My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

The tape ends. Sam is asleep on the floor, and Karen creeps off into Anka and Sam’s bedroom to see what she can find. She finds a ripped-up picture of a little girl who looks like the woman Sam was yelling at when Karen arrived home earlier. Karen sets off for home, having stolen the tape, and pondering everything she learned about Anka. She wonders if it was all true, or if any of what Anka said “came from inside her head” (225). She wonders if any of the people Anka spoke about have a grudge against her, or if they are even still alive. Karen thinks about the locked door in the basement of her apartment building. When she gets home, she asks Deeze if he loved Anka. He answers yes, and explains, “If there is a God then loving people when they don’t deserve it is his whole gig. That’s what Anka showed me” (232).

The bullying Karen faces at school is getting worse. One morning, a group of boys push her down, begin spitting on her, and teasing her for having a sick mother. Karen hears Anka whisper “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi” (241) into her ear, stating that Nazis are people who refuse to see their own acts of cruelty. The boys begin talking about raping Karen, and Karen punches one of them in the face and knocks him down. A Black boy named Franklin intervenes and threatens the boys, who then run off. “This is just another reason why being a human girl stinks compared to being a monster” (249), and Karen is convinced that if she were a monster, she would have fought back much better. Franklin helps Karen up, and Karen depicts him as a handsome Frankenstein—a misunderstood outcast, just like her, with a “big ball of bright light” (252) inside of him. Franklin has scars on his face which make him look as if he was stitched back up, but he does not reveal why. Karen decides to take Franklin and Sandy to the art museum. Franklin is excited to see all the paintings and becomes them like Karen does. Karen draws Franklin as a portrait in several famous images. Sandy tries to grab a cookie out of a still life painting, but Karen stops her just in time. The three of them come across The Temptation of the Magdalene by Jacob Jordaens, which shows the lady sitting bored with the skull on her lap, and a demon staring over her, hidden in the blackness of the room. Karen believes the hidden demon is her clue to Anka’s death, and she begs to ask him a question about whether someone of his kind was responsible for Anka’s death. Karen believes she saw something like a demon over Anka when she died, but the demon in the painting replies that while it was likely not one of his kind, he gets “the strong sense that the reason [Karen] is here talking to [him] is because [she] knows very well who [she] saw in the darkness behind [her] murdered pal” (270). He points out that perhaps she is afraid to admit who it might be and tells her she will need to enter Hell to find her answer. The demon pushes Karen back out of the painting, and she falls to the floor. It occurs to Karen that Anka was not saying “shoots” the night Karen and her mother found her naked; she was saying “Schutz.” On their way home from the museum, Karen and Franklin find out that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered a few hours prior. Many people in the streets are crying, and Franklin tries to talk to a Black man who rebuffs him for being queer. Karen says nothing and is ashamed for not defending Franklin. Sandy tells her, “You couldn’t cuz you’re too ashamed a’ what you are” (282). Karen becomes defensive and immediately shuts down the conversation.

When Karen gets home, her mother insists on a punishment. She wants Deeze to practice punishing Karen in case she will not be around much longer, and she gives Deeze a belt and asks him to strike Karen five times. Deeze locks the door and begins pretending to hit Karen, their usual ruse, but this time he goes out of control and starts yelling and hitting the furniture incessantly. He breaks down crying and admits to shooting Anka in a fit of jealousy. Just then, Deeze’s friend comes over to discuss Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. Karen overhears Deeze talking to his friend about how their father is threatening to take Karen if he does not get their mother’s insurance money when she dies. Deeze mentions that he tried to kill Karen when she was a baby and that he is “the meanest drunk around” (299), and he explains that the only solution is to kill his dad. This sends Karen into a spiral of worry, and she is still convinced that Deeze must not be totally responsible. The next day, Missy comes to visit and apologizes for neglecting Karen. She invites Karen to her birthday party, and Karen agrees to come.

Karen spends the rest of the day listening to more of Anka’s tape. It picks up as the train car arrives at the labor camp and the men and older boys are separated from the women and children immediately, and Anka takes hold of a young boy who has lost his mother. Everyone is marched down a crowded street which has fancy shops set up all along it. Anka notices that there are rats in the bakery window and discovers that the cakes are plaster and the woman working inside is a mannequin. She gets the sense this is no ordinary labor camp but manages to show a guard a letter from Herr Schutz that promises her safety. She is taken to a cabin, and there she finds one of the sex workers from the brothel who managed to escape—a woman named Gabby. She calls Herr Schutz, who is distraught to hear she is at the camp. He offers to pay for her to return to Berlin, but Anka insists on bringing some others with her, and he agrees if they are all female as he plans to start his own brothel.

Karen’s listening session is interrupted by Deeze walking in, and she asks him to take her to Missy’s birthday party. Karen arrives and Missy’s mother and friends treat her horribly, calling her names and under-privileged. Karen decides to leave almost immediately, but Missy chases after her in the stairwell and the two embrace. Missy tells her they can watch a horror movie over the phone together later that night. Karen finds Deeze and the two of them head for home, spotting a large plume of smoke from the fires spread in the rage of King’s death. Deeze begins telling Karen that she is suspended from school, but Karen has a sense that something more is going on and demands to know what it is. Deeze admits that Karen is getting time off school to spend with their mother because she is dying, and Karen “can’t feel anything at all” (349). Deeze admits to seeing the images in Karen’s notebook of herself as a monster and takes her over to a mirror. Demanding that Karen look at herself, Deeze tells his sister, “Look at her! She might be a girl who needs her mouth washed out with a big bar of soap, but she is a girl! A girl! Not Larry Talbot three quarters the way to being the fucking Wolfman!” (353). In this moment, an image of Karen as her human self is shown as she stares sadly into the mirror at her own reflection. With truth at the height of the conversation, Karen finally admits to Deeze that she likes girls, not boys, and Deeze reacts with acceptance and worry, “with a look on his face like he’d just really seen [her] for the very first time” (355). He knows that people will harass and possibly even assault Karen for being queer but tells her he loves her and will do what he can to protect her.