Joe is sitting on the couch.
Staring up at her.
Both are tweaking.
Kathy screams, “You are such a little man, such a little piece of shit. What the fuck is wrong with you, are you fucking retarded, I’m speaking to you, are you fucking retarded! Cuz, I think you might be. I think you might be fucking retarded. The verdict is in. Joe is fucking retarded!”
“Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch!”
“You telling me to shut the fuck up, oh yeah, little man. You are such a fucking retard, Joe. You ain’t shit, you know that! You’s a little bitch, a bitch. Everybody said you were a bitch, and you know what now I fucking believe them. Bitch!”
Joe stands up.
Punches her in the eye.
Kathy hits the floor.
Joe sits on her chest and punches her in the face repeatedly.
Blood everywhere.
Kathy is still screaming, “Bitch bitch bitch, you’s a fucking bitch!”
Joe keeps screaming, “Shut up shut up shut up!”
Joe stands up.
Kicks her till her ribs break.
Then grabs her by the head and smashes it into the floor.
Kathy eventually passes out.
Joe says quietly, “God, you’re a fucking bitch.”
Kathy lays there all bloody and stupid.
Joe leaves because he is on probation.
When Kathy wakes up.
She crawls to the telephone and dials 911.
An ambulance comes and puts her on a stretcher.
The cops go and pick up Joe.
He has just spent two years in the pen for shooting a person.
While arresting him they find enough coke in his car to convict him of drug dealing.
He is sentenced to eight years in prison.
*
Kathy is sitting across from Joe in the prison.
There is glass between them.
They are both holding phones.
Joe says, “Did you bring my money?”
“Yeah, I brought your fucking money.”
“Good, it’s because of you I’m fucking here.”
“I’m not the one who kicked my fucking ass, dick head.”
“You didn’t have to call the police!”
“I was gonna fucking die, asshole.”
“Fucking slut! Shut up!”
“I hope you fucking die in here. You know that! Our son doesn’t need assholes like you in his life!”
Joe looks at her for several seconds.
He spits on the glass.
Kathy watches the spit slide down the glass and smiles.
*
One night after work, Kathy goes to Viper’s house to spend the night.
Viper’s house is small and old.
The kitchen hasn’t been remodeled since the late fifties.
The furniture, tables, drapes, and appliances are all second-hand.
Her parents own the house; it was inherited from a dead great uncle.
There is a bookshelf with everything from Stephen King to Simone de Beauvoir.
Viper grew up poor like Kathy. But Kathy grew up outside the city of Youngstown, in a bordering town.
Both of their grandpas worked for the steel mills.
But Viper, unlike Kathy, had a father who was around when she was young.
She wasn’t so unstable.
And her parents, unlike Kathy’s parents, had an interest in her future.
They took out a loan for her to attend college.
Kathy is sitting on the couch and Viper is in the kitchen.
Kathy sits there rubbing her belly.
She is tweaking and the baby is kicking hard.
Viper yells from the kitchen, “Would you like a drink?”
“Yeah, I need something to calm me down.”
Viper puts ice cubes in two tall glasses.
Fills the glasses almost to the rim with rum and then pours some soda on top.
She enters the living room and hands Kathy a glass.
Viper sits on the couch and crosses her legs.
Kathy takes a drink and smiles.
“You live here all alone?” says Kathy.
“Yeah, just me.”
“How come you don’t have any kids?”
“Don’t want any. I would rather have a swimming pool.”
“What?”
“Well, I like swimming more than I like kids.”
Kathy doesn’t respond.
She just sits there staring at her swollen belly.
After some time passes, Kathy says, “How’s Lenny?”
“Good but he’s getting a bit clingy.”
“Yeah, he seems like he’d be that type.”
“Yeah, but he eats such good pussy. I got this other guy lined up. Andre. You’ve met him before, he goes to the club on Thursdays.”
“Yeah, he’s hot.”
“Yeah, I know. Strong as hell too! Uhh, that’s what I’m talking about,” says Viper.
Viper’s sentences are like grenades in Kathy’s head.
“You know, you’re like a warrior. You go out and get things that you want. You tear it up. It’s like when you enter a room, people take notice. You fight tooth and nail for what you get. I really like that about you,” says Viper.
“I do, I have fought like a motherfucker for what I have. I just got a new car. I got all my bills paid. I still got my kid. I got my own place to live. I got it and for what I’ve done for it, I deserve it.”
“You know people say that you have to go and get what you want out of life. But it isn’t like that. It’s like, the more money you make, the less you actually do. People say going to college is going out and getting it. But in reality it’s just plodding along. I show up to class, they tell me to memorize these certain things. I do, then write in the answers. The whole process takes years. It’s like that at work too. I worked at a toy store for two years and became a manager in my department. All I did was show up on time and take orders well, and never thought. Just did one little dumb thing after another. And somehow that leads to success.”
“I worked at a restaurant once, but the manager kept giving me shit. So I punched her in the face.”
“We do what we have to do.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
They sit on the couch in silence.
*
Kathy and her son pull into the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Kathy’s son gets out and starts running around the parking lot.
The kid is making that siren noise only kids can make.
Kathy gets out, nine months pregnant.
She runs after him, screaming, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you little fucker! Get back over here now!”
Kathy catches the little boy.
Begins smacking him.
Kathy screams while hitting him, “You little fucking piece of shit! I ought to fucking kill your little ass! What the fuck do you think you’re fucking doing running around this fucking parking lot? You’ll get hit by a fucking car! Then you know what? You’ll be fucking dead, you little fucker!”
She is hitting him and screaming and the boy is crying.
A family loading groceries into their minivan stares, wondering how a woman could do that to her child.
Kathy looks at them and screams, “WHAT!”
*
Kathy is sitting with Viper at the bar.
Both just sitting there.
Sipping at their drinks.
Kathy looks off and says, “Now that Joe’s in prison, I sit at home mostly. Watching TV, doing nothing. The other day I was in the store and I saw that there’s Tide with a Touch of Downy now. Tide with a Touch of Downy. Things like that, they get me through the day. Tide with a Touch of Downy.”
*
At work.
Two girls come in with a guy.
One of the girls is named Nicole.
The girls are wearing expensive clothes bought from magazines and off the internet. Clothes that are brand new but made to look old and faded.
Nicole sits down with her friend and starts talking shit about Viper and the dancers. “Look it’s a bunch of skank Wal-Mart girls. Viper has a big ass, fucking slut.” A lot of random dumb shit.