In My Skin (3 page)

I'VE ALWAYS HAD
a mischievous streak. My mom is really quiet and reserved, sweet and soft, and when I was a kid, I liked to see how much I could get away with on her watch—partly because my dad had so many damn rules, but also because I'm stubborn like him. I had to do all my acting out when he wasn't around. One time, my mom sent me to my room for disobeying, and I climbed out the window, scooted down to the ground, then walked around to the front of the house and rang the doorbell. When she opened the door, I just stood there and said, “Hi. I'm out.” She was so mad, she actually started yelling, which is out of character for her. Usually when I was pushing my luck, being a smart mouth, all Momma had to say was, “I'm going to call your father.” That's when I would answer, “Okay, I'm going to my room now. Please don't call him!” She never spanked me, but he did. I got the belt sometimes, mostly the hand—although his hands are so big, they felt like a belt.

When my dad was at work, I couldn't go anywhere. The other kids in the neighborhood were riding around on their bikes, but I was supposed to stay in the yard, where my mom could see me. My dad had a very strict upbringing, and that's how he raised me, as if danger lurked around every corner. It didn't help that my brother got into a lot of trouble when he was younger, hanging with the wrong crowd. I couldn't even go over to a friend's house; there were no sleepovers or slumber parties for me. Hell, no. My dad didn't even like the idea of me playing with other kids.

Mom covered for me a lot when I got a little older. Dad would call in the afternoon and ask, “What's Brittney doing? Can I talk to her?” And if I wasn't there, she'd say, “Oh, Baby Girl is sleeping right now,” or tell him I was busy doing homework. Meanwhile I was probably down the block, hanging out at the corner store. She saved me a lot of whoopings. I guess it was just easier to disappoint my mother than my father, because I was such a daddy's girl, from the moment I could walk. Everywhere he went, I was there, attached to his leg. He could not get out of the house without me knowing about it. If he was leaving to run an errand, I was in that truck with him. If he was working in the yard or the garage, I was right there next to him. Cutting the grass, putting up a fence, fixing cars, doing repairs around the house—I was Daddy's Little Helper. I learned all about tools in that garage. He'd be working on something, and he'd say, “Go get me a 716 D socket and an extension cord.” So I'd go get whatever he wanted.

My mom could never put me in a dress because I would mess it up so fast. She'd put the little lace socks on me, and I'd rip the lace off to make them look like regular socks. We'd go school shopping, and I always ended up in the boys' section because I liked those clothes better. She'd pick something out for me in the girls' section, then hold it up and ask, “Don't you want a new dress for the school year?” And I'd say, “Nope, I'm good.”

“What about a skirt?”

“No thank you.”

“How about this pretty pink blouse?”

“I like this T-shirt better.”

She wasn't going to make me wear something I didn't like, so I got to pick out my own stuff. And my dad didn't care what I wore—at least not back then. He knew I couldn't be outside helping him do stuff if I was in a dress or a skirt. I had this orange shirt with punk rock characters on it, and I wore it all the time. I practically wore it ragged, until it got too tight on me. I also had a pair of overalls I lived in. I wore one strap up, one strap down. I thought I was so cool. (I wasn't.) And I loved being a little rebel.

My best friend when I was eight years old was Thunder, our police-trained rottweiler. We got him after our dog Rottie passed away. Dad liked rottweilers because they're good for protection. I went to a training class with him before we brought Thunder home, and I remember thinking,
That is one mean dog.
I was only allowed to go near Thunder only if Dad was around. We had a fence in the backyard, and Dad put him out there every morning before he went to work. He would tell me, “Do
not
go in that backyard. The dog will bite you.” I guess some kids would have been scared when they heard that, but Rottie had never hurt me, and Thunder seemed to like me, too, especially when I slipped him bacon through the fence. After he had been with us for a few weeks, I was curious to see how he would treat me when my father wasn't standing guard over us. One day, while Dad was at work and Mom was busy doing laundry, I looked out the window and saw Thunder on the far side of the yard, away from the house. So I went out there and walked in the opposite direction, to the other side of the yard. I got down on the ground, on my knees, then looked at Thunder. Sure enough, he took off running toward me, full speed. I was so far away from the back door, I could have been mauled. But Thunder did what I thought he would and slid right into my arms.

A little while later, Dad got home and came running outside when he saw me and Thunder rolling around, playing. At first I thought he was going to yell at me, but instead he said, “How the heck did you get him to do that?” I smiled and said, “I don't know. I guess I'm just good with dogs.” I didn't tell him I had bacon in my pocket and I'd been giving it to Thunder. I think I knew, instinctively, being close to Thunder was another way of being close to my dad, even as I was trying to assert my independence—in whatever ways an eight-year-old can express free will.

When I wasn't shadowing my father, I was mimicking my brother. I worshipped DeCarlo. I would call him and say, “Come over and spend the night, please!” And when I heard his motorcycle pull up, I'd run outside, jumping up on him, jumping on his bike. I wanted to be just like him. He was into cars, so I was into cars. He had tattoos, so I got them when I was older. I even tried to walk the way he walks. Everything about him seemed adventurous, probably because he's a jack-of-all-trades. He has been a mechanic and a truck driver, worked on oil rigs, installed pools— whatever blows his way. My dad liked how good DeCarlo was to me, but he didn't want me taking after him, because my brother was wild when he was a teenager, doing stupid stuff like boosting cars. He gave my dad hell, and they bumped heads a lot. I remember one time Dad told me and Pier, “There's no bail money for y'all because your brother used it up. So you'd better not end up in jail, because you'll be stuck there.”

I thought that was funny as hell, because when you're a kid, you don't fully understand the consequences of your actions, how one mess-up can lead to another, and all of a sudden you find yourself on the wrong path. My dad wanted to make sure I stayed on the right path as I got older, and I appreciate that now. But he would end up saying and doing a lot of things in the years to come that made me question his approach and caused me a lot of pain.

I
don't remember the exact moment, the first time I realized I was different from other kids. Because we're all different, right? We're all unique. And everybody always talks about how we should celebrate the things that make each of us special in our own way. The problem is, a lot of people are full of crap when it comes to following their own advice. They say one thing, then do another. They say it's important for kids to express themselves, but from the moment that starts to happen, from the moment kids start to make choices—what clothes they want to wear, what toys they want to play with, what activities they want to pursue—society tries to define them and put them into neat little boxes. Girls are supposed to act this way, boys that way. And any kid who doesn't fit into one of those boxes gets labeled as weird or strange or different.

I guess I started feeling different when everybody started telling me I was. At home, I was a carefree, curious, mischievous little girl. At school, I was a freak. And no matter how much love I got at home, it couldn't protect me from what was happening at school. It couldn't keep me from feeling sad, frustrated, angry, lonely. Everything was getting harder, and I went from being fearless to scared.

As far back as I can remember, I was never attracted to boys. They were just my buddies. I always liked girls. I had a crush on my best friend when I was in elementary school. We would hold hands, like kids do, and I remember thinking it felt good—it felt right. But over the next few years, most everything else started feeling wrong. I'm not sure middle school is easy for any kid; for me, it was awful. I wasn't one of the cool kids, with the trendy new shoes and clothes, and I was starting to stick out more because of my height and appearance. I was all elbows and knees and rough edges. So I just tagged along with my own little group at school and tried to fit in however I could, hoping to avoid the verbal darts that kids were throwing at each other more often. It seems so stupid when I look back on it now, how much I wanted to be part of the in-crowd. You know what? Screw the in-crowd. Trying so hard to be like everyone else, to talk and act like everyone else, to be something you're not, is exhausting and self-destructive. I learned that lesson the hard way, because sixth, seventh, and eighth grades—the years I tried the hardest to fit in—were the worst for me.

I always had a handful of friends. In elementary school, that was all I needed, because it's not like kids are making plans outside of school without their parents. But as I got older, the friends I did have started hanging out together after school, meeting at the mall to walk around, look in the stores, eat pizza at the food court. At first I would ask my dad for permission to join them: “Can I go to my friend's house?” And he would quickly say no, without even really considering it, his voice like a rock dropping. “I don't know anything about that family,” he would tell me. “They could be killers.” He actually said this; that's how much he distrusted other people and wanted me to learn to do the same. I wasn't allowed to do anything but go to school and come home from school. If I wanted to go to the mall with my friends, he would have been right there with me, like a bodyguard. My mom would let me do what I wanted, but when it came to giving me permission to leave the house, she would always say, “Ask your dad.” And after a while, I wouldn't even bother asking him; I'd just trudge away, my disappointment morphing into anger. Pretty soon other kids stopped asking me to hang out, because everyone already knew the answer. I became the “at-school friend.”

Anxious to find my place, I started acting like the class clown. I enjoyed trying to make people laugh, because it gets them talking with you. I was often by myself at home, so I fed off whatever energy I could create at school, even if it got me in trouble. I remember one incident from sixth grade that pretty much sums up the way I was behaving. I was sitting at my desk, my classmates all around me, and I decided to start mouthing off to the teacher. If she asked a question, I would call out, “You already know the answer, so why are you asking us?” My classmates were laughing, which only encouraged me more. Finally, after a few of these outbursts, the teacher decided she'd had enough. In front of everyone, she looked at me and said, “I'm going to call home.” I didn't believe her, so I said, “Go ahead, call my house. I don't care.” Then I methodically called out my home phone number to the teacher, turning around in my chair when I was done to slap hands with the kids behind me.

I felt untouchable, right up until the moment the teacher actually picked up the phone on her desk and started dialing the number. I couldn't believe it. She was calling my house, right then and there, with me in the room, in front of everybody. I wanted to keep acting cool, but my heart started thudding in my chest and my head was spinning. What if my dad answered? I knew it was his day off. I said a quick prayer that my mom would pick up the phone and save me. But then I heard his deep, booming voice coming through the receiver. He must have asked to speak to me after the teacher told him how I was misbehaving, because she held out her hand and offered the phone to me. I was trembling as I walked to the front of the room. I slowly took the phone from her.

“Hey, Dad,” I said quietly.

“So you're acting up?”

“Uh . . . uh . . .” I stammered, and before I could finish, he cut me off.

“That's enough,” he said. “I'll deal with your ass when you get home.”

Then he hung up.
Click.
I handed the phone to my teacher and slunk back to my chair. I didn't say a thing the rest of the day, dreading what was to come. That afternoon, I asked the bus driver to drop me off at the end of her route, instead of at the beginning. But all that did was delay the inevitable. After I got off the bus, I circled our house, entering through the back door and sneaking into my room to do homework, to make it seem like I was really busy and focused. My dad wasn't fooled. He was sitting in the living room, and when he heard me, he came straight to my room. That's when all hell broke loose. I tried darting away from him, but he caught me and gave me the spanking he had promised—the hand mixed with the belt.

I WAS A MESS OF
emotions in middle school. I could see my classmates were finding their place in the social structure, but I felt adrift, alone, scrambling to figure it all out. My dad wanted me to live inside a glass box, tucked safely away inside our house, exposed to nothing, including the typical interactions kids need. I rebelled by acting like a fool at school, desperate for attention. And as the months passed, I realized I was different from other kids in more ways than one.

The teasing and mocking, the verbal bullying, began some time in sixth grade. I was at Humble Middle School now, with lots of new faces, and I was at least a few inches taller than most girls in my class, but not developing in the same ways they were. I felt like a physical misfit, my body flat and thin, my voice low—a combination that gave my classmates all the ammunition they needed. Most of us were always testing each other in some way, teasing, making cracks, the typical kid stuff at that age. But as we settled into our surroundings, the interactions grew more cruel.