Just like any normal sixth grader growing up in the suburbs, my greatest wish when I was twelve years old was to become a junior high school cheerleader. It didn’t matter that I could barely pull off a somersault without landing on top of my glasses. Or that I was afraid to actually launch myself from the ground. Or be upside down in any sort of way. Or that all my attempts at a front yard cartwheel left me folded over and stuck, until I’d finally lurch back into a standing position, dazed. You didn’t have to be the hero of one of my Nancy Drew fan fictions to crack this case—I was an indoor kid with zero athletic ability. But tryouts were next Saturday and I knew something other people didn’t know. I knew that I was filled with spirit. And that this was America! With a little spirit and a little determination, you could be anything you wanted to be.
I couldn’t wait to swathe myself in the yellow and black cheerleading uniform of Eisenhower Middle School. The polyester top with an eagle paused midflight across the chest. The short, pleated skirt, with matching track pants underneath to protect against the Midwestern chill. The Kappa tennis shoes with the little plastic inserts that could be rotated to pair with your school colors or pre-pubescent mood that I’d seen advertised in the pages of Bop, Big Bopper, and Sassy magazines. The giant yellow bow in my ponytail that would swing just so. Finally my life, which up to this point had been measured in Sweet Valley High novels and half hour increments of Growing Pains, Full House, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and Saved by the Bell, would have meaning. I’d stand on the sidelines promoting traditional gender roles and screaming my guts out for skinny twelve-year-old boys stumbling across the field pursuit of their own suburban dreams. But most importantly, I’d toss my hair and prance about and take my place among my new best friends, the cheerleaders.
I went to find my mom so we could prepare. I found her in her usual spot at 2:00 pm on a Saturday: cocooned in bed with a Stephen King novel, an empty wine glass on the nightstand.
“Mother,” I announced. “I need you to take me to the Boys and Girls Club, I’m going to be a cheerleader.”
“Why?” she said, not looking up from her book.
“Why what?”
“Why would you want to be a cheerleader? How boring.”
What kind of fucking question was that?
My parents were high school teachers—you’d think they’d be interested in things like school spirit and social and athletic activities, but they did not give a shit, especially if it involved any carpooling. While the other moms seemed to always be baking classroom cupcakes, leading Girl Scouts, or chatting with each other at carpool, my mom waved me away from her bed and sent me down the street to Jean’s house when I wanted to bake cookies because Jean had sons but still liked to do girl things. My mom didn’t walk me to school or remember the things I told her about my day, or even make me a homemade lunch in a cute Jem and the Holograms lunchbox with a matching thermos! Just one look around the cafeteria and it was clear: in a land of Jessicas, Amys, and Nikkis—I was an Adrienne! I was two-dollar meatloaf with a cold ketchup crust and everybody else was Nacho Cheese Doritos and Capri Sun. Why would my parents do this to me? Saddle me with a ridiculous name like Adrienne and then refuse to foster any sort of skill that would ease my social journey?
I’d suspected they weren’t normal for a while. I’d observed parents in real life and on TV and come to the conclusion that mine were weird as shit and that their oddities were the Grand Canyon between me and where I really belonged—with the popular kids. My dad kept busy with a million weird hobbies—gardening, antiquing, raising canaries on the sun porch. He especially like to spend evenings watching the McNeil Lehrer Report on PBS and needlepointing religious art, like a giant banner of the Virgin Mary with toddler Jesus on her lap, their hands raised in the peace symbol of Biblical times, that was hauled down the church aisle every Sunday, my Dad beaming with pride from the choir loft.
My mom, on the other hand, showed little interest in hobbies, and could be found in the living room, drinking wine and reading, or in bed, drinking wine and reading. And don’t even get me started on my brother who had a genius IQ and all the nerdy tropes that go with it—cystic acne, an infuriating vocabulary, obsessions with Dungeons and Dragons, Dr. Who, and his Commodore 64. And then there was me: alone in my bedroom that my Dad had inexplicably decorated like a colonial bed and breakfast with dark, antique furniture, Mark Twain inspired wallpaper that featured a sepia-ed Huck and Jim rafting across the Mississippi, and a four-poster bed with one lone New Kids on the Block pillowcase valiantly screaming into the ether, I SWEAR TO GOD A PRETEEN GIRL LIVES HERE. It was as if they wanted me to be a tertiary character in a Jane Austen novel! Adrienne: a quiet, piano playing sort of girl of small ambition, content to sit alone by the fire, working her embroidery.
What the fuck?
“Adrienne, you can’t even do a cartwheel,” my mom said.
“I’ll learn.”
She put her book down and looked at me blankly. “You’re not very good at it.”
“Because you never put me in things! All the other girls are in things and I’m not in any things!”
“Adrienne, you did one gymnastics camp and got the flu and when you went back you were too far behind to catch up. And you didn’t even like it.”
One week later we pulled into the Boys and Girls Club and I was a flutter of nerves and excitement. I’d worn her down every single day until she’d finally agreed to take me. I’d picked out my best outfit for the occasion—massive orange shorts patterned with blue angelfish and a matching white t-shirt with an angelfish across the chest. And my black Reebok hightops because if there was anything my mom really did believe in, it was ankle support.
“What are you doing?” I asked my mom, who was rolling down the car windows and seemed to be settling in with a tattered copy of Pet Cemetery.
“I’ll wait for you here,” she said.
What fresh hell was this? I didn’t even consider she wouldn’t come in with me, that she wouldn’t be standing there with a bored thumbs-up after I landed my triple round off back flip into Student Council President Homecoming Queen Cheer Squad Captain.
“But you have to come! I can’t do it alone!” I cried.
“You’ll be fine.”
Ugh, there was no point in arguing with her, if there was one thing I knew for sure it was that this bitch did what she wanted and it wouldn’t have occurred to her to feel badly about it. She didn’t see my childhood as some precious thing to be documented and celebrated. I had clothes to wear, books to read, she fed me lunch and drove me here, didn’t she? But I didn’t understand why she couldn’t bring herself to care about any of the things I cared about and why the more she wanted to be left alone, the more I wanted to be with her.
I stood with the heavy car door against my leg, weighing my options. Fact: I was scared to walk into tryouts alone. But I knew if I refused to go by myself she’d start the car and I’d be back in my Mark Twain bedroom quicker than you could say Go! Big! Blue! So I grit my teeth and waded through a sea of girls in neon biker shorts alone. I was assigned a group and we were taught a cheer and a dance routine to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind.” My confidence began to falter as I shuffled around in the back row, I had no idea what they were doing, I was an indoor kid for chrissakes! These girls seemed to have no trouble moving their arms and hips at the same time and they all seemed to know each other and be slightly unimpressed by the choreography.
Finally it was our turn to perform in front of a table of mom-judges with clipboards. We started with the cheer and honestly, I think I was okay. It was essentially clapping and turning and yelling, “Be aggressive! Be-be aggressive!” Easy, right? But things really started going downhill when the En Vogue was cued up and I was left to flail around behind this army of trained dancers like a girl in gigantic glasses and fish shorts being attacked by bees.
I was called forward to exhibit my gymnastic skills. It occurred to me then that I’d never actually seen Kelly Kapowski do much more than sort of walk around the halls of Bayside in her cheerleading uniform. Suddenly the cartwheel was the least of my worries. Apparently there was something called a herkie jump, a toe touch, a hurdler, a pike, and as I sort of crumbled to the floor after a failed attempt at a backbend, I caught a glimpse of the moms at the judges’ table. Their faces looked like they were being pinched real hard in that tender spot on the back of the arm.
I laid on the ground and recalled my previous experience at gymnastics camp: no core strength, no balance on the balance beam, just hanging off the parallel bars like a banana. Fine, you win, I thought, I’m not very good at it. I laid on the ground and there were moms everywhere, carrying pink gym bags, rustling for snacks, fixing ponytails, aligned with their daughters in pursuit of a dream. Like jungle guides beating back vines with a machete, these moms were charting a path for their girls towards a womanhood that made sense. And there I was on the floor, clueless and alone.
***
I’m thirty-seven years old and just like any normal single mother living in the city, I’ve decided I’m going to ride one hundred miles on a bicycle in one day. My mother is deeply disturbed by this idea. She no longer drinks and I’m still not an athlete.
“Oh, Adrienne, I don’t know!” she says. “I don’t think you should do that. I don’t think you can do that. Riding on the road is very dangerous. You don’t even have a bike!”
She spends most of her time in her condo watching Netflix or reading and sometimes when I look at her now she looks very old and reminds me of my grandmother. I know she was taught to be a parent by people who were imperfect who were taught to be parents by other imperfect people and that really none of us knows what we’re doing. And sometimes now the more she wants to be with me, the more I want to be left alone. I still want to taste and touch and do and she mostly just wants to sit and I think maybe life is just made up of a series of moments where you have to choose over and over and over again who you’re going to be.
“I’ll be okay,” I say. I squeeze her hand. “I want to try.”
I love this essay.