Girls Don't Cry | The Outsiders

One

So, I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to start this. My psychologist—okay, so he's actually my English professor— said I should write down whatever has been bothering me lately. He said it would help ease a lot of my anger and stress. But that's the problem I'm having. I don't know how to start this because there's been a lot that's been bothering me. Fights, deaths, makeups, breakups... Jesus, you name it. It had been a hectic couple of months, I can tell you that. Of course, this isn't something that happened recently. This was a couple of years ago. But it has been bothering me since it happened.

I guess I should start with the first thing I can remember and move on from there. That sounds good to me, and probably what Mr. Jones wants. "And then what happened, Candice?"

So, here I go. I'm about to pour everything out into this composition notebook. And if anyone reads this, I apologize for any bad spelling. I'm a lot better now than I was then, but I'm still learning.

It was another one of those nights. My mom was angry. On occasion, it was over something that she had the right to be angry over, like the little kids' bedrooms being a wreck or me coming home late. Sometimes, I would just skip over to the Curtises so I could avoid the fight with her. This time, she was drunk angry, angry over nothing. The screaming and the throwing things around was something that happened almost on the daily and I was used to it, sad to say.

There was a glass pitcher shattered to bits in the kitchen, glass everywhere. I told the little kids to go to their room and stay out of the kitchen so they wouldn't get themselves cut up on the glass shards.

To be quite honest, it wouldn't have mattered to my mother if I or Greg or Claire got taken away. That's probably what she wanted. She wanted out. But she wasn't going to leave me alone with her kids in Tulsa. See that as some sort of way she did care about us, but the way I see it, she just didn't want the fuzz on her because she neglected her own children and took off into the sunset with some random stranger in an Impala.

Alright, so my mom did love her kids; it was easier to see when she was sober, which was a rarity. That was the thing, though. She loved alcohol more than her kids.

Even still, whether she loved her kids or didn't love her kids, my kid brother and kid sister were my responsability and I may as well have just let her take off. It would have made things a lot easier on me.

I had a part-time job working in the bakery at the grocery store. I went in after school and worked until the bakery closed at six-thirty. By then, I'd get home about seven-fifteen and make sure the kids were getting ready for bed. I always snooped through their school bags to make sure they'd finished their homework. Johanna was good at making sure they had at least something to eat. That was really the only thing she was good at when it came to taking care of her kids. But the woman loved to cook and she was damn good at it. I didn't know what it was with her, but there was something in me that she hated and I didn't know if it was just me in general or something else. I knew she loved us, but there was still something there that made her look at us with so much disgust, a cockroach could have run to hide.

That night when I'd gotten home, Greg and Claire were still up, sitting in the living room watching TV.

"What are you guys doing? Shouldn't you be getting ready for bed?" I asked, setting down my bag on the table.

"Mom said we could stay up later."

"Oh. Did you finish your homework?"

"Yeah," they said simultaneously, eyes not blinking or moving from the TV.

"Ate dinner?"

"Yup."

"Brushed your teeth?"

At once, they got off the couch and bolted for the bathroom.