There weren’t a lot of photos of me in our house, I guess because I looked a lot like Edward Scissorhands from the waist down, without the cute pouty expression, at least until I was three. After that I think my parents didn’t want to document my development. Denial would be everything if I was ever arrested. There are only five photos of me between the ages of five and thirteen. In both of them I look like a really pissed-off female version of Hannibal Lecter, always ready to eat someone’s liver. My face was perpetually frozen in rage. After Jesus gave me matching legs I began to smile. I began to sleep for the first time in my life. I stopped running away from home and deliberately trying to make my parents’ lives hell. I’m sure they were still on guard after years of demonization.
I figured if God could love an ugly troublemaker like me, he could pretty much love anybody. And thus began my preaching period.
I became a celebrity in our small little Episcopal mission. News spread like wildfire; and the next thing I knew, I was catapulted to the Episcopalian hall of fame. The Arch Bishop came to meet me, and people all over the country asked me to come and tell my story about how God gave me two matching legs. Some people even thought I was a saint, like those girls in France who saw the Virgin Mary. I was quick to assure them I wasn’t in the same league.
My soul-winning period wasn’t met with much enthusiasm by my few school chums. Freak! I didn’t care. My enthusiasm for Jesus was unquenchable. I wasn’t giving sermons in the cafeteria, but my conversion was impossible to miss. If the Bible I carried everywhere wasn’t a giveaway, the “light” my mother had noticed glowing like a 20,000 watt bulb was. My naturally despondent nature took a one-eighty. Feeling loved has its benefits. It was impossible to see me and not know something deep down inside of me had changed.
Instead of feeling like an outcast, I became the defender of the downtrodden masses — a sort of Batwoman in sheep’s clothing. No longer afraid of the “normies’” judgment, I leapt to the defense of lepers in classrooms, gymnasiums and crowded hallways, not because I felt like an outcast any longer, but because I knew Jesus loved them, just like he loved me.
Kids from screwed-up families become all kinds of things. We hide ourselves behind silence, heavy make-up, sexual promiscuity, rebellion, performance. Our school, like all schools, was full of girls like this; we are a sorority with different chapters. The Mean Girls’ chapter was the one no one wanted to mess with. Their raccoon eyes, thick with black eye liner, relayed stories of abuse and rage. No one was listening. Rumors of promiscuity and violence were whispered in hallways and bathrooms. Unless you were a member of their chapter, no one dared look them in the eye. And then there was the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, an outsider extraordinaire. Her nose ring and meandering tattoos were thirty years ahead of the curve. She had no peers, no social group. Even the mean girls trembled in her wake.
One day, a mob mentality overtook a group of cheerleaders in gym class. Bolstered by their numbers, they turned against the Dragon Girl on the volleyball court. It was the first time all year she had dressed out for gym and only under the threat of another suspension. On my team she was an asset. Her anger pounded the volleyball across the net every time.
As she scored another point for our team, one of the mentally challenged cheerleaders shouted, “Whore!” Her pom-pom-toting colleagues’ inner hyenas promptly emerged.
“White trash,” one of them said loudly.
“Everybody knows you’re nothing but a whore!”
The emboldened Barbie dolls spewed every insult their tiny little brains could muster, each taunt crueler than the last. Suddenly I was standing in front of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
“Leave her alone,” I said with a bravado I didn’t know I had. The cheerleaders’ shock struck them temporarily dumb.
Finally one of them spoke, “You gonna be her buddy now?”
“Well I’m not gonna be yours,” I called back.
Perpetually delusional cheerleaders thought everyone wanted to be their friend.
“Now, shut up and play,” I said.
As I returned to my position on the court, the Dragon Girl’s and my eyes met for just an instant. Her hardened veneer showed no emotion, but I sensed surprise and gratitude as I brushed past. I wondered if anyone had ever stood up for her in her entire life.
That night I lay in my bed wondering what on earth had gotten into me. All I knew was that Jesus loved the Dragon Tattoo Girl as much as he loved me, no way would he have stood by and let those Pharisaical cheerleaders continue their assault.