Annie's Baby Read online

  I WILL!

  I HAVE! I have! I have!

  I am now again the noble, mature person I’ve always been, and I don’t kiss up to Danny because of all the above things. It’s just because…

  because…

  he’s so LOVEABLE! AND I LOVE HIM! I really, truly honestly do and I’m sooooooo glad I’ve got you to share both my joy and sorrow with. Jenny and Deanna are my very best friends, but I don’t think they’d understand like you do. I know they wouldn’t…couldn’t.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, very best dear friend Diary. You’re like the very deepest innermost part of me that understands all my trials and sorrows and weaknesses and insecurities and ugly stupidities…and you still tolerate me, think kindly of me and…sometimes even love and respect me. What would I ever, ever do without you? You are my psychiatrist, my mentor, my cheerleader, my advisor…sort of a silent advisor, but you are important in my life. I can cough up the gruesomest, most revolting, nauseous things in the world, and you never lecture or preach; you just accept me exactly as I am. I wish more people could do that. Maybe Danny isn’t as busy as he says; maybe he’s just trying to dump me easy, do you think? Please tell me you don’t think that.

  October 11, Wednesday

  2:31 a.m.

  I’m such a duh, dumb, gullible dweeb sometimes, like now. I can’t think of one single positive in my life. I know that’s stupid and ridiculous but sometimes I’M stupid and ridiculous—like now! Everything good and sunshiney and joyous in life has disintegrated before my eyes. I feel lonely, lost, alone, helpless, and hopeless…. It’s black and spiderwebby, sticky and scary in here. Help, help, help! Somebody get me out!

  October 12, Thursday

  5:12 a.m.

  I must have cried myself to sleep because my pillow is still wet, but that seems to have drained away all the cold, evil blackness because out my window I can see the pinkness in the east turning to yellow, so la-la-la—the sun will come out “tomorrow,” which is really today, right?

  October 13, Friday

  4:37 p.m.

  I’ve only got a minute because Danny passed me in the hall and asked me to go to a party with him tonight. Sorry, I gotta go. What am I saying? I’m not sorry, I’m elated!

  12:21 p.m.

  Daisy:

  Everyone was there. Lots of jocks and cheerleaders from high school, plus some older guys. It was stupendous! Danny was treated like a Knight on the Hill or something. And they treated ME like I was someone too! Can you believe it, me? A princess at a party?

  Kelly’s parents had gone away for the weekend, so the guys brought in a whole keg of beer, and at first I said I didn’t drink. Danny gave me a dirty look like I was embarrassing him and started flirting with Marcie, the prettiest girl there, and I felt I had to. After a while I was as happy and silly as everybody else, and I didn’t know I could have so much fun.

  We were in Kelly’s basement playroom, and the music was so loud, it practically vibrated the walls. Kids were screaming and bouncing on the couches or just snuggled up in couples around in corners. Danny and I were slow-dancing to the sounds that reverberated through our bodies like the big bass drums in the Fourth of July parade. It felt good. We were part of it. It was like something new and wonderful and different.

  Then suddenly we seemed to be all alone, just the two of us in the whole universe dancing together as one, part of the music, the flashing colors, the differentness.

  Oh, Daisy, it was so wonderful and warm. I belonged. I really truly honestly belonged. For the first time in my life, I was on top of the heap where everybody wants to be! and usually doesn’t make it, and it was grand, grand, GRAND!

  The only problem is…well, I guess I can tell you; actually, I’ve got to tell you, or I’ll burst. Well, on the way home Danny pulled off the road by the old haunted house and insisted we…you know. I was scared and…he was drunk and rough, and I really had to scream and fight him off…. I promised myself I wouldn’t EVER again think about that part of the night! I’d blot it out of my mind completely because I know it was just because Danny was drunk. Anyway, I fought and hit back on and on as he hissed at me every bad word I’ve ever heard, but at last he finally gave up, and calling me a “boob, Mama’s baby,” he took me home and almost pushed me out of the car.

  But I’m NOT GOING TO THINK ABOUT THAT. I HOPE HE WON’T REMEMBER IT EITHER WHEN HE SOBERS UP. IT WASN’T THE REAL DANNY. IT WAS THE ALCOHOL AND I THINK HE MIGHT HAVE HAD A FEW PUFFS ON A…but that’s all over. Tomorrow we’ll both apologize to each other and do some serious talking about where we’re going to go from here.

  It’s going to be alright! It’s got to be alright! He’ll probably call me as soon as he wakes up.

  I HOPE!

  I HOPE!

  but…

  Some little, scary, writhing creature inside me is…asking…did he mean to hit me?…Did he mean to say all the terrible, evil, awful things he said to me?…Did he expect me to…do it…for the first time in my whole life, when he was acting like someone I didn’t even know? I am sooo confused. How could my precious, sweet, tender Danny change to…him? It must have been the alcohol or maybe someone put PCP in his…I don’t know. I don’t want to know! In fact, I never want to think about it again! IT DID NOT HAPPEN!

  “But it did!”

  Stay out of this, Daisy. NO! Help me. Please help me sort this out. Did Danny mean it when he said, “Everyone was doing it,” and how long did I expect to “just lead him on and tease him” and all the other vulgar, crude things?

  I hate to admit this, even to you, but some little part of me is wondering if he really is a virgin, or if that too was a line, just another part of his planned persuasion technique.

  NO! NO! NO! HE WAS JUST DRUNK AND STONED, AND HE WON’T REMEMBER A THING. PLEASE, PLEASE LET IT BE THAT WAY!

  October 14, Saturday

  11:30 a.m.

  Danny hasn’t called. I wonder if I should call him? No, he’s just sleeping late.

  And I could be in deep trouble. Mom thought I went out with Jenny and Deanna last night. I told her Mrs. Tanner had car trouble on the way home. I hope she doesn’t find out I lied. I hate to lie to her; it always brings in so many dumb complications.

  1:16 p.m.

  Danny still hasn’t called. I’m getting a little worried.

  2:10 p.m.

  I’m a lot worried!

  3:02 p.m.

  I’m sure Danny’s dad woke him up and made him go straight to work. Oh I do, do, do, do hope that’s it.

  4:12 p.m.

  I called the restaurant and asked them to have Danny return my call as soon as possible. I told them it was very important.

  10:56 p.m.

  Danny hasn’t returned my call. Maybe he didn’t get my message. Could it possible be that he doesn’t want to talk to me? Maybe it’s something macho about him wanting me to apologize first. I can do that! Gladly, happily, and I will, first thing on Monday. I’ll track him down after his first class. But…what if? There will not be a what if! I must be positive!

  October 15, Sunday

  10:56 p.m.

  I’ve waited by the phone all day, didn’t go out of the house once. Mom invited me to go with her to the grand opening of a new Boutique Center, but I said I had an upset stomach. It wasn’t really a lie because I have an upset-all-over.

  I wonder what possibly could have happened to Danny. Is he mad at me? So mad that he’ll never speak to me again through all of forever, or just waiting long enough to let me suffer and come to my senses? What does that mean?

  October 16, Monday

  2:57 a.m.

  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again. Dorky me. I’m so mixed up. Does Danny really want me to…expect me to?…Oh, how I wish you could talk back. You’re the only one I can talk to, and you lie there like you don’t care, aren’t even concerned that my heart is breaking and my life is in an absolute mess.

  Mom told me when I got my first diary on my tenth birth
day that it would help me sort out my thoughts, that by writing things down and then rereading them, I would make better decisions in my life, be more realistic instead of unrealistic…. Now I’m facing the biggest decision in my life, and what are you doing to help me? Nothing! I don’t think I’ll ever rely upon you again; you’re nothing but a stupid, dumb book filled with little baby scribblings. I guess I’ve grown beyond you.

  5:02 p.m.

  I can’t believe a body and a mind and a soul could hurt as much as mine. I feel like I’ve been smashed and bashed and run over and squashed by a steamroller and bulldozer and wrecking ball. Every atom of my body is bleeding. Oh pain, pain, pain go away.

  I wish Mom was here, so I could curl up on her lap and have her hug me so tight, I’d feel little and safe and secure and loved….and I could just blubber out all my pains, and she could kiss them away and make them better like she used to do; but I guess I’m too big for that now. I’ve got problems that I have to solve for myself. Being sort of grown up isn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it would be!!!!!!

  I’m so very, very, very glad I have YOU, dear Daisy Diary; I know I said last night I wasn’t, but I am! I need you now more than I ever have. I’d feel like a silly jackass talking to Jenny or Deanna or Molly or…And, of course, having lied to Mom, I’ve cut off that route.

  Anyway, Danny’s words are still pounding in my ears and on my heart. Oh, they are so hurting and humiliating, I can hardly tell them to you…but I have to. Their loudness is growing in my ears till I can’t stand it; I really, really can’t! This morning I was standing outside Danny’s first period class when the bell rang, and as the kids shoved out I pushed up close to him and whispered, “Danny, we’ve got to talk. I’m sooooo sorry about Saturday night….”

  He…I can not write it…pushed me aside like I was garbage. I caught up with him. “Please Danny, I don’t want to break up—I…”

  He sneered down at me. “Maybe someday, little girl, when I’m going to a Sunday School picnic…” His buddies were around, and they all started laughing. I could feel the blood rushing up into my face and my ears ringing, but I couldn’t move. I was like a dazed animal hypnotized by the lights of an oncoming car.

  Everybody in the hall was laughing at me then. It was like a slow-motion horror-psychotic picture show.

  At last my imprisoned body became mobile and ran down the endlessly long, dark hall tunnel with laughing, poking, making-fun grotesque figures on every side. The whole school—principal, teachers and all—was making fun of me. I must have gone crazy for a time because it really did seem like that was what was happening. I wonder if that’s pos sible? I mean for someone to go absolutely, totally crazy insane for a few minutes? Anyway, next thing I knew, I found myself on the bus, I hoped, going home.

  I’m so scared now, I don’t know what to do. Am I going to have crazy fits from now on for the rest of my life every time something traumatic happens to me? Please tell me I’m not. Please, please tell me that!

  “Okay, you’re not.”

  You told me! You really did tell me! You can’t imagine how much better that makes me feel!

  “I’m glad.”

  Now you’ve got to help me decide what I’m going to do next.

  “Oops, sorry, I can’t do that.”

  You’ve got to!

  “Well…”

  I guess it amounts to…if I want to keep Danny, then…

  “Then what?”

  Danny’s right; I’m just being a little girl, booby baby boob tube.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Ha…you can’t think! You’re just paper.

  “Am I? Or am I your conscience?”

  Well, if you are, butt out! I want to make this decision by myself.

  “Without common sense, reasoning, consideration of ‘cause and effect,’ like we learned in science, or ‘actions vs. consequences,’ like we learned in mental health?”

  You’re sounding like Mom.

  “So?”

  So, I’m fourteen years old. I don’t want to sound like my mother.

  “I know, but…

  No buts! I’m going to do this my way. Without Danny I’m a totally useless nothing, a nothing going nowhere.

  October 20, Friday

  4:37 p.m.

  It has been four long, endlessly, snail-crawling, slow-motioned, stupid, ugly, useless days. I can’t think in my classes; I want to scream at my teachers; I won’t talk to Mom—in fact, she’s kissing up to me trying to find out what’s wrong, until sometimes I feel like I want to turn on her like a cat with its claws out. I’m even beginning to think maybe I’ll burn you and pretend none of the past month’s gibberish shit ever happened. I don’t usually swear, but that’s exactly what it’s been! Never has a word been more correctly used! Danny is trying (AND SUCCEEDING) to stay away from me like I have the plague, even though I’ve almost stalked him night and day, at least in my mind.

  Everybody’s ignoring me! Well not everybody; Jenny and Deanna and my real friends all just keep telling me Danny’s not worth the pain I’m feeling. They want me to flush him and sometimes I think I should. I WANT TO! But I can’t!!!! I wish like everything I could, or…MAYBE I CAN!

  10:58 p.m.

  I’m trying, I really am…but I still can’t! It’s like he’s a part of me, an arm or a leg, or both my arms and legs put together; I don’t think anyone else in the world could understand that, especially not Mom. She and Dad fought from as long back as I can remember. Not big, screaming, hitting fights but quiet, polite little “cut-down” blows. That’s probably what makes me so insecure and all the other negative things I am. But that’s not true. All my friends feel the same way: not as good as, not as pretty as, not as smart as, not as personable as, not as tall as, not as thin as, etc. We want to be. We’re all anxiety-ridden, unconfident, scared, unstable, wavering nutcases trying to carve out our own little niche and not doing too well most times.

  “I didn’t know you felt that way about Dad and Mom.”

  Uhhh…I don’t really. In fact everything seemed to be very story-bookish until Dad lost his job and…

  “His self-confidence?”

  Yeah, and he started just sitting around the house or taking on-the-road selling-stuff jobs.

  “And staying away longer and longer.”

  I don’t want to think about those times, nor Mom or Dad’s troubles! I just wish she’d been more “there for him!” Go away! I’ve got my own problems now! And Danny isn’t one of them! It’s all going to work out! It has to! He just has to learn he cannot handle liquor.

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  I’ll die. I’ll just shrivel up and die! I’m beginning to do it already. I can feel it. I actually sense, deeper than feelings, that my atoms and cells and DNA and all the other stuff that makes me alive are slowly ceasing to exist.

  “I’ve heard you say stupid things before, but that’s about the stupidest.”

  Which proves to me that even you don’t understand. AND I’m not talking to you anymore. I’m going to be talking only to myself from now on. I don’t need your negativity or belittling of me! I’m going to think only of what Danny wants us to do. When we broke up, I was acting like a scared little mama’s brat, and besides, “everyone is doing it.”

  “Everyone is not doing it!”

  Everyone that I want to be like is. I felt, at last, that I belonged and was princess to his being prince, at his friend’s party.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  I’m sure I’m sure! I want to belong! I want to be tight! I want to be a twosome with Danny! A somebody, not a onesome nobody! Besides, in movies and books and magazines and TV, even on cornflakes boxes, sex is the epitome, the beginning and the end of all things, fun and good and rapturous. It’s supposed to be like being carried away into another world of joy, pleasure, love, and ecstasy.

  “What about the vow of chastity you made at your youth conference last summer?”

  Butt out! Butt
out! Butt out! This is between me and Danny AND YOU’RE NOT A PART OF US ANYMORE!

  October 26, Thursday

  10:47 p.m.

  Six, endless, boring, gray, stupid days have passed, each one getting longer and more useless and empty than the rest. Last night I went to a party at Kathy’s, but it was all girls and seemed like a kindergarten gathering.

  Kathy’s mom showed pictures of some of the kids as they were growing up. That was the bore of all bores because it was long before I moved here.

  I feel like a complete zombie. Life has lost its color and flavor and music. I want Danny back so much, I’m obsessed by it. When I see him in the halls, he ignores me like I’m invisible. I saw Pam Doms in his car one day and wanted to literally beat up on her. I could feel myself tearing out her hair. I’m so ashamed; I’ve never felt that way before. It’s scary and hurtful, very, very hurtful!

  Actually I’m beginning to feel trapped and suffocated in this gray, nothing, empty existence. I want out! I need lights, music, excitement. What can I do? He won’t talk to me, and I can’t leave the kind of message I want to leave on his voice mail for fear his dad or someone else will hear it. Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a little kid again with none of these torturous problems eating away at me like flesh-and guts-and eye-eating piranha fish.

  I want to feel like I felt the night I was with Danny at Kelly’s party. Happy and excited and important! I’ve got to get him back. But how?

  I’ve tried talking to him.

  I’ve tried telephoning him.

  I’ve tried praying it would happen.

  I’m tempted to go to a bookstore and get a magic book that tells how to cast spells. THAT should let you know how totally, totally, totally desperate I am.

  Maybe I could make a videotape showing him, telling him how totally I am tied to him. How I respect his decisions and desires, and that I am willing to do every little thing in the world the way he wants it. Maybe I could even…NO, that’s ridiculous! I read somewhere once that “Love is a form of insanity.” It was supposed to be funny, but could that possibly be true?