Mom says hello to everyone and takes Jason upstairs. She looks tired and worried and not like my mom at all.
Dad stands. “Thank you all for coming over.”
We walk to the door. Chelsea opens her mouth, I think to say goodbye, but instead an avalanche of tears falls. And then Nadine starts. Isaac is looking down at the hardwood floors. Just staring.
“It’s okay to cry,” Dad says. “Feel whatever you need to feel. But listen, everything doesn’t have to change just because the cancer is back. You four are starting your junior year. I want things to be as normal as possible, just like every other school year. No matter what happens this year, you all need to stay focused, do your best. Don’t let me or any distraction get in your way,” he says. “You all are just beginning.”
Praise poem for the summer—
by Chelsea Spencer
Here’s to the warmth & every yes.
To the grind of summertime
dripping cones & chlorine haze.
Here’s to float & exist, show up.
Every challenge accepted. Revival
in East Harlem. Freedom!
Fighters printmaking our past
to light up our present. We’re here.
The future of us.
How we study our ancestors.
Dance ourselves into existence.
Electric grind. See the struggles.
Together, we arrive, arms linked,
lungs loud as life. Our hearts
conjuring words
& poems. All of us riding each wave
toward eclipses & ellipses always
the ongoing. Always ahead.
Facing forward. Our lives a ripple
a nonstop jump-start.
Making our mark.
No matter how hard I try, I will never look like the cover of any magazine . . . not that I want to, but well . . . maybe I want to just a little bit. This is the third outfit I’ve tried on this morning.
There’s a pile of T-shirts with my new favorite slogans on them: Cats Against Catcalls (with five super-cute kittens on the front) and one that says Riots Not Diets. I’ve tried them both on, mixing with biker boots and plaid pants . . . definitely not working. I try another look.
I take out my bag of makeup to choose the right shade of super-lush, kissable liquid lip color. I have been reading that fuchsia is the new “it” color for the fall, and that it really makes your lips pop, but the colors my mom picked up for me last week are not quite cutting it. I turn them over, making sure she got the right shades, and read: Pure Doll and Diva-licious. Ewww. The patriarchy is even showing up in the names of my lip gloss? Unbelievable.
The Spencer women have never won beauty pageants. My mom first said that to me when I was in the second grade and my best friend won the Mini Princess Contest at the New York State Fair. I was seven, and I had no front teeth, legs that rivaled a giraffe’s, and a fully grown nose. My mom also told me that a beauty contest was a totally old-fashioned way to judge young girls, and it was created by some sexist, corporate machine that was trying to get women to stay in their place.
She used the line again in the ninth grade when I wasn’t voted onto the basketball homecoming court. She took me for a hot fudge sundae and told me that women have to learn how to stand out with their words, with their fierce minds, and that courage lived in the actions we made, and not in our bra size or the texture of our hair.
I nodded along and pretended I believed the same thing. The next day I bought a bunch of beauty magazines and started to study what I needed to do to be beautiful on the outside.
That was two years ago. A lot has changed since then.
“Hurry up,” my sister, Mia, calls into my room.
“I’m trying, just give me a second!”
“You look fine just the way you are,” she calls back, not even seeing what I’m wearing or how I’ve managed my hair. I have abandoned my intricate routine of gel, comb, mousse, straightening iron, curling iron, and hairspray . . . that would totally derail us getting to school on time. Who cares if Jacob Rizer calls me a frizz factory. Screw him.
I kind of like the way I look, and everything feels different and new. I’ve grown into my nose and learned to embrace my big hair. As for my body, I am currently not at war with it, and even though I still have no breasts to speak of, at least I can sometimes go without a bra. Freedom!
I study myself in the mirror one more time and dab concealer around the patch of zits that have decided to accompany me on my first day. I apply midnight-black mascara to my eyes and a blush that’s called Color Me Perfect to my cheeks. Gag.
“Almost there,” I call back, finally deciding on a shirt that says: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-Damental Human Rights. I put on a pair of skinny jeans (ugh, labeling pants with the word “skinny” is completely superficial and against everything I stand for, but still . . .) and a floppy straw hat that I got over the summer. Not perfect, but not horrific either.
“I’ve been ready since seven thirty,” Mia brags, swinging into my room. Of course she’s been ready for hours. Mia wakes up ready. She’s a senior. We’re only a year apart, so we’re practically required to be close, but since we’re so different, we get along pretty well. Mia is just confident. She’s the captain of the varsity basketball team and wears her hair cropped short. “You look good, Chels—very feminist-y.”
“You both look great just the way you are, and you’re both going to be very late to school if you don’t pull it together,” my mom says, peeking her head in. “Could you please be on time for your first day?”
“Yes, yes, we’re on it.” I say.
“And remember,” Mom finishes, “it’s what’s on the inside that matters. But you two also look very good on the outside. Now get moving, and try not to focus so much on how you look,” she says, walking out.
I grab my book bag and journal, and one of my poems falls out.
Mia grabs it. “This new?” she asks, starting to read.
“Kinda new. I started it over the summer. Figured it would be a good reminder for the year.”
Mia reads it out loud.
Advice to Myself
from Chelsea to Chelsea
Be reckless when it matters most.
Messy incomplete. Belly laugh. Love language.
Be butterfly stroke in a pool of freestylers.
Fast & loose.
You don’t need all the right moves all the time.
You just need limbs wild. Be equator. Lava.
Ocean floor, the neon of plankton. Be unexpected.
The rope they lower to save the other bodies.
Be your whole body. Every hiccup & out of place.
Elastic girl. Be stretch moldable.
Be funk flexible. Free fashionable. Go on.
Be hair natural. Try & do anything, woman.
What brave acts like on your hips.
Be cocky at school. Have a fresh mouth.
Don’t let them tell you what’s prim & proper.
Not your ladylike. Don’t be their ladylike.
Their dress-up girl. Not their pretty.
Don’t be their bottled. Saturated. Dyed. Squeezed.
SPANXed. Be gilded. Gold. Papyrus.
A parakeet’s balk & flaunt. Show up uninvited.
Know what naked feels like.
Get the sweetness. Be the woman you love.
Be tight rope & expanse. Stay hungry.
Be a mouth that needs to get fed. Ask for it.