This is the Part Where You Laugh by Peter Brown Hoffmeister
Authors: Peter Brown Hoffmeister
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did,” she says. “We had so much fun today.”
—
Out in the kitchen, I take off my shirt and put it in the sink. Soak it in warm water and dish soap. Then I take a rag and wipe my chest and shoulder where a little bit of vomit soaked through my shirt. I smell there and wipe again.
I used to clean my mom up like this, but she didn’t ever say thank you. Usually she was asleep, her vomit down the front of her. I’d come in from playing basketball or just shooting alone on the back court, and she’d be asleep against the wall, the room smelling terrible.
I’d feel my head filling with blood and then my head would be tight, too tight like that blood was trying to push out from behind my eyes, and I’d have to lean against the wall for a second so I wouldn’t pass out, but then I’d stand back up and I’d get her clothes off and fight her weight as I worked her into the tub. Then I’d run the water and fill the bath, wake her over and over as the water rose. I’d say, “Mom, you’ve got to wake up and clean yourself off. You have to.” I’d put a washcloth in her hand. But she wouldn’t wake up, and I’d stop the water before it was too high, then I’d sit in there, in the bathroom with her, and wait for her to open her eyes.
Sometimes I wouldn’t eat dinner afterward because I wasn’t hungry anymore. My hands would feel sort of numb and I’d lie on the bed and open and close my fingers, and hope for that feeling to go away.
THE CAMPS
I search again in the morning. I have my backpack filled with cookies, the money jar, cold pizza wrapped in foil, dinner rolls, an old Gatorade bottle filled with ice cubes and mixed Tang. I bike down to the DeFazio Bridge, Alton Baker Park, check the Mill Race, the spillway bridge, the picnic area. Find two people sleeping in the middle of the island, both of them men in their 20s, one without a shirt on, a rash covering his back, yellow pus in the cracks.
I hike the river paths on the north bank, the fish camps, the sloughs. Trash heaps. Find a young woman passed out like she’d been hit in the head with a rock and fell that way. But she is breathing, and her right hand still holds an HRD vodka bottle, a few ounces in the bottom like water.
An old man at the west end of the trails is reading a mystery novel with a blue cover. I nod to him and he nods back.
I keep looking. Where the cottonwoods lean over the river, a middle-aged man smokes a cigarette and stares at the water. He’s wearing a wool shirt and a down coat as if it’s 20 degrees out, not 85. The July sunlight beats on his army-green jacket and he sits and soaks it up.
I say, “How’s it going?” but he doesn’t nod or say anything back to me.
I keep walking. Cut through on the trails east, up past the mini-boulders. There’s a group of men and women with pit bulls at the picnic shelters, under the tin roof, two of the dogs growling at each other, one lunging, then the other lunging back, nearly meeting at the ends of their ties, a foot from each other, off the ground on their hind legs, snarling and thrashing and choking themselves against their collars.
I go back to the river trails, work east past the boat ramp toward the Autzen Footbridge. I look in the hollows, in the berry overgrowths, in places where she might be sleeping, check under a particleboard lean-to and a tarp shelter. But there’s no one under either of those, and I don’t find her, don’t see her dirty hair and green eyes, don’t see the lines across her forehead or her high cheekbones that are always so pink they look like the first layer of skin has been taken off with sandpaper.
I sit down and stare at the water. Feel hopeless. It’s easy for me not to think about the homeless camps when I’m on the surface streets in this city, when I’m biking on the sidewalk or riding in someone’s car through traffic. But down along the river, on the mud paths, at the tents or shelters, or under the bridge, I can’t ignore how
—
Out in the kitchen, I take off my shirt and put it in the sink. Soak it in warm water and dish soap. Then I take a rag and wipe my chest and shoulder where a little bit of vomit soaked through my shirt. I smell there and wipe again.
I used to clean my mom up like this, but she didn’t ever say thank you. Usually she was asleep, her vomit down the front of her. I’d come in from playing basketball or just shooting alone on the back court, and she’d be asleep against the wall, the room smelling terrible.
I’d feel my head filling with blood and then my head would be tight, too tight like that blood was trying to push out from behind my eyes, and I’d have to lean against the wall for a second so I wouldn’t pass out, but then I’d stand back up and I’d get her clothes off and fight her weight as I worked her into the tub. Then I’d run the water and fill the bath, wake her over and over as the water rose. I’d say, “Mom, you’ve got to wake up and clean yourself off. You have to.” I’d put a washcloth in her hand. But she wouldn’t wake up, and I’d stop the water before it was too high, then I’d sit in there, in the bathroom with her, and wait for her to open her eyes.
Sometimes I wouldn’t eat dinner afterward because I wasn’t hungry anymore. My hands would feel sort of numb and I’d lie on the bed and open and close my fingers, and hope for that feeling to go away.
THE CAMPS
I search again in the morning. I have my backpack filled with cookies, the money jar, cold pizza wrapped in foil, dinner rolls, an old Gatorade bottle filled with ice cubes and mixed Tang. I bike down to the DeFazio Bridge, Alton Baker Park, check the Mill Race, the spillway bridge, the picnic area. Find two people sleeping in the middle of the island, both of them men in their 20s, one without a shirt on, a rash covering his back, yellow pus in the cracks.
I hike the river paths on the north bank, the fish camps, the sloughs. Trash heaps. Find a young woman passed out like she’d been hit in the head with a rock and fell that way. But she is breathing, and her right hand still holds an HRD vodka bottle, a few ounces in the bottom like water.
An old man at the west end of the trails is reading a mystery novel with a blue cover. I nod to him and he nods back.
I keep looking. Where the cottonwoods lean over the river, a middle-aged man smokes a cigarette and stares at the water. He’s wearing a wool shirt and a down coat as if it’s 20 degrees out, not 85. The July sunlight beats on his army-green jacket and he sits and soaks it up.
I say, “How’s it going?” but he doesn’t nod or say anything back to me.
I keep walking. Cut through on the trails east, up past the mini-boulders. There’s a group of men and women with pit bulls at the picnic shelters, under the tin roof, two of the dogs growling at each other, one lunging, then the other lunging back, nearly meeting at the ends of their ties, a foot from each other, off the ground on their hind legs, snarling and thrashing and choking themselves against their collars.
I go back to the river trails, work east past the boat ramp toward the Autzen Footbridge. I look in the hollows, in the berry overgrowths, in places where she might be sleeping, check under a particleboard lean-to and a tarp shelter. But there’s no one under either of those, and I don’t find her, don’t see her dirty hair and green eyes, don’t see the lines across her forehead or her high cheekbones that are always so pink they look like the first layer of skin has been taken off with sandpaper.
I sit down and stare at the water. Feel hopeless. It’s easy for me not to think about the homeless camps when I’m on the surface streets in this city, when I’m biking on the sidewalk or riding in someone’s car through traffic. But down along the river, on the mud paths, at the tents or shelters, or under the bridge, I can’t ignore how
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