For Agata and Aleksandra Jacunska
We were happy, until we weren’t. I had the ideal childhood. We had our house, there were kids to play with. It was a good neighbourhood then. My dad was a chef at Treasure Island and my mom was a cashier at the Mirage, where she still is. They met when they were living at the same apartment complex downtown. They loved it here. Then one thing happened, and another, and another. It all just went downhill so fast.
My dad drank. I wasn’t aware of that for a long time. I guess I was too young to tell. We had this little wishing-well barbecue pit in the backyard. We kept a board over it and when we took it off one day we found all these empty bottles my dad had put in there. He drank an eight-pack of beer before going to work one day and they fired him. That was the start, I think. Then my aunt moved in and all these arguments started. My mom and her would argue over something like towels. ‘You took my dish rag!’ It would start like that and escalate until my mom would say, ‘Get out of my house!’ Then my aunt would say, ‘Oh yes, this is yours and this and this and this. Everything is yours!’ My mom would get mad at my dad if he didn’t step in, but then if he did and took her side she’d be mad that he was attacking her sister. My parents also argued about money. She had six different credit cards running up debt at the same time. She bought things, she gambled. She said she deserved it because she supported everyone else when my dad was out of work and she was everybody’s slave. My aunt and her daughter would argue about who was a worse mother. It’s a fiasco. My family has this thing where if something is wrong you have to out-scream the other person and bring up whatever you can from what’s happened before to hurt them.
I think I was eleven when my aunt moved in with us. She lived with her daughter for a while, but got kicked out. My grandparents kicked her out too. She filled up their house with this junk she collects. They couldn’t cope. My mom took her in then. My aunt was kind of wild when she was young. She used to go to work at a casino and then go out to bars. When my cousin was little she had the numbers of the bars her mom went to and knew all the bartenders’ names and their shifts. She had quite a few boyfriends – the alcoholic she had my cousin with and a very controlling and rich Hispanic man, among others. She was engaged to a drug addict who told her he was a pilot. She still wound up paying for his flying lessons later. They got in an argument once and he ran over her with his car. She doesn’t go to bars now. She takes meth, works part-time as a dealer at Boulder Station and gambles. She comes home with nothing, just blows her whole paycheque. And she still collects junk. She drives around looking for it and waits outside storage places so she can collect stuff people throw out.
After she moved in she and my mom started going to Sam’s Town casino on Boulder Highway. It was my grandparents’ favourite. My mom played bingo and then slots and my aunt played tables and slots. When my grandparents and aunt would leave my mom would stay on. She’d say she’d be along soon but she didn’t come and when they went back the next day she’d still be sitting there. She’d have taken out all the money she could get on her A.T.M. and credit cards.
Maybe you can’t pin everything on one thing, one person especially. Maybe it’s not fair. But it’s hard not to blame my aunt for all the bad things that happened. I remember my mom’s warmth. She took my aunt in because she was always such a caring, family-oriented type of person. The change was so stark. She snaps, she’s defensive, she thinks everyone’s out to get her. My dad went to A.A. after she gave him an ultimatum and as he got better she got worse. She gets in these terrible fights with my aunt. My aunt has ripped chunks of her hair out of her head and my mom has hit my aunt so hard her false tooth has fallen out. It happens right in front of us. I’ve been hit trying to break it up.
I found my mom’s straws and razor blades when I was in eighth grade. She snorts meth. I don’t know when she started, but it was my aunt who brought it here. She’ll go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet for thirty minutes and then deny she was doing it. Or else she’ll say she does it to lose weight or because she has to stay up and clean the house. You can hear her at night when she’s high, cleaning and doing laundry. One time I came home and she and my aunt were screaming about who’d used the last of it. My mom said, ‘I wouldn’t have to do it if I didn’t have to clean up after my lazy children.’ So it’s our fault. She gets nosebleeds. Soon her septum will deviate.
I know she’s miserable. She doesn’t see anybody, or even want to. She just stays in her room and only comes out to go to work. She views the world in such a skewed way. We drove her all the way back to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where she was born, for her fiftieth birthday and she stood outside the house, yelling, ‘All I want for my birthday is a gun so I can shoot myself.’ Well, now we have one because we had a break-in. She told my grandma that she has a loaded gun and that there’s no reason for her to be here because my brother and I are old enough to look after ourselves now. One day we’ll come home and she won’t be there, she says. That, or she’ll kill my aunt.
Her and me were so close when I was little. I went to her for everything, then she wasn’t there. Even if she is there it’s not her. It’s a different person from the one I knew. It’s like living with a stranger. That’s what hurts me the most. She’s so close, right next to me, and I want her so bad but…she’s not there.
When I was in eighth or ninth grade I started self-mutilating. It wasn’t even until after I’d stopped for a while that anyone noticed. I think at first I wanted to see if anyone would notice, then I kind of got used to doing it. Everything was changing and I couldn’t fix it. When they’d argue I started to scratch, scratch until the skin broke, but then I started to get razor blades. Somehow it made me feel a little better. It was something I could control. I’d cut my legs in places where I could hide it. One time I left the house and was walking along the street. A neighbour had one of those mailboxes with the little red flag sticking up. I broke that off and used it to cut myself. That left a pretty decent scar.
I got out of cutting because of my best friend. If I felt like I was losing it she’d come right over in her car and we’d just drive and drive along the freeway without thinking of where we were going until I felt all right. I basically lived with her family through my senior year in high school. Her mom calls me her middle child. They really saved me. There was just so much poison in my house. When my mom found out about the cutting she said, ‘You’re sick. You’re what’s wrong with this family. You need help.’ She just tears me down. She says I’m overweight, unattractive, that I’ll never find a boyfriend.
The whole city does that to you. You see those pictures of women and think if you don’t fit that mould you’re not what people want. Even the family shows have scantily clad women in them. They’re the role models. The way men treat us is disgusting. People I hang out with even do it. They call us ‘skanks’, ‘bitches’, ‘sluts’. It’s like we’re not people, we’re just some degraded sub-section.
I started drinking after I stopped cutting. I drank Captain Morgan, or my personal favourite, Southern Comfort. I’d go over to this house belonging to friends of my brother and we’d drink shots around the table. I’d pass out sometimes. Once I fell down and broke two of my teeth. My friend and I figured out that during our first semester at college we were only sober seven days. They dealt weed from that house. Strangers would arrive at all hours. One of them kept a gun under his bed. Everything was very shady there, very negative. Like home. I’ve slowed down a lot now, though. I like a clear head. I got scared too because I didn’t want to be an alcoholic like my dad. ‘I can’t tell you not to, because I was doing the same thing,’ he said, but I could see that for the first time he was disappointed in me. I’ve been lucky, though. I’ve had help. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t. My friend made me realize that just because I couldn’t find stability at home didn’t mean I couldn’t find it somewhere else. I had a wonderful teacher who gave me the compliments my mother wasn’t able to. That made school a kind of refuge. I was an honours student. My brother’s been very good, too. Maybe he didn’t get the full impact of it. He had sports and I kind of protected him a little when he was younger. Now we look after each other when we can. It’s hard to work full time as I do and also go to school and then come home to all that tension, but he and I just got Netflix and we tune out together with that.
I think my aunt was happy once. She was a cocktail waitress. She looked for fun everywhere. She used to clean her bathroom with a toothbrush and now she dives into dumpsters looking for junk. She was just supposed to be with us for a couple of months, but it’s been nine years. Nothing seems to be able to stop it. My dad has given up. I think he feels defeated. My grandma has offered to pay all the costs of getting her out. My brother and I beg my mom to do it, but she won’t. She chooses her sister over her kids. I think she wants her nearby because that’s where she gets the meth from. Sometimes she puts her foot down and throws her out, but then after a couple of weeks she cracks and my aunt’s back again. She always has what my mom needs. I once took a bag of chips from my aunt when she was on the couch and there was a little yellow bag of meth inside. She’ll drop one of them on the floor sometimes and I’ll look at her to let her know that I know what it is. I don’t wish anyone any harm, but I like the times they’re not talking because at least then my mom will be clear of the drugs for a while.
We haven’t been able to have a family meal since my aunt arrived because her make-up and shoes and bits of junk are on the kitchen table. She’s filled four sheds with it out in the backyard. You have to keep to the left in the hallway because one side is full of boxes and storage tubs. My mom has to put her stuff in boxes because if she doesn’t my aunt’ll think it’s hers. She might take it out to the front to wash it down with a hose. That’s what she keeps doing with that stuff. One side of my bed is blocked by boxes. It’s everywhere. It just spreads. It’s like a disease. You can’t touch her stuff because she gets mad. She throws things.
Before she came I was into art. I used to design cards for my parents. They loved them. I pictured this happy future where I’d own my own design company and make art. Then everything started to happen. Now I just put as much effort as I can into school so I can get out of here and far, far away to some safe, warm environment that makes sense. I want to live somewhere I’m not ashamed of. I feel like my family is the joke of the town, that I’ve been dealt the worst hand. I can’t bring anyone to my house. I have to ask them to pick me up somewhere down the street. My aunt will be out in front with a do-rag and a missing tooth washing grocery bags. No one knows why. She’s dark-skinned from all her time in the sun and she doesn’t brush her hair for days. She’ll dress properly for work but otherwise her clothes are torn and full of bleach stains. She wears bright pink shoes. I’ve found her many times passed out on the toilet with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. Once she fell asleep on the couch and spilled a bowl of cereal on herself. She just woke up and brushed it off. The house is a sore thumb. There’s just dirt in the front yard and trash cans full of empty soda cans she’s supposedly going to cash in one day. They attract bees. You have to run down the path to get away from them. It was a decent house once. Now there’s broken junk everywhere, dead plants outside my window. The paint on the house is flaking off because of the chemicals she uses to clean her stuff. There’s always water running out of the hose. She won’t clean the house but she’ll clean her junk for hours. She’ll pick rocks out of the dirt and wash them. It’s got to the point where I take all this as normal now until I think of other people seeing it, or if I tell them about it. I once told my boss and he was amazed. ‘But you’re always smiling,’ he says. ‘I thought life was easy for you. I took you for a spoiled rich kid.’
I’m saving up for a car, and then a place to live. I have to pay for school myself. My dad helped me the first semester with textbooks, but when my mom found out she made me pay her back the $600 he’d given me. She said it was her money. She keeps a chart of my debts to her.
People come to Vegas to blow off steam and then go. But I’m stuck here. When I see the city lights I think of all the parts they don’t shine on. I feel like I’m living there, in those parts. The shadows pull you under. There’s so much distance between me and the lights.
Shelby Sullivan graduated with a degree in English Literature from UNLV in December 2013 and is in the process of becoming a high school English teacher. In the meantime she continues to work at a Sonic fast-food outlet in Las Vegas. Her aunt was finally evicted from the family house. She also lost her job at the casino. Shelby’s mother ceased using drugs and their relationship greatly improved. She would like to live in the east, or perhaps Wisconsin, where her mother is from.