I can remember it clearly, sitting with my mother as she got ready for what would be her first of many dates with Jerry. I was perched on her bed, the floral duvet scratchy, catching my still hairy legs with every movement – I hasn’t started shaving yet, I’d barely moved onto the call of Lip Smackers and deviantly coloured fingernails from childhood.
She had her hair still up on the hot rollers that would give a two-hour illusion of body and vivaciousness, the hot rollers that were more important than the chocolate mousse cake I’d wanted from the bakery, instead of the from-a-mix cake she ended up baking on my birthday.
She was wearing the dress she bought on sale from a store that I knew girls two years my senior shopped at, perfume wafting from every crevice and lipstick that cried streetwalker more than second date. I was only twelve, but I knew already that the heels that lay beside her dresser were called fuck me heels and I hedged my bets that I’d be waking up in the morning to a nervous Jerry at our yellow formica’d kitchen table.
There’d be the usual small talk while he looked around shiftily. I’d be disinterested and a bit rude, my mother hung over, with tonight’s makeup smeared into the creases under her eyes and a terry cloth robe unable to shut out the chills of her hang over. As I always do, I’d end up making some excuse as to why I had to run off and spend half an hour at school, early and bored.
Nothing ever changes.
But this time it did, after a while. Jerry moved in and became my new dad.
I didn’t remember having an old dad. It’s not like one sat around before, getting used up and then we tossed him out with the recycling. It’s always been Mom and me. And her dates, which were often short-lived and had never moved in before. It was uncomfortable, if I’m being polite; fucking nerve-wracking, if I’m not.
Jerry was always there. I found out after about a month of tripping over balled up socks and falling into the toilet, I began to wonder how he came to become such a permanent fixture in our two bedroom apartment. Why did my mother go to work every morning during the week, and I went to school and Jerry would be left sitting at the table with a mug of coffee?
Why was he still home when I got home from school and chatting at me (because Jerry rarely conversed with me, it was always in my general direction and usually about sports or the kids I shared classes with) as I started dinner. Why, when my mother drifted through the door in her polyester uniform on a cloud of unhappiness, was he there to hand her a glass of wine and rub her feet?
And then, to eat the dinner Mom would invariably push me away from, as if I’d prepared 60% of it and wasn’t to be trusted with the final 40. And then, to run her a bath and read her the day’s headlines from a paper while he sat on the toilet seat (why could he remember to put it down, then?) with his dirty feet right by the toothbrush holder on the counter.
He never left the apartment when I was around. He was always there when I walked in or out the door. How did he pay the bills that he’d so easily taken over? I couldn’t figure it out.
Until the day I turned 13, when Jerry took me out for breakfast.
Mom’d had woken up with a migraine, something she was suffering from more and more lately – though I thought it was mostly related to the empty wine bottles that graced our recycling box more and more lately. I’d woken up on that Saturday to a beaming Jerry and two wrapped boxes.
The small box was from Mom. She’d meant to be sentimental, I could tell from the way she wrapped the jewelery box and the amount of XOs on my card, but she’d conserved money on the gaudy locket. It was the shade of yellow gold that you know will rub off with just a little sweat, leaving a bullet-metal smudge marring the finish.
The big box was from Jerry, but he said I had to wait to open it until after we had a man-to-woman talk. I was now officially becoming a woman, he said – as much a creepy phrase from his lips as that was, I was kind of thrilled with it’s utterance. He said,
“You and I need to have some words. I need to explain to you a few things that your mother’s spared you from knowing. I don’t think she realizes how fast you’re growing up, and that you need to know how things work in the world.”
I had a feeling like I was about to get the birds and the bees speech that kids had been groaning about for generations. I was in for a lot more. This was my introduction to another world, by the best and worst man for the job: a pimp.
