Chapter 14

Chapter 14 Nothing says “ “I’m alone” like a bad case of genital warts” ” says Brenda, 38.“Oh, fuck” says her mom, all whispery and sweet.They are on the phone. Brenda tries repeatedly to balance the phone between her chin and shoulderBut it slips off again and again and again. Too small.“Let me call you back on the land line” she huffs. Irritated and largely unaware of why.Just a sense of urgency relating to the relative inconvenience, at times, of technology; this feeling is fleeting and in three, two, one seconds she has forgotten she ever had it and we both know she will never remember it again. It was one of those moments on the cutting room floor of the memory of her life. Like so many pictures taken of her in the background of a strangers camera framed in one of the small spattering of places she has ever visited. There she is, just behind the fountain between the hedges squinting in to the sun, hands on hips unaware of her capture but there, as plain as day in a pictures worth of words. Does it matter that she won’t remember? Probably not at all. And still though, it is sad to think about. She is not contemplating the overwhelming majority of moments to be experienced and forgotten all in one perfect swallow where they will live out the rest of her day, invisible and silent.“My vagina is broken. My stool is loose and my butt hurts” she pouts from the cordless telephone which temperamentally waxes and wanes between clear line and fuzz filled line like stripes on fine linen made into sound. Brenda, one hand running through her very chemo induced short hair attempts to change the channel by pushing the button that says “Channel” although this technique doesn’t ever really seem to work, she hits it, compulsively anyway. Just in case.Let’s leave Brenda where she is for now and focus, for a time, on her childhood. Not bad. No fairy tales. No nightmares. No shark attacks. She made new friends easily and often. At some point during high school or early college, she comes to know and understand the meaning of the word onomatopoeia. On the internet you can find this explained as “the use of words whose sound suggests the sense.” like hiss it says. This takes some time to sink in for Brenda who, at the time, must have been in High School maybe even early college. It was an eye opener.  She would go on to associate it with words that could arguably not be onomatopoeic in the first place. Like Cheesy. Not the dairy kind. The one used to describe the style of some person, place or thing with mild condescendence and jolly distain. But see, this is not an accurate example. This fact would only irritate Brenda were we to interrupt her phone call to explain. She is not in the mood today. There are some memories of hers she is not sure actually happened. She remembers a dairy farm once, milk cows, but this has always seemed like a dream she had and there is no hard evidence to corroborate her cloud covered recollections. Conversely, there are things she knows she knows and will never forget. A name tag torn from her chest by a goat at the zoo; a particularly wondrous ice storm and the black-out it splayed all over town during this time, ice covered everything outside of the house her mother rented for the two of them high on the hill. Without a single noticeable exception ice covered everything. Among the things they will find of hers in the days after she is gone is a photo imprinted 77’ in small letters on the side where a border of white trim around the picture allows you to hold it without getting your finger prints all over the place. She makes amends. Childhood has come and gone. The time comes to lay that burden down and she does so sometime in her early twenties. Letters and snotty confrontations with parents and parental figures alike. Therapy. Temper tantrums. Obsessing about one man, then the next. Fervently. Using words like “cock” with her closest friends as if speaking in some secret and dangerous language.  She drank too much. But not too often. When she did though, her head would spin the room and then suddenly she opens her bright green eyes to remember through that first fog the moment the night before when everything goes dark. One memorable morning she sends the sailor off the shore, showers, pops the stereo on and music sails through the air very, very, very loudly. Yet, she has no memory of this whatsoever. Just the evidence that she was blasting the stereo late into the night and instantly she feels indebted to Art, her neighbor, for not calling the authorities. Brenda spends the vast majority of her time singing to the car radio, TV commercials and the record player. Music is one of the first really hard hitting drugs she ever tries. It intoxicates her every time. It always knows the kind of mood she is in. It never leaves her lonely. She might think that description if cheesy. “I feel like I want to throw myself in front of the Max.” she sulks. “Oh. My. God.”“Oooh Honey. Yikes. Oh shoot.” And then, “How is your stool?, what color is it? You know how much I love Scatology.” Laughter on both ends of the line buoyant and from the belly. “A cackle” it has been called. They are identical in this way. Same laugh. Hardy har, har as they say. But it really was.