Part 1
LOSING IT
Four months and two days after my twelfth birthday, almost ten years ago now, I woke up to see a bunch of hair on my pillow. A big bunch. My hair. At least enough to make a small gerbil. I reached up and touched the left side of my head, just above my ear. I felt skin where hair used to be. I screamed.
Mom came running in, still in her pajamas. "What’s wrong, Phil? Bad dream?"
I had the feeling that it wasn’t. It was a bad reality, instead. Her eyes widened as she saw me. "Phil. You didn’t play barbershop, did you?" She moved up close. Her manicured finger traced its way through near my temple to a large bald spot over my ear. "Oh, no," she muttered, as she felt smooth, not shaved, skin. "Oh, no, Phil." She pulled me close to her and hugged me. I can still recall the perfume she wore.
"Mom?" I asked. "Am I sick? What’s wrong? Grandpa’s hair fell out when he had cancer. Do I have cancer? Am I going to die?" I was sobbing, my head leaning on her chest.
"Oh, no, honey. You’re not going to die. When people lose their hair with cancer, it’s because of the medicine, not the disease. Now in my work I’ve seen people who have developed bald spots just like this. Sometimes it’s just caused by nerves, and it grows back after awhile." Mom is a beautician, so she’s sort of an expert on hair. "You’ve been worrying a lot about kids making fun of you at school, so I can see where you might be upset enough for this to happen. Just to be on the safe side, though, we’ll both call in sick today and I’ll take you to see Dr. Nolan." She picked up a comb from my dresser and ran it through my black hair. Quite a bit more came out in the comb’s teeth. "Hmmm" was all she said. Then she placed her hands on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, and said, "Phil, we’ve been through a lot together, and we’ll get through this, okay? We’re an unbeatable team."
I nodded and tried to smile. It could just be nerves. I was having a tough time adjusting to middle school. I’m small for my age, and I get pushed around by the big kids who want to prove how macho they are. They have yet to discover what the kids in my grade school found out, that I shove back. I’ve already had one detention, and it’s just the end of September. It doesn’t help matters much that I have soft features—I hate it when they call me Babyface. The third strike against me is that I’m smart, too. So you can see why I don’t exactly fit in with the in crowd at middle school. And now I have a bald spot as big as the top of a soda can, almost. That’s strike four. Mom told me not to wash my hair when I showered, but I still pulled bunches more out when I combed it after I got dressed. No more bald patches, but it became clear that it wasn’t just one area. On the way to the doctor, mom told me that when I was a baby, I had worn bald spots on the sides of my hair as I slept in my crib. Mom was right when she said that we were a team, though. My dad left when I was 5 and when my older sister Pam was 14. It hurt me a lot, but Pam really got messed up more. She had a pregnancy and miscarriage at 15, and by the time she was 17, she was pregnant again. Mom and her really fought. She married the guy, a sailor, and hasn’t written us or phoned us since—4 years ago. It’s tough, but mom and I get by. As we drove to the doctor’s, I looked over at her. She’s petite, has dark black hair a very light complexion, and green eyes, features that I share. She says we’re "black Irish." I worried as we drove, and waited for Dr. Nolan. He checked me over and said, "I doubt if it is too serious, but you should have a dermatologist check it out." Our town only has four thousand people in it, so that meant a drive to Coronado Springs, a larger city about an hour away. Dr. Nolan called ahead and got us in with a doctor there.
"It could just be a temporary thing," Dr.Simms told us. "Or it could get worse. I can’t tell you with certainty, but it’s probably alopecia." Mom groaned. My throat tightened.
"Alo-what?" I squeaked.
Dr. Simms smiled at me. "Alopecia basically just means hair loss, and it can come in many forms. Sometimes it’s just temporary loss in patches like this. Other times it can lead to total baldness."
"Bald?" I shouted. "But I’m just a kid. Kids don’t get bald!"
"Sometimes they do, I’m afraid. And often it’s when they are just beginning to enter puberty, and their body chemistry is changing. Maybe it won’t come to baldness, though. Here’s a pamphlet. It explains the causes—and nobody knows for certain what they are—but I believe that it’s caused my an overactive immune system, one which targets the body’s hair like it was an infection. There’s no cure, but sometimes it will go into remission all by itself. Somebody’s hair will grow back, sometimes months, sometimes years, later, just as mysteriously as it came out. There are treatments, but frankly, they’re not much use." The doctor also said that there was a good support group in the city, if my hair loss did become severe. And believe it or not, she wrote a prescription for a wig—a prosthetic hairpiece.
"Honey," mom said on the drive back across the high prairie. "There was a really nice lady in our town a few years ago, Mrs. Rogers, who was one of my best customers. The funny thing was, she would leave her hair to get cleaned and set while she went out to do errands. She had two wigs that she alternated using. Mrs. Rogers had alopecia, and was as fine a person as you would ever meet—and one of the happiest. She would just crack the funniest jokes sometimes."
"Mrs. Rogers? Do I know her?" I asked
"No, you may have seen her, but you wouldn’t have guessed that she was bald. She moved here to the city about three years ago when her husband got a better job. But don’t worry. You may not lose your hair completely like she did."
I did, though. Over the next few days, I littered hair all over our house. Eventually, I ended up like I am today. No hair on my head, no brows or lashes, no hair in my armpits or on my privates, not even hair inside my nose. Phil O’Connor wasn’t Black Irish anymore, just bald Irish.
My life at school, predictably enough, became hell. I had permission to wear a cap to school as my hair was falling out, but it was still obvious to everyone what was happening, and the big stupid jerks would just grab my cap and toss it around, and call me chrome dome and all sorts of stupid things. I tried to hold my temper the best I could, but I still ended up in fights, generally on the short end.
About the time I was losing my last little pieces of fuzz, mom asked me to come into her room. I saw a curly, dark brown wig on one of those styrofoam heads. "Phil, we may need to get that prescription filled. But since we’re short on money and a good wig costs a bundle, I want to try this one on you just to see if it fits."
"But mom, that’s a girl’s wig. It’s long, and has bangs, and everything!" I protested.
"I can see that, silly. But what do I do for a living? I cut hair, right? I can cut this one down to a boy’s style, I think, but I want to make sure it fits first." I already knew that trying to hide behind a wig at school would work just about as well as hiding under a hat. It would be a disaster. I finally agreed, though.
Mom placed the wig over my head—it was like getting swallowed headfirst by a beaver, but finally she got it straightened out. Then she grinned. "You are so cute, honey. It’s a shame that you’re not a girl. You’re gorgeous." I reached up, grabbed the wig off my head and threw it to the floor, and ran out of the room crying and swearing.
Mom came after me and sat down on my bed beside me, and softly rubbed my back as I cried into my pillow. "Phil, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t teasing you at all, I was just overcome by how nice you look. I know kids at school give you a hard time. A lot of kids just want to attack anyone who is the least bit different, and make them feel bad. You don’t have to let them get away with it, Phil. You don’t have to let them make you feel bad about yourself. You’re smart, and good looking, and you’re good at soccer and music, you are just a totally great kid. So when you’re ready, we’ll do some trimming on that wig and see if it will work out for you, okay?"
The next morning, mom asked, "Do you remember Fiona? She was a very pretty little girl." I couldn’t help but smile. Fiona was me, back when I was a toddler. Pam, my sister, would dress me up in her outgrown little rompers or party dresses, and put pink barrettes in my black wavy hair, and would call me Fiona, after an Irish character in a favorite book of hers. Mostly she’d just call me Fee. That all ended when Pam moved out, of course. Why was mom thinking about that? I guess that seeing me in the girl’s wig must have reminded her. Right at that moment, if I had to choose between being Fiona with hair and Phil without hair, I wasn’t sure which I would choose.
"Do you know what really bugs me," I asked mom later in the day after another tough day at school. "A lot of the boys at school are getting hair on their bodies—on their legs, on their uh—private parts, armpits, and kids just a few years older are getting whiskers on their faces. If this alopecia stuff stays around, that’s not going to ever happen for me. I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking like an overgrown baby." By that time I was snuffling again. I never cried anymore at school, but at home it was okay.
"Yeah, that’s tough, honey," mom said. "But hair isn’t the only thing that makes somebody a man. Your body will show it in other ways, too. And more important, as you mature, you’ll become strong, gentle, wise. You’ll be a real man, I promise, hair or no hair. It’s funny, though. I always thought that it would be tragic for a girl to lose her hair, and just inconvenient for a boy to lose his, but that’s wrong. It’s tough on a boy, too. And it’s easier for a girl to hide hair loss. But come on—let’s try on that wig again." She put it on my head and I kept my composure this time. I even faced the vanity mirror so I could see what was going on. Again, with the long, stylish hair and soft face, I looked like a girl—a girl without brows and lashes. Mom took scissors and comb and started clipping, and fake hair flew. "I can’t cut it as close on the sides like you used to have it," she said, "because you could end up seeing the webbing of the wig that all this hair is tied to. But it will still look like a boy’s haircut." And it did, within reason. I smiled a weak smile at the shaggy figure I saw in the mirror.
"Thanks, mom. That does look good. But it’s still obvious that it’s a wig, because I don’t have brows or lashes."
"Phil, I don’t know how this will work, but let me experiment with something, okay?" mom asked. She went to her makeup and pulled out a dark brown eyebrow pencil and began drawing on my face in short little lines. Brows began to appear. "Looking good, kid," mom said. "Lashes are trickier. I can get fake eyelashes and trim them short and glue them on, but for the moment let’s try some eyeliner to make just a suggestion of lashes." And she pulled out another pencil-type thing and drew right on my eyelids.
I shook my head when I was done. "I’m sorry, mom. Now I look like a cute girl with short hair. At first glance, like just walking past someone in the supermarket, I might get away with it. But at school, someone would be bound to notice, and everybody would call me gay because I wore makeup. I’ll try wearing the wig to school tomorrow, but the makeup would just create too many problems. Tell you what, though, I’ll wear it the rest of the evening. It’s kind of nice seeing myself look a little bit like I used to."
The wig experiment was a disaster. Maybe if I were starting at a different school, it would have been okay. But not here. It didn’t even make it onto the school bus. So I yanked it off and stuffed it in my backpack. Those who had seen me in it told everybody else, of course, so everyone asked to see the rug. I had some friends, of course, some of the other smart kids that had appearance problems of their own—too fat, too skinny, too zitsy, whatever. Sometimes we called ourselves the freaks and geeks, like the television show. But at least the ones on TV all had hair.
TARGETED
Smile, they said. Things could get worse. So I did. And they were. I really tried hard to control my temper. Really. But the more I controlled it, the more the nasty kids tried to push the envelope. The school had a zero tolerance policy on violence, so at least on the school grounds I avoided pushing or hitting. Still, the teachers tended to see me as a trouble magnet. Can you say "blame the victim?" I knew you could! On a cool October day, the art teacher gave us an assignment—to do a self-portrait. It could be realistic or abstract. So I drew a picture of a kid with a head like a light bulb—smooth, with no facial features. Instead of a torso, the kid in my drawing had a bulls eye target, with arms and legs attached. Mrs. Russo, the art teacher, didn’t say anything when I handed it in. She just looked at me funny—sort of concerned, and suspicious at the same time.
Later that day, I was called to the principal’s office. Our principal introduced me to Mr. Griffin, who was the psychologist for the school system. After some introductory stuff, he said, "I can understand where losing your hair would make you angry, and how other students tormenting you could make you angry, too. Anger is okay. It’s how you deal with it that matters. How are you dealing with your anger, Phil?"
"Uh, different ways, I guess. I usually can handle it okay. I haven’t hit anybody, or anything. At least around school. Well, I admit I shoved Brad Turley on the way home last week, but he shoved me first." I hoped that I wouldn’t get suspended again. That would really crush mom.
"Phil, have you ever thought about getting back at the kids who pick on you? I mean in a big way?"
"No!" I almost shouted. "Some kids are jerks, but that’s their problem. What are you suggesting? That I’m going to freak out or something?"
Mr. Griffin looked at me. "I could understand how that might happen. You have a lot of pain and anger in you. But this is what worried us." He handed me my picture. "When we see you drawing somebody without a face, somebody with a target where their body should be, it scares the hell out of us."
"What?" I cried. "Didn’t the art teacher tell you what that was? It was a self-portrait. A picture of me. I’m everybody’s target. With my bald head, people don’t see me as a person anymore. I’m faceless to them. All they see is this!" I raised my hand to my scalp. "I’m not targeting anybody, Mr. Griffin. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to be a kid, not a joke." The conversation went on for awhile. Finally, I convinced him that I wasn’t going to bring an automatic weapon to school. So we turned to my problem.
"Phil, I’ve looked at your record. You’re a bright, likeable kid. You’ve had a big setback with your hair loss, but you’re going to get past it. Once kids get used to you—and once you get used to yourself—you won’t have any trouble making friends. You know that since you’re small that you’ll always be at a disadvantage in a physical confrontation. But with your brains, and with your Irish wit, you can turn the other kids’ teasing right back at them. They’ll stop, soon enough."
I gave it a try. When Joe Brockavich called me a space alien, I just said "Zap, you’re sterile." When Kurt Washington put on his sunglasses in the lunchroom and said something stupid about the glare, with about thirty kids hearing it, I just smiled and said in as loud a voice as his, "Kurt, did you know that when we were put together in heaven, just before we were born, it was at the end of a shift? The angels discovered there was a parts shortage. They had two babies there, but only one brain and one set of hair. They gave you dibs. Poor choice, Kurt."
It took awhile, but finally I started getting used to it. Things began leveling out.
There were still jerks, of course, but when they saw that they weren’t getting to me
any more, most of them backed off quickly enough. It’s still irritating to have the
entire basketball team want to rub your head for good luck, though.
THE SHINERS
"Remember when you first lost your hair, Phil, that I told you about Mrs. Rogers?" I hadn’t remembered, so mom told me again about her former customer who also had alopecia. "Anyway, I was able to reach her on the phone. We had the nicest conversation. She really urged that I bring you into the city for a support group that she belongs to. It’s officially called the Alopecia Support Group, but they just call themselves the Shiners. There are both kids and adults in it, and it sounds like they have a great time together. They’re meeting next Tuesday evening. I’d love to take you."
"I don’t know, mom. It sounds kind of boring. I’m getting along better now. Maybe it’s better if I just keep busy with stuff and keep my mind off of my baldness."
"Phillip," she said sternly. "Your doctor recommended this as helpful, the school psychologist said we should look into it, and Phyllis Rogers really urged me to bring you. I think I may have to pull rank on this one." I protested, but didn’t get anywhere—well, actually I did get somewhere. To a meeting of a bunch of bald people in Coronado Springs.
Mom picked me up right after school, and we began the hour drive. We had left early so we could eat supper at a good pizza place we like—that was part of how mom bribed me. Our town only has a franchise pizza joint, so really good pizza is a big attraction. We entered the restaurant, the beautiful black-haired lady and the bald kid who looked more like he was nine than twelve. Of course, we got stares. Sometimes, I’d stare back, stick out my tongue, and cross my eyes. Yeah, real mature, I know, but staring at somebody different isn’t very mature, either. "They’re probably wondering if I’m a racist skinhead punk, or if I have cancer," I muttered. The pizza was good, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. Being in new situations made me uncomfortable.
So we drove on to another new situation—the meeting of the Shiners. We were surprised when the directions from Mrs. Rogers took us up into the foothills, to a subdivision of million-dollar homes. Their utility buildings and garages weren’t much smaller than our four-room house. Now I was feeling uncomfortable. We pulled into the driveway at the right address. It looked like about a dozen cars were there. I almost expected a butler to come to the door and ask us for our invitation, but instead we were met by an attractive lady in designer clothes, expensive jewelry, and the same kind of hairstyle that I wore. "Hi! I’m Gail Arnette—please call me Gail. Welcome! Come on in! Are you the O’Conner’s?" We later found out that Gail was the wife of the president of a big internet service provider, and this was their home. They hosted all the monthly meetings. As Gail said, "It’s the least we can do—this group is so much fun, and has given me so much love." It was the first time I’d been on a first name basis with a millionaire’s wife, but she was so down-to-earth and friendly that mom and I both felt instantly welcomed. We were hardly through the door when another bald lady ran up and started hugging my mom. That must be Phyllis Rogers. Then she was all over me, welcoming me and taking around to introduce me to about 15 other bald people. Most of them were adults, one was an eighteen-year old football player named Rex, and there was a cute little girl, probably about eight. Her name was Heather. Heather’s mom was there, too, one of about five people in the room with hair. I had assumed that the group would be a bunch of sad losers, telling each other about their problems. Actually, it was one big party, where people told as funny stories things that I would have found to be crushing. But soon I joined in the laughter, and started making a few wise cracks of my own.
Heather was a little disappointed to find that I was 12, but she still kept me company. "So how long have you been bald, Phil?" she asked. She frowned when I told her that it was only a few months. "That’s tough," she said. "I was actually born this way, and my parents kept thinking my hair would grow in. It still hasn’t," she grinned. I asked her if she went hairless all the time. "Nah," she said. "I wear a stupid wig to school, but it comes off first thing I get into the door. It’s in the closet over there, where most of the people parked their hair. We’re not ashamed of being bald—and you shouldn’t be, either," she added. "But we just wear wigs to avoid the hassle. Actually I like myself better when I look like this—it’s the real me." I wondered if I could ever be that upbeat about it. It was a fun night, though, and it was good to know that I wasn’t the only one with alopecia.
On the drive back, mom asked, "Did you have a good time, honey?"
"Yeah, that was fun. I guess I wouldn’t mind going back. But maybe we should just bring a sandwich next time and eat in the car. We live in a small town, so most people don’t stop and stare at me anymore like I was a space alien or something. When we stopped for pizza, I really felt like a stare magnet."
Mom pursed her lips and said, "You’re going to miss out on a lot of life if you never leave Martin’s Valley" (that’s our town’s name). "Your school has an in-service day a week from Friday, and I had planned on leaving all the appointments to Isabel, and drive over here with you so I could buy beauty supplies, and I was hoping that we could hit the food court, see a movie, and have a fun day together."
"Mom, I’m not sure I can take a day of stares and stupid comments. Why can’t everybody be like the people at the Shiners, and just accept me the way I am?"
"Well, Duh, if everyone were like the Shiners, I’d be out of a job," my mom kidded me. "You could wear the wig, you know, and I could work out some sort of fake eyebrows. Actually, I have another idea. It may sound silly, but I can guarantee that any stare you get would be a stare of admiration."
FIONA’S DEBUT
"Mom, that’s crazy. I’m a boy, remember? "Boys aren’t supposed to look like girls." Mom had described her idea to me, and I felt confused and puzzled.
"Phil, I’m not saying you have to do it if you’re uncomfortable with the idea. I just thought it might be a fun disguise, and you might enjoy pretending to be a girl—a cute girl, I might add. It would be like Halloween, except nobody would know you were in costume. Wouldn’t it be fun fooling people into thinking you’re Fiona?"
In a way, it did sound like fun, but I turned her down. Boys shouldn’t dress up like girls, should they? Not that there was anything wrong with girls, but it just sounded too weird. So mom went to the city on a school day, and when the in-service day came, she went to work at the shop and I just puttered around the house. Al Twining, a friend of mine (another geek, naturally), came over and we played computer games. After I beat him three games running, he asked, "Phil, do you ever wear the rug?" Al was a real nice kid, so I knew he wasn’t trying to make me angry.
"Nah," I said. "People around here know me now, and they’re used to me. I’ve sort of gotten used to me, too. So I don’t really need it. So mom cut up a perfectly good girl’s wig and ruined it, and I don’t wear it at all. I might wear it when I go out of town, though. I always get all these ridiculous stares. People—grownups—point at me and talk about me like I can’t hear them." I pulled the wig out of the drawer and modeled it, and plopped it on his head, too, covering his light brown hair.
"This used to be a girl’s wig, huh? And your mom trimmed it? That’s funny," Al laughed. "I bet you were really cute before she trimmed it!" He started to prance around, wiggling his hips. I was laughing out loud, but I didn’t dare tell him that if I had gone along with mom’s suggestion, I would have been looking like a girl today.
"Yeah? I bet you’d look cute, too. Hold on—we can find out!" I went into mom’s closet and pulled up a chair so I could reach a wig box on a back shelf. It was a "big hair" wig, all blond and curly, that she hadn’t been able to sell at the shop and would wear once in awhile for laughs. Al didn’t look cute in it, but he did look funny, pouting his lips, patting his hair, and fluttering his long lashes.
"Oh, Alice!" I told my chunky friend, "You’re such a sexpot!"
Then he had me try it on. The thing was huge. "So, if I’m Alice, who are you? Phyllis?" Al asked.
"No, I’m Fiona," I said, striking a pose.
"Fee-who?" he asked, puzzled.
"Fiona. It’s an Irish name. Well, Celtic, anyway. It’s what mom said she would have named me if I had been born a girl. But call me that around anybody else, and you’ll eat fist."
Al looked again. "Damn. You do look cute!" he said. "It’s scary." It was, too. Especially since just then mom walked in. She scolded me for getting into her stuff, but not as much as I thought she might. She even let Al stay for supper. We had sausage and pancakes, and mom let me flip the flapjacks.
After Al went home, we washed the dishes together. "Phil, I missed having our day out together. I was thinking. We’ll go to Mass tomorrow night, and then on Sunday we can drive into Coronado City just to have fun together."
"Do I have to go as a girl, mom?" I asked. The idea was still scary to me, but it intrigued me more, too, after Al and I had experimented with mom’s wig.
"No, you don’t honey. You can go natural, wear your own wig, or be Fiona. But I’ll tell you what. After Mass, let’s try on Fiona for size, and that may help you decide."
I agreed. All day Saturday, I did my usual Saturday stuff as mom worked at the shop, including an informal soccer game. After the game, Al and I had a great idea for Halloween, which was coming up in a couple of weeks. I would wear my soccer uniform, and have mom draw black lines and patches all over my head, to make it look like a soccer ball! At least that way, she wouldn’t make me dress up as Fiona. All day, though, even during Mass, I wondered about what I would look like that evening.
"Ready?" mom asked with a smile, as I kicked off my good shoes. I nodded. She had me strip down to my briefs and slip on an old pink bathrobe. "Might as well get in the mood," she said. It was clear that she was in the mood, as I sat down at her vanity. Again, she drew on brows. This time, she glued on a set of fake eyelashes. Wow! They certainly made my eyes look better. She put a little color on my cheeks, and then slipped a wig on—not the big blond one I wore the day before, but one she had brought home from the shop. It was reddish-brown, sleek and smooth, and curled in at ends. She called it a pageboy, but it didn’t look at all boyish. I couldn’t help but be amazed at the cute girl I saw in the mirror. Mom had me put lipstick on, a shade of pink she called coral. Then she handed me a bottle of frosted nail polish of the same shade, and showed me how to paint my nails, from the base out to the tip. It was a little tricky painting my right-hand nails with my left hand, but I got it done, and my toes, too. It was a quick-drying polish, so I didn’t have to flop my hands around too much. "Well, after all these years, Fiona is still a very pretty girl," mom said. "So, do you want to make your debut tomorrow?" I stared at the image in the mirror. I frowned, but even my frowning image was cute. I slowly smiled, and nodded. Mom gave me a hug, a pair of pink panties, plain but with a little bow on the waistband, and an old flannel pink nightgown. She daubed the makeup off my face with a wet-wipe, and I went to bed. Interesting dreams, too.
The next morning, I put my wig on when I got out of bed. We ate breakfast in our nightgowns, and I kept noticing the gleam of my pink nails. After breakfast, we went to get ready for our trip into the city.
Mom had laid out two outfits for me. One was a plaid jumper and white blouse that Pam had worn to St. Gregory’s School. The other, also formerly my sister’s, looked like a dusty rose skirt, but when I picked it up, I discovered it was really a set of shorts with baggy legs. The blouse with it was white, but with a dusty rose Peter Pan collar that matched the skirt—that was the outfit I chose. Mom put a training bra around my chest, and put some old wadded up pantyhose in them. I grinned as I slipped on the shorts and blouse. "You’re looking good, Fiona," she said. We sat at the vanity again, and she draped a towel over my shoulders to protect my clothing and guided me in applying makeup. This was kind of fun, I thought. I pinned a little unicorn on my collar and slipped a couple of plastic bracelets on each wrist. Mom clipped little pearl earrings to my ears, I slipped on a pair of canvas shoes, and we were ready!
As we drove toward Coronado City, I was a little nervous and sat with my hands folded in my lap. Mom smiled and said, "Don’t worry, dear. No one would ever guess."
We went to the same pizza place where people had stared at me before. The waitress just smiled and said, "This way, ladies," as we walked to our table. My mouth dropped for a second and then I grinned when mom said that we should go to the bathroom so I could comb my hair. This visit, without the rudeness, the pizza tasted great. I was leaning my head back and letting the cheese droop down toward my mouth, and mom told me to act more ladylike. I cocked my head and giggled, like girls my age seem to do all the time.
"Like this?" I giggled.
Mom smiled. "Fiona, I know the giggle was a fake, but I just saw a sparkle of happiness in your eyes that I haven’t seen for a long time. I’m really glad we’re doing this." I agreed. It was crazy, but it was fun, too.
When we got to the mall where the theaters were, we were too late for the first matinees, so we browsed the mall. "Oh, look!" mom said. "There’s a sidewalk sale going on! Maybe we could pick up some extra clothes for you."
Did she mean for Phil or Fiona? I wasn’t sure. It felt awkward to ask her directly, so I thought I’d make a game of it. So when we got to the big department store, I pulled a long, bright green jumper with white buttons up its whole length, and white trim around the yoke collar. Perched high on one breast was a small monogrammed mountain goat, the mascot of our state university, with "Go Goats!" stitched underneath it. "What about this, mom?" I asked. Would I embarrass her, please her, or both?
She grinned at me. "Well, I was thinking of buying clothes for your brother Phil, but I have to admit that the jumper would look great on you." She looked at the price tag and winced a little. Even on sale it was a bit expensive.
A sales clerk zeroed in on us, an older, grandmotherly sort. "Yes, dear, you would be beautiful in that. It goes so well with the red in your hair."
I sniggled—that’s a cross between a snort and a giggle. What hair? I thought.
"I’m sure you get compliments on your hair all the time," she said.
"Not as often as you might think," was all I could say. She asked my name. "Fiona O’Conner, ma’am," I replied.
"An Irish lass, huh?" the clerk beamed. "I thought I could tell, by your reddish hair, your pretty eyes, and your beautiful complexion." Well, she had two out of three right. Arlene—that was the name on her nametag—encouraged me to try the dress on.
I came out of the dressing room, did a twirl, and mom said, "I think you’ve brought yourself a jumper, Fiona. And I found this top to go with it." It was a long-sleeve turtleneck with a print of little teddy bears. I’m not a fashion expert, but I guess that bears and goats don’t clash. She paid for them and sent me back to the dressing room to put them both on. I folded my skirt and blouse and put them in a store bag. We also brought two school shirts for Phil. Mom asked if I thought he would like them, and I solemnly nodded.
"Jumpers are a good choice for you, dear," mom told me when we were out of earshot. "You’re slender enough to fit girl’s clothes well, but the jumper hides the fact that you’re not as wide in the hips or narrow in the waist as a lot of girls." By then, it was time for the movie. I talked mom into a teen comedy about boys with girl trouble and girls with boy trouble. As we took our seats, she whispered, "Fiona, put a few napkins in your lap so you don’t get grease stains from the popcorn box on your new outfit."
"Sure, mom," I agreed. As I ate the popcorn, I noticed light reflecting off my polished pink nails. And I found myself looking at the movie in a different way. The guy, an actor I really liked, came off more like a jerk for the way he treated his girl friends. Hey. we girls have feelings, you know. Of course I did a double take inside my head when I realize my brain had just said "we girls."
The shops had closed early on Sunday, but the food court was still open and we grabbed a light meal. On the way home, mom said, "I love you as my son, but you make a pretty good daughter, too. Did you enjoy yourself as Fiona?"
"Well, yes, sort of, I guess," I blushed and grinned. "It was fun. And nobody stared at me like I was a freak. Thanks, mom."
"Thank you, Phil, for going along with it. Thank you, Fiona, for a really nice day. I presume since we brought that jumper that you think we’ll be doing this again."
It was fun pretending to be something else. The waitress, the sales clerk, and other people seemed to really like me as Fiona. "Sure, mom. I wouldn’t want to do this at home, since it’s a small town and people would recognize me. But I think you’ve just found yourself a part-time daughter."
"And a lovely Irish lass she is, too," she laughed.
(More to come!)
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