Fog makes you happy. Always has. Especially when it turns into rain. Not the cold, ever-wet kind, or warm keeping-you-damp- for-all-eternity kind; the kind that cools your soul like a giant eye drop.
That rain needs to pour. Clouds thicker than mud, thicker than your brother’s skull crush every living thing around. Humidity. Baba demands to sit on the balcony. That damn balcony that clings to her apartment building, on the alley that goes no where and sees nothing. This fragile wrought-iron balcony is like an ivy vine grasping a cement block. Useless. And yet, this is where Baba demands to sit.
Doctor is keeping her away from gin-and-tonic. Unbearable. You want to throw yourself off that damn balcony, but seeing as it’s only the third floor it probably wouldn’t kill you. And Baba’s such a cow she wouldn’t bother calling for help. No. She’d wait for you to melt into the pavement, melt like a kid’s dropped ice-cream cone from Giulio’s down on the corner. Oh, what you’d give for a cone from Giulio’s down on the corner. But you’re trapped on that damn balcony. Stuck like a freaking Rapunzel. The witch is already with you.
You wither down the railing, leaning against it and scrunching your eyes like a raisin in the sun. No, grapefruit. Not that you’ve seen a grapefruit left in the sun, but you just know that’s what your face looks like. Baba took the only chair, a green plastic one. You’re suddenly seized by the fear that you look like your grandmother. That you will look like your grandmother. That you’ll shuffle her path, be the same, end up old, angry and keeping your obnoxious teenaged grandkids that don’t give a shit about you hostage on some balcony in the Bronx. Your response to these thoughts is to scrunch your face more, which frightens you, causing more scrunching. An endless, vicious cycle.
It’s not that you’ll grow up to be like her, even. It’s that you’ll stop being you. The life you lead is already so lost, so ‘cliché,’ so unremarkable, that it wouldn’t take much. What makes your life more interesting, valuable, livable, than anyone else’s? You fear you won’t do anything to change. To be someone. You’ll just be wrinkled like a grapefruit in the sun, not listening ever, to anyone, especially those without the same opinion. People will hate you, but since you’re old, they won’t admit it. Or maybe you’re will be so unimportant that they don’t have time to realize they hate you in your oldness. But they will.
Being devout didn’t save Baba from that, did it. No. You don’t see the point in religion. Baba says you’re going through a ‘rebellious phase.’ Stupid. Makes you feel more lost, ‘clichéd,’ unremarkable. You stop listening to her, just like she did years ago. Vaguely you realize that makes you like her, but you’ll stop it. You’ll open your ears to other people. Just not her. Old, unable to do what she wants. You’re told Baba was a beautiful dancer. It’s why you don’t dance. One less thing to lose when you’re old, inflexible and miserable like Baba. One less thing that makes you like her.
“Book on Head,” Baba crunches. She doesn’t say, or rattle, or snap, she crunches. Old teeth grinding words you’ve always heard. Book on Head. Your body straightens, you’ve been taught well, trained well, the family collie.
Baba is asking you about Sonny DeMarco’s kid. If he goes to church anymore. You have no idea. You haven’t seen Sonny DeMarco’s kid since fifth grade when you would tackle Lina Patil’s toy poodle and tell her that you were going to cover it in glue and wine-bottle corks. Why corks? They had been Sonny DeMarco’s kid’s idea. What was that kid’s name? You aren’t even sure if that was the kid Baba had asked about. You weren’t listening. Too busy waiting for rain.
Tags: writings
