Perspicacious Penner

You don't have any eyebrows. Your music is weird. *sneers and turns the volume all the way down* You don't know anything. Your reality doesn't exist. You f*cking idiot. You're never going to amount to anything. You were the product of rape anyway. Moti, moti, moti! ("chubby girl" in Hindi) You're too white to dance. Your teeth make you look like a hamster. Oh, stop being so dramatic. *As I'm breaking into hives as an allergic reaction to an ant bite* Give me some of your dirty clothes so I can always remember your smell. You did a better job finding him than he did you. Your music is like rape to my ears. *unplugs my phone from the car* I don't give a f*ck about Brittney! It's not like I'm going to get anything any other way! *While fighting my hands to get to my breasts* You're not funny or clever enough to do that. You're okay, but you look perfect with makeup on. Get off your fat *ss and help me get ready for work! You're too...

 "Turn the lights off, be absolutely quiet and, whatever you do, don't look outside," my mother said as she herded my brother and I to our room. At 3 years old, I could sense the urgency in her tone and, perhaps that being a driving force in my curiosity, I looked anyway. Just outside my bedroom window, between the blinds, was a man donned in plaid, rifle in hand, scanning my apartment building. I found out, as an adult, that the man I saw was one of a few involved in a hostage operation involving the next door neighbors. In Riverside, CA, especially in the 90s, much of the neighborhoods were riddled with crime. I remember a time when my mother was working in a Day's Inn when a group of men stormed in with the intent of armed robbery and held her at gun point, in execution-style, while they claimed what they came in for. She quit immediately after it was all said and done. At 4, my mother and I were walking around what was formerly known as Tyler Mall with her friend ...