Juliet

Juliet:  “You’re wearing your mermaid dress,” I say to my mother as she pours us to-go cups of dark coffee.  Is my smile stretched too tightly?  I’m just so happy that she’s so happy – as indicated by her wearing her “mermaid dress,” a long, spaghetti-strapped, emerald green casual gown covered with cheap lace, worn under a faded denim jacket that matches mine.  Her “happy” -- so happy she’s like immortal -- dress.

     I’m wearing a faded black tank with a faded silver arched cat on it, over a bright white tee, under my denim jacket.  Black leggings, knee-high boots with zippers up the backs.  Everything soft and worn, from my heart to my heels.

     “You should try wearing a tee shirt and leggings and cute boots sometime,” I say, getting into her car.  She never drives me!  This is way special.  I am way special today…  I don’t even miss not getting a ride from Derek, even though he’s my best friend and he’s driven me every day for this whole year and even though this year he turned into a total hottie, not that it matters -- Michael is, and always has been my one true love…

     I shake my head so that my thoughts stop jumbling.  My curls fall out from behind my ears, and I look even more like my mother.  Smiley and red-headed.  “I mean, it feels really good,” I continue – “I always feel really good when I wear this outfit.  Like, calm.  Comfy, but also kind of shiny, you know what I mean?”

     My mother pauses, the car key poised to turn.  Did I say something wrong?  Oh Goddess no… why can’t I do anything right?  I love you Mommy --

     But my mother doesn’t burst into tears, she just says, “Interesting, very interesting.”  Then she smiles at me, and I lean in close, holding on to her arm and breathing in her scent – peaches and bergamot and coffee.  Rosemary in her hair.  Love in her warmth.  She loves me!

     But suddenly, she’s gone!  Just like that, on the way to my school with me hanging on to her every word and movement and mood.  She’s drifted into a world I only get to watch-- Heavy lids, eyes almost unfocused but not enough that she can’t multi-task – still letting me hold tightly to one of her arms, and driving at the same time.  This while her brain has sunken into creative mode.  The artist at work in my element…

     Sliding into a parking space at school, she suddenly breaks the surface, splashing up at me with an excited sparkle– “When I wear my mermaid dress, I feel slinky and cool, like I’ve just risen from the deepest, darkest part of the ocean, up into the light.  I feel renewed.”  My mother ruffles my hair as she says, “And shiny, too.”

     “Um… interesting?” I say, trying to see where she’s going with this.

     “Okay, picture this – I’m onstage—“

     “Or me, I’m onstage—“

     My mother waves at me with one hand.  “Shh, shh.”

     I hate when she does that.

     She continues, the ideas bubbling up like the froth of a wave, crash! Ideas! And bubbly-bubble— “and the show’s called ‘You Are What You Wear,’ and I have on an outfit, and I’m talking about how it makes me feel and—“

     I join in.  Crash!  “—it’s one outfit, but it’s in layers that I peel back into other outfits, each one with a different feeling attached—“

     My mother has clasped my hands in hers.  (Crash!)  “We must make lists.  Of outfits, different outfits and feelings that go with them.”

     (Crash!)  “We’ll have to go shopping!” I add.

     “Maybe one of us will be lit at a time, and the other changes clothes meantime instead of showing the layers revealed—“

     “—maybe we call the show, ‘Layers Revealed’!”

     “No, honey, ‘You are what you wear.’ Is better, it’s like ‘You Are What You Eat,’ but--”

     “We should practice wearing our outfits one at a time all day and write down what we’re feeling—“

     This is so great, I don’t even want to go to school, I’m all—

     Oh no.  Shit no!  All of a sudden she has those glassy eyes again.  Mommy’s hands grow cold as she withdraws into her own creative space again.  Without me.  Goddess damn it!

     A boy whistles.

     Michael?  No he did not.

     OMG, it was Michael.  Not whistling at my mother, not not not!

     Was.  Was whistling.  At.  My.  MOTHER!

     I tilt my head down and hurry out of the car, run into school.  I will not cry. 

     I will not cry!  Leave that to her.  Let her cry.

Maree

Maree, still frustrated by her adoptive family (see OGW 1/8, 11/19, 1/7), seeks her birth mother out on Facebook.  The Facebook search really happened, to me!

Maree:  In my room, I ::weep:: on Facebook to all my friends about my horrible adoptive father, my horrible life, my adoptive mother who doesn’t care about anything except that I call her Mom, my sisters who think I’m weird and probably a little more than stupid –-  “Who on earth besides Maree doesn’t believe in God?” 

“God, Maree, you’re so dumb,” says Marigold before she storms out of the room, crying “Daddy!”

Who on earth besides Marigold is named Marigold?

I get up from my desk and go lock the door.  If my so-called father comes pounding, I guess I’ll have to open it.  But at least he won’t take me by surprise.  It was worth it to make my snotty little sister cry.

Putting my head down in my hands, I reach under my glasses with my fingertips and rub my eyes.  Who on earth does God hate as much as me?  If there were a God, I mean.  I wipe away a stray tear.  I’m not a mean person.  I want a family, complete with a weepy little sister-bug.

I just don’t want this one.

     Taking a deep breath, I shake my hair and my head out, and it’s as if I can see my thoughts, all criss-crossed and laid out like Pick-up Sticks.  OMG, there’ one I never thought of before, OmyGod OhmyGoddess Oh My Whomever, it’s fucking genius!  I think and grab for the idea, hold it in a fist over my heart, then quit playing and get serious.

     Facebook.  It was the place I courted, landed and lost Chris Hazelton.  It might be the place where I find my real family!  My real mother!  Facebook!  My heart is a blur of quick beats, and my hands are shaking as I type into the search box, “Wilhemina German”.  I pause.  I press return.

     My real mother’s not there, or rather she might be, but there are eighty-six of her.  Eighty-six possible Mommy’s. Breathing in and slowly letting the air out, I glance at my bedroom door, still safely locked.  I get up to make sure.  Then, I get to work.

     “RU My Mother?” I type as the subject line in a message to the first woman who appears she might be old enough.  I look at her profile pic and think she kind of looks like me.  I tilt my head, look harder.  Untilt, press send, and go on to the next Wihemina German, not knowing whether she’s married now with a different last name.  Not knowing much of anything.  Wondering why I don’t just know when I see her face, why can’t I just know?  Huh?  God, if you’re there, if you’re real?

     Sudden pounding on the bedroom door doesn’t even make me pause, because it’s too small to be my father, and I know it’s only Marigold.  “Maree you let me in!  What’re you doing, playing with yourself?  I’m telling Daddy!  Daddy!”

     The mouth on that girl.  And she’s only nine, but she does believe in God, or at least in Daddy and his belt.  I keep typing, RU My Mother, RU My Mother, RU My Mother, RU My Mother…

     Suddenly a warning appears on my screen:  “You are engaging in an activity that others may find annoying.  If you do not discontinue this activity, you may be cut off from performing this activity on Facebook for a period of hours or days”

     What the—

     I slam my mouse finger down on okay, and then return to scrolling through names, Wilhemina German, Wilhemina German, Wilhemina German, Wilhemina German, Wilhemina German—

     “You are engaging in an activity that others may find annoying.  If you do not discontinue this activity, you may be cut off from performing this activity on Facebook for a period of hours or days”

     Oh fuck off, I think, because suddenly, there she is!  I know it!  I click on raven-haired, sloe-eyed Wilhemina German King, and type in RU My Mother in a blur.  My heart is going to shimmy out of my throat in a moment!  I click send!

     The Facebook gods send me a box with this message now:  “You have engaged in the same activity too often in too short a time, and Facebook will not allow you to continue.  Your message has not been sent.”

     And then the real pounding starts, my fucking adoptive so-called father at the door.  Maybe the Facebook team called him.  Shutting down my page, I think, Wilhemina German, where RU? 

     I open the bedroom door and the real world presses in, his belt already off and swinging in a loop in his hand.

     You see Marigold?  I told you there wasn’t a God.

Anna

Anna’s piece evolved on its own.  The direction it took even surprised me.  I only wanted to write about the new paint in our upstairs hall.  From there, Anna took over, and I actually started to cry. 

Anna:  I reach out and touch the wall, placing my open hand flat on it, feeling for the life that must be there.  The new paint shines even in the small halo of light from the sconce in the hall.  In the energy of the wall, I feel my father’s hands, three times the size of mine, rough knuckled, dry.  Able to reach halfway around my waist, and then met in the middle by the opposite hand, thumbs on one side and fingertips on the other. 

He painted the hall in an afternoon, strong, sure swaths of paint drawn by those hands, the roller an extension of him.  He is big, I am small.  He can do anything, while I am clumsy and can’t even paint my nails without dripping on the table and my mother crying, “Anna Titania Dorfman!  What did you do?” 

My father is certain, but I wander the house alone, touching walls and searching shadows for an answer to what?  I don’t even know the question.

Why am I here?

What did I do to deserve this?

Who am I today?

What did I do?

Why me?

Why him?

Why didn’t they come get me?  Why didn’t anyone know that I needed to be there, even if the ER doc said he was going to be fine.  My mother, my brother – okay, he’s only six, but still – my grandmother, someone should’ve said, “We’d better call Anna, just in case.  She loves her father more than anyone in the world, and she’d want to be here, even though he’s going to be okay.  She should be here.”

No one called.  I can see it, my grandmother trying to keep Aiden occupied with the odd things in her purse and promises of cookies.  My mother getting coffee.  Getting an extra cup for my father even though he just had his head stitched up and his arm set after the fall.  Even though his brain was secretly bleeding… but she didn’t know that (be fair, Anna).

He was just painting the porch!  He’d already painted the whole house, all but the stupid porch, and I was like…  I told him, “Dad, don’t forget about soccer.  Don’t forget you’re taking me out for pizza when we win.”

(Tell the truth Anna)

I told him “Mariah’s coming over, remember?  I don’t want her to think we’re –“  (sigh)  “Just could you paint the porch?  The outside, at least.  First impressions matter, Dad.  And please change your shirt before you show up at the game.  Take a shower, too.  Dad, I know it doesn’t matter to you, but how about you wear that team tee shirt I got you for your birthday, and don’t wear it when you paint!  Clean your fingernails or cut them or something, come on Dad!  I know, I know -- appearances aren’t important, blah blah blah, it’s what’s inside that counts.  Okay, Daddy, I love you.  Gotta go.”  I don’t know if I kissed him goodbye.

Why didn’t anyone come get me?

Why didn’t he tell them as soon as, before, why…

He should’ve said, “Anna should be here.  I want to see Anna.”

     He shouldn’t have let them tell him he was fine just because he was able to sit up and talk and sip the coffee my mother got and ask about my game and

    

     He shouldn’t have died.  He was strong, he was smart,  he was certain and wise and loving and his hands could reach all the way around my waist and the wall is cool as if he never touched it and I want my Daddy!  Please, please, please Daddy, I’m sorry, just come back to me, please.

Rain

Rain, missing her Mom and in a way, her Dad too, takes care of herself – she thinks.  Here she’s getting dressed and drunk just before the big party.  For previous parts of this story from Nancy, Casey, Kayla and Rain, check out OGW 10/1/09, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14/10.  This thread of OGW has evolved into the skeleton of a new novel, called either “The Party” or “Raped”, I think.

Rain:  I emptied my Dad’s ashtray, and put it on the kitchen counter.  Took one of his cigarettes out and lit it.  Coughed, some.  Felt a little woozy – then a lot, like I was going to throw up and-or pass out.  I sat down quickly on the floor, putting my head between my knees until the feeling passed.  Stood up and inhaled from the cigarette again.  It had an awful taste, like soot, but the second hit was smoother than the first, and I figured I could get used to this.

Next – retrieved the vodka from the coffee table, poured a shot into a glass, added OJ like my Dad had taught me, and gulped. 

Whew.  Fuck.  ‘Nother head rush.  Sat down on the floor again, cooling my bikini’ed butt on the tile.  In a minute I was already on my feet again, because I always get up again, and I always will no matter what, fuckin remember that world.

As I started my second drink, I was feeling way better.  Less tense.  Smooooth.  I swiveled my hips and ran my hand over my belly, savoring the warmth, appreciating my body, which wasn’t exactly slim, but it wasn’t fat anymore and it was strong.  Like me. 

      I didn’t even want to put something on over my bikini, wanted to go to the party just like this, slinky and warm and smelling of smoke.  But Casey’s mother would freak, I was sure of that, and then she wouldn’t take us to Brian’s house.  What a bitch.  Mothers. 

I looked down at the red spot around my bellybutton piercing.  The vodka sure cut down on the throbbing.  I wished it didn’t look so new.

Upstairs in my room, I fumbled through my makeup and found a cover-up stick, which I smeared around the new piercing.  It worked pretty well at covering the red.  I looked at myself in the mirror.  Swiveled my hips again – Look, Mom, I’m dancing.  Thinking about my mother killed my buzz, made me suddenly sad.

Fuck that, I said.  Yanked a spaghetti strapped, low-cut, tie-dyed long dress from Target off its hanger and pulled it on.  Tripped going into my parents’ bedroom looking for a scissor.  Fuck!  I pulled in my knees and held on for a moment, trying to stop crying.  Gotta grow up Rain!  Not a little Mommy’s girl anymore.  Gasping for air, I pulled it together, found the scissor and cut down the dress to fit my height – sort of tall, but not enough to match my cup size, so the big dress.  The vodka I’d drunk plus the blur from my tears made me cut a jagged edge, but it was okay.

No one was going to be looking at my hem anyway.

The phone rang.  “Mom?” I said, a sudden rush of hope flooding my synapses -- hoping she was waiting at the train station now for a ride.

Stupid Rain.  I hung up on whoever it was because it wasn’t her. Felt my heartbeat slamming in my chest and tears starting again because it seemed like I wasn’t just on my own tonight.  No one lived here anymore. Not even my Dad, not really.

Not even Rain, myself, not always.

Tonight I would be someone else.  I hurried downstairs, leaving all the lights on as I went because in spite of the hard, all-together, strong person everyone knew me as, I was scared of everything, even the dark.  In the kitchen, I tossed the pack of cigarettes and my Dad’s lighter into my tote on top of my towel, did a shot of vodka straight from the bottle, and left the lights on in the kitchen and living room as I passed through to the front stoop to wait for my ride.  I felt better already.  But I stayed in the halo of light by the front door just to be safe.

Gemma

Gemma first appeared in an unpublished short story, “Wings”, then in OGW 9/24/09 and 10/29/09.  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 has what all the daughters of dusters got – wings.  Horrified and outcast, Gemma left home for NYC to find her mother, and herself. 

Gemma:  Fear wrapped around my neck like Samantha, Ian’s pet python, gone wild.  Tightening, then loosening so I could almost taste air again… and then tight again, choking me.

Gemma, get a hold of yourself, the reasonable, somehow calm me said inside.

Aaaaaaaa cough cough gasp Aaaaaaa… (sound fading out to nothing) said the real me, the anxiety-driven, wings-fluttering, freaked-out me.

“Are you gonna knock?” said Iris.

“She’s chicken,” said Lola.

“Just knock,” said Ian.

“I’m here for you no matter what,” said Luke.

“Knock!” everyone shouted at once.

I did.  I thrust my arm out and rapped hard on the door twice, paused, and then a third time.  All the voices in my head were quiet.  I was alone in the hall outside the fifth floor walk-up.  My knock seemed to linger in the empty air.  When the air stilled, I knocked again, more gently, calmly this time because I was sure no one was home.

“Who is it?  Who’s out there?”  said a gruff voice, and I jumped back.  “Who are you?” said the voice.  Old woman?  Old man?  I couldn’t tell, but I imagined a milky eyeball pressed against the peep hole.

“Gemma,” I said.  “Um, it’s me, Gemma?  I’m looking for my mother?”

“I ain’t her.  Go away!”

“I’m here for you,” Luke said in my head before I could run. 

“Oh. Um.  Do you know um Belle um Green?  Or, I mean maybe she calls herself Belle LaGuin?  I was told, well, I mean, I heard she lives here?”  I pulled my jacket closer, forgetting for a moment that Luke and I had cut out a hole for my wings and they were out there for anyone to see now. 

I am looking for my mother, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of! I thought, and with that, my wings beat, and I rose up off the floor.  Gemma, me, adolescent faery.  On my own in New York, and doing fine.  I pounded on the door this time.

The door opened a crack.  “All right, all right.  Just come down from there.  I’ll tell you what I know.”  A gnarled hand appeared around the edge of the open door, and a long finger with a sharp, yellowed nail beckoned.  “Come on, quit your lollygagging and get in before someone sees you.  This is a nice neighborhood.”

Jenna

Jenna is from my recently-completed novel, Spun.  She formerly appeared in OGW 10/15/09 and 11/26.  In this scene, she is at a new school after being removed from her home.  Jenna is a crystal meth addict, who just quit a few days earlier.

Jenna:

Josh

     The boy’s name is Josh.  Hmmm.  He’s way cute.  In a damaged sort of way, cute.  I like damaged-cute, with stringy black hair, overly-long bangs tucked behind his ears and flopping forward as he sits down next to me.  Me!  As if he chose me, as if he thinks I am cute, surely damaged, but maybe cute. 

     I suck in air fast through my teeth when he leans over me, looking at my notebook.  When he puts his splayed hand on the open page and drags my notebook toward him my whole body freezes, but then suddenly I melt, and my heart gushes open, and I know at that moment, the moment he boldly takes my notebook and starts reading, that he is the One.  The one for me.  Me!  Someone for me.

     While he flips through the pages of my writing notebook, reading here and there, grunting and oohing and aahing, I am spellbound.  Please let him love me.  Please let him love what he reads.

     Totally crazy!  I just sat down.  He just sat down.  We’ve never even seen each other before, and it’s by accident that I’m even here.

     Except it’s not.  It wasn’t the moment he took my notebook that bound me to him.  This sounds weird, but I’m thinking of all the moments before now, that made “now”, you know?  Like, the moment I abandoned my mother at the liquor store and went and got high -- from that moment, I was running toward Josh, because he would take control of me.  From the moment I called 911 from Paige’s house and she was arrested with Kevin and called me bitch – Josh was going to fill a void.  From the time I woke up in Sheltering Arms, and my roommate didn’t understand me, and no one understood me, and I was alone, and scared – Josh was going to take care of me. 

     Look at him!  He takes charge!  He cares what I have to say (or at least write)!  Josh, Josh, Josh,

JOSH

I write when he passes my notebook back.  He smiles.  His teeth are bad.  Drugs.  I know that about him already, and he doesn’t even know my name yet.

+ jenna

     “My mother shoots Oxy.  My father’s dead,” he says, and it’s like he’s read my mind, which I guess he has since he read my notebook. He knows just the right things to say, and maybe I should be wary, maybe I should be creeped out, or just like, “You lie,” but instead I put my hand over my heart like a total loser, only he doesn’t mind.  He takes my hand and squeezes it reassuringly, and I’m all,

JOSH+jenna FOREVER!

which he reads, and I was hoping he would, and I say, “I’m Jenna,” and he just says, “I figured,” and laughs.

Grimelda (aka Stacy)

Grimelda (aka Stacy) is a friend of Meghan (OGW, 12/3/09).  Stacy is what’s known as an unreliable narrator – if you can make sense at all out of what she’s saying, she rambles so much.  It may be that she smokes too much pot.  It may be that she’s reluctant to expose her true feelings about losing her best friend.

Grimelda (aka Stacy):  Do you look at your toilet paper after you wipe, even when it’s pee?  You at least look after you poop, everyone does, or else how would you know that you were done wiping?  Well, it’s true, you know you do it too!  Truly, I’m not trying to be gross, I just have a hard time getting to the point sometimes.  Sometimes… LOL! More like all the time okay?  I admit it. 

What’s my point?  Oh yeah…

I glanced at the toilet paper wad in my hand, and I mean glanced, so it’s not that gross or that weird, I know what you’re thinking… oh yeah, I know, get to the point.  So I looked down at the toilet paper in my hand, and saw it tinted reddish-brown.  I’m getting my period, I thought, that explains everything.  OMG, I can’t tell you how happy I am.  It’s like I’ve been given this little glimpse that everything might turn out okay eventually, even though my life actually really sucks, plus I won’t be able to have sex – well, I could, it’s not against the law, but anyway Mark is definitely going to expect me to give him head for at least a week because the whole period thing freaks him out.  He’s so immature, why don’t I have at least a college boyfriend, I never should’ve gotten involved with a boy in my own grade, but he is hella cute and I should, I guess, consider myself lucky because he is also a pot dealer, and I love my weed, true dat...  What was my point?

Right.  I’m getting my period, and that’s why I’ve been bursting into tears and feeling like my life is starting to suck worse than ever.  It has nothing to do with my life falling apart, ripping at the seams, a hole in my life that I’ve been picking at all week making it bigger.  The hole is my friend Meg getting taken out of public school as if that will help, and it’s not her parents who are making her do stupid things like get high and steal her Dad’s coke and throw up after a few of us were just over there hanging out but Meg got out of control again…

Jesus fucking Christ, even I don’t know what my point was anymore.  Too much coffee!  Too much Red Bull!

Oh yeah, and my period.  I’ve been PMS’ing, and that’s why I can’t keep a smile on lately-seems-like-forever-but-it’s-not-really.  My heart has literally felt heavy, like a rock in my chest I’ve been dragging around.  No more Meg to share a locker with!  No more Meg to show up at school in a bumblebee-striped black and yellow, sparkling, I kid you not, leotard and matching yellow tutu with black tights and knee-high combat boots to cheer me up.  Or to piss off Miss Gotham.  Or to add color to our usual black on black combo.  Or just because her mother was wasted all weekend and didn’t do the laundry and her Dad’s girlfriend is too young to even know how to do laundry and I am definitely losing my mind, can you tell here?

But it’s just PMS. 

Whew.

I’m a nice kid, and I don’t usually go all mental and want to kick some parent ass.  Meg’s parents are Aholes and I don’t want to go all mental on them, I just want my friend back here with me, making the insanity more you know real or something.  Making it okay.

I will not kill her parents.  I will get through this.  We will get through this.  Although I’m going to their house today, and I think I’ll make use of my PMS and go ahead and be weepy and screamy and crazy because they deserve it.  Then later, I’ll be all, “Oh!  I just got my period!  No wonder I was behaving so badly!”  Yeah, that’ll work. 

See?  I feel better already.