The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills

by Joanna Pearson

  “But it gives you something to study, right?” Margo asked. “As an anthropologist?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nincompoops engaged in nincompoopery.” But then I saw TR’s wickedly pretty face smiling in my mind and had a flash of inspiration — the entire plan. It was too perfect. The surest way to get into Current Anthropology yet.

  “I’ve got it!” I said, feeling my heart begin to pound a little more strongly. “You know what I have to do? I have to enter Miss Livermush after all.”

  Margo looked askance at me. “What? Seriously? Your mom’s gonna weep with joy,” she said. “But why the sudden change of heart?”

  “I’ve got to see the pageant from the inside. I need to experience the perspective of an actual participant!” I practically yelped. “It’s regional, it’s quirky, it’s perfect! Don’t worry — I’m still gonna help you take down TR, but this is how I’m going to get my real material!”

  It would be so easy: I could take notes on pageant preparations, read some Livermush Festival history for context, and then just observe. Now that I stopped to think about it, the whole thing was a research bonanza. This was my ticket into Current Anthropology.

  Margo raised her eyebrows, then gave me a thumbs-up. “Yes!” she said. “It’ll be so much better to have company!”

  “Now,” I said. “I was gonna tell you this earlier. Guess who walked up to me and started a conversation during lunch today?”

  ANTHROPOLOGICAL

  OBSERVATION #4:

  Throughout high school, one must look good without looking like one is trying too hard to look good, as the appearance of effortless, semi-intentional beauty is highly prized among the adolescent species. This is impossible for most people to accomplish.

  The rules of the Melva’s Miss Livermush Pageant and Scholarship competition are as follows:

  1. Contestants must be girls who are completing their junior year in Letherfordton County, at either Melva High School or the Letherfordton County High School.

  2. Contestants must have and maintain a GPA of 3.4 or above. The judges evaluate each contestant’s academic record and award academic points.

  3. Contestants must be of “excellent moral character.” (A purposefully vague guideline, yes, but useful in disqualifying girls for all manner of youthful indiscretions.)

  4. Contestants must complete an essay on the topic “What Livermush Means to Me.”

  5. And, most important, the final twenty contestants must compete onstage (humiliatingly!) at the annual Livermush Festival. Each must wear a fancy dress and perform a talent (often stupid), then answer a question (dumbly) during the interview portion of the competition.

  There was one more guideline that you wouldn’t see on the official rules: Although the contest was technically open to anyone, the contest participants were invariably, monochromatically white. This added to the pageant’s overarching antebellum nostalgia. There was a similar pageant sponsored by the Association of Black Civic Leaders that tended to attract any girl of non-Euro ancestry.

  If you meet those requirements, as I’ve said before, there is basically no getting out of the Miss Livermush Pageant. You have to participate. Or else. You’re out. Off the island. People would stop inviting you to Sunday lunch at the Country Buffet after church, and you wouldn’t get monogrammed towels from the neighbor ladies as your high school graduation presents. There’d be no invitation to the post—Miss Livermush mother-daughter tea waiting in your mailbox. Which was why my mom was so horrified at the mere idea of my refusal to participate.

  There was also the Livermush Festival Dance afterward, which basically everyone in Melva age sixteen and above attended, moms and dads and grandmas and all. It was the community’s time to see and be seen, and that’s why it was such a big deal.

  ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:

  Melva, North Carolina, has long been known as the Livermush Capital of the World. Livermush is a traditional Southern favorite — a meat product made of pig liver and head parts (mmm, right?), cornmeal, and spices. To celebrate this culinary tradition, every spring for decades Melva has held the Livermush Festival uptown. (I always forget that often outside of Melva, and definitely outside of North Carolina, people have never heard of livermush.)

  Now that I’d decided to get the inside view of Miss Livermush, I was contemplating my strategy while watching the E! entertainment channel evening news roundup. The E! channel was my major televised source for pop cultural information (a trick I’d picked up from Margo), and it gave me some good topics to discuss with my non-anthropology-minded peers.

  FACT:

  Most of the other kids at MHS only knew of the existence of other countries if Angelina Jolie had adopted a baby from them.

  So, I thought strategy. I definitely needed a performable Miss Livermush talent, and I had zero performable talents. The talents I possessed were best practiced in libraries, not on stages. The academic portion of the competition was my only real competitive edge. The judges evaluated your livermush essay, your GPA — but even so, everyone knew that a pretty girl won each year!

  Grabbing a handful of sugary cereal from the box open at my feet, I crunched, turning my attention back to E!. Clips of celebrities in formal gowns flickered across the screen. Periodically, the host would offer commentary, her breasts bobbing treacherously like floatie devices.

  ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:

  The ancient Greeks linked breasts with distinctly feminine divine powers. But they also told stories of Amazon women who cut off their right breasts to better draw back their bows. At Melva High School, breasts were merely associated with “hotness,” “sluttiness,” and whether you wanted to “hit that” — at least according to what I’d overheard in hallway conversations of the masculine variety.

  It occurred to me that whoever won Miss Livermush actually had it pretty good — there was scholarship money at stake. A lot of scholarship money. Winning a scholarship could change my whole life plan. I’d been thinking about applying to colleges I’d heard had particularly good anthropology departments — Harvard, Michigan, UC Berkeley, or even the University of Arizona (where Dr. Aldenderfer taught). But then my mom said, “Arizona? That’s a great school — great for people who live in Arizona, but you know it’s much more expensive because we’re out of state. And I’m sure that the UNC and NC State anthropology departments are excellent!”

  So I was going to apply to the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill in the fall. Maybe I would find a good excuse to email the anthropology faculty ahead of time. (“Dear Dr. So and So, I am an incoming freshman. Please be on the lookout for my forthcoming articles on American adolescence in Current Anthropology.…”)

  But maybe if I had some extra scholarship money, I could apply to those other schools too. Go far, far away from Melva — far from the North Carolina state line. Maybe I’d end up the undergraduate anthro star at Berkeley. Or maybe Arizona was exactly the place I’d fit in. There, in the circle of the intelligentsia, I’d become non-awkward and beautiful. I’d befriend all the anthropology professors and grad students. Guys would abound who said things like, “My dream girl would definitely skip cool parties in order to rewatch DVDs of The Wire and National Geographic documentaries,” and “Subtitles?! I LOVE subtitles!” I paused for a minute, almost forgetting the Miss Livermush entry form in my hand.

  I also needed a Miss Livermush escort. Didn’t I? Although escorts were not required, it seemed most girls chose to have one. Escorts had no clear-cut role in the pageant itself, but they were listed in the program and counted as your date for the dance afterward. So in that way, it was a big deal: Your date was publicly announced. I saw Jimmy Denton standing before me in his dark jeans and T-shirt…. No, no, no, no. Not even a possibility.

  Then I thought of Paul. Paul might have been willing, but what about The Girlfriend? She’d probably want him to escort her. I didn’t really understand Paul anyway, and apparently never had. There had been the humiliating incident of the Disast
rous Almost-Kiss — an incident that had utterly confused me, an incident on which I did not like to speculate because it was too embarrassing, an incident I hadn’t mentioned, even to Margo, because I couldn’t tell if I’d just wildly misread the whole situation. It had happened last year, before The Girlfriend came along.

  THE DISASTROUS ALMOST-KISS (????)

  One weekend Paul and I had gone to his house to eat burritos and watch an old movie. This was not atypical — at least it had not been before The Girlfriend came along in all her legitimate girlfriendness. And that night, it had almost seemed like something might happen, something more than the same old Gal Pal Janice story. I wasn’t sure what to think about it because the possibility felt so strange — Paul, my friend, as Paul, my boyfriend? I had never consciously thought about him that way, at least not prior to that evening. Maybe it was that he’d complimented my hair that evening. Maybe it had been the way his mom had jokingly winked at us before we’d started the movie. But I have to admit, at least that particular night, the hint of whatever in the air, the tension between us — well, it was exciting. I’d felt trembly in my throat the whole night. When our hands had accidentally brushed over the salsa, Paul had blushed and recoiled as if burned. And when the movie had finally ended, we’d both sat there silently, watching the blank screen and listening to only a faint electronic whirring. The lights were out, and we were motionless, neither daring to turn on the light nor to face the other.

  Finally Paul had said, a little too loudly, “Janice.” I’d turned in the darkness to face him. As if drawn by a force unseen, our faces had moved closer together. The tips of our noses were almost touching. In the movies, I knew that the kissers always closed their eyes, but mine were wide-open. I was so close to Paul’s face that if it hadn’t been dark, I could have seen his pores. Then, suddenly and startlingly, Paul jumped up.

  “Shoot! I forgot to feed Barker. I haven’t fed him at all today!”

  Barker was the Hansen family’s ancient golden retriever. I liked Barker. I didn’t want him to starve to death. But as I watched Paul flip on the lights and slip out of the room, I felt a growing horror. The guy I’d been about to kiss had leapt to his feet to feed his dog. This could only mean a couple things, both of them bad: Either he realized that he desperately did NOT want to kiss me and could figure no other way out of the situation, or he actually DID realize that he needed to feed Barker, meaning that he’d been thinking of his pet dog just as he was about to kiss me. I didn’t know which possibility was worse.

  When Paul had come back from feeding Barker, he was whistling. He bent down to the DVD player and pressed EJECT, removing the disc and popping it back into the case.

  “Boy, Barker’s never been so happy to see me. Poor old guy, he was starving.”

  Still seated on the floor, I’d nodded, looked at my watch, then said I needed to get going. And that night, lying in bed, my whole face had burned in humiliation — so hot that I thought the pillow would ignite. I’d then avoided Paul for a while, and he started dating The Girlfriend, and the whole incident of the Almost-Kiss had never come up.

  Maybe, I thought now, he hadn’t been planning to kiss me at all — maybe he’d actually just been practicing meditation. Maybe he was a narcoleptic. Maybe the whole Almost-ness of the Almost-Kiss was a figment of my idiot imagination. Maybe I had no insight into patterns of adolescent male behavior at all.

  A knocking at the front door broke my reverie. I looked at my watch. It was almost 9 p.m., a strange time for anyone to show up at our front door. I rose to go see who it was and met my mom in the hallway.

  “Are you expecting someone?” she asked. I shook my head.

  On opening the door, there stood Margo — or the person formerly known as Margo. I stared at her, and she stared back at me. We said nothing. This new person had hair that had been carefully straightened and highlighted, unlike Margo’s hair, which was normally a mass of wild curls. She wore tasteful makeup — mascara, just a hint of blush, lip gloss. Her fingernails were impeccably manicured — true, in a color that I’d most often seen on loudmouthed girls named Misti Krystal or Gennyfer Tammi-Ann — but still! And her shirt, it was soft and formfitting and —

  “Ralph Lauren?!” my mom exhaled, unable to help herself. You had to drive to Charlotte to get clothes like that, and my mom, I knew, secretly imagined herself to be a fancier person — the sort of person who drove to Charlotte regularly for Ralph Lauren — although she would never fully admit to this vanity. She salivated over brand names and couldn’t help invoking them whenever possible. In this way, my mom was not unlike a rap video.

  “You like?” Margo asked, giving us a twirl. She was flushed and looked a) older b) happier c) innocently eager for approval d) pretty. Really, really, teeth-clenchingly pretty.

  “Wow,” my mom said. “Margo, you look great. Like someone from a makeover show.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment, Mom.”

  “She knows what I mean, don’t you, dear?” my mom said — my mom, who is a great fan of makeover shows and anything else with a “before” and “after” image. “And it’s very much a compliment.”

  Margo nodded. “You two really like?” she asked, eyeing the lovely architecture of her own ankles as she arched and flexed in the new kitten-heeled sandals she wore.

  My mom and I nodded, still staring at her. She was experiencing all the benefits of The Cinderella Effect. The transformation. I should confess that I felt a familiar feeling creeping up into my throat, a feeling perhaps best labeled “jealousy.” I nudged my mom, and she gave New and Improved Margo a little hug, waved to us both, and then went back upstairs.

  “Margo, what happened?” I whispered now that it was just us. I thought about TR’s schizophrenic-homeless-woman comment earlier in the day — but no, surely that wasn’t it. TR said stuff like that all the time.

  “I needed a change,” Margo said. “I figured, Janice, if you’re going to work on your seeing-the-pageant-from-the-inside anthropology project, then I need to work on something too — like maybe actually putting some effort into the pageant, just to see if I could place, you know? I’ve been working on a solo part for the next chorus concert anyway … and I could really use the scholarship money. So I told my mom I was gonna try to ‘look more presentable,’ as she calls it, and she let me borrow her credit card. And I was kinda sick of wearing those ugly clothes. Becca’s old shirts and stinky thrift store pants and whatever.”

  I returned to speechlessness, staring. It was great. Great for Margo. Not my style exactly, but it was the transformation I envied — a transformation I might secretly write into the movie version of my own life: Janice Wills: Story of a Young Anthropologist.

  I think Margo realized I was mesmerized by her new appearance.

  “Uh, I could help you too, Janice,” she said. “I mean, I know it’s not really your thing or whatever, but since we’re both gonna do Miss Livermush now … It’s not really that hard, with just a little makeup in the right colors and —”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. It’s less humiliating to fail at looking pretty when you weren’t trying to look pretty in the first place. Easier and safer not to try. “I keep it scientific. Dian Fossey didn’t need mascara when she was out studying gorillas. That’s how I roll.”

  During my brief Dian Fossey obsession, I’d made Margo watch Gorillas in the Mist with me four times in a matter of weeks. “Um, okay,” Margo said. “But isn’t that a weird reference since Dian Fossey got macheted by poachers, and she was studying gorillas, not people?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. So instead, I said, “Wow. You know TR’s going to freak out, right? She’s going to realize that you’re serious competition.”

  She smiled slightly, shrugging.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Does this have something to do with Secret Boyfriend?”

  Margo examined the toe of one of her dainty new shoes without answering me. I kept staring at her, waiting for her t
o look up. Secret Boyfriend was the lone element of tension between Margo and me. Basically she had a Secret Boyfriend but didn’t want to tell me about him. It was weird because a) neither of us had really ever had boyfriends prior to this and b) neither of us had really ever had secrets prior to this. If I’d had a boyfriend, I certainly would have told her. (Heck, I would have told everyone, while of course pretending that I wasn’t. Like, my boyfriend would be in an awesome band, and I’d wear the band T-shirt all the time, and then people would ask about it, and I’d say, “Oh, this? Yeah, it’s my boyfriend’s band.” You get the idea.) Margo apparently handled things a little differently, resulting in the mystery that was Secret Boyfriend.

  Finally Margo looked up at me. She inhaled deeply. “Janice, I promise,” she said. “It’s not a big deal. We’ve barely hung out at this point, and I want to tell you — really I do. But I promised not to — it’s just … He’s asked me not to tell people yet. I trust you, I do, but … I promised him, and he’s not even Secret Boyfriend yet, you know? He’s more like Secret We’ve-Hung-Out-Twice Friend at this point anyway….”

  I could tell from Margo’s face that she felt bad, and I felt bad making her feel bad — so there was just a lot of badness hovering around us.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t get it, but I understand you made a promise.” I hugged her. “And hey, your new look is beautiful. TR’s eyes are going to bug out of her head.” Even though I smiled my It’s-No-Big-Deal! smile at her as I said it, I felt sad and left out. And even as she stood there, I felt Margo was slipping away from me.