Hello? Hello Peeps. Mama it’s Peeps, Harrison tells her. Are you coming for Christmas, Peeps? Mama he’s coming for Christmas!
Christ—days and days of cold rain, cold wind, cold—mas. A delicious frisson moves through her. She’s poaching on the sheet in bra and panties, spread-eagle so no part of her touches herself.
Okay, bye Peeps.
Harrison replaces the cordless in its cradle, climbs onto the bed, on top of her, and lies with his heavy rank head on her chest. Almost unbearable, the hot press of his body. The live toad of his heart pulses between them. This close would kill a toad, yet it’s she who’s dying—of heat and waiting, of boredom, of playing telephone in a hot room.
Ring ring. He lifts his head to look at the phone. Clambers off. Hello? Hello Sam. Mama it’s Sam! When are you coming over? Now? Mama Sam’s coming over!
If I took a shower. If the phone really rang while I was taking a shower.
He wants to talk to you Mama. It’s Sam.
He waggles the receiver in her face. Heat has her pinned to the bed. She can barely lift her arm. Hello Sam. I’m expecting a call. Could you phone back? She hands him the phone. Here Harrison, he says he’ll call you later.
Her bathrobe has slipped from the plastic Ikea chair onto the floor in a faint. She sits on the edge of the bed staring at it. The mere thought of fabric touching her skin. It’ll be hotter on the balcony with the sun lasering down on the back of the building, on the glutted Dumpster in the alley, its contents turning to juice.
Two drags, she thinks. Two drags or I’ll go crazy.
Harrison has replaced the receiver again. He takes two dirty fingers, inserts one in each nostril. Grubs.
Dumpster stench, fried chicken stench. She flicks the lighter, dully expecting the unmoving air to ignite. A moustache of perspiration sprouts as she sucks the hot smoke in. Below, Roto-Rooter slowly trolls the alley, crunching over diamonds. The balconies of the facing buildings expose themselves: bicycles, junked furniture, mops, buckets, toys, coolers, bleach bottles, mattresses, dead plants in plastic pots. Some are fringed with laundry. Rap music punches out.
Harrison steps onto the balcony in his underpants, bare feet on concrete. Ow! He hops back inside.
The phone rings. She fires the cigarette over the railing. Harrison, inside, has a head start. Don’t you answer it! she shouts.
Ring. His hand hovers above it, feeling the sound.
It’s my birthday Harrison. Do you have a present for me?
Forgetting the phone, he dashes to the apple box in the living room where the toys live when they aren’t all over the apartment. Ring. She takes the key off the nail, steps out into the hall. The door shuts behind her. She looks up and down, clutching the robe. The neighbours are mostly muffled voices anyway, and cooking odours. Ring.
Hello. She inflects it with boredom.
Bella Pizza.
You a calling Bella Pizza.
Ha ha. You called me.
What for you laughing? Pepperoni? Anchovy?
I’ll hang up.
You hang up. Plenty a people want a my pizza.
Okay. Pepperoni. When should I pick it up?
I deliver.
Harrison calls from inside the apartment, Mama, Mama!
I’ll pick it up. When’ll it be ready?
Mama! He pounds on the locked door.
She’s always ready.
She opens the door on Harrison holding out a tangled wad of toilet paper in two hands. Happy Birthday Mama.
Is this a present? She kneels on the carpet, probes the loose layers. Inside is a wooden block. Just what I always wanted. Do you feel like visiting Mrs. G?
Ring ring! He dashes off. Ring ring!
It’s here.
He runs back and grabs the phone from her. Hello? Hello Mrs. G. Mama it’s Mrs. G! She wants me to come over!
She has to call Mrs. G now. Every time she worries that Mrs. G will say no.
On the phone, Mrs. G thanks her profusely, as though she is the recipient of the favour.
When she gets out of the shower, Harrison is on his stomach, half swallowed by the futon couch, legs, thin and calicoed with bruises, sticking out.
What are you doing?
He squirms his way out, sits up cross-eyeing a finger. Too late, she sees the snag of light. He pops it in his mouth.
I told you not to eat that stuff!
Trees, stars, bells—glitter shapes unstuck from Christmas crafts buried in the carpet, resurfacing even now. Last time she vacuumed she put her hand to the nozzle and felt hot air blowing out.
Outside is so much cooler. She feels guilty for keeping Harrison inside all morning, all day yesterday and most of the day before. She combs her wet hair as they walk the two blocks to the little stucco house with the chain-link fence. There’s a sign on the gate: Pick Up Dog Refuse. She and Harrison pass it on the way to the park and every time she puzzles over Refuse. If Mr. G is in the yard impaling garbage with a straightened hanger, or using a shovel to scoop shit off the verge, they go by without speaking. Mrs. G hollers to him in their language: Vincent-eee! If Mrs. G is outside she insists on running in for a treat for Harrison. Once she invited both of them in for something special she baked herself. Harrison shook his head. It’s dirty. It was poppyseed cake. Mrs. G laughed and laughed. Another day she said she’d be happy to have Harrison come over for a visit if his mother needed a break.
She’s waiting for them at the gate. On a normal day Mrs. G wears loose cotton dresses and weird elastic knee socks that squeeze the flesh of her legs over the top. When she’s expecting Harrison she puts on a good dress with a belt, high heels and makeup, as though she has a date.
Harrison! She waves.
Without a backward glance, the child marches up the walk. Wave to Mama, says Mrs. G, pleased that he forgets her so easily. She waves too, then turns her back on the spectacle of the girl. Hair wet, black T-shirt with dirty bra straps showing. Spelled out in rhinestones: It’s Hard Being a Princess. On her skinny bottom she wears a miniskirt of camouflage material. God help them should there be another war.
Wincenty, having watched the unsentimental parting from a slit in the drapes, opens the door wearing the face he puts on when he discovers a pit in his cherry soup. A ring in her nose! What is she? A pig?
Harrison knows to take his shoes off. He struggles.
Baba will help.
No! The naked foot pops out of the too-small runner, almost throwing him off balance. He looks at her in surprise, then laughs the giddy head-thrown-back laugh of a drunk.
He goes directly to her bedroom, to her closet, where he drops to his knees before the altar of the shoe rack. As though on stilts, he rises unsteadily onto the gold pumps, taking her hand for balance.
Clop, clop, clop to the bathroom. She wipes the dirt off his face and hands with a damp cloth. Clop, clop, clop back. He perches on the padded stool before the mirror and selects a jar. She tells him what it’s for. Wrinkles. He opens the lid, inserts a finger, draws it down one cheek, then the other. Satisfied, he picks out a perfume. Oh, this is my favourite too. Her hand over his, she helps him spray his wrists. He notices her nail polish.
First I trim your nails. Do a proper manicure.
She fetches a sheet of stationery from the desk in the hall, cuts his nails so the tiny dun crescents land on the paper. Carefully, she folds it into a square and tucks it away in the drawer.
He wants pink polish.
Clear is the best for little boys. See? So shiny.
Hands spread open on the table, he blows with her.
Are you hungry?
I want a necklace.
Of course. She sets the box before him, letting him unlatch and open it. He likes the amber beads best and looks at her to tell him again what’s trapped inside. This is pollen. You know, dust from flowers. Here’s your little friend, Mr. Spider. Do you like cherries? I have cherries.
How does Mr. Spider get out?
He’s in the bead forever, but he’s happy.
Why?
Because you’re looking at him.
Ring ring.
Oh my goodness, says Mrs. G. There’s the phone.
The lopsided rotation of the KFC bucket is something she’s taken for granted all her life, like the movement of the earth around the sun, but now it’s still. From where she stands at the bus stop, she can see the girl behind the counter, not statue stiff, wound down like the bucket, but paging through a magazine.
The bus pulls up with a derisive hiss. She boards clutching her Baggie of change. The driver doesn’t look at her for the three stops it takes her to feed pennies into the fare box. Then someone else gets on and he waves her back. I need a transfer, she says. You have to pay the correct fare to get a transfer. He presses a lever and all her coins clatter down. Asshole, she mouths.
Here, says a Native man, handing her his transfer as she passes.
Oh cool. Thanks.
She moves to the very back because she doesn’t want to sit with him. East Broadway sliding by, she squeezes handfuls of her hair so it won’t dry flat. Her thighs stick to the seat and every time the bus stops, her skin feels like it’s ripping off.
A woman gets on with a lot of shopping. A song plays in her purse. She takes out a phone. Hello? I’m on the bus.
A girl with ponytails and a Ouija board gets on. She says to the Native man, I don’t think it works in a moving vehicle.
She’d so love a cellphone. This is what she’s thinking when her dream comes back.
At Alma she gets off and waits for the Number 10.
He opens the door and starts right up the stairs, leaving her standing there.
Could I get a drink of water?
Help yourself, princess.
She really is thirsty, but she also loves the house. It’s so cool. She’s been twice before and this time she goes through the living room to get to the kitchen. There’s a genuine fur rug that she stands on in her bare feet for a second. One wall is filled with a picture, a grey background with a black circle that looks like it was done with a paint roller. She can’t say exactly why she likes the picture, but it makes her feel like painting isn’t that hard. She feels inside the circle. The other wall is a window: dollops of mountain, silver water.
The kitchen tiles are cold. She takes a glass from the cupboard. They don’t even have ordinary drinking glasses but heavy thick-sided ones that make water look like greenish pop.
She goes up the carpeted stairs. He’s lying on his bed in shorts and a T-shirt. Cat—the other white meat. It kills her to think he’s been lying for three days in exactly the same position as her, not phoning.
She goes over to his bookshelf. What did you dream last night?
What?
Do you remember your dreams?
Sometimes. I dreamed once I won the Nobel Prize. I went to collect it and they wouldn’t let me in the building.
She finds the book, exactly where it was last time, fans the pages to N. It’s here. If you dreamed of winning this prestiggious prize—Prestigious.
—you are being cautioned against arrogance and reminded of what goes before a fall—
He lifts his arm off his face. What is that?
The Dreamer’s Dictionary.
Did you bring it?
No. It’s on your shelf. Tell me another.
Look up fellatio.
What?
No. Orgy.
How do you spell it?
D-U-H.
Really.
O-R-G-Y.
Orchids. Organ. Orgy. This dream is a warning that your excesses or repressions could get you into trouble.
Oh please. Repressions.
I dreamed last night that I was at this, like, incredible party. It was outside, in a garden. She finds the Ps. Everyone was dressed up and there were waiters and everything. It was, like, so cool.
He sits up, plucks the book out of her hand and, before she can stop him, stuffs it down the side of the bed. She stares at him.
Get it. Go on.
He’ll slap her ass. She knows he will. She’s not stupid.
There’s nothing more boring than listening to someone else’s dreams.
She looks away, hurt. Takes out lip gloss, daubs her bottom lip. He shoves her down on the bed. When she screams, he claps a hand over her mouth.
Shut up. We’ve got neighbours, dummy.
He straddles her, pinning her arms under his knees. His nostrils are two completely different shapes, she sees now, one round, the other a teardrop. You don’t notice head-on. He twists the lip gloss out of her hand.
Don’t, she says as he digs a finger in the pot. She thrashes her head, but it’s useless. He runs a line down her nose and cheeks, dots her forehead one, two, three.
Mrs. G and Harrison lie together on the bed, Harrison sucking on the beads. Lulled by the ticking fan, his thickened breaths, she slips into a dream. Harrison stands at the end of a long line of children. You, someone says. And you and you and you and you and you. He is going down the line. Her little sister is gone, but he hasn’t yet reached Harrison when the telephone wakes her.
Wincenty answers in the kitchen. Stupid. The only person who would phone in the middle of the day is a telemarketer.
Water drips off his penis. He went to the bathroom and washed her off. She’s hurt until she sees he’s holding something out to her. She sits up. It’s a wad of toilet paper. Oh, she says. That’s so sweet.
He means for her to wipe her belly with it.
What’s that? he asks, pointing at the purple leech above her pubic hair. Get your appendix out?
She wonders about him then. He might actually be younger than she is. This is his parents’ house. She’s figured that out. Don’t you do anything? she asks.
Oh thank you very much. What do you call what I just did?
I mean work.
Work!
She smiles. She so likes how he talks. He doesn’t say he’s unemployed. He says he’s unemployable.
Under the heap of clothes on the floor, a trill. He squats and finds his shorts, takes a cellphone from the pocket, flips it open and turns his back, tucking the hand not holding the phone into his armpit. Hello? There’s a small hollow above his buttocks she’s never noticed. That makes two more things she knows about him.
Nothing, he says. Nothing.
She squeezes past. She wants to wash the lip gloss off her face.
Nothing.
When Harrison wakes, she takes him to the kitchen where Wincenty is eating cherries.
Take the pits out for him.
No, says Wincenty.
She gives the boy his milk and sits down herself. See this tool? Do you know what it’s for? He shakes his head. Watch. She inserts a cherry, depresses the plunger with her thumb. Pop! Out comes the pit!
The boy laughs.
She puts the hollowed cherry on a saucer for him. Wincenty eats it. No!
You pit them for him, you pit them for me.
Fine. Two little boys, one an old man. She pulls his plate closer and pits one for Wincenty, one for Harrison.
Afterward she gets up from the table to wash her hands and dump the pits into the garbage. The boy sits with a clown-mouth stain on his frown, staring at Wincenty.
Why are you doing that?
What did he say? Wincenty asks.
He’s asking why you’re doing that.
What?
Doing what, Harrison? What is Wincenty doing?
Opening and closing his eyes.
I’m blinking! Wincenty roars.
Then the doorbell rings and Mrs. G’s heart falls to the floor. When the thought crossed her mind, she invested some hope in the girl not ever coming back.
The old man answers and looks her up and down. He’s disgusting, she thinks. He walks with a cane. He probably can’t even get it up any more, so why does he bother?
Harrison reeks of perfume when he hugs her. The old lady wears too much and it rubs off. Thank you, she tells Mrs. G, who comes after him with a face cloth.
Harrison. Let me wipe your face.
I really appreciate it.
Not at all. Any time. She gives up with the cloth and waves. Bye Harrison! Bye for now!
Harrison pushes out the door without acknowledging the farewell. She squeezes the back of his neck until he stiffens. Say thank you to Mrs. G.
Shrinking down, he mouths it to her feet.
It’s too hot to fight. She waves to Mrs. G as she leads him away by the hand. When they are through the wire gate, Harrison breaks free and runs.
It must have been a Christmas or a New Year’s party. She was having the time of her life. A waiter offered her a drink off a tray and a good-looking man put a cigarette in her mouth. Everyone was good-looking and so was she, she assumed, or she wouldn’t have been invited. A dream about a party is a good news/bad news symbol of mixed fortunes and contrary omens. So true! she thinks. One of the other guests asked her a question she couldn’t hear. Yes, she answered. A son. Oh my God! she thought in the dream. I have a son! Where is he? She spent the rest of the party in a panic looking for him.
She feels sick just thinking about it and stops to light a cigarette. Harrison has run ahead to the corner. He’s looking right at her, purpled mouth and chin, waiting for her to catch up.
His expression is so sombre, for a second she thinks he’s about to hold her accountable for what happens in her nightmares. What? she asks. What do you want?
Am I wearing underpants?
The apartment feels even hotter now that they’ve escaped it for a while. She plugs in the kettle to make him a Mr. Noodle while Harrison, on the kitchen floor, pries the magnetic numbers off the fridge and lines them up along his arm. She fills the Styrofoam cup halfway with boiling water and when the contents have softened, tops it with cold from the tap.
Here. She sets it on the table.
Meow.
Here’s your supper.
Meow. I’m a cat.
She puts the cup on the floor. He gets on all fours and lifts the dripping ringlets out with his mouth.
She goes to the living room where it’s cooler and lies on the couch. On the ceiling, the smoke detector pants, open-mouthed. Black wire tongue, red wire tongue. Heat. Boredom. Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Harrison, bibbed with soup, comes into the living room. Bun-bun and Paddington are on the floor. Harrison uncouples them and brings her Bun-bun.
Hello, he says in Paddington’s voice. Hello? Hello? Hello!
Hello, squeaks a weary Bun-bun.
How are you today?
Fine, she says.
I’m not talking to you! I’m talking to Bun-bun!
The phone rings. She lunges off the couch though a second earlier she couldn’t imagine ever rising from it again. Don’t you answer that! Time out if you even touch it! Time out for the rest of your life!
It’s the old woman. It’s Mrs. G saying, There’s something I forgot to tell you. He went to the toilet while he was here and, oh my goodness, produced an enormous portion.
What she doesn’t tell the girl. What she keeps for herself. Bending over to wipe him, she glanced into the bowl.
A gold star riding on it.
She straightened with a gasp, disbelieving her own eyes.
Miracles, every time he comes.
Wincenty is still grumbling when she gets off the phone. A tattoo!
And you, he says. You act like you’re in love.
Ring ring, says Harrison. Ring ring.