The Girl Who Wanted To Be Like A Spoon

By Dana Ravyn

THE GIRL WHO WANTED TO BE LIKE A SPOON is a glimpse of a teenage girl's life as she wanders through the shadowy world of Swansea Beach Amusement Park in the summer of 1967. Penny lives with her parents and older sister in a grimy apartment sandwiched between an arcade, a fun house, and a French fry stand. Her parents, preoccupied with running a large arcade, ply Penny with quarters for games and daily hamburgers, clueless of her life selling newspapers in bars and forging friendships with the hippies who sleep under the pier, a cabalistic clown, an erudite sex worker, and a fortune teller. Penny's once-innocent world begins to spin out of control when she gets a crush on an older woman and faces the tragic loss of a cherished friend and protector. She struggles to make sense of the changes in herself and a world reeling in the tumult of the 1960s, turning inward in an existential search for meaning. Penny emerges a stronger person, but an encounter with her crush fifteen years later shakes her beliefs about herself and the past. Penny's story reveals life's profound and sometimes disturbing truths, but always tenderly, through the lens of childlike innocence and the enchantment of a coming-of-age story that will touch readers young and old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798987912072

Dana Ravyn

DANA RAVYN received her PhD in microbiology and MPH in epidemiology from the University of Minnesota, where she was an educator and researcher until 2000. Dana's research garnered two patents and her medical and educational research has been published widely. Since then, Dana has been a medical writer and physician educator, authoring accredited content used for continuing education by physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. Dana is the author of three other novels, Fearless Heart (KDP, 2014) The Suicide Switch (Wynkyn Worde, 2023), and The Woman From Montevideo (Wynkyn Worde, 2024), as well as an award-winning book of poetry, A Supplication For Crows, (Una súplica para los cuevos). In 2023, she was selected to take part as a poet in the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Dana lives in Delaware.

Book preview

1. The Secret Key

Do you have everything, Penny? Mama asked.

I shrugged. I guess.

She asked if I had something nice to wear, and to bring a dress, but I had no intention of bringing a dress because that way I wouldn’t have to bear wearing one at all the whole summer, unless they made me buy a new one. Besides, Swansea Beach was a vacation place, and there wasn’t a single restaurant that called for more than shorts and flip-flops.

Can I bring my record player?

Mama said I had enough stuff. You packed too many books, do you really need all those? But she forgot I couldn’t go to the library for three whole months.

Why does Sarah get to bring way more stuff than me?

When you’re eighteen, you’ll realize that girls need more things, Sarah said.

Willy the neighbor boy who was always prying came over and watched as we loaded the car with black plastic bags full of clothes and boxes of plates and silverware and glasses wrapped in pages of the Providence Journal, and when we wrapped them Daddy said to stop reading the obituaries and just pack the glasses, please. Willy had curly black hair, only a hint of a chin, and was a little bug-eyed.

You’ll be gone for the whole summer? he asked. Who’s gonna ride with me?

I told him he’d be okay, and he could invite his cousin Cookie, anyway. I didn’t think I would miss riding at Willy’s farm because the boys always got the good horses and I had to ride Ginger, who absolutely refused to leave the coral, and even when I begged to ride the chestnut gelding Thunder, I got stuck on the old nag. One of the farm hands would have to come to kick Ginger in the flank just as we got to the gate, then she’d gallop and refuse to woah when I pulled the reins. The boys always wanted to ride to the cave where they had an Almac’s grocery bag full of dirty magazines, and I hated that. The car was loaded, and Daddy went inside to make sure we had everything and to lock up the house.

Guess I’ll see you in September, Willy said. Send me a postcard.

See you, I said.

Does anyone have to go to the bathroom before we leave? Mama looked suspiciously at me, then at Sarah, then back at me.

The seats squealed as Sarah and I slid into the back of the Ford Fairlane Squire station wagon that Daddy’s high school students painted Baltic Blue in his paint shop, although I liked it better when it was green with a fake woody side, but I wouldn’t tell Daddy that. On the floor were copies of Life, National Geographic, and Ladies' Home Journal. I brought To Kill a Mockingbird, and my diary, but after we left, I was sorry I didn’t have Island of the Blue Dolphins because right now I wished I lived alone on an island and got all my own food and had to fight off wild dogs.

Did you unplug the toaster and the coffeepot? Mama asked.

Everything is off, and the living room light is on a timer, Daddy said.

Did you shut the windows? The bathroom window is always open.

I checked everything, dear. Where’s the map? Daddy asked.

He looked it over and glanced at the sheet of steno pad with blue ballpoint directions, then put everything on the seat, lit a Camel, and started the car.

As the overloaded station wagon pulled out of the driveway, it scraped the bottom. We passed the big yellow plantation house where the Campagnas lived and I thought about what Francesca and her brother Tony would do that summer, and whether the red-winged blackbird that Mr. Campagna tamed would come back to eat cracked corn from his hand and whether he would make dandelion wine again. I wished I could stay so we could have dirt clod wars when they turn over the garden for summer and catch snakes in the skunk cabbage and eat wild concord grapes on the barn roof, seeing who could spit the sour slimy seeds the farthest.

When we were kids, we used to slide down what we called ‘the mountain,’ which was really a massive mound covering the old Griswold crypt. The granite entrance to the vault where they kept the bodies had a hole in it, and Francesca said if you put a secret key in it the door would open and the ghosts would come out, but Tony said that was just to let air in.

Sarah nudged me and I ignored her. Then she nudged me again. You okay?

I was looking out the window and didn’t want to turn around, so I just said, Yup.

2. Unwelcome in Bed

We didn’t get to Swansea Beach until it was late, because everyone took so long packing Daddy said, and we knew we were leaving, why couldn’t everyone be ready? It really wasn’t my fault because after we had driven a half hour, Mama made Daddy go back because she swore that she left a cigarette burning even though Daddy said he had checked everything before he left and didn’t see one.

It was dark when we arrived and it took a while to find the apartment because it was behind an old Ferris wheel and even though Mr. Rosetti told Daddy where to look, we didn’t have a flashlight and couldn’t see the door. I found out that you had to walk all the way down the alley past the motor that ran the Ferris wheel, kind of squeezing by the flywheel so you didn’t get all greasy, then at the end of the alley there was a door in a recess.

Daddy drove the station wagon on to the midway and parked at the end of the alley and we wedged all the bags and boxes past the Ferris wheel and into the apartment. There were no windows, and it smelled bad. Sarah found a fan and put it in the door to get some air inside. It was an old metal fan and Daddy said be careful the cord is frayed, and it made a clack, clack, clack when it turned, and anyway, it didn’t do much to get rid of the smell.

Everyone was tired and cranky from quarreling over directions, and very hungry, so Mama gave me two dollars and sent me to Lena’s fry stand to get some food. I came back with two large orders of fries, one with chili and cheese, and a large order of onion rings, although they were just stacked with a straw in the middle so they didn’t have to put so many in the box. Everyone asked why I didn’t get drinks, and luckily there was some Tang in the cupboard, and Sarah made a pitcher full, but it wasn’t very cold, and the freezer was empty with no ice or anything and Mama made me wash all the glasses first because she said they had newsprint on them, but I didn’t see any.

After everyone ate, Mama told me I looked tired, and I could go to bed, and we would unpack tomorrow. I ate one last onion ring dipped in ketchup because I was still hungry and went to brush my teeth. I wondered how four people would get along sharing such a tiny bathroom with no shelves or anything. I thought about taking a shower, but the curtain had grime all along the bottom and the shower looked like it had never been cleaned and I thought I saw hair in the drain but tried not to look too carefully. So, I brushed my teeth and washed my face and went to bed.  I wasn’t sure about the sheets, so I put a bath towel on the bed to sleep on and slipped the pillow into one of my tee shirts and didn’t get inside the covers.

I read for a while, but there was no decent light, and I was very tired, so I fell asleep right away. Before long I woke everyone up, screaming from the bedbugs. My legs were covered with bites and the itching made me crazy. The spots were everywhere on my body, and I scratched and screamed until Mama turned on the light and looked at me. She tried to hide her horror, but couldn’t really conceal the shock, so then I started crying. Mama told me to take a shower right away, and she’d get some clean clothes. I was still crying when I got out of the shower, but I felt a little better after Mama put some Calamine lotion on all the bites. Daddy got some clean sheets from the plastic bags with our things and put them on the couch after he checked under all the cushions and such.

You’ll be okay here, he said and promised to spray everything in the morning.

Why don’t we get those fumigating bombs they have now? Mama asked.

3. Girlsenberries

I slept predator free but woke itching and among spots of blood on the new sheets where I had scratched at night. When I went to the bathroom, I found Mama had cleaned the shower and replaced the grimy curtain with a plastic drop cloth and she said that would have to do for now until they went downtown to get a new one. After showering and more Calamine lotion, I felt better, and we all piled in the car and went to the International House of Pancakes for breakfast.

The woman at the front was browsing Vogue with a picture of Twiggy and put it on the podium to show us to the table but Mama had to call me along because I was looking at the cover photo and wondered if her eyelashes were real or painted on. Everyone was very serious when we sat down because we needed to talk about what had to be done to run the arcade and who would do what and other things like that, all with an air of importance as if we were planning to overthrow Biafra, which was okay because I was mostly focused on my pancakes and bacon.

Being shortest, I was responsible for keeping the space under the pinball machines clean of cigarette butts, French fry boxes, soda cans, and things like that. Of course, the floor required sweeping twice a day, once at noon or so and when closing on account of all the sand people brought in on bare feet and sandals. Daddy said that he hired someone to do that, a guy named Lonnie, and he thought he’d be okay because Lena, who ran the fry stand, had recommended him, and I didn’t have to sweep, just keep junk out from under the machines. Sarah would have to fill the cigarette machine and had the only key to the locker with all the cases of Marlboros, and Salems, and Camels and she’d have to brush the green felt on the pool table, hang up the cues, and make sure there was chalk. Daddy would run everything and he and Sarah would make change, and they’d be wearing a carpenter’s nail belt, except the three pouches would have quarters, dimes, and nickels that he’d refill from the safe where he put away any five- ten- or twenty-dollar bills. Sarah and I fought over who had to clean the glass on the twenty-four pinball machines, and I said I shouldn’t have to because my arms were too short to go all the way to the back of the glass tops and Sarah could reach but Daddy said I should do it because people just gum up the front of the glass and don’t touch the back, and while I was at it keep the chrome fronts free from fingerprints and polished nice.

What is boysenberry?

I asked Daddy because there were six kinds of syrup on the table, and it was the last one I tried. It tasted the same as the others, but it was blue. He said it was a fancy name for black raspberries that made them sound exotic, and they could sell more that way, and I said I thought it might be even better if they called them girlsenberries, but Mama told me not to be stupid and say stuff like that. Everyone was jumpy about Mama’s job because she had to run the kiddie rides, and she got nervous sometimes. There was a tiny carousel with antique horses, a tank of water with boats that went around and had nautical looking brass bells that were very loud, and rockets that you get in that looked like short hot dogs and had noisy ray guns and outside on the pier there was a little version of the Whip. There would be a lot of chaos and noise and I guess Daddy wondered if it might put her over the edge, but I thought maybe she’d like it. Like when you have noisy guests, and the baby is sleeping fine in the other room but then starts crying when people leave and it’s quiet again.

It turned out I didn’t really have a lot of serious work, mostly I had to do something because everyone has to do their part, but a lot of the time I didn’t have chores and would have to keep busy. Daddy said he’d pay me fifty cents a day, and that was enough for a hamburger for lunch and maybe fries if I got hungry later.

The arcade was in a block in the middle of the midway called Robert’s Surfside and it had two five cent spin the wheel games with some pretty decent prizes, and Lena’s Fried Clams, but we hardly ever had them because they were almost a dollar for a small box, so we only got the French fries or if it was special, onion rings.

In the center was a funhouse that I went in