The Bad Mom

“Molly- you were given one brownie, you always do this and it needs to stop. It’s disrespectful! -Lily.”

Guilty.

It’s true I came home from my doctor’s appointment and decided to celebrate my clean drug test with a pot brownie Lily had given me. I was being good and decided to save it for this very moment; I licked the top like I was giving a blowjob. I tore the wrapper off while thrusting my tongue when the brownie fell from my fingertips and into the mouths of two beasts that stood at my feet. No! Bad Dog! My Brownie! So I helped myself to another and gobbled it down as the pugs gobbled mine. I’m not saying what I did was right, and I have raided the brownie stash in desperate times (I can’t wait till they’re pregnant) but I didn’t mean to disrespect anyone. I felt humiliated, fat, embarrassed and the biggest asshole on Troy St. The self-absorbed side of me got pissed and thought, for one minute put yourself in my shoes. I’m alone with nothing and expecting a baby, I know that’s not your problem but if you could give me a fucking break for two minutes, I’d appreciate it. I spoke to my therapist about my situation. She tried to reassure me that people have weird reactions to pregnant woman sometimes and may not know why, something about the hormones in the air. Kat has brought her massage practice into the home, which doesn’t coincide with a crying baby. My therapist suggested I move out. I was planning to move out by fall due to the public transportation hell with a baby. I’ve seen enough women struggle with their strollers on a crowded standing room only bus where young able bodied men have forgotten their manners and have no problem watching a pregnant woman hold on for dear life as the bus slams on the breaks then gases, then breaks again. Maybe if the bus driver hung up his cell phone and drove with his hands at ten and two o’clock I wouldn’t need to be apologizing to the old lady I just fell on top of. I was running late for a doctor’s appointment one afternoon when our bus driver abandoned ship. His relief driver didn’t show up, so rather than wait or continue the route he just grabbed his lunch pail and put on his jacket and left the bus running filled with people who had places to go. I’ve lost my temper a few times shouting, “Move!” to those who think their bags deserve a seat but people don’t. I got so mad once, when I got off at my stop I mooned the other passengers.

I had come up with a plan of moving to Santa Cruz for the summer to stay with my sister Beth. I would help watch her three kids and she could put me through baby boot camp. I would consider it my new writing project where I learned the ropes of surviving when you have nothing. For example Beth bathes her kids at night then dresses them in their clothes for the next day so she would have one less thing to think about in the mornings. I called my niece to wish her a happy birthday, I could hear the phone drop and she ran off screaming to her mom, “it’s my birthday?! You said my birthday was on the first!”

Beth picked up the phone and said, “Thanks a lot! I was postponing her birthday until next payday! Click!

My sister has had an interesting life: pregnant at 13, at 15 she began writing to men in prison, she fell in love with Jose, and he was released a year later. Jose’s citizenship was revoked and he returned to Mexico on a bus. Beth smuggled him back in, he lived with my family and they had two more kids. Beth developed a meth addiction and has been struggling to get clean. Mom, my sister Scarlett and her husband Alex took a trip to Santa Cruz for a visit. Beth’s apartment was disgusting. The floor sticky and covered in garbage, the counters have become an ant farm fed by the rotting food left out. Alex stepped outback to smoke a cigarette, before he could light up he returned back into the house and whispered to Scarlett, “We have to get a Motel room, you gotta see the backyard.”

The lawn was covered in pots of Spanish rice molding, pans with flies feasting on fish bones. Scarlett went inside and jokingly said to Beth, “doing some dishes outback? What are you waiting for it to rain?” We were use to giving each other a hard time. Beth exploded screaming at mom and my sister; she locked herself in her bedroom where you could hear the flicking of the lighter go off every few minutes. She was obviously using again. You could tell by looking at her, she had lost so much weight to where her face was sinking in. The kids were left to fend for themselves, for breakfast they ate a cup of sugar with a spoon. The youngest is five-years-old and still wears diapers, probably to get some attention. His favorite phrase was, “Fuck you Grandma!”

Beth came out of her room a few hours later and said she was running to the store. She didn’t return until 3am.

Mom called me immediately and said we need a new plan. Out of the blue mom received a card and a check from my uncle. His mother in-law had just passed away leaving his family a lot of money so my uncle shared it with his siblings. It was only a few thousand dollars but it was just enough for mom to be able to help me get into a dorm on campus. I’m bummed out because I was looking forward to being at the beach spending time with my family, but I can’t put my kid in that kind of environment. I’d like to help out but I may be just enabling her. I don’t know how to help my sister.

Scarlett called and suggested I spend the summer in Kentucky. It’s generous but two summers ago I moved to Kentucky and can’t really imagine going back. The weather is miserably hot, the public transportation system is obsolete and I refuse to drive a car until this war is over. “No blood for oil, a silent protest.” The pot sucks so everyone drinks bourbon; they have drive-thru liquor stores on every corner open till 4am. A diet of bourbon can make people want to kill themselves; I wanted to kill myself. I also left because I thought I had a warrant out for my arrest.

The warrant was a result of a retail job I had gotten at the Retro Rocket. There was a “now hiring” sign in the window. A blonde woman in her fifties wearing leopard print and smoking a cigarette sat behind the counter.

“Hi I’m Molly and I’m looking for a job.”

“You ain’t from around here, is you,” she said in her scratchy voice.

“No ma’am, I from California.” The minute I set foot in Kentucky I started talking like a redneck with phrases like “how ya’ll doin?”

Miss Lucy handed me a set of keys and said, “We close at eight and don’t forget to lock the door.”

No W2 forms or application, Miss Lucy goes with her gut. It seemed perfect, I could walk from my sister house, so transportation wasn’t an issue. I love everything vintage and my new boss seemed pretty kick back. The next day Miss Lucy stopped by the shop to promote me to manager and that I might want to consider hiring someone else to help me out if I ever wanted a day off because I was on my own.

“Why is it so quiet in here? I want the music loud and the incense burning,” Miss Lucy shouted like a crazy person. I turn up the volume and she kept yelling: “Louder! Louder!” I turned the volume as loud as it would go which was a ridiculous clatter.

Miss Lucy said, “I almost forgot to show you the intercom.”

Miss Lucy thought this was a genius selling tactic, where she had and intercom and camera set up in the back of the store at a mirror. Whenever someone looks in the mirror you say: “that’s hot!”

“When do I get paid?” I asked.

“Hold up! We gotta make money to earn money. I’ll pay you six bucks an hour, under the table that equals eight an hour, just keep track.” Miss Lucy said without really answering my question. She was good at this game.

A few weeks had passed and I started bombarding her with spreadsheet of my hours worked and how much I was owed. She would respond, “Next Tuesday.”

A former employee kept calling the shop looking for Miss Lucy. She disclosed that Miss Lucy never paid her so she quit and still hasn’t seen a dime. Miss Lucy came by the shop before I could give her the messages she broke down in tears and asked if she could borrow some money. “I’m broke until next Tuesday,” I said

“Can you ask your parents?” I laughed as the red flags went off. She owed me about four hundred dollars. My gut was telling me I wouldn’t see this money. So I decided I would pay myself. I took a three hundred-dollar bike and a hundred in cash out of the register. I left Miss Lucy a note telling her I went with my gut and that I quit. She left a message on my answering machine saying, “your gut should of told you that was stealing and you better run cause the cops are coming after you!”

I took her advice and bought the next plane ticket to Portland.

I moved in with my ex-boyfriend, Lou. I met Lou at beauty school; he was one of my first clients. “So what have you been up to today?” I asked as I draped him in a plastic cape.

“Just spreading the word.” He responded with a smile on his face.

“Do tell,” I said which is the only reason I enrolled in beauty school. I had this vision that I would cut people’s hair, they would tell me they’re story and I would write about it.

“The word of God,” he said happily, as I was thinking, “but you look so normal.” In fact he was a gorgeous Hawaiian surfer who had just moved here from the islands to be closer to his son. He and his wife divorced and she moved back home to Portland, he followed and was now an art student at PSU. He asked if I wanted to go to an art show with him that evening. We shared a lot in common. Lou inspired me to fulfill more of my potential than cutting hair. He would always use the quote, “work smarter not harder.” You should get your carpal tunnel syndrome from writing not cutting hair. He helped me fill out the student loan packet at PSU and I can now call myself a: “beauty school drop out.”

I was curious about this whole word-spreading thing. Apparently he had just found God with some campus group that calls themselves “The Disciples.” He said it’s helped him get through his divorce and deal with his schizophrenia. For some reason I’m attracted to the crazies. I saw him every night that week. He invited me to his apartment that he shared with some of the other “brothers”. They did not approve of me.

“What happened to: flirt to convert?” Lou asked the brothers.

I’d like to think that the brothers knew right away that I wasn’t falling for their crap. So they tried to convince Lou that I was sent by the devil as a test of temptation, which I found flattering. Maybe I am the devil in disguise and I don’t even know it…cool. They pulled out all their bag of tricks: they would never leave us unsupervised. Lou and I were watching a moving when they sent in one of the hot “sisters.”

“Will you walk with me to the store,” she asked, “I’m making a big dinner tonight if you wanna come over.”

“I have company,” he said, looking at me like duh.

The brothers gathered Lou for an intervention, and explained how sad they felt and challenged him to fight the devil (me). These dudes were defiantly starting to bug, so I invited Lou to come live with me. That’s when the schizophrenic side of Lou emerged. He was extremely paranoid and would accuse me of cheating on him regularly. He said he could hear me through the heating vents having sex with our neighbor, who I’d never even seen. “I heard you!” he would shout convinced this was true. He started watching me at work from the coffee shop across the street. After a month of crazy hell, Lou checked himself into a crazy hospital then returned to his island.

from my book:  Scars of Paris   available at Borders or Barnes & Nobles