Whore. Slut. Easy. The Whore of Tulsa, they called me. Just 'cause I got pregnant when I was fifteen. So what? It wasn't like I actually raised the baby. I aborted it, which wasn't looked too kindly upon in our small suburb of Bixby. But I had only done it once, and now I'm way more careful. I'm not the Whore of Tulsa anymore. Besides, he said he loved me. That's all I needed to hear. Even if I had kept the baby, the neighborhood would have gotten on my case. I could hear the talk about us in church behind our backs already: "That poor old Hanson woman has yet another mouth to feed." "I heard it was her fifteen-year old daughter's baby." "I tell you, no child should be brought up in that family. The mother just drinks all day, the children are always cutting school, and the oldest one..." "Well, you know about him...the 'accident'...". But I didn't have the baby, so instead I was a baby killer. I tell you, you just can't win with these suburban people. They just want everything from you. But my family wasn't always like this. Actually, we were quite nuclear, even functional back then. Mom didn't drink; she home-schooled us instead of sending us off to public school. Dad was home then; he hadn't left one night for cigarettes and never came back. We would all go to church together on Sundays, we'd say Grace and eat dinner altogether, we'd actually talk to each other. I guess you could say that we were even more freakishly-normal than those white-bred families that love to judge us now. We were exactly like them; until, that is, the Accident occurred. I didn't really know why the Accident was that big of a deal. To this day, I don't know why it was different. Maybe because it was a small town. But no, these things happened all the time. Maybe it was because my brothers used to be stars. Yeah, stars; celebrities. They were this big pop group in the '90's that sang this God-awful music only airheads like my sister could like. Obviously, there were a lot of airheads around back then, 'cause the news really traveled fast around the globe. And that's when the Accident turned us into the Scarlet Letter Family of Tulsa, Oklahoma. But I don't really like to talk about it. Yeah, my brothers were real celebrities. Toured all over the world and stuff. Of course, my father - being their agent - wanted us to all go along with them. He made us all go along with them. I hated them. Loathed them, for becoming big. Why did I have to go along with all of them? I had no identity. At least back home I'm known as the Whore of Tulsa. When I was with my brothers, I was "That Group's Sister" - what was her name again? Josie? Jennifer? They gave away their childhood, you know. That's what everyone said, and that's what they did. They spent all hours of the day, for years and years, in the studio, down in our makeshift recording room in the basement, on tour, or on some TV appearance or another. After the fame, my brothers never had a waking moment to themselves, with all those idiot girls in tanktops that wanted to fuck them. One even told me she would kiss my feet if she could meet my brother. I told her to get a life and find someone else's feet to kiss. They stole my childhood, too. I was even younger than them, and I tagged along on everything they did. Sure, New York was nice, and it was kind of cool to meet Jay Leno. But that shouldn't have been the life of a nine-year old. Whenever I was cooped up in some hotel in Japan or wherever, waiting for my brothers' return, I would think of my friends back home. I had friends back home, not like my brothers; what was it that they used to say? "Best friends, even bester"? Yeah, right. They were each others' only friends. But I had friends back home. They probably ran around the whole neighborhood, playing tag in the woods, never minding that Jessie wasn't there. Oh no, they probably thought. She's having fun all over the world, being second banana and neglected. I was almost glad when the Accident happened. My heart soared, slightly, when I had heard the news. And, for that, I hate myself everyday. That's what I was thinking of as I got dressed on that Sunday morning. Black was what I had to wear, I had to remember that. Not like I couldn't. I only wore black clothes, and there was nothing else in my closet that had any color to it at all. And it wasn't like my darling sister would ever lend me, the heathen, any of her clothes. I might get my sinful filth on it. I brushed a sheer lip gloss to my lips, contemplating on whether or not it's right to wear black lipstick in a holy place. I opted for the gloss. Slowly humming some Korn song or another to myself, I looked around my room. Black. It was all black. Black walls, black bedsheets, black furniture. I liked black. It reminded me of nothingness. It reminded me of me. Posters of devil-worshipping bands like Marilyn Manson and Rage Against the Machine graced my walls, and my sister shuddered when she saw them. That's when she ever sets a foot in my room. Everyday I just thank somebody up there for giving my family a big house after all those years of living in that cramped hole in the ground in Jenks. We got a gorgeous nine-bedroom mansion (back when I was still "innocent," I called it a castle) with three floors and - thank God - four bathrooms. Our old house only had two bathrooms for eight people. You try living nine years scrambling to get five minutes alone to piss. Even with all the bedrooms in the house, my brothers still insisted on sharing a room. Of course, they got the largest room in the house. You should have seen their old room; it was so cramped not even a parasite could sneak through and move in. To this day I still don't know why they insisted on sharing a room again, after sharing one for all those years. One would think that they would get tired of each other. But no, their story was that it would look good for their image to bunk together. I think that there maybe was a little more than brotherly love goin' on behind those closed bedroom doors at night. But then again, I may have been wrong. As I started to get bored of the song and my humming died down some, I could hear the sound of music floating from down the hall. Zoe. God, did that girl ever hear of headphones? She was playing that music like she was deaf. Who did she think she was...me? As I got closer to her room to yell at her, I could make out the familiar tune she was playing. My face cringed in disgust. It was light. It was happy. It was just so late-90's. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I burst into the room, a tornado of black hair dye and anger. Zoe was sitting cross-legged on a bean chair, looking as normal as can be in her baby shirt and shorts, staring up at me as if my hair were made of snakes. She couldn't play dumb with me. She knew I knew, and she wasn't going to get away with it. "Answer me!" I roared, my lips turning into a sneer. Zoe's eyes bulged, and she knew I wasn't fucking around. "I...uh...well..." she stammered, as I trekked over to her stereo and hit the eject button. God, that music was getting to me already. I yanked it out of the CD turntable, scrutinizing it. "You wasted your fucking money on this???" I asked, fingering the familiar orange disk within my hands. Zoe stood up. "It was my money, and I spent it the way I wanted to." Oh, God. Out of all the times this girl decides to have some backbone, it has to be now? "Well, you spent it on junk." I opened the pocket of my cargo skirt and slipped it in. She wasn't going to listen to this dreck so long as I was still alive. Zoe's eyes seemed to pop out of her head, and she grew angry. "Give that back!" she spat, on the verge of stuttering. "It's mine!" "It's mine now." "Give it back!" she screamed, near hysteria. God, all this over a stupid CD? My kid sister really has to learn to choose her battles more carefully. But deep down inside, I knew why she fought so tooth-and-nail for the disk. It was her only key to the life our family had before the Accident - the life that she never had. Zoe was only two, I think, when the Accident occurred. She doesn't even remember Daddy. It's all for the better, I guess; if she knew what kind of life we had before, she would never want to come back to the existence we have here. Stacked atop a mountain of other CDs, something cruelly familiar caught my eye. An orange box smiled at me from its jewel casing, and three little faces stared hopelessly as they mocked me, making me remember the shame I felt the night of the Accident... "There's been an accident." I shook my head, trying to shake out the old memories that allowed my guard to be let down, and I became rigid again. With a sneer playing on my lips, I handed the disk back to my sister's waiting hands. She snatched it up defensively and carefully replaced it back into the player. We stood in silence there, in the teddy-bear adorned room that contradicted the owner to a tee. There I was: almost a woman then, brought nearly to tears by the memories brought on by a nine-year old girl. I cleared my throat and changed the subject. "Get dressed," I said, barely noticing that she was already fully dressed. Zoe acknowledged my tone and the date, and she moved to her closet to find something appropriate. "We're leaving whenever your brother gets home." "Which brother?" The question amused me. For the longest time, the members in my family, friends, and just about everyone in the world had asked me this question, and I always smiled at the thought that, sometimes, I didn't even know the answer myself. "Mackie," I stated simply. I looked at my watch and grimaced. "Where is your brother, anyway?" Zoe shrugged. "How should I know?" she asked, the defensiveness in her voice returning. "He's probably pushing to some kids at the playground again, though." My God! That boy will never learn. How many times had he been in jail by then? Three, four times? And fuck, he was only twelve. What the hell was going to happen to him when he became legal? Well, I wasn't going to bust him out again if he gets caught. Either mom gets off her drunkard ass to do it, or he stays in there till the arraignment. "How's this?" Zoe emerged from her closet, mustering up an old pair of faded jeans and a brown blouse. That wouldn't do. I was no fashion plate or an expert on church clothes, but I knew those wouldn't do. I shook my head. "Not gonna cut it." Holy shit. Did I have the faintest sound of sisterly advice to my remark? Oh my God, it couldn't be. Did we just have a sister moment? "Then what do you want me to look like? Something like you?" Oh, well. If there was any sisterly bonding between us, at least now it was gone. I looked down at my clothes. My black tank top and sheer overshirt were adequate, while my floor-length black cargo skirt was downright orthodox. What, was there something wrong with it? Obviously Zoe had thought so, for I wore these types of clothes everyday. I decided that I had enough of Zoe's bullshit for the day, though. I looked up at her and smiled. "Yeah," I said. "Look something like me." I saw my mother right after that. I never wanted to see her that day, or any other day for that matter, but she saw me walking past her door and beckoned for me to enter. If I didn't and simply ignored her, there was no telling what the hell she would do to me. I didn't know if she had been drinking or not, but the odds were against me either way. And I had to go somewhere; she knew it, and couldn't care less if I went at all. "Avie?" she asked faintly, the desperation in her voice eminent. God, she thought I was Avery. Couldn't she just get over all of it? I wasn't Avery. I would never be Avery. And God, I just wanted to get out of the house. Why did she have to fuck it all up? "No mom, it's Jess." Why did I say that? Now she was going to ask me to go inside and talk to her... "Oh, you." Her tone was warbled, and I could tell she definitely had been drinking. Great. Ever since my father had left, Mom loved to find solace in Jack. Jack Daniels, that is. And she would never leave her darkened bedroom, lest she find yet another tragedy at her doorstop, just like seven years ago. I used to respect her, you know. I used to think she was the greatest woman in the world. Now, the only times I'll actually talk to her are when she's screaming at me, brandishing her liquor bottle and spitting obscenities. "Get your ass in here, I want to talk to you." Well, dearest mother, what if I didn't want to talk to you? I stayed outside of the doorframe, motionless, for a little while, hoping against hope that she would just take another swig and ignore me. But a screeching curse and the sound of chaos brought me to believe otherwise. "Get the fuck in here, you whore!" she yelled, punching her hand against her bedside table, knocking over an empty glass and rolling it onto the floor. I walked in, uncertain of my fate, as my mother, the ever-stable matriarch of our famous (and yet infamous) family, sat up in her bed, staggering and seeming to have a difficult time catching her balance. I hated seeing her like this; she was the greatest person in the world to me for half of my life, and now she was a disgusting piece of trash that I wouldn't care to spit on in the street. She wasn't the mother I remembered; she wasn't the mother I still needed her to be. "Where the fuck are you going, dressed up all in black?" she asked, a cigarette dangling from her mouth and another clear glass, filled with scotch, in her hand. She knew damn well where I was going; she just wanted to hear me say it. And then stop me from going. "You know where I'm going," I said, keeping my distance from her bed. I didn't want to get too close; if I ticked her off, I didn't want to leave the house with a black eye, or worse. She took a drag off the cigarette, and placed it in an ashtray on the table. "Why are you still going there?" she said. For seven years, she had asked me that question. I hated that question. She knew the answer, and I knew the answer, but she still couldn't fathom why I still went there. But she didn't feel my pain. She didn't know the guilt I felt every day, because of my actions and my feelings the minute my older brother came home that midnight. She just would never know exactly why I would go. "Why do you still drink away your problems?" I said under my breath, relating her escape to my escape. Obviously, I hadn't said it low enough, because in a flash, she was upon me, hand flashing quickly against my cheek, the pain stinging like a shark bite. "Don't you fuckin' talk back to me, you whore!" she yelled, spitting the words in my face. She was blowing up, and it was all going to be worse than a little slap on the face. "You little disrespectful bitch! Who puts this roof over your head? Who put the food you eat on the table? Who gets those goddam clothes on your body?" I knew what she wanted to hear. That I was sorry, and I should numbly take my punishment for talking back to her. That she does everything for me, and I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for her. But I couldn't. It wasn't true. She didn't do shit for me, and hadn't done shit for me for seven fucking years. No way I was going to back down today. I had places to go, and I'd rather not go there with a black eye. "You sure don't!" I screamed back, the sudden trace of backbone startling my mother. "You don't do shit! My brothers paid for this roof over my head! You didn't! My grandfather paid for the clothes on my back! You didn't! I paid for the food in my stomach! All you did was watch all of it happening with a drink in your hand!" And with that, I slapped my mother's hand that held her drink, and it shattered on the hardwood floor, the jagged pieces spraying over and cutting my mother's bare feet. What I did next shocked both my mother and myself. I straightened my back, growing to my full height of 5'3". Although I was much shorter than my mother, I seemed to tower over her, mostly because her body was now hunched and slightly quivering, afraid of what I might do to her. My face was blank, a stare that could freeze water, and the eyes of steel to match. I simply stared at her, pure disgust coursing through my veins. I didn't have time to fight with her today. I had to go somewhere. "Goodbye, Mother," I said, turning around and leaving her alone, feet slightly bleeding, the alcohol burning the cuts badly. I didn't care. She wasn't my problem anymore. She never was my problem.
mail. [email protected] � FTLOM"Oh God!" my mother screamed. My father nearly fainted inside the vestibule when he saw the shadow of his nineteen-year old son on his doorstep, panting, out of breath. A large gash, open and bleeding, fell down from his rain-soaked hair and into his crying face. The next four words stung like a bee but were as sweet as honey to my ears:
