Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

by Alix Shulman

  Until I donned my dental armor it had always been my mother’s comforting word against everyone else’s that I was pretty. Though I sat before my three-way mirror by the hour studying myself, I couldn’t figure out whether to believe my doting mother or the others. I would scrutinize my features, one at a time, then all together, filling in the answers at the end of our common bible, The Questions Girls Ask, but I always wound up more confused than when I started.

  Does your hair swing loose? Do you tell your date what time you must be home when he picks you up? Do you brush the food particles out of your teeth after every meal? Do you avoid heavy make-up? Dou you stand up straight? Do you see to it that your knees are covered when you sit down? Are your cheeks naturally pink? Do you consume enough roughage? Are your ears clean? Do you wear only simple jewelry? Do you protect against body odor? Do you powder your feet? Do you trim your cuticle? Are you a good listener?

  It seemed as impossible for me to know how I looked as it was important. Some people said I looked exactly like my mother, the most beautiful woman in the world; others said I resembled my father who, though very wise, was not particularly comely.

  But once the grotesque braces were on, all my doubts disappeared. It became obvious that my mother’s word, which she didn’t alter to accommodate my new appearance, was pure prejudice. While to her, busily imagining the future, the advent of my braces only made the eventual triumph of my beauty more certain—indeed, it was for the sake of my looks that they had been mounted at all—to me they discredited my mother’s optimism.

  Sometimes at night, after a particularly harrowing day at school, after receiving some cutting insult or subtle slight, I would cry into my pillow over my plainness. My mother took my insults personally when I told her about them. “What do they know?” she would say, comforting me. “Why, you’re the prettiest girl in your class.” And when I protested between sobs that no, I was awkward, skinny, and unloved, she would take me in her arms and promise me that someday when my braces were removed they would all envy me and be sorry. “You’ll see,” she would say, stroking my lusterless hair, her eye on some future image of me or some past one of herself. “Just you wait.”

  I longed to believe her but didn’t dare. Before bed each night I would walk to the gable window in my room that seemed to form a perfect shrine and on the first star I saw wish with a passion that lifted me onto my tiptoes to be made beautiful. I performed the rite just so, as though I were being watched. I thought if I wished earnestly enough my life would change and everything I wanted would come true. My grandmothers, teachers, uncles and aunts, and especially my father, were always encouraging me with their constant homilies: if at first you don’t succeed try try again; hard work moves mountains; God helps those who help themselves. Nor was there any lack of precedent: from the seminal Ugly Duckling, a tale which never failed to move me to tears, to Cinderella and Snow White and Pinocchio, there were deep lessons to learn. All those step-daughters and miller’s daughters and orphan girls who wound up where I wanted to go likely started out having it even worse than I. I wallowed in fable, searching for guidance. White-bearded Aesop stretched his long bony finger across the centuries to instruct me in prudence, while from Walt Disney’s Hollywood studio I learned how to hope. “Someday my prince will come” echoed in my ears even as it stuck in my throat. From my first glimpse of the evening star until the ritual wish was over I would not utter a syllable; but pressing my hands tightly together like a Catholic at prayer to dramatize my earnestness, I would summon a certain Blue Fairy, blond-haired and blue-eyed and dressed in a slinky blue satin gown, to materialize. “Star bright, star light, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.” I believed she would one day grow before my eyes from the dot size of the star to life size, and landing on my window sill reach out with her sparkling wand, which would glint off my braces and illuminate my darkened room, and touch me lightly, granting my wish. I had actually seen her only once, in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, but I believed in my power to summon her. If it wasn’t ludicrous for my simpering brother Ben to see himself a general, it couldn’t be ludicrous for me to wish for a minor miracle of my own. When I had finished wishing, I would stand in my gable until I could spot five other stars (on a clear night ten), then climb solemnly into bed.

  If during those years I wore braces there was ever any sign that I might turn out lovely, no one except my mother noticed it. Certainly not I. Each morning I examined myself anew in the mirror for the fruits of my wishes; each morning I saw only the glum reality of my flaws. Faced with my reflection, I shuddered and looked inward. Those steel bands that encircled my teeth like fetters and spanned my mouth like the Cuyahoga Bridge were far more remarkable, more dazzling, than any other aspect of my countenance; exhibiting obscenely the decaying remains of the previous day’s meal, no matter how thoroughly I had brushed my teeth the night before, they completely monopolized my reflection. The pain they produced in my mouth was nothing to the pain they caused in my heart.

  At night I scanned the sky for stars; by day I studied them in the world. Hurrying home from school, I would pore over the movie magazines, cutting out the photos of the stars I loved and pasting them lovingly in my scrapbooks. Like the boys with their total recall of batting averages and lineups, I knew by heart the films, studios, ages, husbands, and measurements of every star I loved. I had my favorite studio, my favorite actress, my favorite singer, my favorite actor; and my preferences, like those for trading cards in years past, were strong and inexplicable.

  With my classmates I would play guessing games about the stars until dinnertime.

  “I’m thinking of a certain movie star whose last initial is B.”

  “Is it a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she at Warner Brothers?”

  “No.”

  “Is she famous for her legs?”

  “No.”

  “Is her first initial J?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it Joan Blondell?”

  “No.”

  “Is it Joan Bennett?”

  “No.”

  “Is it Janet Blair?”

  “Yes!”

  On weekends, standing in the tub shampooing my hair, in secret I would pile my frothy curls high on my head before the mirror in the style of Joan Fontaine or Alice Faye for long magical moments while the bath water grew cold around my shins. Then rinsing out the soap at last and rendering my hair limp again for another week, I would return as my poor self to the tepid tub. There was no getting away from me for very long.

  I placed all my faith in the miracle. I wished nightly on my star and daily on dandelion puffs to be beautiful. I wished on fallen eyelashes, on milkweed, on meteors, on birthday candles, on pediddles, on wishbones, on air. Seeking some sign of the coming miracle I told my fortune with cards and drew prophecies from tea leaves. “Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief”: only a beauty could land one of the desirables. I examined my palm, my horoscope. I avoided stepping on cracks. I depetaled daisies. I knocked on wood, set the knives and forks on the table exactly so, whispered magical syllables and incantations. I ate gelatin to make my nails hard and munched carrots to make my hair curl. I crossed my fingers, bit my tongue, held my breath, and wished steadfastly for the single thing in the world that mattered.

  Then suddenly, in August 1945, as the boys of Baybury Heights reeled in ecstasy over the impact of the A-bomb and the girls of my class assembled their wardrobes for the coming encounter with junior high—on the very eve of my entering a new world—the Blue Fairy, that lovely lady, came through. My braces came off, and the world was mine.

  My problem was, when I looked in Frau Werner’s mirror, I couldn’t be sure what was the matter. The symptoms of my malady were elusive. Nothing so dramatic as a pimple stared back at me—only a much less promising reflection than I was used to: wearier, older. Even the fuzz on my lip was visible only sporadicall
y, depending on my mood and the light.

  It had all started in Spain—I think. I had gone there to fulfill myself as a woman and had come away wondering if I was turning into a man. My body, after only a few doses of hormones, was playing tricks on me as it had at puberty, and I could do nothing but sit by and watch. Growing a mustache at twenty-four was serious; I was unequipped for a man’s life. Would I need electrolysis? Were my barely adequate breasts diminishing? Should I get a padded bra? If a few artificial hormone pills could transform me like this, imagine what a pregnancy would do! I would never, never have a baby. It was unjust that the slightest alteration of my chemistry might ruin me for life. My twenty-fifth birthday was rapidly approaching; I ought to have had five years more to prepare for old age. But at the rate I was deteriorating, I might not have five months.

  If only my “hormonal imbalance” were nothing but a severe attack of insecurity. But no, I had had tangible symptoms in Spain, aside from my looks. Something had happened. I had missed my period, and felt pain when I urinated, and experienced incontinence. Wetting my pants could not, at my age, be attributed to insecurity.

  “You’ve got to find me a doctor, Manolo. I’ve got to have a pregnancy test.”

  “Yes, yes. Next week we go to Madrid.”

  “I can’t wait for Madrid. There must be a doctor in one of these towns! People have babies everywhere!”

  Our life was so slovenly that the simplest task was impossible to accomplish. Always, next week in Madrid. No program, no discipline, no sightseeing since I had been traveling around with the little Teatro Clásico Español. Three weeks of nothing but eating, drinking, fucking, Flamenco, and getting high, stealing an occasional extra hour of sleep while Manolo was rehearsing or on stage. No bath, no mail. If I wrote letters, no stamps. All my planning for nothing. I was going out of my mind with indecision and restlessness, thinking always, I must leave tomorrow, but always unable to pack today. It was a bad life for me.

  When I’d left Munich to test my independence and soak up Spain, I had thought nothing bad could happen to me there. I had crammed Spanish history and Spanish art, read travel books and Frank’s Don Quixote, preparing to make of the trip an Experience—and an opportunity. If I could somehow manage on my own, I thought, then I would leave Frank; but if I found after a month that I really couldn’t manage, I would resign myself to staying wifely home for good. A simple, economical plan: the worst that could happen was I would enjoy a month in the south and be back where I started, no different than before.

  It hadn’t turned out that way. I had not been able to manage on my own—couldn’t even mail a letter or visit the Prado. But if I could feel for a man what I felt for the stranger Manolo, then how could I possibly return to my dreary husband? Compromise was one thing, hypocrisy another. I couldn’t do it: couldn’t stay in Spain, couldn’t return to Frank, couldn’t survive alone. That left me nothing. Nada.

  Manolo was impossible. He sapped my will and made me ill besides. He was in the midst of a life I could have no part of, except as a spectator. When my symptoms did not improve on their own, I started nagging him to find me a doctor. His intentions were lofty, but his memory was like a child’s. As we never stayed more than two nights in any town, we were always ready to leave before Manolo decided to act. It was not until I had wet four different beds in four different villages that, pulling into the middle-sized city of Valladolid, Manolo agreed to go in search of a doctor.

  “I have found a doctor, Sasha. We must take him your piss.”

  I jumped all over him. “Manolo, amigo, amor. Gracias, gracias.” I was halfway out the door, dragging him after me.

  “There will be time for me to take it to him after dinner. Now I am hungry.” He clapped his hands loudly and rubbed his palms together.

  We all ate together around a long wooden table in the pensión the troupe had taken over. Sixteen of us, like a family. The meal was as long as the table. First soup, then eggs, then fish, then rice with chicken, then a few leaves of salad—all digested with mounds of bread and gallons of wine. The Teatro Clásico Español seemed unaware of drinking water. And, finally, the smooth golden custard that ritually ended every Spanish meal, flan.

  After the flan I excused myself and went upstairs to pee in a bottle. When I returned to the table, everyone was already steeped in the seductive rhythms of Flamenco, accompanying Pepe’s high minor falsetto and José María’s and Tonio’s sensuous dancing with las patinas and castanets. Of course Manolo wouldn’t leave the table. He poured out more wine and struck his cupped right hand with the fingers of his left, Flamenco-style. “We have time for the doctor. I promise it,” he said. I could do nothing but clap too.

  It was the music and the meals, oddly both jubilant and solemn, which gave ceremony to our disjointed life. The meals always began in a hush, as though the crude plank or earthen floors of the rooms we gathered in were cathedral stones, and always ended in a passion of Flamenco, a communion. Everyone helped teach me how to eat eggs by jabbing the yolks with bread, how to drink wine from skins, how to clap out the palmas, stomping and clapping faster and faster until the music exploded in a frenzy.

  It was almost time to set off for the theater before Manolo suddenly remembered the doctor. “Dios mio! El doctor! Come!” he yelled, jumping up and draining his wineglass. Though of course it was too late, we set off.

  Fade-in on a muddy cobblestoned back street of a poor Castilian town, five minutes past curtain time with three figures, two on stiletto heels, hobbling along in search of the Teatro Principal, which seems not to exist. The figure in the center is the drunken leading lady, supported on one side by a Spanish youth who resembles the young Brando, and on the other by an American girl too far from home. She carries a bottle of urine in one hand. The street is filled with screaming, running children. The leading lady is babbling something about her heart; the bottle, lacking a top, is sloshing urine over everything including the leading lady, who, believing it wine, grabs for it.

  THE YOUNG BRANDO: Pugh! (dashing the bottle to the gutter).

  Oh, well—it doesn’t matter: the doctor has gone home, and the next morning the company is leaving town for good. There will be other towns, more urine.

  In Palencia at last we saw a doctor. (“Palencia? I’ll send Frank a postcard and he’ll think I’m in Valencia, right on schedule.” We had another good laugh, but I never got around to mailing a card, as I never managed to finish writing a letter.) The doctor reported that I was not pregnant. He diagnosed my malady as inflammation resulting from excessive sex, and prescribed large white pills and abstinence. As I sat across a desk from the doctor, afraid, Manolo translated his words to me proudly, sentence by sentence, allowing the doctor to admire his English and his cojones. A very accomplished young actor.

  I took the pills. But Manolo, living on an excess of everything, would not practice abstinence. “O mi amor, do I hurt you? I never want to hurt you. I am truly sorry,” he would say, aghast, his belly moving over mine. But he couldn’t stay off me. Whenever I got angry and threatened to leave, he’d leap around the bed laughing and grabbing at me, and maybe twisting my arm or dealing me a provocative slap, until I promised to stay; then we’d make love again. Once he stole my passport, threatening to tear it up unless I promised. I forgave him every time. I imagined he did it because he needed me to stay, as I needed him.

  I was sorry to need him, disgusted to know that I had thrown away my one Big Chance not five minutes after entering Spain. Unable to manage for five minutes on my own! As the train crossed the border from France and the entire motley Teatro Clásico Español had climbed on board, I had attached myself to this troupe. When Manolo, Veronica, Pepe, and José María had straggled into my compartment with guitar and castanets, I had imagined they were simply my first Spanish sights. Musical, like the movies. But after Manolo, as young as I and with my kind of looks, began trying out his English on me, it wasn’t half an hour before I knew that all he had to do was ask me to stay, an
d I wouldn’t leave the train in Madrid as planned. Maybe love at first sight is always desperation. Though I passed myself off as an adventuress, inside I knew I was really a coward. Worthless without a man. As the train pulled out of the Madrid station a few hours later, I leaned back on the plush seat in Manolo’s care. We squeezed hands until Madrid and all her guidebook wonders seemed as distant as Munich. What difference did it make, I thought, if I see Madrid now or later? There was all of Spain to see. Wasn’t it better to see it through native eyes, accompanied by Spanish music and Spanish love?

  • • •

  I was not, as I had expected to be, an outcast. Rather, whoever didn’t accept me as just one more member of the troupe took me as something of a celebrity. I was in a class apart, too strange to need explaining, too odd even to need to remove my wedding ring. Americans were still a rarity in Spain in the fifties, especially female Americans traveling alone, and I was shielded by the sheer glamour of being la norteamericana loca. I was a wondrous creature who knew someone who knew someone who knew Tennessee Williams. To Manolo I was more: like some visiting mogul I was powerful, rich, worldly. An exceptional woman, like their own idols Ava Gardner or La Pasionaria. As notable as a man.

  My celebrity carried advantages. As an outlandish American I could, for the first time in my life, be as abandoned as I liked in bed. I could direct everything for my own satisfaction, and Manolo took great pains to please me.

  “You like that? Bueno! I will do it all the night long!”

  He caressed me all over for hours and hours, or kissed me exactly where I wanted for longer than I asked, while I lay back and let him; he did not find my breasts too small; he knew exactly when to enter me; he let me lead, let me set the rhythm; refusing to stop unless I commanded it. In a week I was more intimate with Manolo than I’d ever been with any man—partly, perhaps, because of the freedom the language barrier imposes; partly because of the sheer number of hours we logged in bed together; but mainly because for the first time in my life I was as much a person as my man. We were like Martians to each other, incommensurable and therefore equal. Ordinary standards simply didn’t apply to me. A creature apart, a Martian-American, I carried my own standards. I didn’t worry about how I looked to Manolo; I felt no need to hide from him the imperfections of my body: a Martian-American was more than beautiful enough for him, sufficiently blinded by love. No one dominated: we just circled around each other, coming together for our dance. No games to play, no roles to fit; neither rivals nor adversaries, we were two creatures exploring each other. Anything went.