It’s a Friday and it’s raining when you wake up at
7:30. You meant to get up at 5:30 to get
an early start on work, but the rain sounded so nice and your bed and partner
were so warm that you drifted off, thinking it’s Friday, that you’ve got all
weekend to finish your work. At that gray hour you don’t remember the mound of
graduate school homework you’ve got, and it seems reasonable to close your eyes
again. So you sleep in, and the kids actually wake you up. You make chocolate milk for one, coffee for
yourself, and tell the oldest there’s instant oatmeal, or they can ask their
father to make Malt-O-Meal when he leaves the toilet.
She wants to know can she have chocolate chips in her
oatmeal. Yes, you say, because you’re
feeling indulgent after receiving some food stamps. She wants to know how many. You think for a moment and then say “Nine.” You’d been down to a couple freeze pops and a
few items that didn’t really make a meal of any kind when your case had finally
gone through the system. You felt like
shit that you couldn’t buy your daughter any new clothes for her first day of
Kindergarten, but she looked good anyway and didn’t seem to mind. You’re glad your kids remain young enough to
be comforted by a chocolatey after-school snack, that they’re too young to know
what it means to live below the poverty line.
To say you are grateful for the public assistance is an
understatement.
Your coffee’s ready so you trudge upstairs in your pajamas,
because you know you have to go out later and you’ll shower then, so why bother
with a bra and real pants now. Working
at home as a medical transcriptionist is fabulous and you know you’re lucky to
be able to pick and choose your hours in order to get your master’s degree, to
have a job already set up wherever you go. Your son and daughter come in and out of your
office, interrupting you and asking you to get them things from downstairs even
though their father is downstairs. You
send them down to ask him most of the time, but sometimes you take breaks to
give them a bath or make them lunch.
Your partner watches a lot of anime on his computer. Since you moved to town over four months ago,
he’s been trying to find a job. He’s had
no luck finding a line cook job, even though he’s got nothing but experience,
and you’ve secretly begun to wonder if there’s a racial component. Your partner is Native American and your new
home for the next two years is a pretty conservative place. He wouldn’t say anything, but you know it’s
gotta be on his mind too. But he’s had a
second interview at a chain restaurant that he worked at in your home state,
and he should be finding out today if he got the job. You’re both optimistic, because you have to
be until you can’t.
You type and type, and fuck around on Facebook way too much
and read way too much inflammatory political news, and you type some more. Pretty soon it’s time to read over some
essays, because you have a meeting for school and you have to be able to
comment intelligently on their merits and what not. You try to have at least three things to say
about each piece. After all, you
promised yourself when you started graduate school that you’d participate in
discussions and really be involved in shit.
You’re 35 now with a family, and you can’t afford to be anything but
serious about your education.
The phone rings and you look up as your partner answers
it. Too soon, he’s hanging up, he’s
shaking his head. He hasn’t gotten the
job. They said he wasn’t “a good fit.” WHATTHEFUCKDOESTHATMEAN is what you scream in
your head, but in real life you try to comfort your partner. You hold him and
he holds you back and he says it’ll be ok and you love him for saying it and
you don’t believe it and it makes you feel better. And then it’s time to walk to the bus stop to
pick up your daughter. You go, and when
you get back you grab your bag and your essays and leave for your meeting,
kissing four faces on your way out.
When you pull away from view, you begin sobbing, really
gasping for breath, and you’re surprised at yourself. Shit’s racing through your head, shit like
rent, and racism, and this meeting you’ve got to get through, if only you can
stop crying. It’s a few minutes to the
campus so you have time to pull it together, but you’re not a pretty crier and
it’s too late, your eyelids are swollen and the rims and insides red. Still, you’ll be OK as long as you don’t cry
any more.
You cruise into the parking lot at the campus meeting spot,
and see a classmate you like also getting out of her car. She
sees you, and you walk towards each other in the drizzle, and she’s smiling and
oh no she looks concerned and now you’re crying again, and she’s hugging you
and your eyes are never going to unswell.
After you both go in, you flee to the bathroom and put a wet
paper towel on your eyes for a moment and then go into the meeting, trying to
let your hair fall forward enough to cover your face, which attempt does not
work. You hold off for a while and you
can feel people staring at you, but eventually you say some things and then the
meeting is over. Before you can get out
of there, though, the student managing editor pulls you and some others aside
to tell you that you’ve been selected for the assistant editor job you applied
for, a position you have been hoping for and excited about, and you thank her
and smile, because you don’t want to seem ungrateful, and you’re not
ungrateful.
You get home and you just want to lie in bed and possibly
cry and definitely eat corn nuts, but you can’t. You’ve got a social obligation for school, a
reading. You really don’t want to go,
but it seemed like a big deal to everyone that everyone go, and you did say you
were going to be involved. Your partner
encourages you to go. You show up early
and alone and order a coffee, which you know you have money for because you
checked your account balance before you came.
During the reading you get upset again.
At the end, while the talk turns, as always, to where the drinks will be
drunk, you rush out so no one else can talk to you.
At home, your partner’s still awake, and so are the
kids. They’re all over you, because
you’re home a lot unless you’re at class, but you’re always working or writing
or reading or cleaning. So they want to
snuggle and you want to snuggle with them.
You supervise the brushing of teeth and tongues, and they convince you
to read Dr. Seuss’ The Sleep Book, which you all love but which is quite long
for a bedtime story. You read it though,
and then you sing Mockingbird to
them, slowly like you always do in hopes that they’ll be soothed and fall
asleep, though it’s never actually worked that way. Then you kiss their small lips and cheeks and
whisper your love, and they whisper back.
Finally, you collapse on the couch with your partner. You know you should be reading or writing or
working or cleaning, but you’ve got all weekend to finish that. Right now you both need to see formulaic
hilarious nonsense, preferably involving Chevy Chase. You check the on-demand shows to see if the Community from last night is on
there. It is. Life is good.
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