I Am My Own Cousin.

Chapter 13: Gangster Biotch Barbie

By:Joanna

I was always the favorite child. Even though that sounds like a bold statement, it's true. I know everyone would like to think that they are the favorite child, but most of the time they are wrong. And being the favorite isn't necessarily a good thing; At least not in my case.

I was, and still am, Mom's favorite. But that's just because I am a carbon copy of her. She's obligated to like me, because she might as well have cloned herself. Other than the infamous Kennedy overbite and nubby toes, I thankfully didn't inherit much from Wade's side of the family. Oh, and I should explain... "Wade" is referring to the man who happened to contribute some chromosomes to my DNA. Unlike the rest of the family, I've lost my ability to refer to him as "Dad" without wanting to punch someone or throw up inside my mouth.

I am also the favorite sister. I bonded with Justin not only because of our close ages, but because I was willing to play Barbie and Trash Trucks with him without passing judgment. Sure, most of the time he always ended up with my Barbies and I ended up with GI Joes or Hot-wheels, but anything we could do to be able to be kids was better than the hell we were living in.

I was also my sisters' favorite. But this is where we get to the bad part. It may help to first mention I was the youngest out of five girls, which I like to refer to that position in the family order as shark bait. Being the only child that took primarily after Mom, I was super girly and needy and sensitive. Maybe that should be in present tense as well....but that's irrelevant. It seems that the more children my parents had the more feminine the children turned out. 

 While the triplets were outside eating mud pies, throwing rocks at each other's heads, and throwing their panties in trees, the "little kids" (as we younger three were referred to) were playing dress up or coming up with dance routines to Paula Abdul or ABBA songs. Judi, who was in a way the middle child, was a hybrid of sorts. She was accepted by the triplets because she was only two years younger and minimally whiney. She was idolized by us younger kids because she was the only older sister that didn't beat the living bejeesus out of us for breathing too loudly. Eventually she got too cool to hang out with us "little kids", so Justin and I were left to fend for ourselves.

Living in the shop with only makeshift walls that provided no soundproofing separating our rooms was possibly one of the reasons we started to become so confrontational. Or maybe it was the constant state of tension that we lived in, always wondering which one of us would screw up and cause Wade to go off on one of his rampages. Whatever the reason, we broke out in scuffles and flat out fist fights on a regular basis. I mean full-fledged UFC style, no holds barred. Jennifer usually had an advantage, since she weighed about five pounds more than Jessi and Jacqui, and was a minute older. The fights were over when Jenni was able to sit on top of her opponent, putting those five extra pounds right on their diaphragm making breathing harder than being an asthmatic in a crazy cat lady's house.

Since I was too little to physically pummel, and much too whiney to listen to after being hurt, the older siblings started more of a mental warfare. After Wade started to make us practice tornado drills, gather all of our animals (mine was always a hermit crab that I would name Billy Ray Cyrus) and put them in the makeshift bathroom to see how fast we could get to safety, I started to have a huge fear of tornadoes. I would dream about them and wake up crying, only to have one of the sisters make me feel worse instead of better. They would tell me that the sound of the diesel trucks the workers at the construction company next door drove was actually the sound of an incoming tornado. I remember waking up with Jessica standing over me just saying "tornado, tornado, tornado!!!" as if she was trying to give me subliminal messages of terror.

As I mentioned before, I loved to play with Barbie dolls. Since I was the only girly-girl and didn't want to participate in the big kid's rough outdoor adventures, Justin and I would keep each other company. I started to be overprotective of him, trying to keep him out of harm's way. One time when we lived in a trailer park, we were playing outside and few kids started bullying him. He was a tiny little fella, with most of his weight being located in his abnormally large head. One of the kids decided to shove Justin, and being top-heavy he careened over the steep hillside. Being the good sister that I was, I picked up my jump-rope and ran over to the bully and beat the shit out of him with it. And that was my first fight with someone other than a sibling.

My Barbie phase ended with a traumatizing event. The event that made me question my love for the plastic disproportioned toy was when my Uncle Stephen (the youngest of my Mom's family) lived with us for a while and decided to cut off all of my dolls' hair and tape it to their crotches. I was too young to even understand the perverse humor, but it still made me mad. When the older girls found out what he did, they decided it would be the perfect opportunity to get back at me for all the times I got away with spitting on them. Mom told them they needed to set a good example and it didn't matter if I rubbed crap on them, they weren't allowed to touch me. They started dancing around singing "Gangster Bitch Barbie" until I couldn't stand the thought of playing with another Barbie again. I mean, how could GI Joe ever be happy with her if she was a gangster? Much worse, a bitch???? The doll I used to know was classy and had perfect hair. My childhood idol had been ruined.

The triplets also picked on Justin whenever they could get away with it. He was the baby of the family, the only boy, and was treated like an infant until he was fifteen. He rarely had to do chores or got in trouble. That special treatment caused a lot of jealousy with us girls, so we started to take out anger on him when he got old enough. The big girls would try to convince him that Barney the overly-friendly-super-creepy-purple dinosaur had died. Judi would give him piggy back rides though the shop, decide she was tired of carrying him, and just drop him wherever they were (sometimes on cinder blocks, sometimes on shelves). Jacqui would take cookies and replace the icing with thin slices of soap and talk him into eating them. We would all try to feed him anything with cinnamon in it to watch his face turn red, and then act oblivious when Mom would ask us what was wrong with him. (It turns out he is allergic to cinnamon, but only slightly.) 

Jenni would try to make Justin her little slave, forcing him to clean their room and smacking him with wire hangers when he refused. We would make fun of him for his inability to pronounce the letter "C" correctly. He would always talk about "turch" instead of church, which usually annoyed us enough to slap him or try to make him feel stupid. Of course, we couldn't pronounce anything correctly anyway but it was more of an issue with the letter "R" which was much cuter than his jibber jabber. The list goes on and on, but I was relieved to have some of the negative attention taken off of me so I wasn't too opposed to his being mistreated.

Growing up with only each other as company affected our relationships with each other in a substantial way, especially with our childhoods being played out in such an isolated and tense environment. Until Jacqui started this blog, none of us were ever comfortable talking about things that happened to us as kids or even as adults. I don't remember a lot of the events that took place, and a lot of the details are hard to sort out because I have a hard time telling if they are actual memories or bits and pieces of the constant nightmares that I have. In a way I am grateful that I was too young to retain a lot of the memories, or that I was able to block a lot of things out. 

The response from the readers has been so surprising. I mean, who could possibly find entertainment in reading about our lives? It seems to be like a Jerry Springer phenomenon, such a train wreck that you can't look away and maybe even like it. We all appreciate your support and are happy that you've taken time to read this each week. Thank you for being awesome, keep on keepin' on.