Scrappy Little Nobody(3)
The coach eyed me and asked, “Vhat’s your name, little guirl?”
“Anna.”
“Ah. Anya!”
Foreigners, I stewed.
“No.” I spoke more slowly this time. “Anna.”
“Yes, Anya!”
Oh, this motherf*cker thinks this is cute, I realized. He thinks we’re playing a little game.
“It’s ANNA,” I said, and I put on my most fearsome face.
“Aw, Anya.” He reached down and ruffled my hair.
I snapped my head around to face my dad. Are you going to let him get away with this? This is the name of your beloved mother—may she rest in peace—which means that this man, this Russki, is making a mockery of your flesh and blood twofold!
He noticed that I was on the verge of a tantrum and picked me up. “I think she’s a little tired.” Oh, is that right? And so I saw. I was going to have to fight and claw to be taken seriously in this life. And probably never quite succeed. I still try to be serious, but apathy has become a part of me now in a way that my six-year-old self couldn’t have foreseen. I’ve never been able to muster the righteous indignation of my elementary school years.
Back at school, I tried to embrace the smallest things in every category. Favorite instrument in the orchestra? The piccolo. Favorite mammal? The shrew. Favorite country? Monaco. And my favorite planet? Pluto. (Screw you, Neil deGrasse Tyson.)
Always being the smallest also gave me a specific role in life; it gave me an identity. Lining up by height? Excuse me while I give you a starting point. Gymnastics day in gym class? I’ll prepare myself to be thrown.
On one “family cleaning” day, my dad bought an extendable duster to clean under low tables, and I lost my mind because I thought I no longer had a purpose in the family. He threw away the duster and went back to letting me do a mediocre job crawling under the furniture.
First grade led to other discoveries, too. I was small, I was loud, I had ratty hair, but I suspected something deeper was wrong. One day, I tried to articulate this suspicion to my mother.
“It’s like, it’s like I have a different heart. The other girls have one kind of heart, and I have a different kind.”
My mom was understandably confused. “Are you saying they’re mean?”
“No . . . I don’t know.”
Saying other kids were mean felt like I was saying I was more kind, which definitely wasn’t it—more anxious maybe, more sensitive. I guess all I was feeling was that I was different.
Sometimes I’ll be at work or a party and get that same feeling. I am not like these people. I don’t know what I’m doing here. And it comforts me to know that I felt that way as a child, too. Maybe that should make me feel worse, but it makes me calm and resolved. I’ve been prepared to be an outsider most of my life.
I Remember Every Slight: You’ve Been Warned
In fourth grade I managed to get a good thing going when I discovered the secret to female bonding: the sleepover. Six girls from school would come over to my house and we’d roll out sleeping bags in the spare bedroom above the garage. This became a regular thing, and for the first time I felt like I had a steady group of friends. Even if my attempts at social interaction throughout the school week became awkward and tiresome, by Friday it was sleepover time again and all was forgiven.
One weekend I went out of town for a dance recital, and when I came back I was informed that a sleepover had taken place without me. Apparently, since my house hadn’t been an option, Tori had offered to host.
Tori wasn’t in the group, but she’d seen her opportunity to usurp me and she took it. I didn’t like Tori; Tori was mean. If I’d known what was good for me, I would have just shut up and accepted that we could alternate weekends. Maybe I’d even have to invite her over from now on, but that would be a small price to pay for true friendship. Sadly, my sense of justice would not allow me to make this sacrifice; I’d rather be right than happy. I reminded the girls that we, as a group, didn’t like Tori, that she was a bully. But no one listened.
The next day on the playground I was standing in line for the monkey bars, thinking about what I would say if I ever met the cast of Boy Meets World, and then I was on the ground. Fuzzy black stars appeared and dissolved in slow motion, and when my vision came back, I felt a choking sensation. I was being dragged across the gravel by the collar of my army jacket.
Tori!
I scratched and clawed at her, but she was big for our grade. She towed me across the playground and under the slide. When I was put on my feet, I stood in front of a tribunal of the sleepover gang, who were standing in over-the-top indignant poses.
The slide on this particular playground was flanked by a wooden climbing wall (a normal wall with an old rope on it), so when you were underneath it you had a degree of privacy. Students had taken to scratching their initials into the backside of The Wall’s soft wood, which gave this dark corner of the playground a kind of menacing, Victorian-asylum quality. Something new was there. Haphazardly written in some kind of Magic Marker were the words Mary D is a jerk. In fact, as my eyes began to adjust, I saw that hastily scrawled insults about almost every girl in our group now adorned The Wall. Based on the manner in which I’d been summoned to this meeting, I knew what was coming.
I tried to protest. I didn’t do it! I was their friend! I mean, “Mary D is a jerk”? “Amanda sucks”? Why would I write a bunch of mean stuff about my friends?! Using such generic insults?!