Spent (2 page)

2

G
rowing up, I liked
dirt. My backyard was a wet and mossy redwood forest. In the summer, the fog hung like strips of cotton on the branches. When the sun melted the mist, the fog dripped from the tips. Heading North on the 101 towards Arcata or South towards Fortuna were thick layers of sequoias—shades of dark green giants swaying above brown-red trunks as far as one could see. The shadows they cast brought a quick and quiet night. There's no silence like Humboldt.

The grassy hill where I played was green and lush. Like a lot of kids, I spent hours constructing forts out of old redwoods. I'd find a stump and use branches to form a shelter from which I watched the banana slugs leave slimy trails below. I would pick huckleberries and blackberries and dig into the soil to snatch slim carrots from the garden. I threw stones in the pond. At nine, I pretended I was an Indian princess hiding from cowboys. I didn't want to hide too well because I wanted them to find me, put me on their horses, and ride away with me. Horsetails lined a creek that glistened with silver rocks. Rays of sun reached through the branches, but the trees cooled the creek's bright glow, turning it orange and gentle and still.

Out front, I ran up the ivy-coated hill to a spongy moss-covered stump and pulled myself up. My pretend cowboys never showed up, so I roller skated down the hill in front of my house pretending to be Olivia Newton-John in
Grease
, after she got slutty. I'd roll too fast until I was scared of crashing, then collapse into spit-covered ivy. Soaked, I'd run into the forest and climb over the broken redwood fence and into another yard where I was chased by the neighbor's mean goat, but it never stopped me from stealing their boat and paddling in their pond or from taking a ride on their rope swing. I played alone, and the trees stayed still and watched.

I was surrounded by shadows, bark, and moss. The Pacific Ocean was violent and windy. In high school, on rare sunny days, I'd cut class and drive to Samoa Beach to sit on cold sand. Almost no one went near the ocean without a wetsuit—if I so much as stuck a toe in the water, I squealed. Seagulls flew overhead and pelicans built huge nests on top of electrical posts. The crab boats were docked. Samoa Beach smelled like dead fish and bird shit and home.

The summer Mom died, I got pulled over by a cop for flipping an illegal U-turn to park at the beach and stare out at the ocean. While he spoke to me, I watched waves crash. I wished I could ignore him, but instead I fished my papers out from the glove box.

“You just crossed a double yellow,” the cop said.

“My mom is dying three houses down. I'm from here.” I pointed in the direction of her house. But now I can't remember if that happened right before or right after she died, because that's what death does to memory. Before and after was one day. She was carried off in a big van without her pink and green striped socks because I took those. Wind whipped my face.

The cop didn't write me a ticket.

“Get your head together,” he said.

When he was gone, I walked down to the water, sat on a wet log, and stared at the tide. I wanted to be somewhere else that day—somewhere with my mom, laughing while spreading chocolate frosting on a sheet cake for one of her women's organization meetings. The ocean tide ripped moss and branches with a fast, cold thrust; it pounded as she drifted away. I wanted to sit with her in the sunshine, both of us reading books and munching on her M&M's. I wanted her to be home when I returned with the truck.

On the wet log, in front of icy waves, I remembered things I was told: I was born on the darkest night in November with no moon. Mom wanted a girl so bad she was sure I'd be a boy. She only had boys' names in mind: Anthony. Joel.

She was flummoxed when I was a girl. The name she gave me came from one of those seventies name books. Most of the names in our family lacked spice—Susan and Jen and Steve, with sounds that hung around the front teeth and barely troubled the tongue at all. But Mom wanted something that could be shortened, something with more syllables. So she picked Antonia, which means priceless treasure. Aunt Lou was appalled that my mother had chosen an Italian name. In pictures taken that day, Aunt Lou frowned like a troll, but Mom's toothpaste-commercial smile canceled all that out.

One week before Mom
died, she had said, “Come look at photo albums with me. I'm the only one who knows who these people are.” We never got the chance, and I took the albums with me back to Los Angeles. She'd been right. Who were these hillbillies? The people between the sticky film pages were a gristly clan of Irish, French, and Algonquin country bumpkins with big hands and dirty feet. They carved smiley faces into their blackberry pies, collected coins, dug ditches, and kept bees.

I would never know who any of these people were. But there I was in a faded Polaroid, puckered, pink, and ugly—wrapped in a fuzzy blue blanket, not a boy.

3

O
n the day he
left, Dad said, “You'll always be my little girl,” and I followed him onto the porch, watching. I was ten. I tasted rot on my tongue as he walked to his car and drove away. My mouth was dry from hanging open, and I couldn't cry. I stood frozen on the porch facing the empty driveway for a long time while Mom wailed beside me.

She was standing at the front door of our house one minute, sturdy and tough, then collapsed at the knees like a flimsy doll as he drove away. Alan picked her up, carried her into the living room, and set her down on the fuzzy brown couch. She sat there wailing “Nooo…” and stayed like that for hours, getting skinnier every second. Drool spilled out of her mouth and soaked the couch.

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 Cincinnati. 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.