Ballads of Suburbia (4 page)

“Blood sisters,” I pronounced, admiring the sticky smear that stained my skin when I pulled away.

I
CUT MYSELF AGAIN AFTER MY FIRST
day of high school. There'd been so much to adjust to: trying to find my way around the building that was literally a block long, figuring out when I could stop at my locker to change out the fifty-pound textbooks I had for each class, not being one of the most brilliant people in the room.

I'd been recommended for and taken all honors-level classes. I'd never been a genius by any means, but I was smart and had always been able to keep up effortlessly. Stacey and I both were like that. We didn't consider ourselves “nerds” (though we'd been called that along with a slew of other inapplicable names, like “lesbians,” throughout the years). We didn't kiss up to teachers. We sat in the back of the classroom and passed notes. We even smoked cigarettes in the bathroom once. Basically we acted like bad-asses, but got straight A's. However, I could tell that in high school, I was going to have to work hard, especially without Stacey, who usually tutored me in science while I helped her in history.

That day I thought about Stacey every few minutes. I wanted to ask her where we should sit when I got to class. I kept looking for her in the labyrinth of hallways. The school teemed with a few thousand students. Sure, they didn't
all
know one another, but
they all had friends who greeted them when they entered a room. I had acquaintances, people I could sit next to and ask about their summer, but when the small talk ended I was alone.

After school, I raced home to wait for Stacey's call. We'd agreed she would take the bus to my house that day and the next day I'd take it to hers. When my phone rang, I didn't even say hello, just asked, “When are you coming over?”

“I don't know. I'm really tired.” She sighed into the phone.

“Yeah, it was hard, wasn't it? I have so much homework.”

“No, it wasn't hard. I just didn't sleep last night because I was nervous. It was anticlimactic, really.”

I wanted to tell her that I missed her, but I wanted her to say it first. Maybe she was just tired, but she sounded a lot more nonchalant about the situation than I felt. “Do you have a lot of homework?” I asked. “Maybe you could bring it over. We could see if it's similar.”

“I don't have a lot of homework and it won't be the same. I didn't take any honors classes.”

This was news to me. “Why not?”

She sighed again. It seemed every sentence began or ended with a sigh. “I don't know. To try to get a social life, I guess.”

“Oh.”

I felt like she'd pointed to something shiny in the distance and then punched me in the gut; her revelation caught me
that
off guard. Could you just decide to have a life? Was she doing some sort of “new town, new school, new me” thing like kids on TV who move always do? And how did she plan to incorporate
me
into this new life?

Stacey exhaled noisily into the phone again. “I'm tired, Kara, I think I'm gonna zone out and watch TV. We'll hang out tomorrow, okay?”

I managed to hang up before bursting into tears. Her not coming over was a bad omen. Especially on top of all the other
bullshit. The school that was too big. The classes that were too hard. And now Stacey wanted to add parties and football games and stuff to the mix? I just wanted it to be me and her, like it always had been.

I found myself flicking the scab on my arm from our blood-sisters oath. The little twinges of pain were oddly soothing. I progressed to picking at it and was disappointed when it didn't bleed. Somehow I knew that blood plus pain would make me calm, like it had the night Stacey and I became blood sisters.

After locating my Swiss Army knife in my nightstand drawer, I sliced two more tiny lines next to my scab. The pain rippled through me, awakening me like it was caffeine. The blood that dripped down my arm released all the stress of the day, all the sadness over Stacey. I stopped crying. Blood felt more purifying than tears, more numbing.

One more cut would give me strength. It would drain the bad feelings. I would daub it up with Kleenex. I would ride the ache and turn it into energy to get my schoolwork done.

I could cope.

I knew it wasn't a good thing, but I could cope.

May 1995

I
WAS A BABY'S BABY,
A
KID'S KID.
My ma was sixteen when she had me. I gained a year on her. I'm pregnant and I'm seventeen. When I have the baby I'll be almost eighteen. Almost an adult, but not really. Eighteen's still too young. They say if you're too young it stunts you. Developmentally, emotionally, or whatever. In your head you're stuck at the age you were when you had the baby.

My ma got stuck, that's for sure. Before she had me she was a stoner waitress, always listening to the latest rock bands and always at the best parties. After she had me, she remained a stoner waitress, but one who brought her baby to the not-quite-as-cool parties. She kept that up until I got old enough to ask questions like “What's in that Kool-Aid, Mommy?” Then, she blamed me for the demise of her social life and her musical taste. Once I got to be school-age, she spent all her money on suburban rent instead of records so I could go
to the “good” schools and not screw up like her. I guess she didn't realize the example she set for me was just as important as the education I got.

So am I gonna be stunted? Stuck at seventeen forever in my mind? I don't know. I don't think I ever acted my age in the first place. I grew up fast. I was a latchkey kid starting in third grade. Maybe some people would find that kind of freedom cool, but it gets old. All I really wanted was someone to take care of me.

Everyone thinks of women as the primary caretakers, but since caretaking didn't come too naturally to my ma, I decided that stereotype was wrong. I wanted a guy to take care of me, and my first, most logical choice was my own father. My parents broke up before my ma had me, but when I was little I spent more time with my dad. Usually I was at his place on weekends, and sometimes I stayed for weeks at a time. Those, I realized later, were his unemployed periods. But I saw him less and less after we moved out to the 'burbs. It was a long drive south and Beth wasn't willing to make it unless she got compensated with child support.

The summer before I started high school, when Beth decided to move us to Berwyn, I embarked on a last-ditch mission to involve my dad in my life. It was top-secret. I didn't even tell Kara, mostly because if plan A, “Give Ma some money so she can stay in Oak Park,” failed, plan B would upset Kara worse than me moving to Berwyn. It meant I'd move even farther away. Plan B was “Please, Dad, take me to live with you.”

I met my dad at the food court of North Riverside Mall. Weird and pathetic, I know, but it was my only idea and he didn't have any other suggestions. He was caught off guard when I called him. He sounded gruff, like I'd woken him up. He coughed a phlegmy smoker's cough during his hello, but his voice warmed up when I said, “This is Stacey, your kid.”

He immediately agreed to meet me at the mall, which I chose because I knew how to get there on the bus. I didn't want to chance Beth seeing him if he came to pick me up. It turned out he didn't even have a car. He took a train and two buses to get to the crappy North Riverside Mall and eat at the sticky food-court table, surrounded by screaming kids and teenagers and dead-eyed
moms, just to see me. I guess that's touching if you ignore the fact that he hadn't tried to visit in over four years.

I didn't know how we'd recognize each other, so not only did we plan what we'd be wearing (him: Chicago Bears T-shirt, me: Metallica T-shirt), but I gave him an exact table to meet me at (southwest corner, near the bathrooms, third table in, across from the cookie place).

He was waiting for me. I knew he was older than Ma by like fifteen years, but, man, he
really
looked old. He had huge bags under his eyes and crevices around them, across his forehead, and at the corners of his mouth. He'd probably been one of those guys that always looked old, but in a good, rough-and-tumble, Clint Eastwood way. I bet that's what Ma went for about him. Now it was pretty plain that he just had a lousy life.

He hugged me limply and told me how much I looked like my mother, which everyone always said. Then he offered to buy me lunch. “My little girl can have anything she wants.” He smiled awkwardly and opened his arms, presenting the mall food court like it was a four-star restaurant. I hoped that this would remain true when I pleaded my case later. When he ordered the cheapest thing on the McDonald's menu for himself, I should have lowered my expectations.

While we ate, we made awkward small talk. I told him all about the past couple years, the great times Kara and I had, and what I was looking forward to in high school. I didn't mention the move. I changed the subject and asked him, “How's work?”

He nodded nonchalantly and said, “Fine.”

I took a long, final slurp from my Coke. “What do you do now?”

“Oh.” He crumpled his burger wrapper. “Solo cup factory.”

I didn't know what to say. I thought about joking that his house was probably stocked with plastic cups, but he looked worn out, so I figured that his job was no laughing matter.

My silence brought an end to our lunch. Dad capped it off with a head jerk toward the cookie counter. “You, uh, want something? Uh, dessert?”

I knew it was time. Now or never. Cut to the chase or he'd get back on his two buses and a train and I'd lose my chance.

“Yeah, I want something. But not a cookie.” I took a deep breath. I'd pre
pared an argument, a full case. Before I could launch into it, the waterworks cued up without me even summoning them. I gulped pathetically. “I need you, Daddy. I need you to help me and Ma. We've gotta move out of Oak Park 'cause she can't afford it anymore. And I would have to leave Kara and I really don't want to. So maybe if you could give Ma some child support…”

Dad's pudgy cheeks reddened. He looked like an angry, overripe tomato. “Did Beth put you up to this? Did she send you?”

“No!” I hadn't expected that accusation. The tears that had been welling up overflowed. “If you can't do that, if you can't help her that way…if I have to move…I wanna live with you.”

His skin faded to the color of cigarette ash and his eyes got watery, too. “Stacey,” he murmured. “Stace…” He seemed amazed, and I thought for sure the answer was going to be yes, but then he started shaking his head the wrong way. “I wish, baby, but I don't even have a job,” he choked. “I got fired from the factory over a year ago. I don't even get unemployment anymore. I got cockroaches in my apartment and it ain't even a one-bedroom, it's a studio…” He kept blathering on, but I'd heard all I needed to hear. He offered me a cookie again, but I didn't need that crap.

“I don't want to take your last dollar.” I knew it was mean and I automatically felt bad. I mumbled “I'm sorry” before rushing out of the food court, leaving him with my tray and greasy pizza plate.

He was pathetic. My mother was pathetic. I came from pathetic. Pathetic that couldn't take care of me. I went back and forth between sad and angry about it for over a month. But when I noticed the boys with cars in the parking lot at my new high school, I developed an alternate plan. I would find one of them to take care of me.

I thought it would be like TV, all free dinner and dates to the movies. They would get me away from my mother. And I guess eventually one of them did, right? But only because I'm headed straight into taking care of his kid.

I'm gonna try to do things better than my parents did, though. I'm sure everyone says that, and the odds are against me, but I'm sure as hell gonna try.

H
IGH SCHOOL WAS'T HOW
I
IMAGINED
it at all. I mean, I didn't expect my life to turn into
Beverly Hills, 90210
overnight or anything, but I didn't think I'd be spending most of my afternoons alone with my twelve-year-old brother, Liam, either.

At the time Liam and I hated each other, but it hadn't always been that way. When we lived in the city, we spent hours playing together, Liam providing a constant soundtrack. He sang songs from
Sesame Street,
belted out commercial jingles-“Dial 588–2300, Empiiiiiiiiire!”—like they were opera, and brightened my days with his off-color compositions, like “Don't Flush an Alligator Down the Toilet, It Will Bite Your Butt.”

Then we moved to Oak Park, I met Stacey, and Liam was relegated to tagalong or worse. Stacey and I enslaved him, made him over into a girl, and ditched him places when we didn't feeling like “babysitting.” Liam grew tired of the torture by the time he was in fifth grade and started avoiding us. I'd never tried to patch things up. Why bother? I had Stacey; I didn't need my lame little brother to like me. But then Stacey moved, and despite all the plotting and researching of bus routes, she and I weren't together as often as planned.

In her quest for a social life, Stacey'd discovered boys. Her first boyfriend was Jim. He was really proud of the weight set in
his basement and his facial hair, even though he had scrawny arms with knobby biceps and the fuzz above his lip couldn't justifiably be called a mustache. Stacey bragged about him because he was a junior and had a car.

While Jim scraped bird crap off the windows of his rusty Pontiac Firebird, Stacey twisted herself around in the front seat and said, “I know we promised to hang out every day, but Jim mentioned he'd like some alone time with me. Maybe if I spent one afternoon a week alone with him…”

And I agreed to it, even though my time with Stacey had already been limited to a couple days a week since she was always “too tired.” When we did hang out, we had fun because Beth had started smoking pot with us-she'd caught Stacey and initiated the cool-parent, “you can only do it with me” rule-but every day I was separated from my best friend I felt miserable. I consoled myself with MTV.

I'm sure Liam's resentment of me grew when he came home and found me occupying his former territory in front of the television. High school got out earlier than junior high, and by the time Liam rushed through the door, skateboard and backpack in hand, I'd already claimed the cozy living room as my domain. I'd be stretched out on the La-Z-Boy with the remote firmly in my grip, controlling the big, colorful TV stocked with over forty cable channels. Since no one was home to force us to share, Liam was exiled to the sun porch to sit on a poorly stuffed armchair surrounded by boxes of our old toys and our parents' junk to watch the ancient, black-and-white TV that got only five channels.

By October, the sun porch had grown frigid, the windows that enclosed it rattling with the slightest puff of wind. One day, Liam approached the living room tentatively, a bag of chips in hand, his strawberry blond head bowed. His hair was just growing out of the summer buzz cut he'd gotten at Mom's insistence. Tufts of it stuck up every which way, and when he questioned,
“Tiny Toons?”
he looked as childish as his plea for cartoons sounded.

“Music videos,” I replied firmly.

He sighed and sank back against the couch, rolling his green eyes. That attitude reminded me he was nearly a teenager, nearly on my level, and I decided to bring him there by teaching him about rock ‘n' roll.

“Liam, you're too old for cartoons. This is really good,” I told him, indicating the scene on the TV: a gymnasium overrun by a mosh pit. “This is Nirvana.”

He shrugged. “I don't really care about music.”

“You used to,” I objected, pointing at a photo on the mantel above the fireplace: Liam at four, gripping the guitar I'd helped him make out of a potato chip box and some rubber bands. His hair was slicked back and shiny and he wore a black dress shirt, pants, and even a little black tie because he'd idolized Johnny Cash. An odd choice for a preschooler, but I'd loved him for it. He'd dressed like a mini-Man in Black until third grade, when he'd abruptly come home from school one day begging Mom to take him to the mall for “regular clothes.”

My finger swung back to the music video. “Dave Grohl's a good drummer. You play drums in the school band.”

“Only because Dad made me. This year I quit band.”

“Why'd you quit?” I asked, concerned. When had my brother become such a sour little kid? He'd always been a bit weird and introverted, but he'd seemed happy.

“Being a band geek wasn't exactly making me popular, Kara. I decided to drop it, start fresh in junior high, and see if I could make some friends.”

His words struck a nerve, reminding me of Stacey's comment about trying to get a social life and how I'd lost her in the process. I told Liam what I wished I could tell her: “You shouldn't
change who you are just to get popular, and you definitely shouldn't give up things that you love.”

“I never loved playing the drums,” Liam retorted. “I wanted guitar lessons, but Dad insisted we pick orchestra instruments. Good for college applications or whatever.”

It was true. There was an oboe in my closet, but I'd quit playing in fifth grade. Dad had gotten too busy to come to my concerts, and the only real enjoyment I'd gotten from them was seeing him cheer me on. Shaking off that memory, I suggested, “How about asking Mom for guitar lessons? You could start a band. When you used to dress up like Johnny Cash it was so cute—”

Liam's face flushed crimson and he exploded. “You totally don't get it! I didn't have any friends 'cause everyone thought I was a huge freak because of the Johnny Cash thing. I thought when I got to junior high things would be different, but I still don't have any friends. And I have no idea why you think I should take advice from you. Where's Stacey? She still lives close enough to hang out. Did she
ditch
you?” he taunted. “Sorry if I'm not sympathetic, but after the way you ditched me when we moved here…”

Sniffing back angry tears, I threw the remote at him. “Here, watch your stupid cartoons.”

I stormed upstairs to my room and forced myself to delve into my homework. Six o'clock passed and then six thirty and Stacey didn't call and my biology assignment felt increasingly impossible and I needed to ask her about it and I was hungry and wondered why the hell my family wasn't inviting me down to dinner. Was I being shunned by everyone? Overwhelmed by stress, anger, and self-pity, I grabbed my knife from the drawer of my nightstand; I'd upgraded from the Swiss Army to a sharper X-ACTO blade I'd found in Dad's toolbox.

Since I'd been cutting a few times a week for the past month, I had a whole routine: I rolled up my sleeve, ran my fingers over the raised pink scars, and then picked at my most recent scabs. Sometimes that slight twinge of pain gave me the adrenaline I needed to conquer a lesser problem like biology homework, but when I was really feeling sorry for myself, I wanted to see blood.

I never cut along veins; I wasn't suicidal, just in need of stress relief. When the blood bloomed to the surface of my skin, the warmth of it soothed like a hot bath. After I finished cutting, I felt like I'd cleansed myself in the ultimate way, draining all the anger and sadness directly from my veins.

Liam barged into my room while I was still admiring the blood.

“Knock!” I screeched, jerking down my sleeve.

“I did!”

“It doesn't count if you knock while you're opening the door.”

“Sorry to interrupt your top secret homework,” he scoffed. “Dad's finally home. Mom said come down for dinner.”

He slammed the door after himself and I frantically cleaned my arm. I worried throughout dinner that Liam had noticed. I waited for him to bring it up to our parents, mentally rehearsing my retort-Well, he quit band”-so obsessively that I barely paid attention to what was happening at the table. Not that anything new ever happened.

My dad had remodeled the kitchen two years before and it looked like a set for homey supper scenes on a sitcom: the perfectly arranged table with the glossy red plates, shining silverware, and place mats of thatched yellow fabric that matched the cushions of the chairs, a slightly deeper shade than the butter-colored walls. At dinner, the setting sun shone in through the windows behind the table and blended with the red accents and yellow hues to make the room glow with warmth.

In stark contrast to the setting was our chilly exchange:

Dad kissed Mom on the cheek.

Mom told Dad that he was late.

Dad mumbled something about a grant. Then he asked, under his breath, if this wasn't the same meal we'd had two days ago.

Mom replied under her breath that he of all people should be familiar with how work consumed so much energy.

Dad ignored Mom and asked me and Liam about school.

Liam said school sucked.

Mom told Liam that she didn't like that word.

I shrugged in response to Dad's question and pulled my knees up to my chest, leaning over them to stab at the food on my plate.

Dad studied me with mild irritation and told me not to do that.

I let my feet fall to the floor with a thud and acted angry for the rest of the meal.

Everyone stopped talking until Mom reminded Dad that he needed to help Liam with his algebra. Before Dad could complain about how busy he was and Liam could object that he didn't want help, Mom disappeared to bed to read.

I put my plate in the dishwasher and went to my room to listen to music with my headphones on because I'd been reprimanded by Dad for being too loud too many times. Every time, I'd hoped that when I turned the music down, he'd stay and talk with me, but he always rushed off.

Dad and Liam remained at the dinner table, struggling with algebra until they both got frustrated with each other.

That was our routine.

My forcing Liam to watch MTV instead of cartoons after school became routine, too. He sat there with his arms crossed for the first week, but didn't ask me to change the channel or try to pro
voke me into leaving the room. By the middle of the next week, he was quietly singing along to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” when the video came on.

I turned to him and declared triumphantly, “You like it, don't you!”

“Yeah,” he admitted with a shrug, “I guess.”

But then he flashed me a smile and I grinned back.