Tales From My Closet (8 page)

“No problem,” I said. “Only . . .”

Only I didn’t know where, or how, to start. With the fact that I loathed my junior-high-school-sized dresses? Or that I’d told my parents that I was on (gag) Debate Team? How about the fact that my parents didn’t really have a clue who I was, seeing me as a smaller, younger version of Robot Girl, when in fact I was nothing like her and never could be? Or about my big blabberthon mouth? My inability to push the stop button? Or how about that new girl, Justine?

Finally I just said: “I’m just so stupid.”

“What do you mean, baby?”

“Well, for starters,” I stammered, “I talk way too much. I was trying to be funny, but instead I scared this new girl off at school. She was wearing a paper dress and I told her if she ripped it she’d have instant air-conditioning, and now every time she sees me she runs away like I’ve got the worst case of cooties ever. Plus, I have this stupid idea that I want to start a fashion blog, but who am I kidding? I have all these ideas, but I’m not a good writer. I mean, I’m just not. Plus, look what I look like. I look like I’m ten!”

She leaned back and laughed. “My, my, my,” she said. “A paper dress? I remember those! They were a big hit, back in the sixties. I even had one, if you can believe that. Your grandfather thought I’d gone and lost my mind.”

“I don’t think it’s very funny. I was such a total jerk! That girl will never talk to me again.”

“It’s a good thing you came over today, then, honey, because I have a few things I need your help with.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Every time I came over, Mama Lee had something for me to help her with, like reading something that was too small for her eyes, or explaining (again) how to use email.

“No, honey. No, you don’t know.” And she gestured for me to follow her up the stairs.

A minute later, I was rumbling around the storage space under the rafters, trying to locate Mama Lee’s old trunk. It was so hot in there that by the time I found it, way in the back, I was soaked through with sweat.

But it was worth it.

Talk about finding a secret treasure chest! Inside were all of Mama Lee’s beautiful clothes from when she was a young woman. There was a light-green poodle sweater; a fifties-style skirt with pleats; tailored black linen knee-length dresses; brightly flowered cotton dresses that buttoned up the front; cashmere sweater sets; and a deep-red dress with large white flowers and a pleated, flirty skirt. And accessories, too: hats, scarves, costume jewelry — strings of faux pearls, glass beads, rhinestone peacock pins. I was like:
No way.

“Seeing that your mother and aunts never had the slightest interest in these, I was going to give them to the Goodwill,” she was saying, “or to a thrift shop. Because, honey, they tell me that these old styles are in again. But instead, I think, so long as you’re here, you should try them on. I wasn’t but a bitty thing myself, you know. See if any of these old things suit you.”

“For real?”

“What?” she said, laughing. “You think maybe your old Mama Lee might want to wear these herself? Do what I tell you, little girl. Go on now.”

When I tell you that a miracle happened that day, I’m not even exaggerating: Almost all Mama Lee’s old things fit me as if they’d been designed for my body, and what’s more, in them, even with my short-short hair, there’s no way anyone would think I was a boy. Every time I tried on a new outfit, Mama Lee shook her head back and forth like she couldn’t believe her eyes, and when I came out wearing the one I loved most — the dark-red dress with the big white daisies — she murmured, “My, my, my.”

“What?” I said.

“Take a look.”

I stood in front of the mirror. And there I was, only it wasn’t me at all, or at least not the me I was used to seeing. In Mama Lee’s dress, I had . . .
curves.
True, they were small, but I had them.

Mama Lee looked at me, nodded, and said: “Honey baby, I was wearing that the day I met your grandfather. And now, just look at you. It’s like I’m looking at my own young self.”

“Really?”

“My, my, my,” she said.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but the first thing I did when I got home was put all my new old Mama Lee clothes at the very back of my closet. Good thing Mama wasn’t home yet is all I can say. Because somehow I knew that if she ever knew about my new old wardrobe, she’d freak. So I hid it, dressing for school as I always did, in straight-legged jeans and cotton blouses, sitting at my usual lunch table, and going to my usual classes. Twice I saw Justine, but she must have caught sight of me, too, because both times, no sooner had I caught a glimpse of her than she was heading off in the opposite direction. When I saw her, I thought about my fashion blog:
There’s a new look going around school, which I can only call . . . call what?
Even in my imagination, I couldn’t write. I didn’t have an ounce of courage, was the truth, and I’d never have the courage to wear one of Mama Lee’s outfits to school. Not like Justine. Compared to her, I felt like stale bread.

As if she knew, Mama Lee called one night to ask me if I’d had a chance to wear any of her things yet. “I just can’t!” I wailed. “Mama would kill me.”

“How do you know if you never give her a chance?”

“I just know, is how I know.”

“Aw, honey. You tell her that your old grandmother gave them to you on purpose, and wants you to enjoy them. You think your mother’s a tiger, but underneath it, she’s just a little old kitten.”

Even after Mama Lee’s pep talk, I probably wouldn’t have ever screwed up the courage to put so much as one of her three-quarter-sleeve cardigans on, except that the next day, at school, the two most fashionable girls in our entire class came up to me at lunch and told me that they thought my short hair was cute. “You look like Halle Berry,” one of them said. And, okay, it might not sound like a game changer to you, but when Becka Ramez and Robin Kohn-Chase tell you that you look like Halle Berry, it’s kind of thrilling. Especially if, like me, you’re kind of a nonentity, one of those nice girls who no one objects to but doesn’t much notice, either.

The following morning, I did it: I put on Mama Lee’s dark-red-with-white-flowers dress. Then I took it off. Then I put it back on. Then I took it off. Then I put it on one final time, and said a little prayer. When I went downstairs, Mama said: “Lord have mercy. Where on earth did you get that?”

“Mama Lee gave it to me.” I could already feel the butterflies starting up in my stomach, the way they do when I know I’m going to be in trouble. “She said I was exactly her size.”

“She did, did she?” Mama said. “And you’re going to wear that?”

I nodded.

“To school?”

“That was the plan.”

“Honey, you can’t wear that to school.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really have time to explain it right now,” she said, glancing at her watch. “And anyway, you’re going to be late. Did you do that on purpose? Come down late so you wouldn’t have enough time to change?”

“I overslept,” I said, which wasn’t strictly true. But I couldn’t tell her that the real reason I was late was because I’d put on and taken off the dress so many times.

“Change it anyway,” she said. “Or at least grab a sweater for it.”

“I’ll miss the bus!”

“I’m going to tan your grandmother’s hide.”

As I left the house, my heart was pounding wildly, but at the same time, I felt so pumped — and also so relieved — that I decided I’d just have to find Justine and apologize to her flat out.
Hi, Justine! Don’t run away! Just quickly: I’m so sorry for all the stupid things I said to you! You probably think I’m a superjerk, but it’s more like I’m just plain nervous, and stupid, too. And . . .

Instead, as I rounded the corner from the 1-B wing to the 1-C wing, I ran smack up into the girl. Who was wearing the worst outfit ever. I mean, it was almost as if she’d gone from being Cool Daring Different Girl to I’m Ugly Don’t Even Notice Me Girl. For one thing, her lovely reddish curls were all pulled back, tight, into this nasty little ponytail. As for her outfit, she was wearing baggy blue jeans topped with a man’s button-down shirt, like a big old lump.

“Oops! Sorry!” I said as I literally careened straight into her, making her spill her books.

“No big.”

“No, really,” I said, trying to smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, picking up her books and continuing down the hall, leaving me standing there, feeling stupid.

I ran after her. “I’m Ann,” I said. “From a couple of weeks ago? I mean, from the first day of school? You sat with us. At lunch.”

“I know who you are.”

“I really am sorry,” I said.

“And I really don’t think it’s any big deal,” she said. “The halls are crowded.”

“No,” I said. “What I mean is . . .”

“What?”

“It was sort of an accident. I have them a lot.”

“Whatever.”

“I mean,” I said, “what happened on the first day of school was.”

“Oh,” she said, blushing. Then: “Sorry, I shouldn’t have sat with you guys. It’s not like anyone asked me to. I just barged in.” She looked like she was trying not to cry. I just stood there. Then I began, in my usual way, to blabber: “It’s just that, it’s not that I meant you shouldn’t have sat with us. It was great you did. I mean. And that table? With the Latin Girls? That’s what I call them, anyway.
The Latin Girls.
Sounds like the name of a band, you know? We’re not even that tight. Not really. Not like my older sister, Martha, was with her little clique of robots and suck-ups. She goes to Princeton. She hung exclusively with the high school superstars, like you had to be the best at everything for them to even know your name, but we’re not like that. We’re more like: Rejects welcome here! Nerds, geeks, dweebs, wiener patrol, brainless jocks, albino science rats, ghetto wannabes, stoners, and loners — come one, come all!” I was sounding stupider and stupider. What was I saying?
OMG.
Plus, we weren’t like that. We were just . . . we were just a loose group of girls who didn’t know who else to sit with.

Justine was staring at me with her big round cornflower-blue eyes. “And me, I’m supposed to go to Princeton, too, if you can believe that — what a joke, ha ha on me. Because, you know, here we are in West Falls, land of the Good Public Schools, and we moved here for the schools, yada yada. Like, my father, he works in the city? It’s a long commute for him; he complains about it all the time. But then, you know, we came along, and so here we are. Toodley-too! As for Princeton, I mean, what I really want to do is blog. As in: blog for the blogosphere of blogation.”

“Got it,” the girl said. She probably thought I was on drugs.

“And that’s what I mean!” I said, even though even I didn’t know what I meant. I didn’t have a clue. It was like a small, insistent insect had entered my brain, and every time it flapped its wings, something even more random and stupid came flying out of my mouth.

Justine just stood there, looking like she was trapped in the loony bin. Then the first bell rang.

“Gotta go.”

“Justine?” I yelped.

“Yeah.”

“I talk too much and say stupid things. When I get nervous. Like now.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And another thing. Your dress — your paper dress. I really did think it was cool. I did. I mean it. I was, like, jealous of you. Because you looked so great. Versus me . . .”

“Really?” she said, and though she didn’t actually smile, her eyes curled up a little, you know, at the edges. Then she said: “What do you mean, versus you? Look at you. Where did you get
that
? It’s awesome.”

“Really?”

“Totally awesome,” she said.

Then the second bell rang and we both made little waving motions, smiled little smiles, and, turning, ran to our classes.

I
n October
, my mother did the stupidest stupid thing ever. Which was:

Made a date to go out with Becka — and Becka’s mother. For Sunday brunch.

“Mom,” I said. “The girl barely even acknowledges my existence. And when she does, she calls me ‘Um.’”

“‘Um’?” Mom said.

“Trust me, she’s not nice. She doesn’t want to be friends with me. If anything, she hates my guts.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate your guts,” Mom said. “And anyway, her mother is so nice. She totally thinks that it would be a good idea to get you two girls together. She said that Becka spends far too much time alone and that she could really use some new friends.”

“Becka?” I said. “I don’t think so. “

“Give it time,” Mom said, which is what Mom always says when she doesn’t want to deal with anything approaching reality. Such as the fact that since we’d moved to New Jersey, my father spent even more time than before at the office. “Whenever he starts a new job, he’s like that,” Mom would say. “Just give it time.”

“And anyway,” Mom continued now, “it’s not just going to be the four of us. There’s another girl, and her mother, and someone else, too, who have been invited. Meryl thought it would be nice. . . .”

“Who’s
Meryl
?”

“Becka’s mother. And she said —”

“Forget it, Mom! I’m not going! Are you crazy? I’ll answer that. Yes, you are.”

“Meryl thinks it’s a great idea. She says that Becka wants to graduate in three years and isn’t taking enough hang-out time. It sounds like she’s very bright.”

“You’ve flipped, Mom! Did her mother also mention that Becka treats me like toe lint!”

“Actually . . .”

“Not happening, Mom. Because, seriously, you’ve become one of those hover mothers. You should never have given up your dancing. I’m not even exaggerating. This is insane! You need something to do! GET A LIFE!”

Which is when my mother started crying. Truth. As in: tears springing up in her eyes and trailing down her cheek. “It’s not easy for me, either,” she said. “Moving around so much. And you might not know it, but I’m concerned about you, too. Those awful clothes you were wearing, like you were trying to disappear.”

“Yeah, well, as you can see, I’m over it.” I was, too. Because ever since Ann had nearly tackled me in the hallway, I’d gone back to my natural awesomeness, such as what I was wearing that minute, which was, get this: pedal pushers with a Minnie Mouse sweater.

“And you don’t have friends!” Mom continued. “Not one! I hate to see you so lonely. We got here in July — and it’s almost Thanksgiving.”

“It’s not almost Thanksgiving,” I said. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even Halloween. But at least it wasn’t summer anymore. Because if anyone had told me that summer in New Jersey was like being inside someone’s hot, wet mouth, I would have stowed away in a container ship heading for Hong Kong. But now the trees were yellow, orange, and red, and when I came home from school in the afternoons, I found Skizz stretched out on the window seat in my puke-pink bedroom, taking a sunbath.

“Plus,” I said, “I do have a friend. I have Ann.”

“Who’s Ann?” Mom said, blowing her nose.

“My friend.”

It was true, too, and Ann was awesome. On the other hand, Mom was so desperate for me to make friends that I’d been reluctant to say one thing about her. So it didn’t surprise me when Mom said: “Why don’t you invite her over for dinner some night so I can meet her? Is her family nice? What line of work are they in?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I do know that I don’t need you making friends for me! God! I’m not going to that stupid brunch. How old do you think I am, seven?”

“Do it for me, then. Because you’re not the only one starting all over again in a new place. I could use a few friends, too, you know.”

“Way to turn on the guilt trip,” I said, but by then Mom was blowing her nose so loudly that I’m not sure she heard me. Everything about her seemed so
sodden.
It was hard to believe that she’d ever been a dancer. So as usual, when it came to something Mom wanted me to do for her, I felt as if I had no choice in the matter. Especially since Dad had just announced that he might have to go to Germany on business during Thanksgiving, and then left on another business trip, this time for almost a week, and Mom didn’t say anything about it at all except for: “You know how your father is. Work, work, work!” with that little pasted-on smile she wears when she’s deadly pissed off. But at night, when she thought I was asleep, I could hear her crying. Even Eliza, when I Skyped with her about it, admitted that I wouldn’t be able to get out of the brunch.

“A total butt-bite,” she said. “But, Justine, it’s your
mom.
”

“Exactly,” I said. Then I said: “I hate him.”

“Who?”

“My father. He doesn’t care about me or Mom. All he cares about is his career.”

You know that weird silence that sometimes happens on phone calls that makes you feel like maybe you said something so wrong that you can never be right about anything again? That’s what happened. Eliza didn’t reply. And I felt this great black deep hole open up inside me.

“Just make sure you like what you wear,” Eliza finally said.

“I swear to God,” I said, “I’m going to break out in hives.”

Even though I’d reclaimed my right to be awesomely spectacular and beyond extraordinary in all I wore, when it came to what I was going to wear for the Day of Dread and Pancakes, I didn’t have a clue. It was Ann who, after inspecting every item in my closet, decided on my authentic Peter Max early seventies dress — balloon sleeves, a wide skirt, with a pattern of pink and turquoise and coral swirls, like the surface of the ocean during sunset. She also insisted that I top the whole outfit off with her grandmother’s awesomely cool turquoise Lucite choker.

“I can’t take your grandmother’s necklace!” I said.

“Yes, you can. You have to. First, because it pulls the whole look together. And also, it would be like:
I’ve got style by the mile and you best not mess with me, because I got Ann in my corner
.”

“Yeah, really,” I said. “You could take her down with one punch.”

“My first blog entry? You know, the one I told you I’m going to write? It’s going to be about you,” she said, waving her arms around so her bangles chimed.

“Right,” I said, knowing full well that the chances of Ann actually writing her so-called blog were minimal. The girl hated to write and procrastinated like crazy every time she had to write a paper, calling me and whining and begging me to help her find the right words, which was pretty funny, given how much she liked to talk.

Stroking my Peter Max dress like it was a puppy, she said: “I’m going to call my first entry: ‘Maxing Out.’ Get it?”

“Great.”

“It’ll be all about your Peter Max groove.”

“Sure it will.”

Like I said, Ann was great — but it had taken me a while to invite her over to Homely Acres. I’d been right about that, too. Because not five minutes earlier, when I’d introduced her to my mother, Mom had actually come right out and said: “I’m so glad that Justine is finally making friends.”

“You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard,” Ann was now saying. “But you don’t want to look like you’re competing with her, either. But mainly, you just want to be as you as possible.
Comprende?
”

I
comprended
, all right. But just because I had my outfit figured out didn’t mean that I wasn’t still seriously and absolutely freaked out by the outrageously world-class stupid thing my mother did.

Every other kid in school seemed to know about it, too. Even the loud-mouthed jerk in English who’d made remarks about my paper dress seemed to know.
Ben.
That was his name. He was so skinny that he looked like a cartoon. “I hear you’re having a big breakfast with the In Crowd next week,” is how he put it, and when I asked him what he was talking about, he just grinned this huge, stupid grin and said: “I have my sources.” Meantime, Becka no longer so much as glanced my way.

“Obviously, the girl has issues,” Ann said.

Issues or not, she freaked me out. Freaked. Me. Out. And I’m not all that easily intimidated. Even Weird John, who was getting increasingly more useless, spending most of his time in class drawing things in his notebook that he wouldn’t let me see, didn’t get to me. Even when he purposefully exploded something in a test tube, or sat on my lap, or called me “Mizz Frizz,” or took out his own eyeliner and insisted on doing my eyes.

But with Becka, I was a quivering worm. So when Mom got me up on Sunday morning with a cheery “Wake up, sleepyhead!” it was all I could do not to heave. The best I could do was believe in my outfit — that rock concert of colors that hugged my not-very-small waist in such a way that it looked like I had one, with platform shoes, and Ann’s grandmother’s choker, because as it turned out, she was right. As I clasped the necklace around my neck, I felt a kind of reassurance, a promise that, no matter what might come, Ann and I would be able to laugh about it afterward.

“I’m telling you, Mom,” I said as we drove to the place where we were meeting them for breakfast because even though we lived across the street from each other there was no way we were going to drive in the same car because, duh, Becka considered me to be lower than pond scum and never in a million years would have agreed to be trapped in the same vehicle as me, “this is not going to be fun.”

“Just cool it, would you? How do you know if you never try? Meryl told me that Becka wanted to go.”

“Right.”

It was one of those places with on-purpose-beat-up heavy wooden tables, where they put the entire menu on a blackboard. Becka and her mother, along with Huge Smile All-Varsity Girl — the same one who’d given me the evil eye in the bathroom on the first day of school and who sat, with her big-athlete-on-campus lab partner, in the front row in chemistry class — and
her
mother, were also there. As was Becka’s sidekick, Fabulous-in-Lingerie Girl. Becka was looking her usual amazing, with skinny jeans and low-heeled black leather boots, a plain white blouse topped by what looked to be a real Chanel jacket, and that astonishingly beautiful Hermès scarf, swirls of pink and gray and green, that she’d been wearing the first time I met her. She didn’t even look up. Not even when all three mothers started making noises about “letting the girls sit together,” and promptly rearranged themselves so they were at the far end and the four of us “teens” were at the wedged-in end of the table. I ended up sitting directly across from Becka and Becka’s sidekick, and next to Huge Smile All-Varsity Girl, who was wearing the kind of perfect blue jeans that pretty, popular girls from coast to coast wear, with an oversized sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail. Her skin was as smooth as soap. I held my breath, waiting for the extreme awfulness.

But, amazingly — as in, flip me out with a feather — Big White Smile Girl immediately said: “Wow! I love your dress! Where did you get it?”

“Do you mean it?” I stammered.

“It’s, like — fabulous. Really.”

“Yeah,” Sidekick added. She looked great, too, in a silky top that showed off her collarbones, and jeans, she looked like she could have been in a perfume ad. “It looks awesome on you. It sets off your hair.”

I blushed, thinking about how my head probably looked like an exploded red dandelion.

“No, really. I love your style. Where do you buy your clothes?”

So I ended up telling her — telling
them —
about how, when I lived in San Francisco, I started getting into shopping at secondhand stores, and Big White Smile said that she wished she could pull off the look but was too big to wear anything but fairly straight-up American sportswear with a preppy accent, and I said that I’d kill to be tall and pretty like she was, and she said: “Yeah, but have you taken a look at my huge butt?”

“You?” I said. “A huge butt? You’ve got to be kidding me.”