Mimicking Didion

In my current class on my tortoise road to an M.A. in Writing, I am studying, analyzing and imitating other, more successful and famous voices in an attempt to eventually pinpoint my own. Several years ago I had begun to feel mostly confident and comfortable in my voice, but taking this class makes me wonder if those feelings were premature and naïve. Regardless, each week we choose one of the voices we've read to imitate in a short piece that can be about anything. This week, I chose to mimick Joan Didion in "Goodbye to All That," an essay I had read before-- it is now underlined in my book in several shades from several moods and times. I ended up sort of liking the outcome, and since I don't yet have pictures from the Jamaican vacation, here it is:

Some days at recess I stood in the shade of the oak tree by the balance beam where Melissa Rose impersonated Madonna. We were six, and I wasn’t yet sure which kind of girl I wanted to be. Melissa sang “Like a Prayer” and jumped into side splits on the gravel. Even now, my groin muscles hurt just thinking about a move like that, but at the time I wished I could be that cool. Melissa wore a permed side ponytail and deliberately torn lace. Sometimes she wore fingerless gloves. I had the side ponytail, but that was about it. My mother told me, in an act I would later see as benevolent and sage, that if I still wanted a perm when I was nine we would talk about it then. I felt left out, with long, straight blonde hair. Fortunately, my tastes matured by the time I turned nine.

Other days I stood with Carrie (whose last name now escapes me) under the same tree, arms crossed in front of my chest. We watched Aaron McKinsey play soccer. Everyone watched Aaron McKinsey. In kindergarten, the year before, my mother had made me blush by pointing him out at the playground. “He’d be a good boy for you to marry,” she said, casually, “but he’s Jewish and his mother isn’t very nice.” I had never met his mother and did not have any understanding of what being Jewish had to do with any of it. Our next-door neighbors were Jewish and, at the time, all that meant to me was that they did not go to Backyard Bible Club with my brother and me or celebrate Christmas, but we got to go over to their house for latkes and to help light the menorah at Hanukkah. My mother bought a roll of blue and white wrapping paper that was just for their presents. To me, none of these seemed like hindrances to a marriage. For one week in kindergarten, I told everyone Aaron was my boyfriend. He sat criss-cross-applesauce beside me at story time every day, and when we played house he asked me to be the mom to his dad. Sometimes he held my hand. My friends told me they were jealous. But by the next week Leah Berenstein was the one who sat beside him at story time, and Aaron ignored me. Leah was the kind of girl who dressed up as a teenager for Halloween every year until she actually was one. I never became friends with Leah, and I convinced my friends that Aaron had betrayed me.

So in first grade, when Carrie and I watched Aaron at recess, it was with mixed feelings we didn’t fully understand—feelings that had little to do with him at all. He tried to play soccer, but Lia kept chasing him. Soon it wasn’t just Leah. Melissa Rose chased Leah, and twenty-one other girls tailed Melissa—we counted. Even at six, I remember thinking this didn’t seem right. Girls chasing boys like that? “No way,” I told Carrie. She agreed. We watched in shock, then disgust, as Leah tackled Aaron and stole his shoe. He got up and ran away with one shoe on. It was a strange mix of jealousy and anger I felt then. Even if some part of me knew Leah was acting crazy, I remember feeling irritated that she was still getting his attention and I was not—after that week in kindergarten, I never did again. It was the beginning of a long process in which I eventually learned that indignation never won a boy’s glance in anyone’s direction.