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body, it’s hard for me to believe he’s dead. But maybe that’s what our parents hope we’ll feel — that although my grandfather’s body may be dead, he himself is still with us.

2
My Inner Hillbilly
    W HAT I MISS MOST ABOUT THE L ONGVIEW LOSERS is the camaraderie. Being pounded into the mud by hoods from across town on a weekly basis is a bonding experience like no other. Because of my early years alone in the orange crate, I have a great longing to belong, coupled with an inability to do so. Consequently, I will join almost any group, but only briefly.
    To prove that I’m now one of the girls, I accept a bid from a sorority at my high school named the Queen Teens. Our nickname is the Q.T.s, pronounced “cuties.” Our archrivals, the Devilish Debs, sometimes call us the Cooties. They’re envious because, although we’re regarded as trashier than they, we throw better parties.
    Each Q.T initiate is instructed to submit a bra and panties. These are returned dyed purple, the club color, with holes cut out for the nipples and the crotch. At the initiation slumber party, we new members model our lacerated lingerie for the old members. Many old members are Baptists who are going steady with the burly footballers with whom I used to butt helmets. But the erotic charge in the small ranch house during this twisted fashion show is palpable as the smoke from their mentholated Salems wreathes the old members’ bouffants.
    Meanwhile, I’ve experienced a religious conversion. I’ve announced to my parents that I don’t believe in God. The truth is that I no longer believe in the Episcopal God. I’ve come to believe instead in my grandmother’s Baptist God because He provides hayrides for His youth groups. The Baptist Youth have been reared to regard anything fun as a sin, so they think sin is fun.
    After a few quick verses of “This Little Light of Mine” for the benefit of the chaperones in the truck cab, each Baptist boy piles up a barricade of hay bales while his Baptist girlfriend hollows out a nest in the loose hay that pads the truck floor. As the truck creeps slowly along the country roads, driven by someone’s salacious dad, the Baptist Youth have been known to make a believer out of more than one lapsed Episcopalian.
    I’ve also joined the marching band. In our town, the Friday-night high school football game is almost as important as church on Sunday. It’s certainly more entertaining. I play the clarinet. I’d have preferred the trumpet, but our family owns an ancestral clarinet, so everyone who wants to play something must play that. John played it before me, and Bill will play it after me.
    I’d also have preferred to play sports rather than the clarinet. But when a group of us girls presented the school board with our plan for a basketball team, the head of the board informed us that competitive sports were injurious to the emotional health of young women. (She will be hospitalized for bipolar disorder several years later, despite never having played basketball.)
    My new plan for escaping the family clarinet involves becoming a flag swinger. At halftime the drum major leads the band onto the football field, followed by the school mascots, an Indian brave and squaw, both dressed in feathered headdresses and fringed buckskins. Our squaw is Jewish. Her father owns the nicest clothing store in town. The band director insists she’s the only student who looks Indian enough for the role. (As an adult, this woman will move to Atlanta and become president of the Hadassah.) After the Indians come the majorettes in their white boots, short shorts, and uniform jackets, led by the head majorette, who twirls the fire baton once the bonfire is lit and the stadium lights are extinguished.
    Behind the majorettes come the half dozen flag swingers, also clad in white boots, short shorts, and uniform jackets. Their maroon-and-gray flags (the