Surviving Valencia

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and brushed past them.

“Hey, where’s your locker?” demanded Jenny.

I turned back to them and yelled, as loud as possible, “Get the fuck away from me!”

The entire hallway hushed. That moment lasted for what seemed like hours. Then Keeli and Jessi started to giggle, that exclusive but infectious tinkly little giggle of popular girls. Soon the whole hallway was laughing at the three of us losers and my outburst. My new teacher appeared, grabbed my arm, and dragged me straight to the principal’s office.

This marked the beginning of my solitary years.

Life with Van and Valencia at college was worse than I had imagined it would be. For the first decade of my life, I’d had the luxury of being mostly invisible. I didn’t have to hide in my bedroom, because I could sit on the couch watching TV for hours without anyone uttering a word to me. I rarely got presents or compliments or eye contact, but in turn, I had hardly ever been told to do a chore and had only been mildly punished a time or two in my life. In rare instances I had been grounded, which was no different from not being grounded, since I never went anywhere. I was like a pet hamster or gerbil, only I never had to worry about starving to death because I could pour my own cereal.

Once the twins were gone, my parents suddenly realized I was around and felt compelled to do something about it. They became overzealously aware of my grades, which were poor but not exceptionally poor. C’s, the occasional D, a B once in Spanish class when the teacher got me confused with another student and I didn’t correct her. Suddenly they expected me to get A’s. My mother had the gall to even ask me, “How do you think we feel when we go to our bowling league and Jenny and Heather’s parents are bragging about them being on the honor roll and you can’t even make the honorable mention list?”

Well, she had a lot to learn about motivating others, because hearing that made me want to try less than ever. And after my lasting impression at the water fountain, the teachers had no charity for me. I did just well enough to not fail. It was devastating to poor Roger and Patricia. Without Valencia’s prom queen winning ways decorating the local paper, or Van’s high scoring basketball skills leading the local team to the state competition, they had nothing. They were, for the first time, not just painfully aware of my existence, but of my meaningless existence. There was only one solution: I became in a constant state of groundedness, enforced and monitored like never before. Unable to leave the house, unable to talk on the phone, unable to even leave my room until my homework was finished and until I “snapped out of it.” It being dumb, untalented, and ugly.

I wrote letters to Valencia, and tried to explain to her what I was going through, but she only responded once. She sent a UW La Crosse postcard and on the back she wrote, “Sorry life is tough. See you at Thanksgiving. I will take you shopping when I’m home! Take it easy! Your big sister”

My mom saw it and asked me why I was telling Valencia that life was “tough” and what did I have to complain about? Then she grounded me for two extra weeks.

Chapter 22

Big News! The seventh graders were inviting us sixth graders to the dance they were hosting! We didn’t know this happened every year. The Karis and Jessis were so excited. So was I, but I had to hide it. I had some tricks up my sleeve though: I had been saving magazine articles in a pink binder to help me prep for something like this. Every opportunity to break out of my everyday rut was an opportunity to show the world the real me. I imagined myself walking in and all the boys peering out from lowered shades, Miami Vice style, to see who the new hot girl was.

The first Saturday night in November was the night. Everyone in my school hated me, from the principal down to the lowliest janitor who I swore pushed his broomfuls of dirt at me, but that did not stop me from believing in the possibility of change. I begged my mother to unground me for just that one night. Shockingly, she relented.

I rummaged through Valencia’s closet, trying to find something that would turn my puny, flat-chested self into a beautiful movie star. Then I mixed up two tablespoons of Wesson, three raw eggs, and four tablespoons of mayonnaise in a cereal bowl and slathered the slimy concoction into my hair like Seventeen magazine recommended, so I would have “shiny, healthy, soft, glowing locks that any boy would want to run his fingers through.” I wrapped my drippy strands of hair in a big, orange towel and felt my head getting warm and itchy. While it soaked in, I polished my toenails and my fingernails, perched on the vanity top in the bathroom, making model-like faces at myself in the mirror. The whole room smelled like egg salad from my fermenting hair.

Unfortunately for me, Valencia had taken most of her good clothes with her to college, but I was able to pull together an outfit of stretch pants (a little droopy on me, but they would do), an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt with a tank top beneath it (think Flashdance), and a Debbie Gibson style hat that Van had worn in a play a year or two earlier. It looked like an ill-fitting rip-off of something the popular girls would be doing. I was all set.

I took a hot shower, massaging the oily mixture deep into my scalp, imagining my ordinary brown hair turning shiny and soft, maybe even magically becoming curly. I was always bugging my mom to let me get a perm but she said they were too expensive. All the cool girls had perms. Spiral perms.

I washed my hair with some fancy shampoo I had been saving for a really special occasion. It was called GLITZ and it had tiny pieces of copper glitter in it. The egg salad smell started to go away and was replaced with the rich, fruity aroma of GLITZ. I read the bottle. GLITZ will turn BLAH hair into U RAH RAH hair. There was a little cheerleader on the bottle. God, I wanted so badly for this to work. I washed my hair an extra time, working up a mountain of lather, and as I rinsed away the suds, I prayed for the magic of GLITZ to change me.

Getting dressed was the best. I felt just like Valencia. I put on her clothes and used her old blow dryer that she had left for me. I curled my bangs into an extra tall pouf and sprayed them heavily with Aquanet. My hair was soft. I had never felt such soft hair! Except for the bangs of course. Nobody had soft bangs in the late 80’s. I put on a ton of red blush and some blue eye shadow and ten sprays of Avon Soft Musk perfume. Now that Valencia was gone, I was stepping into her role of teenager of the house.

“I’m ready for you to drive me to the dance, Mom!” I yelled, admiring myself in front of the bathroom mirror. She walked by with a stack of folded laundry in her arms. “You look cute, Honey. Why does it smell like potato salad in here?”

I shrugged. She ruined everything.

“Let me put these away and then I will take you.”

I put on my scuffed black flats. Valencia’s shoes were still too big for me.

“Okay, you ready?”

I nodded and grabbed my purse. It cost two dollars to get into the dance. I hadn’t told my mom this because then she probably wouldn’t have let me go. Luckily, I had plenty of quarters saved up from doing Van’s chores.

As we approached the car, I noticed that my mom was wearing the blue dress that had been hanging behind the bathroom door while I was getting ready. I had thought the dress was dirty, and in an impulsive act of spite, I had used it to wipe up the mayonnaise mixture in the sink. Its smudgy flower print did a good job of hiding the greasy stains. She was

completely unaware of the huge splotch in the middle of her back. Didn’t it feel cold and damp against her skin? Was she, as I had long suspected, part reptile? I started to get nervous. I was going to be more grounded than ever. Then I noticed she was wearing makeup. A sinking feeling took over me.

“Why are you all dressed up, Mom?”

“I’m chaperoning the dance,” she said in an irritated, exasperated tone, as if she had told me this a dozen times.

I froze. “What?”

“Mary Kelter-Gurnsey called me the other day and said they were short on chaperones, so I said I would be happy to do it. Get in the car. We’re going to be late.”