More Than One Way to Be a Girl

by Dyan Sheldon

  Loretta stood beside me, sighing. “We’re going to be drenched just getting to the cross-town bus.” (As if it would make any difference if her hair or clothes got wet.) We were on the west side of midtown and had to get to the Lower East Side. “And then we’ll have to get another bus downtown…” Two buses. Or a gondola if one happened to be passing. “Maybe if we get some plastic bags—”

  “Plastic bags?” She expected me to cover myself in plastic bags? That would get me noticed by agency scouts. There’s Garbage Girl! She’s just what I’ve been looking for! “What exactly are you planning to do with plastic bags?”

  “We could wear them instead of boots. At least our feet would stay dry.”

  You have to know her to really believe her.

  “Loretta,” I said, “I am not putting plastic bags on my feet.” For God’s sake, in New York even the dogs wear designer boots. “We’ll have to take a cab.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Loretta. “We and everybody else on this street.”

  I asked her if she had a better idea.

  For once in her life, she didn’t.

  I shivered ever so slightly. “Heads or tails to see who goes?”

  “God forbid you should ruin your hair. I’ll do it. But I’m putting on my hat.”

  It’s not really a hat. Loretta always carries one of those plastic rain bonnets, the kind not usually worn by anyone under fifty. (Sometimes I think she goes out of her way to be unfashionable if not totally nerdy.) Normally, I would rather have hives than be seen with Loretta in that thing, especially in the world’s capital of sophistication, but I didn’t argue. Already my feet felt damp. Maybe no one would notice her with all the rain.

  In case you’ve forgotten, Loretta isn’t exactly shy and retiring or easily pushed around. Every time an empty cab appeared, she charged at it like a young hippo. But New York is a jungle. The other hippos were bigger. Determined. Experts. Elbows and shoulders blocked her. Computer bags, briefcases and shopping buffered them. These hippos took no prisoners.

  I stood in the shelter of the entrance, watching Loretta dash to the kerb, try to wedge her way to the taxi door, get shoved away or out-wedged and come dashing back. At the rate she was going, we’d be spending the whole day in front of the station.

  “This is when you want to be Wonder Woman,” she said after her fourth attempt, through gritted teeth.

  It seemed to me that what we wanted wasn’t Wonder Woman but her prettier, more charming and personable sister. So the next time an empty cab turned the corner, I pulled Loretta back, held my handbag over my head and went for it myself.

  Loretta claims that men invented high heels so women can’t keep up with or run away from them, but I can run when I have to, even in heels. (It’s a skill you learn, like defusing a bomb.) I put my hand on the door handle at the same time as a man in a classic Burberry raincoat. He was forty if he was a day, but still handsome (clean-shaven, black hair just starting to grey at the temples, the Wall Street Journal over his head).

  I widened my eyes. “Oh, please…” There was noise all around us but I kept my voice soft and coaxing (I’d just seen an old Marilyn Monroe film with my dad and was channelling her). “I know it’s a lot to ask and I’m sure you have somewhere important you’re going, but my friend…” I pointed to Loretta, a wet, defeated young hippo with what was pretty much a plastic bag on her head. “This is her first time in New York and everything’s going wrong.” I gave him my best smile (and my best smile is really good; if it could be bottled I’d make a fortune). “It would be so kind of you.”

  He smiled back (his smile was pretty good, too). “No problem. We can’t have you standing out in this rain, can we? That’s no way to welcome you to New York.”

  I couldn’t thank him enough.

  Loretta, who should have been grateful for my intervention, didn’t thank me at all. She was all askew because I got us a cab in less than sixty seconds and she “nearly drowned” trying. (My fault, obviously. You had to wonder who she’d blamed for everything before she met me.)

  As we climbed in, she said, “So how did you manage to do that, Zi? Have you been practicing white magic again?”

  “I don’t need magic.” I snapped the seat belt over me. “I have a positive personality.”

  “Yeah,” said Loretta. “That and a tight, short dress.”

  * * *

  Imagine the most exciting, awesome and wonderful thing that could ever happen to you. For example, let’s say that you lived in the suburbs of some fourth-rate city and shared a room with your little sisters and their pet gerbils, and then one day you found out you’re really a princess and should have been living in a palace with an entire wing to yourself and someone to put the toothpaste on the brush for you and tell you if it was raining or not. Would you be happy? Yes, you would be. You would be way-over-Mars happy. Well, that’s how happy Loretta was to be in the Women’s History Museum. She said it was “a dream come true” (the rest of us just want to be on the cover of Vogue). And that’s even though it isn’t a real museum that takes up a whole block and looks like the Romans built it. It’s two old houses knocked together, and the only windows are at the front and the back. (My first time in New York City without a chaperone and I couldn’t even see daylight!)

  I wasn’t super impressed. Not that I expected to be. I figured it would be pretty dreary and boring, and, no matter what Loretta said, a lot about mops and childbirth. But I had a couple of surprises.

  Nobody was going to miss New York Fashion Week to visit this museum, but I was still amazed at how many women (sans mops and infants) were featured in the main exhibition. Maybe, like me, you thought that for most of history men were out in the world doing things and women were indoors taking care of the house and stuff like that. Here’s the thing. A lot of them did get out of the house. Way more than you’d ever guess. Doctors … lawyers … spies … farmers … soldiers … musicians … painters … abolitionists … suffragists … writers … explorers … journalists … war correspondents…

  They were all there. What wasn’t there, was men. And I don’t just mean in the exhibits themselves. There wasn’t a single man wandering through the rooms as a visitor, or hovering in a doorway keeping an eye on things. You’d think at least one might have come in to get out of the rain. It was like they’d all been moved to another planet. Or we had.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird?” I asked Loretta. “The only time we’re anywhere that’s just girls is gym.”

  “It’s just another example of the way things work,” said Loretta. “From sports to books, things about men are meant to be interesting to everybody. But things about women are assumed to only be interesting to them.”

  “Either that, or the guys are too busy out running the world,” I joked.

  Loretta didn’t laugh.

  So here’s the other thing I totally hadn’t planned for. Being in the museum brought out the professor in Loretta. Lecturing’s something Loretta’s prone to anyway, but as soon as we stopped at the first display case, she was off. How, historically, women were patronized and marginalized. How hard they had to fight to get into professions. To be taken seriously. To be acknowledged and given the credit they deserved. I said that if all these women were out there writing symphonies and making medical discoveries, you’d think I would’ve heard of some of them. Loretta humphed. The reason I’d never heard of any of these women, she informed me, was because men were the ones who usually wrote history.

  I must’ve been nodding off standing up, because she suddenly said there was something she knew I’d like, and marched me upstairs to the section on women’s fashions through the ages. Fashion is my thing, so I was all set to be interested. And I would’ve been interested, if I’d been by myself. (The exhibit pretty much started with grass skirts and worked its way up.) But Professor Loretta sucked all the joy right out of it like drawing fat from a thigh. According to her, women’s clothes have always been designed either to restrict them so they
can’t possibly do the things men say they can’t do, or to expose their bodies so they’re nothing more than a sex toy. Or possibly to do both. (And I’d always thought fashion was about beauty and fun!) We went from one exhibit to the next, with her pointing out everything that was wrong with each era. I can’t tell you what a relief it was when she decided she was hungry.

  At lunch in the cafeteria (a couple of vending machines and some tables and chairs), she gave me an earful about skipping meals and the carcinogens in diet sodas while she chomped on her sandwiches. After Loretta’s alternative History class, the dungeon in the basement where the library was located felt like an oasis in the desert. At least she couldn’t talk in the library.

  Loretta recommended a book about the “real West” she thought I should look at (God knows how she knew about it). She was always recommending books to me, and normally I ignored her, but it was easier to take that off the shelf than to find something myself, so I did. I knew all about the brave pioneer women who stood shoulder to shoulder with their men and skinned bison while in labour and stuff like that. And about women like Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley (there weren’t as many of them!). But this book had a lot about the women who didn’t climb into a Conestoga wagon with their husband and their children and a barrel of flour. These were women who had no choice but to be mail-order brides – or prostitutes (there were quite a few of them). And women who disguised themselves as men so they didn’t have to get married or join a brothel. I actually checked on the spine to make sure Loretta hadn’t written it, it sounded so much like one of her lectures about what the choices for women used to be (marriage, prostitution or charity). I’m not saying it wasn’t interesting, but it was pretty depressing. I flipped through it, and took some notes, but by then I was feeling pretty done. “I’m going to go get a coffee,” I whispered to Loretta. “I’m leaving my bag here.” Loretta was so stuck into her research that she wouldn’t have noticed if everybody in the library was suddenly changed into a box of salt. She nodded without looking up.

  Someone (a woman, of course!) was walking through the front door as I came up the stairs to the ground-floor hallway. Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. I’d been in the museum for so long that I’d forgotten I was in New York City. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on the street.

  Quel liberation!

  Loretta

  ZiZi continues to dash my hopes against the frilly but treacherous cliffs that loom over her bubbly pink sea

  The library was even better than I’d thought it would be. Which means that I was so absorbed in my research that I didn’t realize ZiZi had left the building until the museum was closing for the night. We’d both been working for a while when she said she was going for a coffee. I assumed she’d be back after she finished her drink. When she wasn’t, I used the wrong type of logic to work out where she was. I used deductive: we’re in the museum, the museum has an impressive exhibit on the history of women’s fashion, ZiZi loves fashion, therefore ZiZi has gone back to that exhibit. I should have used inductive: ZiZi’s a lot more excited about being in New York than about being in the museum, therefore ZiZi has decided to get her coffee from a café on the street and not the machine in the museum.

  When they announced that they’d be closing in twenty minutes, I finished what I was doing and put the book I was reading back on the shelf. I’d half expected ZiZi to materialize to get her things but there was still no sign of her. I picked up my bag and hers, checked in the snack bar in case she was in there on her phone and time had melted away like the last patches of snow at the end of winter, and then I went upstairs. I waited in the foyer entrance till I was asked to leave. The door was locked behind me.

  There were a lot of people on the street, of course, but none of them were Giselle Abruzzio. She knew when the museum closed – wherever she’d gone, she had to be on her way back. I sat on the steps and called; her phone wasn’t on. I left a message. Unless she’d stopped off at the Whirlpool Galaxy, she was taking her own sweet time. I had my book, but I couldn’t read and watch out for ZiZi; watching out for ZiZi took priority. The museum staff left, which is when I started to worry. ZiZi thinks she’s seriously sophisticated because she can tell the brand of a handbag without seeing the label, but in my opinion she isn’t always that good at judging guys. This was New York – a city absolutely teeming with men – and a lot of those men were not going to be the salt-of-the-earth, trustworthy type. Something could have happened to her. Given the statistics, that something could easily be murder, rape, robbery or abduction. If male aggression was taking the day off, she could have been hit by a car or crushed by something falling out of a window. The best-case scenario was that she was lost and wandering the unfamiliar streets with no idea of where she was. Where was she? Chinatown? Brooklyn? Greenwich Village? Harlem? The Upper West Side? Was there any chance she’d found her way to Queens? How would she ever find her way back?

  I sent another text; I called again. I didn’t know what to do. It seemed a little premature to involve the police, but my worry was increasing by the minute. Besides which, I imagined arriving back home without her. Questions would be asked; tears would be shed. I’d be known for ever as the girl who lost her best friend. Crippled by guilt, I’d abandon my career plans and take a job selling womenswear at a major department store, convinced that one day ZiZi – alive but suffering from amnesia – would come in to shop. She would never forget how to shop. Her disappearance would haunt me the rest of my life. I was just about to phone my mom to ask her what she thought I should do when I caught a flutter of colour at the end of the street, and there was ZiZi. She started running as soon as she saw me. I was so relieved that if I hadn’t had my bag and her suitcase I would have met her halfway.

  I got to my feet. “For God’s sake, Zi. Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry! It wasn’t on purpose!”

  I was so happy to see her that I immediately began explaining about not realizing she’d left the museum. “When I got outside and you weren’t here, I started to think that something ha—” I began. Which was when I saw the shopping. “Oh for God’s sake. I should’ve known!”

  “It’s not what you think,” said ZiZi. “And anyway, you can’t be mad at me if you didn’t even know I was gone. You didn’t even miss me. Some best friend you are. I’m the one who should be annoyed.”

  “I didn’t miss you because I was working!” Relief was being elbowed out of the way by my usual ZiZi-based frustration. “Not shopping. I thought you were going to get more out of today than new clothes.”

  “That’s what’s wrong, isn’t it? It’s the shopping. That’s what you’re really mad about. There you are, learning all about the oppression of women, and I’m out buying instruments of torture.” She held up the bags. “Socks, Loretta. Tops. A jumper. Trousers. I’m practically shrieking in pain already.”

  I didn’t want to, but she made me laugh.

  “That doesn’t change the fact that something could have happened to you.”

  “But it didn’t.” Of course not. She lives in ZiZi’s universe, where everything always turns out fine. “And anyway, I am really, really sorry, Lo. You know me.”

  “Never one to over-think a situation?”

  “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant self-absorbed. It was just that I was so excited to be here… Let’s not ruin everything by fighting. We both had a great day.”

  She was right. We had both had a great day; even if it wasn’t together.

  “Point taken,” I conceded. “Let’s not ruin the rest of the day by arguing. I did what I came to do.” I gave her shopping a meaningful look. “And you obviously did what you came to do. So let’s forget it.” Besides which, if we were going to eat before our train, we couldn’t hang around arguing. “Let’s go get supper. I’m starving.”

  The restaurant I’d read about was called Blue Moon. Which seemed appropriate, since it’s once in a blue moon that
you get ZiZi to a museum. It was on the west side, which meant that we’d be able to get a subway to the train station. We strolled across town – ZiZi with her shopping bags and me carrying everything else – talking and laughing and trying to take everything in at once. It was a really nice evening, and after spending the afternoon indoors it felt good to be out in the unfresh air and all the noise and people. ZiZi’s right that there’s an excitement in New York that you don’t get in Howards Walk – similar to the difference between being on a space station and watching it pass overhead. I’d completely recovered from worrying about ZiZi – and from being irked by her – and was really enjoying myself.

  Blue Moon was small and very busy.

  ZiZi couldn’t believe there were so many vegans in one place. “It’s like walking into a party and everybody else has red hair.”

  There was at least a twenty-minute wait for a table.

  “Damn!” For the second time in less than an hour, I didn’t know what to do. “I’m not sure we can wait that long if we’re going to make our train. By the time we order and everything…”

  “So we’ll go somewhere else,” said ZiZi. “It’s not like it’s the only restaurant in the city. I mean, my God, there must be thousands.”

  “I know. It’s just that I kind of had my heart set on this one.” I’d never been to a completely vegan restaurant before. In Howards Walk, if you want vegan, you’re talking baked potato, pizza without cheese, or a stir-fry. “I really wanted to see what it’s like.”