Originally published in Bewildering Stories.
Essa
The first real pay check I ever got was from a Starbucks in Renton. For two weeks, I burned my fingers, smelled like milk, and flirted with the addicts. Then, on a Friday that I had woken up on convinced that it would be a good day to quit and just lie in bed in someone else’s shirt, I found the envelope with my name on it in the file behind the counter. I ripped it open, stuffed the tax tags in the millimeter pocket of my black jeans, and saw numbers of my own. Five little numbers that I told everyone from then on were my lucky numbers. Six five one one nine. Even though they lost every time in Vegas on our honeymoon.
I spent most of that check on music and makeup. I remember that night, painting myself up like a whore and putting on the clothes that I had convinced my parents to buy for me for dress-up days at school and for Halloween. Filling up a playlist with Mineral MP3s and dancing in the proscenium arch of my mirror. The hairs on my bare arms and legs stood up and pulled away from me, tugging my skin in all directions, promising me that, if I let them escape, they would find whatever made me feel the closest to contentment, and there I would coalesce.
It was damn cold that night, after I crawled out of my window. A couple of my friends said I looked hot; a couple others kept their mouths shut. I wasn’t a new woman. They knew I’d still kick them in the teeth if they pissed me off or made me cry.
What made me so different at home, so different that I had to stay in my room, made me painted background at the party. I felt like an extra on a movie set, and took to asking some of the potheads when we were getting our ten bucks for the night, just to see their reaction. One guy pulled ten bucks out of a black leather wallet and started to lead me to a back room. That was pretty funny.
Now that I think about it, he looked a bit like Lane; people say right around the eyes but I think what they mean by that is the way a person’s face is focused through his eyes. It’s the way something extra shows through his pupils, some line of code that tells your brain to remember this.
He was a pseudo-geek. Thought he had a lot to say about computers, but it all came out of his brother’s old issues of 2600. He had a chin that sank inward when it moved, a mouth that must have forced its own birth, and skin the shade of mine under ultra violet. Years afterward, I kept imagining I saw him in movies. I’d ask my friends, Where have I seen that actor before? And they’d all say, Oh he starred in Such and Such, and I’d say, No that’s not it. Absolutely certain that, even though I didn’t know the answer, I knew that wasn’t it.
So, damn it, I can understand. I could understand. If he was a teenager, I could understand. But he’s not. He’s a former sailing captain who has abandoned his post to play with toy boats in the bathtub. He’s a lapsed Catholic putting on robes and asking me if I have any sins to confess, in bed. Fuck him, the bastard. Ha– that’s funny.
He was born in Los Angeles. I was born in Issaquah, a little south of the good stuff in Washington state. He told me it’s because my first friend was a mountain that I miss the people. I told him that he didn’t understand me because he never had a daddy. It takes a little away from me to not be able to call him names in hate. I try, but my every shot is accidentally accurate.
I spent all of this first pay check on food that we could store for a while; enough for the winter, for when our crop of potatoes runs out. He was pretty quiet on the drive back up from town. A cow wandered out onto the road at one point and he didn’t even honk the horn. He just shifted his hand to six, brought the truck down a couple gears, and waited while the beast tried to turn us into food with her dumb forgettable eyes. She gave up and moseyed off the road in the same direction she had come from.
Then when we get home, he helped me with the bags, taking the frozen stuff first so it wouldn’t thaw any more. It was when we were on to the cans of soup and broth that he, arms round from all that pounding, finally said what he had been waiting to.
“I lost my job.”
I knew something. I could see that the truck was using twice as much fuel as it should have been. I thought he was going to ask for a divorce, though.
“How did it happen?”
He stared at me with the look that tried to say, You know the answer so say it yourself. Up against my stubbornness, he dropped his gaze to his legs.
“I don’t care,” I said and went back to moving bags across the room.
A few minutes later, I was standing at the kitchen window, holding the green curtain back with the fist I had pressed into my forehead. The day was turning deep and blue. He couldn’t just leave it. He was out there with Bernard, getting ready to burn the forest down. Make it all smoke and ash and bright orange and red. I could handle that.
#
Kelly
Essa said I could have his computer while he’s gone. She laughed when she said it. As long as I get to push my fingers on the screen and make waves that look like the places the deer sleep, I said. Okay, she said and laughed more. He came in then and asked what was so funny.
“Essa says I can have your computer when you’re gone,” I said. He went red and I could see his heart pumping in his throat. He had to squeeze out his words in between beats.
“Oh… well… be careful…” he said.
“Don’t worry, honey,” said Essa and he didn’t have a chance. She was using her super powers on him, her green eyes on him, and the computer was mine.
“I’ve got some sensitive…” he started to say. Then Essa said,
“I know,” and he went from green to red. Essa lost.
“Your daddy wants you, Kelly,” he said instead of anything she didn’t want him to say. Yellow. I took off before either of them could change her mind. I learned a long time ago that when daddy gives the answer you want, don’t give him time to sigh. When Lane goes up, he has to give me his computer.
Dad was in the kitchen, making me a peanut butter sandwich. I ate inside the crust and asked,
“How long is Lane going to be gone?”
Daddy had his cheeks folded back to grin. It made,
“We figure forty miles or a little further,” sound like a frog said it. I tried to tell him that I’d get Lane’s computer but it didn’t work. I thought the words, made the sounds in my head, but they didn’t go anywhere. That must be writer’s block that Essa talks about. Something in your brain, clang clang, a wood wedge in the middle. She said it gives her headaches. I must not have one.
I thought about how daddy listens to people, today. He blinks and opens his eyes when they say something he likes. When he spells ice cream out loud. He pulls on his jaw and makes his ears move when he wants her to shut up and let him go to bed. He leans forward when she wants him to shut up and go to bed, his eyes still wide and I think ready to listen.
I didn’t notice it was really windy until daddy pointed at the window and said, Look at the trees. They were swaying all over the place like someone had stuck a finger into the middle of them just to make waves. I thought I had invented it.
It was okay, though. Daddy didn’t listen to me when his eyes were wide and listening to the trees. And he had his hand on his jaw. I pulled on his pockets and started to hang from his belt when he said, Ow, honey, that hurts daddy. I asked him to make me another sandwich. The phone rang and he answered it right away. It was Essa, asking if it was okay for Lane to invite us over for a little party. He had to hold the phone a foot away from his ear. He said, Shoot, I was going to suggest it, and, I’ll bring the beer. Right off the bat, he said that.
Poem, I’m glad that it’s Lane going away. The first thing I can remember is from my third birthday, when they fired off the third one. She was there. She wasn’t there in the couple pictures in the red album, but she was. She lights all the fires. It’s how she makes things green. One time, daddy made me only watch PBS, and I saw a show about trees and forests and how mad frantic all the little firemen bugs were running back and forth across the screen in the black and the brown, outrunning the flames that looked sick around the place where dad showed me what a magnet can do. The voice on the show was saying how some scientists say lots of things. About how to fix a fire and things like that. And how if you just let it go, it’s a good thing except for the houses and the people and the animals that get in the way. And at the end I watched the credits because they were showing a mountain in our own valley and how green it is and it must have burned to the dirt just before I was born.
That’s how she does it. She burns under the rockets and makes everything up. There’s that ring around the spot where nothing grows, but that’s because they spend so much time there. Like the barn. All full of just straw and splinters and nothing at all.
Daddy brought me over to their house for dinner and put me to bed when they got out dessert. He walked me across the yard, picking me up onto his shoulders when I told him I was afraid of the thistles. He put me under the covers and kissed me on the forehead and I must have whispered because he bent down and said,
“Hmm?”
And I said,
“I’m glad you’re my daddy.” He was, too. He laughed his head straight up. I could see his shadow. It stretched out an arm and pulled the blanket up tighter around my neck.
“Go to sleep, smartie,” he said.
She burns up and I never see the rockets again. They’re gone to make it green. I told all of this to her in different words and she laughed more than I did. Maybe I needed a better word than burn. Maybe I needed to hold her hand so she’d know I was there when I opened my mouth.
He didn’t even stay to watch me sleep.
#
Essa
I knocked on the door just to see the look on his face. The only light in the room came from his machine’s monitor; he always looks better in those flesh drenched photons than in real day light. He clicked a few times, replacing the warm glow with the dull black of his wallpaper, before putting on a yawn and turning to me.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Getting late. I’m going to lock up. Just making sure you weren’t planning on going out again tonight.”
“Nope. Not tonight.”
“Kay.”
“You going to bed soon?”
“In a bit. I was going to talk to Perch if she’s home.”
“I’ll be done here in a while.”
“Take your time,” I said, closing the door. He usually left it open, so I wouldn’t get suspicious. I could feel my lips curve into devil horns. The door made a heavy click; everything in this tired old house is connected to everything else. Close the oven and the toilet flushes; knock on the door and the smoke detector goes off — or would if there were batteries in it. Lean too far back in your chair and the windows break. When I shut the door, the soft light behind it came on again, shining through the crack by the floor.
It was just too cute.
I left the kitchen light on as I locked the front and back doors. I posed in the reflections, standing in the windows in nothing but my bath robe. I let it slip open so the sides of the V were balancing on my breasts. When I slid the chain across the front door, my nose inches from its mate, I caught my nail in the catch. It didn’t break but hurt like hell. I pressed it tight into my palm to suffocate the ghosted pain.
Things were getting pretty cold outside. Windows don’t keep much of that out; I felt a breeze passing through the molecules and hitting my cheek, passing through my cheek and out the other side.
First time I tried Perch’s number it was busy. Second time, she answered laughing, fighting her own giggles to say, Hello.
“Hey, giggle butt. It’s me.”
“Essie!” I could hear other people in the background, shouting for ale and whores.
“Got a party going on?”
“Just the usual crew.” I could almost make out a guy’s voice rising. “That was Todd,” Perch explained. “He says, Hi.”
“Tell him he’s a bastard.” She did. There was familiar laughter and it hurt. They were having fun, talking about Derrida or Dorcas, pushing their brains over beer and party games of their own devising. “Bad time?” I asked her.
“No no, it’s fine. Just let me escape here.” The din faded to a sussurration, then to the isolated slam of a door. “So,” she said. “Tell me about stuff.”
“Not much to tell. Lane finally got his boat built.”
“Is he still on that kick?”
“As zealous as ever. Thanks to his efforts, humanity will once again be afraid of bursting all their capillaries in the inky blackness of… .” I couldn’t keep it up. I needed air and more words. Perch was laughing enough already, anyway.
“I thought he’d be over it by now,” she said.
“Not a chance. Read anything good lately?” I asked, eager to change the subject. I was tired of thinking about my husband and his obsessions, even if they made hearts lighter from one end of the state to the other.
“Have I ever! Todd got me hooked on this fantasist that I think you’d really like. His name is…”
“Don’t bother.”
“Don’t have time to read?”
“No. Well, sort of. I just don’t have a brain for names.”
She sniffed, then laughed. “That’s right. The flash cards.” She was thinking about our room mate days, when she’d come home late from a party and find me stopping up a bloody nose with tissues and bending over a desk full of white papers, names on one side and definitions on the other. She was thinking about whatever it was Todd had just said to make Ruth do her witch cackle so loudly.
I didn’t want to be bitter. But now that bitterness was in sight, there was no avoiding some awkward flailing descent into its grasp. Either I would ignore it, so baldly obvious in the attempt that Perch would try to be comforting, or I would give in to it, la dee da.
I made plans to come and visit the next time I had a chance. I lied and said that Lane was thinking about coming back to the teaching business, so we might move back to the coast. She said that was wonderful news. I fidgeted with a pen and stabbed it into her beautiful baby blue eye because they were heading out to the Thump later that evening and she still had the tiny camisole and skirt combo I let her wear to our last homecoming as undergrads. She’d even had it dry cleaned.
As I was saying bye, Lane came out of his study. He had on his dirty flannel and jeans from the day. Copper shavings clung to his knees. He stopped with a hand on the catch and stared at me. I crossed my legs and felt a fresh stab of memory pain in my finger nail. I hung up the phone.
“Wear a coat,” I said.
“It’s not that cold,” he said.
“It will be.”
He went outside and the phone rang. It was Kelly.
“Hi, Essa. Can I have a drink of water?”
“Where’s your dad? Can’t he do it for you?”
#
Voices
“Can’t sleep either, huh?”
“No fucking way. I read they made the astronauts stay awake seventy two hours before launch.”
“No. It took seventy-two hours to get the shuttle from the assembly building to the launch site. But they didn’t have to be on it that whole time.”
“Oh. I bow to your superior knowledge.”
“It happens.”
“Do you think we’re rushing into this?”
“It’s been three years.”
“NASA took decades.”
“God bless em, but they had committees. We’re light. Nimble. Agile.”
“Cold.”
“Yeah. Here.”
“Thanks.”
“Neh.”
“Did you ever finish anything this big?”
“We’re not even getting out of the atmosphere.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Lost all my optimism. Figure that one out.”
“Oh shucks. Guess you’d better let me go up, then.”
“I’d rather send a monkey.”
“How about Kelly?”
“Are you serious?”
“No. No, I’m just joking.”
“Jesus. Yeah, to answer your question; I have finished things this big before. My dissertation was three years. There was a piss poor novel that I had published; I had been working on that for five years.”
“That’s right. I forget that you had another life, sometimes.”
“Not me. But I don’t regret it, you know. I got so sick of academics and pretension. The students were almost as bad as my colleagues. You’re much better company.”
“That… actually means a lot to me, man.”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
“This is the biggest thing I’ve ever done. And I’m not even going up.”
“Scissors beat rock. Get over it.”
“Go soak your good natured head. Bastard.”
“You know what? We’ve celebrated your birthday every year since you moved up here, and I don’t actually know how old you are.”
“Yeah, you do. I tell you every year, but you forget. I’m twenty years older than Kelly.”
“You guys were only twenty when she was born?”
“I was. Patty was forty.”
“It’s funny how those opposites come together.”
“Forty isn’t opposite twenty. I mean, I know you only taught basic rocket science, but…”
“I meant how I married Essa when she was eighteen, and I was thirty five. And now we just slot together, the guy who likes older women and the guy who likes ’em young.”
“Except that it’s two guys who are both twenty years or so older than their women.”
“Speaking of the little oyster: what’s that she’s been writing in so much lately?”
“She calls it her poem. She won’t let me read it, though. Says she’s afraid of Aha! sneaking into it.”
“Aha?”
“Alex Haley. In-joke.”
“I hope she grows up quick.”
“She’s a little survivor. I think even if I were to get mauled by a bear, you guys wouldn’t even notice I was gone; the house would stay clean, the chores would get done and, somehow, the groceries would get bought.”
“That’s why rock beats scissors.”
“Say what? Are you getting all obtuse and poetic on me again?”
“Sorry. Be serious for a second, kid.”
“What is it?”
“All I’ve got in the world is Essa. You’ve got Kell. If anything goes wrong tomorrow…”
“Oh. Not poetic; just maudlin.”
“Could you please stop making fun of me? Tomorrow owns a lot of danger. We’d be stupid to ignore that. I’m not stupid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I want you to know that it’s best that I’m going up.”
“I know.”
“That doesn’t mean I just want to tell you that; I want you to know that.”
“Hey, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not like this will be our only chance. God, that’s what we’re gunning for anyway, isn’t it? To make a thousand chances?”
“I feel as if we’re running on a clock, that we’re just going to get out there tomorrow and then our time will be up, that Yellowstone will blow or something and then there goes humanity. And because of the grand fucking stupidity of our leaders, who spent all their money on bombs and coliseums, we won’t have any humans left.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“And Saint Helens will never go off again.”
“Yeah, but Yellowstone?”
“You know that the caldera is just one big lake of magma.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It has been inflating steadily over the last century. The elevation has risen almost a meter since fifty years ago.”
“Wow. You learn something depressing every day.”
A light hits the cracked brown wall. It must be a UFO. The old coot further up the road who goes to the casino every Friday.
“Do you miss the city?”
“No. Essa still on your case about it?”
“Not really on my case. She doesn’t let me forget it. By being silent, she gives me plenty of room to think. She hasn’t smiled for about two weeks.”
“Well, she’s nearing her sexual peak…”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Sorry.”
“Please. That grin makes me want to punch your teeth in.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Take care of her if anything happens?”
“She won’t need it.”
“We would take care of Kelly.”
“I know. That’s why I picked scissors.”
#
Lane
I knew it; you knew it.
“All right, fuckaroo,” he said. He had his arm around my wife.
No children but a legacy. I leave behind the Earth and her desperate whorish ways for the bright expanding nitrogen and oxygen, liquid and solid and gas, all pulling apart, all free.
We planned for chaos. Interrupted by a scream of metal. I leave behind the Earth, the dirt; it’s on my fingers, yet.
And for this reason, the Good Book says, a young man will leave his mother and never look back. He will perch atop his plans, miles in the air, and watch as his future descends, black, through space, bleeding all its warmth into the void until there is nothing left for him.
She has been a growling bitch. Interrupted by a scream of metal. She was not for me. Keep her; keep all her history.
I don’t scream fight breathe blink pant struggle fumble slip burn care.
#
“Barnyard”
Why does your stomach go cold. I don’t know.
“Where did you meet him?”
“He guest-taught my Bible as lit class.”
“Great Christ on a cracker!”
Why did I ever like fireworks. Did I ever like fireworks. I don’t know.
I was driving underneath and getting left in the dust. He didn’t kick it up. It was just the wind biting past on its way into town, beating up the road. He was going to have a three hour wait, at least, if he got all the way to Chesaw. Such primitive land bound transportation. Leave it all in the dust, under the wind, in a hole.
What did we do wrong. I don’t know.
I told you not to no I can’t pretend it wasn’t my told you not to kick the shit out of the if it wasn’t mine then whose don’t even go a second breath without admitting what am I going to tell her watch the sky watch the stars watch the sky watch the stars a new one he’s so much older than you will ever be dead is not an older we made something of ourselves I made something an expanding ball of gas up.
And then I came home. There was no one there. I went over to his house. Kelly usually comes out running when she hears Laddy give up, but she was hard into a book on Essa’s lap. A battered old copy of The Way Things Work. She said, Hi, daddy. I meant to wave but nothing was getting across from my brain to spinal cord. Everything on automatic pilot. Essa looked up and she knew it. She lifted Kell off her lap. She said, Can you go get me a drink of water, and Kell said, I can and will.
Essa came over to me and said, What happened. I had to tell her I didn’t know. She kissed me long enough to lose a lungful of air through her nose. I breathed it in and smelled thick something. She backed away and looked at me. Kelly brought her glass of water. We all drank from it.
The first time I saw him, he was frowning. It’s the look he got when he was concentrating on anything. He was chopping wood and trying hard not to hit his leg. He missed the block and caught his foot. I always felt it was my fault because it was right then that I had called, Hello. Even though he must have heard the truck. Things were bad enough. I left Kell with the Essa she had never met and drove back into town with a bleeding professor in my passenger seat. He talked down to me, but I didn’t really hold it against him, since I never made it through my freshman year. He asked me what books I like and that was the start of the snowball.
I went outside when Kell’s head fell over onto Essa’s shoulder. It was a backdrop night. I couldn’t move either of their faces in my head; they floated there and wouldn’t sink or fly. There wasn’t anything to do. I opened up the barn. We made a good start on the second capsule, in case something went wrong with the first one. I asked him if he had ever been skydiving. No, he said. It wouldn’t be much fun to come back down.
The lights were all on in his house. Essa was standing by the kitchen window with the phone in her shoulder. She was washing the dishes. I stared at her. She had one thin braid sliding down the side of her face, just touching at the corner of her eye. It was the imperfection that drew my attention. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, didn’t know who she’d be calling. The police in Chesaw; the ambulance. For more light and screaming. Oiled metal hinges.
I got in the truck and drove off. Three hours plus pulling over to the side. The wind was getting harder. Even more in the dust. I drove hard, imagining that it was my heart in the pistons, shattering over and over in the surging exploding never sleeping power. The trees bent the beams from my headlights around their branches. In the future, all our greens will be more vivid. And you won’t be able to see it. Not with naked eyes, not without consumer surgery. Just an old kid from Virginia. Nothing got back to me. I couldn’t see.
It would have right if I had flipped and crushed my spine, severing my brain from body. Would never be able to put their faces further than the bridge between my thoughts. But it was nothing flashy. I just hit a drainage ditch and heard something scrape and tear out from the bottom of the truck. There was a flashlight in the glove box. I took it out and peered under the chassis. Nothing I couldn’t fix in the barn. But not out here. I didn’t know how long I had been driving. Long enough to take me all night to walk home.
I kept my eyes up the whole time, thinking maybe his light would echo back to me, and maybe this second time I could be happy for him. The second time it would be warm light, not incinerating hot. But the god-damned universe is unresponsive; you say, Hello, and you can wait forever for the sound to make it back to you. But if it does, it won’t be in response. It will come up behind you, take you by surprise, tear the fucking ears right off your head. Didn’t know you had it in you, did you.
We’ll all be long dead by the time he makes it back. Not even mistress moon bothered to reply. She just sat there in the cold sky, pulling at the tides. My heartbeat slowed to the rhythm of my steps. I made it home in time for breakfast. No one was awake. I mustered a little enthusiasm, like before, and killed myself straight to sleep.
#
Kelly
I’ll feed you more when he turns the light out for me. He does when he goes out.
They made me go to bed. Not just dad, like sometimes. Go to bed, Kell. No, it was both of them, one after the other. Because it was nine.
Nine died, too. I didn’t look at him enough and now I really don’t want to. I buried him out back. He didn’t get a cross or nothing. I didn’t want to have to look at it. I’ll forget where I buried him. I even asked Essa to make the grass grow over him. She wouldn’t do it. And she wouldn’t teach me how. She just looked at me funny and told me to go to bed. Not then, but after.
I’m tired of going to bed. I don’t get sleepy. My blankets get all hot when I lie still for too long so then when I really am ready to go to sleep I’m too uncomfortable to do it. Then I need a drink of water.
Last night, I went into daddy’s room to ask if it was all right. He wasn’t there, but that’s a so what. I called over to Essa’s house to ask if it was all right. I let it ring fifteen times. And when she answered, she said, May I already be a winner, and dad made a chirping strangled noise in the background. It might have been a laugh.
He shouldn’t turn off all the lights when he goes over. It’s hard to find our place in the dark. There’s the hill back near somewhere where Nine got buried and it looks black at night and our house looks invisible in front of it. I tripped over the porch last night and it got me with a splinter. Not one of the ones that sticks straight up and down that you can grab. Going to sleep didn’t help that, either. Like they think it will.
What did I learn about today? She didn’t take me to school, now. I learned that when you bend grass over it doesn’t break. I learned that spiders can tell you’re not a fly when you play with their webs. I learned that there is a pink moon. Dad left his music out. I didn’t spend that much time outside. I sat real hard around the launch site and concentrated just on one little piece of dirt but it didn’t even turn a little green. I let my eyes go crossed and tried not to blink until the colors in my eyes were jumping around and dancing and things started to disappear and I thought, This is what it feels like, but still nothing happened. So I went back inside to listen to daddy’s music. He was with her.
They want me to go to sleep, always. Because I’m not supposed to cry when I get a sliver. That’s a lie. I saw daddy crying. It made me stop.
He called me smartie. I hate that. I hate that he touches my hair when he says it. I hate that the blankets smell like heat and make me cough and it’s all my fault. I could run away. I tried that once. I didn’t get very far. It took the whole day. The house was invisible when we finally got back. I woke up just enough to pull my nose out of his flannel and see that I couldn’t see it. That morning he started out calling me princess and ended up calling me sweetie. Oh he doesn’t give a damn about me. I think I’d better go to sleep. Besides, I’m having to write smaller now. You’re getting full, my pet poem, and I think it’s just about time to put you away. Where every word means something, she said.
It’s not that bad tonight. Kinda cold. And the blankets smell like it. I’m going to go to sleep, and sleep like I did when he carried me home. They can’t tell me to fuck off when I already am.
I’ll feed you more when he turns the light out for me. He does when he goes out.
They made me go to bed. Not just dad, like sometimes. Go to bed, Kell. No, it was both of them, one after the other. Because it was nine.
Nine died, too. I didn’t look at him enough and now I really don’t want to. I buried him out back. He didn’t get a cross or nothing. I didn’t want to have to look at it. I’ll forget where I buried him. I even asked Essa to make the grass grow over him. She wouldn’t do it. And she wouldn’t teach me how. She just looked at me funny and told me to go to bed. Not then, but after.
I’m tired of going to bed. I don’t get sleepy. My blankets get all hot when I lie still for too long so then when I really am ready to go to sleep I’m too uncomfortable to do it. Then I need a drink of water.
Last night, I went into daddy’s room to ask if it was all right. He wasn’t there, but that’s a so what. I called over to Essa’s house to ask if it was all right. I let it ring fifteen times. And when she answered, she said, May I already be a winner, and dad made a chirping strangled noise in the background. It might have been a laugh.
He shouldn’t turn off all the lights when he goes over. It’s hard to find our place in the dark. There’s the hill back near somewhere where Nine got buried and it looks black at night and our house looks invisible in front of it. I tripped over the porch last night and it got me with a splinter. Not one of the ones that sticks straight up and down that you can grab. Going to sleep didn’t help that, either. Like they think it will.
What did I learn about today? She didn’t take me to school, now. I learned that when you bend grass over it doesn’t break. I learned that spiders can tell you’re not a fly when you play with their webs. I learned that there is a pink moon. Dad left his music out. I didn’t spend that much time outside. I sat real hard around the launch site and concentrated just on one little piece of dirt but it didn’t even turn a little green. I let my eyes go crossed and tried not to blink until the colors in my eyes were jumping around and dancing and things started to disappear and I thought, This is what it feels like, but still nothing happened. So I went back inside to listen to daddy’s music. He was with her.
They want me to go to sleep, always. Because I’m not supposed to cry when I get a sliver. That’s a lie. I saw daddy crying. It made me stop.
He called me smartie. I hate that. I hate that he touches my hair when he says it. I hate that the blankets smell like heat and make me cough and it’s all my fault. I could run away. I tried that once. I didn’t get very far. It took the whole day. The house was invisible when we finally got back. I woke up just enough to pull my nose out of his flannel and see that I couldn’t see it. That morning he started out calling me princess and ended up calling me sweetie. Oh he doesn’t give a damn about me. I think I’d better go to sleep. Besides, I’m having to write smaller now. You’re getting full, my pet poem, and I think it’s just about time to put you away. Where every word means something, she said.
It’s not that bad tonight. Kinda cold. And the blankets smell like it. I’m going to go to sleep, and sleep like I did when he carried me home. They can’t tell me to fuck off when I already am.
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Essa
I’d do a lot of things to keep the world from emulating television. I’d take a shot, for or at anyone you’d care to name. I’d write the most persuasive letter in the language. I’d certainly stay up all night pretending to listen to a crazy melting man. Bernard just wouldn’t leave. He was this close to handing me a whip and asking me for thirty-nine lashes. I kept telling him it wasn’t his fault. I kept to myself that worse things have happened.
He wouldn’t shut up. He apologized, and kept on apologizing until he had run out of clichés. Then I made him a cup of tea and tried to make him believe that, even though I don’t give a damn about him, I like when things are calm between us. Not in so many words.
The tea didn’t stay down long. I took him into my bedroom and put him to sleep before cleaning up his mess. Can’t cry in a full face of ammonia solution. Can’t help but gag.
When I was done, the house was quiet. For the first time, quiet. And all the time in the world to think.
I slept on the couch.
Continue to part 3…
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