This is the story they all want to hear. This is the tale that brings the strangers near. This is the why, because it was never a whodunit. This is the truth. I’m speaking it only because you haven’t come to hunt it.
So stop now for a moment and listen to the past. Because once I say it here, I won’t repeat the crash. Crash crash crash. Smash smash smash. Thunk thunk thunk. The sound effects on the TV are made to fake the funk. Because when you really do something, I mean really do a deed, you can never rest again without death screams instead of dreams. And you can’t open albums because they may be there to see your tears as you articulate you stole their true sight, life, and being.
The ghosts is what some call it. The spirits of the dead. To me, those are such disembodied terms. To refer to the loved and lost that way disrespects them. I can celebrate Mother’s Day now only if I date a mom, because I alone felt spotlights on my lone gone choice made so wrong.
I eat my veggies every dinner whether I want to or not. It’s those little silent habits she used to stress when I once forgot. I’ve studied all the things she liked, the culture blend from which she came, like a scientist madly set on recreating her puzzle so I can see it whole. Then I came to reframe.
I loved her as a baby. I loved her as a child. I loved her as a preteen. Even as a teen I did for a while.
When did mom become an enemy? When did we grow apart? I mean, she always said I was her favorite. I loved her back with all my heart.
I know now about trauma, sexual abuse, and shame. But she was the one who never touched me, yet the one I always blamed.
My mom was a liar, but the white lie type, they’d say. She’d compliment my stepgrandma’s hat, then turn around and make a face. She had me wear grandma’s coat to Papa’s wedding and told no one I’d been slipped some dollar bills. So in the pictures I’m in a black coat of death, smiling, unaware amongst the summer-themed frills.
But I was mama’s best friend. I was her secret right-hand man. The one she taught how to get dad to put his extra change in the nightstand. “A man watches his bank statements but never checks his pockets. And this one percent a day will add up if he leaves, so we’ll be okay,” she’d repeat every time we restocked it.
Yeah, that pretty coin sleeve machine. We’d pour that change into it, then take it to the bank dad hates to put only her name on.
My mom gave me lots of hugs. She was a cuddle machine. I mean, never with my father, no. But to every child she’d ever seen.
“Dad’s got two veins in his weenie. It overheats his sperm. But it’s okay because my diabetes has destroyed my womb,” she’d explain, so stern.
They never locked their door at night. Mom liked when I slept in the bed. But dad would give me sleeping bags and send me to the hall instead. Until he came home less and less.
Mom liked to drink her wine each day. Dad said he enjoyed her more that way. But as soon as he would board another plane, the drinking glasses went dry as a desert day.
I remember she went back to work. I heard dad lose his temper, so I asked if we were going broke. She said no, the job would help her. But I was getting older and had begun to raise myself as she searched for purpose, scrapbooking, then seeking Diane Keaton movies for help. The First Wives Club was a constant theme. Whereas before, mom hated TV and all technology, until she decided no more ice cream scenery, closed the freezer, and got her things.
We had a housekeeper who helped me when I’d get home from school to a huge, nice, empty house smelling of Lysol and bleach fumes. Yeah, Francisca made me grilled cheese, as I wasn’t old enough to cook. My sisters were supposed to be there, but once boys came, their lives were taken. So it was me and Francisca, who did not know any English and was not hired to even watch me, but still fed me and treated me decently.
After all, she was the one who walked in on me at 10, under the pastor’s daughter, who was older and hellbent. Yeah, she tried to tell my mother about the hairbrush up my butt. But without citizenship papers, she couldn’t force her to stop that stuff.
My mom was don’t ask, don’t tell. Argentine, not mean, but old school and unwell around any mention of sex outside a nursery, because as a Catholic it was all Satan and his adversity.
So the gardener down the street held me when I was 7 years old. And I was grounded for coming home once the streetlights went on and supper was cold. Back then these things were normal to everyone but me. So I was treated poorly for not being polite about such things.
“Know a child’s place,” I’d hear Papa say, when mom made me wear my pigtails for him in the proper little girl way. He liked overalls on a child and no words for the child to say. Though at home it was never that way.
Oh, and mom did love my sisters, but for them she had higher expectations. Both beautiful and talented, they were my love-hate devastation.
Kimmie was the oldest, a blonde with blue devil eyes who loved me until she went to college, then fell in love with her many bongs and pipes. Before then she’d been so playful, unless in a mood, when her eyes would go milky and I’d know to sprint hard and fast out of her room.
See, she called herself a prankster, but I always ended up an unfunny joke. Tied to a tree, a bike, a car, or any random post. She liked to mimic those dickless movies, but I was always the stunt test dummy. Once she had some boys and some drinks, that’s when I would be videotaped and humming, eyes closed shut, as she put the cables all around my body, then made me fly, fall, flip, or whatever she saw coming.
Until Julie got into her school and Kimmie’s boyfriend tried his luck, only to get turned down. And yet I saw Kimmie smash glass on Julie, who’d duck. After that, Julie came home early to help untie my ropes and pick the locks where Kimmie would put me after those stunts. An empty closet with a big teddy bear, a trashcan, and peanut butter so I could sleep, eat, or use as a rest stop.
Then Julie started drinking too, but she was just a regular kind of drunk. She’d come home crying or all confused, and I’d get her to bed, neatly tucked. I even learned the drunkest codes. Like she’d say “turn off the bathroom,” which meant shut off her light. Or when she’d yell “the lights near,” I knew a pee break was a must that night.
Julie had a boyfriend she’d met in elementary school. His family owned a pizza place and he was a mean mystery who my parents tried to drive away many times, outright forbade. But she’d call him every night the same, as I’d hold her in bed while he yelled and I prayed. Later I found out he had knocked her up, then made her abort the baby. No one knew, but when that bomb blew, she was shipped off to a state far away from me.
Julie was my everything, my role model, but also my reason to stay and tolerate things. Because who, if not me, would be her team? To answer school calls like my mom and say she’d call back sick, you see. Without me, who would get her up the stairs with several random friends in tow, all reeking of Jack Daniels, needing me to put them sitting in the shower, then guide them one by one to bed, scrub up any throw-up left, and get them all into proper silken jammies so in the morning mom would excuse a last-minute slumber party, clean fun and dandy.
And I needed my Julie to teach me things, like how to talk like other human beings, or how to not say exactly how I felt. As she explained, “How are you” was not a question, only a casual greeting. Julie had to pick out my clothes, do my hair, makeup, and all the girl stuff I’d never know. Yes, she had to be there to help me pass so my lesbian ways wouldn’t be seen so rash.
But then mom found out about Planned Parenthood, took Julie’s placemat off the table for good, and gave only a one-way ticket away to a Colorado college town to stay. And let’s just say, on my own, I can’t hide my gay.
Months after, I was kicked out of school for kissing a girl off campus, a Christian rule. Never mind that the girl came on to me, because her grandpa funded the academy. And the girl also reported what she had seen but never admitted she told because she loved me.
So yeah, on Friday a kiss, and Monday dismissed. Off to a charter school for expelled screwups who on paper were the same as me, simply kicked out dropouts, all unwanted, unseen.
That’s when I wonder when mom and I switched teams. Because I’d caught her in a lie. When I’d gotten to private school, she’d sworn I could leave by my first year’s halfway mark if I felt still bullied. Then she took it back and made me stay. I fibbed. She screamed. Only for me to get expelled for being me.
Then the second lie came to backstab me. My biological grandma reached out to me, stage 4 cancer, and requested we meet. A good thing, you’d think, if not for one thing. Mom had raised me saying I’d meet my birth mom one day. I saw my sisters do it and was expecting my dream of orphan Annie returned home to become, at last, complete. Only for mom and dad to tell me they’d lied to help me, because my mother was dead. So I wept and wept. Then asked when her funeral was set to be. When mom and dad locked eyes, a rare thing, then mom said, “Four years ago, right before you turned 3.”
My head spun. I was confused and numb in a bad dream. “You lied to me?” I choked out. “That can’t be.” “We didn’t want you to feel different than your sisters, see?” “I’ve never been like my sisters!” I screamed.
Then I threw my glass cup of water, my first time ever breaking anything intentionally. But they sat calm and didn’t reprimand me. I knew it was because they knew they were wrong. So I stormed out and got online, angry. Never before had I let myself get mad. I’d lived my life shy, in tears, or glad. But that rage awoke in me then and I was beyond pissed, and nobody around could say they didn’t understand.
So I put on Simple Plan and turned it up because I wasn’t allowed to hear rock bands. Then I opened up MySpace, unashamed, the very site my mom had banned me from due to posts she’d called inappropriate. But when she walked in, she had nothing to say. She touched my shoulder for me to shove it away. “You are a liar,” I turned to stare at her with hate. “It was for your own good,” she dared say. “Do I look good now?” Suddenly my mouth was unfiltered and unafraid. She backed away and I slammed the library room door in her face.
The power dynamics, I now can see in crystal clear hindsight, then changed. I was in charge and she was too blamed. We both felt the same. I’d been emo and rocker for years on the low, mainly over the internet only, but all secrets had to go. I threw out all colors from my closet, all but my black sets of clothes. I dyed my hair against house rules, blue black, with Sharpie on my nails to clearly show.
I went on and hurt myself since I was too chickenshit to run. But this time I showed it off. I grabbed my great-aunt’s psych meds and told mom I was up. She had ignored the rapes. She’d ignored cuts and scrapes. She’d ignored the gayness, all for society and suburban image’s sake. She’d ignored my notes and printouts on suicidal depression. She’d ignored my housekeeper’s firsthand witness confession. But every moment she hesitated, I’d open the bag more. Every time she tried not to get in the car, I told her a lie, that I’d already taken some and was about to take more. Every time she tried to pull over, I grabbed a bigger handful. When she tried to stop the car, I undid the child lock on full-speed highways and tugged open the door with a handle.
When she cried and said she was lost, all of a sudden directions to the hospital weren’t forgot. Mandated reporters. Websites had told me a firehouse, police station, or hospital could save me. So I walked in with purpose and told the emergency room nurse I was there to help me not kill me. Mom silently shadowed, docile but letting me take the lead.
That is until the social worker came to see me. She said she’d let us talk, but I saw her on the other side of the door listening. So I signaled to the worker, took her pen, and wrote that I could not speak. So it was all yes or no questions, only head nods for yes or headshakes no from me. Until she asked about sexual abuse and said she’d need more than that from me. But I pointed to the shadow under the door, mom’s feet, and shook my head hard as a serious no. The woman looked scared, then concerned, then declared she’d have to admit me.
So with that, the psych ward was a new home to me. At my new school my new look was hot stuff. I came out as a lesbian on day one. I kissed girls and skipped class, did no homework and would sneak off to crash drunk in the study hall full of new friends for endless hours. They loved the way I gave no damn and reveled in pure power. Tight skinny jeans and low cut, cleavage up, rock and rolled emo goth tees. I wore chains with skulls and guns for charms and stopped hiding the cuts on my arms I’d always disguised with long sleeves. I was going to do and be whatever suited this new not hate-filled me. No one could stop me, at least no one who still had respect or any credibility.
That was 14 days of bliss for me. Cafeteria food, good sleep, and parents locked outside, away from me. I met kids who were kinder than the rebels in school who’d pump me up to do bad things. The kids in the ward were just hurt and sad, so they met the real me. At the end of my two-week hold I begged not to leave. But they said if I didn’t name my sexual abusers, they could not protect or begin to rehouse me. But the pastor’s daughter was a family friend. I knew the church would vouch for her over the homosexual dropout black sheep me. So I held my tongue and cried when forced to leave. That is until I saw my parents and went back to the hardened version of myself they’d accepted I’d turned out to be.
I went home, but after that I knew there were other options away from that house of lies for me. So I packed my bags, got ready, and planned. Only for it to shock and sneak up on me. All that scheming went to nothing when Vons caught on to my card embezzlement scheme.
I believe at this point she became the specific enemy to me, the person I ran from and never wanted to see. Before the hospital she’d been passive, but just out and free she did a test on me that hit me like a blow to the knees. She sent me to fetch milk, normal for me. I’d always prior got her items and mine on separate receipts, but she’d never even checked once. So when the man swiped the milk and my gum at once, I felt I should speak but instead let it be. I hit the maximum cash back, put in the PIN, and decided to leave with my bags of bulimic treats.
I sat in the canyon, ice cream tubs and cereal containers all strewn about. I ate chocolates, honey buns, all I could stuff down. Once full I wanted more, so I purged to make room. I still had muffins, chips, soda, and all things mom called empty calories to enjoy to myself before I’d cover my breath with Juicy Fruit. So yes, I was late, but that was normal for me by then. I hid a bag of leftover food on the side yard before going in the house as if nothing was askew.
But she was waiting, arms crossed, when I put down her bag of milk. She told me to show her the receipt and I told her it should be in there, but she told me to pull it out. So I played on with lies smooth as silk. It must’ve dropped in front of the store or on the way home. But she was set and the test was soon to be blown.
To avoid wrappers in the canyon I told her I’d walked the long way, just in case. Good thing, because she told me to get in the car so we could pick it up as we drove back that way. So I acted like I was looking, tense but acting calm, until we got back up to the Vons parking lot. She told me to retrace my steps and she’d watch. So I got out and acted like I looked for over 20 minutes nonstop.
Then I came back and pointed to the girl scout selling cookies in front of the store. “You know, if they see litter they throw it away.” I believed I’d scored. “Well go through the trash then.” Her face was unchanged. I looked at her as if she’d grown a third head, but she stuck to her guns and I’d bluffed that far, so I went to the trash cans one by one and dug as neighbors passed me looking horrified.
Four trash cans completed, top to bottom as directed, I returned with a receipt so damaged the print couldn’t be read and felt resurrected. But like I said, she’d planned this, was more than a step ahead. She looked at it briefly, then locked eyes with me and said, “They keep copies of sales in the register under my account. I am going to go inside and prove you’ve been lying now.”
“Go ahead. I got milk, like the commercial,” I smirked. But humor was late and lost as she got out of the car. I watched her go inside, felt that wad of new cash I’d gotten back right there in my jeans. Then something inside me broke, and my outside broke free. Running from the lot, straight toward the highway. There were no bus stops so I kept on running, hopping gates and searching for anyone to hide me.
That is until I found myself in a neighborhood along the freeway. I wandered the streets until I saw men playing basketball and I walked their way. Dad hated Black people. He said the Black man kills, steals, and destroys. I wanted to be stolen. If killed, so be it. But I’d just let my old self be destroyed and was up to be with these supposedly bad boys.
So I walked up and said my car engine blew out by the college. I asked if they could give me a ride and they asked to where, but it took me too long to answer. Long story short, one gave me a ride. He gave me many drinks and then he spiked one for his own good time. Memories are hazy but I remember I got hurt. He answered his phone in the middle for his wife and said he’d had a hard day and gotten stuck. I was in their bed, face down and numb. But I could see him and his wife with their baby in a picture above. I saw a toddler’s room as he took me out to his car. He never drove me to where I’d asked to go, but he did drive me pretty far from home. I told myself I’d met at least that goal. Then I told him to drop me off downtown where I planned to get a trolley to one of my girlfriends’ homes.
He drove me to the city, but the rest I will digress. The drugs were still strong and another man got me to go with him in exchange for a place to rest. He held me for three days in what I later learned was a home for sex offenders. He was the lowest level of security and I barely escaped. It’s too raw to remember. And now remember, the point was there were two men. So when my pregnancy test was positive, I figured I’d have no issue keeping a baby, since those drugs had erased both men’s faces.
I made it to that girlfriend. She became my lover. We agreed we’d both raise my son as two proud mothers. I fell in love and had something to live for: a new baby, a new life, newly opened opportunity doors. I was sober while pregnant but got by selling weed. I’d swapped cigarettes and alcohol stolen from my sister Kimmie for my sacks of green.
I was all about the money, getting ready for my kid. But those streets were calling me and I liked to listen. I’d rack off for days, then weeks at a time. I’d met back up with a girl I’d loved and lost and lost my damn mind. Seven months pregnant but less than 100 pounds soaking wet, she let me crash at her place in oversized clothes all bought for 99 cents.
So she told her mom I’d barely been raped and her mom called mine. My mom said to get Plan B but I refused to go, so they all planned my demise. Alexis went to Planned Parenthood with her mom, but when they left the room she told a nurse an abortion pill was her true need. So they got back from what I’d been told was church. They were a Jehovah’s Witness family, very serious about God’s word. Her mom said she’d run to the store and got me a prenatal vitamin. “Try one for now and tell me if you like it.” I took it and then nodded, the mother eyeing me all day. Before bed she asked if I’d taken the pill, if it all felt strange.
But when I miscarried that next morning it all fell into place. I believed my mom knew I was 7 months and the three of them had killed my poor son. The girl I’d been there for wouldn’t confirm or deny it in any way. She only vented about me almost getting her excommunicated from her church due to our past fling I’d openly claimed.
Then I told her mom I wanted to go back to our school. I promised I’d go home but it was all a lie. I was no fool. So I got there and sold a few sacks of weed, saw my plug, who then brought me to an older girl, fresh out of juvi, with real stuff. We talked about me going into selling ecstasy pills for cigarettes, drink, and weed. She told me if I broke off profit, she’d have me soon selling speed.
Then the police came. “Woop woop,” calling out for me. I swore I was busted and the others cleared out. But no cuffs were slapped on and they said, “We just need to talk,” which made all the kids nearby frown. So I went but said loudly I did not want to speak. Still, they said my mom had sent them and I had to make a statement. Classmates were listening. I looked like a snitch. I couldn’t believe it but knew I was in deep. So they took me to a room, closed the door, and I went still. Every second I knew was being counted, so I got directly to the point.
They weren’t there to arrest me and because I was at school, they wouldn’t make me go home. But they had some pictures which they lined in a row. It was the man who’d had me those three days. They told me all the men in the lineup were sex offenders housed in the place I’d told my Jehovah’s Witness friend I’d been held.
For my statement, I pushed open the door and yelled, “Forget the police!” I walked out seeing red, a ball of mass fury. Looking back now I see that was when the violence within poured outward and I wanted others to also be hurting. So I marched straight to the hangout where that Jehovah’s Witness was with our friends. I cussed her out and she leaned forward and the catfight began.
Only once as a kid had I scuffled with a girl I’d liked, but it was nothing close to that. Only two other times in my entire life had I been violent in any way. The first time I was only 3 years old. The pastor’s daughter I’d grown up abused by had run her bike through some children’s blocks I’d built a small wall out of, so I’d pulled her hair and caused her to fall off her bike, which had earned me a swift punishment and long repetitive lectures against violence.
The second time, I’d kicked a close friend in the shin for playing basketball instead of hanging out with me like we’d always done before. That offense earned me a year of detention and every day I was scared my parents would be notified by the school. Only because I’d begun an affair with my sixth grade teacher, a woman over 30 with similar features to the pastor’s daughter, do I believe my parents were not notified. That year of detention was served with the sixth grade teacher I then felt I was smitten for, but now understand I was a victim of, as I’m now her age and would never date any 11 to 13 year old.
So yes, the catfight I had was one
Heather, 32
Incarcerated: 16 years
Housed: California Institute for Women, Corona
