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MASLOW’S DINNER MENU
At the very least, you need the egg yolks to be yellow. These eggs are feeble / barely more than blond. Daddy raises his eyebrows and he stares. Poached eggs depend a lot on yolk color.
“Not farm fresh,” he says to the waitress.
“Where else would eggs come from, sweetheart?” she says.
Daddy cocks his head. Smiles. Sweetheart will stick with him for days. He shakes on too much pepper and keeps looking around the diner to avoid seeing what he’s eating.
Sweetheart.
Daddy is a sweetheart. Mama is, too, only you walked in at the wrong time / during her confusion / a half-psychic yo-yo. So is Richard, only you walked in while he’s still keeping secrets. And so am I. I’m a sweetheart. Paleolithic spear right through your heart—I love you that much, stranger. We are all sweethearts until you ask sister / hates sweethearts / thinks they’re suckers.
Picture Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. Gently place four sweethearts / suckers into the triangle. Now. Toss in a maniac. Cook for eighteen years. Open the Maslow-oven-door. What’s for dinner? / plywood and boxes and conduit and a switch that no one will touch. What’s for dinner? / a pack of sweethearts who can’t figure out what they did wrong. They didn’t do anything wrong.
DESSERT
“Any dessert for youse?”
“Why do you say that?” Daddy asks.
“Our pies and cakes. They’re delicious.”
“You say youse. You have American education. You know this is not word in English,” he says. “Even I know this not word in English!”
The waitress looks hurt.
“No dessert, thanks,” I say. “We have to head home.”
Daddy says, “Sweetheart, I was not trying to hurt feelings. You will find man easier if you have dignity with your words. That is what I mean.”
“Who says I don’t got a man?” she says.
I sympathize with Daddy. He is literal / gullible. He thought she really thought he was a sweetheart. He is a sweetheart. Only sweethearts correct your grammar and care about you finding a man, right?
I say, “I’m sorry. My dad is from somewhere else. He’s not great with . . .”
She slaps our check down on the table and goes back to the kitchen.
CREEK
Knee-deep in freezing cold water / the creek behind our house / Richard’s idea. Daddy lies to reporters in front of the house while we sneak into the back. Our shoes dry as we wind through miles of twisted ninety-degree plywood and conduit to the kitchen, where there’s a note from my sister on the table.
Dear Truda,
I hate you for being born.
Kidding. There’s no note. Instead, there’s residue of the note.
Carmichael arrives, pliers and wrench in his hands / crawls under the half-installed sink.
I hear Daddy on the front lawn saying, “Truda has no drugs. That is not her style.”
I can’t make out what the questions are. But Richard turns on the TV, now propped against the living room wall / former floor and I can see Daddy / hear Daddy saying, “I do not know what you mean about this time anomaly. Truda is national teenage hero.”
Crowbar
LOCKDOWN
Daddy gets in through the him-shaped hole / front door and declares an emergency.
Fight or flight / lock all doors / find a buddy. Carmichael has moved to the basement to fix more plumbing. There are brown stains forming in every corner of every box / trickles of liquid / a faint smell of sewage.
Daddy, Richard, and I decide it’s best to turn off the TV. Richard has located his phone in Daddy’s windbreaker pocket / dives into it instead.
Daddy gets a glass of wine / uses a paper cup. This is out of the ordinary but they didn’t serve wine at the diner, so he’s just probably superstitious. He offers one to Richard and Richard says yes.
“Can I have one?” I ask.
“No.”
I don’t even like the smell of the stuff / no idea why I asked / was probably testing my boundaries. Mama once said that the job of being a parent was to be the walls of a swimming pool. Your children will push off of you, and your job is to be steady concrete. None of us expected so much structural damage from the explosions.
“All window shutters down,” Daddy says. He has a large, gray, industrial remote control unit on his lap. There is a switch for this. He flips it and the windows shutter closed.
“I am electrifying perimeter,” he says.
I say, “Hold on, what?”
“How do they say it here? Get off lawn?”
“Get off MY lawn,” Richard corrects.
“Yes. Get off MY lawn,” Daddy says, flips a switch and because of the window armor, I can’t see anything that happens outside. I hope he’s not accidentally frying anyone. That would look bad.
We sit for a while in silence.
Daddy says, “I do not understand why you will not talk to them. You did wonderful thing.”
I say, “People are already saying I take drugs. You can’t do anything good in the world without someone complaining, I guess. Plus, it’s not like I worked hard at it.”
“You practice every day,” Daddy says.
“For three weeks. No one can throw a two ninety after three weeks. Olympians don’t throw that after lifetimes of training,” I say.
This makes Richard look up from his phone. The two of them stare at me. I suppose I’m being awfully matter-of-fact. They’re only finding out who I am / Paleolithic / powerful. I’ve known for a while / not as affected as either of them by the bird / screwdriver / almost immune now.
“I’m a freak of nature,” I say.
“Stop saying that word,” Daddy says.
“Yeah,” Richard says. “You’re not a freak.”
“Well, then, what am I?”
Carmichael yells from the west passageway bathroom / box #8, “You are extraordinary. Compliment, not insult!”
“Call it what you want, but I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Carmichael arrives, now armed with an acetylene torch and two small copper fittings that he’s jingling in his left hand like bells. “That is natural,” he says. “When did you ever have good feeling about anything you have done?”
The residue of the note—it’s asbestos, not a virus / immunity is impossible once you inhale. Only thing to do is remove it / then heal your fiber-sliced lungs.
“Richard, I need you to find small eyeglass screwdriver I borrowed you,” Daddy says. “It is in your bedroom.”
When Richard leaves, Daddy leans to me and says, “You have always been extraordinary girl. You grew in garden overgrown with weeds and disease.”
“Listen to him,” Carmichael says.
I say, “I never did anything great before. I see no proof of being extraordinary.”
“Today is proof enough,” Carmichael says. “Celebrate these moments, Truda. They do not come often in life.”
“It still doesn’t answer why. Like—why? Why now? Why me?”
Daddy and Carmichael have no answers.
Richard returns with the eyeglass screwdriver and sits back on the couch.
Last week I thought it was because of all the things I never did—all that energy was stored up. But now I think it’s because of my crowbar. I think the universe is rewarding me for dismantling Fear. The switch—I will be the one to pull it. It’s just like telling the truth / making your own yogurt / throwing a spear / Paleolithic.
Daddy seems satisfied as he hears car engines starting and people talking loudly outside and cars driving away.
“You’re sure you didn’t electrocute anyone?” I ask.
Daddy laughs and yells, “Get off my dammit lawn!”
LOCKOUT
I’m in the garage area with my crowbar / dismantling Fear. It’s got to be past one in the morning N3WCLOCK time, and someone is banging on the shuttered front door.
I hear yapping.
I walk to the garage door, and I peek through the window shutter slats. The yapping is Mama’s dog. The banging is Mama.
I run through the house to find Daddy. I accidentally stomp through the wall / floor plasterboard in the hallway. By the time I’m in the main house, I run right into him.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry.”
He turns on the light.
“Is that a crowbar?” he asks.
“It’s not a chocolate cake,” I say.
“Was that you—” he’s about to ask me if I was making the noise, but right then, Mama starts banging again.
“It’s Mama.”
We stand in the hallway, me in my sweats and sock feet, holding a crowbar, him in his brown bathrobe and barefoot, holding the large remote control unit.
“I am taking her back,” Daddy says, “but not with dog.” He marches toward the front door / him-shaped hole / goes outside. Through the open door, I see that there are no TV vans / fried reporters on our dammit lawn.
I go to my room to put my crowbar away and look around / relive the living room scene yesterday. Carmichael, us, the TV, coffee table, couch, and the Tiffany lamp all flopping over like we’re in a slow-motion clothes dryer.
I only had one dresser and it’s jammed into the corner now, on its side. The mirror is cracked and the drawers are a mix of out and in and one of them is on the floor / crooked / broken.
I check my phone, where I find a text from Carrie saying she’ll pick me up for school tomorrow. I crawl to the kitchen for a snack. Richard is there, drinking milk from the carton. “Do you even sleep?” he asks.
“For about four hours, yes.”
“And you break world records.”
“Sure.”
“Excelente,” he says, Portuguese pronunciation on point. “What was all that noise?”
“He’s going to let Mama move back in as long as she doesn’t bring the dog.”
“Sim!” Richard laughs. “Sim, sim, sim!” He is playing an agreeable part in a Brazilian movie. I wish I knew enough to play along / didn’t live inside his Brazilian movie.
Since we ate at the diner and then had to get rid of the reporters, I haven’t had time to look around. The kitchen is a war zone. Carmichael has put half-inch plywood on the now-floor so none of us fall through the walls / now-floor. The old linoleum floor is now the wall where the stove was. The countertops are vertical. Half the cabinets are missing / the ones on the now-ceiling ripped a lot of drywall with them / the rest are sideways / duct-taped shut. I can’t even make sense of it.
“This place is crazy,” I say.
The front door opens and closes. Daddy arrives with Mama next to him / her eyes take in the battlefield / mouth says nothing. They’re holding hands. “We must replace all locks before tomorrow,” Daddy says.
He and Mama walk, arms around each other’s waists, toward the passage that leads to their bedroom. Richard points to the hole I made in the living room wall yesterday and tells me, “Tampões de ouvido means ‘earplugs’ in Portuguese.”
LOCKSMITH
The next morning, Daddy has new keys laid out on the kitchen table for me and Richard. Richard is still asleep. I’m going to school, where I have no idea what to expect. World-record breaker / drug taker / freak / who knows what trouble I will get into for being Paleolithic / honest / yogurt today.
“You must change the keys now,” he says.
“You’ll be home when I get home. I’ll do it then. I’ll be late,” I say.
“Just take old keys off and put new on, please,” he says.
I do as he says. He makes me put every last one on my key chain and then I go out to wait for Carrie. Across the street, there are two news vans and a car. I didn’t expect the news people to even have interest anymore. Daddy must have turned off the electrified perimeter because I’m walking right down the driveway and feel fine.
I don’t have the N3WCLOCK app and I can’t tell if I’m late or early, but I feel like I’m waiting way too long for Carrie, and maybe because of TV people, she didn’t stop. I hate being late for school—though technically we’re all early for school because it’s still June 23, 2020.
When I got outside, I put my tampões de ouvido back in, so I can only see the TV people mouthing questions at me. I can’t just look at them while they strain to be the one I hear the loudest, so I look up at the sky. I cloudbust. I see a rabbit and a spaceship—the 1960s flying saucer kind. I see a small toy train. And then I see a cloud couch. I see her, aged thirteen, arms outstretched, saying, “Hey, come up here and I’ll tickle your feet.” I see me at ten years old, floating from the floor to the couch / giggling. I see a cloud pillow. I see her hit me with it / pillow fight / feel two punches right in my crotch.
x equals how they weren’t punches, exactly.
x equals how punches don’t last this long.
Even in the clouds, it hurts.
* * *
Carrie has clearly gone to school without me.
I walk in to Mama and Daddy having sex in the hallway outside the kitchen.
“I’m walking to school,” I say as I turn back toward the door. “I was late for Carrie.”
My first step after turning around lands off-stud and my foot goes through some exposed plasterboard between the foyer and the kitchen. I pull it out and as I walk to school, I brush the white dust off my right leg and drag my sneaker through long grass / nothing fully removes the residue.
Residue
INTERVIEWS
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Carrie says.
I wait.
“My mom told me there would be reporters all over the place,” she says. “Frankly, I’m surprised you came to school at all. Because—”
Because of the swarm coming at me right now. Coach Turner, the athletic director, and the principal, who says, “We notified all your teachers. Don’t worry.”
“Worry about?” I ask.
“Homework or class or tests or any of that.”
“Your grades are looking great,” Coach Turner says / thumbs up.
Last time I checked, I was barely holding the B average.
“I don’t want to be on TV,” I say.
“It’s just one interview,” the principal says. “You’ll be done in no time.”
We walk through the main office and to the principal’s corner office. “The crew is set up in there.” She looks me up and down and turns to Coach Turner. “Carl, do you have official track gear she can wear?”
“I can get Aimee to grab her extras,” Coach Turner answers.
He and the athletic director sit first while I wait for word on track gear. The principal and I stand and listen to the interview through the door.
“Some internet followers have written their concerns about what happened yesterday,” the guy says. “Some people think she could be from another species.”
“Another species!” The athletic director laughs.
“Extraordinary? Yes, she is. Extraterrestrial, no,” Turner says.
“Let’s not forget that athletes like this come around every few years,” the AD says. “Bobby Road scored twenty-five hundred points on the basketball court five years ago and nobody ever implied he was an alien.”
“I didn’t mean to imply she’s an alien,” the guy says. “Our viewers. They have—um—wild imaginations, I guess. But you have to admit, this is a bit of an anomaly.”
“I saw it the first time I watched her throw. Was it out of the ordinary that she could throw the way she did yesterday? Not really. First day she probably hit one twenty.”
“Is that normal for someone’s first throw?” the guy asks.
Coach Turner says, “It’s normal for Truda’s first throw.”
The principal’s walkie-talkie clicks and she walks away from the door, and I hear Coach Aimee say “I left the warm-ups on my desk with a pair of decent Nikes.”
I nod to the principal and head to the locker room to change / have always wanted a pair of Nikes.
PALEOLITHIC ALIEN INVASION
It’s difficult to care about someone who is asking stupid questions. Daddy has raised me all wrong. The news guy starts with boring kindergarten stuff. How far did you throw again? / 290 / and how old are you? / 16.
Then he asks, “Do you think this is you throwing the javelin, or do you think something else is happening?”
I answer, “Do you think this is you asking this question right now or is something else happening?”
He struggles / the Nikes fit perfectly.
“Let me start again,” he says.
I sit up straight in my chair like Daddy is watching.
“How did it feel to break the world record?”
I smile. “It felt good. Like I found my place in the world. In high school. I’m finally good at something.”
He laughs. “I’m sure you were good at other things before now.”
“Not really, no. Not like this.”
“It would be an understatement to say this is being good at something. You’re clearly exceptional at javelin, right?” he says.
“Clearly,” I say.
He’s still flustered / I can’t tell why / there is a nugget of plaster in my sock from the foyer wall-floor / seeing my parents naked.
“Have you heard of the others?” he asks.
“I don’t listen to popular music,” I say.
“Oh. Sorry. I mean the other kids like you?”
“Did you know that one of our throwers has an Olympian father? Same event. Javelin. She’s got beautiful form.”
