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| Jane Zemel |
Suzie-Q
I can sing all of the oldies. For better or for worse, every single one of those sock-hop Do-Wop-ditties is fused to my brain waves and heartstrings with pink bubble gum.
I blame my mother. She listened the oldies station exclusively and she didn’t really have the right. She grew up in the 70’s so she doesn’t really know what it’s like to go to a Sadie Hawkins dance or wear a poodle skirt. “Don’t you just wish it was the old days again, Suzie-Q?” She’d ask and I ‘d nod because I did.
I’d fantasized about my dreamy teens, when I’d get to wear bouffant hair-dos and flowy mini-dresses to the drive-in where I’d hold hands with boys. If I was lucky, those boys would go off to war and I’d pine over solider boys and promise to be true. I had two pairs of saddle shoes.
On the first day of my high-school freshman year, with my go-go mini dress and my hair a-flip, I waltzed into my new school to find the world had moved on. It had drifted from the primped and curled 60’s to the ripped blue-jean, plaid-shirted universe of 1995. Some older girls passed me in the hall. “Who the hell are you, Suzie-Q?” a girl with no eyebrows and a daisy choker asked.
The tears welled in my eyes and I ran for my life to the ladies room where I cried and sang You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, in its entirety. I thought I’d stay in there forever, but I only stayed until the warning bell for first period.
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| Jane Zemel |
“Are you wearing a costume?” a girl in the adjacent desk asked me. I looked her up and down. Her hair hadn’t been combed in probably a week, her jeans had likely been a hand-me-down from a, much bigger, older brother and the uniform plaid flannel hung from her narrow shoulders. “Uh, yeah,” I said grateful for the excuse. “I have an audition for a commercial after school today.”
She looked relieved. “Oh, yeah? That’s cool. You’re an actress?”
“Yeah. Sort of. Exactly. In fact, I may need to leave early today for the audition.”
She nodded like she knew all about it. “Yeah. That’s cool. I’m Mandy.”
“Suzie,” I said. “Suze. My name’s Suze.”
The bell rang. Mandy got up from her desk to go to her next class and I got up to run home. I sang Take Good Care of My Baby on the short walk from Langdale High as a sort of funeral march.
I came to school the next day in my brother’s old clothes with no bra or makeup. “Hey, Suze!” Mandy called to me when I arrived, and from that day on, I didn’t think about poor-old Suzie.
Last week, my husband turned on the oldies station and I found myself singing along as I loaded the dishwasher. Song after song played and I still knew all the words—every one. “I didn’t know this about you, Suze,” John said.
“It’s Suzie,” I told him. “Suzie-Q.”
Elizabeth Hand
Nicholas Cage and Jim Carrey singing in "Peggy Sue Got Married"
E.A. Hand is a writer and reader of fiction living in Vancouver. She lives with her wonderful partner and two bonsai trees and writes poetry about all three. Her short fiction has appeared in various local publications. She is currently working on a novel of speculative fiction that she hopes everyone will like.
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