by Michelle Tea
Kristy Did It For Me. You Should’ve Seen It. I Looked Wild, Like A Fashion Model. It Was All Up And Fancy.
You look like a homeless person now, she commented.
I Know. I bit into the pizza again. I looked forward to eating it all the way up to the bubbly crust, and then splitting the crust open and dousing the fluffy insides with a ton of salt. Better than those pretzels you buy from a cart at a carnival. Where’d The Pizza Come From? I asked. It wasn’t every day that you come home to find such riches left out on the coffee table.
Donnie brought it home. He got some work off his cousin. She sighed happily. Donnie had a cousin who owned a couple houses in Malden, and sometimes when a water heater exploded or a toilet got especially nasty he’d call Donnie over to help him fix it. I don’t know what it is about guys. They do seem to know how to do things. Even a certified loser like Donnie has the ability to patch up a busted water heater. It’s not a lot, but still, it’s maybe more than Ma. Though I guess Ma had kids, so that’s something, right? God. It’s so Tarzan and Jane, it’s really depressing. I think I’d like to opt out of the whole man-woman thing if possible. And it does seem possible, right now, when I’m mostly just a kid, but I know at some point the kid is going to melt right off my body, and then what? I’m a woman? It’s too overwhelming to think about.
Ma leaned over and gave me a hard kiss on my cheek, she really dug her lips into the skin there and I let her. It felt nice to be loved by Ma. Her hands dug into my gunked-out hair and rubbed my head a bit and I closed my eyes and let myself feel small. It was a real sweet moment. When it ended I hurried out of the living room, my pizza crust clutched in my hand. In the kitchen I grabbed the big tube of salt and shook a stream of it from the metal spout into the tender center of my pizza crust.
Ugh, Kristy said, entering the room. The camera sprouted from her face like a terrible growth. Tell the camera what you’re eating.
Pizza crust, I shrugged. The camera ran the length of my body, and I could feel it soaking in my bare feet, the sweats, the ratty T-shirt, and my crazyperson hairdo.
Kristy, I said, trying not to whine. You’re Not Being Fair. You’re Taking Me Out Of Context.
Kristy shook her head, the camera still firmly pressed to her eye so that it too shook in seeming disapproval. Her free hand gestured dramatically to the kitchen around us, the grease-heavy curtains and the clutter of the kitchen table. No, Trish, she said ominously. This is it. This is you, and this is your context.
Family time! Ma hollered from the living room. Kristy sighed, let down the camera, and hit the Pause button.
There’s Pizza, I offered helpfully.
Kristy shuddered at the suggestion of something bready. Ugh, no thanks. She hesitated, waiting for Ma’s next yell. What’s she doing? she whispered.
You Know, I said. Sitting Up. Waiting For You. It’s No Big Deal. I gulped the rest of the crust and grabbed a half-empty glass of water from the table to wash it down.
Nasty! Kristy said. Ma’s summons from the living room had made her edgy. That’s been there forever.
It’s Just Water.
Gross, Trisha. Really. You’ve got to learn how to be a bit more civilized if you’re going to keep that job. And I laughed, because though Kristy was right, I was going to have to learn to act like some sort of regular human girl for my time at Ohmigod!, Kristy was deluded if she thought my spot there was anything but doomed. The job was unkeepable. She’s In A Good Mood, I said, and jerked my head in the direction of the living room. You’re Going To Have To Say Hello To Her Sometime, It Could Be A Lot Worse. Yeah, Kristy said uneasily. She hit that Pause button again and the camera whirred back to life. She followed it into the living room. Hello, MTV! our mother cried happily from her spot on the couch.
Ten
Monday morning I tried to reason with Kristy. I told her that it was ultimately preferable to come into work smelling like cigarettes than with your face all puffy and red and its makeup muddied and streaked because you were crying about smelling like cigarettes. Through the entire philosophical discussion Donnie leaned far back in his seat, one arm draped lazily out the window and the other gently riding the steering wheel, a burning Marlboro clenched between his yellowing cigarette fingers. I’m doing you a favor, he pointed out, and by “pointed” I mean he used his burning cigarette as a little pointer, jabbing its ashy tip in Kristy’s general direction. I do your mother a favor, not smoking around her and her illness, and this is where I get to smoke. You ride with me, you ride with smoke. He chuckled as if he’d just created some identifying catchphrase for himself, like “Ay caramba!” or “Hasta la vista, baby.” You ride with me, you ride with smoke. What a genius. Kristy didn’t want smoke all over her clothes and her hair and neither did I, but I don’t indulge in dead-end fights. Donnie wasn’t going to toss his butt out the window and onto Route 1, which whizzed by beside us, sort of sad and abandoned-looking in the daylight. At night, forget it. I’ve never been to Las Vegas but I can’t imagine it’s any better than Route 1 and the lit-up theme resteraunts propped up alongside the freeway. There’s a Chinese restaurant that I heard has a frigging river running through it. A place called The Ship, which is on the inside of an I-shit-you-not ship. Another buffet sort of place that has a fountain inside and colored lights flashing below all the spouts, making the water glow red and blue and purple and a person playing a big, white organ in the middle of the whole thing. Route 1 is crazy and at night everything is neon. It’s pretty exciting. In the day it’s just sort of blammed out.
So Donnie was stinking up our hair and skin and fashionable clothing and Kristy’s about to make the whole problem aesthetically worse for herself by bursting into futile tears. Too bad she didn’t bring the camera. It would have been great to get a shot of Donnie, the back curls of his mullet getting blown by car-window wind into the giant pores of his sweaty cheeks, his cigarette, and his cheap plastic sunglasses, saying, When you ride with me, you ride with smoke. If The Real World didn’t just take immediate pity on her and whisk her off to TV-land then probably they’d at least have called Child Protective Services and warned them that a perfectly good teenage girl was being left in the care of a mulleted loser in Mogsfield, Massachusetts. But on the order of Mercedes Patron, Kristy had left her camera behind.
Don’t Do It, Kristy, I hollered at her from the backseat. Don’t Cry! No Crying! Jungle Unisex Has So Many Stinks In It, Nobody’s Going To Smell You Anyway. It’s true, I thought. All the perm-solution smells and the bleach and the hair colors, not to mention the gentler odors of shampoo and conditioner, hair gel and spray and spritz, and the smell of the ladies who work there, their perfumes and lipstick and powder smells. Who’s going to notice a bit of second-hand-smoke stink on Kristy?
Donnie dumped us off outside the side entrance, my favorite one with the neon-bulbed mall sign. Instead of saying good-bye he exhaled a gigantic cloud of cigarette smoke — I swear, he must’ve been holding it spitefully in his lungs since we turned into the parking lot five minutes ago. He breathed it out the window and it hung there like a toxic glob, stuck in the humid air outside his car window. Then he flicked the butt by our feet and peeled off. Me and Kristy stood there staring off after the Maverick, a lacy, blue smoke from the tires blowing into the cigarette smoke, creating a sort of smoke soup in the air around us. The little butt lay smoldering on the cement until Kristy daintily stepped on it with her sandaled foot. She smooshed it and then scuffed the ashy mess onto the ground like dogshit off her shoe. Could start a fire, she murmured. Kristy, I said. I felt like I had to bring her back. The ride in the car with Donnie and the smoke had clearly unhinged her. You’re Going To be Great, Dude! I clapped her on the back, which was bare. Kristy was wearing a terry cloth haltery-thing that scrunched across her boobs and cascaded over her butt. Resting on her chest were a couple of gold chains — one hers and one she’d pilfered from Ma’s dresser. She was biting Mercedes Patron’s style a bit, in a friendly way. I thought it was pretty smar
t of her. My own style was a little weird, if you ask me. A T-shirt that had the word “Baby” across it in that airy paintbrush style, like the kind you get at the state fair in Tewksbury. Like most everything Kristy owned, it glittered a bit. I had her old jean skirt on too but she wouldn’t let me borrow the one piece of her clothing I actually liked, a little belt with metal squares all over it. The squares are loose and Kristy was sure I’d knock a bunch off as I clumsily stomped through my day. I don’t know how fashionable I looked, though. I thought I looked kind of trashy, like some girl spending the summer hanging out at the parking lot carnival down on Revere Beach. I actually love the parking lot carnivals — I mean, I love any carnival, who doesn’t, but that one on Revere Beach is sort of the bottom of the parking lot carnival barrel. One of the times Ma tried to implement some authority in the house was after the last shooting down there. She forbid us to go but we were like, Yeah Sure Whatever Ma and then she went, “Well, okay, then win me something,” and that was that.
I insisted on wearing my own flops because you wouldn’t think the extra few inches on Kristy’s would make a difference but my heel kept sliding off the back and then my ankle would sort of twist around my heel like a contortionist foot and I swear I would have sprained my ankle if I’d worn them to my actual first day of work, so I had my own regular-sized black plastic flops on, my hair back off my face in a ponytail so it didn’t get my skin greasy, and ta-daa, I’m ready to go.
Kristy gave me a quick, fierce hug at the spot in the mall where our paths split. I watched her enter the darkly glowing cave of Jungle Unisex, then continued my way down the faux-brick road that paved the inside of the Square One Mall. Bernice O’Leary was hanging out by the gates of Ohmigod!, her eyes squinting through her bangs at her wristwatch. I felt a tiny clutch of panic in my throat. Was I late, was I going to get canned before I even started? I had to be on time, Kristy was fanatical about getting us into the Maverick, chop chop. That’s what she said, Chop, chop, clapping her hands together like some sort of military person. Also, Quick like a bunny! And she hopped behind me, herding me out the living room and onto the front porch, her sandaled feet snapping at my flip-flops, threatening to give me a flat tire and knock me down the stairs.
Bernice gave me a big-assed smile when she saw me, but that little clench stayed there in my throat, all fisted up tight. I thought: welcome to the workforce, Trisha. Like school but worse ’cause it’s really pretty hard to get fired from school. You’ve got to set the place on fire or beat up a teacher, and even then…Not so hard, I imagined, to get fired from a job, especially a place like Ohmigod! Bunches of spazzy, fashioned-crazed girls are just waiting for you to get the ax so they can strut their resume over to Bernice and take your place like you were never even there. I couldn’t think about it. My work at Ohmigod! was doomed, founded on a giant lie I could not hold up forever. That’s how it worked on TV, anyway. Fools always got found out. The pressure was on to uphold Kristy’s massive fib and be a good worker, whatever a good worker was. For real, no wonder Ma just stayed on the couch.
Patricia! Good morning! Bernice chirped. She tenderized her voice. How’s Kim? Have you talked to her? Is she feeling any better? I took a breath. I wasn’t expecting Kim questions so early in the morning. I figured right then that though I might be getting paid minimum wage to hang tropically flowered dresses and metal jewelry all day, my real job was to be Bernice’s connection to Kim.
Kim Is So Sorry, I started. Bernice’s eyes widened. Maybe she was in love with Kim Porciatti, I suddenly thought. Maybe she felt a lesbian love for her. Usually I hate it when kids say shit like that in school, like if someone is at all nice to a person of the same gender then bam, they’re a fag for them or something, but really there was something so gasping about Bernice’s interest in Kim, even considering the dramatic effect suicide attempts had on people.
You talked to her? she breathed.
Yeah, I said. Yeah, She Told Me To Tell You — I pointed at Bernice for affect — That She Is So, So Sorry She Hasn’t Called.
Bernice’s head was nodding furiously. It’s okay, it’s okay, tell her it’s all okay. She’s got enough to deal with right now. She needs to deal with getting better. Bernice tucked a swinging chunk of fluffy hair behind her ear.
Um, Yeah, I said. I nodded. I furrowed my brow. This was serious stuff, suicide. Bernice rolled up the giant gate and there stood Ohmigod!, shrouded in darkness, the shapes of the many dresses and bikini ponchos ghosty in the shadows, reflected endlessly in the dim mirrored poles scattered around the store.
Stay here while I turn off the alarm, Bernice told me, gently placing her hand on my shoulder before diving into the dark store. God, she was touchy. I was going to have to get used to it, the hands of Bernice O’Leary. The wind of her movement stirred the edges of garments as she slunk down the main aisle and disappeared as thoroughly as a dive underwater. It was undeniably spooky, Ohmigod! all shut down and creepy-quiet. Then blam blam blam the supersonic lights flashed on overhead and the room was screaming with color, fuchsia this and safety orange that and every ugly shade of green human tinkering has brought to the color wheel. The music slammed on too. The theme to that movie Pretty in Pink. Was that it? Was I in an eighties movie? If Molly Ringwald had been going through that drama in Mogsfield she would’ve ended up with her ass kicked at some horrid teen dance club on Route 1, Ducky would’ve been fagbashed, she would’ve never found that cool woman who gave her the dress, and her father would have been a more serious loser, like a molester. Molly wouldn’t have made it to the dumb prom at all — she’d have gone out with some other fuckups, gotten a little too wasted, had sex with someone regrettable, and wound up pregnant.
Okay, okay, come in! Bernice shot toward me with a big grin on her face and her arms akimbo, gesturing toward the glory of Ohmigod! like ta-daa! Like the store was a big party she’d thrown just for me. I felt myself relaxing a little, even in my stupid outfit. In fact, my stupid outfit was largely responsible for this fresh sensation of relaxation. Normally I’m not so relaxed in places like this. But really, on the rare occasions I’m forced to enter a shop like Ohmigod!, or perhaps am simply curious and drawn into the musical blare and general sensory overload, I don’t get treated too hot. In my sweats and in my flops, with my hair just kind of sitting on my head, no makeup, I look like some sort of intruder upon femininity, up to no good. The staff stare at me with undisguised hostility and wait for me to stuff a pair of capri pants down the front of my sweats and book it out the front gate. It’s insulting. I actually have never stolen, not even when it would be so damn easy I wonder if the store is asking me to lift their merchandise; not even when the staff are being such a-holes that they really, really deserve to be stolen from. It’s just my own little code of honor. When you walk around knowing that bunches of people are pegging you as a thief and a loser, the only thing I can think to do to get some revenge is to just not be that, to show them how wrong their puny brains are about people. But then I wonder how you go about letting those snobs know you’re a good person. Do you walk up to the salesgirl at Tight Knit, the one who has been shooting you electric-blue-lidded glares for fifteen minutes straight, and tell her, I’m Leaving Now, And I Just Wanted To Tell You I Didn’t Steal Anything? No, you don’t. You just suck up the injustice. Or, I’m learning, you change your tune. You put on a skirt and a little makeup, take care that your shirt says something demeaning like “Baby”, and the mall is your oyster.
Come here, Trishy, Bernice cried. She slapped her legs on the thighs of her fake-faded jeans so that it looked and felt like she was calling a dog. Some dog named Trishy. I followed her, hesitantly entering the chamber of bright clothes, of vertical stripes and improbable color pairings. She was rustling through a clump of hangers on a round rack. I was just looking at your shirt and thinking this might be up your alley, she said. She pulled out a couple hangers holding shirts embossed with some sparkly symbols. It was also all whooshed and fluffy-looking, like my �
�Baby” shirt. They’re astrology signs! Isn’t that smart? These are going to be big sellers. She tugged a couple more free. I think maybe I’ll do a nice display of them this morning, while you straighten. She nabbed one with a cutesy-looking cow on the chest and held it against her torso. I’m a Taurus. What sign are you?
Pisces, I said. She flicked a shirt at me, a big kissy-faced fish, a girl-fish, a porno blow-job cartoon fish, its lips glittered and poofy.
We should have one day where we all wear one of these shirts! In our signs! Isn’t that a great idea?
Totally. I handed the shirt back to her. I bet Bernice O’Leary was the kind of person who liked to dress identical to her friends when she was little. There’s something wrong with those sorts of people. Pretty in Pink faded and for a minute there was silence in the store, just the sounds of Bernice rustling through shirts, the echoing clatter of gates being rattled up across the mall. And then “We Built This City on Rock and Roll” came on and trashed it.
Eleven
I was standing at a rack of shirts. They were long and slippery and had strange knots on the ends and also sleeves that seemed slit up the middle and a back that plunged as far as a back can plunge without tearing a shirt in two. This shirt should come with instructions on how to put it on. This shirt was nearly impossible to keep on a hanger, even with the helpful strings sewn into the inside for just such a purpose. I was wrestling with the shirts. It was more entertaining then some of the earlier racks, because I was pretending they were slippery eels or tiny alligators and it was my job to catch and pin them to their hanger. It lessened the tedium of the task and made the time go by, creating weird little games in my head. I was glad Bernice was out of my hair, up inside the display window constructing her astrology diorama. Every so often someone she knew would stroll by and Bernice would start yelling, Hi! Hi!, and it would sound like she was talking to the mannequins. Her bubbly voice sounded trapped inside the window chamber. I imagined Bernice O’Leary finally losing it and befriending the mannequins. This too helped me pass the time. My arms were sore from keeping them at the level of the racks, from the lifting and placing. I hadn’t thought that working at a place like Ohmigod! would put a strain on any part of me — excepting the parts of my brain that fritz out after maximum color and flower-pattern overload — but I could feel my muscles aching after a half hour of the repetition. All the hangers had to be a finger apart from each other, so that the clothing fanned out in a perfect arrangement, like a chorus line of kick-dancers, each bent leg angled to reveal the next. It was my job to walk around the store and rack by rack make sure the hangers were this precise, anally retentive distance from each other. I had looked at Bernice blankly when she explained this task to me. I had been waiting for her to burst into chuckles like a big joker and cuff me on the shoulder. I had been waiting for her to say, I’m just fucking with you. I had been hoping to have the guts to ask, Are You Just Fucking With Me? But Bernice is no a joke. Bernice is a straight shooter. There isn’t space in Bernice’s brain for hoaxes. And so I set about spacing the hangers. Sometimes the clothes had to be coordinated by color, sometimes by style or size. I imagined this was like filing, like working in a library, only with clothes. Systems of order. I zoned out. Tried to block out the music, the Chaka Khan? Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan? The robotic dude voice chanting, rich…bitch. The cupcake drone of A material…a material…a material. Girls came in and wound their way through the racks. They oohed and shrieked and pronounced certain items weird or slutty. Those were the critiques I heard most often on that, my first, day at Ohmigod!, and I considered taking a poll, a survey, a study. If only school was still in session, maybe there was a class I could apply such investigation toward. What would I be researching? The worst things for a girl to be, based on insults directed at items of female clothing by shoppers at Ohmigod!