x Tx - Normally Special

Mister Dean watched me eat the Suzy Q. How I unwrapped it and shook it out into my fist like it was a squeezed out pup. How I let the wrapper fall. How it blew across the dirty porch wood and fell off the side. He watched how I took it with both my hands and pulled it apart, slowly. How I listened to the quiet wet split of the cream pulling away. How I smelled at it, the sweet chocolate scent erasing the faint cherry smell of Kool-Aid and the wet dirt smell from his just watered garden. He watched as I placed one half down on my thigh, cream side up, and ate the other half with my eyes partly closed like when I was alone. Shoving and chewing and swallowing until its length was gone and then licking each of my fingers clean of its guts. Mister Dean watched me eat each half like he’d never seen anyone eat anything before.

“You really like them things, don’t you?” His breath, for once, sounded gone.

And I didn’t answer because he already knew the answer.

“You want another one?” He asked me this in a voice meant for church.

And I didn’t answer that question either and he didn’t wait for it. He got up from the stairs and disappeared into the house. When he came out he had the box. He leaned himself against the porch railing, opened the box, got one of the little chocolate cream cakes, and reached it out to me, just far enough to where I’d have to reach.

“Say please,” he said.

I didn’t want to, but then I did.

Mister Dean watched and then Mister Dean made me say please two more times.

Later on the only please I would say would be followed by the word, “stop”

On the Kool-Aid days, I’d never make it to the mill pond.

***

There is a little dock on the mill pond. There is a little row boat tied to the dock. I guess it belongs to the farmer, but nobody uses it. It never moves. I know this because I put a rock on it once. I put the rock in a wobbly place so if someone were to use the boat, it would surely fall. The rock is still there. The rope that ties it has moss growing on it and a spider web that always stays the same. The oars sit like an X in the belly of it. It might as well be on land.

After I am done looking for ruins, I lie on the dock, on my back, and pull my tank top up to my boobies. I rub my belly in the sun. I pray nobody comes but I also hope they do. Nobody ever does. Dragonflies land on the rowboat rope and then they fly away and then they come back and then they fly away again. Sometimes they land on my knees. It’s quiet there. The water never moves. It doesn’t really have a shore. Its outsides are mostly cattails, and by the dock, lily pads. Every so often there are clear plops that break the hum of the cicadas that like to do their buzz when it’s so hot outside. Their buzz sounds like how the sun feels hot. The wet frog plops are the only cool sound out there. The middle of the mill pond is a perfect circle. The water is black, like it refuses to reflect the sky or can’t. From the sky, looking down on the mill pond, I’m sure it looks like a big green eyeball, the cattail heads brown flecks in the green, its middle the shiny black pupil, staring up at the clouds. Like me.

I think about falling into that black pupil sometimes. Untying the rope, disturbing the spider web, falling the wobbly rock, and climbing into the belly of the boat. I have never rowed anything, but I would figure it out and paddle through the iris of green cattails and lily pads until I got to the pupil. I could lie on the boat for a while, there in the middle of the pupil. Stare up into the sky with it, just me and the mill pond’s pupil. The dragonflies would find my knees and I would rub my belly in the sun. When I felt ready, I would stand up in the boat. I’d stand there in my too short, too small striped tank top and my stripe in the fabric pants and my blanket fringe hair and I’d think about the ruins I could never find. I’d think about how I knew what it was like to be a ruin. The cattails would watch and the cicadas would hum their buzzy heat song, and when I jumped into the pupil’s shiny black it would make a cool plop sound like the frogs do. On my way down I’d wonder if I would ever be found and how nice it would feel to be looked for.

It’s ten a.m. and I’m eating Fritos. I enjoy the word “Fritos.” I’m not sure why. It sounds like a young Hispanic boy who brings me fish tacos on a blue plate and tropical overpriced drinks in glasses shaped like women. It sounds like he would probably adore me in an almost sexual motherly way that I would see clearly in his eyes and how they drop sometimes when I stare at him too intently. He would be almost chubby and I would pay him with hands in his hair.

I feel I would have the emotional advantage over Fritos in that he would need me more than I would need him. This would be a first for me and I would feel a sick power in this feeling.

I know if I asked Fritos to hurt himself because it would make me smile that he probably would.

But I wouldn’t.

Maybe.

Okay, if I did, I would start off small, like telling Fritos to take the plastic sword out of my pineapple, orange slice, Maraschino cherry garnish and poke his belly 33 times. I think it would be cool to watch. I would lie back in my intoxicated haze, under the Mexican sun and trace my fingertips over my tan belly while he did this. I would be smiling and when his laughing stops at around poke number 24, and when his smile disappears at poke 33, I would ask him to start over please, and this time, do it a little harder.

Sure, he’d hesitate at first, but that’s why I’d say, come here, Fritos and I’d smile, and I’d adjust my bikini top so it was not sitting where it should and when he took enough steps to reach me, which was only two, I’d run my fingers through his hair and smile when I notice him readying his sword.

Ages 5–6

I discovered that rubbing a soft bristle hairbrush in a quick up and down motion over the top of my underwear, tickled. I did not think of anything, I only felt. My mom caught me doing this in the living room one morning while I was watching Popeye . “What in the hell are you doing, little girl!?” I had not broken anything. I was not sneaking a cookie before dinner. I was not hitting my little brother. I didn’t know why she was mad; but then I did and quickly pushed the brush into the crack of the couch cushions and pulled the afghan up to my neck feeling a new kind of bad I’d later recognize as shame. On the black and white box Alice the Goon sang, “I love Popeye, I love Popeye…”

Ages 7–9

My dad gave me an old-fashioned school desk from when he was a little kid. It faced the wall in the corner of my room and I kept books and pens in it. The top of the desk chair was even with my crotch and if I used both hands to hold myself up against it, I could do little push-ups on the chair, creating a heavy friction on my privates. I would think about the pictures from the Joy of Sex book my dad kept in the back of his closet. I knew to close the door now, but the desk was old and squeaky so I had to listen for any heavy footsteps coming down the hall. As I got older and bigger, my pumping weight would tip the desk, making it jump off the floor, rattling the books and pens. I’d learn to lean forward on the chair to even out the axis until I was able to finish. I remember my arms were very strong for a grade schooler.

Ages 10–11

One day the desk broke, and when my dad asked how the chair could snap away from the steel base that connected it to the desk part I said I didn’t know and he looked at me suspiciously and I felt my neck and ears start to burn up to my cheeks. That’s when I discovered how to use my hands to do it; wetting my fingertips and rubbing and rubbing. I would think about the naked girls in the Playboys my older brother kept under his mattress. My dad took the desk out of my room and put a bookshelf there instead.