Everything I Never Wanted to Be

by Dina Kucera

  I say, “Thirty-six? This is insane. Okay, well, have a good night.”

  I drive home with every single ounce of life completely sucked out of me.

  Ten years. I have been scanning bologna for ten years. The only possible way in hell that this will not feel like I’ve completely wasted ten years of my life is if I’m ever in my wildest and most insane dreams on Oprah and she says, “I wonder what koala bears eat?”

  I will immediately say, “Rubber. They eat rubber, Oprah.”

  Being a checker in a grocery store is a transition job. A job you do until you do something important. For me it’s just a job. I clock in, I scan, I clock out, I go home. That’s when I start my real job. Home sweet home.

  I get home and my grandson, Moses, is there. He smiles and comes right away to give me some love and kisses.

  Moses is eight, but because he has cerebral palsy he can’t balance on the toilet and he’s terrified of the potty training process. Consequently, he’s not potty trained. And just my luck, I walk in right after he’s wet through his jeans.

  Moses can’t talk but we have a whole language that we understand with him coupled with sign language. Moses is very clear about what he wants, and just like any other eight-year-old, he wants it now.

  My mom also lives with us. She has Parkinson’s Disease. Mom hallucinates and is not alert most of the time. She mumbles, and when you say, “What Mom?” she’ll scream, “Are you deaf?!”

  Once when I was holding her up off the toilet, with my spine about to snap and the muscles in my shoulder ripping, she says, “It’s getting to where I can’t even wipe myself anymore.” Then she looks up at me with her wild eyes and says, “That’s good news for you.”

  I hear Mom ringing her bell, and I walk into her room, still in my work uniform. We are the only people in her room, but she motions for me to come closer.

  She whispers, “There’s a conspiracy.”

  “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  “A conspiracy. There’s a conspiracy.”

  “Okay. I’ll check it out.”

  “Thank you. I’ve had to wait all day to tell you that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t tell anyone about it.”

  “Okay. I...”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  I whisper, “Okay.”

  My house is like living with the circus. All we need is a midget and a bearded lady. Well, all we need is a midget.

  John has been out of work, so he has been following behind everyone in the house and shutting off lights literally when you’re still in the room. He lost his job and can’t find work so they repossessed our car. If I don’t work enough hours at my job, they cancel our health insurance. The bill collectors call nonstop, so now I answer the phone and when they ask for me I say I’m deceased.

  Moses comes around the corner with a Coke can that he’s gotten from God-knows-where. I grab it and get him a juice box. He shakes his head “no” because he wants the Coke, not the juice.

  John says, “How can we afford those juice boxes? What are they, like three dollars?”

  I don’t respond and give Moses his juice. He takes a big drink and smiles at Grandpa as if to say, “The economy is not my problem, Grandpa.”

  My oldest daughter, Jennifer, walks in with her girlfriend and says to John, “I have to borrow twenty dollars for gas or I can’t get to work.”

  John says, “What exactly don’t you people get? I. Don’t. Have. Any. Money.”

  In private, I give Jen a twenty and tell her she has to take the transaction to her grave.

  An hour later, Jen goes to the emergency room because she says her heartbeat is skipping. She says it’s a heart attack for sure and she can’t stop itching. She says she’s probably been bit by something that is giving her the heart attack, and then she’s out the door to get medical treatment.

  My middle daughter, April, calls me and says someone took her Grammy CD out of her case and she wants it back. I tell her she may have misplaced it. Of course she didn’t misplace it. Her CDs are all categorized and in alphabetical order. She could feel the weight in this particular case was off and sure enough, the Grammy CD is gone. She says she has to go because if she dries her shirts for more than twenty-seven minutes, they aren’t right and she has to rewash them.

  She says, “Shit. My twenty-five minute timer went off.”

  Click, the phone goes dead.

  I have adult attention deficit disorder with bi-polar characteristics, coupled with obsessive compulsive disorder. Jen is bipolar with a panic disorder. April has post-traumatic stress disorder with some OCD on the side. Carly, my youngest daughter, is bipolar, OCD, ADD with a splash of PTSD on top. I tell the girls that sometimes when they talk, it’s like their brains spin really fast in one direction, and then abruptly stop and spin in the other direction.

  A typical statement from Carly sounds like, “I’m full. I want to be a nurse. Do you like gummy worms? I want to go to interior design school. Motorcycles are loud. Did you just see a flash of light? I’m starving.” The brain, spinning and spinning.

  Then Jen says, “I’m having a panic attack. Or a heart attack. Or liver failure. What is this lump? I don’t have a lump on my other shoulder. Now I’m depressed.”

  April says, “Of course you’re depressed. Your glasses are mixed with your cups, and your plates are where your bowls should be. I’m sorry but how do you people live this way?” The brain still spinning and spinning like tornados in our heads.

  If you want to see the underbelly of mental health disorders colliding, you should see us on a trip.

  Carly stands at the edge of the boardwalk in sweats that say “Juicy” across the ass. She looks out onto the ocean and begins to cry. She says, “It’s so beautiful.” Then suddenly she stops crying and with a tear still running down her face, says, “Do I smell pizza?”

  We get to the pizza stand and Jen says, “Mom, you know CPR right? I mean seriously, you may have to give me CPR sometime today. I’m having chest pains. I also think I have liver damage.”

  I say, “Okay. I’ll save you.”

  Then I say to April, “Get me a slice of cheese.”

  April says, “Wait. What is the system here? Are there two lines or one? There should be a place-your-order line and a pick-up-your-food line. Excuse me, sir? We should have two distinct lines. Are you placing an order or picking up an order?”

  Carly: “I wish this pizza was a cheeseburger.”

  Jen: “My arm is numb. Would a stroke take this long?”

  April: “Are you kidding me? This table isn’t clean. Excuse me, sir! Who’s in charge of wiping down the tables?” He says nobody. April says, “Okay! Thanks!” Then looks down and mumbles, “Fucking idiot.”

  I say, “Can we just sit and have a nice lunch? The ocean is beautiful... the day is beautiful.”

  April: “Why do I feel irritated when you talk? Really, Mom. The second you open your mouth, I know you’re going to say something that gets on my nerves.”

  “Because you think you hate me right now? It will go away, Sweetie.”

  “No, it won’t. And ‘Sweetie’? Really?”

  Jen: “I think I just went blind in my left eye.”

  Carly crying, “You guys just don’t get it!” Laughing with tears running down her face: “I don’t know why I said that.”

  April: “Jesus Christ. We’re going to get food poisoning or the Ebola Virus or something. This pizza is probably our last fucking meal.”

  Jen: “Okay! I’m already starting to feel it! I’ve got the Ebola Virus. Or a tumor.”

  April: “You may have Salmonella.”

  Me: “Girls, please stop!”

  I am magic. I’m the only person in the house who can wave my hand and make mysterious people go away.

  Mom rings her bell. I hear an ambulance drive by the house as I walk into her room.

  Mom says, “Did you take care of it?”

  “The conspiracy? Ye
s. I did.”

  “Thank God. Now, can you bring me a root beer? I’m going to rearrange everything in my drawers.”

  “Okay.”

  She leans toward me and whispers, “Also. That man is under my bed smoking a cigar. Can you get him out of here? Cigar smoke makes me queasy.”

  “Okay.” I lean down and wave my hand under the bed. “Okay. He’s gone.”

  Once John tried to make the cigar man go away. Mom said, “All he did was aggravate him.” The cigar man, the little girl, the family with several children who sleep with Mom and cause her to worry about rolling over on one of the kids... I wave my hand and they are gone. Magic.

  There have been several times when Mom has accused me of trying to poison her. She looked at me and said, “Just what are you trying to pull here?” As if with all the drug knowledge I’ve been forced to retain in my head, I wouldn’t know how to get her to heaven the first time out. As if I would wait until I’ve given her showers for four years. I love her but she is sucking the life out of me. Quickly.

  My sweet Moses follows me everywhere I go. If I stop, he runs into me and then laughs. Man, I love Moses. I love him so much I can’t stand it.

  It’s two weeks before Christmas and for the first time ever, we’ve canceled Christmas. The only person who is getting a present is Moses.

  We canceled Christmas because of the economy. I think we should buy a big white van and drive to Mexico once a day and drop off a bunch of white people. Sorry, but there are no jobs in our country.

  Because there are no jobs in our country, my brother in-law, Geo, just moved in with us. So it feels like there are sixteen people living in our house. It’s only a temporary situation. Until the economy gets better. Jesus Christ.

  John and Geo are identical twins. So now there are two of them sitting in the living room. I was fine with just the one. I walk in each day and there they are. The twins. The boys. Right there on the couch watching sports. Even with the bad economy, we still have two hundred sports channels, so there is a big sporting event on all day long. Holy God Almighty.

  John and I have been married twenty years and I adore his family. He has six siblings... all funny and creative.

  When John’s mother passed away, John and his brothers drove from Phoenix to Chicago to bring their father and all his belongings back to Phoenix to live with John’s sister, Cheryl.

  They pull up in an enormous U-Haul. A very small part of the U-Haul is their father’s belongings. Most of it is “collections.” Hundreds of collections.

  It is unbelievable. They pull them out of boxes, one after another. Thimble collection. Cat collection. Egg collection. I watch this and am blown away. Maybe because we were always so poor that financing a collection of any sort would have meant we wouldn’t have electricity.

  Here’s the part that made this strange event hysterical: all the siblings began to fight.

  “Why should you have the Beanie Baby collection? You already took the ceramic head collection.”

  “I took the ceramic head collection because it will look nice in my living room.”

  “Fine. If you take the Beanie Baby collection, I’ll take the bell collection.”

  “So take the bell collection. I’ll take the glass egg collection.”

  “Why are you so selfish? It’s supposed to be fair. You’re such a fucking asshole. Just take the fucking eggs.”

  “No, fuck you. You take the eggs and I’ll take the ceramic cats.”

  “I’m the one who helped Mom collect the fucking ceramic cats! Just fuck off! Take the eggs and the cats and shove them up your ass.”

  “Shove the Beanie Babies up your ass.”

  “You know what, you whore? Why don’t you go have another abortion?”

  “Fuck off. At least I wasn’t in prison, you filthy sack of shit. And now, I’m taking the ceramic produce collection whether you like it or not, you fucking piece of fucking dog shit! Come on! Come get me! It’ll be the sorriest day of your life, motherfucker! Let’s go outside! Me and you! I’ll rip your leg off and beat you over the head with it!”

  And that is John’s sister talking.

  John and I ended up with collections everywhere. I mean everywhere. I felt like I was suffocating in collections. We had knick-knacks and whatnots all over the house. The girls were told never to touch them. They were valuable collections.

  I’d stand in my kitchen and stare at round glass eggs that had scary faces painted on the front. I’d look the other way and be face-to-face with these little babies sitting on a shelf with ceramic heads and cloth bodies. I couldn’t escape. I’d walk into the bedroom and the thimble collection was prominently displayed on a shelf as if we were honoring the thimbles in some way.

  Slowly, over months, I began boxing the collections so they wouldn’t get broken. Yes, that’s why I boxed them. For their own safety. This angered people: “If you aren’t going to display the wooden pig collection, why the fuck did you not let us display it at our house? Fuck John’s wife.”

  I think a collection should have meaning. I have a magazine and newspaper collection. I collect magazines with amazing covers of events that changed the world. Like September eleventh. Afghanistan. Iraq. The hurricanes in New Orleans.

  I’m not saying, Oh, look how smart I am, I have a better collection. But I am saying, I have a better collection because it makes sense. That’s all. One day, I’ll be able to show my grandchildren history. I’m not saying that a glass egg collection isn’t relevant. I’m saying, Who exactly is it relevant to? And if that person is you, okay, but what’s wrong with you?

  John’s family has become my family over the course of twenty years, and I can call on them for anything.

  We spend holidays and birthdays and special occasions together. I love them. But a baby head collection?

  I thought John was the worst person in the world to watch television with because he clicks and clicks and clicks. But then the twin brother moved in. Have you ever known someone who looked completely normal, but they started talking and you realized something was terribly wrong? Like some of the neurotransmitters in the brain are not quite connected? That’s Geo.

  I’m watching a show that has been on for forty-five minutes. Geo walks in, sits down and says, “Who’s that? Are they married? Why are they in that building? Whose kid is that?”

  Or I’m watching a movie and he sits down and says, “Did I tell you about what happened when I was going to the store? I was driving and this car cut me off.”

  I continue watching my movie.

  He says, “He almost hit me. Missed me by an inch.”

  I nod and then turn back to the television.

  “Did you know that I was in the marching band when I was in middle school? I played the trumpet.”

  I still have no response.

  “Did you know that I cleaned my room today?”

  No response.

  He says, “Where’s John?”

  “In the garage.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Testing his weed blower.”

  “Really?” There’s a pause while he mulls over that bit of information. “I may have to check that out.”

  “Really? Because I never get tired of hearing you talk.”

  Minutes later I hear screaming from the garage. I look out the window and see the fifty-year-old twins with masks on, howling with laughter, dramatically stumbling around with the weed blower blowing crap all over the yard.

  I watch for a minute, but then I hear Mom ringing her bell. Someone kill me.

  I try to do different things each holiday. I’m trying to create a tradition, but I’m the only person who ever gets excited about these projects.

  Last year I gave the whole family a project. I asked every person to write one page about each family member. About why they love them, why they appreciate them, maybe a funny memory. The plan was to gather the pages a few days before Christmas and put each family member’s pages together in a nice litt
le binder with their name on the front. I gave them all thirty days.

  I wrote my pages, and Jen wrote her pages even though she had pneumonia. And you know the only other person who finished the project? Mom. Granted, you couldn’t read what she wrote because of the Parkinson’s. But she put in the effort. I did read something about the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I also could make out the words “manger” and “camel” and “virgin.”

  This year, Christmas is canceled, but what I’m doing is something I’ve never done before. Every time I pass one of those people ringing the bell outside the store, I put what I can in the bucket.

  I also try once a week to buy some cans for the food drive. Why haven’t I done this before? Because I was consumed with spending every dime I had so the kids would love me. Coach purses, cell phones, Guess sunglasses, Gucci such and such.

  I wonder if people a long time ago felt about Christmas the way we do now. I wonder if Mary and Joseph saw the three wise men walk up with the gifts and said, “Oh, great. Now we gotta get them something.”

  I can’t cook and I don’t want to learn. John didn’t marry me for my skills in the kitchen. He married me because of my dazzling personality. I say, “Do you want a Hungry Man frozen meal, or can we just do something simple?”

  People don’t realize that some of the frozen entrées require more effort than others. Some, you just poke with a fork. Others, you have to peel back, and stir, and then put them back in. Some days I simply don’t have that kind of energy or time to be pulling back and poking and stirring.

  Food is not something I feel passionate about, so I don’t prepare food in my house for my family to enjoy. I am merely trying to keep them alive.

  Here’s another thing that I have simply made a decision about: I’m done learning. It’s a personal choice. I don’t want to learn another thing. I want to take all the information in my head and just run out the rest of my life with that information.

  I guess some would say it depends on what you have in there already. I don’t have much, but I have enough. If someone says, “Did you know...” I stop them and say, “No, I didn’t know, but don’t tell me.” I want to spend the rest of my life saying, “I have no idea.”