Chapter 24

They say a girl’s self-esteem is a gift from her father.  So where did that leave me?  My first father left me when I was practically a fetus.  My second father was Phil.  I was fully grown and developed by age 12.  This was not a good start for my self-worth.  And I didn’t have much.  Like my mother, I began to struggle with my feelings about my weight.  I hated my short, over-permed, mousy-brown hair.   All the women in my family had beautiful, bright blue eyes.  Mine were hazel.  Hazel is just a nice word for pukey green.  If left alone, I would have one eyebrow instead of two.  Clearly, I felt pretty crappy about my natural gifts.  Enter my foster mother, Mary.  One of her natural gifts was the uncanny ability to make me feel even worse about myself.  “Your too fat for that swimsuit” she sneered.  We were in the kitchen and I was modeling my modest, new one-piece.  It was red with black polka dots and black trim.  It was strapless and had a black bow on the top.  “Well, I can’t return it” I answered.  If you cared so much, you should have come bathing suit shopping with me.  This was treatment I often received from Mary.  I was too fat, my hair didn’t look good, I had too much makeup on, I didn’t have enough makeup on, that color isn’t good on me.  She was relentless.  But I was given one natural gift that I was about to discover was pretty special.  I was a singer.  I had always loved to sing.  When I was little, I wanted to be Shirley Temple, just like Cindy Brady!  I would sing “On the Goodship Lollipop” and dance on the living room coffee table, escaping my reality for just a little while.  My grandmother had a hi-fi in her front bedroom.  For those of you born past the 70’s, this was a record player with a huge speaker and storage cabinet.  She also had a collection of records by Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand and Johnny Mathis.  I would play these records, sit in front of her mirrored dresser and sing along with them for hours at a time.  I could mimic all three of them perfectly.  But up until now, I never took choir in school.  But, I had attended four schools in the last four years, so I could see how that slipped through the cracks.  I started band in 7^th grade and continued to play clarinet in the band at my new school, Williams Junior High.  But now I was also enrolled in choir.  A new me was about to emerge.