I wake up to yelling.
“Where the fucks my bandage skirt?”
“I didn’t take your bandage skirt, bitch!”
“Well, it’s missing and that means someone has borrowed it and …”
That’s my two adorable cousins, Lanie and Daisy.
“…if you didn’t take it, then where the fuck is it?”
“How the fuck must I know? I got my own, bitch.”
“Why don’t you girls shut the fuck up?” That’s my adorable aunt Carlene, mother of Lanie and Daisy. She had her first child when she was just sixteen and her second when she was seventeen.
Welcome to my crib. Stay close and watch. As they say in Springer: “It gets reeeeeeal innertaining.”
“It’s too early for all this shit!” Aunt Carlene says.
I look at my iPhone – 11 AM. That means she’s hungover.
Carlene’s my late mother’s younger sister who took Angel and me in when my parents died, because she had a big heart.
Strike that – it has nothing to do with the size of her ticker. It was solely due to the fact that she’d receive two thousand dollars every month from the trust fund my parents set up for Angel and me.
Angel and I see not a cent of that money. Not even pocket-money, so I have a part time job. (I never complain, as I dare not risk Angel and I being separated.)
Carlene is always on the Posh Spice diet – all the water you can drink and still lose weight. Eight glasses or more. Carlene, being as inventive as she is, varies her diet a little – she substitutes the water with vodka, but hey, it still works. Eight glasses of Vodka a day and my aunt is thinner than me. Drunk as a fucking bar room fly and broke-ass as anything, but still, most important, she’s a size six.
Carlene really enjoys her part time job as a waitress at a truck stop and the constant stream of dates it brings her.
With her bottle-blonde hair, micro-minis that are plain skanky, especially when worn by a mother of teenage girls, and her scarlet lipstick that stays glued to her collagen-plumped lips, she is able to secure a fair amount of losers. Eh, boyfriends.
She likes whisky, menthol Marlboro, sleeping pills and eighteen-year-old boys. She oozes charm, is touchy-feely and calls everyone ‘Hon’. Getting the guys might be easy, but keeping them after day three is a challenge.
When she loses them, you want to run for cover because she becomes mean as a Nevada rattlesnake.
Now, don’t get me wrong – she’s not the wicked stepmother from Cinderella or anything. She just doesn’t care about … anything or anyone. Not even when it comes to her own daughters. Lacks maternal instinct and should never have had children. Very different from my mom.
“Burn dear, will you be a honey and do the dishes? Sweetheart? Steven’s coming to visit later on.”
Three terms of endearment in one sentence. Gotta hand it to Aunt Carlene – she lays it on thick when she wants something out of me.
She’s sleepy and hung-over right now – want me to wake her up? Really piss her off? Watch this.
“Okay, Aunt Carlene.” An innocent remark? That’s what you think. Wait for it …
“Carlene! Not AUNT Carlene!” That’s her yelling. “Just plain Carlene! How many times must I tell you that, Burn?”
See? Not a single term of endearment now from my darling, guardian aunt.
Like all families, Carlene has rules which we have to obey. A list of ‘nevers’ and they are in no particular order: (Actually, they are in this precise order.)
Never call her ‘Aunt Carlene’ (as previously demonstrated), just Carlene.
Never let her daughters call her Mom, Mommy, Mother etc. (Mommie Dearest is okay, providing it’s under your breath.)
Never tell anyone we’re related. Ever. Tell them she adopted us. She does not want anyone to know her sister married a black man and contaminated her bloodline. ’Sides, adopting a black kid is so fashionable these days. Ask Branjelina and Sandra Bullock and Charlize.
Never wake her up before noon, unless a man with a six-pack comes calling (abs or beer, she’s not fussy about the six-pack) for her, or for any of us at home. (Again, she’s not fussy who he calls for.)
Never ask her to shop for groceries, food, medications, etc.
Never expect her to cook, clean, wash up, etc.
Never ask her for money for essentials, like food etc.
End of the list of ‘Nevers’.
I roll out of bed, put on my Ugg boots and stagger to the refrigerator. I look inside and wriggle my nose as I take stock – beer, wine, gin, Vodka, flat soda, gel eye-masks, line-reducing eye cream, tons of ice, bottles of water, low fat milk, ketchup. That’s it.
Gotta find another way to feed Angel.
I scan the kitchen. Sinks full of dirty dishes, empty pizza boxes scattered around, empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, dirty wine glasses, a snaking ant trail to a can of half-drunk Pepsi.
I haven’t cleaned the place in three days, so it’s now a three hour job. I walk back to my room to get my headphones. Yeah, that’s right, I don’t clean, it doesn’t get clean.
I find some instant noodles in the back of a cupboard for Angel, heat them up and leave them to cool on the table. While I’m waiting for them to cool, I try to tidy up the kitchen.
“This place stinks!” says Daisy. She’s also seventeen, like me. “Oooh, can I have these noodles?”
“No, they’re for Angel.”
Her lips turn downward. Unlike me, Daisy’s blond, thin, blue-eyed and popular with boys, gets invited to all the parties and doesn’t eat. So she’s always miserable. When she does eat, it’s followed by a quick trip to the bathroom.
“Then clean it up!” Carlene shouts.
“I’ll be damned if I spend my Saturday cleaning up. I have a social life, unlike some people.” Mother!
Some people, as in me.
“Then, shut your pie-hole!” Carlene says. Someone’s in need of double-strength Tylenol for that hangover.
“You shut your mouth,” Daisy flings back.
I never dared speak to my mother like that.
“Get a dishwasher!” Daisy mutters.
Lanie walks in and shudders at the sight of the kitchen. We have one – Burn! Lanie laughs and slaps my butt. Here’s the help.
“Get lost, Lanie!” I say.
“What? What? What did I say?” Lanie asks. She looks at the noodles. “Oooh, can I have these?”
“No! They’re for Angel.”
“Mff.” Angel gets everything.
Lanie is Daisy’s older sister. She’s nineteen and a ‘gimme’ child. Gimme this, gimme that, gimme gimme gimme. All the time. All thanks to good ol’ Carlene for raising her daughters the way she does.
Carlene has one more daughter, Katie-Anne. Three-year-old Katie-Anne lives with her father, a twenty-something druggie nicknamed Panda, as he is famous for his black eyes – giving them. His own eyes are green.
“Carlene!” Lanie yells.
“What, Lanie?”
“Do you know where my bandage skirt is?” Lanie has such an obsession with bandage skirts and bandage dresses.
Oh, I forgot to mention – we’re all around the same size and it causes a problem, as we’re always pinching each other’s clothes. Nobody steals mine, mainly because I don’t have much to steal. And also because of one other problem – I’m eh, bigger than them. (My name is Burn and I’ve never been a size eight. Remember my confession?)
It’s a while before Carlene answers. “Yeah. It’s in the wash!” she yells.
“What the hell!” Lanie explodes. “I told you never to wear my stuff.”
“Aw shut up! It’s just a skirt!”
“I’m supposed to wear it this morning, now I can’t! And you took my goddamn hair-straightener too, Mommy Dearest!”
“Don’t call me that, you little witch!”
“See?” Daisy says. “And you blamed me?!”
“Aw shut up!” Lanie says and storms off.
Another day in a place I call home.
I take the noodles to Angel, then return to the kitchen where I stuff my headphones into my ears and crank up Pink to drown out their arguing.
When they continue shouting and Pink’s not enough, I bring in heavy-duty help – I switch to Eminem. Since he’s always pissed with someone and something, he can scream anyone down. Drown the motherfuckers. Sometimes, in the mornings, when I have trouble getting a move on to school, I listen to Eminem and it’s like having a cold shower. I’m awake immediately and I’m dressed before his song ends.