Kristin Hersh - Rat Girl

We have this conversation frequently. Betty’s afraid some cigarchomping studio mogul’s gonna stuff me full of pills just because I’m in a band. Whether or not she was actually a movie star, it often seems like she just stepped out of an old movie; she’s a walking anachronism. “Who’s ‘they’?”

“Listen, this is important. Judy Garland and I had a long talk about this once, in Vegas—”

Geez, sometimes she just seems nuts. “Really Judy Garland? From The Wizard of Oz ?”

“ Listen . You’ll end up dead, like her. Nobody’ll care about you once they can’t make any more money off you; they’ll just go get another girl—”

“But I’m not a girl. I don’t think they do that anymore, anyway.”

Betty stares at me for a few seconds, then turns back to the mirror. “Look at my ugly mug,” she presses her hands to her cheeks, pushing them up into her temples. I feel so bad for her. Betty sees herself as a young, beautiful starlet. Then she looks in the mirror and an old lady looks back.

I thought getting old meant getting wise. Or at least secure. I don’t know why I thought that; I don’t know any wise, secure old people. Maybe I inferred it from after-school specials. And I’d like to think that by the time you die, you’ve figured something out. That you aren’t lying there wondering what the hell just happened.

Betty’s old and she isn’t at all together. In fact, she often seems to be falling apart . Time is like a hurricane to her—a big, fast mess, sweeping her away. What a scary vision of the future. I’d have liked to see time as my friend; Betty makes it look like a black hole.

The doorknob jiggles and someone knocks. Betty shrieks, “Occupied!” at her own reflection and the knocking stops. Wearily, she sits back down on her toilet. “Promise me you’ll stay you, Krissy. No one should have to sparkle.”

“Don’t worry. I can’t sparkle and I’m not scared of them,” I say. “I’m not scared of anything.”

She turns slowly and gazes out the window at the ocean. “Maybe you should be.” The silence that follows this grim prediction is so long and uncomfortable that I interrupt her gazing.

“So you were in Vegas with Dorothy, huh?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t make fun.”

“Sorry… it’s interesting .”

“I was lucky she talked to me at all. I stole the role of a lifetime out from under her.” Sometimes Betty says things that are so foreign to me, I don’t know how to respond. I can’t even pretend to know what she’s talking about. If it’s craziness, it’s certainly fascinating craziness. If it’s real, well… it’s still weird. “Don’t try to meet your heroes,” she says sadly. “You’ll only be disappointed.”

“You just say that ’cause other people say it. People who have assholes for heroes.”

She looks at me pointedly. “This is important, Krissy. The entertainment industry got Judy hooked on drugs that killed her, my addictions almost killed me and I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. Christ’s love saved me, but you’re never going to let that happen.”

Betty says she converted to Catholicism “as an alternative to freaking out.” I think it’s her new drug, but in a good way. She gets all hopped up on Jesus and good works and heaven within and starts telling people that His love is out there for the taking and she means it. She can see them looking at her funny, but she knows too much about how a light heart can replace an old, used-up, heavy one to care. I don’t necessarily love Catholicism, but I love her Catholicism.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answer. “I might go get religion someday.” She says nothing, just looks at me. I grope for a change of subject. “Do you… do you miss it?” I ask. “Drinking, I mean?”

She thinks about this. “No. Alcohol was heavy. I miss pills. Pills made me great.”

“Really?”

She nods emphatically, eyes big.

“You aren’t supposed to say that, you know, Betty. In the movie of your life, you’ll find out they were placebos.”

She smirks at me. “I really do worry about you.”

“I know you do, but I’m invisible, I’m nobody. I’m not in the entertainment industry, so no one cares enough to drug me up.” It occurs to me, not for the first time, that Betty talks to me as if I were her younger self. Poor thing can’t find a better younger self to talk to than me—I have no ambition, no sparkle.

“But you will be in the entertainment industry, Krissy. I’m trying to prepare you for what’s to come.”

She doesn’t get it. “Why will I be in the entertainment industry?” I ask her. “I’m not entertaining.”

“I’m talking about your dreams,” she says gently.

“My ‘dream’ is to live in a van.”

Her eyes widen. They’re enormous. “Your dream is to live in a van ?” she asks, appalled.

“Yeah, that’s the plan. See the country, play every night. We just can’t afford a van yet.” Betty looks sick. I think she just realized I’m not Little Betty. “Does that not sound good to you?” She shakes her head. It’s confusing that she’s in so much pain. I much prefer the superhero Betty, kicking ass and making noise.

“You told me music was your religion,” she says quietly.

“Music. Not the music business . Nobody’s ever gonna let us into the music business .”

She sighs, “Maybe you should declare a major,” then turns back to the window.

“Hey, quit looking at the ocean,” I say. “It’s making you sad.”

“Is it?” she looks genuinely surprised, then sits bolt upright. “I do this, don’t I? I fall into holes.” She looks around the room as if it’s different now, like the light shifted. “Holes I dig myself, trying to be deep—yuck!”

Phew, she’s back.

“You’re a nice girl, Krissy,” she says enigmatically. “I hope you stay nice.”

I check my watch. So much for studying. “I have sound check in Providence at four, gotta load gear by two, but I could squeeze in a student lounge lunch… ?”

“Oh good,” she chirps, stacking her books on the radiator. “We can talk showbiz!”

I laugh and climb out of the tub. “Get right back on that horse! You wanna be on the guest list?”

“It’s Friday night! Of course I do.” Betty comes to every show. Probably because she doesn’t have anything else to do, but I always ask. I don’t want to be caught assuming she’s got nothing else to do.

“Okay. What should we have for lunch?” I ask her, taking my books out of the bathtub one by one. “Candy? Or candy?”

She stands up and flutters her fingers around her necklaces in an idiosyncratic gesture I always find charming. It makes her look like a queen. She does it to shift modes, it seems, or when conversations get too serious. Then, scrunched up in excitement, fists clenched, she squeals, “ Candy! ”

call me

Dude races upstairs to the roof and begins throwing pot plants into the woods while Crane talks to the policemen at the door.

She keeps me with her so the cops can see she’s a wholesome young mother. Eventually, they leave-—false alarm.

“See, Kristin?” she says, shaking. “Another reason why being nice is important. It can keep you out of jail.”

After sound check, while I write set lists in the dressing room, our bass player tells a story about her former life in Santa Cruz that involves living in a tree house, falling out of the tree house, breaking her leg and being attacked by banana slugs. Leslie’s stories are very soothing, and I only half listen until the banana slug part. Then I stop writing and look up. “What’s a banana slug?”