When Only a Friend Will Do
“Where are the Emmas?” my husband asks.
“The Emmas are up in Emma’s room,” I answer.
The plural “Emmas” has been a common word in our house for 13 years, since my daughter Emma met her friend Emma on the playground when they were 9 months old. Maybe if they were named Jenny they never would have met in the mob of Jennys. But the names stood out and the friendship lasted. Las Emmas, Emma K and Emma J, are about to graduate from junior high.
I have dozens of pictures of the Emmas together--with their play group, in frilly dresses on the first day of nursery school, in Brownie uniforms, in Oshkosh overalls and finally in Guess? jeans. But the picture that stands out most is the one of the two of them on their first Halloween--my Emma, a fat little angel with wings; the other Emma, a bald-headed clown.
Today I listen to them argue over who’s better looking--Johnny Depp or Rob Lowe or Charlie Sheen or Tom Cruise. “Ralph Macchio is ‘hell of fine’. . .” says Emma Jepsen, using the favorite phrase of the moment. “Mom, are you listening?” yells Emma Kahn.
I observe them working their hair, making bangs stand and deliver, contemplating quadruple piercings of their ears, complaining from deep in the trenches of balled-up clothes about how they have nothing to wear. But I see only the bald clown and the fat angel asking for more juice in their Timmy Tippy cups.
I don’t tell them that I see the children they are trying to hide under Maybelline eyeliner and Sea Plasma hair conditioner. I know how hard it is to be a girl-woman. I can remember what 13 was like, how it felt to look in the mirror and see nothing but one pimple, one pimple on my nose. One centimeter to the outside world--big as the Ritz to me.
That’s when a girl needs a friend, someone with authority to tell her she looks OK. A mother can’t do it. A mother can’t be trusted because a mother doesn’t see a young woman whose life is being ruined by a pimple. A mother sees a fat angel playing dress-up.
The mother also needs the friend. I have always counted on the Other Emma to tell me what’s going on. Eager to drive her home, I pump her mercilessly for any glimpse of my daughter’s life. That bald clown will tell me anything. We all know this game is going on. After I come home from driving the Other Emma home, my Emma immediately calls her to find out what I know.
If I want to know the latest slang, if I want to talk about “caps” and “marks” and “icy clothes” and “butt-ugly boys,” I’ll have to do it with the Other Emma. My Emma finds my interest totally humiliating.
But sometimes they will form a united front, making it impossible to talk to either one about a subject. A while back, the Emmas, Susie (the Other Emma’s mother) and I went out to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. The girls were in heaven. Once Susie and I had them intoxicated on fries, Cokes and a promise of the coveted sweat shirt, we got to the hidden agenda.
“So, girls,” I began with a casual tone, “Susie and I were wondering if you had any questions about sex?” Without batting an eyelash or saying a word, without conferring, with that absolute certainty that comes from having been comrades in diapers together, the fat angel and the bald clown stood up and marched out of the restaurant.