by Timmy Reed
I cupped my hands to the wood beneath my feet. “Who are you?” I asked. The man looked up startled, realizing he was spotted.
“Why are you breaking into your own house?” he coughed.
“I asked you first,” I said back.
“Okay,” he answered, going into another fit of the coughs.
“There's a hose down there,” I told him. “Turn it on and drink from it.”
He slowly bent over and twisted the knob. The hose made a hissing sound and began to spit. He picked up the end and held it carefully, leaning forward to sip. Still he managed to soak the front of his shirt, which was made of a thin pale-blue material that went see-through in an instant. His crotch got some too and it looked like he pissed himself. He looked up to say thank you. I think we made eye contact through a crack in the boards. I asked his name again. He told me to call him Mister Reese.
“Why did you throw this carrot at me?” I tossed it over the railing.
“That's two questions,” he shook his head. “Not fair. Why are you breaking into your own house? Did you lose a key?”
“That's two questions, too,” I said. Then, “I was avoiding someone.”
“Ahhhh,” he went, like he understood the situation completely. “I'll leave you to continue avoiding her then . . .”
He walked out from under the deck and started off again, in the opposite direction of where his house is located. I walked over to the railing to watch him. Without looking over his shoulder, he called out to me. “Carrots make people see better,” he said. “And we can all find ourselves pretty blind from time to time.”
I watched him round a bend and head up one of the little stairwells. As he began to disappear, I noticed he was wearing slippers. Then the French doors snapped open behind me. I flinched and turned around. My mother. Her hair was wet and sparkly. She was dressed up for work. Her work clothes always make her shoulders look too big for her little head. It's funny. She hugged me without saying anything. I had no choice but to hug her back, even though I felt sort of awkward about it. I hugged her gently, patting her shoulder blade with my hand. She felt skinny. When we were finished hugging, she stepped back and looked me up and down. “Who were you talking to?” she said.
“Nobody,” I told her. “Myself.”
She went off to work and I went down to check out the little orange rabbit. He was broken in pieces on the asphalt. The only part I could still recognize was his face. It looked sad.
~
Yesterday was Saturday and I went to the hospital. I fell off my bike. I was riding on Springlake Way and my front wheel came off. I flew over the handlebars. I bit my lip when I hit the ground. Or maybe on the way down. Anyway, my teeth went right through and came out the other side. There was blood everywhere, bright red like food coloring. But it didn't hurt that bad. I didn't cry or anything. A woman and her little boy were driving past and they stopped to help me. I told them my house was only a block away and I could make it on my own, but they insisted. When I got home my dad was busy on the computer, burning CD's for his jukebox. I went into his office still bleeding all over my T-shirt. Dad freaked out. He made me go into the kitchen. He thought I was going to ruin the carpet.
Dad drove me to GBMC, where they stitched me up. The thread they used is black and prickly and it sticks out of my bottom lip like overgrown facial hairs. My dad snapped at me twice on the ride home because I couldn't stop touching my stitches. I still keep fidgeting with them even as I'm writing this. When I told my dad I couldn't stop, he shook his head in disgust. He told me to sit on my hands if I couldn't control myself. Then we stopped off at Princeton Sports and got a new bolt-thingy for the wheel of my bike.
Today he asked me if I wanted to go riding with him. My dad used to ride bikes a lot, before he got older and fat. He looked kind of sad when he asked me and I didn't react right away, like it was important to him or something. I didn't really want to get up from the couch where I was watching cartoons, but we don't get a lot of quality hang-out time together, so I guess I felt sort of compelled to go. I told him about a waterfall I know on the Jones Falls near Hampden. Me and the Beaster Bunny sometimes go there to smoke blunts, but I didn't tell Dad about that. I just said it was pretty and all.
Dad put on his helmet and we rode out. I never wear my helmet because the way a bike helmet sits on top of your head reminds me of a penis. The mushroom cap part, where you get circumcised. It's dorky looking is all. My father strapped on his old bike helmet from the seventies though. It used to be red but now it's faded purple. It makes him look like a dildo . . .
He got real tired on the way down to the falls. He had to stop and catch his breath. I got impatient waiting for him and asked if he wanted to go back. He acted sort of pissy and agitated about my suggestion. A little further down Roland Avenue he saw me popping wheelies and told me to stop showing off.
We got to Round Falls and he insisted on locking up our bikes, even though I doubt very much if anybody would steal them while we were standing so close by. But my dad doesn't trust people, I guess. So we locked up our bikes.
Round Falls is a pretty sweet place to hang out. It's right in the city, but not many people know about it. There is a little wood deck with a bench you can sit on, which was apparently donated by some guy my father used to do business with. There was a plaque with the guy's name on it and my father told me he knew him . . . I like it there anyway . . . It's a good spot. Right beneath the horseshoe of falling water is a deep pool that flattens back out into the stream and keeps bubbling on down to the harbor. People swim at Round Falls supposedly, even though the river is dirty. There are always a lot of cigarette butts and forties lying around. Sometimes needles. If you look up the hill every fifteen minutes or so you can see the light rail roll past. I like that . . . Today I saw a mallard. His feathers looked dirty. If my mother was with us, she probably would have named him. And maybe made up a story about him. I decided to call him Sam but my father thinks that stuff is for babies so I named him to myself, secretly.
Anyway, I guess Dad thought Round Falls was pretty cool at first. He spent most of his time trying to figure out the history of the waterfall, which is man-made and used to have something to do with all the abandoned mills in the neighborhood. I couldn't give a shit about who made it, but I pretended to be interested for his sake. After a while I started reading the graffiti, some of it out loud when I thought it was funny. My dad HATES graffiti. He becomes fixated when he sees it on a wall. That's what happened today. He couldn't get over all the graffiti. On the deck and on the wall by the river and even on some of the trees. It put him in a real sour mood. I told him not to let it spoil his good time, but he couldn't stop thinking about it. They found graffiti inside the Great Pyramid, I told him. And it was a standard form of communication in ancient Rome.
He was already angry though. I shouldn't have defended vandalism, that annoyed him, even if I was just trying to say he shouldn't let it bother him. My father decided to give me a lecture. On private versus public property and civil contracts and such. He acted like I was the one who had written it. Like I was responsible for the very existence of all graffiti within city limits . . . Truth is, I could have written some of it. Beats me. I write on just about everything when I'm bored. Benches, curbs, desks, my shoes, my own skin. But it's not like he had any reason to persecute me for it on our bike ride.
He lectured me anyway. The slightest sound out of my mouth he took for an argument. I was afraid to even hiccup or cough. He was secretly pissed about something else, I figured . . . My dad gets angry about everything. Even to the point of being angry with me when he thinks I'm being angry. All the while I'm not usually angry, but frustrated, nervous, excited, or scared . . . And when my father gets mad—he's always slightly pissed off about something—his eyebrows go all nutso. My father has tremendous eyebrows. Like caterpillars mating. They seem to grow larger and closer with age. And
when he's upset they flex up high on his forehead. Like antennae. Or horns. He looks down at you and his brows cover his eyes like a visor. They take on a life of their own. Feelers. They probe deep into my soul and try to strangle it. The whole thing makes me highly uncomfortable. And that's what happened today. So we rode home pretty much in silence. On the way, I tried to dream up a fantasy story about Sam the duck. I couldn't.
~
When I was little I used to get off on cutting up living things that were much smaller than me . . . I particularly relished mowing the lawn . . .
If you listen closely while cutting the grass, you can hear each blade's tiny scream. “STOP IT!” they shout. “LET US GROW!”
~
When I was a kid I used to tell my mother that I remembered living in her womb. I'd make up whole stories about my time in there. Living inside her, eating her protein, floating around in her fluids, kicking her, scratching like cave paintings into the walls of her uterus. She thought it was cute. I was lying, of course. There were other stories I'd often pretend to remember, true stories, or at least partly true stories, although I didn't actually remember them. Stuff, family history I'd put together from the anecdotes spun by my folks and their friends at get-togethers. Like my baptism at the Basilica, when my godfather supposedly decided to come out of the closet and leave his wife and children, who were all much older than me. I don't have any memory if that was the way it happened, how could I, being less than a month old? But sometimes it seems like I do remember. Because I've heard about it so much.
Likewise, I'm not sure if I remember the time I got stung in the eyeball by a yellowjacket after trying to pet it on its fuzzy, striped behind. My tear duct swelled up like a ping-pong ball, I think I cried a lot and for a few tense minutes I was locked out of the house, but do I really remember that stuff? Same goes for the spinal tap I received as an infant to combat a mysteriously high fever I'd developed. I can sort of picture the giant needle, but I know the memory is not real. My first REAL memory, the only one I can be sure of, isn't any of those.
The moment I first became aware of myself and the world I'd be stuck in for the rest of my life involved a spray hose, two dogs, a babysitter whose name I've long since forgotten, and her friend. I remember having a vicious case of diarrhea. Hot liquid shits . . . My stomach must've always been pretty fucked up if my first memory involves poop . . . Anyway, my babysitter must have carried me outside because that's where I remember coming to. There were dogs licking me, nipping at the feces running down my leg. It was our retriever, who died soon afterward, and the neighbors' dachshund, who must have been drawn by the smell. They terrified me, lapping at my skin. I was shrieking and crying and squirting furiously. A little brown fountain. My babysitter—who was this person?—was busy hosing me down with a fierce nozzle, washing the shit from my legs and trying to scare off the dogs at the same time. It didn't work. More shit kept gushing. More and more. From where? I didn't understand. I have distrusted my body ever since.
Everyone was frantic. The hounds kept licking up and down my tiny legs, jockeying for position. They had gone absolutely rabid for my turds. I could see it in their eyes, their teeth. Their doggy tongues were enormous. I couldn't stop screaming over the sound of that hose and those monster animal tongues. My babysitter's friend was laughing her head off, cackling, rolling around on the grass some distance away. My babysitter was laughing too, but trying to keep it in control. Laughing out of despair, I guess. I couldn't stop crying. And the dogs wouldn't go away. And the waste poured out with no end . . . Then my head folded back up on me and I don't remember anything really, nothing I can think of, until my first swimming lesson or my first day at school. I remember I didn't want to be there.
~
Dinner at my mother's house is always unpredictable. Like last week for instance we were having pork chops and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and red wine. The A/C was on the fritz and everyone was sweating. I turned on the fan and opened the windows, but that didn't do the trick. It was still hot as hell. And you could hear the cicadas buzzing away outside. It was loud as fuck. My sisters got tipsy on one glass of wine and Katie kept trying to make Thomas Angel eat sauerkraut. He didn't like it. He hissed and went under the table. My mother was chasing her wine with light beer. She kept refilling her glass. She couldn't stop whining about my father, what a bastard he is, and Kelly kept defending him. I tried not to listen and watched a shitty pop culture trivia show instead, but the phenobarbital I'd taken earlier was giving me a headache and I was having trouble understanding the questions. Robby, the Beaster Bunny, had gotten me the pills from his work where they prescribe them to dogs that have seizures. Robby came by during dinner and ate half a pork chop. He had just gotten an eyebrow ring. Katie liked it and asked my mother if she could have one too. My mother said she didn't care what any of us did to our bodies anymore, but I could tell she didn't think much of the idea. The Beaster Bunny pretended to go upstairs for a piss and left a bag of herb on my desk before leaving. He owed it to me from last week. The second he was gone I charged upstairs to make sure he had left it. When I came downstairs from taking bong hits, my mother was looking pretty spent, leaning on her elbow like it was a crutch. Her friend Susie came by with sherbet and blueberries for dessert. Upon seeing my mother's condition, she took out a bottle of something and gave her one. My mother swallowed the pill with red wine. Her lips were looking purple. I suggested she go take a nap. She accused me of being just like my father. I tried not to respond. It took about five minutes for the heat to turn the carton of sherbet into a pink saccharine sludge. I ate some anyway. Katie gave her bowl to Thomas Angel the cat, who jumped up on the counter to eat it. He lapped that shit up like liquid crack. It made him hyper. He started chasing around after a fattened moth that had flown in the window, drawn by the light of the television. He killed the moth and ate it. One of the wings was stuck to his mouth. I tried to take it off and he freaked out. He ended up knocking over my mom's big glass bowl of kraut, which broke in pieces against the tile. Susie tried cleaning it up, but my mother wouldn't let her and stooped over to do it herself. Kneeling on the floor, Mom began to cry because the bowl used to belong to her dead mother. Susie and the twins tried to console her, but she wouldn't stop cleaning the mess. She cut her thumb on a shard of glass and the blood started to flow pretty heavily, mixing in with all that shredded cabbage and sliced apple and vinegar. I took off my T-shirt and gave it to her as a bandage. Kelly made fun of me for being so scrawny. I gave her the finger. My mom gave me a teary-eyed stare and, sucking on her wound, she asked me how I had grown up to be so “vulgar.” I got angry and told her to sober up and asked why she always had to act like such a whiny bitch. “Don't you call me a BITCH!” she shrieked. “I am your MOTHER!” I tried to explain that I hadn't called her a bitch, just asked her why she kept acting like one. Susie gave me the evil eye when I said that. Story of my life. I'm so misunderstood. By this time Katie had called my father and told him my mother was bleeding. He told Katie to give me the phone. He blamed me for not watching after my mother properly, then he asked me if I'd been giving my little sister drugs on account of the way Katie was apparently slurring her words on the phone. I hung up on him. He didn't call back. My mother yelled at me for hanging up on my father. I don't have any respect, she said, and I'm out of control, and what kind of example am I setting for my sisters? They're both already grade-A sluts, I countered, citing as evidence a blow job rumor I heard last week involving Kelly and Jon Shaver. My mom's dykey friend was massaging her shoulders at this point. She told me to watch my mouth. I was in a room full of ladies, she said. I called her a cunt and stomped upstairs. I called Robby's cell phone, looking for a ride out of there, anywhere; I was willing to pay for gas. But Robby didn't pick up his phone. When I came back down Katie and Kelly were fighting about Jon Shaver, who they were both apparently crushing on. Katie glared at me and stuck her tongue out like a goddamn five-year-old. Like I was r
esponsible for the sucking of Jon Shaver's dick! Exasperated, I grabbed one of my mother's beers and rode out on my skateboard. There were fireflies everywhere, blinking. The cicadas were droning away all around me, shrill and constant. I went to the molehill and sat down, but the moles were all hiding, deep inside their mound. I puked a little against the inside of my teeth. I spit it out on the dirt. I rolled a sloppy joint and smoked it as best as possible, but it kept going out and pieces of pot kept falling out the ends. Finally things began to chill out, but hordes of mosquitoes were sucking the hell out of me. So I went back home. When I got inside, Susie had gone home. Thank god. My mother and my sisters were sitting around in their pajamas, all curled up in front of the TV. Kelly was sucking her thumb. Katie was chewing her nails. My mother's hand was all wrapped up in gauze. There was a dark red dot on the bandage, where the blood had begun to coagulate. They asked me to sit down with them and watch Desperate Housewives. I hate that show but I sat down anyway. Apparently they had ordered a pizza. They asked if I would mind answering the door when it came. Big black moths kept crawling on the TV screen, but no one seemed to notice. I thought it was going to turn my stomach again, but it didn't. The door rang and I paid for the pizza, happy to hijack part of the tip. And that was basically a regular night around here . . .
~
One of the Alateen rooms I used to go to was in the basement of a Methodist church and during the day it doubled as a day-care center. There were a billion toys tucked away in the corner and the rug was made of Astroturf in primary colors with a hopscotch lane running down the middle. There was kiddie art all over the walls. The first time I went there I spotted a page from a child's coloring book tacked up on the corkboard. My eyes were just drawn to it for some reason. I stared at the thing constantly from then on, whenever I was bored. I was always bored. The picture was up there all year long. I never stopped staring . . . The page was colored in very neatly, I thought, especially for a child. (When I was little I could never stay in the lines. My crayon just went all over the page, in thick messy streaks. I sucked at coloring books . . .) In the middle of the picture there was an island, lurching up brown and green from a pale blue sea scattered with whitecaps. On the island was a red brick home settled on the edge of what looked like a fort with a lighthouse. There was a patch of puffy treetops that the kid had drawn little polka-dot apples inside. I thought the apples were a nice touch. Seabirds surged over the ocean, where there was a sailboat and a small tug enjoying the weather. Big blue clouds like whales floated over the scene, looking down. In the forefront, on the shore, were lumps of brown sand covered in dune grass.