Big Girl Small

by Rachel Dewoskin

  “You’re going to be great,” he kept saying. “The nervousness is the sign of a true genius.” He said he was so nervous before his swim meets that he sometimes threw up, and the more nervous he was, the better he did.

  “I’m not nervous when I dance,” Sam said.

  It was a cold, rainy night and the pavement in the parking lot shimmered as we walked up to the school from the car. I had on boots, black skirt, white blouse, and red tie, since those were the colors the seniors were wearing. I had dark lipstick on too, like Ms. Doman’s. She had told us she was going to bring her husband. And since we all wanted to be married to her, this was interesting for us.

  Everyone was there—and I mean the entire school, every teacher, student, sibling, parent, and custodian, all crowded in the hallway outside the auditorium. Mrs. O’Henry was all dressed up in a long maroon dress with buttons shaped like flowers, and she waved to my parents and me. Then I saw Ginger and some woman with enormous hair. When the woman turned, I stared. Her face looked like plastic that had been melted and molded, and now could never be moved. She was weirdly ageless, and resembled, in the way that all victims of plastic surgery do, Michael Jackson. Maybe it’s the absurdly tiny noses that make people look like that, shadows of their original, real noses hovering above the new ones. Like the way you have limb anxiety when your leg gets cut off but you feel like you still have a leg. Maybe you break your face’s heart when you chop off parts of it, and it longs for the other half of its original nose. The woman with Ginger had eyebrows so high up across her forehead that they looked suspended by puppet strings. I wondered how she closed her eyes to sleep, because she had practically no eyelids left.

  “Hey, Judy, this is my mom,” Ginger said, and the woman reached out and shook my hand and then my mom’s hand, and after I recovered from the shock of Ginger having a mom who looked like that, I thought how her hands betrayed her, looked like they belonged to a fifty-year-old woman who had been married and divorced twice and was raising Ginger alone. Her boobs, on the other hand, looked like they were about to torpedo off her chest and puncture anything in her path. My mom took a tiny step back.

  “Hi, I’m Mimi,” said Ginger’s mom.

  “Hello,” my mom said, in her flat voice, and I was furious at her for acting like a snob, even though I was stunned by Ginger’s mother too. My mind was surging forward. For one thing, as soon as I met her mom, I thought maybe Ginger had a scholarship too. For another, maybe she wore sweatpants and stuff all the time because she didn’t have that much money to buy fancy clothes. For a third, maybe she was insecure, embarrassed of her mom. Of course, it was sweet that her mother would show up at the senior voice concert when Ginger wasn’t even in it. Maybe she just wanted to see the school. Or had Ginger been hiding her from us and now her mom had found an excuse to meet everyone? I would have to analyze with Molly, who was smart about other people’s parents. Sarah was too mean about Ginger to be able to help.

  “Thank you for having Ginger over,” Ginger’s mom was saying, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how weird it was that Ginger’s mom wore so much makeup and had such a crazy-single-lady look with the big painted nails and everything when Ginger was so pretty in her sweatpants without trying. And then I thought how Goth Sarah was the opposite of her mom too, because her mom was all plain while Sarah was so Goth. This made me wonder if I was the same as my mom or different, and maybe it’s just because it’s hard to see yourself, but I couldn’t decide. The truth is, even now, I don’t know if either half of me is like my mom. Is the regular Judy half of me like my mom, even if the dwarf half isn’t? Even if I weren’t a dwarf, would I be like her? When I think about it, it gets hard to say what either of us is even like.

  I did know one thing: my mom was being unfair by thinking just because of the way she looked that Ginger’s mom couldn’t be doing a good job. My mom never said she thought that, but I could tell. But she was wrong, because I know now that Ginger’s mom is actually a good mother, and maybe my mom had an after-school-special idea about her just because she wants to be younger than she is. Of course, I kind of had the wrong idea about Ginger and her mother too, so maybe I am like my mom.

  I saw Kyle walking into the auditorium by himself, and was thrilled that he had come, even though it was impossible to know who he’d come to hear; I mean, all of his friends were seniors, so it could have been anyone in SV.

  Then Ms. Doman came in with an old man, and I wondered who he was—her dad? A new teacher? Then I saw that he had his hand on the back of her waist, and a jolt of terror shot through me like an arrow. That hundred-year-old man was her husband! My mom made her way over to them, dragging me by the hand like a five-year-old.

  “You must be Ms. Doman,” she said, and I was embarrassed that she would say such a boring thing to the most brilliant teacher in the school.

  “Are you Judy’s mom?” Ms. Doman asked, holding my mom’s gaze like a movie star in love.

  My mom nodded and put her arm behind my head, which is her way of putting an arm around me. This way, she doesn’t have to crouch down, but also doesn’t appear to be patting my hair like I’m a pet of some sort.

  Ms. Doman leaned forward, glanced around politely, saw that no one but her ancient husband was in earshot. “Judy is the best student I’ve had in twelve years of teaching,” she told my mother. I thought my mother might leap into her arms.

  “Thank you so much for telling us that. We’re very proud of her, of course.”

  Mr. Doman harrumphed and Ms. Doman opened up the side of herself that was next to him. “Judy, Ms. Lohden, this is my husband, Norman Crump.”

  “Norman Crump?” my mother asked. “The Norman Crump?”

  “The one and only,” Ms. Doman said, half sweetly and half bitterly, as if she knew he was famous but wasn’t impressed anymore after years of having to pick his undershirts off the back of her desk chair or something.

  “It’s nice to meet you both,” Norman Crump said in a gentle way, and I felt bad for having had mean thoughts about him before he’d even opened his mouth. What was wrong with me? As if to make it worse, he turned to me. He had an afro of gray hair around his head, and wore round frameless glasses. I wondered if he had been cute when he was young, thought probably only in a so-ugly-it’s-lovable way. He had a big, weird-shaped nose right in the middle of his face; it looked like someone had made it half an hour before out of modeling clay and put it on him as a disguise.

  “Emma has shown me some of your writing,” he said. “I hope you’ll be a writer someday.”

  “Really? Thank you!” I was unable to mask my babyish delight, even at hearing him call Ms. Doman “Emma” in front of me. I tried to recover my dignity, but made everything worse by adding, “I mean, coming from you, that means a lot.”

  Norman Crump is a Michigan hero. He’s a writer who sets all of his novels in Ann Arbor, and describes the town perfectly every time, making it seem like the center of the universe, instead of just a top-ten university town like Madison or wherever else college students gather in the Midwest to drink beer and get educated. He always has young people having sex in unmistakably Ann Arbor locations: the stadium, Gallup Park, on the steps at Hill Auditorium. Maybe he and Ms. Doman frolicked all over the town when he was young. Although when he was young, she wasn’t born yet. So maybe he did it with someone else and then married Ms. Doman as soon as she turned eighteen. Old famous writers always marry their students. Maybe Ms. Doman had been the prettiest and most promising one in his class, so he had married her. I couldn’t think of a polite way to ask how they’d met, although I was curious. What if I asked and he had been her nursery school teacher? No one wanted to have that conversation.

  My parents went into the auditorium, where we saw Mr. Luther taking a seat by himself. He was so wrong for being a schoolteacher. It was like he was a sea sponge, removed from its natural habitat and unable to survive in the world he had picked. I hoped he was gay and had a boyfriend, but was just too shy to bri
ng him. I hoped the boyfriend was sweet and sociable and helped Mr. Luther interact with whatever world they lived in when he didn’t have to be at school. As long as he wasn’t just alone all the time, living in the math room, slinking out from behind his desk to attend our events. I told my parents to go sit with him and headed backstage, where all the seniors were chattering giddily and putting on lipstick. Alan was rubbing Amanda Fulton’s shoulders and bare neck. I stood in the wings, waiting for Ms. Vanderly to gesture to me and Carrie to come out, and trying to breathe deeply even though every time I did, I inhaled so much dust from the thick dark red curtains on the stage that I thought my throat would close off entirely like a clogged bathtub drain. Ms. Vanderly was on stage introducing us, and then she turned a beaming smile toward the wings. Carrie and I looked at each other, nodded, and walked out snapping. We started the whole concert with the intro to “Take Five,” and honestly, I was so nervous I felt like I might black out. But the audience was dark enough that I could pretend they weren’t there, that the blazing above me was sunshine coming through my bedroom window, and I bolted that introduction out, all the boo boo shoo be doo bops, listening for Carrie’s voice and trying to make sure we matched, that I wasn’t drowning her out. I could hear her slight, high voice like a glittering string above mine, and I relaxed. We sang, “Still, I know our eyes often meet / I feel tingles down to my feet,” and I could feel Ms. Vanderly’s proud eyes on us from the wings.

  Then everybody came out, and we did four numbers together before the six of us doing real solos exited and lined up backstage. I came out first again, the spotlight so bright in my eyes I couldn’t see anything. I took a steadying breath and sang “We Belong Together,” the whole song out into absolute blankness that could have been my room or the shower or outer space, except my parents and Chad and Sam and Kyle and Ginger and her mother and Molly and Goth Sarah and what I considered to be the rest of the world were all watching, listening.

  I came back to consciousness during the last verse:

  Shall we weigh along these streets

  Young lions on the lam?

  Are the signs you hid deep in your heart

  All left on neon for them?

  Then it was a blur. The audience was standing and screaming, and we were done, had sung our solos and the finale and felt like rock stars even though the fans were our parents and brothers and teachers and their hundred-year-old husbands. Backstage was like being inside a hot air popper. Everyone had rushed back there and was hugging and screaming and congratulating each other. I spotted Kyle right away; he was standing near the doorway to the auditorium with Chris and a woman I guessed must be Chris’s mom. She was fine-boned, wearing a simple black dress with a cream cardigan over it, and black boots with a lot of stitching on them. Her hair was pulled up into a gold clip, and she had on soft pink lipstick. Both of her arms were wrapped around Chris, and she looked like she might die of love and pride. To my surprise, he didn’t seem to mind, was returning the snuggle, unembarrassed. I wondered how his dad could have left them, if she had lots of boyfriends, if Chris was jealous. Alan was there too, but before I could figure out who his parents were, mine arrived to smother me with compliments.

  I could see past them that Kyle was making his way over, although maybe he was just headed to the door to leave. But in any case, as he walked by, he was like, “Judy Lohden, congrats, man, that was great!”

  My parents were standing there like cardboard cutouts of themselves. I said, “Thanks, Kyle!” really fast, and my voice was all high-pitched and squeaky so I tried to cover it up by saying, “So were you,” which was horrible because he hadn’t been in the concert because he wasn’t in senior voice. But instead of being like, “I mean, I know you would have been good,” or whatever I could have said to unembarrass myself and continue making it worse, I managed to stay quiet. This was good, because it meant I could keep hearing my name in his voice. It echoed in the dark, empty chamber of my mind. Ginger was standing there too, and she was like, yeah, good job, Judy, and even though I was grateful that she said it, because now the stupid thing I’d said to Kyle wasn’t the last thing anyone had said, I pushed her voice away so it wouldn’t ruin Kyle’s. Because my name sounded different when he said it from how it was when anyone else, including me, said it. In his voice, it was crunchy, like car wheels on a gravel driveway.

  My parents took Molly, Goth Sarah, Chad, and Sam and me to the Grill that night, where Brad, the manager with floppy blond hair and a unibrow, already had banana splits ready for Chad and Sam and a mint chocolate sundae for me. He asked what Molly and Goth Sarah wanted, and Goth Sarah was like, “Coffee, please, black,” and Molly ordered lemon sorbet. I saw my parents look at each other. I’m not allowed to have coffee, maybe because it stunts your growth. I felt like a little kid, eating my stupid frothy sundae while Molly and Sarah spooned sorbet and sipped coffee. We sat in the front, listening to the rain pound down on the roof and gossiping about the concert.

  “He’s a thousand-year-old fossil,” I said.

  “Yeah, but he’s amazing. I mean, did you read Under Babylon?” Goth Sarah asked. My mom was so impressed she could barely contain herself.

  “I didn’t,” I said, “but my mom did.”

  “It’s a wonderful novel,” my mom said, “I’ve been encouraging Judy to read it for years!”

  “My dad has that book at home,” Molly said. “I’m going to check it out.”

  “Norman made a point of coming up to us to say what a fabulous job you did tonight, honey,” my mom said to me. This made me think of Kyle’s voice saying, “Judy Lohden, congrats, man,” and my stomach flipped like a pancake.

  “You were dope!” Sam said. “I mean, no one else was as good, and they were seniors! Everyone in the audience thought so.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “So, is Ginger coming over again?”

  I was surprised he would ask this in front of Sarah and Molly. I saw Sarah shoot Molly a look like, “Of course,” but Molly grinned.

  “Who’s Ginger?” Chad asked, and I started to say, “You know Ginger—” but Sarah was staring at me like, “Shut up,” and then thankfully my mom said, “Ginger is a new friend of Judy’s” before I could say, “The one your hideous friend Santana freaked at that party we didn’t tell Mom and Dad about.”

  “A hot girl,” said Sam. Molly and Chad and I laughed, and even Sarah had to admit that it was funny with a begrudging snort, but my mom shook her head. She looked at Sam meaningfully. “That’s an offensive way to talk about Judy’s friends.”

  After she said this, she looked at Sarah and Molly, and I was wondering what she could be thinking, maybe something along the lines of: “Well, at least neither of you is hot enough to get objectified by my twelve-year old son.”

  Then Chad was like, “I have to take off. I told Alice I’d pick her up after her study group. Congratulations, J., you were great. Molly, Sarah, nice to meet you two.” I liked this; he was pretending he hadn’t met them before, at the party our parents didn’t know had happened. He even winked at us. I bet Molly and Sarah loved that.

  “So, Judy,” my dad said, as Chad walked away. “Where’d you find that song?”

  I felt in this question something about what it must be like to be a parent, to realize that your kids’ lives actually take place without you, in dark practice rooms, in their bedrooms, in their private, inaccessible imaginations and minds.

  “I’ve been listening to nothing else for three years, Dad,” I said, punishing him for no reason. I never cut my parents any slack at all. And I’m sorry for that now.

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m surprised I’ve never heard it before, then.”

  “I had never heard it either,” Goth Sarah said, and I wondered if this was true, or if she was just kind and wanted to make my dad feel better.

  “Me, neither,” Molly said.

  We drove home in the kind of warm car glow that exists only when your life hasn’t been totally ruined. I remem
ber it now, because it’s raining outside the Motel Manor, and the window in my room is leaking just enough so that the gray paint on the windowsill is bubbling and the carpet next to the window is sopping and black.

  If I close my eyes as tight as I can and rub them until dots of light form, I can still see Sam next to me in the backseat the night of the SV concert, and the backs of my parents, my mom with her arm stretched between the seats. It was warm in the car with Sam and my parents all safe. And I had just had the thrill of being in the senior voice concert. My mom was playing with the little bit of hair curling down into my dad’s collar. She was thrilled, because of the concert and my polite friends, and because she had seen all three of her kids that night and we all seemed happy.

  “You want a haircut, Max?” she asked, playing with my dad’s hair.

  “Do I need one?”

  My mom always cuts my dad’s hair. I don’t think he’s ever had his hair cut by anyone else. My parents met the summer after high school and got married when they were twenty. Those were their “hippie years,” when they moved to New Mexico and made belts and definitely smoked a lot of pot while their one pig and six chickens ran around the yard. They didn’t stay, because I guess it wasn’t a great life for Chad. I wonder if all the pot-smoking I’m guessing they did was related to my foreshortened limbs.

  Later that night, I heard my parents in the bathroom, setting up the haircutting salon, and Sam thumping plastic strums to “The Boys Are Back.”

  I didn’t listen to the vent, just lay down on my stomach on my bed and wrote a long entry in pink in my leather diary—a gift my dad had gotten me at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I wrote all about the concert, Norman Crump, my voice, the way it sounds coming from my body and how it must sound different to people who aren’t inside my body. And Kyle. What he hears when he listens to me. How I think he’s a good listener, so unlike most boys. I wrote about AP bio, how I’d gotten Rachael Collins as my lab partner, and how I liked her because she was tidy and reserved, with short dark hair and a big vocabulary. She worked on the school paper, wrote a current events column, and saved most of her words for that; she didn’t talk much. I suggested naming our dead cat “Cletus the Fetus,” not so much because I wanted Rachael to think I was funny (although I would have liked it if she had), but because joking about the rubbery plucked cat made me feel less miserable about carving up someone’s beloved pet, or worse, a helpless stray. Our teacher, Mr. Abraham, who was constantly touching us with his moist, fat hands, posted cat-part pictures on the class website and made jokes about “partbook” being like, our “facebook.” Grownups who use Facebook are embarrassing, and even if Mr. Abraham had known better than to be on Facebook himself, we still wouldn’t have found him cool for knowing what it was. It’s better not to pander to teenagers, since we have super sharp pander radars. But Mr. Abraham probably wouldn’t have been embarrassed to learn that we thought he was a loser anyway, because there are two kinds of people in the world: people who get embarrassed and people who embarrass others. And Mr. Abraham was definitely the latter. He’d probably be thrilled to know that he and Cletus the Fetus are characters in my diary.