Our mother said when she got down in there. Poor Uncle Tito, a little person was wailing.
"YOU MUST!!!!!" My mother had grabbed the man's tie and pulled his face towards her as a commuter train made wind speed carry voices away.
"Find a RADIO"
ONE OF THE MAN'S LEGS WAS STILL TWITCHING
But the roar and rumble of Americans joining as political parties, with judge and jury safe, and people with roles and duties working in spite of injury, began to rapidly crumble "infrastructure".
People kept on with the kamp and cool hand and the casual quips.
"I guess we know how many people it takes to turn an up yours into a subway."
"Is that like the tube?"
We all stood looking down at the top of the train from the platform.
The "activists" were caught. Spit all over us. "Fuck the high speeders." More spit. A woman in a full black body robe was tackled. First by private school kids. Then by other commuters. At train stations across the City similar take downs were occuring.
"Don't be vigilantes," a lean, strong clancyman warned a gaggle getting off another train. "We needed a real surveyor out there," a tall hansome man explained. The conductor started to back that train up.
Cops started arresting everyone in the vicinity. "Gather 'round," a Suit ordered. "I want witnesses and observers."
The President rubber masks were pulled off.
Lolita." The blossoming boyman had taken a hat in the nuts. And as he regained his composure in a full spectrum of color face he grabbed the item to be inventoried and gruffly pushed the kid's shoulder.
Moments earlier we'd had a viewing of a world class circus, no ordinary circus, with some Opera that even included seeing a real gymnast on a swivel bird perch swinging contraption. She held perfectly still even as they attached wheels and bumped up a box truck ramp. As she was getting arrested the hat had become a futbol. We were getting good at the Everything Game, pre real sports games.
Taller sons patted short, weathered jockey Dads on the back as numbers were unvelcro'd from their backs.
"Why the leymahn?"
The answer was codedly answered in every language including braille.
"Always love you the BEST true response."
"To new products we're
"Readying for marketing
The man didn't want to turn around in his Speedo. He peeked over his shoulder. "Dunno." He winced. Too tight. Turned partway around, "Looks like a Kraut Cap," he breathed in deeper than deep as someone pulled the cake box string attached to the waist of the slacks he'd put on.
A black chest in front of him was opened and a viewing slot in the back of the doored part slid open. "Blech, blich, cough, blocch, BLOCK, suck, hold, cough, cough," a monicled eyeball the color of a lion's fur looked through the rectangle. The slot shut. "Tooooo FAT," a tiny stunt woman's voice said as she zipped herself into a tuba suitcase.
planning Carolina. Production schedules were taking on weight and muscle.
"We'll storm them when we get there," a lankifying refused steroids yet-to-feel-hansome boyman said of
Some kind of convention
And Mom's gonna get to see the Pope
"I already did," Sherry called out passing through the family room collecting socks for the laundry.
There was a funny clicking sound on the landline. "Aright, well, I love you guys."
"We love you too." Whooo. Whooo. Whooo, the youngest brothers pitched in some positive energy.
Some of the men joked about it as the hot dogs were wrapped in tin foil and the BBQ turned into a softball game. Sherry untwisted an elastic on the airman's goggles that she'd found in her travels for some of the kids' WW1 Red Baron hats.
Can mine be a scientist's? A short curly-haired girl asked. "Okay honey."
"And how about that elevator?" A taller than average man lit a cigar and puffed out his question.
"Look at the time!" A parent showed a bare wrist. "Homework Hour!" Another remembered.
started to lurchtip nosedive people could hear creaks and groans and
Damnit
Gigantic fans came on to simulate open air cabin pressure
Oooooo
Not too bad S
Suddenly the "sounds" blared.
I don't like that.
The front end of the plane started bucking.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Jeeeeez.
It almost backflipped.
That's when the eggs rolled and flew and dropped and mostly cracked.
I say mostly because people had "tucked" some to demonstrate special protection capabilities. The cracked eggs on the heavy metal ridged platform stopped a moustached man in his tracks just before it was lights out.
So many "popular" choices and options were "tied" in preference.
That turned out to be "a good thing" but not before a potentially hot thing (hot good? Travolta asked of a sauce for an "ad" audition) would test our grits and nettles.
Everyone in The City in the States had gotten so busy trying to be great, we almost zoomed off "into the future" without tying up loose ends.
And, computering was outpacing human ability to even observe let alone co-participate in the action.
Some people were in a necessary time of reflection as per coached by advisors and clergy.
I asked him again as he shut the cockpit's accordion door behind him and went back to the midsection of the plane.
The answer was still no. I could not marry that boy, he stood up and pointed, and not that one and not that one either. He pointed at an uncle. "Oh Daddy. You are the cruelest man on earth."
"At least I'M STILL ON EARTH," HE plunked back down into his seat and crossed his arms so hard and fast he punched my mother in the face by accident.
The engines started. The stewards and stewardesses situated and we started to roll. I was staring at the back of my awful father's fat head, stubborn old man, my boyfriend whispered.
The front of the plane went. We did not.
midday exchanged nerf footballs. News makes some of them drink. Our father sat on the edge of the bed pulling his neck tie off and putting sneakers on at the same time. Their bedroom door was closed quietly behind her. "Where do you think you're going?" He rattled off helping-the-kids-chores and a neighbor's honeyDO list. She proposed a vacation. He and all the grownups in our circle were regimented, timely, respectful of others's workloads, and polite about it all whatever it was.
It took days to get the whole truth out between married people and families.
We lost track of time. It was after a Miracle Christmas, and our toys were a mix of a few special new and all the stuff we'd collected to be a "working family". Sherry had started to get dressed. "FAHNcee," the princesses agreed about mama's homemade-but-you-couldn't-tell skirt. The Morning Show suddenly got broken into.
It seemed like the first word people were able to first process was hostage
Did they just say hostages? The chaffeur who'd been hearing stories about "the hood" all night just came into the house when he saw that we had a television. My mother had turned to get her purse at the same time. They bumped heads. A police detective walking back to the yard that still needed to be "swept" spit his coffee out when Sherry wasn't still sitting where she was supposed to be.
Because we'd hung out around our mom when she was almost ready for work she had staticky hair and her bathrobe over her work clothes.
the pink foamy kind
But we were like people in Babel. This was way before quasi-sciences had proof, and thetecould be casual collaboration in fluid situation. It was years before terminology like "PTSD" too. But friends and colleagues worked through the seeming "continental divide" between creativity and fact-making. Dropping chemical weapons on us and blitzing "crowds" with confusion-making ordinary-looking objects only made matters worse for a while.
People kept working on books and movies to help explain things after things had happened. But because there's continuation in concepts like ethnicity and warring, an actual exploding gas-filling-an-area basketball was a turning point in how we had to understand ourselves as a "nation" in a world of nation and territory and all that people and place--cultural--stuff.
We had chains of command in every not alone. And "emotional care" teams of counselors and analysts. We dialed it down intergenerationally.
so that we could start to feel safe again. Families were being reunited and in some cases introduced to each other. A lot of photographs had to examined since we had language barriers that made communications sometimes awkwatd, sometimes comical, never really "easy". People circulated lists of words in general use and some were greatly enhanced by all the learning people had done. Some young people who'd gone to school felt behind the people working in "fields". Group conversations took on, almost an elimination process per peoples' comfort levels and "audience".
After they'd dug up hoarded munitions and found dead bodies and archeological stuff that hadn't originated in our neighborhood, people definitively got less friendly,. And many moved away. This led to arguments among service people and "the news" too.
Sometimes reporters who'd been covering their "beats" for a lifetime were "in the middle" of it. Some shifted their literary work. Some struggled with not writing anymore. But lots of people got even more fierce about what are you saying.
"It's not political."
"Well, it's not religious."
"Is it a military thing?"
"Historical?"
"Maybe it's uncategorical."
"Yeah. Maybe that." A policeman's hair had turned white at something that had happened. Parents, teachers, and neighbors went through a group process of sorting information and categorizing the nature of the crime.
it's just a fucking parking lot mahn."
They'd gave chase but didn't veer off. Wedged the fucking ship in between apartment buildings. Then
My black sister slammed a talking text machine shut and was about to throw it over the pond but clutched it like a throat in front if her and shook it and put it in mama's long coat pocket.
It was a sub
Rammed it wedged
Now we're stuck in this Godforsaken place ahg
Still
There's always tomorrow.
That's what they swore to Anashtazhia.
The thing rang. One hand twisted the coat pocket into a knob and held it out from her thigh. An arrow shot through it. She shed the coat. Cammo fatigues. American flag patch on arm. Follow those thighs, a voice unseen ordered. Another everybody's Dad grabbed the woman squarely by the shoulders. "I need you to focus," he said looking into her face. She nodded gently. The man stepped out if the way of the collected helpers.
Giving lectures.
"How do you feel?"
One asked about the impending weather. One turned at a right angle and said, "I just got scalped motherfucker. How would you want me to feel?"
shut their doors behind "the kooks".
Because inside picas and metres and maps and screens and degrees of ink had to be synchronized with radio and TV images.
It took many moons to show secretaries the who, what, where, and why of as many American situations as there were Americans.
After that I had to retire from that service, a hansome man in a cottony casual shirt with no buttons was explaining to young men and women when he saw his. He put the teeth bridge into the gap of his lower teeth. A finger with sandy hair near his knuckles tapped his jaw, all steel. A military cadet coming across the brick sidewalk barely glanced over at him. The cadet tapped on his watch.
The secretary sat with one nylon'd leg over the boot on the ground other leg on a concrete bench. The man in the cottony shirt had waited to hear the hourly chimes when people were allowed to move around the cabin freely so to speak. Then he crossed the quad while reaching under his shirt. He was tackled in a heartbeat. The secretary went away.
Marbles shot out of the man's mouth "THE MOJAVE".
"HE'S AWAKE."
A girl with a messy pony tail stood up and put a finger in front of her lips and shooshed "everyone?"
She sat back down straightened her slacks and put her head on his shoulder. "What is it Daddy?" She stood up and pulled a long skirt up over her slacks. Pumped at the ponytail with a dancer's hand that should've matched a double hip thrust. A gorgeous man pulled her from behind into the airplane's aisle. Another woman pulled her slacks down as the the man rubbed her tummy and hugged her close to him from behind her. Wanna keep dancing baby girl? She turned on a dime and smackef him in the face. Don't you dare. Don't you ever. Don't you He grabbed her and started dry fucking her. But she turned her head towards a wink from the man with the marbles in his mouth and yawned. She twisted out of the fuck by corkscrewing herself out of the slippery skirt.
Where the Gonzo muppetpuppet had been stowed, the trash can box door opened. A pink mohawked punk pulled me inside. Smells of leather and bubble gum. Smells like a boy the hooded ones had decided in a broom closet eons ago.
"Swap?"
A change of backpacks.
The man who the secretary Waaasz in dah hole?"
The man who the secretary was sent to not interview talked funny.
The secretary had to put an explanation as to why on the form. The golden braids on navy blue sleeves pushed mandible back into place. "I gueff ooooo thay," he took the leatherbound datebook from her and a boy in front of him turned his back so it could be a desk. He wrote: bridge missing.
Steady handed to her slight tremor.
He handed back the leatherbound but put the gold pen in his executive's breast pocket. Then he took it out again, held it like a pendulum in front of the boy's eyes. Awwfayszt heck eyeszt
"I'll need that to record the story."
"Ooooft," he stopped giving the pen back and put it back in front of the frozen still Peter Pan. Took a big popsickle stick out of an outer handkerchief pocket and tried to say, open your mouth, but his head tremored and his knees buckled and he collapsed. The secretary dropped both leatherbound books and fell on hands and knees looking down at a man with a melting face.
"That's not acting." The skinny-legged husband told the cold personality General sitting in the director's chair.
"It's not LATE," she kind of curtsied or more like moved her ass out of "the customary greeting" as she handed a sachel of film reel to a boiling hot personality. She peeked at the editing room behind that bitch saw a half drank OJ and asked, "May I finish that?"
"You're not welcome to stay."
The secretary reached for the OJ. Forearm smacked.
A gaggle of gagged people were being led away. Stern, straight-backed, crispy clothed people were being led in. The last one in the line entering the cubicle round handcuffed the smacker. Shoved the woman's face up against a bullet proof garage parking booth window. The secretary waited until both cuffs were on then took the OJ, went in front of the smushed face and dropped the kids lunch orange juice into the open backpack. Bombs away, she mouthed.
Up flights and flights of stairs the golden emblem on the sneakers never stopping.
A rap on a door. The sneakers tiptoed away.
The door started to open. The silver belt tip on a black alligator boot stuck out. Straightened itself perpendicular to the hallway then swiveled in a horseshoe shape. The door was pushed open further by a hairy arm with one medical bracelet on it. Sherry sat back from kneeling with the boot on a stick that had a screwed on swiveler.
walked down the set street. Frankensteins of time period and style. One stopped and like an elderly person put a hand on the forearm of the other. I smell her muda perfooooom. The one with a hand put on backflipped, put a foot on the downed child's chest, and pointed the thickly painted white rifle in his face.
In a real close basement women trying to find heels that fit from a cache of stolen goods heard the tiger roar of the I'm in charge of the, this.
"What was that?" A dressed to the nines very tan woman with an Egyptian wig on sideways asked out loud. She was looking at her barefeet and
Two moms climbed up on a gigantic spool to look through the basement window.
Puuuuuuuul
"Does anybody else feel that?"
A boyman threw the Navy ship rope down. Stood off, heaved in air, couldn't stop laughing. Men rushed over. He bent over stitches in stomach they put a hand each on his back and talked in each ear.
The main in the dress shirt diaper loin cloth yellordered PUUUUUUUUUL
"Waaasz in dah hole?"
The army person didn't look up from the sandy and grimey papers on the clipboard.
The woman in a Russian cakebox fur covered hat and parasol was lifted by two very large hunks of manmeat by them hooking arms under her armpits. She flew like Mary Poppins through the air and landed like a lover mountain climbing a bed of silk sheets. Or like a tree frog against a windowpane before a hurricane.
Two sets of hairy arms clad in various gold bracelets picked up the umbrella and the little lady. She brushed the Victorian skirts off of sand and dried oil grit.
She crossed her arms and tapped a lady's Victorian boot. "Waaasz in dah hole?" She asked again. Her lips puckered. Her hand reached into a waistcoat pocket and she pulled out a compact with lipstick tubes pressed against. A boyman sitting in a lawnchair under a table umbrella spit, out past his mile long legs. He crossed his arms over pounds of gold chains. Pulled feet in tube socks toward himself to slightly bend his knees. Then he sat up, switched chairs, put a ballcap on a little off center, and sounded like a singing gangster when he made pistols of his hands. "Waaasz he do?"
Just then a troupe of international soldiers rounded the octagon field around the air traffic control tower. Marching in unison. One arm stiffly swinging. Rifle spears steady pinpoints from above.
People hopped to
The storyman got under the patio table frame without its glass. A similar looking boy man sat in the first chair. He stood up abruptly. "It waaasz
"The hole?
"Oh that." He waved away all of it with a wave of the hand. "It was the Donald's."
The woman put the compact into her other waistcoat pocket and dropped a lipstick. The tall boyman leaned down, hitting his eyebrow on the table, picked up the tube of lip rouge and put it on a ring pillow before acting like the pillow was a waiter tray. Bending at waist, rising tall, gyrating hand in air to introduce the object back to the woman, "wallah mademoiselle." She plucked the tube from the tooth fairy pillow.
"And who are you?" A real cultural attache inquired.
Act nonchalant.
Nit valiant?
No.
They entered the espresso bar.
A teenage girl with hands on knees like a sportsplayer and butt facing a robed "prince". The man's pants were down around his ankles. She was clothed. He did not seem to think he was. He talked to the butt as if talking to Marilyn Monroe's face.
The people sent to collect the teen because of swift-moving diplomatic changes were dressed as a family of tourists.
A milky haze hung in the air.
An octopus of an ashtray was still smoking on one of the tables.
"Reminds me of a ghost town out west back home," a "mom" in a long jacket with purse strapped neatly across her front ("like a cari-bini"/"was her idea to even play the cop parents") and sneakers ("most up-to-date version or pair or whatevah") said. It was her "job" ("not for a gold bar mind you") to give the next "clue". Man thinks he's still in New Mexico, the grown ups had said of the kidnapped delegates piling up on the tarmac behind the control tower and so inside the shimmering molten heat shield that mostly just looked like a mirror.
It had been abandoned. The limo.
The teenager's hair was cut with a straight razor and a military official in tourist clothing one giant hand mandated the chaffeur cap onto her head.
On one of the planes that had been grounded too long, raising suspicion a neighbor's dad went down the aisle with a pillow case. Waluables? The man somehow blocked tears from coming out of his eyes while he thought of a line. We missed trick or treating. This year. A skinny guy in golf shoes and handcuffs dug into a pants pocket. Dug out a rubbed bending melted, cooled, melted cooled bite-sized chocolate bar and threw it at the man with the pillow case. It bounced off his nose.
people always had questions. Some of the men were just miffed but some were jealous types.
"Write them down on this," one slid a quarter-sized legal pad at the gang of us. "I truly must sleep."
A middle daughter rested on the sofa until she heard snores. Her kneesock blanched white lily feet would be tap dancing and jig pattern memorizing while she rested. I'd giggle and she'd be surprised I was seeing her and she'd fold herself in half by bending her knees and tucking her whole self into her nightgown. "Is she asleep?"
"I tink so."
"I'll take a turn guarding so you can sleep in a real bed."
She patted the seat beside her on the sofa. "Sit and tarry a bit."
"Stop and smell the roses?"
"Cha."
The wall clock ticking would lull us almost asleep and then gong us awake.
Almost as soon as she went on the eleventh gong to sleep in one of the bedrooms, I snuck in and listened to the breathing and snoring. I hate to do it but; I shook her boney shoulder. Her hand snapped awake first and she slapgrabbed my forearm. "How dare you." The daughter was behind me with arms under my armpits and dragging me backwards. I kicked and kicked my heels on the cold slate floor to try and brake my removal. The woman pulled the sides of a cardigan across her bosom and put on glasses from the nightstand.
"Drop that womanchild right this minute."
She did. And I pulled my pajamas under my trenchcoat down from being all bunched up. Then got on my knees and said the Hail Mary out loud, start to finish. She waved off the "overly energetic daughter" with a please excuse us, we didn't know you'd be visiting at this hour. A playing card in between the sides of the keyhole slid over a view.
I marched on knees and sunk my head into her lap. There, there she patted my hair.
"Let's make tea."
In the morning my mother crossed her name off a list. She put her head in the sling of her palm and sighed. Her breathe blowing out made the lost and found church lady's hat with the feathers dance. When she went to the bathroom I peeked into the folder under the list of writer's names. An article about Moslems tipping over a car. I scrambled back to getting to sit in the rocking chair.
"Maybe you might could ask any of them. The question."
"I doubt it."
She unwrapped shredded wheat and broke it up just a little so it wouldn't get soggy.
"Why do you doubt it?"
"Because I can't
"Can't what?"
"Remember something." She unscrewed a jam jar and spooned brown sugar over the cereal.
"What?"
"Not like amnesia, don't worry I'm not turning into your father."
Silence.
"Well, not totally."
"What did it have to do with? What you've forgotten."
"The machetes and the windmill people."
She put milk on her "masterpiece".
"They said a word like interregum or something."
"I didn't hear them say that word."
"You," she pointed the spoon at me, "don't hear everything in the universe missy."
"No, I don't, but I catch a lot of words and impressions."
"Like a fishing net."
My half a cup of coffee was almost empty. "I have a writing thing at the library today. I'll just walk up."
She smiled goofy. "Then I get to play in the workshop."
"All day."
"Until I have to make dinner."
One morning there was a knock on the front double-dutch door. Mom opened the top so the little kids following like me and my shadow wouldn't be seen. There seemed to be no one there. The teeny tiny feathery leathery black lady had turned to go. Mama carefully stuck her head out to view the porch. She's the one 'splains what the Scissorbird whistles, I whispered in mama's ear. The woman turned almost all the way around just as she was finishing putting in her false teeth. "We're here."
The woman fished in a Dr. Suess canvas bag. "What's this about?" Our mom blushed deep dark red. The woman pulled out a pile of little sheets of paper rubber-banded together. She was also putting on her reading glasses as she said, "Prolly a washing machine
"Don't have one."
"Maybe a toaster
"Mine. New. Have receipt."
The woman licked her thumb and looked at the names on top of the invoices/rental slips. "Are you Mrs. Lane?"
"Just an aunt actually. Taking care of that poor woman's children."
"Does she work?"
Mom kicked the bottom of the door and bent down saying, "Oh! Child. Whatever possessed you to run right into the door like that?" She picked up a toddler with a burping rag being held over its forehead. "Gotta go," she hugged the child to her and carefully closed the top of the door.
most of the boys in the vicinity of "home" looked gingerly through Daddy's closet for their manning up moments. Our mother made all the girls be busy.
And we girlrace got good at appearing to ignore them.
Our cousin Pierre picked the cranberry blazer. And Dad who was dressed as a basketball player/referee/bathrobe & slippers/tube sock'd kind of guy had his hands on his hips and was trying to see over Pierre's shoulder at what his fancy had landed on.
Dad sat on the edge of the bed and Pierre in our Pop Pop's chair. A woman in silk running shorts and a sweatshirt "bedazzled" with all color words that read: GO TEAMs. and various cloth tape measures draped down the front of her spoke lowly to Sherry as she pulled the door closed quietly.
"Let's let the men talk. Where's your sewing machine?"
"I'll show you Melinda. And how about a cup of coffee?" The woman got closer and hunched a little bit and put her hand on Sherry's arm. Two steps down Sherry stopped short and drew in a little breath. "Oooops. I told a little fib." She adjusted the washclothe in her underwear through her "peasant skirt from India" and the woman asked, "Anything serious?"
Sherry sat on the step, so did Melinda. Sherry crossed one leg over the other. So did the other woman. Sherry reached a hand up to the railing. Mellie, as we came to call her, put her hand up on the side of Sherry's head. They sat like that. Letting a rush of memories fill in between question and answers. Two almost teens came barreling in from outside, opened the fridge and gulped down all liquids on the top shelf. Then came bounding up the stairs.
Won't ask.
Don't want to know.
Into Dad's room.
Down the steps slowly. Carpet being cleaned, slippery in socks, stocking'd feet, the ladies went into the dining room. Mama flicked on the light. The sight of the chandelier alight brought an ooooooo, and eyes falling onto lace table cloth atop a plastic felt-backed table protector. The woman stood between two chairs. She wasn't much taller than either. "May I sit?"
"Please." Mom pulled a chair out about six inches. The woman looked into her eyes and asked, "Do I seem that tiny?" Sherry's rings hit the table to make a sound, it reached the chair back in a thumb to pinky knuckle distance. She laughed. "What's WRONG????" The middle sister was dressed as a nurse; came in quickly and demanded to know. "She laughed." Mellie thumbed at Sherry. "Not possible," said the black wool caped nurse in the paper white hat.
The middle sister went back into the kitchen and poured two cups of coffee. Mom laughed again. The paper hat would've fallen off if it wasn't bobby-pinned on she poked her head around the corner so fast. "Who's fibbing in thar?"
"Speaking of fibs Melinda," mama caught the woman's eye and held her gaze. "It's not my sewing machine."
"It's not?"
"No. When Ed and I got back to Town." She pulled the chair out farther and they both sat on halfa seat. "Yes?"
"Well, we had to rent our former possessions."
"So, it's a rental?" Mellie crossed her arms and leaned her elbows on the table. From under the table each cloth measure was pulled and rolled so it would fit in a tuna can.
Certain of the girlrace who'd had a taste of life outside the convent took to using rags and cloths for their monthly friend visiting. This so boxes of pads could be used by the service workers. A boy at school wigged out one day when he found a bag of bloody rags. Although "the kind" was not store bought the girlrace would snag an extra when piddling somewhere that had pads in the restroom. This had to be explained to the younger girls as they were getting accused of stockpiling and stealing. But to questions about bodies and hormones, a dreadful silence seemed part of a cover up.
and shadow.
The tallest of us stopped. Hands down release
guns in the dirt
Heads lifting like hot air balloons finding stream.
shafts of sunlight bulleting silty masque of air
The taller hooded, silky velvet dull glimmering now, fell forward on knees from stopping on a dime. Others, figures emerged from large and small tunnels. Squared rocks scraped atop piles of dirt and rubble. Grimey hands thrust out of shotgun framed holes, feeling
Way up, a slope like a pirate's plank, scrambling, fish out of water wiggling back up the hill of platform, a caped person sliding backwards falling heavily, thud. The human chain clinging to each other suddenly broken into an Aframe.
Rumbling gathered like a tornado. Some of the squirming people in the human chain dangled as one side of the Aframe beneath them collapsed.
Seven minutes later dust was still settling, but wooded slats in between us all and the creamy sky were dropping pellets. Pebbles and poop.
People looked at wrists without watches.
A dog whistle was blown. The hooded broom closet people got to feet. A stone sailed low and straight into the taller one's face. It bounced willy nilly near a kid's old lady shoes. Chin jutted. Ear cocked.
Response slow someone somewhere said.
Lip smacking from under the sack hood.
Wants water, was vaants vaatewr.
call this place?"
"The Port of All Times."
Little bands of men in partial uniforms were walking up and down the avenue. Some kids had their nations flags. Mothers asking, Have you seen? Have you seen?
The lady with the almost white blonde hair had been told stay right there. It was like watching a movie on the outside of her sunglasses. What had been quiet had come alive. People were suddenly busy but not doing much of anything.
"Why do you think the people who got shot
"Got shot? I don't know."
"No, listen,
"I am listening
"Why do you think they had street clothes under their kitchen uniforms?"
"Did they?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
I was and then suddenly I wasn't. It was a feeling in the air like looking at a mailbox you've seen your whole life in an earthquake. Like everything was shaking and people had to suddenly do whatever we had to do to not get shook apart.
The woman looked at her wristwatch again and again. "Come on for fuck's sake."
"What are we waiting for?"
"Good question. Let's find coffee." She rubbed her temple, looked at her feet in another woman's boots, and slide one leg a little left about a foot. She waved at a curtain parted like, Hi, right where you left me.
It took us twenty minutes to get past four shop windows. Finally we turned a corner, jaywalked through an intersection, and she slowed in front of a door that didn't seem like a shop or a house.
Inside the furniture was all mismatched. People barely glanced up from what seemed like a paper sea of newspapers.
"What are they doing?" I asked her.
One man with a moustache and thick, thick glasses made a hmmmmm, yep, yep sound before a lot of what he said. A nasally hmmmmm, yep, yep "We are-ah comparING stories."
He looked at us finally and then got to his feet. "What's it like out there Susan?" He came closer. His hand pressing the rims of his glasses closer to his eyes. Real close. Hmmmmmm, yep, yep "And THISS one is AhmeriCAN?"
"I didn't kidnap her or anything. Where is coffee?"
The man clipped his photo loop back onto one of the many strings around his neck and hooked his arm around hers. And they went towards the kitchen.
"Is the sausage on fire?" She asked as we made way into the thick greasy smoky area.
Hmmmmm "It may be but my whole world could burn down now, and I wouldn't mind."
She patted his arm then dove to the little stove/oven and grabbed newspapers to grab hold of the skillet handle. She moved it off the flame. Repositioned the wad of newspaper and took the skillet to the sink beside the appliance and put some water on the smoking heap of meat. The thin bead of water turned the thick smoke to steam and she looked at it closely. "I think we can save it."
From a pocket she pulled a box of matches, relit a gas burner, and used a can opener to open stewed tomatoes. From the can she poured some of the juice into the skillet.
"Eggs?"
The man pointed to a windowsill. A little basket with cloth covering five eggs. As the smoke cleared it became obvious that there were a lot of small appliances and clocks and radios with plugs dangling from every surface. But only one outlet. And what had looked like clothing piled on a chair pushed into a table was breathing. Snoring in fact.
Susan glanced back over her shoulder as she stirred the egg with a fork into the mix in the skillet. Then she directed her voice towards a broom closet. "I guess it'll settle down NOW that the Americans are here."
Hmmmmmm, yep, yep. The man shuffled his heel-less slipper feet to the broom closet. A muffled woman's voice asked, "Tey are?"
The man's hand barely touched the little door knob but it moved almost imperceptively. From inside it turned a little bit more like a question, forward then back.
The heap of clothing lifted then snortcoughed then fell back to rest. Susan put the quiet finger up to her lips.
A grainy whistle blew. Susan's back strengthened tall and straight. The front door opened and shut. The broom closet opened a crack and a dainty finger pointed at me and then beckoned. I silently pointed at myself. The hand made the okay sign. I started to tiptoe toward the broom closet.
Loud European noise-making outside the window. Men, young, playing up having been out all night. One entered the kitchen, took off a neat thin brimmed hat and perched it on a pile of newspapers. Made way to Susan. Stopped and ran his hand through the air around his skinny grayblack jeans and alligator boots like a magician conducting the space between real and illusion. She didn't look at him. He mimed slumped shoulders then, and crying. Then drew his hand way up in the air and made a flying bird wing of it before smacking her ass. That made her jump but it was slow and little, nonplussed.
In the broom closet it was dark. Before my eyes could adjust someone lit a match. A round, round woman in a black veil and shawl was lightly and evenly breathing and snoring. Over her. Swords hung on pegs. Two skinny sets of legs made railroad tracks between the narrow walls. Sitting opposite each other with black flour sacks over their heads and hands tied with rope behind their backs.
He'd placed the backpack radio on the sidewalk, knelt like a knight being knighted, and put up the antennae. A sailor all in white. One man had picked up the little folding cafe table and another had removed the spitoon. "Siddown." One General ordered. Another put his bracleted wrists out of his dark green suit coat, showed both palms and backs of hands, then reached towards to sleepy man's shoulders. The bullish man put up hands to fend his face but the Army man clutched his hands in his own. It looked like they were praying together, then the man was pressed down into the chair. He put his face in his now handcuffed hands and sobbed.
The sailor on knee unpocketed a manual, a folded string of flags, and spoke coordinates into the machine. We heard it before we could see it. Guzzling and gunning sounds. Whoosh. It went by silently. No more people could be seen.
out stiff palm facing forward and bulldozed open saloon doors spraypainted gold. The stainless steel kitchen had fabrics and body fluids on every surface. The stiffarmed man had one piece of medical tape where his nose should've been and his teeth were just a bloody mangle in his mouth. The palm forward broke a man's neck instantly. The man didn't look dead. Just stood there as the blood gushed out of his fat dirty pore nose. Then his eyes rolled back to white and he fell backwards. His head guts splattered on the small tiles. Without looking the skinny man pulled a revolver from his suit jacket and shot six people dead. One slumped but didn't sink. The living skinny man collected guns as he made way back to the slumper. The only one not temple shot. "You gotta problem with what just happened here?" The man's eyes were starting to fill with blood dripping from where the bullet had cut across his forehead. The skinny living man picked up the meat cleaver and cut off one of the slumper's hands. He shook off the suit jacket with the pony on a stick arm and zipped up his black leather jacket. "That's for the gold bars," he said real loud to a deadquiet and cleared of crowd village corner part of the avenue. The woman drove up on a motorcycle. Got off. Removed a helmet that looked like part of the bike, tossed it to the man who donned it and got on first.
"THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT BY CUT," a thinning fat man with binoculars on a strap and a cigar scrunched between his teeth came out of a building across the street from where the motorcycle had stopped. "I'm ah hard of hearwing now too." One man said to the other, Let me look, Jesus, that WAS fast. The skinny man closed his eyes. Still have those eyelashes. "Could be this." The woman opened the helmet face lid and looked. She nodded dramatically. Fished a Brownie camera from the motorcycle and took a picture. The bullet was depressed into skin that had froze and thawed, froze and thawed. The thinning fat man flicked at it with his middle finger. "Ooowie" the skinny man smacked at the hand. Act like lovers, the man warned and moved off.
"Like they're not going to see a golf cart, with it this quiet." The man put his whole hand in his mouth and whistled. A scrappy dog came out from behind a canvas that looked like an alley.
Left, left, straight, knock, straight right, right.
"Did you awaken the prince?"
Never answer. They don't speak to children.
The Sister in all black garb curtsied her head as she stood. "They'll need a fresh set of sheets." Footsteps running past the courtyard arch, long-legged boys playing tag, had the priest handing the cup and saucer to the Sister. Her nerves were vibrating through her hands and the thin china rattled as she forced them together and onto the desk near the phone.
The auburn-haired woman took a deep breath in, held it, then blew the labor pain out slowly. As the priest hurriedly walked towards the courtyard she slightly lifted the long nightgown and her barefeet left sweat marks on the rubbed to polished hallway floor. "Good morning Sister Barbara."
The Sister slumped down into the rolling chair and tucked herself so that the points of her habit were exactly one and a quarter inch from the edge of the desk. She slightly raised her long black skirt and unsnapped a leather band holding a pistol to her thick cottony stockings. "Good morning Miss." The barefeet got close as the woman pulled the shedyule to an angle where she could read it. Out down from one long arm in sleeve and into her palm came the camel-licked glass of hard salt. The items were exchanged.
When Sister Barbara waddled away the woman sat in the chair. "What's the face for?"
"At least Rosemary clears a space for me in the file cabinet."
"Different kind of secretary." The birds chirping. Horns on cars and bicycle bells.
The barefoot nudged my leg. I whispered into the wristwatch now.
"Whose this?"
"A detective."
"What's on his head?"
"It's a graduation cap," the man said of the parachute/kite/jockey outfits pie hat. A whistle blew. A unicyclist came wheeling by and braked in front of the man's dress shoe. Two people did a windmill cartwheel stunt across the hallway.
Not a scuff mark, the auburn-haired woman left the detective in charge.
of the mini-blinds. "That's him," was all she said. Then as the detectives removed the man"s blazer from his head which made him start to bolt in the ankle shackles and he wailed, "Oh. No. I know where I am," she folded her hands in front of her and said, "Let's listen."
What seemed like a long list of fuck yous and fuck hims later. A Four-Star General placed a manila folder on the table shoving him against a wall. "So he don't tip ovah," a uniformed police man explained of his quick thinking.
"What about your wife Mr. X?"
"He hasn't seen me since the poison dart in my ass debacle," she explained.
The man had launched into a scroll's worth of curses against the woman. It was like he couldn't stop. Finally, the woman came out of the room with several children seemingly going to the elevator. She paused and told the room, "I may or may not be any or all of those things. But I know damn well I am not a dirty democrat." A woman officer directed the bunch to the stairwell rather than have them wait for the elevator.
"WHERE ARE THEY?" The man's question echoed in the stairwell.
The tarmac was like a parking garage at that point. Blistering sun had withered the mummy's right side near the window. The corpse of the woman was almost dried and leathery. Bones creaked when they unfurled the hand. A worn broken knitting needle. Both ends had been dipped in ink.
"We better head back."
Two planes back....
The cowboy-gruff man had shoved a handful of marbles into his mouth. A lady in the same row, curved her lip up and her eyebrows into a grimace.
At the bazaar....
Two shoeless tuxedo panted men paid crumpled bills of all nations to acquire cobalt blue suit jackets and a banjo.
"But why?" The younger woman was insisting on knowing. Almost all of the liquid holders had more than one spout. A jet was descending after having been circling the squares of wares. People were sitting, standing, squatting in the open doors. Some were hanging on but their legs were flapping in the breeze that only the front of the plane was cutting through the heat. A barrel-chested man knocked a little folding table over and this clanged against a brassy spitoon as he came awake at the sound of air traffic.
"Move again an I'll shoot 'em all off."
Another man put his gun in his waistband and proceeded to duct tape the bloodied hand to the airline seat. Shards of glass were in the passenger's jeaned knees. His face was blanching.
The flask was tossed into a wastebasket overflowing with yellow and pink forms and carbon paper. The wild eyed man wiped his lips with his arm from the elbow to the back of his hand. He pinched the purse of skin at his elbow because that made a couple of the children laugh almost as loud as the jet engines. The auburn-haired woman straightened the folded edge of her silky shawl along the sides of her face. She studied the man's hands and arms. "Like what?" I bent my head towards her and uncupped one "ear muff". She swatted away a fly, one of many eating on the "hard tack" dumped in a pile in front of the post sachels. "If it was a poem, the drawing, like what? His sunspots."
"Raisins, tar on a beach, cockro
"Almost there," the ear muffs told us.
to be broken, since you asked," the man put his hands together at the finger tips and gathered his thoughts. The coating of dew had begun to melt and drips were making a chorus of sound while the crowd gathered sat somewhat enraptured. "It's that evil is always breaking the rules, so we have to be adaptable to change."
"Are you a cult leader?" A kid asked.
"But not sin!" Our mother chomped on a wedge of green apple with brown sugar on it.
"Exactly!" The man said.
People looked around at each other. A serious-looking teenager known for his inventions and improvements to stuff like go-karts broke his gaze at the man, stared into his coffee, then looked at everyone and said, "Like free thinking or free will which God gave us in addition to parameters." The dew drops were rolling down the back of his jean jacket like lines on a map.
There was a crashing through a thick part of the woods. People just sat and waited. Then three boys in army clothes with rifle stalks opened the vines and found us all. "Did we make it on time?"
"Ah, but what is time?" The macaroni man asked philosophically. "It's a Saturday."
"WHOA...." One of the boys drowning in a helmet breathespoke as he put his glasses on and saw the guts of a tank behind the man. "Now that's a beauty."
After the Weekend Retreat Welcome our mother waited until people were questioned out and the rigid-standing man was again standing alone. She approached. A bunch of us kids came from every direction and joined her. We all looked up at him. "Yes?" He finally said.
Mom put a hand on one brother's shoulder and tried to push him forward to ask. He shoulder-shrugged her hand off of him and crossed his arms. Then he tapped his foot. He'd seen this classic "woman" stance dozens of times at friends' houses. Another brother looked at him and dramatically zipped his own lips shut. Sherry's mouth was sticky and she swallowed as best she could. The man took a canteen from his belt and knocked back a sip and clipped the canteen back on his belt without looking away from us. "What do you want me to ask Mom?" The middle sister crossed her arms and asked. A brother kneed her and she dipped but rebounded. "I see how it is," our mother said. The man was handed a clipboard. "Next activity start time?" He asked without looking at it. "O-700 Sir," a paled skin, pale olive green pants man said and turned and left holding onto the sides of his pants so he wouldn't salute.
A little girl with pigtails walked into the man walking away's leg. "BOOT," she said. She put her hand over her eyes like a salute to block out the sun as she looked way up at him and asked, "Can you help us?"
"Put it back together." The man in front of mama pointed at the teenager. "But it's not ready."
The man unclipped the canteen. Handed it to our mother. "Keep it. You might have communicable diseases." Mama held it away from her like it was a stinky baby diaper. "So might you." A brother grabbed it and opened it, smelled it, and hung it on his belt.
"There's a MANPERSON WITH A GUN," the little girl with pigtails was pulling the other man's pant leg up and down and repeating over and over.
"She's doing everything to win that man's Love."
The older black woman barely looked through the hedges. Her head shook off the bone-weary and her chin dropped back onto her chest. She was memorizing manual after manual.
"Don't you think that's Romantic?" The younger black girl said right in her ear.
"I suppOze." She smiled the size of a piano keyboard and stifled giggling. Shook her head at youth.
"Be more so." The elder black man said it so it could be a wish or a prayer or lead to a sorting of facts.
He was memorizing a Prayer Book. His thick rimmed glasses were melted in little waves on top. The older black woman put the manual on a little pile of already memorized. Sat while turning into on knees facing the younger girl and said, "YES, I THINK it IS romantic." The younger girl sat the same way and they started to play patty cakes.
A different young with graying haired black man waltzed with his "great". She was a featherweight.
"Why YOU keep?????" The whale of a muscled man in train overalls with hands handcuffed behind his back woofed as he stuck his face out--eyes wide open, face back--eyes closed. "Now he's mocking me," a normal looking woman went and told an officer in sweatpants. I'd been looking at the sky. I got up into a crouch, wiped the man's drool with a mama tissue and put my lips near his forehead and hoarsely whispered WATCH!
He sobbed in my pocket. I sat back down on a big rock. "Watch what?" He sobbed.
I looked back at the sky.
Soon I saw the dot. "See it?"
"What's it looking for?" The person with the shotgun had it pointed at us.
"Watch."
The dot got a lil bit larger and larger still.
"Mama's writing a poem," I explained as narrator of the documentary.
"It'll do it," a nerdy man had put his finger in his mouth and popplucked it out to feel the wind.
The dot wibbledandwobbled then gyrated into a triangle of white lined in grey. Then turned back into a dot. Closer still.
"Patrick, look. Come and look." A small kid unsat from atop a car blanket. His face was swollen unrecognizable. A rectangle yellow butt from his forehead over his nose down splitting his top lip. Mama Sherry held out her hand for him to take. Then put vaseline on a QTip under his eyes and on eyelids like pieces of toast. A slightly larger boy took his other hand, Hurry now.
Two lines of drool dripped steady out of Bahloogah Blue's open mouth. Patrick's pitch white hand brushed the patch of flannel on a hole on his bent knee. His pointer strummed up the drool and squashed it into the palm he freed from his brother's hand. He pointed to the sky. "Here it comethz."
The moving dot getting bigger and bigger, turned square then into a stop sign shape, then melted like fancy drapery into two groups. White and gray. People looking at the far away suddenly started covering their heads with arms and hands and that made others scramble into available bushes and behind tree trunks as lines of pigeons steamed to a yacht sail just above our heads. "I hear it," a brother of mine had a conch shell to his ear and the sky. Another had one between an ear and the manhole cover. They all held up a Fonzi thumb until they spied each other and tapped the shoulders of other boys and girls. Each with a "chore".
begrudingly opened up for citizen-besides-police (until more women started making appointments), one of the nicest middle aged men (played organ at church) disppeared into ear muffs, goggles, and gloves. This after over-hearing a teen age boy ask a Sargeant, "Are they still gunning for all able-bodied?"
The Sargeant almost nodded and shook his head at the same time since rotating the head in such a way was often the "most honest" answer. He said, "Son, that's pretty much been the situation since they shot our President." The younger man cocked a thumb towards the quickly ready middle ager, "Even...." his voice trailed off like the secret conversation could be spoken such. The Sargeant walked over to the middle age man and asked, "Would you remove your goggles Sir?" The man did.
"Mama's boys?" The Sargeant said loudly.
"Sir?" The middle ager removed the other ear plug. "Come again Sir."
"Son, have you ever met Lance Corporal Thomas Jenkins?"
"I don't believe I have, Sir."
The Sargeant grabbed each man's shaking hand and looked at the younger man's name on the Sign In sheet and introduced them by making them handshake.
After several sheets of target shooting somebody unseen attached a more 3D version of a person to the line and sent it towards the middle ager. He did not shoot, started to push his goggles up onto his forehead, and let the "dummy" come as close as possible to the shatter-proof glass in front of him. The room speakers clipped on. And the man asked the dummy and his reflection in the glass and the speakers, "Meaning."
A short white-coated man with a school chalkboard pointer (missing its rubber tip of course) appeared through a side door behind and to the stage left side of the dummy. He whacked at it with the pointer. "Gentlemen, this is Roscoe."
Everyone looked. "This is a torso. I believe someone's fine Great Aunt Eleanor donated her, er, um, him to the cause."
The Sargeant cleared his throat in a terrier-sized bark, don't go there, no talking family or politics here fellows. "Anywho, Roscoe here has been dressed today, by a lovely assistant I must say, in half nude, her word not mine, and half a jumpsuit which most everyone calls orange, but which we are going to call," he put a hand into a big labcoat pocket and pulled out a mostly crumpled crib sheet. He drew in a breath. The side door he'd come through opened and a nail polished hand tried to aim and threw a pair of fishnet stockings across the span of targets. These hit the stilled platforms and fell on the floor. The side door closed. Then opened. A lady's voice asked, "Did you tell them the color?"
The man in the labcoat squeezed between the dummy Roscoe and another target platform, plucked the stockings off the floor and shook them in the air like one might shake a fist at God. He opened a side door on the other side of the range and handed the fishnets to a very young officer woman in a pretty basic blue uniform. She put them on top of a beverage tray, moved down the hallway pushing a mail cart, and knocked on another door.
The man football player wove between targets and knocked on the side door. "I'm busy." The man practically pressed his face to the outside of the door while opening it a crack and saying, "That was the receipt for breakfast. From McDonald's. In my pocket. Not the name of this specific or-ange." The man put his face closer to the crack to ask, "Can you hear me?" just as the hand pushed it more open and handed out the crib sheet. The man's hand flew to his instant "fat lip". His other hand took the note. The door closed.
No answer. My mother sideways glanced at my friend's grandmother who'd demanded such a thing. My mother had already slipped a note under the door asking, "Are you in there because you want to be dead or because you want to live?"
"Why did you find atother closet for me to luve in?" Sounds of clanking things being shoved into a banker's box. And a foooock. "That deadline came and fro'd."
Sherry giggled and then covered her mouth. My friend said, "Fro is a poetry word Susan."
You could hear her knocking things off coat hangers as she knelt down and peered through the keyhole of the wooden door. Her good eye asked, "Is that my friend?"
I slapped at the keyhole. "No. It's ma, ma, MY fahfriend."
Sherry showed her left hand to the keyhole. The door was pushed open. "That old cheapskate, gotchya a ring?"
"Said it's for you Susan."
Tears came out both eyes. A long skinnier than skinny arm and hand pulled the door shut quietly.
Grandmother Ginger uncrossed her arms and swung her pocketbook in an arc and landed it on an old stuffed chair. "We'll camp here."
Us girls started setting up the tent.
Sherry went to the kitchen island and got out the lunch bags. She'd carefully wrapped in tissue papers of all colors, tumblers, a mixing spoon and shaker, one bottle of liquor, bridge cards, and the specially made glass with the hardened shellac in it--two fingers worth. She threw the bridge cards in an unlidded trash can overflowing with crumpled up typing paper.
"We're not going to need those to break the ice. We're all friends here."
"Until the other ones get here," Ginger had come over quietly. She crossed her arms. So did my friend.
as you've written it, is my home," the woman let the elevator doors punctuate. I didn't think anybody knew that my physical self, my actual me, had written "the piece". My heart started to pound like a well pump.
Back at the Public Library my writing coach asked me why, why did you call it ugly.
It was in my way.
The only thing in your way is yourself.
No. The World made me have a shitty day and I miss mama and we can see the same sunset on different sides of the world except when there's a big ugly highrise in my way!
We all share the sun, she scribbled on a postcard to a Nelson.
She'd never had one before. So when our mom wasn't in her rocking chair eating cereal, she packed lunches, dressed up "the littlest girlfriend" (the baby sister), and headed to "the woods".
Me and some our-agers beat her there. We stashed our bicycle motorcycles behind a giant spiderweb woven of tree vines. And waited.
Some of the boys working on an in-development tank to replace the one put back into action made wild beastie noises, out of sight but all along one of the trails, and we could see her swerving side to side as the baby sister said, "That scared me. That scared me." She was winded by the time she got to the web.
Oh yeah, a really full day of activities. One of those that had nobody eating dinner until Daddy got the whole truth. And somebody blurted "I saw Mom in fishnets."
Back in the day it'd be hot and boring in some dive. The gameshows re-running on a staticky or lining television everytime a jet flew over. Then some man, usually "a greaser" or "a suit" would enter and go over things (like the night before) in his head. He'd be trying to shake it off and have to decide hair of the dog or
Glances at wristwatches or naked hairy wrists and then a wall. Might recognize somebody of the few sittin' around. And there wasn't an official start to the day until somebody punched somebody in the face.
As "safety" squeezed in between the burbs and the cities back rooms were "tossed". A lot of citizens were choosing communication centers instead. "Yah?? Working TV?? In there?" Pants with polyester. Fashion designers yawned.
At school the lower level got taken over by grumpy, stained yellow and orange, dark and baggy eyed newspaper people.
Up on the third floor Sister Rose had organized Science and Medicine equipment and supplies (including Litmus Paper) shipped from Italy. And grownups and teenagers attending "night school" in some cases were developing forensic everything. From the money trails to stuff on a toilet seat, there was a "process" and hypothesis before anyone could whisper the word theory.
Parents would blanch and sometimes lose their "cookies" out one end or the other as they were called into "offices" to discuss this, that, and the other thing.
Because the wars had rolled into each other there were indescribable pressures on people to not only solve crimes, but to get our nation's integrity back. All along the way there were attending officials to make it known Our Heros were not at fault.
The tall auburn-haired woman in nurse's clothing stood in front of the open door. Every person had to give saliva and nail clippings. Every person had to get caught up on vaccines. Every person had to pledge allegiance, take the oath, and/or have a sponsor. NO EXCEPTIONS.
All color Americans told each other of places. PRIVATE, the fabricator minted another sign and passed it so someone could press it in the tee-shirt making machine. The economic warring turned us simple again. And respecting each others' privacy was a number one rule.
In short order people were raised b people who'd survived WWII, had watched in horror as the Vietnam War wasn't being stopped, were raising families of their own, and were daily up against a "mad" world inundating "nation".
One of the Dad's made it back from around the world to a father daughter dance. A girl he'd known in high school had left a lipstick kiss on his cheek and the color matched his lumberjack coat. He let orphaned girls draw a smiley face near the lips.
All six-foot-something of him stood to see his little girl coming down the church aisle all ready to go in the basement and dance. A far littler girl dashed at the man and pulled the elastic of a macaroni necklace away from her to him. He sat back down on the altar steps. "For me?" He asked. Her Asian parents were tentatively rushing to catch the girl when the necklace broke. Macaronis everywhere. And people bumping heads in the scramble to find them all.
The man's tears plopped on the church tiles. The daughter eyed him assessing...why. "What is it Mr.?"
" I, I," he slipped into sitting cross-legged, "Just. I love macaroni."
"He's tired," his wife said as she looked down at us all. "Too tired to dance. We're going home."
The daughter tied a knot in the elastic, her "brother" (since a month ago) used a big plastic sewing needle to thread the macaronis onto the now
"THAT'S TOO SMALL. SHE'LL SUFFOCATE," a small boy yelled.
"Bracelet," the brother showed by putting it on his own arm.
When we were young no matter what was going on in the world our Mom would get up have coffee and eat shredded wheat with (too much) brown sugar on it. No matter the weather outside she'd rock in her rocking chair, eat, and be there as each of the six of us woke up. Especially in summer there was a vibe of anything might happen. And with imagination and creativity, it was true. The deadbeat vibe of boredom was no match.
It would take us a few weeks to shake our robotic routine mode. But we would work through the stress of doing something different alone and together and be free of the weight of life as a prison cell feeling. Mom refused to let them win because whoever "they" were (making the world boring and dreary) they weren't letting God make rainbows.
The day is what we make of it, was sometimes said out loud as each of us found something to eat and woke up into being near each other in spite of an often ugly world. She wanted to know each person's hopes and plans for The Day and would brainstorm on what could be. "I have an old bench that you could fix up in your workday Michael." Rock, rock, rock. "And I saw princess dresses in the costume closet."
"Indian princess?" One sister would tailor the girls' plan of what to play.
Our mom would take that in and get out of the rocking chair, put the cereal bowl in the sink, and disappear to gather. You could hear rustling as she found all kinds of stuff Indian princesses might need to make the day that.
We were shoved into the same bathroom. "And don't forget to kiss," a girl already getting her tooties bullied. "It's not about kissing," a Kavenaugh said from a foot taller and behind everyone. "It's not?" The shortest kid asked. Someone pointed to the sign on the outside of the bathroom door: UNISEX
"WHAT'N HELL THAT MEAN?" A graham cracker smelling boy asked. A taller twin sister told him not to say hell. Don't even think that word, she warned.
Inside the paint smelled rubbery.
"I might as well take a shit," Kevin said.
"Eeew."
"Everybody shits."
"Good thing you're not in charge of my day."
"What's everybody doing IN THE HALLWAY?" Someone else joined the crowd gathered. No teacher came chasing.
"Gawd, that stinks."
"Wanna look at it?"
"Eeeew."
He grunted. "Shit, shower, and shave. Backwards today."
"Why do you think there's no door on the stall? But it's a longer stall wall."
"Stall wall ball. Having a stall wall ball...." He zipped up then peeked around the stall wall then went back and flushed. Then bee-lined to the sink. "There's soap in here for once."
"You been in here before?"
"Was a teacher smoking room."
"Why does your shit smell so bad?"
Outside with ears pressed to door, the tall Kavenaugh slapped his hand over his mouth to stop laughing loud.
"We only eat poor people food ever again."
"What's that like?"
"Your turn."
"I don't have to go. Either."
"What's it like?"
"The food?"
"No pooping in front of a girl DORK," a Walsh boy had dissassembled the pile spying and pushed in the door.
"Hiiii!"
"Oh sure, light up for him!"
"I didn't just take a dump in front of her."
"I was behind the stall wall."
"Spaghetti night?"
Kevin nodded. And ordered the door shut.
"Is that poor people food?"
"Why?"
"So I can open it for her dumbass."
"I shoulda tought of tat."
"What was it like?" Was the common question on leaving.
everything we hate to become. War mode.
That's why a focus on defense is the first best option. Our sports coaches in Catholic school realized we all cared about each other too much to be effectively winning. They had to make us competitive step by step. Not glossing over each person's stumbling blocks to "progress"....we had no shortage of difference in relationship to competition. But to not be competitive was getting our asses kicked and in the 1970's that had degrees of severity up to and including death.
Plus, depending on where we were living there were also degrees of brutality kind of built in. Being a traveler amongst "friends" I witnessed quite the range of life. And then as world events happened and our "normal" level of "security" changed....a bunch to impact zone, many overseas, some without "men", summer crowds in for the beach weather....duties in the homeland fell to citizens.
One day our neighborhood close to major travel routes (including international travel) was barraged by loophole druggies. It was an awful day to witness. Citizens had been training for all kinds of service work and we had to snap into action again. It's overwhelming to tell whole story....years and years of beseiged by criminality. That one afternoon had people steeped in training but without firearms at that one point in budget decision-making clubbing people. And a lot of the people had been dumped off. Had been "frankensteined". Their organs had been taken. Arms and legs had been taken and replaced with hastily sewn into clothing props and weapons. Some were like robots as "fiends". Frontlines. Infiltrated. People killing people in suburban driveways with yard tools and snow shovels.
Because we'd fallen behind as a nation on crime we had to go region by region on the getting safe.
I'll never forget the night our mom got a phone call warning: KARTOUSH
She put on stripped socks and sneakers with her cut off jean shorts not yet hemmed, slung binoculars around her neck, popped the rest of a peanut butter sandwich in her mouth, and headed outside for her turn, WATCH.
Sure enough before our neighborhood watch could pinpoint the arms and get the tank situated a pop and a whoosh and a hit. Our neighbor's house.
'It's always all connected.'
The manager had grown up inner-city. For about a week he'd let us young people pick the brains of people who had twenty, thirty, forty years of working experience. He'd also listened patiently to ideas for changes, especially for improvement to the customer experience and ways to better our appearance that wouldn't cost much money.
He was as calm in the face of drugs in the parking lot--not okay no matter who you are--as he was visibly crossing people through the fringe: social/cultural world v. business/work day. He didn't even need to fire the crack-smoking employee. That man knew he was messing with his sobriety, head, and livelihood. But he was so "high" all he could do was recite a script of apologies, excuses, long shot other chances, and guess I'll be moving ons.
There were, already in the early 1990's, streams of grew up that way (endemic) poverty and working people merging onto the same highways of business and economy.
It wasn't but two months later that farther out from the suburbs all kinds of managers were "cleaning it up." The overall topic was tourism. The money, fenced behind a race track start, was depending on lower crime, people wanting to invest, and being civil enough to "others" to build up business. There were roadhouses (bars) that had fenced off areas where people could sleep it off, sober up, get ripped a new asshole by my old....
Stifled creatives generated ideas for groups and areas. Some people had been "out of it" (a successful America) for so long we humans were more like a bruise than real able. People donned roles in group talks, sometimes taking the lead, sometimes connecting to points and realities, and there was no shortage of "kamp" (clowning through the bitterness at another bust to boom).
"Barn raising?" An older gentleman in overalls and shit-covered boots wasn't sure if he'd heard the question properly. As coming-into-life young adults we were heartfeltly asking about how did this get here? How was that possible for people?
Not just Christians doing the right thing.
Not just "colored" people who are affected by being understood ad a color.
That's why the Dateline work was so monumental over the years. Crime and punishment is not an abstract issue. It is and isn't "political". And the information available to everyone created a way to talk about even the toughest stuff.
That show demonstrates an America holding an awareness even as there are still gaps in safer world and limits to how law enforcement can be expected to just make security.
Instead of politicizing it keeps prying open the lid on just putting things in boxes and filing the boxes away.
For a lot of years we were seemingly schizophrenic between being lemmings and each being a unique soul with God-given "gifts". We had Parish debates about gray area and definitely a sin. And, stuff like, Is being a group a communism?
There were good people on all sides of the debating. And some of us needed each other to make a point. We brainstormed metaphor and poetry. We were trying to understand how God's Word could be both-- literal and poetic. It was taking great effort to keep explaining ourselves....
It's not political, I don't want to mess up my sobriety. You're party will be Gggggrrrreat.
We need more people in this workgroup so we don't turn the work into a marriage.
It's not that I don't want to be you, I CAN'T BE YOU.
By positing tough stuff to be worked through as "art" and "therapy" we created a space that wasn't the real world of business deals and driving where we could say, feel, know....I'm not perfect since the tree thing, but
I'm not a piece of shit.
Other kids started to say it too. It was a morning cup of coffee, a little mantra of determined people crammed into uniforms and rows of school children.
For a couple weeks, he'd say it before he opened his notebook and doodle a new thing. So others of us did the same. Even though it's not "good art". The teacher though got insistent that nobody was allowed to swear in her classroom. He shut the notebook. Stood up. And stated, I am not a terd. A girl stood up and said the same thing. Some of the guys giggled. Somebody complained, Can't we just get to work.
One day the Monsignor sent a younger, almost cool, priest to find out....Why are they saying that?
It was like a nerfball game in regards real reasons. But one kid who'd joined the growing movement of not being terds, with dark circles under his eyes, finally "snapped". He stood up tall and the sun made a shadow of him that crossed the room. The priest seemed to note that as poetry. He'd been part of understanding better how Our God gave us beauty and scary as poetry in motion while we're on this spiritual journey. The boy threw his arms up and out then shook his palms at us and crossed his arms.
"Did you know Father?"
The red-headed and bearded priest crossed himself for God's help and bowed his head quickly saying a silent prayer and just as quickly asked, "Know?"
"Us Altar Boys, we found out."
People got dumbfaced, ashen, red, horrified-looking.
"That priest that came up from South America," someone gasped, "The list went on for hours."
"What list child?"
The boy shook his head and dropped the tears starting to pour onto his sweatered folded arms.
"All the Christians they've killed."
People sighed and what?'d
"For doing good."
"Doing the right thing?" Another boy still in a joke-about-everything phase to not commit asked.
"Let me go get the Monsignor. I'll be right back." He looked at each person, "I promise," he said.
The man said it out loud by swallowing his wife's spit and diving into the part of his mind normally in control of stuff like making noise with vocal chords.
A little boy exploded into hysterical but silent tears. Yes. HE is. Someone with hands still tied behind back said slowly and with as much determination as he'd walked in metal-coated boots, pulling a line of children behind one foot first. Gun shots flying. Statues. Vehicle tires squealing, peeling out. Another target down. One foot first. In the slime and the muck and the booze and blood we looked like a catepillar had been there. Not far enough, a cracked hoarse croaked. More far, more far an African drum in the slime with us whispered a bass. More far, more far some whisper cried, some sucked up like water and sacked us all a few feet farther.
As we barely survived some one days at a time and the mainstream kept getting blitzed....as the weight of dangers and evil became more real towards the 1980's....people developed new ways of thinking about this "America" that was at once granting freedom and liberty to all and desperately clinging to remnants of being "the greatest generation".
A traveling mom whacked her husband in the chest with her purse, "Hold this." The poor guy was knocked backwards by the blow and the purse contents scattered all over the airport floor. Generic hoodlum teens rushed over in expensive sneakers and grabbed what they could. The woman rose from scrambling to find the man's wallet and jammed a high heel onto a hand stealing her stuff. She straightened her long flowy skirt and dug her foot into the hand pinned. "You guys don't just get to assume the mantel."
The husband rubbed his chest. And his temples. "We don't?" He blubbered. The woman put all her body weight on the one foot. The teen winced loudly. She removed her foot as she pulled the hairy head up to look at her. The teen clutched the wounded hand and she kicked the compact over to her husband like it was a hockey puck. "Porter! Porter!" She yelled at a resting porter near a suitcase spin. He looked her up and down, heaved his weight out of a lean, and came right over. The husband stepped closer. The porter shooed the crying child abuse teen away from what was left of the purse contents. He moved his whole head over the floor to see. Got right in the husband's face and said, "I'll call the Authority." Then he went to a cement pole and talked into a white phone.
A little brother stopped our mom and dad and they helped pick stuff up off the floor. The men heavily shook heads at the pace of the day. A littler brother yelled at the shuffling porter, "Don't just leave." The porter had to get off the clock. The littler brother stalked over and declared, "Mother, that slave is revolting!" She dropped what she'd collected in her skirt at the woman stolen from, got behind the three foot boy and cupped her hand over his mouth. He tried to squirm away, oh, she pinched down on his shoulder and covered up his nose holes too.
As red as Mullugan's steam shovel. Both of them.
