More Than One Way to Be a Girl

by Dyan Sheldon

  I changed my shoes on the porch and we set off into our brave new world.

  The pumps had been a bad idea. They made it difficult to walk. Not impossible, but difficult. I wasn’t actually staggering or partially crippled – which for definite was good news – but I was pitched slightly forward and couldn’t seem to stand completely straight. This, I thought, is how you develop curvature of the spine. I was acutely aware of every step I took. They were so unsteady you’d think I knew nothing about balance. I know a lot about balance, I’ve been doing yoga since I was three. But standing like a tree is a lot different than walking on sticks.

  “Don’t start, Lo,” warned ZiZi. “Those heels aren’t that high. And anyway, you picked them. You could’ve worn the sandals. Or the ballet flats. The choice was yours.”

  It wasn’t that much of a choice. The sandals and the flats were both a little tight, and I’d reasoned that since we were doing a significant amount of walking, it would be better to go with the shoes that actually fit. File under the heading: Wrong again.

  “I’m definitely swaying. I feel as if I’m on a boat in rough seas.”

  “You’re supposed to sway. That’s why you have hips.”

  And all these years, I’d thought I had hips for childbirth – that or for carrying baskets.

  I’d been so traumatized by the ordeal of putting on my make-up and the bathroom lockdown that I hadn’t felt any different on my way to pick up ZiZi, but now I began to feel enormously self-conscious. As if I were on display. Suddenly, the dress I was wearing seemed really short and my legs seemed really long.

  ZiZi let out one of her steam-engine sighs. “Oh, for God’s sake, Loretta. Stop fidgeting. Now what’s wrong?”

  “I feel really exposed.”

  She stopped abruptly, put her hands on my shoulders and looked me up and down. “No, you’re not exposed. All private parts are covered. You have my word.”

  “You know what I mean.” I tugged at the skirt. “It seems really short.”

  “It is short.” She started walking again. “It’s Summer, Loretta. In Summer everybody but you wears short skirts. Unless they skip the skirt part and just wear shorts.”

  The closer we got to town, the stronger the impression grew that I was on show. Was it my imagination, or were people looking at me? Were heads turning in my direction? Were curtains twitching as I passed? ZiZi and I are roughly the same height, but she was wearing high-tops and I was wearing her stupid pumps, which made me feel like I was about six feet tall and looming over her.

  We turned onto the main road and it immediately became clear beyond even the shadow of doubt’s shadow that it wasn’t my imagination; people really were looking at me.

  “Of course they’re looking at you,” said ZiZi. “That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? To get attention. To show off how good you look. They’re admiring you.”

  Admiring or judging. I felt as if I was a contestant in a beauty pageant. Or a pedigree poodle in a dog show. Any minute, someone was going to tell me to heel.

  “They’re admiring me because I have legs and breasts? Everybody has legs and breasts. Chickens have them.”

  “They’re admiring you because you look great. You’re like the goodwill ambassador from a planet where all the girls are young and pretty. You cheer people up. You make everything seem better than it is.”

  Philosopher Barbie speaks. The preening and prepping were all about altruism, not vanity – that was nice to know.

  “I thought I was just showing off, and here I am saving the world with a short skirt.”

  The man smoking a cigarette in front of the deli smiled.

  “Trust me,” said ZiZi as I swayed dangerously close to a lamppost. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Maybe. If I lived that long.

  On this early summer Sunday afternoon, Howards Walk was already more like a bustling metropolis than a small, sleepy town. The marina was packed, the streets were crowded, the stores were all busy and there were tables outside every café and restaurant that had room. Most of the time when you walk past stores with ZiZi she’s checking herself out in the windows, as if some sartorial or cosmetic disaster might have occured between the World of Cheese and Kradinkski’s Hardware – her collar was askew or something had gone wrong with her eyelashes. I thought that now she wasn’t obsessing about how she looked, she’d stop doing that, but apparently old habits really do die hard. Every three seconds she was glancing in a window at herself. Everybody else seemed to be looking at me. Spotlight on Loretta… Which was extremely discomfiting for someone who never actually got on the stage before.

  Most of the shoppers and diners were summer people, but not all. I recognized two girls from school. I didn’t know them or anything – they were a year ahead of us and super popular types who had never given any indication that they were aware of my existence – but, though they didn’t stop their conversation, they both nodded and smiled in my direction as they passed. I turned around to see who was behind me; it was a middle-aged man in a captain’s hat, his eyes on his phone. They had to be smiling and nodding at me. Nor were they the only ones to suddenly decide we were acquainted. A boy I also recognized from school and a couple of college guys who looked vaguely familiar all greeted me, too. More bizarreness. I wasn’t used to being noticed, never mind being beamed at by strangers, and I found it unnerving. It’s just as well I’m not interested in being a celebrity; I wouldn’t be able to take the stress – no wonder so many of them drink or do drugs. I couldn’t wait to get inside to sit with a table shielding my legs and my back to the door. As we reached the bistro, a young man in a panama hat was coming out, but he stepped back when he saw us and held the door open with a flourish. “Check out the black-bean burrito bowl,” he advised me. “It’s really good.” I thanked him. I wasn’t used to getting menu tips, either.

  We grabbed a table at the back, and I sat so I was facing the wall and could pretend that, behind me, the town had disappeared.

  “Fine by me,” said ZiZi. “Unless I drape myself in lights nobody’s going to be looking at me anyway.”

  Safe in our corner, I began to relax and feel like myself again. My legs were under the table, my back was to the room, there was nothing in front of me but ZiZi and a Day of the Dead poster – nothing that I could see my reflection in.

  The waiter brought water and menus – and a smile for me.

  “I know it’s the point of the whole exercise, but I still think it’s amazing how differently everyone’s acting towards us.” I hadn’t expected it to be quite so blatant. Or so quick.

  “What have I been trying to tell you all this time?” ZiZi took a drink of water. “Clothes make the girl.”

  “Clothes make the image, not the girl.” I picked up a menu. “We’re still the same people.”

  “Sure we are.” ZiZi winked. “But try telling that to your new friend the waiter. Or my family, even. Seriously? I mean, we have the ongoing college saga, but apart from that I always thought they were pretty happy with me. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Same here. My folks have already shown signs of a previously hidden dissatisfaction with their only child.”

  We started swapping shocking but true stories about the reactions we’d had so far.

  “Talk about adding insult to injury,” I confided. “I actually overheard my mother saying she thought my makeover must be because I have a boyfriend I wasn’t telling them about. I was totally shocked.”

  “I can beat that,” said ZiZi. “Gina thinks I’m doing this because I’m taking the last break-up with Duane harder than usual.” She made a can-you-believe-it? face. “I mean, duh. Breaking up with Duane is like stopping banging your head against the wall. Even she has to know that usual is like not at all.”

  I told her how my dad had to pretend he was looking for beetles when Mrs Shaunnessey next door came out of her back door while he was peeing in the bushes because he couldn’t get into the bathroom. “Dr Reynolds with his trousers down,
can you imagine? For definite, I’m never going to hear the end of that.”

  Nate’s best friend Marsh – who’s always had a not-so-secret thing for ZiZi – thought she was me the first time he saw the new her. “You should’ve seen his face when he realized,” gasped ZiZi. “It was like he thought he’d been flirting with a girl all this time only to find out he’d really been chatting up a broom!”

  “You think that’s something?” I practically shrieked. “My father offered me money to go shopping. Can you believe that? The man who thinks you only buy clothes at the start of school and maybe in the winter if you need a new coat, because that’s what they did when he was a boy!” And my mother asked if I wanted to go with her to her hairdresser next time she went. “Can you imagine?” I was nearly choking with laughter. “Me and my mum side by side under the dryers? Chanting and meditation are one thing, but this is a level of bonding I wasn’t expecting and absolutely don’t want.”

  ZiZi said her parents kept telling her how nice she looks and how it’s a sign of maturity. “That’s what makes me think they’re not as happy with me as I thought,” said ZiZi. “And like that’s not bad enough, Frank wanted to know if I’m taking up a different hobby from shopping now. I said, ‘Like what?’ and he said that was up to me. So I said I was thinking of racing elephants.”

  We had each other in stitches.

  By the time we left the restaurant, I think we both felt so much like our usual selves that we’d almost forgotten how we looked. We were still laughing as we walked back up the street. And then Gabriel Schwartz came out of the bookstore, walking towards us.

  I swear, I felt my heart hit my feet and bounce back up again. How would he react? Would I be able to tell what he was thinking? What would he say? I checked the impulse to see how I looked in the nearest window. Would this be the moment he discovered that there is more to me than a highly intelligent mind?

  He was practically on top of us when I realized he wasn’t going to say anything; he was just going to walk right past us. Forget him finally noticing that I’m a girl; he didn’t notice me at all.

  “Gabe!” I put a hand on his arm. “Hey, hi!”

  I’ve emptied the trash with more enthusiasm than his “Hi” in return. He looked as nonplussed as Nate had. And then he laughed. “Loretta?” His laugh was like a prisoner waiting to be sentenced. “Sorry. I didn’t – I…” He cleared his throat. “You look…”

  Looked what? Different? Better? Like a girl he’d want to date?

  “What’d you do to your hair?” His smile was clinging to his face with a certain amount of desperation. “It kind of looks like a night sky.”

  Did it? No one else had noticed the similarity.

  “It’s highlights.”

  “Highlights.” He was looking at me as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. An impact crater on the surface of Mars or proof that there once was a sea? “And a dress.” I willed him not to say he didn’t know I had legs. “You going someplace special?”

  “No. We’re just – you know – walking around.”

  He cleared his throat again. “So, how you doin’?”

  I said I was doing fine. I said I was looking forward to the Perseids. “It’s going to be the best part of the Summer. I can hardly wait.”

  He nodded, but it wasn’t a nod of agreement, it was the way you nod when you have no idea what the other person is talking about and don’t really care. You’d think he’d never heard of the Perseids; that we hadn’t been planning this outing since April.

  “The Perseids,” I repeated. “Remember? You wrote the flier?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course. The Perseids.” Even though he was standing still, he seemed to be moving. “I’m sorry. I guess I was thinking of something else.”

  “You’re still up for it, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Yeah. We’ll talk before. There’s plenty of time.” He’d hadn’t so much as glanced at ZiZi up until then, but he suddenly turned to her as if he was lost in space and she was the rescue party. “We haven’t been introduced…” This wasn’t strictly true. I doubted he’d ever actually spoken to her – he certainly didn’t speak to her the day he fell into the fridge – but he knew who she was. I introduced them anyway. ZiZi, Gabe; Gabe, ZiZi. He shook her hand. “You should come, too. They can be really spectacular. It’ll be fun.” ZiZi was so surprised that for once she had nothing to say. “Well, I better get going,” said Gabriel. “I don’t want to be late.”

  Late for what? I wondered. It was Sunday afternoon. Where was he hurrying to? He wasn’t, of course; he was hurrying from, hurrying away from me. We watched him disappear down the street; he turned at the corner – and didn’t glance back.

  ZiZi couldn’t believe Gabe didn’t know who she was; I couldn’t believe that he was happier to talk to her than to me.

  The Einstein-Rosen bridge is another name for the wormhole theory. Which is the idea that there may be shortcuts through space-time. I’ve always fantasized about being able to open a door – or step through a mirror like Alice – and find myself in a different place and time. When I was little, I’d go around the house, pressing on every mirror and door, hoping one of them would give. I spent hours standing in front of the full-length mirror in my parents’ bedroom, imagining the world on the other side – where everything looked the same but wasn’t. What with all the unusual attention I’d been getting from people I didn’t know – and all the attention I wasn’t getting from a person I did know – I was beginning to wonder if my wish had come true.

  ZiZi

  The invisible girl

  Maybe instead of trading looks, Loretta and I should have traded families. I could really have used a new one. Take my brothers, for example. (And don’t worry about bringing them back.) There’s some girl here to see you… Seriously? Like Obi’d never met Loretta before? How many games of Troll Invasion (or whatever dumb thing he’s obsessed with) did she play with him before he stopped asking her because she always won? (Probably thousands!) Okay, she did look different (about a hundred times better), but she didn’t look that different. No reconstructive surgery was involved. And then there’s the other one: I didn’t know you had legs… Sometimes I can’t even believe I’m related to either of them. What was that supposed to mean, “I didn’t know you had legs”? Plus, you should’ve seen Nate’s face when he finally looked at her. (You never have your camera handy when you really need it, do you?) You’d think she’d walked in naked. And it’s not like they had no warning. I’d explained what we were doing very clearly. I was painstaking. You have to be. Loretta isn’t the only one who thinks boys never hear what you say. My mother’s always complaining that the male Abruzzios don’t listen to her. She tells them she’s going to be out for the night and then one of them calls to find out where she is. She asks my father or Nate to pick up milk on his way home, and then they complain that there isn’t any milk. And I’ve had my own personal experiences, too, so that sometimes even I think that when women talk all they hear (and by “they” I mean male humans) is white noise.

  My parents, however, did listen to me (even Frank). They thought the bet was a great idea. If anything, they were too enthusiastic. What a clever plan. What an interesting experiment. “Maybe you should consider studying psychology or sociology at college,” suggested my mother. (This had obviously given her new hope that I wasn’t going to try to get out of further education.) My dad said Loretta and I should do a blog. That would be really interesting. You never knew where it might lead. I said I could guess. (Straight to a dead end!) Girls want to hear about make-up and clothes, not the lack of them. Here’s the thing. My family are all onions except for me. I’m the only rose. So you’d think they’d be a little upset to see their rose’s beauty fade into the plainness of a root vegetable pretty much overnight. But unless they were hiding how they really felt to spare me, they weren’t upset at all. What they were was pretty jubilant! Gina said this was a wonderful opportunity for me to finally lea
rn that I have more to offer the world than a pretty face. (But after she saw Loretta, Gina wouldn’t shut up about how great she looked. Quel hypocritical is that?) Frank wanted to know if this meant it was his chance to send his credit card to rehab since I wouldn’t be shopping for a while. (Like I don’t pay for a lot of my stuff myself!) That’s when I started to wonder if they secretly think I’m shallow and superficial. If they’d gotten a rose, but what they really wanted was a baking potato.

  Anyway, I told them the same thing I told Loretta. This wasn’t going to change me. I might look different, but, inside, I was the same person I’d always been. Only with less hair and wearing more (and more boring) clothes.

  I admit I was pretty traumatized by the haircut at first, but I sincerely believed I’d managed to recover from my initial shock. I’d spent a long time looking at myself in the bathroom mirror getting used to it (two and a half hours according to my father, the family timekeeper). I told myself that it wasn’t that bad, not really. Roma had done a good job. It was sophisticated. With make-up and the right clothes and accessories, it would make a statement: I am a model for a bold, futuristic designer who laughs in the face of conformity and convention. (I know I didn’t have make-up and the right clothes and accessories, but you could see the intention was there.)

  Plus, what I said before was totally true. It didn’t make me a different person. For God’s sake, a rose with faded petals and no body spray is still a rose.

  For Loretta’s and my first journey into the real world together, I was wearing my grossest old jeans (usually reserved for major art projects or painting my room) and a T-shirt. I was cool and calm as Loretta and I strolled into town, but to tell you the truth, I was putting on a brave face. Super brave. Inside, I was really nervous – bordering on ready to have a breakdown. Every step we took made it clearer that I’d been kidding myself about being okay with the new me. Because here’s the thing. Intentions aren’t visible. Girls are. Without all the trappings and trimmings, I looked more like I was enlisting in the army than I looked like a pioneer of fearless fashion and originality. People were going to see me. (I know my family had already seen me, but they so don’t count.) And it wasn’t just strangers who were going to see me. Kidding myself? I’d been seriously delusional. I mean, okay, so Isla, Marilee, Shona and Dillon Blackstock (whose opinions mattered most, especially his) were all safely out of the way, but they’re not the only people I know. Or who know me. School is full of them. Plus, hard though it may be to believe, my brothers do have multiple friends. My parents have friends. I’ve been in the school system a long time, so there were literally dozens of teachers roaming around who know who I am. It was a really long nightmare waiting to happen. One of those really unpleasant nightmares where you go to the prom dressed in the old bathrobe your mother uses when she touches up the grey and the sheep slippers you had when you were three, and your date is that fat English king who killed all his wives.