Tru Confessions

by Janet Tashjian

  For Doug, Warren, and Jake

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  KEEP OUT!

  ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  Enough About You, Let’s Talk About Me

  101 Reasons (Not Dalmatians) Why I Am Keeping This Journal

  Reasons Why Sometimes I Think I’m the One with Special Needs, Not Eddie

  Ideas for My Television Show

  My Pathetic Idea of Fun

  Reasons Why I Think My Mother Is the One with Special Needs

  Just for the Record

  Beginning, Middle, and End

  Being a Twin

  Some Technical Mumbo Jumbo

  Reasons Why Eddie Is the Best

  Reasons Why Eddie Is the Worst

  Surfing the Net for a Cure

  Eddie’s Mind

  Wish Number One

  What People Would Say About Me If You Asked Them (Yeah, Right …)

  An Offer They Can’t Refuse

  Math Problems Not in My Textbook

  Private Time with Eddie

  Hey, John Steinbeck, Thanks a Lot

  My Final List of Things to Do

  Eddie Typing on My Mother’s Computer

  Things I Think About When I’m Bored (But I Hardly Have Time Anymore)

  The Critics Give a Big Thumbs-Down - (A painful entry for me to write)

  Hasty Show Ideas

  A Perfect Moment

  Dreams and Nightmares I’ve Had

  Idea Number Two

  Things I Am Almost Too Embarrassed—or Feel Too Guilty About—to Enter in My Journal

  A Natural Quality

  What Eddie Is Thinking—Maybe

  Words I Hate

  A Little-Known Fact

  Message on the Net for Me

  Geography Night

  Whew!

  Love Stinks - (Get ready for this one)

  Soup or Sandwich?

  B.J.’s Sleepover

  Probable Responses to the Sleepover Story If I Ever Work It into My Hit Show

  Mom’s Dates

  A Frying Pan Hits Me on the Head—Oh Yeah, Eddie Has Special Needs

  SNORE!

  A Sicko Way to Spend a Rainy Sunday Afternoon—Playing “What If?”

  A Patched Bot Wever Noils

  What the Letter Said (My Version)

  What the Letter Said (The Real Version)

  What, Me? Nervous?

  LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

  Unhappy Birthday to You

  Headline in the Boston Globe Tomorrow: TRU OR FALSE? LOCAL SHOW IS A

  One Special Tulip

  Gulp!

  The Big Night

  A Sample of Possible Reactions

  The Next Day at School

  My Real Reaction to the People Who Are Suddenly Being Nice

  Trying to Sort It Out

  My On-Line Conversation with Deedee

  A Slight Misunderstanding

  The Mysterious Deedee

  What Are You Going to Do Now That You’ve Finished Your TV Show? - I’m Going to Disney World! (Well, Not Really …)

  Epilogue

  GOFISH - QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  KEEP OUT!

  This is my private journal. My mother gave me the software package to use for homework assignments, but I can’t stop playing with the journal feature. My best friend, Denise, uses the old-fashioned kind of diary with a tiny lock and key, but I need more space than that. On the keyboard, my fingers fly—I can write about my life, or gossip about my classmates, or even if I want to. Sometimes I just babble—stream of consciousness, Ms. Hinchey calls it—and sometimes I try to re-create a scene exactly as it happened: scenery, dialogue, and all. I guess I’ve never been able to make much sense of what happens until I write—or type—it all down.

  But just because you popped up on my screen like some computer virus doesn’t mean I’m inviting you to stay and poke around my life. On the other hand, I’ve got nothing to hide, at least no more than any other twelve-year-old. You’ve heard of that computer term WYSIWYG? What You See Is What You Get? Same applies here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you … .

  ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  Enough About You, Let’s Talk About Me

  Most of my friends call me Trudy, but Denise and my family call me Tru. I keep asking my mother if I can change my name to Leah or Jamie or some normal name. She won’t let me because everyone in her family for two hundred years has been named after a famous writer. I tell her Judy Blume and Ann Martin are famous writers and they have normal names, but she says Gertrude Stein was a writer from the twenties and I should be proud to be named after her. My mother was named after Virginia Woolf—another great writer but a suicide case like my uncle Tommy.

  Miggs Macrides heard Denise call me Tru, so now he calls me Falsie. He’s one of those kids who thinks his jokes are still funny three days after he says them. I think jokes are like soda; they lose their fizz pretty quickly.

  The reason I know so much about jokes is because I’ve been the butt of a few of them. Mostly by association. My brother, Eddie, has special needs and, unfortunately, that sometimes brings out the comedian in people who don’t know him. I try to ignore the comments and have the relaxed attitude about life my mother has, but most of the time I end up worrying about stupid things—like homework, whether Billy Meier likes me, or if there’s any disability in me. I worry about that last one because I’m Eddie’s twin.

  Asphyxia, that’s what my mom called it—not getting enough oxygen. Poor Eddie was inside her suffocating and no one knew. I remember the day she explained it to me, I was bringing my bike into the garage. I asked her how to spell it twice, then traced the letters—a-s-p-h-y-x-i-a—on the seat of my bike with my finger. She didn’t need to say it could have been me, ’cause I was thinking that already.

  Eddie looks like my mother with his greenish eyes and dark brown hair. I take after my father—or so everyone says—with my blond hair and big ears. My mother says my father was a good guy (sensitive and well-meaning), but he just wasn’t prepared for children, let alone twins, and one with special needs at that. He tried for the first two years of our lives to make it work, but when he got the opportunity to work in the Peace Corps in Africa, he jumped at the chance. My mom says it was probably the best thing, but I think charity begins at home.

  My mother is a freelance graphic designer. Sometimes her work is in fancy magazines with her name printed in tiny letters along the side of the page. She works at companies for weeks or months part-time when they need help, then moves on to another place. Sometimes she even works on weekends. Because her computer is always set up on the dining room table, Eddie and I have learned how to use it, too. Especially Eddie. It’s as if the is a race car, the way he moves and clicks it across the table. He loves to make all kinds of cool drawings on the computer. I write captions for them and hang them around the house. Whenever we get invited to a party (which isn’t that often, now that I think about it), I pick out the present and Eddie designs the wrapping paper.

  My mother says I should work on my self-esteem, so she tries to get me to do exercises to improve it. I tell her I feel okay in the self-esteem department and that I should be working on my math homework instead. But she usually insists, asking me to visualize myself on top of a mountain. I picture myself on top of Mount Everest (or at least how it looks at the travel agency in the mall), then I act strong and powerful for the rest of the afternoon so she thinks I’m making progress. I try to tell her Eddie is the one who needs assertiveness training, since he’s the one who gets picked on more, but she says future women—she never says girls—need all the help they can get. Besides, she says, Eddie has a special angel with him all the time. Well
, I wish his angel would visit me once in a while, especially if it’s invisible, so it can go into Ms. Ramone’s office and find the answers to Friday’s math quiz.

  But if I did have a wish—make that two—here’s what they’d be: to have my own television show and for Eddie to be un-handicapped. My mother says goals are just dreams with deadlines and that anything is possible if you’re willing to do the work to make it come true. As far as my two wishes go, I wouldn’t want to put a deadline on either of them soon.

  I’ve always wanted to be on TV—in front of or behind the camera. My favorite toy as a kid was this microphone that amplified your voice (like mine needs any amplification). Mom says I used to carry it everywhere with me, calling out prices in the grocery store, doing play-by-plays for neighborhood sporting events. Because she’s not a ham-bone like me, my mom can never figure out why I perform in front of any video camera I see. My favorites are the hidden ones at the bank and my grandfather’s apartment building. The person who monitors the video cameras at the Bank of Boston probably groans every time I walk in. I like to think I add some entertainment to his or her day.

  It’s not like I’m some weirdo who just wants to be seen; who cares if the audience sees you if you don’t have anything to say? I’m more like a director in training—digging up stories, filming documentaries that I hope will change the world. That’s how I’ll cure Eddie, uncovering some amazing new therapy through my meticulous research. Win the Nobel Prize while helping out my brother. All in a day’s work.

  These are the kinds of things I think about while I’m lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. I write my two dreams down on the palms of each hand, a to-do list tattoo. I don’t really want anything else this year. Except maybe to go out with Billy Meier.

  101 Reasons (Not Dalmatians) Why I Am Keeping This Journal

  1. So that when I am a brilliant filmmaker and have my own on-line Tru Fan Club, you can download this journal and see what life was like before I was famous.

  2. So that I can relive all my painful experiences just one more time to torture myself.

  3. So if secret agents break into the house and interrogate me, I can tell them everything I know and still have a record on my hard drive.

  4. To have something that’s totally mine.

  5. (Reasons 5-101 are still being compiled …)

  Reasons Why Sometimes I Think I’m the One with Special Needs, Not Eddie

  1. The way I pretend to be laughing at something really funny every time I see Billy Meier outside the junior high. The way I turned our only conversation—“What time is the assembly?” “Nine.”—into the fact that he knows I’m alive.

  2. The way I let Denise borrow my earrings even though I have to ask her ten million times to return them.

  3. The way I sneak onto the Internet on my mother’s computer looking for a cure for Eddie.

  4. The way I still have fun playing Monkey Man with Eddie even though he figured out a few years ago that it’s me and not a real monkey.

  5. The way I actually write down script ideas as if I’ll get my own show.

  Ideas for My Television Show

  • A large studio audience filled with people my age—but only people who Denise or I want to meet.

  • An applause sign that goes on and off every few minutes so the audience can wildly applaud how funny and smart I am.

  • A segment in the show where I bring out my bags and bags of fan mail. Then I read some letters out loud so my fans know that I really do care about them.

  • A special part of the show where Eddie guesses the names of songs and the audience thinks he is amazing.

  • Famous surprise guests who pop out from behind the curtain and hug me like a long-lost friend. The studio audience goes crazy, but I’m totally cool.

  My Pathetic Idea of Fun

  Okay, here goes. (Don’t laugh.) I take my mother’s video camera from the top of her closet, next to the paint-splattered jeans she uses to garden. I grab the tape marked “Home Movies” from my desk and slip it into the camera. Eddie and I wear hats and laminated press passes (you know, the kind real reporters wear) that I made by wrapping our school pictures in Saran Wrap. I take out my small chalkboard and write, “Tru and Eddie, Take One.” Then I ask Eddie to click it in front of the camera. I yell, “Action,” then follow Eddie around the house—eating, watching TV, trying to juggle. A few weeks ago, I had Denise jump out from behind the couch to scare him just to get a little drama on film.

  I have Mr. Taylor to thank for helping me get so good with a video camera. He’s my science teacher, and he does all the audio-visual stuff at school for assemblies and movies. Last year, he taught a class after school called Introduction to Video. Only three of us signed up, so we each got a lot of attention. He showed us how to edit film using our own VCRs, and brought in some equipment from home to dub in music. Ever since then I’ve been hooked. (Technical information will be described in detail later. I’m not in the mood right now.)

  On days I want to be really obnoxious, Eddie and I go to the industrial park a few blocks away and film people leaving work. Sometimes I’ll conduct a poll, like asking people if they think the sixth-grade art class should paint a mural on the wall of the building. I have them talk into my toy microphone, even though it doesn’t really work. On those days, Eddie is the cameraman. He’s a little inconsistent, but if you don’t mind editing out the mistakes, he’s okay. Eddie has filmed more sneakers and shoes than anyone else in history. Maybe that’s why they call it footage.

  Lots of directors got their start filming commercials, so I practice that, too. I ask Eddie to hold up a can of soup or an ice-cream cone and pretend he’s trying to sell it on TV. He usually ends up getting the ice cream all over himself, a melting snowman talking into the camera.

  After a while Eddie gets bored and drifts off to something else. I lie on my bed, hold the camera in the air, and interview myself. Because the camera is so close, when I play the tape back, it looks like I’m at the bottom of a well, like that Baby Jessica I heard about who fell into a well in her backyard. I ask myself how I got to be such a famous director and what my next project will be. Sometimes when I look up, my mother is in the doorway, shaking her head. I try to film her, but she puts her hand in front of her face, like she’s Madonna walking into a restaurant. Then she takes the camera away and tells me I can talk to her friend Stuart anytime I want to. “Very funny,” I say. Stuart is a psychologist specializing in compulsive behavior. If I ever did talk to him, I’d make sure to get it on film.

  Reasons Why I Think My Mother Is the One with Special Needs

  1. The way she doesn’t care how she is dressed and goes to the market wearing sandals and wool socks in the middle of winter and asks the manager when he’s going to start carrying organic vegetables.

  2. The way she won’t take us to Disney World because she thinks it’s crass and commercial, even though Eddie and I have asked her a thousand times.

  3. The way she gets down on her hands and knees at the beach whenever Eddie finds a shell or rock he wants to show her, and then stays down there in the sand—one time for half an hour—while I keep pacing back and forth.

  4. The way she packs chopsticks in our lunch boxes when we have leftovers and encloses a note written in fake Chinese letters with a translation at the bottom—something corny like “Have a rice day.”

  Just for the Record

  Some of the technical terms used to describe Eddie:

  • Developmentally Delayed

  • Having Special Needs

  • Intellectually Challenged

  • Mentally Handicapped

  He’s not Down’s syndrome, he’s not autistic, he’s just … Eddie. These labels don’t give you a true picture. They don’t tell you that he uses a knife and fork, rides a bike and plays soccer almost as well as I do. (I admit it took him longer to learn all these things, but what difference does that make in the end, anyway?) Physically, he looks like any kid our a
ge. Sort of. It’s really after you talk to him for a few minutes that you realize he might not be talking about the same thing you are. But then again, he might be. Confusing, I know, but you get used to him quickly. Besides, you can’t go by me—I’ve known him all my life.

  Beginning, Middle, and End

  Our teacher, Ms. Hinchey, is talking about literature. She says good stories should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Miggs says, “Duhhh,” like isn’t that so obvious, but I don’t think it is. Sometimes a story can go around a few times, then back again, like a roller coaster. Or sometimes they start in the middle and go out, like the spokes of a wheel. I picture my life story as a wave: sometimes cresting, sometimes hitting bottom, then starting back all over again. I like Ms. Hinchey because she tells us stuff about her personal life. Like the time her husband ran over her sandals with the lawnmower, or how she finished her Christmas shopping in October. Ms. Brennan, the history teacher, is nice, too, but I don’t know anything about her—like whether she has kids or not. If she does, I wonder if she makes them sit at the kitchen table in alphabetical order the way she makes us in class. And don’t get me started on Ms. Ramone.

  Ms. Hinchey asks us if we have any ideas for a class trip. I jump up and down in my seat like I’m in kindergarten and ask if we can go to the television station for a tour. Some kids think it’s a good idea, but when Leftover, the class chowhound, suggests a tour of Pizza Palace, everyone goes wild. I’m disappointed, but still, almost anything is better than sitting in class all day.

  On the way to the cafeteria, I peek inside Eddie’s classroom. He’s in one of the other sixth-grade classes, down the hall from mine. We’re in different classes because we’re twins, not because of Eddie’s disability. Our school has the special-needs kids in regular classrooms with a resource person to help them keep up. The school board calls it “inclusion.” As far as I’m concerned, the more Eddie gets included, the better.