I was born Alice with an "i," named for my paternal grandmother
who lived to be 102. Alyce with a "y" was my own doing at
age fourteen, an affectation adopted when, weary of being Gooned and
Wonderlanded to death, I took matters into my own hands, and for several
weeks, experimented in the margins of every textbook I had with all
the possibilities of Alice:
Ales, Alis, Alys, Alyse, Alyce, Allyce, Alyss, Allys,
Allyss, Allysse
Reinvention has long been the American way. Adolescent girls are
no exception. Long before "empowerment" became the buzz
word of self-help philosophies, I had an inkling, as many teenage
girls did, that self-naming was potent stuff. Envious I was of a girl
I knew whose parents had given her a choice of names, and another
who simply selected one in a singular rite of passage that allowed
her to be the person of her own making.
My middle name, the equally vintage Louise, was no help, though I
did briefly consider "Lou," which struck me as appropriately
hip and androgynous. I could imagine myself strolling the halls of
school being nodded to and acknowledged as Lou, which had the gorgeous
tight monosyllabic ring of "cool" when said correctly. Cool,
aloof Lou, tough and elegant all at once. But how to go from Alice
to Lou without a scene change, without the curtain dropping to mark
the passage of time? I'd already been unsuccessful in my attempts
to get classmates to call me what I was often called at home: Al and
Ali. How much longer was I to be plagued by the disgusted inflections
of one popular girl in junior high who, sauntering confidently by
in her slingbacks and pastel shells, resorted to an exaggerated nasal
intonation of " Here comes A-lus Mi-ller"
every time she passed that made me want to wipe the smudge that was
me off the sole of my own antiquated saddle shoe.
I was still shadowed by the old disaster in third grade when, in
a fit of impulse, I announced the first day to my teacher that my
name was "Alice Louise." I had recently met a girl named
Patty Ann, and thought the double name exotic, that by combining both
first and middle names I too could be as wonderful as Patty Ann. But
two days later, when I was still me, only now filled with remorse
after hearing how "Loo-weez" was reminiscent of my
labored breathing during asthma attacks, I consulted privately with
the teacher about my error. "Please," I whispered desperately,
"just call me Alice." A rock-hard, unsympathetic woman with
dyed red hair and drawn-in eyebrows, she stared me down. "You
told me your name was Alice Louise, and Alice Louise it is."
Hoist with my own petard, I had no one but myself to blame, and suffered
accordingly for the next nine months of my life the double whammy
of my false double name.
This was the era of Anns, Debbies, Barbaras, Lindas, Susies, Pams,
Pattys, Judys, and Carols. Renee, Donna, Michelle, Tonya, Marsha,
Phyllis, and Wanda could also be embraced. Mary and Sarah on the right
girl (Sara, if she was really cool) could even be rambunctious and
naughty. But quaint Alice "sounded like somebody's grandma's
name," as one girl put it. It was right up there with Agnes or
Blanche or Zelda or Hester. The name "Alice," from the pot-heavy
Germanic "adalhaidis," means "noble and of good cheer."
I was neither. Alice Blue Gown, an old man called me once, and to
my humiliation started to sing the song. I froze. No one under the
age of 80 had my name. Careless listeners made matters worse by distorting
my name into Alison (how did two syllables become three?) as if Alice
weren't a possibility, and even the oddly sonorous "Olive,"
which some childhood playmates mistakenly called me, struck me as
equally problematic.
So there was distinct relief when others at school first glimpsed
the new spelling of my name which I'd written conspicuously on a sheet
of notebook paper. It was ninth grade, my first year of high school.
I had just been transformed over the summer, with little ado, Alyce
with a "y." Cool spelling, did you change it? Or
I never noticed you spelled your name with a y. That alone
was worth its weight in gold. My response was the offhand shrug of
someone too occupied with more important matters than to notice if
someone knew the proper spelling of my name. The proof was in the
returned work when teachers addressed me as Alyce with a "y."
You could hear it in their voices. The spelling took root. There was
salvation.
The arrival of an elegant pair of sisters to our school from Chicago
retrieved me briefly out of my outcast state as "the only Alyce
my age in a hundred-mile radius." The younger sister, in my grade,
was the sophisticated Kay, a brown-skinned beauty with an elegant
chignon and a statuesque build who genteelly towered over us all,
and with her carefully kohlled eyes and pencilled in brows easily
passed for twenty. Her older sister, a junior, not as beautiful, but
equally poised, was unbelievably Alice too, only her spelling was
the even more unusual "Ales," one that I'd considered, but
rejected for its lack of orthographic beauty. Though Ales in the flesh
was a bookworm and study hound, she nonetheless was courted by all
the cool kids, white and black, for friendship, and attended all the
right black parties, though neither she nor her sister ever dated
local boys. Each, it was rumored with all the attendant suggestiveness,
was going with someone "from out of state," which alluded
to cosmopolitan lives beyond our small college town.
Spoken aloud, Ales and Alyce were almost the same which, by extension,
meant that some of "Ales" rubbed off on "Alyce,"
elevating it even more. Alyce with a "y" now had a new association
beyond Goon and Wonderland, and signified something far more elegant
than my own paltry self. It was no longer an old-fashioned Victorian
name on a lacy Valentine, weighted down with flowers and hearts and
bow-and-arrow hoisting cherubs. It was no longer the spunky girl who
fell down the rabbit hole, nor the monstrous creature pursuing Popeye.
It was no longer the little girl who ran around with Jerry in those
antiquated readers from another generation. The "y," the
amphibious consonant and vowel letter, had pried open a touch of exotic
space, offered up some breathing room, just quirky enough to suggest
edginess, and the hint of mystery I so desperately sought.
About the time I became Alyce with a "y," a few other things
turned unexpectedly in my favor. A brief period of respite. Suddenly,
my unruly, curly hair came into vogue, and all the pressed, ironed,
straightened, chemically altered hair of the other girls went out.
Afros bloomed. Tangled hippie hair was in. Curly, kinky hair was in.
I was in good shape. It was as if Alyce with a "y" coincided
with a fashion that finally, albeit briefly, included my wild-haired,
skinny, lanky self. Gone was the agony of darts in blouses, designed
for the chesty and rocket-breasted. Gone was the terror of no hips
in shifts made to accommodate voluptuous figures. Gone was skinny,
dreary Alice who moped around in silent agony. For a brief period,
Alyce with a "y" emerged from invisibility and stared teasingly
back at me from the pages of fashion magazines. I was seventeen years
old and for one whole year, enjoyed an unexpected and short-lived
burst of acceptance.
For years, post-spelling change, my parents persisted with the "i,"
out of perverseness, I suspected, though I would correct them in the
next missive by exaggerating the y. It was a silent, pointless battle,
they assuming I was rebelling, and I assuming it was their last-ditch
effort to maintain control. Use alone made the name legal, so I never
got to have the day in court I'd fully envisioned÷me striding down
the aisle to face the black-robed judge and explain the change, and
the judge nodding in wise understanding, conferring on me the approbation
and legitimacy I so desperately desired with the pound of a gavel.
The fully forged Alyce with a "y" left home at fifteen,
like a snake shedding its skin, and donned cool mini-skirts and torn
sneakers, or platforms, bellbottoms, and halter tops, and the appropriately
faded jean jacket with a black power fist patch ironed on one sleeve
and a cannabis leaf patch ironed on the other. Alyce with a "y"
finished a checkered college career in a stormy three years, though
not with some flourish. Alyce with a "y" moved off to the
West Coast with eighty dollars to her name, a cat, and one suitcase,
along with all the other people from the Midwest who had changed their
names.
The paper trail of my life, school records, diplomas, all my accounts,
social security, checking, savings, etc., now belonged to Alyce with
a "y." Teachers, bank tellers, store clerks, doctors' office
staff, emergency room techs, and the like, who knew me as nothing
else, would often comment, "What a _____ (substitute "pretty"
or "unusual,") spelling of Alyce." Or sometimes they'd
use the word "unique." It wasn't long before I was inhabiting
Alyce with a "y," without an ounce of guilt, as if Alice
with an "i" had never existed. The occasional reminder of
the old Alice lingered in childhood books of mine, and I am still
pained to read the pronouncement "This book belongs to Alice
Miller" etched in poignant child's script, a hand I barely recognize,
that belonged to someone else.
In California, theories about name changes abounded, and many were
committed to changing their names. One woman I met routinely did this
every seven years, as well as that of her daughter's, (to acknowledge
the complete change of cells in their bodies, she explained). She
had already had 6 names by the time I met her, the daughter 3. There
were the refugees from white bourgeoisedom who had gone in search
of spirituality and finally emerged from religious cults and bouts
with gurus, and retained their "Eastern, swami-given names."
Or the ones who went for the names of powerful Greek goddesses: Athena,
Aphrodite. Black friends dropped their slave master names and replaced
Pam and Debbie with Ayesha, Zuleika, Malika, and Birunji.
In comparison, the undistinctive Alyce with a "y" survived,
and rolled with the punches, despite my mother's continuing letters
addressed to someone named "Alice." After a time, the quotation
marks around the "y" disappeared. It was no longer qualified,
or tentative. I grew into the name. And at twenty years of age, just
after my arrival in the Bay Area, Alyce with a "y" pierced
my nose.
I performed the procedure myself, without fanfare or drugs, in the
Berkeley bathroom of a childhood friend (Ayanna aka Pam), under the
tutelage of her older, knowing sister (Mowabi aka Miriam). It was
a cool, foggy morning. I stood in half-light in front of the mirror,
with a needle and string of waxed dental floss in one hand, gripping
half a raw potato in the other. Which side to choose? I was informed
that one side signified you were a prostitute, the other that you
were gay, but no one could remember which was which, so I took a chance
on my left side, not caring either way. Somehow, per Miriam/Mowabi's
instructions, the potato would provide "backing," something
for the needle to sink into once it had passed through cartilage.
Not so. I finally tossed the wet messy vegetable aside, and with grim
determination took forty-five excruciating minutes to work the needle
all the way through the left side of my nose. Did I do this because
I wanted to be beautiful? I can certainly tell you why I didn't do
it. Westerners have long viewed piercing as a form of self-mutilation.
That was not my reason. And I didn't believe I was opening up a third
eye. I wasn't sure of any symbolic meaning, and I didn't really view
it as a "statement to the world," as my father once called
it many years later. Simply put, I liked the way a pierced nose looked,
and felt naked without it. It enhanced the features, lit up the face,
offered an interesting asymmetry. Miriam/Mowabi and her ex-con boyfriend
Al wore long dangling earrings from their noses which, I have to say,
weren't particularly attractive, but I didn't have the nerve to say
so. They offered me metal skeletons and African trade beads, all of
which I graciously refused. I had always wanted a pierced nose, from
the time I first saw an Indian friend of the family with a small diamond
shimmering on the side of one nostril. There was a radical, smart
black girl in college who had pierced the septum and wore a large
ring.
I'd had my ears done by the family doctor when I was fifteen, the
age my mother had determined was appropriate. I think she equated
pierced ears with losing one's virginity, and there was a rigid set
to her jaw as she accompanied me to the doctor's office and watched
grimly while he stapled in the earrings. It was all performed under
sanitary and antiseptic conditions, and I was prescribed antibiotics
following the procedure, unlike some of my friends with home-piercings
who'd gone around with strings in their ears for weeks while the infected
flesh slowly healed, or turned to keloid. Pierced ears had been all
the rage, though more black girls I knew had it done than white, except
for white ethnic girls, mostly Catholic, who got to wear crosses in
their ears. But hardly anyone was piercing noses back then, and even
if there'd been a willing doctor somewhere, I couldn't have afforded
it. When I was finally done, Bootsy ("Hey Baby This is Bootsy")
Collins raged on the stereo in the living room, and a large red circle
rose up around the tiny pinprick, and a flash of stinging pain turned
into a dull throb through my nose. According to Miriam/Mowabi's expert
instructions, the waxed dental floss could now be drawn through easily
and would not stick to punctured flesh the way thread could. She was
right. Several days later I was informed by a stranger that I could
have permanently paralyzed myself if I'd hit the wrong nerve in my
nose. A quadriplegic with a pierced nose.
For six weeks, I wore the string, sometimes tucking it up inside
for job interviews, before being able to push a gold post through.
Once hired as a clerk-typist for the government, I was free to reveal
the truth to the engineers and architects for whom I edited. A true
ring would have looked foolish, but a 2-millimeter gold post offered
just the subtle touch I wanted, and many people didn't even notice.
I discovered, with relief, that it wasn't even considered particularly
unusual in the Bay Area. I hadn't ever wanted to be a freak. Occasionally
curious (and, I might add, rude) strangers, usually in business suits,
on BART or on buses would ask me, pointing to their own noses, if
"that" hurt, the disgust and disapprobation so palpable
in their voices that I came up with a sassy, smart-ass response that
yes, I was in constant pain, fool, before turning my back on them.
It felt good, it felt right. Little by little, I had remade myself,
beginning with renaming.
It was four years before I got up the gumption to leave the Bay Area
even for a visit to my family. Arriving back in the Midwest, I was
nervous. I said nothing about my pierced nose and, in typical style,
they said nothing. I began to feel relief. But over the next few days
the silence around my delicate little post caused it to grow to the
size of a small tree trunk. I started stumbling over it, and banging
into it. Even when it leafed and blossomed, and the branches were
hitting the window panes, no one mentioned it. I would catch my mother's
swift glances at me before she'd turn away and pretend she hadn't
been looking. Her only comment the whole visit came the night before
I left. It was so subtle I almost missed it. "You know,"
she sighed, gazing at me with pained affection, "you had such
a cute nose when you were a baby."
Thus, she had conferred resignation. When I returned to the Bay
Area, I added two more pierces to both ears. My intention was to pierce
all the way around my right ear, but I never did.
The years have passed. Nose piercing and multiple ear piercing became
such a fad that repeatedly I have considered removing the nose post
and four of my earrings and letting the holes close up. As I grew
older, the people piercing their noses grew younger. Now young teenage
girls (mostly white) stop me on the street to ask where I got my "cool
post." I feel like a dinosaur carrying a cell phone. Part of
me disdains the presumption, the instant camaraderie, the eager connection
of these kids who see before them a "real adult with a pierced
nose." Am I not so unlike the middle-aged Rodeo Drive belles
waltzing around in spandex and bare-midriff tops? I want to say, "Do
you know I pierced my nose before you were even a glimmer in your
daddy's eye?" or some such thing. I want them to know that I
made the rules, and that I hadn't slipped off to some fancy doctor
or to a hygienic mall boutique with all the right equipment, but that
I labored in my friend's bathroom one morning on a perfect California
day, and added to myself, in a moment of personal transformation,
before such things were done.
Now, if I consider it from someone else's viewpoint, it all feels
a bit foolish, not unlike the affected "y" of Alyce, maintaining
the remnants of a young girl's clumsy, but sincere, efforts to remake
herself. The summer I turned forty, I thought of restoring Alice with
an "i," in a gesture of return, an acknowledgment of my
parents' choice, and an homage to my beloved grandmother. I also thought
of relinquishing the nose ring which now seemed out of context, coming
full circle to something I once was. Except that nostalgia for what
we were is just that. Was I ever really Alice with an "i"?
So I couldn't change and I haven't. The Alyce remains, now that two-thirds
of my life has been lived with the "y." And the nose ring
along with it, so much so, that it has become as much a feature of
mine as my eyes, nose, and mouth, and I feel empty and unfinished
without it. Every morning I put it in, right after I brush my teeth
and wash my face. It's no different than slipping on a watch or a
ring. It is small enough to go unnoticed and, given the popularity
of pierced noses, has achieved a kind of mundane respectability. Some
colleagues of mine at the university clearly haven't noticed, and
those who do most likely are puzzled why anyone would do such a thing.
Perhaps it passes through their heads that I just did it, like a tattoo,
as part of some mid-life crisis, a rejection of encroaching mortality.
Cheaper than a sports car.
One anecdote has it that when I was hired five years ago, the chair
commented, "Well, we've never hired a faculty member with a nose
ring before." I was uncharmed and unamused by the comment, feeling
suddenly ashamed of the adolescent girl who had never properly fit
in, and immediately certain I'd never be tenured. But I was. As what
is known as a "creative writer," I am apparently permitted
such eccentricities, including overalls and jeans and tee shirts.
However it gets configured, I don't mind any more. I am too old to
make excuses for myself, and the advantage of age is that you no longer
feel obligated to. The "y" and the nose ring are not just
vestiges of another time and another self, but they belong to me now,
fair and square.
Instead of stunting me, or serving as reminders of youthful indulgence,
both have magically over the years stood as witnesses to the evolution
that characterizes all brief existences, and shared the tribulations
and trials of lived life. In this way, like the scars on my right
knee , the marks left by losses, they are pertinent to and inextricable
from my present and future experience. Every once in a while, when
I consider buying a whole new wardrobe of elegant wool skirts and
sweaters and silk suits that perhaps better befit my age and station,
I pause. Who is to say that life isn't simply a series of impersonations,
the people we were, the people we are, the people we might have been,
and the people we eventually are to become? There is still time, I
say, time to look like whoever it is I think I am now.
