Punk Like Me (33 page)

Someone reached to take the baby from me, saying something about their turn or something, but I put the bottle down and, scowling Þ ercely, used both my arms to hug the little sleeper and hunched my

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body over her. “My Nanny,” I said, forcing myself deeper into the chair and away from the hands that weren’t mine or Nicky’s or Mommy’s and Daddy’s. Protect the baby. I would, no matter what that meant.

How could anyone, especially my family, my parents, Nanny, possibly think I could even remotely dream of hurting my baby sister, blood of my blood, bone of my bone, even this many years later? My Nanny.

But then, I reß ected, the one time Kathy had gotten us in trouble for something true, it had been Nanny who told her, and Nanny herself was also known to stretch the truth on occasion. Kathy had probably seen Kerry and me or something, or maybe just had a suspicion, then had buttonholed Nanny in the last few days with a few gossipy questions.

This was not only possible, this was actually probable.

A thin little wisp of anger curled in my stomach and went straight to my heart, killing some of my affection for my baby sister. Fuck her.

I would avoid her then, if she was so fucking afraid. But it hurt, all the same.

“And your father,” my mother indicated him where he sat, silent this whole time, just watching, “tells me that Nicky and Kerry spoke with him at dinner.”

What? They didn’t come to my meet; they all went to dinner, to talk about me? What the fuck?

“Nicky told your father that Kerry told him, that on Sunday you, that you, tried to force yourself on that poor girl,” she stated, her voice shaking.

I glared at my father, who was watching me with a tight, smug little smile.

“Are you people completely fucking insane? Hello? It’s me—

your,” and I twisted my mouth a little, “daughter? I would never do a thing like that. You raised me, you should fucking know me better!

I’m the same person I was last week, the person who would never, ever willingly hurt another, and especially never do a thing like that!” I caught my breath in anger at the injustice of it, then went on.

“Besides, I talked to Joey tonight. I was home by nine on Sunday, Jack was there at nine thirty, and Joey says that Jack and Kerry, the girl that Dad,” and I looked at him directly, “always calls a ‘dyke,’” I spat that word out and let it hang in the air, “did it that night with Jack, so go fuckin’ ask him, ask both of them, before you’re so damned quick to

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believe someone else before you believe me.” And I stopped, wordless, shocked at the shots that were coming in from all sides.

My mother’s face was surprised by my revelation, my father’s had gone blank. Apparently, this was news to them. Well and good, then. It had been news to me, too.

My brain jumped back into gear and then into overtime. “And another thing…if that was true, why in the world would she have come over and stayed last night? Why would she and Nicky come to my meet? Did you even stop to think about that?” I stood there, dripping scarlet drops on the ß oor, just breathing in and out. “I can’t believe you people.”

There was silence as my mother looked abashed. She sat back down on her edge of the bed and glanced over at my father to see what he would say, but he refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he glared at me with such vehemence, and with such anger, that I knew, deep within, that Nicky had never said that to my father. My father had lied, had taken Kathy’s story and added a lie to it to further egg my mother on, to make her angry enough to hate me, her beloved child, and I would think, no matter what happened, that it was my mother’s fault. I would blame her, be hurt by her, not by him.

It was a great plan, except he’d forgotten one very important thing: I wasn’t as stupid as he loved to say I was every morning of my misbegotten life. I curled my lip at him, glaring back just as strongly.

“You lose,” he spat out, “you lose if you do this.” I just stared at him, waiting.

“You can’t do this,” he continued, his voice full of anger and solemnity.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Forget Annapolis. Forget West Point. Forget ROTC and Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. You wanted Princeton, right? For engineering math and science? Who’s going to pay for it if you don’t have that scholarship? We’re not. We’re not paying anything—” my father said, but my mother put a hand on his arm to shush him.

Any blood that wasn’t falling from my face fell down to my feet.

Oh my God, that was true. I couldn’t go into the service and become an ofÞ cer, couldn’t become a pilot, couldn’t become an engineer, couldn’t become an astronaut. Over something really stupid and insigniÞ cant.

My body shook so badly now I thought my guts would fall on the

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ß oor.

My mother looked at me. “It’s very simple, Nina. You do this our way, and we’ll take care of it. We’ll work it out, no matter what we need to do. You don’t want to join the military, you don’t want to be an ofÞ cer anymore, Þ ne, that’s not a life for everyone and you don’t have to do it, even though you’ve been preparing your whole life for this, and why we sent you to your high school. You don’t have to say you’re, a, a bi, um, a whatever, to get out of it. You don’t want to be in the armed forces, we understand.”

She was very serious and solemn, and waited to see my reaction before she continued, and I’ll be honest, I’d started to rock side to side a bit in agitation and agony. This was my life we were talking about, after all. “Do it your way, Nina, persist in this, and we will not support you. I will not support any monstrosity in my home.” My legs in a slight horse stance, I now stood stock-still and stared intently. “I’m not doing anything wrong,” I said in a low tone to my mother directly. “He…” and I gestured in my father’s direction to my mother. I would have said more, but my mother held up her hand for my silence and I complied, listening hard.

“The law says we have to provide for you until you are of age, which is eighteen. If you decide to live here until that time, we will provide you with food and shelter, but nothing else, until you are no longer our legal obligation, which your father and I have decided will be when you graduate, if you graduate, from high school, instead of your actual eighteenth birthday.” Considering my birthday was in winter, that was a good thing, I thought grimly.

My mother continued, “We will not sign transfer papers or write you notes or sign anything with your name on it. If you decide to go to a different school anyway, you will not live here. If you do not want to live here, we will not pay for you to live anywhere else. Should you decide not to live here, we will have you declared a runaway and a criminal, and you’ll be taken to a home for juvenile delinquents, where you’ll be treated like an animal—”

My father interjected at this point, “You’ll have a new uniform, three squares a day, and continue your,” he sneered, “education, and then you’ll learn, you’ll really learn. How to sleep with your eyes open, where to walk, where to look or not look, so you don’t get gang-raped by a bunch of thugs.” His face had the dim shine of animated wax in the light from the TV that was still on. “That’ll Þ x you, Þ x you good,

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too.” He seemed almost pleased. “I bet,” he paused a moment, a strange expression on his face, “you’ll beg—”

“Roger,” my mother turned to him and said sharply, “that’s enough!” She turned back to me and placed her hands in her lap, composing herself before she continued, and continue she did. “You will have to take care of your tuition, your uniforms, your sports and all of your other expenses, including your transportation and all of your exam and application fees, yourself. You will still have household responsibilities, to pay for your room and board, and you will still follow all of our rules. You have no rights, except to eat and sleep here.

You have no phone privileges. You may read your books. You may, of course, use the washer and dryer. Also, if you quit any of your school activities, you will no longer be welcome in this home. You must continue to do it all, without our support.

“Once you graduate, you may continue to live here, but you will have to pay rent. We will not support you in any way. You are not our child.”

My mother stared at me and I stared right back, wordless and now numb. So far, I had understood. I was still to make dinner, do dishes, do the laundry, somehow pay for school, study for school, take care of all my extracurricular obligations as well, or be homeless. Gee, what a bargain.

“If you persist in this path, Nina, and you are able to do this, Þ nish high school, go to college, take care of yourself Þ nancially, if you can do all these things and not become a depraved sex-and drug-addicted alcoholic monster, I will still not love you. I will respect you, but I will not love you and I will not help you.”

The rocking and shaking Þ nally stopped, and I just stared.

Something, and I don’t know what it was really, grew within me. It had the power, the strength of anger, but it was different somehow.

It was cold and hard. Like ice. Like stone. I had a vision of ancient glaciers carving through mountains. Slow, inexorable, and inevitable.

Unstoppable. Was I the mountain or the glacier?

“Do this our way, Nina, and it’s all there for you. We will take care of everything, and you will spare yourself tremendous hardship.

You will be our beloved child, our brightest star, our child who goes to Princeton or Harvard or Yale or any other place you choose. We will Þ nd a way to send you. You will have our love, our assistance and support.”

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I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. They were going to pretend that none of this had ever happened, these words had not been said, that it wasn’t my own blood running down the back of my throat and spotting the ß oor, if I lied, if I said that it was all a mistake, a misunderstanding.

It would be easy, too, just a few words, and then I’d just have to live with myself for the rest of my life.

I could, possibly, do like people I read about, just hide it and be a liar with those whom it was most important to be honest. These were big stakes here, and I had no way, no knowledge of how to really take care of myself. They were backing me into a corner, and it would be almost impossible, actually, being underage, undereducated, to survive, never mind succeed, considering the very constricting requirements, narrow deÞ nitions, and permissions of what I needed to do to “pass” their test.

But, I realized, I had a higher standard to live by, my conscience, and I had another surge of insight: the glaciers were inexorable, unstoppable, merciless. But the glaciers were gone and the mountains, no matter how carved or scarred, remained, still mountains.

“How can you ask me to do that?” I asked them, “how can you respect me, if I just say, sure, no problem, whatever you say? How can I respect you if you actually do that? That’s hypocritical, it’s not truth, not real!” I tried to desperately explain. “How can we ever believe each other again? How will you know if you love me or just a make-believe or incomplete picture of me, or me of you guys?”

“Just do it our way, Nina,” my mother ordered.

My eyes narrowed as I spoke to both of them. “You,” I said very distinctly, “are asking me to lie.” Suddenly, it was very clear, and I was possessed of an almost unearthly calm. Mountain or glacier.

I took a breath, steadied my stance, then glared at each of them in turn, Þ rst my father, expressionless except for the smoldering anger in his eyes that told me how much he hated me, and then my mother, whose eyes begged me to pretend this all away. I held her gaze with mine. “I am not,” I paused for emphasis, “a liar, and it’s wrong of you to try to force me to be one.”

Quick as a rocket, my mother ß ew off the bed, but this time, I was ready. Oh, she hit me all right. The slam across my face knocked my head back and hit my poor nose again so hard I cried out but swallowed it down quickly enough. The rest of my body remained solidly planted.

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Blood poured again now, out of my nose, from my lips, and at least one cut on my face. It poured down my shirt, but I stood and did not falter or fall, watching my mother, legs wide and Þ sts at my side. I watched her, and I suddenly realized I was looking down. I was taller than she was, by almost a head, maybe more, since my legs were splayed. I took comfort from that fact in a small obscure way, and I realized my mother must have noticed how much taller than she I was, too. She took a step back.

“Do it our way, Nina, and we will give you the world. Do it yours and”—she shrugged—“you’ll earn my respect, but that will be all you get. I will not love you, support you, or help you. I will, however, respect you.”

My eyes still narrowed, I squared my shoulders and stood up as straight as I could, back held proudly. I wiped some blood off my mouth and chin and ß icked it away. It landed on the corner of my parents’ bed, and I watched my mother’s eyes follow it and rest there, before they came back to me.

I stood even prouder and looked down at her straight in the eye.

“You’re just going to have to respect me, then,” I told her calmly and clearly and, executing a perfect right face, strode from their room without another word. Get thee behind me, Satan, I thought. The world on a silver platter was not enough to trade for my soul.

I was a rock.

I didn’t even stop in the bathroom to wash off. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of hearing the water run, knowing that I was cleaning up the mess they had made. I just went straight to bed and went to sleep, vowing through my tightly gritted teeth that I would make this work somehow. I wouldn’t let them break me; I could do this and not become lost, not lose my integrity. I wouldn’t let them win, mold and make me into an unreal person.

Then I remembered it was November, and I would be seventeen in February. I was sixteen years old, and my life was destroyed, by the people who’d given it to me in the Þ rst place.