The past belongs to everyone who was there. What do you remember? ADD YOUR STORY
your stories
B is Diana’s best friend, and she first appears in the book when Diana goes to her new school a year after our mother died. Diana remembers becoming best friends right away. B remembers it a little differently. This is her story.
“Apparently, Diana and I had known each other since we were two, although I didn’t remember that. When Diana returned to the school where we both had attended pre-school, I was hesitant to connect with her.”
“I was shy, studious, and quiet; I thought she was too, for that first day. My mother had told me she was going to be in my grade, implied that I should be nice to her, and I didn’t like the presumption that I should be friends with someone I didn’t really know. What if I didn’t like her?
It makes me laugh, thinking of that first impression: Quiet! Shy! That was soon blown out of the water, maybe within the first week of school. We weren’t that close that fourth grade year, but managed to hang out with the same group of girls at recess, and I felt privileged to have this “connection” to Diana, telling the other girls, “Diana and I remember each other from junior pre-kindergarten!” My mother recalled seeing Diana in preschool, getting picked up from school by her dad: “She had white cowboy boots!” she would exclaim, as though that epitomized everything fantastic and wonderful about it.
Diana seemed fearless. She was funny, direct, smart, and unique. In sixth grade, we were in the same class section and grew close, and spent morning recess in the library, picking out books that we liked, that we thought might be racy. In our English class, we co-wrote a story, meeting daily to discuss where the story should go, how the parts we’d written should be revised; reading The Kids Are All Right is an amazing glimpse into the past, as the style (while now honed and clear) still is distinctly similar to the voice I remember in sixth grade.
We both decided to get short haircuts in sixth grade. This was the only time I have ever seen Diana look embarrassed. (This is ironic, because every short haircut after this one looked terrible on me; but somehow, Village Hair and Nail managed to do me well, at least by 1990 standards.) I came into school that Monday, shy at first, but people were soon exclaiming how great this new ‘do looked, and I shyly began to feel proud. Then, walking down the hall, wearing a jean jacket whose collar she clutched over her head, came Diana.
Excitedly, I ran towards her, eager for her to share in my short-haircut triumph. Look! Both of us! Cool! Short!! But I realized as I got closer that Diana was visibly upset, and as she slowly straightened up and let her coat collar come down, I could see why. At any other age, it might have looked aggressive – maybe borderline punk? But at 12? She was humiliated, and we both ran to the bathroom. I tried to convince her that it looked ok, but both of us knew it was a miserable haircut. She squared her shoulders and tried flattening it in the mirror; she sighed; she choked back some tears, and I think I looked away, not knowing how to react. The boys in our class were vicious – aren’t all 12-year-old boys? Coming out of the girls room into the classroom would have killed lesser girls. The boys were merciless and I have no idea how Diana managed to turn their attention to other things; she must have, she always did.
Diana was the first person I ever consciously made an effort to be a friend with. Up until then, if you were in the same class as someone, you eventually would become friends if you were similar enough. But the end of sixth grade, she left our school, and moved in with her sister Amanda, down in Virginia. I called her every week, still wanting her funny, smart, energetic self in my life. She was starting a new life, and I wanted to remain part of it.
Throughout junior high and high school, Diana would make the trip every summer from Virginia to my family’s house in Maine, and spend a week or two. We would bike into town, read magazines, make mix tapes, take pictures of each other, say we were co-authors of a zine and spend the week writing ‘articles’ for it, buy henna to dye our hair, pierce our ears, interview each other for our entries for “The Sassiest Girl in America” competition. Diana gave me my only tattoo during one of those visits. Age 15, hunched over me on my bed, she slowly stabbed a needle dipped in India ink into the skin of my lower back, as I sweated in pain and told her to stop – ok, go – no wait, just a second… I hid it from my parents for a few years, and when they discovered it, it seemed to make a difference to my mother that it was Diana who had done it; that somehow made it acceptable, if not desirable.
Diana’s and my life continued in parallel tracks. We both went to high school – she experimented with dating women, I tried out field hockey. She tried a fairly harmless quantity of drugs, I got panicky and claustrophobic when I smoked pot. I increasingly felt like I was the square and she was the rebel; we probably both exacerbated these things in each other, both of us being stubborn.
What would have happened if Diana had been happily adopted? What if she’d stayed in Bedford? My mother discussed with my dad once the idea of adopting her; I didn’t know what to say when I found out, a few years later. It was a mix – stunned to think of that alternate life, sad that it hadn’t happened, and selfishly relieved that whatever challenges it would have brought to our friendship hadn’t occurred.
Memories keep coming. Diana’s 14th birthday, where I flew down to DC and Liz took us out to see the movie “The Replacements”, and then out to a bar to hear live music. What an effort Liz made to do fun things for/with us. She was so cool! Taking us out to dinner at the pizza place (next to Shop rite!! Who planned that location?!), when God knows she probably had no money of her own… giving me the coolest jeans in the world…taking us out for movies and beers for your 14th bday in DC. She was and is such a great sister. Diana and I traveling in Europe at age 18, in a tiny town in the south of France at sundown, where there was only one hotel that happened to be 4-star, and Diana convinced me to use the credit card my parents had given me for emergencies, instead of bedding down in the street that night in our sleeping bags. Diana visiting me in college, and buying a studded leather suit from a Cleveland second-hand store. These memories will keep coming.”
