But what really got me was that Shayla completely ignored me after that.
By the time I picked up my crew at the rehab center later that day and got them to the home I was totally depressed.
I took out my spiral notebook, opened it to the back and started musing.
Who knows why we remember what we remember and forget what we forget? You’d think certain things would be so important that you’d remember every little detail of what happened for the rest of your life, and other things would be so trifling that you’d have to fight to remember what they were a couple of seconds after you saw them.
But nope, your brain is on a mission of its own, it picks and chooses what it thinks is important. It doesn’t care what you or the world or anyone else thinks, it’s got a plan of what it’s going to keep and what it’s going to let go of and once your brain has decided to follow that plan, all the concentrating in the world won’t make you remember something and all the wishing and hoping and praying in the world won’t make you forget something else.
Take that pain, Shayla Patrick, for example. My brain has decided our first meeting is something that I’ll be sitting in an old folks’ home thinking about when I’m forty or fifty years old.
It was the first day of kindergarten and the Sarge had taken me to school. I remember being scared as soon as she opened the classroom door. The room was stinking from panic and was filled with a bunch of kids my age, crying their souls out and hanging on to their parents’ legs.
One kid was screaming, “Momma, please let me come home, I’ll be good. Please! Please! Please!”
Another kid was whispering, “Goodbye, Mommy. Am I being brave? You are gonna come get me, aren’t you? OK? Is this being brave?”
But the scariest of them all was the little boy whose mother had already left. This kid was standing by himself in the middle of the floor with his eyes rolled back in his head and his teeth chattering and his knees actually banging together. If this was on the Cartoon Network his knees would’ve been making that funny, hollow clop-clop-clop sound, but in real life the noise that was coming from him was more of a squish-squish-squish sound, all because brother-man had gone and peed his pants.
I can look back now and understand that it wasn’t weakness or softness that had me being scared, now I know there was some good, sound science behind my fear. We just learned about minnows and largemouth bass in Mrs. Bohannon’s science class. She told us that if a bass grabs a minnow and takes a bite out of it some kind of special red-alert chemical is released from the hurt minnow. You can’t see it and I don’t think even chemistry geniuses have figured out what it is, but it lets any other minnows within four or five miles know that one of their partners just had a bunch of violence perpetrated on him.
All the minnows in the lake would suddenly start screaming and shaking and looking nervous while they headed for the nearest rock or lily pad or whatever to hide under. The bluegills and the salmon and the perch and the carp would go about their business like nothing had happened, but in the minnow community it was like the Department of Homeland Security had jacked the alert level all the way up to Tabasco-sauce red.
That was what my six-year-old mind was picking up in that kindergarten class. Sure, the adults were calm and smiling but why wouldn’t they be? They were like the perch and everything else in the pond that wasn’t a minnow, everything was cool as far as they could see. But us kids were the minnows, we knew what the real deal was: somewhere in that school one of our own peeps had psychologically spilled blood and was chemically letting the rest of us know to get on up and get on out. We didn’t know anything about hiding under a rock, but we had the screaming and shaking and looking nervous part down pat.
I remember reaching up to grab the Sarge’s hand.
She yanked me toward where the teacher sat.
“Hello, young man, and what might your name be?”
Panic was rising up in me quicker than the interest rates on one of the Sarge’s Friendly Neighbor Loans.
The Sarge did the finger curl on me and brought me back to reality.
The teacher said, “Don’t be afraid, honey, what’s your name?”
“Luther T. Farrell, ma’am.”
The teacher looked down on a list and said, “Good, I’ll talk to your mother and you can go over to the sandbox.”
I gripped the Sarge’s hand harder until her left eyebrow arched. I knew what I had to do, I mean sure, the air might be filled with chemicals warning me about some invisible danger, but the Sarge was real and visible and there right then and apt to strike without giving any kind of a warning. I let go of her hand as quick as I could.
I looked over to where the teacher was pointing. In the corner of the room there was a plastic shell-shaped swimming pool filled with sand and toys but my eyes slid right over them because standing right in the middle of the pool was something that took my kindergarten-baby breath away.
Your memory can play such dirty tricks on you. I know it’s not possible, but I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that there were flowers floating in the air all around the little girl who was standing there in the shell. And a couple of angels blowing wind at her out of their mouths making her long, thick black hair dance away from her face.
But my lying memory didn’t let it go at that, I can remember there was one of those banners or ribbon things like what beauty pageant women wear around the little girl, but instead of saying Miss Flint or Miss Personality this one had a message that I knew came direct from heaven. It wrapped around her like a snake and had written on it, “Finally! After all these years of practice, I got it perfect!”
I remember thinking it was like the sweetest butter and the brownest brown sugar and the darkest chocolate in the world had melted together, then had had life breathed into them by a kind and loving God.
There’s that old philosophical story about how billions and billions of years ago there weren’t any individual people, how each person was actually two souls that had been stuck together. And how someone had done something to seriously piss off a god or head honcho or whoever was in charge and how as a punishment that god had divided everybody’s souls in half and scattered them all over the world.
In this story you can only know real, true, slam-dunk love when you hook up with that other half of your soul, that’s the only time and way you can ever be really whole. It almost never happens but when it does it’s supposed to be something you instantly know and deeply feel. That was what was happening with me and the little girl in the shell.
I hate to tie everything to the shows I watch in the day-room but if it fits, what the hey? This longing to get whole again is like what I saw a little while back on the Animal Channel. It was a show about a professor who was doing some kind of research with chimpanzees at a school. She’d raised this one chimp named Mikey for five years before she got a promotion and had to move across the country to her new job. She felt really bad about leaving this little monkey ‘cause they’d got real close to each other. She said she thought about Mikey lots of times over the next years.
Fifteen years after she last saw Mikey she got another job back at her old school. When she got there she asked if anyone remembered a chimp named Mikey and what had happened to him. They told her that him and some of the other chimps had been “retired” and were living in a special place at the school. Sort of like a chimpanzee old folks’ home.
She said she felt really funny about going to see him. She said she didn’t know if he’d even remember her, fifteen human years is about a thousand chimp years. She went anyway.
As soon as she walked into the Old Chimps’ Home there was a horrifying shriek like they’d accidentally slammed someone’s fingers in a door. Then one of the old gray chimps came tearing across the grass screaming like he was on fire.
He threw himself into the scientist’s arms, almost knocking her down. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, buried his face in her neck and screamed and screamed. The woman just held h
im, opened her mouth, blinked a couple of times, then cried. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. It was even sadder because the woman hadn’t known until that second that Mikey had spent his whole life grieving for her.
That’s what getting back together with the other half of your soul is supposed to feel like. That’s what I felt when I saw Shayla Patrick standing among the sand and toys.
All I could do was look at this divine little hunk of humanity and think, “Oh. Oh my.”
The sounds of all the other kindergartners in emotional agony faded away and this beautiful little girl was the only thing I could see, hear or feel. I don’t know how long I sat in that sandbox pretending I was playing with the plastic steam shovel while I was really checking her out, but when I looked up the Sarge was gone; the little knee-knocker, who turned out to be my boy Sparky, had been taken out of his puddle and cleaned up; and the teacher was leading everyone who wasn’t too traumatized in a song and dance called “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”
The only reason I noticed was because Shayla knew the words and, just like someone had cranked up a CD in heaven, was singing them from where we were in the sandbox. I did all the motions to the song and moved my lips like I knew what I was singing, but my eyes never left her. Then she smiled at me during one of the funniest parts of the song. I quit the fake motions and the fake lip-syncing and found out the meaning of the word “dumbstruck.”
I couldn’t decide what the most beautiful thing about her was, but I sure wished I had the chance to check her out over and over until I could.
Was it her smile? Even the raggedy little gum holes where her front teeth used to be were beautiful.
Was it her eyes? I hadn’t seen eyes as brown and sparkly since I first set sight on my old dog Bone Thug.
Was it her hair? Her hair looked alive.
It was in a million thick dreadlocks and long and about six different shades of shiny, shiny black. It reminded me of waves or dancing, or what the electricity running from a fully juiced nuclear power plant would look like if you peeled away the insulation and rubber that coated the wires leading away from it.
Right after nap time, Shayla got up and was standing next to my mat sharpening a colored pencil. I can see it so clear that I still remember what color the pencil was, it was aquamarine. And I still get kind of tight in my throat whenever I see an aquamarine-colored pencil.
I couldn’t help myself, I kissed my fingertips, then touched her knee. When I pulled my hand away I’d left three little wet fingerprints. I brought those three fingers to my lips again and I know the teacher thought I was napping but for real I was out cold! My brain had gone and decided this was enough joy for one day and I don’t remember anything after that.
The Sarge claims to remember lots more. She says that was the cause of my first visit to the principal’s office. The school had a zero tolerance of sexual harassment or unwanted physical contact and I still own the record for being suspended quicker than any other student in the history of Stewart Elementary School: three hours into my first day of kindergarten.
Darnell Dixon remembers it in a different way too. He’s always bringing it up and telling people about “the time this fool got busted trying to feel up the undertaker’s daughter.”
But see what I mean? If it really did happen that way it seems like that’s what would be burned in my memory. It seems like I’d’ve remembered being dragged down to the principal’s office and publicly humiliated, but no, all I remember is how my lips tingled when I kissed my fingertips after touching Shayla Patrick’s ashy little knee.
Maybe philosophers have it all wrong, maybe that’s what life is all about. Maybe that’s why your brain won’t let go of moments like that, maybe what we’re all looking for is to get back to that moment of perfect happiness. Maybe life’s not so complicated after all, maybe it’s just about trying to get back to that ashy brown kneecap one more time.
Now here it was nine years later and I was still gonna have a rough night over something as stupid as Shayla ignoring me today after I asked her to quiet down.
One of the best ways to get problems with your woman off your mind is to bury yourself in your work. I wasn’t about to let Shayla’s ignoring me get me down so after I put time in on my project I started early on my chores around the home.
Chester X was upstairs watching TV so after I made my bed I started on his.
I tucked in his bottom sheet, then pulled the bed away from the wall to get at the other side. A corner of something plastic caught my eye. At first I thought it was part of the wrapping that had covered the mattress when it was new. I tugged at the plastic and instead of coming off in my fingers it got bigger. I pulled the bed farther away from the wall to see what was going on.
Oooh! When the Sarge saw this, blood was gonna flow! Some fool had gone and cut a three-inch slit in the mattress and stuffed something inside of it. I tugged at the plastic and finally out popped a Baggie full of pills, Demerol and Valium mostly, a good forty or fifty of them.
Why in the world would Darnell Dixon hide these down here? I’d always thought there was some kind of monkey business going on with him and Dr. Mark and the meds, but this just didn’t make any sense. Why would he hide something way down here in the basement in Chester X’s bed? This seemed too strange for even him to do.
Then I got it. These pills weren’t Darnell’s, they were Chester X’s, and I knew what he was up to. He was saving his nightly meds to take all at once and bump himself off!
Aw, no! That ain’t happening!
There was no way in the world he was going to kill himself while I was in charge.
I’ve watched the Coroner Channel enough to know how a medication overdose would look. Even though Chester X was in his eighties and that usually means you’re carrying a sign on you that says “natural causes” when you die, I know some coroner might want to open him up exactly because he was eighty and looked like he was somewhere around fifty.
With my luck it’d be a slow day at the morgue and someone would say, “Quincy, let’s see what kept this old fart ticking.” Then it’d be me and the cops and a rubber hose in a dark room talking about my medication procedures. Not to mention what the Sarge would do to me if her “special,” no-next-of-kin, five-A client committed suicide.
This was one of those things that not even Dr. Mark would be able to make go away. I know it’s Sarge-think, but Chester X Stockard was messing with my livelihood. Not to mention my life.
I finished making the bed to give myself a chance to cool down. I finally felt like I wasn’t going to blow up and stuffed the Baggie of pills into my pocket and went to the dayroom to bust Mr. Goodbye Cruel World.
He was on the couch in front of the TV, looking like he was half watching cartoons and half nodding off. But I knew the real deal, I knew there was a whole lot more cartoon watching than nodding off going on. From the number of pills I had in the Baggie in my pocket I knew he hadn’t taken any kind of a downer for a good two or three weeks. Chester X was fronting this whole confused, doped-up old man bit.
I had to smile. He’d fooled me and the Sarge, something that wasn’t easy to do. You had to give the man his props, he was good. But I guess you don’t get to be over eighty years old with five “A”s after your name unless you got some pretty good game.
“Chester X Stockard,” I said, plopping down on the couch next to him, “how’s everything going today?”
The sly dog let a little trail of drool come out of his mouth while he mumbled something. Most times I would’ve wiped the slob away, but since this was probably all part of an act, I let his lip leak.
I asked him, “What’s Johnny Bravo up to today?”
He grunted, gave a weak smile and pointed one of his shaking, twisted fingers at the television. Stupid me, all of a sudden I started feeling guilty. This didn’t feel right. I was acting just like the Sarge. I hate it when she knows I’ve done something wrong and also knows I don’t know she knows. She plays this same li
ttle cat-and-mouse game with me, and now I could see that being on either end of it made me feel terrible.
I had to give the man more respect than this. I took a piece of paper towel and wiped his chin and said, “Look what I found in your mattress, Mr. Stockard.”
Chester X Stockard looked at the Baggie I was holding, then raised his gray-ringed eyeballs to my face. He let out a low sigh, like he’d been holding his breath for a long, long time. He sagged into the couch and for the first time since he’d come here it was easy to believe he was a tired little old man.
“What’s this all about? When and why were you planning on checking out?”
It was scary. He unsagged and his eyes all of a sudden got sharp. He looked around the room and whispered, “Where’s the Sarge?”
Wait a minute. “How’d you know I call her …” Then I remembered, I’d done a lot of talking to him and in front of him when I thought he was doped up. I answered, “She’s over at city hall with Darnell.”
“Let’s go down to our room and talk.”
“Our room?”
“Your room. Quit fussing and help me up. I been hoping to have a heart-to-heart talk with you and now seems to be the time.”
I pulled him up and we headed downstairs. As I walked behind him I started thinking about what was going on. This new look of spark and spunk in Chester X Stockard’s eyes was starting to make me very nervous. Then I knew why.
It’s one thing to share your room with someone who’s just hanging around waiting to croak. The worst that can come of that is waking up and finding out your roommate is suddenly a lot chillier and less talkative than he was when he went to sleep. After that happens with three or four roommates it’s pretty easy to handle. What’s harder to deal with is trying to remember everything you said in front of someone that you were pretty sure was unconscious.
You say a lot of things you wouldn’t ordinarily say if you knew someone was listening—not only listening, but understanding. And I have this bad habit of talking to the Crew no matter how out of it or unconscious they are. I mean why not? An unconscious person is always a real good listener and never gives you any kind of backtalk. Besides, even though some of the Crew might seem like they don’t understand everything that’s going on around them, you never know, maybe they like being talked to like human beings instead of just clients.
Bucking the Sarge Page 11