BRUISE VIOLET

October 11, 1994.

The girl's body lay curled in a fetal position at the foot of the bed, as used up and discarded as
the piles of shriveled candy wrappers and dirty clothes littering the room. The once sky-blue walls
around her had faded to a dull lead. The only light came from the few gasps of sun that could penetrate
the single small window hung with sagging, broken blinds. They brought little warmth to the girl’s ashen
skin before being smothered by the late October air seeping through the zigzags of duct tape tacked
over the fissures in the windowpane.

Though the girl’s body looked cold and dead her mind was not. In her dream she floated on top
of a sea of black water, offering no struggle as she was slowly submerged, sinking deeper and deeper,
her senses lulling further and further away, searching for oblivion in the return to her embryonic form.
And like a frightened child ripped from the haze of the womb, her waking came harsh and abrupt. Her
eyes opened only a crack, just enough for the light to pierce right to the center of her skull.

Ahhh…! Sweet Jesus, my head is tore up!

She turned her body away from the window--too quick, and her stomach sloshed with the remains of
her Lost Weekend liquid therapy---only it was a lost Monday, in her case. Taking several deep breaths,
she tried to gain mastery over the tempest raging within.

Okay. It’s okay. I got this bitch, she thought, but heedless of her mind's encouragement her belly
violently rebelled. She stumbled off the bed but the sagging mattress sucked her body back in and she
tripped over the yellow gingham sheet knotted around her ankles. Her arms reached to brace her head
from impact with the floor, leaving nothing to support her fragile stomach, which now emptied itself
explosively around her. The exertion sapped the remainder of her strength, so she let her body drop to
the floor and lay there for a few minutes, thankful she’d made it over the first hurdle of the day. But the
musty smell ingrained in the carpet and the acrid stench of vomit prevented any real rest, so she soon
opened her eyes.

Though it strained the limits of her impaired mental processes she managed to wonder sarcastically
what it was about a fifth of Mad Dog and 3 hours of sleep that did this to her every...damn...time.

What time was it anyway?

Mickey’s white-gloved hands grotesquely contorted to point at 7:00 AM--the exact hour her alarm rang
every school day. Only she hadn’t set the thing last night, ‘coz she sure as hell knew she wouldn’t feel
like going to class the next morning. But trying to pull another Ferris Bueller today wasn’t going to cut it,
though. She groaned and forced herself up to a sitting position, rubbing at her temples for a few
minutes before she felt ready to assess last night’s damage. Except for the jackhammer symphony in
head, the carnage seemed minimal—the old bed sheet seemed to have caught the worst of the mess,
which was a relief, really. She'd been wanting an excuse to get rid of the ugly damn thing and she sure
had one now.

The girl rose and began to roll the sheet up into a ball. As she folded the edges of the fabric up her hand
brushed against a coarse braided strand and she looked down to find yet other victim of last night's
excesses: Her once-favorite plaything lay face down in a pool of vomit.

The girl felt a momentary twinge of sadness but it soon passed. All the Holly Hobbie memorabilia
seemed out of place amongst her new psychedelia collection anyway. Still, she couldn't stop thinking
about the poor doll's fall from grace: Holly has hit rock bottom, she thought, smiling to herself. But it
was long past the time to clear out all the schmaltzy crap she still had lying around, so she decided to
finally consign it the refuse pile.

Her eyes came to rest on the large picture strategically placed over the sickly brown bulge years
of water leakage had caused along the far wall of her room. Its whispery smears of finger-paint formed
the fanciful shape of a polka-dot horse nursing a baby-pink foal. She'd had it since she was six years old,
when she'd made it as a gift for her Grandma Snyder. The old lady had been so elated she'd gone to a
print shop and had it enlarged and mounted onto a poster board for her. Time had made it fade and
wrinkle at the edges, and this former piece de resistance was now flanked on either side by even larger
black light posters.

That old thing needs to go too, the girl decided, but somehow she wasn’t ready to part with it
just yet. She tossed the wadded-up ball of bedding in the direction of the window and focused her
attention on a more immediate concern. Ah, there it was… She crouched down and angled her arm
under the bed to retrieve the thin spiral-bound notebook lying there. It had evidently tumbled out of
bed alongside her but thankfully had been out of spew range. Another visual sweep revealed the empty
wine bottle and the Walkman still faintly pulsing with industrial beats, the remaining evidence of her
late night tryst with the muse.

She didn't quite remember now what had fueled her decision to resist the more salubrious call
for some much-needed sleep, but maybe her frantic midnight scribblings would be pretty interesting
this time. She flipped through a few pages, hoping to find some hardcore Charles Bukowski shit, maybe.
She could reluctantly admit she’d never known the name until she popped in a rented copy of “Barfly”
at Kat’s place one night, but since the man had kicked it earlier this year the local librarian had broken
down and ordered a couple of his books. Which she’d promptly checked out and had no particular
inclination to return, even though she could probably recite a good 2/3rds of the poems by heart at this
point.

the beautiful are found in the edge of a room

crumpled into spiders and needles and silence

and we can never understand why they

left, they were so

beautiful.
 they don’t make it,

the beautiful die young

and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.

That she could ever match that sublime bit of wisdom was extreme wishful thinking on her
part—a bunch of drivel about “the lone moon weeping” was usually what came out of nights like
yesterday. Still, she gave herself the temporary benefit of the doubt and tried to decipher some of the
jagged script but soon gave up.

She wrenched open the top drawer of her dresser and tucked the journal back into the pile with
the others. The girl then waded through the stack of her other six-month-overdue library books on the
floor to open the window and rid the room of the overwhelming wino smell that upchuck and cheap
liquor had left in its wake. She heaved the rancid bed sheet up and over, dropping it outside between
two overturned garbage cans and the ancient rusting push mower no one used since their lawn grass
had long died. She picked up the MD 20/20 bottle and tilted it from side to side in the vain hope she
might be able to squeeze a last bit of nectar out of it. But no, it was heart-breakingly empty and the
knowledge that that was the last of her cache brought a wave of anxiety that raised the hackles on her
forearms.

Okay, time for a bit of Zen, she thought, mentally reassuring herself all is well, it’s gonna be
okay, I can always score more later. She held her arms outraised to her side and took one last long
inhale through the nose. It was time to get the rear in gear, for reals. If she got her ass moving she might
actually make it to school on time. And once she got there…well, she’d get through the day, somehow.

A quick toss landed the bottle out the window and on top of the sheet where she could retrieve
it all for safe disposal out past the train tracks later. She was damn lucky her mother didn't come in and
find her like this. Uh oh, where was her mother? The girl vowed to go check on her once she was looking
more presentable.

She padded down the hallway to the bathroom and turned the knobs on the shower up to full
blast. The water sputtered and whined for several moments before deciding to provide a decent flow. A
haze of fog began to waft up and condense along the strips of green wallpaper, causing them to pucker
like delicate fish scales along the wall---the signal the temperature might at least be fit for the living. She
stepped inside, making the habitual concerted effort to plant her feet to either side of the large rust
stain around the drain. The water pounded out the last of her queasiness and upon exiting she swept
away the mist from the mirror and studied her reflection.

Ugh. Get thee behind me, Satan!

She could practically chart a course to Kankakee in the red lines criss-crossing her eyes. Jerking
open one of the little drawers beneath the sink, she began rifling through the piles of loose Band-Aids,
old Avon samples and half-empty bottles of skincare products in search of the Visine. Squirt, blink, wait
a few seconds---well, a little better. The Kate Moss-y heroin chic look might be hype, but she’d be the
last one to pull that off successfully. Chryssy baby, you are letting yourself go, big time.
 The waif-thing she had going at least, she thought as she probed the newfound hollows under
her cheekbones. The new liquid diet had really been working her over--her face was a lot thinner, sallow
though. She rummaged through the opposite drawer, bypassing the fruit-flavored lip-glosses to find a
more recent acquisition---a cheap purplish-red lipstick she'd "liberated" from the downtown pharmacy.
One swipe across the mouth was enough to show it only made her look more ghoulish than before, so
she wiped the bruise-colored stain off and deposited the tube in the overflowing wastebasket.

Her hunt for something clean to wear was even less successful. What she did find seemed way
too baggy, so she conducted a sniff test on the dirty clothes piled in one enormous colorful heap in the
corner. About halfway through her excavation she found her favorite shirt-- the one with the Swan Song
logo—and it seemed to pass.

She searched once again in the cosmetic drawer and found another of her grandmother's gifts---
a little pink perfume bottle—“Love's Baby Soft”. Well, Grammy, that hasn't been my amorous
experience, she thought with a smirk. Chrystal sprayed the powdery scent on liberally. She guessed this
should mask any lingering malodor.

Damn, it was embarrassing though. With a moue of distaste, she made a mental note to
herself---before her likely descent into oblivion tonight, do some goddamn laundry, lazy ass.

She walked back down the hall to her mother's bedroom and rapped lightly on the door. No
answer. She turned the knob slowly, peeked her head in, "Mom?"

The woman lay asleep in the exact position Chrystal had woken in--curled up on top of the
bedspread, pale hair spread around her in a fan. Only the last physical detail distinguished mother from
daughter. The ethereal blonde hue was a genetic blessing not passed from mother to daughter, a fact
Chrystal had always mourned, her own shade reminding one of nothing so much as lumpy Malt-O-Meal.

Chrystal noticed the woman still had on her cheap hospital scrubs and was struck once again by
the realization her mother was surely the only Caucasian on earth--minus Marilyn Monroe in the “Seven
Year Itch, of course--that actually looked good in white. As haggard as Jennifer Perrin appeared of late,
she still retained a faint romantic air, even more so now, with her lips parted and hands reaching out in
mute supplication.

Like a consumptive angel, Chrystal supposed, a modern day Camille. She was hesitant to jolt her
mother from the peace of sleep, but the need to make sure everything was okay won out.

"Jen?"

Her mother stirred, her eyes fluttering open.

"Chryssy? Oh, baby, I'm sorry."

"Forget it. I got up all right. How's your back?"

Her mother's eyes welled with tears.

"It's…okay."

Chrystal shook her head. "You need to quit that job."

 "It will get better when I finally get my license."

Chrystal only frowned at this, another of her mother's groundless reassurances.

"You were better off working at Roscoe's, Jen."

Her mother closed her eyes again, then licked her lips and spoke.

"I bought some orange juice. I think I put it in the refrigerator…"

"I'll take care of it."

Chrystal made her way to the kitchen and found the plastic grocery sack on the table and the
carton of Tropicana still out on the kitchen counter as expected. She rummaged through the pile of dirty
dishes in the sink to find a serviceable glass, then picked up the worn down sponge from the soap dish
and scoured as best she could before refilling it with the juice. A dragnet of the remaining items in the
sack revealed a blessed container of Advil. She eagerly opened it, popping a couple of the aspirin under
her tongue before pocketing another two. On returning to her mother's room, she found la dame aux
camelias had managed to sit up, and taking the glass from her daughter she swallowed the two pills
handed to her without protest.

"Thank you, baby…are you sure you're over that flu bug you had yesterday? You'd still don't look
very good." The woman reached out to her daughter's brow.

Chrystal withdrew a barely perceptible step away from her mother.

"Don't worry about it; I'm fine. It's you that needs to stay in bed, Mom. I told you this CNA thing
was a bad idea. If you don't feel better when I get home I'm calling in sick for you. You need to talk to
Kathy about getting your old job back. So it pays less, big deal. We'll get by. We always do."

Jennifer nodded, the dutiful child. "Before you go..." Chrystal watched as her mother reached
over to the ghastly tooled leather hippie purse lying on the nightstand beside her and extracted a long
white envelope. She took it without thinking.

As soon as it was in her hand, she knew it for what it was. It announced itself loudly enough.

"Read it, Chryssy. We need to stick together, especially now…" Her mother's voice trailed off
again, gone no doubt to that faraway place where people change and things always get better. Chrystal
repressed a grimace. By rights she ought to set the fucking thing on fire in front of her mother's face, but
why be cruel? Who was she to not let poor frail Jennifer drift through her little fantasy world when she
had her own way of escaping reality, after all?
 Chrystal balled her fist over the letter and shoved it down to the farthest recesses of her front
pocket. With a “Gee, I really need to get going, Jen; so, uh, see ya,” she beat a hasty retreat from her
mother and any more emotional albatrosses she might try to hang around her neck. After a few initial
crinkling sounds the sheer corporeality of the letter seemed to vanish. But even the thought that she’d
actually laid hands on something he had touched made her screw her face up in disgust.

Well, whatever the felon had to say, she had no interest in it. Her mother may well pass for
Greta Garbo, but Kelly Dean Perrin, Sr.--AKA "the sperm donor", AKA "Dad"---is no Robert Taylor, that's
for damn sure. Hmm…dousing with napalm, a coating of nitroglycerin, dropkick into Jupiter like
Shoemaker-Levy….

So lost was the girl in her in her plans to shitcan the letter as quickly and creatively as possible
she’d almost failed to notice her steps had slowed. No, such pretense was futile…Chryssy baby, stop
frontin’. With a mammoth exhalation she gave in and stopped in front of the lone door at the end of the
hallway. She had never failed to do exactly this, never neglected to stop right here and run tentative
fingertips across each whorl in the grain every time she passed, every day for the last two years.

No, she couldn’t pretend otherwise but she wasn’t dumb enough to think that her sense of
loyalty made any damn bit of difference to anyone, even to herself. She drew back and rapped one
ragged set of fingernails against the wood. No, she was a realist, goddamn it, and she wasn’t going have
a breakdown about it. And what a fucking asshole he was anyway, leaving her ugly ass to her ugly life.
No, the lucky beautiful bastard didn’t deserve shit. It was just that... well, just that every shrine deserved
a ritual, right?

She sighed. It all required too much deep thought for her to contemplate today. It hurt her head
worse than it already did, and besides, she didn’t have the time for it. She was already gonna be late for
school, and couldn’t afford to be any later.

She’d only walked a few steps away from her front door before gooseflesh raised on her bare
forearms. So she did need her mother for something, she thought--to remind her to take a jacket with
her in the morning, if nothing else. It would only have taken a moment to go back inside and grab an old
flannel, but she knew the temptation to crawl back into bed for the rest of the day would probably
prove too strong to resist.

Maintaining forward motion was going to be a big enough struggle already, she thought, vainly
reaching up to block out the deafening rumble and downshifting of trucks entering the city maintenance
yard behind her. She groaned and took a shaky hop over the curb and into the gutter, then a leap across
the oil reservoir leaching from beneath the beat-up stock car that had squatted on cinder blocks in front
of her house for the last five years. Just whom the eco-hazard belonged to she had no idea and even less
interest. As Chrystal saw it, if she just minded her own damn business surely the rest of humanity should
have the courtesy to do the same.

One squint towards the medicinal pink house next door dispelled that noble ideal. Oh great,
Jabba the Slut is up early today.
 She made a judicious point of avoiding eye contact although she knew there’d be no way of
blocking any sonic assault. When none came, Chrystal couldn’t help peeking over. The woman had
smaller fish to fry, it seemed. Alas, she was too caught up in chivying a buzzing cloud of children into her
battered station wagon to accuse anyone of Big Wheel theft or alienation of whichever sleazebag’s
affections she was currently enjoying.

So that ginormous pie hole had an ‘off’ switch after all. “Well, hellelujah, things really are
looking up!” Chrystal muttered, her mood instantly lifting even as she was forced to her hold her breath
as she passed through the noxious cloud of Jabba’s car exhaust. The bitch had been at her and her
mother’s throats for months, shit-talking and irony of ironies, even hurling the insult “White trash!” at
Jen one time. Obviously the woman couldn’t fit her fat ass in front of a mirror to see her own shit
reflected back seven-fold. It was only when she’d gotten a few feet away she caught the obscenity-laced
invective: “Why don’t ya get a fuckin’ job, ya fuckin’ drag-ass bastard!”

Chrystal stopped. Her neighbor was already on the fightin’ side of CPS, surely she wasn’t trying
to run a Fagin on one of her raggedy brood? Chrystal yanked her head back around.

Instantly she wished she could do a mental Etch-a-Sketch shake on the image that would surely be
burned into her retinas for all eternity: a man standing on the porch in saggy Fruit-of-the-Looms and
cowboy boots, kicking back a longneck Miller with one hand and the other reaching back to scratch his
ass.

There was nothing left in her belly to disgorge, but the queasiness hit her anyway and she
wavered on her feet as a rush of shakiness passed over her. She desperately willed herself to take a
series of small shuffling steps towards a nearby tree denuded by autumnal leaf fall.

“Oh shit, oh shit this is not good…” She was sure if she could just get some respite from the
damn scratchy morning light she might be able to hold it together.

Before she could make it to safety her toe struck an exposed edge of concrete and she lurched
forward, only managing to plant her hands either side of the massive trunk at the last moment. It took
only the slightest effort to reach her arms around into a safe embrace. Taking slow deep breaths, she
lifted her forehead, then relaxed forward to rest her cheek against its rough, raised grain.

Minutes passed before she reluctantly opened her eyes. She should probably let go before
someone called to report an illicit interspecies coupling going on outside their front window. Funny,
she’d never considered herself a tree-hugger, at least not in the literal sense, but damned if this dumb
shrub now felt like the best friend she’d ever had.

Chrystal pushed herself away from the tree. Yes, morning-after school days like this were
always the worst, but she could handle it; she always did. One day she’d learn not to be up all night
dancin’ with the Dog. Like maybe when she finally scored enough money to be able to afford Alize’.
 She started down the road with what she hoped was a steady stride. She tried to keep face
forward as she approached the rickety Victorian with the fenced-in yard. Sorry, no time for anymore
mindfucks today, friend, she said to herself. Gotta get to school, buddy, gotta… then it came, the low,
plaintive whine, hitting her chest before her ears, like it did every time. And like every other damn time
before, she stopped. She waited for the sound of the slow scraping metal being dragged across the
concrete drive. Soon he appeared, the muddy brown mutt staring back at her with rheumy eyes. She
held her hand out and the dog came forward. They both knew he would be stopped just short of her by
the heavy chain connected to a rotting doghouse bearing the name “Honcho” in barely discernible
letters. She scowled up at the house but it was deserted as usual. The dog’s food and water dishes were
periodically filled, god only knew by whom, but as far as Chrystal knew the poor thing had never seen
more than the three square feet he was chained to. Many had been the years she’d spent waiting for a
car to show up in the driveway on a day she passed by so she could cut their fucking brake line.

She squatted down and grabbed the fence but it was as unyielding as it’d ever been. She wasn’t
sure what good it would do to yank the damn thing out anyway; sure, the thought of vandalizing these
heartless assholes’ property was enticing, but it would do nothing to help the dog in the long run. She
looked directly into his eyes, as unnerved as ever by intelligence she saw there. “Someday, Honch.
Someday I’m gonna bring some fucking bolt cutters and spring both of us from this shit town. I promise
you that.”

She put her right hand flat on the fence in one last gesture of empathy. “I have to go now,” she
said, and the words sounded as hollow as they usually did. Even Honcho seemed to recognize their
impotence for he turned and dragged himself and the heavy chain to the adjacent concrete slab and lay
down.

So even the dog thought she was a fucking loser now. Great. Well, she seriously did need to get
on her way to school then. She’d only had 30 minutes to make a 45-minute walk when she’d started out
the door, and she’d probably wasted another 15 in the interim. Not that punctuality would save her at
this point anyway. Nor was it likely that the two Advils she'd taken would sufficiently clear her head to
deal with her first-period French class.

“J’ai une énorme gueule de bois, professeur.”

Clever, but probably not enough to redeem herself for not having turned in any homework all
last week. She grimaced and shook her head, kicking at an empty Coke can tangled in the weeds at the
edge of the sidewalk. It bounced satisfyingly a couple of times, then veered left and rolled into the
storm drain and out of sight. Eerily similar to the path her school career was taking. Just over two
months into the semester and she knew she was already on shaky ground. And to think it wasn't that
awful long ago she'd requested a college catalogue from the U of Chicago. Well, hardy-fucking-har....the
way she going now she’d be lucky to pass the 11th grade.

It wouldn’t be la belle français lighting any fires under her ass though, that was for sure. French
period used to be her favorite—that is, until Madame Meavey had placed the class into one-on-one
conversation groups. She’d found herself inexplicably paired off with the insufferable puke Jason
Wechter, he of the fashionably long hair, which swept into his face continually and stupid Tommy
Hilfiger rugby shirts that she figured he meant to look ‘casual’. It’d been last Friday when Madame had
ordered them into their groups, the assigned topic what everyone was planning to do over the
weekend. Jason had immediately jumped in and taken over, telling her how he was going to a wedding
at the country club and then out with friends to some dance, and all the while she’d had to watch him
stop every 20 seconds and tuck his fucking tresses back behind his ear like a girl.

At some point he’d mercifully stopped and stared at her. Envisioning the gaping hole that would
likely be her weekend, she managed a half-hearted, “Je sors avec mes amis, aussi.” The puke had stared
at her for a few seconds and then blurted, “Tu as amis?” She’d felt her face flush bright red. “Screw
you,” she’d hissed and jerked her desk back around with a loud squeak, trying to ignore the unwelcome
attention from the dumbass rubberneckers.

Of course Meavey noticed the commotion and wafted over. “Y a-t-il un problème?” When
Chrystal answered “no,” the puke had given this lackadaisical shrug and toadied his way into a nearby
group. Then La Madame had asked her to step into the hall and she’d had followed, swept along with
the woman and her cloud of Chanel No. 5.

She’d trained her eyes slightly to the left of the one of the woman’s pearl stud earrings and tried
to blot out the noise coming from her immaculately lacquered mouth. “It’s evident you’re not doing well
in my class. That’s your choice to make, as certainly I can neither force you to participate nor to turn in
your assigned work. However, when you aren’t sufficiently prepared you slow down everyone else’s
progress and Jason’s in particular.”

Chrystal was barely able to hold back the venom in her response. “Well, I certainly didn’t pick
him as my partner so wouldn’t the obvious solution be to just let him stay with that other group from
now on? He doesn’t want to work with me anyway.”

But the woman had to get in one last parting shot, delivered with a long-suffering sigh.
“Mademoiselle Perrin, the way the world treats us is often a reflection of the way we treat ourselves.”

Meavey’s little homily still rankled her, even four days later. Chrystal snorted and reached up to
rake her hair back, finding some sick relief in the way her decidedly un-manicured nails dug across her
scalp. What was so supremely galling about the whole thing was the fact that she knew she was a damn
sight smarter—certainly at French! —than Jason freakin’ Wechter.

It wasn’t that she couldn't get it together again, if she really wanted to. It was the wanting that
was the tough part. Graduation, should she make it that far, was still two years away, and a lot can
change in two years. And that was God’s own truth, she knew. Two years was more than enough time to
change her wicked, wicked ways--if she lived that long, anyway.

She’d just reached the Lincoln-Nokomis intersection when she heard the sound of squealing
tires behind her. She jumped and whipped her head around to stare at the baby-shit yellow hooptie now
idling at the stop sign ahead of her. The window rolled down and three teenaged male voices shouted
out crude offers at her.

“Woo-hoo, Perrin! Sucky-sucky! Need a lift….on my one-eyed pony?” She’d just made out the
spiky red hair and pizza-faced complexion of Donnie Hentjes before he and his equally repellent crew
pulled away, making the “L” sign on their foreheads as they sped off into the distance.

“Assholes!” she screamed at the rapidly retreating car even though they were too far away to
hear her anymore. “Seriously? You’re the ones driving a fucking Pacer!”
 She clenched her hands and reached up to her skull, positive that any minute now fragments of
bone and grey matter were going to come hurtling out of her head like an outtake from “Scanners”.
That’s it, she thought, I’ve reached meltdown.

Yet the fact remained that even driving that piece of shit car those fuckers would get to school
on time—and it’d be her super loser ass getting chewed because she wouldn’t. Oh, how she prayed for
the power to send up a cosmic flip of the finger to the whole damn shit-dribbling state of Illinois.

And Leighton in particular. What a goddamn weak-ass piece of shit town this is. I need to be
wasted half the time to deal with this crap.

She arched her hand up to shield her eyes as she turned her head to look up Nokomis. The
outline of the old brick building was plainly visible up about a half-mile ahead.

She had come to a fork in the road—how apropos!

Chrystal hesitated, and then took a last deep breath.

Fuck it. Kat's house was only six more blocks up ahead, and she always has a little sumthin'
sumthin' that made it all better.

She continued walking.