HOW DONNA GOT IN A BAD GROOVE

by

Louise Turan

Donna, age fourteen, moved back to the U.S. with her family to California. Her father, The Colonel, had been assigned to Ft. Ord to run the Base hospital and attend a special medical training course. For the past four years, they were living in Italy, in a villa on a hilltop overlooking sprawling vineyards and the Dolomites. The only thing she saw now, from their square, ugly, cement quarters, was a depressing view of sand, ice plant, and more cement houses. Her high school was an equally unattractive, flat building with rows of multiple green doors under flat roofs. California was like a strange planet Donna had landed on by mistake. She felt like a foreigner, especially when everyone around her, at school and otherwise, seemed obsessed with the Monkees, the Mamas and the Papas, and Flower-Power. Donna didn’t really have a clue what they were saying, singing about, or, for that matter, wearing.

Back in Italy she wore pleated skirts, sweater sets, knee socks, and comfortable shoes to school. No one dressed like that here, she observed on her first day, looking and feeling out of sorts, not to mention uncomfortable, in clothes her mother had bought her to help her fit in. Her mother wanted her daughter to be fashionable, just like her. See, her mother said, self-satisfied, now you look like the other girls. Donna was wearing a tent dress with neon stripes slashed in horizontal patterns, making her somewhat wide body look wider. And the white fishnet stockings, which matched the tight, white Capezios on her feet, hurt her legs and was the last time she wore them. No, I don’t, she wanted to tell her mother. Donna didn’t think she looked anything like the other girls in her class, who had blond hair, cheerleader legs, and wore either very short or very long skirts with flowy blouses. The only one wearing tent dresses was Twiggy, and Donna looked nothing like Twiggy. Donna looked like a girl named Carla, who became her best and only friend. Like Donna, Carla had dark hair and dark eyes, features inherited from their European ancestors, and stuck out, they realized, like sore thumbs.

Donna found herself falling into a bad groove, a word she heard frequently. She thought about her situation at school, her looks, living with overly inquisitive parents who wanted her to be happy, which only made her unhappier, and couldn’t see a way out. On top of everything else, she had to ride her bike to school, in the sand and through sticky, gluey ice plant, which left brown stains on her legs and knee socks. If misery was a friend, it was with her all the time, making her think how unlucky she was to be living in Ft. Ord and have a teacher like Mrs. Carver. 

Where was Signora Sari? Her beautiful, Italian teacher who had them reading Dante? Mrs. Carver was bony, with white stuff on her head that could barely count as hair and fake, clackity teeth. It was the despicable Mrs. Carver who pulled Donna’s mother aside at the PTA meeting and said she had serious concerns about her daughter. She laid out the details with hard evidence so that Donna’s mother would get it because so often mothers of teenage daughters don’t. Mrs. Carver had years of experience in these matters and was not to be doubted, especially about something this serious. 

Donna hated what she called Planet Ord, a confounding place so different from her idyllic Italian childhood. What she found confusing was not only how change was happening around her but also inside her; she was becoming a teenager. She and Carla huddled in her bedroom with Teen Magazine. Following the experts in the magazine, they bought Cover Girl blush in a darker tone and applied it to the contours of their cheeks and the sides of their knees to look slimmer. Disappointed, they found it didn’t work. Carla stole cigarettes from her brother, which they smoked behind her garage, spraying themselves with Windsong Carla had borrowed from her mother. The smell was harder to get rid of than the smoke and, they quickly realized, instead of hiding the fact they had been smoking, was an obvious sign they had. But the one thing in their favor had been obvious all along. No need for padded bras or falsies or wads of Kleenex. Both Donna and Carla, unlike their long-limbed classmates, had inherited ample breasts. They saw boys staring at their chests, admiringly and longingly, as they walked to class. The looks made them self-conscious at first but also grateful, if not pleased, with all the attention from the popular boys. That is how it started, when Donna’s bad groove got worse. It was all Mrs. Carver’s fault.

Donna was sitting in the kitchen doing her homework when her mother returned from the late-night meeting with Mrs. Carver. Her mother’s face was the one she wore when something in the house got broken, like a precious piece of china, or when one of Donna’s good sweaters was found in a ball on the floor, that how-could-you-do-such-a-thing-to-me-your-mother kind of face. Part of Donna knew it would be a good idea to run away, hop on a bus, and find her way back to Italy, or New York, which she had always wanted to see, as she sensed living at home now was going to get worse. The other half wanted to stay and watch disappointment contort her mother’s face in a myriad of shapes and colors and then try to return to normal again. The facial contortions seemed to be happening a lot more since she had become a teenager, which Donna found very curious as well as interesting.

A little voice spoke up, some wisdom bubbled up from a wellspring of youthful hopefulness, and told her not to worry, everything was going to be alright. But the whole mess could have been avoided if Mrs. Carver had not been so nosy and gone to the girls’ bathroom between fifth and sixth period and asked Carla what she was doing with a bra in her hand. Now her father, The Colonel, would have to be involved and God knows who else. In her future she saw a tribunal composed of her father, her mother, Mrs. Carver, the school principal, and Mrs. Jake Preston, outraged that her perfect son had been implicated in the embarrassing incident. She heard her father say, let’s just treat her like I treat my men, which no doubt meant a court martial. They’ll probably send me to a shrink, she thought, or march me off to some home for bad girls near a remote army base in Utah. 

Okay. So she had made this deal with Jake Preston. JAKE PRESTON!  

Jake Preston, one of the cutest guys in her class, had come up to her and Carla in the cafeteria at lunchtime and said that he and Charlie Summers, and bunch of other guys sitting at his table, had made a bet. Jake leaned in closely and whispered, and not in a nice way, that Donna and Carla wore falsies because no one in seventh grade had boobs that big. His sharp grin squeezed his eyes into brown slits, like a sly fox. There is only one true test you know, only one way to prove it. You have to let me feel you up. 

Carla and Donna turned to each other, horrified, then incredulous. Why, if they could prove they did indeed have the largest, most attractive boobs of the century, they’d rise to the top of the heap and be the most popular girls in school. 

It was the Ultimate Sleepover Question. How far have you gone: First Base (French Kissing), Second Base (Being Felt Up), Third Base (Everything But All the Way) and Fourth, All the Way. Extra bonus points if the guy was cute or popular. This was the question you were asked at sleepovers hosted by girls like Hilary Medway, or Mandy Clark, or Susan Whitefield, cute girls with frosty white eye shadow and tight-fitting sweaters, girls who everyone dreamed of being like, including Donna and Carla.   

Not that they had ever been invited, or would be anytime soon, because Donna and Carla’s parents had ancestors with hairy, dark genes and were from places impossible to spell, inheriting names too difficult to pronounce, with consonants and vowels that just went on and on forever. But Donna and Carla did have the curves that came along with those genes, and now, with Jake Preston’s little scheme, at least they would be prepared (in the event they were invited) when the question was put to them playing Truth and Dare. They would answer proudly in the affirmative: Second Base. And Jake Preston, no less. Bonus points! Yes, this was their chance. A passport to popularity. 

Donna glanced sideways at the huddled mass of boys’ heads when Jake returned to his table. If Jake had looked like a sly fox, Charlie Summers looked like a cat that had swallowed a mouse. It turned out that it was actually Charlie who had instigated the bet because Jake pissed him off, acting like he knew everything. Charlie had four older sisters and knew a thing or two about boobs, real and fake, and wasn’t going to lose a bet with his soon-not-to-be-best-friend Jake, but that’s how it goes in the seventh grade sometimes.

Eating the rest of her lunch slowly and deliberately, Donna knew if they hesitated, delayed too much, even by a day, they might lose their nerve or, worse yet, Jake would see their reluctance as a sign of defeat and prove him right. Donna was not about to be defeated or called a liar. For once she was in control of the truth and told Carla her plan. During study hall Donna passed a note to Jake: 

Meet me underneath the stairwell next to the gym between 5th and 6th period.  

In the girls’ bathroom at the end of fifth period, in one of the green stalls that never shut properly, Donna unhooked and removed her bra. Her large breasts were released to the wilderness beneath her sweater and bounced as she handed the bra to Carla. Donna clutched her arms over her chest and made her way to the dark space beneath the stairs.

Jake was waiting, wearing his foxy grin. So, he said, his eyes fixed on her breasts. Donna held her breath and closed her eyes, bracing for his bare hands on her bare chest. Jake took his hands and then placed them, like magnets, on each breast, giving each a firm squeeze. On top of her sweater.

Jake removed his hands quickly, as if her sweater was red hot. He stood back, surveying Donna’s chest, recognizing immediately he had not only lost the bet but had been too chicken to do what he needed to do. Jake, blushing deeply, quickly disappeared down the hall. 

Donna was crushed. She had been tricked. Jake Preston had not felt her up. Touching her breasts on top of her sweater didn’t count. She did not have the coveted sleepover bounty prize. No passport to popularity. Crestfallen, she walked back to the bathroom to retrieve her bra and tell Carla the bad news.

But neither Carla, nor her bra, were anywhere to be found. The bathroom and the hallways were silent and empty. Teachers’ voices could be heard through thick wooden doors giving short, clipped instructions, which always marked the beginning of a class. Someone had her bra. Donna had an alarming suspicion it wasn’t Carla.  

So now, according to Mrs. Carver, who handed the tightly sealed paper bag containing Donna’s bra to Donna’s mother the night she came home with the sour, how-could-you-do-this-to-me face, her daughter was a misguided teenager.

That is how Donna got into a bad groove. She had a feeling she was likely to remain that way. At least until next time.  

THE END

photo: Harry Rajchgot