chapter one

CHAPTER ONE

“Slut!” I hear my dad call my mom. If you wanna start a fight with my mom, this is a good way to do it.

Today is Saturday. Normally, me and my sisters watch cartoons quietly while my mom and dad sleep in, because my mom works late on Fridays. My dad also stays up late, because he likes to, as he puts it, “keep an eye on her” while she works, which basically means he sits there all night and makes sure she doesn’t smile at any boys. But this morning, I guess my mom and dad must have got up first, cause me and my sisters only woke up when we heard my dad yell “slut.” I get out of bed, go into the hallway, and look through the crack of my mom and dad’s bedroom door. My dad is sitting on the bed, still in the clothes he wore last night. He’s whispering on the phone.

“Just come home, Candy. Just come home.” Not only are they not sleeping in, my mom isn’t even here. She must still be working, which is weird cause she’s never worked this late before.

“I’m not gonna hurt you. Just come home now or I am gonna get mad.”

I don’t know why he’s so mad about her working late when even my dad must have got home real late, because last night our babysitter, Theresa, had to leave before both of them got home. She woke me up and told me that she was only supposed to baby-sit us til two and that she was sorry but she had to go. I told her it was okay because we were just sleeping anyway. I was worried that they would be mad about Theresa leaving, and I don’t want her to stop babysitting us because she always brings over the Trivial Pursuit game and I help her memorize the answers so she can beat her boyfriend. But luckily, they’re not even thinking about Theresa because they’re too busy fighting about my mom being a slut again.

Whenever my mom and dad fight, it is because my dad thinks my mom’s a slut.  I am reading the whole dictionary and the whole encyclopedia and even I didn’t know what slut meant. Luckily, I have a cousin named Heather. She’s nine which is only a year older than me but she knows a lot because she has two older brothers. She told me that my Aunt Elaine called my mom a slut too, and that her brother said it means a lot of boys like you. Another word for slut is popular. So I guess it’s good to be a slut until you’re married to my dad.

“Candy?…Damn it!” my dad says before he slams the phone down. He looks up and catches me looking at him.

“Good morning,” I say before he gets up and slams the door shut. You’re not supposed to bug them when they’re sleeping but you’re really not supposed to bug them when they’re in a fight.

I go into the living room, which is full of my mom’s knick knacks and what she likes to call antiques, which is just a fancy word for old. Everything we own is from garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores.  We don’t have anything new. Another annoying thing is that nothing matches. There is a chair that is part wood part velvet with flowers on it, but not pretty flowers, brown flowers. The only nice thing about that chair is that you can pull a stick and walla! You’re lying down. The couch is a different colored wood and beige shredded wheat fabric, all of the fabric on one of the arms was completely torn off by Baby, an Afghan dog that we got before my mom found out it was the stupidest dog in the world. Covering up the arm is a brown, beige, green and orange blanket that is¾I swear to god¾also called an Afghan. Plain green Spider ferns hang all over the place.

My sisters are sitting on the living room floor in front of the TV, which they have turned on, and which of course is all static-ey. I don’t know what their problem is because it’s a new antenna. My dad is a mechanic and he made it himself, out of a wire hanger and tin foil. They’re trying to get reception, but they’re only three and five, which means pretty dumb.

I tell my sisters to move out of my way. You really have to know what you’re doing to get the antenna just right and I’m pretty much the best at it fixing it.

Part of the problem is that my mom always puts this stupid vase of peacock feathers on top of the TV. I take the vase and put it on the floor. I pretty much hate everything in this living room but mostly I hate the peacock feathers. There is a huge bouquet of them in this vase that my mom always tells people is hand-made, as if that’s a good thing. It is raw umber, the worst crayon color. My mom likes all the worst colors…like burnt sienna, goldenrod and Indian red. My favorite colors are salmon pink, periwinkle and magenta. My nana is like me, her favorite color is pink …her room is pink, her nightgowns are pink…even her Christmas decorations are pink!

I finally get reception on the station we want. The Smurfs is on, but we missed most of it. I guess it’s a good thing my dad yelled slut and woke us up, otherwise we would have missed the whole show.

I hear my dad yell “Fuck!”

He’s usually pretty nice but whenever he thinks my mom is being a slut, he starts acting like a real jerk. I mean how do you stop boys from liking you if you’re pretty? It’s not my mom’s fault; she was just born that way. Everyone says my mom is good-looking just like my Nana. Aunt Elaine is probably just jealous, when she talks bad about my mom, because she looks exactly like my grandpa, who everyone says is homely but a very good man. Another reason she is probably jealous is because my mom is skinny and my Aunt has to buy her clothes at a store called Added Dimensions.

When the Smurfs is over my sisters start whining that they are starving. I’m hungry too, and since I’m the only one who knows how to cook, of course I have to go make breakfast while my sisters watch the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner hour. Luckily I hate the Road Runner anyway. I know you shouldn’t waste God’s time on stupid things, but sometimes I pray for Wiley Coyote to catch the Road Runner. Then maybe the show will end and a better cartoon will be put on. I get up and go to the kitchen, which is connected to the living room.

If you like wood and mustard color, then our kitchen is great. The cabinets are all wood with the black knots showing. There is a great big bald eagle 1976 plaque that is screwed into the wall, which we have to keep up because we’re renting. I don’t like wood and mustard, I like Formica and almond colored refrigerators like my aunt Elaine has. She also has a life-size chubby Chinese person called Buddha in her kitchen, whose belly you’re supposed to rub so he’ll grant your wish. I don’t want a Buddha or a bald eagle in my kitchen, but I would like to have a birdcage with a few budgies in it.

I can smell my dad come into the kitchen. He smells like onions. “I’m gonna hop in the shower…If your mom calls come get me. D’you hear me?”

“Yeah.” He looks at me and says don’t forget and then he leaves. I won’t forget but I really hope my mom doesn’t call cause I don’t like to see my dad naked. The last time I saw him naked, me and my sisters were taking a shower with him, which used to be fun but this time his thingie was right in my face the whole time. That wasn’t even the worst part. He actually peed right in the shower. Luckily I won’t be taking any more showers with him because my mom said I’m too old now and I guess too tall also.

I keep my fingers crossed that the phone doesn’t ring and concentrate on making breakfast. I only know how to cook a couple things for breakfast¾cinnamon toast and cereal¾and since we had cereal for dinner, I decide to make cinnamon toast, which is the harder one but still pretty easy. The most important thing to know about cooking toast is to be careful when you stick a knife in the toaster otherwise you can get electrocuted. The trick is to not touch the sides, kind of like the game Operation. Other than that it’s not too hard.  I make the cinnamon toast and then I call my sisters in to the kitchen to eat it. They start whining that the Road Runner isn’t over.

“What do you need to know? The Road Runner gets away and the coyote gets hit by a truck. Now eat your toast.” I go back to the toaster to make my toast, which I plan on making more special than theirs just because they’re bugging me.

My dad comes in the kitchen wet from the shower. He is drying his hair (which is really long for a guy) with a towel and he’s wearing jeans with no shirt. His chest hairs are all curly because they are wet. My mom looooves his chest hair. She loves to rub her fingers in it, which is something that I’ll understand when I’m older.

All the guys my mom likes are usually pretty hairy. Her favorite ones have dark hair and moustaches. She calls these guys foxy, which I think means you really wanna French kiss them, which is a fancy kind of kissing where you open your mouths and stick your tongues together. If my mom likes a guy it’s because he’s foxy. She loves Magnum P.I. and she especially loves Oates from the band Hall and Oates. The only guy she thinks is foxy who doesn’t look like someone who hitchhikes is Blake Carrington from Dynasty.

My dad opens the fridge and takes out the milk, which he opens and drinks straight from the container. I can see a tan-line on his waist. Even his skin that doesn’t have a tan is tanner than me, because he is a quarter Creek Indian, which makes me and my sisters a half of a quarter Indian. My sisters are tan like him but I’m not. He says I got his brains but that I’m practically an albino. Everyone calls me Casper the Friendly Ghost.

He picks up the phone again and dials. “Put Candy on the phone… I already know she’s there you dumb fuckin’ hippo.” He must be calling my Aunt Lisa. My Aunt Elaine is fat too but my dad only says so to Aunt Lisa’s face because she likes to get her nose in other people’s business.  She must have hung up on him for the hippo thing cause all of a sudden he slams the phone down. He takes a little jar out of his pocket. He unscrews it and then sniffs the lid into both nostrils. It’s kind of cool because the little jar has a scooper built into the lid. My mom doesn’t like when he sniffs that jar, so, we have to keep it secret.

My sisters are staring at him. “Stop being nosy and eat your toast,” I say to them. My dad picks up the phone and dials again.

I really hope that this fight ends soon because today my dad’s friends Ronnie and Keith are supposed to come over. Every Saturday they come over to work on an old Porsche my dad bought, which my dad calls a classic car and my mom says is a piece of shit. I really hope they can fix it up, because Porsches are the most expensive car and my dad got this one real cheap since there are no doors or engine. He said it’s pretty much the only way we could ever afford one.

My favorite adults are ones that like to play and talk with kids, like Ronnie. I make a lot of my dad’s friends crack up, which is why most of them don’t really mind me hanging around and bugging them. Even my dad doesn’t mind, as long as I keep the beers coming. I’m in charge of opening their beers and throwing nacho cheese combos in their mouths when they slide out from under the car. Even though they’re working, they still like to goof around with me. One time Ronnie called me a cool little chick because I knew which piece of junk was the carburetor and then he tickle tortured me, which even though I was laughing actually hurt. Even though I’m pretty popular with guys, no one has ever called me a slut.

He is still on the phone and I can hear it ringing, so it must be really bugging Lisa. She should just take it off the hook but she probably knows it’ll just make my dad come over. Finally someone picks up.

“Just put her on the phone… she’s my fucking wife…tell her I’m not mad,” he says madly.

I stand perfectly still, so I can listen; now I’m being nosy. I look at my sisters to tell them to hush.

“Bitch,” he screams. Then he throws the phone and punches a hole in the wall.

“Dad, we’re gonna lose our deposit.” A deposit is what you give the landlord so he can make sure you don’t mess up the house or break any of his rules. We have lost deposits before because of punch-holes in walls, too many kids in a one-bedroom and for having a pet raccoon that went into heat.

“It’s okay baby. Daddy will fix it.” He’s said this before, but there’s still holes in the bathroom door from the time my mom locked herself in there and wouldn’t open the door for him. He grabs his car keys and then he says, “Be a good girl and watch your sisters, I’m gonna go and pick up your mom.”

“But dad you’re bleeding.” His knuckle is cracked open.

“Don’t worry sugar. I can’t even feel it.” He turns the water faucet on and puts his hand under the running water. I hope his cut doesn’t get infected because his fingers are always stained from car grease. Even the fingernails are black on the part that is supposed to be white.  My Dad has a special soap for cleaning your hands after you work on a car. It is in a metal tin and it feels like it has sand in it. It cleans my hands good, but his hands are always dirty no matter how many times he washes them. He turns the water off, grabs a dishtowel and wraps it around his hand.

“I’ll be right back…. ‘kay.” He practically runs toward the door.

“Don’t forget Ronnie and Keith are coming over today,” I remind him. The front door opens and shuts and then I hear the car squeal out of the driveway.

I look at my sisters and out of nowhere they start crying like a couple of babies. I always forget that they don’t know that much about how fights work, because they haven’t been around it as long as me.

“What do you want me to do?” I yell at them. They just stare at me.

“Take a picture it lasts longer!” I say, which is a pretty good joke but of course they don’t even get it. They just keep on crying.

Even though I’m usually a mean sister, sometimes I feel pretty bad for them. I tell them that if they finish their toast and go put their bathing suits on, that I will go outside and fill up the pool for them. They’re still crying a little, but they’re happy about the pool. They really love that stupid thing!

They finish eating and then they run to go change. I shove my toast in my mouth. Then I rush outside and pull the pool into a sunny spot. I throw the hose in and turn the water on. I don’t even rinse the pool out, so there is some crud floating in it. I throw some toys on top of the crud before my sisters notice and start whining. When they come outside, I turn the water off.

It’s a good thing we’ve got this pool until they learn how to take care of themselves, because I don’t have time to baby-sit right now. I have to hurry up and get dressed before Ronnie and Keith come over.