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Eventually I went to my dad and I told him what was going on. I remember crying and just repeating “Why?” over and over.
“They’re teasing you because they’re jealous of you,” Dad said, taking my hands in his and looking into my eyes.
“Why?” I sniffled. Were they jealous that I was eloquent? Were they jealous that I knew what the word eloquent meant?
“They’re jealous of you because you’re smart and you’re talented and you know who you are.”
I stopped crying then. The words buzzed around my brain like hummingbirds, filling me with air. I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am.
But now my father looked upset. “Come on,” he said, and he took me to the basement. There are four units in my dad’s building, so there’s a lot of stuff in his basement: baby strollers and washing machines and broken furniture.
Dad found a softball bat and used it to gesture at an old futon. “When I feel bad,” he said, “I like to come down here.”
The basement was cold, and I hugged my arms to my chest. “Why?”
“Because,” he said, “it gets all the bad feelings out of me.”
And then he raised the softball bat and started whacking the futon like a lunatic, screaming and swearing the whole time, his arms wild, the futon sagging underneath the impact of the bat again and again. “Don’t you dare talk to my daughter that way!” he hollered, his voice guttural, like a bear’s roar.
After a minute he stopped and turned to me, breathing hard. “Here.” He held the softball bat out to me. “Your turn.”
I hugged my arms in tighter and backed away. I didn’t want to hit that futon. I wasn’t mad. I didn’t need to scream and attack a piece of furniture. I just needed someone to like me.
After a long moment, my dad laid the softball bat down. We went back upstairs. And we never spoke about that incident again, even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that my dad was disappointed in me. Like he had wanted me to be as angry as he was, when I wasn’t angry at all.
The next day at school, we were forming our circle at the begi
I blinked at her.
“A million?” she pressed. “A thousand? A hundred? You must know more than a hundred words, Elise. After all, you are so eloquent.”
“I … don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know?” The kids nearby giggled. “But how can that be? Eloquent Elise, I thought you knew everything.”
So I took a deep breath, and I drew myself up to my full height—which, at the time, was roughly four feet—and I recited, “You are just jealous of me. You’re jealous because I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am.”
There was a moment of silence in which I thought that maybe, finally, I had bested them. Maybe Lizzie was about to be like, “Oh my God, you’re right.”
Instead, Lizzie and her friends began to shriek with laughter. I felt like I was surrounded by a thousand cawing birds. “I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am,” they sang at me, over and over, for the rest of the period, and throughout every theater class thereafter, until the words that had once sounded so uplifting became an insult, a joke.
Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore, so I quit theater for another arts elective. But painting and chorus were full. So I had to switch into remedial reading. I spent the rest of the semester learning to read picture books of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Because that is where the eloquent go.
So now, four years later, as I thought about confiding in my dad, I tried to figure out what it was that I thought he might be able to change. And the answer was: nothing.
So I said: nothing.
But it was okay. The blog and the silence and the secrets and the Chava and Sally lunchtime suicide help line. It was okay because that wasn’t everything. I had my night life, too, and that was what was real.
I hung out with Vicky more and more. I could tell from their raised eyebrows and suppressed smiles that my parents were thrilled about this, clearly thinking, A friend! Elise has a real, live friend! But aloud they played it cool, acting like, “Oh, yeah, Elise has friends all the time.” And for my part I volunteered no information about Vicky. She belonged to a different world from my parents’, and I was going to keep it that way.
Vicky brought me to her favorite clothing boutiques and I brought her to my favorite record stores. On Friday night I skipped di
“When we’re famous,” Vicky said, “I’ll perform at Radio City Music Hall and my rider will include a bucket filled with ci
“When we’re famous,” I said, “people will buy action figures that look like us. No little girls will play with Barbies anymore. They will only want rock music action figures.”
“When we’re famous,” Vicky said, “we can open a camp for girls who are artists, and it will be free, so even if their parents say ‘No one makes a career as a musician’ and refuse to spend a pe
“When we’re famous,” I said, “everyone will know our names.”
The next week I met up with Vicky and Harry at Teatotaler, which is like a coffee shop except for (surprise!) tea. Harry and I individually took notes on Macbeth, which we had both been assigned at our respective schools. My English class was a full act ahead of his, so I kept spoiling it for him.
“Oh, no,” I murmured, turning a page.
“What?” Harry asked. He glanced up from his book.
“Nothing.”
A moment passed.
“Oh, no,” I said again, sounding even more horrified.
“What?” both Vicky and Harry asked this time.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Okay,” said Vicky, and she went back to pretending to read a thick book of literary criticism for one of her classes while texting with Pippa.
“I want to know,” Harry said.
“Well, if you’re sure…” I leaned in and whispered, “All of Macduff’s family just got murdered.”
Harry groaned and tossed his copy of the play aside. “I hate you.”
I shrugged. “I told you that you didn’t want to know.”
“Excuse me, babe.” Vicky looked up from her phone for long enough to flag down the male barista who was clearing the table next to ours. “Any chance you’d treat a girl to another tea bag?” She batted her long lashes. “Something steamy.”
The barista looked confused. “You can order up at the counter, ma’am.” He walked away.
Vicky sighed and her eyelashes went back to normal. “No one appreciates my feminine wiles.”
Harry snorted.
“Hey.” Vicky turned to me. “Do you want to hear the new Dirty Curtains song? We just recorded it last weekend.”
“I’d love to!” I answered at the same time that Harry whined, “Aw, Vicky, no.”
“Why not?” Vicky demanded.
“Because.” Harry’s face was red. “It’s embarrassing. We’re just going to watch Elise while she has to sit there and pretend to like our music? I mean … she’s a DJ!”
I giggled into my teacup.
“Harry,” Vicky said, “I don’t know how to break this to you, but you are in a band. And that means that sometimes people are going to hear our music. Deal with it.”
She pressed a few buttons on her cell phone, and then the opening drumbeats of a song kicked in. Vicky turned up the volume as loud as it would go. The guitar came in next—rich, raw, powerful. And then Vicky’s voice.