April 5
There’s a page on his desk I read guiltily:
Today, when I told you to behave, you roared angrily: I’M BEING HAVE.
Today, after I took my socks off, you touched my ankles—the impressions that had been left.
Today you put my hand on the impression left by your sock. My hand could circle your whole miniature ankle.
Today, after you lost a tooth, you cried that you looked like a pumpkin.
Today I had to stop by the post office, and you looked around and said, aghast, “This is errands?”
Today, while I was changing your brother’s diaper, and putting baby powder on him, you burst into tears and begged me not to put too much salt on him.
Today you were so readily impressed by me.
April 6
Class today is at Se?or Amigo’s. We’re eating chips and fajitas. I situate myself between Dad and Joan.
“We’re here,” he says, “to learn about the Chinese in California.”
He then proceeds to repeat last week’s lesson, unbeknownst to himself.
We look around at one another, eyebrows raised.
My heart drops. He was doing well. We don’t mention it.
Layla, our teenage waitress, stops by our section to say hello.
“This is my class,” Dad says proudly, gesturing at us.
“This is my daughter,” Dad introduces me.
“Ruth, right?” she says, smiling pleasantly, then brings us a few more bowls of guacamole.
April 7
I’ve been packing lunches for Mom and writing jokes on the napkins, like this is going to cheer us both up.
“Why do dinosaurs make bad omelets?” I write on one side of the napkin.
On the other side: “Because their eggs stink!”
I draw a winking face on her orange.
Mom’s latest thing is making 3-D paper collages. Home from work, in the time she used to spend cooking dinner, she cuts out pictures with an X-Acto knife and glues them together, carefully tweezing layer upon layer.
April 8
I’m standing in front of a Burger King, waiting for Bonnie, when it starts to rain. Bonnie waves from across the wide street and begins to make her way over, jellyfish-like under her clear umbrella. There’s one other person outside the restaurant with me. Her eyeshadow is metallic and reminds me of an Andes mint. Her boots are the soft kind and not meant to be getting wet. She’s holding seventy-five percent of a Whopper in one hand and a cell phone in the other, and into it she’s arguing about whether or not to keep dating her boyfriend, who sounds like a real deadbeat.
Her burger’s getting wet and I whisper to Bonnie that I’m worried about it. Also the shoes. We collect her underneath the umbrella with us. She’s still talking into the phone but raises the Whopper in appreciation. We huddle beneath that small, clear umbrella, watching the people inside the Burger King and the drops collecting through Bonnie’s clear umbrella. She’s telling her friend on the other end of the line that last night he’d told her, “STAY, BITCH.”
Afterward we ask her if she’s going to stay, and she shrugs. “I guess so,” she says.
Later, while we’re eating burritos at the cantina, Bonnie says, about my parents, “You’re not allowed to think about this.”
“I have to,” I say.
“You don’t know anything about it,” she says, “on top of which, it’s none of your business.”
We each dip a chip in silence.
“In other news,” Bonnie says, “things are lighting up in my career sector.”
“Is this a horoscope thing?” I say.
“And I checked yours,” she says. “The stars say: it’s not a good time to tackle deep issues; it’s a time for pleasant interactions.”
April 9
I’m at the store looking for groovy macaroni—macaroni with grooves in it. My mom used to always make this casserole with green bell peppers and ground beef and macaroni. She called it groovy macaroni. Whenever I try to make it, it isn’t right. It’s always too something.
“Ruth?” says a voice behind me.
My high school friend Deb is standing in the aisle with me, in front of the boxed juices. The last time we saw each other was ten years ago, this time of year. She was the first person I ever met who cared so deeply about her weight she wouldn’t eat anything. I met her long before it had occurred to me that somebody might choose to eat nothing. I would later in life meet plenty of people who were the same. She was just memorable to me because she was my first.
Deb wouldn’t use ChapStick because she was scared it would make her fat. She wouldn’t lick envelopes because of the calories. She wouldn’t chew gum. She boasted to me that at communion, her trick was to crumble the body of Christ and drop the crumbs onto the floor until the wafer was completely gone, or almost. The little plastic cup of wine was enough to make her tipsy.
Now we’re at the store together. She is wearing a sundress and a straw hat and she’s gained a lot of weight. She has a little girl with her, and a baby in the other arm. The girl looks about six and is also chubby.
Was pretending I didn’t recognize her the correct thing to do? I turn that over in my mind for a second.
She says hello first.
“You look great,” I say. And she does. The thinness had always been awkward on her. She shrugs.
“How’s William?” I try. William was her high school boyfriend, her baby daddy. What I remember about William was that he had tattoos and wore thin pants better than everybody else; he understood how they looked on him better than other high schoolers did. He seemed mature. Later I learned he’d been held back twice, and maybe that was why he knew better about the pants.
“We split last year.” She shrugs again.
“Bella, this is Ruth,” Deb says. “Say hi to Ruth.”
“Rude,” Bella says.
“Ruth,” Deb says. “Say Ruth.”
“Rude,” Bella says again. I deserve it. She’s doing a little dance.
“That means she needs to pee,” Deb says. “Could you hold her?”
She hands the baby to me without waiting for my answer and the baby scrunches her face like she’s going to break into a loud wail very soon and I jiggle her to keep the wail at bay and rhythmically read her the labels on bottles: Ocean Spray Cran-Apple, Sunsweet Plum Smart, Welch’s 100% Grape Juice, Welch’s 100% Grape Juice with Calcium.
There’s a blooming warmth in the diaper region. You’re taking a massive shit right now, aren’t you, I whisper to this baby, still jiggling her, until her mother—after what seems like an hour—rematerializes to take her back.
I’m feeling a scratch in my throat so I buy a tube of Airborne and a bottle of water. In the supermarket parking lot I unscrew the water and Airborne. But the tablet is too big to fit into the mouth of the bottle. So I hold it in my mouth—this is painful—and let it fizzle until it’s small enough to fit through.
April 10
This morning I get a Facebook request from Deb. “Nice to run into an old friend ?.”