When she walked into the kitchen, she was surprised to see Mama already home from work. “Well, hello there, darlin’,” Mama said as she stood at the counter, peeling onions, dressed in her usual calf-length western jean skirt, cowboy boots, and a plaid blouse with a silver concho belt. “We’re havin’ a party tonight for Moonlight Riders Horse Association.”
Barbey opened the refrigerator, not responding.
“Your daddy and I made a decision about you.” She started chopping the onions. “We’ve noticed you’ve been mopin’ around the house lately and your attitude is negative. Your room is messy with all sorts of strange photos on the walls and you don’t bother to clean up even after you’ve been asked.”
Barbey turned to her. “That’s not true. I did clean my room when you asked. I just didn’t take down the photos because they’re art. I can’t help it if you’re so shallow that you can’t recognize the symbolism in my pictures and you think they’re ugly.”
Mama slapped her on the cheek. “Don’t you talk to me that way, young lady!” she peered at her with that threatening look in her eyes that meant, “don’t say another word.”
Barbey felt the burning on her cheek from the slap, but stared coldly in Mama’s eyes, masking her pain.
“Your daddy and I rented you your own apartment,” she said, returning to the chopping of her onions. “You can move out tomorrow. If you tell the manager that you’re under age, we’ll stop paying your rent. You can get an after school job to pay for food, so you’ll learn what the real world’s about and gain some self-respect.”
“I can’t believe you’re kicking me out!” Barbey screamed. “First, you lie to me for my whole life pretending to be my real mother and then you throw me out like I’m trash. I hate you!” She ran to her bedroom.
At the time when Mama told her to move out of their house, all she could feel was the rejection and pain of not being wanted. The memories of when her parents had cast her from the house the previous time flooded back into her mind as if it was all happening again and it was indeed. As she lay on her bed trying to suppress her crying by holding her breath, she imagined herself sleeping in Sage’s tack room, afraid of the insects and darkness. The cold night settled on her face now. Nausea and loneliness enveloped her when she remembered those creepy older men at Roller World where she had worked at the snack bar flirting with her, cajoling her. Inhaling deeply, her face flushed and puffy from her emotions, she told herself she would not cry as she patted her forehead with her fingers.
Every night when she would leave the skating rink, she would worry that one of the men would be waiting for her outside in the darkness. She thought about the utter loneliness she felt sleeping in her shallow boyfriend’s garage and how empty she felt when he told her she couldn’t stay any longer because she wouldn’t have intercourse with him. Though he didn’t actually so much as say this was the reason, it was quite apparent. This thought made her yearn for Rave all the more because he had been different and hadn’t even wanted sex from her. But then of course, he discarded her as well. This memory sent an explosion through her mind forcing the air out of her cheeks. She was unable to hold back her crying any longer as the pain rushed from her mouth like gushing blood. It felt to her as if she was being vomited out of the entire world, swallowed by something alien, and then digested into a thick heavy darkness which was so foreign and confusing to her that she could hardly stand to live in her own skin.
She decided to kill herself. This seemed to soothe her pain for the moment because at least she had a tangible plan to stop her pain. She considered whether she should just run into the bathroom, slice her wrists with a razor, and then wait to die or if she should plan out the suicide more thoroughly. Maybe she should write a suicide note and maybe she should give away her belongings to Sage first. The thought of dying seemed so frightening to her and she wanted to make sure this was what she really wanted. Would she go to hell if she committed suicide?
Once at a vacation bible school camp that Mama had sent her to as a kid, she remembered learning of this. After most of the children had accepted Jesus as their personal savior, one student asked about suicide. The camp counselor said that suicide was forbidden and that anyone who committed it would go to hell. This worried Barbey because what if life in hell was even worse than life on earth? She couldn’t bear the thought and decided that no god could be so cruel as to send people to eternal damnation for making a bad choice. That would be too cruel and too unforgiving. But what if it was true?
****
Hours had passed and Barbey was still lying in bed contemplating suicide and the existence of God. The sounds of party laughter and talk were wafting into her bedroom from the ballroom two doors down the hall. She found it ironic that her parents and their guests were experiencing such gaiety at the same time she was experiencing such despair. It seemed unfair that her parents would kick her out at a time when she was most vulnerable. Couldn’t they see how much she was suffering? Why did they party when their daughter was suicidal? She hated their constant parties. They seemed false and superficial, escapades from reality.
A thought exploded in her face like a giant firecracker—she decided she was going to join the party as if nothing was wrong. She would pretend that Mama had not told her she had to move out. Of course, she would keep to her rule of only wearing black, so she dressed in a long black satin gown that snapped down the entire front to the floor with big round silver snaps. She powdered her face white, painted her lips red, brushed on black mascara and eyeliner, and slicked her hair back in a low bun, with thick bangs hanging low over her brows. Tonight she would be cold blooded darkness with no feeling whatsoever. She would be everything black and evil.
When she walked into the ballroom, she had to shade her eyes from the bright chandeliers for a moment. Darkness cannot tolerate the light. The ballroom was full of guests socializing and eating hot dogs and hamburgers at their red checkered tables with intricate candle flower arrangements in the centers. Other guests were square dancing in the center on the ballroom floor. The music was festive and campy.
Slithering over to the stereo in her long dark gown, Barbey smoothly removed the square dance CD, replaced it with a Kenny Rogers CD and cued it. She placed the song on pause with the remote control as she slid past the disoriented square dancers, whom appeared confused from the sudden interruption in their music, and lay down on her back on the dance floor in the middle of the square dance circle. With a hiss and a slow predatory glance around the room looking out from the hedges of her thick dark bangs, she pressed the remote control and the slow romantic song, “You Are So Beautiful,” written by Billy Preston, Bruce Fisher, and Denis Wilson began:
You are so beautiful to me
You are so beautiful to me
Can’t you see
You’re everything I hoped for
You’re everything I need
You are so beautiful to me
Such joy and happiness you bring
Such joy and happiness you bring
Like a dream
A guiding light that shines in the night
Heavens gift to me
You are so beautiful to me
Arching her back with her head tilted back, she slowly rose like a black cobra being called up from its basket to perform its slithery dance. She was a contradiction to the song’s romantic notions—to its soft elegant confessions of adoration for the one the singer truly loved. Night and hate consumed Barbey as her body hissed against the music, tearing away at the seams of her long confining gown, revealing her black bodysuit beneath. Her arms fluttered out and away from her body in convulsions as she spun across the floor, leaping and twisting, writhing to the love of the song that she felt would never be hers. She cried and pulled at her hair to the slow heartfelt rhythm as she slid into the splits and spun with her legs pulled up into herself like a coiled snake upon the floor. She wanted to strike the audience with her venom. She wanted to hate with such poison that all
life would cease to exist. She wanted to burn everyone with her despair and destroy all physicality. When she completed the dance with the final lyrics of “You are so beautiful to me,” she stood straight up and gazed into the square dancers eyes with such despondency that she hardly noticed she was alive.
The audience cheered and clapped, stomping their feet in glee and appreciation for her dance. Some thought she was a hired performer. Others, who knew of her, were impressed with her mother’s childrearing accomplishments at raising such an attractive, impressive, young woman. Though, a few were confused by the unsettling nature of the dance to such a beautiful awesome song. The dance was a sort of abomination and some perceived this, but were afraid to question the nature of the darkness or get involved in any way by raising concerns for the young dancer. Barbey walked off the ballroom floor, forcing a plastic smile across her face, suddenly embarrassed, as she pushed past the people and walked out the door.
43
Everything about Suzie Albers was beautiful to Barbey. She could see now through the darkness of the night as she knelt in the bushes before Suzie’s huge bedroom window peaking into the room through an open space in the curtains why Rave loved her. She was often smiling and laughing with a solid confidence that only a girl who was truly loved by her family could have. It didn’t matter that she had a plain face because her beauty vibrated out of her inner-self, igniting her long red hair into a blaze of joy so alive no one could resist her.
For months now Barbey had been spying on Suzie and Rave at Suzie’s parent’s house. After Suzie’s parents tucked her in for the night and then went to bed themselves, Rave often snuck in through her bedroom window. Somehow being near them soothed Barbey even though she was afraid she could never be with Rave again after he had used her for his own personal gain. She knew she could never trust him, but this did not lessen her desire for him.
It had been about a year and a half since she and Rave met in Tijuana. He looked different to her now through the window than when they had been together. His bangs had grown out and his hair hanged down long and shaggy at his shoulders. Somehow, the change in his physical appearance disappointed Barbey. She had become obsessed with a specific image in her mind from the time they had been together and now seeing him physically different confused her. His shoulders were broader and he was slightly thicker. He actually seemed more normal and average now as he never stared at Suzie with his deep penetrating eyes and his inner intensity seemed to have diminished. All his unusualness appeared to have been flushed from his existence. Together they did average mundane activities like playing Monopoly or cards. Tonight they were fighting.
Barbey was embarrassed to watch Rave crying and pleading at Suzie’s feet. He was on his knees grabbing onto her waist like a child begging for his mother to pick him up. Though Suzie was crying too, she kept pushing him away and explaining something to him which Barbey couldn’t hear. He got up off the floor. And suddenly, with a swift movement like a skittish cat, he sat on the edge of her bed, his eyes lit, inflamed with hate, and then, as if suddenly broken, he placed his head in his hands. She sat next to him and they began to kiss. Barbey couldn’t watch anymore, so she left.
It was refreshing to be out in the night air, Barbey thought as she walked home along the dark sidewalks. Her body felt warm from the thick black overcoat she was wearing, but her face felt chilly and alive. The moon was full and bright overhead in the black sky, which bore a mysterious uncertainty to the night. Barbey was frightened to be walking about alone in the night, but this fear exhilarated her, heightening her senses. She unraveled her black long hair from the tight bun that she wore religiously at the nape of her neck and brushed her fingers through her hair and thick bangs with wild abandonment, letting it blow freely in the air. It was exciting to be alone experiencing the city that she had grown up in at night. The excitement was in part due to the fact that it was dangerous for a young woman to be out alone on the dark streets. There was a foreign impassive air to the night that was not present in the daylight that intrigued her.
The trees were bare and gnarled, reaching over the sidewalks. She liked how the moon looked chopped up like cold chunks of Swiss cheese through the branches overhead. For a moment, she wanted so desperately to live on the moon. The thought was strong and fierce, but then it dissipated into other yearnings. She wanted to marry Rave on the moon. She wanted to jump over the moon to the cow bell ring of Little Bo Peep. Oh, how she’d lost her sheep… and she didn’t know where to find them. She didn’t know who she was and she thought it curious and unsettling that her greatest desire from life was to save a young man who had no concern for her. It was her mission in life to rescue Rave, she thought. He was suffering, she knew, and she felt that the heavens had ordained her to redeem him. This was her calling from some spiritual world she didn’t even believe in. This was why she was born. This was why she existed. This is why she did not kill herself.
As she walked along the sidewalks, a black Corvette passed her on the road that she recognized as Rave’s new car. He must be on his way home. So, she decided to walk over to his house which was just a few blocks away. He lived in a one room guesthouse in the backyard of a house where an Indian family lived who owned a liquor store on Second Street. The house was in a middle class quiet residential neighborhood on a cul-de-sac. When she got to the guest house, she saw that the lights were on and the sliding glass door was open. She hid in the bushes next to the main house across the lawn about thirty feet from the guest house. Her heart was beating fast with excitement and she was having a difficult time quieting her rapid breathing. She took her binoculars from her coat pocket and could see Rave setting up lines of cocaine on the bar counter that separated the kitchen from the room. After he snorted the cocaine, she saw the distress in his now gaunt face. He rubbed his eyes and then his nose as he paced the room. He guzzled down two bottles of beer, one after the other, and sat in a wicker back chair facing the sliding glass door, staring out unwaveringly. Barbey could not move. It appeared as if he was staring right at her, deep into her soul. She wanted to reach out to him and touch his lips tenderly with hers. She slowly lowered the binoculars and stared directly into his eyes for the next hour as he stared blankly back. She could feel his breathing. His very essence was twining with hers. They were one and she knew she had won him back.
44
The following night at Zippers, the hip bar where she had gotten a temporary job as a cocktail waitress with her fake I.D., she was colder and crueler to her customers than usual. When a young man she had gone out to lunch with asked her flirtatiously, after she handed him his Rainbow Zip and buffalo wings, why she hadn’t returned his call, she looked at him coldly and said, “Jonathan, Mark, Sam or whatever your name is, I don’t return phone calls to wimps. If you want to get a girl, you need to stop portraying yourself as a milksop.”
His face reddened and he looked away, not responding. A few minutes later, he left the bar leaving a forty percent tip.
When some sorority girls asked her opinion on whether to order Hawaiian Zippety-doos or Summer Rips, she responded coldly, “I’ll check the Barbie manual and get back to you.”
The girls looked at her blankly and then giggled as if she had said something extraordinarily sweet to them. She sneered at them and said, “Everyone loves the bully,” as she walked away.
When she was cashing out for the night, she gave all her tips, which were more superfluous than usual, to the bus boy because she felt she didn’t deserve anything. It sickened her that cruelty was rewarded in this world. She was disheartened by her perception that people were no more elevated than animals, favoring the strongest, most cunning, and cruel of creatures. Should not kindness be rewarded? She was brimming with such strong internal hate that she felt like a bottle of beer all shook up inside waiting to be opened to release its explosion.
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