Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

"I'll cook a masterpiece," old lady Rhonda said.

"Any time you want, you can come and sit on the couch if you miss it."

"It isn't that I love this couch," she pointed toward the window, "it's that I hate it out there."

We kept hugging. I didn't want it to stop, but I could feel her arms go heavy, waiting to pull away. I squeezed her one more time, and we walked to the front door.

"Oh, and the answer to the puzzle is Chairman Mao," she said, smiling. "My little Crash Man."

I'd like to hear more about the house, he said. The weird thing was I never saw Angel-Hair eat any tuna fish, just the smell, always the smell. I didn't know what else to tell him, I'd been saying the same stories for days, months, years. I said, It was all that house's fault. How is it the house's fault, he asked. The house, I said. No question, I said. Angel-Hair sat in front of me. His left leg crossed over the right one. It went black shoe, black sock, streak of white leg, black pants. I could look over his head and through the metal grating and out the window and I could see the desert sky. Letch and I used to shoot doves out of the same sky with twelve-gauge shotguns. Teaching Rhonda to be a man, he said. Angel-Hair's eyes popped back and forth, focusing on my left eye then my right eye. Letch wanted to go to Vietnam, but both his kidneys were on the same side of his body, and he wasn't allowed to go and kill. How could it be the house's fault, Angel-Hair asked. But I knew the house was cursed. It was the place where the men, all the men that mom loved, they came in the house, stayed in the house, all the men who were never nice, hurting us, leaving us. All the wrong notes she hit on her keyboard. The house is evil, I said. How, he said. Right eye. The sidewinders were my friends, but Letch had introduced us. One day. While we were shooting doves. He found one coiled and purring. Letch knew how to pick it up without getting bitten. Sometimes the doves didn't die when you shot them. They'd flop on the sand. One of their wings going crazy. You had to take them by the heads and spin their bodies around in circles to break their necks. Letch picked up the snake, first by the tail and then he somehow took hold of it right behind its head. I was scared, just watching him do it. But I was also hoping. What if, I thought. What if that snake sticks him full of poison. Left eye. The doctor leaned down and scratched the plot of white skin that was above the black shoe, the black sock. Letch held the snake and said, Come over here, Rhonda. Angel-Hair said, Please tell me how the house was evil. The sidewinder was hissing and screaming. Its fangs were out. I didn't want to go anywhere near it. Look, Letch said, wagging the snake. I inched toward them. Closer, Rhonda, he said. I won't let anything happen to you, he said. The doctor coughed. I'm waiting for an answer, he said. What was the question, I said, and he said, How was the house evil. The house was evil because it was the place where all the bad stuff happened. But the house, he said, didn't do the bad stuff. I didn't answer him. Started wondering whether that house was cursed forever, wondering if every little kid who lived there would be shattered like me. Sometimes after we killed doves, I'd get a splotchy bruise on my right shoulder, from the kick of the shotgun. Letch would press on it. Tease me. He'd say, Mark of a man. I liked it when he said that. He held the sidewinder up, at my eye level. He said, I want you to stick your face right in there. Why, I said, and he said, Do it. I said to Angel-Hair, Some places are just cursed. Letch, really yelling now, shook the snake around, agitating it. Hissing and screaming. Right eye. God damnit, Rhonda, he said. I want you close enough to kiss it, he said. I knew not to cry. I knew that there wasn't anything I could say to change his mind. Will you hold it still, I said. He smiled. He said, That a boy. And then Letch wasn't moving the snake at all, holding it perfectly still, but the sidewinder's mouth was wide open, fangs gleaming. Purring like crazy. I stuck my face right in there, inches away. Its breath smelled like lighter fluid. Talk to it, Letch said. I'm not scared of you, I said. Good, Letch said, Say it again. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of you. You can't blame the house, Angel-Hair said. But I could. I could blame anything. Anyone. I wasn't through with that house yet.

The next morning, old lady Rhonda showed up at my apartment with some groceries and a beat-up waffle iron. I sat on the kitchen counter, and we drank mimosas. I'd been sitting in the kitchen anyway, before she got there, staring at the picture of the homeless man with the splayed pizza box on his face that I'd taped to the refrigerator. My miracle. My reminder that things could be worse. I tried explaining it to her.

"Why do you need to be reminded of that?" old lady Rhonda said.

"I don't know Perspective?"

"Bullshit," she said. "You don't need to know that things can be worse, Crash Man. What you need to know is that they can be better!" She made chocolate chip waffles and over-easy eggs. We gorged and lurched to the burned couch, smoking cigarettes. Then she asked me if I had a job.

"Not right now. Because of this," I said, holding up my crooked arm.

"You should get that fixed."

"It's not that simple."

"It's extremely simple."

Me, Rhonda, not knowing what to say, not saying anything, because I should have gotten it fixed, I should have wanted to get it fixed, but I didn't care. It was crooked and so what? Lots of things in life lost their shape. I thought about all of the pigeon-amputees who hopped around the Mission district on one spindly, red leg.

"I'll fix it soon."

"When?"

"When I'm not broke."

"But it's broke."

I didn't answer.

She reached over and rubbed my leg, letting me off the hook: "You want another cigarette?"

I nodded and she handed me one. I lit it, took a drag.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she said.

"Not right now"

"We have to get you one."

"We have to get you a nice husband."

She laughed. "He isn't always like that."

"Do you want me to talk to him?"

"No one can talk to him."

"I'm not afraid."

"I can tell," she said, leaning over and pushing her hand through my curly hair. "You were so brave, the way you saved my TV. I don't want to talk about him right now Do you want something else to eat?"

I was full. But I'd never say no to her. "Can I have another waffle?"

"Where do you put all this food, skinny boy?" She walked into the kitchen, plugged the waffle iron back in, poured more batter into the old machine. It wheezed sickly clouds of steam from its sides.

"Do you guys have any kids?"

"He said we'd have them. Promised we'd have them. But he always had a reason why we should wait. And then one day we were old."

"I'm sorry."

"Is there a girl you like?"

I thought of Handa. That swirl of hairs around her bellybutton. How she made me go sweaty and edgy and nervous, as if she was an amphetamine. The way she'd smiled when she'd first called me Big Bay. "I'm getting up the guts to ask someone out."

Who?-

'She works at the liquor store at 22nd and Dolores."

Old lady Rhonda jerked another chocolate chip waffle out of the steaming machine, slid it on a plate, and doused it in syrup. She handed it to me. "Why haven't you asked her out yet?"