nearly a year to let go of using “to be” as a present tense verb, as in “I be tripping when he tells a joke,” or “She be wearing a cute outfit to school every day.” It wasn’t as if I didn’t know how to conjugate verbs, not as though the nuns at my old school didn’t try to pound this particular verb usage out of our heads. It was just the way we talked around friends who wouldn’t suspect our intelligence because we talked that way. I realized early that people at the new school expected me to be less from the start, in a Catholic missionary “save the savages” kind of way, so I learned to speak the “right way” around kids when it used to be a requirement only around teachers.
It was like another chore outside of just attending school—learning to live this second life. I pretended to like the Eagles (until one day I realized I really did). When my classmates discussed ski vacations, I nodded as though I knew where Breadloaf was and tried to see the logic in wearing a down jacket with no sleeves during the winter. I wanted to ask, Aren’t your arms cold, too? Going five class periods without seeing a face like mine is not that big a deal, I told myself. I tried to call someone a “spaz” without it sounding ridiculous, but it always did. At first, it wore me out, made me grateful when I got off the bus downtown in a world that didn’t expect anything more of me than what I was. Eventually it got easier. Sometimes it was the fact that it did get easier that bothered me most.
*
New differences between the kids and me showed up daily. In the spirit of getting us more involved in PE instead of seeing it as a drudgery that caused our curling-ironed flips to fall before midday, the teacher suggested everyone bring an album or two that could be played during the PE hour. It was still early in the school year, before I’d really figured out just how foreign a place it was. I knew I’d never pass around the latest frosted blue eye shadows and pale pink lipsticks in the locker room the way my classmates did (I’d look like a clown in those colors). On the one Friday a month when we didn’t have to wear our uniforms, I knew I’d never be able to ask if anyone had a spare package of L’eggspantyhose because I’d put a run in mine. (Nude didn’t apply to bare brown skin and Suntan didn’t refer to the shade of mocha I turned after a day in the sun.) But my music was something I could share with them. I was excited about getting home and going through my album collection, which was impressive because one of my aunts was dating a DJ who spun records in a nightclub and he gave her his duplicates, which she always gave to me.
After much consideration, and recognizing that a PE class demanded something upbeat, I chose two songs that were hot in 1979, at least in my world: Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” and Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell.” True, all I’d heard around school so far was a sound I didn’t know much about, southern rock from groups like .38 Special and Molly Hatchet, but I was sure my music would inspire the girls in class to move through whatever lame activity the teacher would inflict on us. This certainty made me get changed quickly and out to the gym floor before anyone else, where I handed my albums to the teacher so they’d get the first play. She took the albums from me without asking anything about them, and was lowering the arm on the school-issued record player just as all of the girls arrived in the gym.
The first few notes of “Ring My Bell” came out of the player’s speakers, sounding small and tinny compared to my stereo at home, and something like the special effects sound that always accompanied the firing of laser guns in seventies sci-fi movies. I looked around the gym floor at the girls to see if the music would have the effect I’d hoped for. Instead, there were small snickers, which grew into giggles, until finally all of them were laughing
It was like another chore outside of just attending school—learning to live this second life. I pretended to like the Eagles (until one day I realized I really did). When my classmates discussed ski vacations, I nodded as though I knew where Breadloaf was and tried to see the logic in wearing a down jacket with no sleeves during the winter. I wanted to ask, Aren’t your arms cold, too? Going five class periods without seeing a face like mine is not that big a deal, I told myself. I tried to call someone a “spaz” without it sounding ridiculous, but it always did. At first, it wore me out, made me grateful when I got off the bus downtown in a world that didn’t expect anything more of me than what I was. Eventually it got easier. Sometimes it was the fact that it did get easier that bothered me most.
*
New differences between the kids and me showed up daily. In the spirit of getting us more involved in PE instead of seeing it as a drudgery that caused our curling-ironed flips to fall before midday, the teacher suggested everyone bring an album or two that could be played during the PE hour. It was still early in the school year, before I’d really figured out just how foreign a place it was. I knew I’d never pass around the latest frosted blue eye shadows and pale pink lipsticks in the locker room the way my classmates did (I’d look like a clown in those colors). On the one Friday a month when we didn’t have to wear our uniforms, I knew I’d never be able to ask if anyone had a spare package of L’eggspantyhose because I’d put a run in mine. (Nude didn’t apply to bare brown skin and Suntan didn’t refer to the shade of mocha I turned after a day in the sun.) But my music was something I could share with them. I was excited about getting home and going through my album collection, which was impressive because one of my aunts was dating a DJ who spun records in a nightclub and he gave her his duplicates, which she always gave to me.
After much consideration, and recognizing that a PE class demanded something upbeat, I chose two songs that were hot in 1979, at least in my world: Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” and Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell.” True, all I’d heard around school so far was a sound I didn’t know much about, southern rock from groups like .38 Special and Molly Hatchet, but I was sure my music would inspire the girls in class to move through whatever lame activity the teacher would inflict on us. This certainty made me get changed quickly and out to the gym floor before anyone else, where I handed my albums to the teacher so they’d get the first play. She took the albums from me without asking anything about them, and was lowering the arm on the school-issued record player just as all of the girls arrived in the gym.
The first few notes of “Ring My Bell” came out of the player’s speakers, sounding small and tinny compared to my stereo at home, and something like the special effects sound that always accompanied the firing of laser guns in seventies sci-fi movies. I looked around the gym floor at the girls to see if the music would have the effect I’d hoped for. Instead, there were small snickers, which grew into giggles, until finally all of them were laughing
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