Channeling Janis

wwf smackdown

2004-11-11T18:21:00.000-08:00

November 11, 2002: Dear, dear diary & good friend of mine. Momma was ready to take me down a notch last night after I got in late to pick up Boo. Now mind you late to me is hours & hours & hours while late to Momma is half hour past her time to settle into her shows. Heaven forbid she should experience interference while trying to watch Wheel of Fortune. After all who could miss her red carpet commentary on Vanna's wardrobe? You have to be there. Any way it was like a good old-fashioned smackdown & yours truly was the underdog of the hour. All right, to be fair, I didn't call and I was over an hour. But for fuck's sake. Can't a girl get an itch scratched without calling out the national guard? Go figure. Here's how it went down: In this corner we have Andre the Giant, old school wrestler extraordinaire, freak of nature, and all around big, mean dude. And over there in the other corner, we got the Rock, action figure and movie star wannabe, ready to rumble, just as soon as his hair gel dries. Who's Momma & who's me? I think you know dearest diary. Later, dudette.

That Emmy Lou should have known better is the understatement. That Emmy Lou knew better is accurate. That she habitually fucked up even when she knew the repercussions of her failed actions, well, that was one for the textbooks. When she was little, she had the habit of throwing herself to the ground and thrashing until she turned violet from the effort.l The first time she fell out, the results were hypnotic. Jack Pritchard was still alive & he and her Momma had spent the whole day at the shore, leaving the girls at home with a girl cousin while they went off on one of their day trips like they were off on a second honeymoon. They came home pink and satisfied and smelling of saltwater and taffy and the sight of them, the injustice of it, was more than little Emmy Lou could bear. It just wasn't fair. And Emmy Lou had a self-righteous streak, a wide swathe of indignation that cut through her core she knew when she'd been gypped all right and she wasn't about to let this injustice pass. Oh, hell no. Down she went in the grips of a grand mal.

"Sweet Jesus," Jack blurted, as Emmy Lou writhed out of control.

"Watch your mouth, Jack Pritchard," her Momma snapped. "The children."

"Lookit that. The children? Lookit. You're worried about my mouth?" He lurched forward unsure really of what to do; he'd had a few beers down shore and his thinking was still fuzzy. "Get her," he ordered, himself grabbing hold of Emmy Lou's torso. Her Momma scrambled for Emmy Lou's legs.

Delighted by this move, Emmy Lou took this opportunity to wail louder and flail harder with impunity. She smacked Jack Pritchard good and plenty hard first with the flat backs of her hands, then managing to break skin with her nails, drawing welts and blood. She landed a leather shoe hard against her Momma's shin.

"Gee-Dee," her Momma bellowed.

Yee-haw, her Momma bellowed. Her perfect, ladylike Momma cursed. Hot damn. Hooty-hoot-hoo-ha.
"Oh, my Lord." Her Momma was crying real tears. "Lord, Lord, Lord. Help her."

Jack Pritchard's combover hung limply across his flushed face as he struggled against Emmy Lou's continuing blows. Emmy Lou was enjoying this show.

"Ruby, that girl's gonna choke," Jack Pritchard hollered. "Go'n get a spoon."

Her Momma hung onto Emmy Lou's legs like she was holding onto a life raft and even through the chaos, probably because of the chaos, Emmy Lou thought her head might burst from the singlular thought looping through her head: my Momma does too love me.

"Girl, did you hear Jack Pritchard," her Momma shouted. "Get that Gee-Dee spoon. Now!"

Cousin Ruby stumbled backward out of the room and came back quick snap with one of her Momma's good sterling plate spoons.

My Momma does too love me. My momma does too love me. My momma does too love me. The words dripped sweet and slow, blackstrap molasses, thick from the cold, puddled at the base of her tongue, held there, savored and swallowed long and slow and whole. My Momma does too love me.

"Gi' me that spoon," Jack Pritchard ordered. Somwhere far above the trance where Emmy Lou found herself immersed deeply and truly in love with the idea that this must surley be love, love, love, raw blocky hands, pried at her jaw, forcing her lips open. Metal scraped against her teeth, propelling a shock like ice water through her.

airing the dirty laundry…

2004-11-11T18:12:00.000-08:00

No one in her family did what Emmy Lou dared to do. The general consensus was that Emily Lou was a tad crazy and a bit stuck on herself. Why else would anyone need to tell a perfect stranger all of one’s troubles? And pay that perfect stranger, no less. You just had to be crazy to do that kind of thing. Initially all that navel-gazing seemed so self-indulgent to Emmy Lou, but then she warmed to the idea like grits and gravy. One minute she was angry at her therapist, probing bastard, and the next minute she was flopped back on the couch inspecting the lint in that navel with the best of them. This is not to say she enjoyed her therapy. It sucked. The first sign it was working was the quiver in her lip, followed by the ache in her throat, by-product of the ache in her heart. Shortly, thereafter, the gate got left open and Emmy Lou was sniffling in a puddle of fresh tears.
The relief was far greater than the shame she felt. She dragged herself to his office twice a week for her sobfest and each week told herself this visit would be her last. And each week she returned, asking herself how she got to be so downtrodden. What exactly was it that she’d experienced that made her life seem so insurmountable. Her Momma’s words echoed in the nooks and crannies of her mind: be grateful you’ve got all your limbs, missy. The idea that she was nothing more than an ingrate who didn’t truly know the meaning of suffering stalked her incessantly. After all, what exactly did Emmy Lou have to complain about. She had a roof over her head, cash flow and a beautiful little boy. There were plenty of folk who had less, far, far less. So, she didn’t know her Daddy. Big deal. Better that than a victim of incest or war crimes. Get over it, she told herself not once, but many, many times.
And in this sense, she was getting over it. Fortifying herself with a little 420 and a little wine-spodey-odie, Emmy Lou was making the best of the crap hand she’d been dealt. That her crap was less deep than the crap of others was irrelevant she supposed on the days when she felt she could treat herself fairly, wisely and with compassion, so off she schlepped to the office of her therapist. Help me, help, help me, please. Her body announced her pain with its hangovers, leg cramps and muscle spasms, throbbing headaches, and low back ache. Emmy Lou was thirty-three, the same age as Jesus when they nailed hijm to the cross, not that that meant anything in the world that was Emmy6 Lou’s. But, she thought she should be more, for fuck’s sake, so much fucking more than what she was and it was this nagging dissatisfaction that ruined her. She should be doing cartwheels or some such nonsense as that and people should be sitting up and taking notice. She shouldn’t be sitting up nights because the little voices in her head wouldn’t let her sleep, kept telling her what a fine piece of work she was and how she’d never amount to nothing ‘cause nothing begat nothing and anybody’s daddy left them without ever even seeing the red wrinkled apple baby face of them. No, sir, life wasn’t meant to be lived this way, yet somehow this way was exactly the way Emmy Lou was living this life.
The rain came down like movie rain, the sheets and sheets of rain, the singing in the rain kind of rain, that glistened hard and unforgiving like diamonds, blood stones, forever, un relenting. Emmy Lou was soaked. Her coat and hat gave off the dung-like odor of wool. The mystery unraveled behind her and she stuffed its messy contents into a plastic bag, trying to keep it all in check.
At some point she knew she had to turn a corner or suffocate. She had known people who had suffocated, the little plastic bags that consist of the drudge and misery of life tightening over their faces until they turned blue and were gone, vanished. For all intents and purposes, dead. Getting the job at cousin Mabel’s insurance agency would be her plastic bag. The more her Momma pushed, the more Emmy Lou dug in to her position as sometime student and welfare mother. Which was the greater shame, dying an infinitesimally slow death by intellectual asphyxiation or living off the man? Well, she thought she knew the answer to that one.
***
She held her head in her hands, trying to keep it from splitting wide open and spilling what was left of her common sense out onto the ground where she would be forced to examine the slight nature of its contents. Jesus, what had she been thinking? Precisely that, she hadn’t been thinking. If she’d been thinking, using right-brain, hell even left-brain, activity, she wouldn’t be here, right now, trying to outsource an excuse for why she hadn’t gone straight home to her Momma’s, picked up her laundry and her son, and gone right about the business of saintly single motherhood. Instead, she’d walked right into the first open bar, which happened to be Miss Beulah’s, and ordered herself a beer and a pork chop sandwich. That innocent beer and pork chop laid the ground work for her current indelicate situation. Emmy Lou had just got herself laid, and that part was the good part. The problem was she’d been too busy bumping bellies to call her Momma to say she’d be late picking up Boo. Her Momma did not like schedule changes.

Mr. I Just Busted a Nut lolled on the bed, oblivious to her pain, real or imagined. Emmy Lou sighed. She was done with him, but it would be nice every now and again if these cretins she kept treating to her pootie would at least have half a brain. Poor choices. Wrong choices. She knew better, but her resistance was at an all time low. No boyfriend, no lover, for months and months and months. The last man who had come anywhere close to understanding her heart had left her about a year ago. Truth be told, Marc hadn’t left her; he just left. His restless nature was one of the reasons Emmy Lou felt comfortable leaving the door open a crack. There was no best way to describe the way Emmy Lou felt. Sometimes she thought she was going to break in two, that if anyone touched her she might shatter, all the little pieces of her would scatter to the ground in a rainbow shower of tear-stained glass. And it wasn’t that she held a monopoly on suffering. Emmy Lou was no fool; she had eyes to see the suffering that occurred randomly and carelessly all over the world at the hands of those with ambition and power and money. Hell, she could read the newspapers and what she saw there did not give her pause to hope, nor still her rampant fears. Emmy Lou didn’t really believe that everything would be all right. From what she could see, nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth. And for this reason, but not solely this reason, Emmy Lou did what she did. She stalled and procrastinated and failed before anyone else could fail her. She barricaded her fortress with near impenetrable walls. There was no one but Boo to whom she was fully open. He was the bright star racing across the blackened galaxy of her chest, the streak of fire filling her belly with heat and tenderness and gratitude. She recognized in him her salvation, her opportunity to right the wrongs that were done against her in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, in the name of nothing better than benign neglect or sheer ignorance or plain not caring. Here was Emmy Lou’s chance to be good, to do good, to make good. If only she had the will to follow through. Her heart was in the right place, even if her pootie kept leading her off into the wilds.

Outside this boy’s house, she could hear the snuffling, whining and occasional yelp of dogs as dusk blanketed the spindly pine groves and dormant cornfields, where the lone stalk or two lolled and staggered like a drunkard in the quickening night wind. Emmy Lou smelled the char of home fires being first lit against the coming chill. Although the fall leaves had barely begun to burnish like golden and molten flames, she could feel the first snow sleeping, waiting its turn to clothe the countryside in soft and downy drifts. The promise of snow crouched in her joints, a thrilling cold that took away a little, some, but not all of the perpetual cold enveloping her heart, her throat, the very curve of her spine, the slope of her neck and shoulders. Here lay the snow waiting, just as she waited, for that one true moment when nature would take its course. When promise would become reality. Emmy Lou waited methodically, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, for nature to take its course and for herself to reveal herself to herself. That this was hard work and necessary work were obvious to Emmy Lou. What it would take from her, and ultimately give to her, were not as clear.

She pushed a long thin leg into the softly, faded denim of her jeans, then the other. She zipped, then snapped, not bothering to tuck in her tee-shirt. She fluffed at her hair with both hands, then scanned the room to see if she had everything that belonged to her. The boy slept. His quiet snoring was child-like and endearing, but Emmy Lou wasn’t partial to sentimentality. Her truth lay beyond the walls of this room. This moment had passed a pleasant diversion en route to something else. She wasn’t a moralist. Let the bible-thumpers save themselves and they had plenty of work cut out for them. She wasn’t a fatalist. She was a realist. What might pass between her and this boy on another day would be little more than a passing nod, a smile of agreeable recognition, a happy little wave.
Emmy Lou picked up her jean jacket and pulled it on, then wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and grabbed up her purse. She left without looking back. As she crossed the yard to her beat-up pick-up, the dogs yowled and bayed, only their chains snapping and clinking for the effort. The cool night air felt fresh and clean on against her flushed face. Emmy Lou grinned like a fool. There was nothing like balls out sex to clear the head of any nattering cobwebs. Her Momma could be pacified. If Emmy Lou merely hunkered down and let the shrapnel skitter and the bombs fall where they may, she would be okay. There was nothing her Momma could say now that hadn’t been said before. Most of it was water under the bridge, dredged up to satisfy her Momma’s disappointments, whether they be large or petty. Her Momma’s blow ups could be weathered if you wore the right protective gear. In fact, her Momma’s temper could often be stoked to Emmy Lou’s advantage, information that was handy to have at hand. Many were the occasions where she had turned her Momma’s ill-will into beneficence. She considered her tactical maneuvers as she inserted the truck key into the ignition and gave it a slow turn. There was no excuse for not calling, unless, of course, Emmy Lou had been unable to get to a phone. It wasn’t likely her Momma would buy the story that there had been no phone. But there was the off chance that she might run with the story that Emmy Lou’s truck had had a flat. That truck was a junker, both a mechanic’s dream and nightmare. It was impossible to say exactly how many times that truck had broken down, real or imagined. Emmy Lou didn't really care as long as the story worked for her Momma.

Pretty is as pretty does…

2004-11-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

“This cake is delicious. Did you use a special flour, Mrs. Pritchard,” asked Rev. Small, scooping up another fat spoonful of red velvet cake. Buttercream icing clung to his pink lips as he chewed noisily.
“Well, I always use cake flour instead of regular,” her Momma said. “It bakes up lighter.” She smoothed a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, flashing her widowed and wedding band-less hand.
Emmy Lou pushed a meatball around on her plate, pretending to eat some of the spaghetti supper her Momma had paid $5 a plate for. She rolled her eyeballs at Sissy, who sat dutifully eating, napkin in lap, clothing remarkably free of food or food stains. Emmy Lou cracked Sissy’s shin with her patent leather shoe. Sissy’s body shivered in whiplash and her eyes watered up, but she said nothing, her mouth primly clamped shut, a tight thin line of martyrdom. Sissy had been practicing turning the other cheek. Her greatest challenge; her greatest obstacle was Emmy Lou. Through clenched teeth, she sighed, her only outward sign of defeat.

Emmy Lou knew her Momma had used box mix, a fact she would have liked to announce to Rev. Small, but one she wisely chose to keep to herself. Getting ready for the social this afternoon had been painful enough. Her Momma had changed everyone’s outfits at least a half dozen times. Nothing would do and the less perfection her Momma encountered, the shriller her tone. Emmy Lou tried to disappear herself, keeping quiet and small while her Momma fussed over the cake, the clothes, the make-up, the hair. Shrinking herself was generally useful when her Momma was in a mood, but sometimes had the opposite effect of drawing attention when Emmy Lou least wanted it. Attention, negative as it often was in the hands of her Momma, was not something Emmy Lou craved. Her thighs and backside still smarted from the paddling she took just this afternoon. According to her Momma, her sullen attitude got her a switching.

Her Momma was better dressed and better coiffed than any of the mothers at the church social. She was wearing a fitted tweed suit, just prim enough to be proper, and just sleek-fitting enough to show off her womanhood. Her ability to sauce up a sensible outfit was one of her greatest talents. Emmy Lou’s Momma prized her womanhood and used it to her advantage. The lessons of her prom queen youth were not lost on her. Pretty girls made their own way in the world of men and plain girls went to work at the five and dime.
Emmy Lou couldn’t ever remember seeing her Momma without lipstick, even when she was wearing her housecoat and cooking breakfast. She never left the house without looking like she’d just stepped out of a bandbox. Her nails were always precisely laquered. Her face always painted. Emmy Lou occasionally saw other mothers out at the supermarket, a scarf tied over their curlers, but never, ever, her mother. A proper lady didn’t go out of the house without her face on and her hair done. It simply wasn’t done and since her Momma had every intention of raising proper ladies, her girls were expected to present themselves appropriately when in public.

***
“Come on, Boo. Shake a leg. We’re gonna be late,” Emmy Lou cajoled.
“I’m tired,” Boo complained, flopping on a floor pillow. “I need to rest. I don’t want to go to school.”
“You’re six. You’re supposed to love school. Are you sure you’re my kid, ‘cause I loved school. Here let me tie those.” Emmy Lou double-knotted the laces on his tennies.
“I wanna sleep, Mommy.”
“Me too, but we can’t. You’re gonna miss the bus.”
Emmy Lou slipped his backpack over his shoulders and tugged his ski cap down over his ears. “Come on.”

Boo and Emmy Lou waited at the end of Ashe Street. The sun was rising iridescent and rose-copper up from the earth, its rays refracting in the dew that glistened on coral and amber leaves just beginning to turn. Two sparrows battled with the dirt at the end of Emmy Lou’s hard dirt drive. Emmy Lou looked at her watch. The bus was late. That was a first.
Their apartment was a renovated garage on a dead end road behind one of the county’s largest thoroughbred farms. They had lived in the drafty apartment for a couple of years, slowly turning it into a home, wallpapering the bathroom and painting the rooms in sunny, happy colors. Emmy Lou loved the space. Boo had his own bedroom and there was a little dining nook where they could spread out all their little projects after supper.

For a while Emmy Lou had dated the son of the trainer that owned the farm across the road. Charles Gray was older, intelligent, and good-looking in a bland way. He was also something of a nutter, not in a deluded or deranged manner, but in the eccentric and paranoid way that sometimes accompanies vast wealth. Gray was used to people wanting things from him and Emmy Lou wanted nothing. Emmy Lou was so remarkably different from him and his ilk that she captivated him without even knowing it. For her part, she was fascinated by how little he understood human nature. In theory, she understood his fear of women, the things they needed. But when the rules were applied to herself, she could do no more than question what she should want from him. This lack of material desire puzzled Gray. He knew little of her childhood deprivation or the form that this lack took shape in her adult life. Her loss didn’t create impulsive need, rather it fostered complacency and satisfaction. She was grateful to be right where she was, getting by without too much outside interference. True enough, she grew to want more for herself and for Boo, but when she was with Gray, when Boo was just a toddler, she felt content to settle for the boredom of routine. She’d had it the other way, the randomness of new men and weekly fresh starts. What she saw in Gray was not opportunity, but a level of comfort that required little input on her side. Here was a man with money, well-educated and traveled, willing to take whatever time she had for him. He placed few demands upon her and even fewer restrictions, not that he would have been able to control Emmy Lou’s impulses..
To say that Emmy Lou frightened him with her impulsivity, the way she blurted, is to say that he feared the unpredictability of life. Gray was an orderly man. Emmy Lou could not be said to have a high regard for order. If it came to her mind and she felt like saying it, it was said. In his circles, understatement was symbolic of elitism. To Emmy Lou that was just shit and she delighted in telling him so. Putting up with her unpredictability was a small price; he willingly paid the price of possession because he understood the value that Emmy Lou brought to him. She stirred things up with her piercings and tats. The women in his social circle tolerated her with thinly veiled contempt and the men wanted her, both groups waiting for him to tire of her but for very different reasons. In the end it was she who tired of Gray, crushing him for he had fallen in love. A few years later he married a socialite whose children were grown and whose hobbies were limited to her own maintenance.
.

Momma sez...

2004-11-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

Emmy Lou had a million of ‘em. Mamacisms. Those little nuggets of knowledge that her Momma had been depositing on her doorstep for the last 30-odd years. She’d been collecting them for years, probably since she was a tween, when the value of her Momma’s pearls of wisdom became more burden than any mule should have to bear. They were often not particularly original. A for instance: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? At that tender age, Emmy Lou had not even given a moment’s thought to what things a boy might want to do with a girl under cover of darkness. She was a tomboy, not interested in playing dolls or making house, and certainly not interested in any romantic doings. Her Momma’s obsession with what could happen behind closed doors or in the backseat of parked cars seemed peculiar at first. But then because she saw how her Momma fretted, Emmy Lou understood that there must be something dark and cruel to be learned there.

Her Momma’s fears would be the first step in the direction of her reinvention and re-education.

***

January 18, 1985: dear diary that boy, the cute one, his brother’s on the jay-vee football team, he loaned me his jean jacket after school today. the smell is of him & I am wrapped up in it now even as I write. The cool metal snaps burn the skin of my cheek. I can still feel where his hand brushed mine. I could just die.

***

And it was shortly afterward that something more than Emmy Lou’s cheek was burning. Her Momma’s fears came home to roost. She’d begun to fill out, sprout breasts and womanly curves. Though Emmy Lou herself wasn’t immediately aware of the impact of her metamorphosis, the change wasn’t lost on others. That she was sensual and lovely without being practiced made her irresistible to boys and men, many not even sure of why they were taken with her. While she was far from dowdy, she wasn’t a classic beauty. Her nose was long and thin, her lips full and her face still plump with baby fat. Emmy Lou’s eyes were magical, black and deep as rubies, but set a little too closely. Her hair was cut in the most practical terms for curly hair, short and tousled, her Mama’s notion that short hair would be easy to manage.

***

The sky fell down on them, smothering them like a crushed velvet blanket. The crisp scent of new mown grass drifted over them, their legs weaving together as they sprawled on the blanket, 747s roaring overhead, their mouths parted and drowning in something honeyed and liquid, time thickened and slowed to a patient drip. Emmy Lou had wanted to say no, but the feeling shimmered in her belly, turning to lava flowing hot and unrestricted. She took him inside without questioning what if. This boy would be her first, but there would be many others that she loved, that did not love her in return, but took her not as she took them, without condition. One of these boys would make her a mother, although she would never be certain which one, nor where the child was conceived. Emmy Lou fell away from him, this first one who propelled her into her sex. Her fingers coiled between her legs, searching for the door through which she’d fallen. She’d been trapped, but raised her fingertips to her mouth, sucking them, taking herself into herself.

And the news was that she liked this feeling and felt the raw power she possessed as each wavelet rocked over her, filling her with heat and need and pleasure, taking her away from her ordinary powerless world where rules begat more rules and restrictions were severe and her heart felt caged. Here she was open and pure and love itself. She understood cruelty, the ways in which she could take things away as things had been stripped from her all her short life. That she was loved by her Momma she understood in the way that you know that you belong to family, that you are theirs and they are yours, that blood binds you. Her blood. His blood. Your blood. Bastard blood. All mingled, running covertly, angrily through your veins, because you were conceived in secret shame and born in anger and pain, reared in the blood and body of Christ so that your Momma could relieve herself of self-hate, so that she could carry out her obligation to you, the child she bore in sin. No, she was not Sissy. She could never be Sissy, pure and golden and unmarked.

Emmy Lou was the bastard child who would make the next bastard child and carry on her Momma’s shame. She did this with duplicity, betraying her mother as much as herself, but she did this without malice. Emmy Lou was well-intentioned if misinformed and not given to deliberate hurt as much as benign neglect. She coaxed and manipulated, relying on her powers of persuasion and her sweet nature to move forward her intended plans.

***

Momma had been the beauty. Her figure was ripe and lush; her hair cascaded in glossy chestnut waves past her waist. A tiny dimple that winked as she smiled marked her special. Her lips were stained raspberry and her eyes were deep and proud. Momma was the beauty the men all coveted and she carried their desires in her bearing if not in her heart. Her gait and posture pronounced her unattainable to all who saw her gliding effortlessly down Main Street. She was their exalted possession, although the language of their desires remained largely unspoken. It was she who was crowned the queen of queens at not one but every celebration -- the Strawberry Festival, the Homecoming Harvest and the Winter Carnival. She graced the parade floats, waving a gloved hand with poise and smiling her ingenuous smile. Her beauty eclipsed the crinkled tissue paper roses and cardboard constructions of those homespun floats, not to mention the charms of the other girls who by all rights could not be faulted for their petty jealousies. It was not easy walking in the shadow of her Momma. Not then. Not now.

Her Momma had a bun in the oven when Jack Pritchard made an honest woman of her. Jack Pritchard was her one-way ticket to respectability and he knew it. Shrewd, with a bit of the horse trader in him, he knew when to play his hand. Ordinarily, her Momma wouldn’t have looked twice at a man like Jack Pritchard. He was the stolid, blue collar kind of man that girls with lesser ambitions would jump to impress. He was stable and financially sound without being showy. Still, he was a man with grease under his fingernails. Her Momma’s parents did not expect great things of Jack Pritchard. Undeterred, he’d courted her Momma, suffering her politely worded rejections, as had so many others who didn’t fulfill hers or her parents’ expectations, while biding his time. Her Momma’s clay feet merely inflamed Jack Pritchard’s peculiar brand of patience. He proceeded to wait her out and when she needed rescuing, he stepped in. Her Momma was no fool. She accepted his invitation to marriage and respectability. Emmy Lou was born early and since she was a small baby, there was little speculation about her Momma’s virtue. Emmy Lou didn’t much look like Jack, but for that matter didn’t look much like her Momma either. That her Momma never loved Jack Pritchard seemed irrelevant. He fathered her Sissy and they stayed married until his emphysema, fueled by his refusal to quit smoking, took what was left of his lungs and left her Momma a widow with two teenage girls to care for. And then her Momma did what any god-fearing recently widowed woman with two teenage girls to feed and an estate picked clean by medical bills would do. She gussied herself up, called on the preacher, and went off to the very next church social.

ain't everybody a star...

2004-11-11T18:06:00.000-08:00

Emmy Lou didn’t care for peanuts. It’s not like she was allergic. She could eat all the Skippy she had a mind to. It was more like she had an aversion to Mr. Peanut himself. What was with that monocled old fool? By virtue of her non-nut eating ways, she made herself feel slightly superior. That she managed to project a modest level of superiority was encouraging to her therapist who didn’t pass judgment on how Emmy Lou actually accomplished said act. She had work to do.

The little man inside her head kept nagging, nagging, nagging her. Just like that damn gerbil, she couldn’t get off the wheel. The harder she ran, the faster her world spun out of control, and here it was three in the madrugada, for chrissake. She picked a random book and tried to read herself out of it. Couldn’t. She kept thinking about what if. What if. What kind of thing was what if to think about? Her therapist sounded like a broken-fucking-record-player. Hope this and hope that. All Emmy Lou could hope is that she could figure out what the hell to do with her life before she completely ruined Boo’s. “In Paris began the reign of the elevator,” she read. The teeny-tiny type blurred and Emmy Lou squinted. “In Paris began the feign of the elephant.” She tried again. “Din pearls demand the pain of the leviathan.” Emmy Lou’s mouth fell slightly open and a thin string of spit arranged itself across the gap between her teeth. Honk-shoo. Her precise little snores rose upward to heaven.

Oh shit. The frigging red LCD glowed ominously. 7:50. School started in precisely thirty-five minutes. Emmy Lou scrabbled off the couch; the book she’d been reading when she finally passed out spilled off her chest and onto the floor with a nasty thud. If her downstairs neighbors had been sleeping, they weren’t now. The radiator plinked a chunky empty start-me up, then hissed, a slithery pissing sound. The room was cold. Emmy Lou pulled the worn comforter around her shoulders and padded down the hall to Boo’s room. She grabbed a pair of socks & a long sleeved tee-shirt. She twisted him around like Gumby, his still sleeping body malleable to her efforts. First out of his pj top, then into his school T. Socks pulled on over tiny niblet toes. Easy as one-two-three. Of course, it was helpful that she had put him to bed in sweats. Half the job was done there. Single mommy tip # 99: Along with making lunches at night, let child wear some portion of next day’s school clothes to bed the night before.

***

November 1, 2002: Well, dear reader. There’s something to be said for mediocrity. Mediocrity means never having to say you’re sorry. In essence mediocrity is comfort itself. Like mashed potatoes or mac ‘n cheese. This is a little known fact that once discovered by the huddled masses will ruin everything for the rest of us bootlicks. I daresay it gives me hope and certainly offers me solace, especially in light of the fact that I did not all those many years past get into the university of my choice. Thus, poorly started, I embarked upon my personal journey through the vast wastelands of average joes & jobs, with the occasional stint on welfare. Still, there is much to be said for being a less than spectacular performer. Low to no expectations means that anything is better than nothing. And as an aside apropos of nothing, I don’t eat peanuts, which makes me a better person than you. So there.

***

Emmy Lou could smugly announce to no one in particular that she didn’t do the lowly legume. Others might forego meat or dairy, but few could boast of having given up peanut butter. This was a conscious choice and an extreme one for a person not exactly minted. Since choosy mothers choose Jif, it was pretty clear here that she was not what one would call choosy. That was really transparent, from the way Emmy Lou had acquired Boo, her son. Boo’s BabyDaddy was not in the big picture, although for all Emmy Lou knew he could well be in the big house since she’d been going through something of a skanky boy phase five years ago when Boo had been ill-conceived. Emmy Lou didn’t really know who BabyDaddy was, and frankly, wasn’t all that concerned. That was more of a problem for her Sissy and Momma, white-glove wearing church ladies that they were. She had Boo and that was better than a picnic in the park – no matter what everybody else said.

***

November 6, 2002: Dear, dear diary. I have been too, too busy these past few days & therefore unable to apprise you of my current situation. Firstly, I was compelled to fabricate yet another little white lie for Momma so she would take me & Boo grocery shopping this morning. It was pure bliss to fill our little cart with goodies. Of course, we were shopping with Momma so everything had to be in its purest form—no box treats, no Mallomars (honey, a smart girl like yourself with time on your hands could make yourself some cookies), no Doritos (empty calories, sweetie), no Coca-Cola (it’s just awful for your teeth) and certainly no neon-colored yogurts (with a drop of food coloring Boo won’t know the difference, hon) She tried to slip a jar of Jif (a good and inexpensive source of protein, dear) into the cart when I wasn’t looking too. I can’t understand why she thinks it’s some great deprivation that Boo & I don’t eat that nasty stuff. It’s harder work getting a free sack of grub than it would be to actually go to a real job. And speaking of which, I am still trying to find gainful employment. Secondly, Momma keeps trying to get me a job down at cousin Mabel’s insurance agency and manages to work into every conversation some reference to buying or selling insurance. It’s better than flipping burgers I suppose, but hardly the stuff o’ dreams.