Why Me? (7 page)

“Where is the school?” I asked my mother.

“I have no fucking idea, Sarah. Ask the son-of-a-bitch who moved us here.”

No matter how hard my mother was trying to bring the mood down, it wasn’t going to work.
Dale
Richard
,
Rachel
Emily
, and I spent the rest of the afternoon unloading the U-Haul and getting everything into the house and the garage. Later that evening,
Dale
Richard
took
Rachel
Emily
and me for a drive around town. Everything was so quaint and cute. The school looked like something right out of a storybook, and I couldn’t wait to start there and make friends.

I wasn’t waiting long. Two days after we moved in, I started school. I was so nervous on my first day, worried about being judged, worried about finding friends and hopefully a boyfriend. I stood in front of the mirror that morning and heard my mother’s taunts in my head … “Thunder Thighs!” “Kidney Kate!” All the good feelings I had about myself vanished as I nervously rubbed my pant legs and tried to see if my butt really stuck out as far as my mother said it did.

“What the hell are you doing, Sarah?” Mom had been standing at my door, watching me look at myself in the mirror.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Making yourself look like a whore, are you?”

“No, Mom!”

“How much hair spray do you have in your hair?” Mom walked over and grabbed my bangs and pulled. “Look at this shit in your hair; go wash it out!”

“Mom, I don’t have time. I have to get to school.”

I picked up my bag and tried to get out of my bedroom door, but Mom was standing in the way with her arms out. “Wash your hair or I’ll wash it for you,” she said calmly.

I refused, repeating, “Mom, I don’t have time!” I really didn’t. I had to go to school early to meet my homeroom teacher for a tour of the school.

Mom dropped her arms, looked me up and down, and laughed out loud. “I guess if you think that looks good, more power to you!”

I put my head down, and tears welled up in my eyes. “Not this morning!” I said to myself.

“Your shoes are down in the basement,” Mom said with a smile on her face. I pushed past her and went to the landing. Mom came up behind me, and WHAM! She kicked me in the back, and I went flying down the stairs. I landed on the bottom step, directly on my tailbone. I felt my breath stop, and I turned my head and looked back up at Mom with tears streaming down my face. “It … hurts,” I stammered, barely able to speak.

“Oh, get up, you fucking retard!” Mom said. She picked up my book bag and threw it down the stairs at me. “You’d better hurry, or you’re going to be late,” she said before she turned away and busied herself in the kitchen.

I managed to stand up and slip my shoes on. “Great first day!” I thought to myself. I made it back up the stairs with my bag and walked out the back door.

It took me over forty-five minutes to walk the three blocks to school that morning because of the excruciating pain in my tailbone. I was a nervous wreck walking into the school for the first time. Not only was I late for my school tour, but also I was afraid that the other kids would make fun of the way I was walking.

I took a deep breath and entered the building. Immediately, I was greeted by a girl my age—a girl who would soon be my new best friend. “Hi, I’m Melissa,” she said cheerfully. “You must be Sarah!”

From that day forward, Melissa and I were inseparable. We played basketball together, were both in track, spent the night at each other’s houses, and even went to an NBA game together. However, I never felt that I could be truly honest with Melissa about my mother. For some odd reason, Mom and Melissa got along extremely well, so I didn’t think Melissa would believe me or be my friend anymore if I told her the truth about what went on behind our closed doors.

Like every other good thing in my life, my friendship with Melissa would ultimately be taken from me. Although our family had moved away from the farmhouse and we were a bit better off financially, Mom’s old habits eventually resurfaced. She found a new mall to shoplift from, and once again she made me go every weekend for a new shoplifting adventure. If I refused, I received the same beatings as before—Mom just didn’t yell so loudly. If I showed any hesitance to shoplift in the stores, Mom would start berating me and making fun of the way I looked in front of other customers: “God, you really squeezed into those jeans, didn’t you? Look at those cow hocks! Look how stupid your hair looks today!”

I would keep my head down and glance up occasionally to see the customers’ reactions to my mother’s taunts. Mostly, people would just stare, but once in a while I would catch someone laughing at the things my mother said to me. “They must think my mom is right,” I would think to myself. Slowly, my mother’s taunts began to affect the way I saw myself in the mirror. Gone was the tall, shapely girl from the farm; all that looked back at me in the mirror was a fat, ugly girl whom no one wanted.

One day after school, right out of the blue, Mom looked at me and asked, “Do you want Melissa to come over and spend the night?”

I looked up at her in surprise and wondered what kind of trick this was. “Sure,” I said hesitantly.

“We’ll drive to Princeton and have dinner—how does that sound?”

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so I jumped up and called Melissa right away. “Yay!” Melissa said when I invited her to come. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes!”

As promised, twenty minutes later Melissa was at the door with her backpack. I let her in, and she ran and gave my mom a huge hug. I watched them and got very sad for a moment, wondering why I couldn’t count five times my mother had given me a hug like that.

“Ready to go to Princeton?” Mom asked Melissa.

“Oh, yeah—Monical’s, here we come!”

Mom, Melissa, and I piled into the Surburban and headed toward Princeton. Melissa sat in the front seat with Mom, and for the next half hour they chatted about everything from cooking to sewing. I listened and tried to contribute to the conversation, but Mom would cut me off and tell me not to interrupt.

“Yeah, Sarah, don’t interrupt!” Melissa would say, laughing along with Mom.

As we drove into town, Mom said, “Let’s make a pit stop before dinner.” I looked out the window and saw that we were pulling into the mall parking lot. My heart sank.

“Oh, God—don’t steal in front of Melissa,” I thought. Then I said to Mom, “I don’t feel like going in.”

“Melissa, would you give us a second?” Mom asked.

“Sure!”

Melissa jumped out of the front seat and got busy fixing her makeup outside as Mom turned around and looked at me. She grabbed my arm and dug in her fingernails. “You still have to go home with me, little girl,” she said in a low tone.

I had no choice; I had to get out and follow Melissa and my mother into the mall. Once inside, they hightailed it toward the craft store, and Mom led Melissa back to the yarn section. Within seconds, Mom was stuffing rolls of yarn into her purse and motioning for me to come over. Melissa was standing there with a look of complete shock on her face. I didn’t want to go over there; I knew that Mom would make me stuff merchandise into my purse, too, and I didn’t want Melissa to see that. But I also knew the consequences if I did not shoplift, and my fear of my mother outweighed my sense of right and wrong and and my desire to do the right thing in front of Melissa.

As I stuffed rolls of yarn into my purse next to my mother, I could feel Melissa’s eyes boring into my back. I couldn’t even look at her as I turned and zipped up my purse. Melissa stood motionless as Mom and I headed to the store entrance. “Come on, Melissa, let’s go,” Mom said.

Melissa shot a look at me and a look around the store. For a moment, I thought she was going to tell on me and have me arrested. But, to my surprise, Melissa smiled at Mom and followed her out of the store.

There was no talking on the way back to the truck. As Mom pulled out of the mall parking lot, Melissa said quietly, “I’m not feeling well. I think I need to go home.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked, feigning concern.

“Yeah. I think it’s the heat, or something I ate.”

I didn’t say a word. I knew why Melissa was going home, and I didn’t blame her a bit.

There was no chatter between Mom and Melissa on the way home, and when Mom pulled into Melissa’s driveway, Melissa jumped out and ran into her house without saying a word.

“Think you’ll be seeing her again?” Mom asked me.

I didn’t reply. Of course I wouldn’t be seeing Melissa again. Melissa had morals. She was a good girl who had a good mom; she wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I went to bed that night dreading school the next day, knowing that everyone would have heard what we did in the craft store.

I wasn’t wrong. The next day, a group of kids from my class—including Melissa— was outside the school waiting for me. When I arrived, they began taunting me, calling me names like “Thief” and “Harvester.” They spent the day chanting these names at me in the school hallways. They stuck Post-it notes with my new names scrawled on them onto my back. The perfect town with the perfect school and the perfect friends had turned into a dark nightmare for me. Now, once again, I had no escape, no one to run to. I was all alone again.

I made it through the school day and then walked home. My stomach was in knots. The names I had been called all day were running through my head along with the names my mother called me. I felt like running headlong into the train that was passing by, ending my life at that moment just to finally have peace. I started agreeing with my mother and the kids at school: “I am a thief! I did steal! I am fat and gross! Look at me, I have the biggest ass in school!”

As I reached the front steps of my house, I doubled over in pain and threw up on the sidewalk. Mom came running out. “Oh, God, you’re disgusting,” she said. “Get inside and stay in your room! I don’t want you getting any of us sick.”

I was more than happy to oblige. All I wanted to do was go to bed anyway, to avoid any more name-calling. I went to my room and took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. “You fat pig! You worthless piece of shit!” I started saying to my reflection. “You deserve nothing—cow!”

I felt my life was over. I was trapped again—but this time, instead of just being treated like dirt at home, I was going to get it at school, too. I spit at my reflection, collapsed on my bed, and sobbed until I was spent. My stomach growled in hunger, and I found myself enjoying the pain. It gave me something else to think about.

Chapter 8

Anorexic Annie

Not long after the Melissa debacle, I started to become depressed. I found it hard to eat; I was physically tired of being beaten all the time; and I had nowhere to run where anyone would treat me with kindness. I was fourteen years old and had no control over my life whatsoever. My mood depended on how my mother was feeling. But even if I left for school in the morning in a good mood, I would still be treated like scum by my peers.

Since the shoplifting incident, the kids at school had completely turned on me. They had no trouble finding reasons to pick on me, and they would relentlessly tease me about things for weeks at a time. I had no friends, no boys interested in me, and I felt completely alone. I started to punish myself mentally: I would look in the mirror and see a fat, ugly, worthless human being staring back at me. I felt lost and unloved, and I needed an answer to my problems.

One winter morning, I woke up feeling quite cranky. I had not eaten well the day before and had had a tough time getting to sleep. My stomach hurt and my head ached, but I didn’t dare complain. The last thing I wanted was to stay home from school with Mom.

I walked upstairs and passed Mom in the kitchen.

“Morning, Mom,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm.” Mom looked up at me. “Jesus—you look like shit.” She looked at
Rachel
Emily
, who was sitting at the table, and said, “How’s my pretty little girl doing?”

I put my head down and walked out of the room. I went into the bathroom, shut the door, stripped off all my clothes, and stood on the scale.

“I lost five pounds?” I said to myself. I got off the scale, checked it, and stood on it again. “140 pounds?” I was 145 just two days ago! How did I lose five pounds so fast? My stomach growled, and my eyes lit up.

“I didn’t eat!” I thought excitedly. “I am finally losing weight!”

Maybe now Mom wouldn’t call me names and make fun of my thunder thighs or cow hocks. Maybe now the boys would like me and the girls would invite me to their sleepovers again. It was almost too much for me to handle! I had barely had time to bask  in the warmth of the new love I thought I would get when my mother yelled, “I don’t hear that shower running!”

For the rest of the morning I was in a daze. Mom had made eggs and bacon for breakfast, but I didn’t eat. I made up an excuse about my stomach hurting and said I would eat when I got to school. Surprisingly, Mom bought my story and didn’t give me any grief about it before I left for school. As I headed toward the front door, I spied Mom’s lip gloss on the floor and snatched it up. “I want to feel pretty today,” I said to myself. As I walked to school, I applied Mom’s lip gloss over and over and imagined myself as one of those pretty girls at school or one of the thin, beautiful  actresses  on television.