Eleven . . . Again!

Eleven . . . Again!

Aside from Halloween, today is my favorite holiday: my birthday.

As with other fun holidays, people feel that birthdays should be celebrated. Friends and coworkers take you out to lunch, or at least give you cards (that hopefully don’t insult you, poke fun at your age, or both). Families reminisce about the good ol’ days. Well, those days might’ve been good for them, but usually not me. It’s amazing how bad some of my past birthdays turned out to be.

In one large, glossy photo, I had just turned one. Trapped in a ruffled dress, I looked like a miserable doll. My mom and aunts all mugged for the camera, but the birthday girl would not smile. In the foreground, was a huge cake with pink roses I bet they wouldn’t let me eat because I was too young. Who wants to be one?

Other birthdays stick out in my head—like my seventeenth, when my mother made me cry in an Atlantic City restaurant. And how at my fortieth birthday party, I locked myself in my bedroom. Some birthdays made up for others, like my __th, where my coworkers threw me a surprise party. It was fun, up ‘til my hair caught fire from trying to blow out all those candles . . .

No matter how many birthdays I have, I think of myself as ageless: like Peter Pan, or Mrs. Whatsis from A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Award-winning sci fi novel. On some birthdays, when people ask how old I am, I have to think about it. (It just doesn’t seem real.) On others, I just say, “eleven.”

Again.

So, naturally, I’d be in tune with probably the best birthday story ever written: “Eleven,” (from Woman Hollering Creek) by Sandra Cisneros.

Told from the point of view of birthday girl Rachel, this story appeals to all age groups. As she turns eleven, Rachel tells us, “You’re also ten, and nine, and eight,” etc. She says you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. She says that there are some days, you still feel ten, like when you say something stupid, or feel five, when you want to sit on your mama’s lap. Her most poignant observation is:

And when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Rachel is at school when the teacher, Mrs. Price, asks the class who owns the raggedy, red sweater that’s been hanging in the coatroom for a month. One girl, Sylvia, thinks it’s Rachel’s sweater, and Mrs. Price believes Sylvia, even though Rachel denies it. “Because she’s older and the teacher,” Rachel thinks, “She’s right, and I’m not.” Rachel fears she’s going to cry. “Today I am eleven, eleven,” she thinks. She tells herself that Mama is baking a birthday cake and when Papa comes home, they’ll all sing to her.Mrs. Price puts the sweater on Rachel’s desk, and gets angry when Rachel keeps shoving the sweater further and further away with her ruler. Then she forces Rachel to put on the hated sweater “that smells like cottage cheese.” That’s when Rachel loses it, crying hysterically for a long time.

Right before lunch, Rachel’s classmate Phyllis remembers it’s actually her sweater. But it’s too late. . . .

I understand why teachers would want to read “Eleven” with their students. The story is very accessible by even middle school students, and it lends itself to good classroom discussions.

Here are some questions to get students to think critically about the story:

1. Why does Mrs. Price get to decide it is Rachel’s sweater, and demand that Rachel put it on?
2. How would Rachel have reacted if it really were her sweater?
3. What if classmate Sylvia had said the sweater were Phyllis’s? Would Mrs. Price have believed Sylvia, then?
4. If Sylvia or Phyllis were the target of Mrs. Price’s anger, would Rachel have sympathized with them? Or be glad her birthday wasn’t ruined?
5. Was Rachel’s birthday really ruined by the misunderstanding? Or did Mama’s cake and that night’s party make Rachel forget all about the sweater?

So, today I’m not just eleven again. I’m ten, nine, eight . . . I’m Mrs. Whatsit with singed hair, and Peter Pan, still at odds with his shadow.