Switch, page 3
I translate / chew. “The meet is next Tuesday.”
“Why are you nervous?”
“I’ve never done one before.”
He nods and takes a sip of wine. “You are a brilliant girl.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Grades not as good as Richard’s, but you have creative ways of expressing yourself. This is your success.”
Not everyone can be a rifle.
He says, “So you will do first meetup on Tuesday. Then another, then another. You make each one better. You grow. You win.”
His lasagna keeps improving. His homemade vinaigrette. He is a walking example of growth mindset. And I am stuck inside a series of his boxes, even though I fly a thousand yards a day.
SIX WHOLE MONTHS
To understand anything is to understand energy.
I help Daddy put a plate aside for Richard and we do the dishes. I wash. He dries. The pristine dishwasher sits inches from us under the countertop wondering why my father sees it as some sort of threat to our family.
Dish-doing is his old-world way to show affection / model teamwork. It’s the way he hugs. Continental-style table manners are how he shows love.
We finish cleaning up and I turn off the overhead light. He says, “How good are you—in this track?”
“I’m very good.” I’ve never said this about anything, ever / would have caused a flash flood / twelve-alarm fire.
“Next Tuesday is my birthday, you know.”
“I know,” I say. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
I smile. He smiles.
He stands for a minute, smiling at me. My eyes wander around the partially boxed kitchen and out into the hallway / to the boxes around the switch / to the switch.
He says, “I will be there to show my pride for you.”
I say, “Good night,” and kiss him on his forehead.
* * *
—
To understand anything is to understand / energy is Paleolithic like I am / trying to survive. It’s natural and enormous. It’s earthquake and ocean. It’s rumors and sunlight. Sometimes, it flows in all directions. Sometimes, it only flows in one. Here, in his series of plywood boxes, Daddy is still trying to contain our energy / keep us safe from doing things too well. But sister is gone now. Six whole months.
I look out my bedroom window and see the car in the driveway.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
SWITCH LOGIC
Locate the switches.
In our precision-built development ranch home, lights are the only obviously switched energy sources. The switch units are mounted right on the wall at shoulder-height—exactly forty-eight inches from the floor—in every room. So convenient.
On. Off.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
PEOPLE SWITCH
To understand anything is to understand energy.
It’s not always lights, you know. You can switch an outlet. You can switch an appliance. You can switch anything, really. Even people.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
OOO!
Sometimes when I was younger, I used to stick chewed gum into the eyes of wall outlets. You know the ones—two surprised little men stacked on top of each other—without whom our freezer melts, our hairdryer goes silent. Without them, your aquarium fish will die. Without those two little men—both saying “Ooo!” at the exact same time—there would be no TV / cold beer / online banking.
When you breathe, you don’t need to be plugged into anything. The little men are in the walls, admiring your diaphragm. This is why I plugged their eyes with gum. The gum was handy / they were staring. One time, I covered their little mouths, too. No more “Ooo!” No more eyes. Just gum-covered outlets and energy with nowhere to go.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
CONDUIT
The wire that connects the appliances and the outlets and the switches must, if not hidden inside the house’s skin, be protected by conduit—a box for wire. A safe place. Like Daddy’s boxes but tubular / long and thin and made of either metal or rigid plastic.
Because of Daddy’s boxes, conduit now connects everything in our house. It is not safe for visitors. There are booby traps in our conduit / the house is laced with tiny, erratic bombs. Boom! On my way to the bathroom. Boom! Midnight carb snack. Boom! I lose my toes ten times a day. Boom! On my way to find Richard.
Box #11
SOMETHING IS WRONG
Richard is standing in his room with his arms crossed. He looks normal. He’s not smiling, and he’s not frowning, but that’s our rifle / Richard. Emotions are not on the syllabus.
“She called me,” he says.
This could be Mama or sister / probably sister if something is wrong.
“When?”
“When I got outside Maya’s.”
Maya still lives next door to our old townhouse—the one with a fuse box. Richard goes there to talk to Maya’s mother, Karen, who is a social worker and therapist. She doesn’t charge him / he doesn’t tell her the whole truth. That’s how the deal works.
“Why did she call you? What did she say?”
“She asked some weird shit about me and what classes I’m taking. She asked me about you. And if you and Carrie are still friends. She talks to Carrie,” he says, “I think.”
“I’m sure she said that, but it’s probably not true,” I say. “What else? Why did you text that something’s wrong?”
He fiddles with the cuticle on his thumb for a second. “Mama’s in rehab,” he finally says. “She wanted to let us to know.”
Mama is probably not in rehab.
We sit on his bed for a minute, side by side. He picks up a pair of dirty socks and tosses them toward his laundry basket.
“And she’s working at a nursing home now,” he says. Shivers. It causes me to shiver. Her energy understands how to move through us. “She’s a cook.”
Last time we talked about her, Richard reported that she was volunteering at a hospital, reading books to kids on the pediatric cancer ward.
“So she dropped out of college, I guess,” I say.
He shrugs.
Richard has always been a smart rifle. He’s not easily swayed by most people. Sister, though—alone in any space—serves as an individual corrective lens to each one of our family / diabolical / parts of us are hypnotized / who and which parts change on any given day.
“How are you, Richard?”
“I need to sleep,” he says.
“I’m sorry she called you.”
“I wish she’d just go away like she said she would,” he says. I don’t point out that he could just let the calls go to voicemail / he looks tired.
He gets into his single bed / clothes still on / shoes kicked off the edge. Snuggles with his duvet. Puts a pillow over his ear to block out the hammering. I marvel the light switch inside his bedroom door. I switch it to OFF and navigate the passageways from his room / #11 to my room / #7.
FOLKLORE
The last time my sister called me, five pretend-months ago, a month after she left for college seven hours away, she told me she’d called child services because Daddy was abusive. She said she would save me / I’d come to live on campus with her / she would take me to beer-keg parties.
Daddy never hurt any of us, not once. He’s not even unkind. Sister has said he’s an alcoholic, but there is no alcohol in our house aside from dinner wine. She said he’s a drug addict. No drugs in our house aside from Advil and Mylanta. Sometimes she would hide the Advil when Daddy got low-air-pressure headaches.
Her weather is unpredictable.
Explosions aren’t supposed to announce themselves.
When she was seven, she killed an injured bird with a screwdriver. Richard thinks about it a lot because he was there and tried to stop her. Something happened that day / changed Richard forever. His energy took form / rifles don’t talk much.
I wish I knew Portuguese so I could have whispered something funny to Richard while he fell to sleep, instead all I said was “Sleep tight.” That’s what Mama would say when she’d close my door at night.
I wonder where she is if she isn’t in rehab.
* * *
—
When I get back to box #7, which takes a while because Daddy’s passageways are getting smaller / thicker / safer, I flop on my bed and open my laptop to write the thesis statement for my Solution Time paper. Nothing comes to me.
By the end of the month, I will figure out how to make people give a shit about other people. I still have no idea how I’ll do this because I live in a house where emergencies are cubed like snack cheese and giving an actual shit has been put on hold. The hold music is shock. No time exists in shock / nothing can be done for us / no thesis statement for that / AFT3RMATH.
I close the laptop and stretch. It’s soon time for work.
I wait until everyone is sleeping.
I bring a small crowbar.
Night Shift
ZENO OF ELEA
At rest / I am moving / with my crowbar.
ROBERT PLUTCHIK
Anger / Anticipation / the switch.
DIGGING
The switch is impossible to reach. There is new construction every day. To get to the switch I would have to disassemble the entire series of boxes—from #1 to #11—that now hold the first switch-protecting box in place. But tonight I want to see the supply, which I can see if I get through the drywall under the switch, which is easy to access by removing only one plywood side of the outer switch box.
BOOM! I get the panel off, but hit a tiny bomb. My hands are here, but my brain is exploding to the fact that Richard cannot be trusted. Exploding to the day I found him crying that first time, three years ago, I was still in middle school, he was a senior in high school and we agreed—never let her alone with us. Ever. But Richard cannot be trusted / he left me alone with her all the time. Had friends to do stuff with. Had senior year to complete / rifle to assemble.
He tried. He took me fishing. He’d rent a canoe on the lake and we’d take Daddy’s rods and we probably used the wrong lures. We weren’t really fishing.
Richard cannot be trusted. He is limp from a lifetime of game. The game is his life. There are no do-overs. Even though sister lit him on fire and it’s not his fault, he doesn’t know what kind of lure to use in the lake / scratches his burns / is not able to heal.
UNWIRING DIAGRAM
I poke the crowbar into the wall below the switch and I pull out the drywall in dusty, prune-sized pieces and let them fall. I aim the flashlight and look for supply wires. At first glance, there are no wires going to the switch. I look again and there are a million wires going to the switch. A billion wires. More wires than can fit this house.
They start to flash / casino of possibility / impossibility. I can’t flip the switch tonight, anyway. Not while Richard is sleeping / not while I’m training.
x equals not knowing what flipping the switch will do.
I replace the drywall, layer it with tape and glue, put the plywood piece back in place. Daddy will know someone was here / he won’t ask / will quietly grind dry peppers.
THE REAL WORK
I move to more private spaces and remove nail after nail.
Hall closet / garage / laundry room / the southeast hallway. Some people do yoga to wind down. Some people smoke weed. I disassemble the boxes / sometimes hanging trapeze-style upside down / usually on my side. I only get four hours of sleep per night / hours don’t exist / I am always awake / always asleep.
I am in Zeno’s arrow. I feel everything / I feel nothing.
When I get back to box #7, I’m exhausted.
FLOOR PLAN / GPS
You don’t understand the boxes and you don’t want to. Plywood-ugly / nails too long. It’s not a bedroom like you’d imagine—no curtains, no rug, no faux sheepskins—just wood grain / do not drag the soles. I’ve had a splinter in my foot so long that a callus has formed and the sliver will be encased forever / a fossil.
You don’t understand the hallways and you don’t want to. The construction feels dangerous. Energy moves through. We move through. We are the energy.
A million wires.
* * *
—
A picture for you / GPS. There are eleven boxes. Switch at the center, kitchen #3 north, living room #2, east of that. My box #7 southeast, Richard #11 southwest. Daddy sleeps northwest in the hallway. Everything is easier with directions. But nothing really comes with directions. Especially not our family.
There are clocks in each room so we know when to go to dinner / none of them move now / we are always on time. There is an alarm system in case of emergency. We have located our exits. Mine is through the me-shaped hole. Richard’s is anywhere he can climb down the conduit / usually windows. Mama’s was through the front door, two bags packed, yapping little dog under her arm, and three words. Don’t call me.
That was nine months ago. Three days before time stopped. Everything has been different since / nothing seems real / no directions.
Daddy is not a precision machine / nothing is level. Full-time job making sure the energy runs right / quit his other job making mall kiosks / expert box-maker / two days after Mama left. In order: Mama left / he quit his job / time stopped. The order is important, I think. He never called Mama / obeys orders / to understand anything is to understand energy.
MAMA
Her weaknesses—American candy bars / American beer / American cheese / American shopping / American television—made her unintentionally lowbrow. She didn’t mean for it to happen that way. She married a man from Somewhere Else who could not accept the fun and dumb.
Five years ago, she became an amateur psychic. Now, she’s pay-per-minute, in-person, small groups at local hotel conference rooms. None of us expected this, considering she was always surprised when the mailman came. Not to say she’s a fake. She may not be / to understand anything is to understand energy / it doesn’t matter because she’s not here.
We don’t talk about the real reason she left / this explanation will do.
No one knows the real reason she left / this explanation will do.
* * *
—
Richard and I fought over her dinner chair.
She always sat to the left of Daddy, which put her out of sister’s reach. Daddy settled the fight by putting me in Mama’s old chair, and Richard took my old place, so sister’s only way to touch us during meals was with her words.
It’s very hard to eat while constantly exploding.
I think that’s the real reason why Mama left. She used to drink Mylanta straight from the bottle and by the time she said Don’t call me, she’d been going to bed before eight o’clock for weeks. I knew she wasn’t sleeping.
We’d been studying cancer in health class. Deep down, I suspected my mother had stomach cancer. So many bombs / too many years / Mylanta.
She’s fine. No cancer. She wrote me an email a few days later when time stopped. Small talk, mostly, but then I wanted to make it easier on your father. He works so hard, and when he would come home all he got was chaos. You had nothing to do with this.
I replied to the email and told her I needed her.
I don’t fit into the family. I heard all the reasons.
I replied and told her she was my mother, which meant she fit into the family / my family / I missed her.
Your father is devastated, but it’s for the best.
I asked Richard, “If he’s devastated and she’s devastated, then why did she leave?”
Richard told me to wait / I wasn’t sure for what.
She now lives in a small apartment she’d rented for her office / psychic den. It’s got angels painted on the walls of the waiting room / smells like burnt sage. She sleeps on the futon couch surrounded by her crystals, where the next day, people will sit with cash hoping to contact their departed loved ones.
Daddy now relies on his old friend Carmichael for parenting decisions. Carmichael video-calls every pretend-Sunday, but Daddy refuses to use the camera / all Carmichael sees when he talks to Daddy is Daddy’s ear. Carmichael talks loud, so I stay nearby when he calls. Whenever Carmichael mentions reaching out to Mama, Daddy hangs up.
All I know is Mama has the wrong idea about what’s going on here / I don’t know what’s going on here / we’re all in a daze. So I invented work for myself. Seems reasonable work. It will lead to something solid in the end / on / off.
By the time I climb into bed, I’ve collected 234 six-inch, galvanized, hot-dipped steel nails.
I still don’t have a thesis statement.
Tomorrow is Trust.
Trust
BEST TEAM EVER
“Y’all know I have trust issues,” Carrie says. “So every time we get to Trust, I go kinda numb. It’s not really a good feeling for me.”
Eric says, “Trust has a lot to do with what home is like and home sucks for you right now.” Two Trusts ago, Eric would have never said something so empathetic.
“Carrie, what do you trust?” Ellie asks. “You trust me, right?”
Carrie sighs. “I trust all of you, but what I guess I’m saying is that when I think about trust, the way we do here, capital T, it makes me think about how few people I do trust. So then I get sad.”
“Why are you nervous?”
“I’ve never done one before.”
He nods and takes a sip of wine. “You are a brilliant girl.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Grades not as good as Richard’s, but you have creative ways of expressing yourself. This is your success.”
Not everyone can be a rifle.
He says, “So you will do first meetup on Tuesday. Then another, then another. You make each one better. You grow. You win.”
His lasagna keeps improving. His homemade vinaigrette. He is a walking example of growth mindset. And I am stuck inside a series of his boxes, even though I fly a thousand yards a day.
SIX WHOLE MONTHS
To understand anything is to understand energy.
I help Daddy put a plate aside for Richard and we do the dishes. I wash. He dries. The pristine dishwasher sits inches from us under the countertop wondering why my father sees it as some sort of threat to our family.
Dish-doing is his old-world way to show affection / model teamwork. It’s the way he hugs. Continental-style table manners are how he shows love.
We finish cleaning up and I turn off the overhead light. He says, “How good are you—in this track?”
“I’m very good.” I’ve never said this about anything, ever / would have caused a flash flood / twelve-alarm fire.
“Next Tuesday is my birthday, you know.”
“I know,” I say. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
I smile. He smiles.
He stands for a minute, smiling at me. My eyes wander around the partially boxed kitchen and out into the hallway / to the boxes around the switch / to the switch.
He says, “I will be there to show my pride for you.”
I say, “Good night,” and kiss him on his forehead.
* * *
—
To understand anything is to understand / energy is Paleolithic like I am / trying to survive. It’s natural and enormous. It’s earthquake and ocean. It’s rumors and sunlight. Sometimes, it flows in all directions. Sometimes, it only flows in one. Here, in his series of plywood boxes, Daddy is still trying to contain our energy / keep us safe from doing things too well. But sister is gone now. Six whole months.
I look out my bedroom window and see the car in the driveway.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
SWITCH LOGIC
Locate the switches.
In our precision-built development ranch home, lights are the only obviously switched energy sources. The switch units are mounted right on the wall at shoulder-height—exactly forty-eight inches from the floor—in every room. So convenient.
On. Off.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
PEOPLE SWITCH
To understand anything is to understand energy.
It’s not always lights, you know. You can switch an outlet. You can switch an appliance. You can switch anything, really. Even people.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
OOO!
Sometimes when I was younger, I used to stick chewed gum into the eyes of wall outlets. You know the ones—two surprised little men stacked on top of each other—without whom our freezer melts, our hairdryer goes silent. Without them, your aquarium fish will die. Without those two little men—both saying “Ooo!” at the exact same time—there would be no TV / cold beer / online banking.
When you breathe, you don’t need to be plugged into anything. The little men are in the walls, admiring your diaphragm. This is why I plugged their eyes with gum. The gum was handy / they were staring. One time, I covered their little mouths, too. No more “Ooo!” No more eyes. Just gum-covered outlets and energy with nowhere to go.
Richard is home. Something is wrong.
CONDUIT
The wire that connects the appliances and the outlets and the switches must, if not hidden inside the house’s skin, be protected by conduit—a box for wire. A safe place. Like Daddy’s boxes but tubular / long and thin and made of either metal or rigid plastic.
Because of Daddy’s boxes, conduit now connects everything in our house. It is not safe for visitors. There are booby traps in our conduit / the house is laced with tiny, erratic bombs. Boom! On my way to the bathroom. Boom! Midnight carb snack. Boom! I lose my toes ten times a day. Boom! On my way to find Richard.
Box #11
SOMETHING IS WRONG
Richard is standing in his room with his arms crossed. He looks normal. He’s not smiling, and he’s not frowning, but that’s our rifle / Richard. Emotions are not on the syllabus.
“She called me,” he says.
This could be Mama or sister / probably sister if something is wrong.
“When?”
“When I got outside Maya’s.”
Maya still lives next door to our old townhouse—the one with a fuse box. Richard goes there to talk to Maya’s mother, Karen, who is a social worker and therapist. She doesn’t charge him / he doesn’t tell her the whole truth. That’s how the deal works.
“Why did she call you? What did she say?”
“She asked some weird shit about me and what classes I’m taking. She asked me about you. And if you and Carrie are still friends. She talks to Carrie,” he says, “I think.”
“I’m sure she said that, but it’s probably not true,” I say. “What else? Why did you text that something’s wrong?”
He fiddles with the cuticle on his thumb for a second. “Mama’s in rehab,” he finally says. “She wanted to let us to know.”
Mama is probably not in rehab.
We sit on his bed for a minute, side by side. He picks up a pair of dirty socks and tosses them toward his laundry basket.
“And she’s working at a nursing home now,” he says. Shivers. It causes me to shiver. Her energy understands how to move through us. “She’s a cook.”
Last time we talked about her, Richard reported that she was volunteering at a hospital, reading books to kids on the pediatric cancer ward.
“So she dropped out of college, I guess,” I say.
He shrugs.
Richard has always been a smart rifle. He’s not easily swayed by most people. Sister, though—alone in any space—serves as an individual corrective lens to each one of our family / diabolical / parts of us are hypnotized / who and which parts change on any given day.
“How are you, Richard?”
“I need to sleep,” he says.
“I’m sorry she called you.”
“I wish she’d just go away like she said she would,” he says. I don’t point out that he could just let the calls go to voicemail / he looks tired.
He gets into his single bed / clothes still on / shoes kicked off the edge. Snuggles with his duvet. Puts a pillow over his ear to block out the hammering. I marvel the light switch inside his bedroom door. I switch it to OFF and navigate the passageways from his room / #11 to my room / #7.
FOLKLORE
The last time my sister called me, five pretend-months ago, a month after she left for college seven hours away, she told me she’d called child services because Daddy was abusive. She said she would save me / I’d come to live on campus with her / she would take me to beer-keg parties.
Daddy never hurt any of us, not once. He’s not even unkind. Sister has said he’s an alcoholic, but there is no alcohol in our house aside from dinner wine. She said he’s a drug addict. No drugs in our house aside from Advil and Mylanta. Sometimes she would hide the Advil when Daddy got low-air-pressure headaches.
Her weather is unpredictable.
Explosions aren’t supposed to announce themselves.
When she was seven, she killed an injured bird with a screwdriver. Richard thinks about it a lot because he was there and tried to stop her. Something happened that day / changed Richard forever. His energy took form / rifles don’t talk much.
I wish I knew Portuguese so I could have whispered something funny to Richard while he fell to sleep, instead all I said was “Sleep tight.” That’s what Mama would say when she’d close my door at night.
I wonder where she is if she isn’t in rehab.
* * *
—
When I get back to box #7, which takes a while because Daddy’s passageways are getting smaller / thicker / safer, I flop on my bed and open my laptop to write the thesis statement for my Solution Time paper. Nothing comes to me.
By the end of the month, I will figure out how to make people give a shit about other people. I still have no idea how I’ll do this because I live in a house where emergencies are cubed like snack cheese and giving an actual shit has been put on hold. The hold music is shock. No time exists in shock / nothing can be done for us / no thesis statement for that / AFT3RMATH.
I close the laptop and stretch. It’s soon time for work.
I wait until everyone is sleeping.
I bring a small crowbar.
Night Shift
ZENO OF ELEA
At rest / I am moving / with my crowbar.
ROBERT PLUTCHIK
Anger / Anticipation / the switch.
DIGGING
The switch is impossible to reach. There is new construction every day. To get to the switch I would have to disassemble the entire series of boxes—from #1 to #11—that now hold the first switch-protecting box in place. But tonight I want to see the supply, which I can see if I get through the drywall under the switch, which is easy to access by removing only one plywood side of the outer switch box.
BOOM! I get the panel off, but hit a tiny bomb. My hands are here, but my brain is exploding to the fact that Richard cannot be trusted. Exploding to the day I found him crying that first time, three years ago, I was still in middle school, he was a senior in high school and we agreed—never let her alone with us. Ever. But Richard cannot be trusted / he left me alone with her all the time. Had friends to do stuff with. Had senior year to complete / rifle to assemble.
He tried. He took me fishing. He’d rent a canoe on the lake and we’d take Daddy’s rods and we probably used the wrong lures. We weren’t really fishing.
Richard cannot be trusted. He is limp from a lifetime of game. The game is his life. There are no do-overs. Even though sister lit him on fire and it’s not his fault, he doesn’t know what kind of lure to use in the lake / scratches his burns / is not able to heal.
UNWIRING DIAGRAM
I poke the crowbar into the wall below the switch and I pull out the drywall in dusty, prune-sized pieces and let them fall. I aim the flashlight and look for supply wires. At first glance, there are no wires going to the switch. I look again and there are a million wires going to the switch. A billion wires. More wires than can fit this house.
They start to flash / casino of possibility / impossibility. I can’t flip the switch tonight, anyway. Not while Richard is sleeping / not while I’m training.
x equals not knowing what flipping the switch will do.
I replace the drywall, layer it with tape and glue, put the plywood piece back in place. Daddy will know someone was here / he won’t ask / will quietly grind dry peppers.
THE REAL WORK
I move to more private spaces and remove nail after nail.
Hall closet / garage / laundry room / the southeast hallway. Some people do yoga to wind down. Some people smoke weed. I disassemble the boxes / sometimes hanging trapeze-style upside down / usually on my side. I only get four hours of sleep per night / hours don’t exist / I am always awake / always asleep.
I am in Zeno’s arrow. I feel everything / I feel nothing.
When I get back to box #7, I’m exhausted.
FLOOR PLAN / GPS
You don’t understand the boxes and you don’t want to. Plywood-ugly / nails too long. It’s not a bedroom like you’d imagine—no curtains, no rug, no faux sheepskins—just wood grain / do not drag the soles. I’ve had a splinter in my foot so long that a callus has formed and the sliver will be encased forever / a fossil.
You don’t understand the hallways and you don’t want to. The construction feels dangerous. Energy moves through. We move through. We are the energy.
A million wires.
* * *
—
A picture for you / GPS. There are eleven boxes. Switch at the center, kitchen #3 north, living room #2, east of that. My box #7 southeast, Richard #11 southwest. Daddy sleeps northwest in the hallway. Everything is easier with directions. But nothing really comes with directions. Especially not our family.
There are clocks in each room so we know when to go to dinner / none of them move now / we are always on time. There is an alarm system in case of emergency. We have located our exits. Mine is through the me-shaped hole. Richard’s is anywhere he can climb down the conduit / usually windows. Mama’s was through the front door, two bags packed, yapping little dog under her arm, and three words. Don’t call me.
That was nine months ago. Three days before time stopped. Everything has been different since / nothing seems real / no directions.
Daddy is not a precision machine / nothing is level. Full-time job making sure the energy runs right / quit his other job making mall kiosks / expert box-maker / two days after Mama left. In order: Mama left / he quit his job / time stopped. The order is important, I think. He never called Mama / obeys orders / to understand anything is to understand energy.
MAMA
Her weaknesses—American candy bars / American beer / American cheese / American shopping / American television—made her unintentionally lowbrow. She didn’t mean for it to happen that way. She married a man from Somewhere Else who could not accept the fun and dumb.
Five years ago, she became an amateur psychic. Now, she’s pay-per-minute, in-person, small groups at local hotel conference rooms. None of us expected this, considering she was always surprised when the mailman came. Not to say she’s a fake. She may not be / to understand anything is to understand energy / it doesn’t matter because she’s not here.
We don’t talk about the real reason she left / this explanation will do.
No one knows the real reason she left / this explanation will do.
* * *
—
Richard and I fought over her dinner chair.
She always sat to the left of Daddy, which put her out of sister’s reach. Daddy settled the fight by putting me in Mama’s old chair, and Richard took my old place, so sister’s only way to touch us during meals was with her words.
It’s very hard to eat while constantly exploding.
I think that’s the real reason why Mama left. She used to drink Mylanta straight from the bottle and by the time she said Don’t call me, she’d been going to bed before eight o’clock for weeks. I knew she wasn’t sleeping.
We’d been studying cancer in health class. Deep down, I suspected my mother had stomach cancer. So many bombs / too many years / Mylanta.
She’s fine. No cancer. She wrote me an email a few days later when time stopped. Small talk, mostly, but then I wanted to make it easier on your father. He works so hard, and when he would come home all he got was chaos. You had nothing to do with this.
I replied to the email and told her I needed her.
I don’t fit into the family. I heard all the reasons.
I replied and told her she was my mother, which meant she fit into the family / my family / I missed her.
Your father is devastated, but it’s for the best.
I asked Richard, “If he’s devastated and she’s devastated, then why did she leave?”
Richard told me to wait / I wasn’t sure for what.
She now lives in a small apartment she’d rented for her office / psychic den. It’s got angels painted on the walls of the waiting room / smells like burnt sage. She sleeps on the futon couch surrounded by her crystals, where the next day, people will sit with cash hoping to contact their departed loved ones.
Daddy now relies on his old friend Carmichael for parenting decisions. Carmichael video-calls every pretend-Sunday, but Daddy refuses to use the camera / all Carmichael sees when he talks to Daddy is Daddy’s ear. Carmichael talks loud, so I stay nearby when he calls. Whenever Carmichael mentions reaching out to Mama, Daddy hangs up.
All I know is Mama has the wrong idea about what’s going on here / I don’t know what’s going on here / we’re all in a daze. So I invented work for myself. Seems reasonable work. It will lead to something solid in the end / on / off.
By the time I climb into bed, I’ve collected 234 six-inch, galvanized, hot-dipped steel nails.
I still don’t have a thesis statement.
Tomorrow is Trust.
Trust
BEST TEAM EVER
“Y’all know I have trust issues,” Carrie says. “So every time we get to Trust, I go kinda numb. It’s not really a good feeling for me.”
Eric says, “Trust has a lot to do with what home is like and home sucks for you right now.” Two Trusts ago, Eric would have never said something so empathetic.
“Carrie, what do you trust?” Ellie asks. “You trust me, right?”
Carrie sighs. “I trust all of you, but what I guess I’m saying is that when I think about trust, the way we do here, capital T, it makes me think about how few people I do trust. So then I get sad.”
