willful ignorance

i was looking through my documents and came across this little vignette/memory i wrote a month or so ago. the reason i'm posting comes at the end. i'm sorry it's such a cliffhanger.

strolling through the grocery store to kill time and find an eight-dollar bottle of wine, and i remember the time i flung dirt in the babysitter daughter’s eyes. we were digging by a tree with plastic spoons. i was eight years old. the babysitter had teeny skinny legs and a big pregnant-looking belly. she was short, had a perm and a pig nose, and wore lots of blue eye shadow. her daughter’s name was brandi and we were friends at school. i flung dirt at brandi because jj picinich had just flung dirt at me. brandi’s mom saw me, though. i was so ashamed and i didn’t even speak up. i didn’t say that i did it in retaliation. and then that bitch told my mom about it. really? that was my worst offense all summer and she couldn’t let it slide?

brandi’s dad worked at montgomery ward in a failing mall. we went there at least once a week and brandi’s mom put things on layaway. my mom began to lose her taste for brandi’s mom. i’m not sure what happened. brandi had a lazy eye and shiny black hair. i think there was a younger sibling. we used to eat fudgesicles from the schawnn’s man. sometimes root beer popsicles. we would play restaurant and make menus full of frozen treats.

sometimes brandi’s older cousin would come over. she went to an r. kelly concert and she said he dropped his pants and his boxers said “horny” in lights. did we know what “horny” means, she asked? yeah. of course we did.

i had no fucking idea. i didn’t want to know because i knew it was a bad thing.