Tammy Wynette was right, sometimes it is hard to be a woman, but it's so much harder to be a chubby 11 year old girl with a flat chest who stands half a foot taller than three fourths of the boys in her class. That was me in 1985, the year I started the sixth grade. If someone had told me then that in four short years these problems would all work themselves out just fine, I might not have spent most of the cruel torture that is middle school feeling mortified by the simple act of being alive. But what I did not know could not help me, and for the tween that I was the loathsomeness of my body, my hair, my clothes, my existence was a permanent condition and the only hope I had in life was to act natural and pray that no one would register exactly how disgusting I was.
Which
is not to say that I didn't want to be noticed. I did. See, I'm a middle child and middle children have an insatiable
craving for someone, please
god anyone, to recognize how remarkable they are. I was constantly trying to unlock
my hidden genius so that the
world, or at least my family, would be forced to admit that while
they in their plebeian
stupidity had failed to recognize it,
I had
been extremely gifted all
along. I made my own cologne
from Scope and flavoring
extracts, I attempted to train our family
dog through telepathy, and I
sang a smoldering rendition
of Charlene's “I've Never
Been to Me” into a hairbrush so many times that I still remember
all the
lyrics to this day.
Thematically, it's an advanced song
for a kid, but like Charlene
I understood the
nuanced
tragedy
of life's
untapped potential.
The combination of my equally urgent desires to have both my talents
rewarded and my flaws ignored led me to join the chorus when
I started at West Millbrook
Middle School. In those days any student who participated in either
the chorus or the band was exempt from Phys.
Ed.
three days a week, which meant three less times I
had to dress-out
in the locker room and run the risk of anyone seeing my
training bra. Plus, I
enjoyed singing and felt certain that I was good at it, so
obviously joining the chorus
was the way to launch myself on to far
bigger and much
better things.
I took my place on the
risers, at the top of course as not to obstruct anyone's view, and
dutifully learned my parts for songs like the spiritual “Wade in
the Water” and a hot Hoagie Carmichael medley as they were
taught to me by Mrs. Edwards, our portly instructor and piano
accompanist who had a giant
dyed red bouffant circa 1961 and
was clearly nostalgic for the days of Jim Crow. She
was awful and I hated her, but she had the power to chose which
singers were awarded solos, so I knew I had to make nice. No matter
how much it inflamed my sensibilities every time she took a bite of
her ever-present candy
bar while
counting out a measure – one, two, bite, chew, chew,
six, seven, eight – I stuffed my feelings down deep and forced a
smile. If I was going to get off those risers, I would need her.
It
paid off big time too. The following year, seventh grade,
I was selected as the second
or mezzo
soprano who would represent
West Millbrook
in the All County Chorus. My
moment had arrived; I had
been chosen. This
was in the
late autumn
or early winter of
1986. To put things in perspective, around the same time that
Elie
Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize and Mike Tyson won the heavyweight
title, the Iran Contra scandal erupted in the news, and the releases of both Sid and
Nancy and License To Ill thrilled young people nationwide. Later
these would all be things that mattered to me, but not then because
I was a 12 year old girl on the verge of tapping
into my own greatness.
All
County was a big deal on the middle school choral scene. Each school
from Wake County could
send one and only one singer from each vocal range – soprano,
mezzo, alto, treble, and bass – to represent them for a one time
only
holiday performance. You learned your part and
practiced on your own, meeting once a week with the other singers
during the month prior to rehearse. I knew it wasn't Broadway, but I
felt special. It was a slice of the recognition
I knew I deserved. We
beamed a little, each one of us, because we were winners. On the
risers in our acoustic practice room we
were positioned as we would
be during the performance. I was in my usual spot at the top and in
the center with the rest of the freakishly tall girls. There wasn't
much time for socializing - we
never even
learned one another's names - but
we got to be kind of friendly, us gargantuan preteen mezzos. There
is a kinship that can only really be shared by girls who don't fit the
mold, girls who understand that the clothes in the Junior's
department weren't designed with
them in
mind, and the articles in
Seventeen Magazine
probably aren't going to apply either. Scarce were the messages about girl
power, diversity, and positive body image floating around the
middle school circuit in
Raleigh, NC in 1986, but at
least we had each other and
there was safety in numbers.
For
our recital the director had selected “Gloria
in excelsis
Deo.” This selection
pleased me immensely. This was not some piss-ant little ditty like
“Jingle Bell Rock” or another impossible
holiday cliché like “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Yes,
the Gloria was a bold
choice. It was a big song, it
had
history, it had
gravitas, it involved
Latin for fuck's sake. When
we all
sang it
together it filled the room with
the dark ritualistic majesty of Christendom.
It started out soft
and as it progressed it gained
mass, climbing
to a billowy
crescendo that gave one goosebumps. Upon
reaching its last enormous “in excelsis day-AAA-oooohhh”
it ended abruptly and was followed by
a silence like
thunder that commanded
attention and respect.
What's more it
was a challenge to master,
requiring the singer to control her breath and sing from the
diaphragm, pushing down air
and contracting the muscle for volume.
It took skill and it took
practice, but we were up to the task. We weren't just some cluster of
pimply chumps, after all. No, we were the All County Chorus.
Just before the performance itself we assembled in our practice
room wearing our matching pressed white button up shirts with black
pants for the boys and skirts for the girls, our sheet music housed
in matching black leather folios. We all took our places on the risers for
one last rehearsal with instructions to treat this run through as if it were the real thing,
and that meant no gum, no giggles, no nudging your neighbor, or
scratching your nose, or tilting your head to the side. I sang my
pudgy little adolescent heart out, paying close attention to my
breathing, making sure to silently gulp in the air during the
miniscule breaks in the song and push it down, and to increase my
volume by contracting my diaphragm so as not to strain my delicate
vocal chords. As the song grew, so did the need to breath and
contract, breath and contract, like some musical lamaze experiment.
Ultimately, there was just too much breathing and too much
contracting for my body to contain and so at the precise moment that
the song crescendoed and ceased to be, instead of a silence like
thunder there was the sound of me, a chubby flat chested now 12 year
old girl, ripping the loudest and most profane fart I had and have
ever heard in all my life.
Let me be clear,
this was not the adorable inopportune gas of a child, this was the
echoing flatulence of a full grown man, and there was no
chance that it would go unnoticed. Nor would it escape anyone's attention that the roaring abomination had come from the
top and center of the risers. Guilt would be assigned and ridicule
would follow the likes of which I had never known but had always,
always feared. There was still a week of class left before the
holiday break and four of those kids were going to be in school with
me the very next day. They were going to tell everyone. I fought back
the surging panic. It was a fate worse than death, I knew that much,
and if there was a merciful God, a God who loved me, he would
take my life right then. But death did not come, and I knew I was
on my own. If there was a God, why, why had he done this to me? Why had
he taken my moment from me, taken my chance for glory and excellence
and turned it into a pit of blackness and despair? But this was no
moment for questioning faith, nor was it a moment for self-pity. I
had gleaned that much from my situation with the greed
and self-consumption of a preteen who was used to disappointment.
This was a moment for action, this was primal Darwinism, survival of
the fittest, and if I was going survive I would need to be swift, to
show no mercy as none had been shown to me. The act of cruelty that
followed is one that haunts me still.
I turned to the
girl at my left on the risers, my sister in awkwardness, my husky
mezzo comrade, a girl whose name I did not know but whose face I'll
never forget, and I looked at her with shock as I wrinkled my nose
and pretended to try not to laugh. I looked at her as if I could not
believe what she had just done, but in my feigned good manners I
would not ridicule her like everyone else was going to. It was as
brilliant as it was terrible. She looked back at me with what I would
learn in tenth grade English was the face of Caesar, saying “et
tu brute?” In that moment, there was only me and her; our eyes
locked and in mine she discovered the meaning of betrayal. What
I knew a nanosecond before, and what she knew then, was that
someone was going to go down for this and it was not going to be me.
As anyone could predict, the
giggles and snickers commenced. The heads turned and as they did that poor girl's face got redder and redder, which only made her appear to be more
and more guilty of the offense she had not committed. I, however,
remained composed. I would live to fight another day, but at what
cost? The performance which followed was stripped of all joy for me
and in it's place was only shame. What had become of me? Where was my
sense of fair play, my goodwill towards man? This was not the spirit
of Christmas and I knew it, but I lacked the sand to come clean, to
admit that not only had I farted, but I was a coward too. Not a
Christmas season has gone by since 1986 when I haven't wondered which
of my life's failures might be attributed, karmically
speaking, to this one gesture.
I know that
confession here will not absolve me, and neither will tracking this
woman down and sending her a fruit basket, though if it were possible
I would do that, or maybe a Target gift card because everybody can
use one of those and the fruit they put in baskets is gross
anyway. I hope that this woman, wherever she is, is gorgeous with
glossy hair and a warm house full of twinkles and cheer. Most of all,
I hope that she is telling her own beautiful chubby flat chested
adolescent daughter the horrifying holiday tale of the bitch who
threw her under a bus in the seventh grade All County Chorus, and
how she learned that there are more important things in life than
ridicule, like truth and decency and kindness. In the spirit of the
season be good to each other as best you can, and so Happy Christmas,
I hope you have fun.
