30th birthday

It isn't ever quiet; just about 100 feet from the interstate. Poor Henry Bartosiewcz never got any sun. Too close to the overpass.

I have the fifth spot in the 12th row. I like it here.  Plenty to see, the hum of the interstate, now 8 lanes wide, keeps me company at night.

I am 15 years old, and have been here for 15 years now. I've seen lots of newcomers. No one visits me anymore, I'm okay with it. Really it's only in the winter when there is snow on the ground when it strikes me just how alone I am here. That's when I can see all the icy, frozen footprints that continue on past my grave.

No one ever stops. I'm a silent, invisible witness to a parade of grief for those in spots 20-260 in row twelve.

But today I prayed silently for subzero temperatures, for the snow to stay forever. Because today 6 foot prints were in the snow, perpendicular to my headstone.

Size 7, size 12 and size 13. My mother, my father and my brother had come to visit. Quietly at first, with one balloon.

Then slowly some small talk, the cold, the noise, what's for lunch and finally a good laugh about the time I got locked in the bathroom at my aunts house on Christmas. They stayed for 24 minutes.

That was 6 days ago. I should be 30 years old and 6 days, but instead I am forever young.  I placed my hand into the frozen imprint of their feet. I cringed the first time someone trampled over their footprints. The balloon didn't last long. in the cold. The helium condensed and because it was weighted it stayed put mocking me with its shrivled and wrinkled yellow smiley face bouncing just inches off the snow. 2 days from now a strong wind would blow it all the way to Helen Markowitz and she would curse the shriveled smiley face that would get entangled on the lighthouse her granddaughter left for her last year.

Win for Life

She had conceived four children in her lifetime. Three had been born healthy, the first stopped beating its heart at 14 weeks and had been taken from her by vacuum.

Now the three surviving children were fully grown and stood at her bedside in an annoyed silence.

"I told you this would happen again, " the middle child said.

The other two stood silent and still. The oldest, stood silent, picking cuticles until one finally bled. The youngest let a few heavy sighs out while staring blankly out the window.

On the bed she lay. The sheets pulled up and tucked neatly under her long, drawn breasts. Her arms stretched out on top of the white sheet. Her lips pursed, bright pink lipstick stuck deep in the creases of her mouth, her hair was tangled and matted on the back of her head and a lipstick stained cigarette had been smoked down to the filter in the ashtray next to the bed.

"What time did you leave this morning?", the youngest asked the oldest.

"9:15."

"And you got back?"

"3:30."

The youngest looked at the clock. It was 4:15.

"Well?" said the middle one, "What do you propose we do?"

From the bed came a long deep sigh, dramatically heaving her bare breasts in front of her children. "You do whatever you like," she said and reached for the cigarettes on the nightstand. The bedroom was large and held little furniture. It never would. She liked her bedroom to remain sparse. The summer breeze gently moved the sheer curtains. The walls were a powder blue. Her bed was custom made and featured a unique brushed steel headboard. The floor had no carpet.

Although she had recently moved into her eldest child's home, each of the children lived very well. When their mother was just 34 years old and the two oldest were already in high school and the youngest in the 7th grade, she had won a scratch off game. The prize: $7,000.00 a week for life.

All four benefitted from the winnings. Moving from a hot crammed third-floor walkup in the gentrified section of the city to a large townhome in a sought after location. For the older two the winnings came too late in life to affect their education much, but for the youngest the move came just in time and a college education was in the future.

Each of them though would struggle with addiction over the years but as two decades passed  the children, now adults, managed to carve out meaningful, respectable lives. Between the 3 of them there had been 6 marriages. There were no grandchildren. On the occasion that pregnancy occurred it was taken care of swiftly and early and at the bargain cost for $500. After all raising children is expensive.

Their young mother, should she live to be 90, would be paid in excess of $20,340,000 in winnings since the day she scratched that winning ticket just 4 weeks after her 34th birthday.  The only way she would stop receiving them was if she died or went to prison.

Now at 54 years old she had grown forgetful, after some significant episodes the doctors said it was dementia, the result of years of heavy drinking. And so just 4 months earlier she had moved into her oldest child's home.

Their mother was a whore. She proudly admitted it. She came to the realization herself when, at the age of 12, her older brother came into her bedroom for the first time. 

That first night it hurt, she bled. He held his hand over her mouth. She had bit him twice and he just pushed his hand down harder over mouth. She held her legs together tightly and the two of them quietly squirmed and struggled under the comforter, him with his underwear around his ankles and a t-shirt on and her in a nightgown. After a short while she found that if she stopped struggling he would loosen his hand on her mouth and she could breathe more. It was then that he slipped inside her. That was her first time. When he was done he kissed her, on the mouth, deeply and left her alone. She never told.

Over the next 2 months he would come into her room 8 times and he began to give her little winks and affectionate pats on the behind around the house. She loved the attention. She would go to sleep at night and wonder if he would come to her, if he would kiss her again when he left. If he maybe really loved her.  One night her brother had a friend sleep over, and to prove how much she loved him, she quietly snuck into his room, laid on her back on his bedroom floor and let him inside her while she took his friend into her mouth.  

She was by all accounts damaged. A whore who loved her job. She did not know the fathers of her children, although she took pride in knowing they all where 100% white, just like "daddy would like it" she used to say. She was a prostitute, a hooker, a slut, a whore but she wouldn't fuck a black guy for any amount of money. She was "old south" when it came to that. "There are just somethings a lady should never do," she would say. She held true to the morals and values she had heard her daddy and grandpap talked about growing up.

Walking around the king size bed in the sunlit room the oldest one said, "What is this?"

Exhaling her cigarette while still neatly tucked under the sheets she said, "I don't know. Maybe 14?"  and with that she slowly rose nude from the bed and walked across the room, cigarette between her fingers. Lube and semen made her inner thighs shine.

The other two began to undo the bed sheets at the mattress corners. The oldest made the sign of the cross and said, "Sorry 14. Today is not your lucky day," and then using two hands pulled a large knife out of the chest of the man who had lay dead for several hours now next to their mother. 

"Ma, when you're done rinsing off, bring the paper towel," the middle one said.

Moments later she came out of the bathroom, still nude and with a damp paper towel and began to wipe blood off the brushed steal headboard.

"Thanks for you help," the oldest said.

"We won't be able to do much with him till dark," said the youngest. The body had now been rolled into the bed sheets. The headboard was cleaned and the plastic wrap on the mattress was doing a fine job of containing the blood so the floor was in good shape. "Ma, you want to get dressed and go for an early dinner?" said the middle one.

"That sounds nice," she said, still standing nude in the middle of the room. "I have this nice new dress I've been wanting to wear. You boys always know how to take care of mama." and with that she took a drag of her cigarette, ashed it on the floor and strolled to the walk in closet.

Connections

She lay upon him, fully clothed both of them, completely upon him, her head on his chest, his heart beating in her ear, his chest lifting with each purposeful  breath, her bare toes rubbing gently on his bright white socks.

His heavily tattooed arm wrapped snuggly around her, his right hand on the small of her back. She moved just a bit and he held her closer to him, “Don’t. This is perfect. Don’t move,” he said without opening his eyes. And so she relaxed and sunk back into him. His left hand rested on the side of her face. She felt small.

His arm grew heavy on her as he began to sleep. She looked up moving only her eyes careful not to disturb him. He only slept soundly when was with her. Prescriptions, over-the-counter sleep aids mixed with natural remedies were frequent cocktails but they never worked well.  She would wake up and find texts from him at 3 or 4 in the morning. She felt a certain pride in her ability to get him to relax enough to sleep beneath her.  And the way he held her, she felt safe, diminutive, and fragile; he could easily overpower her and have her if he wanted. She would not object. But he was content to just hold her and sleep.  

They had a connection. More than a friendship, they were confidants, two strangers that were meant to meet, to console, encourage, entice and calm the other.  They met by chance one warm afternoon, she spoke to his friends first, and as he listened to the conversation unfold she noticed him watching her. Not just watching but observing. He didn't belong with his friends.  He was different. He was quiet, observant, deliberate but never condescending. He had an uncanny ability to read people. He was easily bored.  To get his attention you didn't just have to catch his interest, you had to intrigue him. And she did.

He gave her his number before he left. And when she finally texted him the conversations were immediately deep,  personal, raw, vulnerable and authentic. There were hundreds of texts that first week. He spoke freely of his girlfriend and she told him of her newly broken heart. She easily shared secrets with him she had held for years. And he was just as open with her.  Maybe the anonymous nature of texting put him at ease or maybe it was just that they shared a strange and undeniable connection rooted in sadness.  He sent her pictures, so many pictures; his mom, his dog, his girlfriend, his car, the gaping, fleshy, deep and bloody gash across his wrist taken over a hospital sink, blood swirling around the stainless steel drain. He said when he came home from deployment, “they gave me something that my brain didn’t like.”  She simply wrote back, “I am glad you are here.”  They never talked about it again. There was a simplicity between them.

When they met that warm afternoon  he was sliding into a depression, something she too was familiar with and something he had struggled with all his life but that was amplified after returning from his deployment and compounded by his family pressuring him to make decisions in life. 

Depression has a color, an aura, a smell.   If you've had it you can see it on people, you can feel it when you hear them speak and see it dripping from the text of their Facebook posts. Depression can be contagious. Normally she would have pulled away for fear it would latch on to her, but she had an immediate connection to him, and he to her. He told her how each day it was getting harder and harder to feel anything. One night, he told her that he had watched videos of animals being abused for hours because he said it enraged him. And as awful as it was, rage at least was an emotion. Without the rage he said he couldn't feel anything anymore. 

Nothing in those months could make him feel. He told her that his foot tapped incessantly and his fingers moved restlessly seemingly playing invisible piano keys on the nearest flat surface with anxiety and that it was driving his coworkers mad.  He told her it was getting hard to work and so he’d been staying late to catch up.  He hadn't had sex or masturbated in months. He had been forgetting to put the dog out. He texted these things to her as a matter-of-fact, he was growing stoic.

The thousands of texts between them were never sexual.  It was by all accounts the beginning of an authentic friendship. Months went by before they saw each other again. When they finally met they talked for hours until the early morning hours, drinking water and sitting indian-style on her couch. They faced each other with a connection so intense, never breaking eye contact all the while his phone buzzing with unanswered texts from his fiancee.  When he finally left it was with a simple hug.

He had consciously decided to try not to feel, because even laughter, lust or sex could lead to feelings of self-loathing and pull back the thin scab on his psyche that kept the violent memories of war at bay. But, overtime, he couldn’t resist. She had awakened in him a light, a vulnerability, a wanting for a connection.  It was unexpected. A text on his way over one night that read simply, “Like going grocery shopping while hungry,” was her only clue. She opened the door for him and he kissed her, no warning, no asking permission. Just pulled her close to him and kissed her. It was a strange kiss. "He’s trying too hard," she thought, "and he’s nervous too." She told him to calm down, relax. She assured him that he didn't have to show off  and felt his shoulders drop. He pulled his lips off hers slightly and took a breath. And then he kissed her again. This time she felt it, it was him, and she led him inside to the couch where they lay intertwined watching movies and sharing gentle kisses until the early hours of the morning.  

Overtime he began to send her pictures of him hiking, skiing, enjoying Easter with his family; his dog forced to wear bunny ears. He had it seemed managed to get the cloak of depression off of him.  Sleep was still an ongoing problem. He only slept well when he was with her.

But tonight he needed her. His anxiety had been growing the last few weeks. He had texted her early in the morning. The day would be busy, lots to do but he would be over later, “Midnight. Please stay up.” it read. And so she did.  The last few weeks she had spent reassuring him of their friendship, telling him that she would always be there for him. That there on her couch, with her he would always have a place. By now it had been just over 2 years that they had been falling asleep next to each other whenever he needed to feel her touch to settle the restlessness inside him. 

When he got there he was dressed nicely in his Burberry shirt and dress pants. But she already knew that because he had sent her pictures throughout the day. He really was handsome with his dark hair that was beginning to grey on the sides and deep brown eyes, broad shoulders. There was a single lamp on, and the glow of the TV. There was some small talk, “You look nice.” “Thanks” “How was your night?” “Good” “How was the food?” “Not bad, Gram said she makes a better sauce,” and  with that his shoes were off and they made their way to the couch, tired, leaning on one another, comfortable and mindlessly staring at the TV.

And there they lay. So much being said by the contented silence, by each peaceful breath. So very much implied by his simple act of being able to fall asleep with her in his arms, to relax and just ‘be’ in her company.  They slept deeply and still, perfectly fit together and warm under a blanket. She dreamed.

It was the alarm on his phone that woke them at 4:30am. It was loud, jarring, there was nothing gentle about it. He quieted it quickly without unwrapping  her from his arm or losing the warmth under the blanket.

They lay there quietly, he kissed the top of her head and after some time with a deep sigh he began to lift her up and wriggle himself out from under her. Sitting on the edge of the couch rubbing his eyes she knelt behind him with her arms around his neck. “I’ll see you in 10 days,” he said and turned giving her a gentle kiss, keeping his eyes open and letting a smile spread across his face.

“I’ll miss you, have fun,” she said with their lips still touching.  She walked him to the door. “Send me pics,” she said. “Of course,” he answered and put his arm around her waist and pulled her close, lifting her to her toes and kissing her again, this time their eyes were closed, and he lingered there, she let out a soft sigh and rubbed his back, he squeezed her too tightly.

They  separated  and she went flat-footed, he was a good 6 inches taller than her. “I'll be back before you know it,” he said and gave her a wink. The sun was starting to rise. “It's a beautiful day for a wedding," she called to him as he walked off the porch. "Honeymoon is only 10 days, I'll text you when we land," he said and he blew her a kiss. 

Group Therapy

Photo from The Forgotten Collection, by Travis Keyes
www.developingeye.photoshelter.com

The 8 chairs did not come to be in the room by chance, in fact it was the exact opposite. Each chair came to the group therapy room in a very deliberate manner. It was one of the only ways patients at the hospital for women who had succumbed to their nerves and the pressures of life that damage the psyche and play with the mind could express themselves. And since comfort was key to getting patients to talk, and since this new group would be comprised of some of the hospitals most severely afflicted patients the doctor needed a way to keep the agitated group calm and to perhaps gain extra insight into whatever faculties the women still possessed.

And so at lunch an hour before the first session was to begin Dr. Thompson told each of the women that they were to select a chair that would remain in the group therapy room and it would be theirs – a safe place all their own, one possession that no one could take from them.  The chair would become a place where for 45 minutes, four times a week, each patient could try to relax her mind trapped inside a body often stiff with anxiety and find a way to talk their way through the twists and turns in their lives that led them to reside at the Georgia state hospital for women who were declared, for a myriad of reasons, mentally unfit.

Sara heard the words the doctor said and mulled it over in her head but she was distracted by the sound of herself slurping at her hot soup, and the noise it made inside of her throat as she gulped it down hot, so hot she swore she could feel it burn in her ears. Sara had only 3 teeth in her mouth and all her meals were served as a soup-like consistency in a glass. But hot soup on her open gums was a sensation she had grown to love and in between her mind wandering from one sound to another in her own body she began to consider the options she had for seating in group therapy.

There was one place here in this dreary cavernous hospital where she was most calm, where she could lean back just a bit, close her eyes and enjoy the sound of own ears drumming in her head and the little click her 3^rd rib on the right side made when she took a very deep breath, and the prick and then delightful burn in her arm as the nurse began to draw the monthly bloodwork samples to check for pregnancy among the patients. It never took more than a few minutes in that chair with beech wood arms and the forgiving vinyl seat that cradled her as the needle stay under her skin and the throbbing began to get more intense.  The thought of getting to spend 45 minutes in that chair, reliving the delicate pain of each blood draw was such a distraction that even with only 3 teeth in her mouth Sara managed to bite her tongue, drawing blood. She sucked hard on it and ran her bleeding tongue over her gums, the slight metallic taste gave her an unexpected thrill and she stood up to go get her chair before anyone else thought to take it. She left her soup still piping hot in its glass.

Nadine huffed. She had participated in more therapy sessions in her life than she cared to recall. And now, at age 76, she was tired of reliving her past and talking about herself to new, young doctors every few years. Her joints hurt underneath several hundred pounds of bright white dimpled fat that covered her small frame. She knew she’d need a chair with no arms so that she could fit comfortably, one that would let her hips and thighs fall over the edges freely. And not one of those new plastic chairs that would make her ass and the backs of her thighs drip with sweat. A good sturdy, old-fashioned wooden chair with a  tall back is what she needed. Like the ones in the visitors room. She twirled her wiry white hair around her finger and pulled hard, several dozen strands came loose in her hand. She rolled them between her chubby thumb and forefinger and popped them into her mouth. Yes, the visitors chairs would do and no one would care if one went missing, since no one ever visited these forgotten women anyway.

Therese never said much. Group therapy wouldn’t  change that. She spent her days in the library reading. Hours and hours spent tracing the same line in the Bible with her delicate finger. Isaiah 64:6 “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” That’s all she ever read. One passage, for hours, each day, for years. The heavy wooden chair with its thick blue upholstery, the texture of it with its raised nubs like a perforated edge beneath her finger tips. She would run her thumb on her left hand over the edge where the fabric met the wood frame and with her right index finger she would slowly move from word to word hundreds of times in a day.   Each week day 15 minutes before the library closed (it was open Monday-Friday 9:00am – 11:00am) she would place the heavy, leather bound book back on the shelf, go back to her room and masturbate.

Sandra wasn’t in the cafeteria for the announcement about group therapy. She was outside in the gardens. A nurse told her the news and Sandra gently rocked in the summer sun and hummed a song that the nurse had never heard before. Sandra was not violent, or strange or a sexual deviant. Sandra had simply become detached. Blissfully unaware of the world around her.  Dr. Thompson did not expect her to make much progress at all by participating but she hoped at a minimum that Sandra would understand that she was part of a community and that there were people here to care for her. The nurse chose Sandra’s chair for her. A robins-egg-blue heavy plastic chair from the staff break room. She thought that Sandra, who spent her days rocking among the flowers in the garden, would appreciate something colorful in the otherwise dreary room where therapy would take place.

Carole was in her 50s, she woke each morning and bound her breasts tight to her body. Her thick hair never grayed and was still raven black. She cut it close to her scalp.  Her fingernails were cut painfully short and for some reason long ago she began to pluck her eye lashes, so much so that they eventually stopped growing back. This left a strange openness around her vibrant green eyes.  She was abrupt, passive aggressive, she could start an argument with anyone over anything and she was paranoid.  She sat alone with her back to the group  and heard the announcement about chair selection. She never bothered to turn around. It simply wasn’t necessary. And she knew immediately which chair she’d take: Dr. Thompson’s desk chair.  Nothing would make Carole happier than having that bitch have to scrounge for a new chair and to have her sit and watch session after session while Carole carved obscenities into the chair’s arms.

8 women would need to select chairs but 9 would be participating. Holly’s chair had been picked for her years ago when, after finding her in bed with another man her husband beat her so severely that she was left paralyzed. She found herself a ward of the state after husband abandoned her just 2 days after she was released from the hospital. She sat for 4 days, alone, in her own filth in her wheelchair in her small home in the backwoods of Georgia. No phone, no electricity, sweltering heat. She was covered in mosquito bites after a wind blew the screen door open. In her wheelchair now she appeared to be in good healthy but she suffered from seizures which were becoming more frequent and severe. She looked forward to group therapy, it would be a welcome distraction to the monotony.

At the far end of the table in the cafeteria with her hair in a bun, Justine stared at a couple dancing in the corner that did not exist outside of her own hallucination-plagued mind. A schizophrenic since 22 years old her mind conjured fantastic imagery within the hospital's walls which gave her a strange kind of freedom over the other patients. Although she was heavily medicated to avoid violent outbursts she often found herself with pent up energy and liked to wander around the forgotten areas of the hospital, especially the attic over the east wing. It was only accessible by a narrow and twisting  staircase found in the back of a utility closet. There in the attic were chairs—one of which she’d use for therapy. It would smell of age and humidity and would creak whenever she moved and it had one leg shorter than the others so she’d be able to creak and rock her way through each 45 minute session and this made her happy.

The last 2 chairs would belong to Jillian and Olivia.  Jillian had long ago ceased to exist and instead like a chameleon would latch on to someone whom she admired and she would mimic them, follow them, absorb them, stalk them. She’d practice speaking  like them, spend hours in the mirror  perfecting the mannerisms that make us each unique and she’d steal them away from whomever she was fixated on.  Jillian had attached herself to Olivia when she arrived at the hospital and for the first time in her life, the object of her adoration, the woman she chose to become did not object. In fact Olivia loved the attention, the constant feeling of eyes on her. She played this cat and mouse game with Jillian, purposefully adding lisps in her speech one day where before there had been none, sneaking peroxide and bleach and dying her light brown hair blonde just to watch Jillian squirm for days trying to figure out she too could dye her hair. And when she finally got her hands on the right supplies the mixture was so strong that she burned her scalp, her hair broke off and drop that got in her left eye caused permanent damage to her vision.

For group therapy they would need matching chairs. They walked together, after lunch, holding hands, and entered the meeting room where families receive the results of their loved ones mental exams and where they find out if they can leave behind the damaged burden that was once mom, or wife, or sister, or aunt. Here is where Jillian and Olivia would find their identical chairs.

At the first group therapy session each person brought their chair and they arranged themselves in a semi-circle; Sara, Nadine, Therese, Sandra, Carole, Holly, Justine, Olivia and Jill. Dr. Thompson stood. Group Therapy went on for 26 months, 448 sessions. 5 months in, Holly suffered a violent seizure during group. Falling from her chair and striking her head, she died a few days later. Her chair was never moved from its place. Nadine too passed away quietly in her sleep one night. No one ever moved or used her chair either.

And this is how 8 mismatched chairs and a wheelchair came to be in the center of this forgotten room…at least that how it happened in my imagination.

A very special thank you to my friend Travis Keyes for permitting me to use his amazing photographs as inspiration and guidance for my overactive imagination and for encouraging my writing. See more of his photos at developingeye.photoshelter.com. 

The first day of school

She had traded shifts with the new girl for the school year so that she could be up early in the mornings and then home in the afternoon for the bus.  She would work 9-3 and be home all afternoon to have an after school snack and hear all the days stories. It would cost her, the morning shift was notoriously slow so she'd make less in tips and since her mom would be at work too she would need a pay a sitter for the little one. But it was going to be worth it.

She showered in the small windowless bathroom thick with humidity. Coming out wrapped in a towel she looked across the small apartment.  The kitchen countertop was badly chipped and sitting on it was a brand new, empty, Hello Kitty lunch box.  She didn't need to pack a lunch or snack because they had qualified for the school meal voucher program at the elementary school.  Hello Kitty would never carry food back and forth, but would instead each morning have a note inside it that read, "I love you from the top, to the bottom, and all the way through."  She had bought the lunch box along with the matching backpack even though it cost an extra $5 to help make sure her daughter fit in the with the other kids. The pink backpack lay limp on the floor against the wall. It was empty too. The local church would give her daughter her school supplies in the cafeteria when she got to school. They would provide a folder, a 24 count box of crayons, two pencils, a sharpener, an eraser and a glue stick. This would have to last all year.

She picked up the bedtime story books from the floor and put them on the coffee table and then pushed the table against the wall and folded out the couch. She was tired but anxious. Before laying down to sleep she peeked into the bedroom and watched her two girls sleep. They were lying head-to-foot in a twin bed. The baby, only 18 months slept only in a diaper and was tucked close to the wall and her big girl, 5, was lying on her stomach in princess underwear with an arm hanging over the edge. The room was hot. The windows were open but there was no breeze. Each girls' dark hair was sweaty and damp and stuck to their face and backs. They had no pillows or blankets.

She didn't close the door in hopes that some breeze may come, but she tiptoed back to the damp thin fold out couch and lay down to sleep. All the windows were open. The sheets over the windows were still.

In the morning there was a fabulous rush of school nerves and preparation. A special breakfast of pancakes was made, teeth were brushed, hair was braided, and she surprised her older daughter with a  brand new pink dress from the thrift store that was special just for the first day of kindergarten. It had a heart of made of pink sequins on it, only a few were already missing.

She counted the minutes for the chain-smoking neighbor to arrive to watch her younger daughter. It would be close enough to get the big one on the bus and be at work on time, but if the sitter was late and they missed the bus, well then quite frankly they were screwed.  But she showed up a minute early much to her relief and so she and her daughter were able to walk to the corner bus stop and enjoy the hot late summer morning together.

The bus stop was crowded. Most of the moms seemed to know each other. One introduced herself as the kindergarten room mom. She told her she would send pictures of the first day activities and they traded cell phone numbers. The school bus was loud as it rounded the corner. Her daughter's hand tightened and she kneeled down in front of her, fixing her braid and straightening her name tag. And then with a simple kiss her little hand let go and disappeared into the dark cavernous bus, up the steep stairs and she was too short to be seen from the sidewalk. She was gone. On her way. The bus pulled off and while she felt like she could've stood there waiting till 3:30 to see the bus come back, she had to be at work.

By 10:30 she had checked her phone countless times hoping to see a glimpse of her girl on the first day of school. Work was slow and uneventful. Finally a text. There she was, a smile from ear to ear, sitting on the carpet surrounded by 17 other smiling small faces. Circle Time. She stood staring at the picture and said out loud to no one in particular, "I'm going outside for a smoke."

And there she stood, in the doorway, staring at this picture, the heat unbearably thick and the smell of urine and garbage overwhelming. Late summer heat and Bourbon Street don't mix well.  She could hear the sound of her daughters voice, hear the laughter of the kids and feel the excitement of being 5. She couldn't wait to get home. Her boss called her inside. He had a guy who wanted a lap dance. She walked back in to the  dark loud room and climbed on to the lap of the old white man who was already hard just at the thought of her riding him. One hand on her breast, the other on her ass while she stared at the clock over his shoulder, thinking about meeting the bus at 3:30.

 

This story was inspired by this picture I took a few weeks ago in New Orleans around 9:30am and by the many pictures in my Facebook feed this morning of affluent first days of school. We really are very lucky.

He smelled like a man named Ogre would smell

He had just lost his job as a clown. It wasn't his dream job, just another in a string of jobs that had filled his days over the past few years. He hadn't been very good at it actually, but overall the experience had been positive, meeting new people, going to different places, usually free cake. It was good for the few months it lasted. But as the summer wore on the complaints began to increase. The kids said he smelled. And he did. A sour, putrid, thick smell and it was hard to figure exactly if it was he himself or something he'd gotten into. He actually smelled how you would think a man called Ogre would smell.

Ogre was his nickname for as long as he could remember. Thick curly black hair covered his head, his chest and his back but it was his hands that were most ogre-like. Enormous hands, fingers round as quarters. Dry cracked cuticles that came to sharp points around his thick nails. The skin was thick, like each finger was its own callous. Even before his years as a mechanic the thickness of the skin was remarkable. Now, after years of working on cars the cracks and creases on Ogres hands were stained black. A constant reminder of a past life that he could never go back to.

When he was a kid, long before he was known as Ogre (that name was given to him freshman year of high school, when his size and hair and the lumbering way he carried himself around the high school hallways earned him that name) he went by Billy. He would work on the neighbor's cars after school and all summer learning about transmissions, catalytic converters, and how to rebuild an engine block. He had a real knack for understanding how things worked and although his big hands made working in tight spaces tricky, he had found his passion. And even through the blurry teenage years, when he was given the moniker Ogre, he knew he would own his own garage one day.

And he did. For 18 years.

Holding the curly, coarse red clown wig in his hand down by his side, he stood with the sun in his face and looked across the parking lot from the backdoor of the office where he was no longer employed. It was warm and a little windy and his baggy shiny blue pants made a noise like a flag in the breeze. He hadn't changed into his work shoes yet, so beneath the shiny pants were a pair of old black velcro shoes, not quite sneakers, not quite a dress shoe. They were comfortable and easy to get on and off.  With his furry belly in the way tying shoes had lost its ease and appeal many years before.

His face, under heavy white paint  and facing the sun grew warm quickly. He blankly stared across the parking lot. A few rows of cars on gravel with the railroad line behind them and acres of woods beyond that. He had lost track of how many odd jobs he'd had over the years. He was so tired.

The breeze felt nice. Cooled him everywhere except his face. He walked down 4 steps and the crunch of the gravel under his feet seemed unusually loud. It brought him back to a time years before when that same sound would be the first clue on a dark night that something was horribly wrong.

Married with a family and owning his own shop since he was 19 often meant working late nights, which also often meant drinking some bourbon or on occasion alot of bourbon. His son was 4 at the time and the kid loved his dad. He would hang out at the shop and hand his dad tools. Of course he was 4 and his attention span wasn't great so often he'd leave the garage and its diesel fumes an play in the gravel parking lot. Rarely did he throw rocks. He knew better, but he loved to hear the loud crunch of the gravel when he slid across it. In the warmer months his legs were covered in scabs and his toe nails were encased in a pale grey dust.

The garage had been robbed a few times over the years and so Ogre kept a pistol in the office for nights when he worked late. Even though the it was on the same lot as the house, the garage sat closer to the main road and the house was set way back, the occasional late night good-for-nothing would break the windows, steal tools, or perhaps drunk decide it would be fun to knock over the airpumps. Vandalism mostly, a costly irritating nuisance.

That night when he heard the gravel he had been drinking but it was no bender. A few shots of bourbon and couple of beers.

The gravel crunched in the darkness among the noise of the crickets and frogs and at a distance that at first Ogre did not notice it. It was 10:37 and he was going over the books. It was ok, not great but overall things were good. The gravel crunching moved closer and this time it caught his ear and he lowered the radio and put his hand on the gun. The gravel sound increased as it grew closer and he held the gun in his hand and looked out the window in the dark night. Fireflies.

Sobbing mixed with the sound of gravel now. He left the small office and went outside. It was pitch black except for the small light coming outside of his office window and the front porch light of his house in the distance. Out of the darkness came the small, wet face of his son. Tears did not describe it. His face was wet. As if tears that were too big for such a small boy had fallen from his brown eyes. Feet bare, grey and dusty, train pajamas -- his favorite with the red bottoms. And he couldn't get the words out. Ogre scooped him up in his arms and ran towards the house. The child never spoke, just sobbed the whole way.

The front door was open. The light over the kitchen sink was on. He yelled for his wife Danielle. The boy cried harder and then wet himself down the front of his pajamas and all on Ogre's side.  There was no answer. He put the boy down and ran upstairs and it was there in the hallway he could see in the gentle glow of the train night light into the bathroom at the end of the hall. He could only see her hair. Just the long auburn hair that she had chosen to wear down on the last minute on their wedding day. As he entered the bathroom the scene it its entirety became clear. The ceramic tub was full of red water. Her arms and body submerged. Her nightgown floated about her knees. Her face white and her soft lips blue.

The boy had quieted but was still crying downstairs. And Ogre, heartbroken, angry and confused sat in silence indian-style next to the tub holding his wifes cold, wet hand till the sun came up.

His big, thick, black hand pruny from being submerged in the water all night finally released Danielle's fingers just as the first of the morning birds began to sing their song. Her hand fell beneath the surface with a gentle splash.

At some point his son had fallen asleep on the hardwood floor at the base of the stairs in his urine soaked pjs and he slept soundly still as Ogre stepped over him, walked outside, got in his car and drove away. He never went back. It was all too much for him.

Now he was lying down, sun so bright and hot that he had to close his eyes. He was so tired. The metal was hot and his shiny pants felt hot too even to his thick skinned finger tips. It really was very fast. The train blew its whistle in desperation but Ogre, lying there face painted, eyes closed, velcro-shoed feet up on the opposite rail was tired. He could hear his own heart beat in his ears and it drowned out everything, much in the same way Danielle could likely hear her own beat as her ears sunk below the surface of the bloody water and the life drained out of her.

The train barreled over him. For an instant a searing heat ran through him. And then it was done.