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2
Bruce could remember when his son painted Jim Morrison on the back of his jean jacket. Made the mistake of telling the kid he was a poet, and he had believed him. Told him he died in a bathtub in Paris and that’s when he painted the jacket.
He didn’t think it was a good look. Especially not paired with the cowboy boots the kid had also stolen from his closet. But he didn’t say anything about it. Let him leave the house like that. Knew it might have been his fault as he could hear him downstairs, clomping out the door for school every morning. Laying there thinking he had been a failure as a father. Gritting his teeth.
His aching, brown teeth.
And it wasn't about to get any better. These days the kid was reading James Joyce and Bruce wondered if that’s who would be on his jacket next.
Wasn’t he the stupid cunt with the round glasses?
Well, at least Bruce could never be blamed for this one.
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I would totally sport a James Joyce jacket like a cunt.
Cuntandry, haloed be my eve.
Put a quarter on Paul Newman's pinball game.
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3
Even though he had made sure to call his son a dork as soon as he found him sitting in the dining room reading by himself, Bruce didn’t know anything about James Joyce. And he didn’t want to know. Instead, began throwing peanuts at the boy, trying to get him to close the book. Had no interest in whatever it was his son was flipping through the pages to show him.
“No thanks, professor”
All these years later, Bruce was still nursing wounds inflicted from his high school English teacher. Mr. Bennett, daring to ruin his favorite book, explaining to the class how it wasn’t just a simple story about kids stabbing each other to death on a deserted island. You only needed to think about it a little and everything would show itself as being something other than it was. It was called symbolism and so when they cut off a pig’s head, it was so much more than just that, even though that had always been more than enough for Bruce.
They put it on a pointed stick.
What more was possibly needed?
“Getting lots of good symbolism in there, Poindexter?” Bruce sneered, throwing more peanuts.
And the kid nodded as if to say yes, definitely. Smiling. Pointing for his father to look at something he had underlined in pencil on a dogeared page. Reluctantly, Bruce coming closer to read the passage, trying not to breathe in the smell that rose from the book too deeply. A nauseating licorice stink.
The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot
Bruce read it twice, just to be sure, then shook his head.
Realized maybe it wasn’t such a great line, after all.
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Jinnistan wrote:
I would totally sport a James Joyce jacket like a cunt.
Cuntandry, haloed be my eve.
Put a quarter on Paul Newman's pinball game.
Think of how things could change if only more people knew about the James Joyce fart letters.
He'd be on the back of every cool dude's jean jacket.
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Unfortunately this would probably be too long to scribble on the sleeves in indelible marker:
“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I f*cked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole.”
Poetry.
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EPILOGUE: A VICTORY IN REFLECTION
Laying in bed that night, having destroyed the only book his father could still bring himself to touch, the kid could only read more. Looking for something else to underline and show his father. Something to make him understand he hadn’t meant what he'd done in a bad way.
Raised his pencil as he come upon this:
“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole.”
The words filled the kid with joy. Got him thinking of how things would change if only more people knew about them. The miracle of the James Joyce fart letters.
He’d be on the back of every cool dude’s jean jacket.
His poetry scribbled on the sleeves in indelible marker.
Maybe, eventually, even his fathers.
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STRAIGHT TO THE MOVIES
1
My grandfather said my father shouldn’t be going out anywhere and for a little while wouldn’t drive us to the movies. Then my grandmother explained it was for school, and he was sent out to the garage to wait for us in the car. When the two of us finally got in the backseat, my father was silent the whole way there, like he was trying to conceal something that had hidden in the way he talked. Very careful as he got out of the car and stood upright in the parking lot.
“Make sure he takes you straight to the movie”, my grandfather said before I shut the car door and he drove away.
We'd been left at a mall we never went to much because it was so far away, but this was where the movie I needed to see was playing, so it was where we had to go. At least I wasn’t likely to see anyone from school all the way out here. Knew I wasn’t supposed to be at places like this with my father anymore, how the spies were always out thick on weekends. Kids I’d recognize lurking about, looking for things to report back to school on Monday. Looking for anyone in the company of parents or grandparents or little dogs whose little shits would need picking up while you were out walking them. Anything that could be held against you forever and I could only be relieved that no one I knew would likely be here.
No one but for all the girls.
It was mostly because of the girls that I didn’t go to movies with my father anymore. That’s where they always were and I didn’t want him noticing the way I was looking at them now. My eyes imagining everything and seeing nothing but probably still lit up like a television with all their dreams of tits and asses.
Like hers and hers and hers.
Trying not to let on I knew what all that stuff looked like as one after another passed us on the way to the patio bar at the opposite end of the mall.
But my father saw none of it. None of them. Not even our waitress. Nothing but her hands as she set the two glasses of beer he’d ordered in front of him. Nothing in his eyes but the ones he’d already drunk before we’d even got here.
I had seen her though.
Saw her smile at me. Felt her skirt brushing against my arm, then my head turning to watch her leave, unable to stop wondering how good she could possibly look if I just kept looking at her. Not even thinking of my father who was sitting right across the table from me, the foam from his beer now all over his moustache, hardly even knowing what a woman was anymore.
Such a beautiful girl, but all I could do was sit there and eat my plate of fries, while he swallowed his beer, then try and look at her one last time as we paid our bill and left for the movies together. Buying our tickets and now all alone with my father as he fell fast asleep the moment the lights went down. Snoring and making everyone in the theatre as mad at him as my grandfather had been and probably still was as he sat waiting for our phone call back home in the kitchen.
Worried we would never make it to the movies.
That something terrible was going to happen.
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I've finally taken on the task of going through all of this garbage and ordering it somewhat. Trying to figure out was is missing. Keeping out what doesn't fit or is straight trash. There is little I loathe more than rereading anything I do once I'm finished with it, but some things are unavoidable.
Just going to post a couple that I've recently written to plug a few holes and attempt to make some sense of things.
Of course they wont' make any sense plopped down here out of context, but I've never let that stop me before.
The first one is mostly a rewrite.
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BROTHER #3: GARY
THE BADDEST KID IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
One time my Uncle Gary sprayed me with a hose. Another time I watched him sit and drink a Pepsi in his mother’s house. Never saw him do anything else, ever. Would only see him these two times. But I told myself he would protect me. He was family. Uncle Gary, my secret weapon.
He had done something terrible a long time ago which we had to keep secret. But even knowing only a little about why he was so dangerous made me feel invincible. A threat I could secretly wield against anyone who messed with me.
One time I'd seen a picture of him from prison. Small, bad tattoos, smiling. Sometimes I would try to find this photograph when visiting my mother’s house. Fantasies of stealing it and carrying it around with me at all times and flashing it at people I didn't like.
“He tried to hang a kid”, I’d say, staring directly into their eyes. “Burned his hands on a radiator”
I would tell them I had Gary's phone number, even though I didn’t. How he was out of prison now and didn’t live too far away, even though I had no idea where he was.
Made sure they understood, twenty bucks and they’d be next. That they better not push it.
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BROTHER #4: GORDY
REDHEADED REMEMBRANCE
The freckled little shit. Bruce wouldn’t have liked Gordy anyways, but it was all because of that face of his. Nothing to do with the sucker punch he’d landed at eleven o clock that morning. How this twelve-year-old already had a fist that could knock him to the ground. Bruce turning around to see who it was coming up behind him and—
That redheaded bastard, smirking.
Smashing him in the nose for no reason.
Leaving him flat on the dirty hardwood of Sandra’s apartment, unable to do anything as the kid disappeared into the kitchen to take another one of his beers.
Now, all these years later, Bruce’s son saying how Gordy had been asking about him. Wanted to know how he’s doing. Saying they used to be friends.
“He was twelve. We weren’t friends. He was a redheaded prick”
He tells his son how he was closer to his twin brother, Gary, even though that was one really fucked up kid. How the boy's uncle was always talking about all the people he was going to kill. Where he was going to bury their bodies. Talked about angles he had on girls in the neighborhood that made his skin crawl. Still preferred Gary though, no matter what he threatened to do. That Bruce believed he probably one day would do, but that still didn't stop him from being so much better.
Gordy was the worst.
“He suckerpunched me once. I actually saw stars. Not remotely my friend”
As his son continued to talk, Bruce learned how Gordy was back living in Sandra’s basement. The boy always talking at length about which one of that family was now living with his mother and her new husband. Sometimes it would sound like whole bunches of them, all down there at the same time, drinking and arguing and terrorizing the drywall. Promising they’d start paying some rent as soon as they could. Sneaking up the stairs at night and stealing all of Randy’s beer, and Randy stomping around the house as soon as he realized how they hadn't left anything for him. But never saying a word about it to anyone. Afraid the Boys might be listening through the floorboards. That they could get violent.
“It’s what you get for marrying Sandra”
Bruce felt for this poor guy she eventually married. Learned his name was Randy—Sandy and Randy—and thought he looked exactly like a Randy should. Had seen him a few times through the window when Sandra picked up their son for a visit and had laughed at his glasses and his hair and how skinny he was. How he was clearly not cut out for that family. Not any of them, not even the girls, but especially not ready for Gordy when it came time for him to take his turn living in their basement.
“Once you let one of them in, you let them all in. They never leave. You can’t get them out. But I’m sure he'll learn the hard way”.
As his son continued to tell him all about his uncle in his mother’s basement, Bruce imagined Gordy suckerpunching her husband. Probably with enough force to kill a dweeb like that. Tried to think what that would look like, the crunching of bones, all the blood. He may not have felt the thump of those meaty fists for a long time now, but he knew for sure that Randy would crumple immediately to the ground as they made contact. A thought he was surprised to find disappointed him. Found himself wishing Sandra could have married someone who knew how to fight, if only to let him more clearly imagine someone hitting Gordy right back.
Right back in his face,
Could still remember how hard that kids fist hit him ten years later.
“Fucking redhead”
Gary was definitely better.
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BROTHER #5: WAYNE
Wayne?
Bobby and Denny and Terry and Gordy and Gary and Wayne.
Even his name didn’t belong.
It was almost like he had done something wrong to get himself sent away. Some place where they had put one of his sisters who was just like him.
I think he was mostly deaf. I think he was mostly blind. His brain definitely didn’t work properly. He sometimes made phone calls.
When I’m shown old photographs of my family, I’m not always looking at the faces I know. Sometimes I’m looking most at the one's I don't. Wonder for a moment over each, if maybe this is him. Or maybe him. But only once ever really thinking one of them might possibly look odd enough for it to actually be Wayne. A blurry figure seated at the end of a couch with his mouth open. Holding his hand up strangely.
Maybe that was him.
Maybe that was Wayne.
Or maybe there had never been any pictures of him. None taken and so barely remembered by anyone. Leaving me forever wondering what he could possibly even look like when I sit watching my mother talk to him on the phone. Calling her from wherever he was. Asking when he’s coming home.
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BROTHER #6: BOBBY
THE FUNERAL OF KITCHEN GRAMMA
Denny is dancing with his mother's coffin. Swaying back and forth with it. Leaves in his giant beard, tears on his face, crying on the open casket. His mother right there beneath him with her eyes shut just like his. A shining crucifix around her neck for all eternity, and Denny holding onto her in total desperation. Trying to keep himself from sliding to the floor.
Long lost cousins and family friends who don’t even recognize its Denny in their arms, leading him away and outside to get some fresh air. Scold him for showing up here in such a state. Aren’t sure he is even family and secretly wonder if this is a homeless person who has gotten lost and come to the wrong funeral. Wandered in and cried on the wrong mother.
“She was such a strong woman”, is the general sentiment overheard at Theresa’s funeral. “She had to be. After all, how many of her children did the poor woman survive?”
“Joanne, Patsy, Terry, Gary....Four”
“Such a strong woman, but now all of them reunited and together again, forever”
Nearby, Gordy is standing in a suit. Looking good and a tuft of cocaine hanging from his nose. Smiling and shaking hands, at least until he sees Bobby coming up to him, looking like he wants to talk. Gordy refusing to say anything to him other than what he always says. How he’s no brother of his.
“Where were you? You left. Couldn’t hack it. You’re not one of us. Not by a longshot, buddy”
And, as he usually does at these family functions, Bobby is sure to apologize for running away, all those years ago, when he was just thirteen. For daring to make something of his life. For becoming the type of person who shows up to his mother’s funeral not completely fucked up.
“Not my brother”, will be all Gordy can bring himself to say. And it’s really exactly what Bobby expected, and so he nods and walks away, looking to see if Denny is somewhere around here. How he might have to apologize to him too.
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ROCKING CHAIR RUNAWAY
A good song should break a couch. At least the one Sandy was sitting in. The Supremes or Lesley Gore or Roy Orbison should shatter everything as she starts rocking back and forth to the beat, crashing her back against the cushions until the wood starts snapping. The whole frame collapsing and Sandy quickly swallowed between the cushions to the sound of a Farsifa organ. Del Shannon singing Runaway and nowhere left to sit in the whole apartment.
Sometimes Bruce thinks there is something wrong with her. How that’s no way to dance. Is tired of replacing chairs and is always turning the volume down on her. Trying to shake her out of her trance, the one thing always sure to get her to start screaming at him.
“That’s my song, that’s my song. Turn it back up, turn it back up!”
“Sandy, we’ve got guests”, he would hiss back as their friends milled about the apartment, looking for a good spot on the floor to sit. “Sandy! Would you cut it out and put the baby down. You’re going to drop him on his fucking head”
Her son remembers these times dancing with his mother. Sometime they’d be standing up, with him on her toes, but mostly sitting down and moving back and forth in a chair to the music. These were the first memories he had of her. How she’d pull him onto her lap and how she could go so fast. Even faster than the fastest song, until a rocking chair was in pieces beneath them.
He can remember how much his mother loved music.
The creak of an about to break chair.
All the times he’d suddenly find himself on the floor with his mother, laughing.
And of course, Uncle Denny already down there with them, having been laying in front of the television since the morning. Never much into couches to begin with. Never much into waiting for an invitation to come over.
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SANDY THE LEAST
Boys are coming to the house for Joanne, who already has three babies. Crawling in the windows at night for Sharon. Even Gail and Brenda getting attention. Gail who couldn’t care less and Brenda who is too young to do anything but talk through the screen door to these always shirtless boys on the porch.
All the sisters getting attention but no one coming for Sandy. Sandy by herself on the stairs and worried she looks like a bulldog. Her bottom jaw sticking out and all those dull, shineless teeth showing. Mostly a thing for the neighbourhood boys to pat on the head and nothing else for her to do but stare up at them with her sad eyes. Listen as they tell her bulldogs look like that because they’re inbred. Maybe give her chin a little scratch if she tells them where her sisters are hiding.
Because Sandy never noticed much from her place on the stairs, she was never much help telling where anyone was. Could only let the boys know Patsy wasn’t here anymore. Not that this was the sister any of them were looking for. And not that Sandy even knew where they had put her. Only that until then nobody had ever come for Patsy, and when someone finally did, a whole bunch of them showed up all at once in suits. Took her away screaming. Blind and deaf and no one telling her where she was being taken. Whose hands were touching her.
And now she was gone.
“People always forget about Patsy and now that she’s not here I’m reminding them”
Sandy asks if anyone remembers how they used to sit next to eachother on the stairs. The two of them, right where she was sitting now, waiting for head pats. Maybe even competing for them and only so many to go around. Keeps making sure everyone knows how much she misses Patsy and asks again if they remember her and all the things that were wrong with her and how sad it was when they took her.
But mostly wants them to see how there were sisters that had been gotten rid of before her.
That she hadn’t always been alone on these stairs.
That Sandy definitely wasn’t the worst.
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SANDRA AS A DEAD BABY
My mother thinks she still looks like a bulldog. She always starts talking like this when she’s on the couch with her best friend DumDum. Even though it’s been a long time since the doctors broke and reset her jaw, made it so people stopped staring, that’s who she still is. And it’s who she’ll always be even though now, no one looks at her at all. She’s invisible, even to DumDum, who stares right through her as she talks. While she tells her how much she hates Bruce. How she doesn’t deserve him. Because she looks like a bulldog.
“Oh, Sandy, no you don’t”, DumDum would laugh and twist her fingers together in front of her face. “Your beautiful, Sandy. I look more like a bulldog than you do. We both know that. Don’t listen to Bruce”
But my mother never seems to look any happier when she hears how she was prettier than DumDum. Just keeps busy on the couch, cutting my father out of photographs with scissors. Pictures of me as a baby now being held by nobody. Floating in the air. And the shape of him, overturned everywhere, scattered all around our feet as we watch a movie on the television. A whole night on the couch with my mother, hunting through photo albums together. DumDum at the other end, looking through her own for pictures of Richard to cut up.
“Who’s that”, I ask as my mother comes to an old photograph of a newborn baby. It’s black and white and the baby’s head is turned to the side. Everything else in the picture has faded away other than this slightly blurry head, hovering in the air like a ghost. You can’t see its face clearly, but something seems to be wrong.
“No one”, she says. “That baby died”
She turns the page, and finds a picture of my father sunbathing in a lawnchair, smiling, while at the other end of the couch DumDum finally announces what photo she is going to cut Richard out of. "The one where he’s standing in front of a car wash looking so handsome”. Says she doesn’t have many pictures of him, and that's why it took so long to find one. “But now the cheating bastard is sure going to get what he’s got coming to him”.
DumDum asks my mother for the scissors, and holds out her hand, but my mother isn’t finished cutting. Has just now realized she’s only been starting with my father. That she had grudges against all sorts of people in these pictures of hers and might need to get rid of them all.
Ignoring her friend as she reached out for her scissors, opening and closing her hand. Opening and closing her hand. DumDum never getting her chance to throw Richard onto the floor, where he belonged. Down there with my father, where their bad boyfriends always ended up.
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THAT FAMILY COMES TO DINNER
Norma had heard about that family before and didn’t want to keep hearing about them over dinner. The ghastly things they did. All the things her son may have come into contact with when he was in their home. That had stuck to him somewhere and were now eating across the table from her.
Sometimes she’d send Bruce from the kitchen if he so much as brought them up. Mostly wanting to talk about all those boys. Those terrible Boys you could always tell were from that family just by looking.
“Go eat someplace else”, Norma would say and point the direction she wanted her son to start walking. “I can smell their filthy carpet on you”
It was shocking to even think she might now be associated with these people. Norma had never kept count of how many of that family she’d actually seen with her own eyes over the years, but she knew it was too many. Exactly the problem she was always warning people about whenever she would talk about her strong feelings on the forced sterilization of the feeble and mentally unfit.
“Oh, Norma, you can’t truly feel that way”
But Norma very much did. Even long before she met Sandy, she had loudly encouraged her solution at dinner parties and libraries and bus stops. Didn’t see anything at all wrong with what she was saying. Thought it the humane thing to do, and while she may have never said it out loud, she certainly was aware the whole situation with Bruce and the girl could have been entirely avoided if anyone could have ever bothered to listen to her.
She knew what she was talking about.
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SANDY ON THE LOOSE
My mother’s gone a little weird. Mostly since she left Randy. Leaving him for some old man named Domingo who she said was a millionaire. Some kind of millionaire he must be, shacking up with my mother.
Or maybe it was even before that. She was probably already pretty weird back when she started telling me about how she had another apartment that no one knew about. It was in another city, and she’d drive there just to get away from Randy for a few hours. Go there to sit with her back against the wall and listen to the radio.
“There isn’t even any furniture in it”, she’d tell me over the phone from this secret place. “In the summer I can sit on the balcony and listen to my music, but when it gets cold I’ve got to sit inside on the floor”.
Then she’d tell me that’s where she was right now. The floor. And she’d start to laugh hysterically.
Or could it have started before this? I think it might have. Maybe beginning as far back as when her mother died and all those psychics kept showing up at her house. When she was taking endless pictures of the cigarette smoke crowding the corners of her living room. Her proof there really were ghosts in it, sometimes of her dead mother, sometimes of Native Americans.
“You see him? Right there! Wearing the headband with the feather. Can you see it? Do you see it?”
She would tell me the Indian must have been sent from his ancient burial ground by her mother to keep her safe and when I said I could see him too, at least sort of, she would always look relieved. But I would never think too much of any of this and it all just seemed like normal grief until my brother told me about the time she jumped out of her car in the middle of the highway. Hurrying towards a storm of feathers, thousands of them pouring from the back of an overturned truck full of busted mattresses, trying to get there before they blew away in the wind and the rush of traffic. How he’d watched our mother waving her arms around, collecting as many as she could, stuffing them into her pockets as cars swerved all around her.
“Her psychic said to watch out for feathers”, my brother explained when he could tell what I was about to ask. “How they’re a sign grandma is thinking of her in Heaven”
I sometimes think of my mother out on that highway, grabbing at her mothers spirit in the stink of all that diesel and hot sun and chrome, and realize she’s been sort of gone since way back then. Maybe even longer by the way my brother shakes his head when I ask if that’s when she started getting bad. If that’s when he noticed something was wrong.
“Fuck, dude, you’re so lucky you weren’t raised by her”, he tells me. “She’s always been like this. She's always been completely nuts. She sucks”
And so this morning when I talk to my mother on my phone for the first time in a long time, standing outside next to the mailbox as she talks and talks and talks, I already know she’s been weird for a long, long time now. Don’t worry about it much. Am able to continue nodding my head no matter what it is she’s telling me because it’s all I can expect to hear from someone like Sandy. How she’s begun to worry her cat is reading her mind and thinks she’s evil. Or how she can no longer completely trust who is or isn’t a lizard. Or why she hates all her old friends for mysterious reasons I’ll never quite understand.
Just keep nodding my head as she tells me how she wants me to write her life story. How she has lots of secrets. That’s she’s going to take them all down.
“Just let me know what you need me from me so you can do this”, she says, assuring me there are no limits and I can ask for anything: computers, printers, tape recorders. “You know Domingo’s a millionaire, right?”
I tell her I do know this. That I’ll think about it. Get off the phone and go back inside with my pizza flyers.
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THE OCEAN IS MORE WATER THAN THE WHOLE WORLD CAN EVER DRINK
Sandy had never seen the ocean. Never even thought of it. Didn't, in fact, know there was such a thing until that very moment in Norma’s kitchen. Could never have imagined so much water could possibly exist, and all of it in one place. It made her wonder if she knew how to swim and soon realize she wasn’t sure. Suddenly feeling frightened when she thought of how easy it would be to drown in it, and how much of it there was.
Norma immediately recognized the confused look on the girls face when she told her how she wasn’t born here. How she had come from Great Britain, a country that was very different than this one and where a lot of her family still was. That was on the complete other side of the world.
“All my brothers and sisters have accents, but not me. I wasn’t even talking yet, when we came over the ocean. I was too little, so I talk like all of you over here, not like a British person”
Sandy scrunched up her face. “Ocean?”
“Oh, Sandra, surely you’ve heard of the ocean. Everyone’s heard of the ocean. It’s the ocean”
Bruce muttered something about how he already told his mother how she doesn’t know anything and not expect her to know about things normal people know. “And she’s definitely never heard of England, so you can drop that coming to America talk of yours. She probably thinks London is the street over”
Laughing, Norma took out an Atlas. Opened it in front of Sandra and began pointing at all the blue spots until the girl nodded her head and repeated back to her what it was. Then Norma pointed at England and told her this was the country where she was from. Then pointed back at all of that blue that was in between where she used to be and where they both were now.
Sandy couldn't help but be impressed. “I guess you can swim then”, she said to this well-dressed woman sitting with her in a kitchen. “I don’t think anyone’s ever shown me how to do that. But maybe I know how and just forgot. We don’t have anywhere to swim so I’ll probably never know for sure”. Then she repeated the word ocean one more time, as if checking to see if she remembered how to say it, and Norma gently patted her hand.
“You’ll get it eventually, Sandra. Don’t let this one over here discourage you. He’s always been a miserable shit”
But Bruce could only sniff at his mother, before explaining one last obvious thing to his new girlfriend. “You definitely can’t swim, alright, especially not to England, you tit. Now I’m going to have another beer, and then we’re leaving”
Sandy didn’t say anything back. Three months pregnant, and still very small. Not yet showing and so much smaller than Bruce. Smaller than his mother. Even smaller than the ocean that she didn’t know anything about. Didn’t know how to get all the way across. That she worried one day she might drown in.
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BIRTH ORDER
Definitely twelve. Theresa knew exactly how many children she had, no matter today’s count. Maybe only five eggrolls needed for tonight’s dinner, but always hope that by the last Friday of next month, when it would be Chinese time all over again, there would be more. Maybe not twelve eggrolls worth. But more.
Well, not Patsy or Wayne, of course. They were better off kept where they’d been put, where they were strictly for holidays. And Sandy and Sharon were now off with some Portuguese family and getting forced to eat octopus and not allowed back even for Chinese, so not them either. Then Terry called from prison to say he got caught with that suitcase of dimes his mother had warned him not to touch. Not much of a crime but still enough to keep him away for at least one more dinner with his family.
“Now don’t you start, Terry. You knew what Friday was coming, and you knew we was getting Chinese, so don’t you go making me feel bad about all us eating chicken balls and you getting lousy cheese sandwiches. I told you, they was definitely gonna pick you up as soon as you stepped out the door, but you just couldn’t leave that suitcase alone, could you?”
As for Brenda, she had got lucky again and was still sounding happy about where she'd ended up. Told all sorts of stories about a kitchen with never ending slices of buttered bread and funny little dogs that barked but weren’t scary and how there were bathrooms on every floor.
“And everything flushes, mom, it’s such a relief. But I miss you all so, so much. Tell Sandy and Sharon sorry about the octopus. Ha ha ha.”
So no Patsy or Wayne or Sharon or Sandy or Terry or Brenda. Leaving it so there was no reason to get any more than five eggrolls on this night. Just enough for it to not be a sad dinner. Just enough that it would feel like a family was still here.
Of course, one would be for Denny, who was too old for new families and wasn’t going anywhere, already spread out on the floor in front of the TV and waiting for dinner to arrive. Then two more for Gary and Gordy, who Theresa could hear around somewhere, pushing over chairs and hitting things with sticks. And as for the girls who were still unaccounted for, there were at least a couple of them in the basement. She could hear their squeaky little voices coming up through the floorboards and knew they’d be wanting one eggroll each, without even needing to ask.
And that made five. And yet, at no time, had Theresa ever forgotten how on a good day it would still be twelve. You don’t forget that kind of thing when you’re a mother.
Twelve children in twelve years.
She didn't even need to count.
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LAUGHING
I checked my messages hoping the exterminator had finally gotten back to me. Instead, it was a text from my brother.
“Mom got arrested lol”
I called him and he explained what happened the night before.
“She called the cops on my dad, but they arrested her instead”
She had been drunk and he was the one with scratches on his face. I tell him about that time a long time ago I got to hear mom beating Randy up. It had been him who had chased her up the stairs, trying to grab at her legs after she had thrown a glass of wine in his face. But that thumping I would soon hear coming through the floorboards was all him. Mom on top of my stepfather with her fingers in his hair.
“The thumping was his head”
We both erupted, in tears at the thought. Randy’s head bouncing on the floor, shaking those stupid glasses off his face. I was sitting on my futon, and it was good to laugh again.
As I wiped my face dry, my brother continued.
"I think they’re letting her out tomorrow, but she’s not allowed to go back home if my dad’s there, so she’s got to pay to live in a hotel somewhere in another town. Every day until they go to court but she doesn't even have one dollar in the bank”
More laughter.
“She was a lot better at this stuff when she was calling the cops on my father”, I tell him. My brother doesn’t know much about her days with my father and always listens close when I mention him. “They always took him to jail. But I guess it’s different when it comes to Randy”
We both knew when it came between my mother or my stepfather who the cops would end up taking with them if it had to be one. Sandy, every single time.
“I guess that’s what mom gets for marrying a dweeb”.
We laugh at the truth of it and for a moment everything seems good. I’m not thinking of the exterminators anymore. About how much poison might still be hovering in the air of my apartment or how it didn’t look like it had killed a single one of the bastards. Only chased them out from their crevices, up onto the walls and all over my mattress.
And how as the sun went down, I only began to see even more of them.
Surrounded, but still laughing.