Learning to Cry (24 page)

What kind of stupid law is a curfew anyway? If the parents can’t control the kids well enough to keep them locked in their rooms what could the police really do? Didn’t they have more important things to focus on? Weren’t there actual bad guys out there that needed apprehending or were they too scared to go after anyone who actually posed a threat? After what seemed like an hour-long shower, Melissa toweled off and crawled into bed. She was asleep within seconds and felt so peaceful. She loved the feeling smoking pot gave her even after she was several hours past the first inhalation. It was the most emotionally soothing feeling in the world.

When she heard the banging sound, Melissa at first thought there was a fire alarm. It exploded in her head like a bomb, and it kept going and going and going. She sat upright and held her ears while she tried to focus her eyes. But they didn’t cooperate. She felt like she’d only fallen asleep a few minutes ago. It didn’t seem right that she was already awake. She tried to figure out if that was her mother standing by her bed and what she was doing.

After a couple of seconds she realized her mom was banging two pots together like cymbals in a marching band. She kept banging and banging.

Finally Melissa screamed, “What the hell! Why are you doing that?”

Her mother stopped, stared at her with this glaring freakish vulture look and said, “You will be going to school today young lady, or I will spend the entire day banging this shit together in your room. It is your choice.”

Normally, Melissa would have fought back, but her mother looked possessed at this point, and she just didn’t have the energy.

“Fine!” she yelled and got out of bed to find some clothes. Oh my God, she thought, it’s already 7:15!  She had, at most, 20 minutes to get ready, and she couldn’t go to school looking like she did. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck that kept backing up and running over her again and again.  She slapped on some make-up, threw on some shoes, and made it to the car without inciting her mother again, thank God. She was at least thankful for that. At this point her mom had not even asked her where she was last night.

Maybe this would be just another incident her mother brushed under the table. Just pretend it didn’t happen – that was fine with Melissa. She could sleep at school in most of her classes. As long as you didn’t make a fuss, most of the teachers really didn’t care.

Father

I made mistakes when I was young.  It is interesting to reflect back on my youth and how many things I did that, at the time, seemed perfectly in line. As I grew and matured, though, I realized they were not. Sometimes when you are in the mix of life you can’t see what is really happening. Isn’t that why so many people give into influences that prompt them to do things they might not normally do? Some people are blessed with the power to guide and nurture, and some people who hold that power use it for not-so-savory purposes.

I was approximately 11 or 12. I, honestly, don’t remember how old but somewhere in that range. It was a time when you still hung out for Halloween. You spent the evening on the streets, but treating was not your primary goal. Granted, you still wanted the candy, but you were too cool to really go through the process required to obtain it. Halloween is a specific evening in a year where things can run amok if you are not careful. How many kids at that age can even define the word “careful,” much less understand its meaning? One particular Halloween I ran around town with a few older kids, and we did the typical toilet paper in the trees, soap on a window, and we even had a couple carton of eggs. We really didn’t know what to do with the eggs, but we knew that people used them on Halloween. Being the youngest of our group, I was a follower by default. So much of the hierarchy in youth is dependent on age. No wonder so many kids can’t wait until they are one year or possibly two years older, etc. The older kids always get to do the cool stuff.

In the midst of a break, we sat in a circle on the grass. As luck had it, we were right across the street from this mean old lady’s house. She wasn’t really that mean, but she was a little cranky and chased kids off her lawn now and then. At her age there wasn’t much she could do anyway. Her bark was much worse than her walker would allow her bite to be.

Sadly, that very day she had crossed one of the older girls in our group who formed an idea as she glanced across the street. What if we ceased our aimless wandering and focused on just one house? What if we pooled all of our energy and concentrated everything we could think of on this single home? We could have massive amounts of fun and not be forced to run all over the place. Plus, this old lady was mean, and if anyone deserved it she did. All it takes in a group is a couple of yeses, and there you have it. The sheep follow.

So we gathered up all of our supplies, posted a lookout and began our work. This elderly lady had shingle siding on her house. It was rough and in pieces exactly like the shingles on roofs. What we found is, unlike most siding, it took to soap very well. The soap got in the grooves, and before we knew it, we’d gone through entire bars. It was the most receptive tool for our eloquent wordings that one might have imagined, and we did use eloquent words.

We wrote every curse word imaginable on the side of that house. We got so into it that we had to actually retrieve more supplies since our soap ran out rather quickly. It imbedded in huge chunks into the crevices as we wrote and wrote and wrote. There was not a single inch of that house on any side that was not covered in one phrase or another. We wrote anything you can imagine from your high school days on the sides of that house.  Still we were not done.

At this point, it was no longer about the trickery. It had turned into a project. We attempted to create a form of art if you will and had lost track of what reality was. We threw eggs, every egg we could get our hands on. We discovered later that adding eggs to soap solidified the cleaning product and make it impossibly difficult to remove. Still we were not done. Not forgetting the toilet paper – the adorned trees resembled Christmas trees that were decorated with white streamers on every branch. When we stepped back and looked at the finished product, we were amazed.

We all headed home for a good night’s sleep, proud of what we had accomplished. Then, the morning came.

The entire neighborhood was out on the street, looking at the damage. It was interesting how in the light of the day, it looked more like vandalism than art. The grown-ups were in a frenzy, wanting to know who did it. Someone called the police, and they interviewed people, wanting to find the culprits. The lady who had seemed so mean just the day before was crying and now seemed only vulnerable and sad. At least the neighborhood pitched in, and everyone helped clean up the mess.

Not a single one of us opened our mouths that day or any day after that. This might be the first time any of us have ever spoken of it. I think it stemmed more from the shame we felt than from our fear of being discovered. Sometimes you do something so wrong, the guilt you feel is far worse that any consequence you could ever imagine. Living with it is a punishment more severe than anything that could be imposed upon you. I guess this is why we are blessed with guilt. We have the ability to punish ourselves far worse than anyone else can punish us. Can anyone say Catholics?

I sometimes think about that old lady. She is long gone now, I am sure. She was on her last leg at the time the dreaded event occurred. I am not sure what I would say. I would start out by saying I am sorry, but would the frail words carry any meaning? I, of course, didn’t mean to, but would that really matter after we completed the deed?

Jesus, I am crying again. Is there a night in my life that I don’t cry now? I think about my life, the ups and downs, and it all ended that night as I drove my family home from dinner. I still might be breathing, I still might be living, but that night in the car – a night like so many other nights -- everything changed. How can you say you are sorry when the person or people you miss the most are no longer here? When you are gone, you are gone for good, there is no coming back. No matter what anyone tells you.

Melissa

For two weeks Melissa managed to stay out of trouble. Her primary instigators stayed at bay, but they now relentlessly harassed her. It seemed from the second she woke up, until the second she went to sleep they pushed her forward into something. Scott was brilliant in his devious plans. He seemed to have a knack for twisting even the most mundane episodes into something potentially horrific. If it weren’t for Mike and Dana controlling him somewhat, Melissa might have caved during the past several days.

Even with her ability to balance the constant commotion she found herself more and more isolated. She had friends and kept up the façade of a social network, but she actually spent most of her time alone. It was so difficult to understand what occurred inside her head versus what happened in the world outside. Melissa sometimes laughed out loud at a joke or responded to something Scott said vocally. People started to stare at her. One teacher asked her, in the middle of class, who she thought she was talking to.

This embarrassed Melissa, and she started to hear rumors that she was crazy and spoke to ghosts. With the popularity the last few years of shows like “Ghost Whisperer,” it seemed that people would be more accepting of oddities. That was on TV, though. In reality people were just freaked out by anything different.

Melissa didn’t speak to ghosts either. She talked to people that didn’t really exist. They were just voices. They didn’t even have bodies. They just floated around inside her head, causing issues as she navigated real life.  They were not real. She repeated this to herself more frequently as the days passed.

“They are not real,” she mumbled over and over again, trying to concentrate in class. It was growing impossibly hard to keep the three silent.

That evening at dinner, her mother asked if she would be interested in feeding the cat for her neighbor and checking on their house for an hour or so each day. They were going on some big trip to Hawaii, and it would be a good way for Melissa to earn a few extra dollars. Melissa said yes, and then grabbed her head, screaming in pain. The pain erupted out of nowhere, and it exploded down her spine. Her mother grabbed one of the giant prescription pills Melissa took and helped her quickly swallow it.

This was a regular routine. This was the first time the pain had taken over her body so quickly, though. She knew it was Scott. The second he heard Melissa would have access to a house on her own for an entire week he burst into action. His excitement was overwhelming. There was going to be a house available for an entire week, and the only thing between him and a fun-filled melee was Melissa. She, as always, was quick to give in. Melissa went to her room to lie down and let Scott begin the preparations.

When you are a girl in high school, it is easy to prepare a party. You tell a couple of your good friends, then the three of you tell several boys. You let the boys do the rest. Despite Scott’s relentless brow-beating, Melissa was intent on keeping the party to a minimum. There would be a few girls and a few boys. They would all sneak out at night and meet up around 11 p.m. at the back door. Her neighbors would leave Friday afternoon. They would keep most of the lights off, maybe watch some movies, and the boys would bring over drinks and the pot. It would be a fun week; they could possibly do this every night.

Most of the kids told their parents they were staying at each other’s houses so several of her friends planned on spending the weekend. Melissa was sad she would have to leave during the day, but her mother demanded she attend the outing on Saturday at her grandparents’ house. Her Grandma had recently fallen and broken her hip, so the family agreed to spend Saturday afternoon hanging out at her house. This was her first weekend back from the hospital. Melissa also had her volunteer appointment at church on Sunday morning and her psychologist appointment on Sunday afternoon.

She was down to the one appointment a week with her psychologist, and while she never revealed anything too deep, it was nice having somebody to talk to. She couldn’t talk to her mother now and never had throughout her life. She hated her tyrannical father, as well. He was the biggest asshole ever. What kind of idiot throws his own daughter out of his house? He needed to grow up and at some point in his life begin to act like an adult. Melissa honestly felt she was more mature and responsible than he was, and he was so damn old.

By the time Friday evening rolled around there were 11 girls set to arrive and somewhere between eight to 15 boys. Everyone knew the drill, and nobody showed up before 11 p.m. Melissa helped out with dishes. She played with her little sisters and kept up the show of being a loving daughter and happy child. Her mother as always ate this stuff up. She always painted such a perfect picture of the ideal home, so it was easy to help her with the delusion. Their lives were far from perfect, but it wasn’t about reality, it was about the presentation they pushed out to the rest of the family and to the public.

Scott was downright giddy with excitement. He left her alone most of the week as she planned the weekend’s events. He seemed to be most peaceful when the four of them were working on something he found exciting and fun. Since this was the biggest thing to date, he was ecstatic.

At 10:45 p.m., the house was quiet, and Scott screamed at her to get moving. He had waited long enough and was ready for the festivities to begin. Melissa crawled out of her bedroom window, left it open slightly for her return, and headed down the block to the unsuspecting peaceful neighborhood home. She didn’t see anyone as she approached the door, so when Sarah said “Hey!” she almost jumped out of her skin. They both laughed and a few other girls emerged from the bushes. None of the boys were there yet, but Sarah had her stash of pot to get them started.

The house was two stories, but unlike most homes in the area, it had the living room and kitchen downstairs. It was average size, three bedrooms, but the master bath had a huge tub with jets and everything. The living room had a flat screen TV that was decent and would be great for watching movies. The boys would be sad since there were no video games. The owners had only a 7-year-old daughter, so they were not inundated with action-packed first-person gun shows, shooting out of their TV screen on a daily basis. There were a lot of Barbies lying around, though.

The girls immediately lit up their first joint and, within minutes, the boys arrived. They had several bottles of Bacardi rum. It seemed like they had all shopped at the same store. Melissa later found out they pooled their money and found one guy to buy rum for all of them. Within an hour the gathering was at full swing, and there were approximately 45 people in the house. Melissa thought around 20 of them would spend the night, but the smoke-filled room distorted her thoughts. She couldn’t maintain much focus on what was going on.

They had a movie playing on the TV, there was some music upstairs in one of the bedrooms, and all of the beds were occupied. At least two girls lost their virginities that night, and it appeared that more than a few boys did, as well. Tina, who was by far the most experienced of the girls, parked herself in the daughter’s bedroom and allowed almost any boy that desired her to have his own little adventure with Alice in Wonderland. There should be something wrong with so much sex happening in a little girl’s room, but Melissa laughed to herself at the irony versus worrying about Tina’s actions.

Even with all of the commotion, everyone did a great job keeping the noise level pretty well under control. The odds they would get caught were pretty small. Melissa thought the night was turning out to be great. Her head spun in circles, but she couldn’t hear anyone, not even the three little beings trapped inside. It was as if she and all her friends had suddenly grown up, and they were living adult lives a few years before their time.

Kids raided the pantries and refrigerator, and it smelled like somebody burned a pizza in the oven. She thought about how good it would have been to eat a huge slice of pizza at that moment. Melissa parked herself on the overstuffed cloth reclining chair and leaned back, attempting to stay awake. She had smoked so much pot and had long ago lost count of how much she drank after seven shots of rum. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Tommy with his pants down peeing in the large potted plant that used to be in the entryway.