A/N- Of course this story has been up for around two years, but I recently rediscovered it and wanted to clean it up a bit. Add some detail, fix some mistakes, clean up the format, etc. So I have. The clean(er) final(?) version of "Life I Might Have Known." If you liked the old one better...sorry. Times change. ;)
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It wasn't supposed to happen this way. On stage it looked so dramatic. I always thought it would be beautiful, tragic. Maybe it would be if you watched it happen on a stage. But I am real. I have no audience. Once this "little fall of rain" is over I won't be coming back for the curtain call. The blood that flows from my body is real, the arms that hold me are real. And the pain...that is definitely real. More real than you could ever know.
They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die...
"...their eyes bright, their cheeks shone pink with delight...very pretty little girls with the look of town rather than country...chestnut curls...lively and plump and with a clean glow of freshness and health..." -VH
I am seven years old. My parents have
taken me to my first Broadway show. Les Miserables. I am smitten
immediately. It is a matinee and I sit rapt as the other children
squirm and mutter. When the show ends my mother asks me if I liked
it. I tell her that I want to be "the dirty one who dies."
She laughs. For weeks after the show I listen to the tape my
father made me of the songs. I force my playmates to act them out
with me and when we play pretend my fake name is always "Eponine."
I am the unfortunate but pretty waif. There is dirt on my face. It is
my favorite game.
I used to pretend to die. I used to test myself. How much pain could I handle? A scrape? A cut? A burn? How much could I make myself go without? Could I last a day without food? Maybe. On which boy could I place my affections to ensure they would not be reciprocated? It was a game. It's fun when you can get what you want and be with whom you want at the end of the day. Just little game in my head, because I identified with her so much. I took voice lessons. We could afford it then. I would BE her. I was born to play that role.
"The man had fallen silent, the woman had not spoken, and the girl seemed not to be breathing...to all appearances this woman must have once bestowed upon this man all the love of which she was capable; but the bickerings of daily life and the loathsome circumstances to which they were reduced had extinguished her love, leaving only its ashes." –VH
I am 12. My parents are fighting. What else is
new? Dad's disability has run out. We have to find a way to live on
only my mother's meager income. They fight all the time. She doesn't
believe he's really sick. He says he is. He uses it as an excuse to
stay home all day and spend all our money. I hear my mother yell a
number. "70,000." That's the number of dollars in debt we
are. Money owed to credit cards and men with get rich quick schemes
he saw on TV in the middle of the night. We have to sell our house to
pay off the creditors. We move to a three-room apartment, my mom, my
brother, and me. My father takes what's left of our money and
leaves. We don't miss him.
"...it's only
furnishings were a wicker chair, a rickety table, a few broken
dishes, and, in opposite corners, two frowzy trucklebeds... The walls
had a leprous appearance...a cave is better than a city slum..."
-VH
The apartment only has a small living room, a
bedroom, and a bathroom. The kitchen is so tiny it doesn't even
count. My brother fashions a walk-in closet into a suitable bed
space. I sleep on a mattress on the floor behind our couch and wonder
what's happened to my life. My mother, who used to beg me to go
shopping for nicer things to wear, has expressed relief that I enjoy
shopping at the Salvation Army. But I don't anymore. This isn't a
game. It isn't fun. It's one thing to look poor and quite another
to be poor. The struggle, the charming rags and tatters, it looked
noble on stage. It's not. It amused me to pretend, but now I want to
know...when is the money coming back? It isn't.
It was the beginning of the end, crossing that line. The line between the vision of poverty and the reality of it. Who can be bothered with morals when just keeping up appearances is enough to sink you? We lived there together, but not really. We each fought our own battles and merely shared a roof to sleep under during each break in the fight.
"Did
you know I'd been to jail? Only a fortnight and then they had to
let me go because they've got nothing on me and anyway I'm not
old enough to be held responsible..." -VH
I am 15. I
sit in a small room surrounded by cops. They are staring at me with
pity. I have been caught dealing. And shoplifting. It's really no
big deal. Some stupid prescription pills and a bunch of stolen
clothes. They say they are going to prosecute me. I don't care. At
my age there's almost nothing they can do to me. At juvenile
court the judge places me on probation and gives me 46 hours of
community service. My mother is angry and ashamed of me, but glad
they let me off easy. It was only my first offense...that they knew
of. They all talk about me at school- about my getting caught. Some
kids think it's cool. We hang out for lack of anything better to
do.
I was quite the little gamine by then. Milling around parking lots and front porches, wandering around long after most "good" kids had been roped in by curfews. But the romance of the Paris streets was nowhere to be found in my city. Toughs and alcoholics standing in shadows, eyeing me as I pass. Vacant playgrounds, innocent enough during daylight hours, now the meeting grounds for any number of illegal purposes. Is this what she would have seen? If she was real, if she was alive today would she be living in public housing? Apathetic? The voice lessons have long since stopped, but I still feel like I was born to play that role. Only, perhaps, it won't be sung.
I am 16. I have recently finished reading the entire book of Les Miserables. It was something to distract me from my own misery. I look through bleary eyes at the volume beside me. I am alone on my mattress and Paul is gone. He has left me here no longer drunk and no longer innocent. "Just do it. If it's not me it'll be someone else," he said. It wasn't rape- I never said no- but I never said yes either. He was right. What did I care? Deflowered at fifteen and out of the scene by sixteen. I knew what would happen next.
"Montparnasse had in fact run into Eponine when
she was keeping watch under the trees of the boulevard and had gone
off with her, deciding he was more in the mood to amuse himself with
the daughter than play hired assassin for the father..." -VH
I
am Paul's glorified whore. My mother thinks he is my boyfriend, says
what a good-looking boy he is. He picks me up and takes me back to
his house where we do whatever he wants, whether I want to or not. I
usually don't- not anymore- but I know not to tell him so. The last
time we fought I had bruises for a month and stitches in my hand. If
anyone asks I fell down the stairs, had an accident in the kitchen.
No one asks. He doesn't bother trying to hide it. But he gives me plenty to dull the pain, at least.
There was no way out of it. It was a ridiculous cacophony of numbness. Drugs, sex. Some of them said how "alive" it made them feel. "This is real life!" Maybe it worked for them, but I grabbed everything that might keep my life at arm's length.
And now I am dead- or nearly so. No wayward barricade bullet pierced my heart, just a windshield wiper as we crashed and tossed our way over the guardrail. Paul was driving. What was he on? Even I don't know. Drunk? High? Probably both in excess. He was taunting me. Swerving, speeding, threatening. I told him I didn't care if we crashed or not.
He called my bluff.
The arms that hold me are not the arms of my great, unrequited love. We do not sing a duet. They are the arms of a paramedic, jaded after years of dragging pretty dead girls out of cars and alleys. Maybe he wonders how I came to be here, alongside this drug-addled corpse. Maybe he checks for ID, sees my address and knows this is for the best. If it wasn't here and now it would only be a few months down the road some other way. Maybe he knows I have nothing to live for.
"The dead bodies dragged off the barricade formed a dreadful heap a few paces away, and among them was an ashen face, a pierced heart and the breast of a half-naked woman- Eponine..." -VH