“Ameliorate means to make better. My ‘Wall of Words’ ameliorates my vocabulary,” I said smartly.
My dad laughed out loud. “It does, does it?” He shook his head and looked at me fondly, all traces of anger gone. “All right Josie Jo. You can keep your wall. But keep it up here, okay? I don’t want words written all over the kitchen when you run out of room.”
“Maybe I should start writing smaller,” I said, suddenly concerned at my limited wall space.
I heard my dad laughing as he descended the narrow stairs.
3. Overture
Sonja had made the difficult shift into maturity easier than it would otherwise have been, but I still had to endure the scrutiny that my changing body encouraged. By the time I entered the seventh grade, I was fully grown. Though I was slender, I was 5’6 and had br**sts and curves when boys my age were still wetting the bed. Tara thought I was the luckiest girl alive and pestered me with personal questions and even asked me once if she could wear my bra “just to see how it feels to be a woman.”
Being the only girl in a family of boys made my wardrobe choices pretty limited. I wore my brother’s old tshirts and hand-me-down Wranglers because that’s what we had. My dad had never thought to do anything different, and I’d never thought it important enough to ask. I’d outgrown Sonja’s underwear purchases the first year, and if it wasn’t for my Aunt Louise making sure I had a sturdy bra I don’t know what I would’ve done. The boyish clothing mostly disguised my figure, although I hunched my shoulders to hide my height and my br**sts and was constantly self-conscious and awkward.
Sonja had insisted I get my eyes checked when I persisted in putting my face too close to the sheet music, “ruining my playing posture.” I needed glasses to read or play the piano and since my nose was constantly in a book, I tended to wear them most of the time. I used big words and blurted out deep thoughts, and I think my peers considered me extremely strange when they considered me at all.
The seventh grade was part of the junior high, and I was relieved to be leaving elementary school behind, hoping it would be easier to blend in with the older kids. But junior high was just a different kind of torture. The junior high was made up of grades 7-9, the high school consisted of grades 10-12, and we all rode the same bus into Nephi for school. I hated riding the bus. Johnny was a senior the year I started seventh grade. He drove Old Brown, our old farm-truck, into school most days because he played several sports and practices were after school. Sometimes he gave me a ride, but more often than not, he took his friends - leaving no room for his little sister. The bus was loud and slow with kids crawling all over the place. I hated the elbows in my sides, the fighting, and worst of all, finding a seat.
The bus stop by my house was one of the very last, and every day I would dread walking down the aisle of the full bus, looking for a place to sit down. I drew unwanted attention from the high school boys, snickers from the younger boys, and confusing animosity from most of the girls. Tara, loyal cousin and friend, usually tried to save me a seat, but I almost preferred not to sit by her. At thirteen she was about as big as a nine-year-old, and our size difference made my discomfort all the more severe. Not only was she little, she was loud, and where I would prefer to shrink into the background, she would call attention to herself every chance she got.
There was an 11th grade boy named Joby Jenkins who sometimes hung around with my brother Johnny. He liked being the class clown and thought he was the funniest kid on God’s green earth. I didn’t like him very much; his humor was usually mean-spirited and always at the expense of someone weaker. The younger kids on the bus were his targets. My dad said he was a smart ass, but mostly he was just an obnoxious bully. Above all, I couldn’t stand him because he stared at my chest whenever he saw me. Johnny seemed oblivious to this, as usual, and he thought Joby was hilarious and fun to be with. Because Joby didn’t play sports he always rode the bus, holding court way in the back, making many a kid’s life miserable.
One particular morning in early fall, I climbed on the bus, nervous and desperate for a seat as usual. Tara waved at me and pointed excitedly to the name tags stuck on each seat. Mr. Walker, the bus driver, had made seat assignments. I felt a rush of relief and started looking for my name. Assigned seating meant never having to find a place to sit, and I was ridiculously grateful as I searched for mine. I began to notice that most of the younger, smaller, kids had been seated with older kids, making the three to a seat rule a little more comfortable. As I neared the back of the bus, red heat crawled up my face as an all too familiar voice rang out.
“Josie Jensen! Come to papa!” Joby Jenkins called out in a sing song voice. Everyone around him burst into laughter. “Hey, we can play cowboys and indians! Don’t worry, Jos, I won’t let Sammy here make you his squaw.”
I’d found my assigned seat. My name was on the seat just across the aisle from Joby. Joby was sitting with his legs in the aisle so his knobby knees and big feet in unlaced Reeboks made it impossible for anyone to get by without confrontation. He patted the green plastic seat next to him. Sitting inside the seat beside him was Samuel Yates.
Samuel Yates was the grandson of Don and Nettie Yates who lived just down the road from me. Don and Nettie’s son, Michael, had served a Mormon mission on a Navajo Indian reservation twenty plus years ago. After his mission, he ended up going back to Arizona for some job. He’d married a Navajo girl and they had Samuel. A few years later, Michael Yates was killed when he’d been thrown from a horse. I don’t remember the details; it all happened when I was little, but in small towns everyone’s story becomes known eventually.