Go Ask Alice (2 page)

October 16

Mom and Dad came back today. Hooray, we have a house! It’s a large old Spanish-type house which Mom loves. I can’t wait to move! I can’t wait! I can’t wait! They took pictures which will be back in three or four days. I can’t wait, I can’t wait, or have I said that a million times before?

October 17

Even school is exciting again. I got an A on my algebra paper and everything else is going A and B too. Algebra is the worst. If I can pass that I guess I can do anything! Usually I’m lucky to get a C, even when I kill myself. Isn’t it funny, but it seems that when something is going good, everything else goes good too. I’m even getting along better with Mom. She doesn’t seem to nag at me so much anymore. I can’t figure out which one of us has changed — I really can’t. Am I being more whatever it is she wants me to be so she doesn’t have to always be on my back or is it she is less demanding?

I even saw Roger in the hall and couldn’t have cared less. He said “hi” to me and stopped to talk, but I just walked on by. He’s not going to drop me on my head again! Gee, only a little over three months!

October 22

Scott Lossee asked me to go to the movies Friday. I’ve lost ten pounds. I’m down to a hundred and fifteen which is all right, but I’d still like to lose another ten pounds. Mom says I don’t want to get that thin, but she doesn’t know! I do! I do! I do! I haven’t had one goodie for so long I’ve almost forgotten what they taste like. Maybe Friday night I’ll go on a binge and eat a few french fries . . . ummmmmmm . . . .

October 26

The movie was fun with Scott. We went out after and I ate six wonderful, delicious, mouth-watering, delectable, heavenly french fries. That was really living in itself! I don’t feel about Scott like I used to about Roger. I guess that was my one and only true love, but I’m glad it’s over. Imagine me in my first year of high school and barely fifteen and the one and only great love of my life is over. It seems kind of tragic in a way. Maybe someday when we’re both in college we’ll meet again. I hope so. I really do hope so. Last summer at Marion Hill’s slumber party someone brought in a
Playboy
magazine with a story in it about a girl sleeping with a boy for the first time and all I could think about was Roger. I don’t ever want to have sex with any other boy in the whole world ever . . . ever . . . . I swear I’ll die a virgin if Roger and I don’t get together. I couldn’t stand to ever have any other boy even touch me. I’m not even sure about Roger, Maybe later when I’m older I’ll feel differently. Mother says that as girls get older, hormones invade our bloodstream making our sexual desires greater. I guess I’m just developing slowly. I’ve heard some pretty wild stories about some of the kids at school, but I’m not
them, I’m me, and besides, sex seems so strange and so inconvenient, and so awkward.

I keep thinking about our teacher in gym teaching us modern dance and always saying that it will make our bodies strong and healthy for childbearing, then she harps and harps that everything must be graceful, graceful, graceful. I can hardly picture sex or having a baby as being graceful.

Gotta go. See ya.

November 10

Oh dear Diary, I’m so sorry I’ve neglected you, but I’ve been so busy. Here we are preparing for Thanksgiving already and then Christmas. We sold our house last week to the Dulburrows and their seven kids. I do wish we could have sold it to someone with a smaller family. I hate to think of those six boys running up and down our beautiful front stairs with their dirty, sticky fingers on the walls and their dirty feet all over Mother’s white carpeting. You know, when I think about things like that, I suddenly don’t want to leave! I’m afraid! I’ve lived in this room all my fifteen years, all my 5,530 days. I’ve laughed and cried and moaned and muttered in this room. I’ve loved people and things and hated them. It’s been a big part of my life, of me. Will we ever be the same when we’re closed in by other walls? Will we think other thoughts and have different emotions? Oh, Mother, Daddy, maybe we’re making a mistake, maybe we’ll be leaving too much of ourselves behind!

Dear precious Diary, I am baptizing you with my tears. I know we have to leave and that one day I will even have to leave my father and mother’s home and go into a home of my own. But ever I will take you with me.

November 30

Dear Diary,

Sorry I didn’t talk with you on Thanksgiving. It was so nice, Gran and Gramps were here for two days and we talked about old times and lay around the living room. Daddy didn’t even go to his office the whole time. Grandma made taffy with us like she used to when we were little, and even Daddy pulled some. We all laughed a lot, and Alex got it in her hair and Gramps got his false teeth stuck together, and we were almost hysterical. They are sorry we are moving so far away from them and so are we. Home just won’t be the same without Gran and Gramps dropping in. I really hope Daddy is right in making the move.

December 4

Dear Diary,

Mama won’t let me diet anymore. Just between us, I don’t really know why it’s any of her business. It’s true I have had a cold for the last couple of weeks, but I know it’s not the diet that is causing it. How can she be so stupid and irrational? This morning I was having my usual half grapefruit for breakfast and she made me eat a slice of whole wheat bread and a scrambled egg and a piece of bacon. That’s probably at least 400 calories, maybe even five or six or seven hundred. I don’t know why she can’t let me live my own life. She doesn’t like it when I look like a cow, neither does anybody else, I don’t even like myself. I wonder if I could go stick my finger down my throat and throw up after every meal? She says I’m going to have to start eating dinner again too, and just when I’m getting down where I want to be and I’ve quit fighting the hunger pangs. Oh, parents are a problem! That’s one thing, Diary,
you don’t have to worry about, only me. And I guess you’re not very lucky at that, because I’m certainly no bargain.

December 10

When I bought you, Diary, I was going to write religiously in you every day, but some days nothing worth writing happens and other days I’m too busy or too bored or too angry or too annoyed, or just too me to do anything I don’t have to do. I guess I’m a pretty lousy friend — even to you. Anyway I feel closer to you than I do to even Debbie and Marie and Sharon who are my very best friends. Even with them I’m not really me. I’m partly somebody else trying to fit in and say the right things and do the right thing and be in the right place and wear what everybody else is wearing. Sometimes I think we’re all trying to be shadows of each other, trying to buy the same records and everything even if we don’t like them. Kids are like robots, off an assembly line, and I don’t want to be a robot!

December 14

I just bought the most wonderful little single pearl pin for Mother’s Christmas present. It cost me nine dollars and fifty cents, but it’s worth it. It’s a cultured pearl which means it’s real and it looks like my Mom. Soft and shiny, but sturdy and dependable underneath so it won’t dribble all over the place. Oh I hope she likes it! I want so very much for her to like it and for her to like me! I still don’t know what I’ll get for Tim and Dad, but they’re easier to buy for. I’d like to get a nice gold pencil holder or something for Dad to put on his big new desk in his big new office so he’d think of me every time he looked at it, even
in the middle of tremendously important conferences with all the leading brains in the world, but as usual I can’t afford a fraction of the things I want.

December 17

Lucy Martin is having a Christmas party, and I’m supposed to bring a gelatin salad. It sounds like a lot of fun. (At least I hope it will be.) I’ve made myself a new white soft wool dress. Mother helped me and it’s really beautiful. Someday I hope I can sew as well as she does. In fact someday I hope I can be like her. I wonder if when she was my age she worried about boys not liking her and girls being only her part-time friends. I wonder if boys were as oversexed in those days as they are now? It seems like when we girls talk about our dates that most of the boys are that way. None of my friends ever go all the way, but I guess a lot of the girls at school do. I wish I could talk to my mother about things like this because I don’t really believe a lot of the kids know what they’re talking about, at least I can’t believe all the stuff they tell me.

December 22

The party at the Martins was fun. Dick Hill brought me home. He had his father’s car and we drove all over town and looked at the lights and sang Christmas carols. It sounds kind of corny, but it really wasn’t. When we got home he kissed me goodnight, but that’s all. It kind of made me nervous because I don’t know if he doesn’t like me or just respects me or what? I guess I just can’t be secure no matter what happens. I sometimes wish I were going with someone then I’d always know I had a date and
I’d have someone I could really talk to, but my parents don’t believe in that, and besides, confidentially, no one has ever been that interested in me. Sometimes I think no one ever will be. I really do like boys a lot, sometimes I think I like them too much, but I’m not very popular. I wish I were popular and beautiful and wealthy and talented. Wouldn’t it be nice to be like that?

December 25

It’s Christmas! Wonderful, magnificent, happy, holy Christmas. I’m so happy I can hardly contain myself. I got some books and records and a skirt I really love and a lot of little things. And Mother really loved her pin. She really did! She loved it! She put it right on her nightgown and wore it all day. Oh, I’m so happy she liked it. Gran and Gramps were here and Uncle Arthur and Aunt Jeannie and their kids. It was really great. I guess Christmas is the very best time of the year. Everybody feels warm and secure and needed and wanted. (Even me.) I wish it could be like this all the time. I hated for today to come to an end. Not only because it was such a great day, but because this will be our last big holiday in this lovely house.

Goodbye dear house dressed in your holiday finery of tinsel and holly and bright-colored lights. I love you! I’ll miss you!

January 1

Last night I went to a New Year’s party at Scott’s house. The kids got a little wild. Some of the boys were juicing it up. I came home early saying I didn’t feel well, but actually it’s just that I’m so excited about moving in two days that
I am beside myself. I’m sure I won’t sleep at all for the next two nights. Imagine moving into a new home and a new town and a new county and a new state all at the same time. Mom and Dad know a few people on the faculty and they’re at least casually acquainted with our new house. I’ve seen pictures of it, but it still seems like a large, cold, foreboding stranger. I do hope we like it and it can adjust to us.

Frankly, I wouldn’t dare say this to anybody but you, Diary, but I’m not too sure I’m going to make it in a new town. I barely made it in our old town where I knew everybody and they knew me. I’ve never even allowed myself to think about it before, but I really haven’t much to offer in a new situation. Oh dear God, help me adjust, help me be accepted, help me belong, don’t let me be a social outcast and a drag on my family. Here I go bawling again, what a boob, but there isn’t any more I can do about that than there is I can do about moving. So you’re wet again! It’s a good thing diaries don’t catch cold!

January 4

We’re here! It’s barely January 4, only ten minutes after one, and Tim and Alex have been quarreling and Mama has either the stomach flu or she’s just upset because of the excitement; anyway Dad has had to stop twice so that she could throw up. Something went wrong and the lights haven’t been turned on and I think even Dad is about ready to turn around and go back home. Mom had made a diagram of where she wanted the movers to put everything and they got it all fouled up. So we’re all just going to roll up in bedding and sleep in whichever bed is handy. I’m glad I’ve got my little pocket flashlight, at least I can see to write. Confidentially the house looks pretty weird and haunted, but maybe that’s because there are no curtains
up or anything. Maybe things will look brighter tomorrow. They certainly couldn’t look worse.

January 6

Sorry I haven’t had time to write for two days, but we haven’t stopped. We’re still trying to get curtains hung and boxes unpacked and things put away. The house is beautiful. The walls are thick dark wood and there are two steps going down to a long sunken living room. I’ve apologized to every room about the way I felt last night.

I’m still worried about school and TODAY I must go. I wish Tim were in high school. Even a little brother would be better than no one, but he is in his second year of junior high. Already he’s met a boy down the street his own age and I should be happy for him, but I’m not — I’m sad for myself. Alexandria is still in grade school and one of the professors lives close and has a daughter her age, so she will go directly to his home after school. How lucky can you get, built-in friends and everything? For me, as usual, nothing! A big fat nothing, and probably just what I deserve. I wonder if the kids wear the same things they do at home? Oh, I hope I’m not so different they’ll all stare at me. Oh, how I wish I had a friend! But I better paste on the big phony smile, Mother is calling and I must respond with an “attitude that will determine my altitude.”

One, two, three, and here goes the martyr.

Evening, January 6

Oh Diary it was miserable! It was the loneliest, coldest place in the world. Not one single person spoke to me during the whole endlessly long day. During lunch period I fled to the nurse’s office and said I had a headache. Then I
cut my last class and went by the drugstore and had a chocolate malt, a double order of french fried potatoes and a giant Hershey Bar. There had to be something in life that was worthwhile, All the time I ate, I hated myself for being childish. Hurt as I am when I think about it I have probably done the same thing to every new person that came to my schools, either ignored them completely or stared at them out of curiosity. So, I’m just getting “cut” back and I guess I deserve it, but oh, am I ever suffering! I ache even in my fingernails and toenails and in my hair follicles.