Fragments

The first time, in my house on Foliage, I kept my t-shirt on and when I didn't the second time you said my breasts were smaller in person. Both times and dozens more after that I was pretty sure my grandfather was watching all this from heaven, stoic and staid, and I couldn't tell from his expression if he disapproved. He gazed at me from heaven in the same blank way he did when he was alive. I wondered whether or not Lala slapped him so many times not just because of the infidelities, but to check his pulse. You might not know it, but so many of our times together you were hardly there.

* * * * *

Abuelo did change his expression once. My cousins Jessica and Christine and I were dancing around the living room and one of them climbed up his torso recumbent on the Lazyboy, doing her best to flirt. Suddenly his legs were up in the air, the back of the chair down on the floor, a giant fallen L. The little girls scuttled out of the room, and Lala and I laughed so hard we couldn't breathe. Minutes passed before we lifted the chair to right him. When we did, his face was redder than I'd ever seen, and there was more white to his eyes than I could've imagined, and all he said to us was, "How kind of you."

* * * * *

Abuelo, again on the Lazyboy, legs fire-poker straight with wooly slippers on his feet. I asked for the zillionth time, "Can I?" And he predictably acquieses, even though Lala thinks it's an unhealthy obsession (as any obsession not relating to her must be), and I take off the slippers to begin the peeling. His foot bottoms are white as cake icing, all scab and crusty deadness. If a section of old skin won't peel off, I know to move onto the next one; Lala slaps if I make him bleed. I build a pile of his foot bottom skin and promise to pick up every single piece or otherwise eat them--again, Lala's deal. The scraps of peel look like larger white eraser shavings, and I wonder if I'm working to make Abuelo disappear.

* * * * *

My recurring childhood dream from about the age of eight: I'm Jennifer-Gray thin and wearing her exact pink dress in the final act of Dirty Dancing. My body is still that of an eight-year-old's but I'm not eight intellectually, which is good because of what happens next. I buy a ticket to a train and don't even know where I'm going--just away. On the train is every boy I've ever loved, from Carrie Almond to Patrick What's-His-Fuck to Willie Milligan. No one speaks a word but we all know what to do. I step into my private coach room, and one by one they come in and we make out insanely. No pair of lips can satiate me. As soon as the current-he and I finish with our few wild minutes--before we're even done--I'm on to the next one. When each of them leave I ask them kindly to close the door.

* * * * *

We're making the obligatory Halloween rounds on Phosphor Ave. I'm getting too old for this shit, or so I think, until I approach a porch and the big stuffed mummy sitting askew in a rocking chair leaps up and I scream to shake the rafters. My mom and stepsister are laughing, and I forget to even get some candy I'm so rattled, I forget even that I'm supposed to mutter "asshole" under my breath. As we're walking away from the house some smaller kids approach, and loudly warn them, "Be careful! The mummy's real!" They look up at me gratefully and I feel like a goddamned hero. Then mom grabs my arm and says, "Shhhh! Why do you have to ruin things for people?" We walk the rest of the way in silence. I'm convinced that no one will love or understand me, ever.

* * * * *

A drawing I make for mom years earlier on 30th St.: an elephant with the word Brooke underneath it, and a beautiful princess next to it named Dezi. She hasn't yet discovered the persistent I-hate-my-mother diary entries. I keep leaving the thing out hoping she'll read it, but if she has, she's made no mention. So I show her the damned drawing. She asks what the meaning of this is, why I'm trying to hurt her feelings. And it's the first of a zillion times I'll ask myself why art doesn't always work, why I even bother trying so hard to be me.

* * * * *

Dad and I are leaving Waldenbooks and I've got three new Babysitter's Club books. I swing my bag not so blithely as I'd like because it's come to my attention I'm running out of book room in the drawers Woody built to slide under my bed, but I don't tell Dad that, because I already know Woody's a fucking shithead scuzbucket, and I'm not in the mood to be reminded. Dad and I slow down at the approach of a tall woman with red hair. Her words sound like bird chirps, polite and annoying. Probably they'd prefer having this conversation without me here. But what are they even saying anyway? I get the sense that each of them are talking to an invisible person alongside the other. Her name is Donna, I learn near the end, and we smell her ripe fruit scent in the parking lot, in the carride home. I never see her again.

* * * * *

I am holding an inchoate life in brown pants. You are beautiful, Christian, and I can't talk to you. This makes me sad, because there are already so many things I want to tell you. For instance, you don't have to be your father or even love him, and if you decide not to, since I'm good at knowing guilt I'll show you how to avoid it. Really, you should only love the deserving, though if you're like your mother, you'll roll your eyes at that because you know I'll love you even when you decide to love stupid fuckers. Know that you've been so wondrous in this life that I've been happy to drink your pee (which I just did, a few minutes ago). What depths do these little toes hold? What are the possibilities inside this head, which for now even my tiny hand dwarfs? Even a baby should know these questions are futile: you will simply become, and I will try to be there to see it. For the next few moments my chest will rise and fall alongside yours. Each time I'm holding you, I'm ready.