The Weight of a Compliment

[original_lavi]

Another short writing exercise.  Prompt was...a moment that seemed ordinary to everyone around, but to the central character, was huge.  And to demonstrate that.

I didn't really succeed; should have thought harder of a way to do it without requiring backstory, but at the time, it seemed necessary.  Anyway, I do like the tiny bit of dialogue at the end.

The Weight of a Compliment

                She was first enlightened extremely early on, way before the average person thinks children are aware of such issues.  It was in first grade when the other girls had giggled and whispered behind their hands as they looked at her – the classic synchronized action that could be genetically recognized as something dreadful, just as infants know to refuse rotten-smelling food; no one needs to teach you that.

Though that day and its first taste of mortification burned into her memory, she did not know then the cause.  But that didn’t take long either.  Other girls, and even some boys, were not satisfied with whispering between themselves.  Their assertive curiosity and drive to learn about the world around them led them to ask her directly: Why are you wearing that?

As she got older, she realized that she couldn’t even blame it on her hapless father; he let her pick out her clothes from the resale shop.  And perhaps, she mused, his complete lack of judgment when it came to appropriate clothing was why he remained so very single.

But Nita loved her father and soon came to accept that this was her own problem.  It was extraordinary how what one wore could completely determine one’s entire class’s relationship with you; they never gave her a chance, assumed that anyone wearing corduroy pants with a shirt with a sailor collar cannot possibly be worth knowing or have anything interesting to say.  So she tried – took secret notes of what the “popular” girls in class wore and compared them to her own dress.  But her weak attempts at mimicry (it was difficult to find their sort of clothes in the resale shop) were hooted down all the more – and when they couldn’t find fault with her shirt and pants, it was her jewelry, her shoes, her hair, her handbag.  She realized then that they wanted her to be their laughingstock, to dress even more absurdly than she did.  But at that, Nita put her foot down.  She had thought for a time she would do anything for them to treat her like normal – no, her standards weren’t so high, just better – but she wouldn’t be their monkey.  She knew she had more self-respect than that.

So she kept taking notes and bought the best she could.  Escape was not possible in the near future; her father couldn’t afford to change schools, but the harassment and ostracization was quite enough for her to determine it would not happen again, no matter what her budget.  She took excursions to the mall to take notes on the outfits there and visited newsstands to flip through Vogue and other respected fashion magazines.  All the low-budget stores which ever carried stylish clothes were accounted for.  Nita worked and saved, but didn’t waste her money yet – she would pool all her resources for when it would count.

Her lack of social commitments freed her to focus on academia, and thus it was not particularly difficult for her to pull off a substantial scholarship to a small, semi-prestigious college in-state that none of her fellow classmates were likely to attend.

All the summer after her high school graduation was spent perusing her list of stores, replacing her wardrobe piece by piece with all the weight of a card player choosing his cards in a life-or-death game.  Her father thought most of what she brought home looked strange, an opinion with which she sometimes agreed – but that was hardly important, hardly at all relevant.  What mattered was meeting her culture’s unspoken demand.  Few of her pieces had designer names – and those that did were pure luck – but she hoped the rest at least resembled something normal.

Then came the first day of orientation.  Nita could hardly breathe when she walked into the first room full of her new set of peers – but it was full of those who were paid to be nice to her, and no answer was given for whether or not she had succeeded.  But at least there were none of those flickering glances over her clothes, carefully blank looks or slightly raised eyebrows she had become so adept at catching.

Eventually she did meet her fellow freshmen.  All proceeded as it had since her arrival; they weren’t treating her any different from the others.  Did she, possibly, finally, classify as normal? 

            Nita had already relaxed and begun to think of other issues in the immediate future, such as classes, as a group of her new floor mates walked back to the dorm.

“By the way, Nita, I love your shirt.”

Nita did not even know her name.

“It’s very pretty,” agreed another.  “Goes well with those pants.”

Nita could not remember any names at all.

“Th-thank you.”

The setting sun flashed out from behind a building, searing all of them and everything around them with a golden flash.