Renting Ginny

“Ginny! Ginny! Wake up! Wake the hell up!” My eyes snapped open as I was being shaken so hard it felt like my neck would literally snap in half and send my head rolling to the floor. “How many times you gonna go sleepwalking around here with these damn nightmares of yours?” I blinked. “My God, Teri, your kid really needs help.” I quickly returned to a state of wakefulness and back to the land of reality as I stared into the eyes of my mother’s drunken boyfriend. I, Ginny Gold, had anything but the kind and caring parents who were brutally killed in my nightmares. My disheveled and probably just as drunk mother suddenly appeared from the kitchen, her stringy, greasy hair in her face. “Whatchoo doin’, girl? It’s early on a Sunday morning, yet you’re already up with them nightmares again? Go on, get! Get outa here!” Trying to fight back tears of embarrassment and hurt, I trudged into my bedroom. That was actually just down the hall of our tiny, filthy two-bedroom apartment and not up the stairs of a spacious and well-kept house. “When are you going to do something about that damn kid of yours?” my Mom’s boyfriend screamed at her. “I’m doing the best I can, okay? The doctors say there’s not much we can do about it. She just has to work through things in her own way. Seeing your own father blow his brains out because he was dumb enough to gamble away what little money we had is not an easy thing to cope with. Of course, the kid’s messed up. What do you expect? She has no brothers or sisters and no real friends.” “That’s her fault,” said her boyfriend. “Look how fat she is.” My fists clenched with hurt and anger as I stepped in front of my mirror. It was true. I was anything but the slim, attractive blond I had been in my dreams. I really did have blue eyes, and I really was of average height, but I was about fifty pounds overweight and had limp, dirty blond hair that was positively boring as hell. No way I could ever work for an escort service, whether the clients were crazy or not, like the woman in my nightmares had been… Anita or Anina or something like that. No way a beautiful college professor would ever take note of me. The shitty stench of marijuana wafted into the room. I shut the door tight and lit a stick of strawberry incense. I was surprised when my mother actually defended me. Not something I was accustomed to her doing. “If people feel they can only be Ginny’s friend for how she looks, then they’re not worthy of my daughter’s friendship to begin with.” “You know she’s a freaking dyke, don’t you?” said her boyfriend. “I can tell these things.” “Yeah, I’m sure you can, Mister Know It All.” I heard my mother’s boyfriend slap her, and then the sound of her slapping him back. Then I heard even more slaps being exchanged as insults were flung and furniture was toppled. I huddled on my bed with my back against the wall and my knees drawn up to my chest. Except for the part with my dream parents being murdered and the crazy lady kidnapping and chasing me all over the place, I found a part of me that wished I could escape back into the dream with the perfect parents, the siblings I didn’t have, and the sweet, loving, and totally hot girlfriend I also didn’t have. Yeah, I was a “freaking” dyke, but I didn’t look it. I wasn’t this flashy, feminine thing, but I did look like a woman. Of that, I could be sure. I wasn’t overly masculine in any way whatsoever. I was heavy, but I wasn’t ugly. I was just very plain. I might as well have been ugly, though, for neither men nor women seemed to be interested in me. I wasn’t skinny enough for the guys, nor was I pretty enough for the women. Straight bars, gay bars – I’d been to them all just to end up sitting all by myself in some corner and made to feel totally invisible. No one asked me to dance. No one offered me a drink. No one even cared to sit down and strike up a conversation with me. “Get out!” my mother demanded of her boyfriend. “No. You owe me.” “I don’t owe you nothing. Now get out of here. Now!” More scuffling and then some banging from the apartment below. Did they really think that slamming their ceiling with their broom would get my Mom and her boyfriend to stop fighting? “No, it wouldn’t,” I sighed to myself as I got back off the bed, “but I know what will.” “Get out of here, Clay!” “No fucking way, lady,” he said with a drunken slur. “Get your spoiled little bratty kid out of here instead. She’s almost thirty years old, for God’s sake! How much longer do you expect to have her underfoot? She can’t stay with you and depend on you forever. She needs to learn about independence and responsibility.” “Look, I have to go to sleep soon so I can be out on those freezing streets tonight selling my ass just to keep a roof over our heads. Her job doesn’t pay nearly as much and…” Her boyfriend cut her off with a roar of laughter. “You think you’re gonna sell that bubble butt of yours without me?” “I don’t need your money. You keep your own portion of the drug sales and just get the hell out.” Again, I heard the sounds of punches, kicks, and insults being thrown as I made my way into my mother’s room. “Ow! You just broke my nose, you whore!” “Good! I’ll break some more body parts of yours if you don’t get the hell out right now!” I opened the drawer of the nightstand by Mom’s bed and pulled the small handgun from it. Without a word or a second thought as to what I was about to do, I left the room, walked down the hallway, and fired at my mother’s boyfriend. My mother then began screaming like a hyena just as the neighbor below us gave up banging on our floor and traded in their broom for some loud metal music. “Why did you do that?!” my mother screamed. I stared at her, mystified. Maybe someday I would understand how one could put down, arrest, beat, or even kill a woman’s abuser and then hear the woman ask why? Why did they do that? Next, I fired at my mother. She slumped to the floor next to her beloved abusive boyfriend, in whom she would continually kick out and then allow back into her life, thus into mine, in an endless cycle of abuse and destruction. “I don’t know, Mom,” I said to her lifeless body. “I was hoping you could tell me why, but I guess you won’t be able to now.” I turned and headed back into my mother’s bedroom and replaced the gun in the drawer of the old, rickety nightstand she’d probably picked up for a few bucks from a thrift store when I was too young to remember. I looked at the clock. I had a few hours before I had to be at work, but I wanted to be sure I wasn’t late again either. The boss man was ready to serve my head on a platter as it was for being late the last two days. He promised to actually serve it out the door if I was late again. I started to walk out of my mother’s room, but then I thought better of it. I opened the drawer once again and pulled out the gun. Next, I wiped it clean of my fingerprints and placed it in my mother’s hand. While I was in the shower, I made plans in my mind. I could have already called the cops, but I really didn’t want to miss work. The mean bastard I had for a boss would probably still fire me even if he knew my mother had been murdered. All he cared about was that people showed up to work for him, not what was going on in their personal lives. I decided I would make it look like I’d just discovered my mother and her loser of a boyfriend upon returning from work. I knew that an autopsy could pinpoint the time of death, so I would say that I’d been out riding my bike before actually going to work to clear my head and to get away from their bickering. I was a little worried the angle of the entry wound to my mother’s head might make the murder-suicide thing a little questionable, but I didn’t think it would in the end. I watched TV for about an hour and a half and then I gathered up some items of clothing and other things without actually packing them. I’d read enough detective novels to know that as a designated crime scene, I would probably have to stay somewhere else for a while. I was careful to move through the place quietly, not that the people below me were likely to hear me over their blasting music, but because I didn’t want anyone to report hearing movement within the apartment too late after the shootings, since I knew the coroner could pinpoint the time of death, or too soon before I was to report discovering the bodies. Once I was dressed in my hideously ugly work uniform, I put a cap on my head and left the dingy apartment, hopeful that no one would see me or at least not remember me if they did. The walk in the cool, clean, crisp air was nice. I was almost sorry it ended just ten minutes later when I reached the greasy burger joint. The thought of my life holding nothing above and beyond the sizzling grills, the cleaning chemicals, and the snotty customers almost made me want to return to the apartment and shoot myself next, but I remained calm as the boss man barked his orders at me. “Come on, Ginny, what’s wrong with you today? Move it, slowpoke!” Maybe he was the one who needed the third shot. “I want these countertops scrubbed down to a shine now!” I thought of my dream as a high-class call girl with a prestigious escort service and couldn’t help but smile. I quickly checked myself when I realized the boss man was gazing at me with a quizzical expression on his face. Hey, just what in the world could his least favorite and utterly plain-looking employee with no life possibly have to smile about? Once he moved away, I thought of the dream once again and how fun it would be to stay with all these glamorous-looking women who actually paid me to have fun with them, minus any kidnapping or violence. I thought of the woman called Barbara, who had been my girlfriend in the dream. Oh, how I’d love to have one like her for real! She had been smart, and she’d had a great sense of humor, not to mention the fact that she’d been hot as hell. My grim reality returned to gnaw at me as I wondered who I would stay with while my Mom and her boyfriend’s so-called murder was investigated. I assumed I would be invited to stay with my paternal grandparents since the other set lived out of state. That was okay. They didn’t fight nearly as much as my Mom and her wonderful boyfriend had. Just then, a customer entered the eatery. It was a tall woman with long, light brown hair. I couldn’t see her face just yet, but already the uncanny resemblance to the Anina of my dreams was almost mind-numbing. She turned to face me and smiled once her gray eyes met mine. “Hello,” she said with a German accent. I fainted. Then I was fired. Late that night, I was undressing for bed in the spare room of my grandparents’ house. I threw a robe over my sleep shirt and headed into their kitchen. I wanted to grab some cookies before bed, doubting I would ever really lose my extra weight anyway. As I munched on one of grandma’s famous oatmeal cookies, my other hand casually slipped into the pocket of my robe. I felt something and pulled it out of my pocket. It was a small piece of folded paper. I unfolded it and moved closer to the lamp so I could see better. The name Barbara and a phone number were written on it.