An Ingenue Attends the Freshman Formal
In one-inch heels and a red tea-length dress whose skirt twirled like a parasol, I prepared to descend the staircase, a starlet attending her first Oscars, not a mousy nose-in-book who watched “Golden Girls” in footed pajamas on Saturday nights. I knew the photographer awaited me, and I practiced a modest smile, eager for the frothy bubbles of his adulation.
Dad’s mustache twitched as his eyes traveled from my hair-sprayed bangs to my dyed-red heels. “You look like a hussy,” he said.
Blinking, I gripped the stair rail, and then I was staring at Katie’s breasts in the locker room, lesbo, as they shoved me into the tiled shower wall and chipped my tooth, and then I was sliding down the rope at summer camp, fatso, as my thighs chafed and my hands burned from the fibers, and then I was wetting myself from laughing too hard at Mr. Taylor’s jokes, peetard, as the smell of urine suffused the classroom, and I ran to the bathroom and my tears stung and my nose dripped and I threw away my underwear and disappeared in the stall and waited for the bell to ring. But now I couldn’t disappear, so I blinked, faking a smile for Dad’s camera.
At the dance, I spotted Claire from French class, who whispered when called on, whose dull ponytail dragged, who shuffled with her shoulders slumped and her head hung. Now, her blond hair sparkled in rhinestone clips, and her navy dress shimmered against a body held proud, and her smile radiated joy. I followed her into the restroom, and we stared at each other in the mirror. “You look like a hussy,” I said. Then I closed myself in a stall and stilled my breath, aching for the sound of her tears.
* * * * *
Tally of a Loss
1960: the year you were born
2000: the year I was born, your “favorite mistake”
2001: the last time either of us saw Dad
9: my age when you taught me to save myself for the right person
15: my age when I thought he was right
15 ½: my age when he wasn’t
7: the number of nights I cried myself to sleep in your bed
7: the number of nights you held me
57: your age when they diagnosed the cancer
3: years a stage four patient can expect to live
11 months and 6 days: actual time you had left
99.5: my high school GPA
3: number of colleges that offered me full scholarships
3: number of scholarships revoked after I deferred too many times
4: number of organs where the cancer had spread
3: number of clinical trials you applied to
3: number of trials that turned you down
2: bedrooms in our house
1: living room I converted into a bedroom so you wouldn’t have to climb the stairs
1: closet full of your clothes that gradually became too big
1: kitchen where I’ll always feel lost without you
$20,000: cost of your funeral, plot, headstone and casket
$1,000,000: amount your life insurance paid out
$980,000: amount of money I don’t know what to do with
2: the number of people we ever needed in our lives
1: the number I’m left with now