Laughing All the Way

Michael Milligan

Away

By Devious Mama

She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, it seemed to her that she’d always been searching. Nothing really made her happy, nothing seemed to quench that intense thirst.

I remember the first time I met her, on that faded brown couch, cigarette in her hand, I could barely see her face through the wall of smoke. Her hair was like cinnamon, but the kind of cinnamon you couldn’t get from a box. It was shiny and sleek and matched the cinnamon specks on her face, Her eyes were an intense blue, magnified by the think outline of black pencil, in great contrast to her pale pink face. She sat with half her body behind him and stared at him intently.

He wasn’t the type of guy you’d expect to see her with, but there she was, hand on his thigh, completely wrapped up in him. He was a large black man, his face like a baby but you could tell he’d lived a pretty rough life. The tattoos on his arm were the jail house type people do when they’re high and bored with a bottle of India ink and too much time on their hands. He had short curly hair and a carefully trimmed goatee that added a sense of defiance to his face. He clenched his cigarette tightly between his thumb and forefinger and slowly sucked in, holding his breath while he held it out to her. Slowly he released his breath. She slumped back onto the couch and laid her head back as a stream of smoke escaped her mouth and floated above her head. The smoke moved towards the ceiling, searching for a way to escape. She wished she could rise like the smoke and float through the crack and just dissipate into the atmosphere. If it wasn’t for him holding her there she probably would have.

It’s been about 6 years since that day but she swears now that she can’t picture his face in her head. All those night she spent in his Nichols Street apartment in Lewiston Maine. In his water bed staring over the city. Filling his bathroom with steam and smoking joints on the wet tiled floor. How could she not remember that night?

She got home that evening hoping to just climb into her claw foot bathtub and soak in a hot bath. She walked through her door dropping her clothes along the way, she sat naked at her kitchen table and called him, he didn’t answer. She walked into her room to grab her boxer shorts and t-shirt to throw on after her bath. She noticed her room was in disarray. CD’s were scattered on the floor and there were about Ω as many as there were before. Her CD walkman wasn’t on her night stand. Her jewelry box was dumped over and only the costume jewelry remained. She ran to her living room and found her VCR was missing. She was freaking out, running around in disbelief with tears flowing from her eyes. She grabbed her jeans pulled them up over her thighs, yanked on her t-shirt. Her boots with no socks and her thin winter jacket and ran out the door. She ran most of the mile and a half it took to get to Nichols Street, up the three flight of stair and threw open his door.

With tears of rage she explained what had happened, she had been robbed. He listened intently and wrapped his strong arms around her body. He told her everything would be okay. Don’t call the police I’ll take care of this MY way. He said he was going out to look for who stole her shit. He planned to see what the word on the street was. She just faded into his arms, knowing that he could make everything ok. He could call some of his friends, the ones with the blue bandanas she had been introduced to at the party she had on Halloween, the night they put trash bags over the windows and danced to strobe lights and Rap so loud the walls shook. These dudes were tough. She knew they could take care of business. There was nothing more for her to worry about. He laid her on the couch, told her to pop in a movie and he’d be back as soon as he found out what was going on. He brushed her hair out her face and kissed her slowly on the lips. He got close to her ear and whispered for her not to worry. She looked at him the way a child looks at their father, with trust and admiration and complete astonishment of their power. She looked at him like he was the only other soul that walked the earth with her. He kissed her again on the forehead and walked towards the door.

She laid back on the couch and relaxed. She decided to watch this movie about these four teenage girls that start messing with witchcraft. She lays back on the brown faded couch and puffs on a menthol cigarette as she watches the through the grey clouds of smoke clustering in front of her face. She looks around his apartment, a place she’d spent many nights. She could hear the gentle trickle of a small cement waterfall with a troll-like gargoyle perched on the top, to ward off evil. She looked at the pictures of his son Dimitri, a tan skinned baby boy with almost blond curls cascading from his head. She remembered the nights she’d watch the little boy when his father would be out looking for a job. He was very dedicated in his job search, even out looking for jobs on Sundays and evenings.

She slid further down the couch until she was flat on her back and stared up at the ceiling, once white but yellowed from years of cigarette smoking. She wondered if her lungs looked like that after years of smoking menthol cigarettes and weed. She remembered weeks where they did nothing but smoke weed, have sex and eat, in that order and repeat until it was time to settle down into his massive water bed that squeezed up against the walls of his bedroom, and fall asleep in his arms.

She looked at the goose bumps invading her cinnamon speckled arms and decided to look for a sweat shirt. She wandered through the door and had to squeeze in his bedroom to open his white washed wooden closet door. She slid the clothes to one side of the metal pole and began to rummage through, looking for anything thicker than her white t-shirt. She started looking through a pile of clothes on the closet floor. There was a stack of thin blankets and fubu sneakers.

She turned on the closet light and looked further in. She gasped as she saw a collection of CD’s that looked very similar to hers, a red CD walkman, and the VCR her father had bought her for her 13th birthday. Her jewelry, a book her mom had bought her about the titanic and an array of things she never even knew she was missing from her apartment. She sat there with her jaw dropped wide. She rummaged through the box and started flipping through pictures, him sitting on the couch in his paisley boxer shorts, him smoking a joint on the edge of the bathtub, him with his lips locked with this blond with long curly hair, the next picture, him laying in that water bed she now stood beside, holding her 15 year old best friend in those arms where she collapsed every night. Tears flooded from her eyes and burned on her cheeks. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed from her chest. She felt hands wrapped around her throat as she tried to breathe. She looked around at the spinning walls and tried to lift herself to her feet.

She ran to his kitchen, threw open the kitchen cupboard with the contact paper peeling off. She grabbed what she could of his pill stash. She picked three bottles of pills, the large pink ones, the small white ones and some multicolored pills. She opened a 40 and sat in a rickety chair at the cluttered kitchen table. She threw off the caps and tipped the first bottle to her mouth, first the bottle of pinks pills and some gulps of the 40. Then the white pills, she tipped it up and chased it with the 40. She didn’t hesitate to gulp down the third bottle of pills along with intermittent sips of the beer.She slid his knife down her arm just enough for the blood to begin to seep out, not enough to do serious damage, she knew just how to cut to see the blood but not leave a scar.

She thought about the looks she’d seen her best friend give him and how it never seemed to bother her. She thought about all those nights she laid under his body and she remembered the picture of the blond haired girl in her place. She thought about all the times she had fucked up, all the people she had trusted who has fucked her over. She thought about her mom wrapping her hands around her neck until she couldn’t breathe, she thought about being beat with the broom. She remembered her parents crying when they saw the red scars down her arms and how her father said she had a broken soul. She knew now he was right. She thought about the times they had tried to feed her when she’d refuse to eat weeks on end. She remembered the hospital she stayed in and how it was the only place anyone had ever understood her.

She remembered Dave and how he explained her sadness like he was inside her head. He knew about the nights laying there with the one you love trying to smile but just not being able. He knew how no one else understood.How much it hurts to smile sometimes. She thought about her the way her cousin used to lock the door lay on her body, calling it body slamming .It was supposed to be some kind of wrestling move. She remembered the kids in school that called her fat and refused to play with her, the ones who made animal noises as she walked by, the days before she learned how to control her body. She remembered her first love Jay and how she’d give anything for him to leave his girlfriend in Bridgeton and come save her. She remembered all those night she wished she was gone, the night only the cuts and the weed seemed to numb the pain. Thoughts raced through her mind, tears puddled on the table in front of her. Then it was over.

Nothing.

Silence.

When she woke she found herself laying on a table, her throat burning, hands held her to the table. She felt something harsh stretching her throat and she tried to pull it out. The doctors yelled at her, telling her they were saving her life. She begged them to let her go. She begged them to let her go back to the silence. She begged them to make it all go away. She didn’t want to do it anymore. She didn’t want to hurt. She cocked her head up to watch them pour some kind of black liquid into the tube in her throat. Her head fell back, her eyes strained to stay open but she lost the struggle and fell back into the silence.

She came in and out of consciousness. She watched the nurses float by her bed as she struggled to move her toes under the white blankets that seemed to pin her to the bed. She called out to the nurses asking when she could leave. They had called her parents. It was storming outside and not safe for them to drive the Ω hr it took to get to the ER. They told her parents that she would be okay. They heard her heart beating, blood pressure normal, her brain was functioning, and they saw the air she breathed into her lungs but they didn’t know she was dead. No one was coming to save her. This time no one was going to come and tell her everything was going to be okay, no one would wrap their arms around her. No one would soothe her and no one would love her. Why didn’t they let her go?

She begged to leave. She could barely keep her head upright but she wanted to go. They told her she had to meet with another doctor before she left. She knew what that meant. A petite woman with short brown hair and a clipboard sat beside her bed. She wore a pink sweater that matched her perfect pink cheeks. She asked her about the events that had transpired that night. She told her about the party and how she was having fun and taking pills and got a little out of control. She didn’t want to die she just wanted to feel high and make the sadness go away. She told her that she wanted to get home, her boyfriend must be worried about her and of course her parents would be driving down to make sure she was okay. She was sorry and she had scared herself out ofever doing anything like that again.The pink woman smiled and shook her head. She told her that being so close to death made her realize how precious life was and she wouldn’t ever see her back in the emergency room again. The pink woman smiled and ate it up like buttermilk pancakes she ate every Sunday morning at the IHOP with her perfect husband and 2.5 kids. The pink woman ate it up. The pink woman let her go home, she bought her a cab, compliments of St. Mary’s Hospital, telling the driver to take her straight home. She gave her card, telling her to call if she ever needed to talk.

She dropped into the yellow taxi, shredding the white piece of paper and telling the taxi driver to take her back to Nichols street. She didn’t want to hear bullshit just drive her there or let her out.She climbed out into the snow, barely able to stand and somehow made it up to the third floor. She opened the door, he started yelling at her to get out. He was mad that she had stolen his drugs. How the hell was he going to make money and what did she really think he was doing all those hours he looked for a job. He laughed.

A woman walked out of the bathroom with HER hair spray, spraying it in her mousy brown hair. She started yelling about robbing her. He said she was crazy. He denied everything. It must be the drugs he told her, she must be hallucinating. She told the brown haired woman to get out of her man’s apartment. The brown haired girl laughed. She told her that she’d almost died that night and she wasn’t scared of anything, she asked her to take it outside. The brown haired woman, still holding her can on hair spray, told her it would be rude of them to fight at someone’s house. She didn’t care, she took her menthol cigarette and tossed it in the woman’s 1980's teased bangs, suddenly realizing why the bottle says “Do not use while smoking.” The girl screamed and put her burning hair in the sink. She laughed. He came out to her and held her arm, telling her it was time to leave. He threw her keys out the window into a pile of freshly fallen snow. She was dizzy and nauseous but strong enough to pull her fist back and release it right in the middle of his baby face, with his perfectly trimmed goatee. He fell backwards, landed on his ass.The brown hair woman ran out crying and scurried to his side. The brown haired woman looked at him the way a child looks at their father, with trust and admiration and complete astonishment of their power. She shook her head and laughed.

She walked a mile in the freezing snow that night. Alone. High. The tears now freezing to her cheeks. She made it to the second floor, and she collapsed on the old blue and red braided rug in the hallway. She laid her face down, nose between the sandy braids. And wept until sleep took over and brought her back to the silence she longed for.

Her parents came the next day and brought her back to the hospital where she spent two weeks promising she’d never overdose again. She told them the same lines she told the pink lady but it wasn’t for another couple of years that she’d actually begin to believe the lines of bullshit she gave them.

It’s been 6 years since that night. She’s never been back to the hospital. She heard he had a baby with the girl 15 years his junior. She heard he was still stuck in his little world of slangin and messing with girls half his age. Though she can’t remember his face, she still misses him from time to time. Yea, she knows it’s crazy. She wonders if she’ll ever look at a man the way she looked at him.

She still cries herself to sleep. She still dreams of flying away but now it’s college textbooks and a small savings account that will take her away.

inmaking

by Mattie Bamman

Following Cranes Blues

Bob Bergeron

SHOPFLOOR SHOUTOUTS: A WORKING MOTHER'S FEMINISM

Contributed by: Anonymous

found at infoshop.org

bliss

by treason

WT Living

by mamaspitfire, stevebastid, cbick, and goatgirl

The following are few things we’ve experienced—uh, noticed—about living WT style.

WT Casserole:

1)When you mix the generic mac n cheese box with a can of tuna, beans, corn, etc and call it suppah 2)Hamburger Helper without any hamburger

WT First Date:

She pays for the cab fair to Shop-n-Save; He steals a bottle of Jack Daniels. They go back to her place (which really isn't her place at all just the place she was crashing at that week) she wants to fuck, he passes out and pisses his pants; two days later they're on a bus to Florida.

WT Romance:

Giving your partner fresh flowers you stole from the outside of the bank up the street, in hopes that you'll woo them into drinking the bottle of Boones Farm wine you bought with spare change.

WT Wedding:

when you shack up in the same apartment with your significant other because one of you is pregnant.

WT Divorce:

when the cops come and make one of you leave

WT EBT:

when you use the last five dollars on your EBT card to buy a pack of Mustang Lights and a Bull Ice forty--also, the purchase of twinkies, generic soda, any Little Debbie’s snack item or cheese puffs with your foodstamps.

WT Drinkin’:

PBR, Milwaulkee’s Best, Bull Ice, Schlitz, cheap whiskey, any moonshine, MD 20/20, Boone's Farm (remember when that shit cost a 1.75 a bottle?) anything in a forty and fifths of vodka costing less than eight dollars.

WT Laundering:

when you steal clothes from the thrift store and leave your old dirty ones in the donation bin because you’re too poor to get to the laundromat.

WT Insurance:

when you cancel your car insurance as soon as you get the plates from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

WT Renting:

same thing, only you stop paying your rent after you get the lease from the landlord, then wait until you get evicted, then have a friend lie and say they were your last landlord and start the scam in a new place--you can usually get three months free out of each apartment.

WT Homeownership:

sleeping in your car (if you own it)

WT Shopping:

1) anything you pick up off the side of the road during bulky trash week. 2) most shoplifting 3) anything bought on the first of the month when your check comes in.

WT Vacation:

1) the use of any substance to distract you from the reality of your pathetic life 2) time served

WT Raise:

happens only when you steal from your employer.

WT Parent:

1) absent parent who changes their name, quits their job, or works under the table to avoid the payment of child support 2) parent with two or more baby daddies

WT Vehicle: a combination of two or more of the following:

1)bondo on over 20% of the body, 2) age over ten years, 3) blue book value of 800 or less, 4) illegal plates, 5) no insurance, 6)past due inspection sticker or sticker taken from another car.

WT Car repair:

When you turn the radio up really loud do you don’t hear the new noise the car is making

WT Garage:

Putting a tarp over the car hood so you can fix it. This usually only occurs when WT Car Repair is no longer possible.

WT Auto Parts Store:

Scavenging parts from the other cars in your yard to try and fix the one that broke down most recently.

WT Lawn Care:

Having to finally cut the grass to find auto parts store mentioned above.

WT Pest Removal:

Placing bets with your friends on which dog will "git" the cockroach first.

WT Gift:

When you surprise your partner with the new bookshelf you made from the milk crates you stacked in the living room which were stolen from the local corner store.

WT Church Clothes:

When you change your hat from the daily worn Jack Daniels baseball cap to your Sunday best John Deere cap. worn over a mullet or long dark roots of bleached hair.

WT Library:

) Using the local library only for their video section, 2) PORNO mag next ta da shitta; also WT Toilet Paper

WT Hygiene:

Taking a bath because you have to be at court in the morning. Usually only occurs after a WT Divorce, after your sixth DWI, or when you hear the "COPS" camera man say "Geez did you smell that guy?"

WT Old School: Back when food stamps were paper:

Selling the foodstamps for half price to get the car out of tow. Then helping the old ladylook for them when she asks, "what the fuck happened to the goddamn stamps?"

Send YOUR WT Living suggestions to wtchronicles(at)hotmail.com.

Next topic: WT Love Is…

Steve

by goatgirl