She doesn’t walk, she struts. Hips swiveling like a hula dancer, legs flexing like a ballet dancer. She wears shoes with lots of straps and dresses with none. When she struts past, the boys say, “Looking good today, Francine,” as if she didn’t look good yesterday and might not look good tomorrow. Everywhere she goes, she is besieged by winks and whistles and overtures of fornication.

    She makes it look so easy, but it’s not. I twirl my pelvis and the boys jeer and sneer and tell me I look like a geriatric and do I need a hip replacement? I totter in too-high heels and the boys hoot and holler and ask me if I’ve had one too many. (One too many what?) I snip the straps off my dresses and the boys grimace and guffaw as the bodice collapses at my waist and exposes my chest, which is flat like a pancake but not stacked like them. When I glance down, I’m relieved to learn that God doesn’t hate me as much as I thought He did, because otherwise He would have arranged for me to forget my undershirt.

    Maybe if I practice more. It’s supposed to make perfect, but I’ll settle for hunky-dory. I ask my mother for advice. And for money to buy some makeup. “Makeup?” scoffs my mother, wrenching her lips into a scowl. “What do you want to put on face paint for? You ain’t no circus clown.”

    “I’m 13,” I state, as if this is news to her.

    “That ain’t news to me,” says my mother, swiping at the tears of sweat anointing her forehead. She plops a bowl of macaroni onto the table. “What, you want to be pretty?” She taps the textbook beside me, but it makes no sound because she bites her nails down to stubs. “Don’t be pretty,” she counsels. “It ain’t smart to be pretty. It’s smart to be smart.” This from the woman who says, “Don’t get smart with me.”

    I resolve to get a second opinion. This time, I go straight to the expert: Francine. I follow her to school one day, like Mary’s little lamb, walking close but not too close, so as not to taint her air, so as not to blow my cover.

    “Are you following me?” she asks, and my cover is blown. She sounds amused, if not slightly annoyed.

    “No,” I say, and shake my head, like a dog drying its fur after a bath. “Yes.” I wait for the why, but why ask a question when you already know the answer? We are on the verge of an awkward silence, as if I don’t feel awkward enough around her as it is. I force my mouth to form words, but I can’t get it to spit them out.

    Francine turns away. Back to square one. She turns back. “Come over after school,” she says. It is not an invitation. It is an instruction.

…

    I’m not sure what I expected to find in Francine’s bedroom. We’re the same age, in the same grade, except that she’s a woman and I’m a girl. So maybe I was expecting to find womanly things. Scads of lacy, racy lingerie. Scores of prince charming pinups. Stacks of grown-up glamour goddess magazines. Instead, her room looks … well, it looks a lot like mine, actually.

    “Sit,” she says, and gestures to her vanity table.

    I lower myself onto the plump round cushion, taking

          

care not to touch anything. Francine moves to stand behind me. She leans forward, scrutinizing my reflection in the mirror. “You have pretty eyes,” she says, resting her hands on my shoulders.

    “Right,” I say, but not because I believe her. My pretty eyes are brown, boring brown, the color of soda pop. I put on false lashes once, thinking that might help, but it looked like a centipede was slithering across my eyelids, so I took them off.

Francine plucks a tube of lipstick from the table. “Do you think I’m dumb?” she asks, her tone at once breezy and blasé.

    “Are you?” I ask. It’s a relief to know that God doesn’t hate me as much as I thought He did, because otherwise He would have arranged for me to say, “Aren’t you?”

    “People think I’m dumb because I’m pretty,” she answers, gliding the chunky red wedge across my lips. “And they think I’m pretty because I’m dumb. Compensation, you know? See, I can’t have beauty and brains, but I have to have something, so it’s got to be either/or.”

“I’ve got nothing,” I lament, propping my elbows onto my knees. I cradle my chin in my hands, like a little kid pouting in time-out. “Neither/nor.”

    “The lesser of two evils,” Francine says, and she sounds like she means it. “Well, what’s the verdict?” she probes, handing me a tissue and ordering me to blot. “Do you think I’m dumb?”

    I hadn’t really thought about it, but now that I think about it, I guess I just assumed what everyone else did, that because she’s got beauty, she hasn’t got brains. I always figured that she didn’t have both, couldn’t possibly have both, because if she had both, that might throw everything out of whack. It might bump the Earth off its axis or something, maybe send it spinning in reverse like a merry-go-round. I can’t meet Francine’s eyes so I look at her mouth instead. I watch as it curls into a smirk, smug but not smarmy. This is one of her finer moments. It is not one of mine.

    “You feel guilty,” she observes, though she could have said dumb and if she had said dumb she would’ve been right. “I like to make people feel guilty,” she shares, and unbuckles her strappy shoes. “I’m big on guilt.” She swaps her heels for house slippers. “Why did you want to be like me?” she asks, past tense, as though I’ve completely moved on.

    My shoulders sag, causing the bodice of my dress to droop, making it look even more ill-fitting than it already is. “I was dumb?” I venture.

    “Not dumb, just … dupable,” Francine replies, replacing the cap on the tube of lipstick. “I won’t give you a makeover,” she informs me, and I feel disappointed but not devastated. “I won’t teach you how to stuff your bra or strut your stuff. I’m not running a charm school, you know.” She removes another tissue from the box and presses it against my mouth. She moves the tissue back and forth, transferring the paint from my pucker to the paper. “Besides,” she adds, and deposits the scarlet-stained wad into the wastebasket, “I’ve already taught you plenty.”

Strut

Allison Fradkin