[Prudence]

I'm hoping it's okay for me to use the wayback machine and take a slice of life from my past. This is something I was already working on in my head. Sorry, it's kind of long. But it's the truth from my perspective.

Puberty: An Autobiography

For years my peers referred to me as “Zitso.” Not because I was the only one with bad skin, or because mine was the worst, but because I had been first, and because I didn’t know my place.

The worst transgression a girl can make as she travels through puberty is to shamelessly be smarter than the boys. There were other smart girls, maybe even some who were smarter. Some kept quiet and never revealed their test scores. They slid by under the radar -- not popular, but not a target. Others would bat their eyelashes and ask the nearest boy for unnecessary help; good grades could then be attributed to male tutelage, not feminine smarts.

I didn’t realize the importance of this game. My parents always taught me (indirectly, by their actions) that my intelligence was something to be proud of and use as best I could. My mom stayed home with us until I was in high school, but I knew she was smart. My dad used to take me to work with him on the weekends. I’d sit in his office and marvel at all the wonders in his desk. Colored paper clips! A grease pencil! Special rulers! He’d introduce me to any of his co-workers who happened to be there on the weekend. Maybe it’s because it was the weekend and there were never more than a few other people there, but I never noticed a real difference in numbers between men and women and just assumed that when I grew up, I’d have an office, too. And my own grease pencil.

My dad would take me down to the big computer room at his work and show me the machines taller than I was, with the spinning reels of data. There were pages and pages of dot-matrix printouts with the perforated edges. One day, my dad decided that I needed to know what factorials were and he took me downstairs to his den and wrote out an explanation on the white board. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that my dad never treated me like a “girl.” He never assumed that I wouldn’t be interested in math or computers. In fact, he assumed that I would share each and every one of his technological hobbies and to this day describes his latest accomplishments in exquisite detail – whether or not I want to hear about them.

But the kids in my class didn’t know my dad. They received the usual messages about how girls are supposed to behave around boys. One day the boy we carpooled with asked if he could carry my books for me. I naively assured him that I could carry them myself, because I could; there were only a couple, and why shouldn’t I carry my own burden if I was able? But unbeknownst to me, that seemingly simple question was the first step in some pre-pubescent mating dance and I had rejected his advances. By doing for myself, I demonstrated a total lack of respect for my place in the social hierarchy. I was unrepentant and I’d made an enemy for life.

And that’s when the “Zitso” started. Everyone called me that; to refuse was to offer to be the next target. Teachers joined in on the game, because they wanted to show that they were fun and approachable. And what better way to demonstrate solidarity with students then by joining in the taunting? After all, I never cried in front of them, so it must not have bothered me too much. I saved all my tears for home, where my mother saw and knew that I was miserable, but didn’t know what to do. I was ashamed of everything about myself. I was significantly underweight and convinced I was fat. I didn’t have the right clothes. In seventh grade, I refused to take off my jacket during the day because then people would see the dark spot on the back waistband of my jeans where I’d cut off the label. They were the wrong brand, but the only ones my mother would buy for me.

Most of my eighth grade year is a blank; that’s the year my dad almost died. I had three friends at school. One girl had a spiky mullet and walked with a limp; when my mother saw her years later in a store, the girl swore she’d never known me. Another girl had a learning disability. She was a really good friend, but I was in the honors class and she was in special ed and we didn’t see each other much during the day. I went with her, her dad, and her little brother to my first rock concert – George Michael’s Faith tour, live in the Tacoma Dome. It was almost as if I was a normal kid. The last was the school drug dealer. He looked like he never bathed. He was regularly beat up and tolerated only for his willingness to provide what the other students wanted. I don’t know what eventually became of him, but I will always think of him as a gentleman. He once offered me some of his product, and seemed almost relieved when I told him I wasn’t interested in that. He never offered it again.

Meanwhile, my dad was diagnosed with cancer again. He’d had cancer once before – a malignant lump on his back. The lump was removed and the area treated with radiation. We were lucky that the cancer hadn’t spread. My dad went to several follow-up treatments, spaced farther and farther apart as time went on and he remained cancer-free. He had one final appointment before they would give him the “all clear.” It was on that visit that they discovered five lumps in his lungs.

My dad has never smoked even a single cigarette. He didn’t have lung cancer like you think of when you hear the term. He had lymphomas that just happened to be in his lungs. He had surgery to remove the portions of his lungs that contained the tumors, and I learned that you could use staples inside a human being.

Chemotherapy followed. He planned the chemo for late Thursday evenings. He’d work four 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday. That way he wouldn’t have to take any leave from work. Thursdays my mom would take him to chemo. When they got home, my mom would leave him in the car, come in the house, and make us go to our rooms. Then she’d bring in my dad and the pink basin into which he would vomit. She’d put my dad to bed and let us out of our rooms. My dad would be sick all weekend, but go back to work on Monday. We didn’t seem much of him during treatment, because he was either at work, working at home, or sick in bed.

One night my mom came into my bedroom while I was asleep to tell me that she was taking my dad to the hospital, but that a neighbor was going to come over in case we needed anything, and that my mom would be back to get us ready for school in the morning.

That was the night my dad almost died. His fever had skyrocketed and he required a massive transfusion. He stayed in the hospital for some time after that. I don’t remember how long, because frankly I don’t remember much from that time; I’ve written here almost my entire memory of that year. I didn’t find out until years later how close to death he came. I do remember visiting him in the hospital. My parents never wanted us to see that my dad was sick, so he must have been there some time if they thought we should come see him there.

But my dad lived. He ever even lost all his hair. He still has health problems, but he’s still around, fairly active now that he’s had his hip replaced, and still telling me all about his latest technological accomplishments. It’s a good thing I’m in law school, because some day he’s going to get sued over his websites.

And eventually my classmates gave up the taunting. My skin cleared up for a time and the name replacement no longer made sense. High school teachers weren’t so eager to be friends with the students. There was one last attempt to keep me in my place. My pelvic bone didn’t form quite properly and, despite years of ballet training, I was still a bit pigeon-toed if I didn’t concentrate on my walking. Once, on a field trip to Seattle Center, the boys walked in a cluster behind me, dragging one foot behind them with their hands clasped as claws to their chest in the classic “hey, retard!” pose used by teen boys everywhere. One of the girls asked me who the boys were mocking and I realized that she truly didn’t know. That’s when I knew the spell had been broken. The boy clique could mock me all they wanted, but they were their own audience now, and no one else cared.