she got. Oh, she was lovely in her state of limbo, when the whole world stretched out before her, the moon a bright surprise above. “It means,” I heard her say on the phone to Nance, or maybe Emma, or maybeeven Suki, “it means I am under serious consideration.” I was not, anymore, under her consideration, serious or otherwise. I was free, free to fall, to smoke, to spit, to kiss; free to dress in black, or in crushed velvet, or in ratty tuxedo tails, it was dizzying.
Over and over again, my mother and I crashed, and in some essential way, we were graceless. Eventually, she would get a reply, a rejection of course, after which she would lie in a darkened room for hours. When she cried, it was for things so utterly separate from me that her tears were personal insults. I told myself I didn’t care. But sometimes I think all the corruption that followed had to do with the fact that there was a space between us, and, when I was thirteen, in an extra rickety world, I needed to fill that space with something, and it would not be her. I told myself I didn’t care, but my dreams were full of women; women lifting me, women treading toward me, while above the moon burned in a beautiful way.
• • •
The spring of my thirteenth year was unlike any other. Frail rain fell, casting a silver net over the neighborhood. Then the sky cleared. The sun went down in a pool of red, and all the flowers smelled like lotion.
A little boy came to our school, a Japanese boy by the name of Sumio Yakima. I was cruel to him; I told him “thank you” was pronounced “fuck you,” which won me points with the popular people.
I was inspired. At that point, I was still trying to outrunmy seizures, and I thought I might accomplish that by being mean. I did other cruel things involving lima beans and bananas, the specifics of which I will not mention here. The worst I ever did, though, had nothing to do with hurting another human being. It had to do with God, in whom I believed even back then, and whose name I had promised myself never to take in vain. One day Sarah Kushner gave me a red Magic Marker and dared me to write on the wall “God = shit,” which I did for her attentions, and I pinpoint that as the moment when what I meant versus what I said parted ways, and, with a whimper, my adolescence was born.
• • •
Words came in a rush, then, and none of them were mine. “I would love a cerise-colored outfit,” I said to Amy Goldblatt on the trolley one day. “I look like an absolute hag,” I became fond of announcing in the girls’ room during recess, a place with mildewy-smelling green stalls, gunk in the grout of the cracked tile floor, white washbasins with rings of rust around the drains. In there, girls leaned toward the mirrors, fell into their faces’ reflections like it was love, like it was hate, snapping open clam-shaped compact cases and patching up their oily skin. Everyone’s skin was so oily, and girls squealed like they were only half person and the other half was pig, it was so sad, and I trotted along on my little high hooves with the rest of them, rooting about for beauty.
But no matter how much makeup I wore, I was still a girl with epilepsy, a girl who pissed herself, a girl convulsed; was there a way to make sickness sexy? That was the year I readnineteenth-century novels, in which tubercular heroines coughed up blood, and died in feather beds. I bought foundation two shades lighter than my actual skin. I wore a dark velvet ribbon like a choker around my neck, and I took my Medic Alert bracelet off my wrist and sported it instead as an anklet, the scarlet serpent dangling down.
And still, Sarah Kushner did not invite me to her party Friday night. Danny Harris wouldn’t like me. “I am dying,” I whispered to Sarah in English class one day.
“You’re dying?” she said to me. “What’s wrong?”
“Cancer,” I said.
“I thought you had epilepsy,” she said.
“Epilepsy causes
Over and over again, my mother and I crashed, and in some essential way, we were graceless. Eventually, she would get a reply, a rejection of course, after which she would lie in a darkened room for hours. When she cried, it was for things so utterly separate from me that her tears were personal insults. I told myself I didn’t care. But sometimes I think all the corruption that followed had to do with the fact that there was a space between us, and, when I was thirteen, in an extra rickety world, I needed to fill that space with something, and it would not be her. I told myself I didn’t care, but my dreams were full of women; women lifting me, women treading toward me, while above the moon burned in a beautiful way.
• • •
The spring of my thirteenth year was unlike any other. Frail rain fell, casting a silver net over the neighborhood. Then the sky cleared. The sun went down in a pool of red, and all the flowers smelled like lotion.
A little boy came to our school, a Japanese boy by the name of Sumio Yakima. I was cruel to him; I told him “thank you” was pronounced “fuck you,” which won me points with the popular people.
I was inspired. At that point, I was still trying to outrunmy seizures, and I thought I might accomplish that by being mean. I did other cruel things involving lima beans and bananas, the specifics of which I will not mention here. The worst I ever did, though, had nothing to do with hurting another human being. It had to do with God, in whom I believed even back then, and whose name I had promised myself never to take in vain. One day Sarah Kushner gave me a red Magic Marker and dared me to write on the wall “God = shit,” which I did for her attentions, and I pinpoint that as the moment when what I meant versus what I said parted ways, and, with a whimper, my adolescence was born.
• • •
Words came in a rush, then, and none of them were mine. “I would love a cerise-colored outfit,” I said to Amy Goldblatt on the trolley one day. “I look like an absolute hag,” I became fond of announcing in the girls’ room during recess, a place with mildewy-smelling green stalls, gunk in the grout of the cracked tile floor, white washbasins with rings of rust around the drains. In there, girls leaned toward the mirrors, fell into their faces’ reflections like it was love, like it was hate, snapping open clam-shaped compact cases and patching up their oily skin. Everyone’s skin was so oily, and girls squealed like they were only half person and the other half was pig, it was so sad, and I trotted along on my little high hooves with the rest of them, rooting about for beauty.
But no matter how much makeup I wore, I was still a girl with epilepsy, a girl who pissed herself, a girl convulsed; was there a way to make sickness sexy? That was the year I readnineteenth-century novels, in which tubercular heroines coughed up blood, and died in feather beds. I bought foundation two shades lighter than my actual skin. I wore a dark velvet ribbon like a choker around my neck, and I took my Medic Alert bracelet off my wrist and sported it instead as an anklet, the scarlet serpent dangling down.
And still, Sarah Kushner did not invite me to her party Friday night. Danny Harris wouldn’t like me. “I am dying,” I whispered to Sarah in English class one day.
“You’re dying?” she said to me. “What’s wrong?”
“Cancer,” I said.
“I thought you had epilepsy,” she said.
“Epilepsy causes
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