One day, right after school had started, I ran into two girls on the way home from school.
“Hey asshole, where are you going?” I heard a female voice from behind me call out. I knew from the menacing, heckling tone to just keep quiet and keep walking.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, stupid. Are you deaf?”
I just kept walking, my heart pounding hard in my chest.
All of a sudden two girls were standing right in front of me. They looked like tough cookies. One seemed to be around my age, the other somewhat older. The older one had hair that was dyed pitch black and highlighted with white streaks, and the younger one had hair shorter than mine, making her look more like a boy than a tough girl. Both of them wore skin-tight jeans and tight T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up to hold a cigarette pack. I was pretty sure they must be the Story sisters.
“What are you doing in this neighborhood?” the older one challenged. “Did we tell you you could walk here?”
Petrified, I decided to try to use my charm on them. “I’m new here,” I said cheerfully. “My name is Beverly.”
My strategy fell flat. “Well, new girl, you have to get past us if you plan on getting home,” the older one said. At that they each took turns shoving me in the chest.
As the younger girl pushed me, something inside me snapped. All the pent-up anger and rage I felt toward my mother exploded inside me and I began to push back.
Faced with this resistance, the older girl hit me so hard in the stomach that I doubled over in pain.
Tears streamed down my face, not only because of the pain but because I felt so alone and so helpless. I wanted to just give up—to sit down on the ground and cry. But then I felt the rage inside me building up again and I rose up and hit the girl back, hard, right in the stomach, nearly knocking her down on the ground. She looked as surprised by what I had done as I was. She stood there stunned for a few minutes, steadying herself, and then she started to laugh. “Hey,” she said, “you’ve got quite a punch there.”
With that, they turned and walked away. They never bothered me again.
I was shocked by the intensity of the rage that had risen up inside me. It scared me. It felt like it had taken me over, and I didn’t like that feeling of being out of control. But I also had another feeling: empowerment. I had stood up for myself; I could have given up, but I hadn’t. I could have felt helpless, like I had with Steve and like I often felt with my mother, but instead I’d hit back. Suddenly I felt less vulnerable in this scary place. If I could stand up to those tough girls, I told myself, I could do anything.
There was yet a third feeling stirring inside me as well: pride. I felt proud of myself for standing my ground and fighting back, and for just a moment that feeling of pride overshadowed the overwhelming feeling of shame I’d been carrying around inside me for so long.
chapter 20
When it came to finding friends in this new neighborhood, I had “slim pickins,” as we said in Bakersfield. My usual practice of trolling the streets for people to visit hadn’t turned up much. There were a few kids whose fathers worked in the oil fields outside of Bakersfield—they tended to be the ones with the chain-linked fences. I didn’t have much contact with the children in these homes since their mothers kept them protected behind the fences, watching them like hawks and protecting them from the unsavory elements in the neighborhood.
There was a strange family called the Hansons who lived about a block away and whose oldest girl had a horse that she kept in a lot next door. My attempts to befriend her were for naught; she was in love with her horse and didn’t have room in her life for human beings. The other Hanson girl was about two years younger than me and I started hanging out with her a little, but she was too boring for me. I was used to hanging around younger kids if I had to, but they needed to be extra fun or be able to tell good stories— something that made them interesting. This girl was so far into herself and so shut down that she had absolutely nothing to offer.
Finally, I found the Embreys. I got to know them initially by babysitting the younger girl, Patricia. She was probably only about three years younger than me, but her mother was desperate for a babysitter and I looked and acted a lot more mature than my eleven years.
I liked hanging out with Patricia. She was sweet and pretty— and she did whatever I said. Patricia’s older sister, Linda, wasn’t around much, and when she was she basically ignored Patricia and me. Her mother always complained that Linda should stay home more and be willing to help babysit Patricia, but Linda was a wild child. She was four years older than me and in high school. She never had any girls over from school, but there were always plenty of boys hanging around her.
I’d been babysitting Patricia for about two months when Linda suddenly started noticing me—asking me questions like she was genuinely interested in me. I was thrilled to be getting attention from her.
Linda didn’t have a pretty face. In fact, she almost looked like a witch with her long, crooked nose and sharp chin. She had long black hair and wore lots of eye makeup, which made her dark eyes even darker. Boys hung around her because she had a knockout body and because she was what they called “fast” or “cheap.” At least, that was the gossip around the
