“You will not be a cheerleader,” Stepmother told her daughter as little girls went by shaking their navy-blue-and-gold pom-poms. “Their outfits are a disgrace to women! No daughter of mine is going to wear a short skirt and cheer for boys.” Girl wanted to be a cheerleader more than anything, but she didn’t say a word. She practiced doing the splits with her best friend Gretchen, and someday when Girl was able to get her crotch all the way down to the ground, she planned on bringing it up with Stepmother again, but she couldn’t do it, not quite yet. Cheerleaders were popular and cute and when they stood up in class they tossed their hair with the same right-to-left flip as the models in shampoo commercials.
Shriners rode by on tiny motorcycles with their silly red fezzes, and the children could clap for them, because Mother said that they had a great-uncle who was a Shriner, and Shriners raised money for sick children. Girl thought the old men on their knee-high scooters were embarrassing and she didn’t want anyone to know that she was related to one, but Shriners always threw the most candy, so Girl yelled loudly so they’d make sure to send some her way. Girl felt the rat-tat-tat cadence of snare drums in her teeth, but the deep bass drum got trapped inside her chest where she felt everything. She didn’t know why bass drums made her cry but it had something to do with expectation. When Girl felt the bass drum she did that ugly, nose-wrinkle don’t-cry-face and turned away so Brother wouldn’t mock her. She loved the feather caps of the majorettes even though Stepmother said that majorettes were as stupid as cheerleaders, with their fake white guns and knee-high boots and miniskirts. Girl also loved the dancers that waved double-sided flags until they almost touched the street and then back up with a swirl as the band played behind them. Girl swore that someday she would dance down the street in knee-high boots and a miniskirt twirling a flag because she was really terrible at spinning her baton in the backyard, and she knew baton-girl was beyond her abilities. When she threw that shiny metal rod up into the air and spun around, the white rubber ends hit her on the head as often as they bounced on the grass.
The veterans went by, and the crowd quieted slightly in respect.
“Don’t clap, yet,” Stepmother said. “Wait, I want to see … okay, they are World War Two vets. You can clap for them.”
Korean vets were iffy, but Stepmother told the children to never, ever clap for Vietnam vets. Girl clapped anyway, saying, “It’s a free country,” under her breath, and everyone else was clapping too so Stepmother couldn’t hear her. Even though Mother always said the children could clap for whomever they wanted, Girl wasn’t sure what was right. She didn’t want to clap for war, but a lot of these men were the fathers of her classmates. Girl couldn’t always remember which vets were okay to clap for and which were not, so sometimes she refused to cheer for any of them—it was too hard to figure out. Why was it permissible to clap for very old soldiers and not young ones? Girl had seen the old vets at the drugstore and they always had blurry green tattoos and a lot of them had the red blotches Mother said was scurvy, and their skin was always dry with white flakes on their arms. Girl clapped quietly, her sticky palms barely touching, not making much sound, unless they had a tank or big military vehicle. Then she couldn’t help cheering but was a little afraid at the same time.
The children could cheer for Campfire Girls and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and Girl clapped for all the teenaged girls who wore prom dresses even though she didn’t know what they were queens of. Girl promised herself that someday she was going to wear a crown in a parade and sit on a float and wave, just like them. When the politicians came by with their big signs on the sides of their convertibles, Girl wondered if they had to find a friend with a convertible every year or if they tried to be nice to people who had convertibles just to keep their parade options open. Girl was not supposed to clap for Republicans but if they threw candy her way, she clapped anyway and didn’t care.
“Pinny Cook!” Stepmother yelled and walked up to her car to cheer up close while the politician was stopped behind a dance troupe for a minute. Pinny Cook was a Republican but she was also a woman and Stepmother voted for her but Mother didn’t because Mother said that being a woman wasn’t as important as being a Democrat. Louise Slaughter drove by slowly and the whole family all clapped for her, even though Louise wore too much makeup and everyone could smell her perfume a mile away. “Hi, Judy!” she yelled to Mother, and Girl felt famous because her mother was on the Democratic Committee and made the children walk around the neighborhood and put fliers on houses every fall. But Democrats didn’t throw as much candy.
At the end of the parade came all the kids on bicycles who were in the decorating contest, with red, white, and blue
