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(Continued)
Barky and I start to run
down the sidewalk, to be more like cars, but we quickly get tired.
I can’t stop coughing. At PE when they make us run laps around
the baseball field, I breathe in the wrong way, or swallow
something, and can’t stop coughing. I cough out the water from
my eyes. Then when I cough hard enough throw up comes out.
Barky ate too much wilted
lettuce. We both stop running next to an Oleander bush and throw
up a little. My throw up has little dots of ketchup, orange
chunks, and pieces of dark gray meat. Barky’s is foamy with
slivers of green.
“It’s ok, Barky,
throwing up is healthy. Take it easy boy.”
In the suburbs, the avenues
are wide. It seems a mile between stoplights. We don’t stop at
the red lights. I tell Barky to go, when it’s clear. Then he
walks on with his four legs across the street beside me. We get
thirsty.
We have a drink of water at
a faucet behind a gas station. I let Barky go first. A few drips
of water splash onto my leg and make me cold. The neony gas
station light makes Barky look shiny; I see my reflection in his
black eyes. Mom should have given me a hat. At least her mother
always kept her appropriately dressed. There are crickets in the
bushes, so I roll up my socks. They only go up to my shins. The
moon is erased a little, and is faded white. There are barely any
stars.
Barky looks at me,
anticipating my next move. I stand still. The crickets feel close,
little breezes come off their legs and shake the Oleander leaves.
Barky barks at them. He paces in front of the bushes wagging his
short tail. One jumps out of the bush. Barky runs around behind
it. Just as I sit down next to the air pump, the cricket jumps
right into Barky’s mouth. His eyes get wide, and he runs around
in circles.
Walking at night makes you
more tired, because you should be sleeping at night. As we walk
the last few blocks to the park, my skin feels itchy and I start
to really want a flat, horizontal padded surface, with blankets. I
think about the best nap I ever had, sleeping on an air mattress
dressed in my grandma’s petticoats.
Walking across the
playground sand, past the slide and swings, I pick up Barky to use
him as a jacket. We duck under the metal rail into a full Oleander
bush. There’s a mattress that smells like pee. Barky smells it
and pees on it. My shorts must be filthy. One time I was hit by a
car on my way home from school. I was wearing white jeans and had
to tell my Mom I fell at school. If she knew how dangerous it was,
she’d never let me walk home again.
I sit down next to the
mattress. My head falls back against the heaviest Oleander branch
it can find. Barky sits down next to me, putting his paw on my
thigh. There are bumps on my legs, and my hands are in my armpits.
The cold makes my hair feel wet. We didn’t mean to fall asleep,
just a little rest on the way. My eyes close. I keep leaning onto
the mattress that smells like pee. Every few minutes, Barky licks
the skin between my nose and lips. It feels nice.
I wake up from dreams of
Spanish because my ears hurt. But the Spanish wasn’t from my
dream with little pencils dancing on a piece of floating wood,
saying “hola, hola, hola” as they tilted back and forth.
Rubbing my eyes, I see a Mexican man in a tank top holding a woman
in a sundress. They’re sitting at the bottom of the winding
slide. His brown arms have blue writing; they squeeze around the
Mexican woman, hands folding around her squashy breasts. Except
for a few leaves, branches, and pink flowers, me and Barky can see
everything. As the man kisses her, his gold chain necklace
entangles with her cross. He has a mustache; she’s wearing white
Keds, with white socks folded over once. Then he stands up and her
Keds follow him out of the sand into his orange car. They drive
off.
Sitting in the bush, on the
ground, I look at Barky’s face. He cocks his head as I squeal a
high-pitched eeee sound. He has tiny whiskers. I love him so much.
The way he smiles makes me want to see him every day. I don’t
feel good. I pull Barky onto my lap. His head rests in the fold of
my arm. I lie awake and think about my grandmother sitting alone
in her house, taking small bites of bread, or reading by the
window.
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S. E. DIAMOND just completed an MFA in Writing from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and the bills are already piling up. S.E. works for the Slamdance Film Festival, and has an irrational love of dogs, except dachshunds, who have sharp teeth and aim for the face.
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