Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (12 page)

For their part, my classmates seemed pretty much convinced that this would happen, too.

“Oh God, Susan’s going to ruin the whole pageant,” said Samantha, flinging her auburn hair over her shoulder. “Nobody’s going to be able to concentrate on my lullaby because they’ll all have headaches from her so-called singing.”

The week before the pageant was a wash of anxiety. I’d tiptoe out of bed at night, press my forehead against the cold glass of my window, and look out at the city. The dark sky would be a fumy purple-orange. The windows of other apartments would be illuminated—bright yellow boxes of light—and sometimes I could see an elderly man in his undershirt eating cereal in a small kitchen, or a couple seated on a couch, the blue light from a television flickering across their profiles. Counting the windows decorated with colored Christmas lights, I wondered what religion everyone was.

There was a store that sold religious icons in our neighborhood, right next to Carvel. Sometimes after John and I got ice cream cones, we milled about outside looking at the Jesus calendars and wall clocks. All the pictures of Christ always showed him writhing, bloody, and nearly naked, hanging limply from a cross, clad in nothing but a diaper. Maybe, I thought, Jews didn’t celebrate Christmas simply to spare Jesus any further embarrassment.

But Christian or Jewish, the concept of a messiah made me anxious. Were humans really such screw-ups that we needed a superhero from God to come to our rescue? The idea that we were all such losers and incompetents frightened me. Even with the nasty girls in my class, I somehow gave people more credit. Shouldn’t we be responsible for saving ourselves—and each other?

For the first time in my life, I thought about what I believed.

When I was even younger, I’d secretly suspected that everything on earth was alive and had feelings. This “everything” included not just philodendrons and our pet gerbils, but also things like the dishwasher and the ceramic lamp in my grandparents’ living room.

When my brother said the lamp was ugly, I said, “
Sssshh,
John. Don’t say that in front of the lamp. You may hurt its feelings.”

“Um, Suze?” he said carefully, looking at me as if he were doing a mental health assessment. “The lamp is an object, okay? It doesn’t have feelings.”

Then I’d laugh and quickly agree and act like I was just joking—
Of course a lamp doesn’t have feelings! Sheesh, couldn’t he tell when I was kidding around?
But secretly, I’d still worry.

I realized now that I tended to believe what my mother had told me: that we were all put here on earth to be good to each other … that we were all obligated to help improve the world somehow … and that every one of us had to figure out our own relationship to God.

When it came right down to it, I guessed that was the essence of my religion: wanting to do right, and feeling protective of everything, even the lamp.

The morning of the Christmas pageant, I wandered around our apartment singing “All, All, All” over and over again, practicing this high note until my throat was raw, the strain making my voice crack even more.

My classmates, consistent to the end, made sure to let me know how little faith they had in me.

“I’d say break a leg, but you’re probably just going to break a note instead,” said Courtney. Then she wrapped her forefinger and thumb loosely around her wrist to show off how skinny she was before walking off with a snort.

I stood alone in the antechamber of the church, letting my music teacher adjust my silver tinsel halo and tie garlands around my waist. “You’ll do fine,” she reassured me. “You look lovely.”

I should have felt beautiful, but instead I felt clumsy and fraudulent. The organ music began thrumming, and Alice and I proceeded solemnly into the packed church the way we’d practiced. I couldn’t look at my parents—I couldn’t look at anybody. My solo was toward the end of the pageant. I tried to sing the other carols, but I felt nauseated so I just mouthed the words and tried not to cry.

Then, halfway through the pageant came the scene between the Angel Gabriel and Mary. I’d seen it played out countless times before, but I was always too busy admiring my own angel costume to pay much attention.

Robert stood up. Instead of gold tinsel, he’d been given a much more masculine outfit to wear, a burgundy vest over a white robe. He walked over to Samantha, who was draped solemnly in pale blue.

“And the Angel said unto her, ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou art chosen among women,’” recited Robert.

Fear not, for thou art chosen among women.
The words landed heavily.
Mary,
I thought suddenly. Why, Mary was poor, frightened, outcast, and Jewish—just like me. Nobody wanted much to do with Mary, it seemed; she was in pain and in labor, but there was no room at the inn for her. Maybe the kids teased her, too. And yet, the Angel Gabriel came down and said:
Fear not.

Sitting there beneath the Gothic arches and the chandeliers of the church, I imagined that the Angel Gabriel was swooping down to visit me. Fear not, he was saying, for God has chosen you among women, too. And fireworks seemed to go off in my chest, as it occurred to me that if there had been hope for poor, forsaken Mary, then perhaps there was hope for me, too.

Messiahs, saviors, they were beyond me, but Mary I could understand. Maybe that was what her story was meant to be about—that in the darkness of winter, in the face of poverty and prejudice—I should fear not—I would be taken in—I would be chosen yet—fear not! There were children to be born—and stars to appear—and kings to arrive—Fear not! God had not overlooked anyone! God had not overlooked me, as unattractive and unlikable and pathetic as I was.

I suppose you could say that as I stood there, quivering in silver and white, I had my first spiritual moment, in all its hokey innocence. I felt suddenly lightened; my stomach unclenched slightly. And then, the organ was pounding the introduction to my song. It was time for my solo. I stood up carefully in my long white robe—my heart punching my rib cage—and walked to the edge of the steps leading down from the altar. I opened my mouth as wide as I could, and I began to sing.

If I were being my smart-assed, cynical, literary self, I would alter the facts and recast this next moment: After a spiritual awakening, I’d tell you, I stood boldly before my teachers, classmates, and a church-ful of parents, and sang as badly and as painfully as ever, anyway. In this version, the audience would wince and cover its ears, pigeons would alight squawking from the rooftops, even the kindly Reverend Alcott would grimace. Surely, this scenario would make for a darker, more unexpected, but somehow more human story.

Yet that isn’t what happened. Instead, I opened my mouth to sing. And when I got to that high note, I nailed it. I mean, I really drove it right through that church ceiling. I hit it with strength, vibrato, and a self-assurance that I hadn’t felt since my first day at school. The note seemed to fill the transept, the clerestory, the coatroom in the back. It was so high, powerful, and clear, I couldn’t believe it had come out of me; there seemed to be an audible gasp from the audience. I hit that note, then continued, finishing my solo about my’ master’s garden, filled with diverse flowers, with my voice so astonished and joyful, all you could hear were the lyrics and the thunderous power of the organ. My classmates’ collective sigh of relief was completely drowned out by the music.

Afterward, my music teacher put her arm around me radiantly. “See? I had faith in you,” she said. My parents, too, were ecstatic—not only because I’d hit the high note, but because now they’d no longer have to listen to me stomping around the house singing “All All All” with the frequency of a busy signal.

“That was beautiful,” my mother cried. “You were simply wonderful.”

Gleefully, I hurried upstairs to the library, which had been converted into the girls’ dressing room for the day. The rest of the procession had already arrived there, and I didn’t want to miss my grand entrance. When I walked in, no doubt, the girls would finally cheer, “She did it! She did it after all!” and Courtney would apologize for being so nasty to me.

When I reached the library, Alice was already standing outside the door dressed in her street clothes, flanked by her family.

“Great job, Susan,” she said, while behind her, her parents nodded vigorously. Alice’s father was a preacher. When he gave my shoulder a little squeeze, my heart felt like an enormous flower.

Opening the door, I stepped into the library. All the girls were in various stages of undress. I walked amid the desks slowly, triumphantly, my footsteps ringing against the varnished floorboards. I walked directly over to where Courtney, Serena, and Samantha were changing their clothes and planted myself before them. Then I just stood there, my hands on my hips. The room grew hushed, pregnant with expectation.

Yet none of them lifted me up on their shoulders and shouted “Three cheers for Susan!” None of them had a change of heart and suddenly felt compelled to invite me to their Christmas party after the pageant. In fact, none of them said anything. They simply looked at me viciously for a moment, then turned away and quickly resumed packing their white angel robes into their dry cleaning bags. The library was strangely quiet. Grabbing their winter coats off the pegs by the doorway, they hurried off. Only Jennifer acknowledged me. As she was halfway out the door with her mother, she glanced back and sniffed, “Well, thank God you didn’t screw
that
up.”

Alone in the library, I slowly packed up my angel costume. The silence seemed to reverberate. Carefully, I put on my coat, then went downstairs to where my parents and John were waiting. By then, the church was almost empty. The pageant was over, and the custodian, Mr. Hernandez, was making his way up the aisle with a stepladder, carefully snuffing out each of the dying candles. My family and I stood at the front of the church for a moment, staring up at the Christmas tree sparkling beside the altar. Beneath the cavernous, vaulted ceilings, we formed a tableau, a unique crÉche of sorts: father, mother, brother, sister.

I didn’t feel as euphoric or as exonerated as I’d expected. Strangely, though, I didn’t feel defeated, either. I was simply too drained. The dorks in the movies: they all made it look so easy. Trying to prove yourself to your classmates was exhausting, and I realized I was tired of doing it. It was time to put my faith elsewhere. I reached up and began unfastening my halo, one bobby pin at a time. “Okay,” I sighed. “I’m ready. Let’s all go home.”

Chapter 5

Love and the Maharishi

EVERY SO OFTEN
, when our living situation fell into chaos, my mother would decide that we were in desperate need of a motto. “Remember, children,” she liked to remind us. “Reality is for people with no imagination.”

John and I tended to dismiss this the same way we dismissed her requests to clean up our rooms and take our feet off the coffee table. But really, we should have paid more attention. Because as our mother became decreasingly enamored with reality, she became increasingly imaginative in her quest for alternatives.

The week before my tenth birthday, John and I returned home from school to discover she’d signed our entire family up to learn Transcendental Meditation.

We had no idea what Transcendental Meditation was, but it sounded like something that would only confirm our status as Freaks of the Neighborhood.

“No! Please!” my brother gasped. He staggered around the kitchen as if he were being mortally wounded. “Don’t make me learn Transcendental Meditation … Anything but that! No! Aaaaahhhhh!” Then he fell to the floor writhing in a fit of mock epilepsy, and we both started to giggle.

“Oh, stop it,” said our mother. “TM is a relaxation technique, not electroshock therapy.”

She took a brochure out of her canvas shoulder bag and smoothed it out on the table. “Everyone gets a word called a mantra. You say it over and over again, and it creates a sense of calm. Your father and I are going to learn it this weekend, then you kids will get initiated next Thursday after school.”

John and I leaned over and studied the brochure. It showed pictures of an Indian man with long, gray hair and a tumbleweed for a beard. He was sitting cross-legged on a rug, fondling a daisy. His face, I noticed, had a peculiar, dopey smile on it, as if he had just finished eating an enormous piece of cake, then gotten clubbed over the head.

“That’s the Maharishi,” our mother said. “He teaches people to achieve inner peace.”

Dress him in a Hefty bag, I thought, and he could easily pass for any of the local lunatics who staggered around Amsterdam Avenue singing “Flashlight” and pushing a stolen shopping cart into traffic. In several of the photos, the Maharishi was sitting in a circle with his followers. They were all slightly cadaverous, pale to the brink of translucency: blissed-out albinos in bedsheets. “Transcendental Meditation changed their lives—let it change yours, too!” the caption read.

“Do we have to do this, Mom?” I said. “It looks creepy.”

“It’s not creepy,” said our mother. “Lots of respectable people do TM. Merv Griffin does TM. So does Burt Bacharach. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I’m giving you a tool that can help you for the rest of your lives.”

That past week at school, Mr. Grimaldi, the professional bloodletter known as my gym teacher, had organized a massive game of boys-against-girls dodge ball. Somehow, my classmate Charlotte and I found ourselves the last two girls left in the game. We cowered in the corner while our teammates screamed, “Catch the ball, you morons!” and the boys counted to three, then slammed a barrage of rubber into us with all the force they could summon, breaking Charlotte’s glasses and leaving our thighs imprinted with hot pink grapefruits. My brother, meanwhile, had gotten chased home from school by a gang of older kids with an ice pick who told him, essentially, that his sorry white ass was theirs. As far as I was concerned, the only tools either of us really needed at that moment were blunt instruments.

The next weekend, however, our parents went to the TM Center to receive $200 worth of enlightenment. Despite our secret fear they’d be brainwashed, they returned home a few hours later laughing breezily and carrying a bagful of bagels. Nothing seemed to have changed until that evening, when, just before dinnertime, our mother lit a stick of cinnamon incense and took the phone off the hook. “Okay, kids, Dad and I are going to meditate!” she sang out. “Please cool it for the next twenty minutes.”