Page 35 - WTP Vol. XII #2

mother is delusional at times, so who knows. I’ve never met my grandmother, or my father for that matter, so I couldn’t say one way or another. An al- ternative explanation occurred to me one day, when my science teacher, Mrs. Boyre was talking about Charles Darwin and survival of the fittest and all that. It hit me that maybe this sixth sense of mine might be more of an adaptation, born from a basic will to sur- vive. Maybe, since my mother had no sense, I tapped into something extra, like as compensation, the way they say blind people hear better. I prefer this expla- nation to my mother’s inheritance theory, because, you know what? Fuck owing relatives you never met before, especially when they never show up to do shit for anyone.
~
At the Fremont Street newsstand, David buys three different papers. He pays because a) he knows I don’t have money for that sort of thing and b) it was his idea to get them, so it’s fair. “Has your mom called at all?” he asks, putting the change in his pocket.
“Not this time,” I say. We’re heading back home now, walking briskly, taking the shortcut through Doyle Hollis Park, past the basketball courts dotted with ju- nior high kids shooting hoops. “She’s probably caught up with a new boyfriend,” I say. “But this is the longest she’s ever been gone.”
“Should you call the police?” He asks. That’s the way David is. He asks and he listens. He doesn’t always as- sume he knows better.
“I don’t want Family Services getting into our busi- ness,” I tell him. He nods. He knows we’ve been tangled up with them before. Someone called the police once when they heard my mother screaming and breaking plates. We have plastic plates now.
When David and I get back home we sit cross legged on the steps, and spread the papers out around us. The front pages are plastered with pictures of John and Yoko and the scene of the crime. John lived in Manhattan, New York, in a building called “The Da- kota,” which is described as “a luxury accommodation, popular among wealthy artists.” I didn’t know artists could be wealthy. My mother is an artist but we live in Emeryville, California in the basement of a rent-con- trolled triple decker. We’re not completely penniless. When my mother is feeling good, she goes to the art shows in Berkeley and can usually sell a few paintings a month. Most of them depict rivers or ponds. Water- sheds, she calls them. Sale days are my mother’s best days. She comes home with shopping bags brimming
with our favorite foods, Count Chocula for Carol and Steak-umms for me. She fans the leftover bills in her hand like playing cards, and waves them over her head, twirling around the kitchen like a flamenco dancer. Then we usually send out for pizza or she makes us her famous huevos rancheros. She’s talented, my mother, everyone says that, and her paintings sell for
a decent price, but it’s not nearly enough to pay the bills. Government subsidies help—cardboard boxes filled with brick-sized blocks of WIC cheese (picture generic Velveeta) and packets of powdered milk. Add to that whatever my mother’s latest boyfriend decides to throw our way. My mother always has a boyfriend. She’s beautiful and looks exactly like Goldie Hawn dur- ing her Laugh-In days, a wide-eyed Tinkerbell kind of look, with the same giggle as Goldie too. At first these boyfriends of hers can’t believe their good fortune, being with someone like my mother. They make what my mother calls “grand romantic gestures,” which she loves. They fill the apartment with bouquets of roses or take us all out to a four-star restaurant for lobster.
I wish they’d take us to the dentist or a laundromat, but whatever. The gestures never last anyway, because eventually, my mother lets her crazy out and the men leave us as suddenly as they appeared. It’s important to know that my mother can’t not let her crazy out. The rants that go on and on. The taking apart of telephones she’s convinced are bugged. These things are going
to happen. Once you accept that, you’re much bet-
ter off. It’s the resistance of pain that causes the most suffering. That’s Buddhism, or some shit like that. My mother took us to an Ashram in Berkeley once and we met a guy who explained it all.
~
David holds up a paper and reads aloud. “John was shot in the back multiple times and was declared dead at the hospital, his wounds too serious to survive.”
“He was blindsided, that was the problem,” I said. “It’s hard to protect yourself from something you’re not expecting.”
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