With a sigh, Lorna finishes lacing up her sneakers and adjusts the duct tape on her book bag. "Ma!" she calls up the stairs, "We're leavin!"
"Wouldya quiet down!?" Her mother yells back, "I'm tryna get my beauty rest!"
"C'mon idiot," Franny snarls at her as she takes a hold of her arm and pulls her out the screen door, "You know not to bother her in the morning."
"But I was just…" Lorna trails off. She knows better than to argue with her sister. And besides she doesn't want to admit that her true reasoning was a pathetic attempt to win her mother's affection. She wishes that her mother would be like those on the sitcoms she watches. Maybe she could make her daughters ham sandwiches in the morning while she sips her coffee and then wishes them luck at school. She'd have curlers in her hair and wear a flowered bathrobe. She'd offer them breakfast, Eggo's on matching baby blue plates, but they'd be in too much of a rush to get to the schoolyard early to catch up with their friends. Instead, she'd pop the Eggo's into their mouths as they ran past, breakfast was the most important meal of the day after all, slip the sandwiches into their waiting backpacks and plant a kiss on each of their heads…
"EEEEREEEECH!" A blaring horn jolts Lorna out of her fantasy. In the real world, she had nearly walked in front of a speeding truck.
"What the hell is with you today? Are you going pazzo like ma?"
"No, Franny, I just have a lot on my mind, okay," Lorna hated it when Franny interlaced her speech with Italian. It made her sound like their father or their mobster uncle, which was very un-chic.
"Whatever," Franny rolls her eyes and runs to catch up with her guido friends in their corner of the schoolyard. Lorna knows she could join them if she wanted to, but she likes to hang out with a more in crowd. She takes a deep breath, adjusts her collar and skirt, and walks over to Jessica Randley, Ashley Warren and their crowd of cronies.
"Ooh look it's Lorna Morell-oh," Jessica sneers, emphasizing the vowel ending to Lorna's last name, "What are you wearing today? Hand-me-downs or Goodwill?" The crowd of girl erupts in a bubble of laughter.
Blinking back tears, Lorna laughs right along with them. "Actually," she chokes out, trying her hardest to diminish her heavy Brooklyn accent, "This skirt is from the Sears catalogue."
This makes the girls laugh even harder. "I hear her mother got addicted to plastic surgery and that's why they have no money," one of the girls whispers to another, "That's probably to please the old man she married. Before all her surgeries she was so ugly she was destined to be an old spinster, and that's the last thing any girl wants, believe me."
This conversation makes Lorna very angry. Her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and Lorna wants to be just like her when she grows up. Sure, she would be a little more involved in her future children's lives, but she wants to grow up and get married and have wavy hair and red lipstick just like her mother. Lorna does not appreciate these girls bad-mouthing her mother in such a way. She feels the anger building up inside of her like a kettle about to boil. Before she knows it she's flying through the air wildly waving her fists and kicking her legs.
A few minutes later Lorna is sitting on a hard back chair in the school's main office. She can hear her father yelling and her mother's disinterested tone from inside the principal's office. Every once in a while, a secretary or teacher or student passes by the office and stops for a second to listen to what's going on. Every time this happens Lorna hangs her head a little bit lower. "I have to control my anger," Lorna says quietly to herself, "I have to focus on becoming beautiful like Ma so I can get married and leave this horrible place."
"What did you say, honey?" The secretary asks Lorna.
"Nothing, ma'am," Lorna replies quietly as she sinks further into her chair, praying that the scene will soon be over.