Viper is across the bar, out of earshot.
Kathy is a couple of seats down and hears everything.
Kathy stands and walks toward them and says, “Look bitches, you gotta fucking problem, what the fuck do you think you’re doing coming up in here and saying shit about Viper. I think I might kick your fucking asses.”
The two girls look scared but stupidity keeps Nicole talking, “Whatever, you white trash bitch.”
Kathy, pregnant as hell, punches Nicole in the face.
Nicole falls off her seat.
Viper approaches the other girl from behind. She taps her on the shoulder. The girls turns and gets a right hook to the eye. The bitch falls beside Nicole.
The guy they came with stands there.
Kathy starts yelling, “Look at these high class bitches. You know where you are now, high class bitches. You in a fucking place you don’t fucking belong! So get the mother fuck out!”
Viper then kicks Nicole in the ribs and giggles and says, “I don’t take no shit from an upper class bitch.”
The two girls eventually run out to the new cars their parents bought them and drive away to their safe neighborhoods.
*
Kathy and Viper are sitting at the bar drinking.
Kathy says, “Now that I know Joe ain’t gonna be outta prison for eight years, I gotta move on. But I don’t want no pussy boy, you know. He gotta be a man. If I get into some shit at the club I gotta be able to call him and say, ‘Show the fuck up here now and be ready to kick some ass.’ And even if we know we can’t win, he still needs to come, and at least bring some heart, you know.”
*
Kathy is twelve years old.
Sitting on her grandma’s couch watching television.
Her grandma is sitting on a chair sipping on some vodka and Coke.
“Where’s my mother?” Kathy says.
“She ain’t here,” her grandma says.
Kathy gets up and goes to the bathroom.
Sits on the floor and stares.
There’s no use.
Kathy leaves the house and walks down to where a hotel used to be.
It is night.
The moon shines through the clouds sometimes.
The rubble is still there.
Broken cement scattered everywhere.
Other young kids are there.
Kathy sits on some rubble.
A young girl says, “Did you hear they burned down a crack house on Albert Street last night and another abandoned house caught fire on the south side last night.”
A young white boy pulls out a joint and hands it around.
The children smoke the joint and get high.
Kathy says, “This is good weed.”
The white kid says, “I stole it from my dad. He gets good shit.”
The black girl says, “You living at your grandma’s now, Kathy?”
“I’ve been there for two weeks now, and my mom doesn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon, so I guess I am.”
“I lived with my grandma for three years, but now I am with some fucked-up crackhead foster mother using my ass to get money. But she don’t give a fuck what I do, so it don’t bother me,” says the black girl.
They sit on the rubble and wait for something to do.
*
Kathy is sitting in the living room watching television.
Lisa is sleeping on the couch.
Kathy has been sitting there for over an hour.
She stands up and punches Lisa in the back.
Lisa jumps up, looks scared, and says, “What the fuck you doing?”
“Where’s my money bitch?”
“I don’t have any, I don’t even have tip-out tonight.”
“Bitch, I need that fucking money to pay the fucking phone bill! If the phone goes off I can’t talk to Joe. You owe me like a hundred fucking dollars bitch. Where’s my fucking money?”
“I used my money on the drugs last night, remember?”
Kathy stares at her.
Kathy is very mad.
Kathy looks at Lisa and says, “You better have that fucking money soon.”
“Whatever, just don’t fucking hit me. I’m your friend.”
Kathy just stares at her.
*
Kathy is two centimeters dilated.
She hasn’t worked for a week.
She is alone.
There is an eight ball on the coffee table with some Vicodin mixed in.
She sniffs a line.
Then sits.
Her face is angry.
She looks at her belly.
Her large belly angers her.
She says, “I’m fat.”
Then says, “Why won’t you fucking come out!”
Then says, “Who the fuck is your father!”
Then says, “This is so wrong.”
Kathy never cries.
But she cries now.
Some ugly tears fall out of her eyes.
She sniffs another line.
And stares at her belly again.
Kathy says, “You’re gonna cry aren’t you! You’re gonna fucking cry constantly, and annoy the fucking hell out of me! You’re gonna need to be changed! You’re gonna need diapers, formula, clothes, all kinds of shit that I will have to spend money on. My hard-earned money will be spent on your stupid fucking ass! I lost so much by having the first one, now I will lose more. How much can you little fuckers take from me! All you little fuckers do is take! You give nothing but annoying grueling hours! You are cruel little monsters. I don’t wanna teach your stupid ass the alphabet or how to walk or how to shit in the toilet. But if I don’t take your shit, then my stupid fucking mother will take your shit. And that bitch is nuts! This is horrible!”
Kathy sniffs another line.
Looks at her belly again and says, “What will be your life, you’ll be just like your father, you’ll end up in the pen. You’ll steal, sell drugs, you’ll beat women, you’ll throw it all away. But here I am with the plan of spending thousands of dollars on your ass making sure you live long enough to go to prison. That you live through eighteen shitty years in Youngstown to end up in a little cell writing letters to some woman who ain’t me. And she probably put you there, just like I put your father there. I don’t want to give you life. I don’t want you to know what it means to be poor in this world. What it means to be afraid! Really fucking afraid!”
Kathy sniffs another line.
She looks at her belly again and says calmly, “I’m bringing you into a world where you will know more people in prison than people who have graduated from college. You will know violence. You will know what it means to be hit and what it means to hit. You will know what it is like to wake knowing you have a better chance of getting into prison than getting rich. I will teach how to handle yourself in this environment. How to survive knowing that each day might bring violence and incarceration. I will teach you how to be as tough as steel and how to take no shit from motherfuckers. I will teach you how to get what you want. There is no reason to teach you the alphabet and read books to you at night. They ain’t gonna help you here. Nobody cares about us and nobody ever will, we are poor people. We are doomed to this violence and struggle, and if I show you anything before you hate me when you get older, it will be how to survive in this hell.”
Kathy sniffs a line.
She looks at her belly and says, “Education will make you a talker, not a doer. And nobody cares what the poor have to say anyway.”
*
Kathy is giving birth.
She is gonna pop it out soon.
An anesthesiologist comes into the room.
It is a woman from India. She is there to administer the epidural.
Kathy screams, “Get this bitch out of here, I need somebody that can speak fucking English!”
The woman speaks; Kathy doesn’t understand anything she says.