Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

IT WAS MY aunt Barbara’s idea for Josh and me to spend summers with her family in Kalamazoo. I
was eight when she offered to take us while my mom completed her schoolwork, an older sister’s act
of generosity and superiority: Part “Let me help you while you’re struggling,” part “Let me show you
how it’s done.”
My aunt and uncle Joe lived on a peaceful cul-de-sac with a big sloping hill out front. They had a
waterbed. A big puffy couch with footrests that lifted when you turned the wooden crank. A giant
console TV that doubled as floor furniture. Their home was like walking into a time capsule branded
“1982.”
My mother had strict limits on our television and sugar intake. Debates in the cereal aisle were
like trying to get a bill through Congress. But my aunt pooh-poohed that hippie nonsense. At her place,
we lived on Cap’n Crunch and Little Debbie snack cakes. I lay around in my nightgown till noon,
watching game shows and soap operas. At night, we gathered around the big TV to watch prime-time
dramas and R-rated movies.
Josh and I had three cousins—Joey, Kimberley, and Scotty—and I was the youngest in our group.
To be the littlest in that gang was a mixed blessing. It was to be hoisted on the shoulders of new
adventure at the same time I was blamed for someone else’s farts. We filmed our own version of Star
Wars, directed and produced by my brother, and I was dying to be Princess Leia. Instead, he cast me
as R2D2. I didn’t even get the dignity of lines to memorize. Just a series of random bleeps and
bloops.
The part of Princess Leia went to Kimberley, a cute tomboy with feathered bangs, though
production broke down when she failed to show on set. Kimberley wasn’t obedient like me. Her
response to boys who thought they ruled the world was a sarcastic eye roll. She was Josh’s age, but
she actually preferred my company, which probably felt like having a little sister and a disciple at
once. She let me tag along to Crossroads Mall and taught me things about sex never mentioned in my
mother’s “when two people love each other” lectures.
She tried to make me tougher. The universe had made me soft, too quick to sniffle, and she saw it
as her duty to make me better prepared. We used to play this game.
“I’m going to plant a garden,” she would say, running her fingers along the tender skin of my inner
arm. Her nails were like a caress at first, a tickle of sorts, but as the game progressed, the friction
intensified. “I’m going to rake my garden,” she would say, digging into my skin and scraping, leaving
pink trails. “I’m going to plant seeds in the garden,” she would say, twisting up a corkscrew of flesh
between thumb and forefinger. What a strange game, a femmy version of “uncle.” Girls can be so
sideways with their aggression. Why not just punch each other and get it over with? Instead, we inch
into the bizarre eroticism of inflicting and accepting each other’s pain. I could never beat Kimberley
—but I gnashed my teeth, gulped down my tears, and tried.
I wanted to be like her: tough and foxy. I wanted to borrow her brassiness. What are you looking
at? Who gave you permission to look at me? How exciting to barge through the world, never
apologizing for your place in it but demanding everyone else’s license and registration.
But the summer of 1984 wasn’t like the ones before it. I was nearly 10 years old, and Kimberley
was 14. When I arrived, she greeted me in a tight magenta leopard-print tank top. Her eyes were lined
with electric blue, and she wore hypnotic pink discs in her ears that swirled when she shifted. Men
watched her as she crossed a room. She didn’t smile much anymore.