Spent

by Antonia Crane

  Dad took up residence in a fleabag hotel on Broadway for a while, before moving in with a curvy redhead. Then he bought a cabin a half hour away, in a town that had one church, one gas station, and one grocery store. It was decided I’d stay with Mom, and my brother would move in with him. When I visited on weekends, I swept the country store with a big wood broom in exchange for all the Twix bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups I wanted. This was three years before I learned how to throw it all up from the girls in Jazzercize class.

  Alan was my football-playing, pot-smoking big brother, and I missed him. He was girl crazy and constantly played air guitar to Mr. Bungle, Slayer, and Iron Maiden. He knew all the words and stomped around the house singing them loudly. I looked up to him even though he was always in trouble for selling pot and stealing Dad’s car. He took pills and grew pot in his closet. I didn’t even know exactly what that meant, only that it was a delicious secret from Mom and Dad. After the divorce, Dad bought him a sparkling brown truck, and he wasn’t around much after that.

  My dad had left us right after his law office got robbed. “He rigged it to steal your inheritance,” Mom said. “Your father said he had a feeling something was wrong at the office, but your father wouldn’t know a feeling if it bit him in the face.”

  I’ll never know the truth, but I know what I saw—Mom turned to jelly.

  It took a while for Mom to get used to her new life. After months of denial, she grew comfortable with being angry, then, finally, sad. She drank more, which didn’t help, started smoking More menthols, and threw herself at her work and her women’s organizations. She yelled at me when I didn’t pay attention to her and sometimes dragged me to her meetings or on dates where I would be bored stiff. I’d sit and listen to the radio and memorize all the songs that played on Humboldt’s one rock station.

  The changes seemed to affect Dad less. He seemed upbeat, even happy. I wasn’t sure I recognized him. He stopped smoking. He looked younger and more tan. Once, he picked me up to go see Alan play football in a town about an hour north of Humboldt. The redwoods swayed as we zipped along in Dad’s post-divorce blue and silver 280-ZX. He explained that I was going to be introduced to Jill, the new woman he was dating. On the side of the road, a redwood cracked and fell as we approached it.

  I screamed. He sped up over eighty, and we raced below it, barely missing it.

  The giant tree collapsed onto the freeway, blocking the van behind us; its branches like wild fingers. My dad, the hero race car driver still wearing his suit and tie from a day in court.

  “I’m the best damn driver you’ve ever seen,” he said, then rolled down the window. “Hurricane winds, my ass.” When we reached Crescent City, a tiny suburban town on the northernmost tip of California, it was pitch black because the electricity was out. Windows were cracked in the Denny’s as we drove by. Pieces from roofs were blowing along on the sidewalk. More redwoods swayed in the wind and landed on rooftops. We arrived in front of a small blue house in the ravaged town. When the front door opened, a thin, pretty woman with soft brown eyes greeted us in a very high-pitched voice which could barely be heard with the crashing chimes outside. She looked like a fragile bird in the raging storm, and her three-year-old daughter held her hand in the dark. Alan’s football game was canceled, and he went home with the rest of his team on the bus, so it was just my dad’s pretty new girls and me.

  One restaurant was open. Dad, Jill, her four-year old daughter, and I sat in a booth, and I worried about the windows exploding from the pressure outside. I squeezed in next to him and shook. “Dad, did you rob your own office?” I asked.

  Wind whipped through the restaurant and whistled. Jill’s eyes avoided mine while she sat up straight and cleared her throat. “What did you just ask me?” Dad asked. My insides felt stuck together with gum while his new girlfriend and her baby voice slowly peeled us apart for good.

  4

  I must have been about ten when my mom called me sexy because I was in uniform. My navy blue pants were so tight I couldn’t bend over without sucking in my breath. My shirt was white and stiff with a floppy eyelet collar and plastic white buttons. I didn’t need a training bra yet. Under my shirt was a soft white tank top with dark blue roses on it. My mom grabbed my waist with her hands and squeezed tight and stretched her fingers around until her thumbs and middle fingers met. I figured she was playing the baby fat game where she pinched my sides and cackled like a scarlet macaw. “God! You’re so sexy,” she said. I was embarrassed but not sure why. “Look!” she called out to my big brother. “How sexy she is.”

  “Mom, don’t,” I said. Alan sprinted downstairs with his Walkman on.

  Whatever sexy was, it must have been the worst thing in the world, like being boiled alive with my nerves still intact, or the best thing ever, like winning a game of kick-the-can. I wanted to swat her hands away so I could breathe, but I held my breath so I could glow in her grasp. She saw me as sexy, and that meant I existed. It meant I existed even after Dad left. It meant I could breathe again.

  “Alan said I’m fat,” I said, wriggling away from her.

  “You’re not fat, honey, you’re chunky. It’s sexy.” I didn’t want to be chunky. I wanted to look like Christie Brinkley, have a twenty-five inch waist, and marry David Bowie. I was haunted by fat, always pinching the blubber on my hips. I hated mirrors. I compared my thighs to the skinny girls in Jazzercise whose bodies were sharp points of perfection. I was tall with oddly long, flat feet. I was the opposite of them: loud and thick and wore all blue instead of pink. With my dad’s muscular thighs, I was too fat for ballet. I willed myself to be skinny, but the only diet I saw work was divorce. After Mom’s friends got divorced, they got thin. I didn’t want to wait that long.

  I begged my mom to let me watch Family, a show about a troubled teenager, which came on at 10:00 p.m., past bedtime. I hadn’t noticed it happening, what with the divorce and the new circumstances, but Kristy McNichol was my idol, and I’d become obsessed with her. Kristy played the teenage star, and I loved her feathered hair and the chocolate chip mole on her lip. And I increasingly loved her tight bell-bottomed jeans and the blue satin jacket that unzipped to show a tight baseball T-shirt. Kristy played Buddy, a tomboy whose legs dangled from the swing set on the front lawn; a lip glossed, tough girl with mental problems and a gap in her teeth. I thought about her in Little Darlings when I masturbated on my pillow. I read rumors in the tabloids that she was a bipolar lesbian, and it took a couple of consultations with a dictionary to figure out what that meant. This made her seem hotter to me. She was the most beautiful woman on earth and had the best body on television, hands down. It didn’t occur to me to question my own sexuality; what I felt for Kristy felt right, and it didn’t interfere with my interest in boys. It wasn’t in the least confusing. I preferred being with my girlfriends. I took baths with them in Mom’s Avon scented bubble bath and slept in their beds with them, praised their soft skin, played with their hair, and borrowed their clothes. I didn’t think about the term “bisexual” or apply it to myself—at least not yet. Sexuality felt like a space I stepped into and out of like a mud puddle. I wanted to be chased by boys in the worst way and my body ached when they ignored me. But when they chased me I got scared and quiet, my face flushed, and my body heated up. I wanted to be chased by boys, but I wanted to kiss girls. I admired their strength and soft pillow-like beauty. I wanted to keep their secrets and sleep next to them. I glided between sexes and needed them both. I didn’t hate one and run to the other in refuge. I loved both and rejected both—two forces tugged inside me, and I didn’t yet know enough to be ashamed.

  It was during a commercial break of Family that I first stuck my finger down my throat. I’d read about bulimia in Seventeen. Bulimia was the ticket to losing weight, at least according to the girls in Jazzercize class. My blonde, small-boned Mormon cheerleader friends did it, and their moms all looked like Loni Anderson on WKRP in Cincinna
ti. I polished off a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream and worked my way through a bag of Zingers then I ran bathwater extra loud and puked until my knuckles had red cuts and blisters from my teeth. Loni Anderson’s wide bleached smile mocked me from the television after I washed the slime from my mouth. I thought about kissing Kristy. I wondered if she was born with a perfect body or if she too stuck her finger down her throat five times a day.

  I liked having a secret, even then. It’s something that hasn’t changed. Other peoples’, as well as my own. One effective way to keep my secrets was to tell on other girls. I called Janine Elm’s parents and told them she was bulimic because it took the focus off of me. “You did the right thing, honey. She could die,” Mom said, and made me a roast beef sandwich, which I later threw up.

  Kristy McNichol was sexy, but Madonna was the sexiest, prancing around in fishnets with messy, blonde hair and eyeliner. I wanted her to guide me, so I memorized all of her songs.

  By fourteen, my boyfriend was a varsity football player who looked exactly like Sylvester Stallone and I was a cheerleader with pizza-puke breath. I was a couple years younger than Jeff and was desperately in love with him. I even made a heart-shaped wooden sign that said so and screwed it to a telephone pole near his house on Valentine’s Day. He broke up with me shortly after. I barfed my way through high school, chasing an impossible standard of beauty. I embraced and fought the cravings inside my body—stuffing it down, then throwing it up.

  Both men and boys began paying attention to me, and I began to pay attention to what worked, to what kept them interested. I became an outrageous flirt, destined for laps across America. I was an inevitable stripper—barfing, teasing, aching to be seen.

  5

  While I binged and purged, Mom stopped eating and joined a volleyball team. She’d become skinny like a model. I could tell by the way she smiled at herself in the full-length mirror and swerved when she walked that she liked her legs. Her brown polyester skirt floated inches above her knees. According to her, everyone said she had terrific legs, and it was true. She never worked out at a gym or walked farther than down the driveway to the car and from the car to her office, so when she joined a volleyball team I was surprised. I’d never seen her wear white socks, just Hanes control top pantyhose that made her shapely legs shimmer and glide.

  The volleyball team was where she met Chris, a hunky postman she hastily moved into our house after they had been dating for a few months. He had a Tom Selleck moustache and wore little, blue terrycloth shorts. He spent a lot of time in the garage building stuff: bookshelves, cabinets, and canoes. He woke up at 5:00 a.m. to deliver mail then came home and napped from about 3:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.

  You didn’t want to wake him up.

  In our house, there was a bar downstairs with stools where Mom and Chris gulped yellow booze with three ice cubes from rocks glasses. Mom liked to swish hers around in a circle, making the cubes clack against her glass.

  The sound reminded me of galloping horses. Mom loved to tell stories about being a little girl when she got drunk. “My brother got everything,” she growled. “He could go out and do whatever he wanted. I had to get perfect grades and do all the housework. Do his homework. The happiest day of my life was going to ride Kathy’s horse. I wanted to stay there and brush the horse and ride her horse, Bo, forever. I didn’t care when he kicked my teeth out. I wanted a horse more than anything in the world.” I wanted to give her a horse—anything she wanted. I hoped Chris would.

  The first night it happened, I closed my eyes in bed and listened to them argue. Mom’s bedroom was directly above mine. I heard a loud thud. I recognized the sound of her body being slammed against the bedroom door. Mom kept whimpering, “Please stop.” His feet stomped across the ceiling like a monster. I expected to hear a laugh track, but there was only yelling. He threw things that hit the walls. I imagined the lamp and the alarm clock splitting into shards.

  Outside, the wind blew the redwoods hard. Branches creaked and snapped. The sound was like limbs breaking. I liked the outside sounds better than the inside ones. I opened my window and inhaled damp forest air. I thought about crawling out the window and grabbing the tire swing and slowly lowering myself down like Wonder Woman.

  I heard feet running: heavy long strides above me like Sasquatch.

  “If I can’t sleep, no one’s sleeping!” Chris turned on all of the lights and televisions in the house full blast. The stereo blared Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.” I knew all the words because my mom played that album nonstop in her green Volvo while she smoked her menthols. We would sing along loudly to “She Believes In Me.” My eyes were open and I mouthed the words, but I held my breath and didn’t stir. If I was very still, I figured they would stop.

  Mom appeared in the doorway and sat on my bed. I’m not sure why. She had a cut on her lip that was bleeding through the Kleenex. I worried about her pretty smile. “I love you,” she said from beneath the tissue and pet my leg. She was drunk.

  In a few minutes, she left, then the lights, televisions, and stereo were shut off, and it was quiet apart from the wind. I was wide awake, so I turned on my black and white television and watched the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in an elaborate white wedding dress walk in front of thousands of fancy guests. She stood close to a man with a big nose. He wore a stiff military jacket and had delicate hands. The woman was slim with soft blonde, feathered hair. The train on her dress was at least twenty-five feet long. I watched them say vows and kiss with formal elegance. The woman had golden skin. Her expression was gentle and prim. I wanted to look exactly like her. I studied her hair. I had no idea who they were, but the news announcers told me they were Lady Diana and Prince Charles.

  The mornings after Mom and Chris fought, I watched her dab beige Avon makeup on her bruised eyes and smear frosted pink lipstick on her swollen lips before she went to work as a legal secretary. I followed her around and spelled words out loud for my spelling test as she admired herself in the mirror and sprayed Charlie perfume on her delicate neck. “Res-tau-rant.” She reached for a string of beads the color of dried blood and put them around her neck. She took them off and chose a string of rose quartz, lavender, pink, and white orbs instead. “R-E-S-T-R-A-N-T.”

  “Wrong.” She dug around for her matching lavender quartz earrings. “R-E-S-T-A-R-N-T.” She’ll yell if I screw up again. “Three syllables. You’re missing a syllable. Pay attention.”

  All of her suits were color coordinated. She used to match her taupe vests with blouses that she would tuck into her nylons. Her suits were polyester because, she said, “They don’t need ironing.” She was a joiner of women’s groups, an attender of luncheons, and president of AAUW (American Association of University Women). She was a member of DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). She was treasurer of her class, and she drank with sorority sisters. She never missed a day of work. She cooked and cleaned. She was stern, capable and delicate, like Lady Di, I think. Her boyfriend beat her, and she loved him. I loved him, too. He paid attention to me and liked the same music that I liked. We sang along with the radio in the car. His raspy, deep, voice in harmony with mine as we drove. “He’s the love of my life,” Mom used to say.

  The night Mom’s yelling became screaming I called the cops from my yellow phone, then climbed out of the window and walked up the cement stairs alongside the house. I watched Mom convince the cops dressed in a women’s organization voice and matching blouse. “Everything is fine,” she said. The cops talked softly and wrote things down on small pads of paper, then they left and it was just me in the moonlight, spying on her from the side of the house. I felt guilty. Mom went inside again, but I walked down the hill and through my neighbor’s garage into my best friend, Kate’s, house. Kate’s mom, Rose, was a second mom to me. Rose was standing in the dark kitchen drinking a glass of wine. When I told her about the yelling, she said, “It’s just water off a duck’s back.”

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nbsp; I didn’t believe her. I figured she just wanted me to go away. It was a school night. I went outside and walked the streets of my small town in the moonlight, then snuck back into my window at sunrise like nothing happened.

  6

  I lost my virginity during a blackout, in a summer cabin near the Eel River.

  By fourteen, I’d found alcohol. I never liked the taste; I just drank to get gone. Usually, the way it happened was a friend had a party, and we all showed up and guzzled their parents’ stash. I drank until the burn melted my throat and I fell down. Those summers were foggy and cold, but it got warmer an hour South of Eureka in Garberville, the notorious pot mecca.

  Kate’s family had a summer cabin in the hills of Garberville. The first time I went I must have been about seven years old. I got sick from Kate’s Mom’s white spaghetti, but I think I was just homesick and scared. It was my first sleepover out of town and I missed Mom.

  Kate had a big family with two older sisters who were Gods to me. They listened to Top 40 music, had boyfriends, knew how to bake cookies from scratch, and curled their hair like the girls in Seventeen magazine. They baby-oiled their tanned curves, wore pink and turquoise string bikinis, and bought expensive sunglasses from a department store in Santa Rosa with their babysitting money. They did ballet. I wanted Kate’s family: her sisters and her mom who stayed home and cooked. My mom preferred men and things that were dangerous for her, like runaway horses, menthols, and raging men. Never mind the things that were quiet and safe. I was born with her same cravings and tendencies. When I put myself at risk, I felt closer to her, daring her to keep me safe. I did this knowing she wanted to more than anything, but she didn’t know how.