Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 10:37 A.M. PST} A Tiny Golden Overdose

Gentle Tweeter,

This, this is how the precious little kitten, Tigerstripe, came into my life.

Post-upstate, post-Nana, my parents and I were staying at the ever-lovely Beverly Wilshire hotel. We were eating breakfast in our suite, meaning: I was watching my parents eat. Meaning: My dad was playing his deprogramming games, withholding apricot Danishes and cheese strudels to make me renounce my torrid hookups with Jesus. In retaliation I kept my phone cradled to one ear, billing and cooing and otherwise ignoring my parents’ withering glances as I giggled. “Stop it, Jesus! Stop being such a tease!” I allowed my girlish eyes to flit across the white tablecloth, bypassing the flowers and the orange juice, and rest on my mother’s glaring expression. Pointedly, I examined her, scrutinizing her lips and neck before resting my attention on her bustline as I said, “No, they’re not! No, Jesus, she didn’t!”

My mom shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She lifted the napkin from her lap and daubed at the corners of her mouth. With elaborate Ctrl+Alt+Casualness, she looked at my father and asked, “Antonio, my love, would you pass me the sugar?”

Speaking to my fake Jesus boyfriend, just as I’d spoken to my entire fake circle of girlfriends, I laughed and said, “She’s not!” I said, “I’m sitting right here, and she’s not that bad!”

My father passed my mother the sugar and said, “Maddy, dear, you need to not talk on the phone at the breakfast table.”

My mother began, with the utmost Ctrl+Alt+Sadism, to spoon copious amounts of sugar into her coffee.

The phone still pasted to my head, I bulged my eyes at my dad and mouthed the words I can’t hang up. Silently I screamed, It’s Jesus!

How to rebel against parents who celebrated rebellion? If I did drugs and pulled a train of outlaw bikers and venereal-warted gangbangers, nothing could make my parents happier.

Acting as if breakfast were sacrosanct family time, my dad was such a hypocrite. Open on the table beside his place was the usual stack of orphan dossiers, among them a photo of two flinty eyes that stared out from a glossy head shot. These stone-colored eyes, they seemed to despise every silly luxury they could see in this sumptuous hotel setting. For the length of a gasp, the trill of my schoolgirl giggling fell silent as my own eyes were held spellbound by the craggy features and churlish expression of that particular Slavic foundling. Entranced was I by that coarse thuggish sneer.

At last my mom broke the silence by saying, “Hang up, young lady.”

Turning on her, I attacked with, “Jesus says you’re the one who’s fat.”

“Hang up now,” said my dad.

And I told them, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.” Into the phone, I said, “JC? I need to call you back later.” I said, “My imperious, all-powerful dad is being a big booger; you know how that goes.” As my coup de grâce, I told the phone, “And you’re right about my mom’s belly.” With exquisite Ctrl+Alt+Deliberateness, I switched off my phone and placed it next to my empty breakfast plate. For the record, Gentle Tweeter, at that repast I’d been served nothing more than a halved grapefruit, a sliver of dry toast, and a meager poached egg. A quail egg, mind you. Such death-camp rations had hardly gilded my mood. Affecting my best Elinor Glyn attitude, I thrust my face at my father and announced, “As you seem so determined to make me suffer…” Here I closed my eyes in the style of a true heroine. “… I’d rather you just lashed out and struck me!” As other preteens might long for a large allowance or shiny hair or friends, I wanted my parents to strike me. A punch with a closed fist or a slap with an open hand, I dreamed of it. Whether the blow came from my mom or dad, those pacifist, idealist, nonviolent do-gooders, it didn’t matter. Across my cheek or into my stomach, I yearned for the impact because I knew that nothing else would shift the parent/child balance of power as effectively. If I could goad them into slugging me just once, forever afterward I could cite that incident and use the memory to win any argument.

Ah, to be Helen Burns, Jane Eyre’s childhood cohort who was stood before the students of Lowood School and roundly pulverized by Mr. Brocklehurst. Or to be Heath-cliff and have a large stone bounced against my tender head by young master Hindley. Such public abuse was my fondest desire.

Eyes closed, face serenely presented, I eagerly awaited the painful blow. I heard my mother stir her coffee, the tiny song of the spoon ringing within her china cup. I heard the rasp of my father scraping butter on his toast. Finally, my mom said, “Antonio, don’t let’s prolong this…. Go ahead; smack your daughter.”

“Camille,” my father’s voice said, “do not encourage her.”

I continued to lean forward, eyes closed, offering my face as a target.

“Your mother’s right, Maddy,” said my dad. “But we’re not going to start beating the crap out of you until you’re at least eighteen.”

In my mind, dear CanuckAIDSemily, I wore a blindfold and dangled a smoking Gauloise from between my lips. I prayed to be pummeled like a girlish punching bag.

My mom said, “We wanted to help you process the grief you must feel about your grandparents.”

“We have a present for you, dear,” my dad’s voice said.

I opened my eyes, and there was Mr. Wiggles. A fluttering, jolly golden fish hovered in my water glass. His protuberant eyes swiveled to ogle me. His gulping little hatch of a mouth gaped open and shut, gulped open and shut. My hard-bitten facade crumbled at the sight of the paddling, gasping little sun-colored sprite suspended in the unconsumed water of my meal. In a word, I was delighted. The name Mr. Wiggles came instantly to mind, and in that moment I was joyous, a hand-clapping, happy child wreathed by my smiling family. Then, tragically, I was not.

In the next moment, Mr. Wiggles foundered. He keeled over and floated belly-up in the glass. My parents and I stared in shocked Ctrl+Alt+Disbelief.

“Camille?” my dad asked. “By any chance did you get the waters mixed up?” He reached across the breakfast table and lifted the glass with dead Mr. Wiggles. Putting the rim to his lips, he carefully sipped around the expired fish. “It’s just as I thought.”

My mom asked, “Did Maddy get your GHB?”

“No,” he said. “I’m afraid her new goldfish did.”

My former-pothead, former-junkie, former–speed freak parents, they’d accidentally overdosed my fish by presenting him to me in a glass full of GHB. Meaning: liquid Ecstasy. Meaning: gamma-hydroxybutyric acid. Unfazed, my dad kept drinking even as my pet’s tiny golden corpse bumped and bobbed against his lips. He pinched it out with two fingers and passed the tiny victim to the Somali maid. “To the commode,” he intoned solemnly, “and henceforth to return to the great circle of life.”

Even as I reached for my phone to speed-dial Jesus and relate the details of this latest atrocity, my mom pushed the basket of pastries within my reach and sighed. “So much for Mr. Fish… What say we go out today, Maddy, and adopt you a pretty little baby kitten?”