Big Mouth Ugly Girl

  The next swim practice, I looked at myself in a mirror in the locker room and I saw this fattish, chunky girl. Not like the other girls. I could hardly make myself leave the locker room and go out to the pool. Thunder thighs was something the older boys said to girls; I’d overheard it without understanding what they meant, exactly. But now I knew.

  At the next meet I froze on the diving board, my knees were shaking so. I ran back into the locker room trying not to cry, but that was the end of the swim team for me. Luckily, other sports like soccer, field hockey, basketball had uniforms that could be pretty loose. You could almost hide inside them.

  This time in February, when Mom took us to New York to see the dance troupe, was a weird sort of secretive time for me. I never told Mom and Dad exactly why I’d quit the team when it had meant so much to me. Maybe I didn’t know exactly why. I never told them about how disgusted I felt toward most of the kids at school, for the way they’d behaved over Matt Donaghy and the “bomb scare.” Like they’d wanted to believe it was true. Like it was the most excitement they’d had in a long time. For sure, I never told them how guilty I felt for acting like everybody else, turning away from Matt when he came back to school.

  Lately, I hated being touched. Just accidental touching, brushing against. It reminded me of being tripped on the basketball court, elbowed in the chest, and crowded by the Tarrytown team like a pack of hyenas moving in for the kill.

  Like the outermost layer of my skin had been peeled away, and anything that touched me, however lightly, could hurt.

  There were kids who liked to bump into people at school like it was an “accident.” There’d always been kids like this, mostly guys, starting in grade school. Like sex perverts. For sure, no guy would dare to brush against Ugly Girl for such a reason! Sometimes it was done to hurt, or to provoke. Sometimes—who knows why? Like the Brewer twins, Muriel and Miriam, who were seniors, mean smirky girls nobody liked or trusted. They wore navy-blue skirts and baggy shirts and jackets like uniforms. Their father was a controversial local character, Reverend “Ike” Brewer, who had his own small church, Apostles of Jesus, where he preached against sex education in public schools, public funds for AIDS research, affirmative action, and “giving a free ride” to feminists, gays, blacks, “ethnic minorities.” In middle school Brewer petitioned to get a long list of books banned from our library (including Black Beauty, which he seemed to think was a Black Muslim novel). Last year at Rocky River he’d led a nasty campaign to get one of our new young teachers, Mr. Steiner, fired because Mr. Steiner had marched in the gay pride parade in Manhattan and “wasn’t to be entrusted” with young people. (Both campaigns failed. But caused a lot of upset and hard feelings, and drew a disgusting amount of media attention.) The Brewer twins were girls with faces like sour puddings. They were C-minus students with no sports or activities because their parents disapproved of them “mixing” with the rest of us. Every morning Reverend Brewer dropped Muriel and Miriam off at school, and every afternoon he picked them up, in a worn-looking minivan with a jesus saves sticker on the front bumper and on the rear welcome to america, now either speak english or leave it.

  I guess “religious” people like Reverend Brewer don’t have a clue what America means.

  One February morning the Brewer twins were headed upstairs with me, and sort of pushing and crowding against me, and when I turned I saw the two of them flush faced and smirking. “Hey! What’re you doing?” I asked. I clenched my fists like I was going to attack them, and one of them said breathlessly, “You wouldn’t dare, you big horse! You’d be arrested for assault.” The other said, “You’d be sued. We know who you are.” Which was Muriel Brewer, and which was Miriam? Nobody could tell. Each had dark hair parted on the left side of her head, and each had a squeaky, nasal voice. “You wouldn’t dare hurt us, you big bully. Think you’re so important!” The other said, turning her lower lip downward and inside out, tempting me to punch her, “S’pose you’re real proud of yourself, huh? Sticking up for somebody wants to blow up the school. Sucking up to the prin-ci-pal. Jew-girl!”

  People were staring at us, edging quickly away out of fear there’d be a fight. The Brewer twins were at least three inches shorter than me, and they were no kind of athletes, not at all. Ugly Girl could’ve lifted them and tossed them down the stairs headfirst.

  Don’t think I wasn’t contemplating doing just that.

  My heart was pounding like crazy. “Get away from me! Go to hell,” I said.

  Muriel and Miriam ran down the stairs giggling. One screamed back over her shoulder, “You’re the one who’s gonna go to hell, Jew-girl!”

  For sure I didn’t tell Mom and Dad about the crazy Brewer twins.

  Dad was always saying that people like Reverend Brewer were very dangerous in our society. The United States was a multicultural society, but there was still a lot of prejudice against ethnic minorities. Obviously. There was still a lot of anti-Semitism, though it was mostly hidden. Reverend Brewer was like a man striking a match in a dried-out forest. He knew exactly what he was doing. But he could always say he was preaching “God’s word.”

  It was all so weird. I wasn’t even Jewish!

  In the Brewers’ mean mouths, the term “Jew-girl” sounded like an obscenity. I guess that’s how they meant it. Something they’d been hearing at home.

  What I really wondered was why they’d taunted me—“Sticking up for somebody wants to blow up the school.” How’d they know?

  Evidently it had become common knowledge that I’d talked to Mr. Parrish. Maybe Matt Donaghy had told his friends. Actually, I wasn’t that proud of myself. Whenever I’m singled out for attention, even praise, I get really self-conscious.

  Big deal. Harold Parrish, principal, had sent a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Clayton Riggs commending them on their daughter’s “good citizenship.” Sure, it was a form letter the shrewd old guy had sent to dozens of important people in the school district, changing names and details, of course. I was sort of ashamed when my parents showed me the letter, as if I’d gone to see Mr. Parrish just to impress him.

  Please understand that as principal of Rocky River High School I had to weigh the safety and rights of the majority . . . against the rights of the individual. At no time did I, or my colleagues, seriously believe the allegations made against Matthew Donaghy, who is one of the school’s outstanding students. In the light of school violence across the nation in recent years, and parental anxiety about the safety of their children, I believed that the necessary thing to do was behave with extreme caution.

  Sure: calling in the cops. Practically calling in the reporters and TV crews.

  For any inconveniences caused, and emotional distress, my staff and I are truly sorry. But through the responsible citizenship of your daughter Ursula, as well as the thoroughness of our investigation, this difficult episode came to a satisfactory ending.

  Tell that to Matt Donaghy.

  My dad made a photocopy of the letter to give to me “for my files.” As soon as I was alone I tore it into pieces.

  * * *

  I was thinking of Mr. Parrish’s phony letter, and the nasty Brewer twins, and Matt Donaghy, when Mom, Lisa, and I took our seats in the plushy theater at Lincoln Center. What a fancy, fussy place! Chandeliers, and the mostly older-female audience murmuring in a kind of churchy hush. I was wearing my satin Rocky River jacket, and my khakis, and the faux palomino boots that were kind of beat up by the winter and funky looking. Mom made me take off the Mets cap. I’d stuffed it in my pocket. For dress-up I’d put in all my ear studs—nine in each ear. (Not that they matched.) I felt big and clumsy as a horse trapped in a tinsel candy box. Even in the restaurant I was distracted and sort of sullen. Thinking how people like the Brewers could poison the world for you with their meanness. Ugly Girl was tough but never mean—I hoped. Mom chided me for my “bull-dog face” but I didn’t laugh. Lisa was chattering about the dance troupe; she just picked at the food on her plate. Luscious spinach linguine
heaped with specialty mushrooms. Lisa was always picking at her food lately, I’d been noticing. Even my brown rice/tofu casserole with broccoli and nuts that she used to love. The waiter would have taken Lisa’s plate away except I stopped him. “I’ll eat that.” Mom was embarrassed—that wasn’t the way a well-mannered young lady from the upscale suburb Rocky River behaved.

  Right. It wasn’t.

  Five minutes into a dance called Sylvan Sunset I knew I had to escape from this place or I’d suffocate. My knees kept hitting against the seat in front of me, and the woman sitting there would glance around to glare—I expected her to hiss, “Big horse!” Maybe the dance was beautiful and graceful, et cetera, but it wasn’t Ugly Girl’s style. I whispered in Mom’s ear, “I need fresh air. I’m out of here.” Mom grabbed my wrist and glared at me. As if Mom could hold Ugly Girl by the wrist. “Ursula,” she whispered, “I spent forty-five dollars for these tickets. You are not leaving.” Mom’s eyes showed a dangerous rim of white above the irises but Ugly Girl was already making her move. “Mom, I’ll meet you guys right out front. I promise.”

  “Ur-sula!”

  “I’m out of here.”

  Lisa was embarrassed of her big sister, or possibly ashamed. She was sitting on Mom’s other side and just kept staring at the stage as I pushed and stumbled out to the aisle mumbling, “Excuse me!”

  Out in the lobby, I immediately felt so free. Like, if I’d been a horse, a tight-fitting bridle had been removed. Now I could toss my head and gallop.

  I checked at the box office to see when the dance let out, and actually did go running across the windy plaza at Lincoln Center in the direction of Central Park. My boots weren’t the best for running, but they’d have to do. As soon as I got to the park, on the snowy grass, I could run better. I was trotting, my breath steaming in the cold air. Not that it was very cold, just below freezing. A glowering midwinter day. I watched the skaters for a while. I walked around the big pond. I could breathe. Mom didn’t like me to wander around alone in the city, but I never felt in any danger, that was the advantage of being Ugly Girl at five feet ten and a half inches tall. (In fact, in these boots, five feet eleven.) Especially in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon I felt safe.

  I had lots of time. I went to an art exhibit at the National Academy of Design. The posters out front intrigued me: pen-and-ink masters. I hadn’t been drawing much lately, since quitting basketball and my sour feeling about school and Inky Black moods sort of gripping me, so it was exciting to see this exhibit of drawings by older artists like Rembrandt, Matisse, Degas, Picasso, and Dürer (who I’d never heard of before but who was the best, with fantastic drawings of rabbits and birds more real than “real” that made me just want to stare for long minutes) and more recent artists, like R. B. Kitaj, Alice Neel, Anne Dunn, Joan Mitchell, Jane Freilicher . . . It was exciting to see women artists mixed with men, even if their names didn’t mean too much to me. Their art was good. I was feeling inspired again, and couldn’t wait to get home to my sketch pad. And in the book shop I picked up The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work by Germaine Greer, who I’d sort of heard of, and leafed through it, and this leaped out at me:

  More insidious than the teachers’ contempt was their praise. At all the art schools women consistently bore off the honors. . . . Women easily confused this kind of success with genuine artistic achievement. In such a situation it is very likely that the wrong women were encouraged, for true artistic ability often presents itself in a truculent aspect which does not find favor with paternalist teachers.

  These words really struck me. It was like the author was talking directly to Ugly Girl. It was worth coming to New York just to read this.

  Truculent: I was pretty sure I knew what the word meant, and it meant Ugly Girl.

  Then, crossing through the park to return to Lincoln Center, I had a shock.

  This sensation went through me swift as an electric current. I stopped to watch the skaters again and I saw—I thought I saw—a familiar-looking tall lanky boy with faded-red hair and a pale freckled skin, skating in flashy figure eights. He was showing off for a girl, and they were both wearing red gloves.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and stared.

  Matt Donaghy?

  Matt Donaghy here in Central Park, skating with a girl?

  My mouth went dry. My heart began to beat strangely. I wanted to shrink away to hide before Matt saw me, but at the same time (this was crazy, for sure) I wanted to step into view and capture Matt’s attention.

  Hey. I’m your friend. Ursula Riggs. Me.

  The red-haired boy and his girlfriend joined hands and skated away as if to mock me. Other skaters blocked my view. My eyes blurred with moisture so I had to rub them clear to see, when the couple came back into view—no, of course the boy wasn’t Matt Donaghy.

  He was a total stranger, older than Matt. Not so nice-looking as Matt, with a hard face.

  Ugly Girl hurried away, blushing.

  This was not good.

  I had to hurry now, I was almost late to meet up with Mom and Lisa. And I knew Mom was seriously pissed at me.

  On Broadway there were these tough-looking girls, a few years older than me, in sexy leather pants and funky little jackets, their spiky hair dyed in streaks of green, maroon, orange, and their earlobes pierced and glittering like mine. Except they wore nose rings, too. Were they cool! Seeing me, they whistled. “Hey there, sexy!” They were grinning and waving. I smiled back but didn’t say anything, feeling shy. I kept walking.

  Still, it felt good. They were Ugly Girls, too.

  SEVENTEEN

  WINTER LONELINESS. WINTER SOLITUDE. You could drift away into the hilly, rock-strewn woods and feel your body begin to lose its heat and turn to stone. There you wouldn’t have to hear your mother and father talking, murmuring, their voices occasionally raised and angry in the night.

  You wouldn’t have to hear voices at school lowered in your presence. You wouldn’t have to see the covert glances.

  Poor Matt. He’s changed so much . . .

  He isn’t much fun anymore, is he?

  Mr. Rainey wanted Matt to make an appointment to see him. Just to talk. But Matt had nothing to say to Mr. Rainey, so why make an appointment “just to talk”?

  More and more Matt was going hiking in the preserve without taking Pumpkin. Why? The golden retriever whimpered to Matt at the door, practically begging him to take her, but Matt had his reasons. “No. This is private. Next time, Pumpkin.”

  If ever Matt wanted to turn into stone, to stop his racing thoughts and the edgy nervous sensation like ticks crawling over his skin, Pumpkin would just interfere.

  Matt came in from a hike, and there was Alex in the kitchen, looking frightened. “Where’s Mom?” Matt asked. It was a Sunday in February, a few minutes before noon. Matt’s dad was in Houston, or maybe it was Dallas. San Diego?

  Without Dad in the house, the tension was lessened. Usually.

  Alex was saying, “Mom was going through yesterday’s mail and opened something. . . . She’s in the bathroom.” Matt listened at the bathroom door and heard the fan whirring inside, and the sound of sobbing. “Hey, Mom?” Matt rapped shyly on the door. “Are you—OK?”

  Stupid question. How could Mom be OK, hiding in a bathroom crying?

  Alex said, “It came in this, I guess.” On top of a small pile of mail was a plain white envelope with no return address. MR & MRS DONAGHY, 377 GLENDALE DR, ROCKY RIVER, NY was scrawled on it in oversized letters, in red ink.

  Matt was impatient with his brother standing there gaping. “Go away, Alex. Mom needs privacy.” Alex’s face showed surprise at the harshness of Matt’s voice, but he turned to leave. “And take Pumpkin with you, will you? She’s getting on my nerves.”

  “She’s your dog, Matt.”

  But Alex took Pumpkin, running upstairs to his room.

  When Matt’s mother finally emerged from the bathroom, he was shocked at her appearance. Her face looked s
mudged, her eyes were bloodshot. Her hands shook. “I can’t take this any longer,” she said. “I’m exhausted.” Matt wasn’t accustomed to his mother in this state, unapologetic for her tears. This scared him as much as anything.

  “Mom, what is it? Did somebody—”

  “This.”

  She handed him a newspaper clipping. It was an article Matt had already seen, taken from a Westchester paper the previous month; the headline was area teen questioned in bomb scare. Beside the headline were question marks in red. Someone had scrawled in block letters:

  Matt’s mother was saying, in a flat, tired voice Matt had never before heard, that she wanted to move away from Rocky River. She wasn’t happy here any longer. She didn’t feel safe. None of them were safe. “I go into the food market, into the drugstore, and I can see people looking at me. I know. The cashiers stare at me. Some of them know me from . . . before. They try to be nice. A few of them have even expressed sympathy. The same with our neighbors. Our so-called friends. But still, I’m ‘Mrs. Donaghy the mother of the boy who was arrested—you know, the bomb-scare boy.’” Matt’s mother spoke bitterly, imitating another’s voice. Her mouth twisted in a way ugly to witness. “We can’t stay here. I used to love this house; now I hate it! There’s too much glass in this house. Look—those windows.” Matt looked, and saw just the driveway and the snowy backyard. Only at night, when their lights were on, could you see signs of a neighboring house. “I’m telling your father tonight. We aren’t safe!”

  Matt stood tall and gangly and awkward, not knowing what to do. He wanted to hug his mother, to comfort her, but that felt wrong—Mom was the one who hugged Matt when he was upset.

  Mom was the one who didn’t cry. Once she’d hurt herself playing tennis, twisting an ankle, and she was crying but at the same time laughing to assure her family she was fine. She was all right! If Matt or Alex was angry, or sullen, or hurt, Mom was the one to cajole him out of it. She used sympathy, or she used humor. Always, Mom knew what to do. It was a shock to Matt that his mom was speaking so frankly to him, as if he were an adult. It was a shock to see her face: raw and exposed. And her eyes accusing.