by Janet Walker
Chapter Fifty-One
MOTHERLESS CHILD
Wanda Carver was not pretty, and she knew it.
Her hair was too fine and short—it wouldn’t grow longer than a finger—and so for most of her life, it looked like a boy’s scraggly afro. Once, when she was fourteen, she went to a beauty shop and let a stylist give her a perm. The style, a blow-dried cut-and-feathered crop with matador locks, lasted one week before the hair began to revert to kinks. Desperate to hold onto the look, Wanda found a hot comb her mother must have left behind on a visit and began applying it, searing hot, to her hair every few days. Still, the hair had always reverted, in an uneven pattern, to its natural state, so that while most of the hair remained slick with greasy water, the edges were kinky. On top of that, whenever she had used the hot comb, she burned her fingers and forehead and earlobes. So when her oldest brother walked out of the bathroom one day, his tightly coiled dry hair suddenly a glistening collection of damp soft curls, Wanda knew she had found the answer to her problem. True, the perm box had a man’s head on it, but the texture perms were inexpensive and easy to apply, and she had learned which strength to buy for her hair (mild), and the length of time (eight minutes) to get the desired results (tightly curled wet locks that gradually grew into a soft brown cloud). And the curly-perm afro could endure a whole four weeks of basketball and softball games, footraces and skateboarding, before it lost all its effects.
But still Wanda was far from satisfied with her appearance.
For one thing, there was the birthmark. Her earliest memories included the screwed facial expressions of taunting children. Ooo! What’s that on your face? and Ugh! She’s gotta white thing ’round her eye! And the curious stares of adults who didn’t know what to say or ask but whose silence filled Wanda’s ears, nonetheless. And the adults who thought they knew the right things to say. Oh, what’s that around the baby’s eye? A birthmark? Oooh, come here and let me give you a hug!—which translated in Wanda’s young mind as a reason to feel ashamed of the blemish, for it prompted pity. Only around people she knew well—her brothers and the boys in the neighborhood, who had gotten to know her as the agile little athlete who was a valuable teammate—only around them could she relax and even completely forget about the blotch. But in the company of strangers, or at Beck, where many of the girls were perfect, she remained acutely aware of the blemish and could even see its glaring whiteness whenever her cheeks lifted in a smile. In such circumstances her skin glistened with embarrassment, especially if she overheard remarks made by new Beck and Langston students who spotted her for the first time. Ooo! What’s that thing on her face! and Ugh! What’s that around her eye? Often, to prevent an onslaught of tears kindled by the unkind remarks, Wanda would do something zany or blurt a joke that elicited laughs from others. Only in private did she cry, away from her brothers and neighborhood playmates—they would be surprised that she ever cried. And in those quiet moments she would think of her mother, a beautiful woman Wanda was convinced left the family not to become an actress but because her only daughter came into the world with none of her mother’s beauty but with, of all things, a horrid mark of imperfection.
And the birthmark wasn’t Wanda’s only cause of distress. The fingers that were nimble enough to throw a knuckleball or pump in free throws were no good for making things pretty or keeping them that way. Hence, surprise stains always appeared on Wanda’s pair of the white tennis shoes Miz Grace gave her Girls to wear. Both last year and this season, the other Grace Girls always managed to remain clean and neat for games and pep rallies. The fabric of their sneakers glowed white, their tawny warm-ups retained a sheen, and the burgundy of their T-shirts remained rich and deep, even at the end of the season.
Not so with Wanda.
By the third pep rally of the season, her tennis shoes had accumulated black scuff marks and begun to look off-white, which surprised her because she washed the shoes alone and poured into the washing machine plenty of bleach for the task. And she was discouraged to find, after pulling the burgundy pep-rally shirt from the dryer at home, that dark lint had attached itself to the white lettering on the back, the letters that spelled her last name, and Wanda knew that before the season was over, the CARVER stood a good chance of having a letter missing—it had happened last year—so that she would end up being the only Grace Girl looking ridiculous and unkempt. She also knew that when it came to that, she would resort to her bag of tricks and rely on the best defense she had against ridicule: her clown suit.
Nobody could see the suit, but they knew she had it on because it was the thing that made her the star of boring classes—cracking jokes at the right time, placing tacks in strategic places, imitating gay Mr. Blocker when he wasn’t looking. The clown suit assured that people would laugh not at her but at the things she did. And having others laugh at her antics was better than having them laugh at her hair and skin and ill-fitting clothes. Which was another thing. At Beck, fashion and brand names and malls mattered very much, which was another reason Wanda felt alien at school. With a workaholic father and four rowdy brothers, her early years had not provided her with impressions of femininity, so even if she had owned the desire to dress up, she had no one at home to contribute to the cause. On top of that, she believed her body unsuited for the effort. With a high waistline and pigeon-toed feet and an undeveloped torso, she imagined she would look ridiculous in the fashions the pretty girls at Beck wore, the girly blouses and flair-leg slacks and sandals. And so she never tried.
Adding to Wanda’s discomfiture was the fact that even though she lagged behind the maturity of her schoolmates’ bodies, she also no longer matched the maturation of her childhood playmates, the boys with whom she had run around the neighborhood, lean and inexhaustible and sweaty, for as a child, she was as fast-moving and capable, even more so, than most of them. And could hit a baseball out of the park. And could make a home-run slide on her belly and catch a fly ball and pitch bullets. And when they played basketball, she could easily steal because she was small and quick and had the ability to feign inattention, so that many plays ended with her ducking beneath an arm and taking off with the ball.
But now, she no longer had the cute narrowness of a little boy. Her behind had softened last year, which she observed whenever she looked at it in the mirror, and the small protuberances on her chest were an annoyance she was unable to conceal. An annoyance, because now the neighborhood boys acted amused when she wanted to play ball with them. “Wanda? You wanna play? Okay, Wanda, you can play,” they would say, as if granting her a favor. She knew it was because they saw the little bulges on her chest and thought these would prevent her from making any more belly slides. And she knew it was because she had seemed to stop growing while they continued into heavier, muscular versions of themselves and so thought they might hurt her under the basket. She knew, too, that they saw her broadened behind, which wouldn’t let them forget that she was no longer one of them but was now to be treated differently in athletic contests because she had become a girl.
But they were wrong. She wasn’t a girl as much as she was a child. For when you’re a child, people don’t care if you get sweaty and dirty and run around all day, and yell and scream on the court and field. People understand if you find it impossible to keep your school clothes clean, and people don’t care if your hair isn’t pretty or your skin has blackheads. People don’t care if you fail to brush your teeth for two whole days, or if you forget to wash your face, or if you have dirt under your fingernails. Because you’re a child, and that’s what children do.
But now she wasn’t a child anymore, she knew this. She was a girl—or something close to it.
She would never admit it to anyone, but something inside her always twitched uncomfortably whenever anyone called her a Grace Girl. She felt the same discomfort when a teacher glared at her after one of her pranks and reproved, “All right, young lady!” She wasn’t a young lady or a girl, didn’t they know that? Couldn’t they see that she was s
till a child? Or something close to it?
And most bothersome to her was standing in the bathroom, washing her hands, and having one of the Pretty Girls come in and stand at a nearby sink. The Pretty Girl would open her purse and pull out lipstick and put it on and suck her lips and look at herself in the mirror with feigned disapproval. Then the Pretty Girl would glance at Wanda, and Wanda would quickly look back at her hands under the running water, and only then, because they had made eye contact, would the Pretty Girl say, “How are you?” And then Wanda would have to look at the girl and say, “Fine.” Wanda would never ask, in return, how the girl was doing, because it was obvious to her how the Pretty Girl was doing—she was pretty. And Wanda was not. And at such times, she would glance at her own reflection in the mirror and see the huge white splotch and greasy skin—but it was always only a glance, because she didn’t want the Pretty Girl to see her and laugh and say, “What’re you looking at? Only Pretty Girls are supposed to look in mirrors, because they’re the only ones who have something to look at!”
And so Wanda would leave the sink, hands only half-washed, and leave the mirror for the Pretty Girl, since Pretty Girls were the only kind of girls who were supposed to use mirrors, and Wanda would walk out of the bathroom and think about the few men’s restrooms that accommodated the small male faculty and staff at Beck. She wondered if she would fit in better standing in front of the mirrors in those rooms, for in them there would be no pretty creature whose appearance would highlight Wanda’s lack, and no embarrassing female body parts to see while people changed clothes. People like Sheila Roundtree and her friends. Girls so comfortable with being girls that they didn’t mind if other people saw them in their underwear—or out. Girls who were foreign to Wanda. And because she did not feel adequate in their presence and felt they regarded her with contempt, Wanda was only able to function in the presence of Pretty Girls by wearing the clown suit.
But it was different with Tracy Sullivan. Wanda had initially believed Tracy to be a Pretty Girl, but she soon realized Tracy didn’t exactly fit the profile because she was nice and not stuck up and, unlike a real Pretty Girl, participated in sports instead of standing on the sidelines, cheering. And while Tracy was definitely an athlete, she still dressed and acted like a girl, and yesterday had come to school with a new hairstyle and makeup and shoes people said came from Neiman Marcus. But despite that, Tracy didn’t associate with the other Pretty Girls at Beck. She didn’t associate much with anyone, except Miz Grace, which was why Wanda was not sure how to feel about Tracy Sullivan—whether to steer clear of the girl or hang around quietly in her presence or play a prank on her. She remembered the first time she saw Miz Grace staring at Tracy. It was during tryouts, and Wanda overheard one of the trainers say that Miz Grace was “impressed with number 48,” and from that moment on, something possessed Wanda, something that left her fidgety and restless and urged her to tell more jokes and pull more pranks—irrational pranks such as slapping people across their heads for no reason, or stealing their pencils in class. Pranks she had hoped would get the attention of the ultimate Pretty Girl, Miz Grace, who had, since the arrival of Tracy Sullivan, completely forgotten about Wanda.
This was a betrayal, as far as Wanda was concerned, for she had always believed herself to be Miz Grace’s only pet—or at least the closest thing to a pet the coach had at Beck. Miz Grace would call on her for answers to questions no one else was brave or knowledgeable enough to answer. During last year’s season, Miz Grace had relied on Wanda’s speed and agility and quick hands to get the Grace Girls out of tight spots. And Wanda had expected to start on this year’s team—and would have, too, had Tracy not shown up. If Wanda had been a girl who could hate, Tracy would have been a definite recipient. But there was something so gentle and likeable about the soft-spoken pretty girl that Wanda found it impossible to dislike Tracy. She disliked Tracy’s friendship with Miz Grace, and was certainly stung with jealousy by it, but she didn’t dislike the girl herself.
That left Miz Grace.
Like Wanda’s own mother, Miz Grace had trampled Wanda’s little heart, leaving the girl abruptly and without explanation, and so Wanda found it possible to direct her anger at the coach. And for Wanda, anger manifested itself by wearing extra layers of the clown suit. And so the antics increased, occurring during classes and in the cafeteria and in the locker room and on the court—antics she hoped would grab the disapproval of someone in charge so that the matter could be brought before Miz Grace, who would then have reason—finally!—to turn her attention again to Wanda Carver and give the girl a gentle squeeze of the shoulder or an intense stare that said, I understand you and I care about you and we have something special. Attention that had manifested itself in a dream Wanda had last year, a dream in which Miz Grace had bent forward and placed a tender, gentle kiss on Wanda’s face, next to her mouth. It was a dream that had burned with such reality that for days afterwards she was unable to look at the coach without burning with bashfulness.
Maybe such a thing would happen at the Christmas Eve party. At Miz Grace’s house! To be invited there was a dream come true for Wanda, for many a day she had languished in class or at home, fantasizing about just such a thing. About being invited, her alone, to the woman’s beautiful mansion that Wanda had heard about. About being invited, once there, to the woman’s bedroom so that they could watch TV together in bed and then snuggle and sleep. And now it was to come true! Next week! Well—not exactly the way she had imagined, because she hadn’t been invited alone, nor was she to spend the night. But she was going! And the best part about it was that Tracy wasn’t going to be there! Wanda was thrilled about that, for maybe, with Miz Grace’s shy Pretty Girl out of sight, Wanda could recapture the love Miz Grace had given her in the days before Tracy Sullivan. Such special and close attention was, for Wanda, the affection she had craved all her life. The affection, however limited, that had become her only reason for getting out of bed some mornings.
In the absence of the affection, Wanda had taken to doing something she knew her peers would find surprising, in view of the assistant principal’s reputation for being a witch. In the wake of a private scolding for some prank or another, Wanda had returned several times to the office of Dr. Samantha Shears, ostensibly to chat about a student concern but actually to bask in the private attention received from a woman in authority. And Wanda was happy to note that, far from being annoyed by the brief visits, as Dr. Shears had seemed in the beginning, the assistant principal now seemed to welcome Wanda’s appearances, expressing deep interest in the girl’s life, especially in anything that had to do with the team and Miz Grace.