Punk Like Me

by JD Glass

  Samantha drove me home, and on the way we made plans. I was going to skip swim practice until Saturday, then after practice and detention, she was going to teach me how to drive; that would be a start on the road to independence. One thing we both managed to agree on: knowledge was power, and the school I was going to would give me the best education I could get, pretty much anywhere. Throwing that away was out of the question, and Samantha wasn’t thrilled with the idea of my crawling around the train tracks, but she could at least see where it would be helpful, in my quest for funds, anyway.

  I’d also decided that the very next morning, I would go into Sister Clarence’s ofÞ ce, explain that there was a Þ nancial difÞ culty, and that I would be paying my own tuition. Maybe she’d be able to work something out with me, and I shared that thought with Samantha as well as we approached my street.

  “Hey, now when we polish banisters together, I’ll be the one on detention, and you’ll be actually working,” she teased.

  “Hey, yeah, maybe I’ll never have to do detentions again!” I grinned back. We’d been lucky that day, since we’d had detention given to us the day before by Sister Attila, but very obviously, circumstances outside of her control had excused us from that. We probably wouldn’t be quite as lucky the next day, but, hey, stranger things could happen, right?

  I was feeling Þ ne, like everything would be okay, until we pulled into my block. Then my stomach kicked me with a double dose of anger

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  and fear, and I can honestly tell you, it was the anger that got stronger, until the fear went back into its corner to hide.

  We pulled onto the corner and I released my seat belt as Samantha parked the car. “You gonna be okay?” she asked with concern. “You can come stay with me, at least for a few days, you know, if you don’t want to stay longer,” she reminded me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  I sighed and nodded afÞ rmatively. “I’ll keep that in mind, in case they get crazy, okay? If something happens, maybe they won’t have a strong case for the cops if they beat me up two days in a row, and then, well, that’s a whole ’nother story.”

  “Are you sure? I think we might have a case now,” she said softly.

  “Nina, you don’t know what you look like. I don’t want to see you hurt further.” She ran a gentle hand along the side of my head that was now skin and short fuzz. “I’m scared for you,” she whispered intently. I don’t think she meant me to hear that.

  I caught her hand up and kissed the palm, holding it between mine. “Sammy, I’m scared, too. But I have to try. I have to face them, at least once. If I don’t, I’ll just let fear win. I’ll be running away, and then I’ll be running away forever. I can’t live like that. Believe me,” and my eyes pleaded with intensity for her understanding, “if anything happens, I’ll call you right away, I promise.”

  “What if something happens and you can’t run, Nina?” Samantha asked with real worry. “What if you can’t call?” I hadn’t thought of that possibility, and now I knew why. “It won’t happen again, Sam, not like that. I won’t let it.” I smiled grimly. “I let it this time, because I felt I owed my parents respect, and that they wouldn’t do such things. Believe me, I will not,” I paused for emphasis,

  “let myself be touched like that again. I swear.” Samantha looked very uncertain and said as much. “How can you be sure?”

  Her face was the very deÞ nition of doubt and concern, and I wanted to reassure her that I meant it. I’d suffer the parental units’ shit if I had to, but I would never allow them to harm me again. “Samantha, remember your freshman year?”

  “Yeah?” she drawled out and cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “Do you remember what was required besides Latin?” I hinted, trying to jog her memory. Freshman year was a year no one could ever forget, though I’m sure plenty of therapists are out there making an

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  PUNK LIKE ME

  entire living from those trying. And yes, Latin was among one of the many required subjects for all freshmen, because it would “help us with our English and other language studies,” and dammit—the nuns were right—again. Sigh. Oh, wait, can “nun” and “dammit” coexist in the same sentence? Too late, oh well.

  “We had Latin, Afro-Asian studies, oh!” Samantha brightened up suddenly as the realization hit her. “Everyone had to take judo/self-defense with what’s her name, from that federation!” Samantha nodded her head, “Yeah!” and grinned.

  Yeah is right. Like I said way back before, all freshmen had to take judo/self-defense; it didn’t matter whether the student was a jock or not, and no excuses about asthma. The thought was that every woman should know how to defend herself (never mind the fact that the uniform made us a target), and our class was taught by the woman who took judo and women in martial arts to the Olympics. (You can look her up if you’re into that sort of thing—just search under “judo” and “Olympic history”—you’ll Þ nd her).

  She taught us how to drop, roll, throw, take a punch, and use our size to our advantage—she was incredible! And she also taught us that if we knew how to defend ourselves, we’d never feel helpless, no matter what happened. You know what? She was right.

  But the grin faded from Samantha’s face. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to take that on?” she asked me seriously. “That’s a lot of responsibility…” She trailed off, obviously watching my reactions, waiting for my reply.

  I nodded Þ rmly in agreement. “Yeah, if I’m pushed to defend myself, I’m ready to be responsible for the outcome,” I said very solemnly. That was something they had impressed upon us from the start, that once we’d tried all other options and physicality was the only avenue open, then possibly someone could and would get hurt, and there was no telling to what depth the injury might go.

  This was a very serious thing, and I did not then and do not now take violence lightly. In fact, I’m a lover, not a Þ ghter, but if my life was at stake…I took a deep breath. I was scared, but prepared. Samantha seemed a little reassured, but not much.

  The little voice in my head interrupted my concentration, and the fear came out of its corner to reassert itself. It could happen again, really, couldn’t it? What if I was sleeping? I shared a room with Nanny;

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  JD GLASS

  my dad could just open the door—undo the lock. It wasn’t hard. I’d done it myself, plenty of times. They could, possibly, just come into the room, do whatever they wanted. And it wasn’t like I could stay awake all day and all night. I had to recover from the meet, from the beating, from being ill, and I had to be able to do all of my activities.

  My mind raced for solutions because I wasn’t going to let fear rule me, or Samantha, either. An idea came to mind, and I squeezed her hand again. “Samantha, listen. If I’m not in school for whatever reason tomorrow, and you can’t get in touch with me here, then…” I took a breath then let it out, “tell whoever you think you need to tell whatever you think they need to know, and call the cops, ’cause in that case, I’m in real trouble.”

  Samantha nodded and returned the pressure on my hand. “Okay, if I don’t see you before homeroom starts, I’ll call you Þ rst, then, honestly, Nina? I’m gonna call my uncle and the cops. Cort knows a thing or two about a thing or two, and,” she paused and smiled darkly, “he’s pretty big, too.”

  Great. I was a touch relieved; at least someone would know there was a body to go look for. Why lie? I was scared. I didn’t want to go back there. Like I said before, I’d been disciplined, sure, but never a wholesale knockdown like that before, never anything that had left me both bruised and bleeding. Not to mention broken.

  My face was starting to ache again, and my head was pounding in time with it. I wasn’t sure if I was mentally or physically able to withstand another onslaught like the night before, and despite my words to the contrary, I didn’t really know what self-defense meant.

  “Samantha, if y
ou need to do that, go right ahead. Do what you have to do.” I released Samantha’s hand, grabbed my stuff from the backseat, hauled it over, and put my hand on the latch. “But I don’t think it’ll be necessary.” I smiled as reassuringly as I could, which wasn’t much, because the corner of my mouth was scabbing up. Nasty, nasty feeling. DeÞ nitely on the bad list. Oh yeah, I have a list—several, in fact: the good list, the bad list, the hit list, and the shit list. Everything has its place, ya know.

  “Thank you, for helping me out today,” I told her softly. “I will always appreciate this.”

  Samantha caught my hand in hers again and kissed it. “I will always be there for you,” she swore, and we gave each other one last

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  long hug before I got out of the car and trudged to the door.

  I didn’t even look back because if I did, I was afraid my resolve to see this through one way or another would break, and I couldn’t bear the look in Samantha’s eyes. I could feel her watching me.

  You want to know what happened next, right? You’re probably thinking, hey, she dumped that Kerry chick on her ass and had it out with everyone, then everything settled back down to something resembling normal, because Nina decided she couldn’t live without Samantha, and the deities intervened, and they lived together forever and ever, amen, and they got wonderful jobs in some wonderful company and bought a house that they live in and have hot monkey sex when they’re not busy being heroes and saving the world from evildoers.

  No. Wrong.

  Although I like the hot-monkey-sex part. And the deities (such as they are) remain uninvolved. And heroes are people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, or even Joan of Arc, and people who are everyday people trying to be better, make it all better, no radiated spiders giving anyone special powers or swords to be swung, Joan notwithstanding, of course. But—and this is important—she burned at the stake rather than deny her own truth. That’s a powerful thing, truth. Now that’s punk.

  And heroes are those, big and small, who strive every day just to live, to be themselves and make the world a little better just by being around. You know these people. They’re friends. Teachers. Doctors.

  Lawyers. The nice lady at the insurance company who goes out of her way to help you out, even though you don’t know her mother is sick, her kids are driving her mad, and she just discovered her division is being outsourced. And the guy at work who tells the boss he didn’t appreciate a bigoted joke that was made. These things only seem small, but they aren’t—they require goodness of heart and bravery—and the effects of these actions ripple outward. These are the people that are heroes, and if you really think about it, you might be one too.

  That night, after a silent dinner (which I made, by the way) and a few hours of homework and guitar playing, deep in the dark of the night when everyone was asleep, I got dragged out of bed by the hair compliments of my former incubator and thrown on the ß oor again, though this time it was in the hallway and under the bright light that hurt my not-fully-awakened eyes. She and the sperm donor pulled my hair and shook me around, trying to rub my face into the top steps

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  JD GLASS

  because I hadn’t completed some household chore.

  Quite honestly, I don’t even know what it was—I was still out of it—but when macho man lifted me by my shirt and threw me against the wall right by the top of the steps, I was suddenly aware of something. I had both arms up having blocked a punch coming for my face and had just stopped my foot from smashing the source of my origin—namely, his balls. The cotton of his pajama bottoms was warm on my bare foot, and I could just feel the weight of his pride. Yuck, actually.

  I was horriÞ ed, my father, Daddy, I’d almost hit Daddy. God, Daddy, and we all froze in shock. My father’s face was bewildered, my mother’s scared, and I was terriÞ ed at this capacity I had discovered within myself.

  They both kept screaming at me about their disappointment. They were disappointed with me? They were the disappointment because they lied. Love was conditional, acceptance was something done at a distance, removed from the immediate environment, and brutality was evil, unless they practiced it. They wanted me to be just like them. It was enough to make me weep.

  And despite everything, they were my parents, and I loved them. I couldn’t stop that, couldn’t help it. Daddy, who had taught me to swim and to Þ sh, how to ride a bicycle, who used to just swing me up in the air and put me on his shoulders so I could see the parade or the Þ reworks or touch the leaves from the trees and who had given me my Þ rst microscope and chemistry sets, had played with me, laughed when my little Bunsen burner set the table on Þ re or I’d exploded something—again. Daddy, with his strong arms and warm hugs, who said we’d never be too big for him to cuddle. I’d almost hit him, and I hadn’t meant to—how could I hit Daddy?

  I was furious with them, furious with myself, and I realized I grieved, too, because I couldn’t understand how it had all come to this, screaming and ß ailing in the hallway in the middle of the night, a family of strangers.

  I lowered my leg to the ground and stood up straight against the wall at the top of the stairs, arms and Þ sts in a defensive posture, as tears of rage and frustration poured out of my eyes. I could feel the rush of blood in my head and neck, could taste it in my mouth, and I realized another cut had broken open again.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Daddy. Don’t make me do this,” I begged my father, my voice thick and harsh. “I don’t want to do this, I don’t.

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  You’re my father, I don’t want this,” I cried, while the tears ß owed hot and fat down my face, and I hated that, because I couldn’t stop them, because I hated doing it, and grief and fury combined are too powerful a force to be halted.

  Nanny came out of our room; the commotion had woken her up.

  “I hate you, Nina. You’re ruining this family!” she screamed at me from our doorway.

  My mother said nothing, just watched me and my father with frightened eyes, and I turned to look at Nanny. “That’s not—” true, I had started to say, but my father’s left hand caught my face, and my shoulders spun as my head snapped to the side. I caught myself before I went headÞ rst down the stairs entirely, one foot on the landing, one down the Þ rst stair.

  I heard the door to Nicky’s room open, and I turned my head. I thought I saw his face as my mother screamed, “Roger! Don’t!” but too late, he swung again.

  Faster than it takes to tell, my right arm was up and blocking, and I grabbed the wrist and twisted, bringing it down and behind him, while I threw the left side of my body up and in, my shoulder crashing into his sternum, the momentum carrying us into the opposite wall, away from the stairs. I quickly shifted weight from one shoulder to the other, my right hand still holding the twisted wrist, my thumb digging into the pressure point and drew my left arm back.

  “Nina, don’t!” Nicky whispered from the door, and my Þ st came to a full-force stop less than a centimeter before his nose.

  The angle we were at had his face level with mine, and I looked into his eyes forever. I refused to take my gaze off the man who had just tried to send me ß ying down a ß ight of steps.

  “Stay out of this, Nicky,” I told him from the corner of my mouth where the blood ran freely again. “Macho man, beating on girls,” I hissed into this stranger, my father’s face, contorted in surprise and anger, with an expression in his eyes I’d never seen before, not more than Þ ve inches from my eyes. “Touch me like that again, old man, and I will fucking kill you,” I growled. “I will be only too fuckin’ happy to stab you in your goddamned fuckin’ sleep.” My blood spattered a little onto his face. Blood of my blood. I hated that too, hated that he was half of who I was.

  “Who’s gonna fuckin’ stop me, you little piece of shit bitch?” he hissed back. He tried to move, but I jammed my shoulder harder into

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  JD GLASS

  his. He grunted when he hit the wall again.

  “I will,” I told him very evenly. I released him and took a step back, nodding my head up and down as if I suddenly had a clue.

  Free, El Testostero rubbed his pained wrist, while my eyes swept the hallway.

  Nanny was crying, “I hate you, Nina, I hate you,” in the doorway of our room, but Nicky had come out to stand next to our mother as she stood and stared at me; I read sorrow on her face.

  My father just glared up at me, wishing me incinerated and gone with his gaze.

  I stood up straight, while Nanny closed the door to our room. “Try that again, and see what happens. I’m not just some defenseless little girl,” I told him. “You made sure of that.” I walked past my mother to my bedroom door. “Oh, by the way?” I said conversationally, as I put my hand on the doorknob—I noticed it had been practically destroyed in the unlocking—before I turned to look at them both. They hadn’t moved from their positions at all, except for their eyes, which were following me. “If I don’t show up at school tomorrow or any other day? It doesn’t matter if you call or not. If there’s no contact with me directly, the cops will come here.” I opened the door and started to make my way in.

  “Cops’ll come and get you, bitch, and then you’ll go to fuckin’

  juvie hall where you belong,” my father threatened.

  The door was wide-open and in the light that ß ooded in to the room from the hallway, I could see Nanny sit up in her bed. I stopped and turned around in the entrance. “Look at me, look at my fucking face,” I said with strength. “See this?” and I lifted up my shirt, so they could see the dark splotches on my ribs. I heard Nanny gasp as she saw them, and Nicky winced and turned his head. I didn’t blame him. “You tell them what you want, and I’ll show them the truth. I’ve got evidence on my side—what have you got?” I challenged, lifting my chin.