Slut Lullabies (2 page)

Oh, don't think we weren't on to her. Behind her back—and to her face—we all agreed she was manipulative, controlling. But teenagers are notoriously bad listeners, fickle-hearted, and by and large fairly stupid about the workings of the human mind, or even about how to forge a school absence note that actually looks and reads like it was penned by a fifty-year-old. She was a rare commodity we could not do without, and we did not, really, mind the dramas she stirred up. We liked to be the center of attention, and Sera could make you feel like you were the center of her world—even if it turned out you were one of ten people to call her that night, and you noticed that she rarely called you. Soon she would be majoring in psychology, but she had been our shrink for years, and much later, in therapy myself, I would see that, like all great analysts, she had a certain ruthless immunity to other people's pain, just as a seasoned surgeon fails to gag when slicing through flesh and yellowed, bulbous fat to the blood and guts beneath. She was fascinated by being needed—by other people's capacity for need. That was her fix,
her
need, and while I had not really considered the implications of my failing to confide in her about Alex—when being confided in was her prime vocation—I knew that my need for her was crucial to our relationship. She was the rescuer, and I often needed saving: from my mother's stronger will; from the advances of scary asshole boys; from term papers on books I didn't really grasp; from my future without direction. And now from the jaws of my mother's looming death, which truly was inevitable, we all saw. Sera and I had been friends for eight years, and like a married couple, we had our patterns. She would slice open my skin and fat and stir around my guts, and then she would stitch me back together. And I didn't mind, really. My mother had never been that interested in what went on under my skin—nobody had, even Alex. Her efforts made me feel loved.

“Before my dad opened the restaurant, when he was still tending bar at Cagney's, he said your mother slept with every regular at the bar and used to hit on him all the time. She had no pride, he said. She'd go with married guys just for buying her a drink. I don't want to see you like that with Alex, just because he has money, just because he's all Oh-I'll-Take-You-To-My-Condo-In-Athens or whatever. He'll never admit he's even dating you—he's totally going to marry some tacky Greek bitch with big hair—if he's even
straight
! Can't you see he's just using you?”

And I could. I could. I could have fallen right into her waiting arms.

But here is what happened instead: I became hysterical.

In the middle of the dance floor, while the Violent Femmes intoned, “One, one, one 'cause you left me,” I felt my face crumple into a grimace and whines well up between my throat glands. This is what I saw: my father, in a dark corner of the bedroom I would later know only as Mom's, a strap around his arm, tapping, tapping. Then, the arm flying back, strap flailing, as he smacked my mother's face. Some memories
are
fake: I know. I've had flashbacks of various grisly accidents I could never have experienced without being killed: cars plummeting off cliffs and the feeling of free-falling, the claustrophobia of chaos in a burning plane. Other memories verge on dream, like lying in my twin bed at night listening to the radio for so long that the Top 40 station turned into the religious station, muffled voices from my mother's room, the sound of something pounding the wall rhythmically, the squeaking of an angry bed . . . I knew.

Once, I'd even intruded. Once, when I was old enough to know what sex was but young enough to still think it could not apply to my mother—once, knowing Sera got to sleep with her parents when she had a bad dream—I stirred in bed, plotting, gathering nerve, then scuttled across the dark kitchen, conscious of the fact that roaches scurried out of my way, still frightened of me after all the years we'd lived side by side.
I had a nightmare
, I would say to my mother, and wait for her to invite me into her wide, white-sheeted bed, rumpled with the smooth cool skin of
her
. I had the nightmare all planned just in case she asked: Satan lived behind my wall and I was going to have to marry him. But outside her door, I hesitated; I was aware of hunger scraping my stomach, but there was no food in the apartment. I had to pee, but I rarely used the bathroom at night because I didn't like the sight of bugs scurrying when I turned on the light and shocked them. “Mom,” I whispered. “Mommy.”

An arm on my shoulder. I whirled around, terrified, as though one of the roaches had grown to monster size—I yelped. But it was only Tony Guidubaldi, in my mother's striped terry cloth robe, his hand circling my shoulder blade like a broken wing he hoped he could repair. “Whatsa matter, babe?” he asked. “You have a bad dream? You lookin' for your ma?” But I burst away and ran the few steps back to my room, hopping into my sweat-sticky bed, listening to the caller on the radio say,
I was saved seven years ago but my son
. . . I waited for my mother to come and find out what was wrong—she must have heard me in the hall—but she never arrived. In the morning, Tony Guidubaldi was gone, and after that Mom started letting me spend weekends with Sera. Her parents took us on long drives to the Michigan Dunes, cruising in their green Nova for quaint coffee shops in Cherry Valley, where one could obtain the world's best apple pie. Years later, I said to my mother, “When you were dating Tony Guidubaldi,” and she said, “Don't be crazy. We never dated—he's married. We were just good friends.”

There are some memories that come from a kind of archetype of human suffering: the fear of falling; the hopelessness of trapped limbs thrashing everywhere in a dark, confined space; the itching sting of fire. I went through a stage where I loved all the made-for-TV junkie movies, imagining each addict was my father, and maybe, maybe I have transposed his image, his strap, his slap, on a picture I saw long ago: just actors playing a part. Not my father. Not my mother's face. There are memories that do not belong to us, no matter how real they seem. But for a week, Tony Guidubaldi's watch sat on my mother's bureau, and the following weekend, it just disappeared. There are memories that will always be ours, no matter how hard we will them to go away.

Sera had chased me to the bathroom, where I was leaning, weeping over a sink like I might throw up. “Emmy,” she pleaded, “it's no big deal. So what about your mom? She's not like that anymore, and you're not her—for God's sake, you're a
virgin
—”

“I've been screwing Alex for half a year!” I screamed. “We go at it everywhere—parking lots at night, the bathroom at work the minute George goes on an errand, the elevator at UIC after orientation. You have no idea—you don't know anything about me!”

“Oh, you're lying just to piss me off,” she said rationally. “You'd never do that; you're totally scared of guys. Besides, we made a pact. You
swore
.”

“Duh,” I said. “I fucking lied.”

Even after she'd torn out of the bathroom, I lingered, sniveling and dwelling on my misery. I was just like my mother, who was dying alone at thirty-nine, jobless in a roach-infested apartment we could only afford because she'd boned the landlord for years, along with every other neighborhood asshole. None of them came around now. None of them would probably even show up at her wake, though maybe I'd get it for free if she'd fucked any of the Ragos who owned the funeral parlor. I would spend my college years letting Alex buy me things, shaking my shoulders on dance floors trying to be somebody else while poor George jerked off nights thinking about my tits, and then Alex would marry some Greek girl just like Sera predicted, or maybe he'd come out of the closet someday, but still I'd be kicked to the side of the road as an obstruction to his Athenian pursuit of tight boy ass. I was the world's biggest loser; I would believe anything; the first time I made a move without Sera and look what I did. I was a slut, and my mother was worse than a slut. My mother was already dead.

Back near the bar, Sera and Alex were arguing. I approached them warily, like a tired mother having to break up the public spats of her annoying children one time too many. Alex grabbed my arm when he saw me. He was a lanky, ethereal boy with fine features, too much fashion sense about women's clothing, and a soft, sweet voice; I had never seen him angry before. “How could you tell her about us?” he hissed in my face. “She's the biggest gossip in the whole school. We might as well go have sex in front of my dad!”

Sera pushed his chest. “Who do you think you are, pretty boy, Conan the Barbarian? Let go of her!”

“Mind your own business,” Alex whined like a baby. “Don't
you
think
you've
done enough?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don't be a dork. I'm not going to tell anyone. I'm just mad that Emily broke our pact, so now you guys are going to have to make it up to me somehow.”

“Like how?” I said. I knew she was up to something, but I wanted it to be over quickly so I could go home. Alex had the car. I had no money, as usual.

“Well, we were supposed to lose our virginity at the same time,” Sera said. Then, with a flourish in Alex's direction, “We vowed ages ago. But now I'm going to have to wait till I get to Madison, because there's nobody here in Chicago I want to sleep with. I'll have to start college a bitter virgin.” She laughed—suddenly, she did not sound bitter. “The sooner I get laid, the less likely I am to be angry that Emily is so selfish. Then I'd have a secret to keep, too.”

“So go screw George then,” I said irritably. “He's totally in lust with you.”

“Eeew,” Sera said flatly. “I think not. Alex here got all the charm in the family. Alex, by the way, are you gay?”

“Huh?” Alex said.

“Bi, then?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“Well, I wouldn't want my best friend Emily to get AIDS. If you're bi, I hope you use protection.”

Alex stared at me desperately as if for help. My arm felt bruised; I looked away. I wondered if my mother had fallen asleep on the couch watching TV as usual. I wondered what kind of girl goes out partying, losing her panties in the parking lot of her high school while her bald, breastless mother falls asleep to
The Tonight Show
.

“You
are
really cute,” Sera said to Alex. I noticed then that she had never become truly pretty—that despite her new, nice figure and smooth hair and post-braces teeth, her face was somehow already old, lacked the dewy innocence of youth. We all worshipped her for being smarter and braver than the rest of us, but guys feared her for that, too. Brains don't go far toward getting guys in high school. Sera had never had a boyfriend—never even seemed to fool around with anyone we knew all that well. Our guy friends asked her advice about their naive, girlie-girl girlfriends while Sera collected dust like a spinster aunt. She must have hated us all: normal girls deemed stupid enough to date by the wannabe studs who were intimidated by her mind. Maybe she had a right.

“Emily and I always share
everything
,” she sing-songed. My eyes bugged. I glanced at Alex, but as I'd failed to come to his rescue a moment before, he refused to meet my eyes now. “I don't like to feel left out.”

“Come on,” Alex laughed. “You're never left out of anything. You know everything about everyone. What do you care what Emily does with a guy like me? I thought I was, like, totally beneath you.”

“Well, if Emily thinks you're so great, maybe I should reconsider. She's a very smart girl, you know.”

Alex didn't even turn in my direction at this compliment—if that was what it was. His body leaned in closer to Sera, and I thought then: he is either totally
not gay
, or he is way smarter than I thought. Brighter than I was, apparently. Alex's laugh was suddenly throaty; I turned away, speechless. Maybe Sera would not really go through with it—maybe she was only trying to show me what a dog Alex was—how he'd jump at the chance to put his dick in any hole, even right in front of me. I was convinced. How could I let her know? How could I beg her, right in front of him, not to take it too far?

“So if you and Emily
share
something, and it's both of your secret, then you'd keep it together and not tell anybody else, right?” His eyes were seductive—never, even in the moments before climaxing, did he look at me that way. Even under the stars, on the beach in Freeport where I lost my virginity, his eyes had been confused, ambivalent, worried. I remembered how the first time we'd tried to put a condom on his half-mast penis, it kept popping off and flying around the room, and how we chased it, naked at the shabby Tip Top Motel on Lincoln, time and time again, until his erection was lost and the condom was dry, so we just watched videos for a couple of hours and then went home. I did not know
that
boy could become
this
man. Always, I had imagined us as partners in crime: children throwing rocks at old ladies' windows, wild but harmless. I couldn't pretend I hadn't known Sera capable of treachery, but Alex . . . Maybe this was why Sera would win—would always win. I did not understand people; I looked at surfaces; I believed what I wanted to believe: in a grown-up mother who would invite me into her safe bed, in Charlie's Angels protecting me from behind my wall. Sera believed in turning human need to her advantage. And need would always win out.

I walked out of the bar.

George was leaning against the brick wall of the building, smoking a cigarette. I had never seen him smoke. His dark eyes were in the shadow of the neon sign; he looked like a Gothic vampire, or a detective in a 1940s film. His gaze flicked lazily over me, then back toward the distance, as though he were trying to figure out where he was supposed to be instead of here.

“Do you have any money for a cab?” I asked him.