inprogress

I tap the pocked wood three times with my scraped knuckles, then cram my jittery hands into borrowed trouser pockets. Lint and crinkled paper climb into the my fingernail crevices. There's a heavy pause, then tv garble behind the peeling door is muted in a hush. Sticky bare feet slap across the apartment; the peephole murks up- I avert my eyes, a chain clatters to the slot, and the door separates from the busted frame and jerks to a crack. The flimsy chain-latch clings desperately across the forehead grimacing at me. Crow's feet creep the corners of her squinting eyes, meeting my stare and tossing back years of bitter scowls and bar tabs. Her voice reminds me of Pauline, the tough-as-nails geriatric who served my waffles last night at some all-night diner on Madison Avenue. She'd apparently met a pack of Marlboros in grammar school and they never lost her favor.
“Who are you looking for?” She spits the words at me. She's suspicious, but I can tell she expected worse, someone threatening. The police? A mob of social workers? Her pimp or some drug dealer she's on the outs with? Definitely not some skinny kid in a threadbare hooded jacket and thrift store loafers.
“Mr. Baylor sent me,” I shrug, play it casual.
She shifts her eyes in a once-over, skeptical. “You don't look very strong. I asked for a tough boy. You don't look very big. You do eat meat, don't you?” Her eyebrows purse at the possibility of some shifty vegetarian landing on her filthy welcome mat.
“I'm stronger than I look,” I try to stop my pleading eyes. I don't eat meat, and I'm only a fair liar. She works her mouth into a pucker and tucks her eyebrows together, scrutinizing the gaunt frame poking against my stained, oatmeal-colored sweater. I puff my chest out and stand tall as I can, stoic.
“Come in, but wipe your feet on the rug and do not use the bathroom or touch the icebox.”
She emphasizes the last demand, perhaps convinced I'm starving or junkied thin. The door slams in my face, the chain squeaks out of the latch, and she swings it open again, glaring at my feet with crooked expectancy. As requested, I whisk each scuffed leather shoe twice across a welcome mat so grimy I gain more than I scrape off. As I thump past, she trains her eyes across the floor, scouring for tracks or prints, though the floor is as grubby as the mat.
A bare lightbulb flickers a sickly glow above a ramshackle christmas tree, the fake type with color-coded clumps of squished branches you try to assemble to match the picture plastered on the box. Sections of green bristles are missing and the entire mess looks smushed and lop-sided. One string of lights attempts to stretch in a top-to bottom spiral, but stops halfway down, the rest of the cord dangles unplugged. It is almost Easter. The child sits on a saggy couch, rocking faintly, seemingly unaware of my presence. Straw-colored cowlicks twirl across most of his head, what's left is matted flat against the scalp from sleep, or going days unwashed. The dirt and spaghetti sauce on is his face suggests both. My eyes flick between the neglected tree and child, drawing nonsensical parallels I try to ignore. The body is disturbingly angular, missing the healthy cushion most toddlers have, and wearing only a bloated pull-up and the top to a set of Superman pajamas ending barely below his navel, the cape hangs by one velcro. A murmer repeats from his blank face, though the mouth drooped open is nearly motionless. He faces a console television between channels, his glazed eyes reflecting black and white snow off the glowing screen. I'm twenty-four, and this is my first babysitting job.
“He's a bad boy. It's too bad, since he looks so sweet right now, I know. But he'll sit there all day and if I'm lucky, I'll forget he's there. But goddamn, do one wrong thing, you never know what the hell it's gonna be and wham! He gets pissy like you wouldn't believe. I get so tired of spanking him, I swear my arm will fall off one day. I thought the terrible twos and all that with the fits would be over by now. Seems like he waited till after to turn into such a monster. Imagine, four years old and still in diapers!”
I wonder if he is retarded. He seems retarded, but he doesn't have a down syndrome face, so maybe not.
Her voice creaks out of her in such a coarse way it makes my ears hurt. I just want her to shut up. Every time she hovers near me I smell cigarettes, musky old lady perfume, and the sweaty breath that rasps through her decaying teeth with each syllable. I expect her to give directions for his handling, feeding, emergency phone numbers, and the like. I wonder if she realizes I could change my mind and walk right out the door, that she's not exactly selling me on him. Then, she does realize, and backpedals her trap as she backs out of the door, perhaps hoping that if she beats me in a game of Not it, I'm obligated to stay with her kid- assuming I'm decent enough to not just leave him alone in the apartment or abduct him and dump him off in an alley somewhere. I get the feeling she's the type that doesn't really care either, as long as her alibi checks out and my face is filling the “last seen with” section on the Avid flyer instead of hers.

TBC

10/16/2006

She's thrown a few moments into her appearance before running out the door; she wasn't expecting to be anyone's company tonight. Thoughts from the night before are still tumbling 'round her brain, trying to settle in the way a dog circles her resting place before giving into gravity. There are moments we all experience, most of us occasionally click to auto-pilot without our own consent. We daze out, but somehow continue our tasks and later resurface in our thoughts to ponder and digest how much we've gotten done but cannot recall actually doing, or how exactly we have ended up heading in the wrong direction. She is driving over and finishing up on a couple crazy bits of hair in the dim rearview. She can never seem to tame them, but always gives a good effort just in case. For this, she almost admires them because they seem well-suited on her head considering what goes on inside of it. How long do her eyes leave the road? She is not able to put it together in time as she snaps back into her present mindset, and at exactly the correct moment: appropriate, if only a split-second too late to change her now-destiny. A quick blink and eyes widen as though waking with a startle, alarmless, at the exact moment one should be arriving somewhere, yet the mind-clock has not added on preparation and travel time. Wide eyes, a sharp breath.Lights out.

11/29/2006

(stolen from a bigger scribble it got lost in)

Midnight grocery excursion; she's flying her hand out the window, tilting to rise and descend through crisp air, sounds muffled by winter. Even in the city the stars are blond christmas lights tangled through velvet sky. In the parking lot she spins, savoring the freedom rushing her head, her heartbeat's flutter, the swirl of steamy breath across her cheek. For a moment she hesitates a self-conscious smile; she hasn't been helping and the cart is ready for return. She stands, guilty and sheepish. He joins for stargazing, though the twinkling is no match for a night in the country and does not inspire their devotion to gather so many eye-fulls. Moreso, it offers excuse to sneak a little closer, bringing tilted heads against one another, exposing tender flesh at the throat. A curve that starves to be kissed. And it is. Gently. Because that is what he's feeling tonight, tender and worried about things he doesn't speak. But she senses and tunes her actions to fit, wondering why but rarely asking. At his place she eyes him, nervous and hoping. He can make her feel like such a stranger at times; this hurts in place of harsh words. It's a quieter sort of rejection. He's pushing and she doesn't know how to dance this way. She opens her mouth to speak but nothing sounds right coming out. Neverminds and nothings and back to start again. Squinting from the corner of her eyes she wonders if he knows, if she should tell him, or if what she is feeling is even reasonable.

12/11/2006

Pockets

It all must go.Cabin fever is pitching in, pushing her to attack corners in a fury. She seeks all those leftovers tucked away for a later that never came. It rarely does. Objects overlooked until one day they simply blend into the walls, and despite determined eyes the castaways elude her. Tucked beneath last year's requested and received sewing machine, pants awaiting TLC swaddle patterns for skirts and other good intentions. Every scrap is spread across the floor, facing a fate of out-with-the-old: a year's lease of space made pointless. Long scissors slice crisply along edges of a pocket deemed useful to an undetermined future project, another endeavor likely to accumulate until the next evacuation. A snapped flap struggles to restrain fleeing paper crumples, bits of a years forgotten to-do list or scattered contemplations collected and stored with hasty ink. She picks at fragments with little expectation as the vessel has taken a trip through disaster, and there's nothing left to decipher. Water has bled away all language, leaving blue blurs. Linty white fibers dot the tile and collect on her toes as the mass is unraveled. The last fold is unfurled carefully. Centered, small print remains distinct. It has survived undetected among clutter though she has purged meticulously of these memories, scoured all remaining imprints of him from her environment. But though smudged, she reads his hand: "Dear You..."

2/15/2007

I'm time-passing in the Loop, as volunteer work has brought me the city each morning; I don't want to toss my drive down the drain. I thumb thick linen-colored chapters of a friend I hope tastes just as good on the inside as the cover art lets me assume. I've been told over and over I should not judge this way, by cover, but since the day my sticky baby fingers groped, evolved to caress slices of imagined worlds sandwiched in binding- I've never attempted to hide my biased optimism for the quirkies and pretties, mysterious, strange-fonted, graceful or plain cover designs. There's no formula in my preference for which two-dimensional desserts fronting random titles see themselves fit to fish-hook my eyes. I am skimming lightly, fingertip-dragging across spines, and looking up in time to catch familiar eyes. It's been a while. We land next door for coffee. Like old times, and it feels the same inside our place. But not inside our hearts; at least not mine. I'm long finished with him there. He's buzzing like a chatterbox, catching up, answering my inquiries. I'm fielding his prying, fulfilling his curiosity but keeping secrets.Because I'm bitter? Maybe, maybe not. I wonder if he's noticed the weight. I've noticed his.He doesn't look so good these days.And I am smiling.