More Than One Way to Be a Girl

by Dyan Sheldon

  Contents

  ZiZi: Books aren’t the only thing that begin with a “B”

  Loretta: You never know what’s going to happen next

  ZiZi: Loretta and I have never been the kind of best friends who act like they’re identical twins who were raised by different parents

  Loretta: “I learn a lot of things from ZiZi, among them patience”

  ZiZi: Compared to the rest of my high-school career, my junior year is a ballgown on a rack of plain shirts

  Loretta: My balloon of hope starts to drift away

  ZiZi: Loretta could make a pig’s ear out of a silk purse

  Loretta: None so blind as she who will not see

  ZiZi: Despite everything, I stay cheerful and optimistic

  Loretta: ZiZi continues to dash my hopes against the frilly but treacherous cliffs that loom over her bubbly pink sea

  ZiZi: Loretta makes up for how quiet she was at supper

  Loretta: Walk a mile in my shoes

  ZiZi: A girl has a right to change her mind

  Loretta: Let the show begin

  ZiZi: Like a sheep to the shearer

  Loretta: Over the Einstein-Rosen Bridge

  ZiZi: The invisible girl

  Loretta: For the first time in my life I’m late for work, and that’s only the beginning

  ZiZi: It turned out that I’d changed more than my hairstyle

  Loretta: New me, new world

  ZiZi: And Loretta thought she had problems

  Loretta: I stick to my skirts

  ZiZi: The revenge of the male chauvinist pig

  Loretta: My imaginary boyfriend and other complications

  ZiZi: I stage my first strike but (as I’m sure Emma Goldman could’ve told me) they don’t always work

  Loretta: Maybe plans aren’t always particularly useful, since you can’t always predict what’s going to happen

  ZiZi: The pre-nup blues

  Loretta: One girl’s dream-come-true is another’s giant monster crushing everything in its path

  ZiZi: Dadzilla and me

  Loretta: Things are bad, then things get just that enormous amount worse

  ZiZi: And then the swan started to melt

  Loretta: This was never going to be an easy day

  ZiZi: Sometimes you just have to upset people (especially if they’re really upsetting you)

  Loretta: Things don’t go back to the way they were

  ZiZi: Loretta’s right, change is the nature of the universe

  For Terence

  ZiZi

  Books aren’t the only thing that begin with a “B”

  Towards the end of my freshman year in high school, Jude Fielder touched my breast.

  So you don’t get the wrong idea, there was nothing sexy or romantic about it. It wasn’t like we were in some passionate clinch in a dark corner of somebody’s basement. We were in the town library. I was looking for a book for my history assignment. I guess I left it a little late, because by the time I got around to finding something, everything under three thousand pages had been taken out of the school library. I begged the librarian to see if maybe there was one little, reasonably sized book that hadn’t been shelved yet or was in the back waiting to have its spine fixed or something, which he did (he was always very helpful). But there wasn’t. He was really, really sorry, but what could he do? The problem wasn’t what he could do, but what I had to do. This was one of those times when you couldn’t just slap something together from the Internet. You actually had to read a book. Quel pain in the butt.

  So anyway, there I was on a Saturday morning, when I could’ve still been in bed or on my way to the mall, standing in the world history section of the public library, hoping to find something no thicker than a crispbread for my assignment, when Jude Fielder came up beside me. I knew he was looking at me, but I was used to guys looking at me, so I acted like the only thing next to me was air. He sighed, he looked, he took a book off the shelf, he put the book back on the shelf. And then, instead of reaching for another book he wasn’t interested in, he suddenly put his hand on my breast. Just like that! It was really quick. I was so surprised I could hardly believe it. I’m not really sure, but I think he may have pressed. Lightly. He laughed, like it was a joke, and then he apologized. “Sorry,” said Jude Fielder. “I just wanted to see if it was real.” I didn’t think there was much I could say to that. (What made you think it wasn’t real? Do I look like a robot?) Or much I could do. I know I’m not supposed to say this (at least I know it now!), but I was kind of flattered. I mean, what’s the point of push-up bras and cleavage and low-cut tops if no one notices? If you don’t want to be noticed, you wear baggy turtlenecks and dungarees. And anyway, I guess I was a little embarrassed (even if I wasn’t sure why). I figured he was probably embarrassed, too, for doing such a dumb thing, but I wasn’t too worried about how he was feeling right then. I just wanted to get out of there. So I took the book I’d been flipping through (which turned out to be more boring than white socks) and left without opening my mouth. As I said, I was used to guys looking, but nobody’d ever groped me before. And anyway, the library isn’t where you’d ever expect something like that to happen. Seriously? You don’t exactly go into the library thinking, Wow, I wonder if someone’s going to grab my boobs while I’m looking for a book on the Romans. So even though I wasn’t really mad or anything, I was kind of shocked. But it wasn’t a gigantic big deal because Jude Fielder was pretty okay. When our science class had to get garbage out of the river for Earth Day, in middle school, Jude Fielder let me carry the bag while he did all the work and got dirty. Plus he was one of the better-looking boys in my year. Not gorgeous, but not gross like some of them, either. (Just the thought of one of the creeps from the deep touching me would’ve made me throw up.) So anyway, I got out my book and left. I didn’t run (in case my breasts bounced too much – that always gets looks) but I walked pretty fast. I was halfway to the sidewalk when I heard this kind of wounded-animal cry and then someone shouted, “What the hell, you crazy bitch!”

  That made me stop and turn. There were other people around (like the background crowd in a movie), but right behind me were Loretta Reynolds and Jude Fielder. They were staring at each other like they were checking out flaws in a mirror. Jude Fielder was red in the face. Loretta Reynolds was her usual colour (wet, unbaked pastry). Loretta said, “Sorry. I just wanted to see if it was real.” She said it really loud.

  Quel day for surprises! You could’ve knocked me over with an eyelash.

  Jude Fielder looked pretty surprised, too. (You wouldn’t have needed a whole lash to knock him over.) He didn’t laugh that time. What he did was stomp off, shouting at me as he passed, “Your freakin’ dyke friend’s crazy, you know that, Abruzzio? Like two hundred per cent certifiable!”

  Here’s the thing: Loretta Reynolds was not my friend. I knew her from being in school with her since for ever, just like Jude Fielder did. I didn’t dislike her (most people like her okay even if they think she’s pretty weird), but I didn’t really know her. I could’ve picked her out of a police line-up, and if I’d run into her at the airport on my way to Paris, I would’ve said hello, but that’s it. Loretta is the girl who always sits at the front of the room and is either first with her hand in the air to give an answer or the only person with a question. (That’s from primary school on.) She’s really smart and never cared who knows it. And she’s always been confrontational. My first vivid memory of Loretta disagreeing with a teacher was in Year Two when she argued with Mrs Dansk about whether or not cats and dogs can think. (Loretta won. Yes, they can.) But until that fateful Saturday, if I ever spoke to Loretta directly it was only to say sorry for bumping into her. (Although,
like just about everyone else who’d ever had a class with Loretta, I’d more than once muttered under my breath “Please shut up” when she was yammering away about something, or “Please don’t start” when she was about to.)

  So, as Jude Fielder stormed away, I screamed at him, “I’m really sorry. And she’s not my friend.”

  The next thing I knew, Loretta Reynolds was shouting at me. (Quel ironic!)

  “Are you out of your tiny little mind?” she roared. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Me? What was wrong with me? How did I get to be the one who was nuts? The one who had something wrong with her? I didn’t do anything.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I’m the innocent victim here.”

  “If you’re such an innocent victim, maybe you could explain to the incredulous TV audience why you apologized to him!”

  “Excuse me, but I wasn’t apologizing for me. I was apologizing for you.”

  “Oh, thank you so much.” (In books, people’s voices drip with sarcasm. But not Loretta’s. It poured.) “You apologized for the one person in this little drama who has nothing to apologize for.” She said that really scornfully. “And just to clarify things, Giselle Abruzzio, you are not an innocent victim.” Only teachers or parents who are mad at me call me Giselle – everybody else calls me ZiZi. “What you are is an unconscious enabler. How come you just stood there like a doll and let that jerk maul you?”

  I said I didn’t let him – he did it without asking me. Plus, he didn’t maul me. Maul was an exaggeration. (Exaggeration is a Loretta Reynolds trademark. She should patent it.) And anyway it wasn’t exactly the crime of the century. “Chrissake, it’s not like he hit me or ripped off my blouse.” I was poised and calm, not enraged and waving my arms around like some people. “All he did was touch me.” Really lightly. “And, anyway, what about you? What did you do to him?”

  “Tat for tit,” said Loretta. “If he’d grabbed my breasts, I’d’ve decked him.”

  Yeah, right. Only no boy was going to go grabbing Loretta Reynolds’ breasts. He’d have to find them first.

  I thought she was seriously overreacting (something else she’s known for). He didn’t really grab my breast. (Already I knew better than to mention the possibility of a squeeze to Loretta.) I said it was more like someone brushing against you at the mall when it’s really crowded. Like when there’s some big sale on or it’s Christmas.

  Loretta flapped her hands in the air some more. It was amazing she didn’t take off. “Except that someone shoving past you in the mall isn’t deliberately going for your private person! He had no right to do that. That counts as assault.”

  I didn’t think so. It was more an imposition than an assault. I mean, it wasn’t like Jude Fielder went into the library planning to go for my private person. I figured he acted on impulse. Like when you buy a pair of shoes you know you can’t walk in because they look so cool you just can’t help yourself.

  That argument scored in the high nineties on the Loretta Reynolds’ contempt meter.

  “So if I have the impulse to push somebody in front of a car, that’s okay because I didn’t plan it?”

  I still don’t know anyone else who can scream and sneer at the same time. I said that was like comparing lipstick to leggings. He wasn’t trying to kill me. I think I shrugged. Philosophically. (Loretta’s not the only one who can be philosophical.) “If you ask me,” I said, “getting all warped out about what happened’s dumb. It’s like being mad at the cat for scratching you when you’re dangling a piece of string in front of it. He was just being a boy. They can’t help it.”

  Talk about dangling a piece of string in front of a cat. If Loretta had been a cat, I’d’ve been covered in blood.

  “Don’t tell me,” shouted Loretta. “Let me guess. You think it’s cool when guys gawp and make comments when you walk down the street. You think it’s part of being a girl.”

  Not all girls. It for sure wasn’t part of being Loretta Reynolds. But she was annoying me with her attitude, like she was the only one who could ever be right, so I gave her what I knew was the wrong answer. “It is kind of a compliment. You know, unless they’re saying your butt’s too big or you have a nose like a pelican or something like that. They’re letting you know you’re attractive. What’s bad about that? I mean, unless it’s some ugly old loser with a beer gut or someone really creepy. That would be pretty gross.”

  The contempt meter went through the stratosphere.

  “You hear that sound?” bellowed Loretta. “You know what it is?”

  I didn’t hear anything besides traffic and normal people talking in normal voices about normal things as they walked past us. And Loretta. They could probably hear her in Florida. I pictured all these old people sitting by their pools, looking around trying to figure out who was making the big racket.

  “I’ll tell you what it is.” If you don’t know something Loretta feels it’s her duty to fill in the gaps. “It’s the sound of Emma Goldman rolling in her grave!”

  I had no idea who Emma Goldman was, but I figured the smart move would be not to ask. Not that Loretta gave me a chance. She answered anyway.

  “In case you’re interested, she was an outspoken champion of women’s rights.”

  I wasn’t interested, but I knew better than to say that, too. So I tried to lighten the mood. “Does that mean we can thank her for miniskirts and sexual liberation?”

  “You can thank her for more than that,” snapped Loretta. And away she went again. We stood there while half the town passed by and Loretta lectured me on male violence and aggression and female passivity – and at least a dozen things that started with the word “gender”. Which wasn’t a word I was used to hearing in everyday conversation. I didn’t know what she was talking about. It was like when you have a couple of years of school French and then you go to Quebec and the only things you understand when someone talks to you are hello, no and goodbye. I figured God probably didn’t know what Loretta was droning on about either. If He was smart, He’d tuned out after the second sentence the same as I did.

  “Maybe it’s this sweater,” I said when she finally stopped. That’s what I’d been thinking about while she gabbled away. My sweater was orange.

  “Sweater?” Loretta blinked. “Maybe what’s this sweater?”

  “The reason Jude did that. Bright colours make you look bigger.”

  Which could be considered the first fashion tip I ever gave her. And the first she totally ignored.

  “So the whole thing was really your fault, is that what you’re saying? That you were right to apologize?”

  See how she twists things?

  “I told you, I was apologizing for you, not for me.”

  You know how sometimes your parents look at you like they’re wondering if the babies were switched in the hospital? That was the way Loretta was looking at me. Then she closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she was done counting, she opened her eyes again and said, “Okay. Let’s start over. I guess at least you’re right about it not being planned. If he’d planned it one of his friends would’ve been at the end of the aisle, taking a picture. And then it’d be all over the Internet.”

  So there was some good news.

  I said I was the one who should’ve taken a picture. The next time she did something like that she should give me some warning so I’d have my phone ready.

  Loretta laughed. “His face was great, wasn’t it? You’d think I’d just hit him with a dead fish.”

  I laughed, too. “More like the entrails.”

  When we stopped laughing Loretta asked if I wanted to go somewhere for a coffee.

  I guess because we were laughing like normal people my guard was down. I said, “Sure.”

  Quel day for firsts.

  Loretta

  You never know what’s going to happen next

  Although there is a lot of randomness in the universe, I am the sort of person who likes to know what’s going to happen next. I’m n
ot happy bobbing along on the ocean of life, waiting to see where the current takes me. I make lists, schedules and plans – and I keep to them. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. If I say I’m going to be somewhere at a certain time, I’m there no matter what – because I’m also the person who always takes the variables like weather, traffic and unexpected events into consideration. Which means I knew all the things I was doing that Saturday – and becoming friends with Giselle Abruzzio was not on my agenda.

  We’d known each other since we started school, but ZiZi and I had never been what you’d call friends. Not the kind who walk together if they happen to be going the same way, and for definite not the kind who eat lunch together and go to each other’s house to play. I don’t remember ever having an actual conversation with her, but in primary school we were always in the same groups for reading, etcetera, so we must have said something to each other sometime. I do remember that once – in Year Three or Four – some boys in our class threw her backpack up on the roof, expecting her to burst into tears or go running to a teacher, but she just climbed up and got it. In Year Five, she and I tied for first place in the school-wide Math Marathon. And in Year Six we were in the group that did a project on the effects of oil spills on ocean life for the Science Fair (we won second prize). What I’m trying to say is that, in my memory, ZiZi Abruzzio used to be smart and feisty (and really good at things like Science and Math). But when we got to middle school I guess she discovered there was more to life than reading, independence, algebra and environmental degradation. There were clothes, make-up and boys. Which means that she went from being a person who could shimmy up a pole to the roof of the school to being a Girl with a capital “G”. Girls with a capital “G” are so bouncy and energetic that even if they aren’t cheerleaders, they seem like they are – cheerleaders when it’s always half-time in an important game. I’ve always thought of them as the Misses Bubble. They talk a lot, shop a lot, talk about shopping a lot, talk about boys even more, and laugh as if they’re in a laughter competition – especially if it’s at some unfunny joke by a guy. For reasons I don’t understand, they don’t like to be seen to be smarter than boys – especially ones they like. The only climbing they do is into or out of a car. After we moved up to middle school I know for definite that ZiZi and I didn’t talk to each other. Not until The Assault in the library.