irk

2. irk: v.t. To annoy or weary; vex

Today is Saturday. It should be a nice quiet day in which I am allowed to sit alone on the couch aching my favor anything on television. For me, though, things never turn out how they should turn out. 

There are days when these people get on my nerves and then there are days when these people get on my nerves. Today these people are getting on my nerves and I’m about ready to explode. It started this morning with the pesky cat cat Tingi loves. Her name is Flaca because it is anything but skinny. She’s a a fat, lazy ball or stringy grey fur. An annoyance on four legs. The cat is deaf and mute. You ask me how I found out She never meowed. In fact, she only purrs when she is  extremely happy�" a rare occurrence. Flake is deathly silent. Ting spent a whopping two hundred bucks on the stupid cat. She received shots, shots and more shots along with examinations here and there by an expensive veterinarian only to be told what I had already diagnosed for free: Flaca is mute and half-deaf. 

  My rule of thumb is to never waste that much money on anyone but me. Especially if the option is to spend it on a death, mute, fat cat.  But TIngi forked over the money so some expert could tell her what we already knew. Genius! Well, no wonder she never came when we called her. And I was thinking she just didn’t like her name. 

Side note: to get Flaca to come we tap on the floor or scream really loud.

Well, back to this morning: I had a rude awakening. Flaca somehow got in my room, up on my bed and started rubbing her stringy fur on my face. i began sneezing and it jumped off the bed and silently ran away. I tell you what, I hate cats. I hate that cat! I sometimes daydream of killing her. Just hold it’s mute throat and watch it die in my hands. What is it going to do? Scream for help Meow for help? Yeah right. I’d get away with it.

Since sleeping late on Saturday was totally stolen from me, I ate cold cereal with two spoonfuls of sugar and a little bit of milk. Nova and Tio Roco left to buy groceries and I wish they had taken Mamabuela with them. Of coarse, she would’ve said, “No. I can’t. I got to stay here with my loving grandson and watch over him and make his life miserable.” That lady is evil.

After my nutritional breakfast, I just turned on the TV and hoped for the phone to ring with good news. Mamabuela came inside the living room just a few minutes ago and is sitting a few inches away from me on the couch. She does annoying little things. First of all, she acts like she’s interested in what I’m watching. I don’t even know what I’m watching! Then she starts asking questions. Annoying questions. “ Que esta pasando?” she’ll ask in different forms. What is that? What is happening? What is going on? Who is that? Why are they doing that? Where are they going?

And she also has the nasty habit of clicking her dentures off and on in her mouth. Click, they are off. Cluck, they are back on. CLick. Cluck. Click. Cluck. Over and over.

I’m so tense because I know something is going to happen. That noise she makes! It’s like dropping a hockey puck in a half filled pail of mop water. I look over at her and she gazes over at me. I wish I had a mirror to put it right in front of her face. She might not even care. That or the mirror would break.

“Porque no te vas pa fuera?” I really hate it when she tries to get me to go outside knowing full well that every Saturday I sit and watch this show. Whatever this show is called. 

“It’s cooler inside.”

“Espanol, Tito. Habla Espanol. Si no se te va a olvidar.” 

I wish I would forget Spanish. I wish I could forget a lot of things. Bury them deep inside. Or better yet, burn them up in a big metal drum. Watch the ashes of memories float up in the air till they are no more.

I stare at the glass screen of the television. You know, the curved glass that stands between you and the picture. It’s kind of cool 

Mamabuela is still clicking and clucking. I want to ask her why she does it or if she’s even aware. But that’s a thought al the way at the back of my brain. I just really want her to leave me alone. To go. Go somewhere else.

“Necesito cansoncillos.”  There you go granny. You wanted me to speak Spanish�" Spanish it is. Go do some laundry. Your loving grandson needs underwear for next week.

Mamabuela nods and looks at me. Intently. Her grey eyes trying to read me. She mumbles something about already have done laundry and that I should have plenty of underwear and socks and t-shirts and asks if I’m hungry.

I answer yes and she walks away tot the kitchen.

National Geographic. I’ve been watching National Geographic this whole time. The subject: The African Safari. I start clicking through the channels real fast and wonder why Tingi hasn’t come out of her room yet. Betcha the party last night was a blast and she’s having a hard time acting like she doesn’t have a hangover.

I hear the jingle of keys on the other side of the front door. It opens. Tio Roco has two grocery bags under his arms and Nova is carrying a white plastic H.E.B. bag. “Hey, Tito. Make juself helpful. Der sum more in de car.”

I don;t want to make myself helpful and make a face but Tingo walks right in and catches me.

“Hey you little brat, get up and help out.” She glares at me. “What? We gotta feed you, give up our rooms and put up with you and all you gotta do is sit around your lazy butt and watch TV?” She sure is a good actor. Either that or she didn’t get too drunk last night. As she talks, her head and eyes and hips and neck move in a nasty rhythm,. I feel myself turning red. She never curses in front of her dad but with that tone who needs flowery adjectives to get your point across.

Mamabuea continues cooking in the kitchen and Tio Roco walks by Tingi giving her a kiss on the cheek. I guess nobody heard her loud, demanding voice except me.

Like always, I’m stuck carrying the twenty or so lactic grocery bags into the house by myself. In, out. In, out. I try to bring in three at a time but I’m weak and two is more than enough.

I’m finally finished and think that now, now that I have done my good deed for the United States of America and its province of Puerto Rico, I can sit down on the couch and watch the Nature Channel. Or the news. Or whatever is on and has the least amount of static. So wrong.

Today things are really getting on my nerves. Have I said that already? Is anybody listening to me? Now it’s Tio Roco’s turn to bother me. Tio Roc is a smoker. And he is bad at hiding he is a smoker. Mamabuela would never allow him to smoke in the house. Even near the house. So he sneaks in his puffs out there somewhere. Except he does a lousy job sneaking.

Tio Roco plops his round little body on the couch next to me. Instantly, his order swirls into my personal space and attacks my nostrils. It’s a fine mixture of body odor and smoke and some type of air freshener sprayed a few minutes ago before coming into the house. My nose crinkles. My eyes water. My stomach churns. 

Why do we only own one television? I’d get up and head back into my room but I can’t. There’s nothing else to do. Nothing else but to die from asphyxiation. (Nova ain;t the only one with five dollar words.)

“Papi, you didn’t get me my hair gel.” Tingi is in the kitchen finished putting up the cans and boxes of food in the cabinets. “I told you I needed hair gel.” Whining Tingi is even more horrible than you would imagine. She walks over and leans into the living room.

Tio Roco digs in his tight jeans and takes out a dollar bill. 

“A dollar?”  She’s offended. “What am I suppose to buy with a dollar? A candy bar?” She is so naive. Candy bars are fifty cents. With a dollar you can buy two. Oh, wait. Taxes. 

Tio Roco digs in his back pocket and out of his wallet comes a five dollar bill.

“Thanks.” Before walking out, Tingi purposefully stops, turns her head towards me and smiles. “You wanna come?”

I’m numb. Granted it’s partly from the the god awful second hand toxins in the air but mostly from�" “Hey, stupid! You wanna come or not?” She has a way with words, doesn’t she?

Should I go? It’s almost one in the afternoon and nothing has happened. Mamabuela will eventually come back from the kitchen and the click, cluck, click, cluck will resume. Tio Roco looks like he is about to fall asleep on the couch and his smell will only ferment and get worse. And Nova… Well, I wonder what Nova is up to. She’s acting more and more like a hermit everyday.

“Hey!” Tingi’s head jerks forward and glares at me. “Coming or not?”

I shake my head no and she shrugs it off. She looks at her dad and gives him a you-see-I-try look and walks away.

I have got to stay home. Just in case. Just in case my dad comes home. In case my family is ready to get me out of here. 

Anyhow, I have homework for English class. We have to choose a mode of writing�" a short story, poem, song�" and the rough draft is due on Monday. I’m excited about the assignment. I’m going to write a poem. It’s going to be epic. It’s going to be perfect. There is no way I won’t get a 100 on my poem. I mean, how could you even grade such a personal thing? Any writing work, especially a poem, is about how you think, who you are, what you want to be, how you see the world, a glimpse into someone’s heart and mind and soul. If it makes sense not the person who wrote it then nobody has the right to use the lethal red teacher pen and hack it to death with “corrections.” Mr. Hellinger will read it and have no choice but to laminate it and put it on the wall. 

I’ve gotten as far as giving my magnum opus the title: “Life Sucks.” Ehh, I’m sure Mr. Hellinger will want me to change it to “Disappointments Encountered in the Journey Called Life,” What a bunch of bologna. 

Speaking of food, Mamabuela made me the grossest tuna fish sandwich for lunch. The online and peppers mixed in where cut into no less than one inch squares. There was a gag inducing crunch here and a gag inducing crunch there. On top of that, the ungodly proportion of mayonnaise to actual freshly-out-of-the-can tuna was shockingly unbalanced. That woman has an infatuation with mayonnaise. The white goo just oozed out of my mouth every time I took a bite. 

I decided to not return back to the couch where Tio Roco was snoring life away. In my room, my radio clock bleeped one o’clock. No surprises today. I’m starring out my window. It’s a hot day in Texas. You see the steam dancing it’s way up from the street. The grass is a crispy brittle brown which is a good thing. I hate mowing the lawn. The trees are still green, though, but not for one second am I duped into thinking that the shade they give  would stop you from melting. 

I spot Tingi’s cat outside underneath Tio Roco’s big rig. My one wish at this very moment: A valid driver’s license so I can run over that hellion. Squish her flat like a pancake. Then she would truly be her namesake: Flaca.

As I stare out the window, the back of my head starts registering something weird. I didn’t think anything of it when they first started passing by but now I’m curious. I told you that Baptist Church Road is a dead end and so we rarely get any traffic except for Sundays. However, for the past ten minutes at least fifteen or so cars have gone down the street… or road. These are cars I have not seen before. Curiosity sparked. What’s going on?

I’m tempted to investigate. But it’s too hot!

Someone knocks on my door. “Who is it?” I ask for the fun of it but I know who it is. Mamabuela wouldn’t come to my room. She’d yell for me. Tingi would break down the door before knocking on it and showing respect. And Tio Roco… well, it’s just not him.

“Nova.”

“Come in.”

Nova is wearing a pastel green short sleeve shirt with blue jean shorts and white Keds. She pushes up her glasses and timidly smiles. “Hey, Eddie. I’m kinda bored. Do you want to do something?”

I teeter-totter between annoyance and flattery. I could go with: “I’m not your entertainment” or “Well, what would you like to do?”

I opt for the later choice. 

She shrugs pitifully.

I look out the window again and see three more cars pass y. “Let’s go see what’s going on down the road.”

She slides beside me and presses her face against the window pane. “What’s gong on?”

I get so impatient sometimes. “I don’t know, Nova. That’s why I want to go and find out.”

“Okay,” she says as an apology.

Before we are out the door, my crazy grandmother orders us to take an umbrella because the sun’s rays are so strong today and we may burn. Mamabuela has got herself some smarts. Nova, being the obedient one in the family, takes the umbrella and we’re off to see what’s going on down road.

Nova isn’t a very good conversationalist. I believe the reason she only answers me with yes’s and no’s is that she’s afraid to make me look stupid with her great big vocabulary words. But I’m smart… when I want to be. And we have vocabulary words every week in English. And I usually pass the vocabulary quiz each Thursday. And there’s going to be a spelling bee before school let’s out. And since it’s mandatory that we all be a part of it, I’m going to be a part of it.

I feel like she wants to tell me something.

“So…” I run through a million ice breakers and come up with, “Have you read any good books lately?” Why a guy has to come up with ice breakers to talk to his own cousin is beyond me.

“Well, I’m in the middle of a book right now.” She has a slouch and a timid walk. Her hands barely swing by her side. 

“Title, Nova.” I can feel the sweat drops trail down my back. This was a huge mistake. I’m going to die out here from heatstroke. Dehydration. Cooked from the inside out. Mamabuela will find me and shake her head and tell everybody that if I had taken an umbrella I would still be alive.

“Nothing you’d know.”

“Try me.”

“It’s by Willa Cather.”

People. Are. Getting. On. My . Nerves. I didn’t ask who wrote the book. I asked for the title. But of course, Nova thinks authors are important. “What’s the title?” I say clenching my teeth trying to stop the attitude from spewing out of mouth.

“My Antonia.” She probably saw my who-cares face and added, “You’ve never heard the book, huh?”

“Well, we studied about the Cather lady. But, country western stuff just seems so boring.” I stretch my hands wide in part to get some air circulating through my shirt but mainly for dramatics.  “I mean, we are living a country western right now. I don’t see the point in reading about it.”

Nova shrugs. We’re are still haven’t arrived to where the thing that is going is, whatever that thing is and where ever it is happening.

“So, did you like the book?”

“I’m half way through it. But yeah. I like it so far.” I can see her debating whether or not to risk telling me more. I hope she doesn’t. I hope she doesn’t. I hope- “It’s interesting. See, Willa Cather is writing in first person but as a young boy who meets this girl, Antonia.”

“Maybe the Cather lady wanted to secretly get a sex change and become the man that was hiding inside of her.”

Nova ignores and continues, “I think she wrote the book because she wanted to experience being someone else. It fascinates me that not only the author transcends into this young boy in the old west experiencing love and life, but the reader as well goes through the same, let’s say, spiritual transformation as well. I some times wish I was somebody totally different and Cather found a way to do just that.” She realizes she may have opened it a bit more than what she planned to and sheepishly looks at me.”

I take a step closer to Nova as we walk so part of the umbrella shade covers my head. The dark shadow feels like a cool rag. “When you are in one of those fantasy moods, who do you wish you could be?” I sense the hesitation. Her smile has faded. “Come on, Nova. If you could be anybody who would you be?”

“Nobody in particular.”

I make a mental note to return back to this question at a later date. Next question: “DO you write like you were somebody else like that woman author does?”

“Did, Eddie. She’s dead.”

“Oh that sucks.”

“And her name is Willa Cather. And I write. But when I write I write in third person omniscient so I can see and feel what everyone else is feeling and seeing.”

Too bad I didn’t understand a word she said. Oh well, somethings are better off not being understood.

We finally reach the dead end. The Faith Baptist Temple’s parking lot is full and there are cars parked along the curb in front of other houses. 

It’s Saturday. There should be no cars here on Saturdays. I say. “Do you want to go in and see what’s happening?” I’m pretty sure Nova, the devote Catholic that she is, would fear melting or a lightening strike if she set foot on Baptist territory.

“No. We shouldn’t.” Nova whispers. She slowly lets the umbrella down by her side.

“Why not?” I love arguing and this one looks like it’s going to be a good one.

“Because it’s a funeral.”

Now, I know Nova is a smart chic, but there is no way she could possibly know that someone has died. “How do you know?”

“They are carrying the coffin out.” She points to the entrance below a nice looking stain glass window of two hand in prayer. Six men are carrying a dark brown, shiny box followed by a mass of people in black. Suddenly Nova is nervous. Jittery even. “Let’s go, Eddie. It’s not polite to stare. We have to let them mourn without any spectators.” She puts her arm around me and we swivel on the sidewalk back in the direction of home.

I didn’t hear a word she said after “Let’s go” because that’s exactly what I wanted to do. But I froze. And when Nova put her arm around me I was glad someone was guiding me back to where I belonged.

I’m scared in a little part inside of me. It’s like to the left of your heart and above your stomach. I’m really scared in that part inside of me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been so close to a dead person (a few hundred yards is close enough for me) or because I’ve never really ever thought of it. Death, that is.