Blame

Not every story has a happy ending. They can't, because sometimes you have to tell the story of the losers. No one wants to hear that story, of course. No one wants to sympathize with the loser; it makes more sense to blame them, somehow, for their loss. If you can put a finger on the *reason* bad things happened to them; if you can see, in hindsight, what escaped them in foresight, it’s easy to say, "That never would have happened if she was a good girl." Better yet, and more to the heart of it, "That would never happen to *me* because I wouldn't do what she did."

Imagine if life were like that. Imagine if you could retroactively blame back all the generations of a family tree. I wouldn't be dying right now if I hadn't skipped school and met Jesse Parker at the beach. But I wouldn't have skipped school if Mom's car didn't break down so she couldn't drop me off at the front door of the school like she usually did. But then, her car wouldn't have broken down if Dad would have changed the oil like he was supposed to. Dad would have changed the oil if he hadn't been a goddamn drunk. I suppose Dad wouldn't have been a drunk if my Grandpa hadn't been such a mean son of a bitch. Of course, Grandma always said he wouldn't have been so mean if he hadn't been in so much pain, but he always blamed her for being such a bitch. She *was* kind of cranky, but that was on account of her growing up so poor and never having anything she didn't have to fight her nine brothers and sisters for. You could blame her parents for having so many children, but then they would turn around and blame the church because they forbade birth control.

And I guess that's where it would end: the buck stops at the church because, as far as I can see, they teach you to be guilty for everything. Having had a lot of time to think here in my hospital room, I once concluded that I could blame it all on Jesus. If he hadn't died for everyone's sins, might be people would have to pay for their own sins. As it stands, you can go out and sin 'til the cows come home and then go confess in the morning, ask for forgiveness, do some penance, and be good as new. Of course I was wrong, and I put that thought out of my head because if I turned around and blamed Jesus, well that might be blasphemy of some sort, and I'm not a religious person but on account of I’m dying, I don't feel like I’m in a position to add blasphemy to my list of sins. Just in case.

I'm dying and it's my fault. I mean, I don't really blame myself, but everyone else does. I shouldn't have had sex before marriage, I should have used a condom, I should have been more careful who I slept with. Of course, they don't put it that nicely. I'm just that whore who got what she deserved. Ask Dad, he’ll tell you. “AIDS is for druggies, fags, and whores, Amy.”

Now, if I would have had some kind of miraculous recovery, well *that* would be a story to tell. People love a comeback story, not a story about the girl who will never get the chance to come back, who will die alone in a in a narrow metal bed, smelling of antiseptic because no one can bear to imagine there is any scenario that they, in their all-knowing cleverness, cannot overcome.

It was the same when that Cullen boy died. Ruth Cullen fell asleep because she was exhausted with her new baby girl and no daddy to help out. But everyone was quick to blame her when her toddler up and toddled off, down to the river, and drowned. If all the people who stood around blaming her had helped her out instead, well, they would still be handing that baby around, and she’s in the third grade now. But nope, it was all Ruth's fault because she shouldn't have married that Army fella who went and got himself blown to bits in I-raq or I-ran or Afghanistan. She shouldn't have been sleeping. She should have fixed that screen door little Mikey slipped through. She shouldn't have lived by that river with those babies! Because this never would have happened to any of them. Never *could* have happened because they were good people, smart people who didn’t make bad choices.

Sometimes I still think about Jesse Parker. I don’t think about blaming him because he’s dead and it wouldn’t be right to think ill of the dead, even if he did swear ‘til the day he died, it was me who gave him The Virus and not the other way around… but I wonder what he would say about all this, and I think I know. I think he would say, “I ain’t to blame, that little bitch shouldn’t have teased me, shouldn’t have gone almost-all-the-way and thought she could just stop.” And my father would have agreed; did agree that night when I came home crying, shirt ripped, mascara streaming down my face.

“Girl,” he said, taking a long swig of his bourbon, “Don’t you dare call the police. You shouldn’t have gone and got yourself raped. Go take a shower – you look like shit, Amy.”

Not every story can have a happy ending, and some have unhappy beginnings that go back so far no one knows who to blame.