Out Submission
So folks, I actually submitted this to Out Magazine in their open call for fiction this month. I'm a bit nervous but rather proud that I put it out there. Let me know what you think.
Angel Number Two
By: Lisa Hale
Kindergarten isn’t the likeliest place for a coming out story to begin, yet that is exactly where I can trace mine back to. I went to a private school in Chicago and, to this day, I have no idea how my working class parents paid for it or why they didn’t just send me to the public school a few blocks away for preschool and kindergarten. They didn’t, though, and for that I am grateful otherwise I might not have met the women that forever shaped me. I believe that between the aesthetic appreciation for the female form mixed with the deep adoration of the lunch lady, Miss Judy, who made the single best chop suey I have ever had in my life, is where my love of women really began.
The first female body to draw my attention was at the tender age of five was that of a tall blonde. To be fair, I was five so everyone was tall at that point. Miss Kim was so very pretty with her teased hair and too tight jeans. I remember never being able to take my eyes off of the V where her legs met and the way the denim sat there. I found myself utterly enamored by that spot, wondering, wanting so much to know what was there under the fabric. She was very young, though old by my standards at the time, and worked with the younger children, so all I got to say was, “Hello, Miss Kim,” and “Goodbye, Miss Kim.” That was enough for me, though. Just being close enough to smell her flowery perfume mixed with baby vomit and talcum powder could set my head spinning off into fantasies of resting my head on her thigh while she petted my hair and read me a story in that soft menthol voice of hers. Sometimes I wonder if we met now if I’d be her type. She had to only be 18 or so when she was working there, so the age difference wouldn’t be that vast. Then, on the other hand, she could still be wearing the same tight jeans and teased out hair and be some bit of trailer trash. On second thought, maybe I’ll pass on that one.
Candice. Candice, too, was a blonde. She was so pretty and I was convinced that she was my very best friend. I wanted so much to be just like her because she was the most beautiful girl that I’d ever seen. Plus, she was my age, which was a bonus. I can remember chasing her around the school after hours before our parents picked us up, trying to steal a kiss. We would laugh and howl, and I remember that I very nearly got her by the kindergarten cubbies. My heart jumped up into my throat as though it were trying to escape when I caught her wrist in my hand, her baby-soft skin slipping against mine. I was terrified, thrilled. I wanted to touch her hair and kiss her lips, but I didn’t get to. A teacher calling for her interrupted us; her mother had come to pick her up. I was distraught at this lost opportunity, a foreshadowing of a life to come, so I sat in the sandbox until my own mother came to claim me.
The next day she came to school dressed in a brown gingham dress for pictures. It had a little white bib and her hair was in perfect pigtails, I remember this because I still have our class picture with her perfect little smile just above and to the right of my sort of lopsided one. She looked like an angel, I thought. I was so confused to find out that she, however, wouldn’t speak to me. Something had changed between us the day before that I didn’t understand. I had no idea that I’d done something wrong, that some dynamic between us had changed permanently. The confusion came and went and I can remember the pain it caused that my baby mind couldn’t wrap itself around.
Months later it was announced that we would be doing the Nativity for our Christmas play. What can I say? It was the 1980’s. Political correctness hadn’t quite come into vogue yet. I wanted to be the Virgin Mary so badly I could taste it. After all, I was a Catholic AND I was a brunette. I was a shoe in! At least that is what I thought… that was until the part went to perfect, beautiful, untouchable Candice. I was demoted to angel number two. I wasn’t even aware that there had been two angels present at Jesus’ birth, and now I wasn’t even angel number one, but angel number two… I was one pissed off five year old.
I took the script home and made my parents, my sister, my uncle, my aunt, and anyone I could pin down long enough to run lines with me drill me on my lines AND on Mary’s lines, usually lying to them, telling them that I was Mary’s understudy. No doubt this was something I’d learned from sitcoms. I wanted to know those lines so badly. In retrospect it was a little Single White Female.
I would watch at rehearsals sure that I knew each and every word, every mark where I should hit and when Candice delivered her lines in that flat monotone. By now I’d decided that I hated her voice, her face, those bouncy little pigtails, and most of all the fact that she’d stolen the part that should have rightfully been mine! When I knew that I had both parts down pat, there was this sensation of utter triumph unlike anything I’d known before.
As the night of the play approached, we got our costumes. She got a beautiful blue dress and I got an ugly white frock that had frayed edges and a pipe cleaner halo. Her hair was done in beautiful blonde ringlets that made me want to gag. Mary didn’t have ringlets. She’d been on the back of a donkey, pregnant, riding through the desert. Hadn’t this girl’s mother ever been to church? I mean she looks good in all the paintings and statues, but I’d seen enough pregnant women in my neighborhood to know that not one of them would have taken the time to make their hair look that good to go to the grocery store, let alone on a cross-country donkey ride. While her hair looked pristine and perfect, my hair was pulled back in a pony tail with one of those rubber bands that had the hard plastic balls that would snap you in the back of the head if your mom missed looping them just the right way, which my mother often did, much to the chagrin of my overly sensitive scalp.
When we got to school, we set up in front of the painted backdrop, the scent of dried Tempra Paint in the air as the parents found their seats. I can remember my teacher and the principal in the front row just in case anyone cried, pissed themselves, or threw up. I knew that that wasn’t going to be me, though. I was ready. Line after line of pure torture passed, and even at five, I knew how bad the Nativity as done by kindergarteners was. I felt for the parents who had to endure it with their fifty-pound video cameras out in the audience whirring away. If they could make it through, though, then so could I.
I waited. I watched. I was a lion on the Serengeti waiting to pounce on the wounded gazelle. She had to screw it up sometime. If I just bided my time, I just knew that she would. I had faith that there was a God and that He, too knew that His mother wasn’t some blonde girl who wouldn’t kiss me by the kindergarten cubbies. Then it came, that glorious moment came. Candice, that miserable excuse for the Virgin Mary, screwed up! She went to the wrong side of the baby Jesus’ cradle. And even worse, she had put her back to the audience. Now I hadn’t been in theatre that long at this point, but even I knew that this was a major faux pas.
I felt that it was only my duty to correct this egregious error and stepped in to save the show, as I saw it. I, angel number two, stepped into the scene… a scene I wasn’t even supposed to be in by the way, and grabbed the Virgin Mary by the hair. With a yank that had her bursting into tears, I put her where she should have been with a smile to the audience as I drug her around the side of the cradle and shoved her into place. While some might have seen this as bordering on sacrilege, this WWF version of the Nativity, I saw it as nothing short of my duty to the theatre to ensure that things were done right. I brushed off her pretty little blue dress and looked at her. “Your line is….”
For the rest of the play, because she was so distraught, I fed her each and every line of the show, all while smiling to the cameras.
There is a photo of me from that day, one of my favorite photos of all time. I am still dressed as angel number two in my tatty, cheap costume. You can see the utter delight in my eyes as the other children mill along the sides of the photo. My head is tilted just a little to the side and if you look closely enough you can see the mischief in my eyes and the tiny horns holding my halo up.
Angel Number Two
By: Lisa Hale
Kindergarten isn’t the likeliest place for a coming out story to begin, yet that is exactly where I can trace mine back to. I went to a private school in Chicago and, to this day, I have no idea how my working class parents paid for it or why they didn’t just send me to the public school a few blocks away for preschool and kindergarten. They didn’t, though, and for that I am grateful otherwise I might not have met the women that forever shaped me. I believe that between the aesthetic appreciation for the female form mixed with the deep adoration of the lunch lady, Miss Judy, who made the single best chop suey I have ever had in my life, is where my love of women really began.
The first female body to draw my attention was at the tender age of five was that of a tall blonde. To be fair, I was five so everyone was tall at that point. Miss Kim was so very pretty with her teased hair and too tight jeans. I remember never being able to take my eyes off of the V where her legs met and the way the denim sat there. I found myself utterly enamored by that spot, wondering, wanting so much to know what was there under the fabric. She was very young, though old by my standards at the time, and worked with the younger children, so all I got to say was, “Hello, Miss Kim,” and “Goodbye, Miss Kim.” That was enough for me, though. Just being close enough to smell her flowery perfume mixed with baby vomit and talcum powder could set my head spinning off into fantasies of resting my head on her thigh while she petted my hair and read me a story in that soft menthol voice of hers. Sometimes I wonder if we met now if I’d be her type. She had to only be 18 or so when she was working there, so the age difference wouldn’t be that vast. Then, on the other hand, she could still be wearing the same tight jeans and teased out hair and be some bit of trailer trash. On second thought, maybe I’ll pass on that one.
Candice. Candice, too, was a blonde. She was so pretty and I was convinced that she was my very best friend. I wanted so much to be just like her because she was the most beautiful girl that I’d ever seen. Plus, she was my age, which was a bonus. I can remember chasing her around the school after hours before our parents picked us up, trying to steal a kiss. We would laugh and howl, and I remember that I very nearly got her by the kindergarten cubbies. My heart jumped up into my throat as though it were trying to escape when I caught her wrist in my hand, her baby-soft skin slipping against mine. I was terrified, thrilled. I wanted to touch her hair and kiss her lips, but I didn’t get to. A teacher calling for her interrupted us; her mother had come to pick her up. I was distraught at this lost opportunity, a foreshadowing of a life to come, so I sat in the sandbox until my own mother came to claim me.
The next day she came to school dressed in a brown gingham dress for pictures. It had a little white bib and her hair was in perfect pigtails, I remember this because I still have our class picture with her perfect little smile just above and to the right of my sort of lopsided one. She looked like an angel, I thought. I was so confused to find out that she, however, wouldn’t speak to me. Something had changed between us the day before that I didn’t understand. I had no idea that I’d done something wrong, that some dynamic between us had changed permanently. The confusion came and went and I can remember the pain it caused that my baby mind couldn’t wrap itself around.
Months later it was announced that we would be doing the Nativity for our Christmas play. What can I say? It was the 1980’s. Political correctness hadn’t quite come into vogue yet. I wanted to be the Virgin Mary so badly I could taste it. After all, I was a Catholic AND I was a brunette. I was a shoe in! At least that is what I thought… that was until the part went to perfect, beautiful, untouchable Candice. I was demoted to angel number two. I wasn’t even aware that there had been two angels present at Jesus’ birth, and now I wasn’t even angel number one, but angel number two… I was one pissed off five year old.
I took the script home and made my parents, my sister, my uncle, my aunt, and anyone I could pin down long enough to run lines with me drill me on my lines AND on Mary’s lines, usually lying to them, telling them that I was Mary’s understudy. No doubt this was something I’d learned from sitcoms. I wanted to know those lines so badly. In retrospect it was a little Single White Female.
I would watch at rehearsals sure that I knew each and every word, every mark where I should hit and when Candice delivered her lines in that flat monotone. By now I’d decided that I hated her voice, her face, those bouncy little pigtails, and most of all the fact that she’d stolen the part that should have rightfully been mine! When I knew that I had both parts down pat, there was this sensation of utter triumph unlike anything I’d known before.
As the night of the play approached, we got our costumes. She got a beautiful blue dress and I got an ugly white frock that had frayed edges and a pipe cleaner halo. Her hair was done in beautiful blonde ringlets that made me want to gag. Mary didn’t have ringlets. She’d been on the back of a donkey, pregnant, riding through the desert. Hadn’t this girl’s mother ever been to church? I mean she looks good in all the paintings and statues, but I’d seen enough pregnant women in my neighborhood to know that not one of them would have taken the time to make their hair look that good to go to the grocery store, let alone on a cross-country donkey ride. While her hair looked pristine and perfect, my hair was pulled back in a pony tail with one of those rubber bands that had the hard plastic balls that would snap you in the back of the head if your mom missed looping them just the right way, which my mother often did, much to the chagrin of my overly sensitive scalp.
When we got to school, we set up in front of the painted backdrop, the scent of dried Tempra Paint in the air as the parents found their seats. I can remember my teacher and the principal in the front row just in case anyone cried, pissed themselves, or threw up. I knew that that wasn’t going to be me, though. I was ready. Line after line of pure torture passed, and even at five, I knew how bad the Nativity as done by kindergarteners was. I felt for the parents who had to endure it with their fifty-pound video cameras out in the audience whirring away. If they could make it through, though, then so could I.
I waited. I watched. I was a lion on the Serengeti waiting to pounce on the wounded gazelle. She had to screw it up sometime. If I just bided my time, I just knew that she would. I had faith that there was a God and that He, too knew that His mother wasn’t some blonde girl who wouldn’t kiss me by the kindergarten cubbies. Then it came, that glorious moment came. Candice, that miserable excuse for the Virgin Mary, screwed up! She went to the wrong side of the baby Jesus’ cradle. And even worse, she had put her back to the audience. Now I hadn’t been in theatre that long at this point, but even I knew that this was a major faux pas.
I felt that it was only my duty to correct this egregious error and stepped in to save the show, as I saw it. I, angel number two, stepped into the scene… a scene I wasn’t even supposed to be in by the way, and grabbed the Virgin Mary by the hair. With a yank that had her bursting into tears, I put her where she should have been with a smile to the audience as I drug her around the side of the cradle and shoved her into place. While some might have seen this as bordering on sacrilege, this WWF version of the Nativity, I saw it as nothing short of my duty to the theatre to ensure that things were done right. I brushed off her pretty little blue dress and looked at her. “Your line is….”
For the rest of the play, because she was so distraught, I fed her each and every line of the show, all while smiling to the cameras.
There is a photo of me from that day, one of my favorite photos of all time. I am still dressed as angel number two in my tatty, cheap costume. You can see the utter delight in my eyes as the other children mill along the sides of the photo. My head is tilted just a little to the side and if you look closely enough you can see the mischief in my eyes and the tiny horns holding my halo up.