Chapter 3: Evil Robots Wearing Human Skin

M y mom’s schizophrenia began small with suicide attempts, but ended big when she formed this delusion that I was a robot and tried to kill me. I’ll confess that I deserved some of the abuse that came my way, because my whole life I’ve been an evil robot sheathed in human skin. Once I started to become a threat to her beauty, my mom blamed me for everything bad in her life. All that hate finally warped into one great delusion that I was sent by Skynet. The conflict resembled your average mother vs. daughter fairy tale, with sci-fi overtones. So, let’s start with one clear memory of my mom trying to fry me up an omelet for breakfast to “put some weight on those hips.” In other words, fatten me up so guys would stop staring. By now, I’m sure you can imagine what a slimy, putrid excuse for an omelet my mom was capable of drenching in catsup and tobacco sauce.

In response to my refusal to put this thing anywhere near my mouth, she screamed and hurled raw eggs at me.

“Look at what you’ve made me do,” she said, calming herself as she lit a cigarette on a stove eye. The kitchen bled yellow.

I sponged the yoke off the walls. “I’ll clean it up,” I said.

“I appreciate that,” she said, sauntering off for a bath.

These were my mom’s up tempo moments. You might think life was rough, but you haven’t heard about my brother Harrison yet. His birth changed my mom. I didn’t care much about him at first.

That’s right, I’m not an only child. I act like it most of the time, but truth is I have a brother. I’m saying it again here in case you’d started skimming. His name is Harrison. Got it?

My mom made me do way more babysitting than I cared for. I had to give Harrison his bottle, change his diaper half the time, read to him. All the while, she focused on burning off her baby padding so she could fit back into her dresses. There was no breast feeding. We used formula.

Surprise, surprise when Harrison started calling me mama, and following me around in his diaper. At first, we all laughed about him imprinting on me like an orphaned duckling. After a few days, his attachment felt more like an anchor tied to my ankles. He cried when I left for school, when I tried to do my homework, and when I wanted to hang with my friends.

My parents didn’t care much about Harrison’s impact on the social life of a preteen. Over the years, I saved them a small fortune in babysitter fees.

My mom left the potty-training to me and my dad. Once Harrison became interesting, though, she tried to reassert herself as the matriarch. Harrison liked her, and she got to play the role of cool older sister. I was the mom, the one who enforced discipline and cooked the meals. They made fun of me together. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I learned to deliver formula and change diapers at the age of seven, and a short time later helped potty-train a kid. Childhood is a recent invention. A few centuries ago, nobody would’ve cared.

Those were good times for them, but then Harrison started school and life went to shit. I could do lots of things, but the PTA wouldn’t let me attend meetings in my mom’s place. If I took after my dad’s stoic responsibility, then my brother took after my mom’s wild recklessness. Teachers phoned home almost every day, and I could never fool them into believing I was Mrs. Wilder. Where was my dad? Working. The only question I have is why DSS didn’t intervene sooner. Our family was a fucking TLC mini-series waiting to happen.

My brother did so poorly in school that news of his colossal failures was bound to reach my dad. Thus began the shouting matches. I’ll say this, Harrison had an impressive backbone. There was no fucking way you were going to make him study for his spelling tests, or learn long division. He had the stubbornness of a future American president.

Believe it or not, my mom sided with Harrison in every single showdown. She threw dishes on the floor and screamed at my dad to stop abusing him. It was a shame. Although I spent most afternoons locked in my room, I could press my ear to the wall or the floor and hear my dad gear up to kick my brother’s ass. But he never did, because my mom always grabbed him up in her arms and carried him off into another room — both of them sobbing. My brother was the first true millennial I ever met. I know, I know. I’m technically a millennial. Forgive me. The sights and sounds of these conflicts always amazed me. My dad never had to threaten me or shout. I’d never wanted anything more than his approval, and he knew it. With me, all my dad had to do was sigh or say something hurtful, and I would go out and win a galaxy to prove myself to him. My brother gave less than a fuck; he had my mom’s unconditional love. No matter what he did, she adored him.

Look, I know I said I didn’t believe in unconditional love a while back. I meant for me. Maybe other people have found it. Besides, I’ve come to accept conditional love, even prefer it. Unconditional love is just love that hasn’t fully matured yet.

This downward spiral drove my mom to the hospital, like when she woke me one night by dribbling blood on my face. Her behavior had unsettled us for days by then. She’d already confused past and present, accused my dad of having affairs, and started calling me Megan, who I eventually learned was an old college friend I apparently reminded her of. The news station called my dad twice to ask if “everything was okay.” That’s code for “what the fuck is going on with this woman?”

If you’ve never seen a schizophrenic super model try to deliver a morning weather forecast, I highly recommend it. My mom had predicted 80 mph winds coming down from the mountains and whisking away people’s children. She’d also advised viewers to tie down their pets, if they insisted on keeping them outside. Her forecast ended with a striptease. The good news? The anchors did a brilliant job of convincing everyone my mom’s performance was all a practical joke.

The lesson here: If you can learn to laugh like a news anchor, you can persuade anyone that things are just fine, no matter what’s on fire.

About the blood dribbling, I’d just turned 13 and had enjoyed a lovely cupcake by myself in the school cafeteria that afternoon. Otherwise, not much fuss. Birthdays have always seemed like private, sullen affairs, mainly because they always brought out the worst in my mom. I’m an Aries, so maybe the changing of the seasons messed with her brain chemistry and turned her mind inside out right around that time of year. My birthday present at 13 was a quiet evening, no loud voices from downstairs. I’d finished studying and then listened to Led Zeppelin, falling asleep early with a lamp on, as if I was practicing to be a grandma.

That night, I flinched awake and saw her ghostly figure as it undulated above me, then floated toward the hallway. I followed her into the bathroom, where she’d turned the tiles and mirror into one large, crimson Pollock. My mom’s hair looked like Bjork’s from the music video for “Violently Happy,” an apt title as she stood there with her delirious grin.

“Do you like it?” she asked with leery pride. Her eyes were dark from sleeplessness and smudged mascara.

I can’t remember what happened between that moment and the hospital, but I’m sure it involved me stepping away in horror and shaking my dad wake before calling 9–1–1.

Someone else was going to have to do the morning weather report.

Harrison served an easy target for my scorn as we sat in the brightly-lit waiting room of the emergency center. It seemed like we never had real conversations, just arguments about my mom. My dad came and went, handing off money for the vending machines. The worst part was that nothing good was on the TV, but I did find some decent magazines. Harrison wouldn’t stop criticizing the lack of cinnamon-flavored pop tarts. “You’d think they’d have more options,” he said.

“If you don’t shut up,” I said, glaring at him over the top of the latest issue of Vogue, “I’m going to burn all your clothes when we get home.”

Harrison had caused my mom’s breakdown all by himself, in my opinion, with his failing grades and disturbing illustrations of giant she-demons biting the heads off children. That year alone had seen half a dozen parent conferences about his behavior. It never occurred to me that my mom was ruining my brother, not the reverse. As a teenager, I knew almost nothing about mental illness except by way of thrillers. I couldn’t have told you the difference between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, and none of us understood the recipe of genes and bad parenting that had gone into my mom.

Not one of the experts my mom tried to bite would put their money on a diagnosis. Down the line, I would sneak a peek at her medical records that I turned over to my school in exchange for a retroactive withdrawal — a packet of documents that would confuse Sherlock.

Near morning, my dad returned to the waiting room with great news, everyone! My mom had failed to slit her wrists properly, and the blood loss was much less than we’d hoped. Part of me continues to wish she’d died that night. Hard lessons were in store. We drove home shortly before dawn. While my mom lay recovering in a cot at the hospital, my dad and I surveyed the bathroom. “Well,” he said. “This mess is going to set us back a few grand.”

No kidding, I thought. We’d just had those tiles put in, and they were real marble. Do you have any idea what suicide blood does to marble? Ugh.

At school, I kept falling asleep, to the consternation of my teachers. I flinched awake every time, distracting people next to me.

The worst came during English class, when we were performing Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Guess who was cast as Juliet?

Romeo (played by a boy named Blake) was reading that famous balcony scene when I nodded off again. The sun was definitely the light through which yonder window breaks, and it scorched my eyes and turned the print on my ruffled copy of the play into hieroglyphics.

I closed my eyes, and then I imagined blood dabbled all over the pages, with the same sentence repeating itself:

Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it?

I flinched awake again and yelped, “Yeah!”

Everyone was looking at me as an awkward silence started to make me tear up. Our teacher’s stunned face remained frozen. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Jessica, you’re about to say ‘wherefore art thou Romeo…”

My finger skimmed to the right place, or what I thought was the right place, and I read, “What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night so stumblest on my counsel?”

“No, back up, Jessica.” The teacher stood beside me and guided my finger to the other page.

I read with my hair framing my face, so I didn’t have to watch people’s expressions as I stuttered through my lines for the rest of class. Seriously. Shittiest. Juliet. Ever.

The bell was a welcome relief, and I was lucky that most people my age had no interest in consoling troubled teens. I thought I was home-free until my English teacher pulled me aside and said, “Are you okay?”

I made up three or four bullshit excuses that she saw through immediately. For a few seconds, she pried but then gave me this look like she understood that whatever had happened was not for show and tell. Then she hesitated before spitting out her real concern, “Were you…raped?”

“Oh, no! Nothing that bad.”

The teacher frowned. “Your eyes are bloodshot, Jessica.” She tried to hug me. “It’s your mother, isn’t it? I knew it when she wasn’t on the news this morning. Is she okay?”

“Um, yeah. She…got into a car accident.” I swallowed. “They’re wanting to keep it quiet. Some blood loss, but…um…she’s out of surgery now and in stable condition.”

There was no avoiding a hug at this point. The teacher squeezed me tight. Finally satisfied, she bid me farewell.

Why did I lie? Simple. When your mom’s crazy, people wonder if you’re crazy-in-waiting. I had enough to deal with and preferred to avoid closed-door meetings with our school counselor, who I suspected as a closet pedophile.

Speak of the devil, though. I tried to hide in the girl’s room during lunch, but was so distracted that I walked into the wrong gender. Another, creepier guy from our English class named Michael found me in a stall, dabbing toilet paper at my eyes. What a mess I must’ve seemed. Perfect luck for someone like him.

I looked dazed until my mistake became apparent. I tried to apologize. But Michael just stood there with his fat face and baseball cap and acne, glanced around once, twice, with his hands on his hips. “Well, Juliet. Look at what we got here.” He closed the door to the bathroom stall and slid the lock shut. “I was just thinking about asking you to the homecoming dance next week, but everybody told me I had no chance. You were waiting on Blake to ask you. And now…here you are.”

My whole body was shaking now. I scowled at him. “I’ll be out in a minute, okay? There’s two other stalls.”

Michael chuckled and shook his head, then he leaned forward and touched the tear on my left cheek.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I kicked at him as he approached me, but he just threw my foot down and pressed me against the corner.

He was practically crushing my cheeks with his hand, the other pressed on my hip. Why the hell didn’t I scream, or bite? I’ll always feel dumb for that. He kept asking me if I was going to the dance with him, and finally I just nodded. He made me give him my number as insurance, called it to make sure I wasn’t tricking him, and made some threats I can’t remember.

The good news here is that I just wound up not going to the dance at all. When I called Michael and told him why, something like “I have to take care of my mom after her car accident, and my dad’s out of town,” he apologized and said he felt like a piece of shit. But we know how that goes if you say anything like, “Yeah, fair assessment of yourself there.” I just thanked him and enjoyed an evening alone, because my dad was working, my mom was in the hospital, and Harrison was spending the night with some of his computer gaming pals. “Fuck dances,” I thought to myself while practicing my robotic moves in the mirror and trying on my mom’s clothes. Solitude was way under-rated in my age group.

People always ask how I caught my robot fetish. Yes, caught. As if it were a disease. That’s a lie. They don’t always ask, but they would if I told them about it. I’ve told three of four people my entire life. They don’t understand my attraction to androids, cyborgs, and gynoids (female androids). Hence this book. Cause and effect are tricky, but the question makes me think of my mom and her schizophrenia — especially the time she thought I was an evil robot sent to kill her husband, aka my own father, posing as their daughter.

This adventure happened during one of those family vacations my dad insisted on. We knew my mom’s mind was falling apart. But my dad refused to believe we couldn’t be a normal family. He always ignored me when I tried to warn him about my mom’s next impending malfunction. “She put all of her shoes in the freezer,” I told him, or “She chased me out of the house with a steak knife this morning.” Still, we drove to beaches and mountains and lakes in hopes that somehow some “time away from everything” might restore her sanity. After the steak knife story, my dad patted me on the knee and told me I had to be exaggerating. I think he just wanted to avoid more hospital bills.

The robot delusion wasn’t my mom’s first, and you need some additional context before we go there. She started with less ambitious conspiracies and worked her way up. There’s the time she thought the CIA was spying on us. And the time we were hiding out at the beach in a witness protection program, after she’d witnessed a murder. All that training prepared her for the big one, the coastal vacation when she vanished for an entire afternoon, returned to us hours later by the police, babbling about evil robots wearing human skin.

The police hardly cared. They thought her lunacy was the drunken ramblings of a sunburned woman. I knew better. Of course, I didn’t expect her to follow me around the hotel for the rest of the night, watching every single move I made. No kidding, she stalked me to the steam room, the swimming pool, the gym, the beach. She never said a word, though, ignoring all my attempts at conversation. Who could’ve guessed what was going on in her mind? Certainly not Jessica’s an evil robot that must be destroyed.

I tried to calm her down by making chitchat. We sat on the balcony, watching a thunderstorm roll up with cobalt lightening that spidered through the clouds. My mom knew everything about this kind of weather, and probably could’ve predicted how soon until landfall. I talked about school, boys, television. Had she seen the latest episode of Friends?

My mom remained silent. She stared at me with a hostility I’d never experienced from a living creature, much less a parent. I finally tried to encourage her to speculate with me on Harrison’s beach adventures. We hadn’t seen him since unpacking. Had he met a girl? Was he dealing drugs from a tiki hut? Maybe a shark ate him? Foolish little Jessica thought I was talking too much, so I just turned my head to the breeze and listened for thunder.

I dozed a little while, woken by a few sprinkles of rain. My mom was back inside the room now, having a hushed yet intense conversation with my dad. I trained my ears on them, picking up key phrases.

“You’re not listening to me,” she said. “I’m telling you, Jessica is a robot.”

“Go lie down,” he said. “You’re not feeling like yourself.”

My mom threw her hands out in exasperation. “Don’t you think she’s just a little too perfect? I’ve been watching her for hours. The way she moves, the way she talks. There’s something strange about her. I swear, she’s going to kill us tonight. We have to do something.”

Against my better judgment, I tried joining the conversation. My mom fell silent, arms folded.

I dragged my dad into the hallway and tried to convince him to cut our trip short. He pushed me back inside with platitudes, and soon after that we all tried to sleep. Harrison was still out there on the beach, where I should’ve been. Smart move. Stay out of the way.

Foolish little Jessica thought it was safe to sleep in the adjoining room with an unlocked door. The price of my mistake became clear when I woke with my mom’s hand over my mouth. She skimmed the flat edge of a dinner knife along my cheek, and I shivered, wondering how the hell she’d found a knife like that in this place. Had she packed it? Did she steal it from a restaurant on the strip? That would’ve been smart, if you thought your daughter was an evil robot.

“What did you tell my husband?” she demanded. “Did you tell him I was crazy, that I should be locked up?”

I couldn’t speak. My eyes pleaded with her to let me go, but she pulled me up and walked me into my dad’s room, knife to my back. “Peter,” she called. His snoring stopped. He struggled awake, his hair messed.

My mom declared she had proof that I was a robot. Still sleepy, or just clueless in general, my dad missed the headline here, hello, knife being held to daughter’s throat by schizophrenic mom, and he started debating her evidence. He argued with her that the pamphlets on the coffee table were travel brochures, not my blueprints, and besides, why would I just leave those lying around if I was actually the kind of robot that would present a threat? Only a stupid robot would do that.

My mom smiled. “Fine, then I’ll show you.” She raised my arm, ignoring my dad’s protests, and I started to fight her.

Here, training in martial arts would’ve been helpful. I tried stomping her foot and elbowing her ribs, but my mom’s a tough bitch if nothing else. She wouldn’t let me go.

My dad could’ve done any number of things, like tackle her, or call the police. But let’s not be too hard on him, shall we? It’s not every night that your wife tries to cut off her own daughter’s hand.

I’m not sure what my mom was expecting, but it didn’t include blood. Her face went white when we saw it squirt out of me like a packet of ketchup. My mom wasn’t going to let her squeamishness stop her, though, and she started working the knife through my skin despite my cries for help, which were obviously just a cheap robot trick. The knife piercing my flesh hurt less than the realization that my own mom was actually trying to carve enough of it off to expose a robotic arm, like that scene in Terminator II: Judgment Day. My mom had always disliked the real me, but this took things to a whole new level.

Finally, my dad did wrestle the knife away from her, but only after I’d ruined the carpet with my blood. I swear, my family has the biggest problem bleeding on things. If I’d had the same sense of humor as I do now, I would’ve laughed at her and shouted, “See! I told you I wasn’t a fucking robot!” And I would’ve turned to my dad and shouted, “And I tried to tell you that we should go home! So now you’re going to have to pay, like, a thousand dollars for the hotel staff to clean up all this blood!”

I don’t remember much about what happened after that — flashing lights, paramedics, the emergency room, a heavy amount of gauze and bandages, lies to the doctors about what had happened before we finally told the truth. My dad was relieved that my trauma would only result in a few visits from a social services worker, a weak court order for my mom to take medication — one that nobody ever put much effort into enforcing. And, of course, lies to my teachers about a sea kayaking accident.

Lying to the authorities brought my family together, giving us a sense of common purpose. From that moment forward, I was never just Jessica anymore. I was an evil robot wearing a girl’s skin, and I’d better be careful around schizophrenic conspiracy theorists.

The one advantage to being a girl-bot: no emotions. I figured if I practiced enough, I could just become a real robot through and through, and that way none of the bad things that happened would have any effect on me anymore. Look, I know what you’re thinking. At the beginning of this chapter, I said my child abuse remained psychological. True, my mom did almost cut my hand off, but she wasn’t in her right mind, so this little moment just falls under the category of Fucked-up Family Moments.

My sophomore year, I earned the nickname Little Viper when I kicked a senior in the balls for pinching my ass, and got three days of in-school suspension. (The boy got one day of morning detention.) To pass the time, I wound up reading a book called Adventures of the Artificial Woman from the library (I don’t know how a book like that wound up in a high school, but whatever). The story had a deep impact on me: a beautiful, smart creature of silicone and steel named Phyllis achieves everything that I wanted in life for myself, including the presidency. What happens to her? The man who built Phyllis shuts her down and takes her apart, because she’s decided she wants to fuck another robot instead of him. I was sad, but not shocked. At least I’d found a suitable role model. The heroine stood for everything I desired: intelligence, grace, beauty, utter lack of emotion. After all, look where emotions had gotten the Little Viper so far.

The idea of deleting my feelings became ever more attractive after my final day of suspension. My dad arrived home early for once, only to announce the factory was closing soon, an event that forced us even deeper into the Bible Belt. My dad and I split the responsibilities of preparing the house for the market. Meanwhile, my mom and brother did practically nothing, unless you count getting in my way.

Moving was difficult. If only adults at the time knew that I was filling the mom slot in my family. Maybe I would’ve met with less condescension and mansplaining when I called our real estate agent to confirm appointments, or when I gave tours to potential buyers, or when I had to coordinate the movers because my dad was out of town when they showed up.

I could do all of that, but I still couldn’t drive by myself at the age of 15. That posed problems when one parent was a flight risk. So, my mom was supposed to take my brother and me to our new schools for registration that summer. We were up against the wire, and we hadn’t found a new house yet. Road trip! My mom threatened to sabotage the entire plan if I laid a finger on the steering wheel, and my brother didn’t even want to go. Things were already off to a great start.

Harrison didn’t give a fuck about registration. He didn’t care about school. Or anything else, except video games. Neither did my mom, as it turned out. The news station was thrilled she was moving. They’d already “promoted” her to an assistant executive, primarily for the sake of getting her off the air. The medication had dampened her once feisty performances, turned her weather forecasting into monotone monologues. She still looked great, but she was like a talking mannequin now.

For the past year, my mom had been a glorified receptionist who also did copyediting. Her career prospects were dim. She knew, so she drank. She went for long walks in the woods with a flask. With enough caffeine and possibly cocaine, she could manage to rekindle the occasional fling with a coworker. She stopped checking her private P.O. Box. It filled with receipts from nice hotels.

The minute my dad left for work, we piled into the car and she pulled a bottle of clear fluid from her purse and dropped it in the cup holder.

“What’s Grey Goose?” my brother said, eyeing the label.

“A brand of water.” My mom did her lipstick in the rearview mirror and cranked the ignition.

My brother held the bottle. “Can I have some?”

“Sure,” she said. “Just a sip. It’s expensive.”

After a confident swig, he frowned and spat. “That burns like hell.”

“You’ll get used to it.” My mom laughed like Maleficent, and off we went!

“Just so you know,” she said as we blew through a stop sign. “We are not going to school today.” When I pressed for our final location, she cheered, “New Orleans!” My brother joined her in the cheer, and I clutched my stomach to quell the dread.

First we got lost, then we started to run out of gas. Finding a service station just in time, my mom swerved into the lot and almost rammed the pump.

I got out and unscrewed the cap. When I reached for the pump, I leaned toward the driver’s side and saw my mom had passed out. Her lovely red hair curtained the steering wheel. Her vodka bottle was half empty, now in my brother’s hands.

He raised the bottle to me. “Guess you’re driving us the rest of the way,” he laughed.

“She doesn’t have any cash,” I pointed out, rummaging her purse. I pulled out an expired credit card, half-bent. “We don’t have any money. How are we going to pay for gas?” I shook my mom, unresponsive.

Harrison chuckled. “Just pump it and drive off,” he said. “We’ll be there before they know what happened.”

After I explained my plan to drive us home instead of New Orleans, Harrison yelled at me and stormed off to the gas station bathroom. He refused to get back in the car. We fought for almost ten minutes, then bartered. His protest would end if I bought him two beers for the trip home.

Two men already in line smiled at each other when I walked into the pantry. I did my best to ignore them, pulling at my denim shorts and tank top, which both suddenly felt too tight. I waited, listening to commentary like, “Wonder if she’s from around here,” and “Is she wearing a bathing suit under that?”

Finally, one of them addressed me directly. “Hey, how old are you?” He stood with his arms crossed.

I looked down. “I’m fifteen,” I said softly, hoping that number would create a force field around me.

They started snickering. One of them turned around, and the other punched him on the shoulder. “Damn, dog. My money was on at least 17.”

They started whispering, and one of them pointed behind me and said, “Hey, is that your mom? She is hot!”

I spun around and stood on my tiptoes, wondering what the hell she was up to now. But she was fine, still passed out, but lying back now with her shirt unbuttoned. The two guys burst out laughing. “Those sweet apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they?”

I looked at them, and the fatter one said, “Sorry about that, we were just looking at the…back of your shirt.”

Oh, I get it now. Back of my shirt meant something else entirely. My…apple-shaped ass, which didn’t fall far from the apple-shaped breasts of my mom, or something? Such sophisticated wordplay goes on in backcountry gas stations. I can’t even keep up.

On their way out, one of them said, “Well, that sure as hell made my day. It’s like an angel came to visit us.”

The cashier told me I was just the sweetest thing as I tried to explain my situation, trying not to tear up too hard. He wiped my wet cheek and said nice things to me, glancing around for hidden customers. “Your mama’s passed out drunk, then?”

He kept chuckling, deferring an answer to my pleas until I followed him into a back room with a wobbly table and two metal chairs, a couple of vending machines. I’d seen enough Lifetime movies to suspect we were heading toward a special little deal, but I didn’t know just how special until he locked the door and started playing with my hair, tickling me. I was such a poor, tired girl. I should let him give me a foot massage. His hands moved further and further until he was rubbing my thighs and asking me if I played sports, because I was so sinewy and tan. Did I play volleyball? Softball? I told him I ran cross-country and he went ahhhhh, of course I did.

The deal finally became clear when he gripped my wrist and started using my hand to massage himself. “Don’t be scared,” he kept saying, as if that ever made things better. I did exactly what he wanted as he moaned and kissed on me, and it was all I could do not to puke or burst out laughing at his ridiculous emoting. Suddenly he was the least intimidating creature on earth. Still, I knew if I showed him what I really thought, I’d be in serious trouble. What the fuck had dumb little Jessica gotten herself into now? Why was I trying to save the day and make everyone happy? So stupid.

There were upsides, though. I’d never received so much encouragement in my entire life, and I was thinking maybe I’d finally found my true calling. He gripped my neck with one hand, my breast with the other, and for a minute I thought he was going into cardiac arrest, which would’ve been great because then I could’ve cleaned out the register and got Harrison every flavor of beer his demanding heart desired. We finished, and the clerk sat holding me tightly while he caught his breath.

My hands were sticky with his grease. He gave me a rag to clean them, then we returned to the register. He opened our pump and let me have three of whatever beers I wanted. Oh, really, Mr. Gas Clerk, my hand job was so amazing you’re going to let me have an entire extra beer?

I padded off toward the pump, trying to ignore him as he made some kind of joke I didn’t want to understand. The guy was starting to really creep me out now, watching me through the window and showing slight signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. My danger detector calculated that he was going to come back for another hand job, and this one was going to be for free, or else.

And what if he worried about me going to the police? He was looking at me less like a person through that window now, more like incriminating evidence. Could I be enjoyed one more time before disposal?

My stomach rumbled with fear, hands like rubber as I tried to yank the pump off the hook. I’ve been scared in my life, but not like this. Just fill the tank and get out of here, I kept thinking. The numbers on the gauge spun and spun, and I thought I would start crying before it even reached half full.

But then two vehicles full of wholesome Hispanic families pulled up and distracted my new lover. Lots of kids, a few macho guys. Safety. My pulse slowed and I finished fueling. Harrison cracked open a beer in celebration before we moved my mom into the backseat. I was feeling much better with those families keeping the clerk busy. Still, he managed to catch my eye one last time while pulling out, and gave me a big wave and smile. He probably blew me a kiss, but I’d already screeched onto the road.

At some point, Harrison sighed. “This beer tastes kind of flat.”

I wiped my wet eyes, watching the exits. “Shut the fuck up.”

He slid down in his seat, muttering something like, “What the fuck’s your problem?”

I never told him what the gas and beers had cost. The real shame hit when I wondered how bad it really was, and whether I had a right to feel all that violated. I didn’t know whether to feel like a victim or just another slut who took advantage of a man’s filthy desires to get what she needed. If nothing else, it did come with its own petite form of power.

My dad was not pleased with me, my mom, or Harrison. But for whatever reason, he felt most at ease judging me. “Why did you let her drive all the way to New Orleans?” he blurted, adding “That was so stupid. Didn’t you pay attention to the Interstate signs?”

I nodded, too tired to put up a defense. “Yeah, I saw them.” I stayed quiet about the gas station clerk. If he was already that mad, I didn’t want to pile on more shitty news. Hey, your wife’s crazy and your daughter’s officially a prostitute.

“And you just let her keep going?” He shook his head in disbelief.

I shrugged. “I figured if I said no, then she’d accuse me of being an evil robot again.” I held up my scarred arm.

“That’s a lousy excuse,” he mumbled and then geared up to deal with my mom.

My mom was still passed out in the car. Waking up to my dad slapping her lightly on the cheeks, she became enraged. She glared at me. “Why the fuck aren’t we in The French Quarter?” she said.

I looked at her with disinterest. “Because I’m an evil robot who drove us back home so Dad could bitch us out.” My sarcasm was finally coming into its own. I was getting so great at one-liners.

My brother and I stood by as a fight erupted between our parents, prompting us up to our rooms. Later, I came downstairs to find a confetti of broken dishes on the kitchen floor. My mom bandaged her hand at the table. She saw me and snorted. “I broke a couple of bowls on your dad’s head,” she said. “He went to bed early. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”

I swept up the mess while she watched TV on the couch, critiquing new hair styles and making jokes about fashion trends and diet fads. Then she turned on the weather channel and watched until nodding off.

My calm veneer had carried me through that day, just like all the others. I relished time in my room that night, a quiet house — even my mom was too tired to cause trouble. I snuck the third beer from the gas station clerk up to my room, the one my brother didn’t want to try. I popped the tab and gave the beverage a whiff. It smelled slightly sweet, and I imagined it must taste like soda. On the first swig, my face soured and I spat it out on my desk. I can’t fully explain why that, of all things, made me crack into sobs. I remember giving this terribly hurt look at the can, as if it had betrayed me worse than anyone else in my family. Then this sadistic voice rose up in my head, almost as if my mom stood right behind me. “What the fuck did you think beer was going to taste like, Jessica? You’re so foolish. Are you ever going to do anything right?” That was the night I learned how good it felt to cry alone.

Chapter 3: Evil Robots Wearing Human Skin was originally published in Confessions of An Artificial Bitch on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.