Eleven

By the time I was eleven, the church had relaxed its strictness about what women could show and wear. But since I was a child, the new rules didn't affect me. Except for church and school, where I had to wear dresses, I continued to wear my usual attire: pants and t-shirt.

Whereas my sister, Judy, went from a pretty child to a beautiful teenager (at thirteen she was often mistaken for twenty-one), I went from ugly to ugly. My hair was baby fine, thin and unruly; I wore glasses, and because I refused to stop sucking my thumb, my two front teeth stuck so far out I couldn't close my mouth.

Hazel had moved us from the inner city to the suburbs of Irvington, and I was just beginning to feel at home at our new address when Mother made an announcement that would rock everyone's world and, if her mother was right, it would send her straight to hell.