so i stayed "in bed" on the pull out couch in the dining room. it smells like cigarettes and in the mornings i am frequently woken by the sound of dogs attacking each other, crying babies, people walking in and out right past me, the room is open to the foyer. silent wandered around crying, and i wanted to pull her into bed with me and hold her.
"melody!" they call her, but it sounds almost like "melanie."
"they don't like to call her 'silent'" dawn says.
"why not?"
"they say it's not a real name."
* * *
"what are you doing?"
"watching people drink beer."
"oh" i say "it's saturday." i guess he's at a party, too.
i want joseph to get online so i can have him talk me down, although it doesn't seem to work lately.
"sometimes i want to cuddle you, i know it's a weird thing to say."
it's because of the intimacy, he said. our late night chats.
i tell him i feel worthless. i tell him that when dawn tells me the stories about bruce hurting her, my heart breaks, and i want to hug her.
"you wouldn't even LIKE it!" i tell him.
"i wouldn't. but someone would."
i think of tori, who ignores me. except she invited me to her halloween party, but i'm not going.
anyway, his is a weak condolence, but i think of it when i hear silent screaming. i try to falsify a memory based on stories i've read about women recalling the comfort of mother's breasts and her milk.
"maybe this is why we want to be doulas" dawn says. "because we have had to mother our own mothers."
* * *
i sit on the couch with my breasts half hanging out. bruce tells me there is food if i want it. "c'mon, hon" he says. dear. sweetheart. things like that. he seems like such a nice man. he asks god to bless us and stuff, it's strange to imagine he is the man in the stories she tells me. the other day in the car, i started crying and i couldn't stop.
he was horrible to me, she says, when i was a little girl. he hated me. HATED me.
* * *
"it just seems like you're always trying to play devils advocate." she says, and it pisses me off, because i'm tired of being here. i'm tired of sitting around among what appears to be a helpless family.
i try to tell ask her why it even matters that bruce demanded dinner would be served at 7 when she'd told everyone 7:30.
"i just don't understand" she says "why you're defending him when he was being an a*****e. i mean he had no good reason "
"i'm not defending him. i'm sure he was being an a*****e just to be controlling."
the point is, it doesn't even matter. everyone got there at 7:45 because everyone was late.
the point is, i ask her if she wants feedback because it seems like she doesn't, and i don't want to give it to her if she doesn't want it. "it's not constructive." i say.
the point is, i don't want her to undermine whatever it is i have to say with the stupid assertion that i form my opionions for the sake of arguing with her.
* * *
"so, you have somewhere you are staying now?" the man asks.
--last night i had a dream i called beth to tell her how awful things are. she says she told her aunt clara about me. you know, about the situation with your mom, she said, and your dad. "she wants you to come stay with her." and she's supposed to call, aunt clara. but she hasn't yet. she must be busy. getting ready to migrate south for winter.--
"uh, yeah i do." i tell "maurice" over the phone. he has children. he has a bussiness. he has a home sickness for arlington, and he needs a nanny with computer skills.
"what do you look like?" he asks me.
"uh..."
what kind of a question is that?
but i know what he means, i think.
* * *
i took a bath today for three hours hoping my skin would fall off.
i spread my legs under the faucet and let the water run over me until i came. i let myself sink to the bottom. i thought about the little mermaid pornography i stumbled across recently. i thought about king triton grasping one of ariel's engorged breasts, his tongue trying desperately to reach her n****e. it was so expressive for a cartoon of that caliber.
mermaids are half fish, but the top half is mammal, so i suppose they must lactate.
i thought about what it might be like to take this man's six month old baby and wrap him around me.
"she's a physician." maurice had said about the mother.
they have a strained relationship, he explained. they're cordial, he said. they stay together for the kids.
i wonder if i will be that kind of nanny, then. i wonder if it's a more lucrative form of prostitution than joining the navy, and what i should charge for that kind of service. like, one hundred a night? five hundred?
i am on my belly in the bathtub with my face under the water.
i am on my back, fingering myself. taking pelvic measurements.
"does she breastfeed him?" i wanted to ask, but didn't for the sake of sounding...normal...
ina may told stories about women spontaneously lactating at the cry of hungry babies. i imagined folding towels and watching television with this child in a sling, asleep against me.
i feel sensitive, so i squeeze my n*****s to see if something happens, but no.
* * *
i got a text from mom today.
not really, it just said that. silent played with my phone today while i watched Juno in spanish, and probably somewhere between the part where vanessa talks to the baby and juno leaves her that note, she must have speed-dialed my mother's number.
"who r u"
the text said.
so i went into the bathroom during dawn's mom's 60th birthday party, maybe the strangers and the fact that i keep coughing. it's strange to be around so many people trying to experience intimacy with each other when i don't know any of them, not even dawn.
and i cried a lot, the way i get at night when i don't remember what it feels like to have come to terms with the situation. "i can't believe you're really dead." i tell her, but i'm not telling anyone. just a memory. "i miss you" once i'd texted her. she didn't receive texts, but i guess it doesn't matter.
"who are you?" i asked.
"sue"
"is this a new number for you?"
"yes. who r u?"
"sorry, it looks like the little girl who was playing with my phone today called you. this number used to be my mothers. she died two months ago, and i haven't taken it out yet."
"it's fine." sue said. "who r u"
"arielle."
"okay."
* * *
walter is silent's father. "want some ice cream?" he asks, tells me i have to eat it out here in the garage so the kids don't see.
"they're so sweet." i tell him.
"yeah, to other people." he says a little bitterly.
"they see their mom a lot?"
"not really. they saw her today, but don't tell nobody. bruce doesn't like it, i guess cause she doesn't do nothing for 'em."
bruce is dawns stepfather. walter is bruce's stepson from a previous marriage.
"she doesn't like walter." dawn said about her mother. "i guess because bruce always treated him better. he got into trouble and bruce didn't care. he sent him all the money, and we had to eat hot dogs."
i dunno how much she likes the kids either. little brown kids.
"melendy!" she says to get the little girl to quiet.
"can you tell her your name?" dawn asks, bouncing her infront of another child "can you tell cassidy your name?"
" I-nent!" she says.
"what does she do?" i ask walter.
"she's a cocktail waitress." he says "she just got outta prison four months ago."
i wonder if theirs is a mother that doesn't care. i wonder if she aches for her children the way some mothers do, especially the ones that hold too tight. maybe she's more the type to let a new man hit them, or just one. bend her over and pull down her pants, panties and all, and whip her with the belt. and in her exhaspirated detachment, "bruuuuce. don't do that...she didn't mean it."
"he enjoyed it." she said "i KNEW he enjoyed it. he'd come into my room with a tape recorder afterwards while i was crying and hold it up to me and say 'c'mon, why don't you cry some more? c'mon, cry, cry go ahead and cry!'"
"and just...all i wanted." her voice gets mushy, "she never came into my room. she never came up stairs and held me. 'it's okay'" she says, echoing the words of a ghost. "'i know it's unfair. i know, i know...'"
* * *
i stole a post card the other day from an antique store. it's a hundred years old it says something weirdly pertinent like:
"made it to austin.
i don't know when i'm coming home, but don't wait up for me. i guess it's just the kind of thing you do, you know? always moving always moving.
i miss you, i love you.
-arielle."
only that's not really what it said.
"i dunno, i guess i look normal." i tell maurice. "i'm twenty. i guess i look twenty. actually, a lot of people seem to think i look younger than twenty."
"oh," he laughs "you could get someone in trouble."
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