Where Does the Good Go?

Where Does the Good Go?: A Portfolio of Life Changing Experiences








By Megan Lipkes
ENG 412

December 10, 2008

Table of Contents
Introduction: From Start to Finish……………………………………………………………..3
Chapter 1: Autobiographies
Breaking Up with a Best Friend……………………………………………………………..6

Man with the Brown Plaid Shirt…………………………………………………………….20
Chapter 2: Feature

Sex, Lies, and Sodomy: The Mistake that Changed a Life…………………………………25

Chapter 3: Biography

Hiking Back Up From the Road to Nowhere……………………………………………….33

Chapter 4: Fiction

The Secret in the Ballerina Box…………………………………………………………….40

Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………….45





From Start to Finish
When I started this course, I had only written fictional stories. I was very nervous as to what kind of writing I would do, but I assumed that the majority would be autobiographical essays. I was definitely wrong in making such an assumption because this class explored every avenue of creative nonfiction and really pushed my writing limits to the test. Throughout the semester, I really feel as though I have grown as a writer, not just in creative nonfiction, but also in all aspects of writing. Whether the assignment is a feature, a biography, or an autobiographical event, I feel like I can write them all with confidence and style.
Writing is such an important element in my life because it has been a vice through good and bad times. As a writer, my professional goal is to invoke some sort of emotion from my reader. I always choose the topics of my stories carefully because I want my readers to react to the theme of the piece in some way. As a nonfiction writer, my job is to stay as true to the facts as possible, which makes summoning emotional reactions from readers much more difficult. I want my readers to learn lessons from my pieces and to see how each experience changed a life in one way or another. I know that throughout this semester, my ability to tell a story has improved, as well as my technique. I always try to include some sort of humor into my pieces, regardless of the story. At the beginning of the semester, my humor may have seemed trite, but now I feel that I can interweave my sarcasm into a piece and the reader understands its necessity. It is very difficult to lay your talent, emotions, and memories on the line for strangers to critique, but I’m glad that I have because I have learned so much about myself.
There have been many difficult moments during this class; the most difficult for me was the first big assignment. When I was asked to write an autobiography on an event in my life, I immediately thought of the robbery I went through. I had never really talked or written about getting robbed, but as a writer, I felt like I owed to the readers to be honest and take chances. I really had to describe time, place, setting, and characters, which is the most difficult part of writing for me; I assume it is like that for many writers as well. As a result, I felt a liberating sense of freedom from my own small box of comfort. The first autobiography really forced me to jump right in to my creativity that carried on through the duration of the semester.
The hardest piece that I have had to write so far that made the biggest impression on me was the biography because that was the piece that pushed me to my limits. I have never written a biography before and I didn’t really know how I was going to approach the topic. I knew exactly who I wanted to write about and I knew a few details of the story from previous conversations, but it was really interesting trying to get someone to talk in detail about a horrible event from their past. I like that I got to use my interview skills and techniques because I learned what questions to ask in order to get to the heart of the story. The biography was definitely the most difficult piece for me to write because I really had to be objective and stay out of the story. After I wrote the biography, I felt so accomplished with myself that I really thought that maybe this was an avenue of writing that I should learn more about and expand on.
Although the biography made a big impression on me as a writer, the feature made the least impression. I felt more like a journalist than a writer, which I didn’t like because I felt like my creativity was hindered. There was a lot of research that went into my piece, as well as interviews. The interviews were quite beneficial for me as a writer because I fine-tuned how to talk to people about difficult situations, which is a skill that is essential for any good writer. Despite the long hours spent on the feature, I did learn a new style of writing and I am confident that I could write another feature.
As a student of English 412, I am very sad that this class is almost over. I have learned so much about myself as a writer and a person. I have let skeletons out of the closet that have been collecting dust for years, and it is great that those experiences are now on paper. Every aspect of this class has helped develop my skill and technique, which I will always appreciate. I have always been a fan of creative nonfiction, but after taking this class, I have turned into a groupie. There is nothing about this class that I regret or wish had been different because I was pushed to my limits and forced to face the writer within.

Breaking Up with a Best Friend


It was been two years since we had last seen each other, and now I was waiting for Sara in the parking lot of a small vegetarian café. I didn’t know if she would still be driving that old maroon Ford Taurus with the missing rearview mirror and broken left turning signal, so every car that pulled into the lot sent spurts of stomach acid into my throat. I had been waiting for nearly 30 minutes, but by the small mound of Camel Light cigarette butts at my feet, it seemed that I had been there for hours. My pack was nearly empty and I rifled through my purse to make sure I had backups. I saw I had another pack and grabbed a new cigarette and lit it, my lighter still warm from the last ignition. I looked down at my outfit that I had carefully put together just for this occasion. No matter how hard I tried not to, I still cared about what Sara thought of me. I had worn my best jeans, the ones we had stolen together from the mall three years earlier, a black CBGB’s shirt with aqua camisole underneath, and black converse flip flops. I double checked my hair and makeup in the side mirror of my Corolla and blew smoke at my reflection. Getting a little antsy, I checked my cell phone for missed calls, questioning whether or not I should just go home and assume that Sara didn’t want to reconnect after all.
Just as I was about to grab my car keys and leave, I heard Mr. Bungle blaring over speakers, and knew that Sara was pulling into the lot. She was driving a used white Volvo that was covered in band and bumper stickers, and she could barely see over the steering wheel as she pulled into the open spot next to me. My heart starting pounding and my stomach churned just hard enough to be considered nauseating. Hands slightly shaking, I inhaled one last time before crushing my cigarette butt onto the asphalt with the bottom of my shoe. Her door squeaked open and she stood up, looking at me as if nothing had happened between us and we were meeting for a usual afternoon tea. Trying to be as friendly and polite as possible, I said hello and we walked into the café.
Sara and I met when we were in high school. I had lived in Poway, California, a small suburb of San Diego for my entire life, so new faces at my high school were hard to ignore. I hung out with the “punk rock” kids, not the kind that wear all black and trench coats and walk around talking about starting a revolution against conformity, but the kids that sat around a boom box at lunch listening to music and talking about what show was coming to town that weekend. We all liked to jump around to different groups of people because we were the class clowns and everyone liked a good laugh.
At the end of freshman year, my best friend Sterling could not stop talking about this new girl named Sara who had just moved to Poway from Avondale, Arizona. Sterling’s band was practicing in my garage after school everyday, and he invited Sara to come along and check them out. TBD wasn’t a good band, despite their rigorous practice schedule, so I knew that Sara and I would talk most of the afternoon.
When school finally let out, Sterling walked over to me at the bus stop and introduced me to her. She had a mousy looking face with light freckles that traveled over the bridge of her petite nose. Her dyed red hair was short and spiky, and her bangs covered the majority of her left green eye. She was definitely Irish and I could tell that she had a very spunky personality just by looking at her. We didn’t say much to each other until we got to my house and the band started playing. I grabbed us some drinks and we sat in my driveway, trying to escape the unbearable noise that echoed within the walls of my garage. We exchanged simple introductions and asked each other the usual questions: Where are you from? Do you like it here? What do you like to do for fun? By the end, I asked her to spend the night so that we could continue getting to know one another and we instantly became inseparable.
Sara’s personality was so perfectly matched to mine that people either thought we were sisters or lovers, and what she lacked, I had and vice-versa. We loved the same music, movies, food, and clothes, so it was never difficult to enjoy each other’s company. The things that I hated, she hated, even down to the way a stranger chewed their food. We never fought because we always agreed and during a time when I needed a friend most, she was there. A lot of our friends were shocked when we went to an event alone because they considered us Siamese twins, two sarcastic girls who didn’t need anyone but each other to be happy.
My quality of life during high school was poor. My mother is a Brooklyn Jew and my father is a short Israeli that has an uncanny resemblance to Joe Pesci and an even bigger Napoleon complex. My parents were a match made in Hell from the start, and only married each other because of the untimely pregnancy of my older sister, Erika. When my parents divorced, I was nothing short of ecstatic. My father was an abusive man, who would find any excuse to beat his children. He would work long hours and when he came home, he would crack open a 12-pack of MGD and finish it off with a bottle of wine or two before he passed out topless in his bed. My mother just stood by and cried while he hit us, claiming that we shouldn’t have provoked him. I didn’t realize that breathing or being alive was enough to cause physical harm, but my father seemed to think so. After my father left, she started dating a string of men that seemed neither competent nor a step up from my dear old daddy. When they weren’t trying to sleep with her, they were trying to impress my sisters and me with money or bad jokes. One man even tried to slip his hand down the back of pants during dinner, and when I told my mom, she said I must have misunderstood his gesture.
In an effort to escape, I slept at Sara’s house most nights, which was just a doublewide mobile home next to a hamburger restaurant that stunk of burning coals and stale French fries.
We would talk about my family, how my older sister was sleeping with any man that gave a first look, my younger sister’s overeating, and my mom’s unnecessary complaints on how I didn’t respect how hard she worked and that I needed to take my shoes off when I stepped on the new carpet because we couldn’t afford anything now that my dad was gone. I tried not to let anything bother me because I saw how anything out of the ordinary sent my mother on a raging tangent and I didn’t want to end up another screaming banshee.
Sara saw how unhealthy my living situation was and knew that I needed to get out. She went with me to therapy and helped build my life back up to the point where I was okay in my own skin. It was a struggle for Sara to help me because we always guarded our emotions behind jokes and sarcasm, and I knew that Sara was just as depressed as I was, only she became aggressive instead of starved. She would fly off the handle, not at me, but at other people for any little thing that she considered an annoyance. She was always defensive, and I tried to see everything from her point of view when it wasn’t directed towards me, and I forgave her when it was. I didn’t judge her because I wasn’t any better. Her life sucked, my life sucked, so we leaned on each other for comfort and joked that we were the poster children for anger management.
***
After high school, I moved to Arizona with my boyfriend Brian to start Scottsdale Community College. I figured that Arizona was still close to California, but far enough away to enjoy long-awaited personal freedom. Sara had moved to Utah with her family, but we tried to talk on the phone as much as possible. It was hard because I was working nightshifts at Jamba Juice smoothie shop and Sara had gotten a job at a Wild Oats grocery store. It was the middle of December ’05 when Sara called me crying.
“Hey, Sara. What’s up?” I asked concerned.
Sara usually rambled on about work when she called, but I didn’t mind. She usually made me laugh when she would tell me what some man or woman complained about during the day that made her look down upon them, and explaining to her the nature of an angry customer was useless among her constant need to view everyone as disrespectful.
“I’m sick of this shit,” her voice shaky, “I can’t live with my mom anymore. She is driving me fucking nuts and I’m sick of it. She went too far today. Do you know what she called me? She told me that I was ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. Can you fucking believe that?”
“Why would she say that kind of stuff to you?” I couldn’t help but ask, even though I knew she would have explained without the question. “I mean I know she can be a little hurtful sometimes, but that is just crazy.”
“I told her husband that I wasn’t going to make him dinner. He has hands, he can cook for himself.” She cleared her throat and sniffed again. “Well, I guess my mom figures that he has to be my responsibility too, even though she married him. So, I told both of them to get off their fat asses and make their own damn food.”
“Well, why would you say it like that?” I asked. “You know your mom is over dramatic.”
“Because, I am sick of their shit. I am not their mom, they need to do things for themselves; instead of relying on me to prepare their fucking potatoes.” Sara was breathing so hard into the receiver that I could almost smell the patchouli oil that permanently fermented on her skin. “I want to move out.”
On September 30, we signed our lease for a two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment. We were so excited about renting our own place that we hadn’t even unpacked when we went to IKEA to buy furniture. We couldn’t really afford that much because our rent was a little over $900 a month, but the apartment was over 1,000 square feet and the bedrooms were fairly large. The walls were made of thick cement and the light pink linoleum on the floors was cracked. The beige carpet was supposedly brand new, although I did find a candle wax stain by the edge of the wall while putting together a futon. Our kitchen counters were also new and there was more cabinet space then I had items to fill them. Attached to the kitchen was a gated patio, which was perfect for my Puggle, MJ. I got the master bedroom because I agreed to pay more rent, and we both helped decorate each other’s rooms with band posters and pictures of past friends. Brian had come over to help unload furniture and it was after he left that I noticed something odd about Sara’s behavior.
Sara sat on the futon with her arms crossed, a smug look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I sat down next to her.
“What’s wrong is that if Brian is going to be over here all the time, he has to pay rent.”
Caught completely off guard, I stared at her confused as though she had just spoken Chinese.
“You heard me. I didn’t move in here so that you could have Brian over all the time. That isn’t what I signed up for,” she said.
“Um…okay. He just came over here to help unload our…” I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before she walked into her bedroom and slammed the door, shaking the front window.
I tried to forget about Sara’s comment, but I was irritated at her lack of appreciation for Brian. Brian had taken his day off from work to help us, which he didn’t have to do and she could have cared less. I couldn’t believe that she was talking about rent when I paid most of the rent. I’ve never really had a problem with financial responsibility, but Sara was awful. She refused to store her money in a bank because she thought they would steal it. Sara was convinced that the tellers would keep your account number and then go to another bank with your information, pretending to be you. They would claim they lost their bankcards, but, fortunately for them, had every identifying piece of information. Slowly, but surely, dollars a month would be stolen from your account, until there was nothing left. So, instead, she kept her money in a coffee can.
“No one robbing a house would look inside a coffee can,” she would say when I brought up how insane it was to trust tin. As long as she was paying rent, I didn’t care where she kept her money.
Over the next few months, everything seemed to be running smoothly. I had put Brian on hold so that Sara could get adjusted to her new living situation, which he understood. He knew that Sara was important to me and that I needed to help her adjust like she had helped me through all of my hard times. She had transferred to a new Wild Oats in Phoenix and had met a nice quiet girl named Marty who spent the majority of her free time with us. I was able to spend a little more time at Brian’s now that Marty was around, which was a relief because the only real time I had spend with Brian was when he let me use his washer and dryer.
Soon after getting Sara settled, Brian and I decided to go see the band HIM at a local venue and I told Sara that she was invited to come. She claimed she would be a third wheel and that she would spend the night hanging out with Marty. The show ended at 11:30 p.m. and Brian and I decided to go to Denny’s for milkshakes. I hadn’t even looked at the menu before my phone started ringing. I looked at the caller ID and it was Sara.
“Hey, the show just got out. What are you up to?” I asked.
“Liar. It is nearly midnight, the show wouldn’t have gone that long,” Sara retorted.
“Okay, well it did and I’m at Denny’s. What is your problem?”
“I don’t want you staying out so late. You need to be home by 11 from now on because I didn’t move here to live alone.”
Hanging up the phone, I rubbed my forehead. I told Brian that she called to ask me to bring home milk and that MJ had relieved herself in the house and that was why she was upset. I didn’t want him to know that my supposed best friend had given me a curfew after I had put off my boyfriend for months like he was an old pair of shoes that sat rotting in the back of my closet. Something wasn’t right with Sara and I knew that. After high school, my misery and depression slowly died, as did my hatred for people, but Sara still seemed to be running strong in that department. She banned me from inviting people over that she didn’t know, and if I did, she would make fun of them or me until they were so uncomfortable that they left. Most of the friends that I had made at college didn’t even want to come over because of her, but my loyalty lay with Sara and I felt obligated to uphold that.
When she was in a good mood, our friendship was great. We would laugh about old times, shop, and take the air out of my air mattresses just enough to where we would fly into the air when one of us jumped full force on the opposite end. However, no matter how hard I was trying to keep our friendship the same and not get annoyed with Sara’s constant paranoia and anger, I was starting to lose it.
I thought that it might be a good idea to invite her boyfriend Daniel out from Poway. I had been his friend for only a short while in high school, but he and Sara had seemed to be going strong and he hadn’t seen her in months. I called him and we set up a surprise visit for Christmas time when I knew Sara might be feeling lonely because she couldn’t afford to fly to Utah to be with her family. Daniel drove 350 miles from Poway, but when he arrived at my apartment, he was furious. He had tried to surprise Sara at work, but instead of a hello kiss and warm embrace, he caught Sara kissing what looked to be another boy. I tried to explain to him that it must have been a misunderstanding, but then I realized that it wasn’t a boy that Sara was kissing, it was Marty. The trip was a bust, and so was their relationship.
After Christmas, Marty started coming over to our apartment more and more. This was the first woman that Sara had ever had sexual or intimate feelings for and it came as a shock to everyone. It wasn’t that I was upset that she was with a woman because I just wanted her to be happy, but every time I would ask her if she was gay, she would explode.
“I’m not gay. I’m just confused. If Marty and I don’t work out, I will never be with another woman again,” she would scream.
I understood that it was a difficult time for her and that she may have well been confused, but tensions rose even more when Marty’s belongings mysteriously ended up at the apartment. At first, it was just a duffle bag of clothes and her toothbrush, but slowly her photo albums, CDs, and nostalgic trinkets piled up in a corner of Sara’s room. It took more energy to argue than it did to just accept Sara’s lifestyle and decisions, so I never said a word about Marty’s moving in. I was actually glad to have a new face around because it distracted Sara from complaining about how I was becoming a bad friend because I wanted to spend more time with Brian. I was trying to balance and prioritize, but my time was running thin and so was my ability to deal with Sara.
Shortly after all of Marty’s stuff was moved in, Sara and Marty got fired from their jobs at Wild Oats for tardiness. The rent was due soon and I had been covering most of the bills, which was hard because I was making a little over minimum wage at Jamba Juice. I paid for the measly amount of groceries that barely filled our refrigerator from nightly tips, and the rest came from care packages from my mother. We were living on a strict diet of strawberry Pop-Tarts, Gatorade, and Albertsons brand macaroni and cheese. We couldn’t afford Internet or cable, so I did most of my homework at school when I wasn’t working my normal 35 hours a week. I was trying to subsidize the rent that Sara couldn’t afford and the large phone bills packed with hour-long calls to Utah. When I would ask Sara to cut down her talking time, she told me to fuck myself, which was a normal response and I just stopped asking. Instead, I kept quiet, paid the bills on time, and tried to give Sara some space. I thought she was going through a rough patch because of her newfound unemployment, but the days only became longer and the time I was home became more unbearable.
Marty was no help to our living situation; in fact, she only made Sara lazier. On a typical night after going from school to work, I would come home to find Sara and Marty drunk, spitting sunflower seed shells onto the carpet. I tried to clean up as best as possible and even designated a cup for their shells, but when the cup filled, they would dump the contents onto the floor without so much as an “oops.” The dishes would be piled up in the sink, sometimes covered in ants because Sara wouldn’t do them, and when I came home, she would assume it was my job. The bleach in the Jamba Juice sinks had given me a bad arm rash and our dish soap burned my skin, but Sara never offered to help, even when tears would fill my eyes and roll down my cheeks from the pain. There were only few times when I actually asked for help, but Sara would claim she was tired, even though she would sleep well past noon. I swallowed my irritations and spent most of my time in my room, blaring music so I wouldn’t hear their nightly moans echoing through my wall or their drunken laughter about how stupid I was or how I was coming in between their relationship.
It was February of 2006 before I decided to secretly move my things to Brian’s apartment. At first, it was just my guitar and bass, but then it was clothes and posters. I caught Sara screaming into my dog’s ear because my dog ate a CD case and Sara tried to convince me to sell her, but I just moved the dog too and shut my mouth. I knew that I needed to tell Sara that I didn’t want to live with her anymore because I was afraid our friendship would be over, but I was more afraid of a fight and I was exhausted from trying to avoid them. I invited Brian over for the first time in months toward the end of February, hoping that it would calm my nerves and I could explain the situation to Sara. We all sat down to watch Uncle Buck and Brian poured himself a glass of milk. Halfway through John Candy’s infamous scene with the enormous stack of birthday pancakes, Brian and I left for a cigarette break. Before I had a chance to take a third drag, Sara swung open the door and threw the contents of the glass into the bushes that lined our front window and slammed the door in Brian’s face. Normally, Brian is extremely levelheaded, but he couldn’t stomach as much disrespect as I could and he opened the door and met Sara’s eyes with a glare.
“Um, excuse me, I was drinking that,” Brian snapped. I stood behind him rigorously biting what was left of my nails and avoided any glances that Sara or Marty threw my direction.
“You wasted a whole glass of milk by letting it sit on the table. I didn’t work for you to waste my milk,” Sara said through clenched teeth.
“You didn’t fucking pay for that milk. You don’t even have a job.”
“GET OUT! I DON’T TAKE DISRESPECT IN MY OWN HOME,” Sara screamed. Brian turned and shook his head and slammed the door. I ran into the parking lot stunned and tried to stop him from getting into his car, but before I could, Sara was right behind me screaming.
“Don’t come back to my fucking house you fucking loser!”
“This isn’t your house if Megan pays all the rent,” Brian said without turning around.
“You’re an asshole!”
“I try,” Brian retorted, and with that, Brian left.
Too amazed to cry or speak, I just kept my head down and lit another cigarette. I tried to block out Sara’s deafening shrieks of how horrible Brian was and how I was a terrible person for letting him disrespect her like he had. I didn’t see him as disrespectful, but as a man who was willing to stand up for his convictions like I should have. By the time I had rolled the scalding tobacco out of my cigarette with my fingers, Sara had stated the one thing I had been trying to say, we needed to move away from each other. After everything Sara did for me in high school, I just couldn’t tolerate her negativity any longer. She was no longer my crutch, but the person breaking my legs.
She moved out with Marty in the middle of March and I moved in with Brian a few weeks later. The new tenants were reluctant to take the apartment because Sara had caused damage to her closet by smashing beer bottles against the walls to curb her anger, so I promised to leave them my futon and bookcase that my mother had bought me as a gift. I threw away most of the furniture that I had acquired and only took with me what was necessary. Before I dropped my keys off with the landlord, I took one final look around. The apartment that I had thought would be full of fun nights of laughter, jokes, and drunken 80’s dance parties, was now a cement prison. The smell of old beer stains and food on the carpet loitered in the air and mixed with lemon Pine-Sol, bringing tears to my eyes and nausea to my stomach. I quietly shut the door, smoked one more cigarette out front, and left for the last time.
***
We sit outside of the café eating spinach leaves with watery ranch dressing. I had preferred to go to a chain, but Sara was convinced that big corporate restaurant employees would poison her food, and even though we hadn’t talked in years, I was still intimidated by her. After a few minutes of awkward silence, I told Sara about my life, how my family was doing, and how my relationship with Brian was going, and she told me about hers. She was still with Marty and they were engaged with plans to move to Oregon. My hands shook nervously every time I lit a cigarette, and I assumed Sara could tell because she would glance at my hands and grin to herself. When lunch was finished, we stood and walked to our cars, caught up in conversation over her dad’s three-legged cat that he had adopted. I grabbed my keys out of my purse and ran my index finger over the ridges of my car key, thinking of what to say next.
“What happened to us?” I asked.
“Honestly? I stopped finding you funny,” she said without blinking.
“Well I guess that’s it then. At least we gave it a try.” I knew it was a stupid response, but I didn’t know what to say. Our entire friendship was based on jokes, and if she didn’t find me funny, we had nothing.
“I love you,” she said and hugged me. “I just want you to know that.” She pulled out her keys and opened her door. I stood there, swallowing against the will of my cottonmouth, and watched her back out of the lot and turn onto the main road. We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers or e-mails, but there was no need. She said everything she needed to say, and after two years, I was okay with letting go. We haven’t talked since and we probably wont, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her and wonder what she is doing at that moment or if she is thinking of me. If our paths every do cross again, I hope that we can smile to each other and crack a joke, but we’ll probably keep our heads down and pretend we only saw a flicker of a memory.

Man in the Brown Plaid Shirt
It was cold that January day, but for some reason I shunned the thought of a jacket. I knew I would be working up a sweat, so a jacket seemed somewhat unnecessary. The New Year had just passed and I was looking forward to whatever lay ahead. Managing a team of five high school girls is no easy task, especially during the night shift at Jamba Juice. The evening was routine as normal. By 7 p.m., the machines were cleaned. Taken apart, cleaned with cleaner that caused horrible rashes and smelled like citrus cough medicine, sprayed, dumped, scrubbed, picked, and put back together. The rest was a simple wash and mop and we were usually out by 8:30.
My year mark had just passed and with it came a promotion to manager. Winter months were our slow time, and I was happy to be living in Arizona, but Scottsdale was still so new and intimidating. Everything in Scottsdale is so spread out with no real sense of community compared to my small San Diego hometown. I was barely 18 and I had never moved before. I wasn’t a sheltered child by any means; in fact, I wasn’t sheltered at all. I was used to spending my summers in New York, so I knew the feel of a big city.
On most days, I would man the register. Now that I was a manager, I got the password to the alarm system and the code to open the register without a purchase; it was a small win in my corner and I was proud. One of my co-workers, Molly, was ill and begged me not to send her home, so I let her ring up customers instead. Molly usually gave me rides home, so I owed her a big one. Normally, I was supposed to make several daily deposits of cash to a small gray safe underneath the counter. I never knew the combination, nor did I want to for fear of temptation. Our tip jar sat above it, separated by imitation wood that splintered all the same and peeled at the edges. It’s funny how a small cylinder piece of plastic can determine whether or not you can afford a pack of cigarettes that night, or if you would search for half smoked butts in the coffee table ashtray.
There wasn’t a bell on the door like in other Jamba Juices. The whir of blenders and loud 20 on 20 pop hits would have drowned it out anyway, as it did the same to most customer conversations. I had to look up every few seconds to make sure I wasn’t ignoring someone dying for a Strawberries Wild. The black required visors we wore always blocked my view, so I would break the rules and hide it by the bags of extra cups. I usually stashed it behind the power size because 32 ounces of frozen fruit wasn’t that popular in cold months, or ever really. It was more like 32 ounces of nausea with a couple of banana slices and a peach. Surprisingly, we had sold an abundance of smoothies that day and my hands were raw from the ice cream scoop and the chemicals in the blender cleaner had split the bends in a few of my fingers. By 8, Molly felt a little better and needed sustenance. She hadn’t eaten all day, and even though we only had 30 minutes left on our shift, I sent her to the Subway next door to get some food.
The last on my list of chores before close was to clean the blender stands. I already had two of the five finished when I looked up to see a man standing at the register. He was in his early 50’s, white, wearing a green and brown plaid long sleeve shirt that needed a good wash. I apologized for the wait and told him I would be with him in a minute. He stared at the menu posted above the registers and asked what kind of juice we sold, which was a bizarre question for a customer, even if it was his first time in the store. It seemed irregular that a new customer would come into the store so late, but I figured that he must have been a curious strip mall shopper.
I screwed the third blender into place and walked towards the register. I rubbed the exhaustion from my eyes, and when I looked up, I saw a gun. His crusted fingernails were curled around the trigger and the gun was pointed at my gut. I could feel my stomach acids rising into my throat, burning my esophagus. My heart ached and it crumbled away underneath my breastbone, almost as if I had already been shot.
“GIVE ME THE FUCKING MONEY! NOW! OPEN THE FUCKING REGISTER AND GIVE ME THE FUCKING MONEY OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU,” he screamed.
All I kept repeating was okay, okay, okay, okay. My hands trembled at such a magnitude they could have been deemed a 10 on the Richter scale. Everything’s fine, I thought, just open the register.
I apprehensively keyed in the code and the drawer popped open, but everything seemed to be moving so slow. Like when you try to run in a dream and waves of unhalting pressure force you back, and no matter how fast you run, you just can’t catch up. I tried to grab the cash as fast as I could, but he reached over and started grabbing the bills out of my limp grasp. He forced the money into his jean pockets and then reached back over the counter. It took me a few seconds to realize that he had his left fingers interweaved with mine, and the other hand was still clasped around the gun that was now pointed at my left temple. I looked up, and our eyes finally met. I never could have guessed that the devil would have blue eyes with small red veins that twisted and curled like a bucket of worms, skinned to reveal the muscle underneath. He stared at me for a while, and still holding my hand tight, he started to smile. Disintegrating yellow teeth paraded themselves under his pink cracked lips. His skin, covered in small chickenpox craters, had a thin film of dirt and worsened along his scruffy chin.
I blinked and saw something that wasn’t human. He looked like an evil character from a bad graphic novel. His small teeth turned into sharp prongs and his lips became squiggles. I forced my eyes closed and reopened them determined to study his face, memorize it. Every eyelash and every blackhead in his small bubble nose had to become part of my long-term memory. I had watched enough Court TV to know what the police would ask me if I survived. My mouth was so dry; I could have spit the film that had cemented over my taste buds. I subtly tried to move my jaw so it wouldn’t lock into place, and make me unable to scream if he came around into the kitchen.
“IS THAT ALL OF IT BITCH?” he yelled through semi-clenched teeth.
I shook my head yes and he leaned in closer.
“IF YOU MOVE, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU.”
And with that, he turned and briskly walked out of the store, almost as if he was a normal customer with a drink in his hand.
I stood there for a few moments and stared at the reflection of myself in the glass. All the fluids in my body seemed to be at a standstill, along with my heartbeat and ability to move. I couldn’t see if he had driven away, so I stood there for a few moments until two chuckling women opened the door. I ran to them and fell into their arms, sobbing something about robbery and gun, and one of the women quickly ran next door.
The police showed up and Molly came running back to the store hysterical that she hadn’t been there to help me. The total amount stolen: $796. The most that was ever in the register at one time in my entire career as a smoothie maker and thank God he hadn’t known about the safe in front of my feet.
The man’s name is Aaron Michael Hess, and he was eventually arrested because of my picture identification. I never went to his court case; I didn’t need to see him in person again. His image is burned into my brain in every sense of the word burned. Although he never shot me, I died that night; my trust in people died that night, and my love for humanity died that night. My ability to go outside at night died and now I feel nauseous every time I think of him. All for a measly $800 to buy drugs. In a way, I feel bad for him because I think of how bad he must have been addicted to the heroine the police told me about. I think of whether or not he has a daughter and how she must feel and I wonder if he ever thinks of me. He is serving a sentence of 12 years in Florence, and he is no stranger to the system. I’m not sure if I will ever feel justice for what he did to me that night. He is probably sitting in his cell, going over his case, hoping to get out on good behavior. Lying to the parole board, telling them that he wants to rebuild his life and that he can change. He will never change and he will probably never rebuild. But, there is one thing that I can change and that I can rebuild that he can’t, and that is empathy.

Sex, Lies, and Sodomy: The Mistake that Changed a Life


It was March 27, 2008, and Colleen Szpekowski had just gotten home from work at IKEA in Chandler, Arizona. She was tired and looking forward to watching reruns of “Sex and the City” from her new DVD season box set. She had seen all the episodes before, but she started up a season one episode anyway. Colleen picked up her phone to check in on her new fiancé, Craig, but it went straight to voicemail. Figuring that he was at work, she pressed play on a night of Carrie Bradshaw’s sex and fashion antics. Halfway through the opening credits, Colleen’s “Oochie Wally” ring tone made her heart jump into her throat and she reached down to see who could be calling. It was her old roommate, Amy, from her freshman year of college who she never got to talk to because of their conflicting schedules. Now that they were both 21, they had wanted to get together for their first legal drink, so naturally Colleen assumed that Amy’s call was more so an invitation. When she answered, the voice on the other end sounded panicked.
Amy had been bored at work and some of the girls decided to look up the criminals of the week on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office website. Amy was known to have unusual friends, so the girls were joking around about how one of Amy’s friends was sure to have an arrest photo on the website. After searching through homicide and DUI mugshots, they decided to make their way to the more horrific of crimes and clicked onto the sex offender section. Scrolling down half a page, there it was in color for all public eyes to see, Craig’s morose face in front of a turquoise background with a felony charge listed below. Amy grabbed her cell phone while her confused co-workers cracked up laughing at the idea that Amy didn’t just know someone on the website, but knew a registered sex offender. Running into the parking lot, Amy dialed Colleen while thinking over how she should approach the situation. On the second ring, Colleen answered in her usual friendly tone, and Amy asked how long it had been since she had talked to Craig. It had only been a day since Colleen had last checked in with him, and the question surprised her considering that Amy and Craig were more of acquaintances than friends. Amy told Colleen that she better sit down, which she already had been, but the request was quite unnerving.
“She told me that she saw Craig’s mugshot on the police website for a felony to fail to register as a sex offender charge,” Colleen said with a sigh. “I didn’t know what to say, so I just asked her to give me the web address so I could see for myself. She did, and I hung up without so much as a goodbye.”
Colleen ran to her computer and typed in the address. Scrolling down as Amy had, Colleen’s eyes started to burn with tears as she saw her beloved’s face staring back at her. The look in his eyes screamed embarrassment, as did her face that reflected off the computer screen. Not knowing what to do, she wrote down his booking number and called the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. They relayed the information that his arraignment was set for sometime in the next few weeks and that he would be able to make phone calls once he was past the booking stages.
Colleen took the next day off work in case Craig got the chance to call and it was late in the night when he finally did. His voice was shaky with anger and sadness and he claimed he wanted to explain how he had been arrested in the first place. He didn’t need to call a lawyer considering that a public defender had been put on his case, so his attention was set on explaining to Colleen why he was sitting in a jail cell in Phoenix.
Craig had grown up in Salem, Oregon and turned 18 during his senior year of high school. Some of the senior boys decided to plan a camping trip one weekend and invite some girls who would lie to their parents and say they were staying at each other’s houses. When the weekend came, the group drove up into the forest and set up camp. Like many unsupervised high school camping trips, there was a plethora of alcohol and soon the boys and girls started pairing up into couples. Craig started talking to this girl (whose name was asked not to be printed) who came with one of the seniors and they really hit it off. The conversation was flowing and they decided to take their hang out into the more personal quarters of Craig’s tent. They started kissing and the girl unzipped Craig’s pants and gave him oral sex. She was drunk, as was Craig, so he went along with the unexpected good time. After the private tent party, the girl left Craig to go sleep in another tent with some of the other girls.
When they returned home from the camping trip, Craig went back to school with the boys and never really thought about the girl again, until he was summoned out of class a few weeks later. The girl had only been 16-years-old and one of her friends had snitched to the girl’s parents after the girl had divulged all the dirty details. Regardless of the fact that the girl had performed oral sex on him, the family was highly religious and pressed charges against Craig. Despite his best efforts and arguments, he was an adult, and was charged with sodomy in the third degree. Since it was his first offense, he had been put on two years probation, and when it was up he moved with his family to Phoenix. Now at 24, Craig was once again up for charges because he had failed to register himself as a sex offender in the state of Arizona. Pulled over for speeding in a residential neighborhood, Craig now faced serious time behind bars.
Colleen listened politely and said, “I love you” when Craig said he had to hang up. She couldn’t believe that she had been with him for a year and he had never mentioned such an important event as this. Did he think this was something he would keep to himself until he died? What if he is lying about his story? Am I sleeping with a pedophile? These thoughts raced through Colleen’s mind as she held her hands to her stomach, hoping not to vomit on her new black and white checkered IKEA bedroom rug. She wanted to believe his story, but she had to check for herself and set out on a mission to find as much information about Craig’s past in Oregon as she could. She went to the Salem Police Department website and typed his name into the criminal case search engine. His name popped up, along with his charges and sentence time. He hadn’t lied about his story, and for that she was relieved. Colleen could handle an angry parent pressing charges on behalf of their daughter’s promiscuity, but what she didn’t know how to handle was the consequences of failing to register.
Arizona has a very strict policy on sex offenders. Craig was initially charged as a level-one sex offender, but had been bumped to a level two with an immediate risk. Sex offenders are divided into three levels. The level one sex offender is considered not dangerous to his or her surroundings and his or her information is not released to the public. A person could be charged as a level one sex offender for urinating in public, but the court system feels that they pose no real threat to the community. Level three offenders are considered extremely dangerous and serve serious prison sentences. However, as a level two sex offender, Craig would be forced into notifying the area surrounding his residence, area schools, appropriate community groups, and prospective employers. The notification would be given out as a flyer with his picture, address, and list of charges. A statement would also be sent to local print and electronic media, in order to make the information a fact of public record. Craig would even have to obtain a special license from the MVD that showed his status as a sex offender. Even though level two offenders are considered a low to moderate risk, Craig would be treated like a serious convict and would be branded with a stigma for the rest of his life. Colleen was devastated at the thought of what this would do to her future with her prospective husband.
After four months, Craig was released from jail with four years probation. He was not allowed to go to any family events where children would be present, including restaurants, community events, or any child oriented building. Craig couldn’t even go out to a bar to celebrate his release because he wouldn’t be allowed to drink for the next four years. If he chose to give up the four years probation, it would mean a mandatory sentence of two years in jail. After his probation was up, Craig would still be a registered sex offender, despite the fact that he had served his time.
“Colleen has been very understanding of the entire situation. I am so lucky to have found her because there are other women who would just have assumed that I molested some little kid, even though that is not the case at all,” said Craig, squeezing Colleen’s knee as she fidgeted in the chair next to his.
Colleen plans on being a designer for the Walt Disney Company, but with Craig as a registered sex offender, she worries about whether or not he can be a part of her career.
“If I have an event at one of the Disney parks, an unveiling of rides that I designed let’s say, he can’t come and that makes me kind of sad. I feel like he might miss out on a lot of what will become important to me,” Colleen said.
Colleen does find solace in the stories of other wives and girlfriends of sex offenders that she reads on the Internet. She reads stories on www.stopitnow.org of other families who have gone through treatment with their husbands, fathers, or relatives who have committed sexual offenses. Some are worse than others, but all provide a different perspective. The one that helps her most is from a wife whose husband molested their granddaughters. Although this is a much more heinous offense than Craig’s, the wife talks about how she dealt with the initial shock and pain of finding out the truth and how a person can seek treatment. Craig reads the stories along with her because many of the accused have tried to commit suicide, and Craig is no stranger to trying to take his own life.
Soon after Craig was released from jail, he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, which heavily affects moods and can lead to sever mania or depression. After a few rounds of daily medication, he tried to finish the bottle in one sitting, but was found passed out on the floor by his parents. He was admitted to the hospital for observation for a week, but was released with options for outpatient treatment, which he currently goes to. Colleen sat by his side throughout the entire episode, begging Craig to stay alive for the sake of her sanity. She understands why, and all she can do is sit and hope that he can overcome his demons.
“All I can do is reassure him that I am not going anywhere. I understand that he made a mistake by not registering and that the girl in Oregon screwed up his life. But, it isn’t his fault that he got drunk and got a blowjob. It happens to the best of us,” Colleen said with a smile.
Craig feels that he is finally on the road to personal recovery, which he hasn’t felt in years. The hardest part of his life to date is finding a job because he is required to tell employers that he is a registered sex offender with a felony charge. So far, he has had no luck finding work and is waiting to apply for whatever construction jobs that open up. However, after his four-year probation sentence is up, he hopes to have better luck. Until then, all he can do is wait and do odds jobs for his parents and friends.
“If I could take that one stupid night back, I would,” Craig says as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m checking ID’s from now on to make sure that people’s ages are legit.”
As Craig and Colleen plan a date for their wedding, they are glad that there are no young children in their family that would have to be excluded from the guest list. Colleen’s small diamond ring sits neatly on her finger and she wonders about the other 14,500 Arizona registered sex offenders and whether or not their wives were going through something similar. All she can do is smile and pray that the worse in their relationship is over.
“Finding out about Craig was enough secrets to last me a lifetime. And to think, all I wanted to do was watch Sex and the City. What would Carrie Bradshaw say about this situation?”

Works Cited
Arizona Megan’s Law. Megan’s Law, Sex Offenders Nationwide. 13 Nov. 2008.
Craig. Personal Interview. 11 Nov. 2008.
Sex Offender Infocenter. 12 Nov. 2008. State of Arizona Department of Public Safety. 13 Nov. 2008.
Stories of Hope. Stop it Now! 13 Nov. 2008.
Szpekowski, Colleen. Personal Interview. 11 Nov. 2008.

Hiking Back Up From the Road to Nowhere

Caption: Brittany is on the left in the black jacket, I’m in the flower shirt.
Preface

I first met Brittany after I started going out with her stepbrother, Brian. Brian and I had been dating for a year when we drove up to his dad Steve’s house. Brittany was a junior in high school and we didn’t really talk the entire time I was there. After three more years of dating Brian, we invited Brittany to come to a New Year’s Eve party at our home in Phoenix. She drove from UC Riverside, where she was a freshman, and stayed the weekend at our house. She had just broken up with her long-term boyfriend and wasn’t doing well in school. We offered her our spare bedroom under the conditions that she transfer to college in Phoenix and maintain decent grades, a C average at a minimum. She agreed and moved in the summer of 2008. On one of her first nights, Brittany and I sat outside talking and I asked her what it was like to grow up with my boyfriend’s father. I had always known Steve to be a fun standup guy, but she recounted a different Steve entirely. Her story was so moving that I felt compelled to write about it for this biographical piece. Brittany is a woman of strength and compassion, and her ability to learn from her mistakes is what separates her from the rest of the women her age that I have met in my life. Although this is just one event in her life, it has affected her deeply and made her the wonderful person that she is today.
***
The cheer “M-U-R-R-I-E-T-A, Murrieta (clap clap clap) all the way!” echoed off the walls of the Vista Murrieta High School gym. The gym was empty, except for the sixteen girls standing in formation, practicing for the big Friday night game. Two rows of eight blue, gold, and white clad cheerleaders, ready for their captain’s orders, blended into the navy blue and white painted walls. The waxed wood floor beneath their feet squeaked with each sneaker movement. Retired framed jerseys reflected the neon florescence that beamed from the lights above the squad. Each number represented a member of a team that played hard for the Broncos and were worthy of lifelong recognition. Brittany Wilburn stood patiently in the front line on the right side of the captain. She hadn’t always been a cheerleader; it was her first year in fact. It was 2004, Brittany’s second semester as a sophomore and first semester on her way back up from a year’s worth of depression.
Brittany lived in a newly built community just south of Riverside County in California. Her mother, Kim, met her stepfather Steve in St. Louis, Missouri when Brittany was four, and they moved to Murrieta so that Steve could be closer to his two sons who lived in San Diego. Murrieta is a nice suburb, full of copycat houses built on similar floor plans, and a metropolis of fast food joints. The school system is ranked fairly high, which was great for Kim who had changed her profession from computer programmer to second grade teacher. Brittany’s real father, Bryan, stayed in St. Louis, and they saw each other only two weeks out of the year. Bryan was not involved in her life, other than the phone calls she received a week before and after her annual trips. She had grown to accept that he would never be the father she wanted, but had found solace in Steve. Steve treated her as if she was his own daughter, practically taking over the financial and parenting responsibilities since Brittany was five. A little too over protective, Steve made sure that he always had tabs on Brittany’s whereabouts. Curfews were set in stone with no option for discussion, as well as maintaining the perfect life that Steve had been working so hard to build. Steve was the Vice President of a metal company and a man of rules, with guidelines that were strict and had to be followed. Kim was more of a free spirit, in that she never really had any restrictions for Brittany. After all, Brittany was her one and only child.
When Brittany started her freshman year at Vista Murrieta, Kim and Steve’s relationship had started to turn. They had idiotic fights over what to eat for dinner, or where to take Brittany if there was a celebration in order. If Brittany or Kim weren’t at the front door to meet Steve when he came home from work, a fight would ensue and continue until Brittany locked herself in her bedroom.
“It was ridiculous,” Brittany recounted. “He would get so upset over the dumbest things. When I would try to point out his ridiculous behavior, he would argue with my mom that I had a bad attitude and needed to be disciplined.”
Her bedroom became her temple, her sanctuary; a place she could go to hide away from the pieces of the life she had become so accustom to that were collapsing around her feet. She would lie on her bed for hours, sleeping, writing poems, listening to music, or just crying to the sound of her parents screaming at each other over who touched the remote last. Brittany tried to muffle the noise on most nights, hiding her head underneath her purple pillowcases and cheetah print comforter. Her blue tattered notebook sat open next to her with a pen wedged inside the spiral. The pages that actually remained in the book were full of doodles of hearts and stars, while the actual writings were tucked neatly into a shoebox that she hid in a plastic storage bin in her closet. The writings, which were sometimes poems or long unorganized rants, spoke of a life she remembered where her parents kissed because they meant it and their conversations had a purpose. She dreamt of the life that she had once been proud to display, but now drowned in hidden tequila and rum bottles and numbed with whatever medication she could siphon from her mother’s personal pharmacy. Brittany usually took Zoloft and Xanax, until her best friend Cassie started offering her harder painkillers. Cassie’s method of self-medication consisted of the regular Vicodin and Loritab, but Oxycontin was taken for what she told Brittany were particularly “bad headaches.”
Cassie was a popular girl that Brittany had dumped many of her old friends to hang out with. They were inseparable at best, and since Steve knew Cassie from when Cassie was younger, he saw no problems with Brittany and her friendship. They would drink on most hangouts, including the classes that they had together. Brittany would snatch the alcohol from her mother, who was no stranger to several stiff drinks and even stiffer hangovers. Her mother never noticed, and if she did, she never mentioned anything about the absence. Steve worked an hour and a half north of Murrieta, so he wasn’t there to grab the reigns most of the time. Cassie and Brittany would meet up before school, smiles on their faces to deflect any parental suspicions, and fill half-empty Gatorade or water bottles with the stolen goods. Brittany knew that one campus security guard had probably caught on to her frequent intoxications due to him catching her on several occasions just wandering the halls, Brittany giggling all the while. He never reported her to school officials, for which she was thankful, but not thankful enough to stop. Her GPA, which had been fairly high, had started to diminish because she spent more time trying to fit in with Cassie than focusing on her future. Brittany needed Cassie, she needed someone to take her mind off of her home life, and someone she could party with and rely on for a good time. Anything less would have meant spending more time at home, which was unacceptable for a girl so desperate to experience a life that didn’t so closely resemble her own.
Kim and Steve soon stopped fighting about dinners and celebrations, and moved their quarrels specifically to issues regarding Brittany’s attitude and behavior. Steve felt that Brittany needed to seek professional help for her hobbit-like behaviors at home, and forcefully sent her to therapy against Kim’s wishes. Kim saw Brittany as a direct reflection of herself, and if Brittany had a problem, it meant that Kim had a problem, which she would never admit. Brittany went to the therapist on occasions, rarely telling the truth about her situation at home or her personal life. At times when she did tell the therapist that she would lie in bed and cry, the therapist claimed that her falsified depression was for attention or that she was just tired. No one could believe that a pretty blonde popular girl couldn’t deal with what they thought were a few arguments over spilled milk.
“I guess looking back on the situation, maybe I hoped that they would notice I was depressed. I wasn’t doing anything for immediate attention, but every child just wants their parents to see they’re upset and deal with the problem first hand,” Brittany said.
After a few sessions with the therapist, Brittany called Cassie to talk about how pointless these meetings were. The therapist didn’t believe Brittany even when she did tell the truth, and even though Cassie was wrapped up in her own world most of the time, she told Brittany her way of dealing with unbearable situations. Cassie just told her to burn herself, somewhere that she could hide and somewhere the skin was sensitive enough to feel the pain. Brittany had never really considered this as an option for release, but it seemed reasonable, especially if Cassie was telling her that she did it herself.
It was shortly after 9 p.m., when Brittany heard the stairs creak just outside her bedroom door. It was a house rule that she wasn’t allowed to talk on her phone after 9, so she quickly hid the phone underneath her pillow with Cassie still on the line as Steve kicked the door in, the handle smashing through the drywall. He picked up the nearest thing he could find, a big platform sneaker, and threw it at Brittany’s face. It hit her straight on the right eye, and she grabbed her face as her eyes burned hot with tears. Steve ran up and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her and screaming to get off the phone, spit droplets landing on her flushed cheeks. His breath stank of Camel Light cigarettes that he had sworn he had quit smoking and his eyes were bloodshot with frustration. He never actually saw the phone, regardless of Brittany’s eyes that kept darting to the spot under the pillow where she could hear Cassie’s muffled voice screaming “Hello? Hello? Brittany?” Steve released his grip as Brittany’s tears started flowing more freely and gasps of breath begged for her asthma inhaler. He turned to walk out the door, but before he did, he screamed, “ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED!”
The door slammed and Brittany quickly hung up the phone; Cassie’s voice no longer on the other end. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Brittany sucked at her inhaler, hoping to regain her breath. Breathing in deep, she stared at the hole in her wall. Looking around for something, anything, to cover it up, she tore down an Eminem poster and tacked it back up over the hole.
“I knew that putting an Eminem poster low on the wall behind the door was stupid and suspicious, but what else was I supposed to do? I didn’t want people thinking that I put a hole in my wall and I didn’t really feel like answering any questions about it.”
Peering out the doorway, she saw the hall was clear and quickly ran into the bathroom two doors down. She grabbed a tissue to remove the mascara that had collected underneath her puffy eyes, and searched through her makeup bag that sat on the marble countertop for some makeup remover. A red lighter that her stepbrother had given her sat on top of her MAC eye shadow case and she warily grabbed it out of the bag. She held it in her hands for a few moments, staring at the fluid that sloshed within the plastic. Brittany flicked the lighter over and over again, staring at the flame before placing it to her left wrist. The heat felt good against her clammy skin, and she kept it there until she couldn’t tell if the tears were for Steve or pain from the burn. For the first time, Brittany felt in control of something, in control of her pain. She was able to pinpoint where it hurt and why, and could easily cover up any burn marks with a bracelet or long-sleeve shirt. She did this to herself and it felt good, her parents too wrapped up in arguments over Brittany’s attitude to notice any newfound scars.
On February 29, 2004, Steve decided to move out a few blocks away into a newly developed apartment complex and no one was sad to see him go. The house seemed a little quieter, but Brittany appreciated the peace.
“For once, there wasn’t any fighting over whether or not I was coming home before curfew or some other idiotic reason. I was just glad to see him go. I love him, don’t get me wrong, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. If he hadn’t left, I was afraid I was going to take my depression to the next level, and I don’t even want to think about what that might have been.”
The burns on her wrist had scabbed and healed in just enough time to try out for cheerleading. Some of her friends had tried out and made it, and as normal, Brittany wanted to follow suit. Dressed in a VMHS t-shirt and workout pants, Brittany entered the gym where the tryouts were being held. There were only a few spots left on the team, but Brittany was confidant that she would make it due to previous gymnastics experience. Her friends had already taught her several cheers, and she didn’t miss a beat in front of the panel, including her back tuck. The team captain offered her a position almost immediately and placed her in the front line during practice. She focused all of her energy on performing, the crowds at the football games and competitions cheering her on. She was getting the attention that she needed, regardless of the fact that it was from total strangers. Her parents never went to see her cheer anyway, but it didn’t matter. This was something that Brittany chose to help herself in rebuilding what she had wanted to become, a good student, a good person, and a healthy teenage girl with more to live for than alcohol and butane.








The Secret in the Ballerina Box

The heat waves hovered over the rocky sea of beige, whites, and pinks. The Phoenix summer temperature had peaked and it was a ripe 105 degrees. The windows fogged behind me as my two Boxers peered through the blinds like peeping toms, panting hard against the glass. I sat amongst the rocks next to a cactus that looked like a premature tomato pincushion that my mother used when she sewed. Last summer, I had fallen into the cactus. It took hours of painful plucking to get all of the needles out of my back and my father tells me my scars make me look like a shaven porcupine. I’ve never seen one, but I’ll take his word for it.
I had brought out a red plastic cup when I started my exploration, but now it was full. Full of rock and mineral treasures that seemed fit for a pirate and worthy of fighting over. The shiny flecks in the striations had to be gold because not every rock had them. These were special. My father had watched a show on the History channel about mining for gold and how many men moved to California during the gold rush. Why would they move when all of the gold was right here under their noses?
I wiped my hands off on my dress and retreated inside. I cold air hit my face like fire and every pore stung. The sweat on my neck chilled to below room temperature and I shivered despite the heat resonating off my sun stained cheeks. Rudy and Winnie licked my fingers, their stumpy tails wagging as fast as wind resistance would allow.
“Good puppies,” I said, standing on tiptoes to kiss their soft heads.
“Maggie, is that you?” I heard my mother call from inside the bathroom. The door was slightly ajar and the faint familiar smell of Jean Natae floated down the hallway.
“Momma, I have to show you what I found!” I wanted to make sure that everything was in place for my big surprise. These rocks were not just regular rocks like the ones that lined the flower garden in front of the school. These had gold in them, the same gold I saw everyday on mom’s wedding band.
I ran into the kitchen and set my cup on the coffee table. The dogs were wrestling over a rope in the other room, so I knew they wouldn’t curiously come sniffing around my newfound wealth. I poured the contents out and started to line them up by size. I counted fifteen when I was done, and I made sure the best gold spots were showing for a bigger dramatic effect. I went over my future Christmas list in my head, upgrading everything due to the increased wealth my mother was about to come in to. I expected eight gifts this year, instead of the normal seven. I stood beside the table pointing to the rocks like a young Vanna White as I heard my mother’s footsteps creaking on the wood floor.
“Surprise,” I screamed, all teeth and smiles. My heart fluttered as I waited for her hug and slather of kisses.
“Oh my God, Maggie! Look at your dress! We have to be at the wedding in half an hour and you’re covered in dirt!”
“But mom, look at the rocks,” I said. “They have gold in them.”
“How are we supposed to get you cleaned up and ready in time?” She asked as she grabbed my hand and led me into my bedroom.
“Mom, the gold, the gold!” I shrieked, but she wasn’t paying attention. She flipped on the light and started searching through my closet, pulling dresses off the rack and holding them up against me.
“No, this one isn’t good,” she said holding up another one. “And this one is too small. Oh, why did you do this Maggie? We can’t be late to my own sister’s wedding.”
“Mom, but we have gold now. We can give some to Aunt Susan. She will be happy,” I said, knowing that this would calm my mother down and force her to pay attention.
“Enough Maggie. We need to find a dress. It is too late to wash the one you have on.”
She was talking to herself. Her forehead wrinkled beneath her fingertips as they pinched the bridge of her nose. She checked her watch and pulled down a box from atop my closet. The lid flew off and hit her upper lip.
“SHIT!” she shrieked as she pressed her index finger against the fresh cut. “Well this is just great. Susie will never forgive me for this.”
My mother grabbed a tissue from my dresser and pressed it firmly against her lip to stop whatever blood had begun to escape. My eyes started to sting as uncontrollable tears welled up in my eyes. I hadn’t meant to ruin Aunt Susan’s wedding, I just wanted to show my mom the gold I had found. I just wanted to help. The tears continued to build until they spilled out and over my cheeks. I grabbed my face, hoping to hide behind my dirt-covered hands.
“Oh, honey, it’s okay. Mommy’s okay, she just had an accident,” she said, finally pulling me into a long awaited hug. Only I wished the hug were for my discovery, instead of my tears.
“I…didn’t…mean…to…mommy. I…just…wanted…to…show…you…the…gold…I…found.” My words were broken with sobs and quivers.
“Okay, okay, calm down baby. Go show momma the gold.”
I wiped the tears from my now reddened eyes and sniffled the snot that had started to drain. I grabbed only the best rocks to make sure my mom was impressed, and then she wouldn’t care how dirty I was. We would be able to afford a new dress and everything would be fine. I walked into my pink bunny covered room and opened my hands. Two rigid rocks sat shining in the light of the sun that streamed through the crack in the curtains. God was trying to spy. He wanted a peak on my findings too, but I couldn’t blame him.
“Wow, honey. That is some amazing gold you found. I’m so proud of you,” my mother said as she picked up one of the valuables. “Hold on a minute, I have something for you.”
She stood up and walked out of the room, returning seconds later with a box. It was as blue as the color of her eyes and smelled of dust. There was a ballerina in mid leap on the lid.
“I want you to put your treasures in here. Your grandmother gave this to me when I was your age for all of my secrets. As long as you put your gold in here, no one will find it.”
“Really?” I asked as though I had just been handed the key to the gate of Candyland.
“Now hurry and put them away. We don’t want to keep Susie waiting now do we? She needs her flower girl there more than anything.”
I hurriedly opened the lid and placed the rocks softly into their new hiding spot. I opened the right drawer of my white vanity chest and safely placed the box inside. I put a rubber band on top of the lip as a security measure and turned to change into a dress that my mother had finally found suitable.
* * *
When I returned home from the wedding, I ran into my room and opened the drawer. The box lay hibernating with the rubber band still on top, exactly where I had left it. I slightly lifted the lid and my rocks were still there. My secret was safe, at least for now.

Appendix
Nancy: My First Face……………………………………………………………………………46
Different Times, Different Settings……………………………………………………………...48
Rocks of Riches on Summerfield Lane………………………………………………………….53
Arguments Over Betty Page……………………………………………………………………..55
Interview with Colleen Szpekowski and Craig………………………………………………….58
Interview with Brittany Wilburn………………………………………………………………...60
From Jacko to Wacko: The Story of Michael Jackson…………………………………………..68
“Delivering Lily” by Phillip Lopate: Review……………………………………………………71
“Leaving Babylon: A Walk Through the Jewish Divorce Ceremony” by Judyth Har-Even: Review…………………………………………………………………………………………...72


Nancy: My First Face
I remember the way Nancy’s freckles subtly bridge across her nose from cheek to cheek. They may have been bold at one time, but the sun has faded her skin with age and replaced with some liver spots. Back in the 60s, they didn’t tan with suntan lotion. Baby oil was the tanner of choice, which Nancy claimed to regret later. Her pointed nose comes to a small, flattened plateau at the tip. She has a line across the part in her bridge where the skeletal structure ends and the cartilage begins. It almost looks as if it had been broken at some point by one or both of her brothers. She is a middle child like me, so her skin reflects youth and age that only a middle child has because of constant sibling rivalries, caught in between a paradox of staying young and growing old. She has a small chickenpox scar on her right cheek close to her nose and she picks at it sometimes and reminisces on how her skin used to look.
Her mouth is the most fascinating because her teeth are a bit quirky. They are not bad teeth, she definitely kept up on her dental care, but they are separated. There are the tiniest spaces in between the first few teeth on the top row, but you could only really see them when she smiled. Her tongue constantly rubbed against the back of her bottom teeth, which I later found out was due to heavy methamphetamine use. One of the times I remember her babysitting for me, she was so angry with my sister and my behavior that her tongue moved so fast behind her teeth, I thought it would rip in half.
Her face was very thin then, although she always had a very strong jaw line. Her face was still beautifully natural, despite the sunken black circles around her eyes from lack of sleep, which actually made her eyes stand out more. Royal and baby blue specks perfectly mixed on an iris palette. Her eyes are very gentle, even when she is irritated and her thin bangs always hung over her eyelids and it felt like kitten fur. It is the kind of hair a child loves to weave their fingers through just to feel the tickle as it slides back into its soft and silky place. The rest of her light caramel colored hair lay flat against her back, always past shoulder length.
When she laughs, she laughs with her whole face. Cheeks scrunched to the point where you can see every wrinkle in her almost wrinkleless face. It is this that made me feel so comfortable and it is this that saved my life as I got older. I have never felt more comfortable with a person, and I don’t think I ever will. Her face is more remembered than my mothers because, in a way, Nancy is my mother. She is my best friend, my confidant, my teacher, my unconditional love, my psychologist, my mentor, and my vice. I don’t have a future without Nancy. I don’t have anything without Nancy. She gave me the will to live when there was none, and for that, I owe her everything.

Different Times, Different Settings
Hillcrest, California. “The Near Death Experience”
I was born in Hillcrest. It is the gay community in San Diego. My mother told me that the epidural shot was suffocating me and a random doctor had to do an emergency C-section. I don’t remember much of anything at this point.
Poway, California. “White House on Summerfield”
For 16 years of my life, I grew up in a white house on Summerfield Lane, but it wasn’t always white. My dad painted the house this horrible brown and white color, which my mom despised. It was an ugly two-tone pattern and the neighborhood snickered at our pathetic taste in paint schemes. Hell, I snickered at our taste because the inside and the outside of our house never matched. We had one room that wasn’t even nice that my mother deemed as the “room no one can go into.” Why have a room that no one can sit in? It kind of defeats the purpose of having an extra room all together. Our family room had couches and chairs that never matched, and still don’t. We always had at least two computer desks against the wall, even though we had a computer room with a computer in it on another desk. The miscellaneous desks were used to store papers from classes neither my sisters nor I remember taking. There were also random keys in a dirty cup you may get in Las Vegas when you hit the jackpot in nickels. I bet there is a very upset janitor somewhere in the world.
There were always markers pens that were inkless, and lucky enough, they all sat by the telephone. The house always smelled like warm towels washed in Tide. I used to open the washing machine and inhale the Tide fumes to the point of hyperventilating. I shared a room with my younger sister and my older sister had her own room. Eventually, my younger sister started sleeping in my mom’s bed once my parents got a divorce. I loved having my own room. I painted all of my walls black once it was mine and pushed beer bottle caps into the popcorn ceiling. My mother always felt like I lived in a dungeon, but I just thought it looked cool.
My mother did have a fourth child, her carpet. She was obsessed with the carpet. She would envision spots that weren’t there and would scrub the stains until her hands were raw. One time she said that I ruined her life because of a drop of paint. The house was better after my father was kicked out. He was and is a monster of a man. The screen door always creaked and would catch on her heels and cut your skin, which made sneaking out really hard.
In the morning, the grass always smelled of rain, and on very cold mornings there would be frost. Sometimes, I would grab as much frost as possible and try to flick it at my sisters like a snowball, but it usually melted before it hit them. The air was always foggy, and no matter how dry my clothes was, I always felt wet. When my father lived at home, there was always blackness to the house. It never felt like home and I could always feel the tension the minute I walked up the driveway. Never knowing exactly what kind of man you would meet on the other end. It all depended really on how much he had to drink that night. Most nights I would find him passed out in bed with his shirt off. Some nights, however, I would meet a stranger in a familiar body. I spent most of my life locked away in my room, and eventually, I did install a lock on my door. The town I grew up in was a town that if you didn’t leave right after high school, you never did. So, I left.
Tempe, Arizona. “Let the Good Times Roll”
My apartment in Tempe was disgustingly awesome. I was 16-years-old and in a new state. My boyfriend moved with me and the apartment was on the third floor and had four bedrooms and two bathrooms already furnished. I shared a bathroom with a girl named Amy, who to this day is one of my best friends. I didn’t know my roommates when I moved in because they were student apartments. I just jotted down some hobbies and interests on my lease and BOOM, I had three roommates who were supposedly like me. They weren’t, with the exception Amy. I had band posters from wall to wall and guitars and amps. There was this ugly built in desk against the wall where my computer sat, stealing Internet from other computers within a mile radius. Four boys had lived there before me and there was a crusted booger on the wall next to my bed that I noticed when putting on my sheets. The carpet was dirty and navy blue and it may have felt like a real carpet at one time, but years of trampling shoes matted it down. The apartment smelled like mothballs and dust, even after we did a thorough cleaning.
I drank a lot that year. I smoked cigarettes in my room too, which didn’t help the original aroma. My roommate Colleen started smoking too. I bought a dog a year with part of my financial aid money. There were no pets allowed, but I felt I needed a dog, so I got a puggle named Mary-Jane. The police officers that patrolled the complex at night used to walk her for me. So much for no pets allowed. They also taught me how to roll my own cigarettes, although I think they thought I was going to use the knowledge for rolling joints. Who wouldn’t think that about a young college student from San Diego who likes to play music and surf? I never got my security deposit back because we drew on our couch with sharpie.
Scottsdale, Arizona. “Worse Mistake Ever”
After I left Tempe, I moved in with my best friend from high school. She had moved from Arizona, to San Diego, to Utah, and back to Arizona. Our apartment was on the first floor across from Scottsdale Fashion Square and it was loud all the time. The walls were made of concrete and there was black mold on the ceiling of the bathrooms. The place was huge, and looked even bigger due to the fact that we had no furniture. We didn’t have Internet or cable either, so most nights were spent watching movies or The Bernie Mac show. We slept on air mattresses from Walmart, and when they would spring a leak, we would jump on them. Then, we would return them to Walmart and say we bought them that way. You can do that if you keep the box. Well, karma is a bitch and I eventually got arrested at a Walmart. But, that is another story for a different time.
My roommate Sara was the devil, literally, the antichrist. I had a curfew of 11, even though I paid most of the rent. She hated my boyfriend and they would get into screaming matches in the parking lot over milk left on the table. Eventually, she left her boyfriend for a woman who also moved in with us and her girlfriend was even worse than her. They would eat sunflower seeds and spit the shells onto the carpet. I gave them a cup to spit into, and when it got full, they would dump the contents onto the floor. We adopted two black cats that were more annoying than Sara and her girlfriend and there were cockroaches in every orifice on the apartment. Sara and I decided to call it quits on our friendship halfway through our lease, and I sublet the apartment to someone on craiglist. Our last meal together was Baja Fresh, which gave me heartburn, almost as much heartburn as our friendship. I’m surprised she even ate the food because she was a paranoid bipolar lunatic who thought people poisoned her food. I wasn’t sad to see her go.
Paradise Valley, Arizona. “It’s Getting Better All the Time”
I now live in with my boyfriend, his brother, and his sister. We share a house together and it is great. We got another dog, a pitbull named Danny. His sister and I are always redecorating the house because we get bored easily. My room is still covered in band posters, mostly Bob Marley. I have no blinds on the window because my dog broke them, so there is a makeshift curtain that I purchased at the Renaissance Festival last year. It matches the random décor, so I’m not upset. Our house is highly technological because my boyfriend’s brother is a compulsive electronics buyer. Our living room is a maze of cables and wires. Good thing they make wireless Guitar Hero guitars. This house also smells like dust and we are all too busy to clean it, at least until we actually realize how disgusting it is over the weekends. We all watch television and eat together, and for a first time in a long time, I feel like a family. This home feels comfortable and lived in. The air in this house feels like a warm comforter and I have no problem falling asleep on the couch, plus, it reclines. There is no way of knowing how long I will be here, I guess until my boyfriend and I finally tie the knot, but, maybe we will stay. After all, it can only get better from here.

Rocks of Riches on Summerfield Lane

Avocados hung over the driveway and would hit the car roofs as they pulled up onto the cement. The grass and dirt in front of the medium-sized tree flooded from a broken sprinkler head that sat in front of it on a daily basis. The pink and purple flowers remained small due to constant drowning. The grass was sparse in all other parts of the yard, a yard big enough to flick a penny from one side to the other. Seven perfectly cemented squares curved in an L-shape to the white screen door. It wasn’t always white, but the black screen door would catch on heels and draw blood. Rollie pollies crawled along the squares, while fat pale green slugs sat waiting for a purpose. The air smelled of rain, although most days were sunny and humid and slight breezes slid dead leaves and pine needles around the street like an unpracticed waltz. Assorted frog statues sat on either side of a frog patterned welcome mat, waiting to greet guests like underpaid Walmart workers. Bird-of-Paradise arced over the walkway and snagged the shirts or skin of passersby. The house that sat behind was one story, off-white with a loose black mailbox in the front left corner of the driveway. The street was always quiet, except for a few neighborhood dogs on a nightly walk. Even then, it was only the clicking of rough toenails catching the cracks of the sidewalk. Every yard was clean and well trimmed. White picket fences lined the front of some, while others had large bushes that blocked the view of their neighbor. Mine was open for the whole block to see.
When I was a child, I would go to the corner of my front yard where the house to my left met with mine. There were small pink and white rocks hidden beneath a long pine bush. The white ones wrote on the sidewalk like chalk and I would write my name, marking my territory against the other neighborhood children. The rocks had small silver glints within their striations and I thought I had struck it rich. Finding all this silver in rocks? It must have meant something big. My mother’s jewelry was made of silver, and I knew that jewelry wasn’t cheap. No matter how many pennies’ I saved, I couldn’t seem to afford anything from the jewelry department at Target. Now that I had found these rocks, I could finally buy something decent to show off at school besides the stick-on earrings that fell off after five minutes of recess. A necklace with a heart pendant that had small cubic zirconia diamonds like the silver in my rocks would suffice. I hid them in my Levi’s and went searching for more. Two doors down was a rock garden full of pink. My eye’s widened as if summer vacation had been extended to twelve months; a full year to navigate the silver mines.
An hour later and pockets stuffed like Thanksgiving turkeys, I opened the beige front door and headed for the kitchen. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, a coffee cup ring stained on the plastic frog tablecloth. I pulled out the rocks and set them on top of the stain. I knew she would be so proud, especially now that we would be able to afford the necessities we needed. But, the look on her face said otherwise. She asked me to take the rocks back outside where they belonged. Confused, I explained that the rocks had silver chips imbedded in their topcoat, and if we chiseled them out, we would be financially set. She smiled dully and pulled me up onto her lap. Breath bitter with decaf instant Folgers, she explained that the silver was just a pretty design, lost in the rock forever. Figuring that she lied in order to steal my goods, I ran into my room crying and hid them away in a drawer among Yo-yos, Barbie shoes, and other miscellaneous items deemed necessary for a six-year-old.
I left those rocks in that drawer for seven years. After a day of spring-cleaning, I came upon them and chuckled. Collecting for disposal, I stared at them. Remembering my excitement, my potential wealth, and how much time I spent looking for only these, I put them back in the drawer.

Arguments Over Betty Page
“Gross, Jim. Stop staring at those drunk sluts,” exclaimed Beth half joking.
“I’m not staring at them. It’s Girls Gone Wild. All they show is boobs, which is only cool for like five minutes,” Jim explained.
“You wouldn’t be happy if I was on one of these commercials for nasty old men to see.”
“No, that’d be hot.”
“You better not be serious! That’s disgusting!”
“I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Relax you are so uptight. I was just looking at that last chick’s tattoo.”
“Oh so that’s what they’re calling it these days, a tattoo. I wish my tattoos were double-Ds.” Beth looked down at her size B breasts and frowned.
“Riiiiggghhht. Actually, I was looking at an actual tattoo. That girl had a pinup girl on her shoulder, one of those all black ones. You know, like the kind Rose McGowan has on her shoulder in Jawbreaker.”
Beth looked up curiously from her neckline.
“I think they are kind of tacky. That girl is going to be old and saggy someday and that wont look like a pinup girl anymore. It will probably look like some giant liver spot,” Beth chuckled.
“Well, I think it’s sexy.”
“You do, do you?”
“I think it would be sexiest on your shoulder.”
“Um, no. I don’t want some Betty Page look alike on my body forever. Plus, I heard they hurt like hell and I’m not a fan of needles. You should know that after I fainted at the ear-piercing place, which by the way, my cartilage still aches.”
“Jesus, it was just an idea. You never seem to complain about my tattoos. I just thought that maybe you would want one too. We could even get one together,” Jim said, hoping to avoid an argument on his day off.
“I like the look of some tattoos, just not on me. I don’t want something like that showing in my wedding photos.”
“Who said we are getting married?”
“I wasn’t talking about you! I was talking in general. For the day I DO get married.”
“Okay, okay. Can we not argue right now? I was just saying. You don’t have to get shit if you don’t want to. I was just having what normal couples would call a conversation. You know, small talk.”
Beth sighed and cleared her throat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you. I just had a bad day I guess.”
“It’s okay. I just thought you might want to try something new.”
“Are you serious? That isn’t trying something new. That is putting something permanent on your body. I’m glad you like your tattoos; I like them too. I just don’t want them on me!”
“You’re cute when you flare your nostrils.”
“Shut up and stop trying to make me laugh! I’m trying to make a point.”
“Okay well point, set, and match.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t. You love me,” sighed Jim as he got up from the couch and kissed Beth on the forehead.”
“I can’t help it. But trust me, I’m trying to.”
“I love you too. But, I would love you more if you got a tattoo,” Jim yelled from inside the refrigerator.
“Shut up and get me a drink.”
“Yes, ma’am.”

Interview with Colleen Szpekowski and Craig

I interviewed Colleen Szpekowski and her fiancée Craig (last name asked not to be printed). When I asked for the interview, Colleen was more comfortable with it than Craig, but he obliged and we met at my house in North Phoenix. I had five main questions, leaving an infinite amount of room for follow-up questions and answers. We sat outside on my patio so that Colleen and Craig could smoke cigarettes to ease the tension. Every time I asked a hard question such as, “How did you become a registered sex offender?” Craig would light up a new cigarette. At time, he became irritated, claiming that he was embarrassed of himself and that he felt like a loser. Colleen sat quiet most of the time while he talked, making sure to look into his eyes and reassure him that she was his support system. He spoke quickly, breaking away in tangents from time to time, but he always came back to the point. He nervously laughed through some of my questions, including what happened after he was released from jail. Craig explained his mental problems, including suicide attempts. It was here that I switched the conversation over to Colleen, who explained to me how she intends to plan her future with Craig.
Colleen wants to work for Disney as a designer, which will inevitably be affected by Craig’s current felony charge. Colleen and I talked about how she plans to have a family, as well as small details of her current life. I asked her when they go out to restaurants, where Craig can or can’t go, how long his probation will last, how she deals with his past and present, and other small details of her daily life that are affected by being with a sex offender. I also spoke with them about their fears, especially when it came to Craig finding a job and having to write that he is a felon on job applications. I have never done such a personal interview with anyone, and I was glad that Colleen and Craig were open enough to discuss their situation. After the interview, I gave Colleen and a hug while Craig walked to the car because it takes a lot of heart and dedication to stick with a felon, much less a registered sex offender.

Interview with Brittany Wilburn
When Brittany Wilburn finally sat down with me, she was very nervous. She is not one to talk about her emotions, especially emotions that have been stored away for years. I sat down at my computer and she sat next to me because she wanted to be able to read what I was typing. She felt it would help her pretend that it wasn’t really her telling the story, almost as if she was assisting me in creating a work of fiction. I tried to ask her easy questions at first, questions that I wouldn’t have to dig deep to have answered. When I started asking Brittany how different aspects of her parents divorce made her feel, she was apprehensive to release all of the skeletons in her closet. She made less and less eye contact and responded with “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know.” Eventually, she eased into our conversation and opened up, although it took a few of my best jokes to help her relax. Less than half way through my interview, I stopped letting her look at the computer. I spoke directly to her and kept eye contact, while she bit her nails to the nubs. When I asked more in depth questions, ones that required stories, she paused to take long deep breaths in between sentences. I think she was afraid that if her story got out that it would cement her past. All of her insecurities and actions surrounding the divorce would be put on paper for the first time. This wasn’t just an interview between friends; this was a chance for Brittany to deal with some of her suppressed anger and emotions. Anger that Brittany has carried around for years and has never known how to deal with. This was a breakthrough for her and I hope that by writing her story, she will be able to forgive her own past, as well as her parents.






Me: How old were you when your step-dad and mom decided to separate?
Brittany: When I was 15, they decided to separate. Steve didn’t decide to move out until I was almost 16. I had been going to therapy at the end of eighth grade until the beginning of my sophomore year when I was 15. I didn’t go regularly though. Steve raised me since I was 5, so I don’t really consider him my step-dad.
Me: Why did you go to therapy?
Brittany: My parents wanted to make sure that I was okay and understood everything that was going on. Steve also thought that I was depressed and had eating disorders.
Me: Were you depressed?
Brittany: Yes. Well, there are two answers to that. One, I was 14-year-old girl fresh into high school and I didn’t know where I fit. I didn’t make the cheer team and my friends did. Second, the therapist thought that it was because I wanted attention. I thought that what was going on between my parents was my fault. Steve told me it was my fault all the time.
Me: What would he say?
Brittany: He would literally say that it was my fault. He would get in my face and say that this was what I wanted. He would say, “Are you happy now?”
Me: Why do you think he said those things?
Brittany: Really, he knew that his marriage was failing and that it was his fault. What to better to place the blame on the 14-year-old girl that thought the world was revolving around her.
Me: How did this negative attention affect you?
Brittany: I started drinking a lot in school and out of school. I went from A’s to C’s and I thought I was failing. I clung close to certain friends and stopped being a social butterfly. I clung to one person and my friendships died. I clung to my friend Rachel a lot. I started popping pills and burning myself too.
Me: What did you think this was going to solve?
Brittany: Numbness or that I could control where the pain went. When I was burning, I liked the pain. I think a part of me feels like I was kind of doing it for attention. I wanted them to see that they were hurting me or if they didn’t fix everything that I would continue to hurt myself. I wasn’t crying out for attention or anything, but I hoped that they would see the burns. They never did. They were consumed in their own problems.
Me: Where would you burn yourself?
Brittany: My left wrist and left thigh.
Me: Any significant reason why you chose the left side?
Brittany: I’m right handed. There was no real significance.
Me: What were your parents fighting about during this time?
Brittany: Money, me, little shit mostly. They always fought about what to have for dinner or comments that Steve made about my grades, my brother Brian’s grades. Steve complained about my attitude a lot. When I was 14, I was in my room constantly and he thought that I was acting out. My mom told him it was normal. They fought a lot on how to punish me because my mom is liberal and doesn’t really punish or give rules. He always wanted to punish me or set rules. He always wanted to spank me or slap me, but my mom was against that. When I used to talk on my cell phone or house phone after 9, he used to get ridiculously mad. He would get really upset and stomp around the house and kick and throw things. He would just scream in my face. I remember one time, I hid because he heard me on the phone and I hid the phone under my pillow. He kicked in the door and made a massive hole and picked up my big platform sneakers and threw it at me. It gave me a black eye and I started crying. He was in my face and his spit was flying in my face and I was freaking out because I could hear my friend on the phone saying, “Hello? Hello? Brittany?” I thought it might hear the phone, but he didn’t. He finally left and I put a poster of Eminem over the hole. My mom made him buy me a new door.
Me: Did anyone question the black eye?
Brittany: My friend Cassie knew, but I just said a shelf fell on me. I had floating shelves and I just said that I jumped on my bed and it fell and hit me in the eye.
Me: So, when did you really start drinking and doing pills?
Brittany: August-September of 2002. My freshman year mostly. I didn’t quit the pills until March or April of 2003 when I met Isidro. I still drank a lot when I was with Isidro though. The drinking shifted from me getting drunk alone to constant partying. Before Isidro, I dated a lot. I just felt a constant need for male attention. Once I got bored, I would move on. Once they separated, I just stayed with Isidro because he had heard a lot about my past and he had been there to listen.
Me: What kind of pills would you take?
Brittany: I took literally anything. One time I accidentally took Oxycontin because I told Cassie that I had a headache. She gave me the pill and said it would make me feel better. I usually took Zoloft that I got from my mom.
Me: Why was your mom taking pills?
Brittany: She was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was in eighth grade.
Me: How did that affect her mood and personality?
Brittany: She was always sleeping on the couch. It made me really frustrated that she wasn’t a part of my life. I was jealous that she got to be openly medicated, when I had to hide it. She went from being “Mrs. Mom” to not being in my life at all. Steve was on pills too for obsessive-compulsive disorder. I think that is why they started fighting a lot too. With him, I didn’t really see much of a difference when he started taking medicine.
Me: Tell me about your relationship with Cassie.
Brittany: Cassie and I met in middle school and we got really close at the end of eighth grade. She was kind of popular and she kind of took me under her wing. She started asking me to hang out and we were inseparable. We were always together. She always tried to help people because she was really gullible. She always had an ulterior motive for helping you though. She used her popularity against me all the time and would make me do whatever she wanted me to do. That is why I would take whatever pill she told me to take. I think I did it because I was afraid of losing her as a friend.
Me: Why were you afraid of losing her?
Brittany: I would have had to pick between friends and I didn’t want to do that. High school would have been really uncomfortable because I wouldn’t have fit in anymore. I was depressed and Cassie fed into it. She never tried to make me better; she kind of went depressed with me. We would write poems and she would cut herself. She was in a bad place, but I think she had a clear head about it. I didn’t.
Me: You said you would drink at school, did you ever get caught?
Brittany: No. I used to put the alcohol in water and Gatorade bottles. This one campus security guard I think knew because I would wander the school during class. He never really said anything though other than to get my head straight.
Me: What would you drink?
Brittany: Wine, tequila, or Bicardi. Sometimes we would mix it with the Gatorade already in the bottle. I used a lot of gum and perfume.
Me: How often would you drink at school?
Brittany: During the last half of my first semester, I was drinking at school everyday.
Me: Your parents never caught on?
Brittany: One time my mom was home when I got drunk in the garage. I came in and said that I needed water. Brian went and got me water and gulped this whole glass and I puked all over my ex-boyfriend. I puked again going up the stairs and my mom asked what we were doing. Brian bullshitted some story. Steve was asleep and my mom just didn’t care about the situation.
Me: What would you do when you stayed in your room all the time?
Brittany: I wrote poems, slept, talked on the phone.
Me: Did any of this help you?
Brittany: No, I burned myself when I was in my room a lot. I was talking to friends who weren’t helping me at all. I was a healthy girl, so I shouldn’t have been sleeping all the time. Nothing I tried was effective.
Me: When did you come out of this depression?
Brittany: The day Steve moved out until about a month after, I felt great. He moved on February 29, 2004. Pretty much until the end of eighth grade to the beginning of the first semester of my sophomore year, I was a mess. A month after he moved out, I got into cheer and my mom kind of disappeared out of my life.
Me: What was she doing?
Brittany: She was out getting drunk with her friends, or god only knows what. She never told me.
Me: How did this make you feel?
Brittany: Pissed. She was verbally abusive when she was drunk. One time she scratched up her car and couldn’t remember how it happened. One time, my mom was driving to a friend’s house to drink and I was in the car. I was about to get my learner’s permit, and wanted to drive down this hill. She said no and started driving down the hill. She control halfway down and we started spinning three or four times. We hit a stop sign, and when I stopped screaming, I saw that our front end was almost hanging off this slope that overlooked a canyon. I locked myself in my room after that.
Me: Did cheer help you through your mom’s newfound singleness?
Brittany: Yeah, I consumed myself with cheer 24/7. I was always there early and volunteered for any cheer events. I had been going out with Isidro for a little while at this point, so I wasn’t as frustrated. I found other ways of venting other than burning and taking pills. I stopped because I other things to occupy my time. I didn’t have time to think about the divorce and I was gone all the time doing activities. The best part was that I put myself in activities, so it wasn’t like they forced me to be in activities. My grades improved a lot and I focused a lot of my attention on school.
Me: How is your relationship with your parents now?
Brittany: I think all three of us have suppressed everything and we just live in the now. Steve is my father and my mother is my friend.
Me: Does that ever bother you?
Brittany: No because where he lacks, she thrives. Where she lacks, he thrives, so they balance out. He lacks emotional support and she gives it to me. She lacks guidance and stability, and he has all of that.
Me: What did your real dad do during all of this?
Brittany: My real dad wasn’t there ever. I only saw him twice a year and I didn’t care that he wasn’t there. Steve was always my dad, regardless of the fact that he wasn’t my real dad. My real dad, Bryan, was a Disneyland dad. He was fun when I saw him but he was really flaky. Bryan would call the week before and after I came to visit him, and that was it. He played no part in my life and still plays no part in my life. He has the “real dad” title, but has never done anything to fulfill that title.
Me: What happened to Cassie?
Brittany: Cassie told my boyfriend at the time that she was in love with him, so we just stopped being friends. Cassie was still popping pills and I wasn’t into that anymore when I started cheer. I just came to realize that she was crazy.

From Jacko to Wacko: The Story of Michael Jackson
I read the biography of Michael Jackson entitled “Michael Jackson: The Man Behind the Mask” by Bob Jones. When I began reading this captivating story about the King of Pop, I knew from different media outlets that he had a strong connection with young boys. This uncomfortable and inappropriate infatuation with staying a child and accompanying young boys ages seven to thirteen was only further detailed in this biography. I went into this book with no expectations because Michael Jackson is the oddest character of a man that I have ever seen. I feel even more strongly about this fact after reading this story.
The timeline of this book starts in 1973, when the Jackson Five were hitting it big. Bob Jones was asked to sign onto Michael Jackson’s company, MJJ Communications and Production Company, once he started his solo career. With the release of “Thriller” in 1982, Jackson’s personality and looks started to change. He underwent his first of many nose jobs, explaining that it was to help him breathe better and reach higher notes. He started lightening his skin, telling Oprah Winfrey in an interview that he had a skin condition called Vitiligo. Jones told countless stories about why Jackson decided to undergo plastic surgery and skin bleaching. Michael Jackson is racist. When Jackson moved into the infamous Neverland Ranch, which he named as a tribute to Peter Pan, he refused to see his older sister’s children because they were darker skinned. He told Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan to publicly denounce all of his Jewish friends, and released “They Don’t Care About Us,” which featured the lyrics “Jew me/sue me/everybody do me.” Jones also stated that Jackson rarely had African American employees work for him. Jones went on to discuss Jackson’s failed marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, only marrying Presley to gain access to her father’s estate. Throughout the book, Jackson is viewed as a manipulating man-child who was constantly seen with young boys. He would take boys on tour with him, keeping their parents entertained with shopping sprees and sightseeing, while he would lock himself away in his bedroom with the boys. In his 2004 trial, the police found a secret bedroom hidden behind his closet that was decorated in Peter Pan garb and pictures of babies. Jackson started spending more money than he had and owed hundred of millions in lawsuits for overdue bills. He even had to close his MJJ offices because he couldn’t pay the rent.
When Jackson was first accused of child molestation in1993, he was caught licking the accusers head, holding his hand, and kissing him on the cheek. Jackson even admitted that “If all the children in the world died, I would jump off a balcony.” He claimed that the world would be peaceful if everyone just slept in the same bed as children. The biggest mistake that Jackson made to his career was when he started faking injuries to get out of contracts and gigs. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but faked a broken leg so he wouldn’t have to perform. He had been lip-synching his past performances and didn’t want to do such a thing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He claimed to be doing benefit tours, while secretly being paid under the table. Jones told stories of how Jackson would never do anything for me and there was always an ulterior motive to his actions. Every public appearance had to be a media event that he planned. According to Jones, some of Jackson’s entourage even collected local kids to come to his appearances so it looked like he had uncontrollable fans. The book ends with his 2004 court case, which he was acquitted of all charges.
I think that Bob Jones wrote this book because he had worked closely with Jackson for over thirty years. After he was fired (Michael sent him a note saying that his services were no longer needed) and Jackson was taken into custody for the second molestation charge, journalists were calling him constantly for his story. Jones figured that he would rather write his story his way, and I think he did a really good job of it. He laid out all the details of Jackson’s life after his career started to slip away and it was quite interesting. I wish that there were more information on Jackson’s parents. Jones included a lot of information on Jackson’s brothers and sisters, whom Jackson shunned later in life. There was mention of Joe Jackson’s, Michael’s father, marital affairs and the child that he fathered outside of his marriage. Jones also discussed Joe’s bad temper and how he used to beat his wife and children. There wasn’t much discussion of Michael Jackson’s childhood either, which has been kept somewhat secret. All in all, I felt that this was a great depiction of Michael once he purchased Neverland Ranch. The book mainly focused on the scandals, which Jackson has many and they are all equally interesting. I highly recommend this biography to anyone who is interested in hearing an insider’s tale of the King of Pop.

“Delivering Lily” By Philip Lopate: Review
Phillip Lopate’s piece “Delivering Lily,” is my favorite nonfiction reading this semester. As a woman, I am terrified to go through childbirth. Of course, Lopate made it sound as painful as I thought it would be, if not more. However, he did it in a comical way that reassured me that everything would be all right when my time came to push out half of myself. “All that anguish and grief and triumph just to extract a writhing jumbo shrimp-it was comical” (436). Lopate really gets into the meat of what a new father feels in the delivery room. I found myself shaking my head in agreement when he spoke of Lamaze classes and the ridiculous counting the teachers tell you to do. I started feeling so bad for Cheryl as she kept pushing and pushing to no avail. I wanted to yell, “Give her the epidural already!”
I really liked the images that Lopate used to describe certain situations. “We sat like useless tourists who arrive in an economy hotel after a long trip, too tired to attempt the streets of a foreign city, yet too hemmed in by the unlovely room to enjoy a siesta” (424). I honestly can’t think of a better way to describe a woman in labor in an unforgiving hospital room. I loved how Lopate started his story with what he and Cheryl planned on doing once her water broke. First time parents always plan everything, but once the contractions really start, all hell breaks loose and the plans are just as useless as the husband (no offense guys).
Another excellent aspect of this story was how Lopate described all of the nurses and doctors that were involved. “Dr. Arita had a clinical terseness, never taking five words to say what four could accomplish” (425). These small descriptions really helped me picture what type of people Cheryl and Phillip were dealing with. In a way, there experience seemed like an episode of Seinfeld, two helpless people put into a planned situation where everything goes wrong.
“Leaving Babylon: A Walk Through the Jewish Divorce Ceremony”
by Judyth Har-Even: Review
“Leaving Babylon: A Walk Through the Jewish Divorce Ceremony” by Judyth Har-Even is an incredible description of traditional Jewish culture. When I started reading this story, I had to laugh because my father is from Israel, and my parents are divorced. Judyth’s descriptions of her experience hit close to home because they are traditions that I have been taught throughout my life. As a reader, I can see how painful her experience was, yet how wonderful the liberation is.
Judyth does a wonderful job of describing these traditions in such a way that allows non-Jewish readers to picture her situation with ease. The terms are described in a clear manner, and her writing flows so well that I almost forgot I was reading about religious traditions. “He is a short man wearing a white shirt with a frayed collar and black skullcap placed on his bald head like a dot over an i" (276). This line offers great description on traditional Jewish religious garb. As the reader, I can picture the character that she is talking about and what he is wearing to really give us the state of her surroundings. Of course, any Jewish person knows that this black skullcap is called a yarmulke.
I love how Judyth separated her story into acts, almost as if she was writing a play. The reader gets to see a breakdown of events, and her flashbacks to her marriage really help the reader understand where her marriage went wrong. “I hope he won’t explode this week, when the wine spills on the tablecloth” (283). My father is the same way as Judyth’s ex-husband. During Shabbat dinner and prayer, he would become furious if anything was spilled. Not because of tradition, but because that is when we all got together, and that is the kind of man he is.
Another aspect of Judyth’s writing that I loved was how she brought God and traditional wedding objects into the story as people. When she is describing her wedding she says, “Then he opens his lips slightly, just slightly, and takes a sip. God is crossing His fingers” (281). In her last line she says, “When a man divorces the wife of his youth, even the altar sheds tears” (285). We can see that Judyth is relieved to be divorced, but the strong Jewish traditions that she hangs on to causes her to cry at the idea of a failed marriage. In the Jewish tradition, it is not looked well upon to get a divorce. A marriage is a blessing of God, and like Judyth said, God is not around in a divorce ceremony.