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Part One

1. 

Midnight Shopper 

Your feet are tired from waiting tables all day, but it’s late Friday night, your favorite time to shop at the super-duper Walmart. You find a couple of things you need to try on for size. You walk to the fitting room. No attendant. The stalls are empty. You walk down the corridor until you reach number seven and enter it. You read the new sign tacked on the shiny gray wall: Shoplifting is not a prank, or a joke. It is a crime. Even for a first offense, you can serve jail time and pay fines up to $2000. So please, don’t incriminate yourself. It will haunt you for the rest of your life. You struggle to zip the distressed, size nine Faded Glory jeans. Damn birth control pills are making you fat, but babies are preposterous. When you look into the mirror and see a twenty-seven-yearold bloated babe, you wince. But sex is still your best weapon in your ongoing battle with the Dick Squad, which you usually win, especially since you lowered your sights good and low. Rob thinks you’re letting yourself go to the dogs already. You met him three months ago, but it feels like a couple of lifetimes. He teases you about going to cosmetology school. Fuck him and all his uncles. One fine shimmering day, you will be a great hair artist. You pull the purple sleeveless shell from the hanger, slip it over your blond hair. Your auburn roots are two inches long. Being blond hasn’t improved diddly damn squat. The purple shirt shows off the red tongue on your Rolling Stones tattoo. You turn your tattooed arm toward the mirror, look over your shoulder, and wink at yourself. You rip the tags from the shirt and jeans, stuff them in your pocket. You grab the hanger with the Tweety Bird nightshirt—a gift for your daughter’s birthday—you can afford that—it’s only $8.92. As you turn to leave the dressing room, you notice the last sentence on the Shoplifting is not a prank sign: It will haunt you for the rest of your life. You grab your Cosmos Café ink pen, and write in big block letters: IF YOU GET CAUGHT. Then you waltz with the Tweety Bird shirt all the way to the checkout. You pull out your last ten dollars and pay the oily-haired cashier. He hands you two shiny quarters. On your way out, you drop them in the vending machine. An icy can of Walmart cola clangs to the bottom. You pop the top and guzzle it, pretending it tastes like the real thing. 


2. Daughter 

What mothers don’t know, they sure can’t tell you. And since your mama kept what she did know to herself, well then, Little Pilgrim, you really got screwed. She never talked about herself, what she thought, what she wanted. She quoted the Bible like she wrote it. She prayed like Jesus in the wilderness. The word strong comes to mind. The word enigma comes to mind. The word facade comes to mind. The word frozen comes to mind. The word martyr comes to mind. The word trapped comes to mind. The word unfucked comes to mind. Admit it. Your mama is a cave of imponderable desires. What she didn’t know then and perhaps never will: 


1. Sex is the cake, not the icing. 

2. God’s love ain’t enough. 

3. If it’s anywhere, Heaven is Here. 

4. The neighbors don’t give a shit. 

5. Blasphemer  


God adores transvestites and the inventor of the donut. He marvels at little girls and wishes he were a boy. His favorite tree is loblolly pine. He bites his toenails. He hates like hell being an orphan. He’s proud of thumbs and long sharp thorns, but mourns every detached foreskin. He loathes bananas and snorts angel dust. He’s afraid of submarines and zebras. He regrets inventing sorrow, but waxes rhapsodic about the perfect weakness of gravity. Plus he really digs brunettes. You know the SECRETS OF GOD. Go ahead—tell every damn one. 


4. Exhibitionist 

If there’s a gene for exhibitionist, you have it. From an early age, you loved to shock people. That’s why you begged for those tap dancing lessons. If you make enough noise, some damn body will notice you. That’s all you ever wanted. Your mama, God bless her, wanted you to be a saint or a preacher, but your talents veered off in the opposite direction. You make shit up right out of the air. You see colors around people. Your daddy has that chartreuse neon glow and your mama shimmers with lavender light. Their colors look like shit together. You don’t understand why certain people are attracted to each other like helpless creatures. Carl Jung called it the anima and animus. You had to read that chapter three times before you understood the esoteric theory—that each of us carries an ideal image of the opposite sex in our psyches—that waits like a stick of dynamite to be lit by someone who resembles it. Just like your mama and daddy. Kaboom! Day and Night. Field and Plow. Moon and Sun. Your mama a fresh ream of paper, your daddy a bottle of indelible ink.

13 de Fevereiro de 2017 às 18:38 0 Denunciar Insira Seguir história
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