So I scooched out of bed and called Dinah. I said, “You know what? Maybe you are a little chubby. But who cares? That’s just you.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, and I got a bad, clenchy feeling inside. Had I screwed up?
Then she said, “I’m not fat, though.”
“Not fat. Just chubby. And Cinnamon was wrong to bring it up in front of the guys.”
“Cinnamon can be kind of a jerk,” she said in a surprisingly forceful voice.
“Yep,” I said. What else could I say?
“I don’t think she means to be,” Dinah continued. “At least, I don’t think she sets out with the goal of making me feel like dirt. I think she just…sees the opportunity sometimes.”
“And doesn’t stop herself,” I added. I paused, the whole of her sentence soaking in. “She makes you feel like dirt?”
“I think she was showing off for Bryce,” she said.
“I think it worked. Did you see them today after lunch?”
Dinah snorted. Cinnamon had ditched us to play arm-tickling games with Bryce out on the quad, and I’d half-wished our vice-principal, Ms. Bolletieri, had spotted them and written them up for PDA.
“I’m going to call her and tell her she was really mean,” Dinah said. “After I hang up with you, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Whoa. Was she really? And why did that surprise me? Was it just because I never had?
“Good for you,” I said.
“Or maybe I’ll e-mail her, so I’ll be less likely to chicken out.”
“I totally think you should,” I said, suspecting that if it were me, I probably would chicken out—even over e-mail. Holy pickles, was I an even bigger wimp than Dinah???
“Yeah,” Dinah said. “’Cause if I let her treat me like that, then I’m part of the problem. That’s what I’ve been thinking. And if our friendship is going to mean anything—if the three of us are going to stay friends forever, which I so so so so want—then we’ve got to be honest with each other, right?”
“I totally, absolutely agree.”
She paused. “Can I tell you something?”
“Uh…sure.” My fingers tightened on the phone.
“Sometimes…well…”
“Spit it out.” My heart thumped, because I had no clue where she was headed.
“It’s nothing, really. It’s just that sometimes…your hair gets a little stringy. Like, if you haven’t washed it that day.”
At first I felt relieved. My hair got stringy sometimes? Duh! Especially my bangs, because they got oily from my forehead, I guess. Which was gross, but having stringy hair was far better than being a jerk. Or—truth—being fat. Not that Dinah was fat. She wasn’t. But whenever I saw a truly obese person, like at the mall or at a restaurant, I couldn’t help thinking that existing in such a body would be an awfully hard row to hoe.
“Winnie?” Dinah said. “Are you mad?”
“What? No, no, I’m not mad. You’re right, my hair does get stringy sometimes.”
And then, as the words came out of my mouth, a huge wave of shame washed over me, completely disproportionate to the situation. My hair was stringy. Everyone knew it. Everyone saw me and thought, God, that girl should take a shower.
“Winnie? Um…you sound kind of funny. Are you sure you’re not mad?”
Had Dinah brought up my stringy hair to punish me? If so, she was certainly justified. I hadn’t stood up for her at Bryce’s. I hadn’t told Cinnamon to shut up.
Maybe Dinah needed me to hurt a little, too, and that’s why she said it.
“Yeah, no, I swear I’m not mad,” I told her. “But I’ve got to go, okay? I’ve”—I worked up a laugh—“got to wash my hair.”
But then…I didn’t. I needed to—oh boy, did I need to. Dinah was right!—but I did not get in the shower, and I did not squeeze a dollop of Neutrogena Clarifying Shampoo into my hand, and I did not scrub and scrub until my hair was shiny and clean. What good was it for me to say all these grand things about appearance not mattering if I wasn’t willing to allow appearance not to matter? At least for one day. At least for tomorrow, which was Halloween, and which made it all the more perfect.
I’d dress up as Ugly Girl, and I’d do it with pride. I’d dedicate it to all the Dinahs and Josephs of the world, and obese people, and kids with bad skin. I wouldn’t say it out loud, but that’s what I’d be doing: dedicating my ugliness to beauty within, to everyone taking a chill pill and just being nice, for God’s sake.
Cinnamon was the first of my friends to see me that next morning. She approached me at my locker, and her expression told me without a shred of doubt that my costume was a success.
“What the heck?!” she said. She tried to shield me from the other kids in the hall, but I pushed her away.
“Cinnamon, stop,” I said, giggling. I was sweating and nervous, but I refused to back down.
“Okay, you can not laugh at a time like this,” she said. “Did you take crazy pills this morning? Did an anvil fall on your head, and that’s why you look like this?”
Perhaps she was referring to my hair, which had gone overnight from stringy to outright lanky, and which hung in clearly defined grease-clumps. Or perhaps she meant my face, utterly unbeautified with mascara or lip gloss or my Rock Star glitter dust. Then again, it could have been my stiff and ridiculous jeans, high-waisted as all get out, or my white turtleneck with the little blue whales all over it. Which I’d tucked in, thank you very much, and which, when I dug it out of my drawer, made me marvel at how many hideous articles of clothing I actually possessed, bestowed upon me by relatives and family friends and plain bad judgment.
Pulling on the whale shirt made me think of “Wonderful Whales” and “Hilarious Humpbacks,” which made me think of Joseph. Which was good, because otherwise I might have abandoned my plan. It was remarkably hard to look bad on purpose, I discovered. But I lifted my chin and added a gold lamé belt with a clasp in the shape of a heart. (God only knew how I’d ended up with that gem.) I finished the look with a hat. It was jaunty. It was plaid. Enough said.
“I’m Ugly Girl,” I informed Cinnamon, who was still gaping at me.
“Yes. Yes, you are. You do not see me arguing. But why?”
“For Halloween,” I said. For my protest to count, I couldn’t explain it further than that.
Cinnamon shook her head. “No. Uh-uh. Go change.”
“I’m not going to change,” I said.
Dinah hurried up to us, looking quite pretty in a pink sweater that brought out the rosiness of her cheeks. “Guys, I ran into Louise, and she said I had to go find you, Winnie, because—” She broke off, taking in my fashion statement.
“Because why?” I said.
“Er…she said you’d gone ’round the bend. Which I didn’t understand…but now I do?” She gave a pained smile that said, Oh, God, Winnie, what have you done?
“She’s Ugly Girl,” Cinnamon explained with narrowed eyes. “Only she’s going to march right into the bathroom and change, because she’s not allowed to wear a costume to school.”
“It’s not a costume,” I said.
“Oh yes it is!”
Two seventh graders walked by, being totally un-subtle as they gawked at me.
“See, I told you!” said one of them to the other.
“Leave!” Cinnamon said to them, clapping her hands and making them jump. “Show’s over! Nothing here to see!”
“Does this have something to do with…what we talked about last night?” Dinah asked me.
Cinnamon looked from her to me. “Oh. My. God.”
“What?” I said. Had she figured it out? Did I want her to figure it out?
“You’re trying to prove some point about what a bitch I am for making Dinah feel bad, aren’t you? Although how being Ugly Girl is supposed to do that is beyond me!”
I turned to Dinah. “You told her?”
“I never said you were a…bitch,” Dinah said. She whispered the last word. It might
have been the first time in her life she’d ever said it.
“But…you were being a jerk,” I said. The words came out of my mouth. They did. I stood a little taller.
“Please, I’m begging you,” Cinnamon said to me, making praying hands. “I’ve learned my lesson! I will be a better person from now on! I will feed the hungry and clothe the poor—just for God’s sake do something about your hair!”
I got the giggles.
“You take one arm, I’ll take the other,” Cinnamon instructed Dinah.
“What? No!”
They didn’t listen. They dragged me to the bathroom, where Cinnamon tugged off my hat and threw it in the trash.
“Hey!”
“We need to get her head under the faucet,” Cinnamon said. “I know hand soap’s not the best shampoo, but it’s better than nothing.”
“I’ve got a brush in my backpack,” Dinah said.
They faced me.
“Now,” Cinnamon said firmly. “Are we doing this the hard way or the easy way?”
They were deadly serious, that much was clear. And my bangs truly were greasy beyond belief. The bathroom mirror didn’t lie.
“Fine,” I said. “But the outfit stays.”
“Oh no it doesn’t,” Cinnamon said. “We can go to lost and found. There has to be something you can change into.”
“Deal with it, Cin-Cin,” I said, and the beautiful thing was, I meant it. “I’m keeping the whales.”
November
WINNIE, YOUR MOM HAS A POOCH,” Cinnamon said. It was after lunch, and we were heading from the parking lot to the junior high building. Mom had just delivered my history paper on the Emancipation Proclamation, which I’d left at home even though today was its due date.
“Never again,” Mom had said, handing it to me with a frown.
“I know, I know,” I’d replied. “Thank you so much!” I never intended to leave my history papers at home—or my science reports or math homework or source materials for English—but sometimes it just happened. Well, okay, often. Often it just happened. And every time, Mom would bring it to me, whatever it was. And every time, she said never again.
I loved my mom. She was the best.
“It’s not a pooch,” I said to Cinnamon. “It’s a bump.”
“It’s not a bump. It’s a baby!” Dinah said.
“Really?” Cinnamon said, laying it on thick. “You mean she’s not just becoming a porker? Oh, thank God!”
“Actually, she is becoming a porker,” I said. “The lady likes her doughnuts, I tell you.”
Dinah shoved me. “Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not being mean! Who’s being mean? Mom sends Dad out for Krispy Kremes practically every night, but do you see me complaining?”
“No, we do not,” Cinnamon said.
“That’s right. I love the Krispy Kreme.”
Dinah giggled. “I love the” was our new catchphrase, stolen from Bryce, who at a party over the weekend had announced that he “loved the cashew.” He’d popped a handful into his mouth, smacked his lips, and said it just like that: “Man, I love the cashew.”
“Don’t you be making fun of my Brycie,” Cinnamon threatened.
We got to the junior high, and I sat on a stone bench outside the building. “I’m not! I’m not! Geez, why is everyone getting all over me today?”
“‘My Brycie,’” Dinah repeated. She dropped down next to me. “Did you hear that? She called him ‘My Brycie.’”
“I know. She loves the Brycie.”
Cinnamon smacked me.
“Hey!” I protested. It wasn’t as if I were spilling some great secret, after all. Cinnamon and Bryce hung out almost every day after lunch, and they usually spent at least one weekend night together, too. They didn’t spend their time just talking, either. In terms of fooling around, they’d already gone farther than Lars and I had. It was obvious that Cinnamon loved the Brycie…but did the Brycie love her? They’d only been going out for three weeks. How could she be sure after such a short time?
“So when does your mom have her ultrasound?” Dinah asked. Dinah couldn’t wait to find out whether Mom was having a girl or a boy. Neither could I.
“November seventeenth, two days after Becca’s bat mitzvah,” I said.
“Ooo, goodie,” Dinah said. “I can’t wait!”
“I still haven’t gotten my invitation,” Cinnamon said darkly, meaning to Becca’s bat mitzvah, not Mom’s ultrasound. “You have and Winnie has and even Bryce has. Why haven’t I?”
“Dude,” I said. “The fact that Becca invited Bryce means that of course she invited you. So chill.” My invitation had come in the mail on Friday, and it was like a wedding invitation, it was so fancy. Creamy linen paper, swirly lettering, Becca’s name embossed in gold. Lars received his the next day, and he was bewildered until I told him who Becca was: a girl in my grade who I wasn’t really friends with, but who was inviting every single person in our class to her bat mitzvah, plus extras. I explained to Lars that Becca was inviting him as my date.
“Huh,” he’d said. He didn’t seem convinced that this was a good thing.
“You’ll need to get her a gift,” I told him, plucking the invitation from his hand and putting it on the counter. I twined my fingers through his and pressed against him.
“I will?”
“Uh-huh. It’s to celebrate Becca’s thirteenth birthday. That’s what a bat mitzvah is.”
“Why is she just now turning thirteen? Did she skip a grade?”
“Becca?” I said, lifting my eyebrows. One of the few Becca memories I had involved Becca asking me during history if Colorado was a country or a state. “Uh, no. She went to kindergarten in Alabama and the cutoff date was later, or something like that. But there’ll be dancing, and probably a chocolate fountain, and it’ll be absolutely fabulous. So stop making that face!”
“I’ve never been to a bat mitzvah before,” Cinnamon said now. She squished in beside us on the bench.
“Me, neither,” Dinah said. “Think it’ll be like My Super Sweet Sixteen?”
“It will, it totally will,” I told them. Louise had gotten the scoop from Becca during PE—Louise was very good that way—then passed it onto me. “Becca’s inviting everyone in our entire class, plus the kids from her Hebrew school, plus at least two gorgeous freshmen guys who happen to be dating eighth grade girls.”
“Nudge nudge, wink wink,” Cinnamon said. The bell rang, signaling the end of our free period. “Well, kids…”
“Yep, it’s that time,” Dinah said, rising to her feet. A girl with thick bangs and glasses scuttled by, cutting across from the high school, and Dinah called, “Hi, Shannon!”
Shannon looked startled, as she always did. “Hi,” she said. She hugged her geometry book to her chest—she took freshman math even though she was an eighth grader—and kept going.
“Think Shannon’s invited?” Cinnamon said in a low voice.
I giggled, although I didn’t know why. It wasn’t a nice thing to giggle about.
“Yes,” Dinah said defensively. She was always one for the underdogs. “If Louise really is inviting everyone, then yes.”
Cinnamon pressed her hands to her thighs and stood up. “Whatev. I’m not worried about Shannon; I’m worried about me. Seriously—what if my invitation doesn’t come?”
“Relax,” I told her. “It will.”
It did, and together the three of us went to the mall to buy dresses for “the biggest social event of the season.” That’s what everyone was calling it (I think Louise was the first), and anticipation buzzed like hummingbirds through the junior high. The girls were more excited than the boys, because we got to wear real, live prom-dress-style-dresses, but the guys were excited, too—especially after they heard there’d be food, and lots of it. There weren’t a whole lot of Jewish people at Westminster, but Alex Plotkin had been to a family friend’s bar mitzvah (the boy equivlaent of a bat mitzvah), and he regaled us with stories of DJs and prize
s and a whole room dedicated to dessert.
“Every kind of candy imaginable,” he said. “M&Ms in huge bowls. Snickers in huge bowls. Reese’s Cups in huge bowls—and not just the normal Reese’s Cups, but the white chocolate ones, too!”
Saturday the fifteenth finally came, and Mom dropped me, Dinah, and Cinnamon off at the Ahavath Achim Synagogue at eleven in the morning. First came the ceremony part of the bat mitzvah, and then, that evening, the party. “It’s called paying your dues,” Sandra said, as if she were a bat mitzvah expert. “They stick you with religion and then let you have your fun.”
I didn’t mind the ceremony, though. The synagogue looked beautiful, all lit with candles and drapey, ornate fabrics, and Becca seemed surprisingly knowledgeable and in control up there in front of us all. She was the one who ran the service, which gave me thrills of sympathetic nervousness. It was kind of like church, with lots of singing and different people standing up to say prayers and stuff, but Becca was the one who announced each segment and told what it was.
Then it was time for her Torah reading, and one of Becca’s aunts or second cousins or grandmother’s nieces—I never got it straight—leaned over and said, “This is good, girls. We’re in the home stretch.”
“Is she going to read it in Hebrew?” Dinah whispered.
“She is,” the relative said. “Oh, I remember my own bat mitzvah, how scared I was!”
I was the one seated closest to her, and she took my hand and squeezed it tightly.
Becca cleared her throat and stepped behind the lectern, where a massive Torah lay open before her. She wore a pale blue sweater set and a brown wool skirt, very ladylike, and I flashed on the incongruous image of her at school last week, smiling wide with something chunky stuck in her braces.
Ancient syllables tumbled from Becca’s tongue, rounded, thick, and with a random throat-clearing sound thrown in for good measure. The words sounded mysterious and beautiful. Becca, during those moments, was more than Becca, and I found myself wishing I were Jewish…although even as I wished it, I knew I’d never do anything to make it happen. I loved our Christmas crèche with its teensy baby Jesus, which Mom would get out as soon as December first rolled around. I was Christian, not Jewish. And that was cool, too.