If I say to you white is all, black is absence. If you say to me black is all and white is absence. Are we talking about light or pigment? Are we talking about physics or art? Or are we cheering the home team?
Decay of velvet
Heathens among the roses
Thorns, attar of dirt
Image by Rodion Kutsaev via Unsplash.com
When I read her stories, as I do, at times obsessively, I become uncomfortable with the way she seems mired in her awareness of her own consciousness, her self-conscious awareness of herself and I wonder, uncomfortably, if I am mired in her self-consciousness or if she is mired in my awareness of my consciousness, my self-conscious awareness of how I am obsessively mired in her stories.
Image by Harrison Fulop
a drabble by Becky Kjelstrom
The Grundvig chin. The whole family gets it. Dominant gene. My baby won’t. CRSPR is new officially not for sale. My baby will have a perfect chin. Money buys on demand birth and good drugs. But I still have to push. C-Section leaves a scar, visible if you go Brazilian.
Despite the numbness, I feel her coming. She’s howling mad. Mate cuts the cord, nurse wipes her off and hands her to me. I look at baby, mate, baby. My turn to howl, raw anguish.
The Wilson receding chin. Recessive gene. We didn’t correct for that.
Heat and dust. The little girl kicked a stone down the road. No fair! Sent to the store twice in one day, a quarter clutched in her small, sweaty hand.
At the corner the old woman with the sun hat still worked in her yard. This morning she’d been clipping roses, now she was cutting rhubarb with a sharp knife. Whack! at the ground. Whack! again at the top. A pile of shiny red stalks at her feet, huge wilting leaves heaped on the grass.
Little Girl put her head down and walked faster. Too late. “Barbara Jayne! Would you like to take some rhubarb to your mother?” “No! I hafta go to the store!” She broke into a run. “Your mother makes such lovely pies.”
Little Girl ran faster down the long hill. She stopped at the crossing, hopped into the street as a car horn blared, raced to the curb and up the steps to the store. Inside it was stuffy but cooler. The fat storeman smoked at the back counter, looked up from his newspaper. “Back again, huh?” Little Girl laid the quarter on the counter. “Loaf of bread, quart of milk.” The storeman’s eyebrow shot up. “Please!”
He fetched the milk from the icebox, the bread from the bin, took the quarter. “You got change comin’ or do you want some candy?” “No!” Little Girl grabbed the groceries. “Ma says put it on her account.” She slammed out the door, into the blinding afternoon.
The hill was steeper now that she was walking up it. She was thirsty, should have bought a soda. But Sister would have seen the bottle and told on her. Pooh. She stopped, tried to put the loaf of bread on her head for shade. It wouldn’t stay, dropped in the dusty road. A car was coming! She picked up the loaf, wiped the package clean on her dress and turned her back on the swirl of dust stirred up by the passing auto.
By the time she reached the top of the hill, Little Girl thought a drink of milk might be a good idea. Nope. She’d be in trouble with Sister for opening the bottle.
At the corner, Old Woman had disappeared from her yard, the rhubarb stalks were gone, too. But the big green leaves still lay on the grass. Little Girl looked up and down the road. She looked at Old Woman’s house. No one. Setting the milk and bread at the side of the road, she picked up a rhubarb leaf, plonked it on her head. Cool relief!
Little Girl walked toward home, remembering, in the nick of time, to turn back and fetch the bread and milk from the roadside.
“Hurry up, slow poke! That milk will be curdled by the time you get in here.” Sister stood on the porch. “What do you have on your head?” Ma stood at the kitchen window, laughing.
“Sun hat!” Little Girl tipped her head back, stuck out her tongue.
Sister bounded off the porch, jerked the milk and bread out of Little Girl’s hands. “Come on! Ma’s gonna make a rhubarb pie for dinner. You gotta go to the store for butter.”
a dribble
I’m surrounded by them. This was a quiet urban neighborhood. It’s not them, themselves. They’re shy, well-meaning. The 24/7 scratching tears at my eardrums. The putrid smell invades my sinuses. I’ve sharpened my butcherknife, dreamed of whacking off their heads. I could eat the meat, but what about all the feathers?
She looks at the photograph.
Three-by-two, black and white snapshot
Of a young boy she never knew.
Next to it, on her vanity,
A school portrait of a teenage girl
Spotty with age, also unknown.
But one day, long ago, the boy
And girl met in a high school hallway,
Dust motes rising in the sunlight
Of a spring afternoon.
Together, years later, they created her.
And then two others.
Now they are dust, leaving only images
Of themselves, from the time before
Us.
They like viewing art together. They go to the museum or a new gallery and view the art. They talk about it, there, at the museum or gallery and later, in a coffee shop or restaurant or while walking down the street or even late at night, at home. They discuss and dissect the art they’ve viewed together, what they liked or didn’t like, how it made them feel. Looking at art is one of the things they enjoy doing together, in public.
There are other things they enjoy doing together, but those things cannot be done in public.
Image by Steven Tannenbaum
“I am the former President of the United States of America.”
Tattoo Boy laughs.
“They said let it go.” I look at the boy and the tattoos crawling up his neck and onto his face. “The weight of the world. That’s what they meant. It’ll wear you out.”
“And drive you crazy. Yeah, old man?” Tattoo boy flashes filed teeth.
“I am not crazy.”
“Then tell me again who you are?”
I punctuate my speech with pregnant pauses, orator style. “I am the former President of the United States of America.”
Tattoo boy laughs with his whole body, bare gut jiggling beneath vest and ink. He waves others of his ilk over and gestures toward me. “Hey dudes, meet the President of this great nation.”
A cadre of misfits and addicts, skinny, scarred, toothless, and pierced, surround me.
“Hey Prez! Where’re my food stamps?”
Where’s my tax cut?”
“Where’s my $100,000 a year job?”
I cover my ears and slip away. So many dark alleys to hide in. So many doorways to lie in, drinking myself down the river Lethe.
With just a stroke of my pen, did I pull the trigger that killed so many young men and women?
I notice my hand. It’s dirty, the nails jagged, the cuticles torn. Didn’t I get a manicure twice a week? My clothes emit a sour smell. The sleeves of my jacket fray at the ends. I touch my face. The hairs bristle many days beyond a five o’clock shadow.
My shoulder slides down the glass door of a deserted store front, knees hunch to my chest. I’m not the President.
The doctor at the free clinic said delusions are common for those with my condition. He gave me a packet of samples and a prescription. I tried the pills, used every sample. But I never filled the prescription. The hands shaking, the head aching, I can take. But when my tongue felt like a roll of toilet paper and I bobbled like a caricatured doll on a Chevy dashboard, I’d had enough.
And maybe I wanted to think I’d been President.
I stand, yanking my pack higher on my back. My stomach growls signaling time for the Mission line.
Cops stop the dealers at the bus shelter ahead. I go around the block to avoid them, not remembering why they shouldn’t see me, but knowing everything changes if they do.
The big Indian, I mean Native American, Rafe, motions me forward. No one objects when I cut in line. He’s the boss down here.
“How you doing, sir?” Rafe grins. He nudges the shoulder of the younger man next to him. “Nev, meet my new friend.”
I’ve heard about Nev. There’s a street legend about him and a gang of feral cats. I don’t know the particulars, some legends are best shrouded in mist.
Nev turns “Holy shit!” He knows me. It’s in his eyes. “Mr. Pres?”
It comes in a flood, like a CNN news flash. Bodies with faces blown away and severed limbs. Hospital beds and wheel chairs inhabited by those who should be too young to need them. Coffins draped in flags. Bullets shot into the air as a final ironic salute.
My shivers become an earthquake pulling me apart from within. I struggle to stay conscious, although a part of me wants to slip away.
Nev touches my cheek. I raise my eyes to meet his. He has known shame and despair, as I have. “You have done good things. Remember those. Not just the bad.”
A bit of warmth nudges at the chill.
But it’s not enough. I veer away, fumbling for the flask in my breast pocket.
Image by Bennett Knight via Unsplash
When I finally get up the nerve to ask him why he laughs, he smiles. It’s the smile I’ve seen on his face before. He doesn’t answer for a moment and I think I’ll have to ask again. But he says, “I know things no one else knows.”
I’m at a loss how to respond so I smile back. Not his kind of smile, the one so full of joy it doesn’t look human, but a lame near grimace. As I turn away, I half hope he’ll grab my arm to make me stay. Instead his whisper echoes across the plaza, “I’ll tell you more, when you’re ready.”
So what am I supposed to do with that?
I don’t see him for several days and figure he’s found shelter somewhere to get out of the rain and wind. Not like the birds, they don’t seem to care yet about the weather as long as they can find the crumbs that linger after the mobile breakfasts and lunches.
I try, again, to describe it to my guy.
“He’s this funny little dude. Not much taller than you.” He’s five foot seven in cowboy boots. “He’s really skinny, just a bit of muscle on bone. His hair and beard are both white and long, but not messy. And he always wears black leather. I think it’s the same pants and jacket but sometimes with different decals or chains-”
He interrupts. “You know way too much about this guy.”
“No, he’s the one who knows-”
“You are creeping me out.”
“But if you heard the laugh or saw that smile-”
“I don’t want to meet him. He’s some homeless bum you’re developing some weird fascination over.”
“I’m not obsessed. I talked to him for the first time yesterday.”
“You finally talked to him? Did you ask him out for an Appletini?”
“Oh, you’re real funny.” I’m sulking now. I know how much he hates that. “Let’s drop it.”
“Fine by me.”
“Fine.”
He pauses a moment before mouthing, “Fine.”
I shut up and let him have the last word.
******
I drink my coffee as I lean against the wall, soaking up the sunlight reflected in shades of pink from the bank tower. The birds edge up to within inches of my feet, feasting on their favored fare of muffin scraps. My thick brew is getting cold. I always order the venti with two extra shots. And it always gets cold before I finish it, cold and muddy. I drink it anyway, maybe I think that much adult caffeine should taste nasty. In high school and college, I’d get my morning dose by chugging a big gulp of Mountain Dew. Two on test days.
I tried that the first month or so, on the job, but then I burped through all my morning meetings. A burp is okay for a student but it’s not so cool in the great halls of business.
“Hey.” The balding guy from the cube next to mine dumps his paper cup in the garbage and points, indicating he’s going back inside.
I shake by head. “Later.” The sun is sneaking through the clouds more often than not. Maybe the laughing man will be back.
After about ten more minutes, I have to go back in.
I sit at my ergonomic chair later, after the big weekly meeting, as opposed to the little daily meetings. I go into the draw functions in Word. They say we don’t need any fancy programs, just the basics, enough to get the job done. A few minutes later I take more than a glance at the screen. It’s primitive, not much more than a cave drawing, but it’s the laughing man, complete with leather, long hair, beard, decals, and one silver chain dangling from a belt loop.
