by Monroe, Anya
laughing
flipping my purple bangs from my eyes.
Jess wants to cut school and go find her boyfriend Markus.
Mess around, get high.
I know Ms. F will kill me if I skip out.
My counselor Terry will find out.
My social worker will freak out.
My world is full of adults
who care about my “welfare”
yet don't seem to be doing anything to get me there.
Where I want to go.
Back at home,
with Benji.
"No you go ahead, Jess, it's cool."
I got to go to class
you know
show up
live up
to what they want for me.
She laughs and kisses my cheek
texting
Markus as she leaves.
I watch her walk away
knowing she is my saving grace.
When I showed up
showed my face
at this high school.
11.
Later, in the cafeteria
Jess is back, Markus too.
I sit and eat the free food
the school gives me.
Chocolate milk.
Chicken sticks and fries.
Ranch dressing on the side.
No surprise.
"Are you asking someone to the Hawkins dance, Louisa?"
Markus thinks he's so cute.
I don't get it.
He’s just like every other boy at this entire school.
Thinking they are strong and that
the girls need them to survive.
The truth is, the only thing a man ever gave me was
an STD and
a black eye.
"I think I'll pass. Don't need to waste my night dancing with some dumbass."
Markus laughs, at me.
Thinks he has me figured out.
Thinks I’m too scared to ask some guy to go with me
be seen with me.
Hold my hand, lean on me.
"You’re just scared he'll say no."
I throw a fry at Markus
looking at Jess.
To save me.
Say something.
To prove to him that I am
more than he thinks.
"Yeah, Lou-Lou, why don't you go, with us?"
I stare at her smirk
and her eyes
knowing she’s trying to mess with me.
And knowing that it’s working.
I’ve lived life
face down
on the ground
and it feels like
I will never be
strong enough
to stand
up
and walk away.
12.
On the bus ride home she leans over to ask, "So you think you'll invite someone?"
I roll my eyes.
Feigning confidence.
Pretending I'm oblivious
to my own feelings.
"Well, I just thought it'd be fun. Like a double date. Besides, Markus is cool and all, but he’s not my best friend. He’s not you."
I know.
Markus is the kind of guy who can score you some
weed or beer or cigarettes.
But not the kind of guy who makes you
laugh or feel pretty or interesting.
He doesn't get the jokes or
understand the reason
Jess is with him.
The joke's on him.
"No, I get it. It’s just not my thing. You understand, right?”
I smile, halfheartedly.
As if I want to spend my night with one of Markus’s friends.
Another guy just like him.
Who thinks if they bring some pot
it means they can get to my G-spot.
“You’ll be fine without me, Jess. Don't you worry your pretty little head."
And I pet her
fuzzyshavedbleachedout
skull
until we get to her stop.
13.
That night Ms. Francine's friends show up
like they do once a month
and they sit with
cups of green tea in their hands
and plates of complicated food in their laps
and they talk about all the things
I have never heard adults care about.
Things like:
Women's Rights
Freedom Fights
Liberty
Poverty
Justice
Equality
Same-Sex Anything
And Where Men Fit Into This Thing Called Love.
I’m sitting in my bedroom
at the desk trying to read
The Scarlet Letter
and all I can do
is eavesdrop
on this group of Ms. Francine's
sitting one floor below
and wonder
why my mom
never had any friends
or complicated food
or green tea anything.
14.
My mom wasn't always sick.
Sick in the head
lying in bed.
Hating me for being everything
she was
not.
The weeks before my sixth birthday
I made this magic plan.
It involved a tea party and pink balloons
and cupcakes made by hand.
I told my mom about it
one afternoon
while she was sitting on the couch
smoking, billowing fumes.
I told her about my dreams for the day
wanted her to hear me out.
Back then she was sometimes happy.
You had to catch her in the right mood.
Usually cigarettes and the TV on
meant she'd be able to listen.
Dishes in the sink
dinner being made
“Daddy” coming home
made her scream at you
if you looked at her
or she'd slap your cheek if you laughed too loud
or she'd say mean things about
the way you brushed your hair
or the way you chewed your food.
But now on the couch she had her feet up high
Benji was fussing beside her
crying because he needed someone to
mother
him.
But quiet now, don't you dare say that out loud
or she’ll make you go to your room
where you’ll sit
until the middle of the night
and then when the house is quiet
you’ll tiptoe to the kitchen
looking for a piece of bread.
Your stomach so hungry you’d give anything
for it to be big and round like
Mom’s was.
But here she is, smoking her cigarette
and I knew the moment when I saw it
so I walked right up to her
and told her about the
party
and cake
and pretty dresses and make believe friends
and she laughed at me
and said "You ain't got nobody who will come for you."
That was the truth in her eyes
and so I made it my own
which is why having Jess
means so much
to my six-year-old heart.
15.
At school, dressing down in the locker room.
P.E.–– always the perfect opportunity
to remember who has what
and who's not there quite yet.
And as much as we swear we don't care
we all know what we
wish we had.
I am middle of the line.
Average in
height
looks.
Pretty eyes.
But a nose that is
permanently
crooked from that one fall
that one time
when my mom made me swear it was an accident.
A trip and fall mistake.
I wish the Dr. had a bit more time
to look in my eyes
(the pretty ones)
and see that the mistake wasn't mine.
I undress and put on gray shorts and a blue shirt––
the kind of clothes that are supposed
to make
that line a bit more even.
So the playing field on the basketball court
will seem a little less
Divided.
Decided.
A little more like we’re all the same
and not so much like we’re
beating ourselves into the ground
for the million different ways
we don't
add up.
I look in the mirror and
see the bruises that are no longer there
see the faded scar under my chin
and the stitches
that used to
wrap around my skin.
The stitches now lining
my soul
trying to hold the pieces in the right places.
Wishing for a deepdownhealing
and that it will all look okay
or at least
look like everyone else's
in the end.
So that the line that divides
my insides
will look like my outsides.
Middle of the line.
16.
There are a lot of things I wish I could do:
Play the banjo
ride a horse
swim with dolphins
speak only in French
and smoke cigarettes
without coughing.
Terry, my counselor,
asks me in her calm and quiet way
to write these things down.
An assignment that will
suddenly
apparently
make me want to open up and
tell her all
the deep
dark
secrets of my past.
As if the meaning behind my desire
to play a three-stringed instrument
is somehow telling her about
the broken home
or why I feel all-alone
or why I can't quite put words
to the reason for my lack of
eye contact.
She should know by now
I consider locked eyes a contact sport.
I don't play contact
anything.
That was my childhood
everything.
17.
But I want to humor her,
remember those good girl vibes I got going on?
Gotta ride 'em strong.
You never know what this
late afternoon
counseling appointment might bring.
Relief?
Answers?
A little sense to these mixed up days?
So I tell Terry my list
and she listens.
Trying so hard to make it mean more
than the fact that I saw
a PBS special
with people swimming with dolphins
in Florida
and thought it seemed really cool.
"Do you want to be like a dolphin, free in the water, free to do what you want?"
Her sincerity nearly breaks me.
But I know that that's not how this game is played.
"Yeah, I just want to swim away, Terry."
She sees it as a break through
a better view
suddenly seeing me as a person with a heart, mind, and soul.
Like during the months that I sat here rolling my eyes
I was just
really wanting to tell her
about my dream of swimming
with a big, gray fish.
She hugs me as I go
part of me wants her to know
that I was just going along
putting on an act,
but the other part
knows that
it doesn't really make a difference.
More people are happy
when you say what they want to hear
and
maybe that's okay.
18.
“There is documented evidence,” she had said to me
in the waiting room.
Benji and me, knowing everything
we worked so hard to hide
was now in the open.
The one hundredth and one phone call
from the neighbor was
the final straw that broke the camel’s back
the wind blowing down our house of cards
the huff and puff from the big bad wolf.
What were we waiting for?
A new life?
A new family?
A new way of living out our humanity?
They had proof.
I get it.
But why make us leave so fast?
With no boxes packed.
Our history now two hours away
left in an abandoned apartment
gonna start to decay.
My faceheartsoul streaked
with the knowledge that
my journals
were left
on the mattress of a
freezing cold
hellhole of a home.
This lady
whoever she is, made me get in her car
and we drove so far.
One hour.
Two hours.
More.
To get to this waiting room.
To sit in cold chairs.
To be handed hot chocolate
as she paces, waiting for her phone to ring.
As she paces, waiting for me
to speak.
The policemen had them in cuffs
minutes after they’d arrived.
They came into our house
after a few knocks on the door.
I was standing in the kitchen
sweeping the floor.
“Child abuse is happening here, and worse,” the policeman said.
I looked around
and grabbed the only thing
I could think of:
Benji.
I kept him close to me
in the waiting room.
Scared to look in his eyes.
They’ve always been darker than mine
inside and out
and my brown eyes were
filled to the brim on account
of leaving so fast
of my mom screaming as she got in the police car
screaming she was innocent.
As if somehow that is relevant.
Because the only two people who
are innocent
were sitting in a cold waiting room
until a stranger came to pick them up
to take them somewhere.
“Safe,” she’d said.
“Clean,” she’d said.
“Warm,” she’d said.
But those words felt like
I was being locked up
from everything
I'd known
every single day.
And
That
Feels
Like
I
Am
The
One
Leaving
In
A
Police
Car.
19.
Benji and I sit on a park bench
trying to “connect.”
A scheduled appointment is what our relatio
nship has
become.
It’s not fair.
Being stared
at by a court-appointed adult
who watches us the entire time we talk.
God–– do I really need a babysitter at sixteen?
"So what’s been happening with you? You keep leaving me
hanging."
I ask a question he can't answer.
The answer is something too hard to transfer
to phonetic sounds and syllables
some sort of complicated lulls
in time and space.
And even if he could say why he acts this way
I know it would do no good,
not when the real question isn't
for him or me
or Ms. Francine.
Not for Terry or Jess-
It’s for the man and woman who left
a long time ago.
"At the group home, they're so hard on me. It’s like every time I try and do anything or go somewhere, they make me stay in my room. It sucks. I'm a prisoner, Lou. Take me with you. Please."
His knuckles crack as he shifts
his feelings to his fingers.
Hoping the sensation will make him
feel more alive
ready to dive
into this hard conversation.
"Benji, I wish I could. It just isn't time yet. And maybe mom will show up this month. And then things would change."
That makes him fidget
tap his fingers more
focus his eyes on the floor.
"Nothing’s gonna change, Lou-Lou. Not as long as we sit here waiting on them. Why are you being such a bitch about it? We could just leave. No one would ever need to know where we went. We could be a family again."
I flinch when he calls me out
for not being the person he needs.
As if I’m choosing this life-long reprieve
from normal.
I WANT NORMAL.
I don't want to be living with Ms. Francine.
But I have something Benji never got.
The understanding that sometimes
the life you are living
is your lot.
"Benji, I'm not picking anything or anyone but you. I want to be with you. That’s why you need to do your best and be real good and then they’ll let you live with me again, in Ms. F's house."
