The Whore of Babylon, A Memoir

by Katrina Prado

  “What about Jenny?” I say. “She seems like such a nice girl. Don’t her parents have money?” I ask. I can’t help but feel that if Robyn associates with the upper crust, their good fortune will somehow rub off on my daughter.

  “Besides, moving to California is a fresh start,” I begin. “You weren’t doing well in the schools in Aztec. They’re still in the twentieth century, for heaven’s sake,” I say, trying for a joke.

  “But I was happy there,” she pleads.

  “But you were failing.” I stop a moment and then continue. “And with Daddy out of a job, we didn’t have a whole lot of choice. Besides, we’re lucky he got this job. The whole economy is starting to get shaky right now.”

  “I want my old life back,” she demands.

  “I know, honey. But I’m just trying”

  “Stop!” she screams, clenching her fists. The jangle of movement from her many bracelets underscores her plea. “Would you just stop trying?” she asks. “All of your trying is freaking choking me!” Her voice breaks.

  She stomps away to her bedroom slamming her door so hard I feel the fillings in my teeth rattle in my head.

  ***

  I check my watch. If I hurry, I can finish putting away the laundry before getting ready for work.

  Robyn is in the bathroom, preening, cooling down from our fight earlier. I decide to put the laundry away for her. Clutching the plastic laundry basket, I stump into Robyn’s room, tsk-tsking under my breath. Why can’t she just get her chores done? I pluck out several pairs of her clean panties from among the washcloths and socks and yank open the top drawer to stuff them in. I shove the underwear into the drawer when the back of my hand knocks against something hard. I clear a space amongst the lingerie to find money, lots of it, held together by a rubber band.

  “What are you doing?” Robyn’s voice sounds behind me, accusatory.

  I spin around holding up the money.

  “Where did you get all this?” I demand. I hold the wad of folded bills in my hand reminiscent, I imagine, of stashes exposed by DEA agents from nabbed drug lords.

  “What were you doing in my room?” Robyn says, her voice dry and tight. She peers around, as if expecting to find that I’ve uprooted more of her things.

  “I was trying to help you,” I say.

  “By snooping through my drawers?” she asks incredulously. She is furious. She swipes at the wad of cash in my hand like an angry toddler. I yank back, retaining the money and frown deeply at her.

  “I was not snooping. I thought I’d do you a favor and finish your clothes. I was only putting your whites away when I saw this in your top drawer.”

  We stand confronting each other a second, as if neither one has read the script any further to know what the next move should be. I hold up the cash a second time.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask again.

  She leaps across the room, nearly falling on top of me and snatches the money out of my hand.

  “It’s mine,” she says, recovering her balance.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Doing odd jobs,” she says.

  “What kind of odd jobs?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Raking leaves and stuff.”

  This is such a bald faced lie it takes me a moment to formulate a coherent response. If my prim and prissy daughter, with her high heels, painted nails, and long blond hair has earned three hundred dollars raking leaves, I am a yak.

  “Oh Robyn,” I say, shaking my head. I don’t want her to go on, digging herself any deeper. “Just stop, okay? Tell me the truth. Where did you get all that money?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  She turns her back on me and walks over to her dresser, shoving the cash into her purse. She swipes the brush from the dresser and begins savagely brushing her hair.

  “I can’t believe you’d go through my things like that,” she says.

  She throws the brush onto the bed.

  “Robyn, I told you, I was putting your underwear away,” I say defensively.

  She whips around, facing me.

  “You liar!” she screams. Her face is flushed by anger.

  “I’ve had it,” she says. “You’re hella whacked.” She scoops up her purse and then turns around. She doesn’t even look at me, instead, marches over to her closet where she grabs a lightweight sweater.

  I huff out an elongated breath.

  “I have a right to know what’s going on with my own child.”

  “Yeah, right. See ya,” she says between clenched teeth as she drifts by. A cat’s paw breeze of bubble gum and Hello Kitty lip-gloss floats in the air past me.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, trailing after her like a puppy.

  As I walk through her room, I catch my face in her dresser mirror. I am shocked to see that I look so haggard. I run my hand through my hair, following Robyn into the living room. I clear my throat to get her attention.

  “Anyway, it’s almost time for summer school. I can drive you,” I add, trying to change the subject. But Robyn is fuming. She stomps through the house towards the front door.

  “You can’t just go through my things. Invade my life. It’s like, you know, I have no privacy at all.”

  She stops in the middle of the living room, her face an odd mixture of fear and defiance.

  “Are you walking to school?”

  I ask this because normally Robyn loathes walking anywhere she can’t get a ride.

  Already my mind is racing ahead. Today is Rob’s birthday; tonight after work, we’re all supposed to go to Red Lobster to celebrate. I still have to wrap his gift: a new brush with real boar’s hair bristles. I wanted this day to be a happy one for Rob. I wanted so badly for all of us to be in a good mood. Still, maybe by tonight Robyn will have cooled off.

  “Remember, we’re going out tonight for Daddy’s birthday,” I remind her.

  “So?” she retorts. She spins around and walks to the front door. Her hand reaches for the doorknob.

  “Robyn. Don’t talk to me like that young lady.”

  She opens the door and then stops and turns towards me. The crush of heat from the morning air rushes in, bringing with it a glimmer of the oppressive summer day to come. The lingering smell of exhaust floats into the house from nearby Highway 4. With an insolent glare she says:

  “I want my own life.”

  The front door shuts. She is gone.

  Memories of fights with my mother come to mind. The exchange of angry words followed by the inevitable door slamming of my youth clang in my memory. I blink back the sting of tears. It is one thing to construct a barricade of anger to live behind. It is quite another to be on the other side of that barrier.

  I have never been hated and despised with such an absolute, pure fervor by anyone before. I wonder if I can withstand the crucible of her scorn. I hope that I will emerge on the other side shined and purified. But fear wells within my heart that more likely I will come out a molten, misshapen charred carbon shell.

  I look down at my watch. Almost eight. Already I am going to be late for work. I cannot think about any of this right now.

  “No,” I say aloud, as I grab my car keys, my purse, and my tote, and head for the front door.

  ***

  I hit the print button and check my watch, nearly seven. Everyone else has gone home for the day. Carmelita wants a vendor transaction list for every single vendor account on her desk when she comes to work in the morning.

  From the corner of my eye I spot my poor houseplant I bought months ago to cheer up this dismal room and its flat, institutional gray walls. The plant, a coleus, is now mottled with drooping ocher and brown leaves. I can never seem to remember to water it regularly.

  As I wait for the printouts I pick up my coffee cup and down its remnants. I frown slightly as I swallow because the coffee is so stale and cold that its taste reminds me of modeling clay. As awful as it tastes, the noxious liquid quells the burn that
quietly roils in my stomach.

  I had planned on dinner out tonight to celebrate Rob’s birthday. But he called at four this afternoon to tell me he was going to have to work late. His birthday dinner is ruined even before it got started. As I staple together the vendor reports I think about how Rob sounded on the phone. He sounded unhappy. Not unhappy about having to work late; just unhappy in general.

  I look at my watch again. I bite my lip and pick up the phone, dialing home. I listen to a steady tattoo of thrums as the phone at home rings over and over. The answering machine does not pick up, which means one of two things: Robyn has turned off the answering machine, or she is on the phone and is ignoring the call waiting feature, figuring it is probably me on the other end calling to harangue her about something she’d rather not hear about.

  I hang up the receiver and sigh, releasing an ordinary hope that she isn’t answering the phone because she’s too busy doing her homework.

  I drop the vendor lists off on Carmelita’s desk and then head back to my cubicle. I gather my purse, my canvas tote, and my jacket, making sure my computer is off before leaving. The hallway is filled with shadow, lit only by tiny courtesy lights. It smells of cheap air freshener. I am struck by how empty this hallway feels and suddenly I find my thoughts shadowed by my earlier conversation with Rob and my nebulous, clouded feelings about him. Why is he not happy? Why is it that discontent seems to cling to him like shrink wrap? Like an automated recording, my head repeats these questions.

  I strike out across the parking lot and unlock my car. Clots of bus exhaust languish in the air. A car alarm trumpets from a distance. I toss my bags and jacket into the passenger seat of the old, worn Corsica and head for home.

  Pulling into my driveway I shift the car into park. From the corner of my eye, I spot our neighbor, Mrs. Cotillo gawking at me from behind her dogwood shrubs. I manufacture a smile as I crawl out of the car.

  “Sure is hot,” I shout over the hedge, pointing out the obvious.

  “um-hmm,” she responds weakly, not wanting to be drawn into a lengthy conversation about nothing in the stifling evening heat.

  “Working late?” she asks, her eyes peer over gargantuan peach framed glasses.

  “Just a little,” I say, gathering my things and shoving the car door closed with my hip.

  She glances at the darkened windows of our house, one hand absently fluffing the back of her curly gray hair.

  “First one home,” she muses.

  I can’t tell if she means it as a statement or a question.

  I manage a weak laugh. “It sure looks that way.”

  She glances at her watch.

  “Everything okay?” she asks. Her eyebrows knit in the hopeful anticipation that everything is not.

  “Just fine,” I say over my shoulder as I clear my stoop and plunge the key into the lock of the front door.

  Pickles is curled on one end of the couch. She meows once and then returns to her nap.

  It’s now after eight o’clock. I flip on the living room light and peek at the thermostat; eighty-eight degrees. I jerk the lever down to eighty-three. I stand just beyond the closed front door and take stock. Along the air is the smell of old coffee. Just behind that, if I close my eyes, I think I can smell faint traces of Robyn’s latest scent. The perfume is too heavy for a girl her age, but I had been able to keep those thoughts to myself when Robyn brought the stuff home from Jenny’s a couple of weeks ago. I set down my gear and walk to the kitchen and the answering machine. It’s just as I had thought; off. My eyes scan the kitchen table and then the counters for a note of some kind, but the surfaces contain only the mundane detritus of our lives: unopened bills, pens, a couple of loose screws, and empty gum wrappers among other things. I grab a handful of Cheese-Its from the box on the kitchen table and move to the refrigerator. The salt from the crackers coats my tongue and makes me think instantly of wanting something cold to wash them down.

  I am so exhausted I can barely think. Grabbing three potatoes from the crisper, I toss them into the microwave and then move to the living room, giving a cursory look over the couch and coffee table for Robyn’s backpack, but it’s not there. Her purse is gone too. I frown and move to her room. All I see is the usual hurricane of clothing and CD covers, and a few empty cups from fast food restaurants. The brush she tossed on her bed this morning is gone. I survey the mess again and shake my head.

  “Typical,” I say beneath my breath, as if I’m afraid that even her room might hear my disgust.

  I find myself wondering how I have come to this place in time.

  The day after Rob was laid off from Conoco, I had found myself at Angel Peak, a tourist spot for those passing through Aztec, New Mexico. This place is not the parched and barren desert region that most people think. Angel Peak has a rich and verdant quality that engages the senses. The rock formation is forty million years old and the variegated ribands of rock in acorn browns, and fir greens combined with the mysterious scent of history make it a magical, living place. The Navajo considered this place sacred; one rock formation in particular strongly resembles a kneeling angel with a broken wing. I had found this place not only sacred myself, but oddly appropriate. I stood and stared at that angel with her broken wing. Fighting back tears, I spoke one word aloud: please.

  And yet here we are, not even a year from that day, and already something about our life seems spoiled. Rob stays out drinking nearly every night. Robyn appears to be on a path towards self-destruction and it seems the only thing I can do is sit and watch as each catastrophe unfolds.

  I want so badly to excise this necrotic wound that is poisoning our lives, but I have no idea how to find it, much less remove it.

  I trudge to my bedroom and strip off my work clothes, dumping them into the hamper, donning my favorite pair of old sweats and a T-shirt, wondering on the whereabouts of Robyn. I tug vaguely at the various food stains on my T-shirt idly wondering about the last time it was laundered. It smells of my body lotion, Jean Nate, combined with the odor of deep fried hash browns, though I haven’t actually made hash browns in years.

  Rob said he didn’t expect to get home until after nine or later. And then there’s always the chance that he made a pit stop. I can’t remember the name of the bar he likes, though he has told me several times.

  When we first moved to California, he told me he knew he needed to stop drinking. And, in fact, the first couple of months we were here, I began to allow myself to believe that he’d turned over a new leaf. But it didn’t last. One night he called about eleven thirty and said he and some of the guys from work had decided to get together. That was before I knew about his friend Dusty’s penchant for, as he calls them, “tittie bars”.

  The microwave pings. Time to turn the potatoes. I sigh and plod to the kitchen.

  The can opener resentfully grumbles to life as I open a can of cheese soup. It falls, in arsenic yellow colored globs, into the small pot. I realize, belatedly, that I forgot to spray the pot with Pam.

  I tell myself not to mind the clock, but even before I’ve finished that thought my wrist has appeared magically in front of my face and my eyes fasten onto the tiny hands of my watch. Eight-thirty. I pour a can full of water on top of the cheese blobs, giving the whole mess a half-hearted stir before turning to my address book to look up Jenny’s phone number.

  “Your daughter isn’t here,” Mrs. Kammish says.

  Her curtness catches me off guard. I feel, by the tenor of her voice, that she does not approve of my daughter or me.

  “Thank you anyway,” I say.

  “I hope you find her,” Mrs. Kammish says.

  I listen to the click as Mrs. Kammish hangs up the phone.

  The microwave pings again. The potatoes are done. Not much of a birthday dinner, baked potatoes covered by cheddar cheese soup, but it’s the best I can do tonight. The kitchen reeks of hot, processed cheese that reminds me of a dirty factory.

  I sit in front of my potato, soaking in the greasy, o
range concoction but can’t make myself pick up my spoon. I wipe the sheen of sweat from my forehead and my eyes drift to the left. On the table are the magazines I bought at lunch. These women’s magazines seem the only thing that keeps me grounded in reality at times. The only things that tell me what’s real and what’s not.

  I scan the headlines: “Look Twenty Years Younger Without Plastic Surgery”, “Stress Could Be Killing Your Teen”, “The Frightening Truth About Ketchup ”.

  I flip to the article about teen stress. Your child is stressed out, the article says, because she is involved in too many activities. Swim team, ballet, student body offices, cheerleading practice, and the copious hours involved in doing homework to keep up that straight A grade average will all take its toll on the young teenage girl these days.

  I shove the magazine away from me. This article is not about my daughter. I have always wondered about parents of children whose lives seem so perfect. I know, at least on an intellectual level, that these families have problems too. These teenagers struggle to find themselves too. Yet I imagine that from these mothers there resonates a certain satisfaction in the job they have done raising their young. A pleasure is derived in lingering over the good grades, the sports leagues and group activities.

  I sit and stare, thoughts of Robyn cloud my mind leaving a smudge of despair. Somehow, without meaning to, I have raised a broken child. Within her psyche is a fissure of defeat. I have affixed that fissure there, as skillfully as a surgeon implants a pacemaker. I brush away angry tears because reparation seems as vague and blurred as a dream.

  The phone rings. I snatch up the receiver thinking it might be Robyn.

  “Hello?”

  “There you are, darlin’,” Gladys, my mother says.

  My shoulders collapse in exasperation. Why didn’t I look at the caller ID? I mentally kick myself.

  “I was just getting ready to call you,” I lie.

  “Well, I wanted to be the first to give you the good news,” she says.

  “Oh?” I say, already trying to think of an excuse to get off the phone.