Delight and Liberty
Sitting cross-legged -- he knows it as Indian-style -- on the blue, formerly purple, formerly plush, formerly lacking a large orange stain where last summer Rob spilled the glass containing the moist fabric insides of a Crayola marker and water... The carpet is still purple around the edges and even soft deep in the closet where Rob hides himself in piles of putrid clothing, rancid stuffed animals and Go Bots that dig into his back. He hopes, lying there, that someone (anyone) will come looking for him, or that someone (anyone) will open the door only to have him startlingly leap out. But occasionally he hopes to lose himself, to be lost entirely in this dark warmth and relative comfort. But eventually the quiet and utter blackness get to him, to the him that cannot escape, cannot evaporate, so that he struggles to bring his clumsy, flabby form erect and pushes through the closet door. He shepherds his feet past skidmarked briefs, tiptoes amid jagged plastic -- in yellow, green, blue, red: opaques and translucents -- ball gingerly setting upon bare, soiled rug, heel forever airborne. This way he carefully treads to the sixth pie piece of open carpet before the door where we find him now, sitting cross-legged, pressing together plastics.
Ha ha, yes, I have the black sword. Perfect, yes, the black sword. ["Raaah-berrrt,"] So I'll just ["time to"] climb up into ["set the"] this black saddle ["taaay-buhl"] on my black horse here, wearing my nice black armor, the largest black feather in my black helmet. ["Robert!"] An altogether convincing black knight.
Henchman. You there. Grab that black axe, yes, I know. Not nearly as impressive as the black sword, but it will have to do, won't it? ["Robert"] And round ["Dean"] up some ["Sens-"] archers ["a-"] and ["baugh!"] spearmen. Great, great, let's go.
"Robert! I told you five minutes ago to set--"
Slamcrack goes the door.
"Ah ha ha! oh!"
"Ah hahahaha! Oh no! Ah hahahaha!"
Her laughter dopplers down the hall as Rob sobs loudly, gripping his left shoulder. Her door slams. He lays upon his right side, curled fetal. His eyes have moistened and crimsoned.
"Oh ho ho, ah ha ha."
Written, his pain is indistinguishable from her laughter, which he can hear though the door until she stifles it, opens the door and plods back down the hall.
"I'm sorry, Robert."
On the floor, rocking him now in her arms, she cannot resist this giggle and that chuckle. Yet she is crying.
"Well, Robbie," she wipes her eyes and smoothes his hair, "it's time to set the table." Quickly down the hall she leaves.
Holy-socked feet swing down from top bunk, shaking lofty frame. The other boy pushes slightly from the mattress, dropping his thin self quietly to the floor. "I hate them so much," he says, pausing before he slides past Rob out the still open door.
Rob swirls in his wake, bailing water. Redfaced, limbshook, he clutches at the doorknob, righting himself. He steps carefully over the cold metal strip of threshold and closes the difficult door tightly behind him. He steps, calculated, careful, three steps and through a doorway to the left onto cold clinging tile. Through hazed left corner he sees himself and turns, turns on the faucet.
Rob stares into the rushing, bubbling water, is almost soothed. He cups his hands beneath the cold gush, studies the sparkling overflow as his fingers numb. Slowly, he leans forward and down. Suddenly -- it is even a surprise to him -- he splashes his face with the water. And again. And again. He blankly stares at his dripping reflection until his focus lazily shifts to somewhere beyond and behind the mirror. Setting sunlight beams acutely through the window to his right. The forest bath towel finds its way from the shelf to his hands. Where his face hoped for newly washed solace, it finds only permanently mildewed abrasion. What should be genteel softness bristles. This is no warm embrace, but a chafing, a gnawing.
He's gripping the towel. Clutching the towel and trembling. Jerking, rattling, spinning into the hall goes Rob, towel behind him now. Against but not through the wall goes his right shoulder crashing to balance this pain left. He scrunches his bare toes. Audibly, laboriously exhales, "Okay."
Inhales, "O-" exhales, "-kay."
"Okay. Here we go." Here he goes, playfully down the hall, tottering back and forth from wall to wall. Pushing forward, humming, tuneless reverberation from the coming stairwell.
A man's voice climbs the stairs, echoed sawblade, cutting, "John, do the trash."
Rob sits down at the top of the stairs. He slides his bottom forward to crash onto the first stairstep. The creak of the thinly carpeted floor sonorously fills the well. He takes each step this way, smiling now. He reaches the landing where dust particles swirl in the still resounding racket, playing round about the sun's blushing light. Rob swats at the sunlit dust once and twice.
At once ground grease and tomato acid scramble into Rob's nose. After them he sends a thumb; a struggle ensues. Nail grapples with nostril flesh and allied hairs for supremacy over fugitive rife marshes. Thumb is victor, produces the outlaw; rubbed between thumb and forefinger, yellow becomes green becomes black, is castoff into the corner.
Abruptly, "Robert," the oldest sister snaps his attention, "you better get down here," down the second flight over her shoulder through the off-kilter screen door, past the porch, beneath the magnolia, into the flowerbed, onto a pansy, about which a bumblebee darts; Rob shivers, then laughs once.
"Yeah, come on Rob," echoes the older sister from living room couch, green formerly brown, enviable perch.
The oldest is getting larger, blocking bee, flower, porch, door, from view. "What are you laughing about? Come on, Rob," her right arm reaching for his left wrist, "get up." And she has him by both wrists, is pulling. And he sits uncooperatively, is resisting passively.
"No!" he half shouts, half whispers.
The brother, dangling, makes strange fruit for the sister tree, now thrashing, swinging and repelling.
"Stop it! Brat!"
"Let! Go!"
Kicking, struggling, teetering, the four-legged, no-armed beast might topple, tumble down from landing to crash landing, but that sister plants a foot on the second step and pushes brother to dirt and lime carpeted ground, and through teeth, "Rob. Stop. It. Right. Now."
She asks, "okay?"
"Okay," he says.
"Okay," says he.
"Okay." says she. The sister picks up herself and then her brother. "Let's go." She ruffles his mop; in this tangled jungle, amid pooled oil, through dandruff choked air, a lone, intrepid louse scurries -- not fast enough -- to avoid this pink nail-polished meteor. Strike.
She takes Rob by the wrist, then hand, then fingers, loosely. Quickly, loudly they descend. She leads Rob past steps of shoe boxes, old mail and stray socks, into the living room, between the television and the older sister. One glares, the other blares: "The facts of life are all about you, you-oo-oo-oo-ooh!"
Through the dining room she leads him: The man sits at the head, depositing checks into envelopes, licking envelopes, stacking envelopes. From the kitchen: "Harold, get that junk cleared off the table. Rob has to set it."
"Geez, Marie, I'm just about done already."
"Well, clear it off, then."
"Hold your horses, alright?"
The oldest sister deposits Rob into the kitchen: "Here he is."
"Alright, Robbie, please set the table." and, emphasizing each syllable, "Har-old, come on."
"Yeah, give me a break. I'm finished."
"Well. It's about time."
Rob pulls open the top drawer and grabs one two three four five six smooth handled butter knives--
"Robert, did you wash your hands?"
--but, "No," drops the knives back into the drawer.
"Well. Wash your hands."
Rob pushes closed the drawer and pads into the bathroom where the long, unenclosed fluorescent buzzes and flickers. Rob spins the broken hot water handle as he turns the cold. He wets his hands and he soaps his hands with this orange, cracked sliver. Rob rinses his hands. The boy in the mirror wrinkles his nose and licks his teeth, and from his teeth he picks a speck of black something. The boy shrugs. Rob shakes off water.
Back to the kitchen. Rob regathers the six knives, and in the other hand, two short forks, five long, and seven small spoons.
To the dining room, where at one end of the table he places a knife and to its right, a spoon--
"Hold on," says the man, handing the knife and spoon back to Rob. The man pulls a wet washcloth across the table. He gathers crumbs at one end, where he pulls them off the table into his cupped hand. "There you go," he says.
Rob replaces the knife and spoon, and a large fork, one foot to their left. He does this before each of the chairs and returns to the kitchen.
Opening the low cupboard door, Rob removes two large plastic plates, one yellow, one green, and sets them on the counter. Closing the low cupboard door, he grabs the folding stepstool to his left. Unfolding the folding stepstool, he sets it before himself and climbs. Opening the high cupboard, he removes one large, brown ceramic plate and four slightly smaller, blue plates. Climbing down, he stacks the two plastic plates atop these five and returns to the dining room.
On the corner nearest the kitchen, between spoon and fork goes the yellow plastic. Blue plate, blue plate, large brown plate at table head, green plastic, blue plate, and blue plate at other head. Back to the kitchen.
He climbs the stool, grabs three tall glasses; glass squeaks against glass. He turns--
"Rob!" she shouts, "two glasses at a time."
--full circle: he puts one glass back in the cupboard, taking the others to the table, placing each above a spoon. He returns for two more. And one more. He puts the stepstool away, opens the low cupboard and grabs two plastic cups. These he places by their matching plates.
Job done. He sighs. He sits before the green plastic, except--
"Rob," from the kitchen, "we need two serving spoons, a fork and two pot holders."
--that with a grunt he pushes his chair out from the table. From the buffet cupboard he removes the pot holders. In the foci of the elliptical table he places them. At the silverware drawer he asks, "Slotted spoon?"
"Yes, one, Rob."
He takes the three utensils to the table and sets them down.
He sits before the green plastic. He sighs. Job done.
As he kicks, Rob's feet glide just above the carpet.
No one saw the little one skip that barefoot skip, all pigtails and sleep encrusted eyesnot, alongside the table to the armed chair on the end. The tiny digits placed the plastic bottle -- white with pastel shapes -- atop the table. Between arm and seat, Patty hefted herself into the chair to sit upon kneeling legs. With regal poise at table's end, she surveyed her dominion: indigo and ruddy clay vase with dried arrangement, ivy-specked-green table cloth. But the spoils lay before her -- child-proof lid is no impediment. Greedily she grabbed the bottle and, biting bottom lip, squeezed the top and wrenched with minor might. Success is a chalk-blue two-dimensional--
"Dino!" she exclaimed and jawed the dinosaur.
--multi-vitamin cartoon, followed by--
"Fred!"
--a red and--
"Barney!"
--a purple and--
"Wilma!"
--an orange and--
"Bam-Bam!"
--so on. Success is sweet, gritty iron shavings -- half a bottle -- devoured while bouncing happily, humming, chewing, licking powdered fingers.
Success is sliding beneath the table to lie upon the carpet, wrapping one arm about a chair leg, blowing bubbles in nutrient rich spittle until--
"Patty!"
--the shout. Her stomach heaved. She crawled her best crawl: away from the voice and between chairs into the bathroom, where she did not stand.
Nor does Rob see Patty now as she climbs into the corner seat with the plate of yellow plastic. The boy in the buffet mirror curls down his bottom lip, with thumb and forefinger pulls up his top. He puts his lips back together and puffs cheeks to produce a distinctly flatulent noise.
~
I have to be given some credit for only implying vomit, and not writing about it in elaborate detail with extensive metaphors, right? Opinions, opinions, opinions?
Ha ha, yes, I have the black sword. Perfect, yes, the black sword. ["Raaah-berrrt,"] So I'll just ["time to"] climb up into ["set the"] this black saddle ["taaay-buhl"] on my black horse here, wearing my nice black armor, the largest black feather in my black helmet. ["Robert!"] An altogether convincing black knight.
Henchman. You there. Grab that black axe, yes, I know. Not nearly as impressive as the black sword, but it will have to do, won't it? ["Robert"] And round ["Dean"] up some ["Sens-"] archers ["a-"] and ["baugh!"] spearmen. Great, great, let's go.
"Robert! I told you five minutes ago to set--"
Slamcrack goes the door.
"Ah ha ha! oh!"
"Ah hahahaha! Oh no! Ah hahahaha!"
Her laughter dopplers down the hall as Rob sobs loudly, gripping his left shoulder. Her door slams. He lays upon his right side, curled fetal. His eyes have moistened and crimsoned.
"Oh ho ho, ah ha ha."
Written, his pain is indistinguishable from her laughter, which he can hear though the door until she stifles it, opens the door and plods back down the hall.
"I'm sorry, Robert."
On the floor, rocking him now in her arms, she cannot resist this giggle and that chuckle. Yet she is crying.
"Well, Robbie," she wipes her eyes and smoothes his hair, "it's time to set the table." Quickly down the hall she leaves.
Holy-socked feet swing down from top bunk, shaking lofty frame. The other boy pushes slightly from the mattress, dropping his thin self quietly to the floor. "I hate them so much," he says, pausing before he slides past Rob out the still open door.
Rob swirls in his wake, bailing water. Redfaced, limbshook, he clutches at the doorknob, righting himself. He steps carefully over the cold metal strip of threshold and closes the difficult door tightly behind him. He steps, calculated, careful, three steps and through a doorway to the left onto cold clinging tile. Through hazed left corner he sees himself and turns, turns on the faucet.
Rob stares into the rushing, bubbling water, is almost soothed. He cups his hands beneath the cold gush, studies the sparkling overflow as his fingers numb. Slowly, he leans forward and down. Suddenly -- it is even a surprise to him -- he splashes his face with the water. And again. And again. He blankly stares at his dripping reflection until his focus lazily shifts to somewhere beyond and behind the mirror. Setting sunlight beams acutely through the window to his right. The forest bath towel finds its way from the shelf to his hands. Where his face hoped for newly washed solace, it finds only permanently mildewed abrasion. What should be genteel softness bristles. This is no warm embrace, but a chafing, a gnawing.
He's gripping the towel. Clutching the towel and trembling. Jerking, rattling, spinning into the hall goes Rob, towel behind him now. Against but not through the wall goes his right shoulder crashing to balance this pain left. He scrunches his bare toes. Audibly, laboriously exhales, "Okay."
Inhales, "O-" exhales, "-kay."
"Okay. Here we go." Here he goes, playfully down the hall, tottering back and forth from wall to wall. Pushing forward, humming, tuneless reverberation from the coming stairwell.
A man's voice climbs the stairs, echoed sawblade, cutting, "John, do the trash."
Rob sits down at the top of the stairs. He slides his bottom forward to crash onto the first stairstep. The creak of the thinly carpeted floor sonorously fills the well. He takes each step this way, smiling now. He reaches the landing where dust particles swirl in the still resounding racket, playing round about the sun's blushing light. Rob swats at the sunlit dust once and twice.
At once ground grease and tomato acid scramble into Rob's nose. After them he sends a thumb; a struggle ensues. Nail grapples with nostril flesh and allied hairs for supremacy over fugitive rife marshes. Thumb is victor, produces the outlaw; rubbed between thumb and forefinger, yellow becomes green becomes black, is castoff into the corner.
Abruptly, "Robert," the oldest sister snaps his attention, "you better get down here," down the second flight over her shoulder through the off-kilter screen door, past the porch, beneath the magnolia, into the flowerbed, onto a pansy, about which a bumblebee darts; Rob shivers, then laughs once.
"Yeah, come on Rob," echoes the older sister from living room couch, green formerly brown, enviable perch.
The oldest is getting larger, blocking bee, flower, porch, door, from view. "What are you laughing about? Come on, Rob," her right arm reaching for his left wrist, "get up." And she has him by both wrists, is pulling. And he sits uncooperatively, is resisting passively.
"No!" he half shouts, half whispers.
The brother, dangling, makes strange fruit for the sister tree, now thrashing, swinging and repelling.
"Stop it! Brat!"
"Let! Go!"
Kicking, struggling, teetering, the four-legged, no-armed beast might topple, tumble down from landing to crash landing, but that sister plants a foot on the second step and pushes brother to dirt and lime carpeted ground, and through teeth, "Rob. Stop. It. Right. Now."
She asks, "okay?"
"Okay," he says.
"Okay," says he.
"Okay." says she. The sister picks up herself and then her brother. "Let's go." She ruffles his mop; in this tangled jungle, amid pooled oil, through dandruff choked air, a lone, intrepid louse scurries -- not fast enough -- to avoid this pink nail-polished meteor. Strike.
She takes Rob by the wrist, then hand, then fingers, loosely. Quickly, loudly they descend. She leads Rob past steps of shoe boxes, old mail and stray socks, into the living room, between the television and the older sister. One glares, the other blares: "The facts of life are all about you, you-oo-oo-oo-ooh!"
Through the dining room she leads him: The man sits at the head, depositing checks into envelopes, licking envelopes, stacking envelopes. From the kitchen: "Harold, get that junk cleared off the table. Rob has to set it."
"Geez, Marie, I'm just about done already."
"Well, clear it off, then."
"Hold your horses, alright?"
The oldest sister deposits Rob into the kitchen: "Here he is."
"Alright, Robbie, please set the table." and, emphasizing each syllable, "Har-old, come on."
"Yeah, give me a break. I'm finished."
"Well. It's about time."
Rob pulls open the top drawer and grabs one two three four five six smooth handled butter knives--
"Robert, did you wash your hands?"
--but, "No," drops the knives back into the drawer.
"Well. Wash your hands."
Rob pushes closed the drawer and pads into the bathroom where the long, unenclosed fluorescent buzzes and flickers. Rob spins the broken hot water handle as he turns the cold. He wets his hands and he soaps his hands with this orange, cracked sliver. Rob rinses his hands. The boy in the mirror wrinkles his nose and licks his teeth, and from his teeth he picks a speck of black something. The boy shrugs. Rob shakes off water.
Back to the kitchen. Rob regathers the six knives, and in the other hand, two short forks, five long, and seven small spoons.
To the dining room, where at one end of the table he places a knife and to its right, a spoon--
"Hold on," says the man, handing the knife and spoon back to Rob. The man pulls a wet washcloth across the table. He gathers crumbs at one end, where he pulls them off the table into his cupped hand. "There you go," he says.
Rob replaces the knife and spoon, and a large fork, one foot to their left. He does this before each of the chairs and returns to the kitchen.
Opening the low cupboard door, Rob removes two large plastic plates, one yellow, one green, and sets them on the counter. Closing the low cupboard door, he grabs the folding stepstool to his left. Unfolding the folding stepstool, he sets it before himself and climbs. Opening the high cupboard, he removes one large, brown ceramic plate and four slightly smaller, blue plates. Climbing down, he stacks the two plastic plates atop these five and returns to the dining room.
On the corner nearest the kitchen, between spoon and fork goes the yellow plastic. Blue plate, blue plate, large brown plate at table head, green plastic, blue plate, and blue plate at other head. Back to the kitchen.
He climbs the stool, grabs three tall glasses; glass squeaks against glass. He turns--
"Rob!" she shouts, "two glasses at a time."
--full circle: he puts one glass back in the cupboard, taking the others to the table, placing each above a spoon. He returns for two more. And one more. He puts the stepstool away, opens the low cupboard and grabs two plastic cups. These he places by their matching plates.
Job done. He sighs. He sits before the green plastic, except--
"Rob," from the kitchen, "we need two serving spoons, a fork and two pot holders."
--that with a grunt he pushes his chair out from the table. From the buffet cupboard he removes the pot holders. In the foci of the elliptical table he places them. At the silverware drawer he asks, "Slotted spoon?"
"Yes, one, Rob."
He takes the three utensils to the table and sets them down.
He sits before the green plastic. He sighs. Job done.
As he kicks, Rob's feet glide just above the carpet.
No one saw the little one skip that barefoot skip, all pigtails and sleep encrusted eyesnot, alongside the table to the armed chair on the end. The tiny digits placed the plastic bottle -- white with pastel shapes -- atop the table. Between arm and seat, Patty hefted herself into the chair to sit upon kneeling legs. With regal poise at table's end, she surveyed her dominion: indigo and ruddy clay vase with dried arrangement, ivy-specked-green table cloth. But the spoils lay before her -- child-proof lid is no impediment. Greedily she grabbed the bottle and, biting bottom lip, squeezed the top and wrenched with minor might. Success is a chalk-blue two-dimensional--
"Dino!" she exclaimed and jawed the dinosaur.
--multi-vitamin cartoon, followed by--
"Fred!"
--a red and--
"Barney!"
--a purple and--
"Wilma!"
--an orange and--
"Bam-Bam!"
--so on. Success is sweet, gritty iron shavings -- half a bottle -- devoured while bouncing happily, humming, chewing, licking powdered fingers.
Success is sliding beneath the table to lie upon the carpet, wrapping one arm about a chair leg, blowing bubbles in nutrient rich spittle until--
"Patty!"
--the shout. Her stomach heaved. She crawled her best crawl: away from the voice and between chairs into the bathroom, where she did not stand.
Nor does Rob see Patty now as she climbs into the corner seat with the plate of yellow plastic. The boy in the buffet mirror curls down his bottom lip, with thumb and forefinger pulls up his top. He puts his lips back together and puffs cheeks to produce a distinctly flatulent noise.
~
I have to be given some credit for only implying vomit, and not writing about it in elaborate detail with extensive metaphors, right? Opinions, opinions, opinions?