Stephanie

Stephanie is a young writer-to-be with a domineering mother and a hurting heart.

Stephanie:

I feel … ick.  Icky.  Blah.  Motionless.  Immobile.

Depressed.

Because of Christmas coming up?

Because I’m done shopping, and now it’s just a waiting time, and I hate to wait?

Because I want – no, I expect – to write everyday, and today I just don’t want to

Don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to

Do

Maybe by feeling this way, I’ll learn something about myself, or about other people,

Maybe I’ll grow in my understanding of why my mother comes home and yells because my sneakers are not lined up by the door, one is askew and the other is touching the wall and sneakers are supposed to be lined up with their toes one inch from the wall and why don’t I do anything right?

Cherish

Cherish, teen mother and Outsider Girl, tries to find some time for herself and discovers it’s “not about me”.  Cherish also appeared in OGW April 1, 2010 and May 20.

Cherish:  Seven am, before the boy is awake.  He got me up at four, then he went back to sleep.  I tossed and turned, got up, made the coffee for my mother and me, sat down at my computer.

Free time.  Writing time.

Only there’s an email from the Disney store about a sale on hoodies, and next thing I know I’m browsing their site for about an hour, and I’ve put like sixty dollars on my PayPal account and I’ve bought the boy stuff like a white tee shirt with Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas on it which I figure he can get away with wearing to school ‘cause the uniform is a white shirt.

I want him to stand out.  I want him noticed.

That’s how it is now – screw me getting noticed, nobody ever noticed me for the good things anyway.  And now I don’t have to worry about me anymore, it’s all about him.

I haven’t written one word.  I have like six pages of a children’s book, one I’m writing for him, my sweet little boy.

For him.

When will it be for me again?

Was it ever?

But guess what -- I have a beautiful boy going into kindergarten this year, so who the fuck am I to complain?

Only, I can’t help it.  I want a boyfriend, friends, a new hoodie for me, a full night sleep going to bed before one and up after nine and then a day to write and draw like I used to but—

He’s awake now, tugging on me leg, smiling in my face.  Then he sneezes, and the dripping boogers make him cry so I have to go now, have to clean his face.  Story over.

For today, it’s not about me—

It’s Not About Me.

Juliet

Juliet began as a character in a novel-in-progress, Let Her Cry, and then appeared in OGW 10/22/09.  Juliet is working on a “one-girl show”, hoping to become a performer like her mother.  Unfortunately, Juliet’s mother is bipolar, which often takes too much of Juliet’s time and energy, and leaves her with little left to work on herself.

Juliet: 

Juliet:  Story of My Life

(a “one-girl” show)

starring Juliet McCarthy as herself

(One small dot of light expands… expands, expands, becoming a halo, illuminating Juliet’s face, becoming a spotlight of her whole body.  She is crouched on the floor, holding the microphone in one hand, tapping a cigarette with the other.  A black and white movie reel plays in the backround:  loud sounds of reels spinning, the movie is crackly -- family scenes, like a montage of old family movies

Wait.  Too campy.  Not authentic enough.  Change to: (Natural lighting dims.  Juliet is crouched on the floor, tapping a cigarette with one hand, tapping keys on a laptop computer with the other.  She is illuminated by the light from her computer screen.  The microphone rests on the floor by her feet.  Her toes, barefeet, scrunch.

Slides click into place behind Juliet -- family scenes -- click, click, then faster and faster, clickity clickity click, in time with Juliet tapping out words on her computer.  She reads:)

                                                            Juliet:

After the big fight over Hootie.  Mom in fishnet tights and a big tee shirt with Dad’s Irish-green down vest over it for warmth.  He’s so happy when she kisses him.

            I’m happy too.  No, really.  Mom’s eyes look like clichés – sad clown or raccoon eyes, streaked make-up.  From the fight.  But it’s over now, they’re happy, and I’m happy.

            Really.  (Looks up at the audience.)

            But you don’t believe me.

           

            After the big fight, Mom with raccoon eyes kisses Dad and he runs his hands over her down vest.  They retreat to the bedroom, and Dad leaves his drink.  Scotch Rocks.

            I’m so happy for them, and the fact that they don’t see me anymore.  I’m so happy for me -- and the fact that I don’t see me anymore.

           

            (Juliet looks down at her computer and types as she reads:)  I don’t believe in me.

            I drink the scotch. (Mimes drinking a glassful in one gulp.)

            Tap my cigarette.  Suck hard.  Crouched over laptop on the floor of my room, Achilles tendons stretching, knees popping.  Writing.

            This is my story.

(The last slide clicks into place – it is Juliet, posed as she was a moment ago -- as she was in her bedroom that night.  She rises, and faces the screen and the slide, reaching out to touch her own image.)

Juliet

Juliet struggles to find her own voice, while caring for her bipolar mother.  Juliet began as a character in a novel, Let Her Cry, which is waiting for a rewrite, perhaps will be my next big project.

Juliet:  Last night I was writing a song.  It was about Michael, and it was going along fine, if a little corny.  I was singing and strumming my guitar, “You are the riches/You are the king/You are the future/Whatever that brings…”

     Slam!

     Then came pounding on the front door, and Dad trying not to yell, just to be heard – “Marnie, open up!  Marnie, please –“

     Dad’s river-wild, stage-strong movie voice was cut short by the door

     Slamming!

Open again, and then

     Slam!

Shut.

     My mother was crying in her show-voice, the one I think of as her desperately-crying-for-attention-and-love voice, this time melting into her for-the-audience-in-the-back-rows-too-darling voice.  Her combat boots pounded down the hall past my room and on into her own, where I heard her throwing, tearing, destroying.  And of course crying.  Gasping, sobbing, sucked-up screaming…

     My strum changed to minor chords, loud and abrupt and accompanied by “Shut up shut up shut up now!” angrily sung by me in my quietly-absorbing-everything-and-never-complaining voice.  My parents wouldn’t hear me.  I didn’t want them to.  I didn’t want to make things worse.

     But of course my mother couldn’t keep everything to herself, nope, she had to begin shoving photo after photo under my door, pictures she’d torn herself out of.  She knew how to make an entrance.  I wished I could be so talented, grabbing all the attention for myself -- and then Michael would love me, I thought as my mother scratched the outside of my door with her long fingernails. I dropped my guitar and my selfish thoughts, and ran to her, flinging open my bedroom door and allowing her to fall against me.  She was so tiny, and I was so gi-normous, her head tucked under my chin, and her drippy, sobbing, scrunchy-face pressed against my chest as if she were the child and I were the adult.

     “She shouldn’t – you shouldn’t –“ My father said from just behind her.

     “It’s okay, Mama.  I’ve got you now.”

     “They hated me!  I hate myself!  Everyone hates me!”

     “I don’t hate you Mama—“

     “Jules…” my father said, then sighed and backed away, disappearing back down the hall and into the living room.

     He turned on the stereo, and now it was as if Mama and I had a soundtrack.  Our lives were a play or a movie, and maybe this wasn’t how normal kids lived, but at least in this movie, I was a star.  Not like my mother, but a leading role at least.  A pivotal part.

     “Let her cry… if the tears fall down like rain/ Let her sing… if it eases all her pain/ Let her go…”

     Oh no!  Not Hootie!  I stepped back into my room as my mother ran down the hall to go and kill my father.

     “And if the sun comes up tomorrow/ Let her be…”

     “Oww for fuck’s sake Marcie, you—“

     I closed my door, realizing sadly that I might have to settle for a supporting role after all.

Jenna

Jenna is the main character in my upcoming novel, Spun.  She is a recovering meth addict with an alcoholic mother, a dead father, a torn-up life and an uncertain future.  Jenna is also an aspiring writer, carrying a notebook with her at all times in which she expresses her dreams and hopes, fears and desires, poems, images and observations.

Jenna:

Paige has Kevin.

Even Mom has Frank.

Is there, and if so, where and when is there, someone for me?  I’m filled with longing, or, rather, emptied of everything else.  “There isn’t any me anymore,” said Hemingway.  So say I, when I’m going home, alone again.  I say to myself, Paige loves me, my mother loves me, but do they really?  I scrawl in my notebook: 

     Paige has Kevin.  Kevin has Paige.

         I always go home

                                                      Eventually.

         Mom has Frank.  He has Mom.

                                                      Who has me?

I would’ve liked to make P.’s rm. a genie bottle, cause rgt. now, I feel like a genie trapped in a bottle,

bottle = home, but it confines me to its glass belly, no one gets in or out, and the most I can hope for is the glass breaks.

I want to be in love.  That’s what everyone else has, rgt.?  Paige/Kevin, Mom/Frank.  They hate each other but if they weren’t in love they wouldn’t still be together, or would they?

Who would I be willing to throw myself under?

Gemma

Gemma first appeared in an unpublished short story, “Wings,” which may yet become a novel. Gemma’s mother abandoned her when she was a child. Mom was addicted to smoking faery dust, and now that Gem’s an adolescent she’s getting what all the daughters of dusters got – wings. Horrified and outcast, Gemma leaves home in search of her mother.

Gem:

1 am: It started as an itch I couldn’t get at, but it was driving me crazy. I thought I would scratch myself raw, I mean, I really almost did. Sleep is out of the question, and that pisses me off, because I’m a bitch when I don’t get enough sleep, plus I have a Biology test second period.

2 am: Biology Shmology. What I mean is, I found out that it's not a regular itch, and actually, I am an aberration of nature. A true freak.

3 am: (Sigh, then small breath in) Little breaths as though I'm panting. I have a scissors. But then I find I can't mutilate myself, even if my self is changing and I don't like it.

4 am: Thinking of my mother. A lot.

5 am: The wings aren't going to go away. I can't cut them off. I can't scratch them off (duh). I can't just ignore them, and I don't know how the other girls with wings -- like Hope, like Mommy -- I don't know how they ever slept with all the annoying fluttering and the stupid urge to fly (like I’d ever do that!). Damn, some girls just get their periods, and isn't that hard enough when you're all alone? But they don’t know suffering like this.

5:30 am: I have to get out of here, and GET THESE F*CKING WINGS OFF MY BACK!