Supergirl Mixtapes

by Meagan Brothers

  I put the record down and went to the kitchen to put my sandwich away before it got gross from sitting out. The refrigerator was wallpapered with pictures, cutouts from magazines. It was a collage of rock stars, some I recognized but most I didn’t. I recognized the Beatles, with their long hair and beards. Jim Morrison in his leather pants. Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Mick Jagger with his arm around a sad-eyed blonde. I saw a picture of Kurt Cobain, the one taken of him onstage where he was standing in front of a statue and it looked like he had wings. There was one of Jeff Buckley, too, surrounded by stickers of tiny roses, right next to the one of Kurt. It made me happy, in a strange way, to see Kurt and Jeff on my mom’s fridge. I loved both of them, even before they died. Now I kind of thought of them as guardian angels or something. It made me feel safer to see them there, in the kitchen in New York. I decided to give the sandwich another try.

  Sometimes, when I got nervous about things, like having to give a report at school, or just worried about whatever, it was like my throat closed up and my stomach shut down and I couldn’t eat anything. I’d felt like that all day long, until I saw Kurt and Jeff. I sat down at the table and started to eat. The first bite went down okay. I took another bite and sat back, chewing until it was practically liquid. I tilted my chair and looked around.

  None of the four chairs around the table matched, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t even a real dining room, just a table shoved into the space where the kitchen became the living room. My room. Travis’s guitars were propped up against the wall, his guitar amp next to the futon like an end table. A third guitar with no strings lay on top of the amp, along with some tools and loose strings. I guess Travis was working on it. Travis. Mom hadn’t even mentioned that she had a boyfriend now. He was young, but he seemed okay.

  I flipped through the Mojo magazine Mom had left on the table. It was a music magazine. The cover article was all about Keith Richards, the guitar player from the Rolling Stones. I finished off the sandwich and got up to throw the carton away. It felt better to have something in my stomach. I walked back to Mom and Travis’s bedroom. There was a beaded curtain in front of the door. The beads clacked as I parted them with my hands. My mom had painted an angel on the door. I could recognize her artwork anywhere. Whenever she sent me cards, at Christmas or my birthday, she always drew them herself. She even drew little sketches on the envelopes. I saved them all in a shoebox beneath my bed. That was the whole reason she’d come to New York in the first place. To be a famous artist.

  I opened the bedroom door. I guess I just wanted to see what the rest of the apartment looked like, but as soon as I went in there, I felt like I shouldn’t have. The bed was unmade, and Mom’s and Travis’s clothes were strewn everywhere. I felt strange about seeing their clothes all together like that, and the place where they slept. Some of my mom’s paintings were stacked up in the corner of the room, and I wanted to go look at them, but instead I closed the door and backed out through the beaded curtain. I peeked into the bathroom, flipping on the light. The tub was old fashioned, with claw feet. I liked that. My dad and I just had a regular, boring bathtub back home.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful. Tired and gross. My skin was pale and my forehead was broken out. My plain, long black hair was even more limp and oily than usual. There were dark circles under my eyes. I bore fangs at myself. Grr. Ugly. Go away.

  I flipped off the light and walked back out to the kitchen. I noticed a Polaroid taped to one of the kitchen cabinets. Mom and Travis at some kind of party. She was holding the camera herself, and he was kissing her cheek. Her mouth was wide open in a surprised smile. Mom always looked like she was having a good time.

  The last time I saw her, I’d just turned twelve. The phone rang late one night, and my dad picked it up. It was the weekend; he was home. I heard him pick up, and I heard him say her name. I sat up in bed, listening. She never called us—she said she couldn’t afford the long-distance charges. I’d been just about to fall asleep, and I wondered if I were dreaming. But I wasn’t. He kept telling her to calm down, in between long silences. Then he hung up the phone. I heard him getting up, moving around, flipping on lights. I got up and crept down the hall.

  “That was Mom?”

  “Yep.” He was lacing up his boots.

  “Is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know. I need to run see about her.” He looked at me. I knew he was about to tell me to be good, that he’d have Mrs. Gibbs, our elderly neighbor down the street, check up on me.

  “Can’t I come? I haven’t seen her in a really long time.”

  He thought about it for a while before he finally agreed. I knew how to deal with my dad. You didn’t cry and scream and plead. You just stood very still and very quiet and waited for him to decide it was okay.

  We drove for hours. I fell asleep, waking up once to find us parked in a Hardee’s parking lot, the car doors locked and Dad on the pay phone. And waking up again when we were there. There was a sharp smell of salt and a damp chill in the air. We’d driven all the way to Myrtle Beach. The sun was coming up outside a little motel called the AquaSea Inn. We were parked beneath an arched turquoise carport. Dad took me into the motel office and told me to wait there. I went into the narrow bathroom, came back out, and settled into a well-grooved turquoise vinyl seat. The guy behind the counter swatted flies and smiled at me. He had the Weather Channel on, but he turned the dial around to a Flintstones cartoon and pushed the little TV over on the counter so that I could see it.

  I licked at the bad taste inside my mouth for a few minutes, too sleepy to laugh at Fred and Barney yet, when something outside caught my eye. A heavyset man in a checked golf shirt was sort of jogging down the stairs, and sort of being pushed at the same time. The man pushing him was my dad. I saw my mom at the top of the stairs, her eyes dark, face streaked with mascara, shouting something, her mouth moving and nothing coming out. The fat man held up his hands, fumbled quickly for his keys, jerked the handle on the door of his big white car. My father kept edging up alongside him, muttering something steady and unhurried. He was barely moving, but you could tell he was winning the fight. The fat man finally got his car cranked, and he lurched out of the AquaSea parking lot. My father looked back up at my mother, his fists curled beside his pockets. She walked back into the hotel room. He began climbing the stairs.

  About an hour later, Dad came and got me. By now it was the Jetsons, and the guy behind the motel counter was slumped over on his stool, snoring a little. Dad told me that Mom was in town just for the day, on business, and how would I like us all to go to breakfast together? Sure, I said. We climbed into the pickup and went to a pancake house. Mom was in a different outfit, showered and cleaned up, her mascara fresh and unsmeared. I didn’t ask what her business was, and she didn’t say. She acted like herself, funny and hyper, asking me about school and talking about all the places she’d take me when I came to New York. My dad didn’t say much of anything, just sipped his coffee and barely ate his eggs. After the pancakes, we rolled up our pant legs and walked on the beach, running in and out of the chilly Atlantic. It was spring, before the start of the hot summer season, and there was hardly anyone else there. At one of the arcades we found a photo booth, and Mom and I made goofy faces as the camera popped. I didn’t insist that my dad cram himself into the booth with us, for the same reason that I didn’t ask about the man in the white car. I couldn’t say what it was that kept me from insisting, except that even back then I was beginning to understand that, whatever happened between my mom and dad, they weren’t getting back together again—not for their sake or mine.

  Dad sliced the row of four pictures down the middle with his pocketknife and gave two to my mom, two to me. We took her to the airport that afternoon, and that was the last time I saw her in person, until today. I still had those two pictures in the shoebox under my bed at home, where I kept her letters. Now, standing in her kitchen, I looked again at the picture of Mom and Travis taped to the cabi
net. She always looked so happy. I had my father’s mouth. The kind of mouth that seemed to naturally turn down at the edges. I usually tried not to smile too much in pictures, anyway. My teeth were too big and crooked, even now, after two years of braces. But in those Myrtle Beach pictures, I have the stupidest grin on my face. My mom was the kind of person you couldn’t help but be happy around.

  I walked into the living room—my room—and sat down on the edge of the futon. My mom had left a little note card on the pillow, a sketch of a city skyline with the words “Welcome to New York” written into the windows of the buildings. I looked at the records in their procession. Knelt down in front of them again. There was Lou Reed, the guy they had gone to see. He looked like a ghost on the album cover, or maybe a little like the guy from Rocky Horror Picture Show. Next to it was a Ramones record—I knew a little about them from Dory. There were the New York Dolls—a bunch of guys dressed up like girls, in makeup and big bouffant hairdos! Crazy. There was a band called Television, all pale and skinny but dressed like plain, regular guys. Then there was Richard Hell and the Voidoids, with a guy in a ripped-up shirt looking coolly out of his shades, his hands on his hips. Next was a thick-lipped blond woman with her eyes turned down, looking like another ghost: Nico, Chelsea Girl. And the record my mom told me to listen to first. The one that was supposed to blow my mind.

  I figured out how to turn the stereo on. The power light on the record player glowed warm orange. I slid the record out of its monochrome sleeve and put it on the turntable. Horses, Patti Smith. I turned the volume down and put the needle on the record. There was a crackle, the needle catching the groove. I heard soft piano chords, then a woman’s voice crooning. Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.

  I listened for another few seconds, then I took the needle off the record. I was kind of superstitious about God stuff. My dad and I didn’t go to church too often on our own—there was only one Catholic church in Millville, anyway, and it was tiny. Most people I knew went to the big First Baptist church downtown, the one that was broadcast on the local TV station, or First Methodist, the church with the best basketball team. But we went all the time when we visited my grandmother. My grandfather was Catholic, so my grandmother became Catholic, too. She was really gung ho about it, even more than my grandfather had been, according to my dad. Anyway, I hadn’t been to church in a long time, but I knew it was pretty bad to say that Jesus didn’t die for your sins.

  My throat started tightening again. I picked up Dory’s package and ripped it open along the edge. A cassette fell out. Supergrrl Mixtape #21: Escape to New York! And there was a note.

  Hey kiddo—

  Keep it real in NYC! I hope these songs treat you right. I’m starting to get into weird girl reggae, like the Bush Tetras and the Slits. There’s some live SY on here, and some Royal Trux I think you’re gonna like. Also, the Rulebreaker for this installment is Urge Overkill, because Nash Kato has the sexiest voice evah. I am going to marry his voice someday. Butta butta butta …

  Have an awesome time in NYC! Take it over, dude! And will you CALL ME if you need me? Or just call anyway for fun!

  Love,

  Dory

  I couldn’t help but smile. “SY” was Sonic Youth, maybe Dory’s favorite band of all time. The second or third Supergirl Mixtape she made for me was called Rule of Kims, and it was all Sonic Youth songs on one side, Breeders and Pixies on the other. I didn’t get it until she explained that the bass player for Sonic Youth is a girl named Kim Gordon, and the bass player for the Pixies, and the lead singer of the Breeders, is a girl named Kim Deal. The Supergirl Mixtapes, if you haven’t guessed, are mostly girl bands, or at least bands with girl singers. But Dory always added a few Rulebreakers, which are guy bands. “To keep it from being totally sexist,” she said.

  I think Dory thought of me more as a little sister than a best friend, but that was okay by me. She was the coolest person I knew. It sucked that we hadn’t been talking to each other as much since she went to college, but she was still making me mixtapes, at least. We could still listen to the same music and send letters back and forth, gushing over our favorite songs. It was as close to hanging out as we could get, especially now, some eight hundred miles apart.

  I dug my Walkman out of my backpack and put in the new tape. The sound of snarling guitars hit my ears. I looked around the room. There was no place to put my clothes or anything. But I didn’t really care. I had made it to New York. I was finally back with my mom, back where I belonged, in the city where I was born. I sat by the window, looking out at the tops of the buildings, the lights, the cars moving along the streets, the tiny dots of people. I could see the Empire State Building in the distance, glowing white. I looked down beneath the fire escape and heard shouting, the sounds of a basketball game beneath the lights of a playground below. Horns and brakes and voices mixed with Dory’s music in my headphones, and I knew that everything was getting better already.

  2

  I thought Brian was a jerk at first, then we became friends. I barely even knew him, but I saw him walking down the hall at school on the Monday after Kurt Cobain died, wearing a T-shirt beneath his Langley blazer that had Kurt’s death certificate printed on it. I was so upset about Kurt that I didn’t even care about being nice, or what people thought of me. I went right up to him in the hallway and said, “You’re an asshole.” Which was probably the worst word I’d ever said at the time. I was only thirteen.

  “I am? How come?” he asked. He seemed really surprised.

  “You know why.” I kept walking. I was so upset. But later on, at lunch, the guy in the death certificate T-shirt found me. He sat down at my table. I was eating alone, as usual.

  “So, inquiring minds want to know. What makes me such an asshole?”

  “That shirt.” I put down the Tater Tot I was about to eat. “It’s totally sick.”

  “It is not.”

  “It makes me want to puke.”

  “I thought it was more like a tribute.” The guy sounded thoughtful. “I saw it in the music store at the mall last night, and I thought—I wanted something to wear today to let people know that we shouldn’t forget about Kurt.” He swallowed. “I really loved Nirvana.”

  “Me too.” I felt like I was going to cry. The news just broke that weekend, and I’d stayed up all Sunday night watching the tributes on MTV. That Monday was the first day back from spring break, but instead of talking about their vacations, all anybody could talk about was Kurt. Even the kids who liked Pearl Jam better than Nirvana. Nobody was going to forget Kurt.

  “What about this?” The guy was taking his shirt off. He was sitting right there in the cafeteria without a shirt on. He turned the shirt inside out and put it back on. The tag stuck out in the back. He held out his arms. “Better?”

  “Yeah.” I speared another Tater Tot with my fork and tried not to smile. “How come they haven’t sent you home for uniform violation yet? Or made you put on another shirt?”

  “I’ve already got two detentions,” he said, grinning. “But they won’t do anything else. They’re afraid I’m too upset. I might do something crazy.” His eyes got wide.

  I laughed. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

  “I won’t wear it anymore. You have my word.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m Brian, by the way.”

  “Maria.”

  “I know. We had study hall together last semester.”

  “Oh. Oh yeah.” I kind of remembered him now. “Mr. Kilgore.”

  He nodded and stole one of my Tater Tots. “So, what’s your favorite Nirvana song?”

  That was the start of Brian and I becoming best friends. I’d just started at Langley, and I hadn’t exactly hit it off with most of the girls there. They were all into boys and makeup and going to the mall, and they had a lot more money to spend there than I did. All I wanted to do was hang out and listen to music, and that’s pretty much all Brian and his friends did, too. We played tapes and rode sk
ateboards and cracked jokes. It was always a lot of fun, up until this past summer. Maybe we were just getting older or something. Maybe boys and girls really couldn’t be friends. All I know is that, around the end of tenth grade, hanging out with Brian stopped being fun and started being a big drag. A big drag that felt dangerous sometimes. Lately, hanging out with Brian and his friends, it felt like my throat was being squeezed so tightly I could barely breathe.

  It was almost three in the afternoon on my first real day in New York City. Mom and Travis were asleep. I wasn’t sure what time they’d gotten home, but they were still gone when I went to bed a little past midnight. Now I was itching to explore the city, but I didn’t want to wake them up, and I wasn’t so sure about going out by myself, without a key. Also, I was starving. I found a stale Entenmann’s doughnut to eat for breakfast, but it was the only one left, and there wasn’t much else in the kitchen besides spaghetti noodles and beer. I was almost to the point of eating the noodles dry just to keep my stomach from growling.

  Finally the bedroom door opened, and Travis stumbled through the beaded curtain into the bathroom. I concentrated on the subway maps I was studying and tried not to listen to him pee. When he came out, he saw me awake. He didn’t have a shirt on, and I could see the tattoo over his heart that read AILEEN. His hair was slicked down, and it made him look shorter. He yawned and stretched. I kept my eyes on the maps.

  “Hey. What’s up?” he asked.

  “Not much. How was the show?”

  “It was pretty rad. It’s Lou, you know.”

  I nodded like I knew.

  “You got it all figured out yet?” He glanced toward my maps.

  “I dunno. Is Eighty-Second Street far from here?”

  “Yeah, it’s far. Why’d you want to go all the way up there?” He picked up a T-shirt hanging off the back of one of the kitchen chairs and sniffed it.