Damned (13 page)

But what do I know; I'm dead. I'm a dead brat. If I were way brilliant
I'd be alive, like you. Nevertheless, if you ask me, most people have children
just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. A child allows us to
revisit the excitement we once felt about, well... everything. A generation
later, our grandkids bump up our enthusiasm yet again. Reproducing is a kind of
booster shot to keep us loving life. For my parents, first having blasé me,
then adopting a string of brats, ending with bored, hostile Goran, it truly
illustrates the Law of Diminishing Margin of Returns.

My dad would tell you, "Every audience gets the performance it
expects." Meaning: If I'd been a more appreciative child, maybe they'd
have seemed like better parents. On a larger scale, maybe if I'd shown more
gratitude and appreciation for the precious miracle of my life, then maybe life
itself would've seemed more wonderful.

Maybe that's why poor people give thanks BEFORE they eat their nasty
tuna casserole dinner.

If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by
their own mistakes. Maybe if I hadn't been so flip and glib, maybe my parents
wouldn't have looked to get their emotional needs met by corralling together so
many other destitute kids.

As the chauffeur arrives at the hotel, and the doorman steps forward to
open the car door, I hit Ctrl+Alt+B to search my bedroom closet in Barcelona,
and there's my missing pink blouse. In an instant message to the Somali maid, I
tell her where to overnight the blouse in time for my tryst with Goran. I
almost tell her, "Thanks," except I don't know the exact word in her language.

And yes, I know the word
tryst.
I know an awful lot of things, especially for a thirteen-year-old, dead fat
girl. But maybe I don't know as much as I think.

At that, my mom rips open another envelope and says, "And the
winner is..."

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I know what you're thinking...
to you I'm just some spoiled, rich brat who's never had to work a day in her
life. In my defense, I'm proud to say that I've obtained full-time employment.
A genuine job. As of now I'm a regular working stiff—if you'll pardon the
terrible pun. What follows might seem ragged, but please consider it an
impressionistic slice o' death. A glimpse into a day in the death of me.

As far as I can tell, you have a choice between two types of careers in
Hell. Your first option is you can work for one of those Web sites which
everyone assumes are run in Russia or Burma, where naked men and women stare
unflinchingly into the webcams, a dazed look in their glassy eyes, while they
lick their fingers and insert greasy plastic model airplanes or plantain
bananas halfway into their shaved woo-woos or hoo-hoos. Either that, or they
fake-smile while sipping their own urine out of champagne flutes. You see, Hell
is responsible for about 85 percent of the Internet's total smut content. The
demons just tack up some old, soiled bed sheet to serve as a backdrop, they
throw a foam-rubber mattress on the ground, and you're expected to flop around,
putting junk inside yourself and responding to the real-time Web chat of alive
perverts, worldwide.

Frankly, I've never been that desperate for attention. Do not mistake
me for one of those troubled preteens who walk around, practically wearing a
T-shirt which says:
Ask Me About My Rape
.
Or,
Ask Me About My Alcoholism.

The dirty little secret about Hell is that the demons are always
running tabs on you. If you breathe their air, if you loiter, the powers that
be are constantly dinging you for the cost. No, it's not fair, but the demons
charge you for your upkeep. The meter is always running, and you're piling up
years of additional torture, according to Babette, who it turns out used to
manage people's paperwork until she had to take a stress-related disability
leave of absence and return to her cage for a little nonclerical R&R.
Babette says most people are condemned for only a few aeons, but they accrue
additional time simply by occupying space in Hell. It's like being over the
limit on your charge cards, or accidentally flying your jet into French
airspace; the clock starts ticking the moment you've gone too far. The bean
counters are keeping track, and someday you'll be socked with a massive bill.

Jewels and cash are worthless here. The currency is candy, and
marshmallow peanuts are accepted as payment for all bribes and debts. Root Beer
Barrels are as valuable as rubies. The hellish equivalent of pennies are
popcorn balls... black licorice... wax lips... and these are cast aside in
disdain.

Probably I shouldn't even tell you this—the job market is tight enough
as it is—but if you have any aspirations to earn your daily Junior Mints, you
need to find a career and get working.

Not that you'll ever actually die—not
you
—not
after all the antioxidants you've choked down and all those laps around the
reservoir. Ha!

But just in case you don't want to spend eternity giving yourself high
colonics on some sleazy Web site, ogled by mil-lions of men with serious
intimacy problems, the other type of work which most people do in Hell
is—telemarketing. Yes, this means sitting at a desk, elbow-to-elbow with fellow
doomed telemarketing associates who stretch to the horizon in either direction,
all of you yakking on headsets.

My job is: The dark forces are constantly calculating when it's
dinnertime anywhere on earth, and a computer autodials those phone numbers so I
can interrupt everyone's meal. My goal isn't actually to sell you anything; I
just ask if you have a few seconds to take part in a market research study
identifying consumer trends in chewing gum. In mouthwash. In dryer fabric-softener
sheets. I get to wear my headset telephone and work from a flowchart of
possible responses. Best of all, I get to talk to real-live people—like
yourself—who are still living and breathing and have no idea that I'm dead and
phoning them from the Afterlife. Trust me, the vast majority of telemarketing
people who ring you up, they're dead. As are pretty much all Internet porn
models.

Okay, it's not as if I'm practicing brain surgery or tax law, but it
beats sticking crayons inside my hoo-hoo on a Web site called "Crazy
Nympho Girly Pleasures Self Using School Supply [sic]."

The autodialer connects me to somebody alive, and I say, "I'm
conducting a market study to better serve the chewing gum consumers in your area...Do
you have a moment to answer a few questions?" If the alive person hangs
up, the computer connects me to a new phone number. If the living person
answers my questions, the flowchart instructs me to ask more. Each person
seated at the phone bank has a laminated sheet of questions, more questions
than you could count. The point is to impose on the respondent, always
entreating to ask just
one more question,
please...
until the would-be diner loses their
composure, and their mood and evening meal are both ruined.

Once you're dead and in Hell your options are either to do something
trivial, but in a very self-important manner, for instance, market research
about paper-clip usage. Or you can do something serious in a very trivial
manner, for instance, looking bored and disengaged while taking a poop into a
crystal dish and eating it with a silver spoon— the poop, I mean, not the dish.

If you asked my dad about selecting any kind of professional career,
he'd tell you, "Don't make a date with a heart attack." Meaning:
You've got to pace yourself and not forget to slow down. No job is forever. So
relax and have some fun.

With that goal in mind, I let my attention wander. While hungry alive
people wheedle to end our conversation, begging that their pot roast is growing
cold, I'm actually thinking, musing whether my mother would've acted
differently had she known I had fewer than forty-eight hours to live. In
hindsight, I wonder, if she'd known about my impending demise, would she still
have cheaped out and planned to give me her swag bag of Academy Award luxury
crap in lieu of a real birthday present. If she'd known the clock was ticking,
I mean, and most of the sand had already run out from my hourglass.

Asking hungry people about their dental floss preferences, I remember
how, when I was really young, I thought the United States would just keep
adding states, sewing more and more stars to our flag until we owned the entire
world. I mean, why stop at fifty? Why stop with Hawaii? It seemed natural that
Japan and Africa would eventually be absorbed into the starry part of our
national flag. In the past we'd pushed aside the pesky Navajos and Iroquois to
create Californians and Texans. We could do the same with Israel and Belgium
and finally achieve world peace. When you're a little kid, you really do think
that getting bigger— growing tall, sprouting big muscles and breasts—will be
the answer to all of your problems. That's how my mom still is: always
acquiring new houses in other cities. Ditto for my dad: always trying to
collect appreciative kids from awful places like Darfur and Baton Rouge.

The problem is, troubled kids never stay saved. The Rwandan brother I
had for about two hours, he ran off with my debit card. My Bhutanese little
sister of about a day, she kept downing the Xanax my mom was happy to offer...
and spiraled into drug abuse. Nothing stays safe. Even our homes in Hamburg and
London and Manila sit empty, tempting burglars and hurricanes and collecting
dust.

And Goran, well, the way that adoption ultimately turned out, it's
difficult to call his rescue a Big Success.

Yes, I can recognize my parents' faulty logic, but if I'm so
talented-and-gifted, why is it that the only authors I've ever read are Emily
Bronte and Daphne du Maurier and Judy Blume? Why have I read
Forever Amber,
like, two hundred times? Seriously, if I
were truly
-truly
brilliant, I'd be
alive and skinny, and the structure of this story would be one epically long
homage to Marcel Proust.

Instead, on my telephone headset, I'm asking some stupid alive person
what colors of cotton swab would best complement her primary bathroom
decorating scheme. On a scale of one to ten, I'm asking how she would rate the
following flavors of lip gloss: warm honey... saffron breeze... ocean mint...
lemon glow... blue sapphire... creamy rose... tangy ember... and douche-berry.

In regard to my polygraph test, Babette says not to hold my breath.
Collating the results can take forever. Until we hear something back, she says
I should just hang tight and do my telephone job. A few chairs away from me,
Leonard asks someone about toilet paper. Beside him, Patterson sits in his
football uniform, asking someone their opinion concerning mosquito repellent.
Near them, Archer holds his headset to the side of his face, so it doesn't
smash his blue Mohawk, while he seeks public opinions about a candidate for
political office.

According to Babette, 98.3 percent of lawyers end up in Hell. That's in
contrast to the 23 percent of farmers who are eternally damned. Some 45 percent
of retail business owners are Hellhound, and 85 percent of computer software
writers. Perhaps a trace number of politicians ascend to Heaven, but
statistically speaking, 100 percent of them are cast into the fiery pit. As are
essentially 100 percent of journalists and redheads. For whatever reason,
people standing shorter than five-foot-one are more likely to be condemned.
Also, people with a body mass index greater than 0.0012. Babette begins
spouting these stats and you'd swear she was autistic. Just because she once
worked processing paperwork for incoming souls, she can tell you that blondes
outnumber brunettes three to one in Hell. People with at least two years of
continuing education beyond high school are almost six times more likely to be
damned. As are people earning more than a seven-figure annual income.

Bearing all of this in mind, I figure my parents have roughly a 165
percent likelihood of joining me forever.

And no, I have no idea how "douche-berry" is supposed to
taste.

Over my own headset, some old-lady voice crackles, droning on and on
about the flavor of something called "Beech-Nut" chewing gum, and
over the telephone I swear I can smell the pee stink of her nine hundred cats.
Her old-lady breathing sounds wet and full of static, popping and rasping from
her old throat, the lisping effect of ill-fitted dentures, the shouted volume
of age-related hearing loss, and she allows me to go deeper into the flowchart
than anyone I've ever called. Already we're at the twelfth level, topic four,
question seventeen: flavored toothpicks, for God's sake.

I'm asking, Would she consider purchasing toothpicks artificially
treated to taste like chocolate? Like beef? Like apples? Then I realize how
desperately lonely and isolated this old lady must feel. Probably I'm the only
human contact she's enjoyed all day, and her meat loaf or rice pudding sits
rotting on the plate in front of her because she's more starved for
communication with another person.