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Saving Grace.
By Amy Nathan |
November 19, 2007
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Read more: view from here, teenagers, junior high
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In 1978, cool girls smoked Parliaments. We were experts at hiding our deeds from the "matrons" who policed the expansive junior high blacktop. We embraced them with smiles and entranced them with cheerful banter when they looked and sniffed and appropriately asked what we girls were up to. We knew they didn't mean what were we talking about, but it was their job to make sure we weren't smoking -- even if they didn't really care. I wonder now, if anyone at a junior high school realizes that the dynamics of young teenage girls is just as toxic as nicotine. Perhaps they should have had matrons walking around dispensing adages of kindness and good will.
And Grace would have benefited from that.
I never met Grace, but through ghastly descriptions and tattled tales, I knew her hair was stringy and that she was shaped like a pear. She was the butt of many private jokes amidst the cigarette butts we hid between our legs or behind our backs against the wrought iron fence sharing one pack of cigarettes among us.
My friends yammered and giggled constantly about everything Grace did, all the while flipping their hair. She bowled for heaven's sake, but it was her looks that really had everyone riled up. There were never many descriptive details, just a lot of "Grace is sooo weird" statements plugged into every conversation. The JAPS, as we were called -- not in a politically incorrect World War II kind of way, but in the proud to be a Jewish American Princess kind of way -- berated Grace with laughter, knowing glances, private jokes and elbow jabs. I even saw pictures they drew of her once, with arrows pointing to her hair, her face, her hips, her boobs -- none of it up to par.
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I listened when Grace was talked about, and longed to be in on it. At fourteen, I didn't care what they were doing, but that it made my heart ache not to be part of it. It made me feel alone in the crowd, self-conscious and awkward. So I laughed at the appropriate inappropriate moments, and nodded my heading in unknowing agreement. And my participation in this manner seemed to make it all the funnier. In correlation with my private nature, I never revealed my discomfort at being out of the literal loop.
"You're so quiet," someone would say, nudging me to participate.
"Just listening," I'd reply smiling only on the outside.
The knowing glances skipped over me like they were playing a random game of hot potato and never throwing the damn potato to me.
Being out of step with Grace intensified my feelings of being displaced with the only friends I'd ever known. I didn't like them anymore, and I knew it. I had nothing to say to them. I couldn't keep up with the trendy clothes. Boys didn't interest me. And I felt so out of it when they focused their energy on Grace, I retreated inward as I tried to manufacture some way to get into their groove. I remember standing on the sidewalk, one half beat behind every conversation, my mind racing, my heart pumping. I dreaded every moment with them, yet they were all I had. In my 14 year old psyche I had no options. Had my adult peripheral vision been in tack, I would have seen countless alternatives at arm's reach.
I don't remember the first time I did it, but know I spent many a Junior High Friday and Saturday night getting stoned, eating Cheetos, and laughing my ass off. I was making my friends laugh and feeling at ease. I was just like everyone else, at last.
But if I wasn't high when I was with my friends, I wasn't happy. I sank into a silent, sad self. Every morning I showered and cried and cried, got out and got myself together for a mile walk to school behind two of the JAPs, silently.
I was conscious of everything that was going on in me and around me. In retrospect I guess I was taken to a psychologist or tarot card reader or psychic.
I remember sitting on a chair, in an office. I’d never been there before.
“If you don’t talk I can’t help you,” the man said. I don’t remember being introduced.
We never went back.
Then the big guns. My 30-year-old aunt.
It was late February, my birthday. She took me shopping for new jeans and a shirt, something she'd never done before.
"They think you're on drugs," she said.
"I'm not," I said. I wasn’t.
"Are you pregnant?" she said.
"No," I said. I wasn’t.
I imagine she reported back to my parents that I was a) not on drugs and b) not pregnant.
No one ever mentioned it again,
And nothing changed -- not the walking, the crying, the standing outside the inner circle, the talking about Grace, the feeling like a stranger amidst girls I'd known all my life -- until one day in health class. It was the days before videos and CDs so we were watching a slide presentation -- the kind that came with a tape recording. The room was dimmed and the teacher held the coveted pseudo-remote control that would move the presumed time-waster along. The topic that day was friendship.
The voiceover lady started talking about friendships (click), and adolescence (click), and how sometimes you might be uncomfortable (click) with one group of friends (click) as you grow up (click) and change (click) and you might be better suited (click) to another group of friends (click).
You mean, I can change friends?
When you're living in the body of teenager and fully engaged in being fourteen, you think the friends you have will be your friends ever.
"That's how you feel around us, isn't it?"
One of the JAPs in my class passed me a note. She wrote with a guarded stroke, devoid of bubble letters. I knew she sensed the seriousness, and from that day on she was my silent ally. I turned and looked over my shoulder, but not directly into her eyes, and nodded.
It took me a week or two of existing in the situation I now knew as temporary. I developed a plan, and asked a different girl if I could walk to school with her.
"Why would I want to walk to school with someone who never even says hello to me at school?" she said. And she was right.
I had nothing to say except, "I'm sorry."
The far reaching effect of being thought of as cool, aloof and out-of-touch made me shudder.
Next, all alone, I had to garner the strength to call and tell the JAPs I wouldn't be walking with them, or sitting with them at lunch. I walked in circles in my childhood basement, wrapping the phone cord around my arm as many times as I could. I wrote down what I was going to say. I tried to anticipate every question and any possible reaction. I did not want a confrontation; I just wanted to move on.
Finally, I dialed a number I'd known by heart since I was seven.
"Hi!" I said cheerfully, as if to soften the blow, not to the JAP, but to myself.
"Hi!" she responded, obviously surprised to hear from me, but she actually seemed pleased, although in retrospect I imagine she was just waiting to see what on earth I was calling for.
"I'm not walking to school with you tomorrow," I got it out as fast as I could.
I don't remember what she said, but probably something like, "OK." I imagine she didn't really care. I hoped she was shocked. "OK, see ya," I said, and hung up the phone, holding onto the receiver for just a few extra moments, should I be possessed enough to redial and retract. But with my thwarted innocence, I knew better. I never spoke to her again.
Once again I found myself on the outside of a circle of girls, but this time, I smiled, and asked if I could join in. I didn't need to sidestep or throw my head back and laugh at something I didn't understand. These girls opened up their circle and made space.
I emerged from junior high with a keen sense of my momentary self. I knew from my year of vast experiences that things could change in an instant. I didn't go to counseling or rehab. I was one of the lucky ones. I didn't waste any time, I made new friends, learned what friends are supposed to be, and didn't look back.
When high school started, I kept the distant past of junior high close to the vest. I found a steady pace with even more new friends. I had come into my own much before my time.
October that year I celebrated the fifth birthday of a little girl I'd known since she was born. I helped with the gaggle of kindergartners and then plopped down, at ease and contented, to watch pin the tail on the donkey. Maybe there had been an earlier mention by one of the adults, of my forays in high school, my new friends and activities, I don't remember. What I do remember is right there on that emerald green wide-wale corduroy couch I can still feel on my legs, surrounded by balloons and five year olds, after a spring full of change, a summer of fun and two months of high school, Grace popped into my head.
My life in Junior High flashed past my eyes, riveting my attention to the fast-forwarding images reminiscent of that health class slide presentation. It was akin to what I imagine is a "near death experience." I suppose it was, in a way. I could see faces and hear voices -- images and sounds swirled around me. And then I knew exactly where Grace was and what she was doing. She was on the couch. She was me.
I closed my eyes for a moment. I opened them aged, and anew, and proceeded to help cut the cake.
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Amy Nathan lives and writes near Chicago where she is mom to a teenage son, tween daughter and three big dogs. In addition to her venerable career with The Imperfect Parent, Amy's writing has been published in The Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post and in regional parenting magazines nationwide. She also blogs at Chicago Moms Blog. When she's not folding laundry or driving someone somewhere, she can be found wandering around the world wide web. |
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