Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

“This is not a toy,” he says to me, and he puts the yellow and black box with red and blue writing on it and a tiny black eye into the smallness of my hands. I feel very serious. Or I try to.

This is how you hold it up and look through the little viewing square.

This is how you pan for the shot-you want to pretend you are making a box around what you see — that’s how the picture will turn out.

This is the button you push to take the shot — here — listen — hear the “click?”

Then after, this is how you advance the film — see this little dial — you put your thumb on it like this — you try it — yes, like that, and keep rolling it forward until it stops.

Then you are ready for your next picture.

They are instructions. Suddenly I want him to say them all over again. Again. Again. Ordering the world.

He squats down even lower so that he’s kid eye level and I hold the camera up to my eye and he reaches his long father arm out before us toward the land and says, “OK, now you can choose for yourself what to shoot.”

“Shoot?” I say, dropping the camera down.

“Take a picture. It means take a picture.”

I turn toward him and point my head and the camera right at him and he starts to laugh and he says, “No, Ida, you can take a picture of ANYTHING out here, not me, not me …” but I take pictures of him laughing, of his ear, of his chin. His eye and the top of his head. His shoes. Now we are both laughing.

Then he picks me up and puts me up on his shoulders and says, “OK, OK,” and still kind of laughing he says, “Shoot.”

I do. I shoot everything in the whole world.

A LOT HAS happened since I was six.

I wish my dad’s head would look normal again is all.

My cell vibrates. Ave Maria. “hwz ur dad?” How is he. I stand up to go check. My head swims. I sit back down and grip my iPhone. “Alive” I text. Then I see a flash of beige.

My mother hovers into my father’s room like a ghost. Even I can barely tell when she’s there, when she’s not. She wears off-white pants and a blonde sweater. Trust me when I say she blends in with the earth-toned décor. I shadow her. I stand just outside his stall, out of view. She doesn’t say anything to him. She leans over close to his face like she’s going to softly pet his skin or kiss him. But she doesn’t do either. She just leans in close to his face and closes her eyes, then presses the sides of her hair back.

I’M TWELVE.

The front door of the condo opens and there is a tree with white flowers standing there. No, it’s my father coming home from work with an armful of lilies for my mother. He peeks around the ginormous bouquet and he is smiling. He is smiling so big his face looks weird.

She is not.

She has been running the back of her hand over the keys of the baby grand she has not played for years. In her other hand is a scotch on the rocks. Which to me has become one word: scotchontherocks.

His happiness lives in his pants.

Briefly I wonder if he smells like Mrs. K. in his pants. The lilies scent obliterates anything.

I’m in the kitchen getting a Coke. I can see them through the kitchen door opening in the living room. His happy head pushes the enormous bouquet of sickeningly sweet smelling flowers all up into her face.

She embraces them like she might a child, and for a second, I think I see color back in her eyes. The corner of one side of her mouth twitches briefly. I’m standing there riveted, my Coke midair, my mouth hanging open, watching the scene of them.

It’s wrong.

His happy head.

Pants.

It’s his pleasure that’s the death of her.

Slowly, like as slowly as twelve-year old possible, I slide my iPhone out from my back pocket with my free hand. I lift it up, set it to film, aim it at them. But twelve-year olds are gawky and awkward, so my mother sees me move out of the corner of her eye just as I hit the little red record button.

“Ida, don’t,” she says, holding the giant flowers in front of her head.

Then she sort of “flees” — runs out of the frame. Room I mean. In my hand she looks like a woman with a floral head where her human head should be, dashing to safety. I hear the bedroom door close from down the hall.

Then it’s just my father and the scent of something too sweet still lingering in the room.

Like childhood.

I GO BACK to the room where people wait for bad shit to happen. Jeez.

The weirdest part though is that Mrs. K. is here too. She makes sure to go into his room when my mother is not there, when my mom is down getting some godforsaken fake food from the cafeteria or going for a walk down the maze of hospital hallways. What, is she casing the joint? I can’t figure out where she’s hiding out. Visually though, she’s pretty much the opposite of my mom. Mrs. K. has flaming red hair. A lot of it. Like mythic. Mrs. K. has a full, round, heart-shaped ass. My mom’s ass slid down her hamstrings years ago. Mrs. K. has big tits — like 1950s big tits. My mom’s tits are slowly attempting to hide in her armpits like frightened fried eggs.

My mom knows Mrs. K. is there. She does. But she has so perfected her denial that she can go deaf and blind at a moment’s notice. If I think about all this much longer I’m going to barf in the lap of Christian blabberpuss. I watch my mother walk right past me and down one of the halls Special Olympics so recently travelled. I hope he takes care of her.

OF COURSE the Sig scene is in my head. By now he’s probably home vacuum breathing a table full of blow to ease his wang pain. To be honest? I kind of wish I was with him. How weird is that?

Dirt water coffee suddenly soaks my crotch. I cut a fingernail chimp face in the Styrofoam cup and now it’s everywhere. Christianpiehole stops talking for a second, looks at my wet crotch, smiles, then continues. All Christians are pervs.

Kind of I can’t breathe. Hospital air — did you know it’s all “contained” in the compound? There’s no such thing as fresh air in the compound. It’s recirculated and sterilized. Like in a spaceship. I make a break for the stairwell and the red letters of an exit sign. I stand on a little platform between floors outside and try to breathe like a normal fucking person. I close my eyes. For some goddamn reason I flash on an image of Mrs. K.’s luminous big ass. Briefly it seems light and easy to jump. Which makes me feel more dizzy. I slap my cheek as hard as I can. Youch. That’ll wake you up in the morning. Then I try to smile/grimace like a chimp.

That’s when I have my epiphany. The sick daughter has a sick father, who has a sick mistress, who has a sick husband, who jumps the bones of the sick daughter.

That’s not the epiphany.

I re-enter the hospital compound. The meds in lots of E R areas are in a special cabinet containing medication bins and refrigerators that store limited quantities of medications in single-unit containers. You’d be surprised how often those cabinets and fridges are unattended. I mean it’s a busy place, the ER. So hijacking Vicodin is a piece of cake. Particularly if you have a Swiss Army knife special edition. One thing I’m good at.

After pocketing the velvet, I go into my father’s room. He looks dead. But he doesn’t sound dead. His breathing is what they call shallow and labored. Goddamn it, why are dads such a big fucking deal ?

Me and my father in a room that smells like hand sanitizer and plastic barf bags. Before I realize what I’m doing I pull out my Zoom H4n outta my Dora purse. Before I can stop myself I place it close to his face. Turn it on. Adjust the levels.

“Dad?” I go.

Just the sound of him breathing, amplified, recorded. Sounds … kind of like a horse. Some kinda fist swells up in my throat and my eyes itch. I stare at the H4n. Its glowing LCD display. Its two silver criss-crossing mics. The only other thing I know how to do. Way more than knowing how to be a daughter. I walk away. Why the hell am I holding my breath?