I Can Be a Better You

by Tarryn Fisher

Though, let it be known that my mother is a cunt.

I hope you half-naked fuckers all burn in hell. But, nothing ever changed, and the girls never covered up those little muffins stuck to their chests.

“Well, your luck is changin’, sweetheart,” she screamed again. I was breathless at first then I tried to cry because it seemed like the right thing to do. All I could manage were a few throaty noises and a sniff.

Richard was her new boyfriend. I liked to call him Dick because that’s what he was.

I was packing my medicine cabinet, putting all the little bottles into a shoebox. I pulled one out from the time I pretended to have cancer and shook it in front of my face. I’d always liked the idea of being doomed. Plus, dying gave you perspective, purpose. People told you you’re brave and believed it, like it was my fucking choice to have this cancer that I didn’t really have.

“I have to go, Mom. Tina is calling.” “Oh good, tell her hi-” I hung up before she could finish. Tina was my friend. My imaginary friend. I invented her to get out of phone calls and family obligations. She was a missionary to Haiti so she was hardly ever in the country. Thus, when she called or came for a surprise visit, I had to drop everything to see her. I loved Tina. I wasn’t super into the religion thing, but her heart was in the right place. Besides, she was the type of friend who always showed up when you needed her.

“She just gave you her phone number?” George asked without looking up from the game. “She’s probably a lesbian and wants you to lick her cooch.” I’d not saved her number. I’d laid it gently

Plus, George was probably right: she had just gotten a pixie cut. If that didn’t scream lesbo then I didn’t know what did.

To get a proper understanding of how to act during this time, I searched the hashtag hungover on Instagram. I found that most girls with a hangover wore their hair in topknots. I knotted my hair on top of my head and studied myself in the mirror. It was more of a little turd than a topknot—I’d have to grow it out.

They could sell gorilla phlegm and people would load up their carts with it so long as it was packaged as “organic.” All of the Lululemon bitches and their coconut water could go to hell.

I hadn’t had sex in so long Nooni began to tingle. My mother named my privates, Nooni. She said she didn’t want me to be in the grocery store like her friend Lisa’s daughter, screaming out, My vagina is burning! in the checkout line. So, we called it Nooni, and that was that. I don’t really know where she came up with that name, except in sixth grade my friend Katie called her grandma Nooni, which made things really awkward for me. I called her grandma Vagina in my head. I never told Katie that. The name Nooni probably should have dropped off at some point, but it stuck all the way through college and into adulthood. And here I was at the dinner table thinking about Nooni as I stared down at my French onion soup, everyone laughing around me.