I accosted them in the kitchen one night while Mom prepared dinner and Dad thumbed through the files in his briefcase. I contended that we could find a cheaper house in Berwyn and the taxes would be lower. Feeling desperate, I also asserted, “Berwyn has the car spindle that was in Wayne’s World. Oak Park doesn’t have cool public art like that.”
Dad snorted. “Kara, that thing is beyond tacky. And we’re staying in Oak Park for the schools. That’s why I work so hard to pay those high taxes.”
“Doesn’t Stacey deserve to go to school here, too? Maybe she could live with us or at least use our address-”
Dad cut me off with his patented “Absolutely not!” signaling end of discussion.
Mom chased me upstairs to my bedroom, where I threw myself on my bed, shouting, “Dad’s so unfair! He didn’t even listen to me. He doesn’t care about anything but his stupid job and he doesn’t understand…” I buried my face in a pillow, sobbing.
Mom gently stroked my hair. “I understand,” she murmured. I turned my head to look at her. She brushed away the ginger strands that clung to my damp cheeks before explaining, “My best friend’s parents sent her to an all-girls Catholic high school. I begged my parents to send me, too, even though we couldn’t afford it.”
“You do understand. Will you talk to Dad?” I asked with a hiccup.
Mom smiled in that patronizing parental way. “Sweetie, Jane and I stayed friends even though we went to different schools. We hung out after school almost every day. That’s what you and Stacey’ll do. She’ll only be a couple miles away. And you’ll meet new friends like I did. It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t!” I spat, feeling betrayed. Mom tried to hug me, but I flopped over on my stomach, growling, “Get out of my room!”
Mom spent the summer trying to reassure me that everything would be fine, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that our annual trip to my aunt’s cabin in Door County would be the last of the good times for me and Stacey.
My family always spent the second-to-last week of August at the cabin and Stacey had been joining us since fourth grade. Stacey’s move was scheduled for the weekend after we returned, but we tried to enjoy our vacation.
On our last night, we snuck out after everyone went to bed. We crept through the backyard, down the dirt path to the lake. We did this every year, settling on the edge of the small pier just past where the motorboat was moored to talk and look at the stars. But this time we had a mission: to smoke pot for the first time. We thought getting stoned would help us forget the move and laugh and have fun like we used to.
We sat on the pier in silence at first, listening to make sure none of the adults had woken. Then Stacey fumbled in the pocket of her flannel shirt for the joint she’d carefully wrapped in a plastic bag. She hadn’t shown it to me yet and I’d wondered if she’d actually been able to swipe some pot from Beth like she’d been promising.
Stacey extracted the joint and placed it in my palm. I studied the rolling job. It looked like a regular cigarette, but with the paper neatly twisted at both ends. “Whoa,” I breathed upon examining the craftsmanship. “Did Beth give this to you?”
“No, she’s not that cool. I took the pot and the papers from her dresser drawer while she was at work.”
“You rolled this?”
Stacey nodded, obviously proud of her accomplishment. “Learned from watching the best.” She smirked and handed me her lighter.
We’d started stealing Beth’s cigarettes that summer, but they hadn’t prepared my lungs for the burn of the first inhale. I coughed, tucking my chin toward my chest to mute the sound. Stacey took the joint and her first drag yielded the same result.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I managed to say in a scratchy voice.
“Yeah.” Stacey squeezed her watering eyes shut.
After a few more drags, I stared up at the sky slightly lightheaded, wondering if soon I’d feel happy or at least hungry with the munchies like Beth talked about.
Stacey looked up at the stars, too, and started laughing.
“What?” I asked excitedly, knowing her laughter meant the pot was kicking in.
She wiggled her fingers and imitated her mother’s new-agey best friend, Lydia. “Our fuuuuu-ture is in those stars, Kara.” Stacey sounded very stoned.
The only thing I saw in my future was torturous days at high school without her. “The future is going to suck.”
Stacey kept the impression going, attempting to cheer me up. “The distance between our homes does not matter. The physical world does not bind us. We are linked sooooo-uls.” She giggled hysterically, but my frown remained.
I raked my hand through my hair and turned to Stacey. “You have to promise me that no matter what happens, you and I will always be best friends, exactly like we are now.”
Stacey inhaled from the joint, cupped her open fist to her mouth, and pulled my face toward hers, my lips connecting with the other side of her hand. She blew smoke through her circled fingers into my mouth. “Smoke sisters,” she pronounced with a grin, handing me the joint.
I smiled, but decided to one-up her. Pulling a Swiss Army knife from the pocket of my frayed cutoffs and flicking open the tiny blade, I suggested, “Blood sisters?”
Stacey blinked hesitantly. She hated pain. “Okay,” she finally agreed, extending her forearm.
I traced a thin line in the smooth space between her wrist and her elbow. It was a tiny scratch, barely splitting her skin, and producing only a few droplets of red that dried almost immediately.
The one I gave myself in the identical spot went deeper, making Stacey shudder, but the twinge of pain ignited the rush I’d been expecting from the pot. A strange warmth crackled through me, leaving me with a sense of tranquillity I hadn’t felt since Beth announced the move. The blood oozed out and formed one fat drop that lazily rolled down my skinny arm. I marveled at it momentarily before pressing my forearm to Stacey’s.
“Blood sisters,” I pronounced, admiring the sticky smear that stained my skin when I pulled away.
2.
I CUT MYSELF AGAIN AFTER MY FIRST day of high school. There’d been so much to adjust to: trying to find my way around the building that was literally a block long, figuring out when I could stop at my locker to change out the fifty-pound textbooks I had for each class, not being one of the most brilliant people in the room.
I’d been recommended for and taken all honors-level classes. I’d never been a genius by any means, but I was smart and had always been able to keep up effortlessly. Stacey and I both were like that. We didn’t consider ourselves “nerds” (though we’d been called that along with a slew of other inapplicable names, like “lesbians,” throughout the years). We didn’t kiss up to teachers. We sat in the back of the classroom and passed notes. We even smoked cigarettes in the bathroom once. Basically we acted like bad-asses, but got straight A’s. However, I could tell that in high school, I was going to have to work hard, especially without Stacey, who usually tutored me in science while I helped her in history.
That day I thought about Stacey every few minutes. I wanted to ask her where we should sit when I got to class. I kept looking for her in the labyrinth of hallways. The school teemed with a few thousand students. Sure, they didn’t all know one another, but they all had friends who greeted them when they entered a room. I had acquaintances, people I could sit next to and ask about their summer, but when the small talk ended I was alone.
After school, I raced home to wait for Stacey’s call. We’d agreed she would take the bus to my house that day and the next day I’d take it to hers. When my phone rang, I didn’t even say hello, just asked, “When are you coming over?”
“I don’t know. I’m really tired.” She sighed into the phone.
“Yeah, it was hard, wasn’t it? I have so much homework.”
“No, it wasn’t hard. I just didn’t sleep last night because I was nervous. It was anticlimactic, really.”
I wanted to tell her that I missed her
, but I wanted her to say it first. Maybe she was just tired, but she sounded a lot more nonchalant about the situation than I felt. “Do you have a lot of homework?” I asked. “Maybe you could bring it over. We could see if it’s similar.”
“I don’t have a lot of homework and it won’t be the same. I didn’t take any honors classes.”
This was news to me. “Why not?”
She sighed again. It seemed every sentence began or ended with a sigh. “I don’t know. To try to get a social life, I guess.”
“Oh.”
I felt like she’d pointed to something shiny in the distance and then punched me in the gut; her revelation caught me that off guard. Could you just decide to have a life? Was she doing some sort of “new town, new school, new me” thing like kids on TV who move always do? And how did she plan to incorporate me into this new life?
Stacey exhaled noisily into the phone again. “I’m tired, Kara, I think I’m gonna zone out and watch TV. We’ll hang out tomorrow, okay?”
I managed to hang up before bursting into tears. Her not coming over was a bad omen. Especially on top of all the other bullshit. The school that was too big. The classes that were too hard. And now Stacey wanted to add parties and football games and stuff to the mix? I just wanted it to be me and her, like it always had been.
I found myself flicking the scab on my arm from our blood-sisters oath. The little twinges of pain were oddly soothing. I progressed to picking at it and was disappointed when it didn’t bleed. Somehow I knew that blood plus pain would make me calm, like it had the night Stacey and I became blood sisters.
After locating my Swiss Army knife in my nightstand drawer, I sliced two more tiny lines next to my scab. The pain rippled through me, awakening me like it was caffeine. The blood that dripped down my arm released all the stress of the day, all the sadness over Stacey. I stopped crying. Blood felt more purifying than tears, more numbing.
One more cut would give me strength. It would drain the bad feelings. I would daub it up with Kleenex. I would ride the ache and turn it into energy to get my schoolwork done.
I could cope.
I knew it wasn’t a good thing, but I could cope.
The Ballad of Kid’s Kid: Stacey O’Connor
“It’s up to me now My daddy has gone away.”
—Jane’s Addiction
May 1995
I WAS A BABY’S BABY, A KID’S KID. My ma was sixteen when she had me. I gained a year on her. I’m pregnant and I’m seventeen. When I have the baby I’ll be almost eighteen. Almost an adult, but not really. Eighteen’s still too young. They say if you’re too young it stunts you. Developmentally, emotionally, or whatever. In your head you’re stuck at the age you were when you had the baby.
My ma got stuck, that’s for sure. Before she had me she was a stoner waitress, always listening to the latest rock bands and always at the best parties. After she had me, she remained a stoner waitress, but one who brought her baby to the not-quite-as-cool parties. She kept that up until I got old enough to ask questions like “What’s in that Kool-Aid, Mommy?” Then, she blamed me for the demise of her social life and her musical taste. Once I got to be school-age, she spent all her money on suburban rent instead of records so I could go to the “good” schools and not screw up like her. I guess she didn’t realize the example she set for me was just as important as the education I got.
So am I gonna be stunted? Stuck at seventeen forever in my mind? I don’t know. I don’t think I ever acted my age in the first place. I grew up fast. I was a latchkey kid starting in third grade. Maybe some people would find that kind of freedom cool, but it gets old. All I really wanted was someone to take care of me.
Everyone thinks of women as the primary caretakers, but since caretaking didn’t come too naturally to my ma, I decided that stereotype was wrong. I wanted a guy to take care of me, and my first, most logical choice was my own father. My parents broke up before my ma had me, but when I was little I spent more time with my dad. Usually I was at his place on weekends, and sometimes I stayed for weeks at a time. Those, I realized later, were his unemployed periods. But I saw him less and less after we moved out to the ’burbs. It was a long drive south and Beth wasn’t willing to make it unless she got compensated with child support.
The summer before I started high school, when Beth decided to move us to Berwyn, I embarked on a last-ditch mission to involve my dad in my life. It was top-secret. I didn’t even tell Kara, mostly because if plan A, “Give Ma some money so she can stay in Oak Park,” failed, plan B would upset Kara worse than me moving to Berwyn. It meant I’d move even farther away. Plan B was “Please, Dad, take me to live with you.”
I met my dad at the food court of North Riverside Mall. Weird and pathetic, I know, but it was my only idea and he didn’t have any other suggestions. He was caught off guard when I called him. He sounded gruff, like I’d woken him up. He coughed a phlegmy smoker’s cough during his hello, but his voice warmed up when I said, “This is Stacey, your kid.”
He immediately agreed to meet me at the mall, which I chose because I knew how to get there on the bus. I didn’t want to chance Beth seeing him if he came to pick me up. It turned out he didn’t even have a car. He took a train and two buses to get to the crappy North Riverside Mall and eat at the sticky food-court table, surrounded by screaming kids and teenagers and dead-eyed moms, just to see me. I guess that’s touching if you ignore the fact that he hadn’t tried to visit in over four years.
I didn’t know how we’d recognize each other, so not only did we plan what we’d be wearing (him: Chicago Bears T-shirt, me: Metallica T-shirt), but I gave him an exact table to meet me at (southwest corner, near the bathrooms, third table in, across from the cookie place).
He was waiting for me. I knew he was older than Ma by like fifteen years, but, man, he really looked old. He had huge bags under his eyes and crevices around them, across his forehead, and at the corners of his mouth. He’d probably been one of those guys that always looked old, but in a good, rough-and-tumble, Clint Eastwood way. I bet that’s what Ma went for about him. Now it was pretty plain that he just had a lousy life.
He hugged me limply and told me how much I looked like my mother, which everyone always said. Then he offered to buy me lunch. “My little girl can have anything she wants.” He smiled awkwardly and opened his arms, presenting the mall food court like it was a four-star restaurant. I hoped that this would remain true when I pleaded my case later. When he ordered the cheapest thing on the McDonald’s menu for himself, I should have lowered my expectations.
While we ate, we made awkward small talk. I told him all about the past couple years, the great times Kara and I had, and what I was looking forward to in high school. I didn’t mention the move. I changed the subject and asked him, “How’s work?”
He nodded nonchalantly and said, “Fine.”
I took a long, final slurp from my Coke. “What do you do now?”
“Oh.” He crumpled his burger wrapper. “Solo cup factory.”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought about joking that his house was probably stocked with plastic cups, but he looked worn out, so I figured that his job was no laughing matter.
My silence brought an end to our lunch. Dad capped it off with a head jerk toward the cookie counter. “You, uh, want something? Uh, dessert?”
I knew it was time. Now or never. Cut to the chase or he’d get back on his two buses and a train and I’d lose my chance.
“Yeah, I want something. But not a cookie.” I took a deep breath. I’d prepared an argument, a full case. Before I could launch into it, the waterworks cued up without me even summoning them. I gulped pathetically. “I need you, Daddy. I need you to help me and Ma. We’ve gotta move out of Oak Park ’cause she can’t afford it anymore. And I would have to leave Kara and I really don’t want to. So maybe if you could give Ma some child support…”
Dad’s pudgy cheeks reddened. He looked like an angry, overripe tomato. “Did Bet
h put you up to this? Did she send you?”
“No!” I hadn’t expected that accusation. The tears that had been welling up overflowed. “If you can’t do that, if you can’t help her that way…if I have to move…I wanna live with you.”
His skin faded to the color of cigarette ash and his eyes got watery, too. “Stacey,” he murmured. “Stace…” He seemed amazed, and I thought for sure the answer was going to be yes, but then he started shaking his head the wrong way. “I wish, baby, but I don’t even have a job,” he choked. “I got fired from the factory over a year ago. I don’t even get unemployment anymore. I got cockroaches in my apartment and it ain’t even a one-bedroom, it’s a studio…” He kept blathering on, but I’d heard all I needed to hear. He offered me a cookie again, but I didn’t need that crap.
“I don’t want to take your last dollar.” I knew it was mean and I automatically felt bad. I mumbled “I’m sorry” before rushing out of the food court, leaving him with my tray and greasy pizza plate.
He was pathetic. My mother was pathetic. I came from pathetic. Pathetic that couldn’t take care of me. I went back and forth between sad and angry about it for over a month. But when I noticed the boys with cars in the parking lot at my new high school, I developed an alternate plan. I would find one of them to take care of me.
I thought it would be like TV, all free dinner and dates to the movies. They would get me away from my mother. And I guess eventually one of them did, right? But only because I’m headed straight into taking care of his kid.
I’m gonna try to do things better than my parents did, though. I’m sure everyone says that, and the odds are against me, but I’m sure as hell gonna try.
3.
HIGH SCHOOL WAS’T HOW I IMAGINED it at all. I mean, I didn’t expect my life to turn into Beverly Hills, 90210 overnight or anything, but I didn’t think I’d be spending most of my afternoons alone with my twelve-year-old brother, Liam, either.
Ballads of Suburbia Page 3
