“OH MY GOD!” she cried. “What happened? We didn’t know where you went, and then someone said you were on the ground—”
Just then, another teacher pushed through along with four or five paramedics, snapping their gloves on, rolling a gurney behind them. One paramedic took charge, a ridiculously good-looking dude who was probably only like ten years older than us. Of course.
“Okay. Everyone! Out of the way. BACK UP BACK UP. GIVE HER SOME SPACE!”
I didn’t need space. I needed to disappear altogether. Forever. They kneeled down next to me and started taking my vitals, asking me my name and what happened. I told them I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t move my leg. I was in so much pain.
“Okay. I’m gonna need to get these jeans off of you so we can have a look, okay?”
I looked around in absolute horror. But before I could say anything, a female paramedic was using a pair of medical scissors to cut up the side of my jeans, past my knee, to my thigh, and was about to keep going when I screamed:
“WAIT! THESE ARE EMILY’S JEANS! YOU CAN’T RUIN THEM!”
The female paramedic looked at me sympathetically, nodded, and stopped cutting.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re going to need to get them off at the hospital, though, and I’m not sure how you’ll do that without cutting them. Your knee is badly dislocated.”
Then the hot paramedic said something dumb to try to get me to laugh. I did, but only to please him. I wanted to die. They secured my leg in a foam brace and loaded me onto the gurney. As they started to wheel me out, past literally every single kid I went to school with, my mom showed up with some teachers by her side. She was, as she likes to always say, apoplectic.
I wouldn’t call what my mom was wearing her pajamas, necessarily; it was more like a leisure suit, a soft purple velour tracksuit that she liked to watch TV in, which she had purchased at Price Club, obvi. Let’s just say it wasn’t the best thing for your mom to show up wearing to your school dance.
“Good Lord, Elizabeth!” she said, her eyes filled with worry. “What happened?! Are you okay?”
The hot paramedic knew how to handle this situation.
“She’s going to be fine,” he assured her. “It looks like she dislocated her knee. We don’t think she hit her head, but they’ll take a better look at her at the hospital.”
When we got outside, I saw multiple fire trucks and three or four ambulances. I have no idea what the 911 call was like. Maybe they just said there had been an accident at a middle school dance and the fire department was prepared for mass casualties? This was years before school shootings became a thing. (Ugh, that sentence is so upsetting. “Before school shootings became a thing.” Horrifying.) It was a chaotic scene, and teachers were trying to herd kids back into the gym. As they wheeled me past, I put my face in my hands, overwhelmed by pain and the sheer humiliation of being carted out of my school dance on a stretcher, my mom in her tracksuit yelling at some administrator as she tried to keep up.
This is what I got for wanting to know what was going on, for wanting to be a part of things, for wanting more. I got my fucking ass kicked. It’s too bad I didn’t realize the life lesson I was being handed. Because maybe, possibly, it would have saved me from even more pain in the years to come.
But at the time, it wasn’t a lesson. It was just the worst thing that could have possibly happened to seventh-grade me. My mom met me at the hospital, along with my sister and my dad. My sister could be such a bitch sometimes, but with tears in her eyes, I could tell even her heart hurt for me in that moment.
Do you know how they reset a dislocated knee? Two doctors (or med students or nurses, I don’t know) just yank your leg out straight as hard as they can while a third slams your kneecap back into place. It’s disgusting and kind of violent and it hurts like hell, but as soon as it’s over, you have immediate relief. It took a while to get to that point, though, because they had to x-ray my leg and make sure I hadn’t broken anything and didn’t need emergency surgery. When it was all over, the doctors put me in a temporary knee brace, handed me crutches, and gave my parents instructions to follow up with an orthopedist the next week.
I didn’t go back to school that Monday. Or the Monday after that. Or the Monday after that one. It took me about three weeks before I was able to face it. My parents didn’t press the issue. Emily picked up my assignments and brought them to me every day. I talked with Rachel and my other friends on the phone after school (I had my own line, guys, NBD). My mom turned Emily’s purple jeans into jean shorts and Emily even generously said she liked them better that way.
When I did get back to school, it wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined. A few kids snickered when I hobbled by. There were stares and whispers, and one day some kids threw balled-up paper at me. I learned to handle my newfound infamy by keeping my head down and shutting it out almost completely. That is, until Scott Bell approached me one day in between classes.
Scott Bell was the worst. A Tracy Flick, if Tracy Flick had been a lanky boy who was obsessed with student government and randomly really good at calligraphy. I had no idea why he was walking up to me.
“Hey, Busy,” he said. “Listen. I think you should know that if your parents decide to sue the school over your accident, we won’t be able to have any more school dances. Ever. That’s what Mr. Bataglia said in our student government meeting and I just thought you should know. Just because you fell down doesn’t mean our whole school should be punished, you know?”
I stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And I really didn’t. I hadn’t heard any discussion of my parents suing the school over my humiliation. They’re not exactly litigious people, although my mother does like to bring up all the times she should have sued people.
“Yeah. Well, just make sure they don’t. ’Cause, like, everyone would know it’s because of you.”
I realize this exchange sounds so fucking arch—like how could some seventh grader even be that horrible? But it’s true. The worst part about that kid (who by the way, never got any better through high school) is that he actually lives in Southern California, and our paths have crossed a few times. About fifteen years ago, I ran into him at some cheesy sports bar in L.A. I was on Dawson’s Creek at the time. He was drunk, and very flamboyantly came up to me saying, “Look at you! You’re just all that now, aren’t you?!”
Weirdly, my takeaway from that run-in was that he was gay and had come out of the closet, and I concocted this whole story in my head about how that was why he was so intolerable in school, because he was repressing who he truly was. I mean, he was really into calligraphy! Of course he was gay!
A few months after running into him, I was having a general meeting at a production company when one of the executive assistants poked her head in and said, “I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. I’m friends with a bunch of your friends from high school!”
“Oh really? Who?” I already knew this wasn’t true, since the girls I’d ended up friends with in high school all still lived in Arizona, with the exception of Emily BB, who was my roommate in L.A. by this point.
“Taylor Goldfarb and Nikki Eliot and Scott Bell!”
“Oh! Yeah! I mean, I for sure know those guys. We weren’t really friends, though. I actually just ran into Scott. I’m so glad he’s out of the closet and everything—that’s so great!”
The air was sucked right out of the room. I knew I’d fucked up immediately. Her face fell and then she very tersely said, “Oh. Ummm. No. Scott’s not gay. He’s my fiancée.”
I tried my best to laugh it off and back up what I’d said, but the damage was done. I’ve now heard from multiple people that he has it out for me. Oh well. Do your best, Scott Bell. You were always a fucking cunt.
Anyway, after my run-in with Scott, I confronted my mom that night in tears.
“No,” she said. “I never talked to the school about getting a lawyer. But we did talk about there needing be so
mething put in place for these dances. The fact that there were no teachers or administrators around to stop those horrible boys is unacceptable—”
“Mom! Please! If you do anything or say ANYTHING they’re gonna cancel the school dances forever and it will be because of me!”
“Oh, honey, don’t be ridiculous. It will be because the administration wasn’t doing their job. That’s not your fault.”
“Mom! No!”
“Okay, okay. Calm down, sweetie. I promise.”
I’m not sure if she ever talked to the school about it again, but it must’ve been dropped, because Scott Bell left me alone and the year-end dance went off without a hitch—not that I was there. My knee brace came off and I had to do some physical therapy, but it wasn’t so bad in the end. It was actually kind of fun to go to a weird tiny office in a strip mall and do exercises and ice my knee with a bunch of septuagenarians who were recovering from hip surgery.
As seventh grade came to a close, bar and bat mitzvah season started to get going and I was relieved by all the invitations I got, and the fact that the boys who went to Hebrew schools knew nothing of my humiliation at the Valentine’s dance. I went with my friends, and we stuck to the edges of the crowd, and talked about which boys we thought were cute, and took a million silly photos in the photo booths.
And in case you’re wondering, I avoided the mosh pits.
MY SISTER
(The Juliana Hatfield Three)
One of my mom’s famous stories about my birth has to do with her beloved poodle, Pierre.
“He took one look at you in your bassinet and KEELED OVER AND DIED! HE JUST SAID, ‘NOPE! NOT GONNA DEAL WITH THAT! I’M OUTTA HERE!’ ”
Obviously, I know that isn’t exactly true. I mean, a dog doesn’t look at a baby and just decide to kick it. In truth, the poodle was like fifteen years old when I was born and I think my mom had basically kept him on life support for the months leading up to my birth. Plus, the fact is, Pierre was put down: he didn’t just die naturally of disgust at the whole prospect of my birth. And I believe he was put to sleep a few months after I was born anyway. So, yet another one of my mom’s favorite go-tos is a total fabrication for dramatic effect. Which I knew on some level as a kid. But the feeling I got whenever she told it to people was that I had killed her favorite thing on earth when I was born.
I mean . . . the stories about Pierre the wonder dog! Did you know that when my mom made beef stroganoff, she would give Pierre his helping and he would “SPIT THOSE PEAS RIGHT OUT AND LINE THEM UP ON THE PLATE WITH HIS NOSE! CAN YOU IMAGINE??!”?
And did you know that Pierre was “SUCH a GENTLEMAN, he JUST LOVED wearing his little tuxedo!” that my mom sewed for him? Many times I wondered if she ever loved me or my sister as much as she loved that dog.
The other story about my birth that my mom loved to tell was this: “Busy just popped right out! She couldn’t wait to be born! ‘HERE I AM WORLD!! READY OR NOT!!’ ”
The truth is that I was a planned C-section that she scheduled for the earliest date they would allow, June 25. My dad and my older sister were waiting for me patiently in the recovery room. There is the sweetest picture of my sister, wearing her pop beads and holding the baby blanket that she brought for her new little sister, which matched her own.
“Leigh Ann, on the other hand!” my mom always says. “Well, she tried to kill me! We both almost died! It was horrendous—just horrendous! We should have sued that doctor! The hospital! Everyone!! But you know, we were just so happy that Leigh Ann was alive!”
And here is where my mom—if she’s in a particular mood—always gets teary at the memory. “That ‘doctor’ should have never induced me. Leigh Ann was upside down and backward! They tried to yank her out and they broke both her hips! And then I had the emergency C-section and it was just horrible. Your poor dad thought he had lost us both!”
If my dad happens to be around for this particular retelling, he usually just nods and adds, “It was very scary.”
And so these are the stories of our respective births: My older sister Leigh Ann tried to kill my mother, and then I came along, popped right out, and killed her beloved dog.
My sister is four years older than I am and I think my mom was so traumatized by Leigh Ann’s birth that it took a while for her to want to get pregnant again. I don’t know the whole truth of it (how could I?). What I do know is that she was breech, which wasn’t identified for some reason, and when they tried to yank her out, the doctor broke her hips and she had to be in some sort of cast/brace for many, many months as a baby. I can’t imagine what that does to a person. To have that kind of trauma when you’re born. Or to spend the first six or seven months of your life confined like that. My mom also had a hard time recovering from the birth. They were living in Connecticut at the time, but moved back to Oak Park, where both my parents’ families still were, when Leigh Ann was about three.
My mom likes to say, “Everything was fine until we moved to Arizona. Moving from Oak Park was the thing that did it. Leigh Ann just was so angry at us. I don’t think she ever really got over it, truthfully.”
The amount of anger my sister had, and would display, was often scary to me. I know it didn’t feel normal. I know my friends were always confused by my loud, fighting family. And I know I preferred to play at other kids’ houses when I could.
Our mom had a thing about making everything “even” in our house. I think it was some prevailing parenting philosophy of the time. Or maybe it was something she had come up with to try to alleviate jealousy. She would make it known that she would allot the exact same amount of money for each of us for Christmas presents or back-to-school clothes. When she turned sixteen, Leigh Ann got my mom’s old car, so when I turned sixteen, my parents bought me a used car that was pretty much equivalent. Or, for instance, if someone complimented me on a performance at a play in high school, my mom would pipe up and say, “Both my girls are so talented! Leigh Ann just starred in the Creighton University production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses!”
I would just stand there, rolling my eyes. My friends’ parents don’t care about Leigh Ann, Mom. READ THE ROOM.
When Leigh Ann got to redecorate her room as a teenager, it was determined that I would too, when I turned fourteen. I couldn’t pierce my ears until I reached the age Leigh Ann had been when she got hers pierced. Same for contacts. It was in my mom’s head that if she could make things feel equal, they somehow would be. But I don’t need to tell you, that’s not how kids work. You can’t force them to be equal, and you certainly can’t force them to be friends or even like each other.
I didn’t understand my sister. I didn’t know why she hated me so much. I know now that she didn’t. But that’s what it felt like for so much of our childhood. When she was mean, she was so mean. There were times when she was beyond scary, like when she got mad at me for some reason and flipped over everything in my bedroom. Or when she threw me into a giant potted cactus and I cut my leg so badly, I still have a scar running lengthwise down my shin. I remember my dad telling me to hide in their walk-in closet while they tried to calm her down. Our fights were almost always insanely physical, which was unfair given our age difference and hence our obvious size difference.
But it wasn’t always like that. Leigh Ann was also incredibly creative and smart and funny and weird and occasionally sweet to me as a kid. And that was part of what was so confusing for me, especially since I was so much younger than her. She managed to fashion a pulley system between the shared air vents in our bedrooms so that we could pass notes back and forth to each other. She would always cast me in her video projects for her high school religion class and would laugh so hard at my Jim Bakker–like evangelical pastor impression. She was sweet to me when the girls in fifth grade were mean. She came to all of my plays.
I remember as a kid thinking she was an anomaly in our family, not yet recognizing my father’s deep depression and occasional rage. Not yet understanding that not all mothers break d
own in tears telling stories. Not yet knowing that shaking my head to feel my hair hit the sides of my face over and over again until I got called to the teacher’s desk, or ripping out my hair at the roots in a little patch on the top of my head wasn’t exactly a “normal” thing for an eight-year-old to do.
I feel like my parents knew they should try to instill self-confidence in us, but at the same time, they still thought that spanking, or even a hard smack across the face, was acceptable. We were all on vacation recently (a Disney cruise, if you must know), and one day at lunch, all the kids were kind of cranky.
“You girls are lucky it’s not like when Busy and Leigh Ann grew up,” my mom said. “You’d get smacked right across those mouths!”
And then she proceeded to tell everyone about the time she hit me while she was driving because I had talked back, and my gums got caught on my braces and my mouth started to bleed.
“And I just felt terrible!” she said, shaking her head. “Can you imagine!? Your mouth full of blood?!”
My husband’s and daughters’ mouths dropped open. They couldn’t imagine. But of course I could.
For years, my own narrative of my childhood was that my sister was the one with the “problem” and we were all just swirling around her, trying to stay above water. Yet I’ve had anxiety for as long as I can remember. I would lie in bed at night as a kid and imagine the worst possible scenarios: my entire family being murdered, house fires, plane crashes, car crashes, my parents dying, my sister dying, my best friends dying, myself dying. I would become paralyzed with fear and unable to even go to my parents’ room. Instead, I would just lie in bed, tears streaming down my cheeks until I finally exhausted myself enough to fall asleep, despite my worst fears. And what’s so strange is that I don’t think I ever really told my parents about this. Part of the reason may have been that Leigh Ann took up so much of the emotional space in our family. And another reason is, I think I just thought it was normal. Like probably no one likes bedtime and most likely everyone thinks horrible morbid thoughts before falling asleep.
This Will Only Hurt a Little Page 3
