Pucky

From the time I was three, they called me Pucky. My brothers acted in plays, some of which Dad wrote, at the local playhouse. I got in on the last one or two, as one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream--all I remember is the thrill, to applause, of multiple group curtain calls--and maybe it was because of Puck's puckish personality. Or maybe it was because whenever Tim was leaning over my crib and I started to cry, he'd call out in panic, "Mommy, come get her. She's puckering!"

Anyway, it was Pucky my brothers remember during those years, when they remember me at all. Pucky was the one Ted describes in "Am I missing? (June 10) as "cute and irritating and funny and teasable."

G asked me about Pucky when we met on June 28. I dismissed her immediately as having nothing to do with my trauma. "Pucky was fine. Pucky was--what did Ted say?--'cute and irritating and funny and--' something else. It was when Pucky tried to be cute and funny and this time they were irritated and annoyed that someone else came out and ran into the shoe closet and hid.

"I wasn't good enough. I was bland. I had no personality, I was nothing. It was not enough to be. I had to perform, entertain, be on stage. I was quiet and withdrawn. Nobody wanted me. So Pucky came out. They turned me on and off like a light switch.

"Pucky was my on-stage self. Pucky was desperate for acceptance, 'programmed to please.' She tried hard, so hard! Like Dick Van Dyke, sometimes she overdid it, and was irritating. She couldn't understand why her timing was always off."

"I'm angry at Pucky--but she did the best she could. I feel sorry for her. I feel angry that's what it took.

G: "Jealous because she got the attention?"

I ignored him, wondering instead, "Is Pucky real or just a facade?" Then, "It's just her stage name. I created a stage presence. I created Pucky so I would really exist. At times she would be funny and cute and they'd laugh and affirm her so I'd try to build on that. She'd do it again and it would bore them. They named her Pucky. She was an extension of me, a face I held out for them to interact with. A mask."

G: "We're created for unconditional love, for whole squiggle--" (I'm just copying from my cold, very incomplete notes. It looks like it says "for whol[e] an" Or "am." Or "arm." But none of those can be right.) "When we're only accepted for a false self we know it's not authentic."

"And they wouldn't let me be smart. I was the kid, the little sister, a girl. I learned to throw any game I played with a male. When I grew up and tried to be part of intellectual discussions, they'd wave my ideas aside as irrevelant interruptions. And these were 'modern, liberated' liberals, proud of their tolerance and freedom from prejudice. No, I had to be cute, the comic relief, the clown. Years later I sent one brother an essay I wrote for my Master's degree and he wrote back, 'You really do have a brain!' Ouch!"

I sighed, bitter. "I guess I, the one telling you this, am the Original Self," I said. Then, "I'm NOT boring!"

G: "You can be giddy and fun or thoughtful and reflective."

"Is Pucky shallow?"

G: "She can be wisdom-finding and embracing. . . Brooding doesn't win acceptance. . . The culture of acceptance in this family was difficult." That's the understatement of my life!

"Pucky was me trying to be loved, accepted--and noticed!" I said. "Pucky was me acting."

Maybe Pucky was a good name for the who played a part, albeit pathetically.