My Heart's on fire, for Delilah (my mom's joke of singing "delilah" to the tune of "elvira"

I met Delilah when I was in the middle of grade five, I guess. She came in the middle of the year to our split grade room - she was in grade six. I remember looking up with interest at the new student standing at the door when our principal brought her in - his name was Mr. Dyck, and as he just passed a few months ago, I will not make any cracks about the name or about him.
So Delilah came into the room all gussied up like a young Marilu Retton or some such woman - her hair had that sort of Donna Pescow flip to it, although she was no Donna Pescow (my 11 year old self had a thing for Donna Pescow, first in Saturday Night Live, and then again in the t.v. show "Angie", starring herself and Doris Roberts, and the theme was sung by that chick who sang "The Morning After" from the Posiden Adventure - what the hell was her name?? The song went "love is good, love is kind, love is something-or-other...love is BLAHHHH....." ok, I don't remember the name of the Angie Theme but I do know it was a top 10 hit back in the day.....
Anyway, back to Delilah. I looked up and saw this gussied up chick in a dress and with flippy hair and probably thought "nerd" and went back to my own nerd friends (I always wanted to be the outlaw rebel but it wasn't going to happen). So I don't rightly know how I ever got to know Delilah. Our school, being in B.C., never let us stay in for recess, and as it pissed down rain every fucking day of the winter, we would all sort of huddle in this covered area at recess and play hockey cards, marbles, and hopscotch (I shit you not - nobody wanted to get that wet). So I remember me and this kid Randy somehow killing 10 minutes with Delilah playing hopscotch, and let me say, bitch was good, really she was. So somehow, Delilah and I ended up hanging out after school hours and playing hopscotch - oh man, that sounds so gay, doesn't it? But anyway, we became really good friends and I sort of ditched my other friends, which made my two best friends Scotty and Ruby pretty jealous. Well, fuck them, I thought, because they always ditched me when they felt like it, so piss on them. Anyway, I had this little crush on Delilah, and she had one on me. We spent every day after school together until suppertime, playing hopscotch - I remember her marker was this old dried up black banana peel she called Old Liver Lips. Ah, good times.
So, we became sort of an item - she had a birthday party and I remember we slow danced. It wasn't much of a romance, since she was 12 and I was 11, but I think she would have been the first girl I french kissed, and, if you want the real racy details, and were the first real boobies I touched. But it was kid's stuff, you know? And of course, in the end, we all traded girlfriends and stuff, so it wasn't like we were eloping. But it was one of those "Wonder Years" kind of things.
But the real interesting thing about her was her family. Picture this. I am from this dysfunctional but on the surface normal family, with my dad being in charge of the police force in town, and yada yada. Delilah's family was like nothing I had ever seen. You know the crazy shrink's family in "Running With Scissors" (if you read this blog and haven't yet read Augusten Burroughs yet, well, shame, shame, shame on you)? Well, her family was sort of like that to me. Except they scared the shit out of me. First, Delilah's parents were the first couple I had met up to that point that had a gaggle of kids but weren't married. She had a half brother Billy from her mom that lived up north somewhere, and then there was her 17 year old sister Barbie, and her 16 year old brother Nicky J.R., and then her 14 year old sister Mona Lisa, and then her, and then her 9 year old brother 'Taters. Well, his real name was Valentino, but he loved potatoes so much as a child that he used to say "gimme more 'paters" because he couldn't say taters, and so they called him 'Taters and Paters, and even at school, he was registered as 'Taters. So yeah, they were an interesting lot.
Her mother had long wild hair, and wore lots of black eyeliner, sort of like a biker bitch. Her Dad had about 4 teeth, looked like he was the father of someone in AC/DC, and scared the living shit out of me. In addition to not being married, her parents had the distinct noteriety of not being gainfully employed. I mean, they had money coming in, but it wasn't on the up and up. I remember saying "so, what does your dad do?" and she replied "oh, he's in liqour distribution" which translated to "Daddy is a bootlegger." So that made it very interesting to say the least.
They lived in my neighborhood, a couple blocks away from me, in this house that I thought was really big, but when I went back a few years ago and drove by, was really a little shack (I took a picture I should find and post). The house consisted of a porch, a small living room with the parent's bedroom off of it, a kitchen with another bedroom and the bathroom off of it, a back porch with a washing machine and a staircase, which led to this attic type of room that was a small bedroom with another small room out of it. And they all lived in this place.
Since I always wanted to be accepted by the "bad" kids, I thought this was too cool. First, Barb's boyfriend Rick lived with them too, and slept with 17 year old Barbie and nobody blinked an eye. Mona Lisa, who was 14 when I met her, was also 8 1/2 months pregnant, and her NINETEEN year old boyfriend, Viggo, lived with them too, and schtumpted his pregnant child girlfriend too, with nobody batting an eye. So picture it - upstairs in the attic dungeon, in the main room, were two beds - one for Rick and Barbie, and one for Delilah. The room off of there was for Mona and Viggo and the new baby. So imagine poor 12 year old Delilah lying there at night, with both her sisters fucking themselves silly in the same space as her.... it's fucking twisted, and really sad. She was always in the know when it came to sex questions. I remember when we were all down at the slough one day smoking, this guy watched us, then undressed, went swimming in this gross slough water, and jerked off with a J-Cloth (still don't quite understand the why and how with that one) and then left, to which we yelled and taunted him from a distance (and we are so lucky he didn't kill us or whatever, the frigging pervert). So anyway, Delilah went down and looked at the cloth and said "oh, there's sperm on there, I know because I've seen it on Barbie's sheets". Oh, that's so sad, isn't it?
Anyway, back to the family. Nicky, being a boy, had the room off the kitchen, and I guess Taters must have shared it, because I know it was their room, but I don't know if Taters had a bed or shared it with Nicky. Nicky was always going on about how hot his waterbed was and how he was going to get it ever hotter, and he was always frigging naked, but Taters and I would just keep on playing on the floor and not notice him. I don't think he meant anything by it, but I guess when you live in cramped quarters, you don't care who is in your room when you feel like doing body builder poses in the mirror.
Mama and Papa had the room off of the living room, and daddy would lock himself up in there and play his guitar and sing Night Moves. I would always tell him he sounded just like Bob Seger to stay on his good side, but when he was locked in there drinking, you stayed the hell away.
I was so freaked out by the whole family, because the kids swore like sailors, and everybody smoked. Well, Delilah and Taters didn't swear prolifically, because I think you had to be 13 in their house before you could say fuck and shit, but they could say hell, damn, and all the God curses. Also, Delilah couldn't smoke in front of her parents just yet, but her siblings didn't care, so we would spark up when it was just the kids.
And they were so frigging rude on the phone. You'd phone and they'd say hello, and I'd say "Is Delilah home" to which they would throw down the phone and yell "DELILAH!" or they would say "NO" and hang up. So, codependent me, I was always afraid my mom would call there looking for me and they'd be rude and I wouldn't be allowed to go back there.
They also used their spider plants for ashtrays more often than not, or would rub the ashes on their jeans, because ashes supposedly would fade the jeans and look cool.
They were also pot people, meaning that daddy smoked, and the teens smoked, but Delilah was quite proud that her mom didn't - she said her mom tried it one night and choked and said "Keep that shit away from me" and that was it. So, I believed that for years, until my sister Leslie told me that she and her friend Wilma would go over there in the mornings and get higher than fucking kites with Delilah's mom (Wilma ended up dating Nicky Jr. for a couple years). Oh yeah, my sister Leslie, who ran with the wrong crowd, hung out with Barbie a bit.
So, with all this shit, me and my friend Ruby thought it was really cool, and were there all the time. Of course, since they were so "bad", I was always amazed at the mundane things. Like, for example, it was at their place that I had my first poached egg. Delilah and I were working on some stupid school project on Japan, and someone made up poached eggs on toast. I remember being suprised that they knew how to cook eggs, or that they'd have eggs, and to make it even more exotic, they had brown eggs, which I'd never seen. So I remember going home and telling my mom she had to find these frigging brown eggs because they were the cat's ass, and she had to learn how to poach eggs, and she was like "I can poach a frigging egg, do you think I'm simple?"
I also remember Mona frying a chicken for supper and being suprised that they actually made chicken and such - I don't know, I must have thought they'd just eat bread and crack or something, but I can still see Mona flouring this chicken and peeling potatoes. But since they were so "street" to me, everything was a suprise, especially when they were normal.
I saw more than any 11 year old should see from them. I remember when Billy's girlfriend Tam came down to town - she'd had a baby, but decided to put it up for adoption ,so she had this week old baby and was giving it up the next day or something. She was staying in the seediest motel in town, where literally all these crazy heroin addicts lived, but Delilah and I rode our bikes down there and visited her - drank tea out of ceramic mugs that probably contained lead, and smoked Viscount Menthol cigarettes that we found somewhere. The place was so frigging disgusting, a real flophouse, but it was an adventure, and I think I glamourized it.
We also visited these old drunks who lived in this shitty-ass rathole on top of a business across from Woolworth's. This old broad and her man were probably in their 50s but looked 100, and we went there because we could smoke, and she was a customer of Daddy. She kept drinking some moonshine shit she had in a vinegar bottle and set Delilah up with a job picking worms for 10 cents a worm for someone she knew.
As time went on, Delilah's dad became a dope dealer too, so that was interesting. He was such a slime. Leslie told me how he always wanted her and Wilma to pose for him naked on his bear-skin rug.
It was from them that I smoked dope for the first time. Delilah stole a roach from her dad and brought it over - her and Ruby smoked one one time before - and so we all went into the shed off our carport one night and smoked the frigging thing. Remember, my dad was a cop, and you know how dope smells. Well, we smoked this little thing and I didn't really feel anything but my eyes got so red and my sister Lois said when we got in (I made tea for all of us, so maybe I WAS high) that my eyes were so red that I had to quit smoking, and we all laughed. Delilah also left me another roach, which I smoked with Scotty a week later, but that's another story.
Anyway, I thought they were the cat's ass. But you know what? I am so glad my dad got transferred in retrospect, because even though I endured two or three of the worst years of my life following that, and I mean terrible fucking years of loneliness, I wonder what would have happened to me if I had stayed. You see, the scene around Delilah's house got worse and worse. My best friend Ruby, who was my neighbor and friend since I was 4, had nobody to turn to, so she hung out with Delilah and her family all the time and ended up dropping out of school in grade nine - I don't think Delilah made it that far - Also, Nick Sr. would smoke dope with them all the time, and I mean, that's so sick. Everyone I knew pretty much went through a wasted teen years thing, and if I would have stayed, I'd probably be a crackhead right now.My sister said it was so sick, because Mona had her baby, of course, and when the kid was probably not even two, they'd think it wa so funny to say "come on Sally, pass the joint to uncle Ricky!" I fucking shudder thinking about that poor kid.
So, what happened to them all? I don't know. I knew when I was 16 that Delilah was shacked up and had a baby at 16, and someone said the mom went to jail for something. Nobody has any idea what happened to the rest of them. However, Delilah got out and straightened out (well, partly - read on) her life - she quit drugs, had something like 5 sons, and married her teen sweetheart. I guess she's the sweetest person and really straightened out, but apparently, she likes the ladies, and her husband is ok with it, so they have these 3somes and such, but he's fine with it, and she loves her husband as a soulmate, but likes the ladies. It works for them I suppose, and they have become grandparents apparently as well.
I wonder what happened to the rest of them?
So, I don't know why I felt like telling that story, but I am so glad that I didnt live that life, and I really feel for all of them because what a shitty fucking environment. And you know, good for Delilah for making it out of there - I just hope the rest did too somehow.
And while I romanticized their life as a kid, I was always so happy to come home to my Snoopy books and my loving family and my Sunday school class (because I was also born again at that time, which I will tell later).
So, have a nice weekend all.
xo
JT