Big Girl Small (3 page)
Whenever Meghan and I are together, we talk about how much we wish we lived in the same place. She’s an achon too, so we look alike and everyone thinks we’re sisters and that’s okay, even though we hate it when people assume we’re sisters with, like, every other random dwarf in the universe. At that first LPA conference where I met Meghan, there were tons of teenagers, but she and I were the only two twelve-year-old girls. The next year, there were a bunch of younger guys, but no guys our age, and when we were fourteen, there were, like, no teenagers at all. It’s random. Last year, I met a guy named Joel who was kind of okay, and we danced a few times and even went swimming late at night, but I was embarrassed that all the grown-ups there seemed to think that dwarf teenagers should get married right away in case no one else ever agrees to marry us. I mean, I danced with the guy like three times and tons of people were pulling my parents aside like, “I think they’re a great couple, don’t you?”
My parents, good on most things, said, “We’re glad Judy seems to be making friends and having fun,” and left it at that. They’re not the types to try to match-make.
And even though they spent the whole summer worrying, my mom and dad gamely dropped me off on the first morning at Darcy, trying their best to comment cheerily on the “fabulous” student murals decorating the walls, and the “creative” vibe of the place. They kept up their tradition of staring the welcoming stare at anyone who ogled me, although I was finally like, “People are staring at me because my parents are at school with me. Please leave immediately.” I told them I already looked like a six-year-old, could they please not make matters more unbearable by staying. But they didn’t listen, and sat through the whole morning of meetings and orientations, including a private twenty- minute chat with the principal, Mr. Grames, and a school counselor named Mrs. O’Henry: “We have access to world-class medical facilities and are committed to our students’ physical and psychological well-being, Judy. I hope you’ll contact me right away with any concerns or if you need anything at all.”
At lunchtime, they swept me away from the possible horrors of the cafeteria: my legs dangling from a bench, no one to sit with, some movie-worthy bully slapping my sloppy joe tray into the air and stealing my milk money. They took me off “campus” to Zingerman’s, where we all ate turkey Reubens. I chewed four pieces of spearmint Eclipse on the walk back and spat them out in the trashcan at the back entrance to the school. My parents insisted on walking to the door to drop me off, and tried to kiss and smother me as if I were leaving for a hundred years instead of three more hours of high school. But I fought them off and they left. I was desperately relieved to see them go.
Walking back in, I felt less sure of myself, though. The halls were bulging with kids hugging each other, throwing books into their lockers, slinging on fashionable backpacks, singing, leaping. It was like that old movie
Fame
, the one that has no plot at all and is just a montage of beautiful people in tights, alternately weeping and fucking and frolicking. I chewed more gum. One girl was crying, and an absolute soap star of a high school boy was hugging her. I thought
Spring Awakening
, just knew they serenaded each other and danced through fields together on the weekends. Their life was definitely a rock musical, and they were probably engaged, or at least “going steady.” I felt sick, tried to focus on the student murals my parents had pretended to admire: swirling, spotted, punked-out zebras in rainbow colors, kids dancing, and a Greek goddess with her hair trailing all the way from one end of an orange hallway to the other. The lockers are all painted by students, too; one of the big bonuses of the place is that you’re allowed to decorate the outside of your locker, not just the inside like at most regular schools. It’s a big competition, of course, and there are stories of the most famous lockers ever, like Sophie Armaria’s. She graduated ten years ago but people still reminisce about how she painted herself naked on her locker, in thick, glistening oil, so that the combination dial was one of her nipples. The school didn’t know what to do. Did they “censor” her or celebrate her artistic freedom? Grown-ups are so idiotic. I mean, who cares? Finally they asked her (I’m not joking) to paint a bikini on the thing. She refused, and Darcy put some tape over the locker’s privates. Unbelievable. Sophie, apparently even more deeply in love with herself than ever before, wrote “CENSORED!” in black lettering on the tape. When I first started, people were obsessed with a senior named Amanda Fulton’s locker; she created a mosaic on it out of beads and glass tiles and photographs of her friends. She spent, like, her whole four years at D’Arts working on the thing. The photos look all 3-D, because she framed them and then broke the glass, so each face had at least a few shards of glass over it. It was incredibly cool, actually. I wish I were Amanda Fulton. Or at least one of her friends, framed for eternity (well, four years of high school) on that locker. Some kids who can’t think of anything better pretend to be above the whole thing and paint their lockers black. Others “tag” them with fake street graffiti. The truth is, the whole scene is a little fake, but I spent the whole post-lunch orientation meeting contemplating how I could amaze everyone with my locker decorations. Maybe I’d do something with tissue paper—make an enormous garden, blooming out into the hallway. Or a mint farm with boxes of Eclipse gum. Of course then everyone would steal it and chew it up. Maybe I would use marbles somehow. Was there a way to fasten marbles to a vertical metal surface? It was good I had this to think about, since otherwise the orientation was nothing but an excruciating, dwarf-peek-sneaking affair about “sensitivity to race and gender issues.”
In other words, “We do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, or national or ethnic origin, so you shouldn’t shout racial epithets at the two black people allowed in or refuse to pick the dwarf for your kickball team.” Everyone kept looking over at me, especially these girls I later figured out were Amanda Fulton and Carrie Shultz. They were dressed alike in superexpensive jeans, with all the seams sewn on the outside, and button-up blouses buttoned down enough that their black lacy bras were just visible. I tugged at the jeans my mom and I had bought in the children’s department at Nordstrom’s for my first day—they were the most expensive ones I’d ever had, $118. My mom had splurged, the whole time marveling with me over the fact that people would spend more than a hundred dollars on jeans for a six- or seven-year-old, who would presumably grow out of them in a month or two. Then we were both quiet, maybe thinking I’d never grow out of them, and what the hell, we might as well spend thousands of dollars on designer jeans for me. I had on boots with heels, too, orthopedic but full of the effort to look stylish, a black T-shirt, and a dark pink cardigan. The truth is, in the mirror that morning, I’d felt pretty cute. I have good hair, is the thing—light brown with blond streaks in it, and a pretty good face, too. I don’t have the mushed nose, broad forehead look, and my eyes aren’t too wide apart. I have long eyelashes, which are darker than my hair even when I don’t put mascara on. And my mouth is round and cute, with straight white teeth. Lots of people in Ann Arbor are used to me, by the way. It’s not like I have no friends, it’s just that I stupidly decided to leave my high school and go to Darcy so I could become famous and make everyone be like, “Remember Judy? We never thought she’d be the next—whatever, Peter Dinklage.”
But that first day at Darcy, I kept thinking of my friends, starting the year at Huron, only several miles away. Why had I left devils I knew for ones I didn’t? I wanted to go to Darcy desperately, that’s the funny thing. Darcy Arts is Ann Arbor’s private school answer to LaGuardia High. It’s for talented performing arts kids, so everyone wants to go. If you live in Ann Arbor, getting into D’Arts is almost like winning
American Idol
. Not to mention getting in for free. D’Arts has this friendly pretense that its scholarships aren’t need-based, so if you get one, everyone’s supposed to be like, “Wow, she’s even more talented than the rest of us stars.” But I needed the money, so everyone else who has a scholarship probably did too. My parents aren’t poor or anything, but D’Arts costs almost as much as college (everyone there is always mentioning that). And I guess poor kids do have to be even more talented, because there must be more of us applying than kids who can pay. By the way, you’re allowed to call it “D’Arts” only if you go—who wouldn’t want that? And I know I keep mentioning
American Idol
. It’s not my dream or anything, it’s just an example of giving teenagers a shot at what they want most in the universe. The stakes are very high, is my point.
My parents were shocked that I wanted to go to Darcy. But I thought it was time for me to break out. I mean, they’ve always been overprotective and suffocating. So I explained that it would be a “perspective broadening” experience for me, and the truth is, I kind of thought it would be exactly that. I mean, I was tired of the same hundred kids I’d known since Angell Elementary, even though there was something safe in staying on with them, even the meanest, like Scott Declan, who has pointed and laughed literally every time he’s seen me. Which is roughly two billion, six hundred and ninety-three million times, since we’ve gone to school together since first grade. You’d think someone like that could eventually get a grip, but apparently not. At least I stopped caring what Scott did or said when I turned eleven. If only I’d realized how delicious that safety was. I thought an escape to a more sophisticated school might benefit me, and that maybe I could become an intellectual powerhouse or Shakespearean actor like Peter Dinklage. Because I love Peter Dinklage. I even have a picture of him from
The Station Agent
that I keep in my wallet. And like I said earlier, I can really sing. And I can sort of write, at least school essays. I knew they’d let me in anyway, because how cool would it be to have a talented dwarf on their brochure for the rest of time? And even if I was wrong about everything else I ever thought in my whole life, I was right about that.
Mrs. O’Henry, the school counselor, kept smiling at me from the stage during the orientation, and every time she said “Any questions?” she looked right at me all hopefully, like she was just so thrilled to have a real live special-needs victim there for her sensitivity demonstration. I was like the moment she’d been waiting for, except I didn’t ask anything, because, for one thing, I was chewing gum, and you’re not allowed to have gum so I was keeping my mouth closed. For another, I had already signed up for an arts education. I would have to sing and act and probably dance a dwarf jig in front of everyone in town—that would be enough attention for me.
As soon as the meeting ended, I scuttled up to the library on the fourth floor of the building and sat alone, the hunchback in a dollhouse bell tower, clanging away. I arranged my books in a stack on the desk, opened a notebook, took out my favorite pink pen, and wrote “Judy” and “D’Arts.” Then I doodled patterns—tiny schools of fish, stars, and striped hearts—under my name. The silence echoed around me and I wished terribly to be in the car on the way home with my parents, or already at home, or even on the AATA bus up Washtenaw to our house. I clicked my orthopedic heels together, imagining the intersection where Washtenaw meets Stadium, the little dip in the road, the bike path, the left turn, down the hill, past the speaking-in-tongues church, to where our house is. I was climbing out of the car in my mind when I heard the voice. I turned, away from the dream of my brothers playing basketball in the driveway, and as soon as I saw who was talking I thought I’d been catapulted out of reality into that movie
Mean Girls
, because the girl standing there was so pretty and bitchy-looking that my bones froze and my blood fizzed through my veins like grape pop. She had streaky blond hair that looked all intentionally messed up, and was wearing black yoga pants, flip-flops, and a gray Darcy Arts hoodie sweatshirt, an outfit that looked on her like it had cost thousands of dollars. She was probably five feet ten barefoot. She smiled.
“Um, hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“I’m Ginger Mews,” she said, sticking her hand down at me. I looked at it for a minute before shaking it with my stumpy paw. Her fingers were long and thin, but the nails were bitten down below the line, all ragged and scabby. Some of them even looked freshly bloodied. Maybe we could be friends.
“I’m Judy,” I said, and she nodded.
“I know. I’m on the social staff, I mean, you know, the orientation staff. I just came by to welcome you to D’Arts and see if you needed anything, and, oh, to make sure you knew that there’s a party this weekend at Chessie Andrewjeski’s, so, you know, we hope you’ll come.”
“The social staff ?”
“Mmm. We just, you know, welcome new students and stuff.”
We stood there for a minute, while I contemplated what to say. Only the dwarfs? Thank you? Had Mrs. O’Henry sent her after the meeting with my parents, and if so, what had she said to Ginger, “This girl needs your gorgeous, socially well-adjusted help”? I didn’t know where to look, didn’t want to stare up at her like a weird pet or a flower growing wildly toward the sun, but I also didn’t want to just look away, lest she think I was rude. Mainly, I didn’t want her to leave yet.
“You want some pretzels?”
“Sure,” she said, glancing around. Food was forbidden in the library. I took a bag of Rold Gold out of my backpack and passed it to her, so she could reach in and take a polite, obligatory pretzel and stick the dry thing into her mouth. It was a gesture of solidarity, and, after she did it, she pulled a chair over to my carrel and sat. Maybe we would be best friends. Now that she was sitting, eye contact was easier to manage. I relaxed about one octave, imagined asking her to fetch books for me from high-up shelves, watching her lunge into the chairs in my room at home. Maybe we’d have a love montage, sip from a shared shake at Judy’s, my parents swooning in the background.