Scrappy Little Nobody (2 page)

I continued. “I know Dan, but . . .” I leaned in. “He’s kind of weird.”

“Oooh.” She nodded her head in recognition. Being judgmental was really taking me places. She narrowed her eyes. “We won’t play with him.”
If you say so, Jessica! Your alpha energy is making me feel alive!

More kids got in the van and Jessica made her assessments swiftly. By the time we arrived, she had curated a small group of girls she deemed worthy and said, “We’re going to play together. We’re the cool kids club.”
Hold up, Jess—I’m in the cool kids club?
I was five years old, but I already knew that wasn’t right.
Just hang in there, Kendrick. Don’t mess this up!

The group decided we’d officially call ourselves the Cool Kids Club. Since kindergartners are so pressed for time, we decided to just use the initials. And since kindergartners are
excellent
at spelling, we called ourselves the KKK. When I proudly announced my new affiliation to my mother, she scrambled to explain that neither “Cool” nor “Club” starts with
K
, but I’d seen billboards for Kool cigarettes, so she wasn’t fooling me.

The next day, during outside playtime at the Y, Jessica walked straight up to Dan and yelled, “We’re not going to play with you!”
She stomped off dramatically and took the rest of the girls with her.

What the hell was that, Jessica? I said the kid was “kind of weird,” I didn’t say he dismembered cats. You were only supposed to avoid him long enough that I wouldn’t be caught in my lie!

Jessica became my first enemy. Like most enemies in my life, I hoped to punish her with passive-aggressive glances and silent—but passionate!—resentment. She retaliated by forgetting I existed. Ah, the moral victory.

First grade was when I realized I was small. I was the smallest, youngest-looking child in every group, no matter the situation. In fact, this is something to bear in mind as we go. Whatever age I am in a given story, subtract three to four years and that’s what I looked like.
^I

We were learning about outer space, and our teacher brought in a chart that told us what we would weigh on all the different planets. We were so excited to find out how crazy heavy we’d be on Jupiter and how crazy light we’d be on Pluto. My weight wasn’t listed. It became clear that I didn’t make the cut because there was no calculation for what I would weigh on Pluto. I
would weigh nothing. Less than nothing. I would drift into space.

Oh man. I wasn’t just the smallest one in the class; I was a freak. There was no metric for how deformed I was. It was one thing to be the Chihuahua in a group of Labradors; it was quite another to be the hamster.

That night I cried to my mother, who assured me that she had been small at my age, too.

Wow, that really doesn’t help me right now, Mom.
When I calmed down, I saw her point. She’d turned out fine. She wasn’t living in a special community for the physically repulsive, so I decided I could go back to school the next day.

Even adults thought I was younger than I was. This made me extra sensitive, and though they may have meant well, I became one of those little kids who didn’t enjoy grown-ups fucking with me.

One summer, a Russian wrestling team came through my hometown. My dad had been a wrestler in college, and I believe he was a bit starstruck. He took me to watch their first match, and after letting me play “imagination” under the bleachers for a few hours, he pushed me at the imposing coach, an absolute caricature of a man.

The coach eyed me and asked, “Vhat’s your name, little guirl?”

“Anna.”

“Ah. Anya!”

Foreigners
, I stewed.

“No.” I spoke more slowly this time. “Anna.”

“Yes, Anya!”

Oh, this motherfucker thinks this is cute
, I realized.
He thinks we’re playing a little game.

“It’s ANNA,” I said, and I put on my most fearsome face.

“Aw, Anya.” He reached down and ruffled my hair.

I snapped my head around to face my dad.
Are you going to let him get away with this? This is the name of your beloved mother—may she rest in peace—which means that this man, this Russki, is making a mockery of your flesh and blood twofold!

He noticed that I was on the verge of a tantrum and picked me up. “I think she’s a little tired.”
Oh, is that right?
And so I saw. I was going to have to fight and claw to be taken seriously in this life. And probably never quite succeed. I still try to be serious, but apathy has become a part of me now in a way that my six-year-old self couldn’t have foreseen. I’ve never been able to muster the righteous indignation of my elementary school years.

Back at school, I tried to embrace the smallest things in every category. Favorite instrument in the orchestra? The piccolo. Favorite mammal? The shrew. Favorite country? Monaco. And my favorite planet? Pluto. (Screw you, Neil deGrasse Tyson.)

Always being the smallest also gave me a specific role in life; it gave me an identity. Lining up by height? Excuse me while I give you a starting point. Gymnastics day in gym class? I’ll prepare myself to be thrown.

On one “family cleaning” day, my dad bought an extendable duster to clean under low tables, and I lost my mind because I
thought I no longer had a purpose in the family. He threw away the duster and went back to letting me do a mediocre job crawling under the furniture.

First grade led to other discoveries, too. I was small, I was loud, I had ratty hair, but I suspected something deeper was wrong. One day, I tried to articulate this suspicion to my mother.

“It’s like, it’s like I have a different heart. The other girls have one kind of heart, and I have a different kind.”

My mom was understandably confused. “Are you saying they’re mean?”

“No . . . I don’t know.”

Saying other kids were mean felt like I was saying I was more kind, which definitely wasn’t it—more anxious maybe, more sensitive. I guess all I was feeling was that I was different.

Sometimes I’ll be at work or a party and get that same feeling.
I am not like these people. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
And it comforts me to know that I felt that way as a child, too. Maybe that should make me feel worse, but it makes me calm and resolved. I’ve been prepared to be an outsider most of my life.

In fourth grade I managed to get a good thing going when I discovered the secret to female bonding: the sleepover. Six girls from school would come over to my house and we’d roll out sleeping bags in the spare bedroom above the garage. This became a regular thing, and for the first time I felt like I had a steady group of friends. Even if my attempts at social interaction
throughout the school week became awkward and tiresome, by Friday it was sleepover time again and all was forgiven.

One weekend I went out of town for a dance recital, and when I came back I was informed that a sleepover had taken place without me. Apparently, since my house hadn’t been an option, Tori had offered to host.

Tori wasn’t in the group, but she’d seen her opportunity to usurp me and she took it. I didn’t like Tori; Tori was mean. If I’d known what was good for me, I would have just shut up and accepted that we could alternate weekends. Maybe I’d even have to invite her over from now on, but that would be a small price to pay for true friendship. Sadly, my sense of justice would not allow me to make this sacrifice; I’d rather be right than happy. I reminded the girls that we, as a group, didn’t
like
Tori, that she was a bully. But no one listened.

The next day on the playground I was standing in line for the monkey bars, thinking about what I would say if I ever met the cast of
Boy Meets World
, and then I was on the ground. Fuzzy black stars appeared and dissolved in slow motion, and when my vision came back, I felt a choking sensation. I was being dragged across the gravel by the collar of my army jacket.

Tori!

I scratched and clawed at her, but she was big for our grade. She towed me across the playground and under the slide. When I was put on my feet, I stood in front of a tribunal of the sleepover gang, who were standing in over-the-top indignant poses.

The slide on this particular playground was flanked by a wooden climbing wall (a normal wall with an old rope on it),
so when you were underneath it you had a degree of privacy. Students had taken to scratching their initials into the backside of The Wall’s soft wood, which gave this dark corner of the playground a kind of menacing, Victorian-asylum quality. Something new was there. Haphazardly written in some kind of Magic Marker were the words
Mary D is a jerk
. In fact, as my eyes began to adjust, I saw that hastily scrawled insults about almost every girl in our group now adorned The Wall. Based on the manner in which I’d been summoned to this meeting, I knew what was coming.

I tried to protest. I didn’t do it! I was their friend! I mean,
“Mary D is a jerk
”? “
Amanda sucks
”? Why would I write a bunch of mean stuff about my friends?! Using such generic insults?!

I noticed how high the writing was placed and rushed toward The Wall to demonstrate that I couldn’t have done it! I wasn’t even tall enough! Surely they could see that! Once I started to reach my arm up, though, it looked like I would be able to make it if I got up on my toes. I made a big show of flailing my hand just beneath the writing but kept my heels firmly on the ground, as though I was the kind of person who couldn’t balance otherwise.

This was a setup. I suggested alternative suspects, I tried to look as outraged for my friends as they were themselves. I
knew
it was Tori; it was so obvious I couldn’t believe I’d even have to say it. But she was tall and I was outnumbered, so I wasn’t about to accuse her then and there.

Once we were back in the classroom and under the safety of adult supervision, I made the rounds to each girl. I whispered
that it
had
to be Tori, that she was trying to squeeze me out, that they were giving her exactly what she wanted! Sadly, by this time, they were enjoying their dramatic game of cold-shoulder too much. It would have spoiled their fun to stop hating me.

The next day I regrouped. Sure, I was starting to hate them right back, but I’d been wronged and this would not stand. I doubled down on the “too short” angle, took a ruler outside at recess, and recorded the results. The measurements were shoddy, but what my evidence lacked in accuracy I made up for in volume. That’s how you save a friendship: comprehensive documentation!

I also pointed out that defacing property was not in my nature. I’d read about the disappearing beaches in
National Geographic Kids
and my anxiety about the environment went through the roof, so I did
not
condone waste, littering, or “graffiti.” I even argued that the use of the word “suck” should have eliminated me from suspicion, because I was against swearing. (Oh, sweet, naive younger me.)

They would not be moved. The harder I tried to prove my innocence the more I revealed my true nature, and eventually their motivation for shunning me transformed. It became less about the alleged betrayal and more about their aversion to hyperactive little weirdos. They’d moved on from being angry and settled into just not liking me.

This is how supervillains are created.

I
. Except when I was born. My god, I was so fat. I almost killed my mother. And while that’s gross, it’s completely true. If we lived in a time before cesarean sections, she wouldn’t have survived. (I would also like to thank cesarean sections for sparing me the mental anguish of knowing I once passed through my mother’s vaginal canal.)

T
here was a small window in my early childhood when I wanted to be a doctor. This was inspired by my pediatrician, a relatively young man whom I called Dr. Handsome. I had assumed this was because his name was Dr. Hasen or Dr. Branson, but I recently found out his name was Dr. Ritger, so I guess I should have just died at age four when I decided to call my physician Dr. Handsome without so much as a pun to justify it. Anyway, I loved Dr. Handsome. All I actually knew about him was that he was nice and he helped people, but he got a lot of attention for it, which seemed like a pretty sweet gig.