I Have a Dream

Quote.

I’m supposed to “choose two texts and juxtapose them” for English class. It can be a poem and a play. It can be a story and nonfiction. Take this, Miss Black:

I’m sleeping in the baftub again. But it’s weird to sleep in it alone. Zane used to fluff up all my hair (when I still had it) and sleep on it like a pillow. He used to chew on it too. I’d wake up with spit in it. I would run the sink water. It would wash away all the sounds from my mother’s bedroom. Black noise. (Yes, black. Why white people got to get credit for everything good?) But my mother would come in here half-necked and tell me to turn the damn water off unless I was going to pay the damn bill.

I close the tub drain and spread out a bunch of sweatshirts. I don’t have Zane anymore—or my hair—to keep me warm. Why sweatshirts? Because the only cooties on them is from me. And Daddy. My ear presses against the cold porcelain. I don’t move though. I like the way it sounds like a ocean. I can hear my breathing. I can hear my blood in my ears. NOTHING else.

Falling asleep for me is usually like Wile E. Coyote accidentally walking off a cliff. You know how he kind of stands there mid-air and plummets to the rocks below? But this time, I don’t fall, I float.

I have a dream.

Holy shit.

In the dream, I’m still in the baftub. The water is running but my mother don’t hear it. The whole room is filling up but none of the water is leaking under the door. The tub starts to float. I look up. There is no ceiling. I don’t know why. It’s a dream, stupit. I see the moon. The baftub bobs with the current. It bobs against the wall. The wall begins to crumble.

“Open the door!”

Dream deferred.

What?

“Open the door!”

“Why?” I pop the lock.

My mother barges in. She starts rifling through the medicine cabinet. Digging through drawers, yanking them out.

“Seriously, Ma, you got the rest of the house. Can’t you just let me sleep?”

“What?” she says all groggy as if she’s seeing me through a mist. “Fuck, Macy. Why do you have to sleep in here? Why can’t you just sleep on the goddamned couch?”

“You know why.” I lay back down. “Just leave me alone.”

Tampons hit me in the head. “What,” my mother says, “so you could tell CPS you sleep in a baftub?”

“I don’t tell them nothing, Ma!” I throw the tampons back.

From the bedroom: “Hey girl, where you at? You got the pills?”

Me: “Get out!”

She turns the shower on and high-tails it.

This time I go to get a chair from the kitchen. My mother’s phone is on the counter. I call Alma. She don’t answer. I drag the chair into the bafroom and push it against the door handle. I press my ear against the tub. I’m scared the ocean sound will be gone but it is still there. I breathe in and out because that is good. I can have the ocean anytime now. Macy is cold because she is dripping wet. Yes, Macy. Her. She is cold. I’m not. She’s shivering in a baftub. I’m in a boat. I’m moon-bathing, bitches.

I have a dream.

Block by block the bafroom wall comes down. There is a big-ass tunnel. A current is pulling me forward through the hole. Ahead there are lights. My boat gets pulled toward them. I’m moving faster and faster but I’m not scared. The boat almost turns over but I hold on. Up ahead I see shore. There is a little boy standing there waiting for me.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Dream deferred.

WTF? Are my mother and her friend doing it against the bafroom door?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore?

Then run?

Him: “Whore. You’re a whore! Say it!”

 

BANG! BANG! BANG!

So yeah it stinks like rotten meat

Against the door it makes a beat

And yeah her sugar it crusts

her syrup it thrusts thrusts thrusts

and I will sag with every load

 

UNTIL I EXPLODE