Chapter 8 Later Teach
Later Teach
WHEN BILL AND MINDY WOULD CALL THE COPS ON ME, it was to cover their own ass. They didn’t really want me home, but they just didn’t want to get in trouble themselves, so they looked the part of concerned parents.
Once, cops caught up to me in a routine traffic stop when one of my friends got pulled over. Turns out there was yet another runaway report out for me, so the cops called up Bill and Mindy.
“Don’t bring her home,” they said. “Let her go to WestCare.”
For those of you who aren’t from Vegas and don’t know what WestCare is, let me enlighten you.
WestCare is a nonprofit that provides support for addicts, HIV/AIDS patients, domestic violence victims—and runaways.
It’s not the best place for a confused and angry runway, but it at least put a roof over our heads.
So, the cops dropped me off at WestCare. The staff checked me in and showed me to a dimly lit room. I was told to pick a cot. I blinked in the near darkness—the room was filthy, like something out of a hostel horror movie. Kids lay out on cots all around me.
I headed to my cot, sat back, watched, and listened. My ears perked up when one of them mentioned leaving.
“Hey, did you just say we can jet if we want to?” I called over to one of the other kids.
“Yep! You can just walk out and they won’t chase you or anything.”
That’s all I needed to hear. I hung around for maybe fifteen minutes before I headed straight for the door and tumbled out into the old downtown of Vegas. I didn’t care where I was going. I just knew it wasn’t WestCare, and it sure as fuck wasn’t home.
* * *
I BOUNCED AROUND HERE AND there, and landed for a few nights back at the “perfect” home of Bill and Mindy. I spent all day arguing with Mindy and Bill until we’d all finally had enough.
“Get in the car.” We drove in silence until we got to Tasha’s house.
Bill stopped abruptly, reached in his pocket, pulled out a crisp $20 bill, and handed it to me.
“Have a nice life,” he said flatly. I was surprised, but I didn’t question him. I got out of the car and walked up to my friend’s house. I stayed with her until—yes, you guessed it. My parents called the cops. It was a sick game they played.
Some months later, I got picked up by the cops—yet again—and they called my house.
“Take her to juvenile hall. Let her stay the night there,” good ol’ Bill advised. So off we went to juvie. Unlike WestCare, I was locked in a cell. And couldn’t escape.
“This is what your life is going to look like if you don’t get yourself together,” the cop told me, slamming the cell door closed. He really thought he was teaching me a life lesson.
I found the tiny window in the cell, and by standing on the bench connected to the wall on my tippy-toes, I could watch the world pass by.
I did that all day, and when the sun finally went down, I stared at the sky and counted the stars.
I felt no remorse for my actions, just more reasons for why I’d never go home.
The next morning, Bill and Mindy showed up to save the day. I don’t think I even spoke two words when I saw them.
“Did you learn anything being locked in that cell?” Bill asked.
Hell no.
* * *
I SOMEHOW, MAGICALLY, MADE IT to tenth grade. Ask me how and I couldn’t tell you. I think I was just getting passed so the teachers didn’t have to deal with me. I barely went to class—between the ditch parties I had to attend and running away from home, that didn’t leave much time to show up.
But I was feeling studious one day, so, off to school I went, not realizing it would be the last time I ever set foot in a high school.
I was in the cafeteria, hanging with some friends at their table and minding my business—for real this time. I noticed a group of girls at the table across from us kept whispering and pointing at me.
I just shrugged it off, because honestly I’d had enough of everyone’s shit. I figured maybe they were talking about someone else at my table. Wrong.
The next thing I know, two of them got up and started screaming at me. Then one of them stuck her finger in my face. Here we go. I swung first and I didn’t stop. It was like something took over me, and I couldn’t stop punching this girl.
I went flying through the air and landed so hard on the tile floor it knocked the wind out of me. When I finally came to my senses, all I could see was my four-hundred-pound principal sitting on me to hold me down.
“Alisa! Stop!” he shrieked, panting.
“Why are you sitting on me, Mr. G.?” I asked, perplexed. As if I wasn’t just beating the dog shit out of some girl I didn’t even know.
“You wouldn’t stop. You just wouldn’t stop,” he said, standing me up. He kept his hand on my shoulder and walked me in the direction of his office. “You’re just too violent, and we can’t have that here. I’m going to have to expel you.”
“Wait, wait, wait—expel me? Like as in expulsion? Like I can’t come back? Ever?” I gasped.
“It’s been two years of nonstop violence, problems with authority, and honestly, you don’t seem like you even want to be here.”
I sat there in silence and stared at the floor for what seemed like twenty minutes. I knew there was no reason to even try to keep defending myself. For what? It felt like a losing battle. And honestly, he was right.
“Tell Stacy to take you home. Clean out your locker and go.”
Damn, he didn’t even call my parents. He let my underage bestie drive me home.
All I could think about on the way home was that Bill was going to whoop my ass.
Bill rarely put his hands on me unless he was really mad—or if Mindy egged him on.
But the ass whoopings were so severe that I still remember the majority of them.
Getting thrown up against walls and manhandled like a rag doll as a young girl will stick in your mind.
His specialty, though, was whippings with metal-studded leather belts.
Or there was the piece of wood he cut himself that he loved to call “the board of education.” When my dad first presented me with this board, I drew its name in Old English letters, trying to make it look official and make him laugh. We laugh at our pain in this house, don’t we?
Another school, another upheaval. I had to get the fuck out of that house for good this time. I knew there was so much more to life than this.
I knew I’d be safe with my coven of misfits.
My best friend, Tasha, and her mom would take me in for a few nights, or my cousin Stacy and her two moms. Our friend Tonya’s grandpa had invested in Walmart, so she had her own whole house and she was just barely eighteen.
There would be plenty of places to crash.
I wasn’t scared. I knew how to protect myself and I wouldn’t let anybody put their hands on me. Plus, anywhere was better than here.
I went to my room and started making plans. Back then we didn’t have cell phones, but I snuck out to the living room when they all went to sleep and made a quick phone call.
“Meet me at midnight around the corner,” I told Lisa. She was the only one in our crew with a car besides Stacy. “I’m leaving for good.”
No one checked on me all night, which gave me plenty of time to unscrew the screws Bill had put in my window frame.
My parents had thought I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to get the window open, but it was child’s play.
I packed up all my clothes and put them in two big garbage bags.
How the hell they didn’t hear all the rustling around that night is beyond me. Maybe they did and just didn’t care.
I slid the window open slowly and lowered the bags into the shrub outside my window and waited for midnight. I was the anti-Cinderella—I came alive when the clock struck twelve.
Midnight struck and I slowly lowered myself out my window, trying not to wake my sister, whose window was right next to mine. I grabbed my two garbage bags and hauled ass to the dirt road we lived on.
Lisa was there, waiting around the corner in her car. I threw everything I owned into her trunk and we drove away. I was finally free, and I was never going home. I smashed that rearview mirror and never looked back.