drag
on a cigarette,
like half the cigarette
and then hold
the smoke
in her lungs.
I chose not to say a word
about secondhand smoke
or any
of that shit
that would make her mad.
Instead, I said I was sorry
for messing up her meditation on the living room floor.
Itâs hard, you know.
Everything is hard
for a single mother
whoâs given up all
her addictions
except smokes
and alcohol.
I know, Mom, I said.
It canât be easy.
My Mother Knows
She knows that I love her
and would do just about anything for her
except buy her drugs. She used to do that sometimes.
Give me money to buy her drugs from this guy named
Chevy. I liked Chevy.
Everybody did
even though heâd sell weed or coke or maybe even crack
to a kid like me
to take home to my mother. Chevy bought groceries
for families
that didnât have any money, usually because the father
or mother
had spent it all on drugs.
When we moved awayâoff reserve
Chevy gave my mom a whole
carton of smokes
as a going-away present.
This was after my father was gone.
I think my mom liked Chevy
but didnât want her kid
having a drug dealer
for a secondhand father.
I have to draw the line somewhere, she said.
And when we moved, she got real moody
âcause she gave up everything
but eventually went back to
nicotine and alcohol
in what she called âlimited quantities.â
She worried about me
and took me to counselors
and healers
and psychics. I told them all about
Old Man and they all told me
that was great. The psychics said
they could see him. But I donât know.
The psychics said I was an Old Soul and that part of me was damaged because of some kind of shit that happened in a previous life. The not-talking routine that I did sometimes was a good thing because the silence, they said, helped cleanse me of negative energy from my past lives. I asked one of them, JackâJack the side-burned psychicâif he could see Old Man and he said he could, that Old Man was standing over my left shoulder. And I turned and sure enough, Old Man was smiling. But that was nothing new.
So Jack said Old Man would always be there for me. He also said my father was somewhere Out West and kind of messed up but would come back one day. He said he saw the two of us as adults drinking beer in a gloomy bar. And there were no other people in the bar. Just black dogs.
And I said,
Yeah,
thatâs probably
me
and him.
But the psychic said it was okay, that when I was an adult and we had that beer together, weâd both be pretty messed up but not totally fucked. And that, he assured me, was the way life worked for most people, even Old Souls like me.
You just got to work with
what the spirit world hands you,
and grow from there, he said.
Isnât that true, Old Man? he asked.
And Old Man nodded, straightened his back and disappeared.
Then the psychic told my mother
That will be a hundred bucks.
Cooking
My mother stopped cooking when
my dad left.
She said I had to cook from then on.
I said I was okay with that.
So I shopped for food.
And cooked.
When my mom finished her cigarette
she took out another
and just looked at it for a long while
and then spoke to it:
You bastard, she said. Let go.
And then she put it back in the pack
and I asked her if she wanted me
to make
spaghetti. I love you, kid, she said. Someday.
Someday.
But she didnât finish the someday sentence.
She never
does.
So I boiled water
and it got real steamy in the kitchen
and I kept thinking
I should expand our list
of stuff we would eat for meals.
Maybe start reading some of
those womenâs magazines
I saw in the supermarket line
with recipes
for artichoke salads
and sautéed eggplant
and thirty ways to lose weight
and fifty ways
to have great sex.
As I dropped in the spaghettiâ
the really thin stuff
called capelli dâAngelo angel hair
hair of the angelsâ
I told my mom about
on a cigarette,
like half the cigarette
and then hold
the smoke
in her lungs.
I chose not to say a word
about secondhand smoke
or any
of that shit
that would make her mad.
Instead, I said I was sorry
for messing up her meditation on the living room floor.
Itâs hard, you know.
Everything is hard
for a single mother
whoâs given up all
her addictions
except smokes
and alcohol.
I know, Mom, I said.
It canât be easy.
My Mother Knows
She knows that I love her
and would do just about anything for her
except buy her drugs. She used to do that sometimes.
Give me money to buy her drugs from this guy named
Chevy. I liked Chevy.
Everybody did
even though heâd sell weed or coke or maybe even crack
to a kid like me
to take home to my mother. Chevy bought groceries
for families
that didnât have any money, usually because the father
or mother
had spent it all on drugs.
When we moved awayâoff reserve
Chevy gave my mom a whole
carton of smokes
as a going-away present.
This was after my father was gone.
I think my mom liked Chevy
but didnât want her kid
having a drug dealer
for a secondhand father.
I have to draw the line somewhere, she said.
And when we moved, she got real moody
âcause she gave up everything
but eventually went back to
nicotine and alcohol
in what she called âlimited quantities.â
She worried about me
and took me to counselors
and healers
and psychics. I told them all about
Old Man and they all told me
that was great. The psychics said
they could see him. But I donât know.
The psychics said I was an Old Soul and that part of me was damaged because of some kind of shit that happened in a previous life. The not-talking routine that I did sometimes was a good thing because the silence, they said, helped cleanse me of negative energy from my past lives. I asked one of them, JackâJack the side-burned psychicâif he could see Old Man and he said he could, that Old Man was standing over my left shoulder. And I turned and sure enough, Old Man was smiling. But that was nothing new.
So Jack said Old Man would always be there for me. He also said my father was somewhere Out West and kind of messed up but would come back one day. He said he saw the two of us as adults drinking beer in a gloomy bar. And there were no other people in the bar. Just black dogs.
And I said,
Yeah,
thatâs probably
me
and him.
But the psychic said it was okay, that when I was an adult and we had that beer together, weâd both be pretty messed up but not totally fucked. And that, he assured me, was the way life worked for most people, even Old Souls like me.
You just got to work with
what the spirit world hands you,
and grow from there, he said.
Isnât that true, Old Man? he asked.
And Old Man nodded, straightened his back and disappeared.
Then the psychic told my mother
That will be a hundred bucks.
Cooking
My mother stopped cooking when
my dad left.
She said I had to cook from then on.
I said I was okay with that.
So I shopped for food.
And cooked.
When my mom finished her cigarette
she took out another
and just looked at it for a long while
and then spoke to it:
You bastard, she said. Let go.
And then she put it back in the pack
and I asked her if she wanted me
to make
spaghetti. I love you, kid, she said. Someday.
Someday.
But she didnât finish the someday sentence.
She never
does.
So I boiled water
and it got real steamy in the kitchen
and I kept thinking
I should expand our list
of stuff we would eat for meals.
Maybe start reading some of
those womenâs magazines
I saw in the supermarket line
with recipes
for artichoke salads
and sautéed eggplant
and thirty ways to lose weight
and fifty ways
to have great sex.
As I dropped in the spaghettiâ
the really thin stuff
called capelli dâAngelo angel hair
hair of the angelsâ
I told my mom about
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