I ended up eating lunch with a girl named Sharon. We both wanted to lose weight, so every day we each bought an apple for lunch and sat far away from the cafeteria, where we might be tempted by the smell of food. And this routine had another advantage for me: it allowed me to save my lunch money so I could buy myself some new school clothes. The problem with only having an apple all day, of course, was that by the time I got home from school I was starving and ended up eating too many sandwiches.
I didn’t have nice clothes and I felt awkward and out of place at school. I didn’t feel good enough about myself to be friendly with the other kids, and I didn’t know where I fit in. I didn’t want to hang out with the rough kids—I’d had it with being in trouble all the time. And the good kids, mostly popular kids, didn’t welcome me into their midst.
I noticed that the girls I wanted to hang out with were all on the honor roll for getting all A’s so I buckled down and studied hard, hoping that if my name was on that list in the school newspaper I would gain their respect. But it was an uphill battle. The popular girls all came from good families with money and they came to school with perfect hair and perfect clothes. While I no longer had to endure having my hair cut by a barber and I tried my best to style my hair well, it was always a struggle for me.
One day in Home Economics, one of the popular girls, Ann Goodman, let me know my hair didn’t look good.
“If you’re going to cut your own bangs, you need to learn how to do it,” she said smugly. “You have to cut all the way across.”
My stomach sank. I was completely humiliated. Ann Goodman was one of the popular girls, but she was also one of the most self-righteous. I had never liked her, and now I hated her guts.
At home, at least, I found that I no longer needed to roam the neighborhood looking for friends. I befriended the nice old German lady next door and sometimes I went over to her apartment after school, but mostly I preferred being alone. I realized that I had been too easily influenced by the friends I’d made on Janice Drive. I felt like I needed time alone—to heal from all the trauma and to discover who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.
I went into a sort of hibernation. I focused on studying and regaining my mother’s trust. I wrote lists of how I was going to improve myself:
Lose weight.
Help Momma out more around the house.
Study harder and get on the honor roll.
Don’t talk back to Momma.
My freshman year in high school was an important one in my life, not because I made lots of friends or found my place in the social hierarchy but because I began to find myself. And I was reinventing myself. I was leaving behind the angry, rebellious girl who hated the world and creating a new version of myself. Acting out and getting into trouble had gotten me nowhere, and I wanted to go somewhere.
By my sophomore year, I had been reintroduced to a girl named Florence who I’d met in school while living on Janice Drive. As it turned out, Florence’s parents had moved and she now lived in the new school district as well. In junior high, she had been a nice girl who never got into trouble, so our paths had never really crossed.
Florence collected friends like some people collect knickknacks, and she had her our own table in the cafeteria. When she saw me, she remembered who I was and invited me to sit with her and her friends. This was a huge relief.
Sophomore year was a pretty good year for my mom and me. We were able to connect with one another more than we had since before the sexual abuse. I think she was starting to trust me more. I wasn’t getting into any trouble and was focused on my studies. During the summer, I babysat as much as I could so I could buy my own clothes and school supplies. And I was beginning to feel better about myself.
Mom’s new job was helping her feel better about herself too. She worked with a group of lovely ladies who were as charming and sophisticated as she was. She fit right in with these women, and they treated her with respect and admiration.
Whenever I met these women over the years, I was always impressed with them. My mother brought home a photograph of the group that was taken around this time. They were all standing behind one of the cosmetic counters, smiling. I was stunned. There were five of them and they all looked equally beautiful— dressed in expensive suits, hair coiffed, perfectly made up, just the right earrings and pins. All of them were silver-haired like my mother, with the exception of one dark-haired beauty. My mother had finally found women in Bakersfield who were as classy, sophisticated, and intelligent as she was. She’d found her tribe. She looked happier in that photograph than I had ever seen her.
A feeling of love rose up in me as I looked at my mother smiling in that picture. That smile said it all: I feel happy. I feel proud. I’m with people I respect.
I wish I could say the same for myself. While having a table to sit at in the lunch room was a huge relief, I didn’t really have much in common with Florence’s friends. And while I liked Florence a lot, she was not particularly open with me—or anyone, for that matter. I longed for a friend I
