Learning to Cry

by Christopher C. Payne

  As she fumbled around she woke up a couple of the other girls, and when they saw her face, they immediately ran to get the birthday girl’s mother. She groggily stepped into the room and helped Melissa to the couch. As mother’s can only do, she held Melissa, applied a washcloth to her forward and gave her some children’s Tylenol. It had the desired affect and pretty soon Melissa was fast asleep again. She woke up the next day, and everything was fine. She didn’t mention the voices since it made no sense. As with most kids, once she felt better, she was off and running, putting the incident behind her. What would children do without the ability to forget?

  She had not heard these voices again. For years they had lain dormant, and she had all but forgotten them, but suddenly they were back. The pain in her head was excruciating. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t breathe. She was holding her head, slapping the walls, then holding her head. She thought this must be what death felt like. She stumbled to the sink and poured water over her face. Wetting her shirt and hair as she slapped the cooling liquid continually onto her cheeks and forehead. Another girl entered the bathroom, and she asked her for help to the nurse’s office. The girl grabbed her backpack, and the two stumbled together finding their way.

  Luckily, she had two Advil left that her father had given her a few days before, since the school staff cannot distribute any non-prescription medication to children anymore. Some wayward moronic parent probably sued the school system because of their own child’s stupidity. Another example of the fiasco the legal system has become. The first thing that should be done every day is to string all the attorneys in the world up and give them an electrical shock. Maybe if they started their day with a dose of reality, they might get their heads out of their asses instead of focusing on worthless lawsuits.

  Melissa swallowed the two Advil and asked to see her counselor. Mr. Mitchell had already seen Melissa on several occasions. He was concerned for her and had noticed immediately upon their first meeting that she was not the strongest student mentally. At times, you can just tell when some kids are having a difficult time navigating through life. Children in the middle of a divorce, as you might imagine, are some of the most vulnerable. He came down, and after a few minutes sitting with her, the two walked back to his office.

  She talked to him as the Advil kicked in and attempted to explain what was occurring. She left out the voices. It didn’t seem appropriate to talk about them at this point. For some reason, even to her, hearing voices inside your head was not in sync with being normal. While she could still hear them, they seemed to be subsiding along with the pain as it slowly receded from her mind. She was almost feeling like a normal person again, as the throbbing in her head remained but at a much more tolerable level. Everyone has the ability to handle a certain amount of pressure, it is only when it rushes across the magic threshold that it debilitates one’s ability to function.

  It was already sixth period so both of them decided to call her dad and see if he could pick her up from school early. Thankfully, he was happy to do so, although she didn’t speak to him directly. Mr. Mitchell made the actual call. At this point she felt sure her dad would do almost anything she desired, within reason. As long as she was willing to ostracize her mother and choose her father, he was hers to twist like a little pretzel. She could be like one of those people who blow glass into different shapes and sizes. How do people do that with glass anyway? The entire process had amazed her ever since she was young and saw somebody doing it at a local fair.

  Her dad showed up about 30 minutes later, came into the office, gave her a big hug, and they headed home. He set her up in the living room, put some soup on the stove and started her out watching her favorite movie, “P.S. I Love You.” The two of them had watched this movie a hundred times, and it was something they loved sharing. She still cried at parts, even after seeing it over and over again. She always felt best when she was curled up on the couch, lying in his arms and snuggling in his protective hug. No wonder little girls love their dads so much. Even if her father couldn’t protect her from everything, the feeling that he could kept her content.

  Party at Dad’s house

  Father

  Why is it that every adolescent movie depicts kids having a huge party while their parents are away, and yet parents are surprised that kids have a party when they are not home? Is it just me, or do adults pay very little attention to what their kids are watching? When I was growing up it was “Risky Business.” I thought Tom Cruise was the greatest dude ever. He not only had a party, but he also got a prostitute, then had a party with prostitutes, and then had a war with a pimp. All of this while getting accepted to a kick-ass college for his take-charge attitude. How could you not love this guy?

  Sadly for me, this movie came out a few weeks before my parents decided to leave for a weekend, leaving me by myself. It was a big deal since my father didn’t leave anyone at the house by themselves. I was lucky to even have a key. I spent most of my childhood not being allowed to have anyone over. My father was constantly worried somebody might steal something or break something. What is life if you don’t keep all of your knick knacks intact? Apparently, life is not about living, it is about accumulating a bunch of crap so when you die it can all be thrown out.

  At the time I had been working at Kentucky Fried Chicken. My God, I remember not being allowed to wear my shoes into the house because they were so soaked with grease from the deep fryers. I used to eat so much chicken when I worked at that place. Not to mention I saw more than my fair share of chicken parts slide across a dirty floor, only to be dropped back onto the next customer’s plate before anyone noticed. You can’t let teenagers work in a fast food restaurant and not expect a few rules to be bent here and there.

  My best friend and I came up with the plan. I would tell my manager that my uncle died so I could get the entire weekend off. We would have the party on Friday night, get a few guys to spend the night, and we would all clean up on Saturday. I had a friend at work that was over 21, and he would have no problem buying the beer. We would tell our group of friends and keep the attendance below 40 to 50 people. We felt we could control that many without a problem.

  I informed my manager of the fictitious death in my family, and all went well. I was a great employee, always on time, did my work without complaint, and I had been there for well over a year. Why would anyone question me? My friend told a few people in our group, and that is where the plan started veering off track. If you lay the groundwork for a party too many days in advance you will find out that people talk. The next thing I knew, I was getting guys and girls coming up to me at school that I didn’t even know. All of them telling me they would see me Friday night. It was a little nerve-wracking, and I was not doing a good job at concealing my anxiety.

  So many teenagers tell on themselves that it almost makes you wonder how they ever get away with anything. Maybe it is like drinking coffee. Being deceitful is an acquired taste. Adolescents are not yet schooled well enough to understand how to lie. Let me take that back, kids can and do lie, they are just usually not that good at it. I am not sure what tipped my parents off, but needless to say they became suspicious of my activities. They were not sure what was going on, but they felt things were enough out of place that they switched up their plans slightly and observed how the evening progressed before leaving.

  I spent Friday at school, like a good kid, and had told my parents I was working that night. It became awkward when they had not left by 6 p.m., and people were beginning to show up for the big bash. I had been driving around the block for an hour or so and couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. To make matters worse, it was pouring rain outside, and my friends were starting to wander through the yard, walking in the downpour. I didn’t know what to do, so I pulled in the driveway and went inside. They didn’t even look like they were packed, let alone leaving. We sat down on the couch, and they directly asked me what was going on. I, of course, denied everything. When that didn’t work
, I pled the fifth. I was having a difficult time believing I had been caught, since nothing had even happened yet.

  As we were sitting in the living room, a group of 40 kids, all huddled together, walked slowly down the road passing right in front of our house. They were all staring at the front door, and they were soaked. It was dropping buckets at this point, and my mother just sat, staring back at them. If it weren’t so evident that I was going down in flames I might have laughed. It was pretty damn comical. As the last stragglers ventured out of sight, my mother asked me point blank if I was having a party. There is always a time and place where you just have to ‘fess up, and so I did.

  I spilled my guts, decided to take my punishment, thinking things couldn’t get any worse. That was when a knock came at the front door. My thoughtful friends had decided to cut me loose, but they really wanted the beer in my trunk. I had stored it there for safe keeping. They weren’t stupid enough to ask my father directly when he answered, but they were insane enough to ask him if they could get something out of my car. Jesus, kids are really stupid.

  He said sure, went out to the driveway with me and had me open the trunk. Seeing the beer piled high, he thought a fitting punishment was having me open every single can and pour it down the drainage ditch that ran alongside the south border of our yard. Now, had I been in his position and in charge of punishment, I would have confiscated the beer and had a party of my own. We have slightly different styles to say the least.

  My friends quickly dissipated once they knew there would be no beer, no party, and they realized my father was not in any way a cordial host for the throngs of teenage debauchery. I was then left on my own to face the wrath, and when my father got pissed off, he was royally pissed off. He loves telling this story to my kids but he always leaves out the part where he pushed me up against the wall, holding my throat as he choked me. God, if I did anything even remotely close to this with my children, they would dial Child Welfare Services before I was able to let them go.

  I wonder how children pick which attributes of which parent to mold into their own personalities. Do some kids pick only the bad aspects and pass over any good qualities? Do some kids pick a little of both, while some weigh heavily towards one or the other? How is it that two perfectly good parents who are seemingly nice in every way have a child that turns into the Devil’s favorite spawn? Is having children something like the lottery, and you really have no idea what the hell you are getting? You just cross your fingers and hope for the best. Are some kids destined for a life of self-destruction no matter what you do to avert disaster?

  Melissa

  It was a typical Tuesday morning. Her father made breakfast, and Melissa walked to school while he drove her two sisters over the hill for their daily academic grind. Three girls, three schools, they were all in their own age bracket for better or worse. Melissa made it back to class with no real incidents, and it had now been a week since her eruption. She remembered it like a dream of sorts. It was almost like it hadn’t happened or had happened to somebody else. She felt like that very often, especially lately. Her life was more like a dream than a reality.

  She met Rachel in the hall before her first class, and, as normal, Rachel was trying to talk her into heading out behind the gym to smoke some pot. Most days Melissa would say no, but today she just couldn’t take the pressure and wanted something to help her relax. Earlier that morning, she found out her boyfriend was dumping her and had cheated on her for several weeks. His name was Lyle, and he lived up in Twain Harte. She met him over the summer, and they had spent days together hanging out. Days are enough to fall in love as a teenager.

  She spent most of that morning crying, and it was everything she could do to get her father to leave her alone. He was constantly prying into her business. He talked and talked, and at times he wouldn’t shut up. It would be one thing if he would listen to her, but she honestly felt he talked mostly to hear himself speak. She wondered if he even cared about what she might have to say. Do parents really care about anything other than themselves? Life was so shitty. It just didn’t seem to matter.

  Melissa succumbed to Rachel’s request, and they ventured out behind the gym to light up. As on most occasions a few boys, smelling the pot like rabid retrievers, found their way over to the make-shift party, and Rachel happily shared her stash as they all lit up. Melissa was coming into her own in the drug area and could now inhale a joint as easily as anyone she knew. She might still cough at times, but her skills were increasing, and she was finding it easier to accept drugs with a stronger kick than pot. Ecstasy was one of her favorites, so when one of the boys asked her if she wanted some, she happily accepted. By then, it seemed like school was an afterthought.

  The boys were much older than Rachel and Melissa. They must have been seniors. In the midst of Rachel’s toke the guys quickly decided the group should leave school grounds. They all agreed nobody would be going to class, so the next logical question was where to go.

  Melissa, in her ever-increasing detached state, blurted out, “My house is only a few blocks away, nobody is home. Let’s go there.”

  Her new gang of degenerates didn’t need any prodding, so they made their way to her house. What could possibly go wrong when two girls invited four senior boys – all of them high – to an empty house on a school day?

  By the time they arrived, they were all fried. Completely and totally in another realm, as well as famished. Melissa thought she alone might be able to eat an entire bag of chips, then another bag, and possibly a third before finding her hunger abated. They ran through the front door, threw open the cabinet, and all of them grabbed whatever food they could get their hands on. Chips, cookies, crackers, anything edible was ingested as fast as they could shove it in their mouths. Once they finished with a bag, they simply threw it aside and opened something else.

  They hadn’t even managed to make it to the living room. Everyone sat on the kitchen floor, shoveling piles of food in as fast as they could chew and swallow. Inevitably, they found beer. Melissa’s dad wasn’t a drunk, but the house came readily stocked with alcohol, and at this point everything was up for grabs. One of the boy’s popped open the top, listened to the burst of fizz as the seal was broken and, then, downed the can in one gulp. He passed around drinks, and before anyone knew it there was a party on the kitchen floor. Food was everywhere, beer cans lined the countertops, and the house circled continually like a merry-go-round that somehow had a life of its own.

  As one might imagine, the inevitable course of action led to the bedrooms. Melissa felt her hand being pulled as she was led into her own personal sanctuary. It seemed so contradictory that she would allow this boy into her safe haven. This was the place where she curled up and cried, she talked on the phone with her best friends, she contemplated her life, her future, her goals. Yet, here she found herself lying on her back as the room continued to wrap itself around her, spinning in circles, slowly and calmly, but continuously.

  She felt the boy removing her pants, but she became enthralled with the ceiling fan wondering why it was not moving as was the room. It just sat there, mocking her. The bulbs were mismatched with two of them being normal and two being that twisty kind that were fluorescent or halogen or something like that. She couldn’t remember what they were called, but it was some special kind of bulb that helped the environment. The blades were white, or at one time they had been white. Damn, the entire fixture was supposed to be white, but it was so dirty.

  On the edge of each blade was a thick layer of dust that had accumulated over what looked like several years. Melissa wondered if the fan had ever been cleaned. Her dad was very neat, but he didn’t always clean. He was clean, but neatness was more important that cleanliness. She wondered why the two did not always go hand in hand.

  She felt the boy doing his thing, but she still felt detached. It felt like he was with somebody else, not her. She wondered where Rachel was and what she might be doing. Was it possible that she had hooked up w
ith one of the other boys or were they all still in the kitchen? Melissa wondered what time it was. When would her dad be coming home? Would the school call?

  She woke up a couple of hours later, and the house was empty. For a few minutes she wondered if it was all in her mind. She stumbled into the shower, and the warm spray was so soothing. It felt like her problems were being washed away. Wouldn’t that be the best if you could wash your issues goodbye, see them swirling down the porcelain bathtub until they circled into the drain, disappearing forever? Maybe the key was spinning. Keeping things moving at all times. Her head was hurting, and she realized she needed some water. She had drank too much, had no idea what drugs she had taken, and her head was reaching a critical stage of massive destruction.

  She jumped out of the shower and quickly wrapped a towel around her as she headed to the kitchen. Her eye caught the clock, and it was already 3:30 p.m. Her dad would be home in a couple of hours. She needed to get the place back in order. She didn’t see the broken beer bottle or the glass on the floor and screamed out in pain as a shard found its way directly in the center of her big toe. She fell down on her butt, grabbing her foot in agony when the front door opened.

  Father

  What constitutes a bad phone call? There is not a parent who has any love for a child who would welcome a call from a policeman saying something had happened to his/her daughter. The phone call about a child must be the worst. How do parents feel when a child goes to war? You see movies about it. You see it on TV. How can parents live every day knowing their son or daughter might be shot or killed? I wondered if the parents of drug addicts have groups of their own. How does a parent survive the trauma of a child willingly placing himself or herself in danger on a daily basis?