Meet Erin
This is installment #13 in my several-part series, Shit I Wrote a While Ago. This story was written as a McCaig in 4th grade, but its title comes from a doll I had recently purchased. She was an American Girl Doll, but unlike the historical dolls, who have stories written about them, this doll was a modern-day doll that came with blank books for the little girl to fill in with the doll’s story. My doll was Asian (because apparently when I was 9 I wasn’t full of racial prejudice the way I am now), and her name was Erin. Also keep in mind that I was a FAS baby. From 1995.
Meet Erin
“Please stay seated until the plane has come to a complete stop,” the flight attendant announced. She sounded like a recording. And besides, the plane was at a complete stop. Oh, well. Anyway, I got off the plane only to find three faces grinning at me.
“Hello, Erin,” they chorused.
“Hi!” I called.
Oh, I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Erin Mowry, and I’m 11 years old. I’m Korean-American, and I used to have a pretty normal family: A mom, a dad, and a little sister. Then, on a night it was raining really hard, my mom was driving my little sister home when she hit my dad on his way home from work. [ed. note: I guess it’s implied that they’re dead now. WTF?] I was sent to Orlando, Florida, where I am now. I used to live in Green Bay, Wisconsin. [ed note: The only cities I knew house amusement parks or football teams. Not joking.] Anyway, now I have two sisters who were adopted, like me, and a mom. They live in a four-bedroom house. These are the two girls: Shawana, who is black. She is twelve. She has a strong protest for what she believes in. [ed note: “She is a bitch.”] Then there’s Nora. She’s got black hair, no bangs, blue eyes, and pale skin. Nora is Hispanic. [ed note: Obviously I had no idea what that word meant.] She doesn’t speak with an accent, and she loves adventures. She is eleven. Kind of [exactly] like me.
When we got home from the airport, and I was settled in my new room, we ate dinner. That night I fell asleep to the sound of a radio. [ed note: Riveting!]
The next morning I woke up at 7:00 AM. Mom was up; so was Nora. They greeted me in the kitchen. We ate breakfast. Then Nora, Shawana, and I left for school. On the way there I saw a girl about my age walking to school. She was holding a spotless, white Persian cat in her arms. I looked at the girl a while longer. She had straight white-blonde hair and green eyes. She was wearing a blue pleated skirt and a stiff white blouse. I was wearing blue jean overalls and a purple and green tie-dyed shirt. [ed note: Holy fuck.]
“Who’s that girl?” I asked Nora.
“That’s Sara Pennybags,” Nora said. “She’s rich.”
We walked the rest of the way to school in silence. It turned out that Sara was in five of my eight classes. Every time I was introduced in a class, Sara would raise her hand and say, “Is Erin your real name? Or is it Koochie-goo-goo or something?” Each time the class would laugh hysterically. Each time my face would get redder with anger. [ed note: And from drinking.] Sara had to be stopped [but apparently not by a teacher].
When I was out in the yard playing with my calico kitten, Narnia, Sara came over with her little cloud cat.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I came over so Poopsie could play with your dust mop.”
I giggled. “Poopsie?” I asked.
“And I suppose you have a better name?” Sara challenged.
“Narnia,” I said.
“Oh,” Sara said, and walked away. [ed note: BOOM SHAKALAKA]
I spent the next week in school putting up with Sara’s nasty tricks and comments. I wanted to get her back.
One night I went to see Wilson. He’s like the guy from “Home Improvement,” only more fun.
“Hey Wilson,” I greeted him.
“Need help?”
I explained to him what was going on. He gave me some great ideas!
The next day I woe up, got ready, and went to Sara’s house. I took Poopsie, dipped her in soapy water with blue food coloring, and left.
Nora was waiting behind the hedge that separates our yard from Sara’s. I climbed over the hedge and ran to school with Nora on my heels. I burst through the empty halls of the school. When I came to Sara’s locker I stopped. The locker was painted bright pink. I opened the door (Sara didn’t have a lock), and put snake skins and plastic rats everywhere. Then I took Sara’s bright pink gym shoes and rubbed Vaseline all over them. Then I replaced her spotless mirror with a cracked one.
A few minutes later Nora and I were standing in the drama room. We were in a pile of masks. Nora was staring at something. I followed her gaze to a long black dress. It looked like the kind Morticia Adams wears. Nora put it on. With her long black hair and pale [Hispanic] skin, she looked really spooky. Then she found the weridest kind of white contacts and put them on. It made her look like she didn’t have any eyeballs. I handed her some vampire teeth. She put them in.
“You look great!” I told her.
“Good,” she answered, “because this is going to give Sara a real scare.”
At 6:45 Sara stomped into the school with an angry glare on her face. She had obviously seen Poopsie. The school didn’t have any lights on. There was just the moon’s ghostly blue glow.
Nora started walking down the halls, her arms stretched out in front of her. She chanted, “Oooohhhhh!” One look at her, and Sara almost fainted.
She ran to her locker only to find the rats, snake skins, and broken mirror. She ran all the way to he principal’s office, screaming. Quickly, Nora took off the costume while I cleaned up the locker. Nora and I fled the building with no trace that we were there. Except for the shoes.
The next day I found out that Sara had been so scared that she’s fainted into Mr. Wrinklednose, the principal’s, lap. When she told everyone what had happened they checked the school. They couldn’t find a thing.
I had a feeling Sara Pennybags wouldn’t bother me anymore.
I really had a hard time refraining from making a note every other word. This story is straight-up ridiculous. First of all, I was 9 when I wrote this, so clearly 11 seemed like the coolest possible age. I remember that I always made the people in my stories about two years older than I was. It seemed like I could understand how they worked, since psychologically they weren’t much farther developed than I was, but they still (I assumed) must have had more freedoms and wisdom than I had. It was bold of me to assume that an 11-year-old girl would bounce right back from everyone else in her family dying in the same car accident. It was also bold of me to assume that a single woman would be interested in adopting three adolescent minority girls.
There were two things I was interested in as a 9-year-old writer: Describing exactly what people looked like, and assuming that the reader would follow my bizarre trains of thought. That’s why, while I painstakingly (relatively, anyway) describe what Sara Pennybags looks like, I expend no more detail in explaining Wilson than that I have plucked the character straight out of a sitcom. Why did I choose to name Sara and the principal like Ben Jonson characters? Why did I ever suppose, even for a moment, that Sara would get away with such blatant racism in class? This is set in Orlando, not Biloxi. Why wouldn’t Wilson’s advice be to tell on her prissy white ass? Also, is Sara’s ultimate punishment that she is somehow mouth raped by the principal? Did anyone else get that impression? I was a pretty sadistic kid.
One thing that I do sort of like about this story is that (and I probably wasn’t intending this at all) it has a sort of 4th-wall-breaking-TV-narration sensibility to it. If you consider this a sort of Amelie for children with first-person narration, it’s really not so bad… Because Erin was wearing overalls with a purple and green tie-dyed t-shirt, I give this story a B-
