Walla Walla University - Creative Writing Program Final Project 

My dad used to tell my mom he was afraid I’d never get married because I didn’t fit in. Weird people attracted other weird people; but I wasn’t really weird. I also wasn’t sporty, musical, or artsy. I was messy; my dad wasn’t sure I could find someone to deal with that.

I ran around with dirt covering my school uniform and my face, I refused to shower, and it was a successful day if I ate more food than what ended up on my hands, arms, and sometimes my legs and neck.

My dad, who did the laundry, was horrified, but I was my mommy’s little work in progress.

“Think of how you sound,” my mom would tell me when I got bossy. Or, “Ladies don’t rush to the front of the line, Rachel.”

Speak softly.

Be considerate.

Wash your hands.

Brush you teeth.

Walk as if a string is pulling you toward the ceiling.

Don’t spread your legs when you are wearing a skirt.

My dad grew up in a family of four brothers. To him, girls were born as babies and then fell off his radar, and then viola: suddenly they were women.

His awkward, underdeveloped man-child daughter was a mystery to him.

I resisted the transformation for as long as I could.

During fifth grade recess my girl friends and I would meet in the bathroom for our morning gossip circle.

“What color is yours?” my friend Sarah demanded one day.

“Of what?” I asked, thinking she was talking about the bouncy balls I hoarded under my desk for recess.

“You know,” our other friend Breanna said, “Your T.B.,” she whispered the two letters as if they were sacred.

It sounded like a disease.

Breanna, Sarah, and Emily began shyly lifting up their school-required polos to display their brand-new training bras. They were white, elastic, and didn’t seem to be covering anything.

I gaped, wide eyed, simultaneously horrified and entranced, but mostly horrified.

As the weeks passed, I began to come up with elaborate reasons why I wasn’t performing the usual acts expected of young, blossoming women.

I told them I couldn’t pluck eyebrows because my face would swell up for weeks. “My mom thinks I’m allegoric,” I told them solemnly.

I couldn’t shave my legs because the plumbing in my bathroom didn’t work…indefinitely.

And I always became conveniently busy during their daily bra comparison ritual.

I resisted the body altering plague for as long as I could, but eventually I was infected. At first the change was invisible (despite the TB’s). The only way to distinguish between the unaffected and the affected was by their scent; the boys carried a smell like eggs left out on a hot day and the girls smelled like Bath and Body Work’s Tangy Mango Spray. Both were equally awful.

Then the changes became visible and the girls began carrying purses to the bathroom. Emily’s was green linen with a blue silk liner. Inside were rows of her small white objects wrapped in loud, crinkly plastic. At recess we ran to the bathroom carrying our purses, hiding them under our Polos, half-heartedly. The embarrassed little girl inside us fought against the stronger woman-half that wanted people to know she was changing. We were equal parts mortified and proud.

On the day of sex-education, we sat in masked excitement. Our teacher Mrs. Novack stood at the podium at the front of the class, her book dog-eared to chapter 14, well worn from countless classes of over-excited children. None of us were listening as she began to read about ovaries and “the crimson wave;” we were staring at the pictures on the pages.

“Pssst! Page 57,” Emily whispered across the desk.

I flipped to a page with a giant penis diagram on it. I snorted out loud and then quickly tried to turn it into a cough as Mrs. Novak looked over. Satisfied that I properly ashamed, Mrs. Novack continued with her paragraph on sperm and fertilization.

A note plopped into my lap, ripped off an assignment sheet and folded into tiny squares: Bet that’s what Derrick’s looks like! it read.

I snorted again, not having mastered my lady-like laugh yet, and I dove into my pencil case full of Vanilla Lip Smackers to avoid Mrs. Novack’s glare.

Poor Derrick, the runt of the class.

Three weeks later Jason Birkenstock took it upon himself to run next to me on the track for P.E. He was tall, dark, and oftentimes the bane of my existence. He was loud and I was loud, neither of us liked competition for airspace to vocalize our never-wrong opinions. We spent a lot of recesses copying down memory verses together as punishment for our arguments on the correct length of time it takes to microwave a corn dog and how many steps you can cross over the line in prison ball. I was suspicious of his sudden interest in me.

“What do you want Jason?” I asked, quickly taking control of the conversation before he could.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “It’s Skate Party next week and I think you should be my date.”

I stopped on the track. I could always count on Jason to cut to the chase; it annoyed me but I respected it. “With you?” I braced myself to hold in a snort, but surprisingly none came.

“Yeah,” he said, confidently. “You know. The couples’ skate.”

“Okay.” The word slipped out of my mouth before I could grab it and yank it back in.

“So you’re like my girl friend now,” Jason said conclusively. “Wear something nice, okay? Not that polo shirt.” Then he was gone, running ahead of me to catch up with the other sixth graders.

That day my dad was on duty to pick my brother and me up from school.

“How was your day?” he asked my brother politely as I picked out an Adventures in Odyssey tape for us all to listen to.

My brother grunted from the front seat.

“And you?” my dad asked, catching my eye in the review mirror.

“I got a boyfriend,” I said somewhat smugly. “Guess I’m gonna get married after all.”