Damned (15 page)

In case you have yet to notice, my parents do nothing in moderation. On
one hand, they mourn the fact that Goran spent his babyhood alone and
untouched. While on the other hand they never cease touching me, hugging and
kissing me, especially when the paparazzi are around. My mother limits my
wardrobe to pink and yellow. My shoes are either cute Capezio ballet flats or
Mary Janes. The only makeup I own is forty different shades of pink lipstick.
You see, neither of my parents wants me to appear any older than seven or
eight. Officially, I've been in the second grade for years.

When my baby teeth began to fall out, they went so far as to suggest I
wear a set of the painful primary-teeth dentures that Twentieth Century Fox
forced into little Shirley Temple's adolescent mouth. In times like these,
being kneaded, probed, and polished by a team of beauty experts, I wished I had
also been raised, untouched, in an Iron Curtain orphanage.

This year, the Academy Awards fell smack-dab on my thirteenth birthday.
With stylists swarming around her, dressing and undressing her like a giant doll,
makeup artists experimenting to decide which eye shadow worked best with what
designer gown, hairdressers curling and straightening her hair, my mother
suggests I get a small tattoo to mark the occasion. A little Hello Kitty or
Holly Hobbie, she says, or a piercing in my navel.

My dad has a penchant for buying me stuffed animals. And, yes, I know
the word
penchant,
although I'm still not certain what constitutes
French-kissing.

God only knew what a cute Holly Hobbie or Hello Kitty tramp stamp would
stretch and fade to become over the next sixty years. In the same way my
parents imagined all the little boys and girls of the third world wanted to
become them... my folks thought my childhood should be the childhood they'd
wanted to have, resplendent with meaningless sex, recreational drugs, and rock
music. Tattoos and body jewelry. All their peers feel pretty much the same, and
it leads to children whom the public believes to be nine years old becoming
pregnant. Thus the paradox of teaching nursery rhymes along with contraception
skills. Birthday presents such as Hello Kitty diaphragms and Holly Hobbie
spermicidal foam and Peter Rabbit crotchless panties.

Please don't imagine it's fun being me. My mom tells the stylist,
"Maddy's not ready for bangs." She tells the wardrobe person,
"Maddy's a little sensitive about her big bottom."

Don't imagine I even get to speak. On top of that, my mom complains
that I never talk. My father would tell you that life is a game, and you need
to roll up your sleeves and build something: Write a book. Dance a dance. To
both my parents, the world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard.
Perhaps that's what I admire about Goran: his distinct lack of hustle. Goran's
the only person I know who's not negotiating a six-picture deal with Paramount.
He's not staging a show of his paintings at the Musee d'Orsay. Nor is he having
his teeth chemically bleached. Goran simply is. He's not secretly lobbying for
the stupid Academy of stupid Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to give him a shiny
statue while a zillion people stand and applaud. He's not campaigning to build
his market share. Wherever Goran is at this moment—sitting or standing,
laughing or crying—he's doing it with the clarity of an infant who knows that
no one will ever come to his rescue.

While technicians blast her upper lip with lasers, my mom says,
"Isn't this fun, Maddy? Just us two, together..." Whenever fewer than
fourteen people are clutching at us, my mother considers that to be private
mother-daughter "alone time."

No, whether he's alone or observed by millions, whether he's loved or
loathed, Goran would be the same person. Maybe that's what I love most about
him—that he's so much NOT like my parents. Or like anyone I know.

Goran absolutely, positively does NOT need love.

A manicurist with a Gypsy accent, something leftover from some country
where brokers analyze the stock market by reading pigeon entrails, this woman
buffs my nails, holding my hand cradled in her own. After a moment, she turns
my hand palm up and looks at the new, red skin where I'd left my frozen skin
stuck to the door handle in Switzerland. She doesn't say anything, this
bug-eyed Gypsy manicurist, but she's clearly marveling at how my wrinkles have
been erased. How both my lifeline and love line have not merely stopped—but
vanished. Still cupping my red hand in her own coarse, rough fingers, the
manicurist looks from my palm to my face, and with the fingers of her other
hand, she touches her forehead, her chest, her shoulders, making a fast sign of
the cross.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Over the phone today, I made a
new friend. She's not dead, not yet, but I can tell we're going to be way-total
best friends.

According to my wristwatch I've been dead for three months, two weeks,
five days, and seventeen hours. Subtract that from infinity and you get some
idea why loads of doomed souls abandon all their hope. Not to boast, but I've
managed to stay reasonably presentable despite the overall grimy local
conditions. Lately I've taken to scrubbing my telephone headset and giving my
chair a good dusting before I make any calls. At the moment I'm talking with an
elderly shut-in who lives, alone, in the Memphis, Tennessee, area code. The
unfortunate lady is trapped at home for days at a time, debating whether to
suffer through yet another round of chemotherapy despite the lessening quality
of her life.

The poor infirm woman has answered nearly every question I've thrown at
her about chewing gum preferences, about paper-clip buying habits, about her
consumption of cotton swabs. I've long ago come out to her about being thirteen
years old and dead and relegated to Hell. For my part, I'm pitching her that
death is a breeze, and if she has any question about whether she'd go to Heaven
or Hell, this lady needs to run out immediately and commit some heinous crime.
Hell, I tell her, is the happening place.

"Jackie Kennedy Onassis is here," I tell her over the phone.
" You
know
you want to meet her... ."

Really, all the Kennedys are hereabouts, but that larger fact might not
be such a great selling tool.

Still, despite the pain from her cancer and the sickening side effects
of her treatments, the Memphis lady has her reservations about abandoning her
life.

I warn her that in no way do people simply arrive in Hell and achieve
some instantaneous type of enlightenment. Nobody finds themselves locked within
a grimy cell, then slaps a palm to their forehead and says, "No duh! I've
been a total
asshole"

No one's histrionics are magically resolved. If anything, people's
character flaws spin out of control. In Hell, bullies remain bullies. Angry
people are still angry. People in Hell pretty much keep doing the negative
behavior which earned them a one-way ticket.

And, I warn the cancer lady, don't expect any guidance or mentoring
from the demons. Not unless you're palming them a constant supply of
Chick-O-Sticks and Heath bars. The demonic bureaucracy, they might pretend to
shuffle some papers in an officious manner, then promise to review your file,
but their attitude is: Well, you're in Hell, so you must've done
something.
In that way, Hell is awfully passive-aggressive. As is earth. As is my mother.

If you believe Leonard, this is how Hell breaks people down—by
permitting them to act out to greater and greater extremes, becoming vicious
caricatures of themselves, earning fewer and fewer rewards, until they finally
realize their folly. Perhaps, I muse over the telephone, that is the one
effective lesson which one learns in Hell.

Depending on her mood, Judy Garland can still be more frightening than
any demon or devil you might run across.

Sorry. I have not actually seen Judy Garland. Or Jackie O. Forgive me
my small lie. After all, I am in Hell.

In a worst-case scenario, I tell the woman, if the Big C does kill her and
she ends up in the Pit, she needs to look me up. I'm Maddy Spencer, phone bank
number 3,717,021, position twelve. I'm four-foot-nine, wear eyeglasses, and
sport the way-coolest new silver, ankle-strap high heels anyone has ever seen.

The phone bank where I work is located at Hell headquarters, I instruct
the dying woman. You just go past the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm. Hang a left
at the gushing River of Steaming-hot Vomit.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Babette headed my way. In closing, I
wish the cancer lady good luck with her chemo, and warn her not to smoke too
much spliff for the nausea, since reefer is no doubt what got me express-mailed
to my personal forever in the fiery pit. Before ending the call I say,
"Now remember, ask for Madison Spencer. Everybody knows me and vice versa.
I'll show you the ropes."

Just as Babette steps up beside me, I say, "Bye," and end the
phone call.

Already the autodialer has another telephone ringing within my headset.
On the filthy little screen reads a number with a Sioux Falls area code, where
the window of dinnertime must just now be opening. In this fashion, we begin
our shift by annoying people in Great Britain, then the Eastern United States,
then the Midwest, the West Coast, etc.

Standing beside me, Babette says, "Hey."

Covering the mouthpiece of my headset, cupping one hand over it, I say,
"Hey," in return. I mouth the words,
Thanks for the shoes... .

Babette winks, saying, "No biggie." She folds her arms across
her chest, leans back a smidgen, peering at me, and says, "I'm thinking
maybe we should change your hair." Squinting, Babette says, "I'm
thinking, maybe—bangs."

At merely the idea—bangs!—my butt's already bouncing little bounces in
the seat of my chair. Within my earpiece, a voice answers the call,
"Hello?" The voice sounds muffled and garbled with a mouthful of
partially masticated dinner food.

To Babette, I nod my head enthusiastically. Into the phone, I say,
"We're conducting a consumer survey to track purchase patterns for common
household items... ."

Babette lifts her hand, taps the wrist with the index finger of her
opposite hand, and mouths,
What's the time?

In response, I mouth,
August.

And Babette shrugs and walks away.

Over the next few hours, I run across an elderly man dying of kidney
failure. A middle-aged woman apparently losing her battle against lupus. We
talk for an hour, easy. I meet another man who's alone, trapped in a cheap
apartment, dying of congestive heart failure. I meet a girl about my same age,
thirteen, who's dying from AIDS. This last one, her name is Emily. She lives in
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

All of these dying folks, I pitch them on relaxing, not being too
attached to their lives, and not ruling out the possibility of relocating to
Hell. No, it's not fair, but only the late-stage folks will allow me to harass
them with thirty
or forty questions, they're so strung-out
from their treatments or they're so alone and frightened.

The AIDS girl, Emily, won't believe me at first. Either about being her
same age or about being dead. Emily's been kept out of school since her immune
system crashed, and she's so far gone that she's no longer even worried about
flunking seventh grade. In response, I tell her that I'm dating River Phoenix.
And, if she can hurry up, quick, and die, word is that Heath Ledger isn't
dating anybody at the moment.

Of course, I'm not dating anybody, but what's my punishment for telling
a little fib? Am I going to Hell? Ha! It's stunning how having nothing to lose
will build your self-confidence.

And, yes, it ought to break my heart, talking to a girl my same age
who's stuck alone, dying of AIDS in Canada with both her parents at work, while
she watches television and feels weaker every day, but at least Emily's still
alive. That alone puts her head and shoulders above me in the pecking order. If
anything, it seems to brighten her spirits, meeting someone already dead.

Over the phone, all self-righteous, Emily announces that not only is
she still alive, but she has no intention of ending up in Hell.

I ask if she's ever buttered her bread before breaking it? Has she ever
used the word
ain't
? Has she ever
fixed a fallen-down hem with either a safety pin or adhesive tape? Well, I've
met mobs of people condemned to eternal hellfire for just those very slipups,
so Emily had best not count her chickens before they're hatched. According to
Babette's statistics, 100 percent of people who die of AIDS
are
consigned to Hell. As are all aborted babies. And all people killed by drunk
drivers.