Easier Done

4 3 R E A S I E R D O N E C O N S T A N T I N E C O N T O G E N I S I give her chances all the time – not to make her the mom for me. But I’m just passing through her stop, on a middle track, seeing her go left across my window while she stands on the platform, arrived. So I let her think she’s growing me up with makings of a boy: stripping my wet sheet, blowing a match out near my penis, in training to wait, and sending me to school. I play for time. I drop hints now and then: sit wrong, unhear what she’s said, egg her on to slap my face far enough red that I can dare back at her. Whenever she takes me for a good kid, I lurch from her moisty mommy chews on my ears. But I grant her power to save me a stool at the counter, to wait on me, to slice me thick pound cake for free, to keep my mind from the nearing end of her treat. I put up with her locking the living room and cursing her own weak curses to me. Each ‘‘freaking bastard, son of a bitch’’ gives me more time to burn the more away I get. The inexhaustible smoke is so sweet I live on choking words. The engine runs on time: the early flash fires of volatile vowels, then the lasting, deliberate flames from the n’s of morning, noon, and afternoon. 4 4 Y Once she rode with me part way to school. I stared at her holding a book. ‘‘I’m studying to be a baby nurse.’’ I wondered if we could be together in studying, so I o√ered my one sure sign, ‘‘How d’you find out your grade?’’ Her voice went di√erent: ‘‘By finishing the test. What I learn, I know. So I’ll know what I knew to get right.’’ I gaped, with nothing to think of next for a while. Since that ride, she has never brought up nursing. Evenings I go through motions – eating her vengeance meals, filling my cheeks to spit in the toilet, drying the dishes. On one of my rolls round to the kitchen again, I find I’m stepping o√, frantic to scour the dented pots. Sure, the char will come back, but the gurgling clatter, the pink suds of Brillo, my abraded fingertip, and the coming to shine will stay, like a love note left under a rock. Some laundry days I think of staying for minutes at a time. The warm fresh smell used to be enough. Now I only wait for the sheets and pillowcases: her hands clutching opposite corners as she casts the clean polyester out to snap to its final arc. And before that caves, her arms swing to join the corners – freeing one hand to swoop to its first fold. In no time, she’s dancing with shoulders, arms, and white. ...