The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (2 page)

“Yes,” said my mother.

Wanda pointed back at herself. “I a mommy.”

“Yes,” said my mother.

“
I
a mommy. So
I
know: Mommies suffer for the babies. MISSUS SUFFER FOR THE BABY SAM!”

Indulgence, as a quality, is too winning to let go. By the time Wanda left later that afternoon, my mother had already booked her services for all forthcoming Mondays.

After a month of Wanda’s weekly visits, I developed a habit of locking myself in the bathroom.

My actions were prompted by Wanda’s cleaning style, which was aggressive to the point of feeling competitive. The verbs “attack” and “stampede” jump to mind; she would
attack
one room and
stampede
into the next. Broadly speaking, the seriousness with which Wanda took her professional duties was to her credit. But as a ten-year-old on the cusp of an early-onset puberty, I found her diligence annoying. Eventually, I found
her
annoying, for I was in a life phase that included quite a bit of pelvic thrusting. Pelvic thrusting of varying, well, pelvises: my pelvis, the pelvises of my dolls. And it was as though Wanda had some sort of motion sensor planted somewhere in that strapping frame of hers, and any pelvic motion set her off. Consistently, she’d stampede into my bedroom to find me
mounted atop … well, just go ahead and pick your poison: throw pillows, beach balls, felt hats. The list is long. So it was that a door with a lock became a top priority. I holed up in the bathroom because it was the only room that had one. And, thankfully, because Wanda was finished with it by the time I returned home from school. It may have been small and it may have lacked a television set. Nonetheless, it was private and available. My pelvic activities being what they were, these aspects were important.

Over time, a weird thing happened. Locked in the bathroom, I invented imaginary friends to keep me company. And if you’re thinking, That’s not weird. It’s what kids do! I’ll point out that I had no fewer than three, and that each one of these three was accessible to me only after I’d taken a shit.

It started out as a Monday-only thing. It became the entirety of my prepubescent life.

There’s a percentage of my adulthood I frankly should’ve spent wising up on politics that’s rather been devoted to unearthing the rationale behind all this. As an adult, I put a therapist on the job, and she stroked the old gal’s ego by suggesting it was the byproduct of my intuitiveness. As in: a conversation with a nonexistent person works best if it’s in private. Smartly I sensed this, and so grouped it in my head with another equally private activity.
I was VERY AWARE as a child
. You see the self-flattery there? It’s way far up my alley. As such, I thought I ought to roll with it.

MY MONDAY ACTIVITY
schedule, Age Ten:

I named my imaginary friends Nancy, Jenny, and Kelly. They were all orphaned teen models, and I’d been put in charge of caring for them after having been deemed a prodigy in the field of adolescent education. We all lived together in a pretty Victorian mansion. It was an imagined compilation of both (a) a Barbie Dream House, and (b) something I’d seen on a family vacation to Newport, Rhode Island.

It had a front porch, too, our mansion, that I’d extracted from a Country Time Lemonade commercial.

I was doted on and greatly admired by my orphaned teen models. They craved my advice on everything from boys to needlepoint to who among them had won a game of gin rummy. They were exhausting but rewarding, and in exchange for my wisdom, spent a large portion of their free time showering me with attention. They discussed my exceptionality in the areas of intelligence, acting, singing, dancing, flexibility, and improv. They told me I, too, could be a teen model.

“Really?” I’d ask. “Modeling? You think?” and Jenny would answer, “With a bod like yours? Oh
yes
. Just give it time.”

The personalities and circumstances surrounding Nancy,
Jenny, and Kelly suggest a sharp eye for twenty-first-century television. I intuited the basic constructs for both
Sex and the City
and myriad reality shows before either even existed. À la Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte, my imaginary friends were divergent in both their interests and dimensionless personalities. Nancy was passionate about good manners and landscape painting. Jenny enjoyed male chest hair, sex, and makeup. Kelly liked kickball and swearing. Additionally—and in the vein of reality shows from
America’s Next Top Model
to the old Diddy classic
Making the Band
—Nancy, Jenny, and Kelly passed the time in an expensively decorated home engaged in inane conversations, waiting to hear from the God-Figure (e.g., Diddy, Tyra Banks, me) about their next scheduled outing.

Confine the idiots
, goes this philosophy of entertainment.
And wait for disaster to strike
.

I was in a bad mood after a particularly draining Monday. A fourth-grade peer by the name of Becca Goldschmidt had tugged at the ill-fitting underpants I’d had on. To be fair, they
had
been bunched visibly beneath my stretch pants so as to resemble an untended dump, and very much begged for the plucking. So Becca Goldschmidt plucked. Fine. What I took issue with was that then she went the extra length of shouting to no one in particular, “SARA BARRON’S BUTT IS DISGUSTING! SARA BARRON’S BUTT IS DISGUSTING!”

“So
what
?” I yelled back. At which point Becca Goldschmidt shouted, “Oh my God! She
knows
her butt is disgusting!”

And then I said, “No I don’t.”

And then
she
said, “She doesn’t even know how disgusting her butt is!”

It was not to my taste, this sort of negative attention. True, I could get into a negative
reason for
the attention—see: a severe case of childhood asthma—but the attention itself I liked to be supportive and adoring. I did not respond well if it was otherwise. Becca Goldschmidt spoke negatively about my butt, and I responded, “You are mean and I hope that you die.” And as justice does not always reign supreme,
I
was the one who then got sent to the principal’s office. I had to spend my lunch period in there with this genuine delinquent by the name of Benjy Jacobs. Benjy and I sat side by side as I ate a cheese sandwich and he drank four cans of Mountain Dew. Benjy and I sat side by side as Benjy then vomited the four cans of Mountain Dew into the wastebasket between us.

I was exhausted by the time I got home, eager to sequester myself in my Victorian mansion. I craved the attention and affections of my orphans/models. I dashed to the kitchen for my granola bar, then up to the bathroom. I ate the granola bar. I sang “Uptown Girl” into the removable showerhead. I shat. I started talking.

“Attention, everyone!” I began. “Who needs to go to the mall?”

“I do!” said Jenny. “I need new tights and bras!”

“Tights and bras, yes. I shall add them to my list. Anyone else?”

Nancy had been working on a landscape painting of our Newport–Barbie doll–Country Time Victorian mansion and wanted my advice on how best to improve it. Kelly cared to dish on Becca Goldschmidt.

As a prodigy in adolescent education, I was able to balance their various needs. First, I told Nancy that in order to improve her painting, she needed to paint a centaur on our mansion’s front lawn.

Jenny tapped her toe impatiently.

“Ms. Barron!” she shouted. “I need tights and bras
now
. My date with Leonardo is
tonight
!”

I answered, “I’m coming, my dear,” and turned quickly back to Nancy. “My point—and then we simply must get going—is that this guy should have big muscles and blond hair on top, but then be a horse on the bottom.”

I was ten, and so the statement’s bawdy implication didn’t strike me. All I’d had in mind was that part in Disney’s
Fantasia
where all the strapping, erotic centaurs charge about to the beat of Tchaikovsky’s
Pastoral Symphony
.

Kelly asked, “A man
and
a horse?! That’s fucking awesome!”

“Watch your mouth, Kelly. Please.”

Nancy continued. “It
is
awesome, Ms. Barron. Thank you so much for the helpful advice.”

“My pleasure, Nancy.”

“Also, I wanted to say I think your butt and underwear look beautiful today.”

“You do?”

“Oh,
yes
. You look like you are in a beautiful bikini.”

“That’s sweet of you to say.”

“Sweet of
her
,” Kelly clarified. “Not like Becca Goldschmidt, the cunt.”

“Kelly! We don’t use that word in this mansion.”

“Sorry, Ms. Barron. I thought, well, maybe I could. Maybe
just
for Becca Goldschmidt.”

I thought for a moment. I told her okay.

“Hey, Ms. Barron!” called Jenny. “Can I French-braid your hair?”

“You
may
French-braid my hair. But only once I’m driving. Right now, I want everyone into the car.”

I reached for a handheld mirror that was stationed atop the toilet tank. I used it as a steering wheel. Then I looked to Jenny.

“You
may
French-braid my hair … 
now
,” I said.

“Your hair is
so
silky,” she responded. “You are
so
going to be a teen model.”

“Thank you,” I said, and rotated the mirror to signal steering into the mall parking lot. “Oh, now look: here we are at the mall. Let’s go to a store with some bras.”

We arrived at the store with some bras.

“Oh-la-la! Look at all those fucking bras,” said Kelly.

“Let’s try some on!” squealed Jenny.

“Yes, let’s,” I agreed.

I removed my shirt. I did not
imagine
removing it. I
actually
removed it. Then I
actually
grabbed two fresh rolls of toilet paper and, having imagined them to be the world’s most fashionable bra cups, I
actually
pressed them to my chest.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Are you like, ‘Wow! You look like Tina Yothers’?”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “That’s exactly what I’m like.”

I felt feminine and reenergized in my toilet-paper bra. Still, though, I had the issue of my hair to contend with. It was positioned in what I like to call “The Garth Algar Triangle Shape.”

The position meant that I now faced competing needs.

On the one hand: I needed to get up, to get a comb, to fix the Garth Algar Triangle Shape. But on the other: I
had
just taken a shit. I knew the proper course of action was tending to my ass before my hair. But in this particular instance, the pull of the hair was too strong to be ignored.

With my stretch pants still around my ankles, I stood up. I hobbled to the medicine cabinet, set down my toilet-roll brassiere, and took out the comb. My ass—exposed, unclean—now faced the bathroom door. I took the time I
needed with my hair, pressing and prodding until it was more Tina Yothers up-do than Garth Algar Triangle Shape.

“You look beautiful,” said Nancy.

I nodded to myself, about myself.

“I do,” I said. “I
really
do.”

I believe it was Angelina Jolie in her title role as Mrs. Smith who said, “A happy story is only one that hasn’t finished yet.”

It was on this particular day that I forgot to lock the bathroom door. The attack on my butt, the injustice of how it was dealt with. The principal’s office. The vomit. It had all been too much. And I had lost my bearings. And forgot.

So it was that while teasing my hair into the requisite up-do the bathroom door swung open.

Wanda stood behind me.

“Wanda!” I yelled, and promptly dropped the brush so that I might cover my chest and crotch. “I’m
in
here!”

Wanda spotted the hand-mirror-cum-steering-wheel sitting on the bathtub ledge. She noticed the toilet paper rolls-cum-bra lying on the floor. She studied me. You’d think a person might turn her head out of pity, at the very least, but no. Wanda just stood there, calm. Unflustered. She pointed to the brush.

“You drop you brush,” she said.

“Duh!” I said. “I
know
!”

Wanda shrugged.

“Okey-dokey, baby. Listen,” she said, and pointed at the various items, at the occupied toilet bowl. “You go ‘La la’ to you friends. You have nice times, fun times. But I scrub bathroom super already before. So you be clean.
Keep
clean. Okay okay?”

“Yes,” I huffed.
“Okay.”

Wanda left and I locked the bathroom door. I looked at the clock. It was 4:45 p.m. I sat still for a moment. I listened to hear if Wanda would tell my mother what had happened. Was that even her style? And if it was her style, what exactly would she say?

“Missus, you baby is crazy. The big one. Look out!”?

The situation felt terribly unfair. I’d been so nervous Wanda would find me pelvic-thrusting at any number of objects, and I’d worked to avoid this, and for what? So she could find me while filthy
and
primping? I was in the market for attention always and forever, but why must it come to me like this?
Why
part and parcel with
such
profound embarrassment? I wanted to be coddled! Special! Unique! And that’s a different thing from being caught when you are filthy. Filthy and primping like some attractive orphaned teen.