In my father’s building, there was a daily ritual. The old ladies from the building would gather in the lobby and wait for the mailman, saying things like, “I hope he doesn’t come as late as he did yesterday,” or “Remember that Thursday in October when he didn’t come at all?”
I was so used to being scared and running by then, I don’t know, guess I just always seen it coming. We spent a lot of years running, Ma and me. Start out seeking something better, that life we never had, just to hightail it in the night when that life went and turned its teeth on us.
Country living, living in nature’s bountiful bosoms, being a country girl, pastoral delights and splendid nights with stars shining bright.
Don’t, just don’t shovel that hot, rancid, fly infested, maggot breeding horseshit in my direction. I been there and done that. I sat on that milk stool. I swam in that polluted pool. I slept on the straw mattress with the rats and fleas. I churned butter, collected eggs, slopped the hogs, fed the chickens, shoveled the shit, planted the garden, weeded the rows, gathered the crops, canned, and sewed.
And, I cooked, cleaned, snapped beans, made beds and did the laundry in my spare time.
My country, the country that I lived in, was more than a place in space and time it was an evil disposition of heart and mind.
Reader Advisory:
The Union of Pennames, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters (UPIFFC) now requires the anonymous employer of an associate penname to give the latter a yearly performance review. This event usually occurs in the sort of establishment where the wait staff all have the personalities of unpurged butter clams. As it goes with PR’s throughout the observable universe, the employer typically leads off with the employee’s strong points as a method of Trojan-horsing in darker observations. Sadly, for the employer, the penname has access to each and every of the former’s thoughts while the employer remains as clueless about the penname’s wicked ways as ever. To put it plainly, the whole thing goes to hell from the get go, and the only thing that I as Leila Allison’s employer get from our conversation is a tingling headache and bewilderment over the fact that my alias has the social graces of an irked thirteen-year-old child.
However, I may have gained something useful from this year’s face-to-face. I now present the missive that my penname scrawled on a stack of cocktail napkins not long after she dropped the pretense of pretending to listen to me—But I’ll give her this much: she writes awfully damn fast. Unfortunately, my headache has prevented me from reading it; and it may also be true that I only wish for it to be known that I have had nothing to do with its construction, just in case it too goes to hell from the get go.
Respectfully,
Ms. Allison’s Employer
The Eastern sky lit up for hours this time. Smoke billowing out of whatever building had been bottle-bombed and the stench of charred meat reaching for the wind. Cajoling it to carry the warning to every survivor still making their way towards a pre-recorded radio message or following hopeful, dusty signs carved into tree trunks and telephone poles.
Her fingers dripped with sticky syrup. A warm breeze blew in from her kitchen windows and she closed her eyes for a moment. One perfect moment. Opening her eyes, she sucked one finger after another, savoring the tart sweetness, then dipped one finger in the pot for one more taste. The plum jam was perfect, as she knew it would be.
The croissant had just the right crispness to it.
” Yes, they brought the towels and thank you for doing that, but I need soap for the sink.”
The views from the 22nd floor were stunning. From the East you could see the Silver Cup Studios sign and from the other side of the atrium you could see the Empire State Building already lit up red and green for the holidays, vibrating amidst a vast New York Cityscape.
I wanted to be cosmopolitan, so I redecorated my veranda using a sea green, vinyl bus seat, and I hung a Chinese lantern as my muse. I drank only the bitterest coffee sent directly from Jamaica through a friend of a friend’s ex.
I felt no different.
Continue reading “A Cosmopolitan Epiphany Regarding a Certain Cecil by E.K.”
The tiny clearing off to the side was cooler than the obscenely voluminous garden with its organized cacophony of colors – massed vermilions and oranges alongside indigos, violets, and fuchsias, eye-popping yellows and the occasional calm of white or cream. Cedars bent over an exquisite pool, granite lined, with water more crystalline than glass. Almost lost between moss-padded banks that nearly met, a miniscule stream fed the pool, dribbling over mammoth slate slabs stacked like pricey leather-bound books resting on deep emerald velvet.
Vernon looked at the menu. He saw
Breakfast Special
$2.95
in a box in the lower left-hand corner. That included orange juice, eggs, grits, coffee and a pastry. But he was in the mood for a proper chowdown. A matronly waitress came over and said, “What’ll it be, sweetie?” Vernon said, “I’ll have the pancakes, then the eggs and sausages. Fried eggs. What kind of pie you got?” The waitress said, “Apple, cherry, blueberry, pecan, lemon meringue.” Vernon said, “Yeah, give me blueberry – no, no, make that lemon meringue.” The waitress poured his coffee and brought him the pancakes with a small pitcher of maple syrup and a few pats of butter in a dish.
