Cortez's Story: Part 1

           I've been focusing all of my writing energy on what was supposed to be a simple short story for my creative writing course. I started it three times and gave up on each, feeling that I wasn't on the right track. I want to share it here because a.) you are not likely to meet me in real life b.) you wont know what's true or not in it and c.) I'd love your feedback! Positive, negative, neutral; all I ask is that you please explain why you feel the way you do about it. And if, bmac, you stumble on this, enjoy :p ! 

             And a hardly-necessary warning: there are some 'f-bombs' and one scene which might make you squirm, but I tried to keep the ick factor to a minimum because I am no Chuck Palahniuk. (Pygmy or Invisible Monsters anyone?)                       

           I’m told that my mother and I used to be close, once upon a time. My memories of our interactions start a little bit before I started puberty, so I can’t remember much of the first and only years we got along. I grew up with the belief that she was a world-class beauty and had a kind, deep, spiritual soul. She let me eat cookie dough if I made an effort at pretending to hide it, enrolled me in all kinds of extracurricular activities and volunteered at my school. She initiated popcorn day, something continued at Zeal Bay Elementary to this day, inspiring me to feel that I could make changes in my world. I wanted to have her colourful, modern bohemian style, and to travel the world working on a cruise ship like she had.

 The only sore spot in our relationship at first was her oppressing desire for me to wear dresses. They were all that she would hold up for me to try on when we went shopping. Not wanting to disappoint her, I’d lie and say I liked the one I knew she herself would wear. The dress would come home to my closet and never see the light of day until some cocktail party or other adult-organized event took place. Understandably, she grew frustrated that I was quickly outgrowing hundreds of dollars’ worth of girly clothes. She stopped holding anything up for me in the store, dresses or otherwise, and we quit sport shopping. Only after a major growth spurt would she haul me back out to the mall.

      Puberty started for me in the second grade, and all of a sudden I found myself wanting to wear dresses. Not only that, I wanted to read Tiger Beat, go to nail salons and hang out with girls. But for my mom, the line had been drawn in cement rather than sand. She refused to “waste” money on the cute, trendy clothes all of my female classmates wore. It was the same story for the nail salon, although Santa did bring me a few dollar-store nail polishes. I was still dead-set against wearing a training bra, though I feigned interest after realizing bra shopping would mean one-on-one girl time with Mom. It ended in a fight, and Mom storming out into the mall, leaving eight years-old me crying in the washed-out pink store.

      As I grew up, I became interested in all the things Mom had wanted to share with me four or five years previous. My tomboy side was fading into curiosity about boys and being popular, but she refused to give me advice, declaring “I’m your mother, not your friend.” She had checked out of the relationship around the time of the bra incident, and had no idea that at only twelve going thirteen, I was sinking into a pit of depression. I felt like the odd man out in my family. How could I not when I was the center of every fight, and my mother, father and brother got along effortlessly when I sulked silently in the background? She had no idea that I didn’t have any friends and felt like an alien observing a new species around my peers. It took a few months for me settle at the murky bottom, where I wallowed happily, feeling I was doing my part by not being a part of the family. Each day, it grew ever more comfortable and more of a home than my parents’ house. I had no real home, I constantly reminded myself, and no one could make me feel better, only guiltier.

      “Dad left because of you,” my brother spat at me, a few weeks after our parents announced they were divorcing. Dad was long gone back to his native country, having already bought a house and found, we hypothesized, a younger girlfriend to cook and clean for him.

      “No he didn’t,” I hissed. Back then, Fredrick was four foot nothing and I was in the habit of knocking him around when he spoke to me like this. I took it upon myself to act as big brother and so took pride in the angry pink, puckered half-moon scar scooped into his cheek by my fingernails.

      “Yeah, actually he did,” was his toneless reply. His voice was cold and his pale blue eyes glittered like diamonds. “You’re such a bitch he couldn’t stand to be here – with you. Mommy and Dad and me, we have fun. You wreck it.” A malicious smirk danced across the ten year olds lips, the colour of wild berry juice.

      “Shut up, assface,” I started.

      “No, Taylor, you need to shut up,” Mom sighed wearily, turning away from the sink of dirty breakfast dishes. She faced the kitchen table head on and I stopped picking at my burnt pancakes. Something in her face reminded me of the few times when she’d taken off in the car or on her bike for a few hours. There was a leaden tiredness in her eyes and her skin no longer glowed. When did it stop doing that, I wondered. When did Mom get so old?

      “But Mom –“

      “He’s right, Taylor. You always told us we should just get divorced since we fight so much.” Her voice mimicked my high-pitched one. She gripped the counter edge until her swollen knuckles shook. “You got what you wanted Taylor. You made it so … fucking miserable for him when he came home, always screaming and bitching and just making it absolute hell for the rest of us!”

      There was a long moment where our eyes apologized but we were too proud to use words. I waited for her to exhale sharply, to berate Fredrick for saying such hurtful and untrue things and to run over and envelop me in a meaningful hug. I wasn’t an expert on divorce but I knew enough to know that your parents are supposed to reassure you that it wasn’t your fault in any way. I couldn’t find any trace of an apology as I searched her face desperately, and she didn’t rush over and wrap her arms around me, start crying and apologize for the next week. Instead she watched emotionlessly as I fought off tears until the muscles around my mouth were shaking so hard it burned like the razors I used to dig into my few pads of baby fat. Fredrick, his point proven, had returned to eating syrup drenched pancakes, cooked to a golden brown perfection. I tore off to sob in the narrow space behind my bed and the wall, crying so hard that I gagged and retched until I couldn’t breathe.

I already had a habit of skipping school when that scene went down at the end of grade eight. It didn’t matter to me that I skipped two straight weeks of school when I invariably wound up with near-perfect marks. I realized that school was essentially free babysitting for parents, who were already irritatingly lazy; or, my remaining one was. It boggled my mind that only a select few of my classmates understood that if you just shut up, listened to the lesson and did the work we’d be given free time to do as we pleased. Some teachers were even cool enough to turn a blind eye if you left class early or skipped out once or twice a month, providing you did what was required of you.

While my classmates would talk and flirt, I pretended to sleep on my desk and spent the time steering away thoughts from the divorce. For a long time, Mom went on like nothing at all had changed by immediately re-marrying her job. When that went sour she blamed the continuing relationship on supporting us kids, though she received fat child support checks and went shopping for herself every week.

My reaction was to cover up the hurt stemming from the feeling that the divorce was my doing. What can I say: I am my mother’s daughter in almost every way. I threw my energy into the relationship with my first serious boyfriend and maintaining a snarly, don’t-mess-with-me attitude. Next the two year relationship with David came crashing down and the pain that I had jammed into every available crevice of my soul became unbearable. The messy tar of unmet expectations, disappointment and howling hurt could have flowed out naturally, even beautifully, into writing or music. That’s how it would have happened, had I not discovered drugs; or more specifically, easy access to them. It was like an overstuffed closet exploding with each cap of Ecstasy or inhale of stinging MDMA powder.

At least once a month after the break-up, I went to raves and out-of-control bush parties. The main purpose, as I interpreted it, was to take as many drugs as you could without overdosing, dance like crazy, and become best friends with everyone you encountered. It was exactly what I wanted at that time, having always had a forbidden curiosity about what it was like to be high and the whole “popular” scene in general. It was a relief to be blasted out of my pain by whatever upper was available and my then ‘friends’ recommended. Introverted since puberty, it was exciting to feel like I could talk to anyone and more so when they responded like we had known each other our whole lives.  I thought it was very cool and grown up to “Mexican hitchhike”, which is when you lay in the bed of a pickup truck hidden by blankets or tarps. It wasn’t until a dark, dangerous man that I confused for a well-known and harmless dealer tried to kidnap me that I realized I had a problem. Even then, it took a few months to understand and learn from all that happened that spring night.

I came back to the nightmare that was reality on May twenty-third of my sixteenth year, a Sunday and date I’ll always remember. It took some backtracking, but we figured I had at least nine caps, or doses, of ecstasy that night. I remember walking around with an older guy in a tri-corner Pirates of the Caribbean hat, feeding me pills like they were Skittles. The few people who saw me bop up periodically throughout the night, and I’ve talked to since, are far from convinced I was on E; rather, I was behaving like someone on crystal meth. It explains why I felt like I was dying after the six am dose wore off, why when I looked at the sky I saw it ripping apart and why I felt there was no way to escape but to die. As I started to remember my actions that night I felt worse and worse, and to this day I remember more each time I allow those memories to bubble up. It was eight months since I had skidded into the rave scene when I was inspired to clean up of my own volition.