God, I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is to belong to this family.
We are conspicuously ridiculous, and I am ashamed.
I think I’m ashamed of myself because I don’t feel in control of what I do. I just know that I stick out like a sore thumb, Mom is right that I can never shut up, and everyone at school is still calling me Mawmouth because I compulsively shout out the correct answer to every question the teacher poses. It’s like, automatic. If I have the right answer, I must speak it, and I do have it a lot.
Otherwise, I spend my social moments trying as hard as I can not to talk too much and to be cool. I was hoping to leave behind my awkward big-mouthed self in elementary school. But it follows me like a shadow, like the shadows of my whole family. A forest of shadows.
I think the people of this town look at us like idiots because we’ve always been so freaking Christian and yet we can never keep it together. Mothers and daughters both wrinkle their noses at us. How come both the drunken miner families and the pristine Mennonite families can hold on to some appearance of unity, and yet we have been falling apart at the seams since I was nine years old? I still remember that first separation as if it bore a hole into my heart and the wind still whistles through. You are the only one I talk to about these things, my only friend.
I have to admit that except for Myname, I don’t feel I really have any friends. I am lonesome in my heart. Oh, of course I appear to have friends. Pammy and Cammy and Jennifer. Their faces are caked with so much foundation that I can’t even see their skin, and their eyes drip with mascara, and we all hairspray our bangs so high they’re like walls. And we can count on each other to tell our stories to the world, and to re-tell the stories to each other in a harsher light than before. I honestly don’t know why I get so interested in Pammy, Cammy, their boyfriends, their musical tastes, their social plans, their little problems. Maybe I just want to escape from my own family, I think that’s what it is.
Then there’s my Mennonite friends, who are getting more and more into reading and baking and embroidery as they enter adolescence. I’m beginning to feel like we live on different planets. After the thing with Charlie stealing, I don’t like talking about my sordid family or my tawdry home life to Miranda, while she sits there doing cross-stitch. I guess if my Mom made me do cross-stitch daily, I might be able to stem the tide of my own rapacious inclinations.
All the Mennonite girls are in perfect families that read the Bible together and sing four-part harmony every night before dinner and in the evenings read Christian stories by candlelight until everyone goes to bed without a whisper. Meanwhile I am spray-painting my bedroom, smoking cigarettes every chance I can get, and climbing out windows at midnight to go get French-kissed by an older boy in the next town over.
Bonnie likes the Mennonites a lot. They’re her hiding place in the storm of our grouchy family. Most of the time, Bonnie is a like a dark ghost at home. She does the dishes, prepares food, tidies, reads, slouches around. She and Mom fight a lot about her schlummy attitude. But at youth group and at church, and when she’s out with friends, Bonnie lights up and beams like a star. She praises the Lord, alright. Pretty soon she’ll be heading off to a Mennonite college to take a Bible degree for two years. I think she’s just going to meet a boy and get married and have his Christian babies.
Anyway, she’s always hanging out with Miranda’s older sister and all their friends, going out for coffee and “cruising”. Bonnie is really straight like them, so I hide all my activities from her, as well as from the Mennonites. There’s no point in taking risks. But I’m pretty sure some of the information does get through networks in our high school – there are only a few hundred kids there.
I enjoy going to work on Saturdays because it’s mine and mine only. I enjoy my friendship with Myname because it’s mine, except when she goes off to be best friends with her childhood favourite, Kelly. I’m very jealous when they hang out. Sometimes they sit together at lunch and look over at me and I want to smush their faces together, but I don’t let on. I think I might have a split personality, the one who wants to be good and follow you and all that is right (I guess that is Girl #2) and the one who wants to get wasted and do terrible things for kicks (Girl #1). Well, all my life they’ve told me you’ll hang around no matter what the heck I do, so let’s just test the measures of your forgiveness, shall we.
It’s not like you gave me the best start ever. When I think about it, you actually stiffed me. You planted me in this family where I was going to end up being harassed and harangued and tormented all the live-long day. What about my potential? Don’t you think I would have done better in a home where there was a little love, acceptance and tenderness?
First my father leaves my mother, then my brother gets arrested for grand theft, and that’s only the stuff that everyone else notices. What about the way Dad used to hide food, and Charlie’s penchant for stalking me, and the fights between my parents, and the fights between Mom and us? Only you can see those things. As if I would tell anyone for real. Like my teachers, or my friends.
Teachers and other adults are always saying I should come to them for support. But can you imagine if I told people about what goes down in our family? I’d probably get put into foster care. It’s apparently better to stick with what you know, even if it’s bad, since the alternative could be so much worse. No, instead of telling someone real, I’ll just talk to you about it and trust you to comfort me. Oops, I didn’t mean to insinuate that you’re not real; it’s just that you’re invisible, that’s all.
And sometimes, as you have taught me, being invisible is the most powerful thing of all. So, don’t feel bad.
My brother has gone to live with my aunt and uncle – my Dad’s Pentecostal brother and his family. Mom’s hatred got to be so intense that Charlie sort of ran away. I guess it’s been a few weeks now . . . One day, not too long after he got charged, after ten suppers of indignation, he just wasn’t there for supper. My mother was quiet for a few minutes.
“Where’s Charlie?” she finally said to the rest of us. Bonnie shrugged and stared at her plate.
Keanan retorted, “How should I know?” and rolled his eyes.
I said, “I haven’t seen him since breakfast.”
Mom got up and went down the hall to Charlie’s bedroom. He had made his bed, which was the first unusual thing. His room was tidier than normal. After rifling around a little, she came back to the dinner table. I was still eating; she looked at me and said, “How can you eat when your brother is missing?”
I said, “I’m still hungry even though Charlie isn’t here.” Then for the rest of the hour, she lectured me about how selfish I was because I didn’t starve myself for the sake of big fat lazy thieving Charlie gone missing.
“He’s too much of a coward to take his own life, so he’s probably fine,” I blurted at one point. Mom looked like she wanted to hit me hard, but I’m getting too old for that and she knows it. Honestly, I’m sorry to admit it because I know you care for him, but Charlie can go soak his head for all I care. Whatever he gets is what he deserves.
I find it interesting how Mom always needs someone to vomit on every day, though. First it was Dad, then Charlie, and also me.
Sometimes she tries to do it to Keanan or Bonnie, but they are not satisfying targets. Keanan is violent, scary and impenetrable. His anger is like a demon and I think he’d actually hurt Mom if she went at him. Bonnie is either silently sulky, or helpful. Mom needs her to do all the work around the house, so she can’t insult her too much or else Bonnie will stop being so diligent. When they do have their fights, Bonnie is stony – Mom can’t get through to her. She likes it when Charlie cries with his big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. She likes it when I cry, crumpling down at her feet. She liked it when Dad lost his temper and freaked out.
My mom is nothing more than a provocateur. She doesn’t make peace, but instead stirs up craziness and drama in the heads and hearts of everyone around her. Then she moans on about how all she wants is peace and harmony.
After she finished ripping me to shreds over my deeply selfish nature and how I’m so full of myself and I never stop talking about whatever matters to me and I have no compassion for anyone else in the family, she went over to the phone. It didn’t take more than a few calls to locate Charlie. Instead of going to school, he’d hitchhiked (first transgression!) to Four Foot Falls to the house of an old friend. He was staying there overnight with the permission of the parents (second transgression!). They didn’t call Mom because they don’t know her too well, and figured it was best for Charlie to work it out himself.
But she is like a falcon and soon tracked him down. Someone in town told her they’d seen him hitchhiking in that direction and she recalled his old friend. When she called, he refused to talk to her (third transgression!). Then he said he wouldn’t ever come home.
Transgressions, transgressions!
In spite of myself, I feel a surge of pride at Charlie’s acts of daring. I can’t imagine crossing Mom like that. It’s not that she would physically kill me, but there would be a complete death of sorts. Here is Charlie just saying no. Like Mom is some street drug. Just say no.
I didn’t know it could be this easy.