Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (10 page)

Is your name Susan? If so, you could be a retard.

The girls in my class, I discovered, fell into essentially two categories: the Spanish Inquisition and everyone else.

The Spanish Inquisition was a tightly clenched fist of five girls.

Calculating, self-possessed, and precociously snide, Courtney was the queen of the group, trailed by four ladies in waiting: Samantha (the freckle-faced horse lover), Jennifer (the clothes horse), Molly (a nearly mute, ethereal beauty), and Serena (a skinny, self-possessed gymnast). The prettiest girls in the class, they spanned the hair color spectrum from blond to auburn to brunette, looking like a set of paper dolls, each one with a lithe ballerina body and prim knee socks pulled up to match her corduroy skirt. There was not a homemade haircut among them. By neighborhood standards, all five of them were hopelessly white and un-cool, and yet strangely, this didn’t seem to bother them in the least. The girls in the Spanish Inquisition all lived across the park on the impossibly aristocratic Upper East Side—in town houses and apartment buildings with uniformed doormen. They took the cross-town bus to school together each morning and made a big show of decorating their notebooks with the same smiley face decals and sharing the same bottle of pink nail polish. Dressing alike and talking alike, they seemed almost incapable of delivering a book report on
Amelia Bedelia
without a support group. Ironically, the one area in which they demonstrated extraordinary imagination and initiative was in coming up with ways to make the rest of us miserable.

Weighing in for the victims’ team was me, of course, the chubby hippie kid. I was joined by Georgette, a gangly Albanian immigrant with two different-colored eyes; Gabriella, a tomboy; Alice, the one black girl in the class. And Charlotte, a shy diabetic with learning disabilities and frizzy red hair who had the unfortunate habit of absentmindedly scratching her crotch whenever she stood at the blackboard. We were also all indigenous peoples, members of the great proletarian unwashed, the natives who lived within walking distance of the school.

Yet while the Spanish Inquisition was generous in its disdain for us, they singled out Charlotte and me as particular targets.

Within weeks, going to school for me became the social equivalent of Cambodia. I lived in constant fear of stepping on a landmine. I never knew when something I said would set off a burst of taunting, when something innocuous I’d do would blow up in my face.

“Augh, Courtney, what smells so fishy and disgusting?”

“Eeeew. I don’t know, Samantha, but it’s coming from Susan’s desk.”

“Look, she’s eating tuna fish for lunch!”

“Oh gross. Okay, everyone who thinks Fat Pig Susan stinks more than her sandwich, raise their hands!”

Soon, every time I set out for school, my stomach started to feel like someone had put it through a paper-shredder. Of course, all across America, kids were going to school feeling like this. The perfectionists. The gay kids. The unathletic kids. The kids with strange last names. The artistic kids. The poor kids. The legions of kids who were never sure if they were “in” or “out” on any given day.

When you’re little, it’s nearly impossible to understand that being a scapegoat is a fairly typical experience. Even more strangely, it’s really nothing personal. Oh,
it feels
personal when kids call you Douche Bag or Faggot or Fuckface—when they mimic the way you talk, or chase you home after school, or play “Keep-Away” with the hat your grandmother knitted. But oddly, their teasing has little to do with
who you really are.
Some kids have an instinct for cruelty. Before they ever met you, they were itching, they were hungry, they were jonesing for a victim. You just happened to amble along as they were casting about. If it wasn’t you, it would be somebody else. Anyone, really.

But of course I didn’t know this. And since my new school had only one class per grade, there was no hope of a reprieve after the summer, no chance of a fresh social mix come September. My classmates were mine until middle school. Once I was branded an “Eeeewww” girl, there was no escaping it.

To be fair, I did not exactly do myself any favors either. Socially, I had about as much savvy as a wood ant.

When Courtney and Samantha chanted, “Susan eats snot!” I yelled back, “Stop it! I do not!” then burst into tears right in front of them.

It was inconceivable to me that some girls could actually
enjoy
being vicious—or that picking on me might be their idea of a self esteem program. Naively, I assumed that if people didn’t like me, it was simply because I had yet to win them over. And of course this could be done! If I just showed them how good I was at drawing, how quick I was at reciting the multiplication tables, and how I could build a medieval castle out of nothing but Styrofoam cups, they would admire me and want to be my friend. “Wow, isn’t-Susan intelligent and entertaining?” I imagined them concluding after I’d won the class spelling bee for the second week in a row. “We were wrong about her, girls. Let’s invite her to our next sleepover.”

Of course, if people are already refusing to partner with you for a group project on “Flags of Many Nations,” announcing that you got fourteen A’s on your latest report card isn’t going to win you any fans.

If your nom de guerre is already “Blimpo,” raising your hand and saying, “Mrs. Tumbridge, can I write a book report for extra credit?” virtually guarantees that no one will ever notice any of your lurking inner beauty.

And feigning surprise when the teacher hands you back a pop quiz—slapping your palm dramatically against your forehand and saying aloud, “Another 100! And I thought I failed!”—well, you might as well make a sign reading “Kick Me” and tape it to your ass yourself.

Amazingly, I never figured this out. The more I got teased, the more I became a world-class show-off. My talents, my opinions, my imagination, even my kindness—in my innocence and desperation, I held nothing back. If I could only just prove I was the Best at Everything, I figured, than surely someone,
someone,
would believe I was worthy enough and want to be my friend.

(Pathetically, I would employ this same losing formula to attract guys in college, but that’s another story. Later, in college, too, I would read Plato’s dialogues. In them, Socrates argues that it is only logical that people will always choose that which is good and virtuous and eschew the wicked and unpleasant. Reading this, it struck me that Socrates obviously never spent any time with eight-year-old girls.)

That November, our class began rehearsals for the school’s annual Christmas pageant. Held inside the church, it was considered a pretty big deal. For six weeks, we spent every music period singing “I Saw Three Ships” and “O Christmas Tree” over and over until we no longer needed mimeographed sheets to remember the words.

The Friday before the pageant, we had a dress rehearsal. It was my first time inside the actual church, and frankly, I was disappointed. The interiors of other churches in our neighborhood looked like giant dashboards, like enormous, glittering control panels full of ornaments, statues, and stained glass. But the Second Presbyterian Church was adorned only with two rows of wrought iron chandeliers that looked like medieval weaponry. These were suspended from the skeletal, vaulted ceilings by thick black chains. Except for a burgundy carpet running the length of the aisles, there was no other decoration to speak of. I found it cavernous, bleak, intimidating.

But the day of the pageant, everything was magically transformed. The aisles were lit with long white tapered candles. A huge Christmas tree shimmered by the altar. Filled to overflow with beaming, festooned parents, the pews were ablaze with color. As we proceeded solemnly into the church as instructed (“No waving at your parents! Eyes straight ahead, please!”) our music teacher pounded away at the church’s monstrous organ and a collective “Ooh” and “Aah” rose from the congregants. Flashbulbs went off and perfume came over us in waves as fanatical mothers leaned into the aisles with their Instamatics.

It was only then that I realized the kids from the upper grades were in the pageant, too. The older girls were costumed as angels in white robes, the boys as shepherds. After our headmaster, the Reverend Alcott, welcomed the parents, the organ sounded portentously, and these students rose and launched into a rigorous series of carols I’d never heard before. The singing was punctuated by readings from the New Testament, which the students tended to recite with about as much enthusiasm and comprehension as the Pledge of Allegiance.

But still. By the time Mrs. Tumbridge cued us for our song, I was almost paralyzed with awe. Somehow, I made it up the steps with my classmates, and as soon as we started singing, the audience began grinning like maniacs. Because, since the majority of us were missing our baby teeth, our songs came out as, “I Thaw Thwee Thipth” and “O Cwisthmath Twee.”

Afterward, the story of Christmas commenced. A girl in a gold tinsel halo came forward and sang a song called “The Angel Gabriel,” which I instantly decided was the most extraordinary piece of music I’d ever heard. Following that, a girl dressed as Mary in soft blue robes sang a lullaby that made me feel like weeping. Then, all the other students launched into an anthem called “Torches” that echoed majestically off the vaulted ceilings, and down the aisle came the three biggest boys in the sixth grade class, dressed resplendently as kings. With a great, dramatic flourish, they knelt before Mary and presented her with three coffee cans spray-painted gold.

Watching this spectacle, I was overcome with a sense of wonder and longing. Oh, I wanted to
be
that beautiful, to sing with such heartbreaking lyricism, to make the church swell with music and glory.

It was then that I seized upon a plan to win over my classmates.

In America, there is an enduring myth of redemption that is, not insignificantly, a favorite staple of after-school TV specials and rated-PG movies.

The story line is always the same: A kindhearted, ugly duckling dork is ostracized at school. After class lets out, she returns home to the equivalent of a trailer park. One of her parents is missing, dead, or drunk. The other is unemployed or almost mentally ill.

One day, the dork’s principal announces the school’s annual homecoming contest or talent show. For all the importance accorded it, you would think this event was a summit on nuclear disarmament or the treaty at Yalta.

“Oh, I wish I could enter, but I’d never win,” the dork sighs ruefully to her sidekick. (It is important to note here that the sidekick is certifiably eccentric and hideous-looking, whereas the dork is unattractive simply because she wears glasses.)

“But you
can
win!” the sidekick says. “I’ve seen you—and I
know
you’re the best!”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” says the dork.

But then, we see montage shots of the dork in training—jogging, sweating, getting a makeover, holding up outfits in front of a department store mirror while a bevy of salesclerks frown and shake their heads, then nod approvingly—until the Big Night. Inevitably, some school bully or bitch tries to sabotage her plans. And inevitably, lastminute obstacles pop up, threatening to jettison the whole evening. Maybe her limousine breaks down. Maybe her father has a pulmonary embolism.

But inevitably, our heroine finally arrives in the school gymnasium transformed into a jaw-dropping beauty. The other kids gasp, part around her like the Red Sea, and she then wows them with her hidden talent—which, more often than not, consists of dance moves. She wins the talent show, the homecoming crown, and, not coincidently, the heart of the school’s supreme love interest. Her nemesis, meanwhile, ends up tearing her hair out with jealousy in the parking lot while a car veers past and splatters mud all over her taffeta bubble dress. In the final scene, the dork is hoisted up on her classmates’ shoulders and paraded around the school gym—or is shown in profile, kissing her new boyfriend—while her sidekick gives her the thumbs-up from the punchbowl.

The moral of these stories was never lost on me: namely that, with the right makeover, it was possible to reverse years of social ostracism in a single evening.

And so I became convinced that if I could only land the role of the Virgin Mary in the school Christmas pageant, I could win over my fiercest critics. I pictured myself sitting beatifically in the center of the altar, draped in pale blue silk, singing Mary’s lullaby with such extraordinary, chilling grace that my classmates would sink to their knees. “Oh, Susan,” the girls would sigh reverently. “That was so gorgeous. We’re so sorry for teasing you the way we have. Please, come to our birthday parties. Join us for after-school gymnastics. Allow us to decorate your dollhouse.”

From then on, whenever I was forced to take my bath, I practiced singing. I had to say that, ricocheting off the putty-colored tiles in our bathroom, my voice sounded surprisingly good to me. I sang every carol I could remember from the pageant, from “The Angel Gabriel” to “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

“What the hell is she doing in there?” I’d hear my father say. “It’s the middle of August.”

I practiced this way for the next three years, crooning in the bathtub and in the back of our VW bus on the drive to see our grandparents in the Bronx. I sang in my bedroom and lying on the couch. Soon, in addition to Christmas carols, I found myself singing television jingles for Country Kitchen Noodles, Coca-Cola, and Levi’s blue jeans. I began covering songs from my parents’ record collection, too. I sang along to Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move” and Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.” Listening to WABC radio in the mornings before school, I belted along to such great 1970s hits as “The Night Chicago Died,” “Love Will Keep Us Together,” “Rock the Boat,” and “Tell Me Something Good” by Chaka Khan and Rufus. Granted, this wasn’t exactly church music, but I figured a song was a song.

In sixth grade, it was finally my class’s turn to audition for the pageant’s main roles, and I was ready. When the big lunchtime topic of discussion turned to “Who do you want to be in the pageant?” I felt like I finally had a right answer, the secret password to help me fit in belatedly.