Sorta Like a Rock Star (6 page)

CHAPTER 5

Practical Life Skills class, where I work on my prom dress.

Semi-boring history, and then I’m at Ricky’s locker.

“Amber Appleton slapped Lex Pinkston in THE FACE. Bad girl! Bad girl! Bad girl!”

“If you don’t stop saying bad girl, I’m going to tickle you.”

“No! Ricky Roberts does NOT like to be tickled. No tickle-tickle.”

This is as close as Ricky gets to making a joke, because tickling is his favorite. I get him good under his armpits, and he doubles over and yells “Hi! Hi! Hi!” until some bearded teacher I don’t know comes out of his classroom and asks if everything is okay.

“Beautiful,” I say to the beard.

“Amber Appleton is my best friend. She makes omelets with tequila and takes me on missions and I am taking her to prom in a limousine! Yes,” Ricky says.

The beard nods once, real serious—as if Ricky told the beard that he needed to donate a kidney to the president because it was the beard’s civic duty or something—and then the beard walks back into his classroom.

Truth be told, there are a lot of teachers who are scared of Ricky, because he flips out sometimes and punches himself in the head, which can get a little intense.

As we walk to Donna’s house together, Ricky counts aloud, and I enjoy the afternoon winter sun on my face.

Bobby Big Boy always pisses himself whenever we are reunited, so I pull a few paper towels from the roll, and then let him out of his room. In the tiled hallway, he circles me seven times, like he has been snorting cocaine all day, and then he pees on the floor, so I wipe up the yellow puddle and give Thrice B a kiss. He tries to slip me the tongue, but he doesn’t make it into my mouth or anything.

I give Ricky a sleeve of Fig Newtons and a blue Gatorade.

He’s already doing his math homework, because he frickin’ loves math.

“I have to go see The KDFCs,” I tell him, but he doesn’t look up from his math. “I’ll be back to cook dinner. Okay?”

“Ricky Roberts is doing math. Do not talk to Ricky Roberts when Ricky Roberts is doing math!”

“Cool,” I say, and then lock the door behind BBB and me. Ricky will do math problems forever if you let him, so no worries leaving him alone.

I take Donna’s ten-speed bike from the garage and put B3 in the little basket Donna bought for him that is attached to the handlebars. He fits perfect so that just his head sticks out. It’s pretty frickin’ adorable.

We are flying through the cold January air, out of town, across the tracks, and into the ghetto. There are a lot of down-and-out people in this town, and they usually stare at me when I ride my bike through.

The first time this happened, it scared me a lot, because it sorta looked like these people wanted to kill me, but I have since learned a trick.

Whenever someone looks at me like they want to stomp my face in, I now look the person in the eyes, smile really huge, wave, and say, “Hope you’re havin’ a great day!” It’s pretty wild, because doing this really works. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. Even the meanest-looking people will get this really stunned look on their faces, but then the smile blooms, and they usually wave back and say something nice like “God bless you!” or “Same to you!” It’s a pretty cool trick, and maybe even a pretty killer way of life, if you are a crazy spiritual ho like me. True? True.

Today I yell, “Hope you’re havin’ a great day!” eight times, and I get two “Thanks!” one “Jesus loves you!” two “You go girl!”s two “Same to you!”s and one “You a sexy bike girl! Ride on, girl, ride on,” which made me laugh, because the man who yelled this had to be at least ninety-seven.

And then I’m at the Korean Catholic Church, which is an old shoe store turned house of God, and sits nestled between a McDonald’s and a liquor store. In his penguin suit, Father Chee is waiting outside for me, because the men in front of the liquor store sometimes say bad things to me, and the “Hope you’re havin’ a great day!” trick doesn’t always work on them so well.

Technically, I got hooked up with Father Chee through my high school guidance counselor, who says I have to do a load of community service if I want to get into Bryn Mawr College, which is where I want to study English, because you can go to law school if you major in English and do really well at Bryn Mawr College. That’s what Donna did anyway. But to tell you the truth, I don’t really give a crap anymore about fulfilling the community service requirements, which are of this world, as Franks like to say. I still want to go to Bryn Mawr and all, but doing what I do with Father Chee has become part of my religious practice, which I realize might sound truly whack to some, but I believe in what FC and I do, like—for real. Word. And I had been praying for a chance to make a difference in the lives of people who needed it most, because that’s really all I want to do with my life—help people who need it, just like JC told us to do.

About a year back, Father Chee contacted the high school looking for someone to teach English to the women in his church who wanted to learn. At first, I tried to simply straight-up teach them vocab and grammar and whatnot, but it was so boring and depressing for the women that I had to think up a killer alternative or quit. Lucky for FC’s church members, I’m pretty good at thinking up killer hooey. Also, Father Chee and I work well together—we’re an awesome team—and ever since I implemented my new teaching technique, my enrollment has more than doubled.

Father Chee holds open the front door and I ride Donna’s bike right into the church.

My Man of God locks the door behind us, which is sorta weird since it’s a church and all.

“Hello, Bobby Big Boy,” Father Chee says, patting 3B on the head. Triple B licks Father’s hand, because they are boys, and then FC is pulling BBB out of the basket so that they can get a man hug in, which is cool, because B Thrice loves to hug Men of God.

My dog is Catholic. And if you say dogs don’t have a soul and therefore don’t go to heaven, I will slap your face silly. Word.

Maybe—before I get into the story of The Korean Divas for Christ and Father Chee—you might want to know how I became a Catholic and a crazy-serious religious person?

Well, the only thing my father, Bob, left behind for me when he took off was this series of children’s books called Jesus Was a Rock Star. They were these big picture books for kids—twelve in the series—and each was about one of the killer adventures Jesus had on earth, how Jesus rocked the world and then got crucified for being so cool. These books were pretty awesome because Jesus was always doing miracles like turning water to wine and walking on water and even bringing people back from the dead, which is definitely a pretty killer thing to do. Also, in the pictures, Jesus was very handsome (sorta like Jack White of the White Stripes) with His long rock-star hair. JC always had an entourage around Him, He never freaked out when people let Him down or things went wrong—JC was always so very cool—and He loved everyone and went around saving people like Mom and me, people everyone else had already given up on.

My favorite Jesus adventure was when He stopped the crowd from stoning a hooker. You probably know that one already, but all these mean men were actually going to throw rocks at the woman’s head until her skull caved in and she was dead, but Jesus did this Jedi-mind-trick thing and just wrote words in the sand until the mean men noticed and asked what the hell JC was doing. Then—so cool, like a rock star—Jesus says that the person without any sin can throw the first rock at the woman. And then the men start to feel guilty and freak out and leave—which is the best part. Jesus didn’t even have to raise His voice, let alone throw any fists. Who would have thought that writing words in the sand would work? And then JC doesn’t even yell at the woman for having too much sex. He just saves her and tells her to live a good life, which is pretty cool of Jesus. No guilt trip or anything.

I still have my Jesus Was a Rock Star books, and the pages are all worn out from my reading them so many times. True.

My mom never really dug Jesus too much, maybe because my dad was big on JC and he broke Mom’s heart—shattered it—leaving her all alone with newborn me and an endless train of loser boyfriends.

So Mom never took me to church or anything like that.

But when I was in eighth grade, Ty was always complaining about his mom making him attend these religious classes about Jesus so that he could join the Catholic Church and avoid getting sent to hell. I asked if I could go with him, and this excited Mrs. Hendrix very much. So I started attending Jesus class with Ty at St. Dymphna’s, which is this big old church with killer stained-glass windows, ancient wooden pews full of comfy red cushions, and a massive organ that can blast your eardrums until you go deaf—St. Dymphna’s pretty much has the works.

Only the priest there—Father Johns—told the Jesus stories all wrong. Father Johns was always going on and on about how Jesus was going to be disappointed in us if we sinned or didn’t do enough charity, and the way he talked about JC made the Son of God seem more like a mean, pissy old lady than a rock star. But the one thing that really hit home with me was Father Johns telling us that we would go to hell if we didn’t join the Catholic Church, do enough charity work, and live a good life. That bit sorta scared me and made me want to join for real.

Needless to say, I was baptized, did the confession thing, had my First Communion with all of these little kids whose parents were good Catholics and therefore didn’t let their sons and daughters get to middle school before they have their First Communion, and then Ty and I joined the church as his parents watched all proud. Mrs. Hendrix was my sponsor—and she even bought me a white dress and white shoes for the big day. I took Mary for my confirmation name—not too original, I admit—and then I went to a big party at the Hendrix house, where Ty’s relatives actually gave me presents simply because I was an official Catholic now.

Mom didn’t come to see me baptized, nor when I became a member of the church—probably because of my religious dad leaving her.

For a year or so, I went to church with the Hendrix family every week, but then I just stopped going for some reason. I think it was because the priest kept on messing up the Jesus stories—talking about Jesus as if he were this boring arrogant person who didn’t rock, which we all know is not the case. I didn’t feel anything when I went to church, and I could read about Jesus at home and pray anywhere, so I just stopped going to Mass. I think I really let Ty’s mom down, but religion and JC aren’t for impressing people’s moms. True.

I was going to try another church to see if they talked about Jesus any differently, but then I met Father Chee—and instantly, I knew that I had found my priest for life. Word. FC rocks, just like JC.

Inside Father Chee’s church, there is a small room where you can hang your coat, which is where I park Donna’s bike, and then there is the sanctuary. A big crucifix hangs front and center over a little altar and a simple podium. The walls are cinder blocks painted puke yellow, and there are no windows and no pews, but only long white lightbulbs in the ceiling—the kind that look like lightsabers—and rows of flesh-colored fold-up chairs, which are currently occupied by a dozen or so Korean women, all of whom jump up and start smiling just as soon as I walk into the church.

I don’t want to brag, but I’m sorta like a rock star to these people.

The first thing that happens whenever I enter The Korean Catholic Church:

Every single one of The KDFCs gives me a big old hug and then they speak their homework sentence in English. I give them a prompt at the end of each class, which I copy down a dozen or so times because I don’t have access to a photocopy machine. Father Chee usually explains the prompt in Korean, which is sorta like cheating, but it’s also good because we want The KDFCs to do the assignment so that their English will improve and they can start branching out into America and whatnot.

Last week they all failed to do the assignment correctly.

I had asked them to state what they would most like to do in the world and to describe how doing it would make them feel, using one killer adjective. But all of these kind-hearted women—every single one—said what they would like to do for their husband or their children or their parents.

“I would like to buy a big house for my son or daughter.”

“I would like to buy my husband an expensive car.”

“I would like to send my nice parents to Hawaii.”

So I failed them all and told The KDFCs that they had to use better adjectives and say what they wanted for
themselves
, because having dreams for yourself is totally American, and if they were going to live in America, they needed to think like American women.

So I say, “Na Yung, did you do your homework?”

“Yes, Amber,” Na Yung says.

“And?”

Na Yung, who is old enough to be my mom, gets all nervous whenever she is speaking English around me, which is why I called on her first, so she can get it over with and relax.

“I would like see live handsome movie star in Hollywood—like
delicious
men I see in photo American magazine.”

“Nice job,” I tell Na Yung. “Very American! Good pronunciation and delicious is truly a killer adjective! A-plus. How about you, Sun?”

“I dream to fly in beautiful fat
rotund
air balloon so hair will blow warmest behind my ear.”

“That’s
damn
good, Sun. Rotund is
very
good. I’d like to fly in a beautiful fat rotund air balloon too. That would be truly killer.”

As I listen to the dreams of all the Korean women present, Father Chee smiles at me so that I can see every one of his teeth. I can tell he really really digs me, in a non-sexual good-guy priest sorta way. Maybe he wishes I were his daughter, because he’s not allowed to make a daughter for himself. He would be a cool dad.

The KDFCs love it when I praise their English, and you can tell that they really dig expressing themselves in my class too, which is pretty cool. I’m having a good time listening to their dreams, but then suddenly everyone has spoken and The Korean Divas for Christ are lining up in two rows by the altar—songbooks in hand—so eagerly, because they pretty much come for the soul singing. FC and I know that they like singing better than learning English, which is why we invented this awesome alternative class in the first place.