---
Joanne is three.
She prides herself on knowing a lot of things. She can read, for one thing, which is the accomplishment she feels is greatest. She does not remember the day, exactly, on which she first learned to read, which she considers disappointing because it would be nice to have that memory. All grown-ups know how to read, and none of them remember how they learned, so it would be good to grow up and be able to remember. But nevertheless, try as she might, Joanne cannot uncover that memory or differentiate it from the other ones.
Joanne knows other things, too. She knows how to count up to ten – one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten. She knows her name and address and phone number, but Momma and Daddy say not to tell that to anyone. She also knows Momma and Daddy's names, which are even worse to say around town because not a lot of people like Momma and Daddy. Joanne vaguely understands that it has something to do with their having dark skin, but she doesn't know what that has to do with anything. Like Daddy says sometimes, though, "people can be silly." Joanne thinks it's very silly for people to not like people just because they have a different color skin, but grown-ups are weird.
There is one other important thing that Joanne knows, which is considered by many to be far ahead of her age. Because most three-year-olds do not understand the concept of money, she is certainly considered abnormal. But yes, Joanne knows about money. She knows that Momma and Daddy have more money than most people, and that they live in a prettier house than most people, and have a nice car that a lot of people don't. And she knows that Momma and Daddy help people who are in trouble. According to Daddy, when one grown-up says something mean about someone else, they get to go to a really sparkly building and fight about it using big words. Momma and Daddy help people fight about it and help people get money. And when Joanne grows up, that's what she's gonna do, too.
That's what Joanne's been taught, anyway. And since grown-ups are usually right, she doesn't know why she would ever question it.
----
Joanne is four.
One day, coming home from preschool, Joanne has a new development to share with Momma and Daddy. Since they're both at work, she waits until dinnertime, when everyone is home and settled and comfortable. That is when she announces that she has a new friend, a best friend, whose name is Adelaide and who smiles a lot. Joanne, who smiles relatively infrequently unless she's playing with Daddy, has always taken a special interest in people who are particularly different from her. Adelaide, a light-skinned girl with pretty hazel eyes, scarlet hair and a recurrent smile, is as different from Joanne as night from day. In contrast to Joanne's stiff, financial comfort, Adelaide's family is very poor, plentiful in its numbers, and artistic.
In five days of Momma and Daddy's nail-biting as Joanne returns from school, a tighter and tighter bond between the two girls is established. Adelaide, who loves to paint and often has an entire rainbow smudged over her hands, arms, and cheeks, encourages Joanne to let loose and be artistic as well. At first, Joanne is cautious and unsure, but Adelaide insists, and Joanne returns from school one day with a Play-Doh sculpture of her house, popsicle-stick people scattered throughout – most of them are colored brown, but the smallest popsicle stick is accompanied by an equally small rainbow-colored person. It is from that day forward that Momma and Daddy cease their negative feelings towards Joanne's friendship with Adelaide. It is clear that there is an enormous profit from every moment the girls spend together, even the times where they just giggle together and talk about the boys in their class and how they get cooties on all the best toys.
One day Joanne races down the steps and tells Momma and Daddy that she wants to marry Adelaide. When her parents look at her in bewilderment, Joanne informs them, "You marry your best friend, right? Well, Addie's mine." Momma and Daddy have nothing to say to that, and although they agree with Joanne for the most part, they wonder if she ought to be playing with more boys from her class as well.
-----
Joanne is five.
She is aghast to discover that she and Adelaide will be separated for their grade school years. Although Joanne had the dubious privilege of attending a public preschool, Momma and Daddy feel that there is no better place for their darling girl than a private school. When they see how much this pains Joanne, however, and the temper tantrums she almost pulls but turns into shouting matches instead, they contact Adelaide's family and offer to pay for half of the young artist's tuition. Although they appreciate the offer, Adelaide's parents explain that they couldn't possibly, and promise that the girls will spend time together before and after school, on weekends, and over holidays. But Joanne and Adelaide, seeing this unfortunate turn of events as the end of the world, cross their arms and silently protest.
Adelaide tries pouting. Joanne tries careful debate, which, again, eventually turns into frustrated shouting. Everyone has their breaking point, and Joanne even feels added frustration when seeing Adelaide's "babyish" method of attempting to get what she wants. "We're big kids now," she tells Adelaide, but to no avail. Adelaide remains stoic in her beliefs that a pout and a promise to color a picture for her momma and daddy will always work out. Neither tactic is successful. (Although it must be said that Momma and Daddy are greatly amused by watching Adelaide's attempts, as are Adelaide's parents in watching Joanne.)
At last, September the second rolls around, and Adelaide and Joanne – who had a sleepover the night before – roll out of bed and pull on their respective school clothes. Joanne, wearing a knee-length plaid skirt, tights, Mary Janes and a button-down collared shirt, is hardly recognized by an aghast Adelaide. Adelaide, on the other hand, outfitted in sneakers, paint-stained jeans, and a tank top, causes Joanne's jaw to drop as she exclaims, "They let you wear that to big-kid school?" Adelaide's question is much the same, and she – raised, as she was, by liberal parents – wonders how a school can get away with stomping a child's individuality. She proposes the question to Joanne, but when no response comes, the only possible answer is that some children simply do not have enough individuality to function without guidelines. Adelaide wonders if Joanne is one of these people.
------
Joanne is six.
Surprisingly, she finds that she learns well enough without Adelaide constantly pulling on her sleeve and demanding that she share the crayons. In first grade, Joanne is startled to discover, there aren't any crayons – at least, not most of the time. First grade is all about learning words and numbers. In most cases, first grade is about learning letters and numbers, and maybe the occasional bright student will learn something more, but in this particular private school, an ability to read is mandatory before attending first grade. Joanne likes to think that she perfected that particular skill long before she was three, and although this isn't quite the case, Momma and Daddy and Mrs. Thompson let her think that, as long as her reading remains flawless – which, for the most part, it is.
All in all, first grade is a breeze for Joanne. Understanding as she does that one plus one is two, and two plus two is four – all the way up until five plus five is ten – she is able to relax most of the time. Or she would, if it weren't for the annoying boy who sits next to her. His name is Billy, and his most noteworthy physical characteristics are wicked blue eyes, a fiendish smile, extraordinarily pale skin, and long, loose limbs that flop around when he plays dodgeball at recess. As for the traits that Joanne sees in him, he is constantly humming some song or another, his sleeves are always rolled up – which is, by the way, against the school dress code – and he takes a twisted pleasure in leaning over and ruining whatever assignment Joanne is working on.
After about a month of complaining about Billy, Joanne's prayers seem to be answered. Momma, Daddy, Mrs. Thompson, Joanne, Billy, and Billy's parents sit together in the first grade classroom, with Joanne and Billy playing with the indoor-recess toys while their parents talk. Joanne catches a few snippets of the conversation, and when Billy's parents are asked to briefly leave the room, Momma and Daddy and the dark-skinned Mrs. Thompson urgently whisper about racism. Later, Joanne asks Momma what racism means, and Momma tells her in a mournful tone, "Hopefully something you'll never have to deal with," before kissing her daughter on the forehead and wishing her a good night's sleep.
-------
Joanne is seven.
She steadily becomes surrounded by competition. In school, rivalry is almost encouraged – between the grades, between each homeroom class in a grade, between the intelligence levels (feigned by the administration to have no impact on one's class placement), between the three school "houses," named after the school founders, and so on. At home, Joanne is pressured by Momma and Daddy to do better in school, so that she can get into a good college – eleven years from the present, but still considered to be a "big deal." After all, Momma and Daddy say, no university is going to want to accept someone who didn't get all A's in second grade. This causes Joanne to pale and return to her homework, perfecting her penmanship, spelling, and grammar.
When Adelaide's painting of "peace on Earth" is accepted into the finals of the seven-and-eight-year-old category of an artwork contest, Joanne watches carefully. From what she hears of the competition, the assignment was to use one's preferred kind of artwork – paints, crayons, pastels, markers, and so on – to illustrate one's "greatest wish." Having known for a long time that Adelaide and her family are deeply interested in world peace, Joanne is not surprised, but is greatly impressed by the extent of her friend's artwork abilities. When she herself attempts to make a painting for a contest, she receives a letter congratulating her on having tried, but even at seven, she is not fooled into thinking that that in any way resembles acceptance into the competition's higher levels.
Joanne desperately searches for something at which she can excel, and finds it in her nearly-flawless grades in school. It seems unimportant – like something that people tend not to care about – but then remembers that the only grown-ups she knows that care about art are Adelaide's parents, so she decides that fine art probably is looked down upon in the adult world much more than academic achievement is. She suggests this to her parents, and they nod, telling Joanne that the only way she will succeed as a grown-up is if she gets good grades. Joanne takes these words to heart, knowing and repeating to herself that only the best rise to the top. She sets her paint sets from years prior aside and begins to focus on what she is taught "really matters."
--------
Joanne is eight.
It comes as a surprise to Joanne to find that people change, and in third grade now, she reflects on the classmates she's known since kindergarten and reviews the many personality traits they once had that are now completely different. The only time this seems not to apply is in Adelaide's case, because the occasionally stubborn, always free-thinking individual hasn't changed a bit since Joanne first met her. Others, however, have – such as the students in her class, conditioned to think as a pack but rarely managing to do so.
Before turning her attention to other students who have changed – Billy, for example, once obnoxious but now funny and friendly and one of Joanne's acquaintances – Joanne thinks of herself. She knows that she has changed over the years, but cannot think of in what respects. Maybe one altered feature of her personality is that she is no longer as co-dependent on Adelaide as she once was. Joanne struggles now to be her own person, but as a third-grader in a private school with expectant parents, she wonders how this could possibly be. Then there is the fact that she was once afraid of irrational things – the dark, for example, and strangers – but now she feels that she could not possibly be harmed by them.
Joanne is now old enough and observant enough to recognize what personality traits will clash with others – for example, she knows better than to introduce the stubborn Adelaide to equally stubborn Billy, because the two think differently but each refuses to adapt to another person's ideas. She applies this to other situations as well – she knows that her adoring first-grade teacher Mrs. Thompson would not get along well with third-graders, because Mrs. Thompson's teaching philosophy relies on the children not knowing much else other than what they are being taught. Joanne turns to herself yet again, wondering if she fits into the philosophy that third-grade teacher Mr. Anderson seems to use – that students yearn to know more above all things. Joanne wonders if this is even the case for her, or if she craves something else above even that. Certainly more than she craves knowledge, Joanne craves acceptance, and wonders when that gift-wrapped delight will come hurtling her way, and if it will hurt when it slams into her arms.
---------
Joanne is nine.
While assured by Adelaide that in public schools, such things do not happen, Joanne's school is hosting a dance for the fourth- and fifth-graders. "The boys," Daddy tells her solemnly, "have to ask the girls. That's how it works." So Joanne impatiently taps her foot on the floor while this is discussed during recess, hoping that someone – a particular boy whose name starts with B and ends with I-L-L-Y – will ask her to the dance. In first grade, she recalls, Billy was an obnoxious jerk, but now all she knows about his current personality is that he is funny, one of Joanne's good friends, and good-looking. These, she decides, are good enough qualities to find in a guy before wanting to go on a date with him.
As steadily more and more people are "taken" for the dance, Joanne decides to take matters into her own hands. (After consulting with Momma, it is deemed acceptable for a nine-year-old girl to ask her classmate to attend a school dance with her.) She approaches Billy one morning and, wringing her hands, calmly asks him what he is doing on the night of the dance. When Billy pauses before answering, Joanne hastily cuts in, "I was just wondering if you'd like to go with me."
His once-evil smile now turns sweet, and he nods in agreement. "I'd love to," he replies, and Joanne waits for the catch – but there isn't one.
The night of the dance rolls around soon enough, and Joanne finds herself chatting with her bright, friendly, entertaining classmate, whose floppy brown hair keeps falling into his eyes and making him look even cuter than he already does. At the end of the night, when Momma and Daddy pick Joanne up from the school, Joanne offers to give Billy a ride home, which he accepts. Using all her knowledge of movies and popular culture, Joanne escorts the boy to his doorstep and informs him that she had a really great night. Billy nods and echoes her sentiments, and just as the porch light flickers on, Joanne closes her eyes in anticipation of a kiss. When she opens them about a minute later after feeling nothing, Billy is gone and Joanne's lips are still puckered in front of her. The front door is closed, the hallway lights on, and Momma and Daddy are waiting in the car.
----------
Joanne is ten.
When she arrives home from school one day, she finds Momma's car in the driveway and the lights turned on inside. This is startling – the only person at home during weekdays between the hours of eight and four is the cleaning lady, but she usually leaves by one, at the latest – long before Joanne's school lets out. Plus, Momma is usually at work from seven until five, if not later, but Joanne can clearly see her silhouette in an upstairs window. Alarmed, the ten-year-old runs into the house, backpack and jacket dangling from her shoulders as she runs. When she comes to a stop in Momma's room, she finds Momma on the phone, leaning against the head of the bed.
The first few things Joanne notices that are odd about Momma is that, for one thing, she is in her "home" clothes rather than the suits she usually wears to work. She has her makeup off – or smeared, maybe, because there are black lines running down her face. Her hair, usually in a tight something-or-other, is now bunched up at her neck and shoulders, tangled. "Hi, Joanne," she croaks, and Joanne goes to sit beside her, asking what's wrong. After much persuasion, Momma finally tells Joanne what happened – she was visiting a juvenile client in a detention center in a bad neighborhood, and when she left, discovered that spray-painted on her car hood was a particularly vulgar racist derogatory term.
Joanne rubs circles on Momma's back, not knowing what else to do. "They don't know you," she assures Momma. "They don't know who you are on the inside. They just know you're black." Never particularly good at comforting, she does her best, and thinks that maybe it's enough – Momma breaks into a small smile, thanks her daughter, and promises that she will do all she can to keep Joanne from being exposed to so cruel a world. Joanne shakes her head. "I'm going to have to face it someday," she points out. "Sheltering me isn't going to change that."
-----------
Joanne is eleven.
After receiving a D-minus on a partnered project for which Joanne worked with an irresponsible boy-creature named Robert, she decides to give up boys altogether. This is not simply meant in a romantic sense, nor a friendly sense – she simply no longer wants anything to do with individuals of the masculine sex. The two exceptions are Daddy and Billy, both of whom are nice and intelligent enough to understand how to behave around other people, and that it isn't normal to just laze around eating popcorn while the person with whom you are sharing responsibility for something has to do all the work. Or if it is normal, it certainly isn't right.
Girls, Joanne decides, make much more sense. They are predictable – it is always clear how girls will react to certain situations. With boys, it is quite the opposite: some of them react calmly, some aggressively, some indifferently, and still others with a confusing sort of smugness that makes Joanne want to smack them. With Daddy, it is the first and with Billy the fourth, but individuals who react in the second or third category are simply intolerable.
Another problem with boys is that they are simply stupid. Girls, on the other hand, understand things. They know what they are talking about – for the most part – and stick to their convictions. Unlike boys, that is, whose opinions change whenever it suits them and sometimes when it doesn't.
Yet another problem with boys, Joanne finds, is that they are simply not attractive. But when she considers this more carefully and realizes that so many girls she knows do find boys attractive, she wonders if perhaps the problem is not with boys – but with herself.
It is not until years later when Joanne realizes that this is hardly a problem at all, save for in the eyes of those that are intolerant, prejudiced, or heterosexual males with feelings for a lesbian.
------------
Joanne is twelve.
In a private school where nearly everyone is white, overachieving, and bubbly, Joanne has always felt slightly out-of-place. Although certain people make a real effort to include her and make her seem like part of the community, she knows better than to think that it is really her place, among them. Besides, it is hard to take their offers as genuine, the friendship offerings of the girls that Joanne knows give her strange looks as she walks by.
Longing to be accepted but unwilling to alter her personality, Joanne tries everything she can. She joins after-school clubs and activities, such as choir – at which she excels, by the way, but is shunned for her skin and for her voice, the latter of which is far better than her classmates' and certainly very different. She joins the debate team, and although she does well in that area too, it is hard to show how prevalent she is when her teammates make a point of "going easy on her."
Her last valiant attempt is, thinking of Adelaide, to join the art club. Although Joanne has little to no skill whatsoever when it comes to art, she does enjoy looking at it and trying to decipher what different pieces may mean. So one day after school, she slowly enters the art room. She first discovers that the students' hands are covered with multicolored markings, and the teacher's frizzy hair is flecked with rainbow – much like Adelaide's. Joanne feels a pang of wishing Adelaide were here before slowly mumbling, "I'm not so good at this."
"That's perfectly all right," states the teacher, and without an ounce of trepidation, Joanne sets pastel to paper and begins what later vaguely resembles a masterpiece.
-------------
Joanne is thirteen.
Billy, still among Joanne's closest friends, shyly extends an envelope to her. When Joanne quizzically slits the envelope open, Billy explains, "It's my Bar Mitzvah. I wanted you to come." Joanne, who of course knows what a Bar Mitzvah is but never imagined that she would be invited to one, immediately checks the box labeled "yes" on the repondez, s'il vous plait (R.S.V.P.) card. She offers her thanks and congratulations to Billy, who blushes and mutters that he isn't halfway done with his studies yet. Joanne checks the date of the occasion on the card – November the eleventh – and playfully tells her friend that he'd better get working. With an equally playful swat on Joanne's shoulder, Billy walks back over to his other friends, leaving Joanne to stare at the card in awe.
When the eleventh rolls around, Joanne – in a sleeveless silver dress and the Mary Janes she is still obligated to wear for school – is surprised to find that Billy's party has a "guest of honor" – apart from Billy himself, that is. In fact, she finds him kissing this "guest of honor," and when she goes to investigate more closely, a tumble of red curls over a rainbow dress reveals the girl's identity. "Adelaide?" Joanne asks in bewilderment. An almost-abashed (but still glowing) Billy pokes his head out from against the wall and grins at Joanne.
"You know her?" he asks, obviously amused. Joanne, instead of answering, pulls Adelaide away from Billy and prepares to deliver a speech on not being flighty, when Adelaide insists that Joanne needs to calm down and stop being so "anal retentive." Joanne's hand quivers, ready to slap her friend, when a slow song comes on and Billy smiles shyly and asks if it would calm Joanne down to dance with him. She agrees, as casually as can, and allows Billy to usher her onto the dance floor.
By the end of the evening, however, though she and Billy and Adelaide are all friends again, Joanne knows that what she wants with Billy is nothing more than friendship. In fact, that may be the case with all boys, she realizes with a jolt – she is far more entertained with catching a glimpse of Adelaide's vertically-slipping dress than eyeing, as Adelaide does, the triangle in the upper center of Billy's pants.
--------------
Joanne is fourteen.
A favorite holiday of Joanne's that isn't even really a holiday is the nationally acclaimed "Take Your Child To Work Day." For the Jeffersons, it is simply a matter of deciding which parent should take Joanne, and, knowing as she does that she went to work with paperwork-specialist Momma the year before, chooses to go to work on this particular year with Daddy – who has a trial scheduled for that very day. She has never seen a trial before, and with her notebook poised on her lap, Joanne watches.
Daddy is representing a clean-cut suburban woman who claims that her neighbors constantly "disturb the peace" by throwing loud drinking parties. But according to investigation, the parties are completely drug-free and exclusive of minors – thus giving this woman less of a case. Although loud music is audible from the parties, they take place only on occasions where everyone is loud – Christmas Eve, for example, and New Year's Eve. Joanne watches carefully as the red-faced woman sputters her case, with Daddy shaking his head in almost-amusement.
Joanne does not expect Daddy to win the case. When she hears the defendants' side of the story, she is even more cemented in her belief that Daddy will lose. For one thing, the defendants are much more reasonable than the plaintiff is, and for another, one member of their group – Cassandra Dopfrey – is, by Joanne's standards, utterly gorgeous. Considering, however, that the latter reason holds no meaning in a fair trial (if there is such a thing), Joanne also takes into account the fact that truthfully, there's nothing wrong with having a drinking party on Christmas or New Year's Eve. Is there?
Joanne chalks it up to a suburban justice system when the plaintiff wins the case, and she quietly mumbles something about unfairness before following Daddy into the car and back home. When he asks her what she thought of the trial, Joanne replies that he did a good job, but that's it.
Daddy watches Joanne's retreating back as she ascends the stairs, wondering quite how his daughter will turn out. On second thought, he thinks to himself, it's probably better not to know until the time comes. He has his guesses, however, and is not at all surprised when Joanne proposes that they have a Christmas Eve party.
---------------
Joanne is fifteen.
She has always hated gym, communal locker rooms, and the way sweat sliding off one's body after gym class always makes people double-take at certain girls – even when one is a girl herself – and find them attractive. In this case, Joanne cannot staring at a certain girl who goes by the name of Monique, her skin the same color as Joanne's own, stringy dark hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head. A loner like Joanne herself, Monique has few friends, and so Joanne decides that it is much less risky to stare at Monique than the other, equally beautiful, alternative – the highly popular Lea, whose olive skin twinkles just the same way.
Overcome by her attraction to Monique, Joanne loses control for the first time in her life and plants a kiss right on Monique's lips.
The reaction is immediate: Monique, who is obviously not interested in Joanne, pushes the other girl away and dashes across the room, shrieking about freaks and immoral behavior. Moments later, an isolated Joanne is surrounded by the gym teacher and a still-trembling Monique, acting as though she is afraid that Joanne might spring some sort of lesbianism on her.
Later, Joanne sits in her room, waiting for Momma and Daddy to come home so she can hear what they have to say. But then, she tells herself, she was promised once, by Momma and Daddy, that they would stand by her whatever path in life she decided to take. Even if they don't, she knows that there is nothing they can do, even if they wanted to change this about their daughter – and Joanne can hardly see them wanting her to change. She is, after all, their child. The least they can do, if not support her, is to accept her for who and what she is.
----------------
Joanne is sixteen.
After having kept her "queer" thoughts and desires to herself for so long, Joanne feels amazingly free. She no longer has to obsess over changing the location of the key to her journal twice a day, for one thing, and she feels that now she is officially permissible to stare at girls for exactly the length of time that most girls stare at boys – before, that is, abashedly blushing and looking away. Joanne doesn't exactly blush, per se, but she does close her eyes briefly and demand of herself how she could have been so stupid to get caught staring. But above all, Joanne's favorite thing about being "out" is that she can now officially discuss with Billy the different people she thinks are "cute." It is without question her favorite activity in the world.
Second to staring at girls and discussing them with Billy comes another activity Joanne loves – traveling. Fortunately for her, Momma and Daddy decide to reward their daughter's remarkable efforts in school with a trip to the city of her choice. Joanne selects New York, because she has always wanted to go there, and chips in some money to allow Billy to come as well. (Joanne delightedly later confides in Billy that it would have been impossible to chip in any amount of money for Adelaide to come, considering her lesbianism, and wonders if she should point this out to certain heterosexual girls looking for a way to get their boyfriends to come along on vacation. Billy then points out that the fact that Joanne is a lesbian doesn't make him gay, and nothing prevents him from springing a kiss on her at any moment. "Except," Joanne chides to him, "manners and common sense.")
On the trip, Joanne spends more time with Billy than she does with anyone else. While Momma and Daddy explore museums on the Upper West Side, she and her friend take voyages into the West Village, also known as Greenwich Village – the land of funky bookstores, chic mini-shops, and, of course, the famed Christopher Street. That happens to be where Joanne and Billy spend most of their time – perusing Christopher Street, the most famous gay neighborhood in the country. Billy informs his friend that she is the only person in the world who could get him to do such a thing, and Joanne points out that it's probably because she's his only female friend, and had he taken a male friend along, people of Christopher Street would get an entirely wrong idea.
With a "one hour warning" before Billy and the Jeffersons are set to take their train back home, the two teenagers make a last-minute voyage to the East Village. Like the West Village, it is known as a "funky" mini-city of Manhattan, and as they try to take in the pure and true bohemia in the last five minutes they have to spare, Joanne groans loudly and says that this being the place with the most culture in all city – from what she has seen, anyway – it is tremendously unfair that she has to leave so "early."
"Maybe you'll come back someday," Billy tells her, and with that, they depart.