Twelve-year-old girls in 1958 lingered at the end of childhood, suspended where summers were magic, not so eager to don the feathers and straps of womanhood as they are these days. I pushed back at the changes in my body, ignored the wild emotions I never had before. I felt safe with Danise, and safe in our habitat, the wondrous Third Avenue Villas.

Strange, what art evokes. The Musee d’Orsay in Paris has a fine collection of paintings by Henri Rousseau, and I’m fond of that artist. As I stared at the works, something seemed so familiar. What was it, so far from home, so far from Texas? Aha. The Third Avenue Villas.

The villas are sad slums now, the once-lush vegetation dead or gone. It’s not easy to imagine the wonder-garden it was, unlike anything else in TC. Nestled around four square blocks at the intersection of Third Avenue and Ninth Street, it was a slice of Southern California, oleanders, pomegranates, fig trees, oaks, laurels, and palmettos. Built in 1943, money was miraculously allotted for “landscaping.” As a priority in TC, and maybe most of Texas at the time, landscaping fell right behind filling in gopher holes in vacant lots. A homeowner might plant sorry-looking bushes around the foundation, and that was it. The word “lush” was too sexy for Texas City.

Lush it was though, in the villas, where Danise and I lived. We wanted everything to stay the same, yet the summer after sixth grade, change infected everything. My mother married Cody, a decent man, hard-working, a good provider. She became unavailable for a while, immersed in her new husband. This might have caused problems, but he was kind, and my mother’s behavior was consistent for the times: what mattered was The Man. Even Danise’s mother, gentle and child-loving, withered when her husband was home. We all tread lightly then, so he wouldn’t wake up, so his dinner would be on time, so he wouldn’t miss the news on TV. All about The Man.

After Cody married the Butterfly, they bought a car, a big Oldsmobile, in imitation of my Aunt Jackie. I didn’t have to carry groceries from the Big Chief down on Sixth Street all the way to Third Avenue (milk, hamburger, potatoes). Cody, good-natured and accommodating, would drive me and wait while I shopped. He worked as a towboat captain on the Intercoastal Canal, so he was gone for weeks at a time, and although this was hard for my mother – they were insanely in love – it made the adjustment easier for my sister and me. Soon my mother would quit her job, and having her home all the time, now that was an adjustment that interfered with my daydreaming.

Danise and I stayed outside all summer. We hid among the palms and pomegranates, from our sisters, from the cute paperboy on his manly scooter. Something new was afoot about boys, way beyond the Fourth Avenue gang or my crush on Gene, but in the heavy foliage time would never find us, nor would the paperboy, and we could be little girls forever. And yet . . . the new thing coming was alluring and unknown. We were afraid, either that the changes would happen, or that they wouldn’t.

If we needed a bill-board for change, we had one. The town itself. The football stadium at Ninth Street and Texas Avenue, with its open bleachers and chain link fencing, was across the alley from our back doors, and during the fall of sixth grade, we sat outside, listening to the groans and cheers, march music, announcements, honking celebrations as the winners left the parking lot, and cat calls from the losers. It was beyond exciting.

We would start seventh grade at Blocker Junior High soon, and we would be part of it then, but the old stadium would be replaced by a grand one on Palmer Highway. The Blocker we knew, on the same property as Danforth, had already moved to the old high school on 14^th Avenue. There was a new high school. As the town was changing, so were we. We dreaded it; we longed for it. That’s what it is to be 12 going on 13 years old.

I no longer looked like a brunette Pippy Longstocking. My pigtails were gone, my hair was lose, but I wasn’t satisfied. I persuaded my mother to give me an atomic-powered home permanent, so tight I couldn’t even wear my Easter hat. To add to my lack of sartorial charm, my mother bought my clothes a size too large (she said I would “grow into them”). I was almost 13, and I looked like an 8-year-old or a 30-year-old, take your pick. I was a little boy at heart, so I thought it was funny. That was about to change.

When school started, Danise and I took the academic changes in stride. Emotionally, though, something wasn’t right. We couldn’t go on clinging to each other. We had to find new ways to be, but we weren’t ready to let go. We found new friends like Fay, witty and lively, and sweet-natured Winnie. But our closeness to each other was diluted, and this was happy and sad. Fay’s our friend to this day, but Winnie’s gone, a great loss.

We observed the “popular kids,” and wondered how they were different. We became aware of how we looked, and although I didn’t yet attach importance to the matter, I realized I had no taste. My mother’s style wouldn’t work – I knew that. She loved prints and ruffles. I didn’t favor either. I favored – well, I didn’t know what I favored. I didn’t know what I was supposed to wear, do, say, or be, and neither did Danise, about herself or me, and the distance between us widened.

So puberty arrived and settled in, and once that takes hold, it doesn’t let go until it’s done its job, which is to throw things at you willy-nilly and let you make the best of the mess. We weren’t doing badly, about normal I’d say, until something happened, an explosion of self-doubt brought on by a catalyst with a pretty name.

Rhonda.

Rhonda’s in the Rousseau painting, too, but not the dark, alluring figure, or the snake in the garden of villas. No, she’s the flute. She knew songs we had only heard in the distance. Rhonda showed up and played a siren song right in our faces. She caused quite a stir.

She came to Blocker after the term started. I walked into homeroom one Monday morning, and there she was. I had been the new girl time after time. I knew she could use a friend, so I spoke to her. She was pretty, but though appearance was on my radar, I didn’t obsess about it. It’s a shame when that changes, when your face stops being just your face, and your body becomes an object to be scrutinized, then criticized, no longer just the reliable, sturdy thing that runs and jumps and gets tan in the summer.

As I talked to her, I noticed the boys were acting crazy, coming to the door, peering pop-eyed at the new girl. The boys acted like idiots most of the time these days, but this was worse than usual. What I didn’t process was that at 13 years old, Rhonda had the figure of a well-endowed woman, and she was wearing a tight red dress meant to show it off.

I think about Rhonda now and then, but I don’t know who she was, not really. I don’t have a photograph, but she imitated her idol, Sandra Dee, and she looked a bit like her, so over time she’s become Rhonda/Sandra. I reached out to her because she was alone and new, but we became friends because her family rented a house next door to Flowers Drug Store, on the corner of Ninth Street and Seventh or Eighth Avenue, an easy walk from the villas.

Rhonda’s step-father was in the military, and military families acquire a sophistication born of travel and of mixing with a diverse group. Sometimes, especially in young girls, it’s only skin deep, just a reflection of the adults they live with. Although Rhonda had a knowing way about her, I doubt if she was more experienced than other girls our age. She was a nice little girl in a grown-up body, and that’s a difficult thing to be.

Rhonda started hanging out with Danise and me at the Texas City Teen Club, a good place for kids our age. Located on Sixth Avenue not far from the First Methodist Church, we had fun in a safe setting, ruled over by a devoted gate-keeper, Mrs. Eileen Kirby. There was a jukebox and a dance floor, pool tables and ping pong tables. I met Joe, but I wasn’t allowed to “car date,” as it was called. My mother said when I was 16, and not before. Until then, my date and I were sedately chauffeured to the Showboat Theater by smiling moms and dads. Joe picked me up at the villas once, and my mother demanded to know if he was driving (TC was full of licensed 14-year-olds). He told the truth. He was driving, but his grandmother was in the backseat, a regular old-fashioned duenna.

After the fabulous Rhonda arrived, I still loved the teen club, but not as much as before, because she got most of the attention. She liked to stand out in a room by wearing red, she told me, but I didn’t think it was the color. I became aware that everything about me was sub-standard. Flat hair, flat chest, pug nose, short legs, you name a negative, I had it. I worked on my hair, and the perm was gone, but no matter what I did, it stayed arranged for 30 seconds and never looked like Rhonda’s shining blond locks. She asked me if I had ever heard of hairspray. I had not.

One time Rhonda and I were going shopping. I dressed in my favorite outfit, a black satin skirt and a pink sweater with glitter leaves down the front (it makes me shudder now). I strolled confidently down Ninth Street to her house, but when I got there, she gave me a look, and I knew. The skirt was butt-sprung, and the leaves that once were gold had tarnished. Why didn’t I realize that before?

Rhonda’s aunt-who-was-a-model taught her how to dress, wear her hair, apply lipstick for a pouty-look, and even how to stand and walk. I knew standing up from sitting down. She once told Danise and me her “wardrobe” was based on brown. We looked at each other, bewildered. My wardrobe, if I had one, was based on whatever was on sale at Penny’s.

My best Rhonda-moment came as I was leaving the Showboat after the five o’clock show, and I ran into her on the way to the seven o’clock show. Her date had a car. My date’s parents had a car, and they were waiting at the curb. However, Rhonda wore a blue shirtwaist dress, a white sweater, and black flats. I wore a yellow shirtwaist dress, a white sweater, and black flats. I had got it right!

With 20/20 hindsight, I know it wasn’t about measuring up to Rhonda. I didn’t measure up to anything, since I didn’t know what the standard was. When I first entered seventh grade, I decided to be Beverly, my vivacious, popular cousin. Bev was a “band kid,” so I joined the band, ignoring my lack of interest in music unless it involved Elvis Presley. Most kids took up an instrument in sixth grade, so I was behind to begin with. I was allergic to practicing, I hated the clarinet, and I didn’t have Bev’s outgoing personality.

I stuck to band for another year, but by the time Rhonda arrived, I had an inkling I couldn’t be Beverly. I still had the problem of who to be, though, so maybe I could be Rhonda. I wish someone had whispered in my ear: Not in a million years.

Boys liked her – a lot – but some of them liked me, too, Jimmy in particular, whose cheerleader sister and her friends ran around their house in shorty pajamas. They thought it didn’t matter about “little Jimmy.” He was just a kid, and he told me with a grin he wasn’t going to tell them any different.

Rhonda called the house one day, but I couldn’t talk because Jimmy was over. In twenty minutes she was at the door, uninvited, and she made a big play for him, sitting on his lap, stroking his hair. I found the display shocking (it could only go so far – my mother was upstairs). Jimmy didn’t mind, but he didn’t buy it, either. It probably scared him. She asked him to call her – right in front of me – but he didn’t. She had the grace to admit that later, at least.

Rhonda wasn’t mean. I liked her when it was only the girls around. I suspect she had insecurities, too. Maybe her attractiveness was the only thing she thought she had going for her, and she had to prove something. She was like Jessica Rabbit: she was just born (drawn) that way.

Jimmy moved away before high school, and as preposterous as it sounds, a few years later I ran into him in a cafeteria in Bloomington, Indiana. More preposterous, I was still comparing myself to Rhonda. I asked him why he liked me better, even though she was obviously a superior female. He shrugged. “I dunno. She was Rhonda. You were you. I liked you.” That was the last time I saw him. To this day I wonder what happened to Jimmy. I wonder about Rhonda, too.

But Jimmy’s answer resonated and caused me to consider how much of my mother’s advice I should disregard on my way to becoming a grown-up, such as “don’t be too smart, the boys won’t like you,” or “don’t beat the boys at tennis. They won’t like you.” But what if I was smart? What if I was good at tennis? What if Rhonda could be Rhonda, and I could be me, and that would be OK?

I left childhood behind when I moved away from the Third Avenue Villas, and I left Danise, for a while. Rhonda drifted out of my life, too, and from the libidos of the boys in Texas City sometime between ninth and tenth grade, but she helped me a lot. Or maybe I learned a lot from what she represented, or from the battle of being neither a child nor a young woman, the same battle she was waging.

How did Rhonda help me?

If you want to stand out in a room, wear red (or a tight sweater).

If you want your hair to stay put, use hairspray.

If you want a versatile wardrobe, base it on a single color.

If you want to be Rhonda, forget about it.

My mother gave me good advice in fourth grade: Be yourself.

That takes a long time – years and years – but it’s the only chance you’ve got. Be yourself. I learned how easy that sounds, but how hard it is to accomplish.

Here’s what E.E. Cummings said about it. It’s a beautiful, hard, universal truth:

To be nobody-but-myself – in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Never stop fighting. Never. Stop. Fighting.

NEXT: Dance Band Challenges