Wendy's Got the Heat - Hardcover

Chapter One: Wendy from Wayside

What mother and father give their daughter ruby earrings for getting her period? I got my period when I was thirteen. It was one of the most memorable and humiliating experiences I have ever had. I didn't get a box of pads and that little talk with my mother that most people get. No, both my mother and my father (how mortifying) sat me down for the "you're becoming a woman now" speech and afterward they presented me with two 14-karat gold birds with small rubies inside the claws of the birds. I guess the rubies were to signify my period and my passage into womanhood. My period seemed a bigger deal to my parents than it was to me.

I was not raised in a normal household. I'm sure my parents, Shirley and Thomas, will consider themselves the epitome of normal. But to the outside world, in many respects, I had the perfect family. And actually, looking back, I think so, too. I had a wonderful upbringing and I wouldn't trade my parents for any in the world. But...

Remember that song from Electric Company, "Which of these things does not belong here, which of these things is not the same...?" I was the thing that didn't belong in my family. That was what I thought growing up. Today, I know that's not true. I now know that I am definitely my parents' child and I totally fit with everything they tried to instill in us. It just took thirty-something years for me and them to realize it.

My parents worked very hard to give all of us a solid foundation. They worked extremely hard to make sure none of us wanted for anything. That was why we moved to Ocean Township, New Jersey -- Wayside to be exact. We moved there when I was five from Asbury Park, which was going through a rough period following the riots. Moving to Wayside was like the Jeffersons moving to the East Side to a "deluxe apartment in the sky."

Wayside, a middle-class to upper-middle-class section of Ocean Township, was approximately forty-five minutes south of Manhattan on the Jersey Shore. There were people in our neighborhood with lots of money living in big houses. There were people living in big houses with money to live in bigger houses. And then there were people like my parents, who scraped together everything they had to give us the best. Part of the best included living in a nice, safe neighborhood without a lot of transient families. Wayside was usually the last stop for most families -- people rarely moved from there. I had a next-door neighbor, Jackie, who was there when we moved in and was still there when we both graduated from high school and went off to college. She might be still there today for all I know. My parents wanted a sense of permanence for us and Wayside was that place.

My parents always traveled in the "right" circles. They were involved in many social activities and charities. And they had plenty of prominent friends, like Gwendolyn Goldsby Grant, a noted therapist who does an advice column for one of the major black magazines. She pledged AKA with my mother in college.

My parents weren't rich; they practically cut off their wrists for us to live the way we did. In fact, my parents always drove an old car when I was growing up -- the kind you wanted to park down the street or around the corner out of embarrassment. They didn't waste money on showy material things. They saved and sacrificed for things that would advance our family.

We had a nanny/housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Johnson. We didn't have Mrs. Johnson because we were rich. We needed Mrs. Johnson because both of my parents worked and they didn't want us to be latchkey kids. My parents taught all week, graded papers, prepared for meetings and the like; it behooved them to have someone come in and clean and iron, too. So there was always Mrs. Johnson.

But we didn't have it like that. Not like the rich people down the street. They had a live-in nanny and a housekeeper. And those kids down the street were terrible to their help. They would do things like lock their nanny out in the freezing cold with no coat. If we even thought about disrespecting Mrs. Johnson we would get the hell slapped out of us. Besides, Mrs. Johnson did not play that.

My parents struggled so that my sister, brother and I wanted for nothing. We traveled. We shopped. Christmas was always big at our house. A typical Christmas for me would be four pairs of Calvin Klein jeans, a diamond floating heart, a teddy bear with a diamond belly button, lots of gold jewelry and makeup by Estée Lauder -- never makeup out of a drugstore. My sister would get more of the same, just in smaller sizes. And my brother would get clothes that might include a whole collection of Izod shirts -- one for every day of the week. My mother, though, was the queen of the discount shopping and while she would spend money, she would also wait until things went on sale.

I compare my family to the Cosbys, America's family when I was growing up. I was Denise, Lisa Bonet's character -- the troubled middle child. My sister Wanda, who is seven years older than I, was Sondra, the Sabrina LeBeauf character on The Cosby Show. She was the smart, perfect daughter. Then there was Tommy, Theo Huxtable -- the only boy in the family.

Wanda and I shared a room when Tommy was born and he was given my room. Wanda was the best big sister when I was young. She would often sneak downstairs late at night and bring back snacks for us. We would have orange slices or the little pizzas that you make in the toaster. We would play kicking-feet on the bed and she would ride me around on her back pretending to be an elephant. I was three and she was ten and entertaining her baby sister.

Then it just all stopped. As Wanda was moving into her teens and got into her grades and into her friends and into her life, those days of sneaking snacks, kicking-feet and playing elephant were fading. Who wants to hang around a little kid when you're becoming an adult? And from my perspective, who wants to hang around a perfect big sister and get lectured on your grades and behavior? Not me.

Tommy, who was only three years younger than me, became my best friend and confidant. He was my partner in crime and the only one who completely understood me -- even to this day. I remember when we were kids I would make matching tee shirts using glitter and waterproof magic marker. My shirt read "machine wash" and his read "tumble dry." On another set of shirts I wrote "frick" on mine and "frack" on his. We would skip along the Belmar Beach arm and arm -- tighter than Frick and Frack.

My sister had become the "Myth of Wanda" -- I could no longer relate to her. We were sisters but with little in common. And by contrast she pushed me further into being a misfit. Wanda was the perfect daughter. She was quiet and understated. She dressed conservatively in muted tones and wore Birkenstocks. She had a perfect build -- five-feet-six and a size six. She was a straight-A student, who left for Tufts at age sixteen on an academic scholarship.

I was nothing like Wanda. She was soft-spoken. I spoke too loud, too fast and too much -- so much so that my parents had codes for me when I was in public or at social gatherings. We could be in a room full of people -- if my parents said, "Wendy, TM!" that meant that I was talking too much or giving too much information. It was nothing for me to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger and tell them about a fight I had with my mother that day because I gained weight. No subject was off limits. My loose lips were enough for my parents to have codes for me. TF was for too fast. I used to talk a mile a minute. I've learned to pace myself now. I have learned to use pregnant pauses for dramatic effect but I still have to think about it. And sometimes even today when I get caught up in a frenzy I revert back to that ten-year-old who talks too fast.

Then there was TL for too loud. I still talk too loud today. My husband is constantly signaling me to lower my voice because I have a tendency to speak really loud in public and draw attention to myself. When I was younger, my parents were constantly telling me, "Wendy, TL!" If we were out at dinner or something the codes would be followed by kicks under the table.

Wanda was the perfect size, I had a weight problem. I was a big girl -- five-feet-eleven by the sixth grade, wearing a size eleven shoe. Actually my mother used to buy me a size ten because she had a hard time finding elevens back then and I would curl up my toes to fit into the tens.

Wanda's style was low-key, mine was loud and colorful. Remember the "Bedazzler," a kit that allowed you to adorn your clothes with rhinestones? I had a Bedazzler in the fifth grade and became the Bedazzler queen. I would take a plain denim jacket and fill it with intricate rhinestone designs. I would bedazzle everything from tee shirts to jeans. I graduated from bedazzling to painting on my clothes. I would rip up my tee shirts to create "one of a kinds." I had my own flair even at ten. If I was a guy I guess I would have been gay but not just gay, I would be a drag queen because I loved the flair. I know my conservative family was wondering where in the hell I came from -- especially following Wanda.

The Myth of Wanda was something that I could never live up to. So I never tried. I never tried to be the anti-Wanda, either. I didn't go out on a limb to distinguish myself from her. In fact, I looked up to Wanda. She was the model. She set the mark for me and I appreciated that. I knew if I went too far away from that mark, I would be in trouble. So while I never tried to be like Wanda, I never moved too far away from the standards she set.

She went to the cotillion and was on the student council in high school. I never had the GPA to be involved with either. But I admired her for doing it. I never put any pressure on myself to try and follow in her footsteps. For one, my feet were too damn big. Secondly, I was that Lisa Bonet character. I marched to my own drum. When I realized early on that I was not going to be a straight-A student, I didn't stress myself about it. When I knew I wasn't going to be five-feet-six and a size six, I didn't stress myself. I always hated beige, I liked pink and hot pink at that. I wasn't conservative or understated, I was loud and big -- I liked big hair, big nails, rhinestones and four-inch pumps. I was different.

I was a misfit outside of my home, too. I remember being bigger, taller and blacker than everyone in school. I also remember just when girls were thinking about boys, I was not a part of those conversations because the boys weren't thinking about me. I was the outcast.

Growing up I was invited to a few sleepovers but that's only because my mother was friends with the mother of the kid having the sleepover. Most of the time, I wasn't invited. When you have a sleepover your mom usually only lets you invite five people -- five of your closest friends. I was never in anyone's top five. I might be in the top fifteen, at best, but I was never in the top five. And it hurt.

I was usually the only black in my class throughout school. When I graduated high school, I was one of four. One of the four ended up being in and out of the criminal justice system after graduation. He might even be dead now. And the other two didn't really speak to me much. I was the "white girl" to them. I didn't eat at the black table (as small as it was) because I didn't believe in succumbing to peer pressure.

I was liked by the white people in my school and, for the most part, I liked them. I just thought they had a twisted view of black people. They bought into the stereotypes and because of that they, too, excluded me from the black race.

They would from time to time refer to one of the black kids in our school as a "nigger" right in front of me and quickly say, "Oh, not you, Wendy." To them I wasn't a "nigger." I guess they thought the disclaimer, "Not you, Wendy," was some sort of a compliment like I would feel good about them saying nigger and then excluding me from being a nigger. I seemed to assimilate. I spoke a certain way. I dressed the way they did. They were so comfortable (too comfortable) that they used the word "nigger" and somehow knew it wouldn't insult me. But what they didn't realize was that telling me, "Not you, Wendy," was more of an insult than if they had called me a nigger because once again it set me apart.

Eventually, I found a group of misfits just like me when I got to high school. They were all white, though. There was a friend who was a relative of the former owner of the New York Jets. She was a punk rocker before it was cool to be a punk rocker. A lot of people considered her the freak of our class. She wasn't a bad kid. She wasn't into heavy drugs or anything. But she did have a fake ID, and drank and hung out at Hitsville, a punk rock club right across from the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. This friend had a convertible Mustang, which to me was very cool. There was also Diane and Liz. Diane was not so much a visual punk rocker as she was a mental punk rocker. And Liz was the quiet one. All of these girls were smart, straight-A students who still managed to punk rock and hang out. I was the girl who could talk and got Cs, and sometimes Ds. And a couple of times I would find myself in the little class at the end of the hallway with about six other kids -- if you know what I mean.

Today when I go to schools to speak, I don't focus on the kids who are getting the As. And I'm definitely not talking to the ones with the perfect bodies because they get enough attention. I'm speaking to the kids who get the Cs and Ds and Fs -- the ones who get railroaded into the "stupid" classes. And I'm talking to the girls with the bad body images and the lone blacks in white situations. Those are the ones who need the support.

I know because I didn't really get a lot of academic support at school. I had a guidance counselor who pretty much had me written off. As a matter of fact, I was a blow-off appointment for her, a waste of her time because she was busy trying to get the white students with straight As into college. She was annoyed to even have to spend a few minutes with me. They were the most discouraging few minutes I had ever spent. She told me my SAT scores were too low to get into college and my grades were even worse. She also told me that out of three hundred and sixty-three kids, I was going to graduate number three hundred and sixty and that I should think about trade school. Trade school? And she was serious.

But fortunately, I had my parents. Both of my parents were educators. My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a school principal who later became an English professor at Monmouth College. He was like Roscoe Lee Brown on A Different World, very distinguished, good looking and a sharp dresser. My father is also very funny with a dry, sarcastic wit. He's the type to make you proud to say, "There's my dad!"

He and my mother always seemed to be pursuing some higher academic achievement. My mother got two masters degrees while we were growing up. And my father was working on his doctorate. Their academic excellence seemed ...