Chapter 7 Smells like Teen Spirit
SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
Simone
It was close to six in the morning by the time I unlocked the door to the apartment that had been my home for the last four years.
The bar had gotten a late wave of tourists and club kids around two, and after that, Herb had wanted me to stay and do inventory in exchange for some overtime. And I always needed overtime.
I spent my first year in Boston crammed into a broken-down townhouse in Mattapan along with six other people, including my sister.
My “room” consisted of a corner of the living room blocked off with a hanging sheet.
By the end of that year, Selena had already abandoned Boston for the first of eight times by then (despite begging me to join her here in the first place), and I was broke, lonely, and desperately in need of a place to call my own.
So, when I found a shockingly cheap apartment in Jamaica Plain, it felt like karma was rewarding me. The studio on the top floor of an old grain dispensary became my solitary refuge, the first true haven I’d had since my mother died so long ago.
Years later, I knew I should have gone back to Vermont long ago. But I couldn’t leave this little corner of the world I’d carved out for myself. Even if I’d never quite been able to articulate why.
When I walked into the apartment now, though, it resembled less a refuge and more a flophouse.
Two duffel bags that overflowed with clothes like suds from a full washbasin nearly blocked my entry.
My sink was already full of used dishes.
A trail of cereal boxes, wrappers, and other detritus littered my typically immaculate counters, and several pairs of shoes were piled near the front door (including a few of mine that Selena must have tried on and discarded).
My sister had certainly made herself at home.
That I’d been expecting. What I wasn’t expecting was a very awake four-year-old sitting in front of the tiny television in the far corner, watching Clifford the Big Red Dog on one of the few analog channels I got.
“Hey, kiddo,” I greeted her. “Up early, huh?”
Kylie looked up from the couch. Her hair was messy in the way that only little girls could get away with, and she was dressed in pajamas printed with disco dancing koalas.
An empty bowl with the remains of what I recognized as the chocolate cherry ice cream from my freezer sat in front of the television, and there was a bit of chocolate smeared around her mouth.
She abandoned the TV to join me in the kitchen off the entrance. “I always get up early. Mommy says it’s my ‘fuckin’ farmer genes.’”
I bit back a laugh. No, I didn’t want her to be so familiar with that kind of language.
But hearing a four-year-old swear was just funny.
Besides, she wasn’t wrong. We did, in fact, have farmer genes.
I had to take melatonin to sleep in the mornings after I got off work to fight my natural urge to make hay while the sun shines. Or in my case, bread.
I scooped Kylie up and kissed her cheek. “I love your farmer genes. Where’s your mom, honey?”
“She’s taking a bath. She said her head hurted when I woke her up, so she needed some ‘me time.’” She pointed a chubby, chocolate-covered finger toward the closed bathroom door and appeared to consider this concept. “What’s ‘me time,’ Aunt Simone?”
“It’s when adults need to think,” I told her, though I wanted to say “it’s when your mom needs to soak in her selfishness.”
I grabbed a dishtowel hanging from the stove and cleaned her up before setting her back on the floor.
Kylie skittered back to her show, and I set my purse on the battered wood table currently covered with toddler drawings before turning in the direction of the bathroom door.
Kurt Cobain’s voice groaned through the crack underneath.
Nirvana on a Tuesday morning. Not the greatest sign.
“Sel?” I called through the door.
Nothing.
Kurt’s voice started to moan a little louder, and a puff of something that smelled suspiciously like marijuana slipped under the door.
“Selena,” I called again. “Can I come in?”
Again, not a word.
Part of me genuinely wondered if she’d slipped in the tub and was drowning without anyone knowing. The other part of me was more annoyed that she was ignoring me. She tended to do that. Especially when she was high.
Screw it. My sister had never afforded me privacy. And this was my apartment. I was going in.
“Sel.” I banged on the door, hard enough that Kylie startled by the TV. “I’m coming in.”
“Kylie, I told you, I need some me time!” My sister’s voice was shrill but slightly slurred. “I’ll be out in a few minutes, all right?”
I scowled. Well, at least she wasn’t dead.
I opened the door while keeping my eyes covered. “It’s not Kylie. It’s me, wondering why you are hot-boxing my bathroom at six in the morning.”
There was a brief pause while the playlist switched to something that sounded like Garbage. Selena had had a thing for nineties girl rock since we were in high school.
“Oh my God, Simmy. You don’t have to cover your eyes. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before literally every day in your own mirror.”
I dropped my hand. She had a point.
Selena was lounging in my blessedly oversized claw-foot bathtub, her hair wrapped in a towel and a bright green mask spread on her face. Bubbles cascaded over the sides of the tub as she used one hand to wave at me while the other pinched a joint.
“Greetings from Bliss Island,” she said before taking another hit. “I have to hand it to you, babe.” Her voice was stunted through a held breath. “Your taste is immaculate.” She exhaled into the steam. “What scent are these bubbles?”
“Almond,” I said flatly.
Almost numbly, in fact, as I took in the open (and now mostly used) jar of lemongrass face mask on the vanity and the nearly empty bottle of bubble bath on the floor.
It was just cheap stuff I picked up at CVS every few months, but they made up the foundation for my one small ritual, the one luxury I afforded myself.
Based on what was left of my supplies, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it for a while.
“That’s quite a sourpuss.” Selena stretched back in the tub and exhaled another stream of smoke. “I don’t know what you’re so annoyed about. I’m the one who had to wake up at the butt crack of dawn for the gremlin in there.”
I screwed the lid back on the mask so it wouldn’t dry out. “You don’t think you should be taking care of her instead of getting high in my bathtub?”
“Oh, she’s fine. That kid could survive for a week on her own. It’s like, she’s a ten, but she makes me wake up with her every day at 5:30. What else am I supposed to do on four hours of sleep?”
“Maybe get her breakfast that isn’t dessert. Or go to sleep at a normal hour instead of binging Netflix or whatever else you were doing until 1:30 in the morning.” I put the remains of the bubble bath back in my medicine cabinet and tried not to slam the door. “Try to match your schedule to hers.”
“That would mean going to bed at seven. What am I, a grandma?”
I sighed. While I knew there was no point in arguing with my sister, since basic logic had never seemed to apply to her, old habits die hard. Selena would never stop being Selena. And I would never stop trying to help her be a better person.
I took a seat on the closed toilet. “Well, I’m home. We can talk more now about your…situation.”
“Oh my God, now?” Selena gestured around, causing the smoke to waft my way again.
I blew it out of my face. At this rate, I was going to have a secondhand high. “Yeah, now. We might as well talk while Kylie is occupied.”
“Oh, come on, don’t make me review my failures when I’m so blissed out. I’ll be out in a few minutes, I promise. I just need to relax. I’ve been so stressed, Simmy. You don’t even know.”
Her head bobbed to the beats of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I couldn’t help thinking it was fitting. And wondering whether Selena would ever grow up.
Still, I knew better than to argue with her when she was like this. Or to push her to do something she didn’t want.
“Ten minutes,” I told her, standing up.
“Uh-huh, sure. You got it.”
I closed the door silently, but the rage and bitterness that filled my thoughts was loud.
Selena and I weren’t like the twins portrayed in movies and books. No one read each other’s minds. No one finished each other’s sentences. If we weren’t physically identical, I honestly would have questioned whether we were related to each other at all.
“Aunt Simone, what are you doing?”
I turned from taking a tray of proofing baskets down from the rack atop my fridge. Kylie had abandoned her cartoons and climbed up on one of the stools on the other side of the counter, chocolate smeared all the way around her mouth again.
I set the tray on top of the stove so I could wet a rag.
“Hey, peanut,” I said as I wiped her face clean once more. “Right now I’m getting ready to bake bread.”
“That’s a lot of bread,” Kylie observed as I tossed the rag toward the sink.
I nodded as I went to pull down another tray. “It’s for my pop-up.”
“What’s a pop pop?”
I smiled as I brought down the third and final tray, which I set on the counter next to the second.
“It’s like a little shop stand that I set up every other week.
The coffee shop on the corner lets me set one up in exchange for some of the money I earn.
Kind of like a lemonade stand. You ever had one of those? ”
Kylie shook her head, causing her tangled curls to dance.
Poor kid. Granted, she was only four, but the reason she’d never done something so common as selling lemonade to her neighbors for a quarter wasn’t because of her age—it was because her mother never stayed anywhere long enough or safe enough for her to do something so, well, childlike.
“Maybe we can set one up one day,” I said. “Your mom and I used to have one at Grandpa’s farm. We’d sell to the tourists who would come to buy cheese and Grandma’s bread.”