Invisibility

The day was grey; clumps of snow huddled on the ground, uselessly battling the wet fog. At school, I waited near the front steps for the bus to arrive, skates over my shoulder. Ours was not a big town, nor did we have a big school. I knew everyone by name. I knew the boys who were pounding each other with slushy snowballs. I knew the girls, standing in select groups, shivering in the damp. But I stood alone, as always, nudging bits of dirty snow into a puddle with the toe of my boot.

I hugged an important secret to myself, one that was going to change everything for me, and today it would happen. My grade 8 class was going on its annual skating outing. The one occasion each winter when our school freed us from our navy and red uniforms and bused all of us to the local rink for the morning.

The popular girls like Louise and Cheryl would wear cute skating ensembles, I knew. Such luxuries were beyond my family’s reach, but I’d saved my babysitting money for months to buy a gauzy, ruffled blouse in pastel pink. I’d seen it in the window of The Model Shop and had taken the bus downtown each Saturday to hide it behind less attractive blouses to make sure nobody else bought it. It was just as pretty as anything the popular girls had. Tiny, pearly buttons lay in a delicate row down the lacy front.

Mom told me it was a summer shirt and much too thin for winter outings. Normally I just go along with her when Mom tells me what to wear but this time, I didn’t. Mom just didn’t understand. I knew my life would never get properly started if I didn’t wear this blouse on skating day. If Louise and Cheryl didn’t see me wearing it, my social life would be over before it even started. Mom rolled her eyes when I said that, but in the end, we made a deal: I could wear my new blouse as long as I kept my sweater on over it. I hated that pilly, old, mustard-coloured sweater but I figured I’d just ditch it when Mom wasn’t around. She’d never know.

The bus laboured up to the school in a cloud of diesel fumes just as the bell rang. We grade eights crowded noisily up to its folding door while all the other students trudged indoors towards their ordinary day.

I hoped I’d sit with Louise on the bus but a grinning boy named Gary got there first and slouched into the seat beside her. She didn’t notice me hovering in the aisle. She exclaimed loudly about how forward Gary was, her smile and flushed cheeks giving away her secret pleasure at his attention. Everyone piling into the bus behind me was shoving past so after a while I just moved on. I slid onto a tattered seat next to a boy named Glen and balanced my skates on my lap. Everyone knew Glen but he didn’t really have friends. Same as me. He said, “I fucking hate skating day,” and turned to glare out the window.

I gazed at Louise a few rows ahead of me. She and her friends chatted and giggled. There was a new show on television with this really far-out married couple called Sonny and Cher. We girls tried to copy Cher’s stick-straight, shiny hair. Louise’s hair was just like it. Mine frizzed out in all directions as if terrified at the very idea of being tamed. I told Mom that the older girls were ironing their hair to straighten it but she absolutely refused to let me try it, no matter how I pleaded.

Louise and Cheryl were undeniably pretty, but I suspected that it wasn’t just looks that determined who would be popular and who would be sentenced to invisibility. There was sophistication, too. So far, I didn’t seem to have it. Where did other girls my age get their confidence, their knowledge of grown-up things like make-up and periods and kissing boys? Why didn’t I know the same things they did? The first time we grade eight girls had to change into our gym clothes at the beginning of the school year, I had just pulled off my uniform and began shrugging into my gym t-shirt. I suddenly realized that Louise and her friends were staring at my skinny torso; I reflexively clutched my t-shirt to my bare chest.

“You’re the only girl in our class who doesn’t wear a bra,” Louise informed me, pertly. I glanced around at the half-dozen or so girls stepping into the baggy blue shorts and white t-shirts we wore for gym class; Louise was right. “Not that you need one,” added Cheryl. They giggled. True, I didn’t have an especially large chest as yet, but most of the other girls didn’t have much in that department either. The difference was that they thought of themselves as young women with their lip-sticked mouths, their sleek ponytails, and their bras stuffed with tissues. I was somehow still just a kid.

Half a year had passed since then. I examined myself daily, willing my body to develop womanly curves so that I could wear a pointy bra like Jayne Mansfield. I had definitely grown. My chest was no longer flat. My clothes had begun to fit differently, but Mom said I didn’t need a bra yet.

Since then, Louise and the other girls hadn’t been cruel to me, exactly; they just didn’t see me. They always walked past without a word. I wasn’t one of them but today I planned to join them. I was tired of being invisible. I bet I could be confident and giggly just like them. I could fit in, if they gave me a chance. Today they'd see me in my pretty, new blouse and they’d admire it. They always seemed to be talking about clothes. I could do that. Once they finally saw me properly, we’d be friends.

Arriving at the rink, we piled off the bus and scattered to the changing rooms. Girls on the east side of the building and boys on the west. The changing rooms were achingly cold; they had concrete floors and long, scarred wooden benches with tired blue paint, but no heat. We hung our coats on wooden pegs and pushed our snow boots under the benches. We shoved our frozen feet into stiff skates.

Finally, the rink man pushed open the heavy wooden half-door and the grade eights scrambled excitedly onto the ice. It had been scraped smooth with a shovel, leaving tiny hills of snow against the boards. The rink man sequestered himself in his glass booth and turned on the tinny loudspeakers. Everyone knew you had to have music to skate by. It was our parents’ music, Frank Sinatra and Englebert Humperdinck, not to our taste, but it was loud and that was enough. The rink soon rang with shouts and laughter. The faster skaters sprinted past the rest of us. The more tentative kids clung, laughing, to the half-boards. Groups skated with arms linked, and the boys and girls who liked each other held hands.

I trailed behind Louise and her troop of friends, but as usual, they didn’t notice me. Louise and Cheryl wore soft scarves and fluffy angora twin sets over tartan skirts that ended a few inches above their knees. This was as close as any parents in our strait-laced town would allow their daughters to get to the shocking mini-skirts we saw in magazines. Most mothers hadn't yet realized that their daughters brazenly rolled the waists of their skirts to bare another inch or two of thigh. Louise looked so glamorous, like a movie star.

The time seemed right. I was ready. I took a deep breath to steady myself, and decided to make my move. I skated up to Louise’s group. “Anyone want to crack the whip?” I suggested, trying to appear spontaneous even though I’d planned this opening line for days. We’d all loved crack-the-whip from the time we first stepped onto backyard rinks as toddlers, so I was positive they’d leap at the chance to play. I could see myself leading the group, holding onto Louise’s hand at the front of the chain of skaters. When we were all going as fast as we could, I’d yell “CRACK THE WHIP” and jam my skates into the ice, pulling hard on the chain. The kids down the line would all do the same, except for the lucky one on the end, who would let go and catapult across the rink. We’d laugh and cheer and marvel at the speed achieved by our wonderful whip. They’d see that I could be as much fun as they were! I held out my hand.

“No”, said Louise, in a tone that could not have been more exasperated had I asked her to toss her peach angora sweater into the mud. “That game is for children.” She and Cheryl rolled their eyes and skated away. After an awkward silence, the rest of their friends drifted away, too.

What had just happened? When did we grow out of crack-the-whip? I didn’t know we were too old for it. Yet again, I was miles behind everyone else, like a baby. What was wrong with me? I wobbled to the edge of the rink, struggling to conceal my embarrassment. I retreated to the locker room, skate blades clunking on the concrete. I planned to pout there alone for the rest of the morning. Reaching the deserted room, I threw myself onto the hard bench and let the tears fall. I felt like such an idiot. Why couldn’t I ever get it right?

But as I huddled in the frigid room, I realized that I hadn’t shown them my beautiful new blouse. I still had my stupid mustard sweater on. The day wasn’t over yet! I’d take the ugly, pilled sweater off and give Louise and her gang one more shot at seeing the real me. I yanked off my sweater and stuffed it under the bench, not caring that the slush from dozens of boots would soak into it.

If I was going to impress them, I might as well do it right. I pulled the elastic bands off my pigtails and unbraided them. My hair might not be straight like Cher’s, but it was long. Mom said it was strawberry blonde, a colour that sounded prettier than it looked. I tried to flatten it as much as possible but it was kinky from being in plaits, and pulling my sweater over my head had made my hair sizzle with static electricity.

I noticed Louise’s flowered bag on the bench. Make-up! What a good idea! I’d borrow a bit just to glamorize myself. I’d look like a whole new, mature person. Like Marilyn Monroe, maybe. Nobody would mistake me for a child this time. I’d never worn make-up before but I’d seen Mom apply it when she and Daddy went out and it didn’t look that hard.

In the flowered bag, I found a pot of sticky lip gloss and slathered it onto my mouth with my pinky finger. I squashed my lips together the way I’d seen Mom do. I pulled out a wand of mascara. I stood in front of the locker room’s ancient mirror and brushed on mascara until my lashes looked like clumpy spider’s legs. One eye had a lot more on it than the other, but no matter how much I dabbed, I couldn’t seem to make them the same.

By this time, I was shivering in my thin shirt. I replaced the make-up bag and tossed my hair over my shoulder the way I’d seen Cher do. I practiced the hair-toss a couple of times to make sure I would look casual and cool when all eyes were on me. I gave myself an encouraging nod in the mirror and headed back out.

As soon as I stepped onto the ice, I began skating fast so that everyone would look at me. I knew they’d see me flying by, my hair streaming behind me and they’d wonder why they’d never noticed before how pretty I am. She looks lovely with her hair down, they’d say. And just look at her beautiful outfit. Louise would see everyone admiring me and she’d invite me to skate with her and be her friend.

Faster and faster I went, elbows pumping hard as I increased speed. I felt untethered and beautiful and almost ready to fly! But Louise and her friends weren’t looking; they were flirting with Gary and some other boys near the far end of the rink. I’d just skate up and join them – that’s what I’d do – and impress them with my glamorous new look. I veered over at full speed.

I skidded to a halt at the edge of Louise’s group, my skate blades showering them with snow. My hair floated like a tumbleweed around me, refusing to submit to my cool hair toss. Everyone turned to look at me. I donned what I hoped was my most appealing smile. “Hello!” I said jauntily. Everyone’s eyes widened. “OH MY GOD!” shrieked Cheryl, clutching Louise’s arm. They burst out laughing and dodged away from me as if evacuating a burning house. They were screaming with laughter, covering their mouths with both hands. The boys were howling, doubling over, and gaping at me.

More and more kids heard the ruckus and stopped to see what was going on. They pointed at me and roared with laughter. Some looked shocked or embarrassed.

I couldn’t move. I felt panic rising inside me. What was going on? For several earth-stopping moments, all I could see was a blur of open, laughing mouths and pointing fingers. The rink man stopped the music and stomped angrily towards me. Shrieks of laughter ricocheted around the rink, colliding violently with concrete and ice. A sob rose in my throat. I wiped my eyes with the back of one hand, which came away smeared with black. I’d forgotten about the mascara. Glen broke away from the ring of kids around me and skated slowly in my direction. He didn’t look me in the eye, but as he passed by, he murmured, “Look down”.

I did. I saw that my beautiful blouse was hanging wide open from neckline to waist. The tiny pearl buttons, too fragile to withstand physical exertion, had capitulated and thrown themselves apart. My naked self was bared for all to see.

***

Riding back to school on the bus, I sat silently in the front seat, shocked, raccoon-eyed, skewered to the plastic upholstery by my teacher’s outrage. I’d wanted to be noticed, but my wish had been delivered to me contorted and tainted, as hopeless wishes always are. Behind me, the rest of the grade eights giggled and buzzed, high on the thrill of today’s unexpected scandal. From now on, I would pray for invisibility.