Sometimes, I imagine that she is June
and I am Betty and we are sitting at the kitchen
table drinking orange juice out of shiny glass cups
and placing them carefully on floral tablecloth, and
we smooth out our skirts and ask my father how
he is doing. She says, "Honey, what's in the
paper?" and he says, "Oh, just the usual. The President's
smiling again and there's another charity
that has too much money so they're
sending it to some other charity and the Peace Corps
is overflowing so they're making a Peace Corps II
so that people can start joining when they're 8."
We cook pancakes and put blueberries in them and cut
them into little Mona Lisas and we use chocolate chips
for the eyes, and we use colored powdered sugar
to make it something Van Gogh would've been proud of. We
pick daisies from the garden and place them in crystal vases
all over the house; we do this in our slightly less high heels, and
my brother Johnny is playing football and making
all A's and has no thoughts of girls just yet. We get in the
family car with the family dog and drive over to the lake so
daddy and Johnny can pass the football around and
mother and I can sew more floral tablecloths for the
stunning banquet we are attending that night. We have picked
out pastel yellow and pastel pink dresses with matching
ribbons for our hair and two sets of pearl necklaces
and a pearl bracelet for me and pearl earrings for her. We are
both going to wear white shoes and my date doesn't have
one thought of putting any moves on me. We go to a
drive-in theater and watch a horrible movie about a boy
who has lost his dog that creates a vortex in our world and
makes us sit in silence for at least five minutes: we are both
heartbroken that something so terrible could happen. He brings me
home by 10 and I wake up the next day and I am
Diana and this is not my life.