The Cheer Leader Read online

  Beatrice did not place either but she said it was because her mother and sister did not play favorites. That was a good excuse; however, I think she must have known that she wouldn’t have won anyway. She was a hippie even though we told her that that was not a country and that she had to pick a country. Cindy was already from America but Beatrice said that it was her party and she didn’t have to pick a country if she didn’t want to. She just tied shoestrings around her head, held her hand with the peace sign, pulled her jeans below her navel (an outie) and did the hitchhiker to “Hitching a Ride.” She ended up by doing the pony (which she couldn’t do at all) after her record was over and her sister finally had to tell her to sit down. Having a party had changed Beatrice. It had given her just enough of a sense of belonging that she was willing to freely expose herself. She probably even thought that it would stay that way.

  I was glad that I had my bathrobe especially after Here Come the Brides when we had a séance and Lisa saw John Kennedy’s face in the T.V. Everybody started crying except me because I knew who John Kennedy was and therefore knew that he had no reason to get me. Besides, of all the parties in all the world, why would he have picked Beatrice’s? I thought things like that all night long. Even after everyone else was asleep, I thought about people in China who were eating lunch and all of the fish swimming around all night with their eyes open; how everybody slept, even Mark Fuller and that was hard to believe, that we would do all the same things like eat, sleep and use the bathroom. I couldn’t picture him using the bathroom because it just didn’t seem that he would ever have to. It seemed demeaning but it also made me feel close to him when I realized that he was a person, had a mother who probably made him clean out the bathtub or do other menial chores. Later, of course, I realized that he was as much a part of any bathroom as the permanent fixtures; he was groutish and deserved to be sucked by a drain. However, then I thought that he was the one meant for me, the love of my life and I rubbed my finger where the pop top used to be. I decided to give up on Jeff Johnson, somehow sensing the futility of it all; I told myself that I would never again hold that cool Yankee hand; I told myself that one day Jeff Johnson would be mad as hell that he didn’t get his braces off soon enough to hold onto me.

  Mark Fuller was a person and Bobby Sherman was a person even though I couldn’t imagine either of them ever vomiting. Beatrice was a person and that was easy to imagine because I just rolled over and saw her lying there with her glasses still on, shoestrings around her head, snoring quietly and not knowing that when we all went home everyone would give her hell for writing Ralph Craig’s name in the sand, that things would be as they had always been. I knew that Tricia would probably say the most even though she was the least likely person in the room. She did not snore and I knew that she would wake up looking just as she had when she went to sleep, a frightened Miss Universe, and there was a second when I wished that John Kennedy would get her and then I remembered that we were friends.

  MARCH 2, 1970

  Bobby takes this fuzzy picture to make me mad because I am already mad. I am sitting outside on the porch reading Where the Red Fern Grows for the fourth time. It is my favorite book next to the biography of Helen Keller. It is about two coon dogs, Old Dan and Little Anne. They both die unexpectedly and it makes me cry every time so I read it when I am mad and upset so that I can blame my tears on the book. Bobby knows my trick so he takes my picture. It is fuzzy because I threw the book at him right when he clicked and he moved out of the way. The best page, which contained Old Dan’s death scene, fell out but I don’t even care. I am mad and upset because I have started my period for the first time and everyone has lied to me. It is not (thank goodness) as Lisa had described way back at Moon Lake; it is not an old and wonderful thing as Tricia said when she faked having one at Beatrice’s party; it does not make me feel like a lady like that woman at school said back in the fifth grade and it does hurt (unlike what Mama said when I was worried over tidal waves). It makes me feel old and young; not old like a teenage lady who probably wears sunglasses but old like somebody that walks stiff legged with their legs spread apart like John Wayne, or young, like a baby in diapers. I had decided, while reading Where the Red Fern Grows, before Bobby took my picture, that as soon as he got the hell away from me and as soon as Andy took Huzzy and his first grade art project (a kite that looked like shit and wouldn’t fly) into the house, that I would practice walking like a teenage lady who wasn’t having a period. It was as much a secret thought as my bathrobe; it made me feel old but instead of rhyming good words, it made me want to rhyme bad words, filthy, horribly sordid words like pecker.

  MAY 18, 1970

  I thought that becoming thirteen would cause a change in me, that I would suddenly develop full rounded breasts like Bobby’s girlfriend, Nancy Carson, or that I could just so easily go out and buy a pair of Foster Grants. It was very disappointing; I looked the same, felt the same. I was the same but it seemed that all of my friends were changing right there before me. I had a pajama party in celebration of the change that I thought would take place and here we all are, standing around my cake, my cheeks puffed up, ready to blow. I was having a reasonably good time until Bobby told the toilet water story, until I realized that my friends were suddenly looking at Bobby not as Jo’s brother but as a male, someone to have a crush on. As it got later, things got worse. In my head, I was singing “It’s my party so I’ll cry if I want to” because that’s what I felt like doing. I felt that I should be able to control what happened, what was said at my own party, but I couldn’t. I did not want to hear what Beatrice had to say, that she had made out with Ralph Craig after school, that he had put his hands up her tie dyed shirt (which is what everyone was wearing). I was shocked and found myself mulling over the problem repeatedly. Beatrice had filled out, so had Tricia, Lisa and Cindy. I felt like putting on my bathrobe, hiding; I felt rejected by my friends, by my own body. All of them had engaged in such activities and I wondered if they were transforming because of this or if they engaged because they were changing. I could not bring myself to ask such a question and was not yet ready to engage in such myself, and so after much deliberation, I decided to get a padded bra. Of course, I eventually realized that that was no answer either. The only noticeable change was that I had to wait forever for the bra to dry or it would have sponged wet spots right up through my puckered crepe shirt, which is what everyone wore all through the eighth grade along with Indian moccasins and anything that resembled the American flag. That night when going to sleep beside snoring, semi-sexually active Beatrice, I had no idea what was ahead, all of the things that would reduce worries over padded bras and small breasts into trivial matters. And when I smiled before puffing up my cheeks and closing my eyes to wish for a voluptuous body, a good smile for a good thirteen-year-old Josie, I was so protected by my ignorance about a lot of things. This is why Andy was able to sit for years, happy as a lark with torn and tattered Huzzy; he did not even know that she was tattered and torn and I did not know that people can get that way without even knowing it.

  JUNE 19, 1970

  It is hot which is why the American Beauty roses in the wreath in this picture are wilting. Just seeing this wreath again makes me smell all sorts of things; gardenias, roses, liquor, B.O. It is not a happy event because my great-uncle Bertram is dead. I do not know Uncle Bertram well and I have never really known him well except to have said “hello” and gotten a dollar the few times that I had seen him. Aunt Lucille (great-aunt and wife of the deceased) is standing beside the wreath. I have always been told that I am a dead ringer for her and people say that this day; they say “dead” ringer which I find in extremely poor taste. Everyone has always called Uncle Bertram a drunk, a crazy, until today and now, he is a fine man, a Saint. He is dead and I begin to see how being dead makes a difference in the way that people feel about you. Of course, then there is a problem with the fact that you don’t get to hear it unless of course you’re like Huck and happen to stumble upon
your own service.

  This is right after the burial service and Aunt Lucille has been crying her heart out. “You ripped your Mama wide open,” she told me earlier that day. Now, she says that she is hot as hell and wants a gin and tonic. It breaks the tension and everyone goes back to Lucille’s house (we are staying in a Holiday Inn in Knoxville, Tennessee; if Uncle Bertram hadn’t died, I probably never would have seen Tennessee which provides another interesting insight into what happens when people die). Lucille’s house is small and she doesn’t have central air and so what could have been nice floral fragrances become stifling and gag provoking. Bobby has himself a little drink when no one is looking and Andy is fascinated with the big fat yellow cat that keeps clawing his lily white hands every time he tries to get a pet. I have to go outside and swing so that I can’t smell all the various odors and so that I can think about everything that has happened. The first day that I was in Tennessee (yesterday) I saw Uncle Bertram stretched out in his box; he looked blue—not blue like sad, just BLUE—and I had needed to leave the room. There was elevator music playing all around and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from and there was a closet full of clothes in the hall that had no backs. It was possible that Uncle Bertram was naked on his underside and I tried to get a picture. It was like turning over a rock and finding moss there; Uncle Bertram’s moss was on top. I realized that there was something wrong with that analogy but I didn’t have time to think it out.

  Aunt Lucille’s voice comes through the screen behind my head in shrill “Berties” and I think that I will one day come back to Tennessee when no one has died so that I can fully remember this time when someone has died. Uncle Bertram is getting a lot of mileage out of this and so is Lucille. She loves flowers and I would like to write a poem about how strange funerals are and about how just because I am a dead ringer for Lucille that I will not grow up to be like her or act like her. Dead-red, bled, head, said. As I said, I want some red roses for a blue body. Send them to the deadest man in town. I see by your half-ass outfit that you are a dead man, you see by my outfit that I am not dead. Looking back, I realize that I learned a very valuable lesson: Don’t look a dead man in the face. But it also led to many disturbing questions. For instance, if Bertram went to sleep like the preacher said, did his whole body go fuzzy like when your foot falls asleep? Did he turn blue like when you swing your legs without letting them hit the ground? Did he die in an orgasmic way? An organic orgasmic? The questions plagued me for a long time and even now, I have questions. Even now, I am intrigued by the thought of preservation and memory. When I hear “Bertram” the picture that I always see is the very last time that I saw him—in the casket, dead and stiff, an old man. Even though I can conjure up other pictures of him, slight memories, old photographs, that last picture is always in my memory. When I think of Lucille, now, it’s the same way and it’s interesting because she was born in 1900, the same year as Thomas Wolfe, yet Wolfe will always bring to mind a picture of that large somewhat handsome thirty-eight-year-old with his dark hair pushed back, and Lucille will always bring to mind a picture of a seventy-four-year-old shriveled bitchy woman with age spots on her wrinkled cheeks, yet they are the same age. Or does death change things like that? Bertram is the first to go of the three people that I know who are dead. Or is it four people? Bertram is the first to go of the three or four people that I know who are dead. The red roses of the blue body in this picture are repulsive just as they are in a future picture of Lucille’s flowers, the second person that I have known who has died. I didn’t go to her funeral for fear that I would be a “dead ringer” for the dead person. I don’t even know who took these pictures, his and hers dead wreaths. It was a sick gesture and I see no humor in it at all.

  SEPTEMBER 12, 1970

  I am in the eighth grade and this is my first time cheering for the junior high team. I am wearing a cute little yellow and white suit just like the other ten yellow and white suits cheering with me. Beatrice did not make cheerleading, and it seems now that that could have been a dramatic turning point in her life. Here, she is being a good sport because she is wearing yellow stretch pants, a white turtleneck and a wildcat mask. She volunteered on her own to be our mascot and everyone agreed, knowing that she felt totally left out. As a matter of fact, the only way that she even got in the picture is because Bobby took this picture of me and I was on an end of the line because I was so short. That is where Beatrice was supposed to stand—at the very end. I remember a lot about that day. I remember feeling so proud when I looked over and saw Bobby standing with a bunch of his high school friends. I remember thinking how very All American he was, as All American as Wally Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver. I remember seeing Mark Fuller with a “Kiss My Patch” patch on the ass of his filthy (not even Levi) jeans, and I felt confused because I realized that Beatrice was quite smitten with Mark Fuller’s disgusting appearance. It made me realize that Beatrice had changed; that she did not pull her wagon so much as she got taken for rides. I realized that we no longer had as much in common as when she was so mesmerized by her finger-painting hands and I was so faithful to my old lady suit. Beatrice could not think the same without her paints but I could think the same without my robe. I thought that we were all like trees, flexible youths, saplings, who grow up heavy and stiff, spread seeds and get chopped down and turned into notebook paper. I remember everything about that day because it was all so important. It was the day that Beatrice decided that she was in love with Mark Fuller (“as long as you don’t still like him,” she had said). It was the first time that anyone had ever been smitten with me (that I knew of). His name was Pat Reeves and he was a runner for the high school track team, very smart and a Bobby/Wally Cleaver carbon. I remember it all: losing the game 28-0, Beatrice running around awkwardly trying to get Mark Fuller’s attention, Pat Reeves watching me, smiling at me, coming up after the game and introducing himself, walking me across the parking lot to where my mother was waiting in that old green station wagon. I can see his face so clearly, those wide hazel eyes fringed with long dark lashes (if he had been a girl, he never would have needed mascara) and straight dark hair, a wisp of which he used to have to wet down so that it didn’t stick straight out (a little detail that always made me want to call him Alfalfa). He was always so calm as though everything he said or did was very controlled, in slow motion. Yes, I remember it all, and in the far corner of my mind, of the picture, there is a blue-gray almost autumn afternoon, a boy with thick red hair throwing a javelin in the clear field at the end of the school, spindly pine trees swaying over the top of the field house, their roots hidden by a building full of helmets and jock straps.

  OCTOBER 31, 1971

  This picture is dark because it was taken outside at night. We are all at Beatrice’s house for a Halloween party. Nobody even dressed up; it was not a fun party. I am sitting on a trash can, away from the garage where everyone else is making out. Pat Reeves is beside me as he had been for over a year, and we still had a lot to talk about. We talked about poetry or the movies that we had seen, our childhoods, families. Being with Pat was comfortable because it was like being with Bobby. But, it seemed to me that something was missing, that I was at a dead end, missing out on the excitement that everyone else claimed to have. That’s why out of the blue I decided to break up with Pat Reeves. That’s why I spent most of the night staring at Howard who is the tall guy with curly hair smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. He was in the eleventh grade and known as a “lady’s man.” I was impressed by this. Why the hell I don’t know, but I was impressed, and I stared at him all night long, even before I broke up with Pat, even after Pat asked me “why?,” looked back and forth from me to Howard who was talking to Lisa, looked out at that little spark of fire in the yard where Beatrice and Mark Fuller were smoking a joint, and then turned and walked away so slow motioned without saying a word. I didn’t even feel sorry for him, just for myself.

  JANUARY ’72

  Here, I should feel like someth
ing in my Jay Vee cheering suit. I’m in front of the bleachers kicking my legs and yelling “boogie woogie, right on, right on,” but I didn’t feel like anything. I felt like nothing. I wanted to lie down on the court and blend with the lines, get stomped. At this time I had very mixed feelings about everything which made it difficult to concentrate on anything. I was a xeroxed either/or. All the time, an either/or. Either a cheerleader representing my school as fine moral fiber Or Howard’s girlfriend and managing to fake my way through all the parties with an occasional “wow man” or “cool.” I had not heard of The Feminine Mystique at that time and it is a blessing or things would have been complicated. My salvation was to look at all the people in the stands and to think how they all had lives and how they would go home to their own homes, sleep in their own beds. They were like ants or the amoebae that I had seen sliding around in biology, looking like everyone else but not being anyone else. It took a great deal of thought and it was a secret thought, the kind that could keep me safe.

  JUNE ’72

  This is Bobby in his graduation robe. He looks very distinguished and we are all very proud of him. Nancy Carson is all scrunched up beside him smiling. Everyone thought she looked so pretty that night, except me. I thought she looked somewhat whorish in that tight red dress. Howard is in the background, slumped on the couch, and it looks like he is staring at Nancy’s chest. “Howard is a doll” all of my friends said except for Pat Reeves who would not even talk to me. But Howard was not a doll and I had discerned this long before; I knew that very night with him slumped there, his hair falling in his eyes, that he was not the one for me, yet, I made no effort to do anything about it. It was perfectly obvious that I had no future with such a person, a person who was very popular in school, but a person who used double negatives constantly, a person who had shoplifted a radio. He did those kinds of things, things that Bobby or Pat Reeves never would have done. This is a good picture of Bobby, though, except for the fact that Nancy Carson should have been cut away, especially since she broke up with him just two days after the picture was made. He locked himself in his room for the entire night. He did not even come out when I went to his door and told him that Marcus Welby was on. We watched that show together every single Tuesday night and that is why it took years before I could forgive Nancy Carson that one.