Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig

Author:Rebekah Taussig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

6

Feminist Pool Party

I hated going to birthday parties when I was little. Especially the sleepover kind. The invitation would arrive in the mail two weeks before, and my mom would put it straight on the fridge. An invitation means you’re included, right? And who doesn’t want that? But the small paper invite with cartoon girls dancing beneath aggressively bright balloons and riotous pink confetti haunted me, reminding me what was looming ahead. Samantha is eight! Join us for pizza and swimming and relentless little-girl screaming into the wee hours of the morning! I begged my mom to make up excuses so I wouldn’t have to go.

Parties were vivid reminders that I didn’t fit. When I saw the sparkly balloon dancers on the fridge, I imagined all the girls from my class sharing lip gloss in the van waiting to go to the pool while the birthday girl’s dad slowly bumped me down the front stairs (What do I say to a DAD? Where do I look?). I saw all the girls jumping on each other in the water, easy and light, graceful and wild. I saw myself trying to act casual and chill, gripping the edge of the pool. I saw myself frantically rushing through my nighttime bathroom routine while all the girls waited in a line outside the door, knocking every so often, “Are you okay in there Bekah?” I saw all their cute jammies with tiny ruffles on the sleeves next to me in my giant T-shirt with the rip up the side (it was so soft, though!) and big sister’s gym shorts hanging down to my knees. I saw all their fairy feet and delicate ankles next to my swollen toes. (Should I cover them with socks? But no one else is wearing socks to sleep!) I saw myself skipping soda with pizza, terrified I’d wet my sleeping bag during the night. I saw myself pretending to fall asleep in my spot next to the wall while the girls sang along to Grease 2 and stayed up talking about the boys in our class.

Not being invited at all came with a distinct bite, but an invitation meant that I would need to contort myself into a role that never seemed to fit, an exercise I found to be—more than anything else—exhausting. And after all that effort, I still usually left the party feeling like a drag on all the good party times. The girls screaming in the pool had something beautiful. I didn’t want to disrupt or pollute that. It was plain to see they were better off without waiting on the one bumping down the stairs with a dad, without having to worry about the one clinging to the edge of the pool. I could try to pretend, but it felt crystal clear: I didn’t belong. This, I believed, was a fact—spoken from on high, the hand the universe dealt, the way things were and would be. It never occurred to me that there could or should be a different way.

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