As I walked here, coffee in hand, cookie balanced carefully on my journal, I passed men sitting on bus benches--men I knew not to look in the eye. For if I were to make eye contact they would try to talk to me. I draw this kind of attention wherever I go. Strange men with no boundaries like to see how far they can push me. I walked past the Greyhound station. The image of a dog, ever sprinting, made me dispair. We humans never let our fellow creatures rest. They must provide.
In the train station there are children. They are calling to each other like dogs in the night. They don't even know each other, I just realized, but one whines and then another calls back in response.
The great ceiling fans circulate. Are they whipping around to keep the air moving? Or to push the hot air down off the ceiling. Someone's feet smell. Not mine, I think. An old dot-matrix printer shrieks back and forth over a page. Tickets? Receipts for the day? A janitor comes by with a broom to brush the marble floors free of papers and dust. They miss the spaces underneath the massive wood benches. These spaces are perfect for little boys to crawl and hide away from their parents' eyes. They are small places where they can peek out on the world without being noticed. I hear little hands behind me. A boy is pulling himself up to peer over the bench at me.
Once this place was bustling, I'm sure. Many gates. Now they use just one.
It is quiet here. A man is talking on his cell phone--perhaps with someone who is right outside the station. "Why don't you come in here?" he asks. "It's probably a lot cooler in here than it is out there." He is wearing camoflauge shorts and a t-shirt with the arms cut off. He has a greying crew cut. He is absentmindedly jingling the keys in his pockets. His paunch sits on top of his thighs.
A woman hobbles by. She is wearing white platform flip-flops. Her toenails have been french manicured. It hurts her to walk, though she's not that old. Maybe 35? 40? No...she's older. 55 maybe. Her long, blond ponytail disguises her age.
The two are talking now. The train is late and they are both waiting for friends. She tells him that Union Pacific owns the tracks and Amtrak has to move out of the way if there is a UP train on the tracks. The toilets are backed up and there's a bad stench on the train. She knows this because the friend she is waiting for has called from a cellphone.
They begin talking about the recent shootings in Portland. The man is amazed that the shootings are downtown. He can guarantee they are over drugs. Innocent people can get hurt. He wants to buy a fifth wheel and move out to the desert with the coyotes. He says it "cay-oats." He also says, "shee-it."
He says he won't ride a Greyhound. I don't blame him. That damn exhausted dog on the side of every bus.
His laugh is high picthed like a maccaw. He says he quit smoking on April 12, 2002. He had to get the patch. 21 mg. 14 mg. 7 mg. He only had to take the 21 mg. patch and then he was quit. The patch stung his skin. He doesn't have the urges anymore. He hates the smell. But brags that if you buy the rolling tobacco you can save a lot of money. He went on a ten-day vacation with all his savings. Seventy-five dollars a month in a little kitty. He went to Crater Lake. He's spending this summer with his brother is Seattle. He hasn't seen his brother since his father died three years ago.
She keeps trying to butt in and say something, but he keeps piping up. Now he's talking about the Paul Allen Museum. He used to see Heart, Loverboy. Rush was the best concert he's ever seen in his whole life. He's seen REO Speedwagon and Santana in '76. He drank whisky and got loaded. Now that he's older he's amazed at what kids get in trouble for now. His trouble was getting drunk and playing chicken. Nowadays, the kids don't know how to have fun. They have fights, beatings, weapons.
A train is coming in from California. Only ticked passengers are allowed on the platform. The low rumble of the train and the bells clanging alert us all to its arrival. Everyone has gone outside to wait for it. The brakes are squealing. It takes so long for the train to fully stop.
People are flooding the station. They are wheeling bags behind them. A young girl stops to take off her sweatshirt. A blind woman is led by a golden retriever. The man in camoflauge shorts is still without his friend. He is pacing. The hobbling woman has dissapeared.
Against the side of the train the sun casts shadows of the people on the platform. The shadows move like squat, hunched versions of their other selves.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Sluts
We’re going on Burt’s boat today and you’re going…no ifs ands or buts about it, “she said.
I knew I would have to go, but I felt there was no reason I shouldn’t show my displeasure anyway. It was stupid. A whole Saturday wasted with some creepy old guy, my mom and dumb little brother.
“Well, can I at least go to Amy’s tonight? Will we be back in time for that, or are we gonna have to sleep out there too?”
She wasn’t listening to me anymore. “Go get your suit on and get a towel,” she said as she padded into the bathroom.
It was embarrassing realty, my mom dating. She was probably in there shaving her legs, or douching or something gross. Whatever women do to get ready for dates.
Burt. We had to spend the day with guy out of all the other losers. Burt was an old guy name. I had seen him once or twice at the neighborhood block parties and I guess he looked pretty normal, but Burt was a name for guys who wore white loafers with plaid polyester pants.
I picked up the phone and dialed Amy’s number.
Hi, Amy. Yeah…I can’t come over today.”
“Oh that’s too bad. Sara’s coming over at noon, and so are Brett and Joel.”
Crap! I was going to miss seeing Joel? Amy liked him, I knew it and now they were going to be together all day? I mean, I was prettier, but Amy was sluttier and guys like sluts. I bet they would be going out by the time I got back tonight.
“Well, yeah. My mom’s making me go out on some stupid boat with her boyfriend. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Burt pulled up in the driveway pulling his boat on a trailer behind his big maroon Oldsmobile. He got out of the car and walked toward our front door. He didn’t know I was spying on him. I wanted to see him pick his teeth or adjust himself or something, so I could prove he was exactly the loser I thought he was, but he just walked up to the door and rang the bell like any other guy.
“PamSteve!” my mother yelled when she heard the bell, and came rushing to answer the door. She ran into me still standing behind the window curtain.
“What are you doing? Go get ready!”
I started to walk up the stairs, her perfume in my nose. Ew. She had perfume on for Burt.
“Wait,” she called after me. “How do I look?” She was wearing preppy white shorts and bright white Keds. She kept them that way by throwing them in the wash with a cup of bleach every week. They always smelled like chlorine. She had long legs, that luckily I inherited, and they looked tan against her white clothes.
“You look good, I guess.”
I hated the men my mom dated. They were always ugly stupid men. Ron Laetner, that creep. He already had a live-in girlfriend who he wouldn’t marry but he was still after my mom. Most of the time she talked tough about him saying she wasn’t interested in a guy who wasn’t available but I knew she had her hopes up anyway. There were others too, Ben, who had a wife, and John whose wife had died but it was still weird because he was my science teacher in seventh grade.
I climbed into the back of Burt’s car and dug down in my bag for my walkman.
“Hi kids,” Burt said as he smiled wide at me and my brother. “This is going to be a fun day, huh?”
“Yeah!” shouted Stephen. I didn’t say anything. I just put my headphones on and turned up the volume. This day was gonna suck, but at least I could listen to INXS and dream about Joel.
There we were, swimming in Amy’s pool. It was night but the pool lights were on illuminating the surface from below. Amy and Sara and Brett were having a diving contest, but Joel was sitting with me…
No, no…
There we were up at Amy’s house and it was night, and Joel, Brett and Sara were there too. We decided to play hide-and-go-seek in the woods behind the house and Joel was it. I ran and hid behind a big tree. Joel found me first but didn’t want to go find the others. Instead he wanted to stay there with me.
“Brett is going to find Sara,” he said.
“What about Amy?”
“Who cares about her,” he said and then kissed me.
I daydreamed that one a couple of times over while staring out the window of the car. Stephen was kicking the back of mom’s seat and fiddling with the power window switches.
“Up. Down. Up. Down,” he said to himself.
Mom yelled, “Will you stop that, Stephen Edward!” and then she turned back to Burt, who you could tell was trying hard to ignore the fact that Stephen was likely leaving scuff marks all over the leather interior and sticky prints on the door. He was red-faced, but attempting to smile.
“So, Pam, your mom tells me you’re real good in school,” he said.
“I guess so.” What did he expect me to say?
“Well that’s good.” Mom smiled at him and then looked back across the seat at me.
“And she’s a real good swimmer too, right honey?” she said. “She’s even on the swim team.”
“Yeah. I swim the free and fly.”
“Well great! There will be plenty of water for swimming today,” he chuckled. He obviously didn’t get what I meant by swimming the fly. There’s no way you’d swim the fly in the middle of Lake Erie. I didn’t want to swim in Lake Erie anyway. The only swimming I wanted to do was in Amy’s pool.
We got to the marina and my mom, Steve and I stood on the dock as we watched Burt back the trailer with the boat down into the water. He was having a hard time angling the boat just right so that it wouldn’t hit the concrete berms on either side. Since it was July, I wondered why his boat wasn’t already in the water. It was clear he didn’t do this too much.
Finally he had the boat in the water and we all climbed in. My mom carried a cooler full of pop and sandwiches. I sat facing the rear and pretended to be interested in all the other boats. Stephen got into the seat next to Burt and watched him drive. We motored slowly out of the marina and into the open water and then Burt opened it up. He was trying to impress my mom by going as fast as he could and making sharp turns. Stephen was screaming and mom was hanging on to him tight. My hair was flying in my face, but I acted like I didn’t care and just sat there.
Burt anchored the boat a quarter mile off shore from what looked to be a sandy beach. Several other boats were nearby. They were mostly families out for the afternoon—dads drinking Millers from the can and moms watching their kids dive off the backs of the boats and splash around in the Lake.
Except one boat. There were four boys on the boat. Two of them looked older, like maybe in high school. And the other two looked like they were my age. No parents. They were doing cannonballs off the boat and yelling swear words as they hit the water.
“Douchebag!” Splash!
“Pud wacker!” Splash!
“Dickweed!” Splash!
Aw man, and they were cute too. One even looked a little like Joel. I couldn’t believe I was here with my mom and her ugly boyfriend and they were probably going to think he was my dad and see me over here and thing I was a dorky baby to be out here on a Saturday with my parents.
“Do you want an orange pop?” I looked around to see that Burt was holding his hand out, offering me an orange Shasta.
“No, no. I’m not…thirsty,” I said.
“Why don’t you go swimming, honey?” mom said. She was helping Stephen put on his arm floaties.
“No. I’m…cold. I’m going to go lay in the sun.” I heard her sigh. I don’t know what she expected from me. Did she want me to play happy family or something?
I spread my towel out on the flat bow of the boat and laid down on it, closing my eyes. I hoped those boys hadn’t seen me, and if they did, maybe they thought I was cute or something. Maybe I did see the blond one looking at me? Oh but then he would have seen my mom and Burt too, and my brother with diving mask and floaties jumping into the water and doggie paddling around.
I sucked my stomach in to make it look as flat as possible and propped my legs up so they didn’t look like fat sausages. I could hear mom and Burt at the back of the boat.
“I should really watch him swim. The water is deep here,” I heard her say.
“”Just come here. Nothing is going to happen.” Burt was whining.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the boys were not sitting on the side of the boat laughing and talking. Were they talking about me? I heard one of them say something like “purple,” and I had a bathing suit with purple stripes on it. I didn’t move. I didn’t want them to think I cared or noticed.
“Pam, come get a sandwich,” my mom yelled.” I heard the boys laughing. My mom was making me look stupid. I tried to ignore her, but she climbed up around the boat’s windshield to the bow and stood over me.
“Come get something to eat.” She was stern and wide-eyed.
I’m not hungry.” I closed my eyes again. She crouched down.
You’re being a little brat,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.
“I am not. I’m just laying here.”
“Exactly.” She gripped my wrist and yanked me up. “Now come and sit with us.”
Burt was tight-lipped and strained to keep a cheery note in his voice.
“Do you want baloney, or peanut-butter?” she asked me.
“Peanut-butter,” I mumbled, just as Stephen spilled Coke all over the floor of the boat.
“Goddamn it!” yelled Burt. He scrambled to grab a roll of paper towels before the pop soaked into the red indoor/outdoor carpeting. “This boat is practically new and it wasn’t cheap either!” he yelled at my mom.
“Here, let me do that,” mom said and got down on her hands and knees and took the paper towels from him. Burt stood up and walked to the front of the boat where Stephen and I were sitting. Stephen was crying. He clutched the remains of his soda in one hand and wiped his nose with the other. Burt glared at us and then looked back to watch my mother who was doing her best to mop up the mess.
I could see that maybe his boat wasn’t cheap, but he had hoped my mother would be and he had little use for the two kids she had towed along. So I stared straight at the back of his head, the whole time silently repeating over and over, you’re an ass, you’re an ass, hoping he would feel those words come out through my eyes and strike his heart.
.
“Let’s just go,” he said and hauled in the anchor.
Everyone was quiet the whole way home. Burt switched on the radio and listened to the Yankees and Red Sox game while mom stared out the window. Stephen was asleep; his head rolled forward and bobbed around with the bumps in the road. I bunched up my towel and wedged it in the corner next to him and then pushed him over so he would lean against it.
When we pulled into our driveway, I got out of the car and ran into the house without saying anything. I was hoping Amy and Sara would still be around, so I picked up the phone to call Amy’s house. I could hear my mom from the kitchen as I dialed.
“I can’t just leave my kids and go off with you Burt!” What was he still doing here? I hung up the phone. I hoped she wasn’t going to invite him to dinner. If that’s what she was doing, I wasn’t going to stick around.
“Come on, let’s just go out. Just the two of us. There’s no reason today should be ruined just because of your kids. They can take care of themselves. Let’s go out and have some fun.” Burt said.
“I think you should leave.”
I heard the door slam and Burt’s car start and pull out of the driveway. I tiptoed down the stairs and poked my head around the corner. Mom had the fridge open and was pouring herself a glass of white wine.
“I can see you,” she said, her back turned to me. I stepped out from behind the wall and sat down at the kitchen table.
“You were a real brat today,” she said.
“Sorry.” I could tell she was mad. I had ruined her date with one of the only unmarried men who had asked her out so far. I wondered if she was going to ground me.
She went to the freezer for an ice cube and dropped it into her glass. She sat down next to me and took a big sip.
“I’m not that mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I brought you guys along for a reason. I didn’t really want to be out there alone with him. I know you were just trying to protect me.”
“Ha. Yeah.” I stood up to go to my room. I really hadn’t been thinking of her at all. But she thought I had been. I couldn’t believe she was happy I ruined her date.
“Amy called and left a message. You should probably call her back.”
“Yeah. Well…mom?” She looked up at me,
“Maybe we can just all go out to dinner tonight? Just the three of us.”
“Sure,” she smiled.
I knew I would have to go, but I felt there was no reason I shouldn’t show my displeasure anyway. It was stupid. A whole Saturday wasted with some creepy old guy, my mom and dumb little brother.
“Well, can I at least go to Amy’s tonight? Will we be back in time for that, or are we gonna have to sleep out there too?”
She wasn’t listening to me anymore. “Go get your suit on and get a towel,” she said as she padded into the bathroom.
It was embarrassing realty, my mom dating. She was probably in there shaving her legs, or douching or something gross. Whatever women do to get ready for dates.
Burt. We had to spend the day with guy out of all the other losers. Burt was an old guy name. I had seen him once or twice at the neighborhood block parties and I guess he looked pretty normal, but Burt was a name for guys who wore white loafers with plaid polyester pants.
I picked up the phone and dialed Amy’s number.
Hi, Amy. Yeah…I can’t come over today.”
“Oh that’s too bad. Sara’s coming over at noon, and so are Brett and Joel.”
Crap! I was going to miss seeing Joel? Amy liked him, I knew it and now they were going to be together all day? I mean, I was prettier, but Amy was sluttier and guys like sluts. I bet they would be going out by the time I got back tonight.
“Well, yeah. My mom’s making me go out on some stupid boat with her boyfriend. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Burt pulled up in the driveway pulling his boat on a trailer behind his big maroon Oldsmobile. He got out of the car and walked toward our front door. He didn’t know I was spying on him. I wanted to see him pick his teeth or adjust himself or something, so I could prove he was exactly the loser I thought he was, but he just walked up to the door and rang the bell like any other guy.
“PamSteve!” my mother yelled when she heard the bell, and came rushing to answer the door. She ran into me still standing behind the window curtain.
“What are you doing? Go get ready!”
I started to walk up the stairs, her perfume in my nose. Ew. She had perfume on for Burt.
“Wait,” she called after me. “How do I look?” She was wearing preppy white shorts and bright white Keds. She kept them that way by throwing them in the wash with a cup of bleach every week. They always smelled like chlorine. She had long legs, that luckily I inherited, and they looked tan against her white clothes.
“You look good, I guess.”
I hated the men my mom dated. They were always ugly stupid men. Ron Laetner, that creep. He already had a live-in girlfriend who he wouldn’t marry but he was still after my mom. Most of the time she talked tough about him saying she wasn’t interested in a guy who wasn’t available but I knew she had her hopes up anyway. There were others too, Ben, who had a wife, and John whose wife had died but it was still weird because he was my science teacher in seventh grade.
I climbed into the back of Burt’s car and dug down in my bag for my walkman.
“Hi kids,” Burt said as he smiled wide at me and my brother. “This is going to be a fun day, huh?”
“Yeah!” shouted Stephen. I didn’t say anything. I just put my headphones on and turned up the volume. This day was gonna suck, but at least I could listen to INXS and dream about Joel.
There we were, swimming in Amy’s pool. It was night but the pool lights were on illuminating the surface from below. Amy and Sara and Brett were having a diving contest, but Joel was sitting with me…
No, no…
There we were up at Amy’s house and it was night, and Joel, Brett and Sara were there too. We decided to play hide-and-go-seek in the woods behind the house and Joel was it. I ran and hid behind a big tree. Joel found me first but didn’t want to go find the others. Instead he wanted to stay there with me.
“Brett is going to find Sara,” he said.
“What about Amy?”
“Who cares about her,” he said and then kissed me.
I daydreamed that one a couple of times over while staring out the window of the car. Stephen was kicking the back of mom’s seat and fiddling with the power window switches.
“Up. Down. Up. Down,” he said to himself.
Mom yelled, “Will you stop that, Stephen Edward!” and then she turned back to Burt, who you could tell was trying hard to ignore the fact that Stephen was likely leaving scuff marks all over the leather interior and sticky prints on the door. He was red-faced, but attempting to smile.
“So, Pam, your mom tells me you’re real good in school,” he said.
“I guess so.” What did he expect me to say?
“Well that’s good.” Mom smiled at him and then looked back across the seat at me.
“And she’s a real good swimmer too, right honey?” she said. “She’s even on the swim team.”
“Yeah. I swim the free and fly.”
“Well great! There will be plenty of water for swimming today,” he chuckled. He obviously didn’t get what I meant by swimming the fly. There’s no way you’d swim the fly in the middle of Lake Erie. I didn’t want to swim in Lake Erie anyway. The only swimming I wanted to do was in Amy’s pool.
We got to the marina and my mom, Steve and I stood on the dock as we watched Burt back the trailer with the boat down into the water. He was having a hard time angling the boat just right so that it wouldn’t hit the concrete berms on either side. Since it was July, I wondered why his boat wasn’t already in the water. It was clear he didn’t do this too much.
Finally he had the boat in the water and we all climbed in. My mom carried a cooler full of pop and sandwiches. I sat facing the rear and pretended to be interested in all the other boats. Stephen got into the seat next to Burt and watched him drive. We motored slowly out of the marina and into the open water and then Burt opened it up. He was trying to impress my mom by going as fast as he could and making sharp turns. Stephen was screaming and mom was hanging on to him tight. My hair was flying in my face, but I acted like I didn’t care and just sat there.
Burt anchored the boat a quarter mile off shore from what looked to be a sandy beach. Several other boats were nearby. They were mostly families out for the afternoon—dads drinking Millers from the can and moms watching their kids dive off the backs of the boats and splash around in the Lake.
Except one boat. There were four boys on the boat. Two of them looked older, like maybe in high school. And the other two looked like they were my age. No parents. They were doing cannonballs off the boat and yelling swear words as they hit the water.
“Douchebag!” Splash!
“Pud wacker!” Splash!
“Dickweed!” Splash!
Aw man, and they were cute too. One even looked a little like Joel. I couldn’t believe I was here with my mom and her ugly boyfriend and they were probably going to think he was my dad and see me over here and thing I was a dorky baby to be out here on a Saturday with my parents.
“Do you want an orange pop?” I looked around to see that Burt was holding his hand out, offering me an orange Shasta.
“No, no. I’m not…thirsty,” I said.
“Why don’t you go swimming, honey?” mom said. She was helping Stephen put on his arm floaties.
“No. I’m…cold. I’m going to go lay in the sun.” I heard her sigh. I don’t know what she expected from me. Did she want me to play happy family or something?
I spread my towel out on the flat bow of the boat and laid down on it, closing my eyes. I hoped those boys hadn’t seen me, and if they did, maybe they thought I was cute or something. Maybe I did see the blond one looking at me? Oh but then he would have seen my mom and Burt too, and my brother with diving mask and floaties jumping into the water and doggie paddling around.
I sucked my stomach in to make it look as flat as possible and propped my legs up so they didn’t look like fat sausages. I could hear mom and Burt at the back of the boat.
“I should really watch him swim. The water is deep here,” I heard her say.
“”Just come here. Nothing is going to happen.” Burt was whining.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the boys were not sitting on the side of the boat laughing and talking. Were they talking about me? I heard one of them say something like “purple,” and I had a bathing suit with purple stripes on it. I didn’t move. I didn’t want them to think I cared or noticed.
“Pam, come get a sandwich,” my mom yelled.” I heard the boys laughing. My mom was making me look stupid. I tried to ignore her, but she climbed up around the boat’s windshield to the bow and stood over me.
“Come get something to eat.” She was stern and wide-eyed.
I’m not hungry.” I closed my eyes again. She crouched down.
You’re being a little brat,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.
“I am not. I’m just laying here.”
“Exactly.” She gripped my wrist and yanked me up. “Now come and sit with us.”
Burt was tight-lipped and strained to keep a cheery note in his voice.
“Do you want baloney, or peanut-butter?” she asked me.
“Peanut-butter,” I mumbled, just as Stephen spilled Coke all over the floor of the boat.
“Goddamn it!” yelled Burt. He scrambled to grab a roll of paper towels before the pop soaked into the red indoor/outdoor carpeting. “This boat is practically new and it wasn’t cheap either!” he yelled at my mom.
“Here, let me do that,” mom said and got down on her hands and knees and took the paper towels from him. Burt stood up and walked to the front of the boat where Stephen and I were sitting. Stephen was crying. He clutched the remains of his soda in one hand and wiped his nose with the other. Burt glared at us and then looked back to watch my mother who was doing her best to mop up the mess.
I could see that maybe his boat wasn’t cheap, but he had hoped my mother would be and he had little use for the two kids she had towed along. So I stared straight at the back of his head, the whole time silently repeating over and over, you’re an ass, you’re an ass, hoping he would feel those words come out through my eyes and strike his heart.
.
“Let’s just go,” he said and hauled in the anchor.
Everyone was quiet the whole way home. Burt switched on the radio and listened to the Yankees and Red Sox game while mom stared out the window. Stephen was asleep; his head rolled forward and bobbed around with the bumps in the road. I bunched up my towel and wedged it in the corner next to him and then pushed him over so he would lean against it.
When we pulled into our driveway, I got out of the car and ran into the house without saying anything. I was hoping Amy and Sara would still be around, so I picked up the phone to call Amy’s house. I could hear my mom from the kitchen as I dialed.
“I can’t just leave my kids and go off with you Burt!” What was he still doing here? I hung up the phone. I hoped she wasn’t going to invite him to dinner. If that’s what she was doing, I wasn’t going to stick around.
“Come on, let’s just go out. Just the two of us. There’s no reason today should be ruined just because of your kids. They can take care of themselves. Let’s go out and have some fun.” Burt said.
“I think you should leave.”
I heard the door slam and Burt’s car start and pull out of the driveway. I tiptoed down the stairs and poked my head around the corner. Mom had the fridge open and was pouring herself a glass of white wine.
“I can see you,” she said, her back turned to me. I stepped out from behind the wall and sat down at the kitchen table.
“You were a real brat today,” she said.
“Sorry.” I could tell she was mad. I had ruined her date with one of the only unmarried men who had asked her out so far. I wondered if she was going to ground me.
She went to the freezer for an ice cube and dropped it into her glass. She sat down next to me and took a big sip.
“I’m not that mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I brought you guys along for a reason. I didn’t really want to be out there alone with him. I know you were just trying to protect me.”
“Ha. Yeah.” I stood up to go to my room. I really hadn’t been thinking of her at all. But she thought I had been. I couldn’t believe she was happy I ruined her date.
“Amy called and left a message. You should probably call her back.”
“Yeah. Well…mom?” She looked up at me,
“Maybe we can just all go out to dinner tonight? Just the three of us.”
“Sure,” she smiled.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Discovery
She climbed once
to the pulpit
to be tempted by the devil.
On her way
she saw small signs
that said don't go.
A tree bent low to the ground.
It loved the earth,
a momma's boy.
And great ravens overhead
calling at her,
perhaps mocking her
from their black bellies.
She rose past them
with sweaty palms.
She was amazed her feet
knew how to caress every rock
into supporting her.
to the pulpit
to be tempted by the devil.
On her way
she saw small signs
that said don't go.
A tree bent low to the ground.
It loved the earth,
a momma's boy.
And great ravens overhead
calling at her,
perhaps mocking her
from their black bellies.
She rose past them
with sweaty palms.
She was amazed her feet
knew how to caress every rock
into supporting her.
Loser
In sixth grade, I was tracked into Mr. Schroeder's class along all the problemed kids. The A-D-D dysfunctionals, the slow learners, the poor kids, the losers.
For such a short man, Mr. Schroeder managed to generate a lot of rumors. But he was the angry type. So it's possible that he stirred up people's imaginations whenever he got yelling. Several years later, when I was in that far-removed place called high school, it was rumored he was dying from AIDS. But that year, we heard he was having an affair with my teacher from the year before. We liked to call her "Mrs. Furrybutt." So I reasoned that's why I was in his class. Mrs. Furrybutt had specially placed me with him.
I had always been a smart kid. I got to go to advanced reading class and was in with the gifted and talented crowd. But I don't remember much about Mrs. Furrybutt's fifth grade classroom, except for getting into lots of fights. And she was supposed to teach me about fractions. I should have known how to add, subtract, multiply and divide 3/4 and 1/8. But I ignored most of those lessons and never really caught up.
So it was really my fifth grade failure that earned me classmates like rowdy boys Bobby Sparks, and Jim McCartney, and girls like Sara Sporol and Lynne Hazard who were already sneaking into their parents' liquor cabinets. Sara's fate was to become a deadhead. In high school, she dropped a lot of acid, and eventually dropped out, but not before coming to class once wrapped in a bed sheet and nothing else. Her sixth-grade self was wacky and creative. Too smart for her own good. She was there probably because her parents were alcoholics and didn't pay any attention to her or her grades.
I could have been her. Or Lynne, who got pregnant when she was 15. Or any one of those kids. My newly divorced mom and federal-assistance school lunch program scrawled "bad seed" on my destiny file. I couldn't do math, and I was in the habit of coming to school an hour early every day. I tucked myself into a secret spot next to the lockers so no teachers would see me because I didn't want to be home alone after my mom left for work. Another year of that and instead of coming straight to school, I might have been meeting another latch-key kid to smoke cigarettes or have sex before class.
But there were two new kids in school that year. Mike and Heather. And I think it was my destiny to know them. Their parents were friends and had moved to Aurora at the same time. As the new kids, they both got dumped into the same classroom. To the teachers, they were neither smart or stupid. They were complete unknowns, like two unshaped lumps of clay.
So they weren't related, but Heather knew everything about Mike, and made fun of him a lot. I think she was embarrassed to know him. Once, she whispered that Mike's older sister had made her and Mike pretend to get married. She made them walk down the isle and even kiss. Heather beat herself up over that.
But it wasn't hard to see why Heather said she hated Mike. He was a chunky, dim-witted kid. He'd do anything the other rowdy boys asked him to do, just so they'd be his friend. They would make him do weird things in the locker room after gym class. They would laugh about making Mike give himself a swirly in a dirty toilet. I don't know what else they made him do. Mr. Schroeder yelled at him a lot, not understanding that he was being bad because the other boys were egging him on.
Heather liked horses, a lot. She had a paper route and bought her own horse and paid for its board all by herself. She was the shortest kid in the class, and I don't think she ever made it past 5 foot, even by the end of high school. She was never popular but she was mouthy and unafraid and I liked that. She brought an element into to school that hadn't been there before. She introduced competition, and I latched right onto it.
We'd call each other to complain about how much we'd been studying for the science test the next day and then we would compare grades. We'd talk about our social studies essays. She was writing about the Romans. So I had to write about something harder. I picked Charlemagne. No one else in the class could even pronounce "Charlemagne."
We became Mr. Schroeder's math nerds. He was obsessed with computers, and made us learn to write in BASIC to create simple scripts that would determine the area of a triangle or the circumference of a circle. We were partners, and did the best. We were so good that while the other kids were crashing their Apple IIEs, Mr. Schroeder taught us how to create a picture on the computer screen, by assigning a color to each and every pixel.
Heather became my best friend. We fought hard against each other all through high school AP history and advanced science classes. I usually won. Except she was better when we went on a weekend trip to Cornell University for Model Congress. I just sat there and didn't know what to save. She won an award. I don't know where she is today. But I think she saved me.
Mike became my step-brother.
For such a short man, Mr. Schroeder managed to generate a lot of rumors. But he was the angry type. So it's possible that he stirred up people's imaginations whenever he got yelling. Several years later, when I was in that far-removed place called high school, it was rumored he was dying from AIDS. But that year, we heard he was having an affair with my teacher from the year before. We liked to call her "Mrs. Furrybutt." So I reasoned that's why I was in his class. Mrs. Furrybutt had specially placed me with him.
I had always been a smart kid. I got to go to advanced reading class and was in with the gifted and talented crowd. But I don't remember much about Mrs. Furrybutt's fifth grade classroom, except for getting into lots of fights. And she was supposed to teach me about fractions. I should have known how to add, subtract, multiply and divide 3/4 and 1/8. But I ignored most of those lessons and never really caught up.
So it was really my fifth grade failure that earned me classmates like rowdy boys Bobby Sparks, and Jim McCartney, and girls like Sara Sporol and Lynne Hazard who were already sneaking into their parents' liquor cabinets. Sara's fate was to become a deadhead. In high school, she dropped a lot of acid, and eventually dropped out, but not before coming to class once wrapped in a bed sheet and nothing else. Her sixth-grade self was wacky and creative. Too smart for her own good. She was there probably because her parents were alcoholics and didn't pay any attention to her or her grades.
I could have been her. Or Lynne, who got pregnant when she was 15. Or any one of those kids. My newly divorced mom and federal-assistance school lunch program scrawled "bad seed" on my destiny file. I couldn't do math, and I was in the habit of coming to school an hour early every day. I tucked myself into a secret spot next to the lockers so no teachers would see me because I didn't want to be home alone after my mom left for work. Another year of that and instead of coming straight to school, I might have been meeting another latch-key kid to smoke cigarettes or have sex before class.
But there were two new kids in school that year. Mike and Heather. And I think it was my destiny to know them. Their parents were friends and had moved to Aurora at the same time. As the new kids, they both got dumped into the same classroom. To the teachers, they were neither smart or stupid. They were complete unknowns, like two unshaped lumps of clay.
So they weren't related, but Heather knew everything about Mike, and made fun of him a lot. I think she was embarrassed to know him. Once, she whispered that Mike's older sister had made her and Mike pretend to get married. She made them walk down the isle and even kiss. Heather beat herself up over that.
But it wasn't hard to see why Heather said she hated Mike. He was a chunky, dim-witted kid. He'd do anything the other rowdy boys asked him to do, just so they'd be his friend. They would make him do weird things in the locker room after gym class. They would laugh about making Mike give himself a swirly in a dirty toilet. I don't know what else they made him do. Mr. Schroeder yelled at him a lot, not understanding that he was being bad because the other boys were egging him on.
Heather liked horses, a lot. She had a paper route and bought her own horse and paid for its board all by herself. She was the shortest kid in the class, and I don't think she ever made it past 5 foot, even by the end of high school. She was never popular but she was mouthy and unafraid and I liked that. She brought an element into to school that hadn't been there before. She introduced competition, and I latched right onto it.
We'd call each other to complain about how much we'd been studying for the science test the next day and then we would compare grades. We'd talk about our social studies essays. She was writing about the Romans. So I had to write about something harder. I picked Charlemagne. No one else in the class could even pronounce "Charlemagne."
We became Mr. Schroeder's math nerds. He was obsessed with computers, and made us learn to write in BASIC to create simple scripts that would determine the area of a triangle or the circumference of a circle. We were partners, and did the best. We were so good that while the other kids were crashing their Apple IIEs, Mr. Schroeder taught us how to create a picture on the computer screen, by assigning a color to each and every pixel.
Heather became my best friend. We fought hard against each other all through high school AP history and advanced science classes. I usually won. Except she was better when we went on a weekend trip to Cornell University for Model Congress. I just sat there and didn't know what to save. She won an award. I don't know where she is today. But I think she saved me.
Mike became my step-brother.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Garbage
The busier we get the more garbage we produce. Bike rides and long walks exhanged for short drives and road rage, gardens for fast food. Fat, sugar, caffiene to power through and alchohol to dull the pain. Guilt, excuses and dissapointment instead of closeness and connection. Promises. Promises. The toxic waste of our relationships neglected: misunderstanding, apathy, lonliness. Fall asleep exhausted on the couch and wake up with an aching back. Money spent on unnecessary things. Bribery to the soul to keep going a little longer...pint of ice cream to mimic pleasure, lovely colorful scarf to replace joy, new CD to substitute for soul. Stuff. Our garbage cans overfloweth with the packaging of haste. We hear ourselves say, "Just do it now, I don't have time." We dream of vacations, dropping out, the release of failure.
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