Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Letters from Grandma's House

And I end up here, in a Mediterranean coral pink kitchen with two plaster roosters and an "I love you MOM" plaque embedded in tacky, dated plastic hovering over various Dollar General frames filled with baby pictures of grandchildren with husbands and wives. And I get this pen the color of coffee creamer and write on this egg-shaped table topped with mesh flower cloth and day-old chicken. It always seems that I "cannot not be cryptic," Abe the Salesman tells says into my laced eyes. He's always got advice for me; I wonder if everything's cryptic because he doesn't know me.
There are two tiny, rubbery white chairs for tiny mud children watching flourescent puppet shows underneath the desk. The same dishes I ate upon as an aspiring everything and a self-proclaimed prodigy of nothing sit in a double-shelved bamboo drying rack like time hasn't passed and I'm less of a no one.
Familiar T.V. trays depicting obese clowns balancing their curled shoes on beach balls the size of a small mess jut out from five unfinished bags on stale chips and a box of Generic-o's. I grab a saucer and a new pen and consume enough in caloric energy to propel thousands of thoughts, yet it seems that I have just plain eaten, and nothing comes to mind, and I'm back in the days where I planted squash and knew I'd be a scientist.
An assortment of trinkets are on my old armoir--a metal shoe tongue, my grandfather's antiquated razor, a meritime head scarf the perfect width to fit behind my ears but before my front tresses that I sometimes imagine resemble anime or Tank Girl.
I'm at the age where my head reaches the tops of the poorly painted knobby chairs and I don't know if the euphoria of leaning back is from spinal fluid leaking into my lower back or if it's because I'm sufficiently stoned (italics, to quote Emma). About ten hours ago, I was in a room in a bark-colored corduroy chair. The scene pans out to Aunt Clara, 57 and pulling up her lime green tube top, yanking at a 4-foot long telephone cord and ordering Aunt Vickey to return Grandma's Xanax. Uncle Sonny's beer belly reminds me of a malnourished pregnant cat. He raises his thick, coal miner's fist, and, trembling, "it's no 'un's business" flees from his lower jaw like a hiccup or when you cough too much after a big hit. Mom's soaked eyes shrink into her weathered face and I blur my eyes on the floral wallpaper and conveniently matching curtains.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Man... people never tell me anything