Lady Parts (3 page)

It was my mother who told me that Nanny had been brought to America when she was fifteen, in a pre-arranged marriage, and had six children with a man she never loved, a man twice her age. She had lost her father and brothers in the genocide, and had to leave her mother behind. She could never return to her homeland. I remember her sitting for hours, always wearing black, knitting and staring out the window. I remember wanting to make Nanny happy. But I couldn’t. I was a child and I didn’t understand. So I ran away from that sadness. Ran all the way up Mount Ararat for God’s sake, looking for Noah’s ark.

For the next five hours, I treated the woman next to me
like my own grandmother. I propped her feet up with pillows, put cushions behind her back. When the flight attendant asked her what she wanted for breakfast, and she said, not understanding, “Okay,” I spoke for her. I said, “She’ll have the steak and the omelette, and bring her a mimosa, she’s had enough coffee.” We toasted, neither one of us knowing what each other was saying. “Aaaah,” we said, nodding our heads in agreement. We laughed. “Aaaah.”

Then right before we were about to land, a phrase I hadn’t heard since I was a child came back to me.

“Tza vet danem,”
I said to the woman. Armenians say this to people they love.

“Tza vet danem,”
she said.

It means: Let me take away your pain.

I opened my one-woman show,
Nude Nude Totally Nude,
at the Joseph Papp Public Theater on April 6, 1996. There were many laughs in the show. But for the first time in my life, I dared to not get laughs. It took courage. Not the courage of Tigran the Great, but in my own way, I was defending my people by just getting up there. In my own way, I was preserving my culture, like my boyfriend Mark Finks had preserved his. There may not have been many Armenians in the audience, but getting onto that stage, I was surrounded by three thousand years of history. Like an
actor playing King Lear for the first time, I was never alone but embraced by all those who played the part before me. Finally, I belonged. The part of me I’d cut off, I’d found.

“Tza vet danem,”
I was saying to the audience.

“Tza vet danem,”
I was saying to myself.

Let me take away your pain.

Property of andrea m.
189 Whitney Ave.
Portland, Me.

January 1, 1958

10 years old

When we were playing tag at school a boy came and pushed my pocketbook right off my hands and Mark F. said “Say your sorry to the young lady” and picked up my pocketbook.

January 2

The other girls were calling me a flirt because I liked Mark Finks.

January 11

I went to the Nathan Clifford Baked Bean Supper. I was very sorry that Mark wasn’t there.

January 15

My birthday. 11 years old.

My mother didn’t let me invite boys to my party because she thought I was to young. So I didn’t have a very good one, even though it was fun.

January 17

Stephen R. sent me a birthday card on my birthday. Mark said that he was going to by me a ring but he never did.

February 1

I went to the movie Old Yellar today. I almost started to cry because Mark wasn’t there and I was sick for the whole day.

February 4

I went to the Children’s Theater today with my girlfriends and my boyfriend, Mark. He held my hand gently, and I was so happy.

February 19

Steven R. sent me a love note. The minute I read it I tore it up because I dislike him very much.

February 28

My dog Cinoman has been lost already for three days. Who knows when he is going to come back? All the rest of my family wants him not to come back but I do. We have looked every where and still not have found him and I have been awfly sad since.

March 7

Today I stopped piano and all my prevleges
*
will be taken away.

March 12

Today I went back to piano because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

March 19

My doggie has not come back yet for three weeks and I don’t think he ever will.

March 20

Today we got a cocker spaniel, which we had 30 minutes. The old woman was crying because she didn’t have any children and the dog was just like one to her. So we gave it back.

March 23

Today I went to the movie Sing Boy Sing starring Tommy Sands, with my Aunt and sister. It was a wonderful movie because it had alot of singing, loving, and alot of sadness and thats the kind of movie I like.

April 17

Today Steven G. and Stanley Sax were down my house. They came into the little brown hut with me. We talked for a little while then I suddenly fainted and fell on Steven. He put his arm around me and started to tap me lightly. After that Dear Diary, I am never going to try to faint again.

April 26

I went to Steven G. Splash party today at 8 to 11 oclock. I danced with Steven and Stanley the most times. It was the most wonderful party I have ever gone to in my entire life. (even though I am 11)

April 29

Today Mommy + Daddy came back from Florida and boy were they tan. They brought me back some shells for my rock collections, a very pretty dress, and last but not least a stuffed dog and I named him Cinoman.

May 16

Today after school Stanley and I were arguing about why he hated me and why Steven did. He got me so mad I ran away and started to cry. That was the first time I had ever started to cry when I was talking to a boy.

May 23

I found out the other reason that Stanley and Steven hate me. It is because I bounce to one boy to another. So I am going to try to be a lady even though I can’t be.

May 31

Today nothing much happened except my father almost killed me for not coming home at seven oclock. He swore and did everything that was unnessersry.

June 12

Today I graduated from grammar school. I got 5 a’s + 4 b’s. I’ll be in Jr. high school next year but I don’t want to go because I’m going to St Josephs School (catholic). We have to wear a uniform every day. My parents are sending me because I talk to much, fool around with boys and I think they want me to get a better education.

July 4

Today was Cinomans birthday. But no Cinoman.

August 10

Today I went to Girl Scout Camp. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay home and watch American Bandstand.

August 11

I’m at Girl Scout camp now. It is in the morning. We had oatmeal with raisons and it was terrible. I know I am going to lose 10 pounds. Everybody is a snob that is in my cabin. Even Jeanie V is as fresh as ever.

August 23

Today I came home from camp and boy I was glad. When I came home what a surprise I had. My American Bandstand yearbook was there. I know now that I am not going to camp next year.

September 6

Dear Diary

I saw the most wonderful picture in the whole wide world the other day. The name is Blue Denim. All about two teenagers who get in trouble, the girl becomes pregnant and they don’t know what to do. They both come from good homes and they are very decent themselves. There afraid to tell there parents so they save up enough money so the girl can have an abortion. She is saved just in the nick of time because the boy finally tells the horrible truth. They get married at the end and live happily ever after. (They are 16 + 15.) Carol Lynley + Brandon de Wilde play the parts wonderfully. I saw it 7 times in a row.

September 11

I sent Dick Clark a letter and a picture I drew of him. But I think I sent it to the wrong address.

September 20

Today I think I started my period but I am not telling anybody. Not even my mother.

September 21

Today I dreamed that Steven slept over my house. When I was sleeping Steven called me over. I came over and he told me to sit on the bed with him and so I did that to. He kissed me and I kissed him back. Then he told me that he loved me. I said that I loved him and then he asked me to go steady with him.

October 12

I hate my mother + Nanna very much. All they try to do is cause fights. They let Marcie and Peter go to Aunties house but I had to stay home. And now I can’t get out of the house until I make my bed. This morning Nanna made every bed in the house except mine while I was in church. And she expects me to make mine now.

December 31

I will always remember Mark F., Steven G, and until the day I die, Kenny Rossi. He is the most wonderful boy in the whole gosh darn world. God bless him forever. I love American Bandstand.

Memorandum

Jeanie Marcus and Janet Shur were almost my best girlfriends. They were smart, cute and not so poor either.

March 26, 1959

12 years old

Today is the first time I have written in my diary for a long,
long time. I had been so busy I had forgotten all about it. I think I’m going to get a new diary and start from the start, but I’m still going to keep this one.

And so I did. Kept it for fifty-seven years.

It’s been that long since I’ve taken the diary out of the locked metal security box that sits on a high shelf in my closet. The box holds baby books, locks of the kids’ hair, their first teeth, their first cloth bibs, their first baby brush, birth certificates, school evaluations, and their first pairs of hand-knit booties. I was rummaging through it the other day in hopes that I would find something that would inspire me to write. And there it was. My little plastic and pink (but now slightly dirty) diary with an embossed design on the cover of a ponytailed teenage girl writing in
her
diary.

It came with a clasp and a lock and, at one time, a tiny key. But over the years I had lost the key, so the diary remained unopened. I held it in my hand and then hugged it close. It was as if I’d found a bottle with a message inside it, a message that had been lost at sea for half a century and had now found its way back to me for a reason. What were the pages going to reveal to me about my childhood? Had I uncovered a pirate’s bounty and was about to strike literary gold? Were secrets that I had hidden from everyone about to be unearthed? Was I going to find clues as to why I had
spent a lifetime of uncertainty? Would Freud have had a field day with my innocent confessions?

I took out a pair of scissors and cut the clasp.

I read it from cover to cover, hoping to unlock some juicy tidbits. But nothing stood out as titillating
or
heinous. It seemed that nothing out of the ordinary happened in my eleventh year on this earth. And yet I wasn’t disappointed. Strangely, I was relieved. I wanted to climb inside the pink plastic covers and get to relive that year all over again.

I remembered the term “boy crazy” and how often it was used to describe me when I was growing up. And yet my “obsessions” with boys seemed so innocent on the page. One boy danced with me, one kissed me, one gave me his ring. Big deal. After all, it wasn’t until I was twenty-one that I lost my virginity. I wish I had kept
that
year’s diary. That experience could have filled an hour with Dr. Drew.

But at eleven, nothing extraordinary happened to me. I was brought up in the ’50s, in a warm and loving, albeit strict, Armenian household, and was taught decent values and morals. Yes, I might have needed a little more attention from boys than other girls my age. But my need for attention created in me an overactive imagination that for years now has served me in a life in the arts. How many other eleven-year-old girls were developing the fine skill of convincingly pretending to faint in front of a boy, on cue? How many other girls at age eleven were compulsively drawing pictures of Dick Clark and sending them to the wrong address? Or
obsessively watching
American Bandstand
every afternoon and dreaming that one day they’d get to slow dance with a “regular” on the show. Jonas Salk was dreaming about curing polio. And I was dreaming about slow dancing with a sixteen-year-old thug from Philadelphia.

Dick Clark passed away recently, and part of my childhood died with him. I would love to know where Mark Finks and Stanley Sax are today. I would like to make amends with them and tell them I didn’t really faint. I would like to know where Cinnamon ended up. Years after he went missing, my dad confessed to me that he had given Cinnamon away to a farm because of the dog’s incessant barking. I stopped piano lessons but to this day wish I had continued. And although I hated summer camp when I was eleven, I was hired as a counsellor at the Luther Gulick camp, Wohelo, when I was fifteen, and taught drama to kids every summer for years after that.

Blue Denim
to this day is still my favourite movie.

Since my eleventh birthday, when I made my first entry in my first diary, I have written in hundreds of journals; scribbled ideas on hundreds of napkins, boarding passes, and magazine covers; and now, thanks to my iPhone, I leave long lists for future essays, in my Notes app.

But I have never had another pink diary with a lock and key.

I wonder if they make them anymore.