From Way Up Here, The Plotholes Fill

One afternoon, while driving south, I saw a black cow in the middle of the highway. I slammed on my brakes and swerved to miss it. It mooed, and galloped off on its way, completely unaffected. I caught my breath, and drove on up to the nearest driveway: a long dirt and curvy affair with a little white house to the left.

I climbed out the car, in a skirt and high heels, with a yapping dog at my feet, and an American flag all snapping in the harsh breeze. I asked the dog, Please don't bite me. And jumped from stone step to the next until I reached the glass door where the main door was open, and the lamp was on, and the TV was on, but it took a while for a woman to appear.

I told her of the cow; I know how expensive they are, and I'd hate for you to lose one, not to mention if someone were to actually hit it like I almost did.

She said she'd tell the farmer, the man in the house down the road...I thanked her, and left...down to College Town. The library on campus. On the second floor, in the alcove, I became bored with Flannery O'Conner and all the southern prose you can stomach. I went in search of less green pastures; sex, and plenty of it.

O' Henry Miller. I remember the reference in Seinfeld, and I've seen that movie, Henry and June: the first ever to be rated NC17. How delightful. I took Tropic of Capricorn back to my seat, where I draped my legs across the arms, and just-shaved knees...smooth legs rubbed together...but you can't rub your legs together, or up and under, in public. In libraries where the elevator dings, and fat girls keep walking by to use the water fountain. How I wish I had a man to lie on top of me...I keep reading. Don't sit down. Keep moving.

I just want to feel breath on my shoulder, and hands on my skin...

Down the stairs, I'm floating in a new world that's blue, and tongue in cheek, and trainofthoughtish, out of my head, into my body...all warm and flushed. Nearly sweating.

I can't swallow. I'm shaking...

Out the glass doors, I see a boy walking by. Blonde hair, and tall. I whistle. He turns around, and takes me into his arms...his t-shirt's been bleached. And he's wearing shorts. Rough legs against smooth...he looks me up and down, and asks, How long will you be in town?

Just for the afternoon.

He says he has class...climbs the stairs...and that's all this place is: glass windows and stairs and white, bleach, tile floors, air conditioners humming. And he says in one quick breath, Great to see you, be careful, I love you.

And the sight of our first kiss comes back to me as I float down the sidewalk in the ever softening breeze.

Weeks later, and I'm driving back down...seeing crosses, finding bridges; relieved that the legal troubles have ended only hours before. How strange. The two things that depressed me in April, the boy who died on Easter morning, and the cop who knocked on my door, both pulling me from my mind, and dropping me down into reality like dropping a deadman with his feet in cement down into the darkest river, at the deepest point...the tiny creatures I couldn't see gnawed at my feet for weeks until I finally swam up, and here I am, gasping for air, and dying my hair, only to re-dye it...

I wait another week, due to sickness, mine and Baby Girl's, to go out and take the pictures...to enjoy a couple of offdays...then it's off to Little Chicago to buy that box of haircolor. I'm not fit to be a blonde. I don't like the attention it's garnered...younger men, more thugs, all giggling, and I'm showing too much cleavage...it makes me look cheap, and I feel ugly. I'm not sexy. Don't sit down...

Bot climbs onto a bottom shelf, and the person who caused my legal problems...unless I caused them, though I blame the otherworldly...is walking by. Of all people! And this person speaks to Bot and me, and my God, this person doesn't realize...my locks have rendered me unrecognizable!

I feel embarrassed though...too much cleavage, and the older men aren't looking. And this person keeps showing up, on every other aisle. I devise a plan to escape this routine by backtracking two aisles, but there is this person again! Asking me, Do you know where I can find the Cheese Wiz?

I make a rush to the checkout. Gotta leave this place, and this hair, and the trouble I've been cleared of...the fall that was taken, and the cross on the pole, and the albatross of 'em both, I've cut free. I don't want to be reminded...

On the drive home, the sun has set, and the sky looks like someone's just put out a cigarette in a windowless room. The way the thick clouds loom...I feel something working it's way through my veins. It's bringing me down, as I button my shirt. My breast-implanted-esque chest, and all the trouble it brings. This hair. The child in the backseat. She'll have to do without me tomorrow...I need to rearrange.

I finally come down with it completely by Sunday. An infection... and all that I had at age fifteen...throwing up, begging Mom to help me. She says no, and tells me to clean it up. While I'm still throwing...I never had help, and I'll never have help, and it's always me. On my shoulders. Take care of yourself, and everyone else, and I feel like screaming as the days slip by me from my place on the couch.

I can't move. I'm banned from the bedroom...I'm tired of washing the sheets.

I watch TV. I'm motionless, in every sense...the box of haircolor still unused.

By Wednesday, I feel better. I write a two thousand dollar check, and all is well.

I go out by myself...my day of the week where I am free of Bot...and free of sickness, and rain: two things that have hindered my offdays for months now.

I have a wonderful time, and it's nice to think clearly, without pain, or worry.

At midnight, I start a novel.

I dig a hole to lie in, though, for someone who no longer wants to know me. And now I feel like I've grown six inches in my sleep. Nothing fits me. I'm tall, like Alice eating the Eat Me's. And I'll soon be crashing through the roof with shaking hands. The silence distracts me...its vicious plan.

I WILL write this novel. As sure as my hair is dyed bright red. Yesterday, with gloved hands...to make tropical fruit drip down my strands...the pinkish orange...I said I was bored with the black, and that's why I dyed it in the first place. So if nothing else, I'm definitely not bored now...at least it's unique.

And now it's tonight; Two AM. I'm up and wired...ready to write...wringing my hands. While walking through the living room an hour ago, I heard voices outside...I turned on the porchlight, and heard a girl say, Oh S---!

I threw open the door, and saw them duck down in the driveway. I called, Who's there? They started running...I said, Hey! What the hell are you doing?

It was the Uncle's stepdaughter. The wild sixteen year old who calls back to me some flimsy excuse, and then starts running again...down to the end where a truck flies off, and then she goes running back up...all at One AM.

I don't understand.

It's too quiet in this room...the summer's only just began. Though I can't enjoy it. Too many bees are hiding alongside the road we walk...I took Bot out, despite the ever increasing amount of bees that hover about as we swat 'em away...and the other day, there were too many. I picked Bot up and started running. They buzzed in my face, and in my ears, and all around our bodies...my pants started to fall. An old pair from high school, but too big, and no belt...I put her down and told her to run for home. As I pulled up my pants, the second it took, the second I was still, a bee landed on my wrist, and for the first time in my life, I was stung.

I cried and ran, and once inside, I fell to the ground as Bot begged for a car ride. I washed the sight of the sting, and reluctantly obliged. Since we didn't enjoy our walk, and only out for such a short time...I fastened her into her seat, and drove uptown, in the dark, my speech became slurred...past the church, past the ballgame, the lights overhead, and the boy that used to play...how I sat in the bleachers to watch him...my heart he broke, and the sounds of the game echo up as my throat gets tighter...I can't swallow...I'm sweating...under the bridge now, and through the tunnel of trees, past the train...the lightening bugs, and the animals that dare to cross in the headlights...I slam on the brakes, and Baby Girl is crying. I'm slowly deflating. Short, quick breaths...and the sting on my wrist. Am I dieing?

Driving...in the steam, in the heat. A delayed reaction to the sting...and to June. It took a while to sink in. I'm ready for something new...to not be depressed. To not be in debt. To be free of the problems, and the death...and the blonde, and the bleach. And this blog I neglect. I want to spend my energy on the novel...to write it quickly. I just want to get it out of me...post pictures in the meantime, like I did last summer. I really loved that; just doing photos instead of whole entries. The only time I can find to write them is on restless nights when I'm wired, and waiting, in the holes that I dig.