it's best not to ask

Another piece published over at Cavalcade of Stars.

her father was a real schlemiel. a pest that tended to be horizontal when anything needed to be done around the house.

she insisted on calling him, ‘pater’. she said it was the only way to give him any respect; to assign him a fancy schmancy name, anything other than ‘dad’. he hated it, which made her use it all the more.

“ma,” she said, as her mother raked up huge piles of leaves, “ma, why did you marry him?”

her mother sighed, using the shovel to shift the leaves from ground into plastic bags, grimacing as she found the remains of a squirrel. “jessica, you need to understand. your father…oh! your father used to be a wonderful man, full of jokes and vigor and energy. he always accepted me for who i was, no questions asked. he loved me, allowed me to be who i am, gave me confidence. then, when bush, sr. was elected, well, he worried the country was going to the dogs, and took to the sofa to mope. later, when george w. was elected, he completely turned inward, giving up on all hope for mankind”

jessica held the black garbage bag open, turning her head from the bits of squirrel that was dumped in it’s depths. she pondered the reasoning behind the one time reason to love, then declared, “ma. that was then. this is now. what are your reasons now?”

stretching out, hand in the small of her back, her mother looked with unfocused eyes on the horizon for a few moments, glanced towards her prized lilac bush hedge.

“he knows where the bodies are buried.” she said, as she went back to her raking. “so, are you still dating that boy you met last month?”

pre-frontal cortex

This piece of mine was published on Jeanette Cheezum's Cavalcade of Stars.

pre-frontal cortex

weeks had crawled by.

she’d lie on her bed, in that dark where you find either boogeymen or the answers to your unvoiced questions, with her hands resting on her belly. she slowed her breathing, slowed her thoughts. the baby stirred, no longer rocked internally by her daily activities. slow somersaults shifted it from one side to the other… something–a hand or a foot or a head or an ass–some part pushed upwards, then settled back into the depths of her body with the same languid movement that was used to start the action. there, in the dark, in the pool of her breathing and the clock ticking, she could swear she heard it’s contented sigh slip up through her pores.

trite but true…. she never thought she’d be in this position. it hadn’t been her first time making love, nor her first lover. what gave her a snort of irony lying there (she grasped irony, to her parent’s surprise), was that it was the first time she’d used any form of birth control…the first time she insisted a guy use a condom.
and it broke.

the result of that breakage dwell in that little sac of fluid, trying to get comfortable in smaller and smaller quarters–alice/alex ate the cake, and the room was becoming too tiny. a foot kicked, she poked back… tit for tat.

her parents. her friends. her teachers. her doctor. they all knew. she listened to the advice and lectures and laughter from each of them in different doses, different voices. the pile of adoption/abortion pamphlets had grown in her closet, each giving their version of what should be done, how to deal with this matter. they all begged her to choose them; offering early term, late term, parents who will love this child. they all offered her a way out of wonderland–this was a situation for adults, not 15 year old girls who liked having sex far more than she liked doing algebra homework, deal with it one way or another.

she picked the two best looking brochures, tweedledum and tweedledee, and left a message on the machines…another layer in the waiting game she played. having come to the fork in the road, she took it. neither option repelled nor attracted her. abortion. adoption. adoption. abortion. they were her version of ‘the morning after pill’, far too many mornings after. whomever called first, won.

she slept. the child slept, too… both of them curled on themselves. their dreams fluttered–she saw herself holding a little penguin or a cat or something with all the parts in the wrong place, wondering how she’d change its diaper. the child had dreams of it’s own–of all the universe had told it–knowledge that was erased with the first breath of life. no one understood the reason babies cried with such anger at birth was not the shock of air on their once protected face, but, in sorrow over the loss of the answers to everything.

wrapped in silence, warmth, odd dreams, they heard the phone ring…

“hello?”

their collective future was decided.

haircuts and dance lessons

huge issues with the kids... they refuse dance lessons, hair cuts... hair cuts, ffs!! huge fights over the phone with the mom. i am open in saying i will not force anything. i am not going to pick up or prod some 15 year old to get a hair cut because they have a mom that is a stage mother. worry more about what is going on with your kids and that they are alone 17 hours a day than if they will audition properly for some school.

there is a court hearing on tuesday... the boy and i know, but, she doesn't. i am at odds if i say anything or not. if i do, i betray the boy, if i don't, she'll lose custody.

moral decisions.....