The Bitch Posse (34 page)

May 1988
Holland, Illinois

Well, the shit is officially coming down because Mom went through my backpack and found the Bitch Goddess Notebook. Now not only does she know about the fact that we’ve been seeing each other all this time, but I’m standing here in the kitchen watching her read every word about me and Brandon, as Dad stares over her shoulder, skimming it too. Thank God (
Thank God
) we never used anything but initials, because for all they know the R.S. Rennie’s been fucking (yeah, we used that word, stupid I know, believe me I’ve been beating myself up over the whole fucking thing) is Ron Stapleton, the math genius. But it doesn’t really matter, because Dad’s face is turning red and his hands shake as he reaches for his scotch and soda, oh damn he’s pissed.

Mom belts down some of her screwdriver and keeps reading, not looking at me. I want to disappear into the floor.

Finally she finishes. She slams the book shut, and her eyes narrow. Then, like she’s thinking or something, they widen. “Amy?”

God, that screwdriver looks good. It’s a Friday night, and I already know I’m grounded, which means no going out with the girls and getting drunk and/or stoned. At least I have my Xanax, and my razor blade, ha ha ha. “Yeah, Mom?”

She sucks in a breath. “This is so far beneath you. Rich? What should we do?”

Dad slams his drink down on the counter.

Mom passed out earlier as usual and then woke up again to start in on her second round of drinking. So I know, any conversation is going to be tangled like a blood clot and I’ll never say anything right. “We made a lot of that stuff up,” I say, “just stuff we saw in movies and . . . ” It sounds like the bullshit it is.

“Liar.” Dad unscrews the bottle and splashes some into the glass, straight. “We counted on you, Amy. Do you know how hard this has been?”

“Listen, it’s been hard for me too. I don’t have any friends now. That’s why I’ve been seeing my old friends.”

Mom walks toward me and stumbles on the perfectly flat floor as she reaches for my face. “Amy . . . ” She rubs a thumb down my cheek. Then she starts to cry.

Oh, crap, I hate seeing her cry. Her face squints up like a baby’s and then goes limp. She gasps out a sob, and a thin stream of snot drips from her nose. “How could you, Amy?” She pulls in her tears for a minute. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for us to see you do this to yourself?”

Do you have any idea what it’s like to have parents who are plastered after school, whose moods change on a heartbeat? But I don’t say that. I’m dying to get out of the room so I can at least go upstairs and chew some Xanax because my heart’s racing in my ears. I’m bursting with anger, not the least bit sorry.

Dad’s already finished his straight scotch and pours another. “You’re missing the point, Barb. Amy here is screwing anything that moves, and not only has she disobeyed us but she’s done it flagrantly,” and that last word trips him up a bit; he finally gets his lips around it, though.

“Well, you know what? You don’t have to like my friends, but it’s my life. I should be able to see them, and I will anyway whatever you say, so—”

Mom interrupts. “Amy, do you have any idea what it’s like to be the parents of a handicapped child?”

And of course my answer is no, how could I? So I just stare, but she pushes. “Do you?”

I flatten my lips, shake my head.

She seizes my shoulders. “Then why the hell do you make it even fucking harder?” And she won’t stop shaking me.

I look to Dad for help, but he just says, “You’re hurting your mother, Amy. Can’t you see that?”

And I burst out with “You should take her home, take her home, why lock her in a box miles away?”

Oh, God. Did I really say that?

That’s when Mom slaps me across the face, not once, but twice. “You little bitch.”

I won’t cry in front of them I won’t cry in front of them I won’t I won’t I won’t.

“She’s going to die, Amy,” says Dad in the background. The scotch tumbles into his glass, ticktickticktick. “You need to face that.”

Did I hear right? “Die?”

Mom traces her fingers in a pool of orange juice from the drink she knocked over when she was smacking me. “They don’t expect her to last more than another year. Her heart’s always been small. Now that she’s an adult, her body just can’t take it. We knew this would happen, eventually.”

Then why didn’t they ever clue me in? Now I do start crying, hard, but they just stare at me from across the kitchen. I grab Mom’s fresh drink, and although it’s so tempting to just down it, I take a step forward and fling it into the wall. The glass shatters and hangs there for a moment before the pieces fall to the floor and the orange juice trickles down the paint.

“Amy!” Mom grabs my wrists and bends them backward. “How did I raise such an impossible slut?”

I glance at Dad again, and he coughs and says, “Barb.”

She lets go. “Go to your room.” She spits out the words, as if from a great effort, and doesn’t make a move to clean up the spoiled drink.

“You heard your mother.” Dad’s voice is slurry now, coming from far away.

“It’s my life, it’s my body, what do you care?” I want to fly out the window, drift into outer space, float anywhere but here. “I can sleep with whoever I want and you can’t stop me.”

“Maybe if we keep you home you won’t act like such a little cunt.” The word trips out of Dad’s mouth and shoots into my eyes, piercing them.

I feel dead.

“Your room, now.”

“Gladly.” Shaking, I stalk upstairs. There’ve been scenes with them before, but none like this. Mom’s never hurt me like that. Dad’s never called me
cunt.

You know what’s even worse, they won’t remember a word of this tomorrow. Or they’ll pretend they don’t.

Upstairs I slam the door. My Smiths poster shakes with the vibration and falls to the floor, but I don’t pick it up. I throw a cassette, any cassette, into my stereo and turn it way up. It happens to be the Talking Heads, that get-up-and-dance song “And She Was,” but I just hurl myself onto the bed. It’s a song that should make me happy, but I can’t do anything but cry. My sobs smother David Byrne’s voice as he
sings about the magical woman taking off her dress and rising above the earth. Damn, why can’t that be me? I want out of here, now now now.

At least they can’t hear me—fuck them, fuck everyone, everything. I pull my Xanax bottle from my nightstand and spill them onto my quilt—how many? I count them in fives, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-four. It wouldn’t be hard to swallow them, what would twenty-four Xanax do? Would that be enough, or would I end up in the hospital, in deeper shit, hating myself even more for fucking up yet again?

If I took them all and went downstairs while Mom and Dad are passed out, and grabbed a fifth of vodka and drank it, I bet that’d do it.

I pull out five from the pile and shove them into my mouth, chew them while I think about it.

My beautiful sister, could it be true what they said? Then the sobs start again. I have no family. Even God probably hates me. I don’t have anyone, really, who accepts me no matter what. The Bitch Posse’s the closest I’ll ever get.

Goddamn it, they are not going to ruin my Friday. Fuck them.

I turn down the music, pick up the phone, and get a clear dial tone. So, they’re too drunk to imagine I might try to call somebody. There’re always benefits to their drinking, one of which is the cluelessness that allows me to steal booze right in front of them on my way out the door. They might even forget they grounded me within the next hour, but it’s not worth the risk. I’m sneaking out. First I have to call, though, because I’d better not take Dad’s Mustang tonight.
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,
I mutter as I drop my Xanax into the bottle one by one.

The phone rings three times and Rennie picks up. “Yeah.”

She sounds so listless and depressed, but she can’t feel worse than me. “Listen, it’s Amy. For the last ten minutes I’ve been staring at nineteen Xanax ready to gulp them all and it’s really hard not to take them right about now . . . ”

She slides out a whistle. “Shit, Amy, your parents?”

“Who else? I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’ll be over in ten minutes. Don’t do a thing, okay?”

“I have to climb through my window. Meet you in the alley?”

“I’ll call Cherry. I’ll pick you up, then her. We’ll all go there together.”

“Where?”

“The Porter Place.”

It makes sense really, there’s nowhere else to go, and we agree. I hang up and fix my makeup, stuff my pillows under my quilt, and turn up the music superloud. Then I slip out the window and drop to the pavement, jog to the alley, and wait.

In a few minutes she’s there in her Beetle, and she rolls down the window and hands me a smoke. She’s talked to Cherry, I can tell, because she’s smiling like a girl who is most definitely not depressed. Thank God. She’ll cheer me up.

When I get in, she laughs and shifts the car into gear. “You are beautiful, my darlin’, beautiful.”

“What are we gonna do tonight?”

“Listen, we need to talk. We’re all feeling a little angry, aren’t we?”

God, I know I am. Even the Xanax hasn’t blunted it yet, the anger’s like a knife in my hands. I hate my mother for hitting me, I hate my father for standing by. I hate them both for their words and for fucking me over just so they can get drunk and feel sorry for themselves. They’re so fucking self-righteous about having a “handicapped child,” but they don’t stop to think about what it does to someone to grow up with fucked-up parents, what about that, huh, huh, huh?

My finger drifts too close to the cigarette, and it burns my flesh, but I feel good, alive, alive. “You don’t have to ask that, Rennie. You know I’m angry.”

Her eyes are glassy, excited. “Me too.”

“So are we gonna get wasted? Stoned? Drop acid together like Cherry always says we should do?”

The car jerks along. She doesn’t normally drive so fast. “You want to know now, or wait till the moment?” Her face betrays nothing.

“What moment? What do you mean?”

Her expression doesn’t change. “Cherry and I talked. We’ve got it all figured out. The only way to do something is to do it right the first time, and not fuck around with half-assed solutions.”

“What?”

“We’re gonna really kick some ass tonight, scare the shit out of someone. The Bitch Posse, the avenging three. But you don’t have to be in if you don’t want to.”

“ ‘In’? What the hell are you talking about?”

She signals left onto Cherry’s street. “Before we head to the Porter Place, the three of us are taking a little drive.” She blows out some smoke. “And when we get there, we’ll have our revenge.”

My heart drops to my knees. “What do you mean?”

“No one fucks with the Bitch Posse.” She reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “We’re gonna teach someone a lesson, that’s all.”

“You’re scaring me, Rennie.” I roll down the window and throw the cigarette into the street. I don’t want it anymore. “You’re not making any sense.”

“I already said, if you want out, you’re out, no problem, I’ll drive you back home. But listen to me first. Then decide.”

May 2003
Mill Valley, California

Rennie walks Caleb in from the car and picks up the envelope that’s been slid under her door. As he toddles around the porch, she lugs in the gigantic pack of diapers and the groceries from Safeway. She leads him inside and tosses everything on the counter. Maybe the babysitting service called. Maybe Kelly called. Or Puck again, begging for sex, even though she put him off with vague promises about “next week.” Good Lord.

She slides a Guinness out of one of the Safeway bags, pops the top, and pours it into a tall glass. A drink is surely the last thing she needs after several days without having eaten anything except the veggie burrito that’s turned into a rock in her stomach, but the smooth head rolls over her tongue, and the dark brew tastes so good going down. Caleb’s already torn open the little cars she picked up at the store and
is rolling them across the floor. Messages first or the envelope? She slits open the envelope, and it’s a quick note:

Ms. Taylor,

What happened in your classroom, I don’t know why it happened but you really need to take a step back from whatever’s going on in your life. Listen, you told me once not to fuck myself over. I’m telling you the same. I’m worried about you, you seem run-down and strange and, well, just don’t fuck up. You’re not a bad person. Sorry for all the swearing but I know you understand.

Paul

She smiles; well,
that’s
okay then. Then she frowns, humiliation pouring over her like blood. It’s not really. She still has to face him day after day, still has to relive the embarrassment of him walking away after she made the most overt pass she’s ever been guilty of making. God, did she really grab his hands and shove them on her tits? Did a seventeen-year-old kid, who should be desperate for any sex he can get, really turn her down?

Did a seventeen-year-old kid, who shouldn’t know anything about anything, really tell her she needs to take a step back from her life because she’s acting run-down and strange and might fuck herself over?