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habit that was giving me trouble in and out of school. I could shoot my mouth off and back it up with a swift kick in the nuts or a wildly swung roundhouse to the head. I told teachers to go to hell and meant it. I was starting to notice things sucking, and it was ticking me off.
    The whole hospital thing was getting old. My mom had become the weakest girl that ever lived, in my opinion, and she seemed to relish the title. The world echoed with a chorus of “your poor mother,” and Mom would sing backup. She would cry and cryand stare at us all, sucking all the hope and joy out of anything in a desperate, begging need to be the most hopeless of cases, and, “Isn’t it so awful!”
    I learned how to bite holes inside my mouth, say “I don’t care,” and make no big deal about it when she would go lame. By all outward appearances, or as far as I would let any grown-up know, I was doing fine with everything, blissfully ignorant to what was going on with my mother, or stiff-upper-lipping it. I was neither. I was just big, loud, and broken. I had started to hear myself say things I didn’t mean, but couldn’t stop it. I would lie in bed and say, “Fuck you, God.” Slap my hands over my mouth only to hear it ringing in my head on a dirty loop.
    God can hear your thoughts.
    I didn’t mean it, but it played over and over, hissing like a dusty hi-fi in my head. It’s not me, but what if God can’t tell it isn’t me? I don’t really mean it!
    He hates you, too.
    God was going to see to it that I would live a miserable, lonely life for my terrible words to him. I was sure of it. It was like people spreading shitty gossip about you to a teacher or parent that wasn’t true, but nobody believed the truth, because, well . . . it is you, and you are a bad person. Bad people think bad thoughts and bad things happen to those people.
    Terrible voices were tiptoeing through my two lobes all the time. Many nights I would bite my lip and punch myself in the head to try to shut the voices up, but they would just laugh. I would also suffer paralyzing anxiety, knotted stomach cramps, and outbursts. I walked around, constantly feeling like an exposed tooth nerve, but I did everything I could to make the world at large think I was doing just fine. I was a big strong girl.
    It wasn’t just the punching myself to sleep and all the rest that let me know something was wrong with me. I was a weirdo, a total outcast. Every day at school was the worst day of my life. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but I had invisible pets that I talked to in public. I was just as quick to be completely destroyed by an unkind word as I was to smash someone in the face for hurting someone else. Everything mattered more to me than everyone else. And no matter how hard I tried, I was always in trouble, because I could never be quiet or disappear. And the one person, in the whole world, who I knew loved me completely, the only one who told me I was beautiful and could do or be anything, kept running away to die.
    My grandmother on my father’s side, Neeny, told me that she never liked the way Mom looked at me. “She was obsessed with you. It just wasn’t right.” I loved it, though, Mom really could light up a room or a rainy day like no one else. Besides, Neeny used to drive her Chrysler LeBaron around, wearing huge black postcataract surgery glasses, and scream at those GODDAMNED WOMEN DRIVERS!
    My mom loved me so much it made me feel famous. But that had been a long time ago, and at around nine or ten, it stopped being so great. Her loving me that much was just a trick. Around that time, I also stopped wanting to be just like her. She was weak and needy, so I acted tough. Everyone was still compelled to say how alike we were, but I figured if I acted strong and practiced not giving a fuck, they would eventually stop saying, “You are just like your mother!” Boy, was I