No.
I was a weird little kid, but I wasn’t a bad little kid. I didn’t torture animals, and I didn’t set fires. I didn’t wet the bed and I never tried to play doctor with any little girls. I didn’t do anything to warrant the amount of abuse the universe has heaped on me. I refuse to believe this was the work of some sort of God, and if it was, well then, you know, fuck him.
CHEYENNE BELLE
You ever see the movie Carrie? My mom makes Carrie’s mom look like an atheist.
I’m the oldest, and I was born before my parents were married. I think the guilt of having “conceived in sin” (my mom’s words, not mine) is what drove her back to Mother Church. It’s why I’m the only one of the Belle girls without a good Catholic name. I mean, think about it: Theresa, Agnes, Mary Elizabeth, Katherine, Patricia, Joan, and Cheyenne. One of these things does not belong with the others, right?
Anyway, I’ve been through Catholic school, CCD, and every kind of mass you can imagine. You can’t turn a corner in my house without some image of Christ scaring the crap out of you. So am I religious? Yeah, but it’s not like I had any choice.
RICHIE MCGILL
Yeah, I believe in God.
How else do you explain music?
CHEYENNE BELLE
It was about two weeks after I saw Johnny that I found out I was pregnant for sure. I was already pretty late with my period, though that isn’t so strange for me (my cycle isn’t anything you’d set your watch by). But it wasn’t just that. I don’t know how to describe it; I felt different.
I got one of those home pregnancy tests—actually, I got three of them (I would’ve bought more, but they’re crazy expensive)—and the results were all the same: knocked up.
I was freaked out. And I was sick. A lot. I don’t know why the hell they call it morning sickness when it comes at any time of the day. Do you know the only surefire cure for nausea? No? I’ll tell you. Puking. You can drink all the ginger ale and eat all the saltine crackers you want. You wanna feel better? Woof your cookies.
Anyway, I couldn’t tell any of the guys in the band I was pregnant, so I talked to my younger sister Theresa. Or, really, she talked to me.
We were sitting on the beds in our room—Theresa and I shared a room with one of our other sisters, Agnes, but Agnes wasn’t there—and I had my head leaned up against the wall, my hair matted against a movie poster of Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains. It was really hot out, and I felt like I was going to be sick. Theresa took one look at me and knew.
“You’re knocked up, aren’t you?”
I’m guessing my jaw dropped. “Shit. You can tell?”
“You should go to Planned Parenthood.”
“Planned Parenthood?”
“Yes. Get rid of it, Chey.”
For some reason, I wasn’t expecting her to say that, and it made me upset. Which made me feel more sick. I closed my eyes.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why get rid of it?” She sounded like she thought I was crazy for asking.
“Yeah. You tried to keep yours.”
“And look what happened,” she said. “God punished me.”
Theresa had gotten pregnant two summers earlier, when she was fifteen, and lost her baby, at home, in bed. It was pretty messed up. She was, like, seven months, and the baby just started to come out. She tried to hide it, but with all that blood there was no hiding anything.
It had happened in the middle of the night, and somehow all of my sisters except for Agnes managed to sleep through it, even after the ambulance came. My parents, on the other hand, freaked out. My mother stood there in her bathrobe, clutching her rosaries and praying for the soul of the unborn baby. All I could think was Shouldn’t you be praying for Theresa? My father kept mumbling something about killing “the boy who did this to my little girl.”
The two of them went with Theresa to the hospital, but before they left my mother cornered me and Agnes: “Not one word of this to your sisters, do you understand?” She had fire and brimstone in her eyes.
“What are we supposed to tell them?”
“Tell them Theresa has the flu.” Then she spun on her heel and climbed in the ambulance, still silently mouthing her prayers as she did. To this day I don’t think any of my other sisters know.
I guess the conversation about me being pregnant was bringing back some pretty bad memories for Theresa, because she was squeezing the life out of Mr. Giggle Bunny. That’s one of her stuffed animals.
My father’s only emotional connection to his daughters has been to buy us stuffed animals. Lots and lots of stuffed animals. I have twelve and I’m a lightweight. There are one hundred twenty-six between all seven of us, and every one of them has been named. It’s kind of a thing in our family.