The One About The Cheerleading Picture
By Jennifer Batchelor
@jennbatchelor
I don’t remember the words that caused the tears to spill over. It wasn’t the first thing they said, I know that. Tears have never been my initial reaction to anything.
First, my jaw clenches and my chin lifts. I am defiance personified. Try and break me. I dare you. Then, my face flames with anger and embarrassment and I swallow, but nothing dislodges the boulder in my throat. Finally, my jaw tightens to the point of pain and I feel the prick of the tears I’ve been forcefully willing away. The first tears are always the hottest, as though they’re fueled by the strength I’ve been using to keep them at bay.
It’s always been this way. And they know it.
The two boys had a pact, you see. Their goal was to make me cry every Sunday. Sometimes they talked about how ugly I was: my flat chest, gapped teeth, and terrible fashion sense were their favorite targets. But often, their insults were more than skin deep. They ridiculed my obvious desire to fit in, they mocked the way I never did.
I like to think they varied their assaults for their own entertainment. It’s no fun to make someone cry the exact same way every single week. Takes no creativity. And then, of course, I probably could’ve steeled myself against an anticipated attack.
It was the unknown, I think, that was always my undoing. I can’t say for sure, because I don’t remember the specifics. I can’t quote a single insult they hurled at me; their voices don’t echo in my head anymore. The mind has a way of protecting itself, or so I’ve heard.
I don’t know which words they used to break me every week; I only know they hit their mark.
All I remember is the yellow and white tile of the bathroom I would flee to. I remember the way the metal door of the stall would squeak as I shut it. I don’t remember anyone coming to check on me.
I remember staying there the rest of Sunday School, finally emerging to splash my face with water so I could pretend like everything was fine. The last thing I needed was my mother noticing my red eyes or blotchy face and asking questions.
I never remember her noticing.
This happened every single Sunday for all of seventh grade.
***
My son keeps a photo of me on his dresser. I know that sounds super sweet, and you’re probably picturing a soft, dusk-lit image of me from a maternity shoot or maybe even one of the two of us, a tasteful black and white print from his newborn days.
It is neither of those things.
Instead, it’s a picture of me from seventh grade.
***
My grandparents were moving to a retirement community and downsizing all of their possessions. For weeks I received phone calls from my grandmother—did I want to come look through her serving pieces? Would I be interested in any of her holiday decorations? What about the toys they still had on hand; did I want to come and see if they had anything Nathan and Ellie would want?
At some point during my frequent stops by their house during those days, she handed me a large brown envelope.
“These are your pictures and things we’ve held onto over the years,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d like to have them.”
That night, Nathan—who was four or five at the time—wanted to look through the contents of the envelope. There were pictures from Grandparents’ Day at school and drawings I made for them. Snapshots from Christmases and birthday parties. Wallet-sized school photos from kindergarten through my senior year of high school. The program from my high school graduation. On the bottom of the stack was a framed photo, me in my seventh grade cheerleading uniform.
I could envision exactly where it had been displayed in my grandparents’ house—the middle of a set of three pictures, their grandchildren in their athletic pursuits. My brother, the year he was captain of the football team; my cousin in his karate uniform the day he earned his black belt; and me, the one year I participated in an organized sport.
I’ve always hated that picture. I remember trying to convince my grandmother more than once to take it down, or to at least replace it with a different one.
“But what would I put there?” she’d ask.
“I don’t know; literally anything else?” I’d say. Ideally something post-braces and discovering eyeliner, but really something—anything—from any other year would be fine.
She would laugh and wave me off, and the picture stayed where it was for 20 years. I learned to avert my eyes and, in time, I managed to forget it was there. Or, at least, I got really good at pretending like I forgot it was there.
Now my son sat with the picture I’ve spent my whole life avoiding in his hands.
“I didn’t know you were a cheerleader, Mom,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, shrugging dismissively. “I wasn’t really. They didn’t have tryouts or anything so there were about 50 of us. And I wasn’t any good.”
I started to gather the discarded photos and put them back in the envelope. I held out my hand for the cheerleading picture, but Nathan didn’t release it.
“Can I have it, bud? I need to put it up with the rest of these,” I said, fully intending to toss it, frame and all, in the trash.
“Actually, Mom, can I keep it in my room?”
“What? Why?”
“I like it; can I put it up in my room?”
I wanted to say no. In fact, I probably did say no. But he must’ve kept asking because eventually I acquiesced, and he carefully carried the frame to his room, where he used his step stool to place it on his dresser.
Four years later, it’s still there.
***
I have a hard time explaining my feelings about this picture, about 13-year-old me. On the surface, I’d say that I’m mad at her, although it’s never just anger with something like this. And then, too, why would I be mad at her? What did she do wrong? Am I mad at her simply for existing?
That hardly seems fair.
I’d like to think I’m not the same person anymore—not that I’m some great beauty now, but nobody’s made me cry lately by telling me how ugly I am either. I’ve learned how to wear makeup and fix my hair and dress my body. But that wasn’t the whole story back then, and it’s not the cure now.
At the root of that miserable, god-awful year was a girl who was terribly lonely and didn’t know what to do about it. In between Sundays spent crying in the third floor girls bathroom at church, she logged a lot of time by herself. Oh, sure, she had people to talk to in class and there was usually a place for her to sit at lunch in the cafeteria. It wasn’t that she was widely disliked, she just wasn’t liked enough to truly have a place where she belonged. She watched others and she tried to copy the things they did and said—which is how she ended up in that cheerleading uniform—but it never quite worked the same way for her. Her weekends were wide open—no sleepovers at a best friend’s house, because there was no best friend. No phone calls from boys or trips to the mall. Her mixed tape collection was the most impressive thing about her, what with the endless time she had to listen to the radio every night and record her favorite songs of the moment. But she listened to them like she did almost everything else: alone.
When I look at that picture, I wonder if I’m still that awkward girl who feels like she’ll never quite measure up. And worse, what if someone else finds out I’m still her? I am terrified of someone else finding out.
No, it’s never just anger with something like this.
So for 20 years, I tried avoidance. I attempted to pretend like that version of me never existed at all, because I thought remembering her meant the hurt and shame and loneliness of that season would all come roaring back.
And then my son set my seventh grade photo on his dresser. It turns out that coming face to face with the version of yourself you’re least comfortable with on a daily basis is like perpetual therapy.
I’m still embarrassed by seventh grade me. Spending any amount of time immersed in memories from that year is painful, and it’s deeply tempting to get mired in bemoaning “if I only knew then what I know now.”
But, in time, I’ve realized she was doing the best she could with what she had.
She still is, actually.
***
I asked Nathan the other day why he liked my cheerleading picture so much. He shrugged.
“I like the way you look in it, Mom. Your smile makes you look happy. You look like someone I could be friends with.”
He tied his shoes and grabbed his backpack, but before he could head out the door to the car behind his dad and sister, I grabbed him for one last hug.
“Remember to be brave and kind today, bud,” I whispered.
“I will, Mom,” he promised. I gave him a gentle squeeze and let go, but he hesitated.
“Mom, why do you always tell me to be brave and kind?”
Because of seventh grade me. The answer was there before I thought it. As much as I’ve tried to escape her, ignore her, distance myself from her … I am her. Every single decision in my life has been shaped by who I was then. It’s why I started writing—pouring my words onto the page made me feel less alone. At the age of 20, when the boy I’d had a crush on since seventh grade called and asked if I wanted to come watch a movie with him, I said yes that night for her. When he asked me to marry him five years later, I said yes then, too, for both of us.
And when I remind my children every single morning to be brave and kind at school, it’s for that version of myself, who so desperately needed someone brave enough to be kind to her.
But I didn’t say any of that to Nathan. It’s a story I’m still learning how to tell and one for another time.
“I remind you to be brave and kind because you already are,” I said. “It’s your superpower, and I want you to remember to use it.”
Nathan grinned and ducked out the door to school. Later that morning as I put his folded laundry away in the drawers of his dresser, my eyes landed on my seventh grade cheerleading picture.
You look like someone I could be friends with.
Maybe it’s not too late for kindness and bravery to find her after all.
Words and photo by Jennifer Batchelor.