Dora: A Headcase (12 page)

“It’s about values,” comes out of his pie hole. “You gotta get your kids’ minds right early.”

This guy wants to send his kid to a Christian Khmer Rouge camp. I swear to god, if there was a god, I’d kick this jack-asstic Christian motherfucker straight in the nuts. But there is no god. If there’s anything, it’s an anti-god. With a very perverse sense of humor.

I’d go back in to see my dad but I have to do it in little doses. It makes me feel like crap. The sounds of hospital gadgets. The smell of beating back death. Besides, his head looks weird all hooked up to hospital crap.

 

I’M SIX.

I am with my father at the edge of an estuary that is a bird sanctuary. Marshlands and birch and ferns stretch out before us, divided by small cool streams weaving through grasses and sand.

My father reaches into his brown-brushed corduroy father pants that smell like Irish Spring soap and Good Life cologne – a
sharp spicy amber fragrance that lends itself to a blend of citrus, lavender, sweet spices, and sandalwood I know from reading the label in his man bathroom when he’s not there – he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out and says “I have a present for you.”

My father gives me a Kodak Instamatic Camera. I know because he puts his father pointer finger under each word and then we say the words together: “Kodak. Instamatic. Camera.”

“This is not a toy,” he says to me, and he puts the yellow and black box with red and blue writing on it and a tiny black eye into the smallness of my hands. I feel very serious. Or I try to.

This is how you hold it up and look through the little viewing square.

This is how you pan for the shot--you want to pretend you are making a box around what you see – that’s how the picture will turn out.

This is the button you push to take the shot – here – listen – hear the “click?”

Then after, this is how you advance the film – see this little dial – you put your thumb on it like this – you try it – yes, like that, and keep rolling it forward until it stops.

Then you are ready for your next picture.

They are instructions. Suddenly I want him to say them all over again. Again. Again. Ordering the world.

He squats down even lower so that he’s kid eye level and I hold the camera up to my eye and he reaches his long father arm out before us toward the land and says, “OK, now you can choose for yourself what to shoot.”

“Shoot?” I say, dropping the camera down.

“Take a picture. It means take a picture.”

I turn toward him and point my head and the camera right at him and he starts to laugh and he says, “No, Ida, you can take a picture of ANYTHING out here, not me, not me …” but I take pictures of him laughing, of his ear, of his chin. His eye and the top of his head. His shoes. Now we are both laughing.

Then he picks me up and puts me up on his shoulders and says, “OK, OK,” and still kind of laughing he says, “Shoot.”

I do. I shoot everything in the whole world.

 

A LOT HAS happened since I was six.

I wish my dad’s head would look normal again is all.

My cell vibrates. Ave Maria. “hwz ur dad?” How is he. I stand up to go check. My head swims. I sit back down and grip my iPhone. “Alive” I text. Then I see a flash of beige.

My mother hovers into my father’s room like a ghost. Even I can barely tell when she’s there, when she’s not. She wears off-white pants and a blonde sweater. Trust me when I say she blends in with the earth-toned décor. I shadow her. I stand just outside his stall, out of view. She doesn’t say anything to him. She leans over close to his face like she’s going to softly pet his skin or kiss him. But she doesn’t do either. She just leans in close to his face and closes her eyes, then presses the sides of her hair back.

 

I’M TWELVE.

The front door of the condo opens and there is a tree with white flowers standing there. No, it’s my father coming home from work with an armful of lilies for my mother. He peeks around the ginormous bouquet and he is smiling. He is smiling so big his face looks weird.

She is not.

She has been running the back of her hand over the keys of the baby grand she has not played for years. In her other hand is a scotch on the rocks. Which to me has become one word: scotchontherocks.

His happiness lives in his pants.

Briefly I wonder if he smells like Mrs. K. in his pants. The lilies scent obliterates anything.

I’m in the kitchen getting a Coke. I can see them through the kitchen door opening in the living room. His happy head
pushes the enormous bouquet of sickeningly sweet smelling flowers all up into her face.

She embraces them like she might a child, and for a second, I think I see color back in her eyes. The corner of one side of her mouth twitches briefly. I’m standing there riveted, my Coke midair, my mouth hanging open, watching the scene of them.

It’s wrong.

His happy head.

Pants.

It’s his pleasure that’s the death of her.

Slowly, like as slowly as twelve-year old possible, I slide my iPhone out from my back pocket with my free hand. I lift it up, set it to film, aim it at them. But twelve-year olds are gawky and awkward, so my mother sees me move out of the corner of her eye just as I hit the little red record button.

“Ida, don’t,” she says, holding the giant flowers in front of her head.

Then she sort of “flees” – runs out of the frame. Room I mean. In my hand she looks like a woman with a floral head where her human head should be, dashing to safety. I hear the bedroom door close from down the hall.

Then it’s just my father and the scent of something too sweet still lingering in the room.

Like childhood.

 

I GO BACK to the room where people wait for bad shit to happen. Jeez.

The weirdest part though is that Mrs. K. is here too. She makes sure to go into his room when my mother is not there, when my mom is down getting some godforsaken fake food from the cafeteria or going for a walk down the maze of hospital hallways. What, is she casing the joint? I can’t figure out where she’s hiding out. Visually though, she’s pretty much the opposite of my mom. Mrs. K. has flaming red hair. A lot of it. Like mythic. Mrs. K. has a full, round, heart-shaped ass. My mom’s ass slid
down her hamstrings years ago. Mrs. K. has big tits – like 1950s big tits. My mom’s tits are slowly attempting to hide in her armpits like frightened fried eggs.

My mom knows Mrs. K. is there. She does. But she has so perfected her denial that she can go deaf and blind at a moment’s notice. If I think about all this much longer I’m going to barf in the lap of Christian blabberpuss. I watch my mother walk right past me and down one of the halls Special Olympics so recently travelled. I hope he takes care of her.

OF COURSE the Sig scene is in my head. By now he’s probably home vacuum breathing a table full of blow to ease his wang pain. To be honest? I kind of wish I was with him. How weird is that?

Dirt water coffee suddenly soaks my crotch. I cut a fingernail chimp face in the Styrofoam cup and now it’s everywhere. Christianpiehole stops talking for a second, looks at my wet crotch, smiles, then continues. All Christians are pervs.

Kind of I can’t breathe. Hospital air – did you know it’s all “contained” in the compound? There’s no such thing as fresh air in the compound. It’s recirculated and sterilized. Like in a spaceship. I make a break for the stairwell and the red letters of an exit sign. I stand on a little platform between floors outside and try to breathe like a normal fucking person. I close my eyes. For some goddamn reason I flash on an image of Mrs. K.’s luminous big ass. Briefly it seems light and easy to jump. Which makes me feel more dizzy. I slap my cheek as hard as I can. Youch. That’ll wake you up in the morning. Then I try to smile/grimace like a chimp.

That’s when I have my epiphany. The sick daughter has a sick father, who has a sick mistress, who has a sick husband, who jumps the bones of the sick daughter.

That’s not the epiphany.

I re-enter the hospital compound. The meds in lots of E R areas are in a special cabinet containing medication bins and refrigerators that store limited quantities of medications in single-unit
containers. You’d be surprised how often those cabinets and fridges are unattended. I mean it’s a busy place, the ER. So hijacking Vicodin is a piece of cake. Particularly if you have a Swiss Army knife special edition. One thing I’m good at.

After pocketing the velvet, I go into my father’s room. He looks dead. But he doesn’t sound dead. His breathing is what they call shallow and labored. Goddamn it, why are dads such a big fucking
deal
?

Me and my father in a room that smells like hand sanitizer and plastic barf bags. Before I realize what I’m doing I pull out my Zoom H4n outta my Dora purse. Before I can stop myself I place it close to his face. Turn it on. Adjust the levels.

“Dad?” I go.

Just the sound of him breathing, amplified, recorded. Sounds … kind of like a horse. Some kinda fist swells up in my throat and my eyes itch. I stare at the H4n. Its glowing LCD display. Its two silver criss-crossing mics. The only other thing I know how to do. Way more than knowing how to be a daughter. I walk away. Why the hell am I holding my breath?

I can still hear Christianmouth going. I look down the hall to the right. No one. I look to the left. Nothing. Everything smells like day old Lysol and medicine.

My ass vibrates again. Obsidian. She texts: “wnt 2 c u.” My throat constricts. I close my eyes. Then and only then do I cry. Like a pussy. I hold the phone of her against my cheek. Some jackass in scrubs asks me if I’m OK and I nearly backhand him with the H4n and snarl at him with my chimp face.

The idiotic fluorescent lights buzz down on my head. I feel alone and retarded. I want to sprint down one of these fucked up hallways, find smiley. I want to put my face in Obsidian’s hair. I want to press all of my skin onto all of her skin. But I’d just pass out. Wouldn’t I.

This is the epiphany: there’s no mother here. She’s not there to say, hey Christian fuck, that’s my daughter. She doesn’t want to hear about your shitty-ass parenting skills. Her father
just had a massive coronary and open heart surgery. Shove yourself up your own ass.

She’s not here to tell Mrs. K., that’s my husband, ho bag. Step back before I irradiate you with my voice.

She’s not here to make chimp faces with me.

I run as hard and loud as I can all the way down to the big red letter exit sign. I look up. I open my mouth. “Are you my mother?” is what I try to say out loud. But nothing comes out.

I cough. An odd sound strangles my throat.

It’s my voice.

She’s gone.

I’M GROUNDED AGAIN. IT’S A LITTLE ABSTRACT AS TO why. Whatever.

At home, in my room, I write on the walls with my purple Sharpie underneath my Nico poster: “Dear Francis Bacon: I don’t want to talk anymore since that’s not what mouths are for. I know a mouth is not a mouth. In your paintings? All the mouths are smeared senseless.” I cap my pen. I put it in my backpack.

I have a Swiss Army Knife. The “Elite,” custom-made. It even has a cigar cutter. I stole it from Mr. K. a year ago. I pull it out of my backpack. I open up two of the blades. I lie on my bed as still as a dead girl. I close my eyes. I run the blades over my stomach slowly and softly. It’s relaxing. I can cut a new mouth anywhere on my body I want. My gut. My collarbone. My bicep. My thigh.

I pull out the cigar cutter. All I see is Sig.

Approximately one quarter of all myocardial infarctions are silent, without chest pain or other symptoms. Apparently that’s what happened with my dad. My mom says he came home from work that night, mixed a highball, loosened his tie, greeted her, walked into the living room, put on some Thelonious Monk, and in slow motion, “like he deflated,” sunk to the floor. They say his attack happened earlier in the day. That was just his body finally answering.

They moved my dad to a normal room, though he’s still hooked up to creepy shit. My dad is in and out. When he sees my
mom, he stares at her face, then looks away and goes to sleep. When he sees me, his eyes are all glassy. I can see two Ida heads in his peepers. It’s creepy and usually it makes me have to pee. We don’t stay long.

Earlier today at the hospital I heard Mrs. K.’s laughter coming out of his room. So I guess he’s getting better. Her laugh sounds like … happy opera. It makes me happy and sad and pissed off all at the same time.

My bed smells like teen spirit. I open my eyes. I look at the cracks in my ceiling. Then I pull up my shirt and look down at my belly. Stretched between my hipbones my belly looks like an awesome skateboard bowl. I lift my shirt up more and I cut a very straight line just under my rib cage on the right side. I can feel the crimson line of it coming to life under my fingertips. It’s not smiling.

Now that I’m thinking about it, my mother didn’t actually say, “You are grounded.” What she said was, “The trauma of the current situation trumps your little shenanigans and your hoodlum friends.” It sounded icy. I think that voice kills hair and skin cells – like radiation. Because we rarely speak? She’s totally indifferent to my voice situation. Actually I don’t even think she knows. Isn’t that something? I suppose I could text her, but really, why? My silence? It’s what’s kept the house in order.

I’m a little concerned however. All the times before, I was faking it. Using losing a voice when I needed it. Mostly anyway. Except for that time at the lake with Mr. K. when he jammed his cow tongue down my throat and I had to knee him in the nads. It’s been five days since my voice left. There isn’t really anything to “do” about it.

Well, OK, that’s a lie. It might be that there is someone who could help me get it back … I have a new empathy for that little stuck cuckoo in Sig’s clock. Fat chance now though, huh?