Read an Excerpt
Velcro
I was excited about grade four because I had new shoes, cool shoes. I always had good leather shoes, whereas the average child had sneakers, but nothing says a child can’t be active and play in a pair of good leather shoes! (If the year is 1940.) My mother dressed my brother and me very well, in “real” fabrics, like cotton and wool, and our private-school uniforms were crisp and clean for the first day of school each year. Sadly, we didn’t go to a private school. We went to a Protestant public school in Pointe-Claire, Quebec.
The annual late-August hunt for shoes was so simple: my mother would take me to Buster Brown for a new pair of exactly the same shoes I had been wearing since preschool: navy leather Mary Janes with a gummy sole. The cool thing about those shoes was that the sole had little train wheels on them. That’s cool, right? I would look around the shop at the new shoes, the fun shoes, and dream of wearing something that might help me fit in with the other kids. But I stayed silent as the clerk fit my feet with my practical, well-made shoes.
My mother would loudly explain that I had wide feet “like her father’s,” and that it was very difficult “to find proper shoes for her wide feet.” She would shout out similar facts about my body when buying pants, which was impossible because “she has a very long body but short legs AND a very short inseam,” and I would close my eyes, my cheeks burning with shame over my little iguana body and my mother’s ability to point out things that were wrong with me that I couldn’t possibly change.
I don’t know, maybe I’d already had a good dose of sugar and food colouring that day when we went to the shoe store and I wandered over and placed my small summer-tanned hand on a pair of light blue suede North Star runners with Velcro straps. Velcro was new, a space-age invention, and something I can say everyone was very excited about. I mean, Brian Mulroney was the prime minister, so we had to look to something for hope. These shoes were technically leather, and they were technically blue leather, and I let my hand rest on them and looked over at my mother, using my good eye, not my lazy eye, and hoped she could feel me looking at her with my most powerful eye.
“Do you like those?” she asked in her smoky voice.
“Yes,” I said, my heart skipping a beat.
She asked the clerk if they made the sneakers in wide, and he said no.
“Well, why don’t you try them?” she said.
And I did. And they were too tight, but when my mom reached down to see where my toes were, I pulled them back, just a bit.
“Do you promise to wear them, Alicia?”
I did. And that was the first time I chose something just for me, and the beginning of a long history of lying to my mother about shoes fitting and a variety of other things, like how many cookies I had eaten and how long my torso really is. Maybe it isn’t how long my torso is or isn’t, maybe it’s how many cigarettes you smoked when you were pregnant, which in 1975, was quite a lot, so who knows why my torso is long or short, right, Mom?
I put the North Stars beside my bed and waited for the first day of school. I didn’t sleep much as a child, so it comforted me to have them beside my bed to help quell my anxiety. I didn’t have any close friends at school. Olaf, my dear friend who didn’t laugh at my eye patch, transferred to a private school over the summer, after he was caught doing an “underpants dance” he had been coerced into by some kids who had the advantage of being the bullies and not the bullied. Olaf’s stern father was mortified and removed his sweet child from public school, and we never saw each other again. Olaf, if you are reading this, I hope you are so rich!
My new shoes were my newfound confidence. I started to look forward to school and counted the days to our fourth-grade debut. The year before, I wasn’t as confident. I had to wear an eye patch to school each day, and because of a short-lived attempt by my parents to save a bit of money, instead of a bandage-style patch, I wore a real eye patch, like a tiny pirate, and shiver me timbers, that was an unpopular look. Perhaps if I wasn’t already a sensitive and self-conscious child, I would have handled the eye patch better. But I had a tantrum whenever my parents tried to get me to socialize with other kids, and the eye patch made it so much worse. I remember getting to the doorway of my first and only Brownies meeting and screaming until my mother took me home. I know now that this was a panic attack, but I was so small, and my torso so long, that it was hard to tell.
My parents tried, but who puts a kid with one good eye in basketball camp? Or soccer? Or piano? I just wanted to draw and hang out with my dog, or my two summer friends who didn’t go to the same school as I did.
I was shy, but I also wanted to be heard, and this would come out in terrible ways, with me often breaking into an inappropriate joke I had heard on one of my parents’ many comedy albums. Or when we had a group project to make Easter puppets, mine was the only Mary Magdalene in the show. When other children asked who the puppet was, I would say, “Mary MAGDALENE.”
And they would say, “Oh, Jesus’s mother?”
And I would say,“NO SHE WAS A PROSTITUTE AND JESUS’S FRIEND SHE IS THE OTHER MARY IN THE BIBLE SHEESH” and turn my good eye back to my weird puppet.
Grade four was going to be better. I had two Cabbage Patch Kids now, which was quite a bit of social clout, and I didn’t have to wear my eye patch at school anymore, just my thick glasses, so progress was happening style-wise. I was looking forward to gym class -- I had my new sneakers, and with my glasses, I could see a wayward ball headed towards my curly noggin and bat it away with my normal-sized arms. Life. Was. Looking. Up!
The first gym class of the year was a perfect chance to show off my new shoes. I sat down and pushed my feet into them and sharp pains shot up my toes. Perfect fit! I gingerly pulled the Velcro straps closed. I joined the circle of other children waiting to see what our gym teacher, Mr Sparkle (name changed out of deep respect for a great teacher) had planned for us today. I eyed the ropes and thought this would be the year I would climb to the top. Then I readjusted my Velcro straps, for two reasons: I wanted to give my wide feet a breath of fresh air, and I wanted to alert my peers to the new cool kid in town. As I pulled back the strap again to get the fit just right, Mr Sparkle stopped speaking, turned to me, and asked if I was done interrupting him. At first, I thought I had said out loud the bit about how everyone should take note of my new shoes, but he meant the sound of the Velcro. Mr Sparkle hated Velcro with every fibre of his sinewy gym-teacher body. Some of the other children looked at me sympathetically, and others who were perched to readjust their own Velcro shoes pulled away in newly cautious horror. I looked down at my lovely shoes, my shoes that would change my world, and fought back tears. Would I never get anything right?
Mr Sparkle made a rule that we could not play with our shoes during class, that sneakers are not toys, and anyway, what was so wrong with shoes with laces? His face was turning red; his hands trembled. For many of the children, this was the first time a teacher had yelled at them. Not an adult, though. It was the 1980s and parents yelled constantly at their children, but not a trusted and truly beloved adult like Mr Sparkle.
I looked at my shoes. My feet ached. You only got one pair of sneakers each year and you had to make them last. I knew we couldn’t afford another pair, and I was already waiting out the weeks until I could convince my mom that my feet had grown a full size and I needed a new pair. I worried at the edges of the Velcro straps and ached to hear the satisfying crunch. Concentrating as hard as I could not to touch my shoes, I barely heard the invitation to learn gymnastics from the two gym teachers after school each Tuesday and Thursday. I perked up. Cool girls did gymnastics. I could be a cool kid, too? And it was free. I wouldn’t have to ask my parents to pay for it, which was perfect, as I had kind of blown it with ballet lessons when my parents learned quickly that I had only wanted the ballet outfit and not the experience of learning ballet, and certainly not the company of my peers. Free was exactly the price they would be willing to pay. I showed up at the gym after school on Tuesday. Mr Sparkle patiently helped all of us navigate the springboard, explained the pommel horse, and asked if we thought we should put on an event for the parents at the end of the semester. We all agreed. There is something so without risk during childhood that we never get back as adults.
We had to choose one area of the gym we felt really passionate about. I loved to dance, so I chose the highest art of rhythmic gymnastics: the mesmerizing ribbon dance! I felt so cool as I practised alone on the mat, my red ribbon floating above the simple but intense dance moves I made up on the spot. A cartwheel? Sure! A jump? You bet! A somersault? Ouch! I practised my heart out. At home at night I listened to all my cassettes (one, I had one) and chose my song for the big night.
When I gave the tape to Mr Sparkle, positioned myself on the mat, ribbon in hand, and told him to press play, the sweet warble of Tina Turner singing “Private Dancer” filled the gymnasium. I felt so cool. I spun, I cartwheeled, I moved my little body in time to the lyrics, which I didn’t understand at all.
After only a few lines, Mr Sparkle pulled the tape out and said, “Alicia, you can’t dance to this song!”
I felt like crying. I’d really connected with that song: I was being a PRIVATE DANCER, just for the audience, no one else was dancing with me! It was perfect.
“Why?”
“Ask your mother,” he barked, and handed me back the tape.
With the performance just a few weeks away I had to find new music, fast. Back in the day, you had to wait for a good song to play on the radio, and then press play and record at the exact right time on your tape deck to record it. Mr Sparkle had suggested the Beatles and asked if I had a tape of their tried-and-true ribbon dance songs. I practised to “Eleanor Rigby,” which made for the saddest ribbon dance on earth. Mr Sparkle wasn’t happy. “Choose something fun!” he urged.
I was running out of options.
I tried “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, another hard no.
“Roxanne” by the Police? Nope.
Mr Sparkle never told me why I couldn’t use these songs, and I never asked.
Finally, we agreed on another Beatles song: “A Hard Day’s Night.” Perfect. Ribbon. Dance. Song?
The night before the performance, I started to have second thoughts about the tune. It just felt so uncool. As that wonderful childhood innocence and lack of self-consciousness started putting on its jacket and giving me a “hang loose” salute, I started to worry that the audience wouldn’t like it, and I didn’t sleep that night.
That afternoon, I waited my turn at the lunchtime show. My parents were in the audience, looking nervous (they always looked nervous for me). I gently pulled off my shoes -- Mr Sparkle tensed as he heard the Velcro crack -- walked over to the stereo, and handed him my music. There was a round of applause, and I nodded to Mr Sparkle to press play.
Madonna’s voice came over the speakers and I danced. I ribonned! I spun, I cartwheeled, I somersaulted, as Madge sang, her lyrics so perfectly capturing the exhilaration of this shiny new feeling, as for the very first time, with my heart beating --
The music stopped.
I looked over at Mr Sparkle; he was as white as a ghost. I didn’t know what to do. I just kept dancing and singing “Like a Virgin” as loud as I could until I ran out of dance moves or breath, I’m not sure. I bowed, waved, and ran back to my classmates.
Mr Sparkle couldn’t look at me, but I didn’t know why.
At home that night, my mom explained to me what a virgin was, what a private dance was, and what the deal was with Billie Jean.
Next gym class I wore new shoes, with laces, and kept my head down. My cheeks burned to think about how my innocent dance was not innocent at all anymore.
At some point, Mr Sparkle went on leave. There were rumours that he’d had a nervous breakdown, but I think that was just what people said when someone needed a break from children. Still, I always wondered: Was it the Velcro, or was it Madonna?
