SHORT FICTION The Rules of the Game Kristin Berkey-Abbott I’ve had girlfriends tell me that the first time they realized they had entered adolescence was when cruel brothers made endless comments about their nubile breasts – body parts that they hadn’t even realized they’d started developing until that point. Imagine. Most start-of-puberty stories revolve around secondary sex characteristics of some kind. Not mine. I first realized that puberty had hit me when my hair started to curl. Not those sexy ringlets that women pay so much for when they get a perm. No, my hair started curling in unnatural ways, right off the top of my head, in all different directions. Many days, I looked like a lightning strike victim. I still don’t know why my hair would behave that way. Do extra hormones affect the scalp? My mother acted as if my hair had always done this. Each morning, she braided it all into a tight French braid. But by lunch time, springy curls would escape, and I looked even freakier. I waited for Mom to figure out what to do, but she acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary, like every girl who hits puberty develops problem hair. Nothing could have prepared me for that. Nothing I’d read mentioned hair-on-the-head changes, and my mother had always presented puberty as a stage we’d get through together. Mom had shoved all kinds of books at me so I’d know what to expect. “No daughter of mine will go through the ordeal I went through,” she said as she gave me my very own copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Updated for the 1980s. “I tell you, Bri, I thought I had some horrible disease when I got my first period. That I’d slowly bleed to death. How could my mother have not known what was going on? She did the laundry, after all.” “What’d you do?” “My best friend’s mother showed me how to handle it. I had to use my allowance to buy napkins. And we didn’t have those self-adhesive strips or wings–“ “Mo-om.” I put my hands over my ears. “Such a modest little girl. I know you don’t want to discuss these things– “ “Then why do you keep bringing it up?” “I don’t want you caught by surprise. If I’m not around, I want you to know what’s happening. For instance, when you go to camp this summer, I think you
Volume 13, Number 1
SPRING 2001
phoebe
67
The Rules of the Game should take a box of Stayfrees. I hope you don’t get your period while you’re there. That’d really cramp your style.” She did that donkey laugh bray of hers that I hate so much. “What do you mean?” I asked, more to make her quit laughing than because I wanted to know. “Well, you can’t go swimming, for one thing.” “What do Olympic athletes do?” “I don’t mean that you won’t ever get to go swimming when you’ve got your period. In a year or two, we’ll start you on tampons. You’ll spend a small fortune on them before you hit menopause. But you’re a bit young for them yet.” I had always loved camp, had never thought about the impact that puberty would have on my experiences. But summer camp of my thirteenth year stands out in my camp memories, not because I got my period at camp, but because of two kindnesses in an otherwise bleak half month. I arrived at camp in the North Carolina mountains full of hope, with no thought that camp would be radically different. Perhaps I should have known. That was the year I moved from Pioneer A (for kids) to Pioneer B (for teens). I expected to rule the camp. Pioneer B kids had always run us out of the swimming pool a few minutes early, and on the last Friday night, we could only gaze longingly at the lights bouncing off the disco ball as Pioneer B kids danced late (until 11:00!), and we went to bed. Little did I know how much humiliation that part of camp inflicted on its campers. I always wondered if the counselors did it on purpose. Maybe they got bored. Maybe they wanted to remember how awful adolescence was, to remind themselves how lucky they were to be safely past all that. Or maybe we’d have been mean to each other regardless; even if girls had been kept separate from boys, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a feminist Sisterfest. The only way to keep adolescents from being mean to each other is to keep them completely separated, one from another. During the past school year, I could tell anyone brave enough to ask that my hair curled off my head that way because of how my mother braided it when it was wet. Most of my classmates had been victims of parental haircuts or hairstyles at some time or another, so they understood. At least they left me alone. Not at camp. I got endless comments about my hair, not only from fellow campers, but from counselors. Even the Pioneer A campers felt free to pick on me. The boys were bad, but the girls were the worst. The first Monday, Lauren, a cabinmate, said, “Did you put that perm in yourself?” “It’s not a perm.” “Sure. No one’s hair naturally curls like that. I guess that’ll teach you. Being cheap never pays.” She twisted my curl around her finger and yanked. “Ow.” Stunned, I couldn’t even react enough to move out of range.
The Rules of the Game She twisted another curl around her finger. “Remember that the next time you buy blue jeans. Being cheap never pays. Toughskins are not cool.” She twisted her hip and shoved her butt in my face. “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” She twisted her finger, so that my scalp just started to prickle. Then she set me loose. She thumped my head. “We can talk about your children’s underwear later.” Lauren set the tone. Even the merely curious inquiries mortified me. A week later, after being called Medusa, I ran back to my cabin in tears. A camp counselor, Jean, followed me. “You shouldn’t let them get to you. Don’t you know how this game works? They’re just teasing. If you let them see you cry, they’ll just get worse.” I snuffled. “I can’t help it. Do you think I like crying in front of everybody?” “Buck up, Sabrina. Tease them right back.” She handed me a tissue. “Now get to the bathhouse and get cleaned up. We’ve got team kickball in twenty-five minutes. I want to see you out there as if nothing unusual had happened.” I watched her march out of the cabin; my mother would pay money if it would buy me posture like that. “Have you thought about a different haircut?” I whirled around. In my misery, I hadn’t even noticed Celiana, the French girl whose sinuses had been undone by American ragweed. She often sat out activities because of her asthma. “What good would that do me? By the time I can get a different haircut, camp will be over.” Celiana tossed me her pocketknife. “Are you suggesting I hack my hair off?” “Open it. It’s got a pair of scissors.” “I can’t cut my own hair.” Celiana rolled her eyes. “Sure you can. It’s easy. You don’t think that hairdressers have to get years of training, do you?” She caught the knife as I tossed it back to her. “Oh, all right. I’ll cut it for you.” Even though I knew my mother would not approve, I asked, “What would you do?” She walked over to me with the turned out feet of a ballet dancer. She took my chin in her hand and gently twisted my head to see different angles. She touched each wild curl. “I’d give you a very sleek cut. If you cut each shank fairly close to your head, you’d get rid of the curls.” “Wouldn’t I look scalped?” I thought about my mother’s wails after each of her haircuts. “Au contraire. You’d look very sophisticated. Even the little hick children of this camp would recognize that.” And if they didn’t, they’d just tease me unmercifully using a different set of cruel words. How much worse could I look? “O.K.,” I said. “Do it.”
The Rules of the Game Celiana clipped so gently that I wouldn’t have known I was getting a haircut if I hadn’t seen the curls on the ground. She squirted some stuff out of a can. “You’re going to put shaving cream on my head?” “No, silly. It’s mousse.” I still wasn’t sure what she meant. A year later, when America went mousse-crazy, I felt oddly proud that I was among the first Americans to use it. She twitched it through my hair and twisted a few strands. “Voila!” We went into the bathroom. “You’re a miracle worker.” I couldn’t believe the girl in the mirror was me. Gone was the freak show. It would take me awhile to get used to this new reflection, but I already knew that I liked this one better. “You look at least sixteen. So chic. You’ll need to get some interesting earrings though.” “Thank you so much.” Tears welled up in my eyes, and she kissed my forehead. “You really are a crybaby, no? What’s wrong? You are not happy with your new hair-do?” I wiped my eyes. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been with a haircut.” “Well, good. Now you’ve got a kickball game to get to. You don’t want Counselor Jean to come looking for you.” I smiled and headed out to the kickball field. Possibilities of being the new popular girl flirted with me. I knew that I’d finally put all my troubles behind me. But my body had other ways to betray me. “Sabrina. Good. I was about to send Carol back to find you. You can be on this team.” “Thanks alot, Bri,” Carol said. “Thought I’d finally get a chance to smoke.” Not a soul commented on my new hair. Couldn’t they see? Wasn’t it obvious that a new me stood before them? Why weren’t the boys clustering around me? Why didn’t the girls want to know more about how I’d gotten my hair to do what it did? The head counselor blew a whistle. He liked to do that. He blew the whistle whenever he got a chance. “O.K. Line up. Boy-girl-boy-girl.” What new horror was this? We did what he said, just like massacre victims who line up in front of mass graves and wait to be gunned down. The head counselor said, “You’ll have to get closer than that. Everybody hold hands.” We didn’t move quickly enough for him. He blew the whistle again. “C’mon, move like you got a purpose.” One boy, Arnold, grabbed my hand and then thrust it away like he’d touched something rotten. “Yuck. I’ve got to hold your hand? I’d rather die.” The head counselor trotted over to us. “Hold hands. We haven’t got all day.” “I don’t wanna hold her hand. It’s sweaty.”
The Rules of the Game “Everybody’s gonna have sweaty hands once we start playing. So quit being such a big baby and get with the program.” He blew the whistle again and divided all the five people teams into two larger teams. It was the strangest game I’d ever played. We weren’t allowed to drop hands for any reason; if we did, it counted as one out. Being the team up to kick wasn’t as hard as being in the outfield. But the hardest part was holding hands with Arnold, who never quit muttering and complaining about my sweat. “I see why they call you Bri. You’re just like a warm, oozy cheese.” He sniffed so melodramatically that the other five people teams turned to see what was going on. “And you smell like a moldy old cheese too.” These days I’d shut him up with a zinging retort, but back then, I didn’t even know what Arnold was talking about. The only cheese I’d ever seen came wrapped in plastic, the slices that Mom used to make grilled cheese sandwiches. I’d always found them curiously sterile, not smelly or oozy at all. By the end of the kickball game, I found myself once again reduced to tears. Counselor Jean couldn’t hide her disgust. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to get yourself together. Lie down and then meet the rest of us at the dining hall when you’ve composed yourself.” Celiana said, “They didn’t like your hair?” “I don’t know that anyone noticed.” I told her about the kickball game. She giggled. “Now you know why I developed an asthmatic condition.” “They gave you asthma?” She shook her head. “You should learn the symptoms of a non-fatal illness and be able to fake it. It can get you out of having to do all manners of unpleasantness.” “Well, you’ve already claimed asthma. What’s left for me?” “You could have woman problems. But that’s probably not best for you. You really like swimming.” Indeed I did. Only in the pool did I feel like my old self. If I sweated, who would know? In the water, I glided like a weightless creature. No one pointed out my newfound ungainliness, the way they did on land. Unfortunately, even in the pool, the lifeguards liked to force us to play stupid boy against girl games. Their favorite was keep-away, which quickly turned into a dunk-fest. All the members of the opposite team would gang up on whichever person held the ball and hold him or her under until the ball bubbled up to the surface. I tried to keep to the edge of the pool, to avoid the ball. But one day, it landed right in front of me, so I grabbed it. I could have thrown it to someone else, there would have been enough time. But before I could make a decision, a smiling boy, John, bobbed over to me. I looked into his green eyes and saw no meanness when he said, “You know I have to dunk you.”
The Rules of the Game I nodded and folded my arms across the ball. He wrapped his arms around me, my back to his chest. “Take a deep breath,” he said, and then he lowered his voice. “Scratch my leg with your toe when you want me to let you up.” As he submerged me, I thought I’d scratch his leg instantly. But the panic I’d expected to rush through my body left me alone. I felt a calm comfort I hadn’t expected to ever experience, certainly not at the hands of a boy. My dad had taken off when I was a baby, so I couldn’t remember every being held in male arms before. I relaxed into the warmth of his skin, such a contrast to the cold water. “Hey,” I heard another boy say. “She’s been under a long time. Are you sure she’s not dead?” I moved my head so they’d know. I heard admiration in their voices. I could only hold my head under for so long. I lifted my head, felt John’s breath on my neck. But he didn’t let me go. “Hey, ya dumb cheese girl,” Arnold said. “You’re supposed to let go of the ball.” “Come and get it. If you think you can, worm boy.” I stuck my tongue out at him. Something about the experience had changed me, made me brave enough to taunt right back. I felt John’s smile, even though I couldn’t see his face. And, thus, I changed the rules of the game for the rest of the week. It didn’t take them long to pry the ball from my arms. Only then, after such a quick squeeze that I didn’t know how to interpret, John released me. “Catch the ball again soon,” he said with a wink. “I’ll try,” I said, grateful for the water which kept me cool. Usually, when anyone stared at me for any reason, I blushed and broke into a sweat. “Good.” He dove after the next person with the ball, leaving me to go over the whole incident again and again in my head. If this was one of those novels for pre-teens I used to love to read, this story would end with John and me at the dance, maybe me getting a first kiss. In those books, the unpopular girl always gets, however improbably, the eye of the most popular guy in the school. But that’s not how real life works.