Pill-Billies (Discover this Summer's naughtiest read...) Read online

  Pill-Billies

  By Cynthia “Sissy” Raymond, LVN

  (a Novel by two time Bestselling Author, Jacob K. Ray)

  Kindle Edition Copyright 2010 by Dr. Jacob K. Ray

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  Introduction

  My name is Sissy. My little brother called me that when we were kids. It’s short for sister, of course. It’s common throughout the South as a nickname amongst poor white trash kids, like we were. We grew up in the Appalachians of Kentucky in a small dog shit town you’ve never heard of called Vinson. I did good enough at school to get me into a nursing school in Paducah but now I’m in jail. I got pretty deep into the same little solutions to life’s problems as old Rush Limbaugh did. Hell, we used to call them Rush Limbaughs after he got busted or came out or whatever. I never dreamed I’d be in jail.

  I never thought about it. I never planned to let myself get like this. That’s why it’s called addiction. I know now after it’s too late. I done some bad things, some nasty things, and some desperate things. None of which I’m proud of but they’re done. I can’t go backwards so here I am. Burt, my brother, died last year and even that didn’t get me to stop so why would I think I ever stood a chance against myself? I’m only 24 years old! Burt was 20 when he died. I found him. Sitting up in the bed: frozen-looking, blue, stiff and dead. While I waited for the cops to come get him I smoked a pill right next to him there on the bed as tears burned my cheeks as they had many times before. My bitch mother tried to get me arrested that day. She beat the shit out of me and ripped out my lip ring. I didn’t even care. I knew I had to get to Richard’s to get my buzz back on right. I cried for Burt all that day. I still cry. Every time I see his blue face in my head. I knew he would understand. He got me hooked. So, the whole thing was kinda his fault anyway. Poor dude. He never knew when to quit. He got really violent towards the end and paranoid. Some of our homies said he had gone the way of the crank retard. I highly doubt it. I don’t know how to say bye to him yet. I keep dreaming of the day when I can. I got busted stealing pills on video at my job. That fat fucking asshole Marsha turned me in. I swear I’m gonna get that tub of shit good once I’m out. For now, I got 10 months. I’m in rehab jail. It’s better than shit jail but not by much. They lump me with the tweekers and the needle idiots. The drunks are annoying and preachy. The growers just think they’re better than everybody. So, here I am. I’m lucky we never got caught driving back from Florida up here. I’m still not okay with being locked up. I figured I had some time to kill and access to this computer. I might as well tell y’all what it was like. So, enjoy!!!!

  Chapter One

  First Part: The little Sissy, before drugs

  Like I said, I was born in Kentucky in the little mountain town of Vinson. There was a piecemeal Regional Medical Center. It’s not there anymore. It became a strip mall but that’s where I was born. My mother didn’t necessarily rejoice at my birth. She was never happy about either me or poor Burton being born. My Dad was the nicest guy he could be. He’s the one that raised us most of the time. He and Mama divorced when I was five. Burton was just a baby. We stayed with her until I was ten and Burton was five. Then, we moved in with our dad, Tatum. We called our daddy “Tater Tot.” We loved him. He was so good to us. Mom would get drunk and show up there to pick us up with whoever her new boyfriend was. They would be kissing in the car and stuff like that just to try to make Daddy mad or jealous. He could care less because of all the years mama was so awful to him. She would always pick fights with him. He would never fight back. I remember one time when I was real little, I was brushing the hair on one of my horses, my little toy ones. I heard dishes and stuff crashing in the kitchen. I guess Burton was in his crib. He started screaming. I heard mama hollering at the top of her lungs and throwing stuff at Daddy. I went in there to take the baby and take me and him and hide in the closet in the hallway. Burton wouldn’t stop crying. I just left him there and went in there where Mama was. Daddy had blood all over his face. He was crying and had a washcloth over cuts all over his head. Mama turned around and told me to go get my brother. I went and got him. We got in the car to go to the hospital. My mother smoked the whole way there even though she was still nursing Burton.

  I remember she started trying to explain herself, “Sissy, now don’t you tell nobody about me and your Daddy fussing like we do sometimes. That’s grown ups being grown-ups and times is tough right now. We don’t have very much money to feed y’all. I told your Daddy I was sorry that I wasn’t trying to hit him but that the plate slipped out of my hand when I was upset. Now, when we get there to the hospital you are to keep your mouth shut, you hear me? You don’t say nothing about what happened. As a matter of fact, you just don’t say nothing ever to nobody about what goes on at our house. That means you don’t tell nobody at church, you don’t tell nobody at school, and you don’t tell no grown-ups about what happened today and about the hollering that happens sometimes when mommy and daddy get upset. You understand me? Say?”

  I remember looking over to Daddy but he was in so much pain he was just kind of moaning and moving his hand with his finger pointed towards mama, as if to say, “just listen to what she says and do what she says or this is what will happen.” I froze and I felt something warm. I had wet my pants out of fear. I knew I was going to get in trouble when we got out of the car for doing that. I started crying. Mama turned around and slapped me and told me to shut up or that she would pop me again. Then, I heard the screech of brakes and the car pulled over to the side. She noticed I had wet myself. A rain of hard slaps landed on my head. She yanked my hair towards her to get a better shot at my face soaked with tears.

  “God dammit! Sissy! I am so fed up with you! Look at what you did, do you see what you did? You are a big girl. Big girls do not wet their pants! Now, take them off.”

  “Yes ma’am …” My hands were shaking so hard, I had a hard time unbuttoning my pants. I wasn’t moving fast enough for Mama. She grabbed me by the arm and yanked me up at the same time yanking my pants off. She got an empty plastic grocery bag out of the trunk which was floating along with a bunch of other trash just like the rest of the car. She took a dingy towel that had some kind of motor oil or grease on it and made me wrap it around me like a skirt. My socks had gotten wet. She yanked them off my feet and threw them in the bag. The whole time she was telling me how upset she was with me and how I kept Daddy from getting to the doctor by acting like a baby. Daddy had stopped moaning and was breathing funny. Mama acted like she didn’t even care. She got in the car, slammed the door, rolled down her window, and lit up another Virginia Slim and headed straight for the hospital.

  We weren’t very poor just trashy. We owned the house we lived in. It used to be a double wide but we just kind of built onto it, well, Daddy did and it had a whole bunch of rooms. The rooms that Daddy built to it were nicer than the ones that came with the double wide. Everybody thought so. That’s how Daddy got his good job adding onto people’s houses and fixing them up. As soon as he started making enough money he left my mama and moved into his own house that he built for all of us. Kentucky, like most states that are Southern, doesn’t look too favorably on a Dad and a divorce. He knew he was going to have to fight Mama
for custody of his kids. It took him five years to get us. I will never forget how happy I was when I moved in over there to Daddy’s for good. Me and Burt started doing great. Daddy had bought himself an IROC-Z Camaro. The T – tops could be taken out. We rode around like that a lot on the way to school and back. I was 10 years old. We didn’t have to go to Moma’s if we didn’t want to. Daddy would make us. But, he would sit in the car and wait for us parked around the corner out of sight, so mom wouldn’t see him. The reason he did it was to keep us safe from her. He said that if she ever hit one of us just to run get in the car. We would never have to see her again. Daddy said the judge told him that if momma ever hit one of us or him then she would have to go to real jail. Mama already had two DUIs. That was how daddy got custody of us. Mama fought the police saying they had no right to pull her over. They made her take the breathalyzer and she refused. That judge ordered a blood test that night. When they went to get the blood from her she went crazy and beat the shit out of the two lady cops that they sent to hold her down. They didn’t know like I know. Mama is tough as Hell. When she’s drunk she can get like a tweaker and be strong as Hell. The night Burt died and she beat the crap out of me I could not stop her. I had to run away and slam doors behind me and jump out of the damn window to get away from her. She thought I killed him. I didn’t. He overdosed on his own. I started doing real good at school after I moved in with Daddy. Mama knew the judge would take us away from her if she hit us and that we would tell on her if she did. She just turned to threatening us instead. One time, after the second DUI she was drunk as Hell and made me and my brother get in the car. I was nine years old and I told her no way.

  She came over and got right in my face and pulled her fist back. “You listen to me, I am the adult here. You are to get in that car and sit down and buckle yourself in and keep your mouth shut. And, if that baby cries because you are being a brat, I will pop you as hard as I can and you will get on that bicycle I bought you and you will ride it and throw yourself off of it onto the driveway so you get scraped up so nobody believes you when you say I hit you. You hear me? Answer up!”

  “Yes ma’am.” It was too late. I knew while she was fussing at me and my heart started doing that thing it does when I get real nervous that it was going to happen, again. I tried to squeeze my legs together. I tried to just do what she said but it was too late. I ran inside holding myself down there trying to make it to the bathroom as tears streamed down my cheeks. I heard mamma screaming at me but I didn’t care. I got in there in the bathroom and yanked my britches down as fast as I could only to discover they were soaking wet. I thought to myself, oh God, she’s going to kill me. I raced to get them off and since I had such a bad bedwetting problem, Mama had just bought me a bunch of the same color black sweatpants from Wal-Mart. I didn’t have time to change underwear. I just grabbed a pair of those from the dirty laundry pile in the corner by my twin size mattress that had one blanket, one pillow and a rubber sheet on it. I just about made it to the living room but mama was right behind me slamming the screen door.

  “You better not have done it. Oh boy, Miss Priss, you better hope you didn’t do it. I will slap the tar out of you. I mean it, Sissy, you better not have. Where are they?”

  I was crying hard. I knew I better not lie to her. I put my head in my hands and just started sobbing.

  “I said, where are they, young lady? You answer me! You hear?”

  I leapt up from the couch and darted into the corner of my room where the trash pile was. I dug them out from under all the broken stuff: the empty plastic bottles, the empty bags of chips, that old plastic dollhouse I had that broke, cigarette butts from the ashtray and ashes, used-up tissues, and hamburger wrappers from MacDonald’s. I presented them to her, as the tears flooded my face.

  “You God damned idiot. Look at you. You pathetic little shit. You pathetic, disgusting child. You are the most worthless waste of flesh I have ever seen. Do you know how many pairs of pants you have ruined? Do you know how much money they cost and I don’t have it? Answer me! What the hell is wrong with you? You ugly little shit. God damn! I am so sick of y’all messing up my house. Are those goddamn pants clean? Where did you get those?”

  “I got them from … the laundry pile … I’m so sorry, Mama … I can’t help it when you yell at me … I just get so nervous, I can’t help it. I don’t know how to stop it once it starts going. I’m sorry, Mama … I’m so sorry, please don’t hit me.” I was sobbing so hard. I could hear my little brother crying in the car. Mama hollered at him to shut up. And, that she would be right back. She turned her attention back to me.

  “You are so lucky that stupid judge and your stupid daddy are waiting for me to mess up. I know he’s the one who by-God put you up to this. He tells you to pee your pants when you come over here, just to push me to react. I know what was going on when I seen’t him parked over there in the suburbs waiting on you and the other little brat. Y’all are going to realize that I am your mother and you will respect me and have dignity in doing so. Do you remember in church at Vacation Bible School what they told you about honoring your mother? You are going to Hell, Sissy, how do you feel about that? You lied to your mother and did your father’s evil work. So, to me, you work for the devil and the devil loves sin and sinners. Girls your age aren’t supposed to be wetting the bed. It’s disgusting. It’s unclean. And, it’s something an animal does not a human. So, you count your lucky stars tonight because the only reason you haven’t gotten slapped is because I know they’re watching me. And, I’m smarter than everybody else. I’m smarter than you. I’m smarter than your daddy and his family and your stupid grandmother. All of y’all’s good grades come from my family, not his. Your daddy is like you and your brother: stupid and sorry and disgusting. I’m taking you back over there to him.”

  After enduring the onslaught of abuse from her I let the tears dry up. She said she was going to take us to Daddy’s and that’s all I cared about. At least I wouldn’t have to wear no white underwear and black sweat pants from Wal-Mart! Mama tried to make me wear those rubber underwears but they wouldn’t fit. After she made them fit, by yanking them over me forcefully I still wet the bed that night. Pee still got on the mattress. She got so mad she just flipped it over and made me sleep on the other side. I could still smell the Pee from the night before. It was gross and I felt ashamed. The funny thing was I only wet my pants at my Daddy’s house every once in a while usually after having one of my nightmares. But, when it happened over there Daddy was real nice and didn’t fuss at me or nothing. He just helped me clean it up and get cleaned up. I went on back to bed. He asked me if I wanted to talk about it and I said I did. I remember he sat up with me and I talked about it to him. Mom dropped us off with him. I carried a plastic grocery bag full of white underwear and black sweat pants and a bunch of different color T-shirts from Wal-Mart. That’s what mama bought me for school to wear and a new pair of flip-flops that were a dollar. No toys. No school supplies except for: a 200 sheet pack of paper, five folders, one pack of pencils and a pair of safety scissors. That was it. I didn’t have a backpack. She said I could tote all of it in a grocery bag. Daddy bought me a nice one the next day. That was the last time I ever had to go back to Mama’s house. I told Daddy what had happened and he got real mad at the things Mama said to me and said about us. He said I didn’t have to go back over there. He would still have to take Burton over there because he was a little boy. He still needed his mama real bad. I think it was a bad idea to let Burton go back without me. It ended up being the beginning of the end.

  By the time I was fifteen I was doing real good in school. I was cheering on the cheerleading squad. I was real happy. Me and Daddy were at the house all that time together. Burton wanted to stay with Mama. Turns out, she had been brainwashing him telling him not to have anything to do with us and to just stay with her. That was right after she met Terry. He moved in over there with her. He had two kids. She cleaned our rooms out and made a real nice space for
them with all new stuff. It had all new wallpaper, a TV from a garage sale, and a Nintendo. No more trash piles and laundry piles in opposing corners of our bedrooms. She was better than that all of a sudden. She was going to church. She was making Burton go with her. He was 10 years old. It’s almost impossible for me to believe that that was the halfway mark in his life. He would die 10 years later. He endured Hell from her and that man she married. He was a big Baptist. But, like all the Baptists he was a damn hypocrite drunk. He would froth watching Kentucky play football. He would scream every time they screwed up. They lost a couple of games and we lost a couple of TVs. Terry could get real upset. It was scary. It was kind of like Mama except a man. His daughter’s name was Brooke. She was one year older than Burton. Her little brother’s name was Ben. He was real quiet. I think he was eight years old when they first moved in. Burton was supposed to be living with us. Sometimes, he would come home from being over there because Mama would’ve gotten tired of them all being there at the same time.

  Brooke and her brother Ben got to come over and stay with us, too. That was so much fun. They loved my Daddy and still do. They’re both okay now but they had a pretty miserable life after they crossed paths with my mother. And, their daddy was no saint. Daddy bought a swimming pool for us one summer. It was one of those above ground pools. Burton and Ben helped him put it together while me and Brooke worked on our tans. I thought it was kind of weird that she was only 11 and was wearing a bikini that was for my size in the chest. She also seemed to like lots of boys. She told me she kissed one with her tongue. And, that he felt her chest. She wouldn’t tell me who it was. I begged and pleaded with her. She told me it was Burton. I guess I could understand them just being curious and all. I told her she can’t do that again or let him touch her like that. She promised she wouldn’t. I forgot about it.