Chapter three: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

Wearing a uniform got old in about a week. When I complained to my mother about this, she pointed out the benefits of wearing a school uniform, like how, I didn’t have to worry about what I was going to wear in the morning, how it made life so much easier not to have to worry about what I looked like, and I could just concentrate on my school work, not the latest fashions. Plus, who would I impress at my age?
“But, I feel ugly and plain”.
“It’s all in your mind,” she’d say.
No, it wasn’t; it was in the mirror staring right back at me, revealing the truth that I was an awkward teenager that looked like a dork. I wore braces, my chest was lopsided, and my face was fat with tons of pimples on my chin, always on my chin. They could never spread themselves out. And I wore a polyester uniform everyday that did nothing for my figure. It just hung on me like a wet rag. I really believe that part of the reason my mother sent me to a private school was to save money on not having to buy clothes for me. She liked the idea of me just having one outfit that I would wear for the next four years and all she would have to buy were replacement shirts!
“The uniform is doing nothing for my self-esteem,” I whined.
My complaints were ignored.
I thought fitting in would be easier at SSA considering we all dress in the common thread of polyester yet trying to find one’s place within a sea of maroon was not as easy as it appeared. There were several clicks within the halls of SSA. Most of my freshman class was made up of Irish girls who had all gone to the same Catholic grammar school, St Margaret Mary’s down on Oakley. They hung out together in the cafeteria, and to the outsider, like myself, they appeared to have their own code when speaking. They were also considered the “In” girls who joined all the sports, and tried out for the all the plays, and dominated the school newspaper, the Raven, as well as Student council. It was not surprising that the largest club at SSA was the Irish club. The new entering freshman class of 1987 was only 150 girls and 50 all belonged to the Irish club within the first week of classes!
Then there were the girls who really should have been going to a juvenile detention center. These were the girls that you just stayed as far away from as possible. They were the ones smoking in the bathrooms, wearing way too much eye makeup with black eye-liner, ruby red lipstick, and embarrassed you in the cafeteria by inviting you to sit down and have lunch with them and then getting up and leaving. Their hair was frizzed up with a full bottle of Aqua-Net. You’d walk into the bathroom and have to leave immediately with fear of being poisoned by the fumes. These girls were the type that smacked their gum directly behind you when you were trying to take a test and every time you thought you knew an answer all you heard was “Smack.”
These were the same girls who had hickies all over their necks, and had their boyfriends waiting for them after school. You just knew that at 14 they had sex. They talked in whispers in the bathroom about acts that I had no clue even existed. For God –sakes, I had just given up playing with my Barbie dolls and the closest I ever came to having sex or even kissing a boy is when I made Ken and Barbie pretend to do it. And it’s not like these girls were bused in from the bad neighborhoods, these girls all lived in West Rogers Park!
My mother suggested I join some clubs and get more involved with after school activities. She wanted me to make some friends, instead of coming home and just sitting in front of the TV. I did point out to her that half the time I was working at the restaurant and it was only the third week of school! Plus, my options of joining clubs were slim. I had no interest in the Freshman Board where all they did was talk about school spirit, nor was I interested in Campus Ministry, where all the girls who joined wanted to be nuns. So, that left the Library club, the Pro-life club, and Pom-Pom club.
I thought it strange that we even had a Pom-Pom club at St. Scholastica considering we were an all girls’ school. I didn’t see the point of cheering for a bunch of girls. It just seemed odd to me. I thought the whole point of being a cheerleader was to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Marie, of course pointed out to me that the Pom-Pom club was more of a club to promote school spirit. I didn’t buy it; it was still odd for me to think of a bunch of girls in short skirts jumping up and down for the sake of the girls Basketball team.
The brochure that littered the coffee tables in the Welcoming Center at St Scholastica preached that their “Susie’s” were a melting pot of ethnic groups of girls from Rogers Park. It should have read more like “a blending of different shades of blondes”. There were your token Hispanic and Black girls as well as a few Asians and Middle Eastern girls. They mostly hung together; you did have your minority crossover that belonged to the World Club, which consisted of everyone who was not of Irish decent. There were also a handful of Greek girls who just felt as if they were way better than anyone else, and would give you the evil eye if you even tried to smile at them. And then you had girls like me—Mutts, girls of Italian and Germanic blood. But, it was not like we formed any common bond, and had a Club called—THE OTHERS. No, we were just a scattered few, blending into the walls of SSA, trying to fit in, but really not trying that hard. Mostly, the school was dominated by the perky Irish blonds who felt that joining every single club during the first week of school would look good on their college applications.
I knew from day one, when I walked up the front stairs and opened the wooden doors with the blessed Virgin Mary staring down at me, that I was never going to be in the “In” crowd: I just did not have that bubbly personality to put myself out there, nor was I that apt to challenge myself with my studies. And I saw through the brain-washing of school-spirit that was dished out to us in the form of Freshman/Big Sister day, where when I met my senior Big Sister all she said was “Good Luck, this place sucks”. Real words of encouragement, as she smacked her gum in my face. She was one of those girls, the type that spent most of her time in detention for using too much hair spray.
Nor was I going to be a candidate for “Susie” of the month, not with me racking up three negative referrals that first week for not being on time, despite my mother’s best efforts, not having my homework done because I thought I could get three hours worth of homework done in 30 minutes during homeroom the next day, and reading a smut book in my English class that I grabbed from my mother’s pile in the bathroom. I also smarted off to Sr. Agnes, I think she secretly wanted to damn me to hell but gave me a referral instead. That put me over the top for referrals and landed me in detention the first week of school. Maybe, I was a bad-girl in the making minus the sex acts and the hair.
My mother said I had a bad attitude and that I was too young to be so full of angst. I reminded her again that maybe it was because she sent me to an All’s girls school.
“What happened to my sweet little girl?” she said the night I told her that I couldn’t work in the restaurant right after school on the following Monday because I had to serve detention. She just rolled her eyes back, as if I had been scorned for life, and was now on the fast track.
“Oh, please mother, it’s not like I’m smoking dope!”
That just got me a look. But she knew what I referring too. I wasn’t as dumb as my grades made me feel.
Ma got up and headed for the bathroom, suggesting as she went that I try being nice like my friend Marie, who got along with everyone.
Marie for some reason had the disposition to be nice. That first week she was able to flitter from one group to the other, especially the “In” crowd. I think this was because she was a blonde blue eyed Swede, and she could just blend in. Marie was nice, too nice, always including me in her plans with her new friends that week. She’d invited me for ice cream over at Zephyrs that Saturday, but she was giggling the whole time with these new friends of hers every time a pimpled- face boy looked their way, and it really annoyed me.
It is not in my nature to be nice and sweet. I come from a family who constantly argues about everything and that is my nature. It is too bad that we do not have a debate club at SSA. Because that’s something I would truly enjoy.
Basically my angst is from the fact that I am not going to be brainwashed into believing that my high-school experience is going to be the best years of my life, I feel, I am doing a prison term for being an academic failure in grammar school. And I am afraid that my pot of red sauce is just going to simmer away, forgotten on the stove, leaving me with just a burnt pot to scrub.
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