What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

was mocking me
    A jackdaw?
    that was mocking me.

CHAPTER
     
     
    WHEN I WAS LITTLE
      I would settle down outside there near the horses and the sea so the waves would muffle the voices inside the house and thank God that for an hour or two I could forget about them, my father next to the refrigerator with the dwarf from Snow White on top, turning it round and round without looking at it, my mother asking him in a hiss that carried to the pine trees and made me call to them, pounding on the clothes rack or smashing the car with wooden wheels the minute my mother said
    —Why Carlos?
    and her
    —Why Carlos?
    wasn’t in the living room, it was going from tree to tree and mingling with splotches of light in the haze, the dwarf from Snow White going from one side to the other on the refrigerator and my mother’s question without my mother
    —Why Carlos?
    that same question even today
    even yesterday even today in the hospital by the row of plane trees, looking at their trunks and at every branch those same sounds, pounding on the clothes rack, not hearing the pigeons, the maids in the dining room, the man in the next unit lying belly-up in a whisper, his navel
    yesterday
    today, he said today
    — They’re not attuned to time
    —Why Carlos?
    I am so attuned to time, I know how to tell time on clocks, five minutes to six, seven-twenty, eight-twelve, where did the doctors get the idea that I’m not attuned to time, show me your wrist and I’ll tell you instead of having me draw a family and the person in skirts, dressed as a bride, with pearls in her hair, bigger than the husband, and the son, the husband next to the refrigerator, the son smashing the car on the straw mat and the mat torn
    —Why Carlos?
    the bride grabbed the dwarf from Snow White and stopped it from dancing, my explaining to the psychologist who gave me paper and pencil that it’s not a question of a watermelon or anything like that
    —It’s not a question of a watermelon or anything like that
    it’s a question of the dwarf from Snow White that the bride is moving away
    —Stop messing with that, it makes me nervous
    she was stopping her husband from touching it, this is the husband, this is the son, this is the son’s car with wooden wheels, I had a big one, if you don’t ask the plane trees to be quiet I’m leaving, the man’s navel on the wall, I didn’t hit him, I hit the clothes rack and the orderly as though I’d hit someone and I hadn’t hurt him, I was the one hurt out there by the horses and the sea
    —Let go of it
    where the voices didn’t reach, the shower out here too and the dripping on concrete all night long, a puddle where there were yellow jackets in August, you’d turn the faucet on and the soap was on the windowsill, or rather it was with my parents that the soap was on the windowsill, with me I’d hold it for a second and then because I was a child and couldn’t control anything, it would slip down to the ground and I’d grab it quick before the yellow jackets, on Sundays they’d come in through a hole in the window screen which would put the waves into squares, beyond the soap my father
    deodorant, perfume, my mother’s cold cream on the sly, I peeked and my father stopped rubbing it on and looked at me, there’s something strange about the person in the sketch, not him, timidity, bashfulness, a kind of qualm, the psychologist making an oval mark and an arrow, cream on the buttocks, on the shoulder blades, on the chest
    —Is he your father?
    one of the neighbors, the one who owned the terrace café, perched on the wall to prevent him from seeing him and telling the customers I elbowed the clown out of the way and there I was all alone by the corner of the house spying, the horses were trotting along under the whip, one of my feet was unfinished in the sketch and it stopped me from running, I picked up the pencil and made a shoe, as I got out of the sketch and into the yard, the hospital fence, the river
    —Take