June 16 – Dear Jesus, I really need a room to myself, so I don’t have to constantly be on watch for someone wandering onto my territory and claiming it for themself! If it’s not Jeannie, it’s Rosie, with her piles and piles of dirty clothes all around her bed. I am so sick of all the junk everywhere! Can’t we for once have a really pretty place—not all trashed up with diapers and newspapers and laundry everywhere, and pots all over the place when it rains? Maybe wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room? I realize these are all selfish wishes, because “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Please note: My novena for a single room ends Thursday at 2:00 pm.
Life itself flowed relentlessly on Madeline Drive in Pasadena while we waited for our family friend to be elected Pope. Fertility blossomed continuously, sloppy and voracious, inhabiting every living thing right under our noses and without our permission. It became an atmosphere surrounding us, a ripe smell— the confluence of hot sun, of throbbing, unknowable forces that populated the known world and permeated our subconscious. Grass creeping around the bricks on the walk up to the front door. Roses sprawling in the formal, weedy beds at the side of the house, an overgrown patch prickly with red, yellow, and pink flowers about to bud, in full bloom or falling like confetti onto the ground. The bamboo on the border to Clarkie Franklin’s yard sprouted green rods furiously, and no one tried to cut it back. Vines over the ancient wooden arbor swelled with leaves and then hung with purple flowers, and it didn’t occur to anyone to trim them until the arbor itself groaned in the middle and slunk under all the weight. My dog Sparky went sniffing around the neighborhood as far as the vacant lot to the north, and South Pasadena Avenue to the east and Orange Grove Boulevard to the west. These excursions produced litters of pups who were born more deeply mutt than he was. We only knew they were his offspring because in each litter there was one in his spitting image: short and squat, black and white, a bib around the neck, and a striped tail that curled up over the rump. Because we were Catholics, we would never spay or neuter our pets. Sparky would return from these excursions trotting proudly, his tongue hanging out, panting in quick puffs, later exhausted and spent as he lay down at the side of the house in the sun and napped the rest of the day.
School was out for summer. Candy Kohler had sent out invitations to a co-ed pool party and girls-only slumber party, the first ever co-ed social get-together for our class. Now I wished I hadn’t said anything about being a nun. I really wanted to go to Candy’s party and fit in with everyone else, like a regular person.
Wanda had already “blossomed into a young lady” as Daddy said when she came over for lunch last weekend.
“How’s Wanda?” he asked with sudden interest when she walked into the dining room. It was after breakfast on Saturday, the coffee going cold in the cup in front of him. He stood up from his Captain’s chair and opened his arms to give her a hug. She’d been my best friend for four years, all of a sudden Daddy notices her? (and gives her a hug!). When was I going to “blossom”? I was still flat, flat, flat. My nipples looked like mosquito bites pasted to my white, bony chest. It hadn’t occurred to them that it was time to begin training for their ultimate role in life (nursing babies). But I could see it coming. I had just turned twelve, and soon we’d all be teenagers. I had to seize my life and live it before I was exiled into the convent. I got to thinking about what I should wear in the pool.
Every month Seventeen Magazine came in the mail, addressed directly to me, courtesy of my oldest cousin, Jake McLellan in Northern California (a son of Mother’s sister). He wrote me letters on blue paper with small handwriting, bragging that he was going to take me out of the nunnery and marry me. I pored over its colorful pages, pretending to belong to this ultra hip world where nun was spelled n-o-n-e, and meant nothing left. Nuns of all shapes and sizes wearing bizarre black clothes and living together in delusion of their special status in fantasy relationships with Jesus Christ was like aliens in outer space to the glamorous people in Seventeen Magazine. In last month’s issue, there was a promising but ultimately useless article called “How to Win Arguments With Your Family.” More amazing, it featured a voluptuous model with Wanda breasts and a tanned midriff, casually wearing a two-piece bathing suit with squarish bottoms. When I got Candy’s invitation, I knew everyone was going to be wearing a two-piece.
It wasn’t often you really needed something, especially clothes, in our family, and no one had that particular thing. This was the case with the bathing suit. There was nothing to hand-me-down. I had gotten too tall in the waist for last year’s one piece and Madcap was still wearing hers. Mother had to take me on a shopping trip before the party. It would be just her and me, a spectacularly rare indulgence, and my one chance to get a two-piece bathing suit.
“In case you have any ideas,” Mother warned me, “there’s no way you’re getting a two-piece bathing suit, Annie. They’re immodest.” She slammed the door to the VW bus and climbed behind the wheel. It was a given that other kids had more liberal parents than mine; lately I’d been noticing Daddy scrutinizing the length of our school uniform skirts and getting into fights, especially with Madcap, about how short is modest.
“As a young woman, it is your duty not to lead the men astray with your immodesty,” Daddy lectured Madcap, who routinely rolled up the waistband of her skirt so it was well above her knees. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” One of the advantages of being a Christian who reads the Bible is the convenience of little memorized phrases to whip out during arguments. But Madcap lived outside the lines at our college prep school and was determined not to let Catholic fear-of-everything handicap her style.
After they yelled at each other, after Madcap said “Expand your mind, Dad,” after Dad said, “You’re so broadminded, you’re flat-headed,” and finally after Daddy put his foot down, Madcap unrolled her waistband so her skirt hem hung just above her knees. Long enough to get out the door. Then she rolled it right back up.
“Mary Hucklebee and Wanda wear two-piece bathing suits,” I said to Mom.
“I don’t care what the other kids are wearing,” Mother shot back.
“But their belly buttons don’t show!”
“I won’t buy one for you, and I forbid you to wear one.”
Well, the model next to the two-piece model in Seventeen Magazine was wearing a blouson suit. I suppose I could be that model at Candy’s party, unless by some fluke both my parents had a conversion to paganism. I found a blue-and-white-striped blouson with a navy blue two-piece underneath. The bra was completely flat. My plan was, at the party, I’d take off the blouson top, exposing the two-piece suit underneath. I could stuff the cups with Kleenex and give myself Wanda breasts.
At the store, I held it up on the hanger.
“I kinda like this one,” I said, gambling that Mother wouldn’t get what I was doing.
“That’s what you want?” she asked, skeptically. I shrugged. Mother bought the suit and confiscated the bag. When she plopped it on my bed the morning of the party, the bra had been sewn into the lining of the blouson with tiny stitches. She was worried about sexy, which went hand in hand with sin. But sexy was not anywhere near me and my skinny, flat, child’s body with frizzy red hair and freckles. There was no danger whatsoever of anything sexy about me, even if my midriff was bared.
Mother also tried to forbid me to shave my legs, but it wasn’t against any Catholic dogma, so her arguments didn’t have the sticking power of the guilt of generations. The hairs on my legs were soft and blonde, hardly visible; I didn’t understand why everyone was shaving, but they all were, and if there was one thing I wanted, it was to fit in. I would have grown a mustache if they were all doing it. To deter me, Mother said if I shaved, those fine hairs would grow back bristly and dark, maybe even red. This, I seriously considered.
I hated my red hair. Lumpy and frizzy and no amount of curling it could get it to be normal. It grew too far down the back of my neck, so if I got it cut short, there was always this peninsula of red fuzz below the hairline. Luckily I didn’t usually get a good view of it. And it was orangey and red at the same time; it didn’t match anything, but there was no avoiding it; people noticed it and would try to be witty. “Better red than dead.” “Your hair is blushing.” “How’d you get sunburn on your head?”
Nevertheless, I locked the bathroom door and found one of Daddy’s shavers behind the mirror in the cabinet. Since I was lathering up my legs, I took off my underpants so as not to get them wet.
As I began to shave my legs, wouldn’t you know it, a new horror presented itself, of all things, dark red hairs growing in down there. What? Hairs? What use are hairs down there? No one ever said anything about hairs down there! In a fit of disgust and panic, I tried to shave the rogue reds away, but in my haste I shaved a chunk of skin, producing copious amounts of blood, which leaked over everything. Also the toilet paper stuck onto the wound, but it didn’t seem to do much good as the deep red liquid replenished itself generously each time I dabbed it with a new gob of T.P.
“Mother!” I called at the top of my lungs from the bathroom. “Mother! I’m bleeding to death!”
“What in the world is the matter?” She came from the kitchen, looking puzzled, closing the door behind her. “Oh, don’t worry about this, honey,” she said when she saw the blood.Then she reached up behind the mirror and pulled out a thick bandage from a box called “sanitary napkins.” She handed it to me.
“This is a really thick bandage, Mom. How do I keep it on the wound?”
“It’s not a wound, honey.”
“I cut myself trying to shave my legs! For the party.” I said, too mortified to say anything about the hairs.
“But your legs are lower on your body. This is not your legs.”
“I know, Mom!” She tried to get me to take my hand off the toilet paper. I recoiled.
“It stings!” I held the bandage over the wound while she attached it with white tape. Neither of us could bring ourselves to speak about the hairs. Some were still left. She had to have seen them.
“How do you say, ‘I told you so’ without saying, ‘I told you so’?” she asked me as she helped me wipe up the blood.
The next day after school, Mother took me to her bedroom and closed the door. She had something important to tell me. About growing into a young lady. Ok, I thought, she’s going to elaborate about getting breasts. It was humiliating beyond words that we both saw my new hairs, but maybe she could tell me about them. It’s possible I might have to go to the doctor.
Instead, she read to me from a booklet. “Remember that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. You must have higher standards as a woman; you’ve got to hold it up for everyone. Noli me tangere and Kyrie eleison. Don’t touch me and Lord have mercy. Call upon the Blessed Mother if you need help. One day you’ll give birth. Something’s going to happen to you to prepare you for being a woman. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“But what are you talking about?” I kept asking. I couldn’t picture what on earth she meant.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” she tried to reassure me. How could I be afraid of it? I had no idea what “it” was.
“Madcap,” I asked her in her cubbyhole room by the stairs. She sat against her bedstead under the skylight. “Mother said something is going to happen to me to prepare me for being a woman. But she wouldn’t tell me what it was.”
“It’s your period,” Madcap said.
“What’s a period?”
“It’s something that happens when you’re old enough.”
“How old is old enough?”
“All the girls get it.”
“What is it?”
Maybe it was the hairs. God’s disgusting punishment for being born a woman. The nightmare was expanding. Did the Blessed Mother have hairs down there? I’ll never look at her statue the same way again. And why do they call it “your period”?
It was the Sunday, June 16th, the afternoon of the coed pool party. I arrived early at Candy’s house, so I could grow my fake breasts in the privacy of her bathroom. She answered her front door in a short shift just like mine, only hers was red and white with a flower pattern.
“You wearing your two-piece underneath?”
“Yeah,” she said, “I got it yesterday! Wait ‘til you see!” She already had the music up, “heartache on heartache, blue on blue.” We passed through her movie star living room. I say that because it looked like servants had just dusted everything. It was glamorous and the air was cool in there. I looked around, amazed. How could there be nothing broken or scuffed? Where were the laundry baskets? She had a baby brother, but I didn’t see any playpens or broken toys. Where did they keep their religious magazines? Their National Geographics? And what about the statues? Should I be worrying about Candy’s soul? The white couch was spotless and puffy; the glass and mahogany coffee table didn’t have one fingerprint. A shiny vase of orange and green Bird of Paradise posed next to the armchair. On the carpet you could see the tracks of the vacuum cleaner where it had laid the rug flat. There was a lot of space in Candy’s living room, and it was so quiet. They couldn’t actually live here. They must have another house.
In Candy’s bathroom I wrapped toilet paper around my hand until it was a thick wad, then I pulled it off my hand and stuffed it in against my skin. The paper seemed springy but I kept balling it up and squeezing it down so it would fit. By the time I was finished with both sides, the whole roll was pretty much used up. Outside, I heard voices and the thumping and splashing of the boys cannon-balling into the water.
I had a look at myself in the mirror. Okay, this was kind of fun. I had breasts from the looks of it. They were lumpy, but the effect was grown up. It felt kind of good to stick out on the top. I turned sideways. Oh my God, the board bandage kind of stuck out down there! Maybe I could stuff more toilet paper in my swimsuit bottoms to make it all the same. I opened the cupboard under the sink, looking for another roll. Inside, just another box of sanitary napkins and a plunger. Suddenly these sanitary napkins were everywhere. Why are they called napkins? They’re bandages.
“Candy!” I called. No answer, just the sound of Teresa Feeney’s voice outside the window on the patio. Teresa Feeney, of The Famous Feeney Family. Unfairly gorgeous, six months older than me with silky long hair down her back, right now wearing a Hawaiian-style two-piece bathing suit, out of which her Wanda breasts emerged seductively. Teresa Feeney who sizzled with envy as I soaked up the Cardinal Stefanucci attention. She and her brother Christopher stood around the table pouring Kool Aid into their plastic glasses and crunching on potato chips. Teresa nibbled daintily, like the chips were dirty or something. Why did Candy even invite her? I hated Teresa Feeney (scratch that; I’d go to hell if I really hated her. Instead, I disliked her as much as you possibly could without committing a sin).
“Candy!” I yelled louder this time.
“What?” from the kitchen.
“I need more T.P.!” I looked through the slats out at the pool and lanai. Teresa glanced towards my window. I closed the slats, hoping she didn’t hear that last part. Candy finally came to the door.
“Wow, I thought I put one in there,” she said. “Here’s another.” She plopped two rolls onto the counter. I ripped and stuffed and smoothed. “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To” played through the walls.
Candy’s pool was modern, with blue tiles that gave the water a turquoise-sky look. It wasn’t off in the distance behind a chain link fence, past the blacktop, like ours had been at our old house in La Canada. Hers was part of the side patio. This added to the movie star aspect.
“Hi, Wanda,” I said. She sat on the steps in the shallow end, sitting coyly like Marilyn Monroe.
“Hi, Annie!” She smiled. Can’t say much here with the boys watching. She looked me up and down; I shrugged. Her yellow hair seemed blonder than usual, her lips red and full, and her two-piece was tight around her breasts; you could almost feel the weight of them. Her skin looked so soft, I felt like touching her. Karen, usually tom-boyish had these really tan legs that you just had to look at; they went all the way up to her small, round butt and her yellow two-piece was even tinier than Wanda’s. She had just recently sprouted some low-lying hills on her chest. With their shirts off, the guys looked a bit skinny and bony, except for Villelli who couldn’t decide who he wanted to stand around, Wanda or Teresa. He was older, (held back in fifth grade, so his muscles had a chance to grow). “My boyfriend’s back. He’s gonna save my reputation. Hey la, hey la. My boyfriend’s back.”
I dove into the pool. When I came up for air, the Kleenex had popped out on one side. I went underwater to stuff it back in, but the soft paper had been saturated and was already coming apart. I surfaced again and went down again to grab the little pieces floating here and there. Up again for a breath, my fist curled around the wet mass. Teresa Feeney called across the pool.
“Hey Annie, what’s going on there?”
“Underwater tea party,” I said, gulping air. Thankfully, I thought of that.
I took a deep breath, submerged myself, and pushed off the wall to the far end. If only I could stay down here until everyone went home. I swam to the deep end and approached the ladder, hoping to escape. Teresa Feeney stared down at me through the clear water from above. She had gathered her brother, Christopher Feeney, Paul Villelli and Tom McColloch who crowded around her. I know they all saw it. One Kleenex breast still intact, the other, my usual flat self. I pulled up out of the water. Don’t you dare say anything I mentally bored into her.
“How’s that nun bathing suit holding up?” she asked. Then I had to walk past them towards the bathroom, hoping there was nothing clinging to me.
At 10:00 that night, Mother pulled the VW bus into Candy’s driveway. John-the-Blimp stepped out wearing his official priest camouflage, the cassock. His triumphant expression as he approached the door reminded me of Sparky trotting home from his excursions. Go away John-the-Blimp, I already have a guardian angel. You’re not saving my soul from sin. You’re embarrassing me, wearing that cassock everywhere.
Thank God the boys had gone home by now. The rest of the girls sat around casual and relaxed in their nightgowns, wondering why I couldn’t stay overnight at a slumber party.
“Why are you leaving?” they pressed. How could I tell them it was just my Mom worried about modesty and chastity, two-piece bathing suits, mortal sin, and temptation. I myself wasn’t sure what any of that had to do with a slumber party, but I had to come up with some better explanation for my mother’s refusal to let me stay over.
“I’ve got to get back early to receive a call from Cardinal Stefanucci,” I said as the doorbell rang.
“Ooooh,” everyone crooned, except for Teresa Feeney. Now I had to finish the conversation before Mother and John got in the room.
“Yeah, he’s scheduled to call at 10:30 our time; gotta go! Bye!”
When Mother and John arrived, I had already gathered my wet bathing suit and towel. I grabbed Mother by the hand and started to drag her out the door.
“Thank you so much, everyone!” I chirped cheerfully. But Teresa Feeney stopped all of us in our tracks.
“You forgot your party favor, Annie!” Right. She held out the pink bag. I grabbed for it; she let it drop. So now I was scrambling on the floor at her feet.
“Thank you,” I said, just to be polite. “Bye, Candy, great party!” I was at the door.
“And you’re rushing off to get a call from the Vatican?” Teresa asked loudly. “Really? Cardinal Stefanucci is going to make a personal call to you, Annie?” She said that last bit like it was as unbelievable as it seemed. All voices hushed; all eyes switched towards me.
I was busted. Mother would deny it, and of course John-the-Blimp had no idea whatsoever. Now everyone would know what a fraud I was. The whole glorious few weeks were over and I would never live down the humiliation of having lied to everyone. All the friends I made loaning out the nun book would just laugh at my fraudulent ambition. Even Wanda—I don’t see how she could still be my loyal friend. The blush started at my chest and spread quickly up my cheeks. My eyes felt hot.
I glanced at Mother, who, by the expression on her face, was figuring it all out. She looked at me in the eye sternly, and then to Teresa, and then to everyone. She opened her mouth and she said, “Yes. We’re waiting for a call from Cardinal Stefanucci. It’s getting so close to the vote, and he wants to check in with the family.” Approving chatter erupted all around.
You could have pushed me over with a feather, as Daddy would say. I was struck absolutely, completely, and utterly dumb. I stood there with my mouth open. John-the-Blimp flicked his finger on my earlobe and said, “Oh, really? Sister Skinny Milink,” he said on the way to the car.
“Flummoxed,” Mother said when we closed the doors. “You were flummoxed.” Mother was a graduate of Marquette University, and she had a great vocabulary. The words she used were accurate to within point 1% of expressing exactly what was happening. She liked to say things like hee-bee-jee-bees and discombobulate and flabbergast. She liked the sound of persnickety, kit and kaboodle, lollpalooza and gee-gaw and she thought college was worthwhile; it prepared you for marriage. If you’re perspicacious, as you are, Annie, then higher education can give you the knowledge to converse with your husband at his level. Another of her caveats regarding marriage was never take a job once you’re married—you’ll get used to the standard of living two incomes provide and you’ll be tempted to work outside the home when really your God-given mission is to have babies.
This time, I didn’t mind Mother’s sharp sermon about telling the truth. About how one lie leads to another until you’re a fly, paralyzed in a spider’s trap. It was clear that I was a fly, squirming in a spider’s web, but I was a giddy-with-relief fly. Mother had saved me so totally from complete ruin. And Teresa Feeney humiliation! Ha, ha, I got away! I didn’t want to ask Mom how she could lie for me and still have a clear conscience; I didn’t care. Bless me father, for I have sinned! Amen.
God was still on my side.