Why Me? (9 page)

“He wants to know if you would go to Homecoming with him.”

My heart raced and my face flushed. This was too good to be true; this had to be a prank. “Seriously?” I asked Susan, searching her face for any sign of betrayal.

Susan smiled again. “Seriously!” she exclaimed. “Well, would you at least meet him at lunch or something?” She was starting to get impatient and wanted to get back to her seat before the study hall monitor saw her.

“OK.” The word was out of my mouth before I could even think. Susan slipped away, and I looked up at the clock. Thirty-six minutes until lunch. I drummed my fingers impatiently, fighting the urge to turn around and look at Brian.

Suddenly I heard Susan’s laugh echoing in the back of the library, and my heart fell. “It’s a trick! They’re going to get me at lunch,” I thought. “How could I have been so stupid?” I was ashamed of myself for falling into such an apparent trap, but what could I do? If I didn’t show up at lunch, I would look like a coward. “Damn it!” I thought to myself. “I have to go, or they’ll just get me after school—or tomorrow! Damn it!”

The next thirty-six minutes ticked away slowly, and each tick of the clock made my heart race faster and faster. Finally the bell rang, and I jumped up to gather my books. I wanted to get to the lunchroom first to assess the situation and find a seat by the door in case I wanted to run away.

Before I could walk out of the library, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around, and there was Brian Schulte with a smile on his face. His face was flushed red, and upon closer look I could see that the redness wasn’t heat, it was acne—and a lot of it. Brian was much shorter than me, and his hair was greased back—not exactly what I had pictured as my Prince Charming. But I looked at his eyes and immediately felt guilty for being judgmental. He had the kindest, brightest eyes I had ever seen, and his smile immediately put me at ease.

“Sarah, I’m so sorry! I told Susan that I would do it, but she didn’t want to wait!”

“So this isn’t a joke?” I asked hesitantly.

“God, no! I just like you and I thought I’d ask you to Homecoming. I’m just really shy, so Susan usually does all my dirty work!”

“Holy crap. This is for real!” I thought to myself. “Really? You’re asking me to Homecoming?” I asked Brian with a hint of sarcasm in my voice.

“Well, Susan asked you officially,” Brian said with a laugh.

“Um … yes!” I said excitedly.

Brian held out his hand and said, “So … do we shake on it or what?”

I grabbed his hand and shook it firmly. “It’s a date!” I said.

My head was swimming. I had never been asked out on a date before, especially one as important as the Homecoming dance. I had given up all hopes of dating the moment everyone started calling me “Harvester” at school, but Brian didn’t seem to care. “Maybe he doesn’t know my reputation,” I thought anxiously. But that was impossible. “He has to know—he’s lived in this town longer than I have!”

For the rest of the day, I found it very hard to concentrate on anything but the upcoming dance. What was I going to wear? How was I going to do my hair? What kind of makeup could I wear? It wasn’t until last period, about half an hour before the final bell rang, when it hit me. “Mom is never going to let me do this!” I said to myself. Immediately my stomach sank and tears welled up in my eyes. “She is never going to let me go!” I considered finding Brian after school and telling him to forget it, risking another blow to my reputation, but something inside me didn’t want to throw up the white flag of surrender to my mother just yet.

When the final bell rang, I got up, gathered my books, and headed out the front doors toward home. I took the long way home that day, contemplating various scenarios that I could present to my mother: deals I could make in order to get this one night, this one special night. I was deep in thought when a car pulled up beside me.

“Hey—you need a lift?”

I looked up. It was Brian, driving his dad’s rusted old pickup truck, holding the door open for me to jump in. All thoughts of Mom left my head as I hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. For the next five minutes, Brian and I talked as if we had known each other for years. We talked about the little town we lived in, our mutual friends, school, and our pets. For the first time in a long time, I was comfortable, relaxed, and felt good around one of my peers.

Unfortunately, that feeling vanished when Brian’s truck squeaked to a stop in front of my house. “Here you go!” Brian said cheerfully. “We’ll talk more about Homecoming tomorrow!”

I looked at him and didn’t have the heart to tell him that my mom was never going to let me go. “Absolutely!” I said, quickly jumping out of the truck. Brian waved and honked as he pulled away.

I turned around and looked at the front door. There was Mom, peeking out from behind the curtain. I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t want to deal with the questions, the insults, and then the beating that was sure to come. I was half tempted to run down the road after Brian, but I quickly changed my mind when Mom opened the door.

“Come on in, Sarah!” she said sarcastically. She stood to the side and held the front door open for me to enter. I walked in, flinching slightly out of habit as I passed her, and sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for the tirade to begin. I didn’t have to wait long. Mom slammed the door and whipped around at me. “What are you now? A little whore? He has to be at least sixteen if he’s driving! What were you doing in his truck?”

I didn’t even answer her. I knew that anything that came out of my mouth would just be thrown back in my face and twisted around.

Mom bent over and got very close to my face. Her eyes were filled with hatred, and the corner of her mouth was curled up into a sneer. “So you think you’re a big girl now, RIGHT?” I covered my face with my hands, but Mom snatched them away. She grabbed my bottom lip and twisted it until I thought she was going to rip it off my face.

“Look at you—putting your nasty nigger lips all over some boy!” Mom let go of my lip and stepped back and crossed her arms. “Look at you—who the hell would want you?” Mom laughed and started picking apart my body, piece by piece. “Yeah, I’m sure all the boys want your beautiful thunder thighs and your bubble butt. Don’t forget that you only have one kidney—fucking idiot!”

My eyes welled up, and tears streamed down my face. This only gave Mom more ammunition.

“I guess I should have expected it. Your FATHER was a piece of shit, and so are you!”

Mom kept ranting in my face, and I began to tune her out. The anger in my stomach grew, and I felt flushed. No longer did I hear my mother’s rants and raves; I was seeing flashes of her indiscretions over the years. “How dare she call
me
a whore?” I thought angrily.

Suddenly I blinked, looked at my mother, and said, “You know, I could tell
Dale
Richard
anytime what you do.” I locked eyes with my mother and, for the first time in my life, saw fear in her eyes. Mom opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but no words came out.

The silence in the kitchen was deafening as Mom and I stared at each other, each waiting for the other to react. I didn’t have to wait long. Mom’s astonishment with my sudden show of bravery quickly changed into a blinding rage.

“YOU BITCH!” Mom screamed. She lunged at me and dragged me off my chair. I cowered on the floor, folding myself into a ball as Mom’s fists came at me over and over again. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, you ungrateful piece of shit!”

I started pleading with her. “Mom, stop! STOP!” But my pleas were useless. Mom’s fists continued to rain down upon my body.

Suddenly Mom stopped and stood up. She left me on the floor of the kitchen, walked into the bathroom, and slammed the door. I lay motionless, unsure whether I should go to my room or stay as close to the front door as possible in case I needed to run out of the house. My body was throbbing and already starting to bruise from the beating I had just received, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take this time.

I heard the bathroom door open, and I shut my eyes as my mother’s footsteps came closer and closer. Mom bent over and pulled me to my feet by my hair. She whipped me around to face her and held up a small green bottle of Excedrin.

“Take it!” Mom said in a low voice.

“What?” I asked incredulously.

“End it. Take the bottle and get the hell out of my life.”

Shocked, I started crying again. This was a side of Mom I was not prepared for. I knew how to deal with the beatings and the name-calling and other mental abuse, but this—taking a bottle of pills!—this was something I didn’t know how to handle.

“I don’t want to take the bottle, Mom,” I said in a pleading voice.

“Sit down in the living room,” Mom said to me.

Still crying, I walked into the living room and sat in the armchair closest to the front door. My survival instincts were telling me to run, but I was too afraid to do anything. Mom knelt down in front of me. She held up the bottle and unscrewed the childproof cap.

“Don’t you know how much I hate you?” she asked in a calm voice. “Don’t you see that no one wants you here, how miserable you make all of us?”

I wept harder. There were many times during my childhood when I’d felt that Mom could have killed me, but this was real. This was life and death staring me in the face, in the form of a little green bottle of Excedrin.

“TAKE THE FUCKING BOTTLE!” Mom screamed at me.

I held out my hand and took the bottle from Mom. She backed up and sat on the couch facing me. Then she leaned forward on her elbows and said, “No one loves you, Sarah. Just end it now!”

I shut my eyes, and my entire life up to that point flashed through my mind. I recalled the beatings, the belts, my animals, the boy’s grave at the cemetery—everything that I had been put through—and it occurred to me that my mother might be right. It would be easier for everyone, including me, if I wasn’t around.

I put the open Excedrin bottle to my lips and tipped my head back to swallow the pills. Just as they hit my lips, Mom stood up and smacked me on the side of the head. The bottle of pills fell to the floor, and I jumped out of my chair.

“I can’t believe you were really going to do it! Jesus Christ—you ARE crazy! NUTSO! FREAK!”

I couldn’t take it anymore. Less than five minutes ago Mom was pushing me to kill myself, and when I obeyed she called me crazy. All I could see was the front door, and I ran toward it. Mom reached out to grab me and ended up grabbing the back of my blouse. The blouse ripped off my body, and I was left standing at the front door in my jeans and bra. Mom threw the blouse down and shoved me out the front door.

“Stand on the street like the whore you are!” Mom slammed the door in my face and locked it.

So I was left outside in my bra and jeans as neighbors and people from school drove by and stared in amazement. I ran around the house and hid behind the garage, where no one could see me from the road. I sat on the ground with my back against the garage, gripping my knees to my chest and sobbing.

“Why?” I sobbed. “Why?” I couldn’t utter any other words. The hurt from my mother’s fists, my near suicide, and the show I’d just put on for the entire town in my underwear had crushed my soul. I felt defeated and broken down; life was no longer worth living in my eyes.

“I didn’t even ask her if I could go to Homecoming,” I remembered. For some reason this made me laugh out loud. “I just got a ride home from him, and that’s what happened!” This made me laugh even harder.

For the next hour I sat behind the garage in my bra and jeans, laughing and crying at the same time. A passerby might have thought there was a crazy woman in the garage, but I didn’t care. I needed some form of release, and right now this was all I had.

Shortly before
Dale
Richard
came home from work, Mom called me into the house. Not a word was spoken between the two of us as the table was set and dinner was laid out. After setting the table, I went downstairs to put on a new shirt. I looked at my reflection and saw that my back and sides were covered in red marks, with bruises already starting to form. But I didn’t notice the marks as much as my stomach. “Ugh!” I thought to myself. “I need to lose some more weight!” Almost on cue, my stomach growled, and the pain made me smile. Once again the pain from Mom’s beatings was replaced by this hunger pain, and it helped me forget what had happened just a couple of hours ago.

Dale
Richard
came in the house, and I went upstairs. He looked at me and saw a bruise starting to form on my arm. “Jesus Christ,
Mary
Nancy
! What the hell did she do now? You can’t touch her like that anymore!”

Mom stormed into the room and said, “Well, unless you want to be called Grandpa, you just keep your mouth shut and let me deal with her.”

Dale
Richard
shook his head and sat down for dinner, immediately changing the subject to a construction problem he had experienced during the day. Mom shot me a smirk and a glance as if to say, “Ha! I won!”

I looked away and said, “I’m not hungry. I just want to go to bed.”

“Fine by me!” retorted Mom. “Maybe then we can have an enjoyable meal!”