by Ann Angel
She shakes her head and pulls her French book out of her locker. “No, I think you look great. You know what I mean. Like, from her point of view, the whole situation is ugly.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” But maybe I do look ugly. I was so worried about looking different, I forgot about pretty. What does Gus think?
I meet him at Gray’s Papaya after school. We lean against the wall outside, drinking smoothies. My hands sweat inside mittens, even wrapped around the cold waxed-paper cup.
“Gus?” I tap the thick sole of one of his Doc Martens with the toe of mine.
“Hmm.” He raises his head to look at me, lips still wrapped around his straw.
“So I look really different now. I mean, I must look like a totally different person from when we started going out?”
Gus raises his eyebrows and nods slightly. “Uh-huh. You look different.”
“Is that weird?”
He puts his cup down on the sidewalk and stands in front of me, lifts my chin up with his hand and looks straight at me. His rings are cold against my skin. With the other hand he brushes my cheek along the right side of my nose, near my nose ring. “Does it still hurt?”
“Some. A little less.” I wrinkle my eyebrows. “You’re not answering me, Gus. Do you hate how I look now?”
He shakes his head, his face still inches from mine. “No. I think it’s good.”
“You think it is good, like on some big philosophical level, or you think it looks good?”
He kisses me on the lips, his hands still cupping my face. “Both.”
That’s the right answer. So why am I disappointed? Maybe I want to challenge Gus, too. To see if he’s still attracted to me if I don’t look as good. Because maybe he liked me because I was blond and normal looking and, I guess, pretty in this kind of conventional way. Unlike the other people he hangs out with.
“You’re frowning.” He drops his hands.
I press my lips together. “Gus, why do you like me?”
He picks up his smoothie and takes a long sip. “You’re not bored,” he says. He drinks more and looks at me sideways without raising his head all the way.
“What?”
“I like you, among other reasons, because you’re not bored.”
I narrow my eyes and walk to the corner to throw out my empty cup.
He follows and throws his away, even though it’s half full. “Everyone I know is bored, Lise. Except you. Look at Ben and Carrie. School bores them. Adults bore them. Hell, we bore them.” He kicks the garbage can and steps back to our spot against the wall. “My parents think they can get unbored by discovering new talent. They find some supposedly fascinating new artist and show him off to the world and then, when they’re still bored, they go look for another one.
“But you are totally unbored. You’re, like, engaged with the world. All the time. You didn’t do this”—he wraps a strand of my hair around his index finger—“because you were bored with being blond, right? You did it because you were interested in being blue.”
I smile, because it would be great if that were true. But is it?
“Come on.” He tugs at my jacket and steps away from the wall.
“Where?”
“The gallery.”
I look at him like a question mark.
“Yeah. I’m thinking maybe you won’t hate it.”
From the street it looks like nothing—a glass door interrupting a white stucco wall. Inside it’s all spare white space, white walls spotted with shapes of color.
A mechanical ding-dong sounds overhead as we walk through the door, and a tall man with thinning black hair and thick black glasses appears from behind one of the freestanding extrawhite walls.
“That couldn’t possibly be my son? Is the apartment on fire? Do you need money?” He winks at me while Gus glares.
I press my lips together to keep from smiling and lean into Gus’s side.
He sighs. “Dad, this is Lisa.” He’s mumbling, like a whole different person.
“Ah.” His father steps forward and takes my right hand in both of his. “I’ve heard nothing at all about you. What a pleasure.”
He and Gus stare each other down for a minute, and I wait, trying to figure out how real the tension is. Maybe sarcastic is just what they do.
“You must be an artist,” his dad says.
“Um, not really.”
“That’s not why you’re here, then? Hmph.” He crosses his arms against his chest and looks at me.
Gus squeezes my hand but doesn’t say a word.
“I think you are an artist.” He gestures at my head. “That’s your canvas right there.”
I don’t understand for a minute. But then I do. My hair, he means. My nose. That’s what people see now when they see me.
He waves his hand for me to follow him to one of the display walls. “Take a look around, Lisa-who-I’ve-never-heard-of.”
Gus gives his father a violent look.
“Maybe something will inspire you.”
I step back, away from both of them. “I’ll just look, then?”
They shrug identical bony shoulders.
I walk up one side of the room, turn a corner, walk along another wall. The air around me feels thin, white like the walls. I stare at each piece, but nothing happens. I feel Gus and his father watching me, waiting for a reaction. This is a test. I have to prove to Gus that I’m interested in this stuff, not bored by it, but also I have to be on his side in the fight he’s having with his dad. And for his father, I have to fall in love with the right piece so he can proclaim me an artist.
Gus leans against a bare patch of wall with his arms crossed, staring at me. His dad is pacing, leaving a few feet between us so he can pretend he’s not following me around.
To escape both of them, I turn into this small room off the main gallery, and now I want to look at the art. Tables are scattered around the room—all different sizes and heights—and ledges stick out of the walls. On each surface is a wooden box, painted white or green or pale pink or gold. They have writing on them, black letters, done, I think, with stamps or stencils. One huge round box has stories on it, random paragraphs from fairy tales. “The Ugly Duckling” covers the inside—not all of it, but the part where the ugly duckling first sees the other swans and he wants to be with them, even though he doesn’t know why. Other boxes have poems or dreams or just one word, repeated again and again, letters snaking around the edges of the wood.
Now I want to write words on boxes. On walls, T-shirts, furniture. My fingers itch to write words. I step from one box to the next, reading every word, touching the corners to feel the texture of the paint, opening lids to find more words inside. Then a hand is on my shoulder, and I startle and gasp out loud.
“Sorry,” Gus says.
“I like these,” I whisper.
He nods.
“Maybe you’re a poet,” says his father, who is standing in the doorway to this little room full of boxes. “A word sculptor.”
“ ‘A word sculptor,’ ” I echo. “So my hair isn’t why I’m an artist?”
“Could be it’s just fashion,” says Gus.
“You don’t think fashion is art?” argues his father.
“You know,” I say, “I should really get home. I mean, I told my dad I’d be home for dinner, and he doesn’t know I’m here, and I shouldn’t be late today, you know, after Saturday.”
“Yeah,” says Gus. “Let’s get out of here.”
I wave as Gus leads me toward the front door. “It was nice to meet you.”
And we’re back out on the street. It’s dark now, and cold enough to see my breath under the streetlights.
“Did you see that big box,” I say as we walk. “The one with the fairy tales?”
“Uh-huh.”
We walk into the subway station, and it’s too crowded to talk. Everyone is coming home from work, and Gus and I can barely stay together going down the stairs and through the turnstile, much
less talk, until we get to our platform.
“The box?” he says.
“Right,” I continue, almost shouting. “It had part of ‘The Ugly Duckling’ on it. You know that story?”
“Yeah, sure. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that.”
“Right. But when I was looking at it, I was thinking that’s not what it’s really about. I mean, it’s not about beauty.”
“No?”
“Nope. Not at all. It’s really about the difference between who you really are and who you’re supposed to be, like, according to your family.”
“Yeah . . .”
“So this guy, he was born to a family of ducks, right? And he was supposed to be beautiful or cute or whatever, in a duckish way. Everyone expects him to be. But he’s not, so they’re disappointed in him.”
“Until he finds out he’s a swan.”
“Right. But he still can’t hang out with his family. He has to get away from the other ducks and be beautiful among swans. It’s just like us, like everyone.”
Our train comes and we step on, squeeze together against a pole, and I keep talking, loud, right into Gus’s ear.
“My mom wants me to be pretty and well dressed in this really conservative, pale-pink way. She expects me to be, because she is. Like the ducks. She thinks I’m wrong because I’m not a duck. Your dad thinks how you look is cool, but he thinks it’s because you’re an artist. A duck. But you’ve got a swan Mohawk, not a duck Mohawk.”
Gus grins at me, huge dimples in both cheeks. He’s about to start laughing.
“I’m serious. Let me finish.”
He nods, undoes his smile.
“All of us, you and me and all our friends, are swans. We’re beautiful or special or whatever when we’re together, but not in the way our families want us to be. They can’t see it, because they think we’re supposed to be like them. That’s what the story’s about.”
We crawl off the train and up three flights of stairs to the street.
“So by your theory,” Gus says, “our parents think we’re ugly ducklings; our friends know we’re beautiful swans.”
“Exactly.”
We turn onto my block and I walk more slowly, scraping my shoes along the sidewalk.
There’s a woman standing on my front stoop, right under the halo of the porch light. I drag my feet slower, but she still gets closer. Her back is straight, a brown scarf matches her shoes, suitcase at her feet.
Swan. My mother is beautiful. A swan. Which makes me not. Either.
She sees me, furrows her carefully groomed eyebrows, tilts her head forward a bit farther to be sure it really is her daughter coming toward her.
I’m colder now inside my body than out. It’s cold in my stomach; cold blood pumps from my heart. I squeeze Gus’s hand tight, stop walking. Stand still.
“What?” Gus strokes the back of my hand with his thumb, doesn’t try to loosen my grip.
Breathless, I open my mouth and close it again. I look at the sidewalk: grainy gray cement, not smooth.
“My mother,” I whisper to the sidewalk, loosening my fingers but not letting go. “Over there.”
Gus draws in his breath. “Oh.”
I step forward. Lift my right foot, place it down, left foot up, down. Again. Eyes on my shoelaces, on the cracked, bumpy sidewalk. I stop when the stairs up to my front door are at my toes. Gus’s left foot stops against my right. Our four Doc Martens make parallel lines, black, black, silver, silver. I raise my head.
She holds a hand against her cheek, leather glove against her pink skin, blond hair falling gracefully across the leather. Eyes blue like mine, peeking over her smooth brown fingers. They pierce into me, question, greet, scold, soothe.
“Darling.”
“Mom.”
Gus lets go of my hand.
Then my mom walks down the steps and reaches her arm out to hug me. I let her, and I feel Gus step away from me, giving her room. Briefly, I put my arms around her. A small squeeze to counter the big one she’s giving me.
Then, gently, I push her away.
“Lisa, honey, look at you.” Her voice soft, sad. “You don’t look like you anymore.”
“I do,” I say. “I look just like me.” All the fear drains out of me at the sound of my own voice. It’s like the rush of strength I felt when Carrie put in my nose ring. I am sure now. Sure that this is the important part. Not shocking my mother or being beautiful—duck beautiful or swan beautiful. I reach behind me for Gus’s hand. I can’t see him, but I know he’ll be there. And he is, fingers twisting around mine, no gloves in the way, just skin.
“This is what I look like, Mom.”
J. James Keels
I got hair on my chest,
I look good without a shirt . . .
And I’m goin’ out west
Where they’ll appreciate me.
—Tom Waits, “Goin’ out West”
I was nicknamed Ape the first day of ninth grade, in the locker room.
The showers were lined up in a row, shooting out scalding water. I wore a white T-shirt, and hairs poked out like tiny black quills. I passed stall after stall, each shower with a boy, herded in like cattle, under its gallows nozzle. I walked for an eternity, until I reached the end of the row, turned the faucet, and stepped into the spray. Praying no one would notice. Please God, I pleaded, don’t let them see me. I gazed at the empty lockers through the dense steam; everything seemed so far away.
Closing my eyes, I stood with my back to the others. I curled into myself, a sort of standing fetal position. My wet T-shirt clung to me; the white cotton revealed a dark pelt underneath. I felt the wet hair on my back, like a thin hump. I sensed their eyes on me, each set adding weight until I wanted to crumple to the ground from the pressure. I turned around and found only one set of eyes, staring right into mine.
Jason Keller, all-star quarterback, pointed and uttered his historic words—words that would follow me into my sophomore year.
Look at the Ape!
I am fully dressed, yet I stretch out on my back, on top of the already-made covers. Rolling onto my side, I look at the mirror on the bureau. My bushy hair hides sleep-deprived eyes. I look like a sideshow carny: Ford, the Ape-Faced Boy—fifty cents for a gander!
“It’s time, Ford,” I mutter into my pillow.
Ford Gordon. It sounds terrible—even I hate saying it. All the hard “o’s” and everything. I was named after the car manufacturer. I wish my mom had been fooling, but my name is for real. Long story short, my grandfather strong-armed her in the delivery room.
“At least give your son a fighting chance. Don’t give him a Greek name.” So Ford it was—as American as apple pie. Ford Gordon. My name is based on a myth. American cars aren’t even made in America anymore. Nothing is.
Nannu had already renounced his last name in favor of melting-pot anonymity. He told me once, slouching in the doorway to the kitchen, that Ellis Island had that effect on a lot of people back then.
I’ve called my grandfather Nannu ever since I was a kid. It doesn’t do justice to how fierce he was. He came to Boston from the old country, before the war. Some people hated Greeks back then. Nannu struggled to feed his family, since no one wanted to hire him. Grandma’s family wouldn’t help either. Being Irish, they were in a better position—they had been here longer. But they never approved of Nannu, who would take any work he could find—construction and carpentry, mostly. Sometimes cleaning toilets. He never made much of himself, at least compared to Henry Ford, but those of us who loved him felt differently.
“Breakfast, Ford!”
“Down in a sec!” I yell back.
I hear Boston in my voice. People notice my accent when I’m caught off guard, irritated, or half asleep, like I am now. I carefully trained myself to be rid of it. Now I speak a perfect California tongue, flavorless as tap water. Here in Sacramento, people converse with perfectly blended uniformity, as similar as the pastel tract homes we live in.
“Morning, honey,” she says, holding a cell phone away from her ear. She stuffs papers into her briefcase with lightning speed. A mass of hair, recently bleached, frames her olive features.
I nod and grab breakfast. The toast is a little burnt, and all the windows are open to prevent the smoke alarm from screaming bloody murder. I smear apricot jam over the blackened square. It’s pretty much inedible, so I throw a banana in my backpack for later.
Mom says “uh-huh” into her phone several times and pulls it away to say, “You look tired. Sleep OK?”
I nod.
She gets back to her call. “No, I’m listening,” she says. “See you then.” She hangs up. “Well”—she kisses my cheek—“I’m off.” She gives me the once-over. “Is that what you’re wearing to school?” She takes the last swig of her latte and blots her lipstick with a tissue.
“Yeah.” I look down at my T-shirt and track pants. Everyone at school wears “ghetto.” It’s the “in” thing. “Why not?”
“Nothing.” She checks her watch. “Would you get my dry cleaning on the way home? I have a client tomorrow.”
I nod. I don’t know Mom anymore. As soon as we moved west after the divorce, she landed her job at the ad agency and bought all new clothes. “For a new me,” she had declared after a trip to Talbots. She’s become like those women I used to make fun of at the mall. Gone is the Boston Mom who’d shop at thrift stores and make roast lamb. Now it’s all about gourmet coffee, and she even wears blazers on the weekend. Linen, she assured me, is casual.
“See you tonight, then.” She kisses my forehead.
“Yeah, see ya,” I reply.
Going with Mom after the divorce was like my own Ellis Island. It was hard to leave Dad; the look on his face when we drove away made my gut sink. I felt like a traitor. Now our regular summer visits—his part of the custody agreement—are pretty strained. He dates now, women with names like Amber and Kim. He slugs my arm and asks if I’m trying out for any sports teams. We eat burgers and fries and channel-surf. I love him and all, but jeez—Mom was headed to California!
I stand in the quad between fifth and sixth periods. She passes by me on the way to her locker, and I purr her name, a nearly audible whisper. Helena. She is my dream woman, though she doesn’t know that I exist.