Sorta Like a Rock Star(41)

Maybe you think I am only saying this because I am in a state of denial or shock, but that’s just not the case. I’m being honest, maybe for the first time.





With Father Chee and Donna, I go to identify the body, even though Donna says I don’t have to.

For some reason, I need to see.

I insist.

I’m a real cat about it.

Maybe I want to know, just so I won’t be wondering for the rest of my life—like I do with Dad. And as selfish as it might seem, knowing that my mother is definitely dead is better than thinking she might be out there somewhere having abandoned me in an effort to live an easier life without her stupid daughter to worry about.

I go to the morgue.

I see the facts.

It’s worse than anything I could have ever imagined.

My howling stops them from uncovering more than Mom’s head and shoulders.

I don’t want to see any more.

I crumble.

I melt.

I evaporate.

They cover what’s left of my naked mother back up with a sheet and push her into a wall, which is when I realize that she is in some sorta freezer.

I do not talk for three days.

I sit.

I stare.

I see my mother’s naked dead body in a dark freezer.

Sometimes I shake.

It seems like I am in a constant nightmare.

Donna brings me soup and crackers and toast—and takes care of BBB’s needs.

At my request, Donna pays to have my mother cremated.

Fire. Warmth. It’s better this way.

I promise to pay Donna back, and she says it’s not necessary.

The very next day, at my request, Father Chee performs a private ceremony at the bench where Mom and I used to feed ducks.

BBB is the only other person invited to the ceremony, because this special childhood place is mine alone—it’s what I have left, so I don’t want to share it with anyone except FC and BBB. Not even Donna and Ricky are invited.

Father Chee does a very good job eulogizing my mom, especially since he never met her. He says a lot of things about Mom going to heaven and my seeing her again, which is pretty nice, especially since Mom was never baptized or confirmed as a member of the Catholic Church—and I’m pretty sure she never went to confession—so I know FC is supposed to say Mom was going to hell and all.

Maybe the Pope is pissed?

I don’t care.

FC says he doesn’t care either.

I’m not going to tell you exactly what Father Chee says at Mom’s funeral, but it was very beautiful—as beautiful as Private Jackson’s best haiku, which is saying something. True.

We spread Mom’s ashes on the water and grass around the bench—and I pray flowers will bloom there in the spring, which is a girly and maybe silly sentiment, but a nice thought too.





CHAPTER 14





Donna takes me in, buys me a bed, gives me my own room, and begins sorting through the legal red tape involved for her to become my legal guardian, which is complicated since no one knows if my father is still alive or where he might be—and I don’t know of any living family I may or may not have since my mom left her home out west early on in life, hitchhiked east at the age of thirteen, and never told me anything about her parents whom she hated and refused to even name. I never even knew my own mother’s maiden name.

Donna says she knows enough people to keep me out of the foster care system at least until I turn eighteen this summer, provided that I will state before a judge that I want to stay with Donna and Ricky, which I do.





The police arrest a man with huge brown glasses and strange hair.

I am sure you read all about him in the papers or see him on television.

His face is everywhere.

He becomes famous.

He admits to doing what he did, but his lawyer stresses that the whole thing was random, an accident even, because my mother’s killer went off his medications, but is now back on meds, as if that matters at all to anyone.

Along with the families of the other victims, the prosecution contacts me and says I will be made to testify, which I will hate doing, even though I have Donna to help me out—and I’m not going to tell you about the trial, because it will prove to be too horrible.

My mother’s killer uses my name whenever he talks to the press.

Through the media he apologizes to all of his victims’ family members, but the only name I really hear him say is Amber Appleton.

He says he is sick.

He says he deserves whatever he gets—and his unfeeling mechanical voice makes me shiver.

He has a long criminal history.

He is a registered sex offender.

Looking into his eyes makes you believe that life can be absolutely meaningless.

He is like every other man who makes people disappear in horrible unimaginable ways.

He reminds me of a Nietzsche quote I found while doing Joan of Old research: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

Donna tells me this man will go to jail for life, that he will be punished in terrible ways over and over again by the other inmates—and I tell her I don’t really care about any of that—in fact, I never want to talk about that man ever again, and I do not really care what happens to him.