window

today the eleventh graders came into the room in twos and threes, sat down quietly at their desks and began spreading out their work. this is day two of an exam, written by me to mimic and prepare them for and english exam our state requires that they do not seem to be interested in passing. their desks disappear under photocopies of two or three of the short stories we've read in class, some annotated, some marked up with highlighters, most stark white and blank except for the actual words of the stories. they are expected to identify themes in the works and then write an essay comparing two works with similar themes using literary terms and techniques. as per the state exam. dulldulldull. the word theme is explained in substantial detail at the top of the exam. they will not be able to use any such notes or stories on the actual exam but i want them to just get a feel for what it takes to pass the thing.

but this is not where i should start with this story. so let's start with yesterday. day one of the exam. the first two children in the room began shrieking about how they did not know there would be a test. since the other teacher in the room and i have been talking up this test for over a month and have been talking about how we would begin it this particular day, it seems odd they would both be taken by surprise. they are unable to stop exclaiming about their shock. they suddenly have a lot in common with victorian women. three girls who show up together, but only once every two weeks or so, arrive and do not seem to understand that they need to be awake in order to participate in testing festivities. at some point about fifteen minutes into class seven children are sitting something like quietly and a dean arrives with two more little bits of sunlight. neither child (and by child i mean seventeen year old boy) is interested in taking this particular exam or any other exam. there is pouting. there is fit throwing. the first of the two gets up and leaves before the dean is down the stairs. but before he is out the door he works very hard to rile up the other child, the child who arrived with him. that child spends about ten minutes in the middle of the room whining, saying random things out loud, rustling papers.

he catches the eye of one of the two swooning shriekers from the beginning of class and there are catcalls across the room. this is odd because the shriekers are sitting next to each other (to cut down on suffering among other students) and the whiner is sitting not two feet away. their proximity does not at all necessitate the volume they feel compelled to use. the whining boy finally stands up and declares, "i can't think in here!" and stomps out with his test and all his work. i get a call from the dean's office. whining child has gone there, says i sent him. i explain that i did not, that he stomped out on his own. the dean's office says he can't take the test there and i explain, again, that i never intended him to take it there. he does not return.

i sit between the swooners, hoping to curb some of their ridiculousness. we are now nearly forty minutes into class. neither one has written down anything beyond his own name. neither name is legible. child one begins yelling an ugly word out into the room. at no one in particular. it is a word the children use when they mean "stupid" or "annyoying". it is not a word i allow in my class. technically, it is a term our district clearly defines as hate speech. i glare at child one. nobody else looks up. he says it again. just out there into the empty middle of the room. child two, on my other side, yells it out into the room as well. i look at him like he has lost his mind. truth be told, he has been carrying his mind in a bucket full of holes and i see bits of it falling out all over the place. and so the children continue until the other children are looking up with eyes like new parents at five am.

and i say, "get up." the two boys look at me and wait. "get up now." they take forever to get up because they are both children with organizational issues and they need to pack up their bookbags, ragged and miserable things holding small ugly tornadoes inside them. they wander down the hall behind me and usually i would use this time to snarl at them about how they shouldn't act like they are completely incapable of anything unless they are, about how it gets harder and harder for me to defend them when people say they are idiots because so much of their time is spent mimicking that sort of behavior. but i am too mad and too tired and my skull feels like it will crack open any second and allow my brain to float free. so when they lag behind i turn quickly and hiss, "hurry up!" and continue stomping down two flights of stairs and through two hallways.

when we get to the dean's office she looks up at me and i can tell she feels just as tired as i do. four of my students are now in her office and none of them has accomplished a single thing. she asks them what they are thinking and child two, a child i have worked with now three years, says brightly and cheerfully, "well, i couldn't let him get in the last word." i do not even try to explain that the first child was not talking to him. because i don't think i have the energy to care. i am beginning to worry that my parents and teachers have been wrong all these years. i worry that there may actually be stupid questions and stupid people and that i am staring at them.

so let us get back to today. today is day two. the two boys who left in hissyfits do not show up. the two i dragged to the dean's room do. along with seven or eight other children. the three girls. two girls work quietly, swirl themselves up in stories and ask questions- smart questions- that the other teacher and i try to answer in a helpful way. one girl texts. that's right. has her phone out on top of her bag, which rests comfortably on top of her test. and she spends the entire hour texting. which i would comment on during any other class but she is a nasty human being and to bring it up now would destroy the calm and quiet these other children are finally able to use. so now the only fragile part of this opportunity is the first swooning child from yesterday. a child who speaks, more often than not, in some sort of peter frampton/donald duck voice. when he's not chirping. or whistling poorly. or banging some object on another object. i put him at my desk. a big desk in an alcove at the back of the room. i sit beside him. he needs to read a section of the story but cannot. his brain is squirming, fighting him and he has no way to control its slipperiness. if i walk away for more than a few seconds to answer a question for another child he begins to short circuit, clicking and tapping and creaking. whatever child i might be working with glares at him. he fidgets under the glare but does not want to be alone with all those words on all those pages and his own brain.

and i recall reading years ago about a treatment for dyslexia using colored lenses. now i don't recall that i was in any way impressed with why folks doing this thought it worked but i do recall thinking kids with scattered brains might be calmed a bit by it. so i've had a big sheet of amber gel sitting on my desk for a month or two, waiting. i tried to use it a while ago on the other tornado in the room with less than impressive results. but today i try again when that scattered brain is skittering all over my desk, kicking up dust and paper. i tear the back off a black moleskine notebook, snip a window into it with my sewing scissors and slap a square of amber into it. the child watches, hands me glue when i ask for it, watches me fold down the edges. and then i hand him what looks a little like one of those magnifying windows for books. but with this honey colored film in it. and i explain to him that it might help him hold the words on the page. i hope. i tell him it doesn't work for everyone but that it could work for him, that i expected it would help some little bit, at least.

he holds the window over the words on the page and sits, silent. for the first time ever in our class. ever. he reads a while and then tells me what he read. it is nice to hear. no frampton voice. no chaos. just a child saying what he read. "did it work?" i ask him. he looks up and nods. he is not sure how he feels about something working. his finger moves over the black edge the reading window. "you can take it home if you want to," i say. he nods again. he knows what i was thinking in the dean's office yesterday about stupid people. we are both glad for a little verification that he is capable of something. he holds window for a minute, then puts it carefully in his folder. then the bell rings and he is gone.

spring turkey

most weekend days the sweetie and i eat our breakfast out. we don't so much go someplace fancy. we just like going. lately we've been spending our sunday breakfasts at a place in a little town about twelve miles from home. i like the drive because it takes us along a wild creek with a fairly impressive waterfall and, on good days, the largest cow i've ever seen. ever in the world. and i grew up seeing plenty of cows. the sweetie likes the drive because any road following a wild creek will be twisty and full of opportunity to drive with sass. and he does.

the breakfast place has a horseshoe counter in the center, with nine or ten of those pedestal spinning stools planted around it. there are tables up front near the big window generally full of families with small children and then there are a few tables along the wall and in back. that's where we sit. over to the side. this is the sort of place where the cook strolls out of the kitchen from time to time to visit with someone hunched over coffee at the counter. it is the sort of place where folks sitting at the counter are free to go behind the counter to get a fork or a new salt shaker. most mornings when we're there a woman who has grandma written all over her will get up off her stool near the coffee pot and pour us coffee when she freshens up her own cup. like my own grandma used to do at keller's and then later at colonel's pancake house.

it is noisy today when we show up, busy and a little bit crowded and the voices of children scrape the air along with the forks and cups. and although we do not know the folks eating there mostly they seem to know each other and there's usually some visiting across the counter, mostly about the weather. about halfway through our meal the children are gone and the voices from the counter, heavier and softer, take over. it is in places like this i notice that no matter how far north i get myself, if i listen to a bunch of old guys sitting around a lunch counter with coffee, i hear the english language the way it came out of the mouths of my own grandparents, with the south in it, low-slung words ragged from cigarettes and pulled loose from all but the edges of the letters we use to mean them.

at some point i am lost in the sound of the voices, have no idea what words they are using, when i hear a man on one side of the counter say to two men across from him that they look like they're readying up for turkey season. now it seems to me a little foolish to be hunting an egg laying animal in spring, but i know next to nothing about the habits of a wild turkey and the folks who do say it's fine. but none of that is what's important. one of the men he's talking to, younger than him by a generation, nods and when asked about the best way to hunt turkeys begins with an explanation, then laughs. "the best way to hunt turkeys," he says, "is to drive up and shoot 'em from your truck."

there is laughter. not raucous or loud but that knowing sort of laughter. and the younger man continues by saying he'd never do that, that he draws out the birds with a crow call. the man who first asked him accuses him more loudly than he should have of hunting from his truck. this is wrong. both the accusation and the act. it is wrong to hunt from a truck because it is lazy. it's not sporting. but i have seen men in trucks stopped on the road with guns resting on rolled down windows. the younger man shakes his head and repeats what he said about the crow call. and then, while i'm stabbing into my bacon and cheddar omelet, he puts his hands up over his nose and mouth and a great screaming crow flaps out of him. a man sitting on the corner of the lunch counter, nearer to us than the other men, says he uses a baby turkey call. i am looking at his back when a sound i have never heard before, but which i am now absolutely sure is the cry of a frightened baby turkey, wails out of him and settles all around us. and this is just breakfast.

phone

the newer supernatural nephew's sidekick was crying the other day and word on the street is this had to do with me. me and the sweetie. now, i'm not saying folks are saying it's our fault. i'm just saying we were involved. if i had to think about where to lay some blame for the tears of this small child, i'd be looking square in the direction of that supernatural child himself. i'm not saying he did something mean. i'm just saying this whole mess started with him.

it all started with a phone call. actually, somehow it probably started quite a few years ago with a phone call to the original supernatural nephew. you see, small children, especially those with unusualnesses to them, love talking on the phone. especially long distance. the problem is they tend to find it difficult to have long conversations with adults on the phone because of the way adults communicate. always asking ridiculous questions. how's the weather out there? did you have fun on your birthday? and each supernatural child develops his or her own coping mechanism which allows for long distance communication while avoiding all but a few of the time-wasting pleasantries of adult conversation. let me show you how the orignal supernatural nephew managed it.

him: hello.
me: hi! how are you? what have you been up to? is it still cold there?
him: it's not too cold. ummmm.... mayipleasetalktomaxandguthrieplease?
me: sure.
him:...
max and guthrie: bark bark bark bark bark bark
him: giggles
what followed every time was a completely relaxed and normal conversation between a small boy and two dogs over the phone. at the end he would tell them both he loved them, then would say bye. to them. not necessarily to me.

i do not know whether the original nephew mentioned this to the newer one. i do not know for sure that he explained to the smaller child about the necessity of some small conversation with adults as a way to gain access to better conversation elsewhere. but the small child knows. and he has begun to manage this his own way.

when he talks to me on the phone his answers are short and quick. i'm eating ice cream. i played the drums. the sweetie sometimes gets slightly more information. things about going outside, seeing birds. they end with iloveyoubye. and this is because, although he really does love us, we do not have appropriate communication skills. we are exhausting to deal with in real time. in the real world. the idea of us, however, is wonderful. the idea of us is worth spending some time on.

let me explain. this child and his sidekick spend at least some part of most weekdays at the home of a woman i have known as "aunt rita" for nearly three quarters of my own life. if you walk one house down from where the nephew's mother and aunt and i grew up, turn right and walk down a few houses you would be able to see them there on the left, playing their strange small-child games.

this is where the idea of us trumps us entirely. the two boys occupy long stretches of time by making long distance phone calls on objects others might not be able to identify as working phones. this is one of the benefits of being supernatural. you can do that. now, i don't know how they account for every second of their phone calling time. i don't know the names of everyone they visit. but i do know they visit me and i know they visit the sweetie.

i have it from extremely reliable sources (you would be hard-pressed to find two better truth tellers than this child's mother and rita) that these two boys planned an entire road trip (or maybe an ll-conceived flight) from the very interior of the country all the way out to the crispy edge in brooklyn. this trip was organized completely via imaginary phone conversations with us. sure. occasionally he has mentioned visiting in real conversations and so have we. but the planning? the inclusion of his sidekick in all travel plans? there are phone conversations he had with a me whose words he got to chose. reports have surfaced of an angry conversation he had with me one day where it seems he had something terribly important to tell the sweetie and i didn't have the good sense to get off the phone and hand it over to the rightful owner. and this is the part that gets me. his phone conversations with the imaginary friend versions of us are accurate. he knows us. he knows us well enough to talk to us whether we are there or not.

and now we are back to the sidekick and his tears. the supernatural child reported to his mother that the sidekick had been crying during the day. when asked what happened his response was simple. he didn't get to speak to me or the sweetie on the phone that day. and here's where i start to suspect the supernatural child had a hand in the crying. i am pretty sure this magical phone that connects these two little missouri boys to brooklyn regularly is under the care and control of the supernatural nephew. and i am sure that his sidekick, having read the rules and regulations in the sidekick manual he got his first day on the job, knows he can't just haul off and use that special phone without checking first. and i am imagining a conversation where the sidekick mentions he needs to talk to the sweetie about something. or to me. maybe to check about what sort of jacket to bring for a visit in late spring or early summer. maybe a question about shoes for hiking. and there's the nephew shaking his head saying, "not right now. we have too many things to do. besides, i've got all that taken care of." he is not trying to make the child sad. he is simply focused on their misson. and the sidekick, knowing someday he will move on and be something other than a sidekick, someone with his own phone line to brooklyn, slumps in one of those tiny chairs or maybe just flattens himself out on the floor and waits for the tears.

public transportation

yesterday as i am getting ready to step up onto the bus a blustery old man swoops past me and on up the steps. i walk around him and sit down in my seat and he says something loudly and importantly to the driver, then scurries to a seat. this is the terminal end of the route at six thirty in the morning. there is only one other person on the bus. a block from the first stop the man rings the bell, rushes to the door and begins babbling about how he has to get out RIGHT HERE and RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE. the driver slowly pulls over and the man leaps out a block away from the first actual bus stop. i watch him and look toward the bus driver. he smiles back from his rear view mirror and shakes his head. "that guy does this every day," he says. "can't get out at the regular stop right there. right there!" he says this like he expects to have to deal with this problem the entire rest of his life. i nod and say i don't know what the guy's problem is. "he's crazy!" the driver yells back toward me, laughing. he shakes his head again and drives on.

this particular day it seems everyone needs to ride my bus. everyone. stops where generally one kid gets on have six or seven people waiting. stops we usually fly past have three people hunched under the bus route sign. the bus gets overcrowded quickly. people are shoved together. a few stops from where i leave the bus a boy gets on. a man maybe. i don't know. he looks somewhere between seventeen and twentyfive. this, to me, means he is a boy. he is tall and skinny with a haircut like moe from the three stooges. he is wearing a superman shirt and is listening to something on headphones. his face is empty. he is every teenager before seven am. he stands behind me right in front of the back door.

when i ring the bell for my stop and get up i find myself face to face with him. this is not particularly unusual on a crowded bus and i wait until the bus stops. i try to walk toward the door. he stands still. he is not very wide so i attempt to walk past him. he steps into my path. this seems slightly deliberate. i say excuse me. i say it again, louder. i move forward. he does not look at me but does not let me pass. the bus pulls away and i say something loudly to him. i am pretty sure he can hear it over whatever he is listening to on his headphones. i do not use all the bad words i know but i use the ones i think apply to him.

he turns up what he is listening to and i can hear it. i am maybe a foot away from him. we are facing one another. it is not music. it is clear and deliberate and is in a language i understand. it is a sermon but not like what most of you would recognize. there is screaming. yelling. there is a man howling about how blood must be shed, how people must rise up and kill those who are sinners. the language is so excessive, so violent, i have no place to put it. this is not symbolic killing. the voice i hear screaming at him, at me, is demanding the hearer go out and kill for real. for god. i can feel ice in the center of my body, a sliver, growing larger and colder. i feel sick. the language continues for only a block with the boy standing in my way, but time feels stuck.

at the next stop the boy gets out and stands beside the bus. he watches us all get off. ten or twelve or fourteen people. stands there beside the door like a doorman, like he is waiting for a friend still on the bus. when everyone leaving is off the bus he walks slowly across the intersection and disappears into the crowd.

this morning when i get to the bus stop the strange old man is already there, standing about twenty feet from the bus stop sign. i walk past him, smile, then stand fairly near the bus stop sign because that is where the bus actually stops. he glances over at me, frowns, then very nonchalantly walks past me and places himself between me and the sign. then he goes about standing there, staring out across the street into the park, which is green and fierce with flowering trees right now. if you're going to have to wait for a bus in brooklyn, you certainly could do worse than standing where this man and i are standing, staring over into every color green anyone ever thought of, shot through with reds and purples and yellows and pinks and whites in tight knots and the sun coming up behind all that, making everything glow a little. i knit. we wait.

when the driver pulls up to the stop i expect the man to get on first because he is standing in front of me. he nods at me and stands there. i hesitate and he gestures grandly and with a great flourish and says, "after you." i get on the bus. the driver smirks. the man gets on and sits. as we pull away from the curb he leaps up again just like yesterday, runs to the front of the bus and demands to be let off. the driver is already pulled over and stopped before the man finishes talking.

the man gets off the bus and the driver looks back at me through the rearview mirror and smiles. i am the only one on the bus and am his only witness to this daly ridiculousness. "you see that?" he yells back. "i was ready for him today." and i nod and laugh. i tell him i don't get that guy and he says he doesn't either. today's trip is more normal. the bus never fills up. a few kids. scattered old ladies with carts and giant bags. hundred year old men stinking of cigarettes and the decision not to bother with bathing.

a few stops from where i leave the bus slows down although nobody has rung the bell. i figure there is some cranky grandma waiting at a stop who will take a million hours to lug her bedraggled cart onto the bus. i look out the window and see the haircut and the flat eyes. right. this is the stop. it is the boy who wouldn't let me off the bus. the boy listening to people haranguing him to murder for god. and the bus pulls closer to the curb, slows nearly to a stop. the bus driver looks over, sees the boy i see. and i don't know that the bus driver looked back yesterday and saw what happened. i don't know if he heard me using some of my bad words all loud and huffy or if he saw the look on my face while those words were crowding out into the air of the bus. but it seems like he did. because he slowed almost to a stop right there at the curb, then at the very last minute he pulled back into traffic and we didn't stop again until it was time for me to leave.

red dog

we are at the end of our walk, heading up seventh avenue, busy with shops and kids getting out of school and other folks with their dogs snuffling the chewing gum and cigarette butts on the pavement. guthrie has a toy and is focused, staring straight ahead. he knows where we are, knows where to turn and where to cross the street. he is single-minded.

i do not notice her at first but she is a small red dachshund coming abreast of guthrie, glancing over at him as she falls in step. she leans over and noses his belly and i ready myself for growls and snapping. he is nasty to dogs. he is vicious to long, low, short-legged dogs. when he turns to glare at her i tighten up the leash and am surprised he is not lunging for her, swinging from the end of the leash like a broken yo yo. he stares. i do not know what he sees but i see max. not max exactly, but a dog with his unflappable presence. she stares back, noses him again. he does not bite her. he does not growl. i hear myself apologizing to the man on the other end of this dog's leash for something that hasn't yet happened.

guthrie turns back toward home and walks. she trots beside him and stares straight ahead. he does the same. the man tells me when she saw guthrie she pulled at the leash and wouldn't stop until she got up next to him. he says he just adopted her, that she's seven. i tell him we adopted an older dog and go on about how great it is. he asks about the dog and i find myself having trouble with the words. it takes me a second to tell him max died and the words sound funny when i say them. too loud. maybe because this is not what you say to a stranger. i can feel stupid tears scratching the backs of my eyes and i am mad at how that dog still makes me cry every time i think about him. i want to tell this man how hard max lived his later years, how much he lived them. how he went on hikes and was fierce at catch. i want to reassure this man that he has so much time with this little animal. i tell him how we got max to help calm down guthrie and intend to say more but i can't stop watching these two dogs. guthrie never looks over at the red dog but when a woman walking toward us steps between them, they both veer wildly apart then snap back together, a yoked team.

i do not think guthrie thinks she is max. i do not even think, as many people would, that he "likes" her. but she is calm and she breathes slowly. her feet move without any hesitation. she is able to be in the world in a way guthrie cannot yet figure out and i think it is not so difficult for him to walk there next to a dog like that, like what he used to have. guthrie is a dog and i don't think he misses max. i'm not even sure he remembers max in a meaningful way. but i do think that what was important about max is in his head. how he was easy to walk next to, easy to curl up by. this is, at least in part, what makes me walk next to the sweetie. his calm blankets my constant frantic spinning. and i know this is good. the animal part of me that doesn't think knows. just like guthrie knows. no matter how scattered i get he is there. and guthrie deserves the same thing.

we do not have room in our apartment for a new dog right now and i have not had room in my head or my heart, i suppose, but i did not want max when the sweetie first showed me his photo. i promised i would not love him. now, seeing guthrie walking today with that little dog, watching him lose his wariness and hostility, i realize i need to get ready. it is close to time to get my heart broken all over again.

bones

warning: this post contains descriptions and photos of wild animal remains.
also, the deer photos were taken by the sweetie.

i first see the sharp white claw of ribcage when we are driving back from our fishing spot at the old bridge. we hadn’t been fishing, only stopping by to see if the water was still too high and there along the road the whiteness stood out enough to draw my attention from whatever we’d been saying. so when i finally get the image to fix itself up with words and am able to yell, “ribcage!” and then “skeleton!” and then jabber on something about maybe a deer or something big like that the sweetie’s immediate response is, “do you want to go back?” which, of course, he already knows the answer to. because we’d spent a good part of our lives together with the tiny skull of a rat perched on our bathroom window ledge, orange gnawing teeth spiraling into what should have been space for brain. something in my eye can pick out skeletons from forever away and i’d seen it lying in the gravel of a park path, clean as a skull in a new york park will ever be. i swoon over skeletons in little shops selling oddities. snake spines swirling all over themselves. frogs all hinges and joints. elegant little bats defying the laws of everything.

so of course we turn around, drive back to the fishing spot and retrace our drive slowly, with me unnecessarily craning my neck to find the whiteness again, something i’d seen from the corner of my eye the first time while not even looking, while engaged in something else altogether. we cover something less than a mile probably, drive cautiously around a parked truck overloaded with hay, threatening to tip over on us if we get too close. nothing. no skeleton. not even a white scrap of trash pretending to be something better.

the sweetie is sure i didn’t really see anyone’s ribcage. there is nothing on the side of the road but my imagination glowing like bones. but when we drive back later in the evening with a car full of fishing gear i peer over nonchalantly for that last mile or so, thinking maybe those ribs will be more visible from the other side of the road. they are not. the sweetie fishes and i follow a pack of geese with my camera. their leader is a large bird with a damaged wing. feathers stick up from his back every which way and he reminds me of a duck my sister brought home years ago. he is undaunted by his inability to fly and this somehow lets the other geese have faith in him. they follow him around in the water, up the steep bank, across the path.

when it is time to leave i am looking out the window of the car and right there where we are turning around i see that flash of white again. three or four clean vertebrae clinging to one another, a slow curve, thick and heavy. “spine!” i holler. “vertebrae!” and the sweetie looks at me like i’ve begun hallucinating skeletons. we do not stop for these bones and i consider slumping in the seat to express my frustration but i notice we’re driving awfully slowly back toward home. i look off to the side for that ribcage again. i hold my hands up like a clamshell to show the sweetie or maybe to remind myself what i saw.

when he pulls the car to the shoulder i think he has spotted the ribs. “no,” he says, “but they have to be right around here.” and as the words hit my ears the fingers of bone roll up toward my eyes like distant mountains. how are his guesses so precise? this is where the hay truck was parked earlier, where the driver maybe had that same itch in him to go up and be next to what used to be inside another animal.

as we get out of the car i think of bones my sisters and i found years ago, scattered on a wooded path like tea leaves, a story for those able to read them. and our dad, dad of the microscope and magnifying glass and the feeding of wounded baby birds, said it was okay to pick one up, bring something of this animal back with us. our mother, seeing us coming back with the filthy insides of a dead thing did not share quite the same feelings but seemed to know that children need skeletal things. who would we have been if we’d had other parents?

when the sweetie and i get up close what we see is what used to be a deer, arced across the bank of a wash, head thrown back like it is laughing. the front legs have wandered off on their own somewhere and the jawbone is a few feet from the skull. there are tufts of fur all around it like scattered rabbits’ feet. the hind legs, evidently without merit as food, are still intact- hoof, fur, skin. but the rest of it is clean and all the secrets of how a deer can move the way it does and why it is so beautiful are lying right out there for everyone to see. naked and plain.

wheat

"so, you should cut out gluten," says my doctor, smiling. "try it for a few months... well, six months, and we'll see how it goes." she says this with a smile on her face that suggests i'll survive this experiment but will wish i hadn't. and i smile right back. because in my own mind i do not see myself as a great consumer of bready things. burgers. sandwiches. toast. donuts. these are not things i seek out. i am not all that worried. but as i clomp down the six flights of stairs i have time to think about the eight mile walk from brooklyn that took me on foot over the manhattan bridge and i consider that my body may be turning on me, slowly. system by system.

i have played tina to my brain's ike for more than twenty years. anything but nice and easy. and my lungs, sitting there safe in the cradle of my ribcage, those things have been moving my chair when my back is turned since i was very small. and now this whole stupid gastrointestinal system coils around inside me, monstrous, several times taller than i really am, wreaking havoc. and i remember in fourth grade sitting in the nurse's office at school, listening to her call my mom on the phone. she spoke in soothing tones even to adults and i could hear her say "nervous stomach", which conjured up images in my head of my stomach biting its nails and chainsmoking. i shoved my own ragged claws under my knees and worried, which i was then concerned would be transmitted to my poor, anxious stomach the way i knew cigarette smoke and alcohol somehow got themselves into unsuspecting babies floating around in reckless pregnant women. this was my fourth grade life.

so there has always been an uneasy peace there on the inside of me. i think ugly thoughts about my eyes which required a lens in front of each of them in my kindergarten photo. i cast an inward glance at my ears which have been ringing in time to my heartbeat for the last four or five years. certainly this is a plot. but i think of my bones, lovely things i've fed with all the cheese they could ever want. not a single one has ever bent or broken. and my dear little heart which tolerates daily anxiety from my ugly brain and continues to beat bravely. even there on the bridge when i was sure it would simply stop beating, it did not. and finally my skin, wrapping around me and keeping all of me together, keeping the rest of the world out. perhaps if i coddle those miles of coils waiting like snakes inside me my insides will stay put.

and so it begins. i explain to the sweetie that he will need to be helpful. generally, he is a naturally helpful person and i should have left it at that. because when the sweetie is presented with an opportunity for what we will call here impishness he will take it. we cruise up and down aisles piled high with good things, most of which might as well have big skulls and crossbones plastered across them. the sweetie begins naming things my stomach will never see again. pies. all kinds. not just peach and lemon and chocolate cream, but also pot pies, the wonderful tidbits from the folks down the street at dub pies, spanakopita. over the two days he's had to think about how wheat and i are now enemies he's tossed out plenty. onion rings. fried chicken. pasta. his placid nature has all this time hidden pure evil. he has stored up every bad thing i've ever done somewhere in his cruel mind and is now repaying each one with the name of food that is no longer mine. he tosses a box of cereal into the basket and smiles. "for me," he says.

and you are thinking this is fair because you've been reading long enough to know this man tolerates a great deal from me, that it's fine for him to enjoy himself a little. he asks about beer, knowing quite well beer and i now officially hate each other. he asks so he can watch my face, for the third time, as i pine for a thick pint of guinness the way young girls used to pine for boys who had gone off to war. and still you are fine with this. it is only fair. he is very funny. he is lightening the mood.

but then when we get home he says he has forgotten a few things at the store and decides to return. says he'll be back with a roll of paper towels and some milk to go with my newly discovered gluten-free cookies. nearly forty minutes later he pulls into the driveway from a store just a mile from here. he has taken his time and has considered his options carefully. true to his word he has milk. he has even been good enough to bring back another package of those delicious cookies. i tear into the package but cannot tear through the cookie. my teeth feel like they are cramping. as i search the box for an expiration date the sweetie pulls ice cream from the bag. the cookies expired a while ago and i toss them, then go to hug this man who has brought our good pals ben and jerry over to visit. and the flavor he has chosen is a beautiful one. now, there are things i don't have to tell you. you know i love willie nelson. you know i love peach cobbler. these are things you know because you know how i was raised. and so when my good pals ben and jerry decided to honor my beloved willie nelson by making peach cobbler ice cream you couldn't have any questions about how i feel about such a decision. it is good. it is very good. it is also full of filthy, me-poisoning gluten. brought into my home by a man i have trusted all my life but who is clearly a monster. that's right. a monster.

the man i thought i knew stammers and fidgets and says he thought he'd get himself some ice cream since he got me those special cookies. cookies now living in the penthouse suite of our garbage can. and i am just about ready to smile and forgive him when i reach into the last grocery bag and pull out a tiny pie. a tiny, single serving lemon pie. the sweetie's face scrunches up. he looks very, very guilty. "i was going to eat that in the car!" he says, staring at the pie in my hand.