A Certain Shade of Green

Saturday, 15 July, 1944

Dear Westy,

Tonight at seven o’clock there was a knock at the door. Almira and I were listening to the radio in the living room as we always did while mother prepared dinner for the family. It was another long day of school for the both of us. I hadn’t imagined that Almira’s warnings of the difficulty the new school brought were anything but the fantasies of a lonely girl, but they were all true. Or perhaps I had become just as lonely as she. Perhaps mother was just as lonely when she was our age. 

After a moment father entered the living room followed by a boy from our class. His name is Jack Haley but at the time I thought his name was John. Luckily father entered stating, “Margaret, Jack is here to see you.” I expected the stereotypical insecurity and uneasiness that fathers were supposed to show when their daughters speak to boys from school but father remained indifferent. That’s his type. “Don’t be long. Your mother is almost finished with dinner.” And off he went back into the kitchen to finish reading another article criticizing Roosevelt. He doesn’t often finish those articles - he spends far too much time responding aloud to each sentence, bothering mother who is always too concerned with her casserole to listen to his complaints. 

Jack sputtered forth a nervous invitation to the Summer Festival that I can’t accurately put to ink. I don’t think I’d be able to properly capture his charm. I said yes, obviously. Jack is considered one of the cuter boys in our class from what I’ve gathered, but I’m not often privy to the girls’ gossip. To be completely frank the other girls at school detest me for my nose. My nose of all things! They told me it looked like Frankenstein’s monster, as if Dr. Frankenstein had reanimated my nose with the corpses of dead livestock. So what is it that Jack sees in me? 

Almira told me I didn’t mumble too much when I told him yes.

Friday, 21 July, 1944

Dear Westy,

The Summer Festival is tomorrow! Mother is making me a green dress. She and Almira both tell me that green pairs well with my skin. I was a jaundiced baby my parents tell me. I’m not sure that I ever really got past it. In a certain light, at a certain angle, I still have a yellowish tint - some might see it as green. Maybe that’s Jack’s favorite color. With all of that in mind I approved to the color of the dress. 

The dance will be held in the school’s gymnasium and afterward there will be a bonfire next to the baseball field. I was hoping the Festival would have been held elsewhere as I have a lot of negative memories associated there. My first day of high school a group of girls surrounded me in the gymnasium and called me a monster. Every day at gym class was the same. It’s become part of our weekly routine. It’s only been one year of this ridicule but it’s enough for it to be engraved into my mind. 

“My face is a crescent moon if you look at me from the side. There are thousands of things wrong with me! Look at this wart on my chin. And look at how distasteful it is when I squeeze it! My skin is green for heaven’s sake!” 

I’ve made this plea too many times. They won’t listen. The rest could be forgiven except my nose. 

~~~~

Words are spells. Girls are witches. Boys are complacent. 

Witches can recite a string of words to ignite the straw of their brooms. It’s simple. The broom can’t resist. It’s obligated to set itself ablaze.  

Girls can receipt a string of words, convince the community to join in on the incantation, repeat it for two hundred days or more, reminding their target that she isn’t worth the life she’s been given by God until she accepts the spell as her new reality, forgets what she used to see in the mirror, and accepts the new face that the town has painted on her. 

Call a girl a cow for a year and her rebuttals will start to sound like moos.

Call a boy’s father a drunk and eventually he’ll crash his car and no witch's spell can uncrush a man’s rib cage. All that is left are his feet, poking out from under the upended car. 

Ridicule a girl’s posture enough and she’ll slink through the school hallways hoping not to be seen until all her slinking irreparably bends her spine and the doctors will tell her she’ll never walk upright again - not like the other girls - she’ll always slink - best thing to do is ignore the comments and learn to turn the other cheek - even laugh at herself. Assume what they make of you. That’ll take away their power. 

Tuesday, 1 August, 1944

Dear Westy,

Assume what they make of you. The idea hasn’t left me yet. 

The Summer Festival went horribly. I never knew a town could be so vengeful. 

Jack met me there with a corsage his grandmother had fashioned for him - for me I suppose - even though she’s never met me. It must have been a magic corsage I thought. While it was on my wrist all the schoolgirls took notice - ignoring my nose. I never thought I would see the day. Even at home I catch glimpses of Almira staring at my nose in pity and probably with a bit of relief. Before I entered the high school her nose was the prize winning pumpkin. I even catch my mother side-eying my nose, regretful of cursing me with such an affliction. I’ve even overheard fragments of disputes between her and my father debating what kind of a future I could have with such a nose. I’d die an old maid. At least that’s what I believe they were fighting about. But this night, the night of the Summer Festival, all eyes were on the corsage, then my nose, then back to the corsage. 

If only all moments of reprieve could last a lifetime. After our first dance as Jack was off to grab us each a glass of cola, the crowd encircled me as it always does. “Jack has feeble eyes! He needs a new prescription!” they told me. “Once he tries to kiss you he’ll bounce of that nose and go running for the hills!” Everyone laughed, as they always do. 

As I said before, a year of hearing the same thing will convince you of its veracity but it has a secondary effect. It also tempers you to the consequences. There are only so many times I can be told that my big nose will pop the volleyball until I stop caring about such a result, and swing at the ball regardless. That’s why after the crowd dispersed and the music came back on I took Jack by the hand and pulled him back to the dancing area next to the bonfire. 

As the song came to an end he squinted his eyes and moved in to kiss me. Not wanting my bony nose to find its way into his eye socket I cocked my neck back and to the side, making sure my nose was out of his path. I opened my lips ever so slightly. The warm summer air tasted like the crackling kindling mixed with the sweet scent of cola on Jack’s breath. Before I knew it his lips were touching mine. We stayed that way for what felt like both seconds, and hours. The rest of my body was numb. My eyes were closed. Thinking back on it I bet everyone watched the kiss wondering how such a handsome boy could debase himself to my level. But in the moment I didn’t feel the eyes on me. I felt nothing. All I felt were his lips. 

As Jack pulled away a puff of bonfire smoke pushed its way into our faces. The winds had changed as they often do around a fire. Having kissed him for I don’t know how long, I inhaled the smoke deeply through my nose and, under no control of my own, sneezed, launching my head forward into Jack’s. 

Westy, I don’t want to admit what happened but I promised I’d never keep anything from you. I shouldn’t have grown complacent to the consequences that my enormous nose could bring. The townspeople were right to remind me. Perhaps it wasn’t malicious. Perhaps they were warning me. 

I looked up, Westy. I looked up at him, rubbing my forehead and the bridge of my nose, checking my fingers to see if I was bleeding, as we all do when we strike our head against something hard. Jack was holding his mouth. He pulled his bloody hand away from his mouth, peeled back his lips, and probed at his front teeth with his tongue. Two of them were broken in two. Another was missing completely. I fell to the ground searching for his missing teeth, hoping that finding them might earn my contrition, but to no avail. The night was too dark and the grass too long. 

When I looked up Jack was gone and all my schoolmates were standing around me, shaking their heads.