This is the Part Where You Laugh (3 page)

Ten years ago, maybe, when I was about six, I wasn't angry yet, just little, and I kept stealing the tubes because I kept finding them. I hid them underneath the mattress that I shared with my mom in our motel room on 7th Street out in West Eugene.

My mom would look for them, and she wasn't happy about it because she thought she'd lost them. She threw our stuff around the room, our duffel bag, the backpack with my toys in it, the towels. She slid our one-burner hot plate to the side, rifled through her purse, looked behind that one big picture she had of a green field edged with white-barked trees. She picked up the lamp and checked underneath. Slammed it down and the lightbulb broke. She said, “Where the…” Then she saw me watching her and she said, “I'm sorry. I'm just really…I'm sorry.”

I didn't give the tubes to her. Not even when I saw her like that, angry and desperate. She didn't know I had them, and I didn't want her to know because I liked having them. I knew they were important even before I knew what they were, before I saw her use one, and I guess I wanted to have something that she loved that much.

Then I saw her use one and it wasn't what I expected. She thought I was asleep and she sat back against the wall and laid everything out like she was a doctor on a TV show. She looked like she was about to do a surgery. My head was on the pillow and I squinted to watch each step as she did it, how she went through the whole process, and then I knew what the tubes were, what I'd been collecting. Sort of.

I didn't know why her eyes closed while she did it, or why her mouth opened and stayed open afterward, or why she breathed like she did.

Then she'd stop breathing those big loud breaths, but her mouth would stay open and her head would roll around on her shoulders like the wires that held it on her neck were connected too loose, like her head might fall off if she stood up quick.

Sometimes, when I knew she was passed out, and that she'd be passed out for a while, I'd take my collection of tubes from where I kept them hidden between the mattress and the box spring. I'd lay them all out, put the sharp ends one way like compass needles pointing north. Or I'd make a little tipi out of all of them, crisscrossing the needles at the top, pretending that someone lived inside that tipi.

It was always the future in my game, when people lived in all-plastic houses, and the man who lived under my tubes was the man named Zeus who lived behind the motel Dumpster. Zeus wore a purple tutu and begged for money, but always threw the pennies back at anyone who gave them to him. He kept the silver change. I never gave him anything, and sometimes he grabbed my arm and held me there and flipped up his tutu, and I hated when my mom asked me to take out the garbage because I worried that Zeus might grab me. In my game, when I built a shelter with my tubes, the tubes would always collapse, and Zeus would be crushed inside. Sometimes I'd have Zeus screaming and dying slowly, or sometimes he'd die without screaming, and he'd just gasp and gasp for air and I'd wait for him to get quiet. My mom had told me how to call 911, but I never called 911, not in one of my games and not for real, not even if Zeus held my wrist, not even if my mom was passed out and I was worried she might not wake up.

One night, my mom fell asleep right after she used a tube, and her head went loose and she slumped against the wall. I got up from bed and walked over to her. She still had the big rubber band around her bicep, the tube hanging from her forearm. So I pulled it out. Then I undid her rubber band and sat down on the floor next to her. I set the tube down in front of me and tied the rubber band around my left arm, using my teeth at one end like I'd seen my mom do. Then I picked up the tube.

I pumped my fist and held the tube in my right hand, waited for the vein to rise on my left forearm. Then I set the sharp end of the needle there, on top of the vein. When I pushed it, it didn't go in right away because I was scared and I didn't push it hard enough. I was worried about how much the needle might hurt, but then I pushed harder and the skin came up into a small mound, and the needle slid into that mound. I felt the prick of it and I didn't like the feeling, but I did it anyway, and I pushed the needle to the end.

Then I waited.

Having the tube there didn't feel like anything and I didn't breathe hard. I knew I'd skipped some steps in the ceremony, but that didn't matter to me because it didn't hurt too much to have it there in my arm, and I wasn't sure I wanted to breathe like my mom did anyway. That breathing she did always made my stomach feel tight, like just before I threw up.

I was next to my mom on the floor, and that was good. The tube and the rubber band were just like she did them, and I leaned against her body and I felt her body rising and falling with her breathing as she slept there. My breathing became her breathing, the same rhythm, and I fell asleep leaning against her.

I woke up to her shaking me.

She screamed, “What the fuck did you do?” Then she slapped me. It was worse than when Zeus caught my wrist. Worse than when he flipped up his tutu.

My mom pulled the tube out of my arm, quick, and threw it against the wall, and I hoped for some reason that it wouldn't break. I thought to myself, even in that moment, that I could find it later and put it with the others as long as she didn't break it.

She dug her fingernails into my shoulders and shook me, shook me four or five times, and she was crying, and her mouth was twisted like she was one of those witches from the Disney movies, and I looked at her teeth where the brown and yellow lines outlined each individual tooth. I tried to pull away from her, but her hands were too strong and she yelled, “What the hell is wrong with you? I'm not joking. Tell me.”

I said, “I just…” But I didn't say anything else, and I wished I hadn't fallen asleep. I wished she wasn't screaming like that. I wasn't sorry that I'd stuck the tube in my arm because it hadn't really hurt, and I'd wanted to know how it felt for a long time. But I was sorry I'd gotten caught.

My mom stopped shaking me and hugged me instead. She started rocking and hugging me, and she was crying now, and she hugged me so tight that I had to turn my head to the side to get a breath in. Her body odor was like cooked onions at Taco Bell. She was sobbing and her voice sounded wet, garbled, and she said, “I'm quitting. Don't you even think for one second that I'm not quitting because I am.” Her body shivered and she sobbed some more. “I'm done, you know? I'm done right now. Right here. I'm done.”

That's what she said, but she was never done.

Middle of the day. We're at my grandparents' house. Creature says, “I found a new princess.”

“You what?”

“Super hot, baby. From the 14th century. Her name's Saint Anna of Kashin.”

“You found a hot 14th-century princess?”

“Gorgeous.” Creature winks at me. “At least that's how she looks in the oil painting. She has a halo of gold around her head. It's like a smear of metal. Can you imagine making out with someone who has a halo of gold around her head?”

I say, “You know there's a small chance that she might not've had that halo of gold in real life.”

Creature spins his basketball on his index finger, taps it with his left hand, and keeps the ball spinning. “I believe in halos. You believe what you want to believe, and I'll believe what I want, all right?”

I try to spin my ball on my index finger, but I don't have that trick down yet. The ball keeps falling off one way or the other.

Creature says, “And I'm putting this girl in the guidebook for sure. She's a great addition. Did you read those pages I wrote the other day?”

“Yeah.”

“And what'd you think?”

“It's weird, man.”

“So?” he says.

“So the book's weird. And it's written different from how you talk too.”

“I know, baby.” Creature raises an eyebrow. “That's the magic of the guidebook. It brings out the literary man in me. The Pablo Neruda:
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs, you look like a world, lying in surrender.
”

“Creat, I think you might be messed up in the head.”

“You think?” Creature pivots around an invisible defender, then dribbles through his legs. He says, “I know what I like, and that's all. Basketball and books. Nothing else.” He pulls up for a jump shot but doesn't let the ball go. He says, “Hey, you want to play under the bridge?”

“Sure, if there's a game.”

“Should be,” he says. “I'll catch you later, then?”

“Yep, and good luck with that Russian halo girl.”

“Oh, don't even worry about that. She's mine already.”

Little things mostly. That's all. And I don't even know why. I like the feeling of it, I guess, that moment when I have it in my hand and I slide it into my pocket. Like there are guitar strings inside of me and the lowest string is vibrating that one deep sound.

Doesn't matter what it is, a candy bar, a key chain, a Christmas ornament. It doesn't have to be expensive. I don't care about that. Sometimes after I walk out and I don't get caught, I throw whatever it is in the bushes. I usually feel bad about it later, feel like something's wrong with me, but the next time I'm in a store, I get that urge again, and I start to ask myself,
What if I just walked out? What if I just put this in my pocket? Or even better, what if I held it in my hand and walked out so smooth and so slow that no one even noticed?

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see your hands: puffy, wind-burned, pink-cracked, yellow seeping at the edges of the cracks. Too much outdoor living, outdoor cooking, outdoor sleeping in urban filth. Too little hand-washing.

Those same small hands I've always known, needle-scraped, nettle-scraped, black gunk under the fingernails, overgrown fingernails, broken fingernails with thick edges, nails jagging up and down like a hedge trimmed by a drunk.

I look at my hands. Think about what's fair and unfair. Wonder if I deserve the hands that I have: 2-in-1-oil-marked hands and imperfect, but clean enough. No infections. No pain. Nothing to worry about when I pull them out of my pockets, make food, or grip a basketball.

I wonder if we're given our hands, if the hands we'll have in our adult lives are there from our births, waiting for us, waiting for our futures. Or if our hands are a choice? A series of choices? And if so, are your hands a choice?

This is what I ask: Would anyone choose your hands?

My grandpa's in the study, rooting around in a drawer. I can't hear if my grandma's up.

I say, “Hey,” but Grandpa doesn't hear me. He probably doesn't have his hearing aids in yet. I walk past him into the kitchen.

I crack an egg into a cup and slug it down. Then I think about how many grams of protein I need to get bigger, to be as strong as Creature, so I crack another egg and drink that too. Then I pour some Cap'n Crunch in the cup, add milk, and get out a spoon.

My grandpa comes in and sits down across from me. He's putting his hearing aid in his right ear. He says, “How many nights in a row now?”

I swallow a bite of cereal. “Today's June 28th, so 38 nights so far.”

He nods. “And what's your goal?”

“100 straight.” I don't know why I do these things, but I always have. I make little goals for myself, little challenges. And when I think of something, I have to do it.

“Camping out 100 nights, huh?” Grandpa puts his other hearing aid in. “I never did something like that.”

I take another bite. Talk with my mouth full. “Me either, until now.”

Grandpa smiles. The morning version of him. Opposite of the night version. He picks up the paper and reads the City/Region section while I eat the rest of my cereal. I say, “Is Grandma up yet?”

“No. She had a rough night.”

“Did she throw up a lot?” I go back to the cupboard for more Cap'n Crunch, add another egg, mix the yolk and cereal with the tip of my spoon, and picture the pounds spreading across my muscles.

Grandpa must not have heard me. I didn't realize that he'd been reading my lips before. He sometimes puts his hearing aids in but forgets to turn them on. I lean under the cupboard so he can see my mouth. “Did she throw up a lot?”

“Throw up? Yes,” he says. “She threw up until, maybe…two a.m.?”

I push my cereal down into the milk with my spoon. Slurp a little. Go back to the table.

Grandpa says, “How many lawns are you mowing today?”

“Three.”

“On the far side?”

“Always,” I say. “No one over here can afford to pay.”

Grandpa nods his head. He folds the newspaper and flips it. “Did you see that someone moved into that Sullivan house last week?”

“Yep.” I take another bite of cereal.

“Are you going to offer to do their lawn too?”

I take a bite and think about the girl on the dock. Say, “I probably should.”

From my tent, it's only 300 yards to the back lawns of the nice homes across the lake, but since there's no direct access from our trailer park to the Gilham neighborhood, I have to bike half a mile on Green Acres, then half a mile up Gilham to get to the big houses on the far side.

My Schwinn is a steel frame, strong enough to pull the mini-trailer loaded with the lawn mower, weed whacker, trimmer, gas can, oil can, hand clippers, and debris buckets strapped down with bungee cords.

I don't knock on the door at my first house. I just start weed-whacking. The owners and I already have an agreement set up, so I do my work whether or not they're home. I know they'll pay me later, and they'll pay me well too. Good tippers. So I weed-whack, edge, then mow over the top.

Before I go to my second job, though, I stop at the house that the Sullivans used to own. I knock once and wait. No one comes. I consider leaving, but there's a car in the driveway, so I knock again.

I'm about to leave when the door swings open. It's the girl. She's my age, give or take a year, tall, near my height, 5'9". Real pretty but with a scar on her face, under her eye, a big scar, maybe two inches across then down another inch, like an L turned on its side.

She's staring at her phone, and she doesn't look up when she opens the door, just says, “Yeah?”

I hesitate.

She has tan skin with straight black hair pulled up the way soccer players do with the double Nike headbands, and she's one of those girls that cuts the collars out of her T-shirts. One side of her wide-open collar is off her shoulder, her pink bra strap crossing her collarbone into her shirt, and I follow that line down and look at her breasts. I try not to linger on them too long, but I check them out, and they're nice too. Then I look back up at her face, high cheekbones and that scar.

I can't see her eyes since she's still looking at her phone screen.

She says, “Do you need something?”

I feel scroungy in my stained work shirt, and I wish I'd showered that morning after playing basketball. The carpet on the stairs behind the girl is white. The entryway floor is polished hardwood. Even the porch I'm standing on is clean and swept. I wonder if I'm dropping grass cuttings on the porch right now, wonder if I should sweep the porch if I earn the job.

I say, “Is your mom or dad home?”

“No,” she says. She's scrolling the touch screen with her finger, running through Facebook or something. She has a brace on her right knee. Strong legs. Thin ankles.

I say, “Will you give them this flyer for me?” I hold out the paper that my grandma and I typed up together.

The girl takes the flyer and I see her look at my hands, then stop and take another look. She glances up at my face before going back to her phone. She says, “I'll give it to them.” She turns and catches the door with her heel. Pivots to shut it.

I take a step back so the door doesn't hit me in the face, and it's good I do, because when that door closes, it slams so hard it sounds like something breaks inside the house.

I smile.

I don't know why, but I've never minded when a pretty girl is a little rude at first. I like that edge. It reminds me of basketball, how you have to scrap a bit if you want to win.

I think about the girl as I work the next two yards, go through what I know about her: that scar, that pink bra strap, the way she swam in her clothes, her breasts, her legs, her knee brace, that quick cut of her green eyes.