The Bittersweet Life of Amy Clark(EDITING)

Chapter Three

     Her laughter came to a slow end. “Look I have a gift on judging character. If you were an ax murder I would know.”

     I slowly stepped into her room and looked around. “How would you be able to tell?”

    I heard the door close behind me and spun around to see her considering me for a moment. “Well, you act a little skittish. You don’t have any visible scars or tattoos and then there is your body language. I can read a person’s body language like it was a book.”

    I turned back to take another gander at the light purple walls and fluffy bunnies lining her dresser top. Everything was so pristine, lacy and expensive. If I didn’t know any better I could have sworn myself in an advertisement.

    Her words seeped in and I shrugged out of my backpack. It was starting to weigh a ton. From the corner of my eye I saw her plop her canvas bag onto a plush chair and stride to her mega boom box. It was a killer model yet my attention drifted from it to her.  I didn’t know what to expect or how to act. It was all too surreal and yet as she opened a jewel case and slipped a compact disc into the lifted lid my fears eased. They didn’t entirely disappear. Maybe all she intended after all was an innocent listen to some tunes. In a way I was relieved and still wanting more.

    Then still a tiny part of me thought perhaps in a few minutes laughing and pointing girls would burst through her door and all my worst nightmares would surface. If it did come to past I could always snuff myself out in one quick jump out the window. On my way down I would be sure to leave a trail of piss and liquid shit behind. I bet the sigh of that would make their petty stomachs churn.

    “I love this band,” she said and began snapping her fingers once the beat took an upswing in tempo.

    I inched near her closet. It was open a crack; just enough for me to see into and make sure no one was hiding. Then I thought they must be under the bed. I considered getting down on my hands and knees to check but figured that would look rather suspicious. My eyes then shifted. The door did open but only her Mom popped inside with a plate of cookies.

    “How about a snack before supper,” she asked and offered one first to Alice then me. I could only imagine what Jessie would say if he were here.

    I shook my head. I didn’t know why but I felt his eyes on me then. He would know, I thought. He would know if I ate anything other than his dick infested food.

    “No thanks,” I said quietly.

    “Are you okay?”

    I realized my eyes were locked on the cookies, wide and full of caution. I shook it loose and faked a smile, “I am fine. Just daydreaming,” I nervously laughed.

    She took a second look and slowly a gleam returned to her rosy cheeks and eyes. She closed the door behind her and once again we were left alone.

    You know what has always flabbergasted me? How can someone who claims to be righteous condemn me for how I choose to live my life? Isn’t that like a sin in itself? Doesn’t the quote go something like “Judge not lest ye be judged?” I would really like to know who or what gives them the right. This I thought about while sitting on her bed. I don’t know why the thoughts came to me. I didn’t want to consider it. Perhaps people are judgmental by nature. I don’t know. Whatever the case may be I truly believe they are full of contradictions.

    Alice crawled next to me. She lay on her stomach, her head tilted to one side. The music slowly seeped into my brain. It was louder than I remembered it. I found her stare, her smile and wondered why she had invited me over. Surely there must be a catch in it somewhere. Maybe tomorrow would be the true test to her kindness. If they went to school and people weren’t snickering more than usual when I entered a room then that would be a good sign everything is cool, if not…I don’t know.

    “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

     There was much to tell, but suddenly and quite profusely I began spilling my guts. It was as though I was seeing a shrink before actually seeing a shrink. My Mom married young to an abusive jerk who later blew his brains out because she took me and left for her home state. I never considered my true father to be a so called “jerk”, but hey the word is funny. We rode a Greyhound bus all the way from Wyoming to Minnesota and arrived on the doorstep of my overly religious and hateful grandmother.

     Now my grandmother was a real piece of work. She had this yard ruler she would hit me with and really for no good reason that I could remember. Though she is now deceased those painful memories and words she left me were hard to forget. Like when I was nine and she called me a little whore. I could have been as young as eight, but still in her eyes I was a filthy whore trying to seduce my uncle. Excuse me but back then I didn’t even know what sex was and thought the naughty areas were gross. I didn’t know what a whore even was let alone how to be one. But still as always my precious cousins never got any of her shit. They were always the good children of the bunch and I was always the fucking trash.

     My birthday parties were completely forgotten when my cousins were celebrated with style and lavish gifts. Back then when my mom still cared what happened to me she still tried to give me what she could. And of course I knew we were poor. I understood it to a certain degree. I just didn’t understand why I was different from all the rest and why I didn’t get as many gifts as they did. I also wondered why only one or two relatives showed up to my birthday parties when at my cousins they would arrive in truck loads. It didn’t seem fair and even now the memories sting. Ten years later I am still their biggest disappointment only now I am old enough to know the shit they hide even from themselves. I tell you it is good to have my skills sometimes. But I won’t get into that now. My mom met Jessie around this time. From there on my life was a shit hole floating in a lake of fire. I never thoughts things could get any worse but I was fucking wrong!

     From Jessie I learned a lot of things. For one, you can never hope for much in life when you are born without advantage. The second thing was that evil does exist in the world because he is fucking living proof of it. My faith in religion may lack, but I swear evil does exist. Just take one look into his “soul” and see for yourself. To be honest, if souls exist I doubt he has one or maybe he has sold it for booze and drugs. I don’t know.

    He told me once that he was Jesus Christ because they shared the same initials and the same date of birth. My first reaction to this was mixed. At first I thought he was fucking insane but then I figured he really does think of himself as the son of god because he acts the part. He orders people around and people fear him. I am not sure why they fear him, but they do. Shit, even I fucking fear him, okay? Only I fear him because he has the power to make my life either worse or a lot worse.

    “You give him that power,” Alice said.

    I looked at her.

    She sat up and swung her legs over the edge. “He feeds off of fear. Once you fear him he controls you. Men like him use it to their advantage.”

    It made sense. Jessie did seem to love control.

    “Yeah, I suppose that is true.”

    For the first time when I slid my gaze from her head to toe I didn’t think about her writhing beneath me in a fit of passion. It sort of surprised me. Instead I saw an intelligent human being. Of course, I always regarded most women as intelligent creatures. They thought with their brains and their hearts while men sometimes thought with their dicks. I can’t say as all men are like that. Some aren’t and those need to be commended for having a better sense of control, but for those that believe sex is the world…I would feel sorry for them if their dicks disappear or get cut off. How would they think then?

     In Jessie’s sad world, sex was the only thing a woman was good for. Well, okay he also thought a woman’s duty was to support the man in any way possible. Then after a hard day’s work he expected her to wash dishes, make supper and clean whatever else needed to be cleaned while he sat on his lazy fucking white ass. Oh, and children in his house, are slaves. That is why he had children from a previous marriage and that was what I was. In fact his exact words were, “Children are good only for one thing; slave work. If a man molests a child he should just kill it to prevent it from talking and pointing the blame.”

     “What a pig,” Alice responded.

   “He is more than a pig,” I said softly.

    And he was.