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Ruth Anne moved to our town when I was in fifth grade. She walked into the middle of our Monday, and our math class. She had a yellow hall pass, and a note from her mother clutched in her hand. We weren’t the friendliest bunch in the best of circumstances, and it had been a dog of a summer that turned into a muggy autumn. We stared at her, sweating sullenly under her gaze. She was a dumpy kid – brown and bland, except for the purple satin gloves she wore. The teacher read the notes, looked her up and down, pausing at the gloves, before glancing at the mother’s note one more time. The teacher introduced her, sat down, and the class droned on.

We were out on the playground before anyone said anything about the gloves. We didn’t say it to her. We just mumbled amongst ourselves. Maybe her deadbeat dad set her on fire to punish her cheating mother, maybe she was an orphan scarred by a terrible auto accident that had killed her parents, or maybe she was careless and played with the bottles under the sink.

Amy, the class hall monitor, decided to end the mystery. She marched over to Ruth Anne, and stuck her fists on her hips. ‘So why the gloves?’ she asked. Ruth Anne squinted up at her in the noonday sun like a gunslinger in the Old West. ‘You want to know about my gloves? I’ll tell you about my gloves,’ she said. She thrust her arms out in front of her. Amy jumped back from the purple clad fingers. Ruth Anne turned her palms up then down, letting the sun catch the glistening purple threads in the fabric. ‘My aunt, the opera singer, sent me these from Rome,’ she said. We leaned in to ogle her forearms draped in foreign fabric. She continued, ‘She wore these when she sang at a concert with Pavarotti in a stone bowl called an amphitheatre.’ The bell rang. Amy, upstaged by an answer that wasn’t an answer, twirled away in a storm of braids.

After school, I followed Ruth Anne. She stopped after two blocks, waited for me to catch up, and we walked together. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her gloves. I was a magpie for those gloves. I could never resist a mystery. I asked before I could stop myself.

‘Why do you wear those gloves?’

She smiled. And, just after the moment I thought she was going to ignore my question, she said, ‘I’d tell you, but your ears would fall off.’

She stopped so quickly I bumped into her. We stood in front of a white box-shaped house with blue trim that had once been local military housing before the base closed – when all the government money left town. She invited me up to the porch. Her mother sat in white wicker chair crocheting lace with a tiny hook. We sat on the porch swing, and listened to Edith Piaf playing on the stereo in the living room. She didn’t say much. I didn’t either, but it was comfortable. I went home in a thoughtful mood.

Tuesday, Ruth Anne came to school wearing a new pair of gloves. They were made from thin creamy leather, with two buttons at the inner wrist. This time they were her mother’s grandmother’s gloves that were worn in late 19th Century New York. Her great-grandmother had been a dancer involved in a scandal with a millionaire. There was an argument, a ‘der-ringer,’ and a murder trial that made her grandmother’s career.

The PE teacher baulked at Ruth Anne’s gloves, but after reading Ruth Anne’s mother’s note, the teacher finally decided that if she could play badminton in them she could keep them. Providing, of course, that she wore the school’s God-awful PE exercise trunks, horrible billowy blue things with useless pockets that ejected things not pinned in – like locker keys.

In the locker room, Amy held court with a group of median girls, median meaning smart enough to know they weren’t the most popular, but pretty enough to get to be mean to people dumber and uglier than them. I was walking past when Amy asked how Ruth Anne could possibly wash her hands after using the toilet. The others mumbled, giggled, and ‘ewwed’ their assent. The thought of unwashed, peed-on gloves was too delicious and malicious not to spread around.

Amy had turned her attentions on me before when the ‘We Don’t Like You’ girls’ lotto came up with my name. Different cliques had a designated ‘Kick Me’ member, the position shifted like an unknowable tide. One day it was the snot-nosed kid next to you in music class, the next day it was you. How long it lasted seemed to depend on how the tortured student dealt with the added attention, the more nervous tics that could be cultured in a victim, the longer it went on. I had survived – barely. Occasionally, I still caught myself sucking my thumb upon waking. I got over it, and became friends with a lot of them again, but I didn’t forget who had really ground their heels in when they got a chance.

I leaned over into their huddle and asked, ‘Has anybody seen her go to the restroom here?’ They shook their heads. I leaned my head to the side, and commented, ‘Wow, you think she waits until she gets home, so she can wash her hands away from Nosy Nellies? That is smart.’

My smile was greeted by a semi-circle of pinched faces. I could feel the irritation. I had ruined a perfectly good rumour that could have turned into a nickname that could have been used all the way up to, and, with luck, through high school. ‘Ruth Anne – Pee Hands’, I felt a small pleasure for crushing that moment. Amy watched me walk off. When I rounded the corner, they returned to their whispering. I didn’t take that as a good sign.

After school, I fell in step with Ruth Anne, and we walked to her house with a rhythmic clopping that only leather-soled Mary Janes could give you. We stopped in front of her house, and this time I didn’t bump into her. She turned, and faced me in complicit expectation of my question. I gave her what she wanted and asked, ‘Why do you wear gloves?’

She smiled, and I waited. Again, just past when I expected no answer, she spoke, ‘I’d show you, but your eyes would fall out.’

I felt a thrill that became a shudder. ‘Where would the truth send me?’ I wondered, and followed her into the house. Her Uncle Martin, a travelling magician who worked cruise lines in the Pacific for extra cash, had brought a book of the world’s greatest art. We sat on the floor in front of the coffee table in her living room, looking at the pages upside down while her mother flipped through the huge book. I was told I really ‘must, must, must see The Louvre in Paris sometime in your lifetime,’ by her uncle. I looked back at the pages, and solemnly noted that I really must, must, must go to Paris.

My mother was so different from Ruth Anne’s. My family was so different than hers. Hers was so exotic, and mine was so normal. I wanted to defect to her family like a Russian ballerina, flee to her colourful life from my drab existence. I poked resentfully at my meatloaf that night, wondering what strange dish was being served at Ruth Anne’s. I entertained myself by imagining smoked gnu, chocolate desserts with mounds of cherries pouring off of them.
Wednesday, Ruth Anne wore new gloves. Amy watched her with narrowed eyes. ‘It won’t last,’ she decreed. ‘She can’t wear a new pair every day.’ But, for now, Ruth Anne was a gloved Scheherazade, with a new story for every pair. And we all waited with glee for the new story. Amy hated it. Every time she tried to ask why Ruth Anne wore the gloves, one of us changed the subject – the more nonsensical, the better. It drove her mad.

That day I missed Ruth Anne leaving school. I ran after her, calling her name. She didn’t stop until she reached her house, and there she waited for me. I saw her serene expression as she stood at the end of her front walk watching me huff and puff towards her. When I could breathe enough to talk, I asked a question she wasn’t expecting. ‘What did you have for dinner last night?’

She cocked her head, and said, ‘Beans on toast with sausages. Why?’

I was soundly disappointed; my mom’s meatloaf sounded better. ‘No reason,’ I answered. ‘Why do you wear those gloves?’

She looked relieved now that we were back to the normal questions. She smiled, waited, and answered. ‘Two questions today? You’re getting so nosy; you’ll have to be careful. Your nose might just fall off.’

I touched my nose to check it was still there, and followed her to the backyard. Her father was turning smoking hunks of beef on their grill. The smell of chillies, charred meat, and sweet spice crawled up my sinuses and tickled my brain. Ruth Anne’s mother called us over to her flowerbed. She was licking the dew off a honeysuckle stamen. We knelt beside her, and plundered the blooms like mad bees, drunk with nectar and the smell of green, green, green grass.

On Thursday, school took forever to end. I watched the clock all day; counting the minutes until I got to sit with Ruth Anne’s family, like a pith-helmeted scientist watching an undiscovered tribe, observing them, learning their customs until I understood them. The reason for following Ruth Anne home became less about her hands, and more about her family.

When we walked to her house, I linked my arm through hers. We stopped together at her front walk, and when she turned to face me, we held hands. I asked, ‘Why do you wear gloves?’ Ruth Anne said, ‘I would tell you, but you would tell – and then your tongue would fall out.’

I could see my sad face, minus a tongue, just smooth pink silence where a tongue used to be. Ruth Anne’s mother called us into the house. She had got bored during the day, and made a ginger lemon sorbet. We sat on the porch eating little white mounds of sorbet. I let it melt over my tongue, trying to imagine a world without taste. Ruth Anne invited me to stay for dinner, but I went home. My mom was making beef stroganoff, and the scent wafting from her mom’s kitchen didn’t smell half as good.

On Friday, we had art instead of PE, and in art class we were working with clay. I was so excited thinking I was going to finally see Ruth Anne’s hands, but she was ready. She wore dish gloves to school that day. So, I spilled a bowl of slip on her. Slip is not quite mud, not quite water; it makes a lovely mess.

She ran to the bathroom to clean up. I followed her. I pushed open the door, and barged in. She gasped, gloveless under the pouring faucet in the sink. The water washed the clay off, pouring over her perfectly formed fingers, her unscarred hands, and her lightly tanned unblemished forearms to whirl down the drain. Her gasp was echoed by mine. Amy’s head had appeared over the first stall. She took the scene in, and declared, ‘I knew there was nothing wrong with her hands!’

Ruth Anne grabbed her gloves, and ran, crying, from the restroom. Amy hopped off the toilet she had perched on, and stood in front of me gloating. I sat on the floor, amazed. Nothing was wrong with her hands. The mystery revealed was no mystery. Ruth Anne just loved her gloves, and her mother indulged her. Amy’s ranting finally pierced my dazed revelry. She shook her finger in my face, telling me she planned to bust Ruth Anne for the filthy little poser she was. She stomped out.

I thought of Paris, and lemon sorbet. I decided that I didn’t care that there was no reason for the gloves. They were fabulous just for existing, just like Ruth Anne and her family. They didn’t have to make sense.

Amy had to be stopped. She had always ruined everything, punctured every balloon – gave salt instead of sugar. It was gloves not heresy. I followed the retreating bouncing braids of Amy, as she made her way to the playground and the other children.

When I reached them, I knew she had told. They turned to me en masse with such a look on their faces. One of them asked me, ‘Did you see her hands?’

I took a deep breath, covered my face with my hands, and wept with all the shock I felt in the bathroom. ‘It was awful,’ I said. The words bubbled up between hiccups and sobs. ‘It was the most awful thing I’ve ever had to see, and I did it to myself. Oh, I feel so sick,’ I bent forward, thought about my dead parakeet Wilbur, and let myself grieve for the first time since first grade when he died.

They turned back to Amy. Her jaw had dropped, and she looked at me like I was a strange bug. A shrill voice from the back of the crowd piped up. ‘You suck, Amy.’ Amy tried to explain, then thought better of it when she saw the ring of faces. She ran home.

She was a very different Amy when she came back to school. Finally, she had lost her own lotto. Finally, she was the one nobody liked. And, finally, years of unthinking cruelty came back to haunt her.

I walked to Ruth Anne’s house after school. She leaned against her mother, as they sat in the porch swing. Her mother stroked her hair. I stood at the base of the stairs. I said, ‘I didn’t tell them.’

She smiled at me, and held out her gloved hand which I took.

E H OBEY, 34, had a free-form poem published when she was eight, but 'Paris and Lemon Sorbet' is her first piece of published fiction. She lives in California and works as a massage therapist, copywriter and web designer, setting two to three days a week aside for her fiction. She tends to plan stories out while she massages clients. She has a Cat in the Hat tattoo on her right bicep.

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