The window is open so everyone will hear. Admittedly, the heat is too much, but the sun is something we should get used to because it will never go away. Inside our yellow house, I play Beethoven on the stereo for my son. His name is Rodrico and I am his mother. This music will make him smart.
When the sun touches my house (and the sun here touches everything—sadistically) it turns more yellow. So yellow it must be a new, different color. I repainted it last winter. I want the people walking on the streets to be impressed.
Rodrico points to the sun in his picture books. I think he understands. Rodrico is always in my dreams at night. He is older and we are walking down a long road, but we don’t have shoes and the black asphalt is so hot that it steams. Looking into the distance, you can see the air distorted by heat.
I try not to hold him too much so that he will learn to walk. His head is soft and malleable. I’m scared to drop him and mess him up. But I have a chance to make him good, so I press on his head to make sure it’s still supple and I use right grammar when I talk. I say is not instead of ain’t.
Rodrico is the heaviest thing that I hold in my heart. He is larger than I imagined he would be. Nine months old and already fat. I am 19 and hold my weight around my face. Baby, the other mothers call me. And they call him Baby Baby. I ask them to call him Rodrico, but they won’t. I have to leave him with them at the big house while I go to work. They don’t work—they wait. They sit on chairs and leave their minds to rot like potatoes, growing awful knotted things.
Kelly wraps everybody’s heads in these ugly turbans she makes in her basement. Sometimes when I get him from the big house, he’s swaddled in one like a newborn. They like to do that because it keeps him still and he quiets down. Rodrico is an amicable baby. It worries me a lot. I don’t want him giving in to people. Soon as I pick him up I unravel him from that ugly green thing and ask them never to do it again.
I have asked them many times to play him Beethoven, but I never hear it going when I get there. I think such music would get lost inside that house, or at least it would be hesitant to emerge from the stereo.
Light touches the big house in a different way. It makes it even darker.
Nikia throws a handful of dirt at me. “Dirt eater!”
Nikia is Janice’s daughter. Sometimes I forget who’s whose. She’s got braids and beads with animals on them. She’d be a cute little girl if she were smart.
Rodrico will be better than any of them; only I can’t figure out how, if all day, he does what they do, eats what they eat, and hears what they hear.
I work at a drug store that sells many things. We’ve even got a bowl of bananas for 10 cents each. We sell those at a loss, but nobody ever buys them. We throw them away and get a new bunch every week. “They’re for looks.” Carlos says. “Everybody complaining about the damn food desert. You want a healthy option? You’ve got one. But nobody chooses it. What does that tell you?”
Dirt eater!
Dirt eater!
It’s called Everything Store. It is encompassed by a cloud, which is cigarette-smelling and motionless. I could blow that cloud away if I had the chance, and a sufficient amount of air in my lungs. But nothing has changed since I was 16. Carlos is still here and so am I and so is Loni. Only I am different now. I never chew gum when I’m working and I stand up straight. I want Rodrico to see his mother walking out the door with her shirt tucked in.
Everyone thinks they are being called by god to do something extraordinary, but Rodrico is proof that I really am. Think of him—how large his eyes are and how little they have seen. Imagine what he must be thinking as he’s resting in my arms.
“You’ve got dirt on your face, Bona!” A boy says to me. His chest seems to have one hundred ribs. His fingers are long and dark—made for prying closed things forcefully open. He knows my name.
Dirt eater!
“Yeah, you have, Baby. Right on the lip...Come on. Baby Baby’s over here. He was getting into trouble so we swaddled him up.”
I swallow anger.
Dirt is lovely. Were it not for the shame and the stigma it bears, I would let Rodrico eat it too. But Rodrico will only know the things he reads in books—not the taste of the earth. Not how it feels to draw blood from another human, and send them staggering, hands to their mouth. Or to hear them curse violently when it’s clear that you have won. Rodrico may not win battles, but he will win the war.
I unwrap him from the turban. He reaches his arms and his legs out towards me like a turtle lying on his back, waiting to be overturned. I almost cry, looking at him. To think that he could be without me, had I done what Mother wanted.
When I started working at Everything Store, I despised the fact that they did not have everything. When I look at Rodrico, I am never disappointed. Everything Child.
He is crying.
“Here, let me take him, Baby.”
Onika takes him in her arms—the color and consistency of melting caramel. She has a baby who’s fat like mine. A different sort of baby—with tilted almond eyes and a face too large for her features. Everything flat like the bottom of a valley. Down syndrome baby. Ruth is her name. She’s 16 months old, but she’s just like Rodrico. Onika is 35. She’s got another child too—a son as old as me, in prison.
“Roddy, what you crying about?” She asks, bouncing him in her arms. She smiles at me. “How was work?” I nod an answer, rubbing my eyes. Ruth grabs my pant leg to keep upright. She looks so small sitting there. So out of place. Her snowy skin. (Her father is white. That’s what gave her down syndrome, people say, that’s why you don’t want no white baby daddy.) Onika cuddles Rodrico and I hold out my arms for him.
Something hits me in the back of my head.
Dirt eater!
Dirt is lovely. It tastes like fresh rain. Crushed wet rock. The beginning of everything everywhere.
I started when I was five. Earth-tasting and smooth and melty, I said. And happy-making and good. It quickly became a secret. A secret is just a fact that one is ashamed of. When Mother saw me eating it, she’d smack it out of my hand and I’d cry. It was less like a cry than an unremitting scream. I don’t remember ever stopping, but there always came a point when it was done.
Dirty was always the word people used. You shouldn’t eat dirt because it’s dirty. How does a word become so disconnected from its origins that we spend time arguing the dirtiness of dirt?
Our yellow house used to be white, and it used to be mother’s. She left it to us because she didn’t need it anymore. She won two million dollars off a lottery ticket and went to Maine so she could feel some winter finally. I would not want winter—the dirt would be frozen.
But Mother did always seem like a wintery person. She had a strange blue tint in her eyes, so she wore blue the most—in the interest of bringing out her eyes, or the small part of her eyes that she wanted to bring out.
She talked with the same indifferent inflection, whatever she spoke of. (“The hospital on Gregory Road does abortions for a couple hundred, Bona.”)
Rodrico hits the ground with both hands. “Ma-ma!”
“Mother.” I correct him.
“Ma-ma!”
Our house has a big window. I use Kelly’s turbans as curtains. I forget whether she gave them to me or I took them—it’s all the same here. Carlos would give me curtains for free at Everything Store. He says he has enough money. He says that all the time.
I think we all have enough everything, except for ourselves. I feel that way at night, and sometimes it makes me cry. We all blend together, like celery and carrots turning to mush in a stew. I remember Janice watching a fight video and all the kids were gathered around her, bright bead bracelets racketing as they pumped their fists. From the little speaker of her phone, screams sounded like cicadas—those big noisy bugs. But when they go all night every night, you don’t even hear them anymore.
I hate thinking how our house is a part of this neighborhood. Doesn’t matter how yellow it is. Right now, celery softens in beef stock on the stove.
Rodrico pulls himself closer to the radio. Piano music crescendos. Every time you think it’s about to drop, it just goes higher. It must be some kind of never-ending piano he’s playing. When a song ends, I have to wonder whether it’s really done or the notes have merely reached a frequency beyond the range of my hearing.
Sometimes Everything Store does have what I want. Behind it is a patch of the smoothest soil. Clay. I have already dug a hole just far enough. Carlos knows I do it, and he doesn’t say anything. He never says anything. That is how he survives.
Today there is a man far away. I see him as I swallow, already reaching for a little bit more. He waves. The sun shines on him. I can’t see from here, but I am sure he is squinting his eyes. In one arm, he holds a book. I am sure it is a bible. Every book is a bible here. I nod to him and turn away.
Imagine me. How eroded my gums must be. How deprived I must look, holding dirt to my mouth. Sometimes my braids, from brushing the ground, are light and dusty at the ends. Imagine my arms like long worms protruding from a feeble body. My breasts are much too large for this torso. Rodrico did not take enough out. He is too timid. He is ashamed to drink this dirty milk.
When I look up, the man is gone. He must be inside, eating beef stew and reading his bible.
Rodrico is crying when I enter the big house. Drool comes from Ruth’s mouth and makes a puddle on the floor. The kitchen is hot. The mothers are laughing, two bags of potato chips between them. Rodrico crawls towards me, whining. (Mimicking Beethoven, I always imagine.) When I pick him up, he pulls at my shirt, asking for milk.
“Yeah he’s hungry, Baby.” Onika tells me. “Wouldn’t eat. We tried.”
“We even tried dirt!” somebody says.
Rodrico’s hand is grabbing but I push him away. “What?”
“Kidding! He wants it though, look. He wants that dirt milk.”
The heat and the smell of the kitchen is nauseating—like everybody inside of it is cooking to death. Rodrico smells horrible. His diaper is full and his eyes are swollen, the skin around them thick and folding like Ruth’s.
“We tried swaddling him, but he was screaming like crazy…wouldn’t sleep either. Maybe he’s sick.”
I’m shaking so hard I’m scared that I’ll drop him. My tongue curls upwards inside of my mouth. “Why didn’t you change his diaper?”
“Oh.” They laugh. “We didn’t notice. You mad? Jesus. We watch your kid for free, Baby. Cherish it. When he starts eating dirt, he’s outta here.”
“Rodrico will never eat dirt.” I take him out the door into the merciless sun. We break a sweat instantly, and he almost slips out of my arms. He is so heavy, holding everything inside him. Onika follows me out, but after a second she returns to the house. I look back and see the window close, but not before I hear a burst of laughter from inside. All of them in there growing roots.
Dirt eater!
Mother did not mean to have me. “A child is a bad investment,” she said. “It’s not even a gamble. What’s the prize?”
After a while, she didn’t take the dirt out of my hands anymore. She just watched me until I stopped. I always did. Shame is hot, like acid thrown on your face. Shame feels like you just finished crying and somebody is staring at you.
The truck comes to Everything Store once a week on Monday. All three of us work 6am to 7pm and there’s still more to do on Tuesday. We have as much as ever, but it still isn’t everything.
The man is waiting when I come out back. His book is in his hands. I close my eyes and lower myself to the ground.
He sits down next to me, silent.
I pick up a bit of dirt and put it in my mouth.
He puts his hand on my back.
We might be performing a religious ceremony I do not know the name of. He is wearing a sleeveless shirt that is plain and orange like a monk’s. His hair is cut neatly. He is older than me, but not too old. Not an old man.
“I see you sometimes.” He says. “You work at this store?”
His hand is still on my back. Heavy like Rodrico. Some people, when they speak, unintentionally take on an aggressive manner, but not him. The mechanics of his face move kindly.
“Yes. I work here,” I say, same old dirt moving in my mouth. “I’m nineteen. I have a son. He’s nine months old.”
The man smiles but does not laugh. Anyone else would have laughed at the abruptness. The strangeness of what I am saying.
“What is your son’s name?”
“Rodrico.”
He touches my arm. “Is this a bruise here?”
“Yes.”
“What from?”
“Me and the other mothers get in fights sometimes.”
“Really?”
“I make sure Rodrico never sees it happen.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes...”
“Which other mothers?”
“Neighborhood mothers who watch Rodrico while I work.”
“That’s no good.”
“They call him Baby Baby. He’ll never learn his name.”
“What do they call you?”
“Baby.”
“Oh…Well I mean, what’s your name?”
“Bona.”
“Good morning, Bona.”
“It isn’t morning.”
“You’re right. I lose track of time.”
“Me too. On Mondays.”
“…We must be old friends.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a good possibility we’re old friends. You grew up here?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. Everybody blends together after a while. I forget who’s who.”
I look at him. His orange shirt glows in direct sunlight. It reflects an unnaturally warm-colored light onto his face, and also shadows. Suddenly aware of the dirt I’ve been chewing, I swallow and stand. He follows me up.
“You’re right,” I say. “I think the same thing. But I would remember you if I had met you before.”
“Yes.” He replies. “I would remember you too. You’re right about that. I’d like to meet your son. Maybe I could watch him instead of those…other mothers.”
“You don’t work?”
“Not right now. I am looking for work.”
“Work’s not too hard to find.”
“I am selective.”
We stare at each other. His nose casts the biggest shadow—down the middle of his mouth. I begin to worry that I swallowed a worm. Something inside me is moving.
“Did you really grow up here?” I ask.
“Yes. I did.”
“Then you speak strangely.”
“How old is your son?”
“I told you. Nine months.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
He nods.
I point at the book. “What’s that?”
He tilts it towards me. The bible. But he calls it “The lord’s book.”
The big house is quiet and empty. Sunlight fills the space, uninterrupted by bodies or thrown objects. Nobody calls me a dirt eater. I look in every room for Rodrico. I call for another mother and nobody answers.
There is a thud on the glass door that makes me jump. Rodrico presses against it, his breath fogging up the glass. There is dirt on his lips and he holds another handful.
Everything Child.
I shove open the door so quickly I might break it. Rodrico starts screaming when I rip the dirt from his hands and wipe his mouth. I mutter under my breath—words I should not let him hear.
Onika emerges from a bedroom, blinking in the light. “Oh, Baby, you’re here. How was work? Everybody else went to the park…the kids were getting restless. Well. Ruth is sleeping.”
Rodrico hugs me tight and I hug him back. His legs go around my torso and touch on the other side.
Onika’s wig is sitting on the table. Her real hair is short and purple. Her scalp is dyed purple too. Inside her locket is a picture of her son. I know because she showed me, and said she’d like it if we got married one day. Then Rodrico would be her grandson and I would be her daughter.
I fight the urge to spit in her face (that is how fights start, and I am holding my son). “What is wrong with you?”
“What?”
“You left Rodrico outside by himself! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You were gone too, Baby. We’re all trying our best. Ruth kept me up all night whining and shit. Come on.”
“Look at him!”
“What?”
I take his face in my fingers and push it towards the light.
“The dirt? Are you kidding? Baby, you eat that stuff!”
“Rodrico doesn’t!”
“He’s a baby. That’s what babies do. If I had a normal child, I’d let them do whatever they wanted. You’ve gotta count your blessings.”
“You have a normal child and he ended up in prison.”
Onika looks past me, over my head. We’re both standing exactly in each other’s shadows. Her jaw moves back and forth and her eyes grow hatred (or a perpetual hatred is revealed when the kindness is worn away).
“Get the fuck out of here, you bitch,” she says quietly.
“Ruth is—”
“You want everything. You have everything and you still want everything.” I think she’s about to spit at me, but she doesn’t. “Fucking dirt eater,” she says, and steps dizzily back into the bedroom, slamming the door.
Rodrico cries.
In front of our house, an orange shirt gleams. The man is holding the lord’s book in one upturned hand so it leans against his arm. It’s like he belongs there—a flowering tree in my yard.
When I approach him, he extends his hand to Rodrico, who takes it. They stay like that for a moment. It isn’t a handshake—it’s a different kind of gesture.
I motion him inside and, wordlessly, he follows. His forehead has the wrinkles of a very deep concern. Before he comes in, he takes off his shoes. His socks are the same orange.
He looks around our house, the light wood creaking under his weight. He extends his arms to an impressive wingspan. “Beautiful house. I like the yellow.”
“How did you know?” I ask, pulling down the neck of my shirt to feed Rodrico. “Where I live?”
“I watched you yesterday.”
“You watched me? That’s…not right.”
“Why not?”
His question is sincere. I shake my head. Rodrico mutters as he drinks. I wipe the rest of the dirt from his face.
“He eats it too?”
“No. He doesn’t,” I say coldly. “Can you leave us alone?”
“You invited me in. Or maybe I misinterpreted?”
Again, he is sincere. “You didn’t misinterpret,” I say. “Sit down.”
I turn on the music quietly.
“Is it Beethoven?”
“Yes. For Rodrico.”
“And you like it?”
“Rodrico?”
“Well…no, do you like Beethoven?”
“Oh.” With Rodrico in one hand, I open the refrigerator door. I pour him a glass of orange juice because his shirt is so impossibly orange—an orange capable of occupying one’s thoughts for hours.
“Do you?” he repeats.
“Oh. Well. The music… it’s nice. It gives me hope. It’s so different. Have you seen pictures of Beethoven? His face is always tilted down, and he is looking up. Like there’s something to… revere.”
“Revere. That’s a good word.”
“It is. Revere—to respect.”
“You’re saying it for Rodrico?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good mother.”
I smile. “You’re the first one to think that.”
His orange juice might evaporate before he drinks it.
Everyone wants people to look at them, but when it actually happens it is tight and uncomfortable. The man makes steady eye contact and seems to be constantly thinking. Or fighting himself.
When he moves, I am nervous. He is a fish and he disturbs the water. An orange fish in a bag, who detests that he is contained—not knowing that if it breaks, he will die in that infinite freedom.
Today the man is watching my son. When I left them, the music was playing. He was talking about how he could paint Rodrico’s room for me. And he could knock out the windows and put stained glass there instead. If I wanted.
Everything Store is still locked when I get there and I have to wait outside. The air is exactly the same temperature as the inside of my body. Most people would describe it as comfortable, but it makes me anxious. I can’t feel the contrast. The limits of my body. How do I know where I stop?
Carlos wears pajama pants on Tuesdays because he thinks that Tuesdays are boring. The keys jingle as he walks, 14 minutes late. “You’re always on time, Bona. It’s annoying.” He laughs.
“Where is Loni?”
“Are you Loni’s boss?” he snaps, jamming the key into the door and missing. “She’ll get here when she gets here. Relax. Untuck your shirt. Nobody’s here yet. Geez.”
Inside, he messes with the coffee maker and spills the grounds. (Coffee grounds look exactly like dirt and taste much more bitter.) “Want some?”
Here, there is an abundance of Things To Be Mad About. I made a list when I was 16. List-making is something that I listed under SKILLS on my resume. List-making, organization, decision-making, management.
“You want to be the manager?” Carlos said. “I’m the manager. I’m 40 years old. I’m not retiring until I’m 70. If I’m lucky.”
We stared at each other for a long time and then he hired me.
Things To Be Mad About
The list I wrote when I got pregnant had one side for Having Baby and one side for Aborting Baby. Mother helped me fill up all the reasons for Aborting Baby, and left my small I want to. on the other side. There was every reason to drag Rodrico backwards, out of existence, but everything was not enough. Mother stopped showing me her lottery tickets. She stopped talking so much about her big wins. I knew she would leave. At the time, I was glad.
All the best racehorses are the most high-strung. I am that kind of person. Every bit of repose I have is never enough to keep me from trying to knock somebody over when they get in my way. Maybe I am just like the other mothers, fighting all the time. All I can do is hope it makes a difference what you are fighting for.
Mother loved to bet on racehorses. She had a favorite one named Lucky Star, who was always kicking the dirt. But what do horses have to worry about?
When she started winning more often, I saw Mother go from indifferent to uneasy and agitated. Maybe that’s what happens when you get what you want—you realize you don’t want it and you become directionless.
Loni is smoking inside. I hold my breath. This is why I never bring Rodrico inside of the store.
“Oh, coffee?” Her voice is raspy and off-putting. Like the gripe of a helicopter overhead. “Carlos, you’re so kind!”
Carlos smiles shyly at the ground. He may have a crush on her.
“Bona was worried you wouldn’t come,” Carlos says.
Loni glances sideways at me. “What isn’t Bona worried about?”
Carlos puts seven sugars in Loni’s coffee.
Bits of sand float in my saliva. It rained today, which washed away a portion of the clay. Sand is the part you don’t want—the disagreeable component of the dirt.
“Bona!” Onika is running. Her ankles look strange. She is used to taller shoes. (At night, she meets men. She wants to have another normal baby before she turns 37. I watch Ruth while she goes. We sleep together in my bed. Snow White is my nickname for Ruth, but I call her Ruth too so she’ll learn what her name is.) “Who is that guy in your house? Is Baby Baby with him?”
“Yes. Rodrico is with him.”
“Who is he?”
“My friend.”
“That ain’t no friend, Baby.”
“Why do you say that?” I walk quicker, blinded by the absurd 7:00 sunlight.
“He’s doing all sorts of crazy prayers. Got a fire going. About to sacrifice your baby to some god, probably.”
I run. This is a good excuse to run. My shirt is freed from my belt with the pumping of my arms. I feel my stomach. My breasts. The contrast. The limits of my body. I’m a racehorse, running. Not on a track—in a field. And I am not afraid. Only exited. To see the ones I love.
There is a bonfire in the yard, hastily contained by a handful of rocks in a circle around it. The man is on the roof, looking up at the sky (but it really seems more like the sky is looking down at him) with Rodrico in his arms. Rodrico is clean and fat and smiling. The man is shirtless and his skin is smooth as clay. He smiles when he sees me—a smile born from patience, like he has been waiting.
“Bona!” He calls. “Bona, my Bona!” Holding Rodrico tightly, the man slides down from our low roof. Rodrico smiles—I think he grew teeth while I was away.
“God has returned.” The man says.
I don’t laugh. I just smile. “The dirt was sandy today. Was that a result of your god returning?”
“Do you like it sandy?”
“No.”
“Then no. My god will fix it tomorrow.”
“He has control over that?”
“He has control over everything.”
Things That Are Good About The Man
Inside, the music is playing. Beethoven rejoices in god’s return. We watch the fire burn through our window. Again, the man expresses a desire to knock out all the windows and replace them with stained glass. I nod.
“Do you pray?” he asks.
“Sometimes.”
“When bad things are happening?”
“Yes.”
“It’s important to pray when you are grateful too. Not just to ask for help, you know?”
I nod.
He takes my hand in his and bows his head. I do the same.
“Dear lord,” he says, “Thank you for Bona, and for Rodrico, and for their yellow house, and for the sky, and for the river, and for our food, and for our drink, and for everyone and everything. Thank you lord. Amen.”
When he finishes, I look up. I’ve never heard a prayer like that one. Most will ask forgiveness for some vague sort of sin. The man’s head is still down and he looks up more slowly, his shining eyes so lost in sincerity they might be only an unadulterated reflection of all that stands before them.
Mother stopped praying when the things she prayed for didn’t come. She has everything now, and she doesn’t know what to do with it.
Last week she sent me a letter upwards of 10,000 words. She wants me to move to the white part of town to stage sit-ins and marches. She suggests I change Rodrico’s name to something less Hispanic-sounding. She describes white people as inhospitable and biggity.
“What kind of guns you got?”
A man stands in the doorway of Everything Store. He’s got cuts on his arms very self-inflicted looking. He may be white. Or Native American. Certainly he is tired. Beneath his eyes are swatches of red.
“We don’t carry any guns, sir,” I say.
“This is Everything Store, ain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of guns you got?”
“None, sir.”
“You got dope?”
“No.”
“Well, fuck.”
We stare at each other for a very long time. He’s wearing a cross necklace. He has a tattoo of David’s star. (And something that might be a swastika.)
“Are you Christian or Jewish?”
“What?” He straightens up. “Now, why do you need to know that?” His voice rises to one of Beethoven’s crescendos.
“I’m just curious!”
“You don’t need to know everything about me, bitch. All I wanted was drugs and guns so I came here to this Everything Store, and you don’t have everything. You don’t. So tell your manager I said this is unacceptable. ‘Everything Store’ selling next to nothing. Employees asking personal questions. I will never come back here again. And you tell him I said that.”
Reasons Why Mother Should Move Back To Louisiana
Maybe I should remove list-making from my resume. I have lost the ability. Lists should be short and to the point, without excess information. (How did I ever, with such certainty, know what was truly important?) This is a rambling, impractical list—I should throw it away, but I fold it small and put it in my pocket.
I will keep it. Whenever I send Mother a letter, she goes on with hers as if she never got it. She never answers my questions, or responds to my concerns. It isn’t a conversation—it’s two people talking, trying to say everything as quickly as they can. That seems to be the way of the world.
There is still a fire burning at my house. It has swallowed half the yard, and threatens the yellow walls. Again, it is haphazardly contained—this time with tall boulders and holes in the ground.
Worry is a thing I thought I was finished feeling, but here it is again in my stomach like a sickness.
I hear the grave sound of footsteps. Onika comes to stand beside me. Her wig feels like spider webs on my arm. “Don’t worry. They’re not in there.”
“Oh. Good.” My arms hang. It hurts to blink—the heat of the fire contained in my eyelids. It feels the same as burning tears, or absolute exhaustion.
“I tried to put it out,” she says.
“You did?”
“Yeah. But I just called the fire department. They’ll be here soon.” She is holding Ruth, who grabs my hair and pulls.
“Thank you, Onika.” I sigh. “Where are they?”
“Rodrico’s with us. The man left. He said that god had seen his fire.”
In the big house, Beethoven is playing. Nikia dances and Janice smiles, watching. There is something here that wasn’t here before, or maybe something that has merely come out from its hiding place. (And there are many things to hide behind.) I still feel the uncomfortable warmth of the fire. Rodrico comes crawling up to me and I hold him. Everything Child.
“Baby, that man was a whack job!” Kelly says, hands buried in her daughter’s hair. “Where’d you find him?”
“I met him at work.”
“Came in here, sweating, shoving Baby Baby into our arms, talking about god, holding out that CD like ‘You have to play this music!’ I was about to call the police, Baby. But then he went running out the door. Crazy.”
“He believes too much.”
“Yeah. Should have taken a video—that shit would have blown up on world star.”
Before I left, he stared at me and told me I was beautiful. As beautiful, he said, as god’s rivers and god’s plains and god’s zebras and whales and all those little kids running in the street with nobody. All the people who need help, who don’t know where to go, who don’t have a clean needle with which to inject drugs into their bodies. And pain like Beethoven’s pain—the kind that takes mercy and turns itself into a song. And wind that brushes against you, creating the sense that you are not alone, but more than that—the fact that you are not being deceived by this sensation because you are truly never alone as long as you live on this earth with the elephants. And the seahorses and rhinos, and everything else. All of this shaped tediously by god’s unshaking hands. Isn’t it beautiful, he said, doesn’t it make you happy?
“Oh, Ruth likes the music!” Onika laughs. “Look at her!”
Ruth sways to the sound, giggling. She falls and rolls over, unfazed. It might be her limitations that give her such freedom.
When the fire is out, we return home. Somehow I am not surprised. Only tired.
Rodrico is intrigued by the black trees, slouching over burnt trunks, so I let him look. I walk inside. Two of the windows have been smashed in (to install stained glass windows). A spider is crawling on the windowsill, large and poisonous-looking. I put my finger out to touch it and it runs away, legs in every direction.
The man’s orange shirt is lying on the ground, torn. It must be the color of every orange combined. It hurts to look at. That trembling color. I pick it up. It smells like smoke. Fire smoke—which, incidentally, is indistinguishable from cigarette smoke.
A list is on the counter, untitled and almost illegible--
Body
god
mind
spirit
external circumstance
pressure
loneliness
word of the lord’s book
inherent evil
pride
Outside, I watch Rodrico dig in the dirt. He lifts a handful to his mouth and eats it. Everything child.
Everything includes guns, fire, drugs and dirt. And losing your mind, and loving your son, and despising the people you work with. Everything is everything—which is maybe, after all, too much.
When the sun touches my house (and the sun here touches everything—sadistically) it turns more yellow. So yellow it must be a new, different color. I repainted it last winter. I want the people walking on the streets to be impressed.
Rodrico points to the sun in his picture books. I think he understands. Rodrico is always in my dreams at night. He is older and we are walking down a long road, but we don’t have shoes and the black asphalt is so hot that it steams. Looking into the distance, you can see the air distorted by heat.
I try not to hold him too much so that he will learn to walk. His head is soft and malleable. I’m scared to drop him and mess him up. But I have a chance to make him good, so I press on his head to make sure it’s still supple and I use right grammar when I talk. I say is not instead of ain’t.
Rodrico is the heaviest thing that I hold in my heart. He is larger than I imagined he would be. Nine months old and already fat. I am 19 and hold my weight around my face. Baby, the other mothers call me. And they call him Baby Baby. I ask them to call him Rodrico, but they won’t. I have to leave him with them at the big house while I go to work. They don’t work—they wait. They sit on chairs and leave their minds to rot like potatoes, growing awful knotted things.
Kelly wraps everybody’s heads in these ugly turbans she makes in her basement. Sometimes when I get him from the big house, he’s swaddled in one like a newborn. They like to do that because it keeps him still and he quiets down. Rodrico is an amicable baby. It worries me a lot. I don’t want him giving in to people. Soon as I pick him up I unravel him from that ugly green thing and ask them never to do it again.
I have asked them many times to play him Beethoven, but I never hear it going when I get there. I think such music would get lost inside that house, or at least it would be hesitant to emerge from the stereo.
Light touches the big house in a different way. It makes it even darker.
Nikia throws a handful of dirt at me. “Dirt eater!”
Nikia is Janice’s daughter. Sometimes I forget who’s whose. She’s got braids and beads with animals on them. She’d be a cute little girl if she were smart.
Rodrico will be better than any of them; only I can’t figure out how, if all day, he does what they do, eats what they eat, and hears what they hear.
I work at a drug store that sells many things. We’ve even got a bowl of bananas for 10 cents each. We sell those at a loss, but nobody ever buys them. We throw them away and get a new bunch every week. “They’re for looks.” Carlos says. “Everybody complaining about the damn food desert. You want a healthy option? You’ve got one. But nobody chooses it. What does that tell you?”
Dirt eater!
Dirt eater!
It’s called Everything Store. It is encompassed by a cloud, which is cigarette-smelling and motionless. I could blow that cloud away if I had the chance, and a sufficient amount of air in my lungs. But nothing has changed since I was 16. Carlos is still here and so am I and so is Loni. Only I am different now. I never chew gum when I’m working and I stand up straight. I want Rodrico to see his mother walking out the door with her shirt tucked in.
Everyone thinks they are being called by god to do something extraordinary, but Rodrico is proof that I really am. Think of him—how large his eyes are and how little they have seen. Imagine what he must be thinking as he’s resting in my arms.
“You’ve got dirt on your face, Bona!” A boy says to me. His chest seems to have one hundred ribs. His fingers are long and dark—made for prying closed things forcefully open. He knows my name.
Dirt eater!
“Yeah, you have, Baby. Right on the lip...Come on. Baby Baby’s over here. He was getting into trouble so we swaddled him up.”
I swallow anger.
Dirt is lovely. Were it not for the shame and the stigma it bears, I would let Rodrico eat it too. But Rodrico will only know the things he reads in books—not the taste of the earth. Not how it feels to draw blood from another human, and send them staggering, hands to their mouth. Or to hear them curse violently when it’s clear that you have won. Rodrico may not win battles, but he will win the war.
I unwrap him from the turban. He reaches his arms and his legs out towards me like a turtle lying on his back, waiting to be overturned. I almost cry, looking at him. To think that he could be without me, had I done what Mother wanted.
When I started working at Everything Store, I despised the fact that they did not have everything. When I look at Rodrico, I am never disappointed. Everything Child.
He is crying.
“Here, let me take him, Baby.”
Onika takes him in her arms—the color and consistency of melting caramel. She has a baby who’s fat like mine. A different sort of baby—with tilted almond eyes and a face too large for her features. Everything flat like the bottom of a valley. Down syndrome baby. Ruth is her name. She’s 16 months old, but she’s just like Rodrico. Onika is 35. She’s got another child too—a son as old as me, in prison.
“Roddy, what you crying about?” She asks, bouncing him in her arms. She smiles at me. “How was work?” I nod an answer, rubbing my eyes. Ruth grabs my pant leg to keep upright. She looks so small sitting there. So out of place. Her snowy skin. (Her father is white. That’s what gave her down syndrome, people say, that’s why you don’t want no white baby daddy.) Onika cuddles Rodrico and I hold out my arms for him.
Something hits me in the back of my head.
Dirt eater!
Dirt is lovely. It tastes like fresh rain. Crushed wet rock. The beginning of everything everywhere.
I started when I was five. Earth-tasting and smooth and melty, I said. And happy-making and good. It quickly became a secret. A secret is just a fact that one is ashamed of. When Mother saw me eating it, she’d smack it out of my hand and I’d cry. It was less like a cry than an unremitting scream. I don’t remember ever stopping, but there always came a point when it was done.
Dirty was always the word people used. You shouldn’t eat dirt because it’s dirty. How does a word become so disconnected from its origins that we spend time arguing the dirtiness of dirt?
Our yellow house used to be white, and it used to be mother’s. She left it to us because she didn’t need it anymore. She won two million dollars off a lottery ticket and went to Maine so she could feel some winter finally. I would not want winter—the dirt would be frozen.
But Mother did always seem like a wintery person. She had a strange blue tint in her eyes, so she wore blue the most—in the interest of bringing out her eyes, or the small part of her eyes that she wanted to bring out.
She talked with the same indifferent inflection, whatever she spoke of. (“The hospital on Gregory Road does abortions for a couple hundred, Bona.”)
Rodrico hits the ground with both hands. “Ma-ma!”
“Mother.” I correct him.
“Ma-ma!”
Our house has a big window. I use Kelly’s turbans as curtains. I forget whether she gave them to me or I took them—it’s all the same here. Carlos would give me curtains for free at Everything Store. He says he has enough money. He says that all the time.
I think we all have enough everything, except for ourselves. I feel that way at night, and sometimes it makes me cry. We all blend together, like celery and carrots turning to mush in a stew. I remember Janice watching a fight video and all the kids were gathered around her, bright bead bracelets racketing as they pumped their fists. From the little speaker of her phone, screams sounded like cicadas—those big noisy bugs. But when they go all night every night, you don’t even hear them anymore.
I hate thinking how our house is a part of this neighborhood. Doesn’t matter how yellow it is. Right now, celery softens in beef stock on the stove.
Rodrico pulls himself closer to the radio. Piano music crescendos. Every time you think it’s about to drop, it just goes higher. It must be some kind of never-ending piano he’s playing. When a song ends, I have to wonder whether it’s really done or the notes have merely reached a frequency beyond the range of my hearing.
Sometimes Everything Store does have what I want. Behind it is a patch of the smoothest soil. Clay. I have already dug a hole just far enough. Carlos knows I do it, and he doesn’t say anything. He never says anything. That is how he survives.
Today there is a man far away. I see him as I swallow, already reaching for a little bit more. He waves. The sun shines on him. I can’t see from here, but I am sure he is squinting his eyes. In one arm, he holds a book. I am sure it is a bible. Every book is a bible here. I nod to him and turn away.
Imagine me. How eroded my gums must be. How deprived I must look, holding dirt to my mouth. Sometimes my braids, from brushing the ground, are light and dusty at the ends. Imagine my arms like long worms protruding from a feeble body. My breasts are much too large for this torso. Rodrico did not take enough out. He is too timid. He is ashamed to drink this dirty milk.
When I look up, the man is gone. He must be inside, eating beef stew and reading his bible.
Rodrico is crying when I enter the big house. Drool comes from Ruth’s mouth and makes a puddle on the floor. The kitchen is hot. The mothers are laughing, two bags of potato chips between them. Rodrico crawls towards me, whining. (Mimicking Beethoven, I always imagine.) When I pick him up, he pulls at my shirt, asking for milk.
“Yeah he’s hungry, Baby.” Onika tells me. “Wouldn’t eat. We tried.”
“We even tried dirt!” somebody says.
Rodrico’s hand is grabbing but I push him away. “What?”
“Kidding! He wants it though, look. He wants that dirt milk.”
The heat and the smell of the kitchen is nauseating—like everybody inside of it is cooking to death. Rodrico smells horrible. His diaper is full and his eyes are swollen, the skin around them thick and folding like Ruth’s.
“We tried swaddling him, but he was screaming like crazy…wouldn’t sleep either. Maybe he’s sick.”
I’m shaking so hard I’m scared that I’ll drop him. My tongue curls upwards inside of my mouth. “Why didn’t you change his diaper?”
“Oh.” They laugh. “We didn’t notice. You mad? Jesus. We watch your kid for free, Baby. Cherish it. When he starts eating dirt, he’s outta here.”
“Rodrico will never eat dirt.” I take him out the door into the merciless sun. We break a sweat instantly, and he almost slips out of my arms. He is so heavy, holding everything inside him. Onika follows me out, but after a second she returns to the house. I look back and see the window close, but not before I hear a burst of laughter from inside. All of them in there growing roots.
Dirt eater!
Mother did not mean to have me. “A child is a bad investment,” she said. “It’s not even a gamble. What’s the prize?”
After a while, she didn’t take the dirt out of my hands anymore. She just watched me until I stopped. I always did. Shame is hot, like acid thrown on your face. Shame feels like you just finished crying and somebody is staring at you.
The truck comes to Everything Store once a week on Monday. All three of us work 6am to 7pm and there’s still more to do on Tuesday. We have as much as ever, but it still isn’t everything.
The man is waiting when I come out back. His book is in his hands. I close my eyes and lower myself to the ground.
He sits down next to me, silent.
I pick up a bit of dirt and put it in my mouth.
He puts his hand on my back.
We might be performing a religious ceremony I do not know the name of. He is wearing a sleeveless shirt that is plain and orange like a monk’s. His hair is cut neatly. He is older than me, but not too old. Not an old man.
“I see you sometimes.” He says. “You work at this store?”
His hand is still on my back. Heavy like Rodrico. Some people, when they speak, unintentionally take on an aggressive manner, but not him. The mechanics of his face move kindly.
“Yes. I work here,” I say, same old dirt moving in my mouth. “I’m nineteen. I have a son. He’s nine months old.”
The man smiles but does not laugh. Anyone else would have laughed at the abruptness. The strangeness of what I am saying.
“What is your son’s name?”
“Rodrico.”
He touches my arm. “Is this a bruise here?”
“Yes.”
“What from?”
“Me and the other mothers get in fights sometimes.”
“Really?”
“I make sure Rodrico never sees it happen.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes...”
“Which other mothers?”
“Neighborhood mothers who watch Rodrico while I work.”
“That’s no good.”
“They call him Baby Baby. He’ll never learn his name.”
“What do they call you?”
“Baby.”
“Oh…Well I mean, what’s your name?”
“Bona.”
“Good morning, Bona.”
“It isn’t morning.”
“You’re right. I lose track of time.”
“Me too. On Mondays.”
“…We must be old friends.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a good possibility we’re old friends. You grew up here?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. Everybody blends together after a while. I forget who’s who.”
I look at him. His orange shirt glows in direct sunlight. It reflects an unnaturally warm-colored light onto his face, and also shadows. Suddenly aware of the dirt I’ve been chewing, I swallow and stand. He follows me up.
“You’re right,” I say. “I think the same thing. But I would remember you if I had met you before.”
“Yes.” He replies. “I would remember you too. You’re right about that. I’d like to meet your son. Maybe I could watch him instead of those…other mothers.”
“You don’t work?”
“Not right now. I am looking for work.”
“Work’s not too hard to find.”
“I am selective.”
We stare at each other. His nose casts the biggest shadow—down the middle of his mouth. I begin to worry that I swallowed a worm. Something inside me is moving.
“Did you really grow up here?” I ask.
“Yes. I did.”
“Then you speak strangely.”
“How old is your son?”
“I told you. Nine months.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
He nods.
I point at the book. “What’s that?”
He tilts it towards me. The bible. But he calls it “The lord’s book.”
The big house is quiet and empty. Sunlight fills the space, uninterrupted by bodies or thrown objects. Nobody calls me a dirt eater. I look in every room for Rodrico. I call for another mother and nobody answers.
There is a thud on the glass door that makes me jump. Rodrico presses against it, his breath fogging up the glass. There is dirt on his lips and he holds another handful.
Everything Child.
I shove open the door so quickly I might break it. Rodrico starts screaming when I rip the dirt from his hands and wipe his mouth. I mutter under my breath—words I should not let him hear.
Onika emerges from a bedroom, blinking in the light. “Oh, Baby, you’re here. How was work? Everybody else went to the park…the kids were getting restless. Well. Ruth is sleeping.”
Rodrico hugs me tight and I hug him back. His legs go around my torso and touch on the other side.
Onika’s wig is sitting on the table. Her real hair is short and purple. Her scalp is dyed purple too. Inside her locket is a picture of her son. I know because she showed me, and said she’d like it if we got married one day. Then Rodrico would be her grandson and I would be her daughter.
I fight the urge to spit in her face (that is how fights start, and I am holding my son). “What is wrong with you?”
“What?”
“You left Rodrico outside by himself! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You were gone too, Baby. We’re all trying our best. Ruth kept me up all night whining and shit. Come on.”
“Look at him!”
“What?”
I take his face in my fingers and push it towards the light.
“The dirt? Are you kidding? Baby, you eat that stuff!”
“Rodrico doesn’t!”
“He’s a baby. That’s what babies do. If I had a normal child, I’d let them do whatever they wanted. You’ve gotta count your blessings.”
“You have a normal child and he ended up in prison.”
Onika looks past me, over my head. We’re both standing exactly in each other’s shadows. Her jaw moves back and forth and her eyes grow hatred (or a perpetual hatred is revealed when the kindness is worn away).
“Get the fuck out of here, you bitch,” she says quietly.
“Ruth is—”
“You want everything. You have everything and you still want everything.” I think she’s about to spit at me, but she doesn’t. “Fucking dirt eater,” she says, and steps dizzily back into the bedroom, slamming the door.
Rodrico cries.
In front of our house, an orange shirt gleams. The man is holding the lord’s book in one upturned hand so it leans against his arm. It’s like he belongs there—a flowering tree in my yard.
When I approach him, he extends his hand to Rodrico, who takes it. They stay like that for a moment. It isn’t a handshake—it’s a different kind of gesture.
I motion him inside and, wordlessly, he follows. His forehead has the wrinkles of a very deep concern. Before he comes in, he takes off his shoes. His socks are the same orange.
He looks around our house, the light wood creaking under his weight. He extends his arms to an impressive wingspan. “Beautiful house. I like the yellow.”
“How did you know?” I ask, pulling down the neck of my shirt to feed Rodrico. “Where I live?”
“I watched you yesterday.”
“You watched me? That’s…not right.”
“Why not?”
His question is sincere. I shake my head. Rodrico mutters as he drinks. I wipe the rest of the dirt from his face.
“He eats it too?”
“No. He doesn’t,” I say coldly. “Can you leave us alone?”
“You invited me in. Or maybe I misinterpreted?”
Again, he is sincere. “You didn’t misinterpret,” I say. “Sit down.”
I turn on the music quietly.
“Is it Beethoven?”
“Yes. For Rodrico.”
“And you like it?”
“Rodrico?”
“Well…no, do you like Beethoven?”
“Oh.” With Rodrico in one hand, I open the refrigerator door. I pour him a glass of orange juice because his shirt is so impossibly orange—an orange capable of occupying one’s thoughts for hours.
“Do you?” he repeats.
“Oh. Well. The music… it’s nice. It gives me hope. It’s so different. Have you seen pictures of Beethoven? His face is always tilted down, and he is looking up. Like there’s something to… revere.”
“Revere. That’s a good word.”
“It is. Revere—to respect.”
“You’re saying it for Rodrico?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good mother.”
I smile. “You’re the first one to think that.”
His orange juice might evaporate before he drinks it.
Everyone wants people to look at them, but when it actually happens it is tight and uncomfortable. The man makes steady eye contact and seems to be constantly thinking. Or fighting himself.
When he moves, I am nervous. He is a fish and he disturbs the water. An orange fish in a bag, who detests that he is contained—not knowing that if it breaks, he will die in that infinite freedom.
Today the man is watching my son. When I left them, the music was playing. He was talking about how he could paint Rodrico’s room for me. And he could knock out the windows and put stained glass there instead. If I wanted.
Everything Store is still locked when I get there and I have to wait outside. The air is exactly the same temperature as the inside of my body. Most people would describe it as comfortable, but it makes me anxious. I can’t feel the contrast. The limits of my body. How do I know where I stop?
Carlos wears pajama pants on Tuesdays because he thinks that Tuesdays are boring. The keys jingle as he walks, 14 minutes late. “You’re always on time, Bona. It’s annoying.” He laughs.
“Where is Loni?”
“Are you Loni’s boss?” he snaps, jamming the key into the door and missing. “She’ll get here when she gets here. Relax. Untuck your shirt. Nobody’s here yet. Geez.”
Inside, he messes with the coffee maker and spills the grounds. (Coffee grounds look exactly like dirt and taste much more bitter.) “Want some?”
Here, there is an abundance of Things To Be Mad About. I made a list when I was 16. List-making is something that I listed under SKILLS on my resume. List-making, organization, decision-making, management.
“You want to be the manager?” Carlos said. “I’m the manager. I’m 40 years old. I’m not retiring until I’m 70. If I’m lucky.”
We stared at each other for a long time and then he hired me.
Things To Be Mad About
- The store does not have everything, but it is called Everything Store
- Carlos, the manager, does not show me how to do anything
- Nobody cares
- Nobody listens to me
- I only get paid $7.15 an hour
- Carlos and Loni both take extra breaks and nobody cares
- Carlos and Loni are rude to the customers
- Carlos and Loni are unfit for their jobs
- I should be the manager and nobody cares
- Carlos and Loni complain about things they can change/problems they caused
- It can be so much better but nobody tries and nobody cares
The list I wrote when I got pregnant had one side for Having Baby and one side for Aborting Baby. Mother helped me fill up all the reasons for Aborting Baby, and left my small I want to. on the other side. There was every reason to drag Rodrico backwards, out of existence, but everything was not enough. Mother stopped showing me her lottery tickets. She stopped talking so much about her big wins. I knew she would leave. At the time, I was glad.
All the best racehorses are the most high-strung. I am that kind of person. Every bit of repose I have is never enough to keep me from trying to knock somebody over when they get in my way. Maybe I am just like the other mothers, fighting all the time. All I can do is hope it makes a difference what you are fighting for.
Mother loved to bet on racehorses. She had a favorite one named Lucky Star, who was always kicking the dirt. But what do horses have to worry about?
When she started winning more often, I saw Mother go from indifferent to uneasy and agitated. Maybe that’s what happens when you get what you want—you realize you don’t want it and you become directionless.
Loni is smoking inside. I hold my breath. This is why I never bring Rodrico inside of the store.
“Oh, coffee?” Her voice is raspy and off-putting. Like the gripe of a helicopter overhead. “Carlos, you’re so kind!”
Carlos smiles shyly at the ground. He may have a crush on her.
“Bona was worried you wouldn’t come,” Carlos says.
Loni glances sideways at me. “What isn’t Bona worried about?”
Carlos puts seven sugars in Loni’s coffee.
Bits of sand float in my saliva. It rained today, which washed away a portion of the clay. Sand is the part you don’t want—the disagreeable component of the dirt.
“Bona!” Onika is running. Her ankles look strange. She is used to taller shoes. (At night, she meets men. She wants to have another normal baby before she turns 37. I watch Ruth while she goes. We sleep together in my bed. Snow White is my nickname for Ruth, but I call her Ruth too so she’ll learn what her name is.) “Who is that guy in your house? Is Baby Baby with him?”
“Yes. Rodrico is with him.”
“Who is he?”
“My friend.”
“That ain’t no friend, Baby.”
“Why do you say that?” I walk quicker, blinded by the absurd 7:00 sunlight.
“He’s doing all sorts of crazy prayers. Got a fire going. About to sacrifice your baby to some god, probably.”
I run. This is a good excuse to run. My shirt is freed from my belt with the pumping of my arms. I feel my stomach. My breasts. The contrast. The limits of my body. I’m a racehorse, running. Not on a track—in a field. And I am not afraid. Only exited. To see the ones I love.
There is a bonfire in the yard, hastily contained by a handful of rocks in a circle around it. The man is on the roof, looking up at the sky (but it really seems more like the sky is looking down at him) with Rodrico in his arms. Rodrico is clean and fat and smiling. The man is shirtless and his skin is smooth as clay. He smiles when he sees me—a smile born from patience, like he has been waiting.
“Bona!” He calls. “Bona, my Bona!” Holding Rodrico tightly, the man slides down from our low roof. Rodrico smiles—I think he grew teeth while I was away.
“God has returned.” The man says.
I don’t laugh. I just smile. “The dirt was sandy today. Was that a result of your god returning?”
“Do you like it sandy?”
“No.”
“Then no. My god will fix it tomorrow.”
“He has control over that?”
“He has control over everything.”
Things That Are Good About The Man
- I love him
- He is a good influence for Rodrico
- He does not make fun of my dirt-eating
- His shirt is a wonderful color, which, if he left, I would never see again.
- He has enough belief to overwhelm any trace of doubt.
- His smile comes on slowly instead of suddenly, so you can watch it come together like a sunrise. He is not embarrassed of his teeth.
- He is not embarrassed of anything. Thankfully, he does not eat dirt—but in another world, he might, and no one would feel right to shame him for it.
Inside, the music is playing. Beethoven rejoices in god’s return. We watch the fire burn through our window. Again, the man expresses a desire to knock out all the windows and replace them with stained glass. I nod.
“Do you pray?” he asks.
“Sometimes.”
“When bad things are happening?”
“Yes.”
“It’s important to pray when you are grateful too. Not just to ask for help, you know?”
I nod.
He takes my hand in his and bows his head. I do the same.
“Dear lord,” he says, “Thank you for Bona, and for Rodrico, and for their yellow house, and for the sky, and for the river, and for our food, and for our drink, and for everyone and everything. Thank you lord. Amen.”
When he finishes, I look up. I’ve never heard a prayer like that one. Most will ask forgiveness for some vague sort of sin. The man’s head is still down and he looks up more slowly, his shining eyes so lost in sincerity they might be only an unadulterated reflection of all that stands before them.
Mother stopped praying when the things she prayed for didn’t come. She has everything now, and she doesn’t know what to do with it.
Last week she sent me a letter upwards of 10,000 words. She wants me to move to the white part of town to stage sit-ins and marches. She suggests I change Rodrico’s name to something less Hispanic-sounding. She describes white people as inhospitable and biggity.
“What kind of guns you got?”
A man stands in the doorway of Everything Store. He’s got cuts on his arms very self-inflicted looking. He may be white. Or Native American. Certainly he is tired. Beneath his eyes are swatches of red.
“We don’t carry any guns, sir,” I say.
“This is Everything Store, ain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of guns you got?”
“None, sir.”
“You got dope?”
“No.”
“Well, fuck.”
We stare at each other for a very long time. He’s wearing a cross necklace. He has a tattoo of David’s star. (And something that might be a swastika.)
“Are you Christian or Jewish?”
“What?” He straightens up. “Now, why do you need to know that?” His voice rises to one of Beethoven’s crescendos.
“I’m just curious!”
“You don’t need to know everything about me, bitch. All I wanted was drugs and guns so I came here to this Everything Store, and you don’t have everything. You don’t. So tell your manager I said this is unacceptable. ‘Everything Store’ selling next to nothing. Employees asking personal questions. I will never come back here again. And you tell him I said that.”
Reasons Why Mother Should Move Back To Louisiana
- Maine must be so white. The snow, I mean. It must be impossible to see where one thing stops and the other thing starts.
- Mother is a gambler and she needs someone to keep her in check or she will throw away her fortune
- Rodrico wants his grandmother. I see it in his eyes—in that mucus building up in the corners as he sleeps, that I wipe away with a tissue so gently.
- Mother should meet the man. She would like him. They have similar minds.
- She will get away from the white people she thinks are so horrible. She won’t have to stare up the holes of their noses anymore.
- It must hurt her hands to write such long letters. Sometimes her cursive is such that, even between words, the pen is not removed from the paper. The continuous lines of fevered thought are impossible to read.
- Living near water is strange because you might be neighbors with an undiscovered sea monster. The ocean is tremendous and anything could be in there.
- The people in Maine, they cook lobsters alive which shows they have no mercy. I don’t want to know that I am dying while I die.
- I want my mother. I have already forgotten her face. Or it has been covered by everything else.
Maybe I should remove list-making from my resume. I have lost the ability. Lists should be short and to the point, without excess information. (How did I ever, with such certainty, know what was truly important?) This is a rambling, impractical list—I should throw it away, but I fold it small and put it in my pocket.
I will keep it. Whenever I send Mother a letter, she goes on with hers as if she never got it. She never answers my questions, or responds to my concerns. It isn’t a conversation—it’s two people talking, trying to say everything as quickly as they can. That seems to be the way of the world.
There is still a fire burning at my house. It has swallowed half the yard, and threatens the yellow walls. Again, it is haphazardly contained—this time with tall boulders and holes in the ground.
Worry is a thing I thought I was finished feeling, but here it is again in my stomach like a sickness.
I hear the grave sound of footsteps. Onika comes to stand beside me. Her wig feels like spider webs on my arm. “Don’t worry. They’re not in there.”
“Oh. Good.” My arms hang. It hurts to blink—the heat of the fire contained in my eyelids. It feels the same as burning tears, or absolute exhaustion.
“I tried to put it out,” she says.
“You did?”
“Yeah. But I just called the fire department. They’ll be here soon.” She is holding Ruth, who grabs my hair and pulls.
“Thank you, Onika.” I sigh. “Where are they?”
“Rodrico’s with us. The man left. He said that god had seen his fire.”
In the big house, Beethoven is playing. Nikia dances and Janice smiles, watching. There is something here that wasn’t here before, or maybe something that has merely come out from its hiding place. (And there are many things to hide behind.) I still feel the uncomfortable warmth of the fire. Rodrico comes crawling up to me and I hold him. Everything Child.
“Baby, that man was a whack job!” Kelly says, hands buried in her daughter’s hair. “Where’d you find him?”
“I met him at work.”
“Came in here, sweating, shoving Baby Baby into our arms, talking about god, holding out that CD like ‘You have to play this music!’ I was about to call the police, Baby. But then he went running out the door. Crazy.”
“He believes too much.”
“Yeah. Should have taken a video—that shit would have blown up on world star.”
Before I left, he stared at me and told me I was beautiful. As beautiful, he said, as god’s rivers and god’s plains and god’s zebras and whales and all those little kids running in the street with nobody. All the people who need help, who don’t know where to go, who don’t have a clean needle with which to inject drugs into their bodies. And pain like Beethoven’s pain—the kind that takes mercy and turns itself into a song. And wind that brushes against you, creating the sense that you are not alone, but more than that—the fact that you are not being deceived by this sensation because you are truly never alone as long as you live on this earth with the elephants. And the seahorses and rhinos, and everything else. All of this shaped tediously by god’s unshaking hands. Isn’t it beautiful, he said, doesn’t it make you happy?
“Oh, Ruth likes the music!” Onika laughs. “Look at her!”
Ruth sways to the sound, giggling. She falls and rolls over, unfazed. It might be her limitations that give her such freedom.
When the fire is out, we return home. Somehow I am not surprised. Only tired.
Rodrico is intrigued by the black trees, slouching over burnt trunks, so I let him look. I walk inside. Two of the windows have been smashed in (to install stained glass windows). A spider is crawling on the windowsill, large and poisonous-looking. I put my finger out to touch it and it runs away, legs in every direction.
The man’s orange shirt is lying on the ground, torn. It must be the color of every orange combined. It hurts to look at. That trembling color. I pick it up. It smells like smoke. Fire smoke—which, incidentally, is indistinguishable from cigarette smoke.
A list is on the counter, untitled and almost illegible--
Body
god
mind
spirit
external circumstance
pressure
loneliness
word of the lord’s book
inherent evil
pride
Outside, I watch Rodrico dig in the dirt. He lifts a handful to his mouth and eats it. Everything child.
Everything includes guns, fire, drugs and dirt. And losing your mind, and loving your son, and despising the people you work with. Everything is everything—which is maybe, after all, too much.