New Jersey

Nanny Six loved raw beef. Liked how it felt at the back of her throat. Some rotavirus in the blood puffed her vocal cords. Made her sound like a troll.

Nanny Four tried raw beef once but it made her puke. Ate it at one of my parents’ fancy dinner parties. Raw egg yolk on top. Capers. Fancy crackers. She’d gone out to the living room to scavenge food. Mother locked us in the rumpus room with some board games and pretzel sticks. We emerged when the coast was clear and made a beeline for the fridge.

Nanny Three used to give my old man blow jobs in the boathouse.

Nanny Four looked out for us when the adults disappeared.

Nanny Six was from New Jersey. Party girl. Got up to some crazy shit on the weekends. Dated a senator’s son. But that was years later. After our downfall.

Nanny Four watched Wheel of Fortune in my parents’ bedroom when they were in Europe. She took off all her clothes and dabbed Mother’s homeopathic lotions on her varicose veins.

Nanny Two died in a skiing accident in Colorado.

Nanny One let us watch The Brady Bunch and The Flintstones back-to-back. She bought us sticker books with her own money.

Nanny Two said she loved us more than life itself.

Wheel of Fortune fed us sweet, sugary breakfast cereal.

Nanny Seven let me sip her beer.

Nanny Five let me puff on her clove cigarettes.

Nanny Seven was fourteen. Captain Crunch between her braces. She smiled at me and my heart broke.

Nanny Two had a dark history. You could see it on her face. My old man said he found her in the back of a dry cleaner. Digging through a dumpster. Searching for chemicals.

Blow Jobs was ex-military.

Wheel of Fortune was working off a debt she refused to talk about.

Nanny Five had unusual ticks. Wore men’s underwear. Put baby powder in her hair. Found her going through my old man’s laundry once. Sniffing his dirty socks.

Braces was a hypochondriac. Convinced I had rickets. Took me to the free clinic in her neighborhood. Three-hour bus ride. Some homeless guy called me “Marshmallow.”

Wheel of Fortune got drunk and engaged in crazy, inappropriate behavior. Filled the wading pool with milk and made me bathe in it.

New Jersey once said, while giving me a bath, “Your testes look like walnuts.”

Dumpster hung a cracked mirror on the wall next to my bed. Said it was to ward off my perfection.

Wheel of Fortune lived at a Motel 6 with her boyfriend and his mother. She carried around hundreds of those tiny motel shampoos in her purse.

Braces used to spend hours drying me off after a bath. So much that my skin became chafed. She said that in order to avoid the impending infestation, I needed to keep myself squeaky clean.

Blow Jobs covered me in glitter and put lipstick on my mouth. She insisted that I learn French out of an old cookbook Mother kept under the sink. She said, dyeing my hair in the kitchen sink, “You never know. You might need to sell your body someday.”

Sticker Books claimed she could hear secret, underground generators hum.

New Jersey accused me of having no empathy. “You’re like a human tape recorder,” she said, “but with no soul.”

Blow Jobs staggered into my bedroom one night, drunk and sporting a black eye. She kissed me on the forehead and asked me, “Am I still your girlfriend?”

Dumpster smelled like death. Ammonia and wet dog. Her fingers were stained blue.

Dirty Socks had three kids. She used to bring them over on the weekend. One of her kids was a shitter. He’d drop trou’ in the living room and crap right on the shag.

Blow Jobs blew her brains out with a shotgun. “Like a dude might,” my old man said. “Damn shame to ruin such a perfect complexion.”

New Jersey wore an ankle bracelet. So we could track her if she left the property. She was sixteen when we leased her. On the fourth of July we sat under a blanket and listened to the radio. Canadian station. French. She said it was an erratic jet stream that moved the signal so far south.

Dirty Socks was a partial amnesiac. You could see the vacancy in her eyes. Sitting by the edge of the pool. Looking at her own reflection. Trying to get a glimpse into her own past. We didn’t know who she was exactly.

New Jersey had unsettling friends. Showed up in the middle of the night in a Hummer. Maybe an ex-husband. Or her pimp. Mother bought drugs from him. The three of them partied in the hot tub.

Dumpster said she was searching for something unreal. She’d get up in the middle of the night, put on her coat, and walk down to that abandoned strip mall. She just walked back and forth in front of the boarded up shops. In the morning, we’d find her asleep in the garage. Inexplicable bite marks on her arms and legs.

Blow Jobs was my first love. I tried to look in her window when she was dressing, but my old man caught me. He said it was an impossible romance, and I should focus on girls my own age.

Dirty Socks liked to kill field mice. She’d put out those sticky traps with the peanut crumbs on them. Attractant. Sat there in the dark. Waiting. When she caught one, she just watched it suffer. Trying to escape the glue and crawl back to its family. Tearing off its fur. Stretching its legs like rubber bands.

Wheel of Fortune found my shoebox. It was filled with dirty socks.

Braces took us to Montana. Due to kidnapping concerns. My old man had hundreds of acres out there. Only we were stuck inside a cabin with a couple of private-security men. Playing with sticker books.

New Jersey drove with us in the Jeep. Windows blackened. Sound of bombs in the distance. She let me put my head on her lap when I was scared.

Wheel of Fortune cried a lot. My old man couldn’t stand it. He said, “They will tell you they hurt inside, but don’t fall for it. No matter what they tell you. You have to be strong.”

Dumpster came with a warranty. My old man showed it to me once. We drove for days into corn country. Small town. Bank. He had a secret safety deposit box there. “Out of the public sight,” he said. Assumed name. “Keep the IRS off my ass.” He showed me her papers. In an old leather dossier.

New Jersey was deeded to me when I was twelve. I told her I wanted waffles for breakfast. “But I’m running out of battery power,” she said.

Blow Jobs taught me to communicate by blinking my eyes.

Dirty Socks killed a man. In the garage. I just remember the sirens. Mother said the man was there to do bad things to us. My old man was thankful he paid extra for the special-ops training.

Braces had greasy hair. I imagine there’s still a stain on the wall next to her bed. Looked like a skull.

Blow Jobs said she yearned for one moment in life where the fragments came together and made sense.

Wheel of Fortune came to us through the national lottery. It was the system they used back then. To assign a girl to a family.

Dumpster taught me sexual positions using a G.I. Joe and a Barbie doll.

Nanny Eight had unpleasant and dark memories of her father. She wrote them down in a journal that she kept under her pillow.

Dumpster still crawls around inside my head at night.

New Jersey hated silence. She was constantly humming a tune. Or the radio was on.

Dirty Socks said I could look at her pussy if I wanted. She sat on the couch in the unfinished basement and spread her legs on the ottoman.

Braces left me when I turned seven.

Blow Jobs grew tired with age.

Dumpster got angry with me for not believing in God. “Who’s going to give you the glue?” she asked.

New Jersey watched the decline of my family from afar.

Sticker Books recognized Mother’s mental instability right away.

Wheel of Fortune wore funky high heels. During the downfall, the two of us fled to the city.

Braces saw my old man’s car explode. She wiped blood splatter from my face. She pulled gravel and safety glass fragments out of my arm with a tweezer.

Blow Jobs was dragged away by a neighborhood patrol. They had started cropping up all over. We were walking the dog. They spotted her and dragged her into their van. I hid in the bushes.

Dumpster and I traveled to New Jersey incognito.

Wheel of Fortune said that when she was a little girl the colours were more intense.

Dumpster kept a folder of places she wanted to visit.

Dirty Socks and I took baths together until I was sixteen. She washed my back with a sponge. She kissed my deformities. “Does it still hurt?” she asked.

Sticker Books liked to take us to Fairy Land. That was a small, local amusement park out on the outskirts of town. There was a huge cement whale at the entrance. You walked through its mouth to get in. The ticket booth was inside the throat.

Braces said her grocery lists were an underappreciated form of poetry.

Wheel of Fortune liked to flirt with the guy who ran the farm stand.

Dirty Socks loaded me into a station wagon. She told me we were leaving the city. We were losing the war. None of the other grown-ups wanted to admit it, but we would be invaded by the end of the week.

New Jersey lived with me for ten days in a storage unit.

Wheel of Fortune once told me that voles were monogamous.

Sticker Books took us trick-or-treating. She dressed my sister up like a princess. I was a troll.

Dirty Socks looked out the bus window and asked me, “Where have all the people gone?”

New Jersey said that I was a special, because I wasn’t seduced by the big picture.

Nanny Eight made me wear a pair of headphones and a sensory vest. Mother thought I was autistic, but really I was just angry.

Blow Jobs took us to Fairy Land after it had closed. We broke in with her boyfriend. They were drinking vodka out of a thermos. The boyfriend cut the chain-link fence and we crawled in. The buildings were all broken-down.

Wheel of Fortune climbed to the top of one of the water towers and threatened to jump off. She said my old man had made her pregnant and forced her to have an abortion.

Sticker Books waltzed into my life too late to save me from myself.

Nanny Nine was Iranian. She had an intensity to her eyes that scared me.

Headphones took me to the movies to see a Disney cartoon about a family of vampires living in modern-day Los Angeles. Before the film started there was a newsreel about our troops. The narrator said we were winning the war, but I knew this was a lie.

Dirty Socks took me to the town square one morning. She said she had a surprise for me. An enemy soldier had been captured and was going to be hanged.

Dumpster had a big binder filled with art projects to entertain us on rainy days. She was young and optimistic. Mother used to get angry with her, because she let us play with Lego on the dining room table.

New Jersey predicted that I would never make sense of these fragments.

Wheel of Fortune made a maze in the garage with sheets and lawn furniture and ran the dog through there.

New Jersey and I held a backyard carnival to raise money for muscular dystrophy but nobody came.

Iranian held poetry Wednesday, where we had to turn ordinary events into haiku.

Blow Jobs taught me how to build a bomb out of bleach, fertilizer, and marbles. For my ninth birthday, she gave me a book with pictures of edible mushrooms. She said, “The time will come when you’ll need a new set of skills.”

Dumpster liked to play capture the flag. Mother was convinced it was thinly disguised military training. Mother said, “And spin the bottle is really interrogation. So please don’t tell her anything.”

Iranian said, “The days ahead are wicked.”

Headphones tried to keep the darkness at bay by giving us themed birthday parties long after we were too old to care.

Dirty Socks had a storage unit filled with furniture and crystal.

Braces made us play a game called “grave robber.” We’d go into the cemetery and dig up a fake coffin, usually an old Partridge Family lunch box she’d buried. Filled with pictures cut out of Playboy as a prize.

Braces believed God was random in His blessings.

New Jersey once let me touch her nipple through her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I tried to stick my hand up there, but she slapped me. “That’s enough for now,” she said.

Headphones came into my bedroom one night and climbed in beside me. She said, “Somebody is going to have to teach you. It might as well be me.”

Braces told me to remember her in code. “So that the bastards can never take me away from you,” she said.

Iranian took me into the woods. We were carrying shovels. She made me dig beneath an oak tree. We found a suitcase. Inside was a dead dog. The dog was wrapped in a plastic garbage bag and duct tape. “Early genetics experiments,” she said. There was money in there too. Old money. The faces on the bills were the faces we saw in history books.

Dirty Socks homeschooled me. Mother didn’t trust the teacher’s union. But then my old man realized the only thing I was learning was housekeeping and so he enrolled me in public middle school.

Braces showed me the mass grave behind the courthouse. She showed me Mother’s corpse and let me hold her cold, dead hand for a few seconds. Then the man in the iron mask tossed lime on her face.

New Jersey visited me when I was sent to live in the special dormitory for orphans.

Iranian said my parents were killed, because they refused to embrace the downfall. “They couldn’t understand the shifting layers,” she said.

Headphones shot my earth science teacher with an old, rusty revolver. He had been hoarding chemicals and textbooks.

Braces called the downfall “stasis.” I didn’t know what she meant until my old man sat on the edge of my bed, holding the Crock-Pot, and wept. He was so hungry he’d slow-cooked my guinea pig. But he couldn’t figure out if he should use low or high heat. “Six or eight hours?” he asked. “Curry powder or sage?”

Iranian made sure I got placed in one of the decent work farms. She said that the smart ones were culled and I could learn a skill that would keep me alive.

New Jersey was the one who told me my little sister had disappeared. “She’s got smooth skin,” she said. “Probably end up working in one of the sex caravans.”

Sticker Books was accused of being a collaborator. She got strung up outside the public library for everyone to see. They made me poke her with a stick.

New Jersey said she didn’t feel much pain anymore.

Headphones tried to get me a job at her brother’s Dairy Queen, but he said he already had his quota of retards.

Sticker Books taught me how to clean weapons. First you break them down into their components. I had tiny fingers and could handle the small parts without dropping them.

Headphones hooked up with the football coach. He’d been a sleeper agent, working with the other side. He’s the one who gave them the plans to our defense systems.

Iranian lived in the temple. At least they called it a temple. None of us could figure out exactly what it was. They seemed to pray there. They got down on their knees when the bell rang.

Wheel of Fortune said that I could try to cling to the past, but that it was impossible to go back in time.

Dirty Socks said that there was something living in our walls that made her head fuzzy.

Braces taught me how to disconnect from pain.

Sticker Books visited me in the dormitory. It was set up in the old high school gymnasium. There were mattresses on the floor and tents set up in the locker room. Couples went inside the tents for conjugal visits. The guards charged by the minute.

Blow Jobs took me on long walks through the city. She was afraid of cracks in the cement. She put her ear up against graffiti, like it could speak to her.

Braces had a disabled son who was making a set of chain mail out of buttons and twisty ties. He needed to keep his hands busy so he wouldn’t self-satisfy.

Iranian said cleaning weapons was just a short-term gig for me. She said my fingers were small now, but pretty soon my knuckles would grow large from malnutrition and fractures. Then they would have no use for me.

Dirty Socks took her family on a vacation to Florida. They went to Disney World, but couldn’t afford to stay on-site. So they rented a room at a cheap motel two hours away.

New Jersey carried around a jar of sand and saltwater. She said all nannies were attracted to the ocean.

Sticker Books sat with me by the fire and told me stories about her eccentric father.

Blow Jobs said she welcomed the extinction of humanity.

Braces said every sentence is a code for something else.

Sticker Books was treated like family. For her birthday, we took her to eat lobster at a seafood restaurant. This was back when you could get a whole bowlful of steamed clams for two dollars. Salty. Buttery. She helped me crack my lobster. Dipped the red meat into the butter and put it in my mouth. I had bad diarrhea afterward. She held me all night. My stomach hurt so bad. I ran an intense fever. They thought I was going to die. My brain swelled up. I lost my intelligence. “Hush now,” she said. “You can’t die on me. You’re all I have.”

Dumpster smuggled food into the dormitory. Some extra mac and cheese. A few hot dogs.

New Jersey helped my father stuff the pillowcases with valuables.

Braces got married to a famous movie star. I was picking up trash on the side of the road and this big limo stopped and she stepped out. She kissed me on the forehead and said, “I knew you’d find a way to survive.”

Blow Jobs was let go, because my old man thought she’d stolen his Lou Gehrig autographed baseball. It was in mint condition. It turned out the dog got to it. Chewed it into a pulpy mass.

Braces was in a panic one day. For some reason she needed to find a mirror. “I need it for signaling,” she said.

Dirty Socks had a brother with wooden legs. He fought in the war and got his legs blown off stepping on a land mine. The family couldn’t afford fancy prosthetics. Her brother carved the left leg into a cribbage board. On the right was a picture of a Harley.

Iranian strapped Mother to a chair and pulled the veneers off her teeth with a pair of needle-nose pliers. When she was done, Mother looked like a vampire.

Braces claimed revolution was hidden in scraps of memory.

Headphones told me to grow some balls. “Your family grew out of favour,” she said. “So what? You need to move on.”

New Jersey made me wash her van on Sundays. She said I needed to work off my shame.

Wheel of Fortune said that people want life to lead chronologically from one moment to the next, but that it rarely does.

Sticker Books told me to be careful. “The haunting will be subtle,” she said. “Objects and people will become intermingled.”

Wheel of Fortune left a one-line suicide note for her family. “I’ve paid the electric bill,” it read.