I'm Down: A Memoir (20 page)

When we were done cleaning and Anora and the babies were settled on the couch watching TV, I slipped downstairs into the laundry room and the door to my dad’s office. I hadn’t thought about Dad’s business for a long time, but something that night made me wonder. It just didn’t seem like the type of thing Yvonne would go for and I imagined “Never go in that room” didn’t work on wives like it did on daughters.

I checked to make sure nobody was nearby and cracked the door open. There was no bright light as I opened the door, and when I flipped on the light the only thing lying on the floor was a dirt and some scattered rags. There were no more pot plants and no one had even bothered to clean up and make a room out of it. It was abandoned—just like I had suspected. Yvonne was more than powerful; she was omnipotent.

The next day, I gave Yvette the best hairstyle yet. I saturated her hair with Pink oil, then parted it into the most adorable French braids with matching blue ribbons on the end, which I pinned in so she wouldn’t lose them while she was playing. And that night as the kids climbed in the car and got settled, Yvonne said to them, “Mishna sure did a good job on your
hair.” And I felt my heart fill with joy. I had pleased Yvonne, and we were communing as women now.

Andreus started chattering about what they did at school, but Yvonne corrected them. “What do you say to your sister who did your hair?”

“Thank you, Mishna,” Andreus said.

“Thank you, Duck-Butt,” Yvette said, laughing at herself. But Yvonne was not laughing.

“Yvette!”

“What?” Yvette said, giggling. “That’s what you call her, Duck-Butt.” Just saying it made her laugh.

But Yvonne gave Yvette a little swat on the leg.

“Eeeeh!” she fake whined.

“Say sorry to Mishna!” Yvonne commanded.

“But you say it . . . ,” Yvette started, causing Yvonne to raise her hand again, so Yvette quickly spat out, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say it to me,” Yvonne said. “Say it to Mishna.”

“I’m sorry, Mishna,” Yvette said, and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Now, Mishna,” Yvonne said, changing the subject. “What do you want to listen to?” She pointed to a stack of cassettes lying in the drink holder. I rifled through five tapes I would never in a million years listen to and said, “Anita Baker,” hoping it was what Yvonne wanted, too.

“Oooh, my girl Anita,” she said. I had pleased her again. And as we dance-drove home listening to “Giving You the Best That I Got” I felt close to Yvonne and her mystique. And to top it off, when we got back to the house, Yvonne pulled me into her and my father’s room and closed the door. There, she handed me one of her dresses.

“Try it on,” she said. “It’s too small for me.” I took the silk shirtdress while the rest of the kids banged on the door.

“What?” Yvonne shouted toward the door.

“It’s Andre. Can I come in?”

“It’s girl time, Andre,” Yvonne said as I slipped the dress over my head.

“Can I come in then?” Anora asked.

“It’s woman time,” Yvonne replied. “We’ll be out in ten minutes.” Yvonne looked at me in the dress and said flatly, “It’s good.”

“But what?” I asked. Yvonne hesitated and said, “Nothing, it’s just not great.”

I walked over to the mirror that was leaning against the wall. The dress was way too big, but it was pretty and fun to wear.

“Can I keep it?” I asked.

“You ain’t got the body for that dress.”

“Oh,” I said, seeing what she meant.

“We gotta get some meat on your bones, Duck-Butt,” Yvonne said disapprovingly. “Give me back the dress.” And as quickly as I was in, I was back out of her good graces.

A few days later when I got home from school, Yvonne was home and Dad was out with Anora and the babies. It seemed a little odd, but Yvonne decided that we should have a girl’s night and sat me down to do my makeup again.

“Isn’t my dad gonna be pissed?” I asked.

“It’s okay, just tonight,” she said. “Besides . . . it’s good when men get angry. It means they are invested. They care.” I didn’t like the idea of her making my father angry on purpose, but she was doing my makeup so I wasn’t gonna argue.

We got in Yvonne’s car and went to the mall where she bought me a fancy coffee at an espresso place. I told her I didn’t drink coffee, so she ordered me an espresso drink with whipped cream and chocolate, which burned a hole in my stomach. As we walked around looking at clothes and trying on perfume, I
tried to pretend I wasn’t having the sweats as the caffeine attacked my nervous system.

We wandered into JC Penney and I started looking at a pair of earrings at the jewelry counter. But Yvonne wasn’t browsing, and rather than look with me, she grabbed my hand and started leading me. I was titillated that she was leading me to a surprise destination. She stopped in the women’s lingerie department.

“What are we doing here?”

“We are getting you a bra,” she said. I felt completely ambushed.

“What? Why?”

“Because you need one.”

“For what?” I asked. I looked down at my chest in its white Vuarnet T-shirt with a pocket, and saw no evidence of any breasts.

“Your dad and I agree we can’t have you running around boobless.” I had no idea what she was talking about. That didn’t even make sense.

“I don’t have breasts,” I said. But she dragged me over to a rack of bras that were way too big for me.

She began flipping through the rack scratching her head. “You’re probably about a thirty-two A,” she said as she handed me a lacy padded bra, something that was meant to make me look like I actually did have breasts.

“What about that one?” I said, pointing to a flat jersey training bra.

“That’s ugly,” Yvonne said. “The other one is at least pretty.”

“I’m not wearing anything padded,” I said, really putting my foot down. But my little statement landed with a thud. Yvonne’s sisterly mood turned to anger in the blink of an eye. “Try on the bra,” she growled.

“Okay, okay.” And I went to the dressing room and put it on.

“What’s taking you so long?” Yvonne said impatiently after a minute or two.

“I don’t know how this works,” I said, trying to figure out the hooks and straps.

So Yvonne came in with me and helped me figure out how to put the mess of nylon and foam on my flat chest, and when it was all done I looked like I was wearing my mother’s bra. Even Yvonne had to admit that it looked ridiculous.

“Well,” she said, tapping her fingernails against the dressing room door. “You sure got some tiny little titties.” It was then that she literally reached out and twisted my nipples.

We both stood there in shock as she put together that she wasn’t fourteen anymore, and that I wasn’t fourteen yet. It was embarrassing for both of us.

“Come on,” she barked. “Get dressed and let’s pay for that.”

“You saw how big that was. Why can’t I just not wear a bra?”

“Because!” she said. “You’ll grow into it. It’s part of your mystique.” I was terrified. I didn’t want mystique. It seemed like too much. I just wanted to look pretty.

When I got home after the traumatic trip to JC Penney Dad and the kids were eating McDonald’s. Dad hadn’t gotten any for me or Yvonne. I guessed it was because we were women and women didn’t need food. It was part of their mystique. Andreus saw me and said, “You look like a babe!” I forgot that I still had my makeup on. In my hand was the JC Penney bag holding the bra that I would, I guess, grow into. I sat down at the table to glom a fry from my sister, and noticed Dad was acting weird. He wouldn’t look at me and he kept clearing his throat.

“So . . . ,” he finally said. “Did you guys do your shopping, then?”

“Oh, yes,” Yvonne purred. “Mishna’s practically a woman now.” Anora turned and looked at me questioningly. I shrugged, as Yvonne continued, “Pretty soon you’ll be moving out.”

S
LEEPOVERS WERE LIKE
minivacations for me. I got to step out of my family responsibilities and into my friends’ homes where I was catered to like a crippled person. Dad wasn’t in the habit of asking if he could make me something to eat, or if I wanted him to rent me something while he was at the video store. In fact, the last time I’d had Zwena over, he got her to clean the kitchen after I made dinner. That’s why I was so disappointed when all my friends with super, awesome, overbearing, attentive parents decided to have our big seventh-grade sleepover at Oksana’s house.

The lure of Oksana’s house was that she had the most lax parents of all my friends—when she was staying with her mom, the artist. By the way, her mom’s art was intricately hand-beaded penis sculptures. The whole of her house from top to bottom was beaded penises in various stages of construction. You couldn’t look and not see a beaded penis. On the mantelpiece there was a completed rainbow-beaded penis, next to a zebra one. On the coffee table sat a damask penis, and in the bathroom over the sink was an argyle penis.

The greatest quantity of peni resided in the kitchen. On this particular Saturday night as I walked through the kitchen
to get to the guesthouse out back, I could see she was working on a new series of paisley penises. And by the looks of the place, nobody was gonna be making me pancakes.

I got to the guesthouse and all my friends had already arrived. Lilith—who that year had taken to dressing like Robert Smith from The Cure. Violet—whose bobbed blond hair had the appearance of feathers. Marni—the only girl in seventh grade with circles under her eyes. Eileen—a ridiculously skinny girl with both braces and glasses. Kirsten—who talked constantly about elves and druids. And, of course, Oksana—who hid the covers of her Harlequin romance novels under fake drawn Faulkner book covers.

The great thing about partying with the “highly gifted” is that you know no one is going home with a broken arm or getting bailed out of prison. That night we talked about schoolwork. We talked about boys. We sang Smiths songs. We worked on a riddle. We built D & D characters. We drew our D & D characters. And as the night went on, we got more and more witchy, adding our usual Ouija board and tarot cards into the mix. Fantasy was our primary way of dealing with the budding sex problem. And our obsession with the occult always focused around creating a reality where we were sexier, more powerful, and less allergic.

Around 4
A.M
. we finished nipping at an airline bottle of gin that Oksana had stumbled upon in a locked cabinet, and we were getting restless. Marni was giving Eileen the world’s most boring tarot card reading and I was designing a city in my mind made out of toothpicks. That’s when Lilith had an idea. She closed her spell book and said in a really creepy voice, “Hey guys, let’s try to summon the devil.”

The air in the guesthouse changed, and suddenly the party came to life.

“How do we do that?” Marni asked.

“I have a spell right here,” Lilith said. “A conjuring spell.”

Eileen asked, “Can we finish my tarot reading?”

Violet, who had had more gin than the rest of us said, “Fuck your tarot card reading,” which surprised us all. I didn’t even know she knew the F-word.

I was beyond skeptical about Lilith’s magic abilities, but after
The Exocist
, anything concerning the devil creeped me out.

And I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think this is a bad idea.”

“Mishna is pretty reasonable about this stuff,” Violet said. “And if she doesn’t think it’s a good idea, I don’t, either.”

“Me, neither,” Eileen said.

“So what’s the problem, Mishna?” Lilith asked.

“I just don’t see the upside,” I said. “It’s creepy and there has to be a better way to kill time.”

That was when Oksana explained, “The idea is for Satan to work for you. He’ll do, like, whatever you want. Like wishes and stuff.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

Kirsten, in a show of forethought, asked if Lilith had any spells to put the devil back should he get unruly. But when Lilith said no, we decided to roll the dice anyway.

We got some chalk and candles and sauntered over to the church parking lot across the street. It was cold, so we all wore our sleeping bags around our shoulders and shivered as what little gin we had all sipped wore off. Lilith drew a pentagram on the pavement, and Oksana decorated the middle of the pentagram with one of her mom’s penis statues.

Then we lit the candles and sat down around our pentagram wrapped in blankets to chant for Satan to appear. . . . Then we waited.

Nothing.

“Let’s do it again,” Lilith said. “I think sometimes you just have to keep doing it.”

So we did it again. This time Eileen interrupted in the middle, “Are we doing this right? Lilith just double-check the book!”

“Don’t interrupt in the middle!” Violet said. “Who knows what can happen?”

“Maybe I should do a druid harvest dance,” Kirsten said.

“Let’s save the harvest dance for later,” I said.

Violet, who was following over Lilith’s shoulders screamed, “We are going to do the spell exactly how it’s written!” This caused her to get winded and need a puff off her inhaler.

Eileen deflated. “This is like my whole stupid life!”

“Oh, well,” I said. “Satan’s busy.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” Eileen growled. “Stupid Mrs. Heller isn’t giving you a B-plus in English and refusing to change it. Guess stupid Satan won’t be changing it, either!”

Kirsten and Marni looked bummed, too. “You guys didn’t really think we were gonna see the devil?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Marni took too long to say.

“I hate Mrs. Heller!” Lilith said. “She thinks she can mess with everyone’s future by passing out B’s and C’s. . . . That stuff goes on your transcript like forever!”

“Oh, I know!” Oksana said. “Mr. Hammer tried to give me a B in math and my dad went down there and they had a fight and it took the principal to get him to just give me some extra-credit assignments.”

“Ms. Miller won’t let me take off for elven holidays,” Kirsten said.

“Fascist,” Marni said.

“Do you guys want to try this again?” I asked.