Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me - Chelsea's Family, Friends [56]
When she got back, I yelled at Chelsea and told my parents what she had done. Chelsea said lemonade stands were for chumps and the real money was in babysitting.
“Hello, who is going to let us babysit? We are way too young,” I replied.
“Listen, Shana, if you lost your goody-two-shoes looks, we could easily get you up to age fourteen. I could pass for ten. I’ll say I’m your assistant, and we’ll split the profits sixty/forty. Sixty for me, since it’s my idea.” Chelsea had already inherited some of my used-car-dealer father’s warped reasoning, and it was maddening to deal with.
“Maybe in a few years, girls, not just yet,” my mother wisely chimed in. “Stick with the lemonade stand for now.”
We had three older teenage brothers, and when we were up on the Vineyard, they got to sleep in the basement. The basement was the cool place to be. It had a separate entrance, its own bathroom, and a little fridge. It was like a clubhouse. My brothers’ names were painted on the walls, and there was thick shaggy carpeting and bunk beds everywhere. My brothers had a stereo and a million records and were usually playing Cat Stevens, Neil Young, or the Grateful Dead. There were even a couple of bongs down there, but we didn’t know what they were at the time. At least, I didn’t. Mom told us they were microscopes. She was completely clueless about drugs.
Our brothers had jobs during the summer, so they were often gone during the day. Chelsea and I would go down there and snoop around when we got bored. One day I found a rubber snake in my brothers’ stuff. Chelsea was and always has been petrified of snakes. She could not even see one on TV without crying hysterically. At the time, I’d had a rough few days of Chelsea’s shenanigans, and I wanted revenge. For weeks she had been daring me to drive an old two-door Datsun around our dirt road while my mother took her daily nap. It was a beater car that my dad left on the island year round. Chelsea had kept egging me on, calling me Goody Two-shoes and saying I was a giant sissy and that she would get her driver’s license before I did. I was sick of her teasing and finally drove the car just to shut her up, but of course, I dented the door on a big tree branch in the process. My father came up to the island the next day and went off on me, as Chelsea smiled devilishly behind him.
Before bedtime that night I took the rubber snake I had found earlier in my brothers’ room and put it under Chelsea’s pillow. She climbed into bed, snuggled in, felt the snake, then saw it and went apeshit. Bloodcurdling screams could be heard up to a mile away. She was absolutely hysterical and practically having a seizure while hyperventilating at the same time. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. This wasn’t good. I hadn’t really thought this one through.
I was screaming, “It’s just a toy, it’s fake, it’s fake, okay?!” I could hear footsteps approaching quickly and they sounded ominous. I tried to cover Chelsea’s mouth so no one would hear her. She kicked me in the coslopus, wrestled me off her, and literally slid down the stairs and into the main living room, with her ass bouncing off each step. My mother was already rounding the corner when I got to the bottom step. I looked up just in time to see my mom’s hand reach out and slap me across the face. She didn’t even ask what had happened; she could tell from Chelsea’s reaction that it had to have been something bad.
Chelsea was yelling, “Sn… sn… sna… ke!!” She sounded like the girl in Jaws yelling, “Shark,” but worse. It was the only time my mother had ever hit me. Until that day, my parents smacked Chelsea all the time,