Teenaged boys will ask to look in your windows, even though you assure them that nobody wants to see your parents naked. You compare your stepmother to the androgynous Pat on Saturday Night Live, and it is an accurate description, even down to their shared first name. Your Pat loves the skit and tries to mimic the character as much as possible.
In high school, every single straight male you meet asks, “Did you ever think you were a lesbian?” or some other permutation of that sentiment. You spend your teen years on a quest to prove your heterosexuality. It sounded like, “Look, I have a boyfriend, so I can prove I’m not gay.” Of course you don’t tell anyone about the tingling rush you feel when you look at the supermodels on Cosmopolitan magazine’s covers in the checkout line. You push any thought of women as sexy deep down inside, as deep as you possibly can. At night, you are afraid that you might wake up and find that you have turned into a lesbian in your sleep, and then you would have to live this sad, furtive life forever. You know that your stepmother knew she was gay since she was twelve, and you were relieved when you passed that age and still liked boys, but you also knew that your mother didn’t turn gay until she was in college and became involved in the feminist movement. College was still a few years away but you refused to become a feminist, just to be on the safe side. You don’t want to be the kind of feminist you see—unshaven, man-clothed, angry all the time. You want to be Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Anybody, and you want, more than anything, to be beautiful, sexy, a head-turner.
But you also don’t see why anyone would think girls aren’t as good as boys. Of course girls can be anything they want. Of course they are just as smart. Why can’t they be anything they want and still shave their legs and wear high heels and stay at home with their children? You want, more than anything, for your mother to stay at home, but she works full-time and that’s not something that is ever going to happen in your lifetime. When you tell your stepmother that you want to stay home and have children, she follows you into the front yard, yelling, “You will not be a housewife! You will be a business woman!” You jump over the hedge at the side of the yard and take off running for high school. You don’t know what a business woman does exactly, but it sounds boring. You only know how much you yearned for your mother when you were small. You want more than anything to raise children who don’t have mother-sized holes in their chests.
You hear your stepmother berate your brother over and over, like a broken record. “If I had been born a man, I could have been a minister, or a doctor. If I had been born a man I would be so much more successful. White men have everything—all the power, all the money, all the good jobs. Look at you, you were born a boy, you were given every opportunity from birth and you just squander it. You’ll never amount to anything.” So many words tell you that men are the ruling class, and you want to hitch yourself to a rising star, so you don’t have to rise yourself. You’re not sure you are as smart as your mother thinks you are.
If you have to choose between being a man-hater, an abuser, and being soft, feminine, gentle—if those are the only options you think you have, you will teach yourself to be submissive, you will make yourself as sexy-beautiful as you can, and you will even vote Republican. You will look for a strong man to defend you against everything that scares you.
the memorial day parade
The seventh-and-eighth-grade band at Dake Junior High was marching in the Memorial Day parade. Of the dozen percussionists, only eight could play snare drum, so Girl made sure to audition on the first day to secure a spot. No way was she playing bass drum or cymbals if she could help it. Snares were the lifeblood of the band, repeating their cadence over and over while everyone else marched in place, the only instrument that never rested. She might let the boys intimidate her into playing triangle and bells during daily band practice, but she was claiming her spot on snare for the parade. Mr. Bell, the conductor, let her pass, even though she wasn’t able to hit the emphasis right on the sixteenth notes. She practiced every night, but she just didn’t quite have the coordination down to really nail the accent notes. DA-da-da-DA-da-da-DA-da-DAH-DAH she chanted as she played, trying to get it down. The band got to miss afternoon classes the week before the parade to march around the neighborhood, learning to walk in step. She marched next to James—the coolest boy in eighth grade—not that he spoke to her or even once made eye contact. Girl was sure that he wouldn’t have looked at her even if she was an eighth grader—not with her braces and glasses and bad jeans. James was kind of chubby and didn’t follow clothing trends, preferring to wear button-down shirts over his jeans. But James’s father was a famous jazz drummer who died of a drug overdose, and just about every girl in school wanted to tousle his chestnut curls and stroke that baby doll face.
