Jaena

A few months of my life...

 

Jaena

I looked at her over her glowing cigarette. Her eyes were oddly blank under her eyebrows shaven into thin lines. She was wrapped up in my favorite blanket and had jammed her feet into my slippers. We sat out in the cold November night. I was telling her all my secrets. She promised to keep them. She was twenty three, but looked several years older. She was a big woman. She had replaced her previous lifestyle with food, but she was solid under her layer of ice cream and third helpings. She had a blatant bisexuality about her. She rarely wore a bra. Her hair was dyed a strange orange color. She said she had been going for blonde, but had quite made it. She was a recovered meth addict. She called me Meisha, and I called her Jaena.

     She asked me to move in with her, just until she could find another roommate. She didn’t want to be in that house by herself. I understood. I wouldn’t have to pay rent. We went to tell/ask my parents about it. I was eighteen. They loved her and wanted to help her. I needed space to think, to focus. They finally agreed. They agreed to two weeks.

     I broke up with my long distance boyfriend later that night. I said I needed a break. She sat next to me and held my hand as I did it over the phone. I cried. I couldn’t take the pressure he was putting on me to fly and marry him in South Korea. In a week it would be my birthday. I would be nineteen. Eighteen had sucked so far.

     I had kissed Rob at my Halloween Party. I had had a crush on him before I met my boyfriend over the internet. He lived near her house. The house I was moving into. I told him over MySpace that my boyfriend and I had broken up. I wanted him. She wanted him too. She saw the energy between me and him. She made fun of us. Before, the boyfriend was never mentioned. After, he was merely my psycho stalker, and wouldn’t stop calling Jaena’s phone.

     I moved in on Sunday and Monday. I moved into her old bedroom and she moved in downstairs. Her old roommate had been kicked out for doing meth. My mom helped us clean. The landlord was the scary old lady who told us we had to keep the house super clean if we wanted to live there.

     It was fun. Just her and me, for a while. I paid for her cell phone bill because we were going to share the phone. That didn’t really happen. She got the phone most of the time, and I was sometimes allowed to use it.  We ate dinner together. Rob came over for dinner most nights. We had him do manly-type things, like help us move heavy furniture. I stayed the night over at his house once. After that, I made my bed and it stayed that way.

       One night we went over to this guy’s house. Jaena met them over MySpace. She wanted to get laid. There were two of them. One was short and geeky. The other was tall and hot. They lived across from Wal-Mart. We watched stupid movies. They got drunk and high, I didn’t. I thought about Rob. We played complicated card games, and when I tried to teach them a simple one, they didn’t understand it. I fell asleep. I woke up to the sounds of her and the short one making out. The tall one had my zipper open and was playing with my panties. I told the tall one I wasn’t that type of girl. I had to lie next to him all night because there was only one bed, and the short one and she had taken over the couch. He was hot, and he held my breast all night, no matter how many times I moved out of his reach. We left in the morning and missed the bus to school. We then walked in circles until the next bus came. She asked me if I had gotten laid. I said no. I realized that I didn’t want to have a series of random sexual partners. I didn’t want to ruin the ‘maybe’ I had with Rob.  I wanted him to come and rescue me.

     My friend Kate wanted to move in. The rent was cheaper with more people. She would move in after Thanksgiving. She was getting her wisdom teeth pulled first. She would have the last bedroom. I looked forward to having her in the house. I didn’t know her very well.

     Leann moved in one day. She was just going to stay a few days. A few days turned into weeks, then months. She slept in my bed. She paid rent. I didn’t.  She was loud and bitchy and I didn’t understand her. I gave her the clothes that were too big for me because I had stopped eating.

      Thanksgiving morning, my sister was going to pick me up. I was at Rob’s. She didn’t know I spent the night over there most of the time. It wasn’t always sex. I just liked to sleep next to him. I felt there was something missing when I was by myself.  He said he hadn’t slept that well in months. I liked the way he smelled. We had been friends for a long time before, and it was awesome how well we got along. It was merely the natural progression of our relationship.  

      My sister got mad because she had to wait ten minutes for me to get there, and I offered her lunch, because Rob and I were hungry and we were making it. She wanted to leave now. She was angry. I told her to just leave. She did. I spent Thanksgiving with Rob, his mom, and his twin sister.

      Later that week I called my mom to tell her that I wasn’t moving back in. She got angry. Other things were said that were hurtful and she told me I was being stupid. I had no job. I had no money. They came over that night to take my television, because it apparently wasn’t really mine. They emptied my bank account because I owed them money and then closed out my account.

     Leann moved into my room, and I moved into the hallway upstairs. It was because she was paying rent and I was not. I didn’t even have a bed, but they said I was spending so much time over at Rob’s that it didn’t matter. I spent two full days at the Valley Mall looking for a job. I finally got one at Motherhood Maternity. They paid well, but I got almost no hours. The girls were bitchy and know-it-alls. 

     Kate moved in, but she wasn’t there at the house much either. I was scared. The house now had bad vibes attached to it. I spent my mornings at the house watching television and crocheting scarves for the next door neighbor who had given me yarn for doing them.

     I came clean to my parents about Rob, about my ex, about lying about everything that was me. My sister cornered me one day and school and yelled at me about how I was breaking our parents’ hearts. I knew that I had to before we could move on and I could be who I really was.

      Jaena’s friend Sara started staying with us. They called each other sisters, and she would do anything for Sara. Sara pretty much lived there for two weeks until she went to Arizona. Sara gave her weed, and they started hanging out in the basement a lot. They smelled like pot all the time now. I found out later that Sara was a big time meth dealer, and had given Jaena some. She bought me chocolate milk once.

     With Sara came all sorts of strange people: This guy Matt who had a thing for Sara and tried to grope her in the shower when he was tweaking out and then got thrown out of the house. He later got his gallbladder removed and Jaena said he could stay at the house. There was also this large black woman who beat up Sara in the closet when she wouldn’t give her a ride somewhere. I was rarely at home now.

     Christmas came. I tried to reconcile with my parents, and I spent Christmas with them at my Grandparents’. I worked at lot and got one decent paycheck. I fell in love with Rob. I became good friends with his mother. January came. On the third I got my financial aid check and paid my parent’s back, got my own phone, and took Rob out to dinner. Jaena said she would cover me until the money. She called me about seven times over my night with Rob. I finally answered and she asked me to bring her the money because she had to buy laundry soap. It was twelve thirty in the morning. She had no ride anywhere and no place within walking distance was open. I told her finally that I would bring her the money. When I got there, she told me I had to pay her for the utilities too. I didn’t want to give her the money because I knew what she would do with it. Leann yelled at me because I apparently had yelled at Jaena on the phone. I told them I had a problem with them doing drugs in the house, and the fact that Sara had been doing deals there as well.

    I gave her three hundred dollars and told her I would bring her the rest in the morning. Leann said that if I didn’t give them the money right now, I had to have my stuff out. I told them I was moving out anyway. Rob said I could stay with him. I told him later that night that I loved him. He said it back.

     My mother helped me move some of my stuff to Rob’s and the rest to their basement. The last thing Jaena said to me was “I’m sorry that it turned out this way.” She hid my stereo and I forgot to look for it when I was there. I didn’t see Jaena after that. Kate moved out that weekend as well and back in with her parents.

      My stuff remained in a pile at Rob’s for a couple of weeks, but then it slowly trickled to be mixed in with his stuff. When I went back to the house a week later to get my paycheck, some stoner guy was there named Chris. He told me to look around for anything that I had missed. He was pretty nice.

     On Leann’s birthday, towards the end of January, she called me and told me that Jaena had left with all the money and my stereo. No one had heard from her since. Leann said that she had a few of my things, and some of my mail. She was living there with her best friend and Chris. We saw her that day, Rob and I, and she apologized for everything that had happened. The landlord was coming the next day to put them on the lease. I think she was going to ask if I wanted to move back in, but Rob made it very clear to her, and to me, that I was living with him. He started mixing our laundry together when we washed it. Colors with colors... Whites together...