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