Finding Joy

by Laurie Woodward

  “For Mom, and…” I trailed off, not wanting to remember how Ronny had started yelling and how I’d been quiet at first but then got pissed and shouted how he wasn’t my dad and couldn’t tell me what to do. How his eyes had turned bong-hit red and he’d chased me down the hall grabbing my hair and whirled me around for the punch to my cheek. He’d said to never talk to him that way again.

  “How is your relationship with your mother?”

  Epic. Like Carol Brady and the Brady Bunch. “Fine. She’s a mom. Does Mom stuff.”

  “Which is?”

  Boy, for having so many framed certificates of all the shit he’s done, this guy really is stupid.

  “She cooks dinner, tells me to brush my teeth, tells me when to go to bed, tells me to get up, go to school. Stuff like that. You do know what a mother is, right?” I gave him an incredulous look.

  He smiled smugly and wrote something in his little pad. I tried peering over the desk to see what it said, but it was too far away and upside down.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “What are you so angry about, Joy? These are just questions to get to know you.”

  Maybe I don’t want to know you. Maybe I don’t want you looking inside my brain and prodding around like some weird Dr. Frankenstein stitching together body parts and shooting electricity through me, I almost retorted. But then I flashed on Mom. After Ronny’s fist had bounced off my cheek, he’d turned on her and told her what a shitty mother she was. If she didn’t have her head up her ass reading those stupid magazines and had done some mothering, maybe her kid wouldn’t be such a fuck-up. Fists still curled, he’d stood over her, ready.

  I knew more would happen if I told. And Mom hasn’t had to cower for, like, two years. Until I got in trouble, Ronny had actually been pretty fun. I blinked, realizing for the first time what she had to deal with every day.

  “I am not angry,” I replied, putting on the mask Mom used when people asked what happened to her face.

  Dr. Bond, not James, tried to get a rise out of me for the next forty minutes of our session. But I kept the mask up. Pretending to be the girl Mom wished I was.

  Thirty-Three

  Joy

  Now that I’m a senior, you’d think my family would acknowledge something good about me, but I’ve slowly been turning invisible. Not like in comic books or old black and white movies on Sunday afternoon, but the kind where people seem to look through me. When I walk into the living room, Mom doesn’t acknowledge my presence but keeps her eyes fixed on that one spot in the wall. The hole we don’t talk about.

  The one that’s all my fault.

  Oh, I know. I fucked up. Shouldn’t have messed up Kourtney’s purse. But imagine what would have happened if she told everyone I was in her gang? Then I’d be beyond outcast, part of a freakizoid group.

  Hell, I was barely clinging to Lisa’s friendship. She’d already been asked to three parties this year. Once right in front of me. I stared into the chick’s back and pulled on a stray thread unraveling from my t-shirt while waiting to hear the words, “Joy, you can go too.”

  But no. She just walked away.

  One late Tuesday, I got back from Lisa’s to find Kyle on his belly watching Super Friends on TV. Even though I walked right in front of him, half-blocking his view, he kept his jaw in his hands. He didn’t even whine to Mom.

  She was slumped in the club chair, staring off into space.

  I glanced from one to other, before trudging down the hall to drop off my books and binder. When I came in again, both were still transfixed on other places. I opened my mouth to say, “Hello? I’m here. Do you see me?” when I noticed the shattered glass on the kitchen floor. I tiptoed toward it, wondering why Mom hadn’t cleaned it up yet.

  When anyone dropped something, she usually swept up the broken shards so quickly you’d think a flash of lightning had just passed over the floor. When I say ‘anyone’, I mean me. As Ronny always pointed out, I’m the clumsy one in the family. As if I didn’t know.

  The glass was spread all over the floor. The quatrefoil pattern (Mom taught me that phrase for four-leafed when she picked out the avocado-green linoleum) now looked like it was covered with jewels. For a moment, I was transfixed by the beauty of rough-cut diamonds shining on four-leaf clovers.

  Then I noticed a ruby amongst all those clear diamonds. I reached down to touch it and realized it wasn’t a piece of red glass but a droplet of blood. Recoiling, I pulled my hand back to see three more stains on the beautiful tableau, a trail of red flowers leading to the sink.

  Don’t look. I curled my hands into fists and stepped closer. There, in the sink Mom scrubs daily until it sparkles like yellow daisies, was a towel blooming blood.

  I wasn’t high, but my brain felt foggy when I turned back to Mom. She wasn’t just slumped but hunched over, clutching her gauze-wrapped forearm.

  “Mom, you okay?”

  She didn’t answer, but kept staring at the hole in the wall. I knelt at her feet and touched her arm just above the bandage. She didn’t so much as flinch. Gently placing a hand over hers, I uncurled the clenched fingers from around her arm. A rose stain the size of my fist lay in the center of the cloth.

  My heart fluttered. Red was a new color. Black and blue I was used to. Black and blue you could hide with make-up. Black and blue stays beneath. But this…

  “Mom?” I waited long seconds, but her eyes remain fixed and staring. After rewrapping her fingers around the bleeding arm, I strode into the living room.

  I bent down next to Kyle. “What happened?”

  Even at fourteen, he knew enough to put a finger to his lips before pointing toward his room. My head a jumble, I trailed after him, dreading what I’d hear. Once we were safely behind a closed door, he whispered that Ronny’s drink tasted bad, so he threw it on the floor.

  “Mom didn’t make it right,” he explained.

  I give him an exasperated look but didn’t argue. He was always making excuses for his father. “Then what?”

  “He told her to clean it up. Well, started to make her…” His voice trailed off.

  “With his fists?”

  “He didn’t mean it. He was just trying to get her to do it right.” Kyle jutted out his lower lip and hugged himself.

  There was no point explaining. Kyle would make this what he needed to.

  With a sigh, I trudged back past my silent Mom toward the kitchen, where I got out the broom and dustbin. Then, using my thumb and forefinger, I picked up four large pieces. Clunk. They thudded against the plastic trash bottom. Now you couldn’t even tell what had shattered on the floor. As I grasped the broom handle and dragged it across the floor, I understood why Mom always cleaned so quickly. Every pass of the brush erased some part of the story.

  Sweep, sweep. The glass no longer sprawled in rubescent disarray but sparkled in piles. Brush. Swish. More of the quatrefoil pattern returned to its soft green.

  The tinkling pieces cascaded into the trash like pebbles in a dying stream, yet the bristles kept seeking more fragments. I swept each corner, once, twice, three times, until every sliver was lying on the bottom of the plastic liner.

  Soon, the only reminder was the blood. Fucking smears on the linoleum garden. I ripped off a few paper towels and threw them on the floor. Then I stepped on the pile with both feet, hoping that would soak up the stain. Still there. Shit.

  With more urgency I grabbed another wad and moistened it. Get rid of it, now. I began rubbing like hell to mop it up, but multiple strokes did little more than turn spots into blotches. I tossed a few bloody towels into the trash.

  Began again.

  Why the fucking stains wouldn’t disappear was beyond me. No matter how hard I scrubbed and scoured, the smears remained. Without any help. Cartoons blared. Kyle kept his back to the kitchen. Mom’s gaze remained on the hole

  Then I realized the stains were gone. Had been for several minutes. I hurled the last of the sopping pink towels into the plastic bag and tied it in a tigh
t knot. This, I carried to the outside bins. Slammed the lid shut.

  When I returned to the living room, everyone was gone.

  Leaving me to float in silence like the invisible girl I was becoming.

  Thirty-Four

  Joy

  Well, I thought Mrs. Plante was full-on cool. A teacher that got it. Who let you slide if an assignment was late or you didn’t follow directions.

  Think again, Joy.

  Instead, she is a you-can-do-so-much-better teacher. The ‘I see the potential in you’ cheerleader with so much enthusiasm you’d think she took a handful of uppers before school.

  I mean, handing back my article on marijuana use among teens three times? What was she thinking? I was just a high school kid, not friggin’ Edward R. Murrow.

  “I have seen the wonder that you can create. Your work has approached the sublime before, and I know that it can again. Rewrite the article until it shines like, like…” She glanced around, then pointed to the abalone necklace around my neck.

  She would have to go there. The one place I was vulnerable. I was going to blow her off until she mentioned Carl’s pendant.

  With a sigh, I said, “Okay, Mrs. Plante. I’ll try.”

  So now I’m sitting in my room, trying to figure out how the fuck to turn a report about weed into a real article. But what I’d really like to be doing is figure out how to get tickets to IT.

  IT was going to be the most rockin’, bitchin’, radical event of the decade. And if I went, I just know that I would finally be delivered from geekdom to cool land. Then maybe Paul Janssen would finally notice me. Ask me out. Want to get down with me. And be so enraptured by my expert lovemaking, he would ask me to Prom.

  When did I become such an expert on sex, you might ask? Okay, I’m not. Still a virgin, if you must know. But I French-kissed a guy at a party last year and I’ve been reading lots of Penthouse and Playboy articles from when I snuck some out of Ronny’s porno stash. They taught me plenty, probably all I’ll ever need to know about doing it.

  With foxy Paul, if he ever says hi.

  There’s a new chick in our Journalism class, Janice-from-New-York-Rappaport. Short reddish hair, hazel eyes with those lashes that flip up without an eyelash curler, and a full-on rack all the guys stare at.

  “Hey, my eyes are up heah,” she says, when some buzzed Stoner forgets she has a face.

  “Sorry,” he retorts, before shuffling away.

  She cracks me up.

  We’ve been hanging out at lunch and sometimes after school. She doesn’t live in Country Club but in the Development, where a bunch of cookie-cutter houses were built about two years ago. The Rappaports even have a pool and she invites me over to work on our tans, although it’s late November and getting cold. But true California girls will suffer through 58-degree weather for bronzed legs.

  Or so Janice says.

  Janice is Mrs. Plante’s pet. Everything she writes is freaking Hemingway to our teacher. Mrs. Plante even reads her essays aloud to the class to show us what we should strive for.

  But will Janice help me with my article? Fuck no. She is too busy with her boyfriend, Russ.

  Russ, Mr. Surfer Hottie. Russ with eyes so blue, the sky hides when he looks up. Russ with a tanned torso all the girls drool over. Russ of the Plymouth Valiant fame—a station wagon topped with a surf rack and a stereo system that blasts so loud, everyone invites him to their keggers in the boonies. The one he parks next to the pony keg, with open doors and tailgate, cranking the tunes.

  Rocking!

  Russ with the tiny penis Janice makes fun of behind his back. Well and to his face, when I’m in the back seat of her Toyota and they are up front, fighting. Then his foxy smile goes all crumply.

  I feel sorry for him.

  If I was a slut instead of, like, the oldest virgin in my school, I’d get down with him and tell him what an amazing lover he was. How he could work his just-the-right-size junk like no one’s business.

  Instead, I wave from the back seat and say, “Hello? Other person here.”

  More times than not, Janice laughs it off. But one night she argued, “Show Joy your baby dick, Russ. So she’ll know.”

  “Janice! That’s mean,” I said, proud to finally get the guts up to say something.

  She only shrugged and told Russ to take her to 7-11 for a diet Coke.

  Yeah, Janice can be mean but she’s also popular. The girls like her New York accent and the guys… well, I already talked about that. Ever since I’ve been hanging out with her, almost no one has called me freak.

  Maybe they’ve moved onto some other non-suspecting soul too shy to say anything back. And finally forgotten what a mutant I am.

  A whole glorious month with no taunts. Aside from that bitch Angie in Algebra. But she has, like, Tourette’s or something.

  Now I have to make this marijuana article better so Mrs. Plante will finally say it’s satisfactory and approve it for the school paper.

  Get to work, Joy.

  Thirty-Five

  Joy

  Well, sweet sixteen will soon be coming to an end. I don’t why they call it that, because it wasn’t exactly an angel food cake with sprinkles on top. Sure, there were a few tasty moments, but I’m not too bummed to put it in the rearview mirror. Maybe it’s because most sixteen-year-olds get to drive. Unlike me, who has a stepfather who thinks the female brain can’t figure out the difference between stop and go.

  I only pressed the gas instead of the brake once! And I didn’t hit anything; just bumped over the curb. If Ronny hadn’t been yelling about how terrible I was, I probably would have braked just fine. But all that yelling made me nervous and I slammed my foot down on the wrong pedal. After that, he said I’d have to prove I wouldn’t wreck the car before getting my license. Whenever the hell that is. Which sucks, because that means I’ll still have to bum rides or hitch to go anywhere.

  One cool thing is that, since Lisa, Janice and I all have birthdays pretty close to each other, we’re planning to honor our mutual passage with a kegger! And not just some flat pony keg left over from last week’s party. No siree. We are getting a half-barrel and inviting, like, fifty people. Radical.

  It’s going to be out by the Oil Piers just north of Ventura. We might even make a bonfire on the beach. If we can keep it on the down low until then.

  We’ve been selling pre-party tickets to the bash. Buy a ticket, get a beer. That’s what we’re telling everyone, anyhow. Truth be told, we need the money. All three of us are pretty broke and I’m saving my money for my ticket to IT.

  Now, there’s an idea for a birthday present. Maybe Mom and Ronny could get me a ticket to the World Music Festival! Then I wouldn’t have to save all of my babysitting money and could buy some really good dope, not the rag weed I’ve had to smoke lately.

  Maybe even get a cool outfit for the show. Joy Chapel would enter the Los Angeles Coliseum looking like a rock star, or groupie, or maybe even a Woodstock hippie.

  Yeah!

  I suggested it to Janice, but she said, “Bettuh not ask. If they say no, it’s too fah, then you can’t make up a lie to sneak out. Bettuh keep it quiet fah now.”

  Mrs. Plante finally approved my article about marijuana use. It isn’t exactly what I’d hoped. I mean it’s full of statistics and numbers of related deaths and boring shit like that. Not really an homage to the almighty leaf.

  Still, it was printed in last week’s edition of the Wildcat Times and a few kids even gave me high fives for it. Cool.

  My glory was short-lived, though. Now, everyone is talking about that girl in the news who was found wandering in the desert missing a hand. She almost died. All of our teachers are giving us lectures about hitchhiking, which is stupid because everyone knows that if you’re nice enough to someone, they won’t attack you. I mean it even works with Ronny. When Mom does what he says and is really quiet and nice, he doesn’t go off on her.

  Usually.

  Until I got suspended. Why was I su
ch an idiot about that freakizoid’s purse? If I hadn’t been such a fuck-up, Ronny wouldn’t have come after me. That time, I really deserved it.

  That’s what I told Mrs. Plante when she asked about my black eye. That I had done something wrong and deserved to be punished. She looked at me kind of funny, as if I was kidding. But she must have heard about my suspension because she quickly changed the subject.

  “I want you to write an article about rape prevention. With what happened to that poor girl, we need to educate our student body.”

  “But Mrs. Plante, that would never happen to a kid at our school,” I argued.

  “I wish that were true, Joy. But the reality is that one in four women will be assaulted at some time in their lives. Maybe your article could help reduce those numbers.”

  “Oh, come on Mrs. Plante. I can’t write an article about that!”

  My teacher would not let me argue my way out of it. She pointed at my throat and pulled the ‘you-shine-like-your-pendant’ on me again. And when it comes to anything about Carl’s necklace, I’m hopeless.

  I went to the public library after school, since the one at Hillview High doesn’t have jack shit about any kind of sex, consensual or not. I know, I’ve looked.

  My cheeks were kind of red when I went to the card catalogue to look up ‘rape’. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one could see what I was searching for, before opening the drawer. There were several books on the subject, but Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, by Brownmiller, sounded interesting, so I wrote down the number on the small slip of paper and went over to the 300’s for the book.

  When I saw that there were at least ten books on rape, my brows shot up. I hadn’t imagined there’d be so many. I started to reach for one, but then a lady walked by, so I dropped down and plunged my hand into the bottom shelf, pulling out the first one I touched. With a scrunched-up my face, I pretended to read the back cover of something called The Prince. It was by some dead dude named Machiavelli and looked boring as shit, but it’d be a good one to go on the top of my pile.