American Girls(19)

Earlier in the day I’d been reading about Patricia Krenwinkel, the only one of the Manson girls to take part in both of the murders. She wasn’t a very pretty girl. That doesn’t sound like a nice thing to say about someone, or like being ugly should have mattered, except that because they were girls, it mattered big-time. Krenwinkel had a face that was more dude than lady, and a medical condition that caused extra hair to grow all over her body. From what I read, her parents just made matters worse, which was starting to seem like the reason God made parents, to put the cherry on top of a shit-sundae. Her folks split when she was seventeen and pretty soon after that she met Charles Manson, and she stepped right out of her life to follow him around. As in, she didn’t even cash her last paycheck before she hit the road.

Another Manson girl, Mary Brunner, who was also technically the first Manson girl, had a witchy face as well. And it’s not like either of those girls had crazy written all over them—what they had written all over them was ugly with a big, fat side of alone. I kept kicking the same idea around my head the way I did a face that I couldn’t match to a name—that the people that these women killed were richer, more attractive, more hip. Insiders. The fact that all the books mentioned how they looked meant that their appearances mattered, but no one ever said why or how. Before the carnage began, Susan Atkins herself said about Tate and the others, “Wow, they sure are beautiful people.” Whether that made the rest of the night easier or harder, she didn’t say.

I guess that Charles Manson had figured out why pretty mattered. Because he called Patricia Krenwinkel beautiful, even kept the lights on when they did the nasty, she chased down Abigail Folger and stabbed her so hard that she broke her spine in half. The murder was so brutal that Abigail Folger, her white nightgown soaked red, pleaded with Krenwinkel, “Stop! Stop! I’m already dead.”

Such a creepy and sad thing to say!

All that death over nothing.

I was trying not to think about my mom, but that was impossible. She was going to need chemo. She was going to lose her hair. She might lose both of her boobs. She was going to look sick and sad and not like herself, and there was a chance I wouldn’t even recognize her by the time I got home. My eyes were watering and I knew that if I started crying I probably wouldn’t stop.

Then I remembered the letter outside my sister’s door, my beautiful sister’s door. For a minute I thought about Paige Parker as well, with her perfect skin and giant boobs, about how much boys liked her and how much Doon hated her. My head started to pound harder and I closed my eyes to make the letters inside the envelope go away, to squeeze them out of my mind. They weren’t written in blood, but they felt just as sinister, and my sister just dismissed them, like the maid who told Manson he had the wrong house the day before he sent his followers back to murder everyone. And now I was living with Delia. And my mother thought I was as toxic as any zombie hippie. And she was probably dying and just not telling me. I took two aspirin and waited to feel better, but I didn’t.

My sister’s windows opened onto the valley below, with nothing but a sheer metallic curtain to shut out the night. The view could be beautiful, when she lit candles and watched the moon, but there was no telling who was looking in. I hunched down further into the couch and covered my head with a blanket, peering at the chalk-black sky through a pocket of light like I had done when I was a little girl and scared of the dark.

I wondered if my mom was feeling bad about what she’d said to me, or if my sister cared that she’d driven off and left me here with nothing but a pizza box and plastic silverware for protection. The dogs a few doors down started barking wildly at something, and I repeated to myself, It’s probably a rabbit; it’s probably a rabbit; it’s probably a rabbit until they quieted again. I closed my eyes to try to sleep, but instead I just heard my mom telling me that it was my fault she was sick, that I was carcinogenic: a human cigarette without a warning label.

Finally, I gave up trying to sleep and opened the book again, because the only thing harder to think about tonight than the women in the Manson family was the women in my own.





6

My mother left a long message in the night. I played it three times before my sister finally came home from Dex’s place. Anna, darling, I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to ever think that you can’t come home. I just think you’d have so much more fun there this summer, spending time with your sister. Birch is going to be in the day care at Lynette’s work, and I want to rest, to really heal and recenter myself. There’s so little time for that. I’d like for us to talk; we’re so far from how I want us to be as a mother and a daughter. Maybe we could write letters, or e-mails, or something to get to know each other again. And then when we’re both ready, we can be friends. I’d like this summer to be about healing for all of us. You can call me later if you like, and your dad is coming back from Mexico soon, so he should be in touch. I’m sure that he would let you stay with him if you like. I love you so much. I don’t want you to forget that.

That’s my mom’s favorite MO: punch you in the gut and then tell you that she loves you. It’s almost worse than being a garden-variety psychopath, because on top of everything you walk around feeling like you can’t tell what’s true anymore. My mom probably should have been the one to move to Los Angeles. We’re so far from how I want us to be as a mother and a daughter. She was like something out of a bad Tennessee Williams play. We read A Streetcar Named Desire for English this past year, and there were times when my mom seriously reminded me of a dyked-out Blanche DuBois. And it’s not because she’s so southern, but because she likes the idea of things more than the actual things, and she can’t own up to anything she’s actually done. Once she told me: You were such an easy baby, a joy until you turned five or so. Then I just lost track of you. Poor Birch. I wondered if he’d have a longer shelf life, or if she’d turn on him too when he developed an actual personality.