“Oh right, the fifty hours a week I spend making pizzas isn’t a real job?” I respond. I don’t know what the hell she expects from me. At least I am paying my bills by myself, unlike my older brother Austin. My Mom replies.
“Well, if the school board gives me a promotion soon, then I’ll be able to help you out with paying for the classes sweet heart.” She says to me half-heartedly. She has been expecting a promotion for some five odd years.
“Mom, just stop. You had to refinance the house two months ago. It’s OK. I know we don’t have the money. I’m fine.” I tell her, trying to reassure her that it doesn’t matter to me.
Student loans seem like a death trap to me. I’ve already accumulated a few thousand dollars’ worth of loans and have almost no college credit to show for it. The workers at the financial aid office at the community college just hand you the money without question. They give you the money so easily that it seems like you don’t even have to pay it back.
I have several friends with tens of thousands of dollars of loans. A few of them have actually made it through and gotten their degrees. But even those with a degree have trouble finding jobs. Paying for college is like financing a house before you’re even 25. It’s not an investment if you just end up working some bull shit job after you graduate.
“Have you seen your father’s new house?” My Mom asks me after a while. I take a few bites of food before responding, not wanting to talk about the subject.
“Um, yeah I have. Hey I think Austin is calling me.” I say the latter part and look downward at my phone. It isn’t ringing, but I made the comment in hopes of changing the topic. I’ve seen the huge house where my Dad lives now. He must be so happy. It was such a good move for him to leave us.
After lunch, my brother actually does text me and says that he’ll be over soon. I head out to the garage to wait for him. The garage is full of useless and accumulated junk. The junk is a symbol for how America operates as a whole. Why fix anything if you could just use your credit card to buy a new replacement?
I light a cigarette to kill the time. Nothing is better for waiting than a cigarette. I take a long drag from the burning cylinder and exhale. Standing at the threshold of the opened garage door, I examine the neglected driveway and lawn. There’s a basketball goal that my father put up many years ago. The backboard is cracked and the net is torn and hangs loosely. I stare at it, and after a few minutes, my brother pulls up in his truck.
He drives an old two-door SUV with tinted-out windows. As he pulls into the driveway, I hear his loud metallic music blaring from the stereo. He opens the door to get out, and my senses are overwhelmed with the smell of marijuana.
“Hey sis! How’s it hanging?” He yells at me goofily as he gets out of the vehicle and approaches the house. I reply to him as he comes nearer.
“Good, I guess. Maybe if you weren’t so stoned, you would’ve made it to lunch on time.” I say to him and he laughs loudly. He walks up to me and pulls his white undershirt up, exposing his abdomen.
“Check this out. It’s sweet, right?” He asks, motioning to a fresh tattoo on the side of his rib cage. The tattoo is a depiction of Tommy Ninja from the cartoon we use to watch when we were kids. As I look at it, my brother shouts out.
“Hi-yaw!” He yells and mimics the character’s signature karate chop. I half smile and shake my head.
“How the fuck did you even pay for that Austin?” I ask him. He drops his shirt, and sort of readjusts himself on his feet in an uncoordinated way as he answers.
“Don’t worry about it. My buddy at the tattoo parlor did it for half price. Hey is Mom still home?” He asks me.
“Yeah, of course she is. It’s Sunday dude.” I say to him. I then look at him a little more closely, into his glossy and red eyes.
“Wait why?” I ask him. He answers casually.
“No reason, no reason. Just wanted to see her you know. Is she in a good mood?” He asks me in a cool and high kind of way. I read through the question to his intentions.
“What do you need money for? Seriously, Austin. You know she doesn’t have shit right now.” I say to him angrily. He looks at me for a little before responding, like he might be able to get sympathy out of me.
“Look, the dude I’ve been crashing with just wants some money now for rent. No big deal. I’m going to get a job soon.” He tells me. I make a loud exhalation and turn away from him.
“Fucking dead beat.” I say out-loud, and make my way to my car. You would think that when my Dad left, my brother would’ve stepped up as the man of the house. He doesn’t do shit though. It pisses me off so much some times.
I head back to my apartment slowly. I’m exhausted from everything. Every time there is a break in the music from the radio in my car, I hear the minister’s voice from earlier. It makes me feel dead inside over and over again. As I lie down to sleep later, my last conscious thoughts are those of the hell that awaits me.
I wake up around mid-morning, and lie in my bed for a long time. The morning light finds its way into my room around the cracks of the blinds of my windows, shining onto my long legs. I feel helpless and unable to move at all. My thoughts run through my mind like a running dialogue.
“You’re a slut.”
“God hates me.”
“Kill yourself. Just fucking kill yourself.”
“Stop it!” My mind is racing so fast that it becomes overwhelming and unbearable. I toss and turn in my bed, unable to sleep, yet continuously shutting my eyes like I am going to. Occasionally, I pick up my phone and stare at it desperately.
I have a phone full of numbers for people that I don’t talk to anymore. I scroll down through my contacts, looking for someone to talk to. I start at the A’s: A.J., Alex, Allen, Anthony. I scroll more quickly. I get to the B’s: Billy, Brad, Brandon, Bret. I throw down my phone in disgust. All I have is numbers for guys that I barely know. I pick up my phone and look at my contact list again; it’s at the D’s. The first contact is “Dad”. I drop my phone and start crying.
I remember the last time I saw my father. I went to visit him at his new house, with his new wife, and his new kids. I got dropped off by a boy that I had spent the night with. As he drove off in his truck, my Dad addressed me.
“Who the fuck is that Katie?” He asked me in a hostile tone.
“He’s just one of my guy friends Dad.” I told him. “Guy friends” is a term I use for the men I sleep with. None of them have any intention of really being with me, thus “boyfriend” would be inappropriate. He yelled at me violently.
“Is that what you do now? You just fuck every god damn dick in town?” He shouted at me. I started crying a little bit and responded.
“Oh yeah, like you’re any better asshole.” I said. He slapped me in the face, and I began crying with more emotion. He told me to leave and forget about our dinner plans. He told me to never come back to his house again.
I think over this as I lie in bed. If I were just better, if I just hadn’t been such a slut, then maybe my Dad would still love me. A few hours pass before I decide to get up to go smoke a cigarette outside.
I stand outside in the covered porch of our apartment. The porch is on the ground floor, and the grass of the lawn reaches right up to the cement foundation. As I light my cigarette, I look outward into the cloudy skies and it starts to drizzle.
The rain comes down lightly, falling from the heavens. It’s like the tears from angels weeping. They cry and cry over me, over the unwanted and sinful whore. They cry because they know I have broken God’s laws and that he will seek justice. He will damn me to hell for eternity.
After