Gawky

by Margot Leitman

  “Yeah, of course, it’s no big deal. I’ll see you then.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Good-bye, then, Margot.”

  It was a weird call, and it seemed overdramatic. Well, at least he cared.

  But the weirdness continued. At school the next day, a lot of people welcomed me with hugs instead of ignoring my presence as usual. All through the day, people seemed to be speaking to me more slowly and, strangely, more loudly as well. I sort of enjoyed the kind attention, though it felt as if something was up and I should probably figure out what. Finally, I got to seventh period, my class with Derek. He had saved me a seat next to him.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked as I sat down, making very sincere eye contact with me as if to say, I know what’s really going on.

  “Fine,” I said. “I had some spinach last night and took my iron pills. I should be on the mend.”

  Derek looked confused. “When do you start the real treatment?”

  “That is the real treatment.”

  “No, I mean . . .,” Derek leaned in real closely and whispered, “the hospital treatments.”

  “Why would I go to the hospital?” I asked, now super confused.

  “Because you have leukemia,” said Derek, looking around the room for eavesdroppers as he said the word leukemia.

  “What?” I said, practically shouting. The rest of the students turned around and stared at us. “I don’t have leukemia. I said I had anemia. It’s a minor problem, an iron deficiency. Did you tell the whole school I have leukemia? Is that why everyone is being so nice to me today?”

  I looked around and a few of the other students mumbled yes and nodded their heads.

  “Derek, are you serious?”

  Derek stared at me, silent. Clearly he had no idea what to say. Then he burst into hysterics. “I am so sorry, Margs,” he said through laughter.

  I wanted to stay mad at him for creating unnecessary drama, but I couldn’t help the fact that I’d loved the attention I’d received all day. How could I stay mad at Derek? He was my accomplice to many a fake illness. Now he had bestowed me with the Cadillac of fake illnesses. Watching him crack up, I couldn’t keep a straight face. I started laughing too.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, and I’ll try to clear up the rumor . . .”

  I controlled my urge to tell him to wait a few more days so I could milk the schoolwide sympathy. Instead I said sarcastically, “Yes, the rumor, the one about me being terminally ill? That rumor?”

  “Yes,” Derek laughed. “That rumor. I’ll try to clear it up.”

  I shook my head at him as we went back to our studies. I did like the way people treated me that day, but I didn’t like that it was because they thought I was really, really sick. But just as the rumor died down, lucky for me, I got mono and got to miss an entire month of school.

  Mononucleosis, also known as “the kissing disease,” was the be-all, end-all of high-school illnesses to get. I got it from being run-down, but no one needed to know that. Everyone would assume I had kissed someone to get it and would be speculating about who it was! Yes, I had kissed John in Pennsylvania, but no one at school, not that anyone needed to know that either. My rep was ready for some rumors about whom I had kissed. I hoped in my absence classmates would be too distracted by solving the puzzle of my secret love life to finish that stupid homecoming float. Even better than that was how bad everyone felt for me. I reveled in pretending to be asleep on the couch while my mother stroked my head, saying things like, “Poor thing, she doesn’t know how sick she is.” And, the best part was, the doctors had to do a massive amount of blood tests on me while I was sick, which put a halt to my assuredness that I had contracted AIDS that fateful weekend when I came into contact with a genital at Jackie Angel’s house. To add to the awesomeness of being AIDS-free, rumored to have been kissing someone, and having my mom feel sorry for me, Amy Fisher had just shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face, and I got to watch all three made-for-TV movies about the scandal. We’re talking The Amy Fisher Story starring Drew Barrymore, Casualties of Love: The “Long Island Lolita” Story starring Alyssa Milano, and Lethal Lolita starring some other chick. Each one was more brilliant than the next, and it saddened me to know that one day this scandal would die down. What I didn’t know is that just around the corner Tonya Harding would bash in Nancy Kerrigan’s knee and I would be able to get my tabloid fix once again.

  Another great thing about mono was that the kids at school actually took a break from purposefully mispronouncing my name as “Maggot” and instead began worrying about my health. Sometimes, because I lived so close to my high school (just a quick trip through that skuzzy path), kids would stop by after school to see how I was feeling. Of course, nobody cool like Chad Decker would come. I was mostly visited by kids like Larry—the lone senior in my otherwise all-freshman French 101 class. But still, people actually felt sooo sorry for me. I went from being visible only when I was being teased to the person people were rallying for to get back on her feet. Life was pretty good.

  When I returned to school I was about five-foot-nine and down to 120 pounds from my illness. I borrowed my father’s red sweater, to match my red lace Betsey Johnson tights (bought on clearance at Macy’s), and wore it with a black skirt and black combat boots. I still wasn’t back to my full strength, so I hoped that red (which I read in Glamour magazine was a “power color”) would make me look less gaunt and sick. I was ready to get back to life. The timing couldn’t have been better. I was just turning an age when being a giant girl was considered Amazonian and sexy. After six years of feeling too tall, at fourteen it was suddenly sort of okay to have some height. At school, Frankie Patucci, the only out-of-the-closet person at my school, told me I looked like model Kristen McMenamy. I wasn’t sure if I actually resembled her or if he was just comparing me to a model due to my mono-induced weight loss. Either way, I took it as a compliment, even though I had no idea who Kristen McMenamy was. She wasn’t included with the majorly big-time fashion models of the time: Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Naomi Campbell. But if she was a model, she had to be tall, thin, and beautiful, so I was flattered nonetheless and imagined one day coming into my own enough to walk a runway like my doppelganger Kristen. For the first time I felt redemption for all the awkwardness my size had caused me. But then I read an article about Kristen McMenamy in a magazine in my orthodontist’s office, which said she was “known for her unconventional, androgynous gender identity.” Basically she was famous for looking like a dude. So much for flattery. I’ve got news for you, Frankie Patucci, I seethed silently. No tall girl wants to be told she looks like the model that looks like a man. Next time go for the generic Claudia Schiffer if you want to compliment a hulking blonde woman.

  Meanwhile, my mom was a little on my case at home regarding my fashion choices, which she famously referred to as “free spirited” to my middle school principal. A week after I started working at a low-budget drugstore on Main Street, I went to a teacher awards dinner for my mom at an Italian restaurant about twenty minutes away, wearing black-and-white-striped thigh-highs, a baggy black sheath, and “Coffee Bean”– colored Revlon lipstick. I felt like the belle of the ball in my bedroom, but when we got to the event, my mother had a different opinion.

  “Margot, please,” she hissed in a volume just short of a yell, finally taking a break from studying her acceptance speech to notice my outfit. “I can’t believe you’re wearing those lesbian shoes to my big night.”

  I looked down at my shoes. I always donned a pair of authentic combat boots, purchased at the army/navy store, to complete my teenage antiestablishment look.

  She hissed some more. “You’re tall already, and those clunkers add an extra inch and a half. You’d have a lot easier time at school if you wore cute flats like I did.”

  Now I knew I was in for it. Here it comes.

  “I would never have been crowned runner-up for Snow Queen if I shopped at the army/navy.”

&nb
sp; I was about to explain for the eightieth time that I had no interest in ever being crowned anything as mainstream as Snow Queen, when I was cornered by a stout yenta just dying to know the pleasures of being tall.

  “Oh, you must be Pam’s daughta. You’re so tawl, just like her. Do you play basketball?”

  “No.”

  “Volleyball? Beach volleyball. You couldn’t live in a more perfect area to play beach volleyball.”

  “I don’t play volleyball. I’m not good at sports.”

  “Oh, well then, do you model? You should!”

  “I can’t model, I’m uncoordinated.” And apparently I resemble a woman who looks like a man, I didn’t tell her. “And also there’s this problem.” I showed the yenta the mouthful of baby teeth behind my recently adhered braces. It had just been determined that I was unable to produce adult teeth for some of my pearly whites. Lucky for me all the missing teeth were located right in the front of my mouth, and for the meantime I still had the baby teeth. Meaning that when I smiled, I resembled a killer whale. The orthodontist decided braces were the best option to move my non-baby teeth into the right places so we could eventually pull the baby teeth and one day implant permanent fake adult teeth. This lethal combination of braces/baby teeth and with a few crooked adult teeth was enough to convince her that my height served me no real advantage. You can’t be a model if you look like an orca. She seemed disappointed, and I understood. I wasn’t so happy about it either. After all, right when I became old enough to no longer be viewed in the same category as André the Giant, I got my braces on as everyone else was getting them off. I couldn’t win.

  My dental defect was my deep dark secret in high school—as if being asked repeatedly by Chad Decker if tall girls also had huge vaginas wasn’t enough. Plus, I’d finally been freed from the fear that I had AIDS from my encounter with a genital in Pennsylvania, and now my orthodontist refused to switch gloves between patients. I’d lie in his squeaky chair in the middle of a row of miserable, brace-faced teens, and watch effeminate Dr. Clott go from patient to patient wearing the same bloodstained gloves. I’d learned in health class that we were extremely likely to get AIDS from a dentist, and if I was the next statistic, I knew Dr. Clott himself would be solely responsible.

  At least he gave me choices for the style of braces I’d wear. I opted for the “clear” braces, enamel-colored squares adhered to the front of my teeth with the optional neon rubber bands. In elementary and middle school it was the cool thing to get red- and green-colored bands around Christmastime, orange and black for Halloween . . . you get the gist. Nothing says Happy Easter like cheese-stained pastel rubber bands in an acne-faced teen’s mouth. I’m sure that’s exactly how Jesus would have wanted his resurrection observed. I opted for the “tooth-colored” rubber bands, which yellowed as soon as they hit the air. My teeth looked like the fangs of a chain-smoking vampire.

  By my sophomore year, I was so unfortunate-looking—tall, gangly, braces, baby teeth—that I faked sick on picture day. I wanted no proof that I ever looked or felt like this, no preservation of this memory for years to come. Strangely, when the yearbook came out, all the other missing people were listed as “not pictured,” except for me. In place of my photo was just a blank space. No name, nothing. It was as if I didn’t even exist.

  When I finally got my braces off during sophomore year, there was no time to celebrate, because they then ripped out the baby teeth and gave me a retainer with removable teeth on it. This was another step on the way to my permanent fake adult teeth. In order to eat, as with any other retainer, I would have to take out my front teeth—only, of course, after making very sure I was alone. This worked fine at home, but in the cafeteria, surrounded by upperclassmen discussing dieting and Boone’s Farm strawberry-flavored wine products, I attempted cold grilled cheese on pumpernickel with my retainer still in, allowing the food to rot up there for sixth through eighth period. It was more important to have bad breath and be mistaken for normal than to let anyone know I was a giant girl in lesbian shoes with missing teeth. And despite having to endure history class with cream cheese stuck to the roof of my mouth, for the most part it worked.

  However, I would take the retainer out when I ate dinner at the drugstore where I now worked. Here I toiled alone at the back lottery counter, where I sold scratch-offs and Pall Malls to loyal local customers such as Squirrel, the town pimp. I always ate between 8:00 and 9:00 PM, right before we closed and I knew no customers were coming in. The pharmacist worked the front counter and was too busy to notice the toothless teenager chowing down in between selling losing lottery tickets. The entire shift I looked forward to the eggplant parm sub from Vito’s Pizza next door, the hottest hangout in town. Vito’s wasn’t only a pizza place; it also doubled as a marijuana delivery service. The pizza department was run by two smokin’ Italian brothers named Vito and Vinnie. The pot department was run by a few thugs from school who made no attempt to be inconspicuous. I didn’t think much of it. Considering that just that year ago a girl had given birth in the school nurse’s office, and that kid in my homeroom had been arrested for murder, I figured Vito and Vinnie’s pot/pizza place was the least of this town’s problems.

  So nobody seemed to mind the fact that Vito and Vinnie were also running a marijuana ring out of their pizza parlor. They were still legitimately running a pizza business anyway, so who cared? Every night, for a year of high school, I would place my order, then put on a coat of tinted Blistex before Vito or Vinnie stopped in. Even though Vito and Vinnie weren’t my type—for one thing they were both under five-foot-eight—they had great smiles and didn’t know what a freak I was at school. It was all that kept me going, a smile from a cute Italian drug-dealing brother, right before I took my teeth out to eat dinner alone at the drugstore lottery counter, five nights a week, longing for my days at camp.

  One particular night, Vinnie brought me over the usual eggplant parm sub, hold the weed. As usual, I made sure the coast was clear, popped out my food-crusted moldy retainer with three fake teeth on it, and took a gummy bite. Just then, Cecelia Rios, the hot, big-boobed cheerleader from my school, came up to the counter. How could I have missed her? Shit! Now, towering over her with my retainer in my hand, it was too late to put it back in. I tried to play it cool, clenching my saliva-ridden, halitosis-stanked retainer with falsies and smiling at her without opening my mouth. I had gotten really good at the tooth-free smile lately.

  If Cecelia finds out I have a dental birth defect, my future is fucked. I’ll end up working for the town pimp Squirrel and giving birth in the nurse’s office.

  “Hey, Cecelia, how’s it going?” I said, speaking as if I’d been in a horrible car accident and my jaw was wired shut.

  “Good, Margot,” she said, looking at me suspiciously, her back arched, huge breasts sitting pertly under her size-small MATAWAN HUSKIES sweatshirt.

  “Just this?” I asked, desperately hoping that she was buying something embarrassing like Imodium A-D or a pregnancy test, so when she told everyone I had no teeth at least I could retaliate by saying, “Well, she’s knocked up and has runny poops.” But no, she was just purchasing a greeting card.

  As I rang up her card, clenching my teeth in my right hand, I thought, The gig is up. She’s going to know, you’ve got to pop your teeth in quickly before she figures it out. Just pop in your teeth, give her the change, end the transaction, and she’ll be none the wiser.

  My heart was racing. My whole life could come crashing down at this very moment. If I didn’t do something fast, Cecelia would see that I was toothless and tell everyone at school, including Chad Decker. He would now have the fact that I am without teeth to add to the relentless cafeteria Gulf War protest teasing and ruthless claims that I have a huge vagina. Word of this would spread faster than Teresa Carimonico’s pregnancy and the reveal of Milli Vanilli’s lip-synching combined.

  I was shaking, and the moment seemed to last an eternity. Cecelia Rios was staring at me strangely, eager to ge
t home and retrieve her phone messages from various hot guys or do whatever it was popular people did. It was time to make a move.

  I took a deep breath, faced Cecelia, threw all her change in my mouth, and handed Cecelia Rios my fake teeth.

  As soon as it happened, I knew I was dead. I stared in horror at Cecelia as she looked down at the fistful of falsies I’d handed her. Utter repulsion registered on her face a full beat before she could speak.

  “Ugh, ugh!” she gasped, disgusted. I couldn’t blame her. I was pretty grossed out, too, and they were mine.

  Still, I couldn’t believe it. I had mixed up what was in each hand. I actually handed the captain of the cheerleading squad my teeth. I had put in her hand the single most prominent reason why I would never, ever be cool. I had to act fast or this would only get worse. There was no time to strategize, so I did the only thing I could: I snatched back my teeth, spit the 93¢ out into her hand, popped in my fake teeth, and said, “Thanks, Cecelia!” with a smile.

  “Whatever,” said Cecelia, horrified, and she shook her head, her perfectly conditioned hair swinging as if it were in a Pantene commercial, and walked out the rickety door.

  It wasn’t until then that I completely freaked out. She was going to tell everyone! I was absolutely positively never, ever, ever going to be cool! How would I be able to go to school the next day? I imagined it spreading like wildfire that I had a dental defect, that I had dentures at fourteen, and that I was a humongous freak. That I would be selling lottery tickets and Pall Malls to the town pimp for the rest of my life. That no one should ever love me and that this would forever be my life: the pharmacy, eggplant parms from Vinnie or Vito, and my vague resemblance to a she-male. I was nothing.

  I tried to stay home sick the next day, but having just faked sick from the school photo, my mom was on to me and made me go (after my morning tea and biscuit, of course). I arrived at school and tried to blend into the crowd—which was difficult being almost five-foot-ten and owning nothing but crushed velvet attire. But to my surprise, nothing happened. Beyond the usual purposeful mispronunciation of my name as “Maggot” and being told I looked like “Girl Eric Clapton,” no one said a word about my teeth. Cecelia must be absent today, I thought.