Sorta Like a Rock Star(30)

This is depressing news, even though I realize it is a weird sorta compliment.

I sigh. “I wish you were the only person who ever made me feel like crying, but I can’t give you that honor, Joan of Old. Sorry.”

“ ‘Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself.’ That goes for women like us too. Remember that, Amber. Remember that.”

“Nietzsche?”

Joan of Old nods once and then says, “I hope I don’t die before I make you cry, Amber. I’m going to beat your young little hopeful butt one of these days.”

“May we have many more battles,” I say, and then go collect BBB from the lap of Agnes the Plant Talker. Agnes talks to any old plant and pretends it’s her son, who lives in California and never visits.

As I put on my jackets, Old Man Linder gives me one more shoulder squeeze and says, “You were brilliant up there, kid. You keep us feeling young with your youthful ha-has and your skylarking.”

“Can I get a hug, Old Man Linder?” I ask.

“Is the Pope Catholic?” he says, and then gives me this very long hug, his nasty breath making my neck sorta wet, which I tolerate, because he’s got oxygen tubes up his nose and is probably going to die any day now, plus I really like hugs.

“See you next week, Old Man Linder.”

“If I live that long!” he says, and then gives me a wrinkly wink.

“ ’Bye, all you crazy old people!” I yell across the common room, and then BBB and I walk the depressing hallways with the dusty fake plants in the corners.

“How’d you get that little dog in my building?” Door Woman Lucy says to me when I walk past her, which makes me laugh.

“How’d you like the hot chocolate and Snickers?” I ask her.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking ’bout.”

Door Woman Lucy and I share a smile. She’s good people. Truly.

I retrieve Donna’s bike from the bush, put BBB in the basket, and begin my ride back to Donna’s house.

As I pedal, I start to get a bad feeling. I start to feel like I have everything all wrong, and that everyone—all of the many people who are not like me—everyone else is right, and all my hopefulness is just childish bullcrap.

I mean, yes, there are a few people who like to watch me do my thing—taking on the school board and Prince Tony, singing with The Korean Divas for Christ, defeating Joan of Old on a weekly basis—but it really doesn’t mean anything, because there is only one of me and so many of the people who are not like me, and maybe I’m just an amusing distraction for those other people. Maybe I’m just a freak. A sideshow.

Speaking of sideshows, here’s all-time Amber-and-her-mom moment number three:

When I was a little girl Mom always took me to see the circus every year, whether we could afford it or not—all through elementary school. There were years when we couldn’t even afford to turn on the heat and had to go without eating meals from time to time, but Mom always came through with circus tickets for us, and when we were at the circus, she’d always buy me cotton candy, popcorn, peanuts, soda, and a souvenir—sometimes a stuffed elephant or monkey, sometimes a T-shirt or a hat or a poster of someone being shot out of a cannon or walking the tightrope or a million clowns getting out of a tiny car.

I didn’t even really like the circus particularly, but I liked to look at my mother’s face when we were there watching all the acts, because she always looked like a kid. She got so excited whenever the guy got in the cage with the lion, or the motorcycle guy rode around the inside of a metal ball super fast on his bike, or the trapeze artists swung and did flips. All that stuff amazed my mom—she’d be on the edge of her seat the whole time, and if you looked at the faces of all the kids around us and then looked at my mom’s face, you’d see that same sense of wonderment.

I remember when I first really understood that my mom was a kid at heart—it was the last time Mom and me went to the circus when I was in sixth grade and was sorta outgrowing the circus and other little kid things too. I didn’t really want to go to the circus that year, but since it was a tradition, I didn’t say anything to Mom. And then we were there in the middle of it all, in the big tent, seeing the same tired acts, and I was bored out of my mind until I noticed how into the circus Mom was—how much going meant to her. You could tell just by looking at her face—Mom frickin’ loved the circus.

I wanted to be able to light up my mother’s face like the circus did.

It was an important moment for me.

So maybe that’s when I started trying to be something more than I was, but truthfully—five years later—no one really takes me all that seriously. At best, I’m just an interesting blip in people’s lives—an amusing footnote. Which is probably why my dad split and my mom can’t stay sober and all of her boyfriends ditch us after only a few months or so. Sometimes I wonder why I try at all. What’s the point?

In an effort to prep for my battles with Joan of Old, I did some research on Nietzsche at the library. He was an atheist like Donna and Ricky. And he once wrote: “What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?”

That statement made me mad at first, because I am a Catholic. But it also made me think. How do we really know that we didn’t just make up God? What proof do we really have of God’s existence? And if God doesn’t exist, is there really any reason to be hopeful at all?