“Who’s that with your mom?” the other child asked.
“My aunt,” Girl said, telling the Official Family Lie. “My parents are divorced,” she offered, to justify it. Almost nobody she knew had divorced parents, but Mother promised that by the time she graduated high school half of her friends would have divorced parents. Girl swam away from the questions. She’d rather play by herself anyway. Girl ran back to her mother, her swimsuit dripping down her legs, and asked her mother for a penny. Girl threw the coin into the deep end and dove after it, trying to catch the spinning copper before it hit the bottom. When she got close to the bottom, her ears felt overfull and made a tinny, throbbing sound. If she missed the penny and it floated all the way down to the square grate of the filter nine feet below, she’d try to pick it up with her toes, or convince Brother to get it for her. Girl exhaled on the way up, racing the silver bubbles to the surface. If she twisted quickly enough, sometimes they would get caught in her hair.
Before she took a bath the next night, Girl dug through the drawer in the bathroom cabinet and found an old, orange Bic razor. She pulled the single blade over her wet shins, leaving them red and stinging. She could see why Mother didn’t want to shave, if it hurt so much, but Girl did it anyway. She shaved her thighs and her arms as well. Girl knew that she wasn’t allowed to shave until seventh grade, three years away, but she could not stand the boy-like black hair on her limbs. The next day Girl pulled her socks up to her knees so Stepmother wouldn’t see that she had defied her.
middle school
naked sculptures
Stepmother was a Great Artist. The house was filled with her landscape paintings and clay sculptures of naked women.
Some of the girls at school were no longer allowed to play at Girl’s house once their parents heard about the statues. “The human body is a work of art! You go tell your friends to tell their parents that all great artists study the female nude. No, it is not weird!” Stepmother explained to Girl and Brother. But Girl’s friends only looked at her funny when she said it, obviously unconvinced.
One of the sculptures was of Mother seated in a chair, large breasts splayed on her large stomach, legs slightly spread to reveal the pubic hair Stepmother had carved with a special metal sculpting tool. Stepmother had lengthened Mother’s hair—Girl didn’t know if this was meant to disguise Mother, or if it was wishful thinking. Stepmother often asked Mother to grow her hair long and dye it red. Girl didn’t think it was nice to imply her mother wasn’t good enough as she was.
“Don’t tell your friends that is supposed to be me,” Mother told the children.
“But isn’t it supposed to be a beautiful work of art?” Girl asked, not entirely innocently.
“It is absolutely a beautiful work of art. But it makes me look fatter than I am in real life,” Mother replied.
Girl had seen Mother naked plenty of times and she thought the statue was pretty spot-on, but she knew better than to contradict her. She didn’t want her friends to know what Mother looked like naked anyway, so Girl wouldn’t have told anyone even if she hadn’t been forewarned.
Because Stepmother was a Great Artist and understood the importance of naked statues, she was very understanding when Girl made a sculpture of her own in fourth-grade art class.
Mr. Bailey taught art to all the grades, traveling from school to school. Back when Girl was in second grade, her class painted pictures of autumn trees. She had red and orange for the leaves, and purple for some violets she was planning to add around the bottom. Mr. Bailey dipped his paintbrush in the purple paint and added some purple leaves to Girl’s tree. She was livid, but didn’t say anything. She just iced him out. For the next few years, anytime Mr. Bailey spoke to Girl, she’d turn her head fast in an obvious, hair-flouncing fuck-you.
Once she knew that she had made her point, Girl graciously began speaking to him again, and he was pathetically grateful for it. He’d smile at her and allow her to ignore his assignments and make whatever she wanted during art class, as long as she was quiet. Girl spent her entire fourth grade year drawing life-sized pictures of girls with braids and roller skates and cool clothing. Art was a pass/fail class anyway. If she liked an assignment she’d try it, like when the class made piñatas. Girl made a brown rat head and was quite pleased with herself—it turned out exactly like the vision in her head. Mr. Bailey felt she should have made ears that stuck out using oaktag as he had instructed, and when he gave her a B on it, he earned another month of glowering stares.
Girl was excited when he announced the unit on clay. She had liked making pinch pots and little animals over the summer at the Art Gallery, and she had been hankering to make a very specific sculpture for quite some time. She had it all worked out in her head. She wanted to make a penis sculpture, and she could picture exactly what it should like: it would sit on the rounded V-shaped testicles, the shaft of the penis pointing up at a right angle. Girl and her best friend, Gretchen, talked a lot about penises and how to make a sculpture of one without getting caught. They needed a statue because they couldn’t agree on what
