Amelia Zirin-Brown (Rizzo) - Corduroy Patches in Pink Plastic Lunch Boxes

 

 

I'm five years old and we pull into Ona Beach State Park and I dust off the sesame seeds from my halvah snack off of my favorite brown corduroy romper. It had patches and kind of an Elizabethan flair to it. And I'm trying to get some knots out of my hair. I decided to just cover it up with my favorite raspberry beret, put it on a jaunty angle, and I go out into the clearing. And the moment I see these other five-year-old girls, I realize that they're really different from me.

 

They were clean, number one. [audience chuckle] And I guess their hair was like, what do you call it? Brushed [audience laughter] and pulled back in these like tight ponytails with lots of plastic clips. And they were wearing shoes. [audience chuckle] And I felt like I should turn around. I didn't have my A-team by my side. Amber Star and Aurora. I was all alone, but I soldiered through and got through the first day of the Brownies. [audience laughter] I was raised by a group commonly referred to as hippies. But these weren't just any hippies. These were theater, dance, and art hippies who raised me basically with trust falls in mime. [audience laughter] And it's not a great idea to be caught in a trust fall by a mime, by the way, but it was a really great idea to be raised by these people.

 

They taught me I could be whatever I wanted to be. And my parents made Shakespeare in barns and Chekhov in basements. And my father made a life size puppet of the Elephant Man that sat in our living room for too long [audience laughter] and still frightens me. And I had my sisters who were not my actual blood sisters, but my sisters Amber Star and Aurora by my side. We were raised together, breastfed together. We started modern dance when were three. It's important to do contractions at that age, [audience chuckle] and I had them on my side. But this summer they were off traveling and my parents thought it might be a good idea to socialize me with kids outside the community. And so there I was with the thing underneath the Girl Scouts, which is called the Brownies. And I clocked Christy and Mindy right away. Yeah, they looked so shiny. [audience chuckle] 

 

And the differences really unfolded when lunchtime came as all the other girls opened these space age plastic cases with cartoon, ponies and Care Bears on them and pulled out these sandwiches made from bread as white as clouds, [audience chuckle] just spongy and uniform in shape. It looked like a drawn piece of bread and on it. The condiments that looked like primary paint colors, so bright. [audience chuckle] A luncheon meat of indiscreet animal. It must have been a snake because it was so round. [audience laughter]

 

But the piece de resistance was the beverage. You see, they had this mylar pouch with a picture of paradise on it. [audience laughter] I watched as they peeled some sort of instrument of destruction off the back of the pouch. It must have been a spear of sorts, because they stabbed the belly of that beast and they drank its blood and glory. [audience laughter] I wanted nothing more than to taste whatever this rainbow was. [audience chuckle] I saw their lunches and I thought it looked so fun, like a vacation made for kids. And for the first time, I looked at my own lunch with disappointment as I pulled out my sprouted flaxseed and millet bread [audience laughter] out of a bag, hand sewn by my father, [audience laughter] made from Guatemalan fabric.

 

And the bread had hummus on it. Hummus. You had to say that because it was-- [throat sound] it was so granular. [audience laughter] It had been hand-pestled. Hand pestled by loud New York Jewish women. [audience laughter] And I pulled out my beverage, which was a rusted Mason jar filled with cloudy apple juice that had separated during the day so it was interactive. [audience laughter] At the end of lunch, Christy and Mindy, we had already decided, wordlessly, that they were the leaders of the group. They came over to me with, like the girls in The Shining, only more frightening. [audience chuckle] Hands held, they said, "Dirty girl." They didn't know my name yet. [audience chuckle] "Dirty girl. We were just wondering if you wanted this. Capri-Sun, Capri-Sun, Capri-Sun.”[audience laughter] 

 

It had a name. How did they know? They read my mind. I said, "Thank you so much." I bowed professionally. I grabbed it from their hands. I took the straw in my mouth. I jutted it to the left and right. I couldn't. Deeper. I should try deeper. Nothing. Only Christie's expelled air. She had puffed it up to make it seem like there was a drink. [audience aww] And then Christy laughed and Mindy laughed, and then all the Brownies laughed and I laughed, too. [laughs] But when my mom picked me up, I cried.

 

And I got through that week of Brownies somehow with my head down and quieter than I'd ever been. And then I got through elementary school with breeze. I had Amber and Aurora by my side, and still we had this wild life where we would make this art and our parents would have cast parties where all of a sudden, they would disappear in the middle of the party to have a meeting in the laundry room about herbs. [audience laughter] And we had this life, but then we had each other and we had this kind of secret life. But then I made it through elementary school, and then middle school came, and the first day of middle school, I was at my locker. And then down the hall, who do I see but the Capri-Sun duo, Christy and Mindy, for the first time since then. They were walking, it seemed as if in slow motion, with their flaxen hair blowing. They were wearing Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles, Keds, an Esprit sweatshirt, a Benetton sweatshirt, and Swatch watches on each wrist. [audience laughter] I was bowled over by their cookie cutter glamour.

 

And that week, also, a D.A.R.E officer had come into our classroom, [audience chuckle] a police officer who said, "You know, kids, it'd be a great idea if you told me if you knew anyone who did drugs." [audience laughter] And I remember so distinctly my mom sitting me down and saying, "Amelia." She said, "Amelia, we don't lie, but sometimes we omit or bend the truth, [audience chuckle] like when we order you something off the children's menu and could you please stop correcting us and letting them know you're 12. When you're on an airplane, if you're ever on an airplane and someone asks you if you're Jewish, I want you to lie. And the third time is if an officer asks you if we or our friends smoke marijuana, by this time, you know we do. We just don't agree with the rest of the country. They think it should be illegal, and we use it to relax, just like they do their whiskey."

 

So, I had already learned that I had to hide parts of myself to pick and choose what to expose, to fit in, to survive. And I was picking and choosing some things off of the wardrobe of Christy and Mindy. “Please, mom, please can I buy some Guess jeans? Please.” I begged. I begged for each little bit. And slowly through the year, even though Amber's mom, Nancy, suggested that perhaps we just buy one pair and cut off the little triangle and put a piece of Velcro and just share it. [audience laughter] I collected all the pieces of clothing, and by seventh grade, I decided I was quitting dance and I was quitting theater because I was going to join the basketball team with Mindy and Christy.

 

And midway through seventh grade, Mindy and Christy, at lunchtime, sent one of their minions to me, Katie or Danny. You can see what kind of names you had to be a leader here. [audience chuckle] And they said “They want you to sit at lunch with them.” Oh, my God. My moment had come. I was them. I sat down and I realized really quickly the order of the day was to make fun of the other girls that were in seventh grade with us.

 

And Christy said, "Did you see what she's wearing? Oh, my God. I mean, what is it? Has splatters of paint on it intentionally." I knew exactly who they were talking about. Aurora had been wearing this jacket made by a family friend named Becky, whose art was to throw paint at vintage clothing. [audience chuckle] I loved that jacket. It had puffy sleeves, a snatched waist. Mindy said, "Yeah, she's so weird. Did you see her glasses? What do you think, Amelia?" I took a sip of my milk. "Yeah, she looks like she cuts her own bangs with craft scissors." They laughed, and I died inside. I had cut my own hair with her, with craft scissors. And I was selling myself out so hard.

 

At the end of lunch, Mindy and Christy and Dani and whatever her freaking name was, they started picking up speed. They were, like, running fast through the breezeway. We were running from some boys, but then they picked up some intentional speed. And then they took a quick right into the library and a quick left through the computer room. And then I was just trying to catch up. I wasn't as athletic as they were. And I just saw out the window of the computer room that they had gone into the girl's bathroom.

 

And I took a breath, and I slowly, as quietly as I could, entered the bathroom. And I heard them. They were huddled in the disabled toilet, and they were saying, "Did we ditch her? Do you think we finally ditched her?" They were talking about me and oh, my God, what a gift. What a gift to be given so clearly and so young that I had built this house on sand. And I stood back, I went and searched out Aurora. I found her. I hugged her as tight as I could. I didn't tell her the story, and I still haven't told her the story until now. [audience chuckle] And then I, for the first time, really felt the joy and the gift that all these adults that had raised me had given by modeling their genuine and expressive selves. And I walked into high school wearing combat boots and a Goodwill dress with Aurora and Amber by my side.

 

The A-team was back, and I carried on that joy. And seriously, this is what happens when you tell a child they can be whatever they want to be. I went into a life of a niche world of cabaret, where I meld songs and stories through the portal of glamour with the greatest wish that somebody in the audience is going to be inspired to let their light shine through whatever normative cracks have held them back. Thank you.