Pink Princess Phone

by Beverly Lucey

I wanted a pink princess phone. I wanted privacy to talk in my own room without my mother and father listening. I wanted not to be sitting in the living room where our one phone was, using the heavy black receiver in front of those two, while curled up in my father's chair. Hunching my back to them while I talked didn’t help.

My mother would be sitting in her puffy chair sewing, while my father tried to nap on the couch. As my mother sewed she'd try to listen to the news on our 12” black and white Admiral console television. But I knew she was trying her hardest to figure out the news on her daughter's mind. At least it felt that way.

I was going to be twelve and my life was starting to feel like headlines, but ones only fit for the underground press of the almost-a-teenager world:

Parents keep out.
Parents, go out.
Parents, go away.
Parents? Not welcome.

I wanted a princess phone made of that new light miracle of plastic, in colors fit for the lighthearted life, the blossoming sign of coming womanhood. Arlene could call me from her extension phone and whisper that she just got her "friend" for the first time and Janice could call me from her family’s second phone to tell me that two cute boys moved in next door, and Barbara could call me when her mother was out at work, and say anything she wanted; she wouldn't have to whisper that Lenny really liked me.

Sandra Dee had a princess phone so she could talk to Troy Donahue. I saw the celluloid conversation at the Saturday matinee Steve Totelli and I took the bus to see. I did not know, at age eleven, that he was gay, but then Steven probably didn't know it either. He was just a good altar boy at St. Mary's. We traded comic books instead of kisses.

I wanted a pink princess phone for my birthday which was four months away on New Years Day. Obviously, I should have a princess phone because I was in seventh grade and there were boy/girl parties starting. Bunky Legere had a big record hop in his rumpus room. Nancy Olson had one in her cellar. And by Halloween, I'd slow danced with Lenny. I wanted to call Arlene as soon as I go home to tell her that Over the Mountain, Across the Sea by Johnny and Joe was Lenny's and my song but I couldn't use the phone after nine. Except no one would know I was calling out if I only had a princess phone, a pink one, in my room.

I even wanted dents in my face from the chenille tufted bed spread. I figured I would get them after lying on my side talking after midnight to that hormone network of budding girls that lived to relive their last few hours over the next few hours, slowing down the moments that were happening all too fast. The dents would fade by morning, but it would be physical evidence that I had friends and Things to Tell, in the dark and so late at night.

I was an only child. It was hard to say no to me, but my mother was saying no.

She was saying, another phone? In your room? Who needs two phones in a five room apartment? Lazy bones who can't walk? People with secrets? An expense every month and nothing to show for it like the acrobat, toe-tap, and baton lessons we send you to. No! No phone. That's final. Pink, Shmink. Black is fine for a phone. The line should be open in case Nana or Grampa needed something anyway.

Homework wouldn't be done. They would never see me. No. No pink princess phone. Think of something else.

There was nothing else. The pink phone was everything...it was freedom; it was secrets. It was the freedom to have secrets.

Arlene and Janice and Jane had one.

"It's important, ma! I need the phone. Please, the phone. I won't ask for anything else. Promise. A princess phone. A pink one. Remember, a pink one. To go with my room, my gray and pink room."

Perhaps she was right to say no, to stand firm, to fold her arms and close the case--no more about the phone, enough is enough. --Then her sister Lillian, my favorite aunt got into the act--saying outloud at the Sunday night meeting of the Cousin's Club—oh, get the kid a phone—I had won.

I won the right to secrets.

I won the right to leave my family, to take up the phone line playing the same song on the same station that Lenny had on so we could listen to it together, In The Still of the Night, by the Five Satins.

I won The Battle of the Pink Princess Present, but surrendered my childhood to a telephone pole.

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I wanted a pink princess phone for my birthday which was four months away on New Years Day.