Call Me Mimi Read online

  To those who have been bullied

  Thanks to all my students from grades one to ten: You were great sources of inspiration throughout my career as a teacher! Thanks to my colleagues at École secondaire Étienne-Brûlé in Toronto as well as at the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat of the Ontario Ministry of Education, where enthusiasm for learning is always nurtured.

  Thanks to my friend and agent, Michael Levine, and my editor, Kathy Lowinger.

  J’aimerais remercier ma famille pour leur appui constant: Maman, Mario, Tante Yvonne, Sylvie, Réal, France, et Daniel.

  Thanks to my professors at the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto: Kristen Vanstone, for your course on astronomy, and Dr. Claire Duchesne.

  Thanks to the staff of the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto for your assistance with my research on bullying and self-esteem.

  Thanks to my friends: Luc Bernard, Chantal Carrier, Isabelle Carrier, Lily Dabby, Lisette Falker, Charles Gibbs, Jacques Goulet, Allen Kwong, Joe Labao, Michelle Marcelin, Jamie McKnight, Lionel Pardin, Mark Prior, Seamus O’Reagan, Sharon Silver, and Craig Zadan. As for those who don’t find their names on this brief list, please call me so I can invite you for dinner.

  “Courage is doing what you are afraid to do.

  There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”

  —EDDIE RIGKENBAGKER (1890–1973)

  all me Mimi. I used to be a pretty normal kid (I think) until high school, when I was accepted at St. Mary’s Academy for Girls. It was supposed to be my path to a golden future, but instead, I got lost. My body ballooned while I sort of shriveled up inside. There’s a fine line between what’s real and what isn’t, between being real and being a stranger in your own skin. This is the story of how I found myself again. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but for me, it’s been like Columbus discovering a whole new continent. It’s not always a picnic, being real. But now that I’ve tried both, I’ll pick real anytime.

  Nobody knew about even one of my secret lives except for Patricia Tahir. She was a transfer student, the only person at St. Mary’s Academy for Girls who liked me, and she was certainly the only person who was bigger than me. Everybody tormented me about my size. Nobody tormented Patricia. Nobody dared. Legend had it that, back in Cameroon, she’d killed a lion with nothing but her manicured hands. I knew this couldn’t be true because she’d grown up in Paris, in a family of diplomats. But the legend stuck.

  I was hunched over my notebook – at a remote table in the cafeteria when I sensed Patricia standing over me with her tray. “What are you doing, Mimi?” She looked over my shoulder. “It looks like you’re writing a speech. An acceptance speech. What’s it for?”

  While she arranged her plate of shepherd’s pie, her glass of milk, her butter tarts, and her nod to good health – an apple – on the table and propped the tray against her chair, I debated: If she found out what I was doing, I would make my only friend in the school think I was nuts. On the other hand, there was the tempting possibility of relief in telling somebody. Something about Patricia was so supremely unflappable that before I could stop myself, I blurted it out.

  “It’s in case I ever win a beauty pageant.”

  I braced myself for her big boom of a laugh. It didn’t come. All she said was “It’s good to be prepared, I guess,” and set about methodically eating her lunch.

  Mimi, the Beauty Queen was only one of my secret lives. I had several, all featuring a wise and bright, self-confident and lovely Mimi.

  I am taking the laundry to Monique at the Laundromat when a big, apple red car drives up beside me. The smoked window opens and the lady in the backseat calls me over. She hands me her telephone number on a pink Post-it, with a rose in the corner, and begs me to be in the beauty pageant she is organizing. I am reluctant. After all, I am a straight A student (that part was true – also fat – and homely, but that doesn’t play a role in the fantasy) and above such superficiality. She is persistent. Think of how much good I could do as an example to more frivolous teenagers. I finally agree to enter the pageant on the condition that I can donate all my winnings to orphans. Thus I would have it all: acclaim for my looks and the superior feeling of knowing that my looks don’t count, all at once.

  Patricia was fascinated. She never told anyone (believe me, I would have heard about it if she had), although every now and then she’d ask me what I was planning to wear in the, say, evening-gown category. Then she moved to Ottawa and I was on my own again.

  There were other fantasies I kept to myself.

  Queen Elizabeth comes to our school. Macy Moore is chosen to show her around because her family is, after all, Montréal royalty. Queen Elizabeth listens to Macy prattle on for a moment or two and then says, “Enough of this! I want a girl with substance, with poise and grace, to show me around St. Mary’s. And that girl is Mimi Morissette!” We soon become close friends. She confides in me about the problems she has with her children and I offer my wise counsel. She invites me to live in Buckingham Palace so that I can give sage advice whenever needed. She gives me a corgi.

  Then there was the Céline Dion fantasy.

  Céline is driving along our street in the back of her limousine. I am pushing Mrs. Jaeger’s wheelchair (Mrs. Jaeger lives across the hall and is both sweet and quite capable of pushing her own wheelchair). Céline sees me and rolls down her window. “You seem like a kind person. I need an unbiased opinion. Which of these rings do you like best?” She holds her jewel-bedecked hand out to me and two emeralds flash. “I think that natural is best. You don’t need rings,” I answer. “Someone who is honest! You must become my special companion, thanks to your down-to-earth sincerity!” I modestly demur. After all,Maman would worry about my living a star’s life. “Never mind. I appreciate family too,” Céline reassures me. “Both of you can live in my mansion in Las Vegas.”

  But the fantasy that I loved best was the most far-fetched of all. It was about my father.

  I fumble with the key to our apartment because the bitter, wintry walk from school has numbed my fingers. A warm gust of candle-scented air greets me as I open the front door. I hear the comforting order of a Bach fugue coming from the radio. My father calls out from the leather armchair, “Mimi, my darling, I’m so glad you’re home. Now everything is just perfect!” He taps his pipe against an onyx ashtray. “Why don’t we order in a pizza with the works while we talk about what we’ll do together this summer? Would you like to go the mountains, my darling, or perhaps to the ocean?” And when my mother gets home, he mixes cocktails for them both, rubs her feet, and tells her that dinner is on its way.

  MIMI, REAL LIFE

  Except for studying, I spent every possible minute of my last year in high school, like the previous years, immersed in one or the other of my fantasies. Céline or the queen or the pageant lady or my dad followed me to school, to the library, to the dentist’s office. I was never alone.

  My only other pastime was hiding in the washroom, obsessing about my appearance. In an effort to cut down on the heinous crime of Bathroom Loitering, someone on the staff of St. Mary’s had removed the mirrors, so I had to contort myself to see my reflection in the shiny steel doors on the cubicles. My reflection looked as distorted as a fun-house mirror, but it was, alas, accurate.

  I would squint and try to see a girl who looked like the other girls in my class: the sleek and flossy girls with their coltish legs who pored over magazine articles entitled “Find Your Best Summer Look” (you can bet that isn’t my handed-down-from-my-mother flowery muumuu) and “How to Spot a Virgin.” (No problem there. Me.) And “Say Yes to Great Skin.” (Not if it means saying no to chocolate.)

  Even with my stomach sucked in and my back ramrod straight, I did not look like anyo
ne else but me: the only girl at St. Mary’s Academy whose dress size matched her age – I was seventeen and, at five foot two, I weighed 170 pounds. The thinking part of my brain that could do algebra in my head and recite whole swaths of Rimbaud’s poetry knew that this did not make me a freak. But the reptile part of my brain that reacted like a trained seal to pictures in fashion magazines knew no such thing.

  Then someone else would come bustling in, and I would adjust my St. Mary’s Academy uniform – a kilt that would have fit Robert the Bruce, my man’s white shirt, and my knee socks (which drooped dispiritedly, their elastic but a fond memory) – and make my way into the arena like a reluctant gladiator.

  don’t know what possessed me to go to Prom Night. I would never have willingly hauled my spotty carcass to the school gym, site of countless humiliations at the pommel horse, on the fiendish mats, and at the other instruments of phys ed torture. But the prom was being held at the gorgeous Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montréal, a place I’d only ever heard of. There would be gilt mirrors hanging from the silk-covered walls, which would reflect the ornate crystal candelabra so that they looked ablaze. There would be thousands and thousands of flowers – sharp and spicy and sweet all at once nodding in graceful vases. I wanted, craved, some of that sheen. Besides, Queen Elizabeth had been there. I would be looking at the very same walls that she had looked at with her royal eyes.

  It’s pathetic, but you should know this about me. I like beautiful things. It’s not that I want to own them, I just love to look at them. I love horses and the way they shine and Impressionist paintings and stately poppies and pearls. For once I wanted, longed, to be part of the freshly washed, perfumed, graceful crowd on Prom Night.

  As soon as I walked into the grand ballroom (theme: Salute to Flowers), I realized I’d made a colossal mistake.

  “Ohmigawd!” said Macy. “Is that you, Mimi?” Macy, of the brown satin (black is so yesterday) off-the-shoulder dress, her glossy blonde hair held back by a fresh camellia. Macy, who had never said a civil word to me.

  My face was frozen into a frightened half-smile. I was afraid to move in case she struck. Macy was a snake. A snake with the power to make me a laughingstock with the tiniest wry twist of her iridescent mouth.

  “It is you! I didn’t recognize you under all that makeup. Wow, is that nail polish ever red, and the lipstick! Oh, I just love that green dress against your skin. Vintage?”

  It was vintage alright. But not in a good way, as Macy well knew. It was my mother’s dress from when she was pregnant with me. What had felt silky and sort of Mary Quant Swinging London, with a big pussycat bow under the chin, all of a sudden felt like a deflated parachute.

  “It’s nice and roomy. Mine’s so tight, I don’t know how I’ll be able to dance.” This was clearly not a problem I was going to have to face. I wanted to pry up one of the cabbage roses on the vast rug with my toe and disappear under it. The hopeful makeup felt like mud on my face. What was I thinking? What was I thinking?

  Macy slid away for a moment, and Akila – best known for her year-round tan – appeared in her place. “Hi, Mimi. Did you see what Macy’s wearing? That is the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen, ohmigawd!” She gave herself a happy little shake. “What’s wrong? You look sort of green.”

  She turned back to Macy, who had planted herself at the door once again to bestow her presidential blessing on the arrivals. Akila tried to take Macy’s hand, but she shook it off.

  “Where’s Dorian?” asked Akila.

  Macy’s boyfriend, Dorian, was a model, so the rumor went. Nobody had ever seen him in person.

  “Oh, he’s on a photo shoot in Florida. He thinks proms are immature.”

  You learn a lot when you hang out in the washroom as much as I did. The tom-toms were pounding out the message that Dorian had broken up with Macy. Word had it that he dumped her by sending her a text message on her iphone: In Miami, need space. As I’m sure Akila would be happy to tell you, Post-it notes are so six breakups ago. Dorian was probably being kind by not wanting to tax Macy’s limited vocabulary with anything longer. Akila reached for Macy’s hand again, but Macy pulled away and Akila was left standing alone by the door.

  I made my way to a delicate satin-covered chair by the swing door to the kitchen and sat staring at my pink high-heeled sandals. I took stock one more time. I was the grossest butterball, the fattest cow in this stupid please-don’t-feed-the-models private school that was paid for by my mother’s two thankless nursing jobs. I knew that many of the Macys and the Akilas who terrified me and fascinated me (you know, the kind of girls who look like they just stepped off the assembly line at Mattel) may have been beautiful, but some of them were also cruel and, well, dumb. I wanted to rake Macy’s face with my faux nails (Ribald Red, said the bottle), or at least stand up for myself and not let them make me feel so worthless. But would I?

  No. Because Big Beluga here was afraid of her own shadow. That’s the way I was. Thieves could walk up to the door of our apartment, and I would invite them in, apologizing for the meager haul of electronics. Then I’d tell them, “Thanks, and come again”! For all my size, I was a mouse. A mouse that gobbled cheese. Fattening, runny, delicious cheese.

  “Hey, Mimi, good to see you.” Mrs. McKnight was balancing a plastic cup full of a neon orange liquid on her clipboard. Mrs. McKnight was sixty-something, the height of the average ten-year-old, with black skin that always smelled faintly of Noxzema. She tied her kinky gray hair back with blue or pink shoelaces. The girls called her The Hippie because she looked like one and because she had taped a picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the closet door in her classroom.

  Every teacher at St. Mary’s Academy had a nickname: The Fridge was the icy Mrs. Myrtle, our gym teacher; The Giraffe was Mrs. Maurice, who taught French and dressed like a spy from the Second World War, with her no-nonsense shoes and her hair rolled into a sausage over her forehead; and the not-too-subtle Fairy was Mr. McTavish, the principal, who Macy had once seen walking hand in hand with another man on a beach in Cuba during March Break. She spread that news fast and poisonously, causing many a self-righteous Parents Association meeting. The furor eventually died down, but the nickname stuck.

  Five years ago, when we were in grade seven, Mrs. McKnight caught Macy cheating by copying from Akila’s test paper. Zero for both of them. A potential suicidal act for a teacher at a school full of the offspring of tout Montréal society, but Mrs. McKnight is brave. That was a great day. Add to that the time when Mrs. McKnight cried as she read us Ophelia’s mad scene, and when she didn’t laugh at me as I chewed up my English pronunciation (maybe you can’t tell just by reading this, but when I try to speak English, I have this huge French accent, even thicker than Céline’s). I swore silent allegiance to her.

  I hauled my yearbook out of my knapsack, which I’d covered in glue-on sequins in the hope that it would look Wacky in a Good Way. Dashed hope. The knapsack looked like what it was: a lumpy stand-in for the delicate jeweled clutches the other girls carried.

  “Will you sign it for me?” I handed the yearbook to Mrs. McKnight.

  “Of course, my dear. And what a nice pen. Purple ink?”

  When she opened the book, her smile dis appeared. Wrinkles pursed around her mouth. “When did you get your yearbook?”

  “Last week, just like everyone else….”

  “It looks like I’m the first to sign it. Well, I consider that an honor.” She wrote her name with a flourish.

  “You know, Mimi, I’ve always wanted to say something to you and I guess it’s now or never. Listen to me. You are a smart girl and you have incredible potential. I hope you know that and I hope you won’t let anyone mess with your talent or your heart. Anyone! And that includes you.

  Let yourself grow into the person you can be. Do you hear me?” When she said “hear me,” she blinked hard.

  “Yes,” I said doubtfully, bobbing my head like a toy bulldog in the back window of a car. Grow was the last thing
I wanted to do.

  She handed back the yearbook – and crossed the ballroom to take a seat at the teachers’ table.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Prom Night.” Mr. McTavish rocked back on his white leather shoes and fussed with his pink satin tie. “Girls, I want you all to think about your parents tonight and the prom nights that have preceded this one in our school’s proud history.”

  There wasn’t much for me to think about. I never knew my dad. The words “father” and “papa” are not part of my vocabulary, except when I am living in my Mimi, the Daughter imaginary world.

  “Girls, you’ve accomplished a lot during your years at school, just like your mothers and grandmothers did before you,” he said, voice trembling. “Tonight is your night.”

  Nobody goes to this school alone. They drag along their family trees, full of ancestors who are household names on the stock-market pages and society pages of the newspapers and on the shelves at the supermarket. My poor maman, who knew she couldn’t give me a father, worked at two hospitals to pay for me to be here. I made my way to school from our ground-floor rented duplex – not far from where she grew up in Rosemont – and not from one of the grand houses on the mountainside.

  As Mr. McTavish droned on, I slipped into make-believe Fatherland. It’s my happiest place to be. I’ve been constructing it all my life. I can’t remember when I didn’t know that my father was an anonymous sperm donor, when I didn’t want to know everything about him, and when I didn’t know that there were questions too hurtful to ask.

  This is all I had gleaned from years of pestering Maman. She had always wanted to have a child, but her soon-to-be-exhusband did not. At least, not with his wife. When she turned thirty-nine, she divorced the guy, sold the house, colored her hair blonde, and went to a sperm bank in Toronto. Why Toronto? No idea, but I knew her younger sister, Amélie, lived there. My mother doesn’t talk much about Amélie, except she once told me that Amélie taught astronomy at the University of Toronto.