Filth Queen

~ One ~ 1

A lot of girls would call me a slut, a whore, a no-good heartless backstabber who chain-smoked Dunhills while painting her toenails a pretty coral pink. After being bounced from foster home to foster home, I guess it didn’t really matter what people thought of me; a lost sixteen-year old girl with short dark hair, greenish-blue eyes, and hands that were big and smooth like my mother’s. I wasn’t anyone’s friend, sister, protector, or neighbor, I was just Mattie Flowers, the girl you can take home but never wake up to, a girl wearing too much eye-make up and face powder, prowling the muggy streets in search of a cheap hotel fuck or a better life. Only my idea of a “better life” was flattened into the pavement like the beer cans that littered London Street, smothered under the suffocating haze of car exhaust, cigarette smoke, and seductive perfume. My mother always said I’d never amount to anything; she and I were like the fused heads of Siamese twins, inseparable, doomed to live out each other’s tedious lives. Sometimes I felt like Astrid in White Oleander, forever running away from the beautiful, controlling mother with the white-blonde hair, the kind of mother who stood in the silvery light of the full moon reading poetry. She was just like the fairies I used to read about in my children's books: lovely, kind, but fake as breast implants, always just out of reach when I needed her. After shipping me off to the foster homes I suddenly learned what it meant to be a "loose girl." The gate that seperated a good girl from a loose girl evaporated the insant my mother left my life; and, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, I was sucked into the filth and cheap thrills of being a slutty nobody on the road to nowhere. My new existence was no longer Mattie Flowers, straight A student and head of the Chemistry club, lover of dogs, romance novels, and all things sky blue and furry - I became the Filth Queen, worshipper of dirty thongs, black leather, hoop earrings, smeared lipstick and blonde wigs. In this new life there was no room for good reports or best friends; there was only going to bed and waking up, hoping to survive the next day, to be stronger, to slap yourself hard on the side of the head and say it was all just a bad dream. If I was lucky enough to put on a pair of clean jeans and a T-shirt - everything was good. It meant I was still alive. 2


-x- -x- -x- -x- -x- -x- 3

Counting the money out in the plastic jam jar, I'm up to $325.60, not bad for five days of turning tricks at run-down strip clubs. Sitting there, legs swinging back and forth at the edge of the bed, I feel like a little girl waiting for her father to take her out to a school play. The innocence was like a shield that protected me for so long, swimming through my veins whenever I walked into a bar with my friends (we had fake IDs) or sauntered over to the gas station all alone to buy pop or chips, moving my hips in a way guys loved. All boys were the same, wanting to give you a quick shag before they're off like rabbits back into their own social lives and responsibilities, leaving you under the rumpled bed sheets totally alone. In the end, there's never a shoulder to cry on but your own.4


~ Two ~ 5

The new foster parents were the Applesmiths. Fiono Applesmith, my no-nonsense foster mother, made clay plots and was in this knitting club for middle-aged-in-need-of-sex women. She was always babbling about how God will show us the "way" to happiness, leafing through cookbooks and telling me her dashing rice pudding recipes or how I was a bad influence on her starving-for-attention daughter, a goth girl named Cass with pink-streaked black hair and a pierced lip. 6

"You'll never fit in here", she mumbled, watching as I unpacked my things from the few cardboard boxes marked MATTIE'S STUFF. The bedroom was small but tidy, with cute little pink curtains, lemon-yellow wallpaper, a lava lamp, and even a shiny wooden desk that smelled of lysol. Everything seemed to sparkle around me, as if the Applesmiths had awaited the day of my arrival like a couple anticipated the birth of their newborn child. 7

"Mom always has these stupid little phases where she adopts some kid, spoils them for a bit, then dumps them off like a stray dog on the side of the road. Don't get too comfortable, friend." 8

"Nobody's getting comfortable", I said, breathing in the vanilla scent of my mother's powder blue cashmere sweater - the one she used to wear but decided to give to me for Christmas since it didn't fit her anymore. Looking at it now, it was hard to keep myself from crying. We used to make gingerbread houses together every Christmas, entering them in these stupid contests, squealing in joy whenever we won first prize (which was usually a Martha Stewart gift basket or some shit). She had worn the blue sweater to her first staff party, on the day of my graduation from middle school, when I was sick with the flu and had to stay home, letting her make me chicken soup and herbal tea. She was one of those classy mothers, the kind of woman who tucked a lock of hair behind her ear when she was nervous, pretending to read the newspaper when a guy she liked passed her by on the street. Unlike Fiona, who was flustered and strict, my mother had been calm and collected, whispering that the two of us needed only each other and nobody else; not dad or friends or anyone who threatened to ruin our "circle." But, when December 29th rolled along, that circle had been violently torn apart when she tried to kill my father - who admitted to having sex with some girl at a party five times. I could picture her, eighteen or nineteen, Spanish, with these big chocolate-brown bedroom eyes and cupie-doll lips. She had given him the look, that little wink pretty girls gave older men at parties - the kind of look that could make any married man do anything out of character. 9

"Guess we're gonna go to the same high school, huh?"10

"I hate school", Cass said bitterly, scrunching up her pale face like a rodent. "It's just teachers that are out to get you, people that talk too much, pointless assignments and red detention slips."11

Intrigued, I lifted my eyebrows at her. "You get detention much?"12

"Spend more time in detention than I do in any of my classes..."13

"What's the worst thing you did?"14

Cass bit her lip and folded her arms, thinking, foot tapping the carpet. "Probably spraying graffiti all over the girl's bathroom. I blamed it on the janitor but, you know, those bitchy girls knew it was me all along. The principal made me scrub it all off the walls, which took six fucking hours, and on top of that my parents grounded me for a month. I'm lucky the school didn't expel my ass."15

"No kidding, I can't believe they - "16

"Mattie?" Fiona suddenly appeared in the doorway, dressed in skinny jeans and a navy blue turtleneck with a cat on it that made her look ten years old. There was a little blonde girl behind her leg, staring at me shyly, wearing this adorable ketchup-stained lime green T-shirt with pickles on it and a frilly jean skirt. 17

"Come downstairs now, Cass can help unpack your belongings a little later, okay? I'm making nanaimo bars and hot chocolate. How does that sound? You don't have any allergies to peanuts or anything, right?"18

"Nothing but pollen and dust bunnies", I smiled, walking towards her. The blue sweater was tucked neatly in one of the boxes that I had hid like a vibrator under the bed, where it would hopefully stay safe and untouched until I had to leave. The sweater was a sort of good luck charm, like rabbit's foot, and I had grown to use the powers of my mother on anything and everything in life. For now, as much as she had mistreated me in the past, I needed her; and as much as I hated to admit it - that was something I could never get away from.19

-x- -x- -x- -x- -x- 20

After four days spent pigging out on Fiona's amazing baking, learning how to cook without blowing up the house, and watching hour-long specials of Animal Planet; I moaned in horror when school crept up in my mind like a cockroach from a toilet bowl. Fiona's husband, Roy, drove Alice (the pickle shirt girl) to elementary school while Cass and I walked to Raven Creek High, kicking pebbles across the pavement and talking nervously about our unfashionable outfits and how everyone was going to think we were just a couple of shy lesbian freaks. 21

"There's Ricky's Diner over there", Cass said, pointing over to this snazzy little resturaunt with big windows and a 1960s vibe to it. "It's pretty much where everyone from school hangs out, like 7-Eleven or whatever. They have the best french fries there, you know, they're absolutely heavenly. If you're ever having a bad day just go over to Ricky's and buy a bag of curly fries, I guarantee you'll feel better." 22

Raven High was like a block of concrete in front of a potholed parking lot. It was a hideous school, with this sad-looking raven mascot named Beaker, lots of grafitti and boarded-up windows, ugly barf-green lockers as well as dirty, stifling hot classrooms with poor air conditioning. Every lock in the girl's bathroom was broken, so you had to get someone to hold the door shut for you for fear of it slamming open while you were trying to take a piss. Speaking of girls, half the females that populated the dingy shitcan of a school reeked of hairspray and hand-rolled cigarettes. They were the kind of girls who chewed with their mouths open, looked at you with dagger eyes and got high in the courtyard during recess. One girl, whose name was Tamara, announced to everyone in science class that her tampon needed to be changed and if she died of Toxic Shock Syndrome she'd have her parents sue the pants off of Mrs. Wheeler (my frizzy-haired science teacher). You couldn't hear what the teachers said since almost everyone listened to their mp3s, and to make matters worse, people kicked your seat and put their feet up on the desks.23

The boys were almost as bad as the girls; rude, loud-mouthed, chewing their gum loudly during lessons or writing explicit notes to the chicks they liked. One guy, who was in twelfth grade, had asked for my name and flashed me a winning smile that made my knees buckle with lust. He was Paul Floyd, your typical jock, and lived for football and any sport that involved tackles, sticks, or goal posts. I followed him outside every day during the first week of school, cutting across the lacrosse field, our sneakers sopping wet from the rain-soaked grass. After what seemed like hours we finally made it to his house, which - surprisingly - was only a few blocks from mine. It was a clapboard house painted forest green, with chipped, pearl-white trim. As I walked up the driveway a black, scruffy kitten darted from the bushes onto the street, its white-tipped tail flashing behind it when it vanished into a neighbor's yard.24

"Was that your cat?" I asked Paul, who led me to the back door where he pushed in a tiny silver key. 25

"Yeah. It's my sister's actually, dumb thing nearly got run over twice in the past few days. Mom bought it for her when she turned five."26

"What's his name?"27

"Bubbles", Paul said, rolling his eyes. "She named it after the dumb blonde character from that Powderpuff Girls show." 28

"That's cute", I laughed, stepping into the basement that was pungent with the stench of gasoline, burnt rubber, and dog piss. Inside, the house smelled much nicer; lilac soap with a hint of ginger-scented candles. 29