A few good women and men were still floating around the rooms of the home, cloth tape measures hanging on them, sniffing the aroma of coffee in the morning.
"He was sleeping," Sherry assured.
Finger pointed at, "(i)They even put zippers on some of Nana's old dresses."
"Good as new."
"The weather girl's here Daddy!" A little boy in a suit whispered something to the man still in his pajamas. Other kids demanded to know the secret. The man started laughing and stifling the laugh at the same time. "He said," laughing to hard to talk, "She's the first one that, that," he sat up straighter and his belly button disappeared behind the buttons, "She's the first one that doesn't sound like a husky."
On the way to shower he said, "I think we should let the kids interview her."
"So, Diane is it?"
"DamBIT." The hat full of coins dropped onto the cement porch floor. Kids in Sunday clothes scrambled every which way after the rolling ones. A penny landed on the baby's foot. Wooden spoon windmilling in the air, (i)You kids, I mean it now, put all the money back in the hat. We don't need those peoples' money.(i)
"DAHT HAHT," the long black finger pointed at the flopper. The black woman had turned at the waist from where the top step had tripped her up. "STUPID STEP!" One little girl admonished the step.
The whole week had been a landslide since we missed the Odd Day for getting gas. By Sunday Daddy made us walk to Mass. Even though the Mass was Holy and we got blessed, the quietness of the growing-town-sometimes spooked us. By the time a third black person dressed in white stepped out of bushes we'd passed Daddy got hushed for being paranoid and then coo'd with a (i)don't want you to scare the kids(i). "I'm scared Daddy," arms on hips then crossed and a shake of the pigtails had him picking up the baby girl. "That one's walking funny," a brother said like a ventriloquist. "Nobody look."
On the fourth day of the half a woman (since the second night) being on the steps, we thought she was asleep. Mama's barefeet snuck her towards the mailbox. A hand shot out from the full-breasted torso and clamped around her ankle like a shackle. Most everyone screamed.
Mama's not strong yet again heart showed on her face to be sloping down to her stomach. One kid (i)whooped and shazamed an Indian holler(i) walked as if on the high diving board, faster almost running, then launched to another kid's, "AIM FOR THE POOL!!!!!!" Hand let go of Mama and caught the kid. Threw him like a spider monkey. Others crept from inside the house and shouldered mama inside.
A gloved hand with blade fingers caught the sun near the pine tree. "That's the sweater guy," a taller but younger kid kept a hand on mama's shoulder so she wouldn't get up. Mama reached an icy cold hand up and put the corner of the brown curtain over her face. "Why you doin' that Sher?" A kid asked. "Embarassed I got scared," she said.
"I'll use my 'lowance," a kid put a coin in an empty cut up Janitor In O' Drum bucket. Opened the fridge. And poured a shot glass full of orange juice. "Daddy's," kid told the fridge guard. "But mommy needs some."
"Make her drink it," one kid in underwear and a big leather belt with a GI Joe knife sheathed ordered. Kid padded back to the fridge. Another coin dropped through the masking taped slit. "What's that for?" The guard demanded to know. "A little scissor birdie tole me the nurses are back from overseas. I'll wait to give them some." Guard shrugged and bit at calloused skin where a finger nail had turned black and fallen off.
Kid went out the back door after unlocking seven locks.
A coughing and (i)weeeee-ing(i) sound outside had people peeking. The half woman was sitting up and sipping the OJ. The kid had put on a wool nurse's cape and nurse's hat.
On the fifth day Daddy put a bathrobe over the half woman when she was snoring hard.
And the seventh day was almost over when mama got an idea. "Is it a Lucy idea lady?" A friend of the fridge guard asked. Mama frowned. "You bigger boys better stay away from (i)my(i) daughters."
"Which ones are yours?" Asked a boy in dyed black overalls.
"All these are mine," she waved a big spoon at all the children and licked the last taste of brown sugar from it. "Good to know," the boy put his thumbs in the overall suspenders and locked his hands together.
She lashed together all family bathrobe ties and tested it as a lasso.
It wasn't automatically doing any good to blame it all on spoiled children, or stupid parents, or even politics. It was going to take some masterful connection work between life and physiology.
Dr. Phil was the guy, but he wasn't so sure at first. And immediately suggested to turn things around the world was going to need more than one TV problem shrinker. Many agreed. For all sorts of reasons.
"Oh. Really?" The man looked through his very large eyeglasses and thought about this. Someone like Phil Donahue. Someone with real education. Someone who had boisterous children less worried. "Really?" The man asked again. "Yeah!" One kid blurted. "Now the secret stuff gets to our mom and she believes it!"
The man took up his worn Bible from the podium. "Well I'll, I'll have to find out about this." Someone took his Bible and put it in his briefcase sachel. Handed him his tweedish jacket. "And I'll, I'll have to get my doctor degree!"
"Really Charles?"
"Absolutely."
And (i)that(i) was what was being henpecked.
"Hey, kid, scramoosay. You're wearing out my actors."
"Just back from Barundi Sir, how can I be of service." A man put a hand in a pocket and yanked on a backpack strap weighing on the curve of his spine.
"Oh good. You're back." A woman strode nearer to the men mostly in black tie outside of the ballroom/community center. "What's all this about bodies?"
"Bodies?" The man asked the woman quizically.
"Perhaps NEXT TIME they should check the GUEST LIST first," a usually reserved man said to whomever was left in the agreed-upon-named activity room. Another woman took a magnifying glass out of a bike messenger bag and spied the man's sleeve. "What by God has your temperature up?" She asked him.
He didn't answer. The sweat dripped off his gleaming forehead onto an almost ancient tuxedo jacket.
"It's a good idea kid, but I have to tell you," the child who'd been outed as "a girl" by a traveling group "big brother" stared at the supposed Director-of-Everything. "Does she understand a lot of English?"
Nobody knew.
The man pulled a magician's scarf from a tuxedo pants pocket. He used it to pose hands into shadow puppetry. He pushed himself off sitting in a yoga pose on the floor and flew hands into a well lit section of the crowding hallway. "Bird!" The child guessed. The man nodded emphatically.
"It was really, truly (i)my idea(i)," the taller child said behind the man. The man used the scarf and moving his hands to pause the bird mid-flight and step aside so both children could watch the show.
"It was the great idea," a tall, moustached man said firmly as he approached the wall poetry.
"I agree," said another woman in the traveling group.
"Diplomacy went so much smoother by inviting the humanoids to participate."
The taller boy jolted into facing the tall, moustached man. "Like the bird, right?!"
"Peace dove?"
The shadows glided into reaching for the heavens and rolling in ecstasy, smooth, and languid in the air. "Yes. Peaceful," said the puppeteer. "Until a group acting on behalf of some wild artistè was ordered to secure heads for some sort of ground animalé."
"And then what happened?" The girl child asked.
"Only Heaven knows. I was getting ready for this very most important show. Right here, right now." He dropped his hands and started folding the scarf. He gave it to the taller boy. "You won. Congratulations."
A young guy stabbed the question like a flaming torch at someone who'd opened a pretty bare cupboard in the kitchen.
"Maybe. Hungry. No."
"I think you are."
The person took a box of macaroni out of the cupboard, put it next to an old stove on a cracked counter. Opened lower cupboard doors searching for a cooking pot. "So you (i)think(i) you know me?" A small thud on the counter top indicated the salt had turned moist, then hard. Tap water turned on to fill the pot ran a reddish brown. "How did it get like this?"
really old now. Let's just make it a nice atmosphere (i)for them(i)."
Someone had rented the space. Though on the outside of the building, it looked delapidated, maybe even abandoned. Some of the neighboring buildings were "crack houses" and overcrowded people boxes.
It was one city block in a world grid of megacities and sprawling cities and rundown metropoli that population-wise wasn't really like a city anymore.
US Agencies had worked together, at least in a traffic coordination way, to allow the unsettled to go through and the residents to "place up".
Some middle agers had teamed up with other "boomers" to transport and keep safe parents and grandparents who needed somewhere to be.
Warring had taken a turn. In the streamlined processes of trying to contain the hot wars, there was a period of blurred lines and a brutality getting the upper hand in the fighting. Civilians were getting killed. Some were even being targeted. The all-hands-on-deck had many people in "bridge positions".
A nationwide not yet digital social networking was counterweight to sheer panic and a more blind than "seeing" approach to calming down as a country.
"One day at a time," someone kept whispering hoarsely to a vigorous, "but, but, but". A binder of big picture about drug fiends and having no money in a quicksand environment was passed around. "It is life and death that everyone in this shelter stay in this shelter until daylight."
Limited supplies were shared.
painstaking process for all of the people involved in the so-called culture wars." Nobody had paid the volunteers to say such things. They were people who'd largely passed through the "like" or "dislike" phase of vetting candidates, and many had also gone through the guts of the standing question (i)what does it mean to be American?(i)
There were others "keeping their nuts" behind little tables. A lot had been deemed "crazy" and "abusive" for speaking their minds. "There's a lockdown on sanity chica," a passing through bestie of a friend of a friend, but nobody's cousin, high-fived someone else who'd stayed sober through an estrangement process. "What are they selling over at the tables?"
"Not really licensed to sell anything and a lot of them got laid off, but some volunteered to brag on the orgs that survived."
A gaggle of crowd straggled through the all-recycled-materials park. Cooperatively owned by community, mostly local, but with some corporate sponsorship.
"Yah, it's all (i)staged(i) for actual political people to bulldoze or (i)TAKE OVER(i)," a hot-headed woman chucked her workbelt into the back of her pick up truck. "I don't think that will happen Lupè."
"Don't even turn around here come the invisible masses." When the Human Resource person did turn around, the hot-head drove off. The scene stayed calm and all kinds of information was exchanged.
The typewriter dinged. The page was carefully pulled from the carriage. "How much?"
"That was a freebie."
"Starter resumé?"
"We finished up those. We're on to starter paragraphs of newspaper articles."
"What?" A long-lashed, heavily eye make up'd woman in an expensive dress shirt and construction helmet blinked and blinked as the pause after the question was demanded.
"Of course there's no guarantee that any of these party papers will run community concerns, but..."
"What?" The woman said again.
"Lookah, I fill up page. More?" A person had already block printed the front of the piece of paper. An assistant to the typist showed the blank back. The person smiled. Licked a half a pencil and stuck the pencil behind ear.
Kept creeping out of the treeline and snagging left behind items from a series of "conferences" that were, more or less, on the tail end of a rubberband shotputted at administrative people tasked with explaining (i)budget, no budget(i).
Orgs the world over were suddenly and for truly like the emperor with no clothes.
The guy grabbed a broken waisted corn husk hula skirt. He shook it. "Why are you shaking it? What's the meaning?" A small and tidy Asian woman asked. Before he answered, "I like the sound," he debated tying the response into the trend of rebirthing our mythology.
"My daughter (whom he'd been spying on) wants to marry a white man. Think I could convince her to go with this as the wedding dress?"
"It's hard to understand you with the fangs in your mouth." His woman friend had been filling the car tire with a can of air when he emerged from the crop of woods around the open air "conference center". "And you owe me twelve dollars."
"For the air? I could've done it myself!"
"Coulda, shouldah, woulda." She looked at a long string of spit between the guy's mouth and the fangs in hand. Shook her head at the sad state of the world. Stood up and said, "For ruining my eye makeup puttin' it on your face like that."
Of course there are crocodiles in the doorways and at desks.
There are orbits on horns and sharp angles.
There are representations of fragmented institutions, memories of iterations, there's recall of what was, and real unknowing of what will be.
"Not going to mourn."
Sort of a soldier's stand I guess.
Tinged also with the ocean current of deeming and being deemed (i)savage(i).
Fire or ice, there's transformation either way. And for some that is what to (i)war for(i). What to (i)rage and rail(i) against.
This is why (i)loyalty(i) and degrees of dying for willingness and so much confusion about standing for something.
Troubles.
