3 posts from August 2009

I found this bookmark in my classroom. On one side, it’s a six-inch ruler and on the other side it’s a holographic landscape of a barren desert highway with a telephone pole and two golden retriever puppies on Razor scooters scooting down the road. After enough wine, cigarettes and cold medicine it really starts to make me emotional.

He thinks it’s silly, that I’m only acting this way for attention. Such a drama queen, he says. Blaming it on all the depressing American poetry and the quarter-life related angst.

“You need to move to Los Angeles and start sleeping around. At least try to develop a dependency,” he teases, but is mostly serious. He pours another sarcastic capful of Nyquil and raises an eyebrow, “What would Hemingway think?”

“Do you know,” I say to him, fishing for toenails in the carpet. “Do you know how fucked the Salton Sea is?”

And this is the only reason why I like him; he is so good at things like this, at being an ominous pretentious fuck. But sometimes he has these moments—usually few and far between, but moments nonetheless—where he remembers how human he is and all that enigmatic composure falters and it’s these moments that are enough to forgive him for that head of his, one of those with the non existential jaw line that blends into a chin which is just a set of wrinkly folds erupting above his enormous protruding adam’s apple. So you see I don’t have to look for ways to resent him, but I’ve made a game out of this, and out of the corner of my eye, when puzzlement flashes over that sloppy face of his I can’t help but grin and pour another shot of cough syrup.

My sinuses are pounding, I explain. He crosses his legs, kind of high for a boy, but not for a faggot, on the edge of my bed and I open my laptop and go off on how I’m bidding on miniature mid-century furniture on eBay because I have an idea.

“What idea is that?”

“Did you know,” I tell him. “When I was little I saw my dad put a windshield wiper blade through his hand?”

I wait, but it didn’t work this time. So I have to tell him the whole story. Of how it was pouring rain after school and I must have been nine, ten, maybe eleven. Anyway.

It was pouring rain, right? and I can already see my dad out there from the classroom window, messing with the windshield wipers. I have to peek, of course, because our heads are bowed in prayer. "We always dismiss with The Lord’s Prayer underneath the Christian Flag which hangs next to the American one," I explain. "Imagine all of us," I insist, in our little plastic raincoats and lunchboxes and then it was Amen and I was flying out the door across the lawn to jump in the front seat of the pickup.

It fell hard in sheets over the Nissan and in our tin can he did well not to alarm me, but asked me very normally to go and see if my teacher had a band-aid. And before I even saw the blade that had driven through all four of his fingers, I remember fighting back any reaction, clenching my jaw because my stomach turned at the wince in my Daddy’s face.

“You ask me all the time about my Greatest Fear,” I take a break in my story to look at him and address this. “Think about the wince, think about the first splinter your dad ever had to pry out of your little finger. Then think about the wince again, oh god. The unintelligible tremor in your hero’s voice? That’s enough to end your fucking world, isn’t it?”

“It is,” and those brown eyes rolled around in that ugly pinhead and I continued.

The blade went through all his fingers on his right hand, I have no idea how. Blood was oozing out in fat black drips into a blob in his lap and his left hand was wrapped around the other wrist. A steady voice asked me to look for the pliers or the wire cutters, I forget what they were, that he kept in the toolbox in the backseat.
            Hurt’s a little, Daddy said, sucking in a breath.

And outside the fucking fat mothers are honking in a hurry to the brats at the canopied picnic tables and their stupid book-bags bouncing on their back as they trot to their respective minivans, minding the floor mats with their wet shoes.

The metal didn’t clip cleanly at first. I sort of had to bend it this way and that, but it eventually gave. With the blade now split into three shorter pieces, they slipped out the flesh easier. I found an old t-shirt he kept as a grease rag and he wrapped his own hand and turned on the radio, he put the truck in gear, rolled down the window and took out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

I remember the smell of the rain, the heater coughed out dust and he lit the smoke with one hand, I don’t even remember which one. I do remember though, I remember, the tires hissing against the wet street all the way home.

“Jesus,” he says. He's now reclined back on his elbows and has been turning the holographic scooter puppy ruler back and forth to see the animation. He wants to say something, but doesn’t. I don’t blame him, either.
Even I’m disappointed now, too.

Tomorrow marks the end of my second week at my new job. I work as an 8th and 9th grade teacher of a small classroom at a Summer Tutoring Academy in the Woodbridge community of Irvine. I started out as a substitute for private tutors, specifically the woman who tutored a six-year-old named Joy.

Joy, like most of the clients at the Academy, is Chinese. However she has an American last name and green eyes and light brown hair, so I think she must be a mix of some sort. Joy and I got along well at first; we had a lot in common. We both like the color pink, we both enjoy snacks and we both have sassy attitudes. I figured we’d grow to be close friends.

When I first asked Joy what she liked to do, she told me her favorite thing was to draw dolphins. Perfect, I thought. I am going to blow this kid away with my tight dolphin drawings. So I drew a dolphin with her hot pink marker on a sheet of lined paper, and she hated it. 

“That doesn’t really look like a dolphin,” she told me.

“Have you ever seen a dolphin?” She ignored me, and opened her lunchbox, full of sweet and salty treats wrapped neatly in ziplock bags.

“I will share some of my snacks with you,” she told me. I politely declined. I was not going to take food from a six-year-old. Most of the food I didn’t even recognize because it had Korean writing on the packaging, but I was hungry. So I peeled open a really unappetizing granola bar from my purse and practiced my dolphin drawings.

We did an hour of reading and writing, then took a short break and continued with math. She was smart, which I appreciated. When it was time to go, she asked me to wear pink the next day and if I would bring her some treats? 

The next day was also my last day with Joy and I arrived a few minutes late to find her waiting in the classroom, her backpack already unpacked with her markers and snacks spread across the floor under the desk.

“Are we having a picnic? I love picnics!” I exclaimed, ducking under the table to sit with her. She didn’t even look up from her drawing.

“Are you wearing lipstick?” She asked.

“Maybe. Why?” She handed me a blue marker and a sheet of lined paper.

“Does Dr. Wong know you’re wearing lipstick?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him today.” I was squirming, uneasy and indignant under the child’s interrogating questions.  

She glared at me. “If you put lipstick on me, I won’t tell anyone you wore lipstick to work.”   

That was enough. I told her to take a seat and added that my mother allowed me to wear lipstick and one day her mother would allow her to wear lipstick and when that day came, I would be more than willing to put lipstick on her.

Halfway through our grammar lesson, she refused to finish the worksheet until I gave her a treat. I didn’t tell her I had forgotten to bring a treat, so I gave her an old lollipop I got for free at some school rally months ago. I told her that it was hers if she finished her classwork before the hour was up. She worked diligently and when she finished, she did not hesitate to reward herself by fishing it out of my purse and hastily ripping off the wrapper.  I looked at the clock, only two more hours.

“This is disgusting,” she said, spitting the lollipop onto the floor. “Can you please pick that up and throw it away?” She asked me. Me.

“That is so rude to insult my candy and then spit it out onto Dr. Wong’s carpet and make me throw it away for you. Don’t be bossy. The trash is right there,” I said very sweetly, trying to mask my utter appall at her behavior.

“But I said please,” she argued almost tauntingly and took her seat. I threw away the candy.

We didn’t get all the way through math because, to be honest, I really didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, I was not responsible for teaching her manners or proper behavior or even how to subtract double digit integers, I was only there to babysit and administer her lessons and whether or not she wanted to respect me and learn was her own decision.

She threw a tantrum when I refused to give her my Disneyland Princess charm bracelet that my mother had bought for me. She made me give her my granola bar even though I told her she would not like it if she didn’t like the cherry lollipop I tried to give her earlier. It was like she was trying to spite me. I watched her eat my whole granola bar, my only breakfast, while she had a fat puffy pink lunchbox packed with two maple donuts (still warm!), Chex mix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, two packs of chocolate milk and a mini-pack of Original Pringles.

“Are you going to eat that?” I asked, pointing to the donut.

“No, you can have it. I hate donuts.”

Fuck it. I tore off a tiny bite and ate it, I was starving. And it was good. 

We took a short break to go hang out with her older sister who was being tutored across the hall. I carried Joy’s backpack and asked her if she wanted to eat the rest of her lunch outside and she said no, first she wanted to play Freeze Tag with her sister and her sister’s tutor and me. I said okay, but she had to promise to eat the rest of her lunch. Joy’s sister, Trinity skipped out of the classroom and asked her sister what flavor of donut she had gotten today. I felt my face go white.

“Miss Alexis ate my donut! She ate the whole thing!” She announced it to the entire Academy. I saw Trinity’s tutor raise an eyebrow as she said very tongue-in-cheekily, “My, what a nice thing to do for your teacher…”

I could have slapped them both in their chatterbox pie-holes.

After lunch break we read a short children’s book called “Little Bear’s New Friend” or something. I recognized it from my own childhood and felt a warm nostalgia rise up in me while looking through the pictures. I missed my mom. I almost forgot how furious and humiliated Joy had successfully made me feel. All of a sudden she closed the book and looked me dead in the eye.

“Santa Claus isn’t real, did you know?” She informed me very matter-of-factly. “My dad told me and he never lies.”

“Who brings you presents then?” I didn’t even miss a beat. “I always get presents. Maybe you’re just a really bad kid.”

“No. My parents give me toys. Your mom and poppa bring you your toys and presents, not Santa.”

This bitch. I looked at the clock, five more minutes. I started to pack her notebook and markers into her backpack.

“Santa brings me toys. Your dad is a liar.”

Matty, whose real name is Matilda, will park around the block because Oliver has memorized the sigh of her four cylinder from two, three, four blocks away. Matty doesn’t use the garage, which is tucked underneath their second-story apartment. She’s given that to Oliver, who is there when she comes home. As for him, he is at his usual post, huddled over the aluminum card table drilling holes through thin sheets of plywood when he hears her. She mindfully avoids rickety stairs numbers four and seven, but the aging wood gives slightly under the weight of her careful steps, and she knows she’s been given away. The high squeal of the screen door being thrown open off its hinges, the clamor of wind chimes when it slams shut, and he’s already halfway up the stairs.