“I’ll make this easy. Any bird, all right? If the guy dresses up in any animal costume whatsoever, or worse yet, hires someone else to do it? My answer is no. And some geese have orange feet, just so you know. Most, I think.”
“How did I raise such a snob? It’s sweet this man is doing something different. Anyone can get on his knees and pull out a ring.”
“Then any guy
should
get on his knees. And I’m sure my father dressing up like fowl has something to do with my haughty behavior.”
She shakes her sewing kit. “Have you seen the tea bags? I’m going to dye the suit.”
Am I the mother here? “No, Mom, but I imagine they’re in the kitchen.” Although in my house, one never knows.
“You should watch your attitude, Daisy. Those costumes pay for your tuition. You can’t afford to be snotty when your dad’s sacrifice is for you.”
I’m sorry. Did she just say “sacrifice”?
“I haven’t seen the duck suit. Will you shut my door? I want to get ready for school.”
She shuts the door, but not without one of her weary sighs that tells me how ridiculous I am. It never occurs to them that fitting my father for a goose suit for a big marriage proposal contributes to my behavior. Do they expect me to be normal in this environment? Does a polar bear raise a cub and expect it to turn into a penguin? Isn’t Mom the one who is always saying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? I’m weird because that’s what I know. Duh.
Prom Journal
September 6
(School and My New Life Start Tomorrow!)
180 Days until Prom
I’ve racked up $447 working in the last three weeks at Checks R Us—a check-printing company that is now 24 hours because of the bank closures. It’s great because they think nothing of paying me extra for my time, and I can work on weekends and everything, which for an office job is pretty great.
I haven’t even had time to think about my prom journal, but I’m finally back here as I get ready for the new school year and the new me. Wait, that’s not entirely true, I have had time to obsess about the number of days left until prom. I wake up first thing in the morning, and that number pops into my head. It’s always one day less than the day before.
So wrong. I am supposed to be thinking about being a normal girl. I even practiced this thing in the mirror where I say, “Oh my gosh, I totally love that!” And I insert some insanely happening cultural reference that reflects the current conversation.
By the very fact that I think in numbers first and know how many days I have left to find a date, I know that statistically, my chances for finding a prom date are dropping, yet every morning I’m haunted by that number. I’ve been trying to get up early and giggle girlishly in the mirror, like the popular girls do. Right now it sounds a little horse-like, but it’s getting better. I’m going to try it out on Claire and see if she notices anything weird.
Claire, my BFF since preschool, is currently going all emo scene on me, so I can’t exactly tell her my life’s goal is to go to prom. Which it’s not, it’s just my high school goal, my short-term goal. See? Totally living in the moment.
Claire’s eyes would roll out of her head if she heard about this. She’d write some depressing poem about it and tell me how hopeless I am to express my pointless thoughts on paper, a valuable resource. “Green” was her last phase, but she found her Mustang convertible was more fun to drive than her parents’ Prius, so that ended the environmental phase. You can’t be green and drive a car that sucks gas into its powerful engine like a kid slurping an Icee after soccer practice.
Claire’s the one wearing a studded dog collar and calling me hopeless. You see the irony here? I’m on my own, and if I find comfort in a frilly pink journal, so be it. Pink is life affirming.
Besides, what’s the point of promised purity if my parents don’t trust me to test it? My dad should realize the purity thing has to be my idea, and if I’m going to stand on my own in college, he needs to understand I can handle myself on a date now.
So I state it here for the record. I will go to my senior prom if it’s the last thing I do. I will obtain the secret prize: the photograph that proves I was not a total nobody in high school and that I could get dates, I simply chose not to. (I’m straightening my shoulders as I write this!) I need proof that I had some semblance of a social life. Senior prom is the one event you have to go to. All those other years can be erased with the right prom moment.
Let’s put it this way. I’ve seen my mother’s memorabilia, where she’s in a freakishly hideous hot pink minidress, clinging to some nerd. I don’t want to pass on to my children that (1) I had no taste, (2) my date was one step away from my first cousin, and (3) Grandma went to her prom, but Mommy didn’t. I mean, you might as well put the sofa on the front porch at that point.
I have 180 days to find the perfect dress (one that stands the test of time and doesn’t look like Lady Gaga in the year 2024), talk my mother into letting me get blonde highlights, and nab the perfect date to redeem my sad excuse of a social life from total oblivion. It won’t be easy, but I am committed to stay the course.
For future reference, there are a few roadblocks to this plan.
1. Guys don’t seem to know I exist (with the exception of the boys I tutor on the baseball team—and call me picky, but I was hoping for someone who could spell “prom”).
2. My parents believe only in the concept of courting (naturally, because they’re married), so dating is out of the question until I’m of marrying age. Prom hardly counts, though, right? God says the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains, and I have to believe it’s true. Maybe my dad will stand next to the mountain and budge just a tiny bit.
3. I do not plan on “putting out” until my wedding night. Nor do I see someone buying me a meal and renting a tux/limo as cause for losing my purity. You want it? It will cost two karats and a platinum wedding. I do have God’s standards. Duh. As Beyonce' says, if you like it, put a ring on it. And it BETTER have a diamond, know what I’m sayin’? And you’d better not be dressed like a duck!
Mom’s calling. More later!
“Daisy?” my mom calls. I shove my prom journal under my pillow, grab a nearby book, and grin. Mom appears and leans against the doorway. I think she feels my guilt on her mom-frequency because she never comes in here unless I’m writing in that journal.
“Hi, Mom!” I say with too much enthusiasm.
“What are you up to?” she asks me. “You sound guilty.” She thins her eyes.
“Me?” I laugh uneasily. “I’m not guilty. Did you lose more weight, Mom? You’re looking really good.”
“You think so? I haven’t weighed in this week.” She turns and shows me her new, skinnier self. She’s fresh-faced and pretty, but she wants to dwell on none of that since it’s vanity, and a sin. I beg her to read the book of Esther and see how beautiful they made the queen look before she went to her king. It’s biblical, I tell her. Get thee to Talbots.
She just tells me I’m irreverent. That’s her favorite word: irreverent. As in everything and anything that isn’t her point of view of Scripture is irreverent.
A laundry basket on her hip, Mom is standing alongside David Beckham, a poster I placed strategically so that when Mom comes in and nags me, I have my equivalent of the stress ball Claire’s dad has on his desk. Mom thinks the poster is because I love soccer, which works for me.
“Where did you get this?” She sets the basket down and holds up a T-shirt.
Ack!
Abercrombie and Fitch contraband! I must have left it in the laundry by accident.
Be cool. Be cool.
I casually look down at my book. “I got it at Goodwill when I went with Claire. Fifty cents, can you believe it?” My mom cannot pass up a bargain, so she has to appreciate my good shopping sense.
“You went to Goodwill? With Claire?” Her eyebrow bends in her are-you-lying way. “To shop?” Unsaid:
Are you expecting me
to believe this?
Claire’s clothes are all from the mall. She’s had to work hard to get the emo look, until discovering vintage.
I shrug without meeting Mom’s eyes. Eye contact would be very dangerous at this point. “Lots of kids do the vintage thing, but I can’t get past the grossness of it. I mean, who knows where that thing has been? Right? But that T-shirt was barely worn. How could I resist?”
“You’re avoiding the question. Why is Claire shopping at Goodwill?” Mom asks. This is our version of the standoff. What Mom wants is a thorough explanation, and heck if I know why my best friend thinks black is the new black. Naturally, I haven’t mentioned the dark poetry or the part about the plastic spider rings plunged through her nose. Claire is kind enough to remove it all before crossing the Crispin threshold. She probably fears my mother would bring Pastor Gorman over, and quick.
“Why does Claire do anything, Mom?” When in doubt, change the subject.
“Are her parents all right financially? Maybe if—”
“Mom, her parents are fine financially.” In case my mom hasn’t noticed, Claire’s parents drive a Beamer and a Lexus fake SUV. Their bedroom suite is the size of our entire house, and you can tell all of this from pulling into the expansive driveway on the hill. If my mom thinks the Webbers need help from the likes of us, in our decades-old Pontiac and fabric-strewn house, her compassion has softened her head.
“You know how she likes to change things up,” I add.
Mom’s eyes are slivers now. Nothing tests my mother’s Pollyanna view of life like us talking about Claire. “You almost got me off track. Claire’s latest phase doesn’t explain this!” She holds up the shirt like it’s dirty underpants—outstretched between her forefingers and thumbs.
I admit, I think about lying, telling her the shirt is Claire’s, but my conscience gets the better of me. “Mom.” I try to grab the shirt, but she clamps those innocent-looking fingers around the wad, and she’s like a lobster on lockdown. She is not letting go. I try one more tug. “Seriously, Mom, you told me I couldn’t buy at Abercrombie, and I haven’t, but I paid for this with my own money. I hardly see why I can’t wear it. It’s a perfectly good shirt. If some rich kid is done with it, why shouldn’t I have it?” I cross my arms, staring up at Saint Beckham for strength. “Abercrombie got absolutely no money from me.”
“Daisy May Crispin, I’ve told you, God looks at the heart.”
“So now he sees my heart through my cool new T-shirt that I purchased for a song. Maybe he gets to see an ‘m’ or a ‘b’ stretched over it, that’s all. What do you think?”
“I think that’s not funny. It’s irreverent.”
I flatten my lips. “I saw the shirt at Goodwill, and I bought it because it’s still cute. I thought I could wash it in hot water and it would be as good as new.”
Okay, really? Really I squealed in delight that some rich girl outgrew my very cool T-shirt and her own mother tossed it into the Goodwill bin—traitor! I ran through the store to show Claire, like when Veruca Salt finds the golden ticket. That’s what I really did, but that’s the kind of full disclosure that leads to nights alone in my room.
“There’s nothing wrong with your clothes. I had the popular styles during high school, Daisy, and it only got me into trouble. I want things to be different for you. You’re focused on your grades, and that’s what’s important.”
“Is it too much to ask that I don’t stick out like the poverty-stricken dweeb I am? I just wanted to have one shirt you didn’t stitch together.” Catching her horror, I add, “No offense.”
“Poverty-stricken! Of all the—Daisy, your father works so hard to make this education possible for you. I would think that would be enough to make you grateful.” Now, even when my mother nags, she does it so sweetly, in this encouraging Barney-the-dinosaur kind of voice, that it radiates guilt like a sunlamp. “If you want to call us poverty-stricken, I suggest you take a trip with the missions group from church. People have it so badly, sweetheart. Don’t mock what we’ve been given.”
“Um, just for the record? I tried to go to Guatemala with church. You wouldn’t let me go, remember?”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for boys and girls—”
“To build a church together and run Bible camps? Mom, guys are half the human race. I have to get along with them at some point.”
“You’re a teenager now. Hormones are raging and it’s not the best time.”
“For building churches?” I have overstepped my boundaries because Mom’s lip is twitching. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t appreciate all your hard work, I totally do, but I’m tired of standing out in homemade clothes and I wouldn’t have stood out in Guatemala, so you should have sent me. That’s where they send the T-shirts for losing teams. So if my shirt said, ‘McCain wins!’ I would be totally fine there.” It’s not a bad idea. Maybe I belong in a third-world country.
“I didn’t have Christian parents, Daisy.”
Cue the violins. She gives me her passive smile, the kind with no teeth involved. She might as well pat me on the head.
“You answer to a higher standard, and that’s a good thing. While those kids use their clothes and their appearance to get by in life, you’re learning to stand on your own two feet and make your inside matter. You’ll thank me for these rules someday.”
Do not roll eyes. Do not roll eyes. That will only make it
worse.
I look down and realize I’m the social equivalent of those prairie dresses on the FLDS ranch—an Easter-egg-colored frock—who looks like I worship the god of bad fashion choices. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if I lived on the cultish ranch and all the other girls dressed exactly like me. I mean, maybe it is fashionable there, you know?
“I want to take one walk down St. James’s hallway without being laughed at.”
“If they laugh, that’s their problem, Daisy. It’s building character in you because you know that clothes don’t define you.”
“It may be their problem, Mom, but I’m the one they laugh at, and that never feels good. Your prom dress may be laughable now, but I’m sure it was cool back then, right?”
“You can buy your own clothes. No one’s stopping you from that. I just want approval first, and I’ve given you a list of stores I don’t want to support.”