Pill-Billies (Discover this Summer's naughtiest read...) Page 9

  e-Bay and actually making a profit. She customizes sneakers, decorates them, and paints them in really cute and creative ways. She smokes pot the whole time. But they are neat. She charges twenty on top of the price she pays for them and turns a good profit. I decide to help her. If we can make this work we can quit selling pot and just grow it in the woods up the mountain a bit. Daddy comes back from the funeral and looks mad. He found out about the rape and murders. I was glad. Now, he could finally see the David I saw. He acted sort of distant at first like he was mad at me. I never told him and that hurt him but it went away. We bought Brooke a desktop, a domain name, and a website with Google's checkout on it. We were in business. Shannon was helping us fill orders now. Things were picking up. Girls in England started ordering Brooke's custom sneakers. I was so proud of her. She was making some money, too. Enough for us to buy wine, groceries, pay Daddy and Shannon's power, garbage, cable, and Internet. We had enough to go out to eat on a night or two. We had found a job. I changed my phone number again and said goodbye to Paul and Richard for good. I was sure they would stop by or call my Daddy. I would just tell them I lost my phone and all the numbers I had in it.

  I didn't care anymore about them. They were just pill-billies now. I used to call myself that. Now, I don't. I have nothing but disgust left. No more sadness, pity, grief, sorrow, or those blackest inky regret oil slicks I used to miss and slip to the hip breaking floor on. I went by my old job and thanked Marsha for turning me in. I gave her a hug. That was when I knew the nightmare was over. I had no business being a nurse anyway. I'm too flaky. I can't do mornings. I can't play the office games. I can't be fake nice to somebody if I don't like them, just to get a check. So, Marsha did me a favor. I left out of their feeling something I never felt before called confidence. I realized I had done something incredible. I lifted the shroud placed over me. It was nailed to the ground by the gravity of my low orbiting self-esteem. I had no opinion of myself that wasn't one of my mother's damning slogans. I had no original thoughts just borrowed pain from my mother's miserable life. I secretly loved that she got kidney disease. She's supposed to have surgery. I just let Terry deal with her. Old softy Daddy will go help him. He's a better man than me. I don't feel anything for Moma. She lost me at birth. I'm a walking miscarriage. Daddy and Shannon are so freakin' awesome that I think God did me, like Marsha on parents. I'm lucky. If Daddy would have never left Moma I wouldn't have Brooke or Shannon in my life and that would suck. CustomShoesbyBrooke.Com is doing great. The UPS guy comes to pick up the shoes to be delivered. Brooke and I think he's hot. We decide to give him the time of his life. We let him come in the cabin one day when Shannon and Daddy were away visiting with Shannon's kin. We told him we thought he was sexy and asked would he like a glass of wine. I came out in a skin tight white tank top with no bra. Brooke had on her black bathing suit. We made him happy for hours. It was awesome. Turns out he was married with two kids but at least we knew he was clean. He started hanging out and fooling around with us only every once in a while when we invited him in. I missed sex with a man, so did Brooke. We had tried the whole strap-on thing but it just wasn't the same. It was perfect to have our little secret boy toy. I'm sure if he told his buddies they wouldn't believe him anyway. He was mellow and his name was DeMarco. He was from Alabama. He had moved up here after he met a girl from here and transferred with UPS. He was odd but interesting. He was an expert on Voo-Doo. He told us he was a high priest or something. He left us a little matchbox for a good luck gift last time we all hooked up. Me and Brooke put it on the mantle. His route changed. We lost touch for a tick. He showed up in his Bama clothes and spent the night a couple of months ago when his wife was gone with the kids. He made sure to leave his phone number, email, myspace, and facebook so that we could hook up from time to time. That was sure to be a blast. We tore down the old above ground pool and got Daddy and Shannon a real pool. We put it between the houses so we could all use it. I had my hammock put there. I drink Sangria and type up my stories. Brooke says I'm an artist now. She sent some of my poetry to a poetry contest through the University of Kentucky. She called it "Jailhab.”

  It won. We drove up there. I got to read a bunch of selections from it. I had a new purpose. I was a songbird. I used to be a canary dying slowly in a dark mineshaft. My songs and cries could now be heard. Moma couldn't come. She was about to check in the hospital for some procedure. I was relieved. A lot of the poetry talks about how she did me my whole life. Everybody else came. Richard, Tori, and Paul rolled up with glassy eyes. It felt good to have them there. We spent the day with them on campus and ate in the cafeteria. We hung out while they smoked smokes and blabbed about how great they were doing. We saw right through it. Towards the end Tori pulled me aside and told me they had lost a baby. She said she was worried about Richard. All I could say was sorry but that I hoped he got help or quit. It was an empty sentence. She also told me her crazy brother Christian got arrested in Portland, Oregon. He was charged with kidnapping and murder along with countless felony robbery charges. He was looking at life in prison. I wasn't surprised. I hoped he got the chair. He was a child molester. I read online. He kidnapped a girl when she was eleven and brainwashed her until she was married to him. They had a baby together. Poor thing. I knew I had to get away from Tori and them for good. I just had a bad feeling. When it was over that day I told her Brooke and I were going to church now. We wished them the best but that our faith has made us choose between drugs and God and we choose church. Richard got peeved. Paul wasn't even paying attention. Tori is so distracted by her brother's situation she just half ass hugs me and says okay. We left and I couldn't wait to get home. It was about four o'clock in the morning when my cell phone rang with more news.

  My mother had died. They did everything they could to save her. She just did not survive the surgery. She died on the table. It was the saddest I'd ever been. I didn't even care or say anything to her or tell her I love her or nothing before I left to do the poetry book reading and accept the award thingy. She had gotten a lot nicer since she quit drinking and got sick. I remember the day she took us to do our nails and get haircuts. She kept telling me she loved me and touching my hands and stuff. I guess she felt guilty, finally. She never said she was sorry, though. She had a short, awful life. Terry and Daddy told us mama had been severely sexually abused by her step-uncle. Daddy said that's what made her go crazy. She never told on him. He was a rich, avuncular, big shit lawyer in Missouri. He wouldn't be coming to the funeral thankfully. A heart attack got him in 2005. All of her extended family came though. Some came from as far as Oklahoma City. I didn't even know we had relatives there. The funeral was ornate, tacky, cheap, gaudy, and perfect for her tastes. I figured she wanted open casket and we did. That was incredibly hard to see. I was so angry she was dead. I guess I thought her death would involve: a final goodbye, or an I'm sorry, or an I love you and did you wrong when you were little because of what happened to me I had to toughen you up for the world…that's not what I got. I left with everybody thinking she would be in and out of the hospital, like we all do. But instead, she died. Wow. I couldn't move away from the casket. I had to pry myself away using Brooke as a human shield from the gossipy extended family of crying strangers that saw me as her "daughter that stole them pills from the nursing home and got caught on camera 'cause she was so drugged out she didn't have sense enough to look up and see the videocamera there, big as you please.”

  Dumb ass, pissy-Sissy. I hated myself around them. I could not wait to get home. I said a short speech. I said Moma had to go see about her baby boy is all. They all broke on that one. I hated to do that to Daddy but it was the only way I could explain God's goodwill. God just called Moma home to see after Burton his lamb lost in the eternal darkness. His blue-lipped lamb was running towards a tattered, ragged, jaundiced Angel he hadn't seen in a while, his Moma. He could be one with her finally. They had a combined number of years on earth that was less than a century. Now, with God's grace th
ey had eternity. It was beautiful and succinct. Like a poem. There little lifes were a tragic poem told in darks and blacks. Daddy was so proud of my speech. He carried me to the truck. I couldn't stop crying. I had an accident from crying so hard. Brooke ran home and got me a change of clothes. Nobody batted an eyelash. Only Brooke, Shannon, and Daddy saw me with wet clothes. I didn't even care about being vulnerable anymore. The only good thing about Moma being gone was it was over. She couldn't hurt me anymore. She couldn't make me feel embarrassed or unwanted. She was silent forever. I let it wash me over and take me under as we moseyed over to the cemetery. She was buried next to Burton. I guess they represented the life and death of my drug and self-esteem problems, respectively. They were the half of my family waiting for me on the other side. I had had enough of them. It was time to live my life. Brooke and I were no longer related. We came out. Nobody was surprised. Her grouch dad fussed but he came to the party. Probably for the free pot brownies but he showed up. Ben was a fucking asshole to Brooke. He called her some nasty names. His bitch girl friend tried to put her two cents in. I slapped the shit out of her, twice. They left. Ben was more and more like his Daddy. They even worked together. Brooke told him to get out of her life if he didn't approve of her lifestyle. They stayed gone. Christmas rolled around and they broke down and said they were sorry and invited her over. They didn't invite me, or Daddy or Shannon but we didn't care. We got Bosco for the week. Poor Brooke endured them for a few days. She came back late Christmas eve. We were happier than ever. Ben had their Dad occupied and taken care of. We got Daddy and Shannon and that was the end of it. We all got together for football and Christmas but besides that we kept to ourselves. Paul showed up one afternoon. We weren't home. He hung out with Daddy and Shannon. At the end Daddy asked him politely not to come back. He apologized and said he just wanted to drop something off. He handed Daddy a huge bag of outdoor Kentucky homegrown that sang through the bag. He was moving with Richard and Tori to Portland. Tori was going to try to adopt that baby from her brother. The moma had been arrested for robbery. Apparently, she was helping Christian do home invasions. The baby was going to the state. Tori got clean in an effort to get custody. Her Mom got it instead. They ended up staying out there, thank God. Brooke and I were free. Richard tried to make friends on Facebook. I ignored him and set my page to private. The shoe business is rocking and rolling. We are thinking about expanding but all that is just another thing to look forward to and let happen naturally when it's right. Brooke hired two college girls to help us. We need two more. I am writing my butt off. Brooke doesn't want me to slow up for her business so we plan to expand. But, for now I just keep trudging along. My success as a poet came and went. I decided to finish this old thing. And, here we are. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to you as you were my witness. You watched me fall all the way down and get scooped up by the grace of God's invisibly gentle hands. I must admit I have put off ending this story until it was ready. Until I was ready to close this chapter for good. So, goodbye Moma. Goodbye, my dear sweet little baby brother, Burt. Goodbye evil David. And, goodbye pills and powders. I won't miss you haunting me. I won't miss your incredible power over me to destroy myself. I won't miss all the disgusting sexual things and desperate clinging I did to your salty bosom. I won't crave your teeth on my neck. I won't feel you squeeze the sense out of me with promises of good times. I won't let you tickle that itch. I won't let you dangle gold in front of me only to find out upon mining it from my own dignity that it's just pyrite. I won't let you take another person away from me that I love. I will surround myself with those who know better. I will bury you between my brother and my mother in a steel clasped box marked "Dead." I will scratch my name off of your long list. I will pull back from your advances and walk away. I will get to the great pond and row away further from these only shores I've ever known. Further than land can be seen. I will finally stop and just look up at the stars that made me. I will let them transform me into light. I will fly away to a heaven-like sphere. There, floating in the rounded ether will be all the good childhoods, the kind parents, and the lovers of the world. I will let myself join this new cosmos. It will embrace me, fully. There, each song is a promise and joy drips from long branches strewn with the harps and discarded wings of the cherubs who've cocooned into full Angels. Sweet manna will rain down from time to time. We take honey baths and the milk bubbles. The sun always shines in my eternal place. There is no more night or cold moon. There is no death-shade blue. There is no nightmaring allowed. There is no day where it all ends but you must have had endings while earthbound to make it feel like forever does and can. And, you must marry yourself to feeling everlasting peace to thrive here. If you cannot your wings won't be issued. God will keep working on you until you let go. You spin silk around you and wait to butterfly. Then, the birds of paradise can flutter around you as you become one with the light. You look down and behind you. You are finally flying. The nest that was your earthly life has been left. You can now join eternity. Be careful. You won't be able to stop it from becoming you. It will soon take you over with a swift love. I pray you let it take you. I pray you learn to let it sooth you. I pray you let it cradle your wounds from this world as it heals them all. I pray you stop lying to yourself if you are an addict. I pray you make it. If you do you can hear the Angels sing. It is the sound of all souls before yours singing, at once. It resounds through the universe and lights the sky. If you don't stop, you won't hear it. You won't let it flicker and drip. You will drown it out. You will only hear the howls. You will try to tune them out. They come back louder with each rejection. You can hear them now. Just go look in the mirror. Look deep. Do you hear them? They are the downturned corners of your mouth. They are your sad eyes. They are your jaundiced skin. They are your bad breath. They are the messy bathroom. They are the confused animal looking back. Stop their cries. Walk away now. Never go back. They will only get louder. You can bury your head in the dirt to try to get away from them but then your ass is waiting to get kicked by something else. Just let go. What have they done for you anyway? Don't let looking cool interfere with being human. Drugs make you a slave animal. Take the jagged dagger out of your hand and see what happens. I bet you start to see heaven all around you…or at least a shimmer…

  Love, Sissy

  The End

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