Chapter 9
Tab. Tab. Tab. Tab. Add-to-cart add-to-cart add-to-cart add-to-cart.
Knitwear and bag charms and brown Mary Janes, jumbo scrunchies and animal-print claw clips and faux-suede kitten-heel boots that can’t handle Alaska’s snow, but I don’t care.
I keep adding. A cropped puffer, a metallic puffer, a bright yellow coat with a Peter Pan collar, a koala signet ring, a silver cuff bracelet, a velour choker, a cardigan…
a purple cardigan…a chunky, purple, statement-piece cardigan…
I shut my laptop and grab my notebook and pencil from my backpack so I can start on the latest assignment from him: a personal essay that explores our point of view at three separate ages of our childhood.
I write hurriedly but with singular focus. Everything else evaporates and for a moment, I feel calm. Grounded. Tethered. There is no racing mind. There is no mind at all.
I’m five years old. Mom’s getting me ready. On a regular day, I can wear whatever. A Pocahontas T-shirt and orange shorts or overalls and cowboy boots. But not today. Because today Dad’s coming over. And when Dad comes over, Mom gets stressed. And when Mom gets stressed, we get pretty.
“Best way to keep a man is to be as pretty as you can be,” she says while she glides lipstick on. Then she smacks her lips together and says it’s my turn to get pretty.
Mom puts me in my good dress and rolls my hair in hot curlers, rubbing oil onto the ends so they look all shiny. She puts lip gloss on me and a little mascara on the tips of my eyelashes. By the end of the routine, I’m a mini version of her.
Dad comes over. We all sit down for dinner. Mom looks at Dad and Dad looks at his phone. He leaves pretty quick and Mom sobs. Says next time we’ll leave the curlers in our hair longer. Get us some new dresses.
Next time we do get new dresses and we do keep the curlers in longer.
Mom puts mascara on my full lashes, not just the tips.
Dad comes over. He looks less at his phone and more at Mom.
Even stays for dessert. At one point they go to the bedroom.
I press my ear against the door and hear Mom making ooh-noises. She sounds happy.
As he’s leaving, Dad reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a plastic capsule from a grocery store quarter machine. Inside is a jelly hand toy. He shows me how it sticks on a window. Says it’ll be there for days.
Dad leaves and Mom seems relaxed. We must’ve done better. Been prettier. Pretty enough for Dad to stick around a little longer. I switch back into my Pocahontas shirt. The sticky hand falls off the window.
I’m seven years old. The hot curlers haven’t come out of the closet in over a year.
Kids at school have started calling me trailer trash and making fun of me for wearing the same shirt three days a week.
I swear to myself that as soon as I’m old enough, I’ll get a job so that I can use my money to buy myself enough clothes that I’ll be able to wear a new shirt every single day.
Even though Dad doesn’t come around anymore, other men do.
Some of them Mom’s age, some of them older.
They rarely stay long. They always smell weird.
Like chili and cologne. Mom pays me less attention so I make friends with kids in the other mobile homes around us.
Kimberly and Robin and Angelica. We play hide-and-seek near the swamp and make mud pies.
We play jump rope games—Snake and Helicopter.
We put water and fruit chunks into ice cube trays with toothpicks sticking out to make homemade popsicles.
We have fun. Then Robin moves away. Then Angelica.
Then Kimberly. And I’m the only kid left in the mobile home park. Sometimes I still make popsicles.
I’m nine years old. We live in an apartment now. Mom’s boyfriend gets her a job dancing. I ask her if it’s tap but she says not quite. Too bad. I’ve always liked tap dancing.
People comment wherever we go that Mom and I look like sisters.
Older women often ask how old she was when she had me.
When she says sixteen, the women say “Oh” and try to smile their best smiles, but I can tell they want to shake their heads or say tsk-tsk or both.
I’m starting to notice that a lot—how people say one thing to hide another.
Like Mom. Sometimes she’ll show off a new blouse and act like she’s excited about the fabric or the neckline, but I can always spot the new bruise peeking out from under it. I want to say something about it but I compliment the blouse instead, so I guess I do it too.
Mom’s boyfriend breaks up with her. She sobs into my lap.
I stroke her hair. It smells like VO5 shampoo.
The strawberries and cream scent. She cries and says I’m all she has.
That ever since she saw that plus line on that stick, she knew she wanted to keep me.
Or that she couldn’t bear to get rid of me.
Which is really the same thing. I don’t know what she means exactly, but I know that they don’t sound the same to me.
Wanting to keep something is very different than not being able to get rid of it.
By the time I’m finished, it’s almost two. I pull open my shopping cart tabs and am about to choose the winning cart, but none of them look as great as they did a few hours ago. I don’t even like animal print. Or scrunchies.
I clear my carts, then pull up Mr. Korgy’s Instagram and masturbate to it using a bottle of tropical Tums from my bathroom drawer to grind on. The grooves feel nice. I fall asleep with the bottle in my hand.