Alice longs to wear a plaid skirt, and Halloween is her chance...
*
I don't have to apologize, not one little bit. The fates themselves planted the seeds in my head and even though I didn't recognize them at the time there was no way for me to resist their eventual flowering. I do, however, remember the exact season they were sowed.
I was a little girl of five and it was the beginning of autumn. Looking out our bay window one morning I discovered that there were tiny groups of girls walking by our house. Girls in white cotton knee socks, white blouses and shiny black patent leather shoes with a little strap across the top.
Most importantly to me, they were girls in plaid skirts.
I had no idea why those skirts intrigued me so, but I was enchanted. I liked the bright colors of the skirts, how they wrapped tightly around skinny waists, the way the motion of the legs under them caused them to swish softly to and fro. I was sure that if I ever got one I would have to learn how to walk a special way just to make them do that.
Every day giggle after giggle of girls went by holding books in their crossed arms, their blue plaid skirts swaying gently as they sauntered by. And every day I went to sit in the bay window to watch.
Sometimes I even noticed that there were boys walking along in groups of their own. They seemed to spend a lot of time watching the girls in blue plaid skirts, like I did. If a girl caught any of them, the boy would pretend that he hadn't been looking at all. Then he might throw a rock or punch one of his friends in the arm as if that somehow meant he hadn't been looking. And every once in a while one of the boys would nudge his buddy and whisper in his ear. Then he would nod at the swishing skirt on the girl in front of him and they'd both laugh. Of course I had no idea what that was all about. I could tell that the girls noticed, but for some reason they mostly pretended that they didn't.
But that stuff didn't really matter to me. What mattered was the pretty plaid skirts. Most girls my age dreamed of being princesses who wore long silky gowns in shiny colors and were named Ariel or Rose. But not me. I didn't want to be a silly old princess. I was proud of myself because my dreams were much more grown up than that. More realistic. What I wanted was to wear a plaid skirt.
I knew that somehow if I could only put one on, then everyone would look at me and admire me and tell me how pretty I was. Of course I would pretend that I wasn't as pretty as all that, but deep in my heart I would know that all of the compliments were very true.
I wanted to be one of those girls so very badly. I wanted to wear a pretty plaid skirt and carry my books and walk down the street and have the boys look at me while I pretended I didn't notice.
"Where are they going?" I asked my big brother Evan, who happened to be looking out the window too as I watched them going by one spring morning. Evan was six years older than me and the font of all useful knowledge as far as I was concerned.
"Those girls? They're going to school. Pretty soon you'll be old enough to go to school yourself."
"Me? Really?"
"Really, Allison," he said, using my full name and patting me on the shoulder in that possessive big-brother way he sometimes had. "You'll have books and teachers, and they let you play on the playground. You'll really like it." It was reassuring to have a big brother who knew everything, and I couldn't wait to be old enough for school so I could wear a plaid skirt and black shoes and have the boys watch me as I walked.
As my first day of school got closer, I grew more and more excited. I was going to put on my new plaid skirt and my patent leather shoes; I would wear my hair in pigtails and all of the boys walking behind me would look and all of the girls would be jealous with how pretty I was. I just knew it.
But nobody had thought to tell me that we weren't Catholic and that the school down the street wasn't the school I was going to. When the first day of school came Mom laid out my prettiest dress and told me to get ready for the big day. I burst into tears.
"Why do I have to wear this?" I cried over and over. Mom had no idea why I was so upset, and no doubt thought my distress was somehow related to first day jitters -- her daughter fixating on the wrong thing because she couldn't articulate her real fear. Trying to keep me calm, she told me I could wear whatever I wanted. I couldn't understand why she was teasing me so. I ran to my room and pulled all of the clothes out of my drawers, looking for a new plaid skirt and new black patent leather shoes, but I couldn't find them.
Mom finally lost her patience and pulled me down into her lap. She asked me what exactly I was looking for. It took several tries to get the words past my tears and out of my mouth.
"My p-p-plaid skirt! And my black shoes! All the girls have them. That's what you're supposed to wear when you go to school." I could see the light bulb go off over her head as she realized my misunderstanding. She gathered me in her arms and soothed me, murmuring sympathetically in the perfect way that only mothers know how to do. She explained that those girls weren't as lucky as I was, and that I could wear whatever I wanted to my school. She tried to make it sound like my school was better than the one down the street, the one where all of the girls had to wear pretty plaid skirts that swayed when they walked.
"Sweetie, you'll like it much better at your school, I promise. Didn't you ever notice that all of the girls going to school down the street are lots older than you are? Your school is for little girls like you. Sally is going to your school, too, and she's your best friend. You wouldn't want her to have to go to school without you, would you?" Mom rubbed my back and whispered to me, just as if I really had a choice, "Will you do it for me?"
Miserably I caved in to her calm reassurances. I put on the dress she had laid out for me and went off to my first day at school. I even learned to like my public school, and as the years went by I gradually figured out that I really didn't mind not being Catholic at all.
But I couldn't get the images of those schoolgirls out of my mind, and I never did stop wanting to be one of them.
* * *
I stuffed the thoughts of plaid skirts and patent leather shoes away in the back of my mind where they could do no damage. Oh, I never forgot them. And as I grew older and began to learn a little about life I slowly came to recognize the undercurrents of sex that were inextricably tied to schoolgirls in uniform. But there was nothing I could do with my realizations. If you're not actually in a school where the girls wear uniforms you look kind of silly parading around in a plaid skirt and knee high socks. So I wore tight jeans and tops that showed my tummy and I kept that little fire banked in a far corner of my mind, ready to be fanned back to life when the right occasion arose, which it didn't do until high school.
Just after I turned eighteen, Jamie Nelson was throwing this big Halloween party and all of the cool kids were going. Sally and Hannah and I were at my house trying to decide what to wear. We weren't sure what we wanted to be, but the one thing we knew was that we wanted to go dressed alike.
"How about cheerleaders?" Sally said.
"That's not bad," I said. "Short skirts. And the boys always drool over the cheerleaders. Look at how many guys are always drooling over Ella."
