The Disturbed Girl's Dictionary

by Nonieqa Ramos

  And what was that underneath the egg carton? It couldn’t be another pair of panties, could it? How many pairs of panties was in that dumpster? I stood there staring into the dumpster, the wind blowing between my legs. I started imagining that dumpster filling up with every pair of panties every girl had ever thrown into the trash, overflowing onto the sidewalk. I clutched the M&M’s to my heart and ran home.

  I crashed into a guest as he was throwing sheets out. “Why?” I asked.

  “Because a man wants to know he’s the only one who been between his woman’s sheets.”

  Puhlease. “In that case, you better get us a new couch, a new rug, a new sink, and a new toilet,” I told him.

  I ran to my mother’s room and started pulling open drawers. It felt like the fan from the Super S was still blowing on me. I felt cold and necked. Damn! My mother came after me screaming, but I put on the mute button. I flang drawers over until I finally found it. My daddy’s clothes. His sweatshirts.

  My mother: “Damn it, Macy! I could have told you where they was!”

  Me: “Yeah right. Could have, but wouldn’t have BECAUSE I asked.” I ducked my mother’s smacks and stocking-egg grenades as I ran from her bedroom.

  I locked myself in the bafroom and took off the last dress I was ever going to wear. I slipped Daddy’s sweatshirt on. The cold thawed. I felt clothed, covered, ready for my body to hibernate.

  I hid the M&M’s in the back of the fridge so they didn’t melt. That night I dreamed of little pink notes that smelled like roses. They folded themselves up into origami birds and let me fly on them.

  I woke up the next morning real early and went to the kitchen. No one else was up and the house was silent. I reached my hands up behind the old milk carton that had morphed into cottage cheese. I couldn’t feel anything! My throat tightened into a knot. Damn! Somebody just pushed the M&M’s behind the old ketchup. I grasped them but not too tight so I wouldn’t wrinkle the bag. Only something was wrong. The package was open. Somebody with midnight munchies had stuck their fingers in and ate all but two.

  I had another Lifetime Channel moment and dropped to my knees. Ahhhhhhhhhh! I banged my head against the floor. My mother burst out her bedroom and kicked me in the head.

  “Stop banging your head on the floor!”

  This gave me a lightbulb.

  My mother: “Wait. What? You’re just going to get up, just like that?”

  Me: “Yup.”

  In movies, if you sleep at a fancy hotel they leave a chocolate on your pillow. (See D for Do Not Disturb.) Not a whole bag. Just one. I grabbed a knife and held it up.

  Guest, walking in scratching his crack: “Uh. Yasmin?”

  My mother: “Macy?”

  Me: “Hee hee hee hee.”

  I flang open the refrigerator. We may not have had food in it, but containers we had a-fucking-plenty. Even though we hadn’t had eggs since ever, I found a egg carton. I cut off two cups and threw the rest in the trash, AKA on the floor of the kitchen. With markers from school I decorated each cup. Then stuck a M&M in each one and carried it to school.

  Out the corner of my eye I watched Miss Black’s face when she sat down at her desk. I would remember the face of the Super S manager every day for the rest of my life. But I would remember Miss Black’s face too. The way she unwrapped the tissue paper very slow so she didn’t rip it. The way she smiled like when you did something right on your test. The way she ate one M&M like it was something she might order at her favorite restaurant. She saved the second M&M for later.

  Later that day, there was a little pink note pinned to the bulletin board. All period I kept glancing at it out the corner of my eye so she couldn’t tell I was interested. At the end of class I had my chance. I snatched the note from the board and tucked it in my pocket. A girl saw me but she knew better than to open her mouth.

  I waited until I got home to open it, to read the words that was written just for me. I didn’t want my mother to see it. She was with Mr. Guest in the bedroom. I could hear her laughing through the walls. Always through the walls or into the phone. I knew her lips, her mouth, the sound of her laugh, but not her smile. Can a person laugh but never smile?

  I closed the bafroom door. It was the only place I could be alone. I popped a squat and sniffed the envelope. This note was my botanical gardens. I closed my eyes.

  Opened them when I felt a breeze. Popped up, then back down again, almost falling into the toilet.

  Guest: “Hey, whatchu doing in here? What’s that? A love note?”

  “Get out of here!” I screamed, pulling Daddy’s sweatshirt over my bare crotch.

  My mother from the bedroom: “What’s going on?”

  Mr. Guest and I wrestled over the note. I ripped it away and stuffed it in my mouth. He wasn’t staring at my mouth, though. He was staring between my legs. I backed up and almost fell into the tub. I was getting a queasy feeling in my stomach, the taste of that hamburger from lunch coming back up in my throat.

  My mother: “What the fuck, Esteban?” She pushed him, but he didn’t move until he was good and ready to.

  “She got a boyfriend,” he told her, not looking at her but still looking at me. I swallowed the rest of the note like it was the last Dorito on earth and pulled up my pants.

  Mr. Guest walked back into the bedroom.

  My mother popped her head in. I could smell the weed on her. “What was you two doing in here?” she asked. Her robe was open. I could see the hickies on her boob.

  Me: “Don’t you want to ask Mr. Guest what he was doing in here?”

  My mother: “Trying to pee, Macy. Don’t flatter yourself.”

  Me: “Shut up.”

  My mother: “You shut up.”

  Mr. Guest: “Woman!” He banged on the bedroom wall. “Get your ass in here.”

  My mother and me: “Shut up!”

  My mother turned around to go into the bedroom. I wrinkled my nose at the thought. At the thought of what Mr. Guest might be thinking when he was with my mom. That he might be thinking of . . . A little bit of hamburger came up.

  But I didn’t let it. If I let the hamburger up, I let Miss Black’s note come up. I thought real hard. About jazz and book trash and heroes and pink roses. Now forever inside me. A shield to keep everything else out.

  Peace,

  Macy Cashmere

  Pocket

  Noun. If you could make any three people in the whole world dump out their pockets, who would they be?

  Alma and me are waiting for the bus. I can’t see my breaf anymore and I push air in and out my lungs for a reminder. Alma raises a eyebrow and I cut it out. I kick melting icicles off the bench. A little kid’s jacket is sitting on it soaking. Today jackets, coats, and sweaters clutter the school yard fence. Hats and scarves hang off the monkey bars.

  “I’m so cold,” I tell her.

  “Cold? On the warmest day of the year? It’s fifty degrees. Here,” Alma volunteers, “take my coat.” It’s hanging through her backpack straps.

  “The cold’s in my bones. I have winter in my spine.”

  “Tell me how you are going to move to Canada again?”

  “Here, the winter’s in me. There, the winter will leave my body. Also, I will wear pelts. A bear will attack me. I’ll kill the bear and take its spirit into my body.”

  “Sounds like you have it all worked out.” Alma turns away and shakes the coat in front of my face. I stop talking and take the coat. I nod.

  The nod means Thank you. Thank you for the coat. Thank you for the shoes. (That was last week.) Thank you for giving me the shirt off your back. (The week before.)

  I shiver.

  “Oh, Macy,” Alma says, “this isn’t like the time when you freaked out because of your tongue, is it?”

  My tongue felt too big for my mouth. I had no explanation. Alma didn’t ask for any. She just sang me opera until I stopped banging my head against the wall and laughed. Singing opera is the only thing Alma can’t do.

  Th
e bus is late. Alma gets up and paces. I don’t like her being at the bus stop bench too long. Some guy is always bound to make a comment. I’m always bound to crack a skull. I hunker down in my Alma coat cave, shove my hands in her furry pockets, and scope out the area for scrubs. Clink. My hands touch bottles.

  Alma turns when she hears me digging through her pockets.

  “Carrots and peas?” I say, more to myself than to her, reading the label on a jar I’ve pulled from her pocket. I pull out more jars. “Squash? Bananaberry?”

  “Give me those!”

  By those, Alma means the half-dozen jars of baby food she has in her coat pocket. I stand up. “Are these the babies’s’s food?”

  “Yes. But we get loads from WIC for free.”

  “A’ight. But why are they in your pockets?”

  “This coming from the girl who eats napkins?”

  Ouch. “Damn, Alma. I didn’t mean nothing.”

  “Sorry. It’s just I’m so tired of canned food. Spaghettios. Spam. What is Spam anyway?”

  “Mmmmm. Spam. Canned ham and when you fry it up with a little rice and onions—oh! it’s heaven.”

  “Yeah, if heaven were made of chemicals and fat.”

  “Chemicals and fat. Mmmmm.”

  “Macy!”

  “You know what. It’s all good. Just didn’t know you were on the Disturbed Girl’s Diet.”

  “I’m not disturbed!”

  Ouch again. “A’ight. No offense.”

  “I’m sorry, Macy. Look, my mom has been coming down on me lately about the babies and me taking care of them . . . I guess I thought you were saying I’m selfish for eating their food. I love my babies. It’s just sometimes, I just don’t want Spagettios in my hair. I don’t want to shove fast food down my throat because I’m too busy feeding everybody else. I don’t want to be in charge. I’m—annoyed. Maybe it is a little selfish. But I just want to take a minute. Taste my food—even if it’s mush. With the jars I can steal that minute for myself. . . .”

  “Hey. You’re the least selfish person on earth. Hello: I’m wearing your shoes and your coat.” I imagine her eating the baby food in Pepe’s closet between classes. In a closet at home with kids pounding on the door.

  When the next bus comes, I tell Alma to go ahead and I hand her her coat. She grabs it and climbs on, but just as the bus door closes she throws the coat at my head. That is the Alma I know. The problem is the Alma who eats baby food. The Alma I don’t know.

  I wear the coat but the cold hibernates in me. I get home. My mother’s in the kitchen. Her back is turned. She’s on the phone. “Don’t cry, Daddy. You been doin good. You’ll get out soon. I know it.” She turns around. She’s not crying. WTF?

  My mother puts her hand over the phone: “Do you want to talk to him?” I freeze. My mother looks at me funny. “Augy, Macy’s—What? Okay.”

  My mother to me: “He had to go.”

  She goes to the restroom and leaves her phone on the toilet like she always does. But my feet don’t move to get it. My mouth don’t know what to say to anybody about anything. What would I have said to my dad if I heard him crying? What should I have said to Alma? I know I didn’t say any of the things I should have said.

  I should have fucking said to my dad, I love you. But right now I don’t know what I is. I don’t know what love is. I don’t know what you is.

  Right now I would normally be breaking something. But I just feel broke down.

  The counselor said if you don’t know what to say, write it. If you don’t know what to write, draw it. I take out a Sharpie and sit at the kitchen table. I draw a mountain and a sky on it. When I was a little kid I used to think mountains held up the sky. I liked to think my dad was the mountain when I rode on top of his shoulders.

  But that’s bullshit.

  There ain’t nothing holding up the sky.

  I want my dad to call. I don’t want to have to say the right things to him. I don’t want to say I love you first. I want him to say all the right things because—he’s my fucking dad, damn it.

  I want to talk to Alma about not wanting to talk to Alma.

  The phone rings. My mother runs out the bedroom and into the bafroom and picks it up. “It’s for you. You have five minutes, then I want my phone back.”

  I grab the phone. “Hey.”

  Alma: “So, what’s up?”

  Me: “Uh, since the bus stop?”

  Alma: “Shut up.”

  Awkward silence. Like the first one we’ve ever had. Me: “So—”

  Alma: “So, I guess I’m going to get some dinner.”

  “Yeah.” My stomach is growling.

  “Listen, I’m not going to eat baby food anymore.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have to go.”

  She hangs up. For the first time I feel like she is gone. Like I can’t call her right back like I always do, like I’ve done a million times.

  That night, I burrow in the dirty laundry. I space out. I think about all the things I’ve eaten in the dark. I think about Alma. When did she start? Why didn’t she tell me? How would I have acted if she told me? Alma’s hunger scares me and I can’t understand why. Any more than I could understand why my dad’s tears scared the shit out of me.

  But Alma is giving it up. The baby food. Because she don’t need it. She don’t want it. She’s better than that.

  Everything is back to normal.

  Question

  Noun.

  Am I disturbed?

  Ready—or Not

  Adverbs. One for the money. Two for the show. Three to get ready. And four to—

  I think about writing a letter to Daddy in prison about what my mother is doing. More specifically, I think about writing a letter to my daddy in prison about who my mother is doing.

  Instead I decide to write a letter to my grandmother. My mother’s mother.

  Dear Grandma,

  I’m thinking about the day we met. It was sort of the day you and my mother met. You brought Mom the pictures of you two before you left. I always want to expand the picture. See all the things you cropped out, wanted Yasmin to forget. A daughter can never forget losing her mother. There’s always a empty seat at the table.

  As mad as I get at my mom, I get madder at you. Every time Yasmin does stupit shit, I think of the person who didn’t do shit for her. YOU.

  And why’d you finally show up? Because you needed someone to take care of you. You needed someone to love you. Yasmin wouldn’t do it, and I know she still don’t forgive herself. I blame you for that too. After she threw you out she spent hours, days, looking for you on the Internet. She still does sometimes. What sucks more than anything is she ain’t never gonna find what she’s looking for, but she can’t ever stop searching for it.

  I write this letter on Yasmin’s behalf. To say everything even she could never admit. That you’re a criminal. A thief steals shit but you stole the person Yasmin could’ve been.

  Fuck you on behalf of my mother. You didn’t even try. At least Yasmin gets credit for that.

  I archive this letter in my dictionary. Next I write the letter to my dad. Put it in one of those envelopes the CPS worker left for us. Crumple it up. Uncrumple it. Keep it in my pocket.

  Super

  Adjective. Rhymes with Duper!

  The history teacher is very excited. He has a SUPER! lesson plan. Tests are over so he can teach us something. We are learning about Pompeii. Pompeii is a Roman city from a long-ass time ago. Long-ass is to be defined as times when people write AD and BC. It got burnt down by a big-ass volcano. Big-ass. Not ginormous. I hate that word ginormous. Stop saying it.

  I say to Teacher Man, “I do not get AD and BC. I do not get why the 1800s is called the nineteenth century. I mean why can’t the 1800s be called the eighteenth century? We created daylight savings time, didn’t we? She-it, if we could make day earlier and night later you would think we could call the 1900s the nineteenth century.”

  Alma draws me a diagram. S
he thinks she will explain AD and BC to me. She is even making it into some kind of game and folding loose-leaf into a dice. I ask her to hand me a dice.

  Alma: “DIE!!!”

  George: “Die? Die! No!”

  Alma—rolls her eyes.

  Alma! I want to shout. WTF?! I give her the eye. A first for us.

  Me to George: “She said dynamic! Like Dynamic Duo.”

  This leads George to pretend he is flying with a cape. This leads the class to talk about when the X-Men will stop sucking so hard.

  The teacher is mad. I don’t think this is in his SUPER! lesson plan. I start thinking what would happen if a big-ass volcano exploded and the Super S got buried by volcanic ash.

  So I tell the class to shut the hell up and they do. I motion to Teacher Man so he knows we all are going to listen now. He talks. He tells it like it was. Picture this.

  Back then there are farmers. There are fishermen. There are potters. There are blacksmiths and carpenters. They are all waking up at the crack of dawn because they have shit to do. The fisherman has to catch the fish and sell the fish. He probably made his own boat. Can you imagine making a boat? You can’t even make sense, let alone make a boat. There ain’t no Super S back then. Everybody had to grow things. People built with their bare hands. George gets excited.

  George says, “My uncle has hands!”

  I say to the class, “He means his uncle builds things.”

  George nods so hard his helmet falls over his eyes. Everybody starts talking about their uncles that make things with their bare hands.

  Me to Alma: “Back then I would be a blacksmith. I would work with iron and fire. I would get rich on rage. You?”

  Alma: “I don’t know what I want to be now. Let alone then.”

  Me feeling like I’m in a time-lapse, replaying her words: I don’t know. “You don’t know?”

  Alma: “No. I don’t.”

  Me: “Shit, if you don’t know, who does?”

  KABOOM!

  Everybody jumps. The teacher has played a sound byte of a eruption. He’s got our attention.

  Teacher Man: “Imagine it. People are sitting in an amphitheater. Today’s equivalent would be a movie theater.”