“I think a lot of people would find ’em pretty far out.”
“A lot of people think women should wear veils in public.”
“Your point?”
“I don’t care what people think.”
I swear, I could feel my blood pressure rise. “But do you care how I feel?”
She closed her eyes, brought her thumb to her right nostril and pressed in. Took a few deep breaths out of her left nostril. I’d seen her do this before; it was supposed to be soothing, but to watch it when you’re waiting for an apology is downright infuriating. Finally she opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, in a controlled way, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
Well, I had my apology. Not too exciting after all that. Rather anticlimactic, really. Worse yet, now I had to eat my crow. I hesitated. She lay back flat on the floor and looked up at the ceiling. “Ohhhhh,” she groaned. “My back. My lower back. It feels so tight. I think I might be getting arthritis.”
“Arthritis? Come on.” The idea of Coco getting arthritis! She was in better shape than I was. “That’s for old people.”
“I’m not kidding. I went to a physical therapist yesterday and he said it’s possible.”
“Are you sure it’s not just stress?”
“Stress over what?”
“Well, like, the idea of spending the rest of your life with Jack?”
“Didn’t you just promise . . . ?”
“Sorry. Forget I said that.” She closed her eyes. I wanted to ask her why she’d changed her mind about him, but wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Maybe she was simply doing it for the money. Why make her admit that? Or maybe she really did love the guy. Was that possible? If she was finally going to fall in love, why Jack? I stared down at a food stain on the carpet. That stain had been there for years. It was somewhat comforting. “So, Mom?” I hesitated. This really felt like major defeat. “I’ve been thinking . . . maybe I should start doing something about how I look.”
She opened her eyes. “What?”
“You know, like, makeup?” It was excruciating, telling her the words she’d always wanted to hear. “New clothes?” Relinquishing the small bit of power I’d always had. “Something more feminine than I’ve tended to wear in the past.” Surrendering to the enemy. “Something more . . . you know . . . sexy.”
She practically leaped up off the floor. “Let’s go!”
“Where?”
“H & M! We’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe!”
“I didn’t mean right now—”
“If not now, when? Come on! Quick! Before you change your mind! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for these words to spring from those lips, young lady? Let’s get the hell out of here!”
The music was booming. I mean, what is it with the booming music? Are people so plagued by their thoughts that when they shop, they need to have them blasted out of their heads? Yes, okay, the beat could make you feel sexy. Get you in touch with your jungle side. But it was all so silly, wasn’t it?
No. I had to try to take this seriously. So I would be taken seriously as a woman. I could be sexy too. I could get down with that jungle beat!
Or could I? Huge posters of skinny/sad/angry/seductive models looked down on me from the walls. They were totally imposing, totally condescending, totally pompous, impossible to replicate.
Okay. Calm down, already.
They were just pictures. Fantasy images. No one really expected you to actually look like that. Just an approximation of that. An attempt. To show men that you wanted to look like that, even if you both knew you couldn’t actually look like that. To let the guy know you were on the same wavelength. The “I submit to being a sex object” wavelength. Don’t fight it. Use it. Like everyone else. Because really. It didn’t have to be such a big deal.
The store was three stories high, and crowded with customers caught up in their own individual dreamlike dazes. An elevator wound its way up the center, delivering endless streams of dazed women to aisles crowded with endless racks of clothing. The dazed women unselfconsciously paused to touch the fabrics, imagining the cloth against their skin and draped on their bodies.
I tried to turn myself into one of the dazed women and dutifully strolled past aisles of racks crammed with clothing. I repeated the phrase that had gotten me here. One of the guys. At least the clothing was cheap. A pair of black slacks was only nineteen bucks. A party dress was only twenty-four dollars. You could wear it once and throw it out before it fell apart.
Coco was pulling things off the rack. She loved this store, and it was easy to see why. Almost everything was hooker chic. Hooker chic for the masses.
“How about this?”
Coco held up a slinky red dress. It was made out of some kind of flimsy spandex-y material, and it was obvious it would be totally formfitting, and it was too low-cut, and too short, and my body wasn’t good enough. “It’s nice.”
“Very sexy.”
“You don’t think it’s too tight for me?”
“Work with your curves, girl, not against them!”
“Okay. I’ll try it.” Apart from my hesitations, I was curious to see what it would look like. How it would look encasing my body.
Coco forged on. I followed after her, and even started getting into the music. It was that old disco song, “Boogie Oogie Oogie.” I moved my hips to the beat. This was fun!
Our arms full, we headed to the dressing room. My shopping high turned to anxiety and irritation. There were about ten people ahead of us in line. As we stood there in the hot, stuffy area that seemed to be designed specifically to induce sensory deprivation (except for the earsplitting, unrelenting techno music that was now playing) a woman behind us jabbered on her cell phone about trying to quit cigarettes and a girl behind us argued with her mom about her curfew. Finally, we were first. A tall, hulking guy counted our stuff and led us to a booth. “For you,” he said, “I have the executive suite.”
We both laughed. It took a lot of ambition (or was it a lack of it?) to do a godawful job like dressing room attendant and maintain a sense of humor. How did he do this every day? There was something oxymoronic about a guy doing that job. Was he there guarding our virtue? Or violating it? Maybe he got off on handling women’s clothing. Especially when customers handed him slinky nighties and bras after trying them on.
Maybe my imagination was a bit too fertile for my own good.
Coco followed me into the cubicle, but I didn’t want her in there with me. “Can you wait outside?”
“Why?”
“I’d just like some privacy.”
“How can you be so modest around me of all people?”
How, indeed? Yet I was. Even though I’d seen her naked a million times, I still didn’t like the idea of her seeing me. “I’ll call you in when I’m ready.”
I tried a cotton halter top on first. I’d liked it when I saw it on the rack because it had a vintage fifties look and the material was this pretty lilac plaid. But the top was so low cut, if I leaned over, you could almost but not quite but just possibly, depending on how the fabric wanted to behave, see my nipples. I pulled open the curtain.
“It’s so cute!” Coco said.
“I don’t like it.” The pumping beat from the loudspeaker right overhead was making a mockery of my modesty.
“It’s adorable. You should get it.”
“My boobs are hanging out!”
“Ginger. The world will not stop spinning just because you have cleavage.”
“It’s the opposite I’m afraid of.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t want anyone to notice me.” I knew she couldn’t conceive of such a thing.
“I thought you wanted to sex up your image.”
“I do.” But maybe it wasn’t worth it. Better to just disappear. Who needed attention from perverted, slimy men?
Except, of course, it was Tom’s attention I wanted to get. Tom, the known quantity. The nice, sensitive g
uy. There was no way to look sexy for him, yet hide my appearance from every random, skanky man on the street. And if he saw my boobs, especially my nipples, maybe he would dump Tara. Except maybe I was too flat. But I wasn’t any flatter than Tara, so maybe I had a chance? Oh, god. How could I be thinking these thoughts? How desperate had I become? If this was love, give me cold indifference, please!
“Stop fighting nature,” Coco said. “Nature is not out to get you. Now I’m not leaving until we buy you at least three things. How about this skirt?”
She looked at me with such hope; I didn’t want to let her down. Plus, it really was cute. It had cherries on it. I loved clothing with fruit on it, especially cherries.
I made her leave the dressing room, took off the halter, put on my bra and T-shirt, took off my jeans, noticed the wayward pubic hairs extending down below the edge of my hipster cotton panties, and stepped into the skirt. At least it went on easily because of an elastic waistband. But it barely extended past my upper thighs!
I called Coco back in. “It’s too short.”
“It’s adorable.”
“My legs aren’t good enough.”
“You’ve got great legs. You’ve got my legs.”
“No, I don’t.” Did I? Maybe if I lost five pounds, so my thighs were a little thinner . . .
“It’s a crime you’ve kept them hidden all these years. And you can wear your white sneakers with it, if you want.”
“Really?” If I could wear my sneakers . . .
“White sneakers with red laces. Cute. After you shave your legs. And I have some tanning lotion you can use. Or maybe we should just get them sprayed. But you need to exfoliate first. You can use my loofah. Oh, and by the way, you could really use some new underwear. They have a great selection—we’ll go pick out some thongs before we leave.”
“I’m not getting any thongs.”
She put her hands on her hips. “What is the deal with you?”
“I don’t want anything in my butt-crack.”
“Jesus, you’re stubborn. Here,” she said, throwing the slinky red dress at me as she went to wait outside. “Try this.”
I looked at it like there was mold growing on the seams. I would never wear it in public. And there really was no air in the room and the music was extra loud from that speaker right above our executive suite and I was getting the worst headache but then Tom’s words came back to me.
I really want to be friends.
After wrestling on the stretchy but tight material, I discovered you could see the top rim of my bra peeking up above the low neckline. And, since the red straps were so thin, you could see my white bra straps. So I had to take the dress back off, take off my bra, and put it back on again. By then I had nipple-itis. Why was this so impossible?
“How is it?” Coco asked through the curtain.
“Way too tight—forget it.” I started to take it off.
“Don’t take it off! Let me see!”
“Mom . . .”
She came in. Looked at me. My nipples, I swear, were big as thimbles. Mom didn’t seem to notice. She was looking at my feet.
“How can you tell what it looks like with those damn gym socks on?”
I pulled the socks off. We both looked at me in the mirror. The dress completely outlined and clung to my body.
“Now that,” Coco said, “is fucking sexy.”
Her words made me want to put on a muumuu. “I hate it.”
“You look hot!”
“I could not go out into public with this. I might as well be naked!”
“They had it in black, but I think you should stick with the red. Just stand up straight. And you need a thong—I can see your panty line.”
“What is it that you can’t see? My appendix?”
“Why do you insist on hiding your assets? Is it so important for you to not be like me? Well, get over it. You look fantastic.”
“But I have all those bulges . . . bulging out all over . . .”
“Those aren’t bulges! Those are curves, my dear. Women have them. Men love them. Curves,” she proclaimed, “are nature’s way of making you powerful.”
Yes. It did look . . . womanly. No doubt about it. I was a woman. I could have that power. It was within my power to have that power. Me. A powerful woman!
No. Better if men could take me or leave me. Instead of taking me and taking me until there was nothing left . . .
“Buy it,” Coco said, “and think about it. We can always return it.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.” I’d had enough. “Let’s go.” I picked my jeans up off the floor and put them on under the dress.
“After we get you new underwear.” She stepped out and closed the curtain, but from the other side she was still going at it. “And a bikini wax. You just need a bikini wax and thongs and bras and . . .”
“Mom. I’m done.” I wrangled the dress off. The thing was so tight, it seemed to be fighting me to stay on.
“Most important of all, you need shoes. You can’t wear the dress without a pair of red heels. Let’s go to Nine West, there’s one right around the corner.”
I found my bra on the floor. “Not now. I don’t even know if I’m keeping it.”
“You have to wear heels with that dress.”
“Mom.” I kept my voice calm. “You aren’t listening. I can’t shop anymore.”
“You must be hungry. We’ll get you a slice of pizza and then we’ll hit the shoes.”
“Pizza yes. Shoes no!” I was aware of the fact that if I did ever wear this dress, I would need some kind of heels to go with it. Even my one pair of black flats wouldn’t fly here. But in my mind, heels were the most offensive of all the sex object wardrobe dictates. By giving in, I’d be surrendering to the enemy, a fashion war Benedict Arnoldette.
“If you just try a pair on . . . you’ll get used to it . . . It’s just a matter of—”
I pulled open the curtain. “Mom. If I decide to keep the dress, I promise I will buy shoes to go with it, but for now, I am not getting heels.” By the look on her face, you’d think I was telling her I’d decided not to give her grandchildren.
“You know what?” She pulled herself together. “There’s probably a line at the cash register. I’ll go pay for these.”
“Good idea.”
She was gone. Thank god. I put my T-shirt back on. Phew. Finally felt like me again. I sat down, exhausted, on the little corner bench and got out a roll of Life Savers. There was a pineapple on top. My favorite. As I sucked on it, I tried to reclaim my equilibrium. There was a conversation going on in the cubicle next to mine. I realized they’d probably heard our exchange. I couldn’t help but listen to theirs.
“Mom, please? I really want it.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Why do you always do this? I’m never going shopping with you again.”
“You don’t need any more clothes anyway, young lady. You already have too many.”
“Are you insane? Mom! I have nothing to wear!”
They were having a normal argument. The kind daughters were supposed to have with their mothers.
“I don’t even know why we came here.”
“Ummm. Because I love this store?”
“Well, I hate this store.”
I pulled on my socks. Yes, the mother sounded like a mother. The daughter sounded like a daughter. I knew they probably wanted to kill each other at that moment, but on the other hand, it must’ve just felt so right. I crunched on my Life Saver, swallowed it down, and tied my nice, comfortable, gorgeous, good-for-my-arches sneakers that helped me get where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do. My neighbors were still at it behind the curtain.
“No way you’re wearing that dress.”
“Mom, I love it. Pleeease?”
“It makes you look like a hooker!”
Even though I’d had the same thought about half the stuff I’d seen on the racks, hearing this woman say it made me flinch. As I left
my booth and passed theirs, they were outright screaming at each other.
“Are you kidding? All my friends dress like this!”
“That doesn’t mean you need to! Where’s your self-respect?”
Self-respect. Well, hey. Coco had self-respect. Matter of fact, she had more self-respect than this woman, because she truly loved and appreciated her own body. I left the fitting rooms thinking maybe it was a good thing not to fit in. Especially if fitting in meant being narrow-minded.
Four long lines of people waited by the cash registers. The music was this extremely hyper rap. I thought I would faint from lack of oxygen. Man, these stores took advantage of people. Undoubtedly they couldn’t get employees to stay because they paid them next to nothing. There was Coco, second from the front, yakking with the woman in front of her. In some ways, yeah, I was lucky to have her as a mom. She meant well. Was only trying to help me in the way she knew how. And if Coco hated this store, then I’d probably have to love it just to show her, and then I’d have to be a slave to cheap clothing mania, so maybe I was spared from living out this insanity.
As I joined Coco in line, I felt a wave of tenderness. “Thanks for doing this, Mom. I know it’s a challenge.”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “This is fun! I can’t wait to get you in a pair of six-inch heels.”
I smiled. Kept my mouth shut. And let it go.
chapter twenty-three
“ w hy did you let Mom become a stripper?”
It was a Saturday night. Grandma and I were in the kitchen eating spaghetti. I was in my first year of high school. That day, a guy in one of my classes had told me he’d snuck into a topless bar on his older brother’s ID and it was really cool.
Grandma chuckled as she twisted strands of pasta around her fork. “You think I could stop her?”
Grandma was born and raised on Long Island and escaped to Manhattan as soon as she could. Her white hair was always pulled up into a bun. She had beautiful dark, olive skin that neither Coco nor I were lucky enough to get. It seemed less naked than my pale skin. An extra layer of protection. I never saw her wear a dress. She favored white jeans, blue work shirts, and Birkenstocks.
The Art of Undressing Page 15