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I daydreamed about what it would be like when my father finally saw what my body had been reduced to; I even considered shaving my head for a more dramatic effect. “You have no idea what it was like, Dad. Some of the stuff…I just can’t even say…” I would take long pauses while looking down and shaking my head. I would imply that there was penetration, possibly sodomy, if not only to play the sympathy card for years to come, but also to remind everyone that my sister was an alien and needed to be excommunicated from our family.
I dozed off and was awakened moments later by Lucille smacking me in the face. “No! Noooooo!” I screamed.
“Your name. They’re calling your name to be released.”
My eyes lit up bigger than the first time I had seen Jon Bon Jovi perform live. I jumped off the bed and started to run toward the booth.
“Wait!” Lucille yelled. “Aren’t you even going to say good-bye?”
I turned and ran back to give her a hug, but was dumbstruck when she planted her lips directly on top of mine and held them. My arms fell to my side and I waited for her to finish kissing me. There were hoots and hollers coming from the women around us, and one of them yelled out, “Hammertime’s got a girlfriend! Hammertime’s got a girlfriend!”
“I’ll e-mail you,” I said as I slowly backed away.
“Barbie’s going home to her daddy,” a large black woman with dreadlocks yelled as I was taken by an officer out of the room and downstairs to an outbooking room, where I was handed a bag filled with the clothes I had come in wearing.
Twenty minutes later I walked out the doors of Los Angeles County Women’s Prison, otherwise known as Sybil Brand Correctional Facility, into the bright sunlight. I wondered who exactly Sybil Brand was and who she had pissed off in order to have an entire women’s prison named after her. I made a mental note to google her later.
I saw Lydia’s car parked at the far end of a circular driveway. Upon seeing me, she and my friend Ivory jumped out and started ru
The whole way to the car, Lydia and Ivory were telling me how horrible the past thirty-six hours had been for them and how they both had to call in sick to the restaurant where we all worked.
“Does everyone know I was in jail?” I asked.
“Yeah, Chelsea,” Ivory said. “We got together a fund and everyone chipped in. Even Hermano the busboy. We were worried your aunt wasn’t going to get the money fast enough, so we started asking everyone.”
“How much did you get?” I asked her.
“Fifty-five dollars.”
“None of us are ever driving drunk again,” Lydia said. “We are all taking taxis from now on…well, for a while anyway.”
“I don’t want you guys to be jealous,” I told them, trying to distract myself from the fact that they could only raise fifty-five dollars on my behalf, “but I’ve made a new friend and her name is Lucille. We’ve already kissed on the mouth.”
“Oh my God,” Lydia exclaimed looking back at me. “Were you raped?”
“Face raped,” I proclaimed as I got in the passenger seat of Lydia’s car. I wanted to get home as soon as possible and weigh myself.
I went to court about three months later, when I was given my sentence: five hundred hours of community service, a fine of twenty-five hundred dollars, and three months of DUI school.
My favorite of the three was DUI school. The instructor was a small Asian man who repeated one thing at the begi
CHAPTER FOUR
I was visiting my parents in New Jersey for a three-day break during my first book tour, and I had just come from the car wash, where I had taken their minivan to be disinfected. My parents are two of the most unsanitary people I know. They will leave fast-food bags, soda cans, coffee cups, and perishable items in their car for weeks at a time. When my father picked me up from the airport, there was a half-eaten apple rolling around on the floor mat, a melted chocolate bar stuck to the passenger seat, and a small order of McDonald’s french fries in the glove compartment.
“I have an idea, Chels,” my father said to me as I walked in the door. “I think you should start your own clothing company but only design thongs and lingerie.”
My sister Sloane was sitting on the couch playing with her new baby girl, Charley, while our dog Whitefoot looked on in disgust. With every baby my brothers and sisters had, our dog became more and more depressed.
“He’s been talking about it for the last two hours,” Sloane said as she rolled her eyes. “He also wants you to write on all the clothes ‘I’M A CHELSEA GIRL.’”
“Whaddya think, love? We could really rake in the big bucks,” my father went on. “You’ve got a great sense of style, and with a shape like yours, you could also model the stuff.”
“Why would I design clothing?” I asked.
“Why would she design clothing?” he asked the air and then Whitefoot, as if the answer was so obvious, even the dog would know. “Why wouldn’t you design clothing, is the real question. You’ve got a huge fan base.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Sloane said. “Not big enough to launch a clothing line.”
“A lingerie line, goddammit! A lingerie line!” he yelled.
My father is always yelling for no apparent reason. He yells at unsuspecting people all the time, but his favorite person to yell at is Sloane, who usually responds with a “what the fuck is your problem?” look.
“Calm down, Melvin,” my mother chimed in, as she emptied an entire box of Carr’s crackers into Whitefoot’s bowl along with some freshly made egg salad. Whitefoot’s “bowl” is a stainless-steel baking tray. My parents are under the impression that our dog is Edward Scissorhands and can somehow manage to put the egg salad on top of the cracker and enjoy it like a human.
“Don’t give him the pepper crackers,” my father said. “He only likes the plain ones. The pepper ones give him gas.”
I looked over at Sloane, who was rubbing her temples.
“Anyway, back to the thongs,” my father continued. “We’ll have your sister Sidney run the company-”
“Can you please stop using the word ‘thong’?” Sloane said, with her eyes now closed. “How do you even know what a thong is?”
“Yeah, Melvin,” my mother added. “How do you know what a thong is?”
“Oh, come on! Thongs are the new bloomers. What are you girls, living in the dark ages? All the girls are wearing them; Chelsea’s been wearing them for years. Sylvia, I wouldn’t mind seeing you in one,” he said, looking at my mother with his bowling-ball head tilted to the side and an enormous grin on his face. Suddenly Whitefoot started to bark uncontrollably and run back and forth from the front door to the living room while we were seated.
“That’s the mailman,” my father said as Charley began to wail. “Whitefoot, quiet!”
“Ugh, that dog has some serious problems,” Sloane said, as she picked Charley up. “You need to send him to a dog trainer.”
“He has a little social anxiety, that’s all. You don’t send a ten-year-old dog to obedience school,” my dad screamed over the dog’s barking. “It’s just not done.”
“No, you don’t do it,” my mother said in her most argumentative voice, which is about a half an octave lower than her regular voice.
“The mailman comes here every day,” Sloane said. “You’d think the dog would figure that out by now. He’s so stupid.”
“He’s not stupid, he’s just depressed! But he’s a good Jewish doggy who’s very loyal, isn’t that right, Whitefoot? Goddammit, Whitefoot, come here and shut up! Sylvia, look and see if that’s the mailman.”