Dissentery

My Middle Years, 11-15

Does it seem like I'm glorifying my life too much? I hope not. I feel like I'm Proust, taking my own mundane existance and holding it up as if it would be the source of unlimited interest. Feel free to ignore this at any time--it's simply a reference tool for any questions you may have as to why.

My first memory of Texas is standing in an airport watching my mother's feet while she had a miscarriage in an airport lavatory and hearing her cry. My second memory is of standing on the front lawn of our Texas house and feeling like my foot was on fire only to look down and see that I had stepped on a fire ant pile. These two incidents are perfect book-ends of my time spent in this godforsaken state.

Our furniture had not yet arrived when my mother became extremely ill. I had no books, there was no place to walk to, and I had two children to take care of while my mother was bed ridden. It was the highlight of my week if she pulled herself up long enough to take me to Sam's Club, where I would by dozens of whatever cheap books they had and then read them in a matter of one or two days. When my father came down he took my mother in to get X-rayed and it was discovered that what had been her baby was now a tumor, and she had to have a hysterectomy. While my mother underwent tests to get rid of her tumor, at the age of 11 I had control of the house and everything in it, and I got to play mom and undertake a huge amount of responsability. For a long time we assumed she was going to die, and as I had no friends (when one moves every year, one's family becomes one's friend), I had to wise up to the fact that the only thing stable in my life was about the be taken from me. It was at that moment, that summer, that I came to the conclusion that everyone in my life was, at some point, bound to leave me or let me down.

Luckily, my dad called some people at Harvard who had done advanced work in this field, and by employing some new procedures we were able to remove the tumor--now a bundle of hair, eyes, and teeth--without removing the womb. She was able to get pregnant with Jordan the next year. By then I had already started retreating into sci-fi and sixites counter culture music; I played with my chemistry set and had long Q&A sessions with my dad where he answered any questions I had about science, history, or literature. I made no new friends, as children in dallas do not play outside in the streets. They have soccer practice. My new school was about a year behind my old one and completely contrary to my learning style. It emphasized rules rather than learning, margins over clarity. As a result, I threw myself into learning to master Texas social rules too keep myself from going completely crazy. I was told at school that I would go to hell for being Mormon. I was told that peace signs were broken upside-down crosses. I made friends with boys first (I could take a punch, so I had an automatic in. The other girls resented this, but befriended me because I was close to boys, and in the fifth grade, boys were becoming an interest). I had been wearing bras off and on since the age of 9, but now at 11 it became the source of embarassment, having developed too quickly. I tried out for choir but was never good enough to get a solo, which destroyed my confidence. I fell in love with many boys, all who ignored me romantically, all who went after my best female friend, lead skank Cathy Dixon. One even screamed when I tried to kiss him on the last day of school. I beat people up and I hung out with a kid who picked the scabs from his head wound (tumor also) because he was jewish and I missed hanging out with jews. I made fun of a dumb poor kid because he wore the same shirt every day and he wasn't a good reader. I often came to schoool sick and threw up in front of people. The stress of so many new schools was beginning to catch up.

And then my parents sent me to another school.

At 12 my parents sent me to the Hockaday School for Girls, one of the top private schools in the nation. Previously, my only friends had been boys, so going to an all-girls school seemed like suicide. It was at this time also that my parents had the idea to build a house. While in retrospect they claim that building the house wasn't a big stress for me, they were wrong. They fought about grout, tile, insulation, windows. The builder ripped us off, and they fought about that. They were always meeting with architects, always out of the house. And with a brand-new baby, I had to pick up the slack, I had to babysit and clean because my mother was never around.

Then after the builder ripped us off we had to move into an apartment to save money. The apartment was much too small for our family, and I never had any privacy, which doesn't seem like it would matter unless you're 12 or 13, and then you want your space. We lived right by a highway and a tollway so I wasn't allowed to leave the apartment. My first year at private school was a disaster--I was (not as, but still) poor, I rolled my socks down and buttoned my shirt up to the top and had woody allen coke glasses and could only communicate through rough and tumble sports or the overtly slutty ways of the girls I used to hang out with. Hockaday girls were rich and coy, and none of them wanted to be with me, nor did their parents want them to be with me (and believe me, many girls told me about their mom's disapproval of my family). The year I went to Hocakday only 6 girls were accepted: Ib, who later went on to be one of my best friends, Leigh Notestein, at first an enemy (we went to public school together and were in different circles) but in high school, a friend, Jenna and Barbara Bush (later to be the first daughters), and some other girl of no significance. Ib and I became friends because we both took french and couldn't catch up (other girls had 3 or 4 years of the language in lower school), both of us were poor, and both of us were ostracized-she because of race, I because of religion.

As a result of lame public schooling, I was at least a year behind on everything but English. I worked very hard, but between the house-building, the new baby, the money problems, and the apartment-living, I didn't exactly blossom. Finding me socially awkward, many girls took their anger out on me. One put a poster on my locker saying I was a great person, than made fun of me behind my back when I was visibly delighted. The Bush twins took every opportunity to make fun of my taste in music (beatles? rolling stones? the four seasons?). I spent my free moments, my recesses, and my lunch hours in the library with other book worms (Gwyneth Gravelle, among others) reading as much escapist literature as possible. I must have gone through 10 books a week. I liked horror mostly--Louis Duncan, RL Stein though absurdism like Louis Sacher also delighted me. Gwenyth was really into Dune and Dragon Lance and tried to get me into fantasy sci fi (I preferred ray bardbury and "Star Trek"), which I took up for a breif period but ultimately disliked.

I made friends slowly with however would have me. Often the foreign students--people from Eastern Europe like Zoya, Eva, Sanida, people from Africa like Ib, Jewish girls and exchange students like Sung Yeoung from Korea--these are the people who I made friends with. I spent a lot of time by myself, talking with adults. Some girls had their boyfriends call and invite me to a dance as a joke. I cried a lot.

Seventh grade I sort of decided I had had enough, and started taking little steps to coolness. Cut off my hair, wore my socks rolled up like everyone else, unbuttoned, loosened up. I had learned how to study, was in advance Math classes, was taking extra curricular geography, etc. I never managed to catch up with french though. In order to make myself more socially acceptable I started sifting through my friends, slowly removing some that were holding me back socially (Gwenyth, Sung Yeoung), and aligning myself with more easy going and funny girls--Bonnie, Meg, Ib, my Eastern Block. Most of those friendships splintered off by high school, as I was never rich enough or had enough connections to warrant friendship. But those that stuck it out with me, I stayed friends with to this day.

The lease on our apartment ran out around the start of the 8th grade, and I was forced to live with my grandparents while our house was finished being built (my paternal grandparents had moved from Pheonix to live and die near us). It was the start of the deteroriation in my relationship with them, as my grandfather was so mean to me, and my grandmother so passive and complaining, that I lived an independant existance, though constantly annoyed, constantly interrupted. People at church, taking pity on my backwards taste, started passing me tapes of Hole, Nirvana, and Marilyn Manson. I started listening to modern rock radio. I had no real impression when kurt cobain died, but on the first anniversary of his death, I was very moved. I got my ears pierced and started wearing jewelry. Cut my hair dyke short which in retrospect, was a bad decision, as it started the rumor mill turning for the rest of high school. But by the time I had graduated from junior high, I was in possession of a group of real female friends for the first time in my life, and I was in all the most advanced classes again (my 6th grade marks were not so good). I was in a good place to be entering high school, so its funny that my freshman year turned out the way it did.

posted by Mary @ 10:42 AM