Josephine

drama, drama, drama?

When Josephine walked into the bar, her mother didn’t notice her at first.
Josephine had already packed her bags. A blue duffel and a black rolling suitcase were sitting in the silver Honda she had parked outside. Her plan was to leave without saying goodbye, but after she left the Texaco she had driven here, almost involuntarily.
She hadn’t eaten anything but a couple of apples and a bag of baby carrots for two days and it felt good. She was in control. When she saw her reflection in the glass before opening the door to go inside, she knew her mother would comment on how thin she looked, how unhealthy. She would shove a hamburger and fries at her and open two beers. She would expect her to eat the burger, drink the beer.  Then she’d want to talk. She always wanted to talk.
    The neon clock on the wall said 1:30 AM. She had told Dylan she’d be at his house a half hour ago, but she doubted if he was even packed. When they talked earlier he was still hung over from the farewell party one of their friends had thrown them the night before. Dylan had ended up passed out in the laundry room, on top of a pile of dirty undershirts and socks. They had fought over something at the party. She couldn’t quite remember. Some guy had probably hit on her or something. Dylan usually went crazy when that happened.
She liked to sit back and watch him lose it.  The way his jaw changed shape— set itself in a hard line, like a soldier. She liked making the angry vein protrude from the middle of his forehead. Sometimes she flirted with other guys on purpose. It was like lighting a firecracker, or the time Josephine was eight, when she set one of her grandmother’s living room curtains on fire, using one of her mother’s cigarettes.  She had taken the cigarette out of her mother’s fingers after she had passed out and sprayed a little piece of the heavy tan cloth with a bottle of her hairspray. The flames had moved up the curtain slower than she thought they would, but she had liked the way they jumped out at her like fast, reaching arms. Her grandmother had been furious. “No wonder the kid’s always does things like this,” she had said, “just look at all the shitheads you surround her with, at the bar, in my house, how many times have I said not to bring them here?” That was a little more than a decade ago, when they still lived in her grandmother’s two-bedroom apartment, back before her grandmother died.
     Josephine looked around the bar.  The place was so familiar she dreamt about it often. The empty bottles lining the back wall. The leather bar stools, peeling and unstuffing themselves along the bar. The ancient pinball machine, “Gorgar”, in the far corner.  The stale, smoky air.  The way the room was always dark and cavernous, even on sunny afternoons. When she was little, her mother brought her here when she had to work, almost every day. She would sit her at the table closest to the bar and give her napkins and a pen. Josephine would draw all over the napkins while her mother served drinks and talked loudly to drunk men. 
Tonight there were only a few customers left. A young couple was sitting at one of the tables near the back wall, finishing their beers. Balls of rolled up napkins sat atop an empty pizza tray between them.  The girl was telling a story, using her hands, pointing her spoon at her boyfriend like a director’s wand. The girl finished her story, laughed loudly, and swallowed the rest of her drink.
Josephine felt the sticky cement floor grab at her shoes as she walked toward the bar. Her mother nodded at her and smiled. She was in the middle of pouring an old man in a leather jacket a beer, the only other customer. His eyes were barely open and his body hunched over the bar. One arm dangled purposelessly beside him. A cigarette burned in his ashtray. Josephine sat down two stools away and put her purse on the bar. Her mother took it and put it near the cash register, after ruffling through her wallet, taking a ten and two fives.
    “Mom, that’s the last of my paycheck.”
    Her mother took her hair out of her ponytail and bent over so it was covering her face. Josephine watched her acrylic nails comb through her long, bleached hair as she talked, her voice muffled by her lowered head. “I told you, honey, things have been slow here.” She flipped her hair back and looked at Josephine, then came over and put her face in her hands. Josephine smelled old cigarettes on her dry, slender fingers. “You look tired sweetie,” she said. “And you obviously still haven’t been eating.”
    Josephine pulled away and looked at her mother’s face. It was wrinkled with years of sun-tanning. She had put on too much eyeliner again, so it was smudging underneath her already tired eyes. Her mother had always been skeletal, and in the low, reddish light of the bar she seemed old and corpse-like.  Josephine tried to remember a time when her mother didn’t look like an addict, but it was impossible. She had been one since she could remember. Her body aged as fast and hard as she lived her life.
“You should look at yourself,” Josephine said, already regretting coming.
    Her mother laughed for a long time, then coughed in long hacking breaths. Throwing a towel over her shoulder, she began to clear the empty bottles a nearby table. She was quiet for what seemed like a long time, moving around the bar like a chaotic moth, cleaning, and forgetting things. A couple bottles on the farthest table. The spray bottle of Limesol she always left in the bathroom.  Most nights it took her mother nearly an hour and a half to close up after only a few customers.
Josephine watched her now, wondering if the woman was short-circuiting.  Repeatedly, her mother looked at her and just blinked, as if she had seen her never before; or perhaps, as if she had seen her many times, just as she was now, sitting at the bar observing, ready to run away.  Suddenly, after an intense quiet, her mother yelled to the kitchen to cook up a cheeseburger and some onion rings. Then she walked over to the jukebox near the ratty pool table, leaning into it like she would a lover.
“It’s too damn quiet in here,” she said and started humming loudly.
Her mother wore a short jean skirt and a pink halter that used to be Josephine’s. Sometimes she raided her closet. Josephine had given up trying to explain to her that she was no longer young. A little bit of her thin, wrinkled stomach was showing. Her legs were wiry, like tree branches in the winter. Blue veins crawled up her calves to her thighs.
    “I know you can’t turn down those onion rings,” her mother said after she had chosen a Beatles song. Josephine ignored her and watched the couple stumble out of the bar singing. “Come together, right now…over me…”. When they got outside Josephine watched them through the window. The boyfriend pulled the girl into him and kissed her head as they walked in the cold to wherever they were going.
Jeremy the line cook came out of the kitchen wearing a greasy apron. He was a quiet high school dropout. When she was fourteen, Josephine had gotten stoned with him behind the building, next to the dumpsters. He had told her that her mother had once came on to him, grabbed his crotch. Josephine had informed him that her mother was probably high when she did that and to not ever try and touch her, even if she asked him to. He had just laughed and tried to kiss her, but Josephine didn’t like him or his greasy hair, or the way his voice never changed pitch when he talked.
    “I just cleaned up in there,” he said.
    “Just get one pan and dirty it for one effin’ cheeseburger and some onion rings. Won’t take you too long, I promise,” her mother said and blew him a kiss. The old drunk man at the bar let out half a mumbled laugh. Jeremy raised his eyebrows at Josephine, sighed, and walked into the kitchen.
    “Why are you making him do that when you know I won’t touch any of that s**t?”
    Her mother lit a cigarette and walked toward Josephine, swaying her hips to the music. “I tell you what,” she said, cigarette hanging from her lips, “we’ll split it. You need something in you, you’re shriveling up.”
    Her mother’s eyes went in and out of focus, like they couldn’t decide where to look. Her head was shaking a little, and she was playing with the rings on her fingers, almost obsessively.  Her mother caught her staring, put her cigarette out, and turned to make a drink. She made two, flipping the bottle like an expert, though trembling still. She raised it high in the air and then lowered it, the alcohol waterfalling into the glasses. When her mother was finished, she slid one in Josephine’s direction, then leaned against the back counter and took a gulp of her drink. “I swear I’ve become this rotten bar,” she said, “Twenty years. I must be in the walls.”
    Josephine said nothing, and didn’t touch her drink. She didn’t feel like indulging her mother tonight. And the woman never had any trouble talking when no one was listening. She never had any trouble talking at all. Once, when Josephine was in fifth grade her mother had gotten atop the bar and recited the anti-drug speech Josephine had written for school. She had scrawled it on a napkin, with a blue pen. “There are many reasons why drugs are bad…” Her mother had snatched it from her. “What’s this Jojo?”
She had watched her mother’s straight yellow smile while she read it silently to herself. When she was finished, she had laughed one of her coughing laughs, and climbed on top of the bar. “Watch, girlie. I’ll show you how to give a speech.” While performing it, her mother’s nose had started bleeding. It bled all over her white tank top and dripped onto the bar. Josephine had closed her eyes and listened to her mother laugh hysterically. When she opened them her mother had been lying atop the bar on her back, laughing so hard she wasn’t making any noise, just shaking; her boss was giving her a napkin for her nose, and touching her thigh with his big, hairy hand. Men were always touching her mother.
Later that night, Josephine had fallen asleep next to her mother on the couch, watching infomercials for closet organizers and blenders. Josephine had closed her eyes, and put her head on her chest, listening to her heartbeat as it pounded against Josephine’s cheek. It had been beating so quickly, like the woman had just run five miles.  After an hour or so, it had slowed to a rhythm Josephine could finally fall asleep to.
Josephine wondered how fast the woman’s heart was beating now and how many lines she had taken in the employee bathroom before she arrived and how long ago. She watched her mother as she counted the cash register. She was whispering numbers to herself in rhythm with the falling, clinking dimes. Faster than the falling dimes, Josephine thought. Her mother’s heart was beating faster than the dimes. Much faster.
“Your phone’s ringing,” her mother said, “I can feel it vibrating. It’s that stupid boy, I bet. That stupid, stupid boyeee.”
Josephine rolled her eyes. “You don’t even know what you’re saying right now.”
“Oh I know what I’m saying. That guy is useless. I’ll bet he doesn’t even know what to do with himself without you there rubbing his belly.”
“I told him I’d be there a long time ago. Whatever. I don’t even know why I came here.”
Her mother stopped counting, turned to Josephine, and smiled. Her face was child-like, earnest. “I know why you came,” she said, “You missed me.”
Josephine hopped over the bar and grabbed her purse, touching shoulders with her mother. “I never miss you,” she said, staring at the cash register. Then she looked into her mother’s unfocused, tired eyes. The woman’s face grew tight. She turned back to the register. “Why don’t you get going then,” she said, “before you hurt any more of my feelings.”
She thought about hugging her mother. She would have when she was younger. When she couldn’t stand to see her cry, or sprawled out on the kitchen floor half-naked, after a bad night with a boyfriend. Then Josephine thought about hitting her mother.
“I’ll be around,” she said, moving toward the door.
“Jojo,” her mother said quietly.
Josephine turned around. Her mother lowered her head and played with some change in her cupped hand, picking up pennies and letting them fall again, into her open palm.
“Please take care of yourself.”
Josephine stood, watching her mother, and again wondered if she should hug her. Then she turned and walked out the door, without saying goodbye.

Two weeks ago her mother’s dealer/boyfriend Joel, had come into the bathroom while Josephine was showering. He did this a lot when he was high—came in acting like an idiot, making jokes about thinking she was her mother. This time had been different.  He had had a gun in his right hand and a video-camera in his left. The water in their s****y apartment had just begun to get cold as he opened the shower curtain and pointed the gun at her. “You’re going to do what I say, right?” he had asked, smiling a little. Josephine had gotten out of the shower without turning it off, shaking. She had reached for a towel, water droplets falling from her hair into her eyes. He had held the towel out for her with the hand that still held the gun, and then pulled it away. He had been laughing, and looking in the mirror with the camera, recording his own reflection.  “Don’t worry,” he had said. “I’m not going to touch you. We’re just going to make a little movie.”
    He had told her to lie on the couch in the living room naked. He sat in the beaten leather Lazyboy across from her and set the gun on his knee. Josephine had stared at the dull black metal and wondered if it was even loaded. “Where’s my mom?” she had asked. He had just laughed, recording her. “She passed out in the other room after talking my ear off for an hour,” he said, “What a surprise.”
    “What are you going to do if she wakes up and comes out here?”
    “Shoot her.”
    He had thought that was really funny and laughed, closing his eyes and scrunching up his face, like a child. For a moment, it seemed like he had forgotten where he was, what he was doing.
He had made her touch herself. “Moan,” he had said, and then, “f*****g christ, you’re hot.”  She had done what he asked for about two minutes, shaking and scared. She forgot to breathe, and stared at the tiny white specks of the ceiling, pretending she was watching a movie or alone in her room, ready to sleep. When she finally remembered to inhale, a sudden calm had come over her. She realized the gun wasn’t loaded. If it was, he wasn’t ever going to shoot her.  Slowly, she got up and grabbed a blanket. “What the f**k do you think you’re doing?” he had said, tightening his grip on the gun, on his leg. She had turned and watched his white, desperate knuckles, clenching the hard metal, and his bouncing, nervous knee.
“It’s not loaded,” she had said, still trembling. “You’re pathetic. You’re all the same.”


The hutch in Dylan’s back porch swung open when Josephine walked into the room. It disrupted the wine glasses a little, and made her jump, though she should have known it would happen, in this weather, in this late autumn storm.  She was still thinking about her mother, and felt both guilty and angry, though the two felt oddly alike inside her stomach.
    She sat down on the straight-back wooden chair, put her knees up to her chest, and pulled her sweatshirt over her hands and knees for warmth, because she was shivering in the cold wind that whistled through the screened porch. The gusts carried the winter with them, and she was glad she wouldn’t be here for the first snow. The light in the neighbors’  back window was flickering on and off, and she wondered if they were even home. Piles of leaves she had watched Dylan’s youngest brother rake that evening were in disarray, flailing around the backyard like crazed butterflies. She watched the leaves, and the hutch, swaying on its hinges, and waited for Dylan to get off the basement couch and start packing.
    He had wanted to leave at 2:15 in the morning exactly. When he told her it was his “lucky time” she had known he wanted her to ask him why, but she didn’t question him out of spite. “That’s 2:15, sharp, Jo,” he had said, “sharp as a shard of glass.” He was fond of coming up with new phrases, and trying them on until they bored him, a few weeks later.
She had told him if anyone would make them late it would be him. Dylan was always late. She used to think it was because he was reserved and got too caught up in the hours he spent alone, playing the guitar, or watching gore films. Not until recently had she realized it was because he was addicted to speed and was afraid to go anywhere when he was too amped up, especially if he might see Josephine’s mother, or her mother’s boyfriend.
 Sometimes she was overwhelmed by how much Dylan reminded her of her mother.  Yesterday she had caught him stealing Adderall from his thirteen -year -old sister Lynn.  She had watched him from the girl’s doorway tip-toe to the drawer of her bedside table.  When he found it he had whispered “Gotcha”, as if he and the bottle of pills had been playing hide and seek. Something in his hoarse, low voice had bothered her, and for a second she doubted her decision to move with him to Tennessee. The pill bottle had rattled in the dark of the room, and it worried her that the child might wake at the sound. It hadn’t been long ago since Josephine had worn braces, and she didn’t want the middle schooler to have even more to worry about. “You’ve reached a new low, Dylan,”  she had said as they entered the light of the hallway. He had just shrugged his shoulders and reminded her of the time she had read the girl’s journal for her own drunken amusement. Josephine had fallen silent after that, and watched him swallow the pill, without water.
“You cold baby?” Dylan said as he stepped into the porch. “A little,” she said, burrowing further into her sweater. He had a bottle of Gatorade, probably spiked with something, in his right hand. He was fiddling with his belt with his left, holding part of his shirt up with his chin so Josephine could see the thin white scar that ran from his bellybutton to his hip.
When he was twelve Dylan’s older brother Charlie had stabbed him with a kitchen knife in a fight over a cookie. The incident had spread around their school and everyone who knew him started calling Charlie “Cookie.” Except Dylan. He just kept calling him Chaz like he always had. She had asked him once if he was still angry about it. Dylan told her that he never really had been, it had happened so fast. Charlie had been drunk, and Dylan grabbed a knife in a half joke. His brother had taken it from him and flailed it around in a drunken threat. Instead he had sliced Dylan’s stomach, sending him to the emergency room to get twelve stitches. “It really didn’t hurt that bad,” Dylan had said once, but with an abrupt defiance that made Josephine think that it had.
Dylan moved closer and knelt in front of her, putting his hands under her shirt, trying to find the button to her jeans within the tight ball she had made herself. Josephine didn’t move to let him in. She put her head on the top of her knees and closed her eyes in an effort to ignore him. “I can warm you up,” he said, still searching underneath her sweatshirt. After some more fumbling and more of her closed-eyed silence, he stood up and sighed. “We haven’t fucked in weeks,” he said. Josephine looked up and found that his face was bent exactly the way she had just imagined it would be—hard and scowling, like a child. She looked into his frustrated brown eyes. “Two weeks,” she said, “It’s been two weeks.”
He walked away and leaned his tall thin body against the hutch, then took a piece of his long dark hair between his fingers and put a few split ends in his mouth, a behavior Josephine always felt an odd guilt for watching. A couple years ago his mother had caught Josephine watching Dylan chew on his hair while the whole family was watching TV. She had nudged Josephine from her orange floral chair and whispered that Dylan had sucked his thumb until he was eight. Josephine had replied by asking how long he’d been chewing on his hair, but the woman had gone straight back to staring mutely at the TV, sipping her gin and tonic, and rocking in her chair.
Now, in the dark of the room, lit only by an aging porch light, Dylan’s gaunt pale face seemed youthful in its intense concentration; the stern, anxious gaze of a boy putting together a complicated train set. Dylan felt her observing him, looked up, and pointed his finger at her, slowly, as if trying to push an invisible button. “We’re not leaving until you f**k me,” he said, “and f*****g eat something Josephine. You look like s**t.” When she laughed and continued staring outside he said, “I’ll be downstairs.”
As he walked out of the room, Josephine watched the bottle of pills bulging from his back pocket.  She took her hands out of her sleeves and held them in front of her face. They were shaking. The cuticles on most of her fingers were bleeding, as she had been picking at them incessantly for two days. Her body felt creaky and empty, like an old attic. Inside her stomach, acids were trying to eat non-existent food. Her eyes were throbbing from being awake for so long and felt as if they were burrowing further into her head.
Josephine had started starving herself a year ago. Running on only adrenaline, she had trouble sleeping. The night Joel had made his “little movie” she had slept in this porch, on the floor, in a child’s sleeping bag, with one of Dylan’s old sweatshirts for a pillow.  She was wearing the sweatshirt now, had been for days. It was dark grey and had a tiny hole from a cigarette burn on the sleeve, near the wrist. The hole had gotten bigger since she’d been wearing it because she usually had her thumb shoved in it. That night on the porch she had slept better than she had in months, and had no dreams. The nights following she couldn’t sleep at all. She’d only gotten two or three hours here and there of the more awake, watchful kind of sleep; the kind where strange dreams try their best to become reality.
The moths clinging to the porch light were going about their business, jumping from the light to the screen of the porch, crawling up it until they flitted back toward the heat of the lamp. Josephine decided that if it wasn’t drugs or alcohol or starvation or sleep deprivation there would always be reasons for people to slowly kill themselves.
Josephine decided she wasn’t going to Tennessee. She unburied herself from her sweatshirt and walked to turn the porch light off. She walked into the kitchen, where there was only silence except for the ticking of the hanging clock on the wall next to the phone, near the microwave. It sounded as if it was getting louder, as if it would stop suddenly any moment, and the room would explode.
She turned the kitchen light on and stared at the room, at nothing in particular, and though she felt her knees shaking, she walked toward the fridge and contemplated the family pictures hanging there, mostly of Dylan and his sister and brother; ancient photographs of the days they went fishing, snow-mobiling. She found herself missing Dylan’s young face, a face she never knew, a face he wore before he started asking too many questions, for too much from his small life.
Josephine moved towards the utensil drawer and opened it. She eyed the butter knifes and their dull sheen. She grabbed a hold of the drawer, shoved it from its socket, overturned it suddenly and brought herself to the floor along with the knifes, forks, and spoons. She sat near the mess and ran her hands along the knives’ edges. Dylan called from downstairs. “Everything’s good up here,” she yelled to the empty room. Her voice sounded not like her own, empty, hoarse, and tinny.
Slowly, she grabbed the sharpest knife, still a somewhat dull one with a navy blue handle. She lifted her shirt and held the knife near her lower stomach, noticing her hand had stopped shaking as badly as before. Closing her eyes, she drew a tiny bit of blood at first, and touched the warm liquid with her finger. Then Josephine shoved the knife across her stomach, with more force than she planned.
The blood didn’t bother her as it pooled onto the floor, swimming with the utensils. She laid down on her back and put her arms out like a snow angel, telling herself not to touch the wound, not to think about the unblinking pain. Go to sleep, she told herself. Images jumped underneath her closed lids. Mostly of her mother, Some of her far away childhood. A decrepit carousel outside a convenience store. A sick boy she had seen when her mother was in the hospital. She thought mostly of her mother. Her mother was laughing giddily at something on TV. Josephine wished she could see what it was. But she couldn’t.
 

Reviews

[bluessadmood]

God my friend you are a great story teller..i really loved this..
only someone talented and had experienced life and its ugliness most of the time,would write about it with such
clarity and such bitterness but so fit as how much life is worth..
she had her mother in front of her all the while,seen her frustrations at life,her mother drank most of the time
she had boyfriends now and then ,and would see how mistreated she was most of the time to make her cry
she would like to hug her but at the same time she hated her for the life she had,
it was always that bar,most of the time she was drunk and working even playing with an employee..she had seen
how low she became,a miserable life all the line..
she had a friend ,with no less troubles than her mother ,all drugs and alcohol,and the sex that waht he was interested in
her only dream as he promised her was to take her away from all this ,so it appointed that they leave in a few hours ,she still remembered her mother
and felt sorry for her in a way ,but she also hated her,her dream ,as her boy friend taking her away did not seem that solid
he was just stalling her and the more she looked at him,the more she was convinced ,this young boy is good for nothing
step by step she came to know even this dream of running away with a loser boyfriend is far from real..
when we come to lose our last dreams ,life just seem not worth it,so she grabs on the knife and without
hesitation she pushes it through her stomach,while she thought mostly of her mother laughing..
as dreams passed away and as her life was passing away too..as she was dying ..slowly
great,lovely write..

[SR Urie]

Hi Sofie.
An interesting read. Your Josephine seems like a very troubled person, surrounded by selfish family members and holding in a lot of painful memories that flash in her mind, numbed by shallow thoughts and memories that replace the tedium of guilt she doesn't have to take the blame for. Ending the story with Josephine killing herself allows her to finally do something for herself, ending her life and leaving her pathetic boyfriend and ludicrous mother to dwell in their own addictive lives without her. For such a selfish act as suicide, unfortunately for what there is no cure for, Josephine exposes her true nature, her real character, and no doubt her spirit becomes trapped in the ruddy kitchen of the apartment, shackled to the pain that she has produced in everyone around her. It's too bad that she couldn't decide for herself to go someplace like California or New York instead of chickening out on going to Tennesee by slaughtering herself more readily than starvation or enduring the sexual endeavers of the impotent men around her.

A very sad story, Sofie. Sublime in its truth about the lives of the young who grow up in our modern society. Excellent character study and setting, very good use of imagery and hyperbole, and an extreme climax that I, as the reader, didn't see coming. You have made a very good start in a journey that can take you to some broad heights as a writer of charater study and social exposure. Please continue to put your ideas to the page. A story like this one takes time, effort, labor that is tedious to be sure, but well worth it for those who are fortunate enough to be able to get to read it. Do me a small favor too, kiddo; eat yourself a burger and give yourself a break. An artist does have to take care of one's self, if only for the purpose of being able to write the next story for people like me.

Great job, Sophie! BZ