OPRAH
Oprah has a personal trainer named Bob Greene.
He has natural guns like Dixie’s old boyfriend Henry and he says anyone can get in shape. Anyone.
I wonder if Norma is anyone.
I also wonder why Dixie dumped Henry and what happens when people get dumped.
Oprah with guns: clay
MRS. DEAN
After yoga, Mrs. Dean takes me to the Gap.
“I don’t shop here,” I say.
“Of course you do.” And she starts looking at something.
I sit on a place where they keep T-shirts until a lady with a nametag that says Fairy says, “You can’t sit there. Sorry.”
So then I sit on the ground by the jeans.
“Where’s Dixie?” I ask Mrs. Dean, but she is holding up a brown blazer in the mirror so she can’t answer me.
I say it louder. “I thought Dixie was going to come with us to yoga.”
“Nope,” she says, and holds up a gray one that looks like elephants.
“Why not? You said.”
Mrs. Dean sighs and puts the blazer back. “Dixie had a little accident today so she couldn’t come.”
“What kind of accident?”
“It’s not important.”
“Why?”
“Because Dixie is always messing things up.”
Mrs. Dean holds up a pink shirt now that makes her face all red.
“That makes your face all red.”
Her face gets redder in the mirror.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“Why don’t you get up and look around a bit? I’ll buy you a new outfit.”
“No thanks,” I say.
She holds up another shirt and it is green.
It looks like baby poo. So I say, “What did Dixie do?”
She sticks her chest out and pulls the sides of the shirt around her. It doesn’t look good.
“It doesn’t matter what Dixie did.”
Mrs. Dean looks at me and then walks to another part of the store.
I keep sitting there.
I think about Dixie.
I also think about Dixie’s accident.
I wonder if it was like our accident or not that bad.
Mrs. Dean comes back with a stack of clothes and says, “Okay, let’s go. Get up. We’re going to the dressing room.”
I sit there.
“Get up, Mazzy.”
I still sit there.
“I said, get up.”
The lady named Fairy is looking at us and so is a girl who looks familiar, and I wonder if she went to my school.
“Mazzy,” Mrs. Dean whispers. “Now. Please get up right now. Make this a bit easier for both of us.”
Then I remember. The girl’s name is Holly.
I get up and say, “Hi Holly.”
Holly says, “Hi Mazzy.”
Mrs. Dean smiles.
So I say, “I don’t usually shop here.”
Mrs. Dean stops smiling and grabs my arm.
I do a karate chop in the air and then we go to the dressing room.
OLD VAMPIRES
“Colby, what if they’re old vampires?”
“How old?”
“Like grandmas.”
“Are they hot?”
“Pretty hot,” I say.
“How hot?”
“Hot.”
“And they are vampires for sure?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Liar.”
“What?” I say.
“Your story doesn’t work. When you get to be a vampire, you don’t get old.”
“You don’t?”
“No, stupid.”
“Not at all?”
“No. You become immortal. You don’t age at all.”
Colby gets up from the sprinkler.
“Duh,” he says.
Then he says, “So no. I would not make out with an old vampire.”
DRESSING ROOM
In the dressing room I try on a jean skirt, three T-shirts, a pair of jeans, a striped thing, and four pairs of shorts.
“Well,” Mrs. Dean says, “I love them all. How are we going to decide?”
I’m standing there in my underwear, which is lacy, and my bra, which has oranges in it. Mrs. Dean hasn’t said anything about the oranges again.
“I like the skirt and the T-shirts,” I say. And I don’t really like them all that much but I guess I should get some stuff for school.
“What about this?” She holds up the pink striped thing.
“No.”
“Why not? You looked so cute in it.”
“No. I hate it.”
And I’m being rude. Mom would say, “Mazzy, don’t give her the satisfaction.”
But for some reason I can’t help it. Mrs. Dean is on my nerves. She’s acting like she knows me.
I karate chop at her and she backs against the wall.
“What was that?” she asks, like I was really going to hit her.
“What?”
She looks at me for a while and I don’t care.
Then she says, “You heard from your dad?”
I want to karate chop again so I do.
She sighs and says, “Mazzy, honey, you’re acting like a little kid. You need to act your age.”
I close my eyes, and we are both standing there and standing there until finally she says, “Well, I’m going to go buy these. You get dressed.”
“All of them?”
“Yep. Today is your day and I thought you looked great in everything but maybe not these.”
She puts a pair of shorts on the hook.
“I liked those.”
She ignores me and says, “I think your Mom would agree that these are very flattering clothes.”
I feel something sick in my stomach.
She’s folding everything and I’m sitting on the bench still in my underwear and oranges.
“I’ve been wanting to do something for you and Roxie for so long and this turned out to be a fun idea.”
I pick at the lace on my panties.
“Don’t you think it was fun?”
Fun backwards is NUF.
“NUF,” I want to say, but I don’t. I don’t want to act like a little kid.
She starts humming again and then says, “Okay, get dressed and I’ll meet you out by the checkout,” and then she’s gone.
I wonder what my mom would say if she was here.
I wonder if Mom would like these clothes even a little bit.
I wonder if I look like Mom at all.
I look at myself in the mirror.
Stand up and look at everything: my face, my arms, my stomach, my legs, my butt, my everything.
This is everything.
And I don’t look like her.
I take the oranges out and jump on them so that juice gets all over the floor.
I smash them and wipe them all over the walls and then someone says, “Hey, what’s going on in there?”
Some shoes are outside the door — right next to the door — almost in the stall.
I freeze.
A knock on the door.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yep,” I say.
The shoes are still there.
And then they leave.
I push all the orange leftovers into a pile in the corner of the dressing room and put the shorts we aren’t buying on top of them.
Then I get dressed and leave.
BACK BENDS
When I get home from yoga with bags from the Gap, I go straight to her room.
She is in her yellow nightgown and she is looking at the ceiling.
“Mom,” I whisper.
She keeps looking up, and I sit in the chair by the bed.
“Mom,” I say louder. She turns her head a little toward me but is still looking at the ceiling.
Then I say, “I went to yoga. Mrs. Dean took me.”
She blinks.
“I think you might’ve liked it or maybe not.”
Blinks again.
“Is yoga stupid?”
Blink.
“She got me these clothes.”
I pull out the skirt and the T-shirts and the pink thing.
She closes her eyes and breathes really deep. I hold the clothes up for when she opens her eyes.
She doesn’t.
She just breathes deep.
So I say, “Actually, your breathing is very good. It’s a rejuvenating breath called Ujjiya or something and that’s another thing I wanted to show you.”
I put the clothes down and I pull the covers off her.
But first I open the window and the blinds so she can reset her system.
Then I say, “Keep breathing really deep through your nose.”
She does.
Then I say, “Okay, I’m going to help you do something from yoga. It will help you, I think.”
Her eyes are still closed but she is doing the breath and it is almost like Darth Vader.
So then I try to do this but it isn’t easy.
I say, “It’s called Modified Bridge Pose.” I put my hand on her shoulders and say, “Bend your knees.”
She doesn’t so I have to make her bend her knees. Her nightgown falls down to her stomach.
I look at her thighs.
Blue.
Blue white and red.
Like the flag.
She doesn’t move or try to cover up. She just keeps breathing.
“Good, Mom,” I said. “Good concentration.” Then I said, “Now get on your shoulders.”
But I can’t really explain what I mean because it’s not easy to explain. I say, “Like put your arms underneath your body and curve onto your shoulders.”
She doesn’t and I am holding her knees so they will stay bent.
I let them go to show her the shoulder part, and they go back down.
“Mom, you have to do some of it,” I say. Her eyes are still closed.
So I get her knees back up and I try again. I say, “Go up with your butt and stomach in the air but your shoulders on the ground.”
She lies there. Breathing.
“Mom, please try this. Please.”
She doesn’t move.
“Please?”
I let go of her knees again and they slide back down.
I can do this.
So I lie down on the bed.
“Like this, Mom.” I do one. “Just do what I’m doing. It’s called Modified Bridge Pose. It’s supposed to help.”
She won’t open her eyes.
“Open your eyes, Mom.”
Please open your eyes and try this. Something is starting to come up my throat but I bite on it.
Mom’s eyes are still closed. She is breathing deep and my tongue is bleeding.
Finally I say, “Mom, do you think I act like a little kid?”
Nothing.
Later, when Bill comes over to help Mom, he yells to the front room, “What are all these clothes doing on the bed?”
I switch the channel to Wheel of Fortune.
“It’s one thing to have all your crap on the floor, but you can’t have stuff on the bed. Okay? You’ve got to keep stuff off the bed, Mazzy.”
Bill would be bad at Wheel of Fortune.
NONI JUICE
One time I gave Mom a cup of noni juice.
Norma gave it to me because she found it in her fridge and said, “Maybe your mom would like this. It’s supposed to be healthy.”
“What is it?”
“Exotic fruit juice delivers superior antioxidants.”
She was reading from the label.
“What are antioxidants?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Not sure, but I’ve heard this juice fixes everything.”
“Everything?”
“That’s what I heard, on the Web site and around,” she said.
“Why do you have it?”
“Even if I don’t look like it, I’m trying to be healthy.”
“Oh,” I said, and pulled another weed because I help her pull weeds almost every day now.
I got up and sat with her at the table.
Instead of lemonade, we had Fresca and a bottle of noni juice.
“Does it work?” I asked. I don’t like Norma’s lawn chair because my butt was going through the plastic slats.
“Umm, I don’t know.”
“You haven’t tried it?”
“Not yet. I don’t like how it smells. Plus I just buy the stuff; I don’t drink it.”
I opened the lid and smelled it: barf.
Then we ate Twinkies and I ate three almonds from a bowl she brought out.
“Can I take this home?”
“Of course you can,” she said, and handed me another Twinkie.
TWINKIES AT SUNSET: oils on canvas
OLIVIA’S ALBUM
So that night after two reruns, I put the juice in one of her yellow cups and take it with the sorbet and pills.
I almost drop the tray when I get in there because she is sitting in the chair by the dresser looking at the album.
“You’re up.”
She turns a page and doesn’t look at me.
It is Olivia’s album. The one she keeps under the bed. She’d gotten up and crawled under the bed.
I hold my breath and she turns another page.
Then I say again, “You’re up.” Another page.
Her hair is matted against her head and she’d put on an Eeyore sweatshirt that I’d gotten from Disneyland when I went with Dad on a special broadcast.
She didn’t like that sweatshirt.
“Mom?”
Still nothing, just another page.
I step over a pile of pants and then some shoes and put the tray on her bed table.
“Mom?”
Nothing.
I sit on the bed and watch her. Her face is so hard. So white and hard and skinny.
I look at my hands and sit. And sit. I sit like that and she sits like that for over an hour. She starts the album over and over and I sit and sit.
“Mom? Do you want your pills?”
The sorbet is a puddle and I don’t know if the noni juice has to be cold.
“Mom?”
A while later I am lying on the bed.
On my side watching her.
Then on my back.
On my side again.
On my back.
Page after page after page.
I wake up the next morning and she is next to me — her knees in her chest and her breathing heavy.
The sorbet puddle is still there but the pills and noni are gone.
And one more thing; her hand is touching my hair.
DAD
One week after the text message, Dad calls again.
“I’m going to try to come home this weekend.”
I’m melting eleven marshmallows because Lisa dropped some off.
“Did you hear me, Maz?”
The microwave beeps.
“Am I on speakerphone?”
I open it and the marshmallows aren’t done.
“Maz.”
I push .30 and start.
“Maz . . . Maz, answer me.”
I turn on the light and watch the marshmallows go around and around.
“Mazzy, pick up the phone and talk to me right now.”
The microwave beeps again but they still aren’t done. I check with a chopstick.
“Mazeline, if you don’t pick up the phone right now . . .”
I pick up the phone and say: “What?”
“I’m going to try to come home this weekend so we can sort things out.”
I don’t say anything.
“I have had several long discussions with Mrs. Peet.”
I bite my lip. I don’t know how to feel because I don’t want him to put her in a place.
Everything is fine.
We’re fine.
I want to tell him that.
But then I also want to tell him he can come home. He should come home. We need him.
“Okay,” I finally say, and I take the marshmallows out anyway.
He’s quiet for awhile and I stir the marshmallows.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making Peking duck for me and Mom.”
“Peking duck this time, huh?”
He sort of laughs.
He says: “Getting a little fancy these days, eh?”
“I’m serious, Dad. Mom said she wanted Peking duck so I’m making it.”
He’s quiet.
I eat some marshmallow but it’s too hot and I burn my tongue. I drop the phone and it hangs up.
DAD
Dad and Mom used to dance.
Late at night when we were supposed to be asleep.
Mom would throw back her head and laugh and Dad would pick her up.
“Stop it, Dave,” she’d say.
“What?” And he twirled her around and around.
“You’re going to hurt your back.”
“Well, I guess I should stop, then,” he’d say, and keep twirling and twirling and twirling.
I used to lay on the floor and watch them from the hallway.
Watch them laugh.
I’d lay there until maybe Dad saw me and he’d say, “Well, looks like someone is in big old trouble,” and I’d scream “No!” and he’d put Mom on the couch, and her face. I can see her face.
All giggly.
I’d start down the hall but he’d catch me. He always caught me and then it was me laughing and twirling and everything was how it was supposed to be.
My mom used to love my dad and my dad used to love my mom.
And they both used to love me.
He went for a one-week audition for ESPN 360. One week became forever.
NEW FOOD
Lisa comes by and she has four big bags of groceries.
“My dad’s coming home for the weekend,” I say.
“I know,” she says. And she starts emptying milk and bread and everything we haven’t had for a long long time.
“He called you?”
She doesn’t answer but instead pulls out a box of cookies.
“Why so much stuff?”
Another box of cookies and a roasted chicken.
She still doesn’t answer and she’s slamming things down on the counter.
When she finally has everything out, I say, “Aren’t some things for you and José and the kids?”
Everything Is Fine. Page 5