Rat Girl: A Memoir

by Kristin Hersh

  I swore I wouldn’t waddle like the married professionals when my middle got this big, so I use these walks to practice my Not Waddling. One foot in front of the other. We always take the same route down a rural lane, past farm houses, orchards and lime green hills, then along a dirt road that ends in the petting zoo barn full of lambs and calves and bales of hay. It really is pretty here.

  I know I should be more frustrated than this, but I’m feeling vague, enjoying the view. I never wanted that horrible voice to happen in the first place—it’s hard to be upset about it not happening. And I don’t want yesterday to repeat itself; I really don’t think I have it in me. Giving up feels so much better. So I lost music. Big deal. It was never very nice to me anyway.

  Gil, however, is not feeling vague, is not enjoying the view. He looks pained. “You don’t sound like you when you sing. What is it, Kris?” Putting an arm around my shoulders, he asks sweetly, “Are you not angry enough? You want me to say something insulting?” He pushes his glasses up his nose and squints into the bright blue New England sky as we trudge down the road yet again.

  I grin. “You could try. I’m not easily insulted. I’d probably just agree with you.”

  “What would make you angry?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. You just made me sing the same song all day; I should be pretty pissed off right now. I don’t think that’s it, though. The songs aren’t angry; they’re intense. A song doesn’t have to be dopey to be happy.”

  He stops and looks at me. “You think your songs are happy?”

  “Well, maybe not ‘happy.’ Celebratory.”

  “So why don’t you sound like yourself?” He squints into the sky. “What’d make you sound celebratory?”

  “I do sound like myself. That’s the problem. This is my voice. The songs’ voice is the one you’re looking for and I honestly don’t know where it is.”

  Gil’s eyes widen. “The songs’ voice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The song isn’t Kristin?”

  “Oh god, no.” Geez, that’d be awful. “It’s best if I’m not feeling anything. Otherwise, I crawl into the song and start messing it up. Like I just did.” He stares at me for a second, then starts walking again.

  I catch up as best I can without waddling. One foot in front of the other. “You can still say something insulting, if you want, Gil. I deserve it.”

  He can only come up with a half smile. “Would you like to talk to Ivo? We could call him when we get back to the studio.”

  “You mean for a pep talk?”

  “Input,” he answers.

  “Sure,” I say, “but I don’t know if it’ll help.”

  “Are you sure the song isn’t you, Kris?” asks Gil.

  “Well, if it is, then it’s evil me.”

  He looks very sad. I don’t know if he’s feeling sorry for me, for Ivo or for himself. Maybe he’s feeling sorry for our doomed record. “So why isn’t she here?” he asked.

  “Evil me? I’m kind of relieved she isn’t here. I don’t like her very much. She’s not a good babysitter.”

  He stops walking and brightens. “You’re worried about the baby?”

  “Yeah. Duh-uh. Evil Kristin screams pretty loud.”

  “Right.” He rubs his hands together, looking busy again. “Evil Kristin is supposed to scream loud. I could take your vocal out of the cans; then you wouldn’t be so loud in your own head. You could really let go. I reckon you know the feel of the notes by now, so your tuning’ll be okay.” He looks excited.

  Staring at the ground, I think, The baby’ll still hear it. But when I look up to respond, I see two Doberman pinschers tearing down the hill behind Gil in total silence. They’re in full attack mode, heading straight for him, and they aren’t making a sound.

  Gil looks back at me with mild concern. “What, you don’t want me to take your voice out of the—”

  “Gil, run!” I scream, pulling him down the road.

  “Christ!” he yells when he catches sight of the Dobermans, then races alongside me as they leap into the air, mouths open, a few feet away from the back of his neck. I hear an awful clang! as they’re jerked backwards on chains. We stop running and turn to look. Both dogs have fallen to the ground and are now lying in the grass in a tangle of chains and spit, looking pathetic.

  Gil leans forward, hands on his knees, like he’s gonna puke. “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  “Oh god,” he says. “My heart.”

  I stare at the strangled dogs on the ground—they look worse than Gil. “Are they okay?”

  Gil looks up. “They don’t look so good, do they? It’s their own fault. They almost gave me a heart attack. Fucking American dogs.”

  “I think Dobermans are German.” The dogs’re lying on their sides, drooling, and they aren’t moving. I feel bad for them. “They were just doing their job, Gil.”

  Gil shakes his head and stands upright, takes my arm and begins to walk slowly down the road. “How ’bout we go do our jobs, Kris?”

  Poor Gil. “Sure thing, boss.” We walk in silence. “Why didn’t they bark?” I ask him.

  “That’d just give us time to get away,” he sighs.

  The song “Vicky’s Box” pours into my head. Gil’s blasting me with the track, but he’s turned my mic way down so evil Kristin can work without any censorship from me. He sits in the control room, looking tense and pale. I yell pretty loud, I think. Probably out of tune. I don’t know; I can’t hear it. Sorta don’t care. The vocal is Gil’s problem; the baby is mine.

  “Better,” says Gil’s voice in my headphones after the first take. “But not quite evil. Pretend a Doberman’s after you.” He turns to say something to the assistant engineer and then hits the talkback button again. “What’s this song about?”

  “About? Hell, I don’t know.”

  “I heard the word ‘blow jobs.’ ”

  “That’s two words.”

  He stares. “Is that what it’s about?”

  I know he’s baiting me, but I have no good answer. “Yeah, Gil, it’s about blow jobs.”

  He smiles. “I just want you to put yourself in the song. What do you think it’s about?”

  “My roommate, Vicky, painted some cool stuff on a box when she was moving and some of it turned up in a song.”

  He looks stunned. “Really? ‘Vicky’s Box’ is a song about Vicky’s box? A box owned by someone named Vicky?”

  “Mostly,” I say, embarrassed. “That’s why it’s called that.”

  “Huh.” He seems disappointed. Why do people want you to make shit up? He opens his mouth to say something and then closes it again.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Gil turns off the talkback mic and says something to the assistant engineer. The engineer has a long answer with a lot of pointing and gesturing in it. Then Gil says something else and points at me. They talk for a long time while I stand there watching them, wishing I could read lips. He’s probably speaking English again, anyway. Finally, he hits the talkback button, and I can hear what’s going on in the control room. “Kris?” he says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is Vicky a gay man?”

  Oh, for god’s sake. That’s what they’re talking about? “Gil . . .”

  “Yeah, Kris?”

  “Please stop listening to the lyrics.”

  “Okay.” He rolls tape. “It isn’t just about a box, though, is it?” I don’t say anything. “Right. This is the one, Kris.”

  But it’s not the one and neither is the next take. I don’t know what to do: call back that terrible voice I never asked for in the first place? Bring heat and electricity to the body I now share with an innocent baby? I can’t make myself sing right; it either happens or it doesn’t. The Monster Body simply doesn’t wanna be a mouthpiece for the Brain That Wouldn’t Die anymore.

  This was all a stupid idea in the first place—why can’t anyone see that?

  So I run away.

  I�
�m trying to teach Zoë to bark. She sits in front of me and I say “woof” over and over again while she watches. She turns her head so far to the side, it looks like it’ll twist off, but she doesn’t bark.

  Eventually, I get bored and sit down. “Look,” I say. “If a bad guy comes to our house, you gotta let us know, okay? Whine or something.” She looks at me. “It’s important.”

  Zoë sighs, then lies down with her chin on my lap.

  ♋ red eyes

  two fists of rose hips

  red eyes

  in springtime you come home

  I stand on the edge of a cliff, staring at the ocean, the school behind me. This was our view from the library bathroom. Looking up at the window next to Betty’s toilet seat, I wonder if she still hangs out in there without me.

  Spring is happening again. Again! What a great deal we have here on earth. Sunlight on the water is literally dazzling—I squint painfully but can’t look away—and in the air is rosa rugosa: rosehips, beach roses.

  I try to button my sweater ’cause it’s flapping around in the breeze, but my stomach sticks out too far.

  Standing at the pay phone in the student lounge where I used to buy Betty candy to fuel her show-biz spiels, I wait for her to answer the phone. It rings and rings. Finally, she picks up. “Surprise!” I yell. “It’s me! I’m here, Betty—at school! And I signed us up for a seminar; an easy coupla credits before summer classes. C’mon.”

  I can’t wait to pick up where we left off. I can finish my degree and she can give me advice that I ignore. She’s gonna be so happy. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the studio?” Betty asks suspiciously. “Making a record?”

  “I am in the studio making a record. Technically.”

  “Huh?” She doesn’t sound happy that I’m back. “What do you mean, Krissy?”

  “It was awful. And dumb. So I ran away. I don’t believe in making records anymore; you can’t measure music,” I explain. “It doesn’t matter; just drive over and take a class with me. It’ll be great. It’s a beautiful morning. I can see the fairy tree from here.”

  “Don’t believe in it?” she asks.

  “No. Turns out it’s ripping the arms and legs off a song and then sewing them back on. The song can’t walk and nobody notices.” I wipe some dust off the leaves of a potted plant. “Plus, I’m just plain bad at it. They make us play the same song so many times, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.”

  Silence. “So you just ran away?”

  Grrrr. Hang up and drive over here. “I didn’t just run away . . . I ran away for a reason. I don’t belong there. I missed the ocean. I missed you.” She says nothing. Why isn’t she happy? I try this: “I wanna go back to school ’cause I’m thinking, you know, that if I don’t plan for my future, I won’t have one.”

  It doesn’t work. Betty just sighs. “Are you taking care of yourself?”

  People ask me this all the time. Like I might forget I’m pregnant and chug a six-pack or something. “Absolutely,” I say. “Eating, sleeping, breathing—the whole deal.”

  A couple of girls with clipboards post themselves in front of me and begin stopping people on their way to class to discuss some issue. I turn away from them. Betty switches to her I-don’t-have-time-for-you voice. “You sure you’re feeling well?”

  “Everything’s fine. I finally have my head on straight.” She says nothing. “Could you please go to school with me? We go to school at the beach, remember? The beach, Betty.”

  “I know where we go to school, sweetie, but I can’t take any more of your classes. Do you know they’re making us dissect cats?”

  I loved dissecting cats. “They’re dead cats. Cat cadavers.” I look up at the bulletin board next to me, read a roommate-wanted ad, one asking for a ride to New York and one that just says, “Help, I need help,” with a phone number attached. Help, I need help?

  “I’m planning a headache for that day.” Poor Betty. It takes weeks to dissect a cat. She says something muffled to a person in the room with her. I watch a spider walk up the stem of the dusty plant while I wait for Betty to talk to me again. The spider catches me watching it and freezes.

  I can’t believe she doesn’t even care that I’m here. She was supposed to be happy. I’ll just explain to her that there aren’t any dead cats in this class. “Hey, Betty, the seminar is Art Therapy. Get it? Isn’t that funny? ’Cause art is the opposite of therapy! It makes you crazy!”

  Betty sighs again. “You don’t talk that way around other people, right?” She sounds like I’m making her tired. “I have to go, honey, but tell me—do you really think your record’s going badly?”

  Shit, I think she’s blowing me off. “I don’t know. Probably. The English people took out all the fun songs.”

  “You don’t have any fun songs,” she says distractedly. I roll my eyes. I guess it was presumptuous, thinking she’d have nothing to do on a Saturday morning. She’s probably got a date with a priest. “I talked to a Hollywood friend about you and he says you need a single.”

  “Do you know what a single is, Betty?” I ask, annoyed. “It’s a dumb song, a bad song. Bad enough to get played on the radio. That’s just public humiliation—what’s the point? I’d rather be good in private than bad in public.”

  “Well, maybe just some up-tempo numbers, then.”

  “We’re plenty ‘up-tempo,’ we’re just not in the right—” I can tell she isn’t listening. “Never mind.”

  In a singsongy way she asks, “Do you like living in the recording studio? I loved recording studios.”

  “Well, this one’s a rich-people farm. They cook for us and stuff; we don’t get it. It’s too sterile. Hey, wanna go to school? School is important, remember?”

  She drops the singsongy thing. “I do go to school, Krissy. I didn’t quit.” Ow. “You know what I think? I think you’re under a lot of pressure, with the baby coming and making your first record. Maybe it makes you want to go back to a time before you had these stresses in your life.”

  She is blowing me off. “So you’re a psychology major after all.”

  She doesn’t laugh. “I’m going to give you some advice now.” No shit. “Don’t ever run away from your commitments. You’ll have more options open to you if you don’t run away. Does that make sense?”

  I say nothing. I shouldn’t have said that I ran away. I should have put it differently. ‘I’ve come to a decision’ or something dramatic like that. Then she’d be on my side, welcoming me back, not lecturing me.

  “We all have a snake,” Betty continues, “and right now you need to—”

  “What?” It’s like she slapped me.

  “I said we all have a snake and yours is—”

  “We all have a what?” My head’s pounding along with my heart.

  “I don’t mean it literally. I’m just trying to say that if you don’t face—”

  “Did you say we all have snakes? Why did you say that?”

  She sighs. “Krissy, if you’d let me finish, I could tell you.” I sit, stunned. I never told her about the snake. “I have a snake and you have a snake. We all have to face our demons some day, sweetheart, and that day’ll be the scariest you ever lived. Then you’ll wake up the next morning and realize your snake is still there, that you have to face your demons again. But it won’t be so scary this time. Once you see your shadow, you’ll realize that the rest of your life will be spent staring it down, but you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You can do it.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Betty.” Christ.

  “Krissy, you have a calling, so make this record. If you hate it, you never have to make another record again.”

  She doesn’t understand. I slide to the floor. The issue girls turn around to stare at me, their clipboards at their sides. “Promise?” I ask.

  “I promise,” says Betty. “If this record’s as bad as you think it is,” she says cheerfully, “you won’t be allowed to make another one!”

>   I laugh uncertainly. “Not ‘bad’ exactly, just hard.”

  She’s talking to somebody else again. I’m losing her. “Go back to work, sweetie.” Now she’s gonna go dancing off with some priest and leave me here alone.

  “I gotta take this seminar anyway, Betty. I mean, it’s a ‘commitment’ and all. Why don’t you just sit in?” I’m getting desperate. “Please?” Help, I need help. The lounge begins to fill with students talking and buying styrofoam cups of coffee between classes. They look happy. I miss my life.

  “You’re gonna be great, sweetheart,” says Betty. “It’s a new chapter! I love you. You’re super. Fall in love!” and she hangs up. Bummer. I lean against the dusty plant where the spider is still frozen in terror.

  “Miss you, Betty,” I say to the dial tone.

  My aunts-—Lily White, Frank, Sister, Tony and Weeza-—are sitting around a table, slicing strawberries and shelling pecans for pie. They talk and laugh, their hands moving expertly. Frank looks out the window. “It’s getting dark,” she says.

  Lily White, the youngest, knows what this means to children. She smiles at me, her fingers pink with strawberry juice. “When the stars come out, they’re telling you it’s their turn to play,” she says. “They help us say goodbye to one day so we can see a new one tomorrow.”

  I wanna go back to the ocean or sit under the fairy tree. The buzzing fluorescents are gross and the other students don’t look promising.

  The first thing the teacher asks us to do is lie on the floor. What is it with college professors and lying on the floor? This time, though, I have the opposite experience from my deep relaxation freak-out in Dude’s class. I could no more jog around the room than . . . I don’t know, stay awake.