Gawky (16 page)

I didn't realize how fast we were actually going and wondered if we were going to be unfashionably late. My hat-versus-no-hat inner debate had set us back only about two minutes, but I was just noticing my mom was going eighty miles per hour when the cop lights turned on behind us. “Shit,” she said, in true fashion of how she'd been acting all morning. Her sudden potty mouth was probably caused by the stress of her own mother being very sick at the time, but nonetheless, I loved my mom's new vernacular.

She pulled over to the side of the road, took a deep breath, held it in for a beat, and began to cry on cue. Never before had I seen such magic from her. 1, 2, 3, cry. Amazing. She probably used season 6, episode 113 of
Laverne & Shirley
, “Not Quite New York,” as a sense memory. I blinked a few times to try to induce tears to help the cause but to no avail. The officer approached the window and my mother manually rolled it down. Just once in my life I wanted my parents to own a car with power windows, which were first invented in the 1940s . . . I know this for a fact. I looked it up. With each inch the window clunkily rolled down my mother's crocodile tears grew more and more evident.

“Hello, officer,” said my mother, barely able to get the words out.

“Hello, ma'am,” the officer nodded at me, “miss.”

I nodded right back, eager to not disturb the awkward dynamic my mother had already instituted with her enviable ability to cry while simultaneously being chased by the cops. This was my first run-in with the law. I was loving every second of it.

“I'll need your license and registration, please.” My mother handed it over, awaiting her punishment. “Ma'am, you were speeding pretty badly. Eighty miles per hour in a fifty-five zone. Were you aware of that?”

“Sorry, we were on our way to church and didn't want to risk missing the sermon.” As if we hadn't missed it every single other weekend of our lives? My mother took out a used tissue from the bottom of her purse and wiped her nose with it for effect. Who's kidding who, it was probably a piece of one-ply toilet paper, as we never had any tissues in the house.

Still, my mother must have known what she was doing, because the cop softened. “I understand, ma'am. I'm a God-loving man myself. I hate missing church on Sundays.”

What the hell was happening? My mother was now bonding with a cop over their mutual love of God and churchgoing habits! This would be a lovely moment if any of it were true. I sat and watched, happy to have one up on my mother for this behavior. My mother then unfolded the already snot-filled toilet paper and loudly blew her nose into it . . . again. My mom's nose blowing and sneezing were a constant cause of embarrassment. We were once in a two-level store shopping with my grandmother in Manhattan when my mom sneezed her usual overexaggerated “A-CHOO!” We were on the second floor of the store and a customer on the first floor called up to us, “God bless you!” I was humiliated. This particular nose blow in front of a suburban cop was as loud as the infamous Manhattan sneeze.

“Here's what I'm going to do,” continued the cop, desperate to make her stop reusing what had now become the opposite of a tissue.
“Because I understand what it's like to be late to church,” he chuckled to himself, my mom joining in as if they shared a bond over the hilarity they both knew from personal experience ensues when one walks in late to church—“I'm going to let you off with just a warning. Drive safely, and please obey speed limits in the future. Enjoy the service ma'am, miss.”

I nodded in disbelief.

“Thank you, officer,” said my mother, “and God bless.”

God bless
was a phrase she had never once used, but it rolled off her tongue with such ease that I wondered why she had chosen a career in teaching rather than three-card monte. She let out a closing sniffle and rolled up the window, each creak accenting the awkward silence. As the officer walked to his car, my mother watched him in the rearview mirror. As soon as he got into his vehicle, she quickly wiped the tears from her eyes, leaving just the smear of her Estée Lauder midnight-blue eyeliner. She sucked in her remaining mucus, looked me in the eye, and said in a tone I'd only heard previously in Clint Eastwood movies, “Jesus Christ, I thought for sure that officer was gonna give us a ticket. Let's go.” She peeled out going even faster than before with no sign of having been in hysterics just seconds earlier. And my morals were “fucked up”?

We arrived late to the service, though no one seemed to mind or even notice, and sat in the back. This was a Unitarian Universalist church, and we had missed the preaching part. We arrived during a medley of pretty songs, and I couldn't tell if they were religious or not. The songs seemed to mostly be about flowers and love, which seemed remarkably similar to my father's Joni Mitchell records. Then we sat in silence for a while “meditating,” during which I spent the entire time wondering about my mother. She must have been really upset about her mom. Where did she learn to cry on cue and lie like that? Did the officer think my mom was hot and that's why he let us off? Or did he really believe her Mother Teresa shtick?

Either way, between the church sneak-out and the run-in with the law, today would be a special secret day kept between only my mother and me. If her intention in taking me away was to re-create a mother-daughter bond that recently had been diminishing, she had definitely achieved her goal. After the service, we drove home at the requisite speed limit, never spoke of the day, and never returned to church. My father never found out (until now if he's reading this). But one thing was certain after our brief stint with religion: I was certainly not going to have any sort of God-infused coming-of-age celebration for this year's birthday. If I wanted one, I was on my own to figure it out.

CHAPTER 9:

B
ecause my birthday falls in October, so close to the beginning of the school year, who to invite to a party always seemed a little shaky. Having no love of a lifetime, no style, no religious affiliation, and not really belonging to any clique, I was about to resign myself to forfeiting hope of any rite of passage. But then I heard rumblings around school and found out to my delight that Alyssa was throwing me a surprise party at her house (obviously not during Shabbos, so we could pump up the tunes). I thought surprise parties were for popular, well-dressed, normal-size girls like Jessica Rosenstein of the White Lipstick Posse. I thought girls like me were supposed to spend their birthdays alone writing tortured love ballads on their acoustic guitars. This grand gesture of throwing me a party was pretty much the nicest thing a friend had ever done for me.

The big night came when I was supposed to come to Alyssa's house under the ruse of the usual experimentations with Nair and Jolen body
hair bleach. Having clear body hair still made me envious of brunettes who got to experiment with chemicals and hot waxes in order to remove unwanted hair. Pouring bleach on one's upper lip seemed like really risky behavior, and I wished I had reason to give it a try.

I walked over to Alyssa's house to “hang out for the night,” making sure I was wearing my best outfit: black-and-white horizontally striped tight bell-bottoms with an oversize belt. I knocked on the door and heard a few “Shhs” and “She's heres.” Alyssa opened the door wearing a tight gray V-neck over tight black jeans. She looked hot in a way that said
I spent two hours to make it look as if I just threw this outfit together.
She smiled and then flung open the door to a group of pubescents in Starter jackets and neon-colored, parachute-material Hot Dogger jump-suits yelling “Surprise!”

I took a note from my mother's recent brilliant performance and acted incredibly surprised. I said things like “Wow! Alyssa, you devil! I had no idea! I am sooooo surprised! You guys!” I really worked my skills as an actress, marveling at how convincing I was and figuring it must run in the family. But no one bought it. Instead, everyone began yelling, “You knew, who told you? Alyssa, she knew!”

As disappointed as I was to find that I was an ineffective actress, I was elated to see how many kids showed up to my party! Granted, the guys were all there because Alyssa invited them and she had big boobs, and the girls were all there because Alyssa was indirectly popular because of her boobs. I didn't care. My friend cared about me enough to throw me a surprise birthday and people actually came. No longer would I be forced to hang out with six-year-old tomboys whose parents disapproved of me. My weekends would now be spent gallivanting around town with fun kids my age rather than babysitting big-mouthed twins and rewatching
Look Who's Talking
. Eighth grade was going to be so much better than seventh grade after all!

When I opened my gifts, I was shocked by how many kids gave me
cold, hard cash. Twenty-dollar bills were shoved into free blank greeting cards from the ASPCA mailings. A few kids even had their moms write me a personal check. Imagine that! A check just for being born. At home I had to weed the front walkway to earn an Andrew Jackson. It was the closest I would ever come to that mythical Bat Mitzvah/confirmation money I had been so jealous of the legitimately Jewish and Catholic kids getting. This party was my time to get in on the money everyone else my age seemed to be getting after they read some religious speech. I was even luckier—I would still get the money ($250 total!) without ever setting foot in CCD or Hebrew school. Wow.

After the party, I thought about my options for my money. I could save it, toward a car or computer, but that would be boring. Besides, my parents didn't know about the money because Alyssa hadn't told them about the party. She got the feeling my parents didn't like her, which was kind of true—Alyssa gave off a confident vibe that lots of people, including my mom, interpreted as sluttiness. Alyssa was completely boy crazy, and the boys were crazy for her. What my mom didn't realize was that I wasn't participating in Alyssa's escapades. I was just tagging along, occasionally being forced to make small talk with a cute guy's less attractive friend while Alyssa made out with the hot guy on the other side of the sofa. But nonetheless, my mom worried that my hanging out with Alyssa would lead to me doing slutty things. What my mom didn't consider was that the only guys interested in me at this point were dirty and gross, albeit with keen musical ability, and even they were barely interested. The guy who had given me all the rock T-shirts seemed to have moved on, sensing I wasn't game. I had learned from '80s movies that playing hard to get was the best way to keep a guy's attention, but I guess it wasn't fair if you were keeping his interest for self-esteem purposes, not because you returned his feelings. He probably figured, “If this chick, who has no other viable options, isn't biting, I'll take my T-shirts elsewhere.” I hope he did. Living vicariously through Alyssa's actions was much more my style.

I decided that my mom and dad didn't need to know about the party, and they didn't need to know about the money. Therefore I would have total freedom to do exactly what I wanted to do with it. The possibilities for $250 were endless.

I also decided that I would spend my unexpected windfall by going to the mall and buying absolutely everything I desired. I loved how on the old episodes of
Wheel of Fortune
the winners of each round could go shopping in the
Wheel of Fortune
rooms and buy whatever they wanted. Even though people were forced to buy cat plaques and vertical blinds in order to use up their money, I still found it exciting to be able to buy anything I desired. This is a similar feeling to the way I felt the few times my mom dragged me to the dollar store at Christmastime for wrapping paper. In Dollar Dreams, I couldn't help but think,
Wow, Margot. You really can afford whatever you want in here.

So, when I got dropped off at the mall with Alyssa, I had an incredible rush of adrenaline. This was the Freehold Raceway Mall, the newest mall in the area. It had a lot of clout because it was in Bruce Springsteen territory, which gave it slightly more class than the Bon Jovi territory fifteen minutes away that I was used to. The people there were less likely to get in fistfights over a Black Friday Nintendo special, and walking among them made me want to rise up to their level of class. We entered a boutique and I pulled a bunch of items off the racks without looking at the price tags first and truly felt like a rock star. The shopping mall was limited in its '70s-rocker-clothing selection, but I found a bunch of impractical items to suit my needs. Poet's blouses, chiffon shirts, purple pants. I could afford it all. Shopping with money had exceeded my expectations. I felt like the youngest contestant ever on
Supermarket Sweep
. As I took my loot home, I was really excited to debut my new looks at school the next week, especially because ever since the surprise party I thought I might be teetering on being almost popular.

Sunday night I planned out my outfit for Monday. I would wear
a bright orange spandex unitard paired with a mustard/orange/hot-pink zip-up shirt strongly resembling a wet suit. Why hadn't I ever worn this color combo before? The hot pink really brought out the rosy hue of my pale skin. I loved how the unitard clung to my lanky frame, giving me an androgynous look, as the skintight nature of the outfit really accentuated my lack of cleavage. I would look just like a freckled David Bowie. This outfit was going to be the start of my new social standing.