On the front lawn, my mom popped open the large jack o’ lantern light like an umbrella. I ran out in my socks and helped add stakes to keep it from flying away as she added the final touch—a screeching black cat jumping over the pumpkin. It was officially Halloween season. Inside, the Pillsbury ghost and pumpkins baked in the oven. The mantle was decorated with leaves and the twisted, gnarled black tree that reminded me of the Headless Horseman’s resting place from Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, which we watched every year, along with Hocus Pocus. We would all watch in the living room, squished on the couch and in a nest of blankets on the floor, quoting our favorite lines. Another glorious morning… makes me SICK!
I was hypnotized by all of October’s macabre magic, from pumpkin patch hayrides to my mom’s side of the family visiting for a weekend as we were terrorized by chainsaws at Hundred Acres Manor and came home to make caramel apples to munch on as the aunts shared their legendary ghost stories. They were told with the exact same hand motions and line deliveries every year, which is how I knew they were real. Most of all, I loved creating the perfect costume. Our dining room turned into a one-woman sewing studio as my mom spent hours bent over her noisy machine creating anything my and my siblings’ minds could imagine, like Tinkerbell, Frodo Baggins, and a pterodactyl.
Each year, I knew I had to step it up. In second grade, my first year at my new Catholic school, I had blown everyone away at the Halloween parade with my hand-painted Tiki God mask (apologies for the cultural appropriation), and especially the shrunken heads on my scepter that my mom carved from apples and left out to dry and shrivel. How could I cement my costume icon status for third grade?
During shopping trips, mom and I would always stop at whatever derelict strip mall the Spirit Halloween store had materialized in that year. We took notes on what decor trends were popular that year. Demon babies were having a moment. I’d jump onto the touch sensors to activate the overpriced animatronics. We never store-bought costumes but did sometimes accessorize here to complete the look. But it was still fun to rifle amongst the aisles to see if there were any clever new releases. I needed inspiration for my own costume, but wasn’t finding any as we flicked through Buzz Lightyears and referees. As we stormed past the vulgar “bro” outfits like a guy dressed as a giant genie lamp that said “Rub Me” all over his crotch, mom and I ended up in the girls’ section.
That’s when I saw it. Bright pink. A bubblegum feminine dream. In the plastic pouch was a Barbie Cheerleader costume complete with pink and white pom poms, as well as a striped belt to give some shape. I wanted it immediately. I had spent all of kindergarten and first grade learning my sister’s cheers from the sidelines as basketball games. How funky is your chicken? How loose is your goose? Now come on everybody, and shake your caboose! Shake, shake, your caboose!
I didn’t want to hurt mom’s feelings by wanting some run-of-the-mill costume, but I had to have it. This cheerleader was the kind of girl who clutched her books to her chest as she walked home yearning for more than small-town life. It was Sandy in Grease before the leather and cigarettes.
“Mom, wouldn’t it be the craziest thing if I was a cheerleader for Halloween?”
“Excuse me?”
“Tons of the boys dressed up like girls last year, but I know I could do it better.” This group of JV basketball boys crudely stuffed bras and wore ill-fitting leopard prints from their moms’ closets, while clipping auburn extensions into their hair and adorning their faces with cheap red lipstick and blush. But my cheerleader wasn’t a joke—she was the star. Top of the food chain.
“Ummm… are you sure? You don’t have to make your pick today. We can wait and then-”
“Nope. This is definitely what I want to be.”
I left Spirit Halloween with the costume tucked safely under my arm and a bloody severed leg prop that was on sale. Get ready, St. Margaret of Scotland students, there is a new head cheerleader in town.
The only problem was, what were we going to do for the hair? With it being an official Barbie™ costume, I obviously had to be bleach blonde. My own hair wasn’t long enough to pull off her signature pony. A wig would be a necessity. All the ones we looked at were flat, dull, and didn’t bring out the inner sparkle I was searching for. My mom wasn’t feeling them either. Her face scrunched up as we pulled wigs out of bags and touched the synthetic strands.
“You know what. I have an idea. It will be way better than all of these scraggly things.”
Of course, mom still had to homemake at least one thing for it to be a true Halloween. We zipped over to Jo-Ann Fabrics. I followed behind as mom made way for the back of the store. The foam aisle. She squeezed a thick patch of green foam, testing its thickness, and held it against my head.
“This size should do it.”
At the checkout counter, my mom set down the foam, some pink ribbon, and a can of yellow spray paint.
As my mom searched through her purse the checkout clerk said, “That will be $21.78”
“Gah… I swear I had a 20 percent coupon in my bag. Do you have any you could give me?”
The clerk blinked at my mother, rolled her eyes, then quickly scanned a barcode with her price gun. “Your new total is $17.42.” Cha-CHING. My mom wrote down the total on a little yellow sticky pad she used to keep track of her spending, and then we were off.
At home, mom pulled out her good fabric scissors with the orange handles. Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt Kickers roared the “Monster Mash” on the radio. She measured my head once more and took to the foam like Edward Scissorhands to a garden shrub. With chunks of green fuzz flying through the air, two silhouettes of a massive bouffant hairstyle emerged. She took a magic marker and traced an outline of bangs and a face shape on one of the silhouettes. Her scissor work was gorgeously precise and free-flowing.
“Set newspaper down on the grass and take these out there with you.” She held up the cut foam. “You’re going to spray paint both sides evenly until you can’t see any more green. Just the yellow.”
I nodded, absorbing every instruction, and set up my workstation. The marble ricocheted through the can as I shook the spray paint. The paint particles flew through the air and transformed the gross green into Barbie’s signature color. I waved to our neighbor as she brought her dog outside to use the bathroom. Nothing to see here! Just a wee boy and his wig.
The October days drifted past. I munched on Little Debbie Pumpkin Delights after soccer games, I pretended to be Jack Skellington in the basement discovering snow, I watched Michael Myers slash horny teenagers to bits on AMC reruns. Usually, with mom’s homemade looks, the creations always went down to the wire. It wasn’t typical to be able to kick back with nothing on the checklist waiting for the 31st to arrive.
Parade day was here. Before heading to work, mom drew a little bat on my Toaster Strudel using the blue icing packet.
“The costume is all in the bag. Make sure not to bend it, so you don’t get any wrinkles.” She kissed me on the head. “Have the best day.”
The boys changed in my homeroom class while the girls had to go across the hall to dress into their costumes. The only women in the room were a few chaperoning moms and a statue of the Virgin Mary with a chipped nose. Before I pulled Barbie from her bag, I watched as the boys around me turned into mini Roethlisbergers, Spidermen, zombies, and Gryffindors.
A mom I knew from cross-country meets, where she brought oranges that I snacked on and smiled with the rind facing out, sensed my hesitation to change.
“Do you need any help?”
“I should be fine. Umm, can you just make sure that the hair looks straight on my head once I put it on?”
“Of course.”
I wished my own mom was there to help. I turned around and fluffed out the cheerleader dress. It had a built-in white undershirt that gave it a cute illusion of a turtle neck and three-quarter length sleeve. I reached behind my back and attached the VelCro tabs. The foam wig was around two feet in height, enough to make Dolly Parton jealous. Mom’s work is always in the details. With a darker brown, she had painted over the yellow base color and added depth and dimension. The wig looked like massive pigtails with the real ribbons tied into perfect bows set within the foam. I didn’t think my mom knew it and neither did I, but this is my very first introduction to the idea of camp.
I turned around to the generous mom and she smiled back. She gives the wig a little tilt and then two big thumbs up. “Perfect.”
We lined up single-file and reunited with the girl half of our class and exited out the front doors to begin the annual Halloween parade through the Church parking lot, around the school, and into the gymnasium. The parade route was lined with parents everywhere we looked. The audience needed to know I was a serious threat, like Kirsten Dunst in Bring it On. I couldn’t do herkies or toe touches, so I used my pom-poms in different formations—one hand on my hip, the other shooting towards the sky as Toni Basil’s “Mickey” played in a loop in my head. I shook the pom-poms together towards my chest all with a big, competition-ready smile. I left behind a trail of pink and white tinsel. The parents laughed and snapped photos. My stride got more confident as I walked. I wasn’t ashamed of twirling and flouncing past in my polyester skirt. Let them take pictures. Let them think about this parade forever. We marched through the doors into the gymnasium where I could cheer from the sidelines for the ghost basketball team. Mission complete. I had successfully one-upped last year by a mile. I didn’t realize that I was joining a phenomenon of drag queens being “born” on Halloween.
On November 1st, we put the cheerleader into my closet where all the costumes of years past lived. Sometimes I would sneak into my room, close the door, and dig through the closet to find her. The seams began to bulge and rip the older I got, but the wig never lost its popular-girl spunk. The jingle played through my head, “Be who wanna be, Barbie girl!” There was so much to be horrified of during Halloween. Bats, goblins, and ghouls. But with the foam wig, my mom made for her son on my head, I never felt safer.