A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir by Linda Zercoe Read Free Book Online

face and snarled, “I didn’t move here for my daughters to marry the help of the millionaires.” She abruptly stated, “You are nothing but a tramp and a slut.”
    I stood up to leave. She erupted, “I didn’t say you could get up.” I got up and left anyway. As I made my way down the hall she screamed, “You’re grounded.” Yeah, right, I thought.
    I didn’t know at the time that Dad was losing his business and our family was in financial trouble. On my Saturdays at the store, I had seen that customers would come in and pick my father’s brain about the audio equipment he sold, but they wouldn’t buy. Apparently they’d go to a warehouse store like Crazy Eddie’s down on Route 22 and buy their equipment for less.
    Dad was heartbroken.
    “We would be rich if you didn’t throw our inheritance away on that damn store!” my mother would constantly remind him.
    When I shared this turn of events with Dave on the phone, he went to my father’s store the next day and bought an eight-track player and speakers for his car.
    Shortly after the “slut incident,” Mom went back to work as a secretary at a chemical company down the road. I got a job after school at a puzzle factory as a clerk typist in the business office five days a week, and was soon told I had to pay my mother board.
    College was never discussed until the day my mother shoved in my face a tear-off application to William Paterson College, a state college located in Wayne, while I was sitting in the kitchen under the large portable hair dryer with my big smooth-out rollers. I looked at the application for this school that I had never heard of and noticed that the deadline had passed more than a month before. Earlier in high school, I had taken a career-interest personality test and it showed that my top two careers were either a fighter pilot in the Air Force or something to do with home economics. I’d given some thought to becoming a nurse in a branch of the service, and traveling, but then there was Dave.
    I opted to apply to County College of Morris (CCM), the local community college, and was accepted into the nursing program. I could get an associate’s degree and become a licensed registered nurse in two years, after passing the state boards.
    Soon after starting college, I got a big abscess in the crack of my backside. I shared this with Mom, who told me I should wait until it exploded before going to the doctor. She explained that Dad had a pilonidal cyst early in their marriage and this was what I had, in her opinion. A few weeks went by. I had to take a bed pillow with me everywhere just to sit half-assed. Finally, belatedly remembering that I was now 18 and unable to bear the pain one more second, I made a doctor’s appointment.
    The evening of the appointment, I announced that I would be taking the car. Mom asked me where I was going.
    “To the doctor,” I said, grabbing the keys, going out to the driveway, and starting the car. As I was pulling out of the driveway, Mom ran out of the house and threw herself on the hood of the car.
    “You’re not going anywhere without me!”
    Just to piss her off, I lit a cigarette as soon as she got into the car. Even though she’d never seen me smoke before, somehow she knew now better than to mess with me. Reaching around while backing out of the driveway, I told her, “Keep your mouth shut!” As I shifted the car from reverse to drive to go up the hill, the ash fell off the cigarette that was clenched between my teeth and burned a hole in my white pantyhose. I was still in my nursing school uniform.
    The doctor said I had a perirectal abscess and had to take care of it immediately. The next day I was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery, involving an incision and drainage of the abscess, which was about the size of a banana. My white blood cell count was so high I was in the hospital for a week on antibiotics.
    Dave visited every day, sitting at my bedside with his blue puppy dog