Toeing
the Line
Kathy
Rhodes
As
different as night and day. It’s true with my sister and
me—two girls, born of the same parents and growing up in
the same household. I’m average, blond, green-eyed. She’s
tall, brown hair, brown eyes. There are other defining differences,
as well. Take the whole pierced ears saga …
Toward
the end of ninth grade, pierced ears got to be a big thing. All
the girls were doing it. They’d poise little gold balls or
tiny polished pearls in the center of their lobes, and it was
so “neat,” and then with index and middle fingers, they’d
push hair behind their ears in a stylish display, as if to say
Look what I’ve got.
I
wanted it, too. I wanted my ears pierced, but Mama said no. “It’s
just a fad. You’ll be sorry twenty years from now when you
have holes in your ears.” I was sick over it, just plain
sick. I didn’t want to be left out. I wanted to be like everybody
else, to be “in” and have those shiny balls or sweet
pearls, but Mama was bound and determined that I didn’t need
another hole in my head.
With
the arrival of the pierced-ear fashion, there also came a line
of fake pierced earrings for girls like me, whose mamas were hell-bent
on their daughters not having any more holes than they already
had. They weren’t like the old timey screw-on kind. They
were lightweight, with a ball or pearl on each end of an inconspicuous
U-shaped gold wire, to be positioned around the lobe and pinched
together, front and back, to stay put. That’s what I had
to settle for. From a few feet away, they looked like the real
thing. Unless the light hit one and reflected off the metal wire.
My
jewelry box with red velvet lining had little squares perfectly
sized for holding earrings. I bought the faux ones from Ben Franklin’s
Five and Dime, and there mine lay, with little gold wires against
the crimson nap.
When
I put them on and looked at myself in the mirror, I tried my best
to see them as pierced—just little balls isolated in the
center of my lobes. But somehow those wires, not much bigger than
a strand of hair, were magnified, huge against my ear, obviously
holding those balls in place, and had the weight of steel bars,
like those of a porch railing.
As
I walked down the long school hallway between classes, and especially
on the stairways where the light was intense, I felt hundreds
of eyes on me. They weren’t looking at my smile, or my blond
hair bouncing in a flip with a faddish grosgrain ribbon matching
my outfit. They weren’t looking at my stylish fishnet stockings
or cute new patent Mary Janes. They weren’t looking at my
dress from Jay’s, modeled in Seventeen. They weren’t
even looking at my padded chest. They were looking at my ears—those
gold wires, like pipes, supporting the gold balls. Big lines drawn
there that separated me from the girls with real pierced ears.
I
just wasn’t quite “there” without pierced ears.
I listened to Mama too much. I was obedient, safe, followed the
rules.
Then
along came my little sister. She wanted pierced ears, too, and
Mama gave her the same runaround. “It’s just a fad.
You’ll be sorry twenty years from now when you have holes
in your ears.” Judi always walked a little closer to the
edge than I did. She did what she wanted to do. When she thought
she was old enough, she made an appointment with the family doctor,
took her best friend Sherrie with her, marched downtown and took
care of it. She had a job making pizzas and bought her own earrings.
Mama never knew. Judi’s hair was long and thick and curly,
and waved right over her little gold hoops. Until one evening,
Judi forgot and wore her hair rolled up to the dinner table. Mama
noticed right off. But it was a done deal at that point.
To
this day, well over thirty years later, Judi maintains: “If
I hadn't had my hair up in rollers, she'd never have known.”
The
neighbor who lived across the street summed it up succinctly after
Judi and I were both adults with our own children.
“I
used to watch you ride your bike,” he said to me. “You’d
ease down the driveway and get to the street and stop and look
both ways. You were careful. But now, that little sister of yours,
she never looked a lick either way. That Judi, she didn’t
give a damn.”
One
sibling toeing the line, one . . . well, not.
I
wish I had walked closer to the edge. I did finally get
my ears pierced—when I was twenty-six, married, with a child.
And thirty years later, I’m still not sorry I have these
holes in my head.
©
Kathy Rhodes