Tales From My Closet (7 page)

So I didn’t even mind it all that much, Becka and Robin going off to be their own little club of two, without me. I changed groups, too, except in my own case, I didn’t really have a group. I hung out with the other swimmers, but it wasn’t like we were all best friends. Plus, because I was an athlete, I knew tons of boys. People thought I was, like, so popular. But it was more like I knew everyone and tried to be nice to everyone but at the same time didn’t really fit in anywhere, with any particular group, or even with one single other person.

Even though I was crazy-busy with swimming, a part of me really missed being best friends with Robin, especially in the summer, when half of West Falls went away and it was like living in a ghost town. But Robin was going into the city every day. The one time I saw her, at Starbucks, she was wearing swishy loose silky pants with a skinny top that showed off her collarbones and made her look like someone so glamorous and creative that I didn’t even know her at all, and with her long beautiful hair pulled back into two tight braids, her face looked like a deer’s, with high cheekbones and large liquid brown eyes.

It was at a store called Shake Your Groove Thing that I finally found them —
the
jeans. First, they fit. Second, they didn’t make me look too fat.

When I came out of the dressing room, Mommy looked me up and down and told me to get a second pair, too, only in blue. “You’ll need them once it gets cold again, for school.”

“Do you know how much these cost?”

“It’s your birthday present.”

“They’re one hundred and fifty seven dollars!” I said. “And tax!”

“This is something I want to do for you.”

“We’re going to starve to death! How can you afford all this?”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “Am I really such a bad provider?”

“It’s not that,” I tried to explain, but it was no use — Mommy would get sadder and sadder, and feel guiltier and guiltier, and then she’d start telling me long stories about how much fun she used to have with her own mother, how much they laughed, how her mom would take her shopping to the new Bloomie’s that had just opened up in their town. Which is how I ended up not just with one pair of white jeans, but with a pair of white jeans and a pair of blue jeans, both high-end.

On the day of my actual birthday, Poppy called from his old-age home in Queens to sing the “Happy Birthday” song, like he always does. From somewhere just behind him, I could hear Patty, one of his favorite nurses (they were all his favorite nurses), telling him that he ought to go on
America’s Got Talent
. Then she got on the phone and said: “Oh, my! I know your granddaddy’s so proud of you.” I got a bunch of “happy birthday, Polly” messages on my Facebook page, including one from Coach Fruit! A few of the other girls on the team gave me little presents (a pretty box, a book, funny flip-flops). Mommy made me a cake. But Burton, as usual, was silent.

It’s always the big question. What to wear for the first day of school. I knew that both Becka and Robin were going to once again look like movie stars. But I woke up feeling like yuck. A few days earlier, some kid I’d never seen before had run toward me on the sidewalk, saying, “Hey, Mike! What’s up?” When he got up to me and realized that I was a girl, he apologized, but I couldn’t shake the memory. There was just no use: I looked like a boy. A boy with a huge butt. Plus, it was hot out, and school wasn’t air-conditioned. It would be a broiler inside. I put on a pair of shorts and an oversized blouse. At least I’d be comfortable.

But when I appeared for breakfast, Mommy said: “You’re not wearing that, are you?”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing — except that you should wear your white jeans. Don’t you want to feel confident on your first day of school?”

Maybe she was right. I mean, I knew I looked like I always looked: invisible and big at the same time. So I back to my room to try again. But I just couldn’t do it. Not on the first day of school!

“Oh, honey,” Mommy said as I gathered up my stuff to go to school. “I just wish you knew how pretty you are.”

“Thanks.”

“Well!” she said. “Have a great first day of sophomore year.”

As it turned out, I
did
have a good first day. For once, my teachers didn’t seem either bored or mean, and in chemistry a junior boy who was one of the best runners on the cross-country team asked me to be his lab partner. Robin came up to me and gave me a big hug, and even Becka, who I wasn’t really friends with anymore, made a point of coming over and talking to me, asking me how my summer was, stuff like that. My old teachers waved at me as I passed by in the hallways, and Coach Fruit gave me two thumbs up, and I suddenly felt sorry for the freshmen, who looked so small and geeky and confused.

Then I went into the bathroom and saw this new girl — I’d noticed her in chemistry — and she was wearing the coolest dress I’d ever seen. She told me it was made of paper, and the first thing I thought was:
This is going to drive Becka crazy!
I wanted to ask her all about her dress and if she was new — because even though usually I’m on the shy side I was feeling like maybe sophomore year would be good after all — but then I noticed her staring at my bottom. My big, huge derriere.

“Well,” she said, “later.”

That’s all it took. My heart sank. I looked at myself again, and saw what she saw: a girl who wasn’t fooling anyone, with the biggest rear end in the world!

“Later,” I said as the girl in the paper dress breezed out through the thick wooden door.

The rest of the day I had a stomachache. I mean, what had I been thinking? Like I was going to e
ver
wear those white jeans that Mommy had bought for me? And then — what about the money! Mommy had spent more than three hundred dollars!

By the time it was time for swimming practice, my stomach hurt so much that I felt like I was going to be sick! It was important to show up for practice every day, but the first day of school was even more important, and I knew that if I sat practice out it would look bad and might even jeopardize my place in the upcoming season lineups. I didn’t know what to do! But my stomach decided for me. It was gurgling and churning so much that I felt like I’d swallowed a piranha. Finally I had no choice, and decided that I had to tell Coach Fruit that I simply didn’t feel well.

“I’m really, really sorry,” I said.

But instead of getting angry at me or giving me the usual coach lecture about being part of a team and showing up for my teammates, Coach Fruit said: “You look so sad, Polly. Is there something you’re not telling me? I mean, aside from your having a bad stomachache?”

Which is when my eyes filled up with tears. I was so embarrassed!

“What?” he said gently, and as the whole story tumbled through my mind — about how much Mommy and I were struggling financially and Burton had left us when I was only a baby, and how Mommy had taken me to buy new clothes that she can’t afford, and how sad I was that Poppy had to live in an old-age home in Queens, and finally, how that new girl had looked at me in the bathroom like I was the star of Ugly Land — what popped out of me was: “How can I be a swimmer? I’m huge!”

He smiled. “You’re strong.”

“I’m a giant piece of blubber!”

“My girlfriend complains that she’s too big, too,” he said, laughing. “What is it with you women? You look like goddesses and all you can think is:
My thighs are too fat.
Or whatever.”

“Bella thinks she’s fat?”

“Can you believe it?”

“But she’s so — thin.”

“Yup,” he said. “And great looking. Like you.”

He was grinning from ear to ear now, doing a total Dennis the Menace, and suddenly I realized that, unlike Mommy, he wasn’t saying all that nice stuff because he had to.

“You’re a champ, kid,” he said. “You just don’t know it yet.”

I was so startled that I just stood there like a fish, my mouth opening and closing. Then I smiled back. By the time I was halfway to the locker room to change into my Speedo, my stomachache was almost gone.

M
e and my big
, huge blabbermouth mouth. I mean, it was funny for a second, but then that new girl blushed the color of my grandmother’s favorite wine-red lipstick, and I knew that, once again, I’d gone too far.

She was wearing this awesome, and I mean
awesome
, paper dress. And what did I say? “If it gets too hot, you can just rip a couple of holes in it and — voilà — instant air-conditioning!”

Yes, I really said that. The girl got so red, I was worried she was going to die of heatstroke.

All I’d really wanted was to impress her — to make her think that I was even halfway as cool as she was. I mean: a paper dress! Any girl who can pull
that
off is a girl I want to know.

I’d love, and I mean LOVE, to wear something like that. But I never will. And that’s because I’m what my mother calls “petite” and I call “I look like I’m twelve.” Every time I’ve tried to wear clothes with a little flair, I look like a little girl playing dress-up. I’m so small that I didn’t even wear a bra until ninth grade! Mama says that, with a father as tall as mine is, I’m sure to grow, but in the meantime, I’m stuck with my jeans and T-shirts, my cords and pullovers, my denim skirts and button-downs. Not to mention that Mama has a thing about girls who dress, in her words, “like women of the street.” By which she means in platform shoes, heels higher than an inch or two, miniskirts, bandage skirts, clingy tees, camisole tops, short-shorts, strapless or figure-hugging dresses, and any makeup other than a trace of lip gloss.

“It’s plain disgusting, the way girls your age advertise their bodies like they’re looking for customers,” she says before launching into one of her typically endless stories about some teenager or another who she’s trying to help: She’s a social worker, and, as she puts it, she’s “seen it all.”

“College is where you’re headed,” she says. “College and maybe grad school, too. One way or another, though, you’re going to have yourself a career. No detours for mess, no ma’am.”

Hence my button-downs, my pleated skirts, my straight-leg Gap jeans, my cardigan sweaters, and my Mimi Chica dresses. You heard right. I still wear Mimi Chica flowered and printed junior dresses and skirts, even though no one else has since the year all the Jewish girls were having
bat mitvahs.
But Mama just
loves
Mimi. So much so that I’m surprised she didn’t name me Mimi. Instead she named me after her own mother, Mama Lee. Mama Lee Livingston.

I love Mama Lee. She’s the only one in the whole family who I can tell things to — true things that no one else knows, like how I want to be artist, and that even though I’m a mousecake, I love clothes so much that I want to launch a fashion blog. But the blog I’d do wouldn’t be a typical teenage blog, with lots of “WOW” and/or “MUST HAVE” with uploaded pictures of clothes I like. I want to make it more artistic, and deeper, than that — more about how clothes are their own art form than mere fashion — except that I don’t really like to write. As in: I hate it! I even told Mama Lee that since school started, I’ve been spending my afternoons in Ms. Anders’s art room, learning figure drawing. “Well, that’s just wonderful,” she said. Versus Mama and Daddy, who pitched a fit last year when I signed up for Techniques in Painting, arguing that to fulfill my arts requirements, I should do computer design and journalism, like my perfect sister, Martha (aka Robot Girl), did. I mean, it’s downright weird, how crazy they got about my taking an art class. The way they talked about it, you’d think it was dangerous, like experimenting with drugs or having a skydiving hobby. But when I asked them why they were both so freakanoid about my taking a basic high school art class, they both clammed up and changed the subject. And I know it’s pathetic, but now I’m so scared that they’ll find out about my extra time in the art room that I came up with this huge whopper of a ridiculous lie and told Mama that I was going to Debate Team meetings. I mean, really. Can you see
me
on Debate Team? I can’t even open my mouth without putting my foot in it.

Robot Girl
had been
on Debate Team, culminating with her triumph as Debate Team captain. And now she goes to Princeton, goody-goody for her. But me? Ever since I’d launched that lie, a small, hard knot had appeared in my stomach and wouldn’t go away.

“I’m so proud of you, making Debate Team sophomore year,” Mama said over and over. “But the one thing that makes me proudest of all? It’s that you and your sister are so close.”

Were
so close. I have a picture of the two of us on her bike, together, with me sitting on the seat, and Martha standing up, pedaling. We’d ride all over the neighborhood like that. Now she barely acknowledges my existence.

“It’s like you’re twins,” Mama said.

“Except that I look like I’m in kindergarten.”

“Your sister was the same at your age. Don’t worry, you’ll get your figure. Martha did, right? In the meantime, enjoy it! Think about poor Ashley. . . .”

Ashley is my second cousin. She sprung a figure when she was about eleven, and was taller than most of the boys, too. Her parents had to put her in private school because she was teased so much at her old public school. Mama brings her up every time I gripe about what I look like.

“Trust me, you’re better off looking like you look. And some of these girls, honey? No self-worth at all. Poor Ashley dresses inappropriately, too, with so little self-respect. You don’t want to look like that. Really.”

Actually, I wouldn’t mind. But, as I’ve already mentioned, what’s the use? Except for my bangles, I’m like a walking, wall-to-wall beige carpet — just kind of there, in the background, inoffensive and unnoticeable. But even my bangles are proof of what a conformist I am: Each one of them was a gift from my parents for getting good grades. The most radical thing I’ve done recently, style-wise, was cut my hair very short, which I think gives me a slightly punk-radical-artist edginess — it used to be shoulder-length, worn straight, and parted on the side. I love my punk-short boy ’do, but Robot Girl says it makes me look like our first cousin Roger, who’s her age and goes to college in California. So it’s not like some random new girl wearing a totally funk-o-rama dress sits down with me and the Latins every day. They’re the Latins because I know them from Latin class, except for two of them, who actually
are
on Debate Team, which in itself qualifies them for being Latins. The truth is, most of the girls I hang out with are not actually people I really am really friends with, not like I was with my old friends from elementary school and middle school — but the girl who was really my closest friend moved to Baltimore, and my second-closest switched into Catholic school, and the girls who’d been my friends when we were little had long since soared to the heights of popularity or jockhood or beauty-queen-bee-ness, so that by the time I got to high school I was on my own. And sure, I still saw them on occasion, but we’d drifted apart, leaving me with the Latins.

But that redheaded San Francisco girl? A
paper dress
. I mean, how great is that?

But I couldn’t tell my parents about her, let alone about how I’d chased her off. The truth is, they were so ambitious for me, so certain that I was destined for academic greatness, that I could hardly tell them anything.

A few days after my Huge Blabbermouth incident, I saw San Francisco girl again, this time in the hall. Or at least, I
thought
it was San Francisco girl. Same wild red hair. Same very pale, slightly freckled face. Same ridiculously blue eyes. Same “don’t mess with me, dude” way of walking. Only she wasn’t wearing a paper dress. She wasn’t wearing any kind of dress. In fact, she wasn’t really wearing anything interesting at all. What she was wearing was my own basic uniform of dullosity: jeans and a T-shirt, with flip-flops. No makeup. No fabulous metallic blue fingernail polish. No ropes of beads.
Nada.
I had to stare at her like five times and then stalk her to her next class before I was sure that it really was her, and then, finally, edging up on her right before the final class bell was about to ring, I said:

“Hey there, San Francisco! How’s it going?”

She turned to look at me. “My name’s Justine.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Justine. Like
Justin
, right? Only for girls?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I knew this kid Justin once. He was a real dweeb.”

She looked at me like my hair was on fire.

“Uh-huh,” she said again.

“A total dork-out dweeb of dweebation,” I added.

She must have thought I’d mainlined caffeine. “Well,” she finally said. “My name isn’t Justin. It’s Justine.”

“Just Justine!” I sang. “Just, just just — Justine!”

Then the bell rang and she went into her class, and I was late for mine and got a tardy.

What is
wrong
with me?

When I got home that afternoon around four, the first thing I did was call Mama Lee. Here’s what I said: “Can I come over to your house this weekend?”

“Prettier than ever,” Mama Lee said, giving me a big hug. In the past few years, her cheekbones had become even more prominent, and her wide-spaced dark eyes even more wide-spaced. Her hair had gone entirely silver, and glowed, like it was back-lit. And even though she had a slight limp from the stroke she’d had a few years earlier, her posture was erect and stately.

She was the most amazing person I’d ever known. She’d been the first in her family to finish high school; then she worked, doing whatever she could to save up enough money to go to secretarial school. And then, in 1951, she became the first black saleswoman ever to be hired at Bamberger’s, which is where she met my grandfather, who worked on the loading dock. In old photographs, her long hair is pulled back into a smooth puff, and she wears pearls, cotton dresses with cinched-in waists or suits with padded shoulders, with smallish hats perched on her head.

“How’s my baby girl?” she said as I inhaled the smell of her warm skin — part baby powder and part hand lotion.

“Okay, I guess.”

She released me now to take a step back and look at me, like she always did when I came to visit. “Uh-huh, I see,” she said. “Sophomore year, huh?”

“Yup.”

“You’re growing up fast! Tenth grade already. Imagine that!”

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “It’s just high school.”

“And you looking so fine!”

That was just so — so Mama Lee. She didn’t even know how to be anything but my biggest fan, like she’d never even heard of being critical or demanding or cranky. She didn’t know how to look dowdy, either — not even with the right half of her body listing a little. She was wearing a pair of navy slacks with big brass buttons and a white blouse, and her fingernails were painted red, like she was expecting some boy she had a crush on to come over instead of her dorky fifteen-year-old granddaughter.

“Baby,” she said, “I’m so glad you came over today. Because I got some work you can help me with. Would that be all right?”