Push

“Look at what the honey gave to you,” she said to me. “It gave you sweets and good time.” By I didn’t get anything sweet out of the honey, I argue. She tells me it’s because I don’t have no taste buds now that I’ve done so much damage to my own body. She rolls up the blinds and asks me what it is I think that the sun gives to me. I reply with “headache.” She rolls her eyes and cross the apartment to the small kitchen. She turns the sink knobs and water comes reluctantly rushing out. “What does water give to you?” I think for a minute. Not for my answer, but for what she’ll want to hear. I reply with “calm”. She whacks me across the face with the back of her right hand. From the floor I landed on, I see her run water over a green washcloth, ring it out, and then she throws it at me. “Right.” She says smiling, and then walking away.

Before I did all that damage to myself, I lived in the third floor apartment of that pink house on Van Zandt street. I had my own tiny kitchen, and I’d do all of the damage to myself on the sun porch, but at night. While the rest of the world slept, I’d stay up all night. Shooting for the stars, alone. And sailing in the moon’s light ocean, with my friends, imaginary and cupid dodging the rocks.  My bedroom was the greenish color of french mustard, and the stucco on the walls was fun to run my hands over when I was high.

Whatever.

The people at the center said I was in need of a tough love rehabiliation, and I told them “Whatever”. They signed their signatures on some paper that detailed my life and story and soon She was knocking me around and asking me questions about plants and auras. A bad chakra, or something about no sympathy. I eat a lot of fucking rice here too, and no meat. Even though She tells me I need to gain weight because I was “so hell-bent on wasting away to the nothing I was inside,” I can’t eat anything that will get me fat. And She plays the viola all damn night, and I can’t sleep, until she stops and switches to the piano.   She wakes me up around noon every day and makes me run on the beach, promising me a gluttonus lunch afterwards. The lunch is an apple and a half block of cheese. I inhale it. “See how good that tastes? Do you want to eat all of the time now? Not just starve yourself?” She demands of me. I nod in between bites, and She cracks a smile.  Her television set has a mannequin head in it instead of a glass screen. The head is missing an ear and I think of Mr. Potato Head, and then I think of potatos and then I get hungry, and I let out a small sigh. “Shut up.” She says. “If I hear you feel sorry for yourself one more fucking time, I swear to god I’ll feed you dust.”

We’re in her car. It is a nice car, a hybrid, and she rolls the windows down as we turn left and head into a part of town I hadn’t been to before. Some little kids are playing in the street with old bikes and Barbie dolls with no heads. I see an old lady pushing a cart with garbage in it. “You’re pretty much like what’s in that cart, don’t you think?” She asks me. I nod yes. “Maybe you could get out and help that woman push her mini-You around.” She tells me as she pulls over. I stare at her as she turns off the car. “Go.” So I go, and the air in this neighborhood does seems thicker and harder to breathe in. The old woman looks at me, and I see the cataracts in her eyes. I ask her if she needs help and she does not respond. I ask again, she nods. She tells me she is only going up the block to St. Luke’s for the soup kitchen. I nod and start pushing, and she follows me, telling me not to let anything spill out of the cart. Inside is indeed garbage. Old soda bottles filled with piss, a tattered Bible that she had drawn in with a blue crayon, and rags of fabric. As I turn the corner, an ancient disposable camera falls from the cart and the old woman let’s out a wail. “Stop! Stop! You’re letting it all out!” She swoops down faster than I thought she could and retrieves it, she cradles it in her hands. She looks terrified, as if I may have broken something like the solar system or the delicate balance that is home. “I’ll do the rest, go home now.” She tells me, with little tears in her eyes. I tell her I’m sorry and don’t mind helping her to St. Luke’s, but she wipes her nose and shakes her head. “I don’t want your help anymore, I just want you to gone now. You’ll break it all next time.” She pushes her cart and disappears behind a house.

She is leaning up against her car waiting for me. She looks right through me and I know she’s trying to read me in everyway that she can. “I know.” is all I say. She cracks a small smile. “It’s amazing how much people care about garbage, isn’t it?” She asks me and I nod. “Get in the car.” And I do.

She made steak that night and told me I was delicate.