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Authors: Michelle Tea

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BOOK: Rose of No Man's Land
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Most of the time I don’t have my period and am not trapped in a chemical sadness over Ma and her various ailments. Kristy hates when I refer to Ma’s ailments as such, because she is a hypochondriac, but then Kristy does not fully grasp the nature of hypochondria, which truly is much more than our mother lolling about on the couch in a progression of polyester nightgowns. Ma has made herself sick with her hypochondria, like actually sick on the inside of her body. And even if that’s not true, being a hypochondriac is at the very least an illness in itself, a mental illness. Which is worse than having a kidney infection or a gallstone ’cause it can go on forever, and in the process you lose all your friends for being crazy.

When I woke up this morning my bed was bright, full of sun, and the alarm clock on my nightstand was blinking on and off, on and off. I could feel in my body that it was really late, not morning anymore. I could hear someone, Ma or Donnie, in the kitchen making food. Lying in bed, woken up naturally, without the loud static jabber of the alarm scaring me awake, my senses were super sharp. In that moment, just before my brain snapped together, it’s like my body was an animal body, and I could tell just by breathing through my nose, catching the hot wet smells coming from the kitchen, that it was pasta or ramen, something
you boil that fills the place with balloons of damp cooking steam. Lunchtime food. As my brain cranked to life, everything — my observations, the sunlight, the repetitive flash of the clock, and the starchy, humid air — coalesced, and I screamed. I hollered for my mother. I felt all this instant anger. The day was mostly gone and I couldn’t get it back and it made me feel cracked like I wanted to smash something.

I heard Donnie singsong from the kitchen,
Deborah, ya daughter’s hollering for you…
and I heard Ma yelp,
What?
over the television hum. It sounded like a talk show, the rise and fall of boos and cheers. I knew Ma was not going to get off the couch. I would have to go to her. I checked to make sure the T-shirt I’d slept in covered my ass, which it mostly did, and I stomped out into the house. I can’t help but think of my bedroom as not quite part of the home we all in live in. It’s like my own wing, separate, velcroed to the rest of the place, detachable. Like I could hit a button and my bedroom would shoot away into outer space.

In the kitchen Donnie stirred not one but two spice packets into a single-package serving of ramen noodles. He always did this, which meant a few things. It meant there were opened packages of ramen noodles stacked in the pantry, all missing their flavor packets. Donnie wasn’t going to eat them later, so I guess they were being thoughtfully saved for me and my sister. And ramen is a carb, which is a real no-no on Kristy’s diet, so I guess they were piling up for me. A packet of plain ramen actually isn’t so bad with some salt and a little margarine, if you’re really starving, but still, it’s the point. It’s a rude practice. Nobody
in our house made ramen like you were supposed to, with the broth, like a soup. Even Kristy, when desperate, sort of dusted the bowl of cooked noodles with the flavor packet and then scarfed it down, but Donnie’s noodles were positively encrusted with the stuff. They were crunchy. I don’t know how he could eat it. It was like pure MSG with an afterthought of noodle. He loved it. He made happy and excited noises in his throat as he ate it, moaning and gurgling at once, like the noodles were strangling him from the inside and he couldn’t have died happier.

So I stomped into the living room. Ma moved her eyes from the screen to greet me. It was Sally Jesse Raphael. A bunch of girls were crying because their moms dressed like teenage skanks. Ma, Today Was My Last Day Of School, I told her. I tried not to be totally accusational because it really gets us off on the wrong foot.

How was it?
Ma asked.

I Didn’t Go! I shrieked. I know I sounded really blameful but I couldn’t help it, I blew it, and once my voice goes to a place like that there’s no coming back. I Overslept Because Someone Blew A Fuse And The Alarm Didn’t Go Off!

Oh, your sister did that
, Ma said.
She plugs too many things in, it’s an old house. She had that camera going, and the blowdryer, and everything went out. Donnie had to go down into the basement and hit the fuse box.

Don’t thank me
, Donnie held his hand up like he was a big hero but also humble. The MSG paste from his lunchtime ramen had collected in the crook of his mouth like a cold sore.

Well, Why Didn’t Someone Wake Me Up Or Check My
Alarm Or Something? Didn’t You Know My Alarm Wouldn’t Go Off?

Donnie started nodding vigorously, tapped his greasy head with the tip of the fork he was eating from. He swallowed a clot of ramen.
I did think of that, I did. And then I forgot. It slipped my mind.
His tongue shot out like an undersea monster, eyeless and newborn. It scraped the bit of flavor packet from the corner of his lips and retreated.
Sorry, kiddo.

On the television a newly made-over skank mom walked onto the stage in a khaki pants suit and subdued golden jewelry. Everyone cheered.
That doesn’t look so hot, either
, Ma observed. She was done with me.
But I don’t think much would look good on her. What do you think, Don?

Donnie investigated the controlled chaos of the Sally Jesse Raphael show. The skank mom’s daughter was crying great tears of salty joy at her mom’s new look. I could sort of identify with her, which made me mad.

Hello! I made my voice extra slicey, to cut through the television haze they’d been marinating in all morning. Hello, I’m A Real Person Here In Your Living Room Who Missed The Last Day Of School For The Entire Year. That’s A Little Anticlimactic, Don’t You Think? And It Would Be Really Cool If You Could Admit That It Was Your Fault.

Oh, here it comes, the blame game
, Ma sighed. Ma loves self-help books. She doesn’t have the attention span to actually finish one, but she gets in deep enough to fish out some groovy new lingo.

It’s Not A Game, Ma. It’s Real. I Really Missed School. It’s Really Your Fault.

Ma arranged herself into more of a sitting position, less of a lying position, her fighting stance. Her shimmery nightgown was a deep cranberry, and her long brown hair fell across the lace at the throat and on her shoulders. When I was wicked little, me and Kristy loved to fish all Ma’s slippery shiny nightgowns from her top, most mysterious drawer. The drawer with all the nothing-colored fabrics wound together in the wood, the technical-seeming items like bras with their hooks and straps. All of it stunk up from the tiny pillow of dead flowers buried in the center, a stale, sweet smell. The nightgowns Ma lives in now are the same ones I used to play dress-up with. I have a memory of Kristy swimming in that particular cranberry number, her lips smacked with some sort of matching lipstick, making me walk behind her with the hem of the gown clutched in my hands, lifting it from the grubby floor.

Well Trish, how about being in the solution instead of the problem
, Ma sighed.
Can you go to school now? All this time playing the blame game with me, you could be putting on some pants —

Which, maybe you could do anyway, huh?
Donnie cut in, scrunching up his nose like
I’m
the creep of the house.

Ma smirked. Now that Donnie butted in on her behalf she was going to act like she won the fight. She’s such a bully. She’s got great eyes. They’re a real spooky green color. People leave you alone when you got eyes sharp like that. It’s a color they give to witches in horror movies, to illustrate their evil powers. Of course I did not get the spooky-eye gene. I got brown. Just Forget It, I spat.

Your sister was in your room with her camera this
morning
, Ma told me.
I thought she was waking you up. You kids aren’t babies. I didn’t know I needed to check on you all morning. I was still sleeping. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, it’s like I got mono or something.
She sunk back into the collapsed pillow that held her head.

If You Had Mono, I said, We’d All Have Mono.

Her eyes rounded.
Don’t say that!
she said.
God forbid. You feel tired, Don?

Nah
, Donnie shook his head. Donnie wears a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. They slide down his greasy nose all day long and I have a suspicion he wears them only to look smart. But Donnie doesn’t look smart. You can spot his smartlessness twelve miles away, like a throbbing neon sign.

Maybe you need a battery clock
, Ma suggested.
Since the fuses blow.

They sure do blow
, Donnie chuckled and nudged Ma with his bowl. Ma chuckled back. They really are perfect for each other.

Why don’t you put it on the wish list
, Ma suggested.
Battery alarm clock.
The wish list is a worn and crumpled piece of yellow paper that lives on our fridge. It’s pinned to the metal with a plastic banana magnet. On it is scribbled everything we need. The scribbles take different shapes — the perfectly sculpted handwriting of Kristy; Ma’s faint, looping script; Donnie’s quick jots. They’re marked in pencil and ballpoints and fuzzy markers that bleed through the back of the page. It reads:
canisters, DVD player, stepstool, cordless phone, new sheets, towel rack, towels, blender, diffuser, George Foreman grill, humidifier, dehumidifier, security system.
Some of the earlier items from years ago have faded
away, though Kristy periodically rewrites the whole list in her neat penmanship on a clean piece of paper. The banana magnet is weak, so the wish list frequently falls off the fridge and gets stomped on, kicked under the table, then picked up with food-stained fingers and dropped atop the table, where it gets eggier, more coffee-stained and dusted with ramen flavorings before being hung back on the fridge. The weight of the page slowly drags the banana magnet down the length of the pukey green refrigerator. The fridge is avocado-colored, Ma has told me. A shade that was big in the ’70s, when everyone loved to eat avocados I guess. I have never seen an avocado, but if the fridge is any indication, they can’t be too appetizing.

I turned and stomped away. I took tiny, hard steps and felt satisfied by the way the rickety house rocked beneath my annoyance. The way this house moves, it’s like a living thing we all live inside. I think about it a lot in that way, especially at night if a wind hits it and it shifts and squeaks. Like it’s restless and trying to communicate. I think that the house is aware of us and likes me best, is on my side, feels sort of sorry for me. I rattled myself into the kitchen and plucked the wish list from where it sagged, knee-level, on the fridge. There were no pens anywhere. I rifled through the junk drawer and came up with a mostly dry purple marker that still smelled faintly of grapes, a souvenir from grade school. I pushed the scratchy tip to the page.
Battery powered alarm clock.
I stuck it back on the fridge. What a joke. Sometimes an item will miraculously fall off the back of a truck. Sometimes Ma will hit on a Scratcher and we’ll cross something off the list. Last year
we got a hot-curler set that Ma and Kristy had seen on TV. It hadn’t even been on the list, it was a spontaneous purchase. There were about fifteen desired objects ahead of my alarm clock. I wasn’t holding my breath.

In my room I sunk onto my bed but not too hard. Kristy once made a big show of flinging herself onto her bed and wound up busting the frame and the box spring, and now had to sleep on a mattress on the floor. It doesn’t pay to show strong emotions in this house. I eased myself onto my bed even though I’d have preferred a full-body slam, some sort of rough and complete contact. Maybe I should take up a sport, something aggressive like rugby, which I heard is wicked violent, but I don’t think they have that in America. At least not in Mogsfield. I don’t know if Mogsfield has anything aside from cheerleading, actually.

It’s going to be a long summer.

Two

I found out from Kristy that Kim Porciatti tried to kill herself. Kim Porciatti didn’t go to my school, Mogsfield High, and she didn’t go to the vocational school like Kristy, the one called “the Voke.” The vocational school frowns on that nickname because it sounds too trashy. They’re trying to get people to call it “Metro Tech” instead, short for the Eastern Metropolitan Technical Vocational School. That’s the school’s real name but not even people who go there can keep it straight. It sounds like some sort of government institution you could learn to fly planes and fix air conditioners at. As opposed to a run-down high school for pot-smoking hicks learning plumbing and girls with bad hair and no future studying data processing. People get real excited about the Voke at first, because it’s so different from
regular schools. Girls who go there say things like, “Oh it’s just like real life,” with this sort of superiority as they exhale a plume of Marlboro Light. But once the novelty wears off you realize you’re actually working a really shitty job you’re not getting paid for. Companies hire the students to process their data for wicked cheap. They pay the school, and the students — all girls, in data processing — do the work and never see a dollar. How is that even legal? I guess the really great bit is you’re getting taught how to process data, which is supposed to be a valuable job skill. Except you learn how to do that in like fifteen minutes and then for the next three years that’s all you do. Then you graduate and find a job doing more data processing and you do that until you die, either from natural causes like cancer or some deliberate suicide, whatever comes first. It’s fucking depressing. Plus, learning that someone you know tried to kill herself will put you in a dark space, even if you didn’t particularly like the person.

Kristy’s shop at the Voke was not data processing, it was cosmetology, which if you ask me is the only reason to go to the Voke, and the reason most every girl does. That shop doesn’t start ’til junior year, though, so you essentially piss away two whole years of your life learning something you have absolutely no interest in, like drafting and design, killing time until junior year. And not every girl gets accepted to the cosmo shop, either, so there are a lot of ruined female lives at the Voke, a lot of bitter data processors. You go in dreaming of being a hairdresser and you leave a dental assistant or a glorified babysitter — “child care technician.” Those girls spend their entire high school life watching
the teachers’ kids. For free. For their education.

BOOK: Rose of No Man's Land
3.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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