Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
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against tears that aren't there.<br />
And just when I think things couldn't get worse, my mother prepares<br />
for the ugly cry. Her face contorts and begins to fold in on itself and turns an<br />
oh so pale shade of violet. Pretty really, on flowers, but not on 40ish women<br />
who have been asleep for the past 10 years.<br />
"Tucker," I say, arms still folded tight. Holding it in. Not seething.<br />
Conversational. But with projection. "Has Mona told you yet? Informed you<br />
that she is not a narcoleptic, probably not even an alcoholic." With gunfight<br />
speed I pull a half-smoked butt out of my buttoned shirt sleeve pocket and a<br />
wooden match from the small front pocket of my jeans. I strike the match<br />
against the doorframe, light the stub, and inhale. "She drinks to sleep and<br />
sleeps to forget. How you like them apples?" I say through the encircling<br />
smoke which looks really cool. I whistle the theme from The Good the Bad and<br />
the Ugly and let them digest it. "Ask her what she wants to forget." I look<br />
toward my mother. She misses her cue. "No? I'll tell you. Me. Us. That she's<br />
burdened. That her daughter is beached, that her son is born and the three of<br />
us are stuck with each other. As for Charity, well, I'm sure even you can imag<br />
ine the road we've been down before."<br />
bed.<br />
Charity whales, "Why, why, why?" and then thrashes a few times in the<br />
I regret my performance, though only slightly. And only as far as<br />
Charity's concerned. I back out the doorway and notice that mom, for all her<br />
exertion, is either bowing her head in prayer, stifling a sob, or beginning to<br />
doze.<br />
That night, I try to sleep but can't. My bedroom and my sister's bed<br />
room share a painfully thin wall; our heads are separated by mere inches of hol<br />
low drywall and I can hear her gargled struggles for breath through that<br />
opaque veil. She has a mighty case of apnea and tries to sleep sitting up, but<br />
every once in awhile the weight of her body collapses on itself and she finds<br />
herself lying flat. I breathe with her, stopping when she does. Long mississippi<br />
holds. Inhale. One-mississippi-two-mississippi-three-mississippi-four-missis- �<br />
sippi-five-mississippi-six-mississippi-seven-mississippi-eight. Squeak, squeak,<br />
gargle, gargle. Exhale. After a few of these breathing exercises I've got a head<br />
rush and my heart is pounding powerful. Bored, but convinced she'll live<br />
through the night, I flip on the thirteen inch and wiggle the rabbit ears until I've<br />
got a semblance of a picture. It's 3:00AM. I flip through the infomercials and<br />
stop at Tucker's. That's how she found him, on T.V. Tucker is sitting in a fat<br />
girl's prissy pink and flowered canopied bedroom. He's holding her pink piggy<br />
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