by Jesse Ball
I should say, I was sad once when I went with her to a restaurant and we saw a girl from Parkson. It was a girl who I thought was smart and maybe could be my friend, but once she saw my aunt, I knew it wouldn’t happen. I felt bad about it—this was the combination:
part of me felt angry at my aunt for causing it;
part of me felt awful that I wouldn’t get this friend;
part of me felt okay because obviously the girl was terrible if she cared so much about what other people think that she would disqualify me on the basis of my aunt.
The whole thing was even worse because it was supposed to be a celebration. I had this problem for a while where I couldn’t stop crying, so I was out of school for two months and just crying all the time. It made me get brutal headaches. This was the first two months that I lived with my aunt, after the thing happened. So, at the end of that time, when a week or two passed, and I wasn’t crying anymore, my aunt said we should celebrate. Even though we couldn’t afford to, she knew it was the right thing to do—so we went to a restaurant. That’s when this happened, which made me feel even worse. Because my aunt is great. Fuck anybody who doesn’t approve of her!
Of course—I expect that I will look as strange to people as my aunt does if I live as long as she has. I think back then it looked to me that there was a chance I would be able to go undetected—that I could pass through society without being noticed. Since I realize now that people are against me anyway, it is easier for me to stomach having people think my aunt is a freak.
So, ultimately, I can’t take credit for being okay now with my aunt’s weirdness, is what I’m saying. I’ve just accepted that we’re painted with the same brush.
We walked down to the park. There were no pigeons. I don’t know where they had gone to, but when we tossed some bread on the ground, there were many pigeons. My theory is—they hide inside the park benches and wait.
If you want to say, Lucia, there is no inside of the park benches, I won’t argue with you. But, then you have to say where the pigeons come from.
After that, we read—I read a book about cremation in China. My aunt read Faust in German. The hot-dog guy gave us two hot dogs because he felt bad for us when my aunt had to pay for the one hot dog with change.
I want to add about my aunt that she does everything with an immense amount of dignity—so it isn’t that she really looks like a weirdo. It is just that people have so little acumen these days—they don’t even know what dignity looks like. Or, a few do. Like the hot-dog guy. He was moved by her display.
PREDICTION
Tomorrow I will go to the Home to visit my mom again. I will wear a raincoat and I will take the number 12 bus all the way down Ranstall Avenue and change to the number 8 at Bergen. While I am riding the bus, I will read more in my book about Chinese cremation. While I am reading that book, someone will try to talk to me. I will grunt and indicate that I am reading a book. When I get to Stillwell, I will get off the bus. No one else will get off it because no one else will be on it at that point. I will walk half a mile to the entrance, and then half a mile past the gates to the main building. At the main building, I will get a guest pass and I will be escorted to my mother’s room. She will not be in the room. I will then be escorted to the fish pond. She will be sitting in a rocking chair next to the fish pond. She will be wearing a medical gown. Her hair will be in a ponytail (she never wore it in a ponytail). I will approach her and speak to her. She will once again fail to recognize me. I will sit with her for a while until it becomes clear that it isn’t doing anyone any good. Then, I will go back and hand my pass in. I will walk back down the drive. I will walk to the bus stop. I will get on the number 8 bus. I will take the number 8 bus past Ranstall past Wickham, past Arbor, to Twelfth. There I will get out. I will go into the bowling alley, Four Quarter Lanes, and I will sit at the bar and my friend Helen will pour me a drink. This time I will try to drink it a little slower. Probably, I will drink a glass of water first. (If I am hungry or thirsty and someone gives me a beer or a mixed drink, I will almost always drink it too fast, or faster than I should.)
WHAT HAPPENED
I woke up and made my aunt breakfast. That was—a poached egg. My mom showed me once how to do it. It requires a bit of a skillful maneuver. There was a little left of a fancy pepper, so I used it for her egg and ground it over the plate. The pepper ground up really beautifully. When I get to use nice things, I always think: nice things are so nice. But, like everything else—you get used to them and they vanish, unless like me you never get them, or only rarely.
She was really happy about the egg. When I got to her with it, she was already sitting up, since she slept in the chair, so it was just a matter of her opening her eyes and being happy.
I had my raincoat on, and she knew where I was going.
Later, chief! she said. It was a joke from an old TV show that aired fifty years ago. I always laugh and enjoy pretending to enjoy the joke, even though I don’t know what it is.
Later, I said.
I took the number 12 to the 8. I read my book. Three people tried to talk to me separately. I got rid of them by doing nothing. I walked up the drive to the main building. The girl was there, and she gave me a weird look along with the pass. The orderly came, same guy as before, and he was happy to see me. I could tell even though he acted like it was nothing at all. He said he had read the book. Did he like it? He said some of the stories were good but some were very bad. I said this is true—this is the way it is with that book. We went down to the fish pond straightaway, which was new. When he left he patted me on the shoulder, where the raincoat had fallen off. Which meant, he touched my shoulder, and I could feel his hand there while I sat looking at my mom. She was looking at the pond.
She does this thing where she is looking at the pond, and then for no reason she wants to go closer, so she gets out of her chair and leans over the pond, looking down over it. Then she shakes her head a bunch and mutters something and goes back to the chair. If you wait long enough, she will always do this. I think about the visit in terms of how many cycles I stay for. Once, I stayed for six cycles of the head-shaking. If I try to touch her, she says, no no no no no no nononononononononono.
When that happens, I always cry. It is really stupid, and it breaks the rules because it is not something I am proud of. But, so far I have not been able to stop it.
My mom’s gown is not always tied properly, so when she goes to look in the pool, her underwear is pretty visible. That is sometimes the occasion for the touching—I’m just trying to fix the gown so it covers her. She really doesn’t like it, though.
I didn’t want you to think I was trying to give her a hug or kiss her. I know that she doesn’t want that—and I don’t either, since she isn’t actually anyone I know, and I’m not anyone that she knows.
FISH POND
The orderly came back and he must have noticed I was okay with him putting his hand on my shoulder, because he did it again, this time with both hands, one on each shoulder. So, I was sitting there and he was standing behind me sort of touching my shoulders. I leaned back a bit, which encouraged him more.
I said before that my mom doesn’t really notice anything that happens. That’s true. It’s also true that the fish pond is behind a screen of trees on one side, and the back of another building with no windows on the other side. No one goes there, ever.
So, I didn’t have many misgivings about it. I could tell that he was pretty happy about how things were going with his hands on me, and for the record—I don’t get very much affection elsewhere, so I am a little starved. I was conscientious, I mean, when he started undoing my pants, I made sure we were going to do it safely, and he was like, yes, of course, and he showed me, and so—it felt really good. I can treat a person well. I really can, and he treated me really well. People aren’t all horrible. They aren’t. Sometimes you find a good one, at least for a while—even if it’s just for twenty minutes or so.
While we were at
it, I looked up and my mom had gotten out of her chair. She had come over toward the pool and was looking around in confusion as if she couldn’t remember where to look. She came toward me and I met her eye, but there was no recognition, none. I must have shifted suddenly, because he shifted too. His hand moved over my breast and I shivered a little. That broke our gaze and I shut my eyes. When I looked back at my mom, she was over the pond, shaking her head, shaking her head, shaking her head.
DAY SIX
That Monday was my sixth detention, so I was done with them for the time being. I finished writing the paper based on Russia Is Burning. and it was much easier because it turned out the school will loan me a computer to use while I am there. I can’t take it home—but I can check it out. So, I typed the paper on that. It is a pretty bad computer. Certainly, I don’t look cool while using it, but I am a fast typist, so it didn’t take long.
Kennison came over and we had an argument about citation. She had some idea about helping me, I guess. But, I don’t need help. She wanted me to do parenthetical citation. I said footnotes are fine. She failed to present a cogent argument about why her way is better. I said footnotes allow for the author to comment on the source immediately at the point of use. She basically threatened me with more detention—but that was just because some of the students laughed when I clowned her.
Lana was there again. Maybe she is my friend. We went to a twenty-four-hour donut shop where her cousin works. He gave us free donuts. She kissed him a little and that’s when I knew he wasn’t her cousin. She said she calls him that because she thinks it’s funny. I thought to myself—this is my kind of girl, and I said, you think that because it is funny. It is funny.
MY DAD’S LIGHTER
We went outside the donut shop to smoke a cigarette and Hal, her “cousin,” asked to use my dad’s lighter, which I was holding in my hand (as usual). I gave it to him.
He did some zippo tricks with it and lit his cigarette. I did some too, so we have that in common now. He told Lana that I was cool, that it was cool with him if she brought me around now and then. It wasn’t a creepy thing to say—it was more like, the three of us can talk without other people messing it up, so let’s keep doing that.
He doesn’t go to school. Hal thinks school is a waste, and I could not fucking agree more.
I want to describe my dad’s lighter to you.
It is a zippo, so it is made up of several parts.
There is an outer shell, a metal case. That holds the parts together. The shell is rectangular, but it is curved at the edge, almost slightly beveled. The top of the case has a true curve across it. Even with all this curving that I’m describing, the main impression you get from the zippo is flatness. All the sides, even the top, they’re all pretty flat. It is intensely comforting. Some lighters seem like they’ll jump out of your hand. The zippo is the opposite of that. The tricks and things that you can do with it are evidence. The zippo likes to be in the hand—it isn’t trying to flee the hand. You can pop it open, make it do a somersault—whatever you want. It isn’t trying to escape to the ground.
That’s the case. Inside the case, there is a sort of spring attachment that flips the top up or down. This spring attachment is connected to the body of the lighter. The body of the lighter consists of: the wick, the flint, the striking wheel, the cloth-like part that holds the fluid. Essentially, the zippo is always releasing gas. If you keep one in your pocket, your pocket will smell like gas (or it will smell like what they make gas smell like so you can smell it).
The outside of a zippo can look a number of different ways. Sometimes it will have a Vietnam kind of POW you are not forgotten thing going on. Sometimes it will have a USMC thing. Sometimes, just a skull. Some of them are mirrored. Others are matte silver. Some are dull black. Like other blue-collar things they will often feature gambling elements, like dice, cards, pool balls, or flags. My father’s is matte black and has a white dot in the center. I haven’t seen another like it. Years ago, I thought about asking him if he had done it himself, but I realized, and this was kind of a big deal for me to be smart enough at that point to realize something like this—I realized that I didn’t want to know. I liked not knowing. So, I still don’t know. The only thing that will make it clear is if one day I see another exactly like it. To be precise, that won’t make it 100 percent clear. But, it would make it likely.
Other things that can vary about zippos:
1. Some are smaller—I don’t know why. Maybe those are marketed to women, or to men with small pockets.
Often, people want to say that things are “for men” or “for women,” but I think that many of these items just share the property that they can or can’t fit into the shitty pockets women get. Of course, if girls were less focused on their appearance, maybe they would wear carpenter’s pants and carry whatever they wanted. Who is to say? It is inarguable, though, whomever’s fault it is, that having small pockets is terrible.
2. Some are looser or tighter in the way they snap open.
3. Some leak like crazy.
4. The inner cartridge on some slips around, so that when you go to shut the zippo, it doesn’t shut properly. This was happening with my dad’s, so I put a little sand into the case, and it is tighter now.
MY AUNT
was in the middle of beating me six times in a row in cribbage. They call it a skunking or something like that. I was getting skunked. That’s when someone tapped on the door. I figured, it is the landlord, since no one else ever comes to the house. My aunt knows nobody. I know nobody. There isn’t anything left to take. Why would someone come?
But, when I went to the door, Stephan was there.
Stephan, what are you doing here? How do you know where I live? It’s eight o’clock. I said something like that to him.
He said it was on the emergency contact card we had to fill out that day. He got the pile of cards for a second and he has a photographic memory.
I thought to myself that this explained why he sometimes seemed smart and sometimes not. I didn’t say that to him; maybe I should have. Sometimes people need to know what other people are thinking.
Mostly, though, I was just embarrassed about him seeing where I live, and then I was ashamed for feeling embarrassed about it, because it is a shallow thing to be embarrassed like that—and certainly not a way of behaving that I could feel proud about.
So, I said, come inside. You can meet my aunt.
Aunt, I said, this is Stephan. He is a convicted child molester. He wants us to know that he lives in our garden now.
My aunt laughed in a congenial way that put Stephan at his ease despite my awkward joke.
Do you go to school with Lucia? she asked.
He said he did.
She has a very foul mouth, don’t you think? Sit down and have some tea with us, she said. We’re just playing cribbage. Do you play?
Stephan took a gander at the room. I could see he was repulsed a little and when he looked at me, maybe he pitied me a little. I try not to be good at identifying pity in people’s eyes. It is mostly better not to.
Anyway, he sat down, and my aunt explained the rules of V_I_C (veritably improved cribbage) to him, and then she beat us both really badly a few times and went to sleep in her chair.
Do you want to go for a walk?
Okay.
We went outside and walked for a while.
I heard what happened, he said.
About the pencil? It’s nothing. He was an asshole.
Not that. Of course that’s nothing. I mean—about your parents.
How did you hear about that.
Jay Lesso.
Oh. Jay, he’s okay.
Yeah. Anyway—I’m sorry about that.
There is a really dirty canal that is near my aunt’s place. We went to it and threw some paving stones into it.
Stephan told me that he was going to set a fire.
I said that I doubted it, he seemed kind of like a pussy to me.
S
tephan repeated that he was going to set a big fire. He was planning it. He wondered if I would help him.
I said it is better to do those kinds of things by yourself.
He said, for this he would need a little help.
RUTTING
I think Stephan definitely wanted something else. A couple of times he seemed nervous as if he couldn’t think of what he was trying to say, which is stupid, because he is smart enough to have a conversation without tripping up. He did this weird thing where he would take off his watch and put it back on. So, I knew.
It wouldn’t be so bad. There’s nothing objectively wrong with him. But, since he was someone I could talk to about setting fires, I figured—if you are a young woman, there are many people who want to do things to you that they enjoy doing to young women, so if someone is interesting for other purposes, it can be good to use them for those other purposes and avoid the things that anyone could do.
To be totally honest, and I like animals, it is just about rutting like animals. I ask you—is the best thing we’re capable of just rutting like animals? We need to do it, yes, just so we don’t get anxious, but for the rest? If someone says to me, Lucia, do you want to train to be a great spelunker so we can explore some unexplored part of Carlsbad Caverns, I mean—that is definitely more interesting. I say yes to that. I guess it’s true also—you can do both kinds of things with the same person, but I haven’t found anyone like that.
