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My Profile
She blinded him with whiteness - 2008-07-25
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11:59 a.m. - 2008-02-15
It's never too late to have a happy girlhood. Of all the stuff denied me by the crappy circumstances of my life- fun, a formal education, confidence in myself, travel, security, I think it was the loss of a true girlhood that's grieved me the most. How did it happen? Was it when they brought my sister home and told me she was my responsibility? That usurping little sister whose illnesses and antics forced me to become if not a true co-parent then certainly one who was no longer parented by my mother and father because they had no time for me. Maybe it was when my Da left and my grandparents told me I was to take care of my mother. Already four years into the struggle to raise myself, now I was in charge of my sister and my mother. At 7 years old. I know that after the first time my mother's boyfriend climbed into my bed and the truth of what had been done to me was ignored, when I was told I was deliberately trying to wreck things and I understood no help was ever coming, that I vowed no such thing would ever happen to the little sister who was my responsibility and I stopped struggling and crying so he wouldn't leave my bed and go after her instead. Was it at photo shoots where time was money and it was my job to be a smiling obedient robot? No time to explore. No time for confusion or curiosity. No time to waste on playing dress-up, the potions, make-up and clothes were serious business. Was it my precocious growth that forced me out of kiddie rides, girls' clothes and undershirts far before I was ready to give them up? Was it always being the last in line because of the nuns' penchant for size-order? And the whispers and nudges from the congregants when I draggled up the aisle after my wee bride classmates to accept my First Holy Communion in a stark A-line dress and ladies pumps because neither the poofy communion dresses or patent Mary-Janes came large enough to fit my outsized self? That's a lot of it. But mostly it was hearing over and over and over again about how I was too big and too old to want girlish things. No dolls. No lace. Nothing remotely child-like or soft. I was bad for wanting those things. I was ungrateful and selfish. And stupid too, how could I be so smart and still not know what I was? I would be a joke tarted up like a girl. Imagine a moose like me wanting to wear flowers and glitter! How foolish! How utterly ridiculous! When was I ever going to get it through my head that those things were for pretty little girls? I wasn't pretty. And I sure as hell wasn't little. If I couldn't stop myself from being absurd then my mother would do it for me. "C'mon, LA, enough time wasting, there's nothing for you here, you're too big. Besides you need to start dinner. I have a date and your sister is hungry." By 13 I had a centerfold's body and was the tallest person at Cow Town Jr High, teachers included. Locker room humiliation in the Jane Russell special my mother insisted I wear. The tittering and sneers from my pixie classmates. The bawdy howling and mockery from boys desperate to be big to themselves and couldn't handle being dwarfed by me. Shut out forever from boy-girl things, forget about diaries and slam books and crushes, I was flinching from the leers and fending off the gropes of grown men. I learned fast. Guys with hard-ons don't give roses. Mouths full of drool rarely sing love songs. What could I know of their insecurities? All I ever got was sick-o lust. So I thought it was me. That I was too big and too gross to deserve tenderness and wooing. Those things were for the real girls. So I worked and I cooked and I cleaned and I wore the loathsome old lady clothes and that goddamn orthopedic bra. And forever felt myself unworthy of the things my heart cried for. Even today when I go to Claire's and reach out for anything pink or delicate I wince remembering the mica-hard glitter of malice on my mother's face as she smilingly told me the baubles and the pretties I wanted were 'wrong' for me. I would look and be a fool. I hear the bitchy tittering of the wee bitties. The caustic tee-heeing that proved my mother right whenever I made the mistake of trying to be girly in the ruthless chook yard of teenage society. And we all know what my marriage to Mike the Chihuahua Lover was like. Never say never though. Here I am on the brink of menopause and I am finally free to be a pretty girl. It's Mick. Mick who loves me enough to see all of me. He's not blinded by my toughness and my size. Mick is delighted by everything I am, all the things I do so frighteningly well. He's proud and honored to be loved by such a phenomenal woman. Mick loves me so much he can acknowledge all those things and wants to cosset and spoil me anyhow. Mick does for me the one thing I could never do myself, which is to see the girl within and allow her to come out and play.
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