by Alice Ozma
That night, after my father closed the book, I stood in my sister’s doorway as she finished her own evening routine of praying beside her bed.
“What do you think Granny Fang would do if she was the host of your visit?” I asked.
Kath got into bed, pulled up her covers, and turned out her light.
“She’d probably just put us all in the same room. That would be her most cruel trick.”
I headed back to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, hugging my legs to my chest.
“This will get better,” I told my knees reassuringly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Day 2,578
Something… gave me permission to do things I had never done before. Never even thought of doing. Something there triggered the unfolding of those parts that had been incubating. Things that had lain inside me, curled up like the turtle hatchlings newly emerged from their eggs, taking time in the dark of their nest to unfurl themselves.
—E. L. Konigsburg, The View from Saturday
My full name is Kristen Alice Ozma Brozina.
Names are funny things. Parents spend months, sometimes years discussing them and weighing options, often deciding on one before you’re even an air-breathing creature. Or they wait until you come out, all pink and puffy and maybe bald, to realize that somehow, they can just tell, you are a Ryan or a Jimmy or a Shana. Or a Kristen.
I was not always supposed to be Kristen. At first, I was a JJ. My mother’s ultrasound showed clearly, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was a boy—which was a pretty clever trick, if you ask me. So when I came out without all the matching parts to be James Junior, my mom decided on Kristen right then and there because one of her former students had the name, and the girl was apparently very nice. It was a last-minute name, and I could sense, even then I’m sure, that it was not right for me.
Many people say that the world was not ready for them, but in my case it is a literal fact. After stripping my father of his “the First” title before he even got to use it, my parents took me home and moved me into the Phil Collins room.
“What does one do in a Phil Collins room?” a friend recently asked me.
“Appreciate Phil Collins.”
“Do you need an entire room to do that?”
“No. You need half a room. You can keep a baby in the other half.”
There were pictures, and records, and posters, all mixed in with the yellow and blue baby decorations. One poster in particular sticks out in my mind, because it somehow kept its place on my door for years after the rest of the memorabilia was gone. It advertised the Genesis Invisible Tour, which I always found confusing.
“Really,” I told my mother one night, as I was putting on my pajamas, “that concert was probably a waste of money. I don’t think they were ever even there. I don’t know if a person can be invisible, probably yes, but I don’t think a whole band can, or at least not at one time. I hope the tickets were at least cheap.”
So I lived in the Phil Collins room, and my name was Kristen because it could not be James, and all along I knew this was wrong. But it took me sixteen years to change either.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided that my room needed a makeover. It had always been a mess, but I realized that maybe, really, this was because I didn’t feel like it was my own. So I took down all the old posters and replaced them with photos of my friends, rolled up the carpet and invested in floor polish. I cleaned, and decorated, and realized that when the space felt like it was meant not for Phil Collins, or JJ, but me, I actually wanted to keep it tidy. Parents, take note: maybe a coat of bright purple paint or a few heavy metal posters aren’t such a bad idea after all.
And as long as I was reclaiming things, I figured that my name might as well be one of them. So gradually, I started letting people know that I didn’t want to be called Kristen.
“What do you want me to call you?” people would always ask.
“Well, anything, I guess. But not Kristen.”
It felt weird saying it, even if I had always been thinking it. But because I never told anyone anything specific, I got a hodgepodge of names. What I really wanted people to call me, though, was Alice Ozma.
Alice. Ozma. Alice, and then, Ozma. They sounded perfect together, like two names meant to follow each other, but even better; Billie Jean, Cindy Lou, Sara Jane—take cover. I loved hearing the sounds back to back, the way they rolled off my tongue and stayed in the air, hanging there for just a second like hot breath on a cold day. Alice, a perfectly American, wholesome, calm name was followed surprisingly by Ozma, a dark-haired exotic gem that usually led to questions. They were questions that I loved to answer.
My parents made a deal that my mother could pick the first names of girls and my father could pick the middle names, and vice versa, so Alice and Ozma are his doing. They are names appropriate for the daughter of The Streak, though I wasn’t that girl yet when he picked them. My father wanted to name me after strong females in literature. Luckily, he already had some experience reading with my sister and had two specific young ladies in mind.
Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is full of questions and content to admit that she doesn’t always know the answers. She considers, and ponders, and of course, makes mistakes. She was a logical choice for a middle name. But when my father thought of Ozma, a heroine in every book in L. Frank Baum’s Oz series except the first (and most well-known), he was torn. Ozma is the intelligent, unwaveringly fair ruler of the Land of Oz who befriends and guides Dorothy. She is logical, and kind, and loyal. And my father was left with quite a decision to make.
So rather than choosing one, he put them back to back and liked how they sounded. Alice Ozma. Naturally. That is who I became.
These were the names I loved the most. I doodled them in notebooks and made a point of signing everything with my full, legal name in an effort to include them. When people asked what they meant, I enjoyed telling the story, every single time, no matter how often it came up. When people guessed what they meant, I knew I had found an instant friend.
At sixteen, when I started cautiously, nervously, asking people to come up with something, anything but Kristen, many people were stumped. To those, I suggested Alice Ozma.
“It is very literary,” I would say, feeling like a boardwalk pitchman, “but with an earthy undertone. It sounds like summer rain, or maybe jasmine. When you say it together, it is the most logical thing in the world.”
And when they still resisted, I would say, “Well, you can at least try it.”
But I wanted to encourage the effort. One of my teachers once mused that finding your place in high school is all about selling your brand, so I started selling Alice Ozma every chance I got. I had an Alice Ozma blog, and an Alice Ozma screen name for chatting with my friends online, and an Alice Ozma e-mail address. I tried signing notes as Alice Ozma. When I started taking art lessons I scribbled simply “Ozma” in the corner of my paintings to save room, but it looked lonesome. They needed to come together, as a pairing, or maybe a balancing act.
Eventually, most people stopped calling me Kristen, but to my dismay Alice Ozma never really caught on. Only here and there, with some people, in certain circles, on certain occasions.
“Why won’t anyone call me what I want to be called?” I asked my father one night after our reading. “I mean, it is my name. I didn’t make it up.”
“They are just jealous. It’s eating them alive, because their parents picked their names out of baby books.”
He rested his head in his hands, always proud to talk about his parenting skills.
“Do you think it is something I have to grow into? Like long hair?”
I hadn’t cut my hair in a year, and though the length seemed appropriate, it didn’t look quite right on my head. He wrinkled his eyebrows and made a face like he was blowing out a candle.
“Are you serious about this hair thing? You look like a swamp creature.”
&
nbsp; It was lucky that I had decent self-esteem.
“Or do you remember the movie Attack of the Killer Shrews, where they used dogs with carpets on their backs as the monsters? That is sort of what it looks like.”
Yes, that self-esteem really came in handy.
I didn’t think people were jealous, as he suggested. If anything, some people thought the names, and the stories behind them, were a bit nerdy. Those were people who probably would not have appreciated The Streak. So in some crowds I kept my name preferences, and my reading experiences, to myself.
Every once in a while, though, when I made my request and told my story, I’d see a flicker. The new friend’s eyes would light up.
“Really?” she would say. “Is that true? Does your school ID say that?”
I would show her.
“Wow, that is kind of neat. I mean it’s really neat. It’s different. So is your dad, like, really into books? Did he read to you a lot when you were a kid?”
I was sixteen and, like any sixteen-year-old, unsure what people might think if they knew more about me, or about my family. But if they were really interested in my middle names, and asked questions, and smiled at all the right times, I knew I was safe. That was the best moment of all, because there was something I was waiting to tell anyone who wouldn’t laugh.
“Well,” I would begin, “does your family have any… traditions?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Day 2,740
So just think: you have nothing more to fear for the rest of your life. Even if you put your pants on backwards or wear two different-colored socks, a hat with grapes on it, and a diaper, you will never look as stupid as you did a moment ago. Obviously you will never be embarrassed again.
—Stephen Manes, Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days
The thing about community theatre is, it takes time. Every hobby takes time, that is obvious. But in theatre you don’t often make your own schedule, and therein lies the problem for a Streak daughter.
When I first got involved in theatre, there wasn’t a Streak. At age four, I gladly helped out a local high school that was looking for a child for a bit part in their spring musical. I enjoyed the experience immensely and went on to perform in many productions without worrying too much about the time they took up or the late-night rehearsals. When The Streak began, though, those long nights became an issue.
It was a brilliantly clear, absolutely perfect fall evening. It should have been winter, but for some reason, it wasn’t. Not quite yet. The leaves were still hanging on with all their might, dancing in the breeze and showing their reds and golds defiantly to the slowly creeping frosts. You couldn’t see your breath, but you might need a sweater if you were going to be outside for long after dark. It was, in my opinion, the perfect sort of weather for many things: buying pumpkin-flavored fudge, or making ice cream sandwiches using ginger snaps, or sitting on the front porch with a glass of cider, hoping to catch the glorious scent of someone burning leaves. Because fall is my favorite season, I would say it was the perfect weather for just about anything. But it was by no means, not even in the slightest bit, good weather for total embarrassment. I’m not sure what that weather is. Probably snow or rain or any other condition that creates limited visibility.
I was at a rehearsal for a production of a somewhat obscure, antiquated musical about family values and American ideals. Actually, the rehearsal itself had ended almost an hour ago. We were now going through the tedious process of “notes.” In theatre, notes are just about anything the director, musical director, choreographer, costume designer, technical crew, or general assembled party notices about the production, good or bad. For a five-minute scene, notes can easily last fifteen to twenty minutes. I once had a thirty-second nonspeaking role in a production and got over five minutes of notes, ranging from my posture to the angle of my hat. Notes can be a long process.
I was pulled into the chorus for this particular show at the last minute when the director realized none of their sopranos were actually high sopranos. My job was to sing high notes, and walk across the stage in a shawl, and hand a book to one of the main characters at one point. I did not have lines or any solos, which worked well with my busy schedule. But since my job was basically to blend in to the crowd, I always wished I could skip notes.
I was sitting on the edge of the stage, dangling my legs over and looking at the clock. For the past hour or so, it seemed to be moving at lightning speed. Just a minute ago, I was picking at a hole near the ankle of my pantyhose and the clock clearly said 10:45. Now the hole was only slightly larger, and the skin under it only a little irritated from my rubbing, and it appeared to be 11:30. I held my head in my hands and tried to keep from shifting my weight in an effort to seem perfectly calm. If anyone had been looking at me specifically, they might have guessed I was tired and eager to go home and get to bed. Which would have been very reasonable for someone who had school the next day.
In actuality, though, I was crossing my fingers and hoping against hope that my father was not about to walk through the door. I didn’t have a cell phone yet, but I told him I would borrow someone else’s and call him when rehearsal was about to end so he could leave to pick me up. I had planned to call him when we got to the notes for the second act, but we were less than halfway through the first act, and I knew he was panicking, worrying that we weren’t going to have time to get our reading in before midnight. If he wasn’t driving over right now, it was because he was already parked outside, practicing the reading by flashlight and occasionally lifting the beam to check his watch and nervously walk over to look through a window.
I could picture this all so clearly because similar things had happened before. Rehearsals went late, and my father would show up, book in hand, and gesture to me from the back of the auditorium. But generally, a theatre is a busy place and there is enough commotion that one white-haired man standing in the shadows could easily be overlooked.
In these situations, I would gesture to him and try to communicate that he could wait outside if he wanted and I would meet him as soon as I had a break in my scenes. Even a lead is generally offstage for a decent amount of time, so I’d run out to the parking lot, sit on the hood of the car or lean against the building, and listen for ten or so minutes before running back inside. If I missed a cue, I usually just made a general excuse like “I’m sorry, I had to step outside.” The Streak could be embarrassing in the right (or wrong) context, but more than anything, it was hard to explain. When I did explain, I always had to give the full story, since “I’m sorry, my dad had to read me a few pages of Sherlock Holmes before midnight” generally just added to the confusion.
My concern, in this particular situation, was that there was no dark corner for him to quietly wait in and signal to me from. We were rehearsing in a rather small room because the group was in the process of looking for a new theater, and the space was tight, cramped, and bright. The entire cast could barely fit on the makeshift stage at one time, so some had spilled into chairs scattered around the room. The director himself (and a few rather nice-looking teenage boys) were seated directly in front of the door to the parking lot, and every light in the room was on.
I started picking at the hole in my pantyhose even more. I tried to make a plan. If I asked to leave, I wouldn’t be allowed—someone else had just tried it and the director insisted that if he had to stay, we had to stay. I could head toward the bathroom and see if there was a door in that back hallway, but I’d run the risk of being out of sight when my father came in, which would get him even more worried. I thought of saying that I was going to get something from my car, but since I was always trying to bum a ride, everyone in the cast was well aware that I could not drive. I could say that my father was waiting in the parking lot to tell me something, but I’d be accused of checking a cell phone during notes—otherwise, how would I know he was out there?—and that was strictly forbidden.
I felt as though I was going to fall through the stage.
I can’t say what was so terrifying about the thought of my father coming into rehearsal. I think mostly, it was the fact that I had no idea what he would say or do. Any number of things could happen, and only about 20 percent of them weren’t particularly embarrassing. I think the root of embarrassment is feeling totally misunderstood, wanting to explain yourself over and over but knowing that you won’t make much sense to anyone even if you do. The Streak always posed that sort of problem. No one would understand; therefore, it was at least a little embarrassing. Interesting, and a great conversation starter when talking to someone who might understand, yes. But at sixteen, when feeling misunderstood is about as standard as sprouting pimples and thinking you’re the first person to truly get the Beatles, The Streak could also be difficult. Sometimes I wasn’t proud of it. I wish I could say otherwise.
I sat and pictured the door opening so many times that when it finally did, I didn’t react at first. I couldn’t quite connect that this time I wasn’t imagining it. My dad walked in and looked around, but somehow failed to notice when I eventually began waving from the stage. The bright lights can be blinding, especially when you’re walking in from the dark. He covered his eyes and squinted, rotating in a little circle, until the director finally said, sounding a bit annoyed, “Can I help you?”
“I need to speak with my daughter” was all my dad said for the time being, and I breathed a sigh of relief that he used the word speak instead of read. Then I pulled my breath back in and held it, wondering what the director would say. He was a very nice man, fatherly and warm, but the rehearsal had gone poorly and it was wearing on his patience.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I understand that it is late and I apologize for keeping her. But these are important notes that I think she will want to hear. We should be done in twenty minutes or less, if you’d like to take a seat.”
