me at 6 mos. (assumed age) 9 mos. (real age)

I was a beautiful baby, a bit awkward but still pretty as an adolescent, and quite pretty as a young woman.

How come I thought I was so fat and ugly?

People always seemed to fuss over me when I was little, trying to make me pretty, sweet, a feminine little doll. Pin curls, rag curls (even though I had naturally curly hair), nail polish, ribbons, sandals, socks. After all the fussing, they would tell me how pretty I "looked". So, I thought, "I'm not pretty unless I have something done to me to make me look pretty."

I don't remember thinking those exact words, but that was what I believed. I wanted long hair so badly I cried every time they cut it. I begged for long hair. But I was told how pretty I looked with short hair, how pretty I looked with spitcurls, or else told that I didn't want long hair because short hair was so much prettier. But I thought long hair would be prettier; didn't matter, though, did it?

When I was five or six, I told Elaine I wanted to take ballet lessons. She said, "No, you don't. It will make your legs muscular and they won't be pretty when you grow up. But if you want to learn to dance, I'll send you to dancing school and you can learn tap dancing." I hated tap dancing to begin with, all that jumping up and down and flopping feet looked awkward to me and I already felt I was awkward enough -- I liked the grace and elegance of ballet, but if Elaine said tap dancing was what I'd get, that was better than nothing. I hated it -- flopping my arms around and plopping my toes on the floor. And cartwheels and handstands. No way! I was supposed to be a pretty little girl and they wanted me to act like a poorly-managed puppet on strings!

Marilyn's 1st birthday, and I'm about 6.
I was always told I was "such a happy child.
Do I look all that happy to you?
All my pictures between about 4 and 8 show this strained look,
maybe because I was so near-sighted I couldn't see anything,
maybe because I was always afraid of doing something wrong.
Maybe both.

The dance teacher told Elaine I was "clumsy". So not only was I not pretty, I was clumsy, to boot. Dancing lessons lasted quick.

Me and Marilyn at Neveal's. I'm a third grader and Marilyn is two or three.

I have large bones and a large frame, and I was a skinny little kid. I was always told how "bony" I was, but still had to wear extremely short dresses to "show off" my legs.

Elaine had a foot fetish of some kind. When I was two or three, she was cramming my feet into my high-topped baby shoes from infancy. When I asked her why I had to wear such awful shoes, she said it was because I had weak ankles and needed the support. Baloney. I realize now that I only had to wear the shoes when nobody else was around. As a result of those shoes, though, my feet are not in very good shape -- they don't look too bad, but I have hammer toes and broken bones in my arches.

So not only was I not pretty without being "made up" and clumsy, I had weak ankles, as well.

Elaine, Neveal, and Grandma were very petite women, small frames, small hands, tiny feet. By the time I was in high school, I was wearing size six shoes to their three's and four's and was taller than they were. They interpreted my size as "fat" and harped on how "fat" I was and what "clodhopper feet" I had. Crazy people.

Here I am at 23. This is how I dressed in high school. At 23, it's a pretty slick outfit, but when surrounded by frilly petticoats and saddle shoes, it was pretty severe. If only I'd known then how pretty I really was, and here I am showing off what I was told was my "best feature."

When I was a senior in high school and living at Grandma's, I wasn't allowed to choose my own school clothes because I was "so fat," and grandma told me it took special taste to dress when you were so fat (it was a given that I didn't have such taste, and I was NOT fat -- if anything, I tended toward thin, but I thought I was disgustingly fat and not at all attractive). Their idea of the kind of clothes I should wear was severely tailored, grey-tweed or brown, tight skirts and white blouses. (When I wore sweaters, they were a size or two too large to hid my "big breasts" which to me were a problem, even though the family thought they were my "best feature"). This tailored clothing was in the days when most girls wore full skirts with lots of petticoats, topless dresses, and "sweater sets" with tight pullovers under a cardigan. I wanted to look like the kind of very feminine girl who would wear such styles, but here I was wearing almost masculine apparel in a style that was not only unfashionable, but was also too old for me.

Ah, but the biggie. The one thing that more than anything made me feel unattractive, weird, and ashamed:

I had an overbite and my two front teeth had a gap between them. This could easily have been fixed with braces. Elaine told me that I had an awful smile because of the gap in my teeth but she couldn't afford braces. So she had found a dentist who would pull all my upper teeth and give me a plate so that I would have a "pretty smile". I was horrified, but there was no way I could show it -- I never ever disagreed with what I was told; I don't think I even knew how.

Even writing about this now makes me sick to my stomach. My insides just crawl into themselves. I was 16 and with false teeth. I was afraid to laugh or smile too broadly because I was scared they would fall out. I had never been conscious of my teeth before, but now I was sure that whenever a boy looked at me, he saw my false teeth. I always ate lunch by myself because they were cheap teeth and didn't fit well -- they made noises when I chewed.

The actual dental appointment and aftermath was ghastly. Everybody was too busy to go with me, Grandma was going to have company for dinner that day and had to cook. Elaine was in California. So, all alone, I took the bus to the dentist's, had my teeth pulled (the dentist used "laughing gas), an upper plate was put in right away, and as soon as I woke up, I got on a bus, had to transfer twice, and then walked the last half-mile home. Grandma and her dinner guests had just finished eating and were sitting in the living room, the food still on the table. Grandma was mad at me because I was late and had missed dinner, and insisted that I eat something. The only thing I could force down was mashed potatoes and gravy, and I went to sleep at the table. She woke me up and told me to go to bed. The dentist had given me a prescription for pain that had codeine in it, and I slept through the next several days.

Such a kind, sweet grandma. The appointment was made weeks in advance, but that day she planned a big dinner for friends she saw once or twice a week at any rate, and the dinner was for no special occasion. It didn't occur to me then, but she did that on purpose. I don't know what her motives were. She was crazy. A crazy, crazy, cruel woman.