Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea

Watcher’s T-shirt out from the ball of sheets on my bed. Better, normal. My own normal, since Kristy and her kind would insist that it’s not so normal for a fourteen-year-old American female to lounge around in sweats without a friend in sight, no gang of girls dying to slumber party at my crappy house, sticking each others’ bras in the freezer or whatever weird-ass things girls do when they stay up all night together, getting wigged out on sleep deprivation and making out with pillows. No gang of girls, and, if I may be honest, no boys either, as in, I could give a crap. I’m seriously not interested. And I know that is seriously abnormal, but I’m not going to lie. I’m not so good at lying. Which makes me a little anxious in regard to my new employment at Ohmigod!, since it does seem like my primary job requirement is to be an ace number-one bullshitter, so I better getgood at it quick. I better learn how to properly sashay in a pair of platform flip-flops. I better learn how to be a girl.
    Ma hollered her
Family time!
cry from the living room and I put the brain-twister aside and went to spend a bit of bright-time on the couch with her.
    Ma, I Got A Job, I started.
Oh yeah?
she asked, part happy, part skeptical. The skeptical part is always there — it’s the part trying to sniff out the potential disease or festering bacteria in any individual or location or concept. I’ve learned not to take the skeptical tones personally. Yeah, I’m Working At The Mall Now, At A Clothes Store. Ma squinted her glittery green eyes at me, like shards of beer bottle glass.
So you and Kristy, both working at the mall, huh?
I nodded my head. The salty-grease stink wafting up from the pizza box was starting to really get to me. I hooked my fingers into the crust of a triangle and wrenched it from the cardboard.
Women of the world, my daughters
, she said with a smile. She said,
You two don’t take after me, that’s for sure. You must take after your father. He didn’t have any problem just going out into the world, did he? Clearly he didn’t.
I bit into the tip of my pizza. Extra cheese. My teeth really sunk into the thick mass, yum, it was excellent. I love cold pizza. I love it better cold than hot. I was ignoring Ma because she was being what they call passive-aggressive with that comment. Like me getting a job is the equivalent of abandoning the family and running away to Louisiana to get high in a swamp like our dad did. That’s Ma, though. One hand is petting your head while the other’s giving you a pinch.
What’s up with your hair?
she asked.
    Kristy Did It For Me. You Should’ve Seen It. I LookedWild, Like A Fashion Model. It Was All Up And Fancy.
    You look like a homeless person now
, she commented.
    I Know. I bit into the pizza again. I looked forward to eating it all the way up to the bubbly crust, and then splitting the crust open and dousing the fluffy insides with a ton of salt. Better than those pretzels you buy from a cart at a carnival. Where’d The Pizza Come From? I asked. It wasn’t every day that you come home to find such riches left out on the coffee table.
    Donnie brought it home. He got some work off his cousin.
She sighed happily. Donnie had a cousin who owned a couple houses in Malden, and sometimes when a water heater exploded or a toilet got especially nasty he’d call Donnie over to help him fix it. I don’t know what it is about guys. They do seem to know how to do things. Even a certified loser like Donnie has the ability to patch up a busted water heater. It’s not a lot, but still, it’s maybe more than Ma. Though I guess Ma had kids, so that’s something, right? God. It’s so Tarzan and Jane, it’s really depressing. I think I’d like to opt out of the whole man-woman thing if possible. And it does seem possible, right now, when I’m mostly just a kid, but I know at some point the kid is going to melt right off my body, and then what? I’m a woman? It’s too overwhelming to