Chapter 3
After work most days that summer, I would go for a run or sit out in the garage and read or something. It was easier to take the pills and sleep it off without being bothered out there. Our garage, overrun with all of my dad’s precious junk, that he swore he would use “someday” was pretty much the only real getaway in a crowded house with eight people. It was scorching hot most of the time, but the need not to go to jail, far overshadowed any fears of dying from a heatstroke. Petite women can’t go to jail because we become someone’s shower bitch. In some ways it’s probably a lot like the real world, where you either have to become a bitch of your own creation or turn into someone else’s bitch. The real world may not have metal bars, but metaphorically speaking we're all being punked. Please write that one down before you commit a crime. I mean the thing about petite women going to prison. It’s pretty important. Sorry to be blunt, or ruin anyone’s dreams, but that’s just how it is.
I would sit in the garage for hours, sometimes not doing anything at all but staring off into space thinking, in an old, abandoned, living-room chair. Every once in a while, dad would come out to the garage to poke his head in and ask what I was doing, wondering what I was in such deep thought about. So much so, that sometimes just for laughs when he’d ask, I’d answer him, “I just don’t know anymore, dad.” I’d only told him about a hundred times that summer that nothing was wrong. I think he must have thought I was doing drugs or “in with the wrong crowd.” Little did he know, I wasn't in with any crowd at that particular time. At first, he claimed I’d become withdrawn. Withdrawn from what? A home and a family that wasn’t really mine? That had never been mine? That ship had long sailed and he had missed it. That fifteen year-old girl that had held so much faith in her father was dead, and dad still talked to her corpse every now and then to see how hell was going. All those times she had reached out a hand to ask him for help, for him to show some kind of mercy, and all those times he just let her down. I felt sorry for him. I felt embarrassed for him. Most of all, I hated him.
Unless they just knew I was out in the garage, my “family” usually had no clue where I was, whether they realized it or not. They probably forgot they had another child residing in the household amongst the other five that still lived at home. And while in summers past, my dad had always asked where I was going if I was leaving the house and when I’d be back, this particular summer, it seemed like he didn’t ask any questions at all. Like he didn’t even realize I’d left the house when I was returning. Maybe he’d felt obligated to ask the questions at one time. To know where I was going and that I’d be safe. Maybe he thought it looked like he was being a good dad when his new wife was watching. Probably in the back of his mind he hoped I would just walk away and never return. Just like mom. He would never admit it to anyone, not even himself but my brother, sister, and I were his burden. Just his constant reminder of life he once had and the obligations he no longer had time to fulfill. Like Thanksgiving visitors the day after Thanksgiving…no one wants to come right out and tell them to leave, everyone just quietly hopes that they will.
It’s hard to say if a change occurred or some kind of realization of divine intervention had had begun to stir. Perhaps, it was more of an awakening of sorts that I should have seen coming. I couldn't find a reason to care about a lot of things anymore. College hadn’t made me a different person, but I was much more used to the independence that came with having no one to report to and operating on my own clock. While many of my friends had gone wild when they’d gone away to college, like Jolene, earning reputations that I got to laugh about every Monday morning as I listened in on stories from people I didn’t know, that were about seemingly everyone that I did know, I was too busy working, studying, or simply too stuck in my own head to care about anything going on outside of it. Parties weren’t really my scene. I didn’t like being around large groups. Parties were for show. To show the rest of the world how much you could drink, how hot/slutty you could dress, that you were “the baddest bitch.” I didn’t need to be the baddest bitch. Some nights, hours would go by while I sat at my desk, staring out the window onto campus watching other people walking in and out of the building, down the sidewalks, and going about their lives. I’d wonder about their homes, if they were happy, and if they were, how they had gotten so lucky? Occasionally, the thought crossed my mind, “What if I just jumped?” I wondered if anyone would care or if in time I would just become “that crazy chick who jumped from Stu West and killed herself.” I wondered what it would feel like to just let it all go.
So many times before I had gone off to college, people had told me that college was the time to engage other people and to embrace the environment of learning and knowledge that was at my reach...or some same flavorfully, corny nonsense along those same lines. Truthfully, though, I never really wanted to go to college. It wasn't something I ever vocalized. College was something I was supposed to want; education, debt, babies, and retirement. Kids with good grades are supposed to want those things. All throughout high school, guidance counselors, teachers, and guest speakers, drilled it through my mind that college was the only way to a happy and fulfilling life. Just the idea of wasting another four years in a classroom was disenchanting, but a lifetime supply of student loan payments to follow...The whole thing sounded like a horrible scam. If I could do it over again, I would never have bothered with the applications. I'm not saying I didn't have some good times in college, becoming friends with Jolene and writing stories when I was supposed to be paying attention in lectures, but college was never where I belonged. I didn't picked my major, radiation therapy, because it was my dream. I picked it because it was a short program and I hated school. I picked it because my dad made himself pretty clear in that I was going to do something that made money...not that he was donating anything to the cause. I was lucky enough to be able to afford books for my classes a couple of times after he and Kathleen dipped into my account. Kathleen's daughter, Leah, needed horseback riding lessons and gymnastics classes...and I guess I had my priorities all wrong. Looking back, I should have packed my car up the night of my high school graduation and driven as fast as I could, but guilt and the lack of clarity held me back like an anchor.
I wasn’t enticed by group discussions or the anatomy of the human heart. If it wasn’t going to be on the test, and I wasn’t being graded on it, then I did not care. As for professors, I could honestly find no evidence that any of them were any smarter than the rest of the population, maybe just a little more eccentric, and often arrogant. They were god-like scholars who bestowed wisdom upon the next generation of future professionals, in their own minds, anyway. I had an English professor, once, who constantly felt the need to let the class know that he could be doing things that would make him much more money than teaching at a university, and therefore that we should be grateful he had chosen to devote his time to educating the next generation, instead of pursing more money. Well, just tell the class how you really feel.
If I wasn’t busy driving an hour back home to work from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening only to return back to die upon my dorm bed, I was usually too exhausted from the aftermath of hardware hell to do much else. I would usually arrive back sometime on Sunday evening after guzzling a gallon of coffee from the gas station around the corner from campus, drop down on the bed back first, and hope to wake up at some point on Monday to go to my exciting Physics class. My life ran on caffeine and pills to keep up with the busy schedule. Jolene always told me she didn’t know how I did it, managing to work my weekends completely away and still keep a decent GPA. I thought that if I could just stay busy and keep moving, maybe eventually everything else would fall into place. The busier I was, the faster time would go by. That was a big thing with me, wanting time to go by. I couldn’t really explain to myself in a way that made sense. It was difficult to put into words. I wasn’t really looking forward to anything that time would bring about any faster. It was almost m
ore of a feeling of knowing I should be somewhere else, of wanting to be there, but being frustrated that I wasn’t there and having no idea how I was going to get there. I came to that conclusion once during one of my long shifts, dozing off one slow night in front of a cash register at the hardware store. I remember being annoyed at myself for having such deep thoughts about what I considered to be nothing, but in retrospect, I was probably onto something. I wanted to be able to do what other people did. I wanted to be able to look forward into my future and see myself somewhere, doing something, being happy…But no matter how hard I looked slate was always blank and I couldn't see myself at all. Jolene could picture herself down the road, partnering in her law firm, married with two kids, names she had already picked out despite the fact that she had no man to speak of. It wasn’t the accuracy she was predicting her future with that intrigued me. I mean, more than likely, with Jolene’s background, she probably wasn't too far off. Things happen, however, Jolene was most likely on the right track with what would probably happen to her. However, it was the optimism she had in her description of everything in her future. She had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to be doing and was happy with her plans. She had an innate feeling that it would all work out according to her master plan. I ached for the ability to look forward and say this is where I will be and this is what I will be doing, or even would like to be doing, but the harder I strained to see it, the more blurry the picture became.
It was a pretty long drive to go all the way back home, but it was three eight hour shifts a week that paid better than any minimum-wage job I could have gotten on campus by a decent amount. I was beginning to have a small fortune stashed away, about a few thousand dollars. And with grants paying for most of my college, my paychecks just went right into my account and there they stayed other than the little bit of money that went toward gas tank to get me back and forth. Sure, I’d had to come home every weekend of my freshman year, but I had a summer job to come home to and did not have to ask my dad for money like most of my broke college friends often had to do with their parents, which was good, because he spent all his money on his new kids that his new wife had given him, anyway. I always thought how lucky Jolene was that her parents had stayed together and had the time and always had money to give to her and her brother. How they’d come up to visit her in the dorms and take her shopping for whatever she thought she needed at the time. “Must be nice,” I’d think to myself. Jolene’s parents loved her. She talked all the time about how they got on her nerves and called too much, but at least they called. She always said her mother was too involved, but at least her mother knew where she was. At least she cared. I didn’t even know if my mom was still alive and Jolene was a little bummed that her mom wanted to know if she was sure she didn’t need anything else. Jolene’s dad told her he loved her every time they talked on the phone and I’d never even heard my dad start to say the words. Jolene had holidays to look forward to going home to, and I dreaded the drive. If a professor was harsh with Jolene about anything, her parents would probably have contacted the president and brought in the troops, whereas one time I was home asleep on a couch and woke up to one of my mentally deficient step-siblings touching me inappropriately only to be lectured by my father that boys will be boys. There’s an awakening for you. So, for years I had been afraid to relax or fall asleep anywhere in the house other than my locked bedroom, and Jolene’s biggest fear was that she wouldn’t make the dean’s list and get that car her parents were promising her. I’m sure Jolene never thought of herself as having been born into privilege, but from where I was standing, she never seemed to have it too bad.
The days that I actually lived on campus, I’d go for long jogs, work on school assignments, pretty much anything that allowed me to zone out and go numb for awhile. Often times I just listened to Jolene ramble on about the details of her life. She had a knack for getting juicy gossip she wasn’t supposed to know about and seemed to feel it was her moral obligation to share this gift with the world. I usually didn’t care, or didn’t even know the people that she was going on about, but I had learned that even if I wasn’t interested, a “yeah” or “oh really, that’s crazy!” was enough to suffice and pacify her devotion. As long as I mirrored the reaction she was hoping for, all was well in room 387 for another day. Jolene had become like a sister to me. Living in the dorms was somewhat like living in a functional family. It was something I had never experienced before. We had a schedule for the most part, even outside of classes. Jolene and I always ate dinner together, did laundry together, and watched the same shows on her big screen tv at night while we did our homework. I always went jogging about the same time too, right around the same time Jolene’s mom would call her to talk for an hour or longer. It wasn’t unusual to get back and find her still on the phone. The living arrangement was a new concept to me, that people were capable of living under the same roof without screaming and fighting and that disagreements could be solved without police officers. What a concept. It was a freeing feeling that I could sit anywhere in our room, in our building, on campus even, and not have to feel uneasy or in anyone’s way. Most of the time on campus, no one’s family was around. So, on campus, until holidays and weekends would roll around, I could on some level feel like everybody else for awhile.
When we got really bored, we’d come up with something stupid to do, like putting the free condoms the school passed out on the other girls’ doors or writing obnoxious things on the marker boards of the lounges. We became experts at prank calling. We went down to the lobby of our building one time to steal the main school directory to call faculty and professors to let them know there was an ass slapper on the loose. We even stooped one day to calling all of our friends and classmates, pretending to be the free health clinic on campus to let them know they may have been infected with syphilis by a partner in the past thirty days. That one never got old, discovering how many of our friends truly were “hos”. The best one was when we got Jolene’s older brother, who happened to go to a neighboring college, with it.
“OH MY GOD, WHO WAS IT?!” He asked in a panic-stricken voice through the phone.
“Well, we can’t divulge that type of confidential patient information, sir, but what I can do is have the test ordered for you and so that way we’ll know for sure what actions need to be taken from this point forward,” I answered him in a high-pitched, squeaky voice as Jolene rolled across the floor laughing so hard, I had to cover the mouthpiece for a moment so we wouldn’t be given away.
“OK let’s do that! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD, what are my parents going to say?!” He kept repeating.
“THAT YOU’RE A HO!” Jolene finally yelled, roaring with laughter, as I fell back in my desk chair laughing so hard I couldn’t stand anymore.
“WHAT?!” He yelled into the phone. “JOLENE?!”
Neither of us could speak, except through gasps between laughing. We were used to getting funny, sometimes even skeptical answers when we did this health clinic routine, but who’d have thought scrawny, studious, little James would have to worry about winding up on somebody’s STD list. I guess it’s true what they say. Every dog has his day.
“OH MY GOD! James, you are a ho!” Jolene screeched, when she could finally get a coherent sentence out.
“JOLENE AND LAURA?! YOU TWO ARE SO MESSED UP! I SWEAR TO GOD I HATE Y’ALL BOTH!” He yelled before finally hanging up.
We laughed for days about that one. It was one of the highlights of my whole first semester. Jolene and I were always pulling stupid things like that. She was one of the few people I didn’t really mind, and seemed to have the same sick sense of humor that I harbored. Despite our differences in backgrounds and personalities, we had managed to stumble upon that common ground pretty easily and had remained friends through it all.