Anyway, after much deliberation, I chose theater. I liked to play pretend, and theater class seemed like an opportunity to play pretend, only with everyone paying attention to me.
What actually happened in theater class was that we played a lot of “theater games,” like the one where you make a sound and a motion at the same time, or the one where you walk around the room at different speeds, or the one where you mirror a partner’s motions. After three weeks of this it occurred to me that maybe our teacher, Madame Chevalier, did not actually know anything about theater.
One day she had us play a game where you alliterate your first name with an adjective about you. Like Lizzie Reardon was “Likable Lizzie”—even though I would describe a dead skunk as likable before assigning that adjective to Lizzie.
Maybe I will someday discover that all Broadway actors audition for roles by playing a game where they alliterate their first names with adjectives. Maybe I will discover that Madame Chevalier was some kind of method acting genius. But I do not think that is going to happen.
Anyway, when it came to my turn, I said, “Eloquent Elise.” Which is following the rules of the game, right? But then everybody laughed at me. And called me “Eloquent Elise” for the next three days. Which you wouldn’t think would be a bad thing; I mean, eloquent is a compliment. But I could tell that no one was saying it as a compliment, and that was what confused me.
Eventually I went to my dad and I told him what was going on. I remember crying and just repeating “Why?” over and over.
“They’re teasing you because they’re jealous of you,” Dad said, taking my hands in his and looking into my eyes.
“Why?” I sniffled. Were they jealous that I was eloquent? Were they jealous that I knew what the word eloquent meant?
“They’re jealous of you because you’re smart and you’re talented and you know who you are.”
I stopped crying then. The words buzzed around my brain like hummingbirds, filling me with air. I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am.
But now my father looked upset. “Come on,” he said, and he took me to the basement. There are four units in my dad’s building, so there’s a lot of stuff in his basement: baby strollers and washing machines and broken furniture.
Dad found a softball bat and used it to gesture at an old futon. “When I feel bad,” he said, “I like to come down here.”
The basement was cold, and I hugged my arms to my chest. “Why?”
“Because,” he said, “it gets all the bad feelings out of me.”
And then he raised the softball bat and started whacking the futon like a lunatic, screaming and swearing the whole time, his arms wild, the futon sagging underneath the impact of the bat again and again. “Don’t you dare talk to my daughter that way!” he hollered, his voice guttural, like a bear’s roar.
After a minute he stopped and turned to me, breathing hard. “Here.” He held the softball bat out to me. “Your turn.”
I hugged my arms in tighter and backed away. I didn’t want to hit that futon. I wasn’t mad. I didn’t need to scream and attack a piece of furniture. I just needed someone to like me.
After a long moment, my dad laid the softball bat down. We went back upstairs. And we never spoke about that incident again, even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that my dad was disappointed in me. Like he had wanted me to be as angry as he was, when I wasn’t angry at all.
The next day at school, we were forming our circle at the beginning of theater class when Lizzie slipped in next to me and cooed, “Eloquent Elise, how many words do you know?”
I blinked at her.
“A million?” she pressed. “A thousand? A hundred? You must know more than a hundred words, Elise. After all, you are so eloquent.”
“I … don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know?” The kids nearby giggled. “But how can that be? Eloquent Elise, I thought you knew everything.”
So I took a deep breath, and I drew myself up to my full height—which, at the time, was roughly four feet—and I recited, “You are just jealous of me. You’re jealous because I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am.”
There was a moment of silence in which I thought that maybe, finally, I had bested them. Maybe Lizzie was about to be like, “Oh my God, you’re right.”
Instead, Lizzie and her friends began to shriek with laughter. I felt like I was surrounded by a thousand cawing birds. “I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am,” they sang at me, over and over, for the rest of the period, and throughout every theater class thereafter, until the words that had once sounded so uplifting became an insult, a joke.
Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore, so I quit theater for another arts elective. But painting and chorus were full. So I had to switch into remedial reading. I spent the rest of the semester learning to read picture books of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Because that is where the eloquent go.
So now, four years later, as I thought about confiding in my dad, I tried to figure out what it was that I thought he might be able to change. And the answer was: nothing.
So I said: nothing.
But it was okay. The blog and the silence and the secrets and the Chava and Sally lunchtime suicide help line. It was okay because that wasn’t everything. I had my night life, too, and that was what was real.
I hung out with Vicky more and more. I could tell from their raised eyebrows and suppressed smiles that my parents were thrilled about this, clearly thinking, A friend! Elise has a real, live friend! But aloud they played it cool, acting like, “Oh, yeah, Elise has friends all the time.” And for my part I volunteered no information about Vicky. She belonged to a different world from my parents’, and I was going to keep it that way.
Vicky brought me to her favorite clothing boutiques and I brought her to my favorite record stores. On Friday night I skipped dinner with my dad to meet Vicky downtown for pizza and a movie at the indie cinema. We spent most of dinner playing a game called When We’re Famous.
“When we’re famous,” Vicky said, “I’ll perform at Radio City Music Hall and my rider will include a bucket filled with cinnamon jelly beans. Just cinnamon, no other flavors. A stagehand will have to go through and pick them out. And if he accidentally leaves in any cherry jelly beans, because he mistakes them for cinnamon, I will have him fired on the spot.”
“When we’re famous,” I said, “people will buy action figures that look like us. No little girls will play with Barbies anymore. They will only want rock music action figures.”
“When we’re famous,” Vicky said, “we can open a camp for girls who are artists, and it will be free, so even if their parents say ‘No one makes a career as a musician’ and refuse to spend a penny on their arts education, they can still afford to come.”
“When we’re famous,” I said, “everyone will know our names.”
The next week I met up with Vicky and Harry at Teatotaler, which is like a coffee shop except for (surprise!) tea. Harry and I individually took notes on Macbeth, which we had both been assigned at our respective schools. My English class was a full act ahead of his, so I kept spoiling it for him.
“Oh, no,” I murmured, turning a page.
“What?” Harry asked. He glanced up from his book.