A BIANNUAL LITERARY MAGAZINE
You’re It
Nina Packebush
Me and Timmy and Todd run through the backyard jumping over dog turds trying not to get freeze tagged. Timmy is my best friend in the whole world and Todd is his big brother. Sometimes instead of tagging us Todd shoves us so we fall down hard in the patchy dry grass and have to stay frozen with our faces right up close to Moe’s poo. Moe is Timmy and Todd’s dog. I love Moe, even if I do spend way too much time staring at his poo.
It’s best not to complain about Moe’s poo because if we complain then Todd makes us play fag tag. I don’t completely know what a fag is, but I sort of do and I know it’s not a good idea to be a fag. Todd shoves us extra hard when we play fag tag and yells, “Tag tag, you’re a fag.” When we get fag tagged we have to bend over with our butts in the air and sing, “I’m a little fag. I’m a little fag,” until Todd punches us in the butt.
Today Todd made us play fag tag. After we’re done playing fag tag Todd tells me to come up into his tree house. Technically the tree house belongs to Timmy too, but Todd almost never lets him in. I don’t want to go into the tree house without Timmy, but Todd tells me if I don’t come up that proves that I really am a fag so I go. Todd makes me go up first and pushes on my butt to help me up the ladder. Todd keeps naked lady magazines and cigarettes in the tree house even though he’s only thirteen.
Todd asks me if I’m a fag. I say no. He says if I’m not a fag then I have to prove it. I don’t know how to prove that I’m not a fag and I feel my face get hot. “I don’t know how to prove that I’m not a fag,” I say.
“You’re kind of stupid, aren’t you?” he asks.
I don’t answer him, but I know I’m not stupid. I get all E’s on my report card and E’s mean excellent. I’m in the fourth grade and since kindergarten the only S for satisfactory that I’ve ever got was in the second grade for P.E.
My stomach hurts.
“If you don’t want to be a fag you have to kiss me,” he says and then he shoves his dry lips against my lips and put’s his slimy tongue right into my mouth. I start to cry and he laughs, but he keeps kissing me, and wiggling his tongue around, and touching my butt.
“Okay, you’re not a fag today. Go on and go play with my little fag brother,” he says as he pulls out one of his naked lady magazines and shoves me towards the ladder.
I climb down the ladder and find Timmy sitting on the top of the metal slide attached to his old swing set. When he sees me he pushes himself down the slide and we run into the house together.
Timmy’s mom is in the kitchen making dinner. Timmy’s mom doesn’t go to work because Timmy’s mom and dad aren’t divorced like my mom and dad. I hate Todd, but I like Timmy’s house. Timmy has a family like the kind you see on T.V. He has a mom and a dad and a brother and a dog and his house is always clean and his mom is always home. His dad mows their lawn every Saturday and his mom makes dinner every night; real dinners like roast and potatoes and green vegetables that don’t come in a can. Timmy never has to do the dishes. At our house we eat a lot of canned vegetables and Spaghetti-O’s and nobody ever mows the lawn, but I always do the dishes.
Timmy’s Mom always has a fancy glass of red wine in her hand and a Virginia Slim cigarette in the ashtray while she cooks dinner or reads her Redbook magazine, which is mostly the only thing she does when she’s not cooking dinner or vacuuming the rugs.
My mom said Timmy’s mom once put her head in the oven to try to kill herself, but that doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe Mom just said that because she’s jealous that Timmy’s dad still lives at home and Timmy’s mom doesn’t have to get up early every morning to go to work at the Pay-n-Save like Mom does. Besides how can you even kill yourself by putting your head in the oven? My mom says Timmy’s mom lives on valium and diet pills.
Timmy and I run down the hall to the rec-room and flop down on the couch to watch the very end of The Land of the Lost before I have to go home. Moe is curled up on one end of the couch and I scootch over to sit next to him. I send him telepathic messages about how much I love him and he sends me some back. I can talk to animals with my mind, but I don’t tell anyone about this. It’s a secret. I tell Moe that I wish he were my dog and he tells me that he wishes that too.
I try to decide if I wish Moe were my dog at my house or if I wished I lived here with Moe. I wouldn’t want to live here with Todd and his fag tag game and freeze tag shoves and tree house kisses, but maybe I would like to live in a house with a dad that comes home at night and a mom that drinks wine instead of vodka and Kool-Aid, but thinking that makes my stomach hurt, so I stop.
But still I miss having the T.V. sort of family like I used to have.
When I miss my dad I like to pretend he’s just out of town on business. When Dad goes out of town on business his return always means those tiny sausages that I like. He works for Vienna Sausage. He’s a salesman. The stubby pink sausages come in cute little cans. They float in juice so good that sometimes I drink it, letting the thick, salty liquid run through my teeth. Mom says it’s disgusting. If I pretend that Dad is just on a business trip then my stomach doesn’t hurt so much at night when I start to miss how he used to put my dragon puppet on his hand and peek it around my doorway to tell me bedtime stories.
I see Dad every other weekend and every other Wednesday night. My little brother and I both go to Dad’s on the weekends, but we each go alone on opposite Wednesday nights. Dad has a hard time handling us both at the same time. Being at Dad’s on Wednesday is way better than being there on the weekends though. On the weekends we have to share him with his friends. He finds friends at the Chinese restaurant by his apartment. Sometimes Dad takes my brother and I with him to the restaurant and buys us Shirley Temples and Roy Rogers. We sit at the cracked red booth and sip our syrupy drinks while he goes behind the velvet curtain to the bar to find new friends. His new friends almost always spend the night. Dad and the dragon puppet never tell me stories now.
Dad only makes friends with girls. Sometimes they try to be nice to me and my brother. They make us pancakes in the morning or come with us to Lake Washington to waterski behind Dad’s new speed boat. I don’t like any of them. Mom always asks us about them when we get home from our weekend visits with Dad. She drinks extra Kool-Aid on Sunday nights. It makes my stomach hurt so much that sometimes I don’t even go to school on Monday.
It’s Wednesday and when I leave I will be alone until Mom gets home from her job at the Pay-n-Save. I don’t mind being home alone. It’s sort of scary, but Mom is always in a pretty good mood on the Wednesdays that we are alone. She says my brother drives her crazy. Usually on Wednesdays we go to McDonalds for dinner.
I glance at the clock. It’s 4:37. I will leave at 4:42 or 4:44 or maybe 4:46. I like even numbers. I keep track of the things I do and make sure they are always even, things like how many steps I take or how many scoops of sugar I put in my cereal or what time I leave places or go to bed. Even numbers are lucky. I need things to be lucky.
Mom gets home at 6:30 and I have to do the dishes and iron the hemming tape into her work pants before she gets home. The hemming tape falls out every time she washes her pants and if I forget to iron more in then she has to use duct tape to hem them and that always makes her super grumpy at me. “How many times have I told you?” she’ll say. And I'll shrug and my stomach will knot up and I might have to stay home from school again. I don't mind staying home from school though because school itself gives me a stomach ache. Timmy is the only good thing about school.
When Dad moved out we had to move into a new house and my brother and I had to go to a new school. The kids at my new school wear clothes from the fancy stores like Fredrick and Nelson and the Squire Shop and Nordstrom. Mom gets my clothes from K-Mart and Sears. Mom and Dad have a deal that he mostly buys my brother’s clothes and Mom mostly buys mine. My dad got my brother bell bottom jeans, four velour shirts, and even a pair of white Nikes with a red swoosh for school this year. I don’t really think a six-year-old needs Nikes, but I guess my dad disagrees. He bought my brother’s clothes at Nordstrom and the Bon Marche. Mom could only afford to get me Sears pants and K-Mart shoes. I’m hoping that maybe next year Mom and Dad will trade and maybe Dad will buy me a red Breezin jacket and my own pair of white and red Nikes.
I scratch Moe behind his ears. There are lots of soft greasy knots behind his ears, but I like to rub them with my fingers. We had to put our dog to sleep when Mom and Dad divorced, so I like spending time with Moe. Mom said it was Dad’s fault that we had to kill our dog. Dad said Mom is hysterical. I know what that word means and I think that maybe Dad is right, but I also think that Mom might be right that it’s Dad’s fault we had to kill our dog. We got to keep our cat, Easy, though. She’s my best friend next to Timmy, so I was glad we didn’t have to kill her too.
I watch the clock that sits over the TV. The hands tick tick tick and I wait for them to land on an even number. I watch the time tick past 4:42 and 4:44, at 4:46 I jump up. I say goodbye to Timmy, but not to his mom or Todd. I send a telepathic goodbye to Moe and he sends one back.
I grab my backpack and my Bionic Woman lunch box and make sure I don’t slam the door on my way out. I have good manners.
If I hurry I’ll be home in time to watch Banana Splits and Secret Squirrel and Squiddly Diddly while I do the dishes. Last year on my birthday Dad bought me my very own little black and white TV. I like to put it on the kitchen counter to watch my shows while I do my chores even though our big color TV sits facing into the kitchen. I’m pretty sure that if the kids at my school knew that I had my own TV they’d be impressed, but I never tell them about my TV. I try not to talk at school.
I walk home kicking at the dust and singing the Banana Splits song in my head;
One banana, two banana, three banana, four
Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more.
Over hill and highway the banana buggies go
Comin' on to bring you the Banana Splits show
Tra la la, la la la la…
And then in my head I sing the song from my very favorite show of all time. It’s called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I watch it on reruns.
People let me tell you about my best friend,
he’s a warm-hearted person who’ll love me to the end.
One time Mom took me to the boy’s section of JC Penny because they had a big sale and she said she was too broke to buy me clothes in the girl’s section. I tried to think about what clothes Eddie would buy and I bought two pairs of pants—one pair of striped pants and one pair of brown cords—and three shirts just like Eddie’s. The kids at school made fun of me. “Why are you wearing boy’s clothes? Are you a boy or a girl?” But I didn’t care. I knew I looked just like Eddie. I like to wear boy clothes, but I don’t ever say that out loud.
Mom always teases me and says I have a crush on Eddie. I don’t though. I just like to pretend that I am Eddie and that his dad is my dad. I think I might have a crush on the girl that plays the daughter in the movie Paper Moon though. I’m not sure girls can have crushes on girls, so maybe I don’t. Or maybe having a crush on that girl really does make me a fag. Or maybe I just want to be her the way I want to be Eddie. Once I tried to get my hair cut like hers, but it didn’t work and the kids teased me. It was a dumb idea anyway because with my sticking out teeth I could never look like her no matter how I cut my hair. The kids at my new school call me Beaver Woman and stick their front teeth out like mine. Thinking about school makes my stomach start to hurt so I go back to singing in my head.
People let me tell you 'bout him, he's so much fun,
Whether we're talkin' man to man or whether we're talking son to son.
When I get home I pull out the key from inside my shirt. It hangs on a beaded chain that I put on each morning. I unlock the front door. I pour myself a cup of green Kool-Aid and while the sink fills with water I go into my room and get my TV. It’s heavy, but not too heavy. I place it on the counter and adjust the antenna until the pictures turns clear.
I turn the volume all the way up on my T.V. until the sound is scratchy and jagged and fills all the corners of the house. One banana, two banana, three banana, four, sing the Banana Splits as they run and jump around on the little black and white screen. Before I fill the soapy water with dishes I go into my brother’s room and find his Stretch Armstrong doll. I change Stretch’s name to Todd. “Let’s play fag tag,” I say to Todd, “only today is opposite day.” I fwap Todd on the side of his smooth rubbery head. “Tag! The fags win,” I say as I push him through the suds and into the warm water. He floats on the water, his stretchy face looking out from the suds. I pile the crusty dishes on top of his lumpy face.
I glance at the clock again. I hope Mom gets home at 6:36. That would be super lucky.
Nina Packebush is a queer writer, zinester, comic drawer, and grown-up teen mama. Her work has appeared in numerous alternative publications including Hip Mama, Mutha Magazine, and Waging Nonviolence, as well as the queer sci fi anthology, Flight. She’s excited to announce that her young adult novel, Girls Like Me, will be published by Bink Books in November of 2017. Check out her blog at: wehaveraisedpresidents.org.