The Anomalies (5 page)

“Reverend, let us be frank. Your daughter is beautiful, and naturally there are many men out there who would like to make her their own personal whoopee cushion. When I met Aurora, she was tired and sick of being seen as a sexual object.”

“Okay, Luster, that’s enough,” says Rory.

“No,” I say. “I need to hear this. Go on, Luster.” I notice the adorable little girl is no longer in our presence. She must have grown tired of this grown-up intercourse. My new African-American
friend continues.

“Aurora tried dealing with her sexuality in her own hysterical way, but then I suggested the wheelchair idea. I thought if Aurora made herself dead from the waist down, that would take sex out of the equation in regards to her dealings with people, because, after all, in traditional copulation—”

“Luster! He gets the idea!” interrupts Rory at the climax of the young man’s explanation. It actually wasn’t that ridiculous an idea.

“Why didn’t you tell me that’s the reason why you were riding around in a wheelchair, Rory?”

“I didn’t think you’d understand. Besides, every time we talked, you just started yelling at me for being a Satanist.”

“Right. My daughter the Satanist.” I look downward and shake my head in disgust.

“I had nothing to do with that, Reverend,” asserts the boy.

“Look—it was a creative way to rebel, okay?” says my daughter.

I must admit, perhaps this “creative rebellion” of Rory’s makes a favorable alternative to the rebellion of her older sister. Stacy saw to it that she became impregnated. Then she dropped out of high school and moved in with an older man (who was probably not the father). Chad soon left her, and I then bought her a home in California where she failed as an actress, got her G.E.D., went to college, and became an atheist. However, she assures me that, though she’s not religious, she’s very spiritual.

“So I take it the wheelchair idea didn’t work as well as expected.”

“Not really,” replies the boy. “We failed to consider blow jobs. That is why she also should have pretended to have lockjaw.”

“Luster! Shut up!” demands Rory.

“Now be nice, Rory. Luster is our guest…So why aren’t you in your wheelchair now?”

“I realized tonight that people are gonna judge me no matter what. My boyfriend showed me that I’m just, like, breasts and thighs to him, just like I am to everyone.”

“Rory, don’t say that!” I bawl. “You are so much more than breasts and thighs. You have a gorgeous soul, especially now since you retrieved it from the Prince of Darkness. However, do you think that maybe if you would wear some baggier clothes, perhaps some culottes, these guys wouldn’t treat you like they do?”

“I like my clothes! Why should I have to rearrange my wardrobe for others?”

“You rode in a wheelchair because of others, didn’t you? Rory, you’re not being consistent.”

“You are right, Reverend,” says the articulate young man. “She is not being consistent, but her inconsistency is something you should love about her.”

“What do you mean, good buddy?”

“Would you prefer she be consistent to the behavior expected of a girl who wears a dress like that?”

My daughter self-consciously tugs at her miniskirt, trying to cover up more of her thighs.

“Why, no,” I answer.

“And would you prefer she be consistent to the stereotype of a stripper being a dumbslut?”

“No.”

“And would you prefer your daughter to be consistent to the pattern that so many preachers’ daughters before her have set, of rebelling against their dads by tossing their snatches
around like pocket lint?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.”

I could do without such language, but he is my guest.

“Then let us praise the Lord that this girl has had the good sense to worship Satan and ride around in a wheelchair she did not need. Can I get an amen?”

I don’t know if it’s his voice or the words he’s saying, but this irreverent young man could make anyone a believer. His positions and thoughts are unorthodox but sound. His word is strong. His convictions seem impenetrable. Despite his forceful manner, he has lubricated the difficulty between my daughter and me, and I find myself agreeing with him.

“Amen.”

But right after I testify, I am jerked back into the necessary reality of my earthly mansion, as from the other room emanates the arousing sound of something valuable being broken.

“Ember?” yells the fruit of my loins.

We all run to where the noise came from, to my father’s den where he keeps all of his expensive religious art. We rush in and find Ember looking up at us bearing the mean but cute scowl that she usually displays. The floor around her is littered with white, brown, and flesh-colored pieces of clay.

“My Jesus statue!” screams my father. I want to laugh, but I realize that, sadly, this moment must be tragic for him. He loves his statues. Luster is already on the floor, trying to piece together the fallen icon.

“Ember, what happened?” I ask.

“I pushed it over as hard as I could, and it broke.” No excuses. She just likes to destroy.

“But why would you do that?” I ask.

“I thought you’d like it,” says Ember as she holds up her hand with her pinky and index finger, making a horn symbol.

“No, Ember. No more of that stuff. No more Satan. Forget all that. You should have never paid any attention to any of that. I was just talking.”

God, we have to keep a closer eye on her.

Luster is having no luck putting the pieces of Jesus back together. Meanwhile, Father looks like he’s gonna blow, and he finally does.

“Goddammit! That’s the most expensive fucking Jesus statue I have!”

Ember laughs, but I don’t want to anymore. Father goes down on his knees and holds big chunks of the statue to his chest as if he was embracing a dying soldier. Luster crouches on the floor with him.

“We will clean it up, good Reverend. No problems here,” says Luster.

“No!” growls my father. “Leave! All of you, leave at once!”

“So may our band please practice here? I had been meaning to ask you that,” says Luster.

“Never! Get out!”

Ember grins and giggles some more, and she looks somehow different. That’s when I realize that this is the first time in the year I’ve known her that I’ve seen her smile. She has always looked so cute, I guess I never really noticed the actual feelings on her little face. She’s always angry or pouting or brooding over something and sometimes even seems depressed.

As we’re walking out the door, I want to pick Ember up
and shake her and yell into her tiny ears, “Don’t be like that! You’re eight years old! You shouldn’t have a care in the world! You should be happy!”

But then I realize that I can’t preach, because someone could just as easily say the same things to me since I’m a teenager, that these are the best years of my life and all that crap. Still though, a depressed child has to be the saddest thing on earth.

I’d give anything to be a kid again, before zits, breasts, drugs, jobs, boyfriends, death, and those nagging thoughts that make you constantly question everything around you and inside you. I didn’t know how good I had it as a kid, when my thoughts were to the point and pure and true, when I immediately accepted anyone I met and they accepted me, when the concept of what other people thought hadn’t yet entered my mind.

So here’s my epiphany for the day, one that should be taught in grade schools all across the world: When you’re a kid, you’re as close to perfect as you’re ever gonna be.

I got my hands in my shoes. I walk like a dog all over the classroom.

“Na-hoola-hoola-hoola. Na-hoola-hoola-hoo,” I say, some sounds I like to make.

“Ember! Get over here, now!” says my mom. Her name is Kristen. She is a bitch. She is very pretty and almost thirty. I hate her.

“Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell, I appreciate your coming in today,” says Ms. Watson. She’s my lesbian teacher. I hate her too.

“That’s fine,” says Mom. “But we have to be out of here by 3:30. I have to take our dog to agility class.”

“I won’t take up much of your time. I just wanted to talk to you about Ember’s conduct. I don’t suppose Ember has been bringing home her conduct notices for you to sign. She never brings them back to me.”

“No. Have you seen any conduct notices, Don?”

“Uh uh,” says my idiot dad. He’s also almost thirty and sucks.

“You haven’t seen them because I burned them all up!” I yell. I know it’s wrong, but I love fire. When I’m around matches or lighters, I just can’t help myself.

Fire is so pretty. I like to think about the whole world on fire. I see the earth from outer space. Instead of water, the oceans are made of fire. I have dreams about that sometimes.

“Well, I figured you should know that her behavior is getting out of control,” says my teacher. “And if it continues, we’ll have no choice but to consider expulsion.”

“Oh, geez, is she that bad?” asks Mom.

“Uh, yes, she is. We expect instances of bad behavior in any third-grade class, but it’s the intensity and the ferocity of Ember’s bad behavior that, frankly, sometimes scares the other students and me.”

“What has she done that’s so bad?” asks Dad. He’s dickless.

“Let’s see. I have a list here. She’s thrown scissors at other students, sprayed Windex in other students’ eyes, carved ‘Slayer’ into most of the desks, accused students of being homosexual, accused me of being homosexual, she regularly sniffs gluesticks, she’s been caught chewing tobacco three times, she writes cryptic messages on the chalkboards such as ‘nightmare day,’ she’s tried to incite riots in the cafeteria, she does this thing where she writes down what I say before I say it—the list goes on and on.”

“Well, what do you want us to do about it?” says my mom all bitchy. “We know how bad she is. There’s nothing we can do with her. We’ve tried everything. Ritalin doesn’t work. Nothing works. She’s just wild.”

“Is she having any problems at home?” asks the dyke.

“Are you?” Dad asks me. I shake my head. Not me.

“She often talks about being friends with a stripper, an Iraqi, and a crazy black man. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” says Mom. “She lies all the time. The only person I know of that she hangs out with is her eighty-year-old babysitter.”

“We think she might have imaginary friends,” says Dad.

Clueless bastards.

Was I ever as wild as my kid? I swear, if I had come as close to
being an abortion as she did, I’d be trying to behave a little better. She’s lucky I had already had one too many or she wouldn’t even be here.

“Have you considered any psychological treatment?” asks the teacher.

“Look, Mrs…”

“Ms. Watson.”

“Yeah, Ms. Watson,” says Don. “Ember’s never been a normal kid. She doesn’t act like other kids act. Like when I was a kid, I got a kick out of simple stuff, like pushing the buttons in an elevator, you know whum sayin? But Ember could not care less about stuff like that.”

That’s right, Don. You better not tell anyone that our daughter has been to a therapist. We took Ember to a therapist for the first time when she was six because we noticed she kept rooting for the coyote and yelling “Die!” at the roadrunner. The therapist couldn’t do anything with her.

She’s just too much. Screw Don for getting me pregnant. I’d probably go ahead and go for a divorce if I weren’t able to have fun on the side like I have been lately. And thank God for Opal always being able to keep Ember. Don and I like to have some us-time now that our daughter is getting to an age where she doesn’t really need her parents. Besides, she seems to like Opal better than us anyway.

“Ouch! Dammit, Ember!”

Ember just threw a pair of scissors at Don’s head.

“Ember! Get over here, now!” I order.

Now she throws crayons at me and Don.

“Go get her,” I say to my husband. He obeys, and I resume this little conference with the teacher.

“She’s such a cute little girl, Mrs…”

“It’s Ms. Watson.”

“Right. She’s just so adorable on the outside, and it’s hard to believe she’s such a monster on the inside.”

I hear three good spanks behind me, which usually shuts her up for a few minutes.

“That ain’t cool,” says my daughter after the last spank.

“Uhh—she’s also extremely intelligent,” says the teacher.

That’s news. She never seemed all that smart to me.

“But I’ll warn you. Should her behavior not improve, not only could she face expulsion, but also the school might contact social services, as Ember would perhaps best belong at the East Home.”

“The East Home for Girls?”

“Yes.”

“You hear that, Don? They might send our girl off to the East Home.”

“Oh, great,” says Don as he sets Ember in a desk.

They cannot send any daughter of mine to that skanky place. I used to hang out with some of the trash that lived there. God, I could use a big fat blunt right about now.

“What’s the East Home?” asks my daughter.

“Don’t worry, Ember. We’re going to straighten things out,” says the lesbian.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” I say. “It’s a home where they send all the bad little girls, and most of them are really mean orphans.”

“Ember, I know that you’re really a good girl, and I don’t want you to have to leave this school or your home,” says the teacher.

“She’s not going to any home for delinquents,” I say. “We’re gonna change, Ember. We’re gonna make you a good
girl, aren’t we?”

She gives me the dirtiest look and says, “You’re not the boss of me, and someday I’m gonna grow up and fart all over you.”

Mom said that after all the problems I was causing, she needed a vacation from her worries. The day after the conference with Ms. Watson, she and Dad left. They are in Cancun. They will be there for about a month. They left me at home with my babysitter. They took the dog with them.

I don’t mind since my babysitter is Opal. Now Opal will be living in my house for the next month. Mom told her that she couldn’t deal with things and needed to get away. She told her to make sure I go to school and stuff.

I live in a big, nice house in the suburbs. Now there are no adults in it. (Opal doesn’t count.) We are finally free to do what we want. Opal and I started talking about our new freedom. Then she called the rest of the band.

Opal and Aurora move the couch against the wall. Ray jumps. Luster looks all around my big living room.

“Righteous,” he says. “This is all ours for a month. The possibilities.”

I help Luster and Ray bring the music stuff into the house. Luster is so happy. He loves music so much. I love playing it, too. Now we can play it every day.

We get the stuff out of the station wagon. The neighborhood walkers and joggers look at us funny. I hate them.

Ray waves at them. He doesn’t ever act tough. He is gentle and not like men.

People sometimes don’t like to see all of us together. They would hate to see us as a band. They’d hate to hear us come together. That’s why I love playing music with them so much.

Ray keeps waving. They look the other way. Why should I be a good little girl when the neighbors won’t even wave?