by Lauren Jayne
That was the last time I ever addressed him as Dad. From then on I referred to him as Joel, and Mom never asked why.
*
Knowing Mom and Joel were in back-to-back meetings all day meant I finally had the time to do what I loved most – organize my room. Turning the dial up on my clock radio, I opened my closet door and took out every piece of clothing from all of my drawers and put them into piles on the floor; one for giving away, one for keeping, one for hanging. My clothes were mounded on the sheets that I’d just taken out of the dryer so they wouldn’t touch the carpet. My bed, covered in a fresh sheet, was mounded with hanging clothes that I could organize by season and color. At that moment, I heard my door rip open.
“What are you doing in here?” Dad was screaming over the music.
He ripped my alarm clock from the wall.
“I said what are you doing? Look at this place; it’s a pigsty. Your mother and I work night and day and look at you, you lazy pig!”
“Stop! Stop!” I screamed as he grabbed my clothes, throwing them at me by the handful, walking over them to get to me as I ran to the corner. Seeing him touching and standing on all of my clothes with his dirty black socks made me sick. How could I ever wear them again? How could I get everything I owned clean enough to put on my body again? He cornered me and smacked my face so hard I fell into a pile of clothes on the floor.
“Clean this up NOW, you little pig!”
I lay on my pile of clothes, screaming when he slammed my door so hard the mirror above my desk fell off the wall. All of my piles were destroyed; folded clothes with hanging clothes, and all covered in him. Not wanting to even touch them, I sobbed into a pile he hadn’t touched.
Just then, I heard the door to the garage close under my room. Hearing Mom’s voice, I hoped she’d come up and see for herself the monster that Dad was and what he’d done to my room. I fantasized that she’d see my red face and ask, “what in the hell is going on?” and kick him out.
Instead, I heard Mom scream “Go and shut her up!” in her loudest, most angry voice. In a split second, Dad’s La-Z-Boy slammed shut and I heard him bounding up the stairs, thundering.
“I’ll kill her!” he screamed with gritted teeth.
I sat on my knees and clasped both hands over my mouth as tightly as I could to keep one unintentional cry or noise from leaving my body, and just as he was coming up the second stairway to my room, he turned around.
“I have twenty minutes between meetings. I can’t take her screaming. How could she do this to me? I guess I just don’t do enough for her. It’s never enough for her,” Mom said, as she started to sob.
Sitting on the floor with my hands over my mouth until I heard the garage door close, I got up and walked into their room. Watching to see that they had left together, I fell to my knees and sobbed. I wanted to run as far as I could run but knew I was trapped. I knew the only thing I could ever let myself count on again was God and myself. Falling on the floor in my room, I dropped to my knees, laced my fingers and started to pray.
“Dear God, I promise I will never, ever forget what this feels like. I promise I will never forget what it feels like to be trapped without any options; too young to work, to drive, to live alone. I will never forget, and I swear I will help kids like me as soon as I’m old enough, and I’ll never ever stop. I promise, God, I’ll never, ever forget this moment.”
As I loaded my clothes into huge black garbage bags and dragged them down to the laundry room, it hit me like a ton of bricks. No one was coming to rescue me, and I could finally give up my stupid fantasy of mom or anyone swooping in to save me.
Chapter 13
Faithfully
After checking the garage to make sure Dad wasn’t home, I started to get dressed for our ninth-grade dinner dance; it was our last event in Junior High. Pulling the Mariposa special dress from my closet, where it had hung since I had taken the bus to Bellevue Square Mall with Jenny and Misty to buy it, I was having second thoughts. In the dressing room, the girls had told me it looked amazing and that I had to have it, but now it looked stupid.
Going through my shower ritual, minus the undressing part since Dad wasn’t home, I washed my hair and then dried it. Always wearing it in a ponytail or a bun, I’d never really dried my hair. I brushed and dried it like I had watched Misty do a million times before. Misty was so beautiful that she was not only on Star Search as a model, she was the first runner-up. With bouncy, long, chestnut hair, bright blue eyes and a full face, she stood a lanky five-foot-ten. Fun followed Misty like a new duckling follows her mama. After almost half-an-hour of drying, my hair was done. I pulled on my white dress; the bodice went straight across my chest, was tight around my waist, then poofed out and fell to my knees. Pulling my dress up higher wasn’t helping to cover my fully-blossomed chest; it was no use. Looking in my mirror, I was horrified. What am I doing? I cannot walk into the dance like this. But Cassie’s mom, Jeri, was coming to pick me up soon, so I slipped on my shoes, swiped on a little shimmery pink lip gloss and headed out the door.
Pulling the double doors back that led into our gym, I saw that it had been transformed since I’d left school three hours ago. The smell of school lunch had been replaced by glue, bubble gum and a mixture of every different variety of Impulse body spray available on the free market. Lights were dimmed, disco balls hung from the high ceiling, and three chaperones relived their youth as they painfully danced on the empty dance floor.
An hour or so into the dance, standing alone at one of the high tables that surrounded the sparkly dance floor as Faithfully played through the scratchy speakers, I noticed a girl from across the room heading straight for me. Smoothing my dress to make sure she wasn’t coming to tell me it was stuck in my undies, and feeling my face to make sure she wasn’t coming to tell me I had gum from a bubble I’d popped covering my cheek, I was startled when she stopped right in front of me. Two inches from me she stood at least 5’ 7”; I had to look up from my 5’ 4” to see her. With her shoulders pulled so far back, it looked like the taut brown skin covering her bony chest plate would split; her long neck held up her exotic face.
With light green, sparkly eyes, a perfectly thin nose and full, round, shimmering white lips, she spoke, “I like your dress,” in a half-laughing, breathy, voice.
Now she was laughing like a little kid, letting her head fall back, sending her almost black curly hair down her back. A little confused, I looked at her dress and then we both started to laugh. We were wearing the exact same Mariposa special, white, princess-looking dress; except her pumps were white and mine were royal blue. As we stood talking at my table in the corner, she completed my sentences and I completed hers. At the exact same time I reached for my Wet and Wild baby pink lip gloss that I’d set on the table next to a pack of strawberry Hubba Bubba that kept me from eating the snacks at the dance, she reached for her L’Oreal Grecian lilac and popped in a piece of Fruit Stripes from her little silver bag. We thought it was hysterical that we were both addicted to lip gloss and gum. My lips were big and so were hers, and we both hated when they were dry. If I was in the kitchen cooking and had dry lips I’d wipe oil on them; Carmen did the same, but with Vaseline.
Looking at the big clock that hung on the brick wall, I noticed three hours had gone by in what felt like three minutes. I told Carmen I had to go. She grabbed my hand and we ran out of the gym, pushing through a wall of streamers that the party committee had hung in our school colors of red, white and blue.
Waiting at our meeting spot in front of the school for Cassie’s mom to pick me up, I watched as Carmen ran down the steps to the parking lot with her shoes in one hand and her tiny silver bag in the other, hopping into a car. Wondering why she jumped in the driver seat, I watched as the lights went on and Carmen started the silver Toyota and drove off.
The next morning the phone rang, and Noah yelled up that it was for me.
“Hi, it’s Carmen. Want to do something later? I’m going to a party tonight�
�do you want to go with me?”
“Sure,” I said.
“When should I pick you up?”
“How about now?” I suggested.
Carmen was laughing so hard, for a second I thought she was gone. Then I heard her take a breath and start laughing again.
“I’ll be there in a half hour, OK?”
I got dressed as quickly as I could, sure not to miss any of my steps, and making sure to flip the mirror off before I quickly stepped in the shower. Throwing on a pair of 501’s and a baggy sweater, I ran downstairs when I heard Carmen honk. I gave her specific directions not to come to our front door; there was no way I was going to let my dad get even one eye on Carmen.
Running down our front steps, I saw her standing in her open sunroof, bare feet on her duct taped seat and a smile as wide as her face. The morning breeze was blowing her wild, curly, high ponytail, messy bangs covering one eye and longer pieces sticking to her shiny lips. She was jumping up and down, and when she saw me, she started to clap. I climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door as Carmen sang, “People are strange when you’re a stranger; faces look ugly when you’re alone.” I didn’t know who the artist was, but I knew I was in love with his voice and with the sound of the music and with the words that matched how I felt in the world, and within a few minutes, I started to sing along with Carmen. Windows down, sunroof open, warmth had already broken the morning dew. A crisp smell filled the air, the leaves on the trees were thick and bendy, and everything around me felt fresh and new.
Carmen and I did it again – we each grabbed for our lipstick; mine from my pocket and hers from the inside console that had about three kinds of moisture thrown into it: a plastic tub of Vaseline, a little glass jar of Carmex with a yellow lid, and her L’Oreal Grecian lilac lipstick. We swiped them on at the same time, looked at each other and started to laugh, then grabbed a piece of gum, popped it in our mouths in perfectly unplanned unison and started to sing along with Jim. As we headed around Lake Sammamish, I was so in awe of the beauty that surrounded me with the lake, the trees, and the mountains that I didn’t really care where we were going. If Carmen had kept driving until the sun set, I would have been happy. She flipped her blinker on and took a right, up off the lake road, and then a sharp left. Slowly pulling over the rocky parking lot, she put the car in park and headed out. I followed behind her.
From the top of the grass-covered hill, Carmen grabbed my hand and we started running. About halfway down she let my hand go and started ripping off her flowy hippy skirt and tank top, skipping down the hill in her undershirt and undies. With the soft fresh grass tickling my bare feet, I did the same, and with the wind blowing my hair back and my eyes closed, I took in a deep breath and ran a little faster to catch up with Carmen. Bounding down the long, warm, wooden planks, we had the beach all to ourselves. The dock bounced up and down as we ran without stopping into the dark green water, hand-in-hand. We both popped up screaming and laughing; the water was freezing for a second but then it just felt refreshing. With our hair slicked back off of our faces, we treaded water and talked. Breaking into a backstroke and barely moving, we lay silently in the protective water, staring up at the bright blue sky. Carmen started swimming towards the steps on the dock; following right behind her, I crawled out of the water.
Realizing that for the first time in my life I was standing in front of someone in my underwear and bra, I panicked a little as I looked at Carmen’s long, lean, willowy, childlike body. Carmen walked up to me and pushed on my wet bra with her finger.
“You are the luckiest girl I know, Lor. Look at your body. If I were you, I’d go to school naked.”
Then she did a swan dive off the dock into the calm water. She was as graceful as a ballerina, but when she didn’t pop up, panic ripped through my shivering body. Maybe there was a rock and she hit her head. Maybe the green plants that grew in the water tangled around her feet and she was at the bottom of the lake drowning, wondering why I wasn’t coming to save her. Just as I was getting ready to jump in after her, my body shaking in the brisk wind, I heard Carmen laughing behind me.
Quickly spinning around, I said, “How did you get over there?”
“I swam under the dock. I hate swimming on that side. Come over here; it’s much nicer.”
So I jumped into the lake side instead of the shore side, knowing that if the lifeguards showed up, we’d get busted. The boats and water skiers were on the open side of the lake, so swimming was only allowed on the beach side of the dock. Jumping off the dock into the open water, I felt free. We swam out and out and out until we lost our breath and then floated on our backs in what felt like the middle of the lake. Lying on our backs, the water gently cradling our bodies, we floated in silence, contentment washing over us like a blanket.
When Carmen crawled out of the lake, she said we should do a diving contest and see who could dive out the farthest.
“I don’t know how to dive,” I said, kind of embarrassed.
“Well, then, I’ll teach you.” She grabbed my hand and brought me to the edge of the dock. “Now, lower your head and put your hands like this,” and she put her hands out straight in front of her, crossing one over the other; she peeked her head through the hole and laughed. “Now, bend your knees a tiny bit and push off, keeping your head down.”
When Carmen did it she looked like an Olympic diver; when I did it, I looked like a four-year-old, plopping into the water in a messy belly flop. I popped out of the water, my long hair covering my eyes.
“Good, let’s do it again!”
Three more crazy, spastic attempts and I had it – I was diving! Carmen jumped up and down on the dock and clapped her hands as if she were watching her baby girl walk for the very first time.
As a few people arrived at the park, I was scared to death that I was in my undies and bra. Carmen told me to wait in the water while she glided up the hill to our dry clothes in her wet undies like she was walking down a Paris runway. She scooped up our clothes and told me to swim to the edge of the water, outside of the dock. With our clothes in hand, she met me at the water’s edge, and she was right – no one could see me through the trees. Once dressed, with our arms linked, we headed back to her car.
She drove us less than a block to her apartment on the water. She pulled into the oil-stained spot, put the car in neutral, and with all of her might pulled back on the black emergency brake that was jutting up between our seats like she was trying to stop a wild stallion. Jumping out of the car with wet hair, we walked into her apartment.
A little nervous that her dad would be there, I asked, “Is anyone home?”
“Nope,” she said, as she grabbed a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. “Want one?”
Then we went to her room and laid down on her squishy waterbed that was really just like a big water balloon with a thin sheet over it. Carmen pulled out a bag of nail polish and asked if I wanted her to paint my nails.
She said, “Do you like the foot-rubbing part? That always tickles me, but I love it at the same time; kind of like good torture.” Then she started to laugh in her breathy, floaty way.
“I don’t know; this is my first pedicure,” I said.
Lying on her bed listening to Cyndi Lauper’s, if you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting… as our nails dried, we fell asleep. At about seven we woke up from our nap and Carmen grabbed a bowl of Cheerios for herself and one for me.
“I told my friends that I’d show up at their party. Can you go with me or do you need to call your mom?”
I just looked at her and laughed and said I could go. Carmen couldn’t believe that my hair was still wet from the lake that afternoon. It went past my bra in the back and was as thick as a horse’s tail, so letting it air dry took a full day. She brought me into her tiny bathroom, bags of make-up resting on the sides of the sink, a curling iron balancing on the tiny shelf with the cord hanging into the sink. She pulled open the narrow closet that was behind us and grabbed a warm towel from
the mini washer and dryer stacked there and toweled off my hair. Then Carmen brushed out my long hair and started to dry it.
“Lauren, your hair is amazing; there are a thousand colors in every strand. It’s the silkiest, longest, prettiest hair I’ve ever seen in my life. You look like the girl in the ‘you tell one friend and she tells one friend’, and so on and so on commercial.”
Being around Carmen, I felt not ugly for the first time in my life. Being around her, I felt not completely alone for the first time in my life.
We started to laugh and then we went into her room to get dressed.
“I didn’t really think about the party,” I said. “I don’t have anything to wear.”
Carmen handed me a pair of her tiny, ripped-up 501’s from her floor and a tank top.
“Umm, A: those will never fit, and B: I’m really not comfortable wearing just a tank top.”
“You are so silly, look at you! But okay…here, how about this?” She grabbed a white button down from her closet, put it on over one shoulder and the other and then tied it at my waist. “Perfect. You okay now, my sweet girl?”
Jumping into her car, we headed onto the lake road and up about a mile. When we pulled up I could hear music from the street; lights shone from every window in the big, newer-looking house. Carmen pulled up in the driveway, leaving her car hanging over the sidewalk and into the street. When we got out, I looked at her car, but she was already halfway up the steps. As soon as I was by her side, she pulled the front door open like she was walking into her grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner.