Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek

by Maya Van Wagenen

  “Oh yeah.” She speaks with confidence, but I notice how her voice shakes just a little bit. She’s never dyed her hair before. But it’s Halloween, so if it goes badly (bleached or bald), she can simply make it part of a costume. “Thousands of women dye their hair,” she says for the third time in fifteen minutes. “It can’t be too bad.” She takes a deep breath and reads aloud, “CAUTION: DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT TO COLOR EYELASHES OR EYEBROWS. WILL CAUSE BLINDNESS.”

  Yikes.

  Thirty minutes later Mom is looking at herself in the foggy mirror.

  “Uh-oh,” she says. “I think I dyed my ears.”

  “That’s just fantastic,” I say.

  She plays with different hairstyles, obviously pleased. She digs around in one of the drawers until she finds a stubby brown makeup pencil. “I’m going to be Frida Kahlo for Halloween,” she says, drawing a unibrow on her forehead.

  “What about the mustache, Mom? Frida Kahlo had a mustache.”

  “You’re right.” she laughs, sketching hairs on her upper lip.

  “AHHH! You look like a MAN! This is so wrong!” I yell. “Make it stop!”

  She chuckles in a deep voice.

  I bury my face in my hands.

  I hear the sound of the front door opening. Dad calls a cheerful hello, and right away, I can tell he’s up to something. He clomps up the stairs and appears in the bathroom with a wicked smile on his face.

  His hair is tied back behind his head.

  Mom has facial hair like a dude, and Dad has a ponytail like a chick.

  Dad stares at Mom, and she looks back at him. They run to each other and kiss. I flee the room. It’s all so disorienting. There are just some things you shouldn’t see your parents do.

  Monday, October 31

  For Halloween this year I’m going to be Betty. Not Betty Cornell, but a very different, yet also influential, Betty. Betty Suarez, aka “Ugly Betty,” is a brilliant, confident, braces-wearing Latina, with a unique style and powerful sense of self. Mom and I watched all four seasons of the show together over the summer. We’re big fans.

  We found a frilly purple blouse, a pink flowered skirt, hideous crocodile-print flats, green butterfly socks, and some red-rimmed glasses at the thrift store. At my last orthodontist appointment I even changed the rubber bands on my braces to blue. Brodie is going as Harry Potter, dressed in Mom’s old graduation gown. He smiles, showing off his dimples. His light brown hair is almost as long as Dad’s, but more California surfer dude. Goodness gracious, he’s adorable.

  By Brownsville standards, we live in a nice subdivision, so it’s a good place to go trick-or-treating. Our neighbors consist of full-time nurses, teachers, FBI agents, suspected drug dealers (as previously mentioned), and at least one registered sex offender (inspiring the relocation of our bus stop). Tonight should be interesting.

  It’s quickly getting dark as Brodie and I trick-or-treat. He holds my hand as we walk up to the next house. I catch a glimpse of myself in a car window. It looks like my head is being swallowed by an ugly brown alley cat. I ratted and teased my hair out for my costume. I suppose it’s fitting that my coifed curtain call is the largest configuration yet.

  Overall, the evening turns out rather well. Brodie and I collect loads of candy and see some of his friends decked out in pink curly wigs. I even get leered at by some incredibly drunk neighbors. That’s never happened to me before. I guess being noticed is the first step to becoming popular, even if it’s by inebriates.

  “One of the most important things for any teen to realize is that she is always on display,” says Betty Cornell. I may have to watch myself though. If I keep following in her footsteps, maybe someday I’ll become so popular that everyone, sober or not, will have to stop and stare. But for now, I’m moving on to bigger and Betty-er things!

  My family’s Halloween

  November

  MODELING TRICKS

  To look your best, you must get in the habit of standing tall . . . Someone once told me to stand as if I wore a beautiful jewel that I wanted to show off at my bosom, and I think perhaps it is the best advice I can pass on to you.

  I read this out loud to Mom, Betty Cornell’s book in my hands. She smiles, stirring leftover chili at the stove.

  Brodie looks up from his homework. “What’s a bosom?”

  Indeed, what is a bosom? I probably will never know.

  In this next chapter called “Modeling Tricks,” Betty recommends that I sit and stand tall with shoulders back. I should walk with fluid leg movements and boobs thrust forward to greet the world (okay, those last words are mine. If she’d uttered “boobs” back in the 1950s she probably would’ve been burned at the stake).

  When I was four years old I started ballet and continued until I was nine. During those years I was most aware of how I carried my body. Still, I never belonged with any of the tall willowy blond girls who looked as if they’d been spun from sugar and would break if touched. I was built more like a brick. Heavy and sturdy. Mom finally let me quit after my kneecap dislocated.

  So, at one time I was good at sitting up straight and tiptoeing along. Now . . . not so much. So, all I’ve got to do is reconnect with my inner ballerina.

  Practicing posture

  Wednesday, November 2

  You never see a model slouch, you never see a model with her fanny poked out or her chin resting on her breastbone. A model knows that good posture is basic to a good figure, and that a good carriage goes hand in hand with good posture.

  I walk lightly down to the bus stop, sucking in my stomach. I pull myself up into one straight line, even though it hurts my shoulders. Later, in history class, I keep up my good posture. It’s definitely a challenge. Mr. Santiago keeps the room so cold that it forces me to go into hibernation mode. All we do the entire period today is read out of the textbook. He has a talent for making influential breakthroughs and conflicts as boring as counting tiles on the ceiling. I try to stay awake by doodling Ethan’s name in the margins of my notebook.

  All of a sudden I hear some girls screaming at each other in Spanish. The commotion seems to come from the hall. I look up from my scribbling. More screaming. Mr. Santiago closes the door and goes on with his lesson.

  Later, I find out that the yelling was from two pregnant girls who got in a rather heated fight. There was a lot of name calling and hair pulling, but security personnel intervened before they could do any real damage to each other.

  Thursday, November 3

  Thanks to an ill-fitting bra, I grab my PE clothes and change my shirt in the bathroom stalls. The Volleyball Girls watch me as I go, their faces annoyingly blank. I wish Kenzie was here, but she’s sick today.

  As I walk into the gym I feel everyone’s eyes turn toward me, but not in the Cinderella-arrives-at-the-ball way. It feels more like the pigeon-walks-into-a-room-full-of-peacocks way.

  Then I realize I am the only one dressed in ugly PE clothes.

  I panic.

  Finally, I force myself to take a deep breath and try to imagine what Betty Cornell would do.

  So I smile, showing my electric blue braces, shove my shoulders back, and draw myself up to my full height.

  “Hey, look guys,” says Carlos Sanchez, “she’s trying to be a model!”

  Maybe I am.

  Monday, November 7

  We’re almost a third of the way through the school year. I don’t feel popular, but I still change up my hair once a week just to keep people guessing. Today, I make my way to algebra concentrating on my legs, imagining Ethan is watching. Betty Cornell explains the best way to stroll like a model.

  To walk gracefully one must move the leg in one piece. . . . In that way, the leg moves forward in one sweeping movement, instead of propelling itself by a series of awkward disjointed jerks.

  This is actually harder than it sounds in a hallway f
ull of screaming kids all pushing and shoving. Around me everyone is talking:

  “He’s such a lying, dirty, perverted scumbag! I can’t believe I actually . . .”

  “Did you see the thing in the girl’s bathroom? It looked like pot.”

  “Like I told you, Sophie, the French are idiots.”

  “I heard somewhere that a dork is what’s between a whale’s legs.”

  Suddenly someone crashes into me, and my backpack strap snaps. It’s now hanging off my left shoulder. No! I have to lean over, slouching with my right arm bent around my back to keep my stuff from falling out.

  Forget posture—I limp along trying to maintain my dignity.

  . . . . . . .

  When Mom picks me up from school, I tell her that I went to see one of Mr. Lawrence’s friends (my old history teacher) to ask why Mr. Lawrence has been absent for so long.

  “He said Mr. Lawrence is very sick,” I say, looking down at the ground. “If he comes back it won’t be until after Christmas. That’s all the information I could get out of him.”

  I’m starting to wonder now if Mr. Lawrence will come back at all.

  . . . . . . .

  I’m reading my Betty Cornell book on my bed. I open the front cover and notice an inscription in careful cursive.

  To Le Nore,

  From Mama and Daddy

  1953

  I wonder how old Le Nore was when she held this same book in her hands. What did she look like? Did she ask for it, or was it thrown at her by observant parents who felt bad when they saw that their little girl had no friends? Did the book help her, or did it sit on a shelf for nearly forty years before being dropped off at a donation center?

  I wish this book could talk. I bury my nose in its faded words and yellowing pages and breathe in the smell. I’ve always loved to read. Mom and Dad made sure that I brought a book with me wherever I went, the way some parents would insist you bring a jacket.

  When I was seven, they gave me a copy of Old Yeller. Eager to hear the happy story of a boy and his dog, I began reading it immediately. Halfway through, in the middle of the night, I realized what would happen to poor Old Yeller. I became an inconsolable, sobbing mess and ran to the basement where Dad was working. I told him that I couldn’t take it. He held me for a long time while I cried, and then told me that the author had forgotten to include a chapter at the end of the book. He sat for an hour with me on his lap and wrote the “final” section to the novel. It described how Old Yeller didn’t really die, that it was a different dog that looked like him but was evil because he ate kittens. Old Yeller lived happily ever after in a just world that (I’d already learned with the death of my sister) was light-years away from reality. That chapter is still taped in the back cover of Old Yeller, and every time I read it I smile.

  Tuesday, November 8

  “This is an official lockdown. Please go to your lockdown areas in a calm and orderly fashion.”

  We all jump at the sound of the principal on the speaker. I put my choir binder down on one of the risers and turn to Anita, the girl who’s standing next to me. She seems a little annoyed.

  In Brownsville, so close to the Mexican border, we have “lockdown drills” more often than we do fire drills.

  At the border wall

  For the last few years a violent drug war has raged between Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican military, leaving tens of thousands dead and missing. Terrible things have spilled over our border: drugs, shootings, kidnappings. Last year our school was on lockdown one afternoon because of a secret FBI drug operation going on down the street. There were even helicopters flying over and agents in our parking lot. Dad was furious when I told him about it and personally complained to the local director of the FBI. He said it was absolutely insane for them to do something like that during school hours.

  Cartel battle in Mexico as viewed from Dad’s office

  So, as the principal announces this lockdown, I think through the familiar procedure: lock the doors, hide in the classroom, and turn off the lights. Then, all of a sudden a panicked woman’s voice booms through the intercom.

  “MANDATORY LOCKDOWN! NOW! NOW! NOW!”

  I know right away that this isn’t just a drill. Anita bursts into frightened sobs. I grab her hand. Forget about orderly fashion; we run. We hide in a storage closet in the band room. There are twenty girls in all. Ms. Fletcher, our assistant choir director comes in, her voice quiet, but stern.

  “Don’t say anything,” she whispers.

  The room is dead silent. No one breathes. When a room full of middle school girls is so quiet that you can hear a pin drop, something is very wrong.

  We hear thumps in the distance. Anita lets out a whimper.

  All I can think of is my family. Natalia, Dad, Mom, Brodie. I curl up into a fetal position. The worst thing is the silence. The dark. The fact that I have no idea what’s happening. The fact that not even the teachers, the adults in charge, know what’s going on.

  We sit for what feels like hours when sirens blare.

  Ms. Fletcher peeks through the window.

  “Don’t say anything, girls, please stay quiet. Don’t make any noise. Don’t talk.”

  Tears begin to cloud my vision. I fold up, hugging my knees close to me.

  What does it feel like to die? Will I ever see sunshine again? Will I ever get to tell my family how much I love them?

  “Please, don’t move. . . .” Ms. Fletcher murmurs. Her voice is hardly a whisper.

  We sit for over an hour, trembling and crying. Then suddenly, the lights go back on. We slowly walk back to our class, dazed by the fluorescent white. We sit back on the risers and learn about how to build a five chord.

  “So you see how the notes can be switched around . . .”

  Just like it never happened.

  It wouldn’t be until we watched the news tonight that we learned the police were chasing an armed robbery suspect through the neighborhood directly across the street from our school. What kind of world do we live in?

  Wednesday, November 9

  Today Natalia is officially six. The living room is scattered with wrapping paper and string, and Natalia carries around a toy horse in each hand looking like she just might fall over with excitement. It’s always so cool to see the way she smiles when she opens a Wonder Pets DVD.

  “How old are you, Natalia?” Dad leans down and kisses her forehead.

  “Four,” she says, in the same way that we taught her two years ago. When some things get drilled into her head, they’re stuck for good.

  “No, you’re six.”

  “Sex . . .”

  “How old are you?”

  “Four.” She smiles at us, showing her pointy teeth. I still have the scar on my chest where she bit through my dress three years ago. I’d grabbed her to keep her from running into the street.

  “No, Natalia, you’re six.”

  “Four!” She’s frustrated now. “Madre Santa!” she shouts.

  I love it when my little sister swears in Spanish.

  Friday, November 11

  Many teens seem to walk head first into everything—that is to say, they lead with their chin. This aggressive attitude comes from standing with the head jutted forward, shoulders slumped, and eyes focused on the ground.

  This definitely sums up the posture at my school.

  I walk (Betty Cornell style) into my science class and see that Ms. Cordova is ready to lecture. I pull out a pencil from my “sling” (which once served as a backpack), and I straighten my spine and stand up as tall as I can. My vertebrae pop and I wince.

  All of a sudden, Carlos Sanchez and his buddy Pablo come running in from the hall. Pablo snatches the pencil from my desk, and the two of them begin an epic sword fight behind Ms. Cordova’s back. They spring to and fro, dancing around, attacking each other wi
th the sharpened points. The class cheers them on. I realize that Pablo isn’t going to give back my stolen property, so I march up to him, head high. I nimbly grab the pencil from his hand just as he’s about to make a brave thrust at Carlos Sanchez.

  Then, I remember my manners. I look him in the eyes. “Thank you,” I say, and walk back to my seat.

  One of the worst faults most of us have is that we do not stand up. Even when we are in a vertical position in relation to the ground, we still tend to sit down. Our rib cages are slumped into our waistline and our shoulders are bent forward. One way to correct this habit is to concentrate on your rib cage.

  Some of the other kids begin to stare at me. Slowly, as if intimidated, they sit up straighter and glare at me for making them feel slouchy.

  Three cheers for positive peer pressure.

  Monday, November 14

  “Guess what, Maya.” Kenzie is flushed with excitement. “I got a boyfriend!”

  “What?”

  “Yep,” she beams.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Angel. We were in PE with him in sixth grade.”

  “I remember. The slouchy one.” Betty would not approve of Angel’s posture. “Is he nice?” I ask, thinking of my (generally sweet) nerdy crushes. Ethan is both kind and intelligent.

  “He’s got a mustache.”

  I bite my lip. Come on, be a good friend. “Okay,” I say. “Just, don’t let him do anything to you, all right? You deserve so much better than that.”

  “Never,” she promises.

  The bus comes to a stop and I stand up. She gives me a quick hug. I force a smile, but I’m not sure how long I can handle this new, bubbly, affectionate Kenzie.

  Tuesday, November 15

  Today I take the leap. Today I put away the pads. Today I join the legions of tampon-wearing women all over the developed world.

  In Brownsville tampons are seen as immoral. So is using birth control. What I don’t understand is that teen pregnancy is generally accepted.