Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea Read online

  “Fourteen?” I asked. Who hires a babysitter for a fourteen-year-old? I wondered if he was retarded. “Is he retarded?” I asked.

  “No, he’s not retarded,” the woman replied, sounding a little shocked. “He’s just a little hyper, but he’s a good boy. It’s more to have someone else there who can be in charge of my youngest, Kyle.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, as I took a bite out of the apple I was holding and kicked my feet up on the sofa. “Well, I charge ten dollars an hour for two kids.”

  She said that sounded reasonable, and we set a time for the next evening.

  “Who was that?” Sloane asked as I hung up the phone.

  “A client,” I told her. “I have to babysit for a fourteen-year-old tomorrow.”

  “You can’t babysit for a fourteen-year-old,” Sloane told me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re twelve, that’s why!”

  “They don’t know how old I am,” I said, as I polished off my apple and penciled my new client into my Filofax.

  “Chelsea, you can’t babysit for someone who is two years older than you,” Sloane said.

  “Girls mature faster than boys,” I reminded her. “It’ll be fine.”

  The next night my father dropped me off at Susan’s house. He was impressed with my work ethic and business sense. “You’ve really shown a strong sense of self, Chels. I’m proud of you,” my father told me.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said as I hopped out of the car. “If you need to borrow any cash, I’m sure we can work something out at a moderate interest rate.”

  I walked up the steps and peered through the screen door. “Hello,” I said. Susan came running to the door, carrying her seventy-two-month-old son on her hip.

  “Oh, Chelsea, it’s so lovely to meet you.” She was harried and it didn’t take long to figure out that she was completely unstable. “This is Kyle,” she said in baby talk as she introduced me to the kid she was holding like a baby kangaroo. “Can you say hello to Chelsea?” she asked him as she took the pacifier out of his six-year-old mouth.

  “Hi,” he said shyly, and then nuzzled his head into Susan’s shoulder.

  “Let’s go in and meet James.”

  James was her fourteen-year-old and I half expected him to be in a crib, but instead he was sitting on the living room floor playing Nintendo. I sized him up and figured we were about the same size, although it looked like he had a bit more lean muscle mass than I did, which would give him the advantage if it came down to a tug-of-war.

  “He loves those video games,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Kids,” I said, shaking my head in unison. I wanted Susan to think we were totally in sync, even though it was becoming very obvious that Susan needed to be under psychiatric supervision. I followed her to the kitchen, where she had three pages of telephone numbers listed in case of an emergency. At the very top of the list in bold print was: any sort of emergency: dial 911.

  Then it went on to list every family member still alive, including a few relatives she had in Russia. I tried to picture myself calling overseas to Moscow if and when Kyle hanged himself. I couldn’t believe someone like Susan would allow a complete stranger to babysit her children.

  “I know this is a bit extensive but I just wanted to cover all bases.”

  “Hello, I’m James Sr.,” her husband said meekly as he walked into the kitchen. He looked like a battered wife with his head hung low and his terrible posture. I immediately felt sorry for him.

  Susan and I spent the next forty-five minutes going over the boys’ routines. “Their pajamas are already laid out. Kyle goes down at seven thirty and James can stay up till nine o’clock and watch a show. Both can have some frozen yogurt after dinner but only the sugar-free kind. There is a tub of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream in the freezer for James Sr. The children are not allowed to have that.” Then she leaned in and whispered, “James Jr. is a sugar addict.”

  “Does he go to meetings?” I asked her.

  “He can be very moody. We try and stabilize his blood sugar level, and if he’s on his best behavior, he can have one or two spoonfuls of regular ice cream, but anything more than that and he tends to get carried away.”

  I wanted to tell Susan that the reason James Jr. probably got carried away was because he was living in the equivalent of a state penitentiary, and that she was doing far more damage than good to these children by treating them like they were both infants.

  After weeks of childcare over the summer, it became obvious that the best contribution I could make to the world would be to open up my very own day-care/night-care center. Clearly I knew more about child-rearing than most of the parents I had encountered. Sugar addict? Who isn’t a sugar addict when they’re fourteen? I, of course, couldn’t speak for myself at the time, being only twelve.

  Susan was the antithesis of my mother. There was more adult supervision at the Neverland Ranch than there was in my house growing up. When a week before my fourth birthday, my parents told me to plan my own birthday party—I knew I was pretty much on my own.

  My brothers and sisters occasionally stepped in with some guidance, but my parents were exhausted after raising my five older siblings, and I have no doubt that my mother’s pregnancy with me was an accident. Mostly because on several occasions, she told me I was an accident.

  I wanted Susan and her husband to leave already, and wondered if she would ever stop talking. I had dealt with some over-protective parents before, but this was outrageous. Susan was a total basket case, and I didn’t like the idea of being responsible for either one of her children. This was clearly a woman who would fly off the handle if she came home to find one of her kids missing.

  The whole time Susan was talking, James Sr. sat at the kitchen table staring out the window. He probably had no idea his life would end up like this when he first met Susan. She was probably fun and outgoing with no signs of being a complete and utter nightmare. This was not the life anyone intended to carve out for themselves, and I imagined James Sr. hanging himself sometime in the next couple of weeks.

  After explaining in excruciatingly painful detail what to do in case of a tidal wave, she handed Kyle to me and headed for the door. When they finally left, I put Kyle down on his feet, and we walked back into the living room, where James Jr. was playing Nintendo.

  “I want my dinner,” James said, without looking up from the game he was playing.

  “Okay,” I said, and walked back in the kitchen with Kyle, who was shadowing my every move.

  “Actually,” he yelled out, “I’ll take some frozen yogurt first.”

  I didn’t mind giving James the frozen yogurt first, but didn’t really appreciate being ordered around like a servant. “Well, would you like to come into the kitchen and eat it?”

  “No, bring it to me!” he barked.

  I looked down at Kyle, who frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “Do you want frozen yogurt first too?” I asked him. Kyle’s eyes lit up as he nodded his head feverishly. Kyle was cute and I felt bad for him. He had no chance of having a normal life. If I had just been a couple of years older, I could have adopted Kyle and given him a real life, but I knew I had to get through middle school before committing myself to potty training a six-year-old.

  “I’ll get the yogurt for you,” Kyle said in a very soft, sweet voice. I was shocked that in his condition he could even speak, never mind negotiate his way to the freezer.

  “Thank you, Kyle, that’s very thoughtful of you,” I said loudly, eyeing James to let him know that good behavior would be rewarded with positive affirmations. “What a sweet boy you are!”

  I kept a close watch on James until Kyle returned with the bowl and walked over to where his brother was sitting.

  “Put it on the floor,” James demanded.

  “Can you please not talk to him like that?” I asked James in what I thought was a reasonable tone.

  What happened next is hard to describe. Whatever happened to Lou F
errigno right before he turned into the Incredible Hulk was similar to the rage that filled up James’s face right before he wailed, “Put the yogurt on the floor!” The only differences were, James didn’t turn green and he wasn’t wearing cut-off jeans. Kyle started crying and I nearly threw my back out picking him up.

  I felt a little scared but was also taken aback by the lack of respect James had for adults. He was obviously a loose cannon, and I knew I had to remain calm and get back some control of the situation.

  “Okay, James, you need to pipe down. I do not appreciate being talked to like that, and you are scaring your brother.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you. I can talk to you any way I want, you dumb girl!”

  I was tempted to tell James that he was technically talking to a woman, since my very first period had come on a like a sneak attack earlier that month, but I wasn’t about to get into the birds and bees discussion so early in the night.

  This was not going well, and I really had no idea what to do. I was trying to console Kyle while racking my brain trying to think of the best approach for handling an unruly teenager.

  “That’s it,” I told him. “You’re getting a time-out.” I walked over to the television and shut it off. This sent James into a full-blown meltdown. He threw his game control at the window but stayed seated while he pounded his fists into the floor over and over again and started bawling. I hadn’t been alone with them for five minutes, and now both kids were crying and one of them was foaming at the mouth. I made a mental note to ask for more money when their parents returned.

  “Okay, calm down, James, just calm down. Please stop crying.” I put Kyle down because my knees were giving out. “Please, everyone stop crying.” I went and turned the TV back on. James immediately perked up and went to retrieve his game control.

  “Not so fast,” I told him. “You are fourteen years old and you have no business acting like this.”

  “Shut up, stupid,” he grunted, as he craned his neck around where I was standing to get a look at the TV screen. I couldn’t believe what an asshole this kid was. I was obviously going to have to give him a spanking.

  “Listen up, James,” I told him, standing my ground. “I am not trying to make your life miserable; it obviously already is. But there is no need to take your frustration out on me.” Kyle was now standing next to me, holding on to my pant leg and sniffling, his pacifier in his mouth. “Now say you’re sorry,” I said to James.

  “No!” he screamed. “No fucking way!”

  I wanted to hit James. I thought about a closed-fist punch and then my mind drifted to a swift kick in the neck. “That’s it,” I said, shutting off the television once more. “You are going to bed, mister.”

  “The fuck I am!” he screamed as he got to his feet. He was taller than I had originally estimated and towered over me. This was getting scary and I knew my personal safety was in danger. No matter what, the first rule of babysitting was never to show any fear.

  “I’m calling your parents,” I told James as I held Kyle’s hand and walked out of the living room into the kitchen, where I spotted a huge tub of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream on the counter.

  “Kyle, that’s not frozen yogurt, that’s ice cream.”

  Kyle, who clearly wouldn’t know the difference between a guitar and an airplane, shrugged his shoulders and started to cry.

  “It’s okay, Kyle. It’s okay,” I assured him, kneeling down to give him a hug.

  “I’ll be good,” Hitler Jr. called after me in a completely calm tone of voice.

  I turned around and walked back into the living room, where he had stopped crying and was seated on the floor next to his half-eaten bowl of ice cream. “You were not supposed to have sugar, James.”

  “It’s what Kyle gave me,” he said, shrugging his shoulders innocently. “I’m not a sugar addict, it’s fine. My mom is nuts.”

  “Well, that’s obvious,” I told him, finally feeling like we had made a connection. “But I’m supposed to be watching you, and she told me not to let you have any, so do me a favor and don’t tell her, and I won’t either.”

  “Cool,” he said, actually looking in my direction for the first time since I had arrived.

  Kyle was finally calming down, and if he hadn’t put his arms up for me to pick him up again, I would have given myself an actual pat on the back for finding a way to reason with James. I really am good with kids, I thought to myself.

  “I’m going to my room,” James announced as he got up abruptly and marched out of the living room—and then came back in. “And don’t come up there, you dirty bitch!”

  I didn’t know what to make of James. I didn’t know if he suffered from Tourette’s or bipolar disorder. I did not feel safe at all, and it occurred to me that I would need to start carrying a taser gun.

  I looked down at Kyle, who had taken his pacifier out of his mouth and was eating James’s leftover ice cream, and I wondered if he was still breast-feeding.

  After Kyle was done I told him it was bedtime. It was only 7 p.m., but I needed some time alone to prepare myself in case Hannibal Lecter came back downstairs. I changed Kyle’s diaper, helped him into his pajamas, read him Goodnight Moon, and then tucked him in. “Good luck with everything,” I told him before I turned out his light.

  I walked over to James’s room and knocked on the door. I thought about what it must be like for James to go through life under these conditions, with a mother like Susan. It’s no wonder he was miserable. I thought maybe I could sit down and talk to him about his life, be a shoulder he could cry on, if for no other reason than to prevent him from becoming a dateraper later in life. “Do you want me to bring you your dinner?” I asked through the closed door. Silence.

  I was about to ask again, but decided I was the one who needed to eat dinner. All this caretaking had made me forget about my own needs. I went downstairs and looked in the fridge. There were a few containers that had james sr. written on them. I took one out, opened it, and found some chicken. After taking a couple of bites and not being able to identify the exact spice used in preparing it, I shut the container and put it back in the fridge. I went over to the cupboard and found a can of SpaghettiOs.

  About an hour later the phone rang right in the middle of a brand-new episode of The Golden Girls. My favorite character was Bea Arthur. I’ve always felt we had similar senses of humor, although I imagined myself having a much better body when I hit seventy, not to mention highlights.

  I picked up the phone and Susan was on the other end. “Hi, Chelsea, is everything okay?”

  “Yes, everything is fine,” I told her, feeling like I had finally gotten the situation under control, and not wanting to miss any more of The Golden Girls than necessary.

  “That’s wonderful, Chelsea. Thank you so much.”

  “No problem, Suz,” I told her. “Have fun at the movie.”

  The minute I hung up the phone James walked into the room with the entire bucket of frozen yogurt along with the entire bucket of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream in his hands. Both were empty. I hadn’t had any experience with sugar mania before, but was intuitive enough to know things were not going well.

  He ran in and started jumping up and down on the couch I was sitting on. This was way before Tom Cruise humiliated himself on Oprah, and I had no idea then that James’s behavior was not only a result of liking sugar, but most likely a direct link to Scientology.

  “No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” he started screaming.

  I was so shocked at first, I pretended he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary and tried to ignore him. If he was looking for attention, he wasn’t going to get it from me. Then he jumped off the couch, ran into the kitchen, and came back with two oranges, both which he fired in my direction. One hit me right in the forehead, and the other went through the window, breaking the glass.

  Once I got hit in the face, I lost my cool. I stood up, but before I could make my move, James pushed me back d
own onto the couch. Not only was I petrified of what might happen next, I was furious that I would mostly likely have a bruise in the middle of my forehead, with Ash Wednesday months away.

  I had to think quickly. I decided the best approach was to not react at all, so I sat there watching him buzz around the room, banging his head into one wall after another. I remained seated, not wanting to run any interference and get manhandled. I knew James would crash, but I didn’t know how long that was going to take, and was praying he would get it under control by the end of the commercial break. The last five minutes of The Golden Girls were right around the corner, and the episode’s plot line was clearly leading up to a cliffhanger.

  James was a real live windup toy and I was just hoping his batteries would die soon. I looked at the broken window and wondered what I was going to tell his parents. I didn’t even care. I just wanted to go home. I thought about my sister Sloane and how she would have handled this situation…Sloane would never have been in this situation, because she was about as much fun as a cold sore, and would have never allowed anyone to eat an entire tub each of ice cream and frozen yogurt, even if it wasn’t intentional.

  Then James picked up one of the tubs, tossed it on the floor, and eyed me like a piece of meat. I pretended I didn’t notice his death stare, and even tried to fake a yawn as an example of my disinterest in his showcase.

  I was successful in faking disinterest until he took the almost-empty ice cream tub and forced it over my head. “Stop it!” I screamed, kicking my legs while my head was getting coated in vanilla-chocolate swirl. He was spinning the tub around my head and I was getting ice cream leftovers in my mouth, eyes, and nose. I felt myself starting to hyperventilate. I couldn’t take another minute, and tried to head-butt my way out the other end of the carton, but without enough wiggle room found it nearly impossible. I had no choice but to find my way between James’s legs and nail him in the balls with my foot.

  As James went flying onto the ground, I took off my ice-cream hat, threw it on the floor, and got on top of him like a wrestler, pinning his biceps down with my knees. “Listen, you little fucker, I am going to call the police on your ass, you crazy lunatic bitch! What the hell is the matter with you?”