Everything Must Go
Page 27
Sinclaire screamed, the first time I’d heard her make a sound louder than a whisper. So did Fern, who, I realized, had never left.
Sam, I won!!!
Juna Díaz
Pigeonhole 46
The Quare Academy
2 Quare Road
Main Stream, NY 12497
May 2
Dear Juna,
My name is Wink DelDuca, and I’m the editor in chief of Nymphette magazine. Your girlfriend, Thee, suggested I get in touch with you about an idea we had to collaborate on a project to show our support of one of your peers, Flora Goldwasser.
It’s a bit much to discuss via snail mail, but I understand you’re allowed to make phone calls, so please give me a call at (212) --- ---- at your earliest convenience. I look forward to working with you!
;)
Wink
To: Faculty, staff, and students
From: Miriam Row
Subject: Exciting news
May 2, 2:18 p.m.
Dear Friends,
I’d like to extend my warmest congratulations to Flora Goldwasser, who just this morning was awarded a gold medal from the Young Innovators’ Promise Awards (YIPA), the nation’s highest honor for young artists, writers, and performers in the United States, for an excerpt from her original play, Vending Machine, or Everything Must Go. Flora will be traveling to Manhattan later this month to accept her award at Carnegie Hall.
Flora, currently the apprentice of Guild, will be performing the play on May 17. I strongly encourage the entire community to attend—I myself wouldn’t miss it for the world!
Blessings,
Miriam
Amsterdam Dental Group
1243 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10027
May 3
Dear Flora,
Please accept this chocolate on behalf of your father, who congratulates you on your award but is too busy to make it to the ceremony. He is sure it will be wonderful, and he looks forward to hearing all about it when you come home for the summer.
Your father also asked me to remind you that he would like you to call him—and he will accept the charges, of course—as you come to decisions about college applications for next fall. He stressed to me that he would like to know immediately once you decide which schools you would like to visit this summer.
Fondly,
Linda Lee Lopez, receptionist
Lael Goldwasser
Harvard College
2609 Harvard Yard Mail Center
Cambridge, MA 02138
May 5
Lael,
Can you pick up the phone for once in your life? I mean, it was great to talk briefly after I found out I won, but you’ve been superMIA for the past few days. Is there a man or woman in the picture perhaps??
I just realized that the wedding is the same day (and the exact same time, now that I look at the event description again) as the Carnegie Hall thing, so I just called Mum to let her know that I’m missing the actual wedding ceremony and that I’ll try to come after the ceremony if I have time to do that before heading back up to school.
She sounded really hurt, and I felt bad, but what can I do? Should I skip the award ceremony? I’m a bad daughter, I know, but it’s not like Mum has been mother of the year, either.
Advice, please?
Flora
To: Cora Shimizu-Stein
From: Wink DelDuca
Subject: Idea
May 6, 9:21 p.m.
Thanks, Cora, for the heads-up about Flora’s big win. It gave me—and Grace—an idea about what’s going to go down. I just got off the phone with Juna, who’s a student up at Quare, and discussed all the details with her.
The ceremony’s on May 22 at Carnegie Hall, right? Well, what if we gathered together as many Nymphettes as possible—and you two, obviously—and did a rally when Flora gets back to campus later that night? Juna, our Quare contact, said the Feminist Underground is planning a separate rally specifically for sexual assault survivors, so this one would be more of a generalized show of support for all women, all of their bodies, and all of their stories. Any sort of reclamation.
I’m thinking full rally spirit. Chants? Candles, as it’ll be evening?
It’ll be called the Nymphette Storm. Let’s raise hell, maybe see what this school is all about, do our march, and peace. Natalie, you’ll contact news outlets? And, Thee—can we count on you for photos to make sure the whole thing goes down in history?
;)
Wink
Editor in Chief, Nymphette magazine
Nymphette is an online feminist arts & culture magazine for teenagers. Each month, we choose a theme, and then you send us your writing, photography, and artwork.
To: Wink DelDuca
From: Theodora Sweet
Subject: Re: Idea
May 6, 9:34 p.m.
I’m so down, it’s not even funny. I can fly in from Santa Fe on the morning of the twenty-second.
Anyone want to help me ask my girlfriend to move in with me for the summer when we’re done?
Thee
To: Dean Elliot
From: Elijah Huck
Subject: Re: Flora
May 7, 6:13 a.m.
D,
I think I should come talk to her in person. My finals end the twenty-first. So I’m thinking the twenty-second. Want to give me a ride from the train station, or am I still too irrelevant in your book?
E
To: Elijah Huck
From: Dean Elliot
Subject: Re: Flora
May 7, 9:56 a.m.
E,
I’ll be there. But if she doesn’t wanna talk to you, I’m taking you home.
D
Flora Goldwasser
Pigeonhole 44
The Quare Academy
2 Quare Road
Main Stream, NY 12497
May 7
Flora,
Don’t even give it a second thought. Go to the Carnegie Hall ceremony, and stop by the park if you have time when it’s over. Seriously. We both knew Mum was going to act offended, but you’ve worked so hard for this, and it would be such a shame to miss it. I’ll hold down the familial fort until you can get there.
Love you, and congrats again,
Lael
PS. There indeed might be a woman in the picture … remember my teaching fellow, Susan? God, what is it with us Goldwasser girls and authority figures? (Sorry, too soon?)
My play’s program, May 17
It was recently brought to my attention that for the first month at Quare, I scrubbed my Steve Madden boots with a toothbrush (whose? I’m never telling) in the gender-neutral bathroom after my roommate had gone to sleep.
Things are a little bit different now, to say the least. After my “sexual debut” at the end of my first semester and the ensuing emotional crisis, I decided to get light. I launched Vending Machine, or Everything Must Go, an interactive performance piece in which many of you have participated. Along the way, I’ve found a robust, if unlikely, community.
I’ve become preoccupied with buying and selling. When you watch the play, you’ll doubtless have myriad questions: What does the vending machine mean? Am I—is Ursula—the machine itself or the stuff inside (I’m still grappling with this one)? Are we ever more than the sum of our saleable items? Why are none of the actors onstage? And, maybe most important, why does the play end in such an awkward, non-ending type of way? —FG
Guild fondly presents
Everything Must Go
written & directed by Flora Goldwasser
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ursula / Flora Goldwasser
Caleb / Agnes Surl
Lorne / Michael Lansbury
Sister Athena / Althea Long
Miranda / Juna Díaz
Guild, established in 1966, is the only and oldest theater troupe at Quare. Its members are: Luella Lookman (master player), Flora Goldwasser (apprentice), Michael Lansbury, Gary North, Lia Furlough, Jean Noel, Shy Lenore, Solomon Pitts, Luella Lookman, Peter Wojkowski, Heidi Norman-Lester, Juna Díaz, and Agnes Surl.
To: all-staff
From: Wink DelDuca
Subject: preparations
May 18, 7:50 p.m.
Okay, we’re on. Grace and I are in charge of the banner. Cora and India, you’re on transportation. Everyone else: rest your voices, because this is going to be one hell of a reclamation rally!
In terms of dress: this isn’t a slut walk, per se, but I wouldn’t be opposed to showing a little skin. Do what you’re comfortable with, obvs, but don’t be afraid to go all out! We see this as being centered around supporting both Flora and her art activism, as well as all women everywhere.
See you all at Grand Central on Friday.
;)
Wink
Editor in Chief, Nymphette magazine
Nymphette is an online feminist arts & culture magazine for teenagers. Each month, we choose a theme, and then you send us your writing, photography, and artwork.
Carnegie Hall program
THE YOUNG INNOVATORS’ PROMISE AWARDS
May 22
Medal Ceremony
2:00 p.m. Medalists arrive at Carnegie Hall
2:30 p.m. Rehearsal begins
3:00 p.m. Students proceed to holding room
3:30 p.m. Guests arrive
4:00 p.m. Introduction: Head of YIPA; video of winners
4:30 p.m. Keynote speaker: Lena Dunham
5:00 p.m. Awarding of medalists
5:30 p.m. Ceremony concludes
I had to miss classes (just Nonviolent Communication and World Issues II) to catch a train to Grand Central. Luella, Guild master player, brandishing her acceptance to Hamilton, where she planned to major in theater, begged to come with me—now that she knew where she was going to college, she said, there wasn’t much use for her to be in classes—but Miriam, of the opinion that learning is not for college’s sake but for life’s sake, disagreed, and I was just as happy to go alone. I’ve always liked train rides, and it’s nicer to be able to look out the window without anybody bothering me.
“Now, you’ll come right after the ceremony is over, right?” Mum asked on Thursday night on the phone. “Just hop on a train?”
I told her I’d do my best. I felt evil, but the thought of Mum and Nell marrying still made me all panicky. I mean, at this point, it wasn’t even personal. The fact that Mum was marrying ANYONE less than a year after the divorce was finalized made me want to throw up.
Mum paused. “If you’re sure …” she said. In the background I could hear Nell’s low, urgent voice saying something about a salad. “We’re knee-deep in wedding planning. And we’re praying for good weather. Nobody likes wet sand.” She laughed too loudly.
I could tell from her tone that she was trying to make it up to me, everything from this past year, and when my throat got tight, I told her I had to go.
It wasn’t too hard to decide what to wear, because my closet was looking pretty sparse post–vending machine. I’d saved my apricot Jackie Kennedy shift dress, the nubby one, for reasons unknown; it just never felt right to stuff it in the machine with all the other things. So I zipped it up, ran a comb through my hair, dabbed some blush on my cheeks, and headed out the door. The dress, I realized, standing in direct sun, had certainly seen better days: today the fabric looked worn, covered with a dusty film that I tried to hop and shake off on my way to the van.
The Oracle was headed to Poughkeepsie to visit a friend, so he took me there to catch a train into Manhattan. The station was absolutely still. As the Hudson Valley flew by, I read a book and looked out the window. The train filled up slowly, people filling the empty spaces around me, and I found myself, as I had been on all previous breaks from Quare, fascinated by the little details that made them “normal”: leather bags, shoes with heels, hair slicked back with gel.
And then I was there—back in Grand Central Station. I swarmed into the main hall with everyone else who had been on my train, but as they dispersed, I stood in the middle and looked up at the ceiling like a tourist. People were everywhere around me, laughing into their cell phones and shouting to one another in various languages. The ground felt like it was buzzing. I took a sharp inhale and pulled out my one remaining pair of sunglasses—a classic pair of big and black ones—from my bag, sliding them onto my face. Everything still looked gold.
The ceremony was slated to begin at five o’clock in the afternoon, but the information packet had instructed us to arrive at two for a dress rehearsal. It took me a second to get my bearings, and I exited to Forty-second Street and started walking north, and then west to avoid Times Square, which feels like an assault in the best of circumstances.
And there it was, finally, Carnegie Hall: palatial and majestic, stretching over a few blocks in its grandeur. It was positively crawling with people too, and it took me a second to trace the line of awardees stretching down Fifty-seventh Street, shuffling forward desultorily. I had time, I realized. The line of young innovators stretched to the deli two blocks away. Even if I joined the end of the line now, it would be at least a twenty-minute wait. But then I looked down. My shoes—white Oxfords with a slight heel—were falling apart. And not only that, but they were smeared with dirt and smelled a little bit like manure.
Most of the female recipients and a handful of the males were wearing some variation on a prom dress, or what I imagined to be a prom dress: lacy, fluffy, paired with bright shoes with spiky heels. Obviously I would never wear any such thing, so it wasn’t much help, but the clock was ticking, so I spun on my flimsy heel and searched the horizon for a store, any store.
Much to my dismay, I found only H&M, home of the Little Lacy Thing. I shuddered. Not only because I prefer to think of my style as more vintage, but also because of the articles that Jaisal and Allison had made us read, about the abominable conditions to which workers in factories producing clothes for inexpensive stores are subjected. But I was already opening the door by that point, and heading over to a rack of little lacy things. I caught sight of myself in a wide mirror in the middle of two racks of short shorts. My hair! My face! I clutched at the bird’s nest that had taken residence on my head. It had been a while since I’d last looked in the mirror—or maybe the mirrors at Quare were kinder than those illuminated by fluorescent lighting. My hair, over decent shoes, was the most important thing to take care of, I realized. The dress was in good shape, and as long as it wasn’t stained, it would have to do.
So I dashed back outside and took a few deep breaths. Surely one of the prom girls in line would have a comb. I walked down the street again. Carnegie Hall came into view, and I made my way to the back of the line, trying not to stare at my fellow awardees. Almost every winner had his or her parents in attendance. Many had two: a plump father and a blond mother, or a plump mother and a bald father, both beaming and squinting to read the pamphlets about visiting New York City that YIPA had sent in the mail. I wasn’t jealous, exactly; in fact, I felt lucky to be alone. I wouldn’t have wanted Mum dabbing her finger in her mouth to smooth my eyebrows or Daddy fighting his urge to read the newspaper he’d stuffed into this briefcase rather than make conversation with any of the neighboring families.
The girls on the line were shiny. Their eyes glimmered under thick layers of eyelashes that I guessed had been made possible by Maybelline; their hair was sparkly, chemically straightened, falling in thick curtains at their shoulders. And these were supposed to be artists—yo
ung innovators? How did they all have time to apply glitter to their cheekbones? Most girls wore heels, and almost all of them, except for the serious-looking ones in suits, wore big shiny dresses, or even little lacy things that had the same effect. Almost all had bare arms.
I said, “Excuse me,” and pushed my way through the crowd to find the end of the line. I knew I must smell, at least a little bit, and I hoped that there would be a ladies’ room that I could use in Carnegie Hall to give my armpits a quick douse.
I found the end of the line, finally, in front of a building two blocks away from Carnegie Hall, and joined it unceremoniously. The girl directly in front of me was slightly plump, a tall girl with a long curtain of straightened blond hair and enough glitter on her face and dress so as to be spotted from space. The light bounced off her in such a way that I had a hard time looking at her for more than one or two seconds at a time; she was like a vampire. The girl was with just her mother, a short blond woman in a pantsuit.
“Where are you coming from?” the mother asked me.
I wasn’t sure what to say. “Ulster County,” I said finally, but that didn’t feel right, exactly, so I said, “Well, Manhattan, originally.”
“We’re from Columbus, Ohio,” the mother said, her daughter still silent and avoiding looking at me. “We drove through the whole night, and after this we’re driving back, because her high-school graduation is tomorrow morning.” She jabbed a long red fingernail at her daughter.
“Wow,” I said.
“We got a little nap in this morning, but I’m afraid I might doze off during the ceremony,” she confessed, then burst out in a snorting laugh. “Anyway, what’d you win for?”
“A play.”
“She got a silver medal for a drawing she did. Charcoal. You should see our white sofa. She’s going to RISD in the fall. Where are you going?”
“I’m just a junior,” I said.
“Oh, right, right.” The mother waved her hand in recognition. “That’s great. Good luck with the college process. Now that’s a real accomplishment: they should give out awards to any parent who survives college applications.”