49. Pudge and Prejudice

Pudge and Prejudice. A.K. Pittman (aka Allison Pittman). 2021. [January] 346 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that a teenage girl in possession of a double-digit jeans size must be in want of a diet. I’m just not a part of that universe. All my life—my chunky, pudgy, soft-bellied life—I’ve always found something I needed more than a smaller waist. Like to read more books, to learn more words, to know the personal satisfaction of guessing the grocery total before the cashier beeps through all the produce. You know, things that matter. 

Pudge and Prejudice is a young adult adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It is set in Northernfield, Texas, in 1984/1985. 

For some that little teaser would be enough persuasion. But you probably still have questions. After all, it's not as if all adaptations of Pride and Prejudice are well done and/or successful and/or clean.

Is it worth reading? Yes. A thousand times yes.

Is it clean? A few kissing scenes. Some handholding. But yes, it is clean.

Does the adaptation work? YES. It works not because she keeps every single detail the exact same as the original but because she makes it her own.

The basics:  Elyse Nebbitt (aka 'Pudge) is our heroine. She has an older sister, Jayne, who is a junior in high school. Lydia (13) is in eighth grade. She has two Littles: Mary and Kitty aged 6 and 8. They don't enter into the story often so I'm not sure which is six and which is eight. On moving day, Jayne and Elyse meet Charlie Bingley and Billy Fitz two high schoolers that have volunteered to help them move in. It is love at first sight for Jayne and Charlie--these two seemed to be a destined match. But Billy Fitz and Elyse don't necessarily form a good first impression of the other...

There were a million little details that make this one oh-so-magical. I loved, loved, loved it.

 Quotes:

To the universe, being thin means being right. In my case, it would mean my mother was right, and boys were right. If I’ve learned nothing else in my fifteen years, it’s this: I would rather stand my ground in all my wrongness than step one foot into someone else’s idea of right, even if it means I’m sometimes left standing alone.

Then September of my Sophomore year, 1984, my entire universe changed. 

 

Somehow, after six hours in the car, Jayne managed to look beautiful, her blonde hair in symmetrical, fluffy feathers, her skin miraculously sweat free, her clothes unrumpled to catalog perfection. Some would think this would conjure up some sort of jealous spark in me, but it’s really more of a sense of wonder. Being jealous of Jayne would be like being jealous of a butterfly, who has no more control over its beauty than Jayne does. Everything about Jayne is effortless. Not just her beauty, but her kindness, her goodness. In a way, we are everything each other is not, so we stick together in our weak spots. And that’s important, because in this family, you need a hand to hold in our spinning vortex of chaos.

The moment the big truck turned onto what Mom called “our” street, Jayne and I each rolled down our windows, trying to guess which would be “our” house. There was no sign out front, and since it was the middle of the day, plenty of driveways were empty. But then, the huge truck with all of our worldly possessions drifted to a stop, and Dad hopped out with all the fanfare a middle-aged man could muster. Mom pulled precariously into the narrow drive, and we were home.

Then, from out of nowhere, a sound I never expected to hear in Northenfield, Texas. The rumbling car motor, yes, that was common enough, but singing out over it was the sound of an electric guitar. As it came closer, I realized it wasn’t just any guitar, but Neal Schon’s. As in, Journey, and we were hearing the unmistakable guitar solo of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” In only a matter of seconds, we could put the music together with a car—Camaro, late seventies model, midnight blue. Sweeter than sweet. And, shock of all shocks, it came to a screeching, rumbling, rocking stop right behind our U-Haul.

There are those moments when you get the opportunity to stop and have a short talk with yourself and say, “Hey, self! Remember this. Make a note. Get rid of the brain space you’re using to remember your lines from the fourth grade play and make room.”

This was one of those moments. The music played on to the end of the song, then disappeared when the engine cut. The doors opened, and two boys got out. One looked like sunshine—blond, curly-all-over hair, tall, thin, green IZOD shirt with the collar popped. The boy with him, everything opposite. Dark, straight hair, parted in the middle and feathered to the sides. Jeans, Ramones T-shirt, Converse high tops. Jayne and I set our soda cans on the Joggling Board and stood up, because it was pretty obvious they were headed to the front porch. The dark one hung back a little, but Preppy Boy took one look at my sister and smiled like a kid who’d found a Transformer under the Christmas tree. A new boyfriend for Jayne? Well, that would be a matter of 5, 4, 3, 2....1. 

ONE OF THE GREAT IRONIES of being the chubby girl on the scene: you literally take up more space than any other person around, and yet you are somehow invisible. To be fair, the minute Charlie Bingley (Green IZOD Shirt Boy) met Jayne Nebbitt, the entire neighborhood could have been swallowed up by muddy underground aliens and neither of them would have noticed a thing.

And so we worked. Keeping priorities straight, we unearthed my boom box and found a Top 40 station to keep the music going. REO Speedwagon, The Cars, Billy Idol—aka everything our father would forbid us to listen to if he were home. The boys were the souls of efficiency, with Charlie motivated to impress Jayne, and Billy motivated to get away. My sister and I helped, too, of course. Jayne knew exactly where every box and chair and lamp should go, so she kept to the front door and foot of the stairs, pointing and directing and encouraging. I was more of a workhorse, running back and forth with whatever I could easily carry.

TWO WEEKS AND SIX DAYS LATER—Thursday night, right during the first fifteen minutes of Family Ties—the phone rang, and Mom answered it. Nothing extraordinary there—Mom almost always answers the phone. It’s easier that way, for all of us. Otherwise, we’d spend the first five minutes of every conversation letting her know exactly who was on the other side of the line and what they wanted. Plus, Family Ties was one of the few shows that met with parental approval and had a cute actor. No ringing telephone could compete with Michael J. Fox, not even in Lydia’s anticipating ears.

Still, when we heard Mom’s long, lyrical Hellooooo, Mrs. Bingley, Jayne and I tore our eyes away from the Keatons on the screen. Mom walked out of the kitchen, stretching the yellow phone cord all the way into the living room, and mouthed MRS. BINGLEY, as if the neighbors three doors down didn’t hear just who had dialed our number a few minutes before.

I muted the TV, grateful for the first time in my life that I had no such option for my mother. Still, her side of the conversation was too cryptic for true comprehension, even if its volume made me wonder if she somehow thought Mrs. Bingley was deaf. Or ninety. Or both. All Jayne and I heard was, Yes, Yes, Of course, Indeed, and a finale about something being our pleasure before Mom scuttled into the kitchen, hung up the phone, and returned with an expression that could only be described as triumphant.

Jayne, it seemed, through the powers of Mom’s compliant negotiations, had a babysitting job.

Now, I must explain that for girls like us, meaning girls without access to a family’s unlimited credit card, babysitting jobs are the absolute key to functioning normally within our society. Movie tickets, new jeans, cassette tapes, magazines, lip gloss—all those things cost money, and until you’re old enough to snag a paper hat and make shakes at Dairy Queen, that money comes from sacrificing the occasional weekend to take care of somebody’s kid.

It’s a delicate thing, being new in town. Establishing clients, building trust. It’s one of the best reasons to go to church, so you can hang around the nursery looking trustworthy. Or a girl can take a stroll around the neighborhood, chase a ball that some kid kicks into the street, return it with a smile, and hope a parent pokes a head out the door for an introduction.

But there are rules. One being that you don’t babysit the younger siblings of your friends, because that just reinforces the fact that you need money more than your friend does, because otherwise, well, why isn’t she babysitting? And Two, you really, really don’t babysit the younger sibling of a cute boy. One that you like. And one who might possibly like you back. Now, I—of course—have never had the opportunity to put this rule to the test, and it was too late to bring Mom up to speed on the delicacies of booking.

As if all of this wasn’t enough to justify the look of horror on Jayne’s face, Mom’s further explanation had us clutching each other’s hands for support. To spare anyone the inconvenience of shuttling back and forth to deliver the girl, Jayne would ride the bus—the BUS—to the Bingleys’ house after school the next day. And stay there for the entire afternoon and evening.

We might not have been the richest kids in school, but we were lucky enough to live within walking distance, sparing us the daily humiliation of climbing those steep steps of shame to be hauled back and forth on some dilapidated yellow monster vehicle. The bus was for kids who had neither the car nor connection to get a ride.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible