The Garbage Times - White Ibis

by Sam Pink

  This?

  This is what you think I look like?

  Good god, man.

  Then, to add further degradation, they sat down to color it.

  Here, now color it!

  Like paying for the bullet of an executed loved one.

  Man.

  As they finished, they left the room to go play until everyone was done and it was time for presentations.

  And then the room was empty.

  And I was done.

  But my girl’s cousin led the girl who didn’t want to be drawn—sullen—back into the room.

  ‘Do I have to?’ said the Girl Scout.

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘But I don’t like how I look. I’m ugly.’

  ‘Cassie, for the last time, you are beautiful, ok? Look at me. You are a beautiful little girl. Now hurry up and come join us right after you’re done, we got presentations.’

  She left and the Girl Scout sat down.

  I looked at her, raising my eyebrows once to say hi.

  I started drawing her.

  It was no more and no less shitty than all my others.

  The only upside was my own personal disappointment had bottomed out and could not be lowered.

  When I was almost through drawing her, she reached out and held my arm.

  She said, ‘Oh, I like your tattoos.’

  She was touching a devil-looking creature.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I drew them and my friend back in Chicago did the tattooing.’

  ‘Really? You drew them? Let me see.’

  She grabbed each of my arms with her hands and inspected the other tattoos.

  ‘Hurry up, Cassie,’ said the troop mom from the other room.

  I finished up the drawing, letting her hold and inspect my free arm.

  ‘Heh, cool, thanks,’ she said, taking the drawing. ‘I like drawing too. I don’t do faces though.’

  ‘I’m not good at drawing faces either,’ I said.

  ‘I hate being in pictures,’ she said.

  While she was coloring the portrait, I got out some paintings I’d just finished.

  ‘Oh wow, now this is talent,’ she said. ‘I love it.’

  ‘Cassie, come ON,’ said the troop mom.

  ‘I like drawing sea creatures,’ she said, pushing back on her chair and getting up.

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  ‘I can draw you one if you want.’

  She pulled her neon shirt over her belly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, getting up.

  We walked to the kitchen together.

  She sat at the counter while everyone watched a fellow Scout give her presentation on a powerful woman.

  It was about a woman on TV who’d had her own show for a long time and then put out a magazine that had her on the cover every time.

  ‘I mean, she can just buy a huge boat whenever she wants. Can anyone else say that? I can’t,’ said the girl, finishing her report.

  She was smiling, holding the picture of her subject so more or less no one could see it, then sat down on her friend’s lap in the front row.

  ‘Ok, thanks, Lacy,’ said the mom, up in front of the audience again.

  Then she called up another girl to do her report.

  The girl drawing at the counter whispered, ‘Hey, psst,’ and I turned around and she slid a piece of paper over the countertop.

  It was a drawing of a squid.

  It was really nice.

  ‘Nice. Is this for me?’ I whispered.

  She nodded. ‘It’s a happy squid.’

  ‘I love it.’

  The girl giving her presentation said, ‘And that’s why I think she’s um, an important woman, because she went to space, thanks.’

  Everyone started clapping again.

  The troop mom said, ‘Hey, c’mon, Cassie, since you got so much to say over there how bout your turn next?’

  Cassie rolled her eyes and went up to perform her speech.

  She started pulling at a fingernail and kind of wobbling/dancing in place.

  ‘Um, I’m doing mine on [male superhero] and um I …’

  ‘Cassie, you know it’s supposed to be a woman,’ said the troop mom. ‘[male superhero] ain’t no woman.’

  Cassie said, ‘I know but um, that’s who I picked. Why does it have to be a woman just because I am?’

  Her face turned red as she fidgeted with her hands.

  ‘Ok fine,’ said the troop mom.

  Cassie gave her speech.

  It focused some on the superhero’s values—yes, the normal roll call of ‘doing good,’ ‘being honest,’ etc.—but mostly on the ability to defeat enemies.

  Because not everyone was going to help you survive out there in the woods.

  Not everyone has a sash full of skills and a heart full of love.

  And, as my squid-drawing friend pointed out, those people must be defeated.

  ‘And that’s why [male superhero] is a person I look up to,’ she said, ‘aaaaand—’ looking at the ceiling, then nodding—‘yep that’s it.’

  She skipped off to the side to sit down. I clapped loudest.

  Yes …

  Yes!

  When the presentations were over, everyone put their pajamas on.

  We gathered in the living room to watch a movie, the subject of which was, in fact, a Girl Scouts–type of club in a particularly rich area of California who had found themselves in a most unlikely underdog scenario.

  The Scouts were on the couches.

  My girl and I lay on the floor under a blanket.

  I settled in and did my best to follow the movie but mostly just lay there staring at the screen while the girls echoed the lines, then laughed.

  Someone tapped me on the back of the head.

  I turned around.

  It was the squid-drawing girl.

  She motioned to her lap where Bam, aka Tha Chocklit Hawg, was lying, eyes half closed, licking his lips as she petted his butt.

  I smiled.

  My girl kissed my cheek and quietly told me to go look at the card on the counter.

  I got up and found the envelope.

  It said ‘From: Tooth Fairy. To: Cassie, the Beautiful’ on it.

  There were two dollars in it.

  I added another dollar.

  Then I wrote ‘I AM real’ on the other side of the envelope.

  When the movie was over, everyone went to sleep.

  My girl and I went to bed.

  We had sex and then lay together, sweaty, our hearts slowing.

  She held me and said, ‘I love my big treat.’

  Then she fell asleep, farting.

  The bayou swayed in darkness outside the window.

  The next morning, I lay in bed as my girl got up and reconvened with the troop in the kitchen.

  They did their last activities and made breakfast together.

  I, of course, couldn’t face them again and would be waiting for them to be picked up.

  Eventually my girl came back into the room and closed the door.

  She handed me something in a napkin.

  ‘Here, we just made these,’ she said. ‘They’re really good.’

  It was some kind of egg/biscuit thing.

  She grabbed my dick and gave me a kiss. ‘I’ll be back in a little bit, I’m going to help clean up.’

  I lay in bed eating the biscuit thing.

  It was really good.

  I enjoyed it, looking up at the ceiling.

  Every time a thought came tiptoeing up, weapon in hand, I’d be like, ‘Uh-uh, not so fast.’

  Just staring at the sunlight on the ceiling, chopped up and swirling through the branches.

  I saw a piece of fuzz coming down towards my face.

  I reached up and tried to pinch the fuzz midair, but the wind from lifting my hand blew it away.

  Floating back out into the endless middle.

  Something tapped against the window.

  It was a wasp, outside, hover
ing and bumping into the pane.

  And I couldn’t tell if it was trying to come in, or telling me to come out.

  In loving memory of Nonno and Nonna

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to acknowledge Yuka Igarashi and the whole Catapult/Soft Skull staff for being a mafia of flowers, Jereme Dean for neon third-eye guidance, Jeremy McFarland for the spirit spit-shine, the pets of the world for helping this bullshit along, and anyone who has read a book or bought a painting or even just emailed to say hi. See you in hell, bastards.