Grace

 

        Grace Lee was graceless, but then she was only 12. It was clear that she was going through that alarming transformation that stretches even the most darling little girls into grotesque caricatures of themselves, if only for a short time. They grow arms and legs that no longer fit well within the core of the body; suffer complexion issues for all but the most fortunate; and develop body parts and functions that border on the terrifying. In Grace’s case, she was far from having been the most darling of little girls. Except for her being terribly skinny, there was no one feature you could point to and say, yes, that’s why she is homely. It was just that all of the parts did not seem to go together very well. 

         Her father often teased her about her name, which she inherited from her mother’s oldest aunt. He liked to tell her that her name was only one letter away from “grave” a word which had three different definitions none of them exactly joyous. Perhaps as a result of that, Grace was not only graceless but humorless. Thus she had few friends through grammar school. She did have one good friend, Pinky. He was the same age as she was but short and easily embarrassed to the point where his ears not only turned pink but stayed that way for hours. When he was eleven, he had to get braces and that made him almost eternally pink. What endeared him to Grace and her to him was that they both had braces. 

        Grace hated her braces. Her father didn’t help by rhyming her name with “brace” every chance he got: “This morning my daughter graces with her toothbrush her braces.” He didn’t have a clue how much he was eroding his daughter’s self-confidence because he thought he was being funny like he used to do when she was smaller. Much smaller. He failed to notice the age when she stopped laughing, but it was 9. Not much later, he stopped the silly rhymes and tried to be more sympathetic to his only daughter. He saw that life wasn’t being fair to her. It wasn’t fair because her mother was more than just pretty, she was gorgeous. She was the kind of woman that both women and men stared at and wondered if she was some famous model or actress. She wasn’t just Grace’s mother, though, she was a social worker at the Salvation Army. As compassionate as she was with the runaways and borderline delinquents at the teen center, one would have thought she would not tolerate how her husband treated their daughter. Possibly it was because she was secretly appalled at her daughter’s appearance. Possibly it was because most of her attention was focused on their son, the second child. He won’t figure much in this story, so there is no need to give his name. Possibly it was because she did not want to stand up to her husband. Whatever the reason, Grace got no maternal comfort. 

        As puberty stretched Grace’s already scrawny frame even scrawnier, two other conditions erupted, one almost literally as her face broke out and her eyesight suddenly got worse. Her pediatrician merely went “tsk-tsk” for she had seen it all before. Grace was given some creams and antibiotics for her acne and a referral to the optometrist. As neither parent needed glasses, they asked Dr. Lee if it wasn’t some underlying anatomical condition. She told them that it was common for puberty to bring about a sudden vision problem that could self-correct over time. Grace only looked into the mirror more often, seeing a four eyed, pimple faced, scarecrow scowling at her. 

        As they tend to be, her classmates were very helpful when they noted Grace’s new conditions. Despite their own pubescent battles, they were only too happy to make her feel even worse by tossing the usual derisions at her. The only question was whether the guys could be any meaner than the girls, from whom she could not totally escape even by going to the bathroom. She spent most of the eighth grade recesses in the stalls where the taunts could only be heard and not seen. Sadly, grammar school was coming to an end and high school beckoned, bigger, denser and more squalid. 

        About a fourth of the freshmen at Lincoln High were from her grammar school. Almost all of them knew Grace and hadn’t forgotten her. Grace was very glad that she had no cell phone and had never asked her parents for one. Why would she want anything that would simply make her subject to creative new insults on Instagram? She preferred to focus on her studies as shelter from her lack of attractiveness, athletic skill or gregariousness. She didn’t need anyone but Pinky. 

        It was October and Grace sat with Pinky reviewing their first month of high school. They shared only two classes, English and Algebra, so they had studied together a bit, but they were both interested in how their other classes were going, especially Physical Education. They were sitting alone together at lunch.

        “You should see what I have to wear for gym class,” said Pinky. “It’s called an athletic supporter and it kind of goes…” 

        “Umm, I don’t think I want the full description, thank you,” said Grace. She needn’t have said anything, because Pinky had gotten very good at reading her eyes and they told him not to continue well before Grace could finish her “umm.” 

        “Well. I don’t like anything about P.E.” said Pinky, “I don’t like the supporter, the kalisenicks, the coach always yelling at us, or the showering.” 

        “I’m glad you showered, though,” said Grace, turning Pinky pink. She laughed. 

        Pinky loved Grace’s laugh. Her eyes glowed even a brighter blue than they usually did as she half closed them in her merriment. It was as if she had a tiny piece of the bluest part of the sky winking behind her long eyelashes. The more Pinky gazed at her laughing face, the more he realized what beautiful eyes she had, even behind those ill-fitting glasses. He didn’t know it then that was when he started to fall in love with her. 

        That evening, Grace, retaining no thought of her lunch conversation looked at the mirror. Ugh. She was growing breasts, clearly having lost the argument with her mother over needing a training bra. “I’m not training for anything, Mother,” she had said to no avail. She was also getting lumpy in other places which made her feel even more awkward as it ill-suited her scrawniness. “Her Scrawniness” she mused. How royal that sounded. How stupid that sounded. How stupid she felt. Freshman year couldn’t pass fast enough but she had three more years of high school to falter through. How would she manage? She stared at the pile of textbooks on her desk and sighed, a scrawny bookworm. She wrote another entry in her diary, this time not writing “I’m ugly” over and over, but writing about how much she hated everyone and that she would show them all. Only, she didn’t exactly know what she would do. 

        Grace became an excellent student. Her parents rarely saw as much of a minus sign behind the rows of As on her grade report forms. In her junior year, her SAT scores were so high she started getting postcards, fliers and letters from all the private colleges in the country, most of them listing the scholarships she could get. At that point, getting through, much less into, college was the least of her worries. 

        Somehow all those odd fitting parts had started to come together very nicely. Plus, her skin had cleared up, her eyesight had improved and she had let her hair grow long. She had always had short, blond hair which, like her mother’s, had that radiance that is advertised on hair coloring ads, but natural. So in her junior year, Grace had become if not beautiful, attractive. Grace, however, was still ugly to everyone but Pinky, the one person who saw her as she was. Even Grace refused to see it. When Pinky would gush over her, she would get more than annoyed and, had he not been her only friend, would have resulted in an end to their relationship. Plus, Pinky was now fully in love with her and she was beginning to suspect it. She wrote in her diary that she didn’t deserve someone like him, that she had something deeply wrong inside of her that he couldn’t see. 

        Maybe it’s just pure stubbornness in people. People see someone in a certain way and that seeing sticks even if the someone changes. So, it was odd that all of the students at Lincoln High still thought of Grace as being ugly. That perception was given a big assist because Grace was not very neat and dressed in a somewhat slovenly fashion. In other words, she dressed ugly because she believed she was ugly. She was antisocial, avoided everyone and was generally surly. In other words, she had an ugly personality and that is what everyone saw. Yes, it was strange, but you need to know that it was not like Grace blossomed overnight or over the summer, both which would have forced her fellow students to see the changes. No, the changes were very gradual and occurred over her sophomore year, so it was harder to notice. Pinky did not notice either but only because he had always thought Grace was beautiful, beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, beautiful person. Love, as it has ever been, was blind in some ways and saw clearly in others. 

        But what about new kids in the school? Would they not see Grace as she was now? Yes, but when they would talk to their new classmates about her the conversations would go something like this: New guy: “That blond sitting over there with the pudgy kid, she’s really something.” 

        Not new guy #1: “Yeah, that’s Grace. She’s not so hot, plus she’s really mean. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot pole.” 

        Not new guy #2: “I wouldn’t touch her with a twenty foot pole.” (Remember that these are high school kids, not known for colorful or original rhetoric.) 

        If one not new guy comments on something to a new student, it’s a rumor. If two do, especially at the same time, it’s a fact. So by the time Grace was a senior she still thought she was ugly, she still had no friends except for Pinky, and she was starting to turn as mean as everyone thought she was. She had been on the receiving end of so many insults that she turned her intelligence to giving very harshly clever and cleverly harsh insults to others. 

        To a girl with bad teeth she said, “Your teeth are so ugly it’s amazing your tongue doesn’t leave.” 

        To a guy who clearly thought he was good looking she said, “You must have astronaut underpants because you think your ass is out of this world.” 

        To another guy who tried to tease her she said, “You shouldn’t be ashamed of yourself, that’s your parents’ job.” You get the idea. 

        For everyone except Pinky, Grace’s behavior aligned perfectly with what they already thought of her.

        “Grace, why are you that way?” said Pinky at their usual one-on-one lunch. 

        “What do you mean?” 

        “Why are you so nasty and rude to everyone? I know you’re not really like that” 

        “You’re wrong, Pinky, I’m mean and ugly and practicing to become just like the Wicked Witch of the West, or Maleficent or, best of all, Beatrix LeStrange.” 

        “Then why are you so nice to me?” 

        “It’s a bad habit and I’m trying to fix it,” said Grace with a wicked smile, you know the kind where the corners of the mouth are turned up but the eyes show a lot of hate. Besides, she had detected the crush he had on her and through the complex psychology that was Grace’s brain, she had begun to dislike even him because she could not like anyone who liked her in all her ugliness. She was subconsciously trying to drive him away and it was working. That was the beginning of the end of Pinky’s crush on Grace. He had been frustrated about the way she showed the worst of herself to the other kids, but she had always been nice to him. He couldn’t ignore this first sign that she was just plain as ugly on the inside as she was beautiful on the outside. Besides, they were reading Oscar Wilde in his English class. 

        If Grace detected that she was driving Pinky away from her, she gave no sign of it. She continued to focus on her studies, seeming not to notice that Pinky now ate lunch more and more frequently with others. At the start of their senior year, it was just easy for him to not eat with her at all anymore. She didn’t care. More time for her to study. She studied her way into one of the best universities in the country.

        That summer, she first noticed that her father had stopped making fun of her for some time now. She could not remember the last time her called used her name in any of his silly rhymes. She actually missed it and wondering what it meant, went to his study after dinner to talk to him.

        “Dad?” Grace said, “Can we talk? 

        Surprised, Mr. Lee said “Of course, pumpkin. What do you want to talk about?” 

        “How come you don’t make those silly rhymes about me anymore?” 

        “Well, that’s easy to explain, you’re all grown up now, a young woman who is the spitting image of her mother. You know how beautiful your mother is, right?” 

        “Sure Dad.” In fact, Grace had never thought she looked anything like her mother, but glancing at the small mirror on her father’s desk, she had to admit to the resemblance. 

        “In fact” her father said, “Now that you bring it up, you never even went to any of your school proms, did you? Whatever happened to that guy you used to hang around with, Punky or something.”

        Grace shook her head. “Pinky, not Punky, and he did ask me to the Junior Prom, but I didn’t want to go. Now even he’s stopped talking to me.” Tears were welling up in her eyes. 

        “I just don’t understand. I’ve noticed that you don’t dress very well for school, but I thought that was the way girls looked these days.” 

        Then Grace started to cry. “I’m so ugly.” 

        Mr. Lee was now very confused and speechless. He wrapped his big arms around Grace and she sobbed into his shirt sleeves as she had never done before. 

        “Why do you think you’re ugly?” he finally said. 

        “I just realized that I have a painting in my bedroom that shows me the way I really am, ugly, ugly, ugly.” 

        “You don’t mean…” “Not really Daddy, but that’s what I am. I’m ugly inside. If I was like Dorian Gray, you could see it.” Grace went on to explain how she treated her classmates, even Pinky. As she spoke, she began to understand why she had done that. It made her feel so small and unworthy of even her father’s affection. She decided to show her father her diary, a drastic course of action. 

        Mr. Lee not only read Grace’s diary, but studied it, trying to get some insight into what was making her feel so ugly. Even though he taught community college Sociology and Psychology, he was no therapist. As he thought about her, he realized that he was glad that she had not tried to kill herself and was really glad he had never allowed her to have a smart phone. Still, it was a mystery, but what could he now do? Then, he had an inspiration. 

        Over the next few weeks of the summer, he spent most of his spare time with Grace, going to movies, taking her to lunch or coffee. He even called Pinky to come over and spend some time with them in the pool. Pinky had mixed feelings, but when he saw that Grace was glad to see him, he made his peace with her, although he now had a girl-friend and would be going to a nearby college, whereas Grace had been admitted to Princeton all the way across the country. Still, that accomplished at least a reconciliation that helped Grace a lot. Pinky had confided in Mr. Lee that he thought that Grace treated him badly because she had a lot of anger over how everyone treated her and is had somehow spilled over to him. He was glad to forgive her now. 

        Mr. Lee thanked Pinky for his insights and decided that it was now it was time for a talk. “Grace” he told her, “I want to thank you for sharing not only your feelings but your diary with me. That must have been hard to do.” 

        “It was great, Dad, to be able to share it all with you. I’ve felt a little better lately, but I’m still ugly.”

        “I can tell you that your pretty till I’m blue in the face, Grace. Notice my little rhyme there, ha ha.”

        “Oh Dad.” 

        “But the fact is, I think you feel ugly because you’ve been surrounded by all these kids in school that made you feel that way. The big deal now is that you get to start all over at Princeton. No one there will be affected by your past, so you shouldn’t be either.” He then steered her over to the big mirror on his bedroom wall. “Look at yourself, Grace. Look at your teeth. No braces. Look how clear your skin is. Look at your eyes and your hair and tell me that if you saw another girl like this, you would say she was ugly.”

        “Ummm, I guess not, but I’m not beautiful either.”

 

        “Look, I know that all fathers think their daughters are beautiful, but I can be frank with you and say objectively that you are not as beautiful as your mother, but you are also not even close to being ugly.”

        “What if I’m ugly inside?” 

        “That should be easy to change if you really want to, especially at Princeton. Right?” 

        “How?” 

        “As you know, I’m not a Psychologist, but I play one in the classroom, so I know that the first step is to admit that you have a problem and you have. You admit that you’re “ugly” because you treat people badly, no?” 

        “Yes.” 

        “And you weren’t always like that, so just remember how you used to be before high school. Can do?”

        Grace broke into a big smile and said, “Yes, I think I can.”