The fencing instructor was waiting for us in a large wood-paneled room, with horizontal lines on the floor and a coil of rope and bladed weapons on the wall. A row of masks lined a long table. It looked like an executioner’s chamber and I was beginning to have second thoughts. The instructor, who had bright-blue eyes and curly blond hair, informed us that he was training for the Olympic team. My mother made it clear that competing in the Olympics wasn’t my goal and that she’d be happy if I could just walk properly. “She has problems with her feet,” she explained. “They don’t support her body.”
That I was standing upright temporarily confused him, but he recovered enough to ask, “Does she have balance issues? That might be a problem with fencing.”
“She doesn’t have balance problems—yet,” my mother said. “It’s just that her feet don’t work and fencing is supposed to correct that.”
“Who told you that?” he asked.
“My podiatrist,” my mother said. “He’s also a fencer.”
I suspected he’d never received a referral from a fencing podiatrist before, and despite the doctor’s directive, he was nervous about working with me. What if I lost my balance and fell on my sword? He’d be disqualified from the Olympics and put on trial for negligent homicide all because I wanted to take fencing lessons. Reluctantly, he walked me down to the far end of the room to show me the three weapons used in competition: the foil, sabre, and épée. “Here’s a mask,” he said. “You can try it on if you want.” It looked like something a beekeeper might wear and smelled of perspiration and something else, something vaguely familiar. He began to explain how the weapons differed and which parts of the body they were allowed to target—the torso, neck, and groin. He gave me a sabre, holding his hand tightly over mine to prevent any accidents. The smelly mask was really getting to me, and I recognized the odor: Tyer Rubber. It was coming from my new Converse sneakers.
“I think I’m a little dizzy,” I said.
“Is it your balance issues?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
He helped me take off the mask, and putting an arm around my waist, he walked me back to my mother.
“I don’t know what kind of podiatrist you’re seeing,” he said, “but giving a dizzy girl fencing lessons is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. The doctor should have his medical license revoked.” He patted me on the shoulder and wished me good luck.
“What was that all about?” my mother asked in the car.
I shrugged. “I don’t think fencing is for me.”
“I didn’t think so. You could kill yourself, and then where would you be?”
“Dead, I guess.”
“Maybe we should look into orthotics?”
I felt guilty that she’d canceled her appointment with Mrs. Godfrey when she had an affair to attend. I pictured her standing around in her stilettos, trying to make small talk, while Frivolous Fawn died a slow invisible death on top of her head. How bad could orthotics be?
“Yeah,” I said, “I think I need them.”
“Good, that’s settled.” She was beaming. “I’ll call the foot doctor first thing Monday morning.”
4
Wedgies
Most cultures have coming-of-age ceremonies that begin when a boy or girl reaches puberty. Young Hamar boys of Ethiopia prove their manhood by running four times over the backs of their cattle, while South American girls of the Tikuna tribe are painted black and made to sing, dance, and jump over fires for several days. While these may strike Westerners as strange, a Tikuna girl transported to America might assume that our coming-of-age ritual involved walking on two sharp objects wrapped in a slaughtered cow.
I recently attended the confirmation of two nieces who live in Greenwich, Connecticut, and also accompanied the younger one to a friend’s bat mitzvah. Dozens of young girls spilled out of SUVs wearing what appeared to be their mother’s high heels. I spotted a pair of Louboutins. Around the same time, a friend who lives in Manhattan complained that her thirteen-year-old insisted that she “needed” four-inch heels for all the parties she was attending. My friend, who doesn’t even own heels, ultimately gave in. In case I didn’t believe what the shoes looked like, she sent me a picture. They were extraordinary in their scale and complexity and would have served her daughter well as a pint-size dominatrix, if she hadn’t nearly fallen flat on her face as she toppled into the car at the end of the evening.
Even before Suri Cruise set off the dubious trend when she was photographed, at the age of three, in peep-toe silver heels, privileged children in the seventeenth century wore high heels to emulate their parents. Back then, however, there weren’t as many designers to pounce on the burgeoning kiddie market, such as Michael Kors, with his three-inch “silver bandage style” espadrilles, and Kenneth Cole, who created a whole line of sophisticated heels, including a Dance Away dress shoe with a “girly glam” bow. My youngest sister, Nancy, who was born when my mother was forty-two, also loves shoes and for Christmas one year, she gave her seven-year-old daughter, Isabel, Christian Louboutin’s special edition Barbie Shoe Collection. The shoes came with Louboutin’s signature red soles and miniature shoe bags and boxes. “At least Isabel can’t fit into them,” Nancy said, “and Barbie’s feet are already permanently arched so she won’t suffer any major foot injuries.”
“And she’s a doll.”
“That too.”
An article in The New York Times, citing the “Mini-Me” trend, quoted a podiatrist who said that toddlers and preteens, with their softer bones and lack of coordination skills, were more likely to injure their feet and ankles. When the article was posted on Facebook, dozens of mothers decried the fashion, lamenting how young girls were being sexualized. But high heels have always functioned as a symbolic passport to the mysterious adult world of escalating adventures.
When I was confirmed in 1963, the desired shoe was the wedgie, which had a small heel that resembled a Chunky bar, and a squared-off toe. It was the only shoe we were allowed to wear for our debut as adult Christians and, as a result, it achieved icon status far beyond its innocuous style. Though the nuns at St. Augustine’s School varied in age and temperament, they were of one mind when it came to fashion. We didn’t have uniforms until seventh grade, so we were free to exercise our best judgment as long as our sartorial choices didn’t involve excessive flesh or the flaunting of undergarments. As far as our shoes went, we’d been operating under the flats-only rule since kindergarten. If we dared show up in even the most microscopic heel, we’d be labeled a “brazen hussy” and sent to Sister Superior’s office.
One of my classmates, Bridget, who lived near Tyer Rubber, was always in trouble for footwear violations. She had numerous older sisters, who passed along their hand-me-downs, including shoes that looked suspiciously like slippers. I couldn’t escape Bridget. The nuns lined up everybody according to height, and since we were among the tallest girls, we wound up spending far too much time together. Bridget had a cavity in her front tooth that first appeared in third grade, and I’d watched it grow every year until it assumed the size of a sesame seed. With so many children in the family, I guess it was hard for her parents to keep up with everybody’s teeth, especially the loose baby ones. Bridget was the first person to tell me there wasn’t a tooth fairy, and when I said I didn’t believe it, she called me a stupid dodo. I retaliated by telling her that I’d been born with twelve toes.
“I’ve seen worse.” She shrugged.
For the past six months, we’d all been hearing rumors of “the Talk.” Not having older sisters, I asked Bridget to fill me in while we lined up for a fire drill. “It’s about the Curse,” she said matter-of-factly. Seeing my blank face, she put it more bluntly: “It’s about blood. Lots and lots of it.” I stared at her tooth, my head spinning. Suddenly, her cavity had turned into the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, and I stepped back to avoid tumbling down it.
A few days later, when my mother sat down on the edge of my bed, I was prepared for the worst.
“Patricia, you’re twelve now,” she began. “In eight months, you’ll be . . .”
“What?—Dead?”
“No, not dead. Why do you have to be so dramatic about everything? You’ll be thirteen. A teenager. Almost a woman. So I think it’s time you learned a little something about meninstration.” My mother occasionally mangled words, particularly ones she didn’t want to pronounce.
“Men! In Stration?” I cried. “Who are these men? Members of the mob?” Was it too late to reconsider fencing?
My mother handed me a pink booklet with a picture of a girl smelling a daisy on the cover. “If you want more information, you can read this, but don’t discuss it with anybody. It’s personal and private.”
After she left, I immediately delved into The Voyage: Journey of an Egg. I was desperate to learn how to deal with the “men,” but it was all about eggs, my eggs, and their bold journey down my fallopian tubes. If one didn’t get “fertilized,” it was shed along with the lining of my uterus, “thereby producing menstrual discharge.”
Blood!
For some odd reason, the girl in the booklet didn’t seem to mind having her “friend” visit every month. I figured she must have been awfully hard up for companions. There was a list of “things to avoid,” such as “no swimming.” It hardly seemed fair that while your eggs were on a voyage, slipping and sliding down your fallopian tubes, you were marooned on land with a bulky napkin strapped between your legs.
Several weeks later, Sister Superior descended from her office to deliver another “talk.” She rarely appeared unless it was for something extremely important, such as reminding us that one of Priscilla Lane’s movies was going to be on TV, or shaking us down for money to assist the Maryknoll missionaries. We all stood up and delivered the standard greeting: “How are you today, Sister Superior?” to which she’d answer, “Very well, class. Now take your seats.” Physically, she wasn’t an imposing woman. With her pale skin and clear-framed eyeglasses, she was practically see-through, but despite her short stature and watery face, she was a match for any boy in school. If brutal and aggressive cheek pinching qualified as a martial art, she’d have been a grand master.
After sending the boys to the adjacent cloakroom, where they pretended to hang themselves on the coat hooks, she passed out prayer cards with a picture of Maria Goretti on the front. Maria Goretti was the patron saint of teenage girls, and since we were fast approaching adolescence, Sister Superior wanted to share her story with us. From my experience, these stories were usually pretty gruesome, which is one reason why popes favored red shoes. They evoked the blood of Christian martyrs.
Sister Superior stared at us with her moist yellow eyes. “When Maria was twelve, she attracted the unwanted attention of a male neighbor on the Feast of the Most Precious Blood,” she explained. “Maria was in her house, sewing garments for her family. The neighbor tried to strangle her, but Maria fought back. So he held a knife to her throat and cried, “Submit or die!” Maria responded, “Death but not sin!” and he became so angry he stabbed her. Not once, not twice, but a total of fourteen times.”
I hoped the story would take a more positive turn, but since people didn’t achieve sainthood without dying, I realized it didn’t look good for poor Maria.
“Miraculously, she lived for the next twenty hours,” Sister Superior said. “During that time, she forgave her murderer. He was so moved by her compassion, he eventually wound up in a monastery, where he worked as a receptionist.
“So what is the moral of this story, girls?” she asked.
All forty of us were completely stumped. Sister Superior waited impatiently until Bridget raised her hand and stood up.
“The moral is you don’t have to kill someone to become a receptionist,” she said. “One of my sisters has that job and she didn’t even graduate from high school.”
“Sit down! Now, obviously you girls haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. Death but not sin—that’s the moral. And as you prepare for your confirmation, I expect you to live by that rule.”
Realizing that I didn’t have the right temperament to become a martyr, my mother thought it was important for me to learn ballroom dancing in order to eventually attract a husband. The November Club was the place for boys and girls on the cusp of puberty to grasp the essentials of civilized living. These included the waltz, the foxtrot, and “small talk.” The November Club had started out in the late 1800s as a women’s club, the first in New England to have its own separate building, in this case a dark and spooky Shingle-style house near Phillips Academy. Dancing and etiquette lessons were provided on Tuesday afternoons. Boys had to wear jackets and ties, girls white gloves and their best Sunday dresses and shoes. I chose black patent-leather flats, even though the nuns had told us to avoid shoes with shiny surfaces because they reflected your underpants and boys could see right up your dress. It sounded ridiculous and I didn’t buy it, though I hoped I wouldn’t find out later that Maria Goretti favored patent leather.
The routine never varied. The boys sat on one side of the room, the girls on the other. At some point, an ancient woman, who was probably in her fifties, made us go through a receiving line so we could introduce ourselves to our volunteer “hosts.” As we lined up, boy-girl-boy-girl, I wound up next to the cutest boy in the room. His name was Nathan, and his father taught at Phillips and had done something heroic, like survive multiple torpedo attacks during World War II or climb Mount Everest. Nathan oozed self-confidence and approached the receiving line as if he’d been doing it all his life. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Watson,” he said. “I’d like to present my friend, Miss Patricia Morrisroe.” Holding out my white-gloved hand, I temporarily became tongue-tied and kept staring down at Mrs. Watson’s shoes. They were decorated with ladybugs. Finally, I opened my mouth. I’d recently been listening to the cast album of My Fair Lady—Julie Andrews was my idol—and in my best Henry Higgins diction, I managed to say, “How kind of you to let me come.”
“Are you British, dear?” Mrs. Watson asked.
“My grandmother was born in London.”
Since we’d just learned that discussing the weather was a great icebreaker, I mentioned that in “Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.”
“Oh, how nice,” she said. Nathan nudged me along, and we returned to our segregated spots. I tried not to stare at him, but he was adorable, with a long forelock that kept falling over one eye. I hoped he’d ask me to dance, but he made a beeline to a pretty girl with blond hair. I was left sitting on the sidelines with someone who’d broken her leg in a riding accident. She was small and cute, so if she’d been able to walk, I’m sure she’d have been dancing too.
Though it’s nice to be tall when you’re older, it’s a handicap when you’re towering above the majority of available partners. For the rest of the semester, I danced with other tall girls, or girls with premature acne, girls with weird hair, girls with thick eyeglasses, fat girls, skinny girls. We took turns leading so we wouldn’t alienate the boys even further when and if we ever got a chance to dance with them.
We progressed from the waltz to the foxtrot and then to the rhumba. One afternoon, as a special surprise, we even learned the Mexican hat dance. During the last class of the semester, when I’d all but written off the whole experience, Nathan asked me to dance. I was over the moon. He only came up to my shoulder, but I tried through my untested powers of mental telepathy to convince him that I was cute and petite. After we finished the foxtrot, I thanked him for the dance. As we were all leaving, I saw him huddled together with his friends and I waved good-bye—a bold move for me. Afterward, I heard him say, “What a scarecrow!”
When my mother came to pick me up, I started to cry and told her I hated the November Club and everything it represented.
“What
does it represent?” she asked. “The foxtrot? What’s so awful about that? We paid good money for you to learn how to dance, and now you’re hysterical? Really, Patricia.”
When I got home, I exiled my patent-leather flats to the inner reaches of my closet. They were no longer shoes but clumps of hay that could easily be made into a scarecrow whose purpose was to frighten away cute boys with impeccable manners. To this day, I still can’t foxtrot, or make small talk, but I do like patent leather.
Richard Cardinal Cushing, who had offered the invocation at President Kennedy’s inaugural, was set to preside at our confirmation, and we had spent hours practicing. He was required to give each confirmand a symbolic slap on the cheek as a reminder that we had to be strong in defense of our faith. The Cuban Missile Crisis had happened six months earlier and the nuns were obsessed with Castro. In case he showed up in Andover wearing battle fatigues and chomping on a cigar, we had our instructions. Even if he threatened to pull out our fingernails or tongues, we had to resist committing a sacrilegious act, such as spitting on the crucifix or stomping on Communion wafers. It was a test of our will, and like Maria Goretti, we could respond only one way: “Death—but not sin.”
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