Lipstick on a Pig

Rescued from the Dorchester projects and a father keen on racehorses to live in Laconia, New Hampshire at a young age, this story focuses on Becky, her siblings Ethan and Diana, and her single parent, Jane. A family unit embroiled in perpetual dysfunction; Pine Street, an apartment inhabited by beings not of this world, peaceful and otherwise, is where the Butt family finally docked after wearing out their welcome in temporary living arrangements.

Becky, the anxious and chubby middle child, getting bigger by the minute, lived a muted existence that was contradicted by unwanted attention related to bedwetting, soiling, and sneaking and eating obscene amounts of food. For a young addict, food was meant to prevent feelings better smothered from breaching. Haunted by a faulty memory bank and an entity that took pleasure smothering and violating Becky when she slept, she became an overeager people-pleaser. She used humor to deflect attention from her obvious afflictions.

Jane, the Kraken, parent to many and detached mothers to none, was angered by her life sentence of many mouths to feed and bodies to cloth on a low-wage budget. A sea-dwelling beast at her core, when provoked by the very act of parenting, her rubbery tentacles and enraged words would lash, uncensored and frenzied. Though she viewed her children as filthy, disgusting animals, Becky's fatness and inherent defectiveness particularly perturbed her to the point of loathing.

Ethan, the oldest, sought order and created it through neutral and practical exchanges marked by efficiency and limited emotion. Were it not for the scraps of a knit blanket hidden under his pillow that alluded to his insecurities and fears, he appeared unscathed by Jane and whatever happened in Dorchester and thereafter. A false assumption.

The youngest, Diana, was the favored child if there was one. Favored due to her slimness, absence of toileting issues, and the need to sneak food, her role was complex and distressing. Diana used her position, her means of adapting, to her benefit. This dynamic only fueled Jane's dislike of Becky, and Becky's jealousy of Diana. An equation that resulted in a stressed sibling relationship.

A family in poverty with limited rearing by a rageful and detached parent, The Butt kids became the undesirables and delinquency prevailed. Evicted often, they nomadically bounced from apartment to apartment. A lost family in the city of Laconia, Becky, afflicted with night terrors, morbid obesity, depression, and anxiety slipped through the wide fissures of the system and without concern, dropped out of high school.

This story explores hope despite complex interfamily dynamics, the ghosts and demons that permeated the thin line between the living and the dead, and addiction and humor as a means to cope. Abigail, the welcomed ghost of Becky's great-grandmother, was the anchor Becky needed. She saw in Becky what Jane, her teachers, and peers did not; that she was worthy and salvageable.

??About the Author
As a young child, Rebecca escaped into books, and wrote happy stories accompanied by bright and cheerful pictures with houses, trees, flowers, and birds, that were a contradiction to her real-life circumstances. Her childhood love for reading and writing endured, and she eventually wrote and published her short stories and poetry in a literary journal in college. Lipstick on a Pig is her lengthiest writing endeavor. A licensed Speech Language Pathologist with a master's degree in communication sciences and disorders, she is the Director of Special Education for a school district in New Hampshire, where she resides.
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