David Sedaris - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

There were pages of slides, all of them etched with ugly messages. Photographs, too, were ruined. Here was me as a toddler with the wordshity scratched into my forehead. Here was my newlywed mother netting crabs with her eyes clawed out. Included in the pile were all of the little presents accepted with such false gratitude, the envelopes and postcards, even the towelettes, everything systematically destroyed.

I gathered it all up and went straight to Brandi's mother. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and she was dressed in one of those thigh-length robes people wear when practicing karate. This was morning for her, and she stood drinking cola from a tall glass mug. "Fuck," she said. "Haven't we been through this?"

"Well, actually, no." My voice was higher than normal, and unstable. "Actually, wehaven 'tbeen through this."

I'd considered myself an outsider in this neighborhood, something like a missionary among the savages, but standing there panting, my hair netted with cobwebs, I got the horrible feeling that I fit right in.

Brandi's mother glanced down at the filthy stack in my hand, frowning, as if these were things I was trying to sell door-to-door. "You know what?" she said. "I don't need this right now. No, you know what? I don't need it, period. Do you think having a baby was easy for me? I don't have nobody helping me out, a husband or day care or whatever, I'm all alone here, understand?"

I tried putting the conversation back on track, but as far as Brandi's mother was concerned, there was no other track. It was all about her. "I work my own hoursand cover shifts for Kathy fucking Cornelius and on my one day off I've got some faggot hassling me about some shit I don't evenknow about? I don't think so. Not today I don't, so why don't you go find somebody else to dump on."

She slammed the door in my face and I stood in the hallway wondering,Who is Kathy Cornelius? What just happened?

In the coming days I ran the conversation over and over in my mind, thinking of all the fierce and sensible things I should have said, things like "Hey,I 'mnot the one who decided to have children" and "It's notmy problem that you have to cover shifts for Kathy fucking Cornelius."

"It wouldn't have made any difference," my mother said. "A woman like that, the way she sees it she's a victim. Everyone's against her, no matter what."

I was so angry and shaken that I left the apartment and went to stay with my parents on the other side of town. My mom drove me to the IHOP and back, right on schedule, but it wasn't the same. On my bike I was left to my own thoughts, but now I had her lecturing me, both coming and going. "What did you hope to gain by letting that girl into your apartment? And don't tell me you wanted to make a difference in her life, please, I just ate." I got it that night and then again the following morning. "Do you want me to give you a ride back to your little shantytown?" she asked, but I was mad at her, and so I took the bus.

I thought things couldn't get much worse, and then, that evening, they did. I was just returning from the IHOP and was on the landing outside Brandi's door when I heard her whisper, "Faggot." She had her mouth to the keyhole, and her voice was puny and melodic. It was the way I'd always imagined a moth might sound. "Faggot. What's the matter, faggot? What's wrong, huh?"

She laughed as I scrambled into my apartment, and then she ran to the porch and began to broadcast through my bedroom door. "Little faggot, little tattletale. You think you're so smart, but you don't know shit."

"That's it," my mother said. "We've got to get you out of there." There was no talk of going to the police or social services, just "Pack up your things. She won."

"But can't I. ."

"Oh-ho no," my mother said. "You've got her mad now and there's no turning back. All she has to do is go to the authorities, saying you molested her. Is that what you want? One little phone call and your life is ruined."

"But I didn't doanything. I'm gay, remember?"

"That's not going to save you," she said. "Push comes to shove and who do you think they're going to believe, a nine-year-old girl or the full-grown man who gets his jollies carving little creatures out of balsa wood?"

"They'renot little creatures!" I yelled. "They're tool people!"

"What the hell difference does it make? In the eyes of the law you're just some nut with a knife who sits in the pancake house staling at a goddam stopwatch. You dress that girl in something other than a tube top and prop her up on the witness stand — crying her eyes out — and what do you think is going to happen? Get that mother in on the act and you've got both a criminal trialand a civil suit on your hands."

"You watch too much TV."

"Not as much as they do," she said. "I can guaran-goddam-tee you that. You think these people can't smell money?"

"But I haven't got any."

"It's not your money they'll be after," she said. "It's mine."

"You mean Dad's." I was smarting over the "little creatures" comment and wanted to hurt her, but it didn't work.

"I meanour money," she said. "You think I don't know how these things work? I wasn't just born some middle-aged woman with a nice purse and a decent pair of shoes. My God, the things you don't know. MyGod."

My new apartment was eight blocks away, facing our city's first Episcopal church. My mother paid the deposit and the first month's rent and came with her station wagon to help me pack and move my things. Carrying a box of my feather-weight balsa-wood sculptures out onto the landing, her hair gathered beneath a gingham scarf, I wondered how she appeared to Brandi, who was certainly watching through the keyhole. What did she represent to her? The wordmother wouldn't do, as I don't really think she understood what it meant. A person who shepherds you along the way and helps you out when you're in trouble — what would she call that thing? A queen? A crutch? A teacher?

I heard a noise from behind the door, and then the little moth voice. "Bitch," Brandi whispered.

I fled back into the apartment, but my mother didn't even pause. "Sister," she said, "you don't know the half of it."

FOR MANY YEARS I cleaned apartments in New York, which is not a bad way to make a living. My boss ran a small agency and charged clients fifteen dollars an hour, five of which went to him and ten to the employee. You could earn more working for yourself, but to me it was worth it to have a middleman, someone to set up the schedule and take the occasional flak. If something got broken, our boss would replace it, and if something was stolen, or alleged to have been stolen, it was he who defended our character. With the exception of a chiropractor's office, all of my jobs were residential, apartments and lofts I visited once a week or once every other week. The owners were usually off at work, and on the few occasions that they were home they tried to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, acting as though it were my apartment and they were just guests.

One such client was a claims adjuster in his mid-sixties. I'd been cleaning his apartment for over a year and finally met him while he was at home recovering from an operation. He had some kind of a heart condition and approached me while I was cleaning out his refrigerator. "I hate to bother you," he said, "but I'm going to go lie down for a while. I've set the alarm, but if for some reason I don't wake up, I'm wondering if you could possibly insert this into my anus." He handed me a rubber glove and a translucent lozenge filled with amber liquid.

"If you're not awake by when?" I asked.

"Oh, say, three o'clock."

He went into the bedroom and I started wondering what I'd do if the alarm failed to rouse him. Which was worse — inserting a lozenge into a stranger's anus or feeling responsible when his heart stopped beating? As with most things, I supposed it all depended upon the person. The man had never complained to my boss or asked me to do his laundry, and hehad been thoughtful enough to provide me with a rubber glove, so who was I to deny him this one favor?