Sherry is older than me; maybe low 30s? She has a boyfriend and kids and dogs—basically, the white-picket-fence type of life that most people dream about. Her boyfriend has a decent job managing a concrete company, so they are filthy rich. Sherry would never admit my assumption about her being rich, but I am observant. I can tell. She constantly has her nails manicured and freshly polished. Sherry wears a new flashy pair of heels to work every day. I rarely see her wear the same shoes twice. She must have a room in her house dedicated to storing shoes. I know she’s loaded because she has a new chic purse on her shoulder every few weeks. It’s sickening. She reminds me of those housewives that are bored, so they shop online for shit they don’t need. Oh, and did I mention she drives a BMW with huge rims? That’s a dead giveaway.
For a long time, I questioned why someone with noticeable money would be working a low-paying job in clothing. Then it dawned on me one day. Maybe she truly is one of those bored housewives. Perhaps Sherry needs something to do throughout the day when her kids are at school. Maybe she has this job out of boredom. I wish I had that problem.
A group of women enters the store. They appear joyful and are snickering with each other as they make their way around the clothing racks. Each of them has platinum blonde hair. I wonder if they realize how fake that blonde looks on each of their pretty little heads.
I recognize one of them as a girl I graduated with in high school five years prior. Sherry can take this one. I need a minute to compose myself and get into the work groove. I stride around the corner, out of eyesight but close enough to eavesdrop. Two of the women are making fun of my old classmate because her pregnancy belly will be condemning her to the plus-size section of the store.
Jealousy immediately strikes my mind. It’s hard enough seeing all the ultrasound pictures and gender reveals of friends on Facebook. Yet again, another person I know is moving on in their life and starting their family. My eyes start to swell, as the longing I have tucked away begins to surface.
I have wanted to become pregnant for a while but Sean always says he is not ready to be a dad yet. Part of me thinks he just doesn’t want to have kids at all, and this is his way of procrastinating until it’s too late. Will he ever be ready for fatherhood? I went off the pill without telling Sean hoping that we could start our family but no such luck yet. My mind allows itself to wander to a place where I am a failure yet again. I’m not married. I don’t have kids. I never went to college. I always thought I would have accomplished these things at this stage of my life, but it just didn’t happen.
I admit that I am ashamed I never pursued college. I planned to move on to bigger and better things. Working in a clothing store is not exactly how I saw my days being spent. The last thing I want is for this woman to see me working here and judge me—I judge myself harshly enough for the both of us. I watch Sherry talk with the women and help them find what they are looking for. She is careful to chuckle along with their boring stabs at each other. I envy these women; they are so pretty, its blinding. I envy Sherry because she is perfect at telling them what they want to hear.
These women look happy with themselves, which is something I’m not. I notice my fingers becoming numb. My heart begins to beat harder. A feeling of dread covers my skin. My mind starts to race. Why does this happen to me? I hate this feeling that overcomes me. I can’t be as good as Sherry. She knows how to give the customers what they want. I am horrible at my job.
Why am I even doing this? Why did I even come here today? What’s the point of even trying? Why did they promote me of all people? Sherry would be a much better assistant manager than I am. They probably only promoted me because I had next seniority. Did I even earn the title?
My mind is going a mile a minute and I can’t inhale. I dash to the bathroom and lock myself inside. Tears begin to stream down my cheeks, and I feel suffocated. I try to focus on my breaths. Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Inhale the clean empty air, exhale the emotion-filled dirty air. I continue this for a few minutes until I can feel my heart rate coming down. I still have the blanket of dread over my body. It feels like it’s weighing down my arms and legs.
“Get your shit together,” I tell myself as I stare into the mirror.
In through the nose and out through the mouth once more. Why is this happening? I saw someone from my past and suddenly I’m completely melting down. I stumble over to the toilet stall and sit down. I drop my head and close my eyes as the tears continue to drop from my cheeks to my sweater.
There is something very wrong with me. I don’t understand how I lose control of myself so quickly and for no reason at all. I try to think about happy things. I need to get my mind in a better place. My thoughts begin to slow and I start wiping the eyeliner from under my eyes. I hear someone calling my name. It’s Sherry. Get yourself together. You are better than this. I open the bathroom door.
Sherry gives me a confused look.
“Can you help me with a customer?”
“Sure can,” I say with fake enthusiasm.
My mind begins to focus. I hope the classmate has left the store by now. I worry about her recognizing me and judging how I’ve let myself go and get this fat. As I tread around the corner, I scan the store and notice the group of blonde women are gone. Guess I dodged a bullet this time.
The rest of the day is a blur. I go through the actions of my job with my recent breakdown weighing heavily on my shoulders. Soon enough its 5 p.m. and I’m locking up the store ready to head home. I congratulate myself for getting through this day, not forgetting that one failure this morning. I get into the car and sit for a minute. Now I get to do it all over again tomorrow.
Sex
Body to body, nothing else but need.
The ping, the patter.
The urge to suffice the calling within.
A blatant term for some to fill.
A rush of fresh air allowed into your lungs.
The power is intense.
Willing to give, willing to get.
A means to a future, a means to a night.
A predator who dismays showing gluttony for a cause.
Desire the fire burning bright before your eyes.
A collage of faces that still haunts.
Some won’t need; atypical.
Others wouldn’t survive the grasp.
Hot or not, soft or hard.
Choose wisely, intentions do alter.
Be mindful of the wandering eye.
Plant a seed to create your garden.
An edible source of wisdom at your fingertips.
Easy does it; needs tell a story.
How do you want it?
Adam
I stand outside the front door of my apartment and stare at the bright orange paper taped to it. The dreaded eight letters that no one hopes to see. Eviction. I have one week to come up with the missed rent or I’m out. I rip the paper from the door and throw it off the balcony behind me.
There is no way I can pull it off this time. According to the landlord, I owe $450 for last month’s rent plus this month on top of that. I open the door and drop my bags to the side. I stare at the 250-square-foot room that is my kitchen/living room/bedroom and wonder how this shit hole of an apartment is worth that amount of money. I know it came with the refrigerator and some cockroaches, but fuck. I work and work and work and still I can’t maintain the things I need.
How do people survive in the world? I’m doing everything right and still can’t keep myself above water. I sit down on my bean bag chair and let my head fall back. I stare at the ceiling and begin to count the tiles. How do I fix this?
I head to work a little early to talk to Paul about getting some extra hours. Dishwashing is an easy job but it doesn’t pay worth a shit. When I turned 18, my foster family let me stay until I could get a place of my own. They helped me apply for jobs and gave me a few hundred bucks to get set up in a place. I could have been a lot worse off—for this I am grateful. I’ve been able to
survive the last five months on my own, but barely scraping by. At the time, dishwashing was all I could come up with. I need something that pays better than $7.50 an hour.
“Hey Paul. You got a sec?”
“Does it look like I have a sec Adam?”
He is combing through receipts for the store when he glances above his glasses to peer at me. He is a complete douche, and treats people like shit. Especially me. I don’t know what it is about this guy, but he just doesn’t like me. To be quite honest I don’t like him either, or his greasy slicked-back Elvis hair.
“I wanted to know if you had any extra jobs for me around the place?”
I feel like a child asking his mommy for candy. I see a hint of a grin on his face. He has to know how hard it is for me to ask him, of all people, for anything.
“Coming from the guy who didn’t show up for his shift twice in the past two weeks. How about you try coming in for your scheduled hours before asking for more work.”
What an asshole. I feel a rush of rage pulse through my body. I want to punch his fucking teeth out. I wonder what makes him the way he is. Running a shitty diner in the slum of Detroit can’t be that hard. Why does he have to be such an ass? I turn around and begin to walk away.
“Liz didn’t show up this morning. Rumor has it she found herself a bartending gig down the street. Be here at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow to take her shift if she doesn’t show.”
“Alright, I’ll be here.”
“I still expect you to be here for your late shift tomorrow night.”
The asshole is showing me some mercy? Nah, he just doesn’t want to get up at 5:00 a.m. and carry his stinky drunk ass into work. That works for me. I post a sign on the bulletin board at the entrance of the diner for a roommate ASAP. I have been holding off on a roommate until absolutely necessary, purely for the fact that the apartment I live in isn’t big enough for two people. However, I’m desperate for cash so I will have to deal with a roommate for a while—at least until I can get back on my feet. I put my email at the bottom of the posting and hope someone will bite.
I begin my shift by washing all the utensils and pans from earlier in the day. Apparently, no one knows how to rinse anything off, so there are food particles caked onto the inside of every pan. It’s a bitch trying to scrape them clean. The worst part of my job is the soggy pruned fingers and the dreaded diner smell that’s absorbed into my flesh. On my way out the door at the end of the night I grab a loaf of bread and some cheese from the back cooler and stash it in my backpack. That should get me through for a couple days.
I make the short walk home and decide to take a hot shower right away. No matter how long I let the water trickle down my body, the stench still clings to my hair. I will occasionally catch a whiff of the diner, and it makes my stomach turn. It’s 11:15 p.m. and I’m wide awake. I usually don’t go to bed until after 1:00 a.m.; however, I have to somehow be awake and to work by 5:00 a.m. to cover Liz’s shift.
I lie in bed with the lights off and listen to the cars driving by below me. It must be a full moon because it appears bright outside my window. The blackout curtains my foster mom put up for me aren’t doing their job. You can still see the radiance of light through the fabric. I listen to the footsteps in the apartment above me as they pace back and forth across the ceiling. This strikes me as unusual. The old guy that lives above my apartment is always quiet at this hour. He must be having trouble sleeping. I feel your pain, old fella.
As I stare into the ceiling, I think about what it was like to be young. To have no cares about money, bills, or relationships. I would give anything to feel that carefree again. I feel like I’m making the best choices that I can for my situation. I just don’t understand how people can thrive in life. I went to high school and got my diploma, which is more than I can say for a lot of the foster kids I grew up with. I saved money when I could. I mostly stayed away from partying and the drug scene growing up. Don’t get me wrong, my life has been chaotic being a foster kid. To the world I was just another troubled black kid that was destined to fail. Another kid that was abandoned by his meth head mother, thrown like trash into a dumpster to die. If that strung out twat would have tried raising me, it surely would have been a million times worse for me.
I feel like I was pretty lucky with the families I was placed with in the foster system. Some of the kids I lived with would confide in me, telling their disturbing experiences with certain families. When I was young, I didn’t realize that these stories I heard were in the wrong. As I grew older, I learned that the things I had been told were sick and against the law.
There were two families I was placed with that were particularly curious for me, the Carols and the Greenburgs. The Carols were a family I lived with when I was 11 years old. They were decent and kind for the most part. They kept us fed and clothed. They made sure we went to school and did our homework. They played games with us kids regularly, and even let me join little league baseball.
Fridays were special to them. They made all the kids in the family dress up in suits and gowns for supper on Friday nights. It was the weirdest thing. The mother would go shopping early in the day while we were at school. She would buy the girls brand new dresses to wear that evening. She would buy each of the boys a brand new tie. The mother’s name I don’t remember, but she would take the girls one by one and trim their nails, brush their hair, and tie their bows. The boys she would sit in front of her and gel their hair and wash their shoes until they were shiny. She would prepare a lavish meal with all the food groups, and put out the nice silverware and dishes for us to use. It was like they wanted to be pretend wealthy for one night a week.
The couple would then spend time cleaning themselves up into attractive creatures. The father would trim his stubble and comb his hair to the side and enter the kitchen with his flashy tuxedo and gold-plated cufflinks. The mother would enter with new color on her face and her hair curled just right. She would be wearing a new glittery gown that exposed her cleavage almost flawlessly.
We were to try a taste of everything on the menu and converse for an hour before we were permitted to excuse ourselves. During this fascinating hour, we had to be well-mannered and speak clearly. We had to use the correct silverware for the correct food and sit up straight. After our over-the-top meal, the parents would retreat into their bedroom and not be seen until the next morning. We would knock, bang, kick on the bedroom door to get their attention, but they would never answer. The house could have been burning down and they still wouldn’t have come out.
I remember pressing my ear to the door many times trying to hear them, but I only managed to catch the faint sound of music playing. I’m sure I knew what they were doing in that bedroom every Friday night. For a long time, I yearned to catch them in the act.
One evening I hid in their bedroom closet before they locked themselves away for the night, and I got to see what really happened in that room.
If I sat down and crossed my legs, I would have a perfect view of the entire room through the cracks in the closet door. After minutes of waiting in stone cold silence, they finally entered the room together. She locked the bedroom door and muffled the bottom opening with a blanket. He looked through CDs and selected one to listen to. When the music started, he pulled a comfy upholstered chair from the corner of the room. After sitting in the chair, he waited patiently for her to emerge from their dressing room.
A few minutes later, she entered my view and began dancing. She would seductively dance to each window and shut the drapes. I watched her bounce from one window to the next, shielding the outside world from what they were about to do. She moved her body in a slow sensual manner to the beat of the music. She approached him and began unzipping the back of her dress slowly as she swayed her hips. Unhurriedly, she removed her arms then let her dress fall beneath her small breasts.
I had always wondered what her breasts looked like. I remember feeling slightly ashamed that I was spying on these two people. The two people tha
t were supposed to be my pretend parents. I was mesmerized by how well her body moved. My eyes wouldn’t slip themselves away. Her dress fell below her thighs and to her ankles. She slowly stepped her bare body toward the father. Her skin was flawless, not a blemish in sight. Her paleness made her orange locks radiate under the bright lights. She was perfect. I managed to peel my eyes away from her figure for a moment. I noticed his eyes showed no emotion as she danced openly closer to him. During their encounter, I observed neither of them had said one word to the other.
They stare occasionally at each other, mostly avoiding eye contact. She sits atop and straddles him while she continues to move her hips and tease his lips with her breasts. I watch as she slowly leans forward, touching her nipple to his lips. Before he can take her flesh into his mouth, she pulls her body back as if to tease him into insanity. He finally reacts, out of frustration, and places his hands to her thighs. She quickly grabs his hands on both sides and throws them off her. She doesn’t want his touch. I don’t blame him for wanting his hands on her, I want my hands on her, too.
I am startled when I notice the outside door to the bedroom begins to open. I almost pounce to alert them that someone is here but decide not to give up my position quite yet. The mother looks up and stops her teasing. She removes her naked self from him and goes over to the woman who has just entered. By her actions, I now understand that this woman was invited.
The woman is petite and curvy. She has long, straight dark hair and a mysterious look in her eyes. The woman doesn’t acknowledge the father as he sits there in the middle of the room. She smiles as the mother approaches and begins removing the clothes from her body. The father stands up and drags his bulky chair back to its corner of the room and sits down. He watches the two women closely as they lead each other into his bed and begin touching each other’s body. The mysterious woman is much different than the mother. She is firm and more directing with her actions, while the mother is soft and more delicate.
Tomorrow Page 2