The Geography of Girlhood (2 page)

I stand on the far wall

in a free-fall shame spiral.

Elaine and Denise are next to me,

hopped up on Milk Duds.

Denise is wiggling around so hard

that when Eric Chandler asks her to dance,

he can barely keep hold of her.

In his fourteenth year, Eric’s arms are at war
with his legs

and it’s safe to say his legs are losing.

Then Stan Bondurant comes up

and tells a joke about Polish people

before he takes Elaine out to dance.

Stan’s fine, but I have a thing about class clowns—

it seems like they’ll do anything

to hide their heart.

As for me, the song is halfway over

and I am at the edge of the dance floor

like a stone at the edge of the sea,

waiting for my rough edges to be smoothed

into something worth touching,

and I tell myself that one day someone will come for me

and until then

I’ll wait.

After the dance, I get a ride home from school

with my sister and Bobby

and they stop at the beach

to do what they do,

which means I’ve been sent off

to collect shells

like I’m five.

A Navy helicopter flies by

and the birds on the marsh start to panic

and the air fills with a great cloud of wings

and I realize that’s how it goes here:

nothing ever happens

and if it does

all the things with wings

fly away.

Tonight after dinner, my dad shows me his new

computer program. He says it looks for signals in space

while you sleep. Are you talking about
aliens
? I ask.

He nods like it’s totally normal. My father has either

officially lost his mind, or maybe he’s on to something;

maybe if scientists can find life on other planets, then

maybe one day somebody can find my mother.

They say my mother was like a hydrangea,

prone to wilting and then falling apart

at the slightest sign of stress or sun.

They say my mother was a rhododendron,

she always looked better after the rain.

They say my mother did so many bad things

to so many people she loved

she was a snapdragon with nowhere to go.

Me, I say my mother was a night-blooming jasmine,

she was at her best when no one was looking.

I say my mother was a late bloomer

who didn’t get time to grow,

but then again, what do I know.

It was night and the snow on the Ridge

was just starting to melt.

As they made their way up to the top

in his old truck,

my mother noticed the rams

propped against the hillside,

feeding on dirt.

The stars came out fast that night

and my mother imagined

that from somewhere on high,

someone looked down and said,

See that girl’s skin? Protect it
.

I was late for school today because my sister was trying

to instruct me on the ways of feminine hygiene and I

can’t seem to get it right and tampons are officially my

enemy and I will be stuck with maxi pads forever which

means I will be uncool forever and it’s safe to say there

is definitely something wrong with me, which now

makes this the fourth time today I have thought that,

the other times being when Rob Calderon told me to

“grow some tits” during P.E., and when I had sweat

stains during third period for no reason, and when

Danny Helms said that blue eyes are the prettiest and

here I am, stuck with brown.

Today after I got out of play rehearsals, Skyler Reeves

came up to Denise and Elaine and me, all fresh from

cheerleading practice and wearing her shiny skirt

and her shiny hair and her shiny smile.
Can you guys

come over Saturday
? she asked and Elaine said,

Of course we can!

As Skyler walked away, Elaine was talking a mile a

minute about how cool it was going to be, and Denise

looked lost and sad and far away, and I stared at my

two best friends and saw that if we were a continent

unto ourselves, Elaine would be the north pole and

Denise would be the south and I would be somewhere

in the middle, trying to navigate all that space in

between.

We are at Skyler Reeves’s house

watching Maggie Cartwright’s dad’s copy
of
Showgirls

which could be fun if it weren’t so embarrassing.

Denise has spent half the night

hiding in the bathroom,

because sometimes she gets that way

around more than three people.

When I ask Elaine

if she thinks Denise is alright,

Elaine shrugs and says,
Sometimes Denise is such
a freak

and Skyler Reeves laughs.

Elaine acts cool and won’t look at me.

But what she doesn’t say

is that her half brother is in jail

and Skyler Reeves’s mom is on her fifth marriage

and Maggie Cartwright likes being spanked

and I am what I am

so basically

that makes us all freaks,

doesn’t it?

After the movie,

we all lay out our sleeping bags

and Skyler and Maggie start

talking about what happened

at the Senior Prom last night,

telling stories about high school girls

like Lisa Tavorino and Kelly Barnes

and Jenny Arnold and Jenny Able

as if they were movie stars.

Even my sister’s name comes up once or twice

and Dinah says,
She’s so pretty
, as if

I were somehow not aware of this fact.

Skyler and Elaine and Maggie are

so ready to become those girls

and then there’s Denise,

who’s still hiding in the bathroom,

and as for me, all I know

is that even though high school is only

three weeks and an entire summer away

it still feels like it’s a faraway land of
them

and I will forever be living

in the same old hometown of
me
.

The story goes that Jenny, homespun girl,

hopped onstage during the Prom last night

and started singing with the band.

Jacked-up on the fervor of fifteen,

drunk Jenny sang the girl-part of a duet,

didn’t notice her boyfriend’s hand

loitering on another Jenny’s thigh.

High school seems filled with Jennys,

most of them hiding out as Jennifers,

others as easy-access Jens,

but these two—Jennys to the core.

They’ve spent the year ruling popularity contests

and baffling teachers with their identical penmanship.

They discovered beer and marijuana

and that’s when the trouble started:

one Jenny liked Budweiser,

one liked smoking out on the cliff.

One Jenny has her hair tipped black,

the other wears Mike Shaw’s letterman’s jacket.

Last night, so the story goes, they were at the same
dumb dance,

one Jenny onstage, the other by the lockers.

They took turns kissing the same boy:

a beer jock, more Jenny’s type

than Jenny’s, but it’s not about the kissing anymore.

It’s about the fierceness of the name,

the matching J’s and A’s on

every science quiz for the past eight years,

the feathered hair, the push

to get Paula off the cheerleading squad,

and the countless after-school hours spent

making high school what it is,

making sure no other Jennifer

dares to call herself Jenny again.

I come home from Skyler’s to learn

that last night, after my sister’s curfew

had not only been broken

but smashed into a million little pieces,

my dad went into her room

and tore down all her posters

and threw her sluttiest shoes in the trash

and drilled a lock on her door,

but he was so mad it fell off

and now there’s just a hole there.

Tonight, my dad came into the living room

where I was doing everything I was supposed to do

and he said,
Penny, don’t ever be like your sister

because no good can come of it
.

He told me I only had one life to live

and I’d better not ruin it

the way she was ruining hers.

Then he headed out to the garage

to hit things with other things

and I went upstairs and knelt outside my sister’s door.

I looked through the little “o” my father made

and I could see Tara in there,

lying with her legs up against the wall,

scribbling in her diary

her hand speeding fast over the page,

speeding fast like the car

she drove into the ditch last fall,

scribbling down secrets

I would kill to know.

As for my diary,

it’s just a bunch of stuff about

how I wish certain boys would love me,

how I wish our mom hadn’t left town

before we were old enough to know better,

and on and on, a bunch

of basic stupid wish lists

and lots of little secrets

that absolutely no one

would kill to know.

I wish I was this

I wish I was that

I wish I was thin

I wish I was fat

I wish I was Skyler

I wish I was Jean

I wish I was sexy

I wish I was mean

I wish I was beautiful

I wish I was tall

I wish Bobby loved me

but it’s a pipe dream, that’s all.

The next morning, I see what the fuss was about.

My sister’s neck is covered with

a trail of dime-sized bruises,

a scrapbook of the night spent in Bobby’s car

on a road so remote it’s not even named

and the seats were rolled back

and the windows were fogged up

and the music was cranked

and the secrets were spilling

and it was magic,

just like how it will be

when it happens to me.

That’s what Mrs. Hillstrom says to me in front of

everyone in the middle of English. Two days ago, she

stopped me after class to tell me that even though my

grades are good, and even though she appreciates

my after-school participation in
The Diary of Anne

Frank
, I need to stop daydreaming about whatever I’m

daydreaming about. Don’t I know that this is my life?

she asks me. Don’t I know that I need to live in the

here and now and not in a fantasy?

After Mrs. Hillstrom turns back to the board, Elaine,

who’s trying not to laugh, throws me a note, which hits

me square in the eye.

Penny—

Wanna hang out with me and Skyler after school today?

Xoxoxo

Elaine

P.S. Don’t invite Denise.

P.P.S. Stan and I totally made out yesterday!

P.P.P.S. I heard Randall Faber might like you. Isn’t that
awesome?

Elaine—

I can’t hang out today cuz I have rehearsal for the play.

P.S. Why can’t I invite Denise?

P.P.S. I barely even know Randall Faber.

Why do you have to go to rehearsal if you’re only
doing lighting?

P.S. Denise has gotten totally weird.

P.P.S. Stan is an awesome kisser!!!

P.P.P.S. Should I tell Randall you like him?

NO, do NOT tell Randall I like him!!!

P.S. I have to go to practice because I’m understudy for

the lead, so Mrs. H says I have to be committed.

P.P.S. I don’t think Denise is that weird.

Just as I throw my note to Elaine, I hear Mrs. Hillstrom

say,
Penny—detention
. I look up to see she’s staring

right at me and Stan Bondurant goes,
Ooh, busted
in

this really stupid voice. He might be an Awesome Kisser

but that doesn’t stop him from being a Total Ass.

Now I feel sick to my stomach because I have never

gotten detention before, but then again, to look on

the bright side, after today I will no longer be a virgin.

Of detention, that is.

Detention is nothing like a teen movie

where all the guys have Mohawks

and the girls carve hearts into their desks

and everyone is secretly smoking weed.

In my teeny tiny town

detention is a beige classroom

and a vague smell of depression

and a clock that clonks along so everyone can hear

and a bunch of people staring out the window

waiting for something to happen—

but here’s the weird part—

something actually does.

A bunch of high school guys just walked by the window

where I sit in detention, their lettermen’s jackets glowing