It's Tough to be a Girl Scout in the City
- It’s Tough to Be a Girl Scout in the City
especially when practically every girl in the troop goes to Holy Family Catholic School, and you go to Henry Hudson Junior High, so practically every girl in the troop thinks she’s better than you, her parents willing to pay for her education.
You’ve let Yvette talk you into yet another initiation, this one seemingly less perilous than the baton twirling club she took you to—dozens of girls catching and twirling batons in an apartment building’s rec. room, some persistent despite being bonked in the head by batons speeding
their way down. You’re hoping this joining will be different, that you’ll make friends besides Yvette, who seems to have no trouble talking their talk, knowing their slang. With no prior history of scouting, you join at the Cadette level, a dangerous time when hormones and cattiness
are just kicking in, pimples erupting across your nose just in time for Saturday’s troop meeting, where you work towards sewing badges by piecing together fabric cut into bunny shapes, then stuffing the results. You like this work: the large embroidery needle,
the yarn you use as thread, the pre-cut patterns that are virtually foolproof, so that everyone takes home individual variations on the same calico rabbit. In weeks to come, you earn badges in Personal Hygiene, in Reading, in Needlework. And because there is no camp nearby,
the troop settles on a trip to Flushing Meadow Park, running relay races in the untamed splendor of Queens, your Physical Fitness badge only a third-place finish away, the day full of sprints, dashes, races where two girls stumble towards the finish line tied together at the ankles. [End Page 453]
Even this you don’t mind, careful to sew that badge on first on an old green vest you now use as your uniform’s vest, though you wish the uniforms were any other color than green. But slowly, over the following weeks, the troop’s one concern becomes a dance routine the girls from Holy Family
already know—intricate steps they perform in formation so that one misstep is all the more noticeable. You’re the only girl in the troop who consistently messes up, so you end up apologizing when you turn at the wrong time— facing left when everyone else on line is facing right,
turning right when everyone else has turned left. As far as you can tell, this dancing serves no purpose other than humiliation, fulfilling the requirements for no badge listed in your handbook. But you practice with them, vainly, hope they’ll stop soon, until
one Saturday they decide they’ll perform this routine for their parents, in sky-blue leotards everyone must wear. But that Saturday you forget your leotard, forget the steps, so that the girls from Holy Family think you’re a loser who can’t follow directions
or dance, and you wonder why these girls can’t follow the handbook’s simple credo: Be a sister to your fellowGirl Scout. They’d rather laugh instead at your public school clumsiness, your slow uncoordinated feet. So you toss your green vest
far in back of your closet, spend Saturday mornings at home in front of the TV, earning hours towards a badge you’re sure they don’t have—the badge of non-attendance, of teen sloth and laziness that has you
sprawled out on the floor, staring up at twenty-five year old cartoons on the old black-and-white, stuffing salty popcorn into your mouth in handfuls, refusing anyone’s calls, especially Yvette’s, the room yours alone, without sisters.
Selected works by Allison Joseph:
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• Summers on Screvin
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• On Sidewalks, on Streetcorners, As Girls
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• Playing Rough
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• Artist-in-Residence
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• It’s Tough to be a Girl Scout in the City
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• The Tenant
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• Señora Williams
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• Plenty
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• An Interview with Allison Joseph
