She Was a Bitch on Steroids

Panic-stricken, I searched everywhere I could think of around the vicinity of the washing line, peering in unlocked sheds and outbuildings, even the scratchy shrubbery that grew behind the garages.

‘Where the fuck is it?’

There was no doubt I’d hung up my new sweater only a few hours earlier. My mind, perturbed, raced to rationalize why it wasn’t there, hanging up with my other items of clothing that swayed in a soft breeze, oblivious to my predicament.

‘The pegs are still there, I don’t understand. Why the fuck isn’t it there!’

***

It was rare that I was able to treat myself to new clothes, even more so now, since leaving home on the cusp of my sixteenth birthday, the year before. I grew up in poverty, so it was always sheer luxury to own anything new. I was pretty used to having second-hand cast-offs, but I was okay with that.

But now, at seventeen, I was having to claim rent money from the social to give to Lyla, even though I had to share a bed with her when she wasn't staying at her boyfriend's, being only a one-bedroom flat, but an escape from my previous living arrangement hell.

Those factors warranted my new top as being that extra bit special.

I left school (and home) running. It had been vital for me to get away from my controlling mother, even if that came with a price—I had no other options. I left with a suitcase and zero future. Little did that younger me imagine I’d be moving eight more times in the following two years up to my eighteenth birthday, and that’s without even measuring the numerous moves in the years to come, after that child-to-adult benchmark.

***

I ran back into the flat, hoping that bitch would be able to explain why my new sweater wasn’t on the washing line with my other stuff. And where the fuck was it! I had a hunch it had to be her.

She clocked my disbelief, but heck, she wasn’t fazed, replying nonchalantly, while taking a long drag on her cigarette:

“No, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about!”

I never knew whether to believe her — her lips were moving after all!

***

Lyla—a friend of my older sister—had twelve years on me. I looked up to her, naively believing she was a mature woman, yet her actions screamed: cold-hearted bitch! My sister lived with her five years ago, for the shortest amount of time — when she’d split home, at sixteen, too.

I remember a time I’d called round for my sister, and while I stood waiting at the open front door of Lyla’s old flat, the overpowering stench of ammonia made my eyes smart; I’m not sure how many cats they had, but it was a clowder. Back then, Lyla’s then-husband was a professional burglar. I remember my sister telling me that he would defecate in his victims’ gardens before he did the job; something about 'pre nerves'.

I was about twelve when my sister shared this story with me, and my young mind overimagined Lyla’s rundown squat full of raggedy six o'clock shadowed crooks. I felt deep trepidation and concern for my sister.

Before I moved in with her, Lyla’s life had been primed with not only toxicity but the impact of criminality, too. Anything that may have been good in her soul had been manipulated or physically beaten out of her by her ex.

And it wasn't long before she'd let me stay with her, that my sister had introduced her to Grant, a friend of ours. He had been smitten with me a year or so back: a sixteen-year-old — a Lolita in his eyes, I imagine. I was an unbearably shy teenager, and tragically naïve. He was ten years older — ancient through my adolescent eyes.

He’d asked me to accompany him on a trip to Toronto, Canada, but hell would have had to have frozen over for me to join him on that trip. He not only used to share what he wanted to do with me intimately, but also verbally stepped over boundaries about the intimate parts of me,  along with the other male adults , who were associated with my sister's much older partner. I had no clue about boundaries at that age — I felt like I was a dumb, unworldly kid.

Grant, after giving up pleading with me, asked Lyla to join him, and launching at the opportunity, she was more than keen to fill my shoes. I’m sure some of her zealousness was because she felt it would piss me off; she got off on doing that to people. But I was more than relieved, and happy he had someone else to take; it meant the pressure was off of me, having not yet built boundaries, I was scared of saying 'no' to anyone, even if that meant someone was pestering or abusing me.

Her jealousy for me wasn’t based on anything concrete, but looking back, I wondered if she had an idea that Grant was attracted to younger women, and being almost thirty, she may have felt that gap. Not only in age, but in his morals, although she didn’t appear to have any either.

She’d run like a wild animal in her old life, and something, to me, felt missing from her heart. Back then in the mid-eighties, we weren’t familiar with the term ‘narcissistic sociopath’, yet I would generously use that term for her now.

When Grant popped over to the flat one early evening to collect her, I was chilling and had thrown on a raggedy old nightdress. Lyla turned into a ballistic fireball, fuming with rage as she slammed every door possible throughout the minuscule flat. Her face was so contorted, she could have set off a nuclear bomb.

My garment was old-fashioned and ugly; it looked like something an old woman would wear. Grant couldn’t help but notice her crazy-ass energy — his blue eyes twinkled at me as he acknowledged her baseless, passive-aggressive jealousy.

I grew up with little financial opportunities, and an unmaternal mother-daughter relationship, so I didn't get to experience the Saturday girlie trips into town, even with friends. The first pair of jeans I ever owned were second-hand. Serendipitously, the jeans were bespoke, with a designer label: Chantal — sewn onto the inside of the waist. I felt blessed.

I couldn’t have tried harder not to be any kind of threat to Lyla. Still, she was so mentally unhinged that it didn’t matter if I was wearing a bin bag — she hated me. I was enough for the rent money, though, and that was about it. Everything was a commodity to her, even Grant.

Looking back on that time, I want to hold that younger me and stop myself from living like that. The lack of genuine friendships, devoid of any warmth. I hopped from one living situation to another like this. I had tried to move back home, but my mother is impossible to live with. The manipulation and control always sent me screaming and running. I didn't know what else to do.

Lyla would say kind things to my face, and then behind my back, she would be critical and cruel. I had asked her to post a letter for me to my favourite celeb once she landed in Canada with Grant. I lived with far too much imagination, but that was how I coped. Usually hating any photos of me, I happened to have one that I was so proud of, and slid it into the envelope. She could have just placated my adolescent dreamy self with the truth. Instead, she ripped it up, along with the letter, after using it to mock me behind my back. That’s how she rolled.

Finally, after enough was enough, I asked my sister to come and rescue me, even though that would mean living with her boyfriend, who was a crude, dishonest, and disrespectful sexist. I had to get away from Lyla, and so I would just have to tighten my ‘I don’t give a fuck’ armour — yet again.

I learnt a few years later that Lyla and Grant had married; it hadn’t altogether surprised me, being that he had money, and that would be like honey to a bee, for her. They had a daughter, which did surprise me — I couldn’t envisage Lyla as a mother. I often wondered how their little girl coped growing up with a dishonest bitch like Lyla — would she have softened for her child?

And as predicted, in those short years after giving birth to Emily, I heard that they had divorced. Lyla, from her usual evil stance, wanted everything — she’d take Grant to the cleaners, no matter what. He, on the other hand, had always been a simple man, and not clued up for women like her. So torn inside and out — like dazzled caught prey, he started on the booze and drugs, throwing parties for any occasion. Everyone was invited, the more company the better for him to deflect or drown.

Fast forward ten years or so, and I spotted his American monster truck parked outside the office I worked at; he was there to pick up his girlfriend, a colleague of mine. She was an edgy and confident girl, but only seventeen. He must have been kissing forty by then.

It was no more than a year after I saw him that day that I got a call from my sister, telling me he was dead! Struggling with depression, he violently shot himself in the head. He had planned it, as he attentively placed his overcoat so that the scene wasn’t any more barbaric than necessary. He was found three days later, along with his pet Alsatian, who had been discovered face down in an outside bin. The poor animal was at a loss and had been searching for food.

I knew that Lyla would eventually kill him in the end, although I hadn’t anticipated it would be this tragic. Her heart felt nothing — anything to do with her would end up in a negative effect, like a poison.

Even though some decades have passed, I can’t help but remember the Vicar reading aloud Grant’s suicide note; how he’d joked about his Bugs Bunny teeth, which were magnificently white, the top two standing proud. I could never marry those two elements together: joking about his teeth, while planning to pull the trigger!

After we’d finished up at the service at the crematorium, on my drive home, I was met with the most supernaturally bizarre experience. Grant sat in the back seat of my car, and even though it wasn’t an outline or apparition of him, I knew without any doubt, it was him: a wide expansion of a bright, bright light that took up the expanse of the entire rear of my car. As I looked through my rear-view mirror, on and off, I witnessed this multi-coloured light, and an overpowering sense of him for the forty-five-minute journey home. I have never ever experienced something as phenomenal as this in my waking day, and yet it didn’t frighten me; it just felt natural. Almost as if a sixth sense were as natural and normal as are my other five senses.

Strangely enough, my sister wanted to say goodbye to Grant, where he lay to rest in his coffin  ( after the mortuary makeup was applied), she told me:

"Grant wasn’t there, Chantal. It was just a body. I knew he was gone."

And I knew exactly what she meant, years later, when I lost someone close to me.

***

I’d discovered a short time after splitting from Lyla’s place, from two friends who’d hung with Lyla and myself, that it was in fact, Lyla who had stolen my new top from the washing line. She had taken it back to the boutique for a refund to pocket the money.

She was a schemer and didn’t give a shit about anyone. She knew all the tricks to get what she wanted, regardless of how she did it. My friends, for whatever reason, chose to confess and write me a cheque to return the cost of the top. I was shocked on both accounts; they didn’t need to do either, but they chose to, and I felt blessed for that.

Names have been changed to protect identities.

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