NINE
Angela’s grandparents vehemently disapproved of their daughter’s lifestyle, but after a lifetime of trying everything they could think of to straighten her out, they eventually came to the conclusion that there was nothing they could do about it. Sally always refused any kind of advice or help, usually at the top of her lungs. Angela remembered epic arguments and Sally throwing things at her father. She insisted there was nothing wrong with her and that she had everything under control. She said it was her life and she was living it the way she wanted.
Angela knew that Sally was loony tunes.
Sometimes people were simply stupid, and there was no fixing stupid.
Angela loved her mother, yet had been disappointed by her so many times that she had come to love her in an at-arm’s-length way, part of it snippets of rare smiles and hugs, most of it fantasies of what it would be like to have a real mother.
On the other hand, she adored her grandparents. She loved nothing more than being with them. They were stability and safety and the comfort of unwavering love.
She was often afraid of the men who always seemed to be hanging around their trailer. Angela hated to have to be in the house when her mother was out of it or unconscious—or getting laid—and there were men about. Her grandparents were her refuge from that ever-present, shadowy threat.
When she had just grown into her teens, one of those men, Frankie, her mother’s more-or-less regular drug dealer and boyfriend, began to lose interest in having sex with Sally in exchange for drugs. Drugs and alcohol had taken their toll on Sally’s once-good looks. His fixation began to turn to Angela.
That first time it happened was as terrifying as everything Angela had imagined it would be. She lived in fear of those men, always worried what they might do to her.
She found out one night when Frankie came into her bedroom after her mother passed out.
Much like her mother, Frankie was skin and bones. The teeth he wasn’t missing were yellow and rotting. High on meth, he grinned like death itself as he pulled her clothes off. He warned her what would happen if she didn’t keep quiet. Angela knew Frankie well enough to know he did not make idle threats. He groped her a bit and then stripped down to his bony self. It was like being raped by death without his black robes.
He held a knife up to her face as he was forcing himself into her. After he finished, he leaned in close and whispered that if she told anyone, anyone at all, he’d skin both her and her mother alive. Angela believed him.
While Angela was never close to her mother, she couldn’t understand why Sally seemed to care so little about her, or herself for that matter. Even so, Angela didn’t want her hurt and she certainly didn’t want her to be murdered.
She was terrified of being cut by Frankie. She knew what he was capable of. After all, he’d just raped her.
Rather than leave after he was finished, he sat on the edge of the bed for a while, stroking her hair, whispering to himself how hot she was. Before long, he got it up and was on her again. She pleaded for him to stop. Frankie told her to shut the fuck up or he’d cut her throat.
She cried as quietly as she could through the ordeal. She bit the inside of her cheek to distract herself when he was hurting her. She wasn’t sure exactly how long he had her in her back bedroom of the trailer, but she knew it had lasted hours.
When it was finally over, she lay quietly, listening until she heard the screen door bang shut. Frankie had finally left. There was no one else in the trailer but her mother. Angela lay in bed shaking until she worked up the courage to go into her mother’s room. Sally lay sprawled on her rumpled bed, dirty clothes thrown everywhere, only barely conscious. Angela shook her mother’s arm to wake her. Sally mumbled incoherently.
Angela knew that Frankie had given her mother extra drugs to make sure she didn’t interrupt him. Despite Frankie’s warning that if she said anything to anyone he’d cut her, Angela’s outrage at what he’d done to her was stronger than her fear. He’d already hurt her. She was already bleeding.
She shook her mother harder, crying as she told her that Frankie had raped her. Her mother’s answer was to mumble something dismissive before slipping back into unconsciousness.
Angela’s tears stopped as she grew angry with herself for thinking that her mother would care what happened to her, much less do anything about it. What was her mother going to do? What could she do? Angela knew the answer. Nothing.
She went out into the living room and called her grandparents, the tears returning, and asked if they could pick her up and she could stay at their house even though it was a school night. They knew by her voice that something was wrong. When they arrived, it felt like she was being lifted out from the depths of hell. In the car, even as ashamed as she was to say it out loud, Angela told them that Frankie had raped her.
Her grandfather drove them to the cabin and told Gabriella to take care of Angela, that he had an errand to run. As horrified as she was, as distraught and physically damaged as she was, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world to be safe at the cabin with her grandmother.
Gabriella cleaned her up, nursed her, had her shower, and gently asked questions. She gave Angela a tea that made her sleepy. Then she took Angela to their bedroom, to their bed, and tucked her in. Gabriella slept with her, holding her all night.
Vito had come home sometime during the night and slept on the fold-out bed in the couch in the living room. He slept there for the next few nights, where Angela usually slept when staying at the cabin, while Angela and Gabriella slept in the bed.
Angela loved being there with them both, being safe at the cabin. She didn’t ask where her grandfather had gone that night, or what he had done. She didn’t need to. All she needed to know was that her grandparents had rescued her.
Sally eventually said something in front of her father about her friend Frankie being missing. She cast a suspicious look at Vito. It was a wordless question. He said that he suspected Frankie had taken a shortcut to hell.
Sally didn’t know what he meant, but she was afraid of her father so she didn’t ask. Between the assistance checks she got from the state and the sex she provided for drug dealers and their friends, she was soon back into a suitable stupor. Sally was on to other men. Frankie was soon forgotten.
Angela never forgot him.
Since she was getting to be old enough to do a lot of things to take care of herself on her own, Angela was also gradually drawn into being her mother’s servant of sorts. On school nights when not staying with her grandparents, she did laundry and cooked and was always at her mother’s beck and call.
Sally would tell her friends, “Go get the girl in the moon. She’s in her room. Tell her I need her.” Or “Go tell the girl in the moon to run to the store and get us some cigarettes.” Or “Tell the girl in the moon to make us something to eat.” Or “Tell the girl in the moon to bring us some beers.”
Angela never knew why her mother called her the girl in the moon. She assumed it was mockery of some sort.
Angela knew that Sally was growing increasingly jealous of how her daughter was evolving into womanhood, becoming gracefully leggy and inescapably feminine, while Sally, who had once been a seductive beauty, had become skin and bones. The teeth she had left were horribly discolored and rotten. She had scabs and scars everywhere on her skin and needle tracks up her arms. While Sally was busy partying and getting high all the time, before she knew it, she had lost her looks and her sex appeal.
Angela was becoming everything her mother no longer was.