D.R. Humble
My mom loved P!nk—not post exclamation point Pink, but the original badass Alecia Moore—the one that waged a catastrophic catfight against Christina Aguilera over who should sing lead vocals on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Xtina won, but my mom loved to talk about how P!nk went down swinging. Ever since my parents’ nasty divorce five years ago, my mom began to embody the “fuck you and your man” rough and tumble attitude the popstar liked to parade around stage. Naturally, my mom wanted to see her in concert, and nobody wants to go to a fist-pumping, beer-spilling concert alone, so she bought me a ticket too.
Unfortunately for her, my mom forgot that the date of the show fell on my dad’s weekend, and when she asked his permission to swap weekends and take me to the concert, he had some reservations.
“She’s nine fucking years old.” his voice rattled over the flip phone. “It’s out of the question.”
“Come on John take the stick outta your ass—she’s been going to concerts since she was three.”
“There’s a big difference between the Wiggles and P!nk, Simone.”
“She’s comfortable in that kind of atmosphere. She’s really mature.”
“You’re even stupider than I thought if you think I’ll let you take her to that whore show.”
“Look shithead, I already bought the fucking ticket—”
I listened to the conversation through her bedroom door, praying that my dad would win out. I hated the concerts she made me go to. I hated being so short and surrounded by tall people I didn’t know. I hated having to stand of my chair to see. I hated being the youngest person in the room by twenty years. I hated it when drunk ladies played with my hair, and I hated wearing the concert t-shirts mom dressed me in for school. The other kids always made fun of me for the scantily clad women on the front. I hated it, but my mom was always so proud of me after a concert. She called me mature.
I heard her utter one final “fuck you” into the receiver and hang up before jerking her bedroom door open.
“Did you hear all that?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Dawn, you do want to go to this concert right? We’re concert buddies!” she grinned, wiping the welling moisture from her eyes.
“I want to go,” I lied, readying a half truth, “but I don’t like hearing dad yell at you over it. Maybe I just shouldn’t go to this one.”
She crouched down so she was on eye level with me, “Listen Dawn, your momma is like Wonder Woman. Nothing he says can hurt me—I can deflect it all away with my magic bracelets.” she grinned wildly while waving her wrists around, deflecting imaginary bullets. “And you, you’re my Wonder Girl. Don’t you worry, Dawn. I’ll get you to that concert.”
I gave her my Wonder Girl smile, but it didn’t touch my eyes. She never noticed, anyway.
***
My dad hopped out of his blue SUV, relieved, as my mom’s rusty red minivan pulled into the government center parking lot. After the altercation on the phone, dad had called back threatening to call the cops for kidnapping if mom didn’t bring me to visitation. This is where the divorce decree says they had to exchange me—so there would always be cameras watching.
It was the night of the concert, so my mom dressed me in my P!nk “I’m Not Dead” tour, skull laden t-shirt. I crossed my arms over my chest so dad couldn’t see that the woman on my shirt was clad in only a crop top and lowrise jeans.
“I’m gonna talk to your dad. Get your suitcase out of the car just in case things don’t work out Dawnie.”
I nodded, mom was going to try to trade weekends again with dad. I was so close to avoiding the concert; all dad had to do was stand his ground. I pulled my pink Cheetah Girls wheelie suitcase from the trunk, trying to ignore the escalating argument between my parents.
After depositing the suitcase in his trunk I went back to the minivan for my Hello Kitty snow boots. Whenever I went to dad’s house during the winter we had a snowball fight and made snow angels. He bought me a set of three My Little Ponies—Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle, and Applejack—when he moved out so I had something to play with while he worked on finishing the basement. The kids in my grade would call me a big baby, but I secretly still liked to play with them.
I heard my dad yelp in pain and turned back to see my mom slashing a car key vertically down his left collarbone. My mom yelled for me to get back in the car, while my dad screamed at my mom. He called her a crazy bitch and promised to call the cops before he turned to plead for me to go with him instead, trying to gloss over the fact that I’d never heard him swear before by saying we could swing by the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way home.
I had to be brave. I had to be strong.
My snow boots bounced along the ground as I peeled open the sliding back door to the minivan, hopping up onto my booster seat. It was time for me to be a big girl.
My mom laughed, inserting the bloody key into the ignition, “That’s my Wonder Girl!” We peeled out of the parking lot.
Tears had sprung to my eyes as my dad, clutching his shoulder, ran toward the government center before doubling back to grab my Hello Kitty boots.
I turned forward, wiping my eyes, putting on my mature face as we sped through the congested downtown roads. We sailed beyond the city limits toward the Xcel Energy Center in Minneapolis—where P!nk awaited.
***
It only took ten minutes before we were on the side of the road, three squad cars flashing blue and red pinning us in from all sides.
I could finally breathe again—a crushing irony that lingered for years.
D.R. HUMBLE'S writing and photography can be found in Z Publishing’s "Minnesota’s Top Emerging Poets", Interstellar Mag, Floresta Mag. She is the 2018 recipient of Alpha Chi Honor Society's Creative Writing presentation prize. Her debut pamphlet, Forest Shitty, was released by OrangeApplePress in the fall of 2021.