How the Sausage Is Made
We start listening to Little House in the Big Woods, and E is disturbed by the pig butchering part. I keep waiting for it to end, but it keeps going on— Laura covers her ears so she won’t hear the pig squealing, but then comes the “fun part,” the actual butchering. The description of all the parts of the pig they could use. The hickory smoking. Pa blowing up the bladder for them to play with. The tail being stripped of its skin so it could be given to the girls to roast over the fire on a stick and gnaw down to the bone. Despite having read this book as a child, I remembered none of this.
*
It’s the Thursday before Easter — Maundy Thursday — and a teacher work day. E squirms at the table until we go outside. He climbs a playhouse with his friends. They play robber and murderer. “What’s a murderer?” he says. He touches his friend’s back with the bubble wand, telling him it’s jailbreak liquid. The friend has been falsely accused, you see. He tosses a gun-shaped stick at another friend.
*
A Catholic friend asks online whether anyone else’s services skipped the foot washing. Another friend watches Zeffirelli Jesus, as is her custom. Later, I am at home thinking, “Maundy, Maundy. What does that mean?” I light a candle to the goddess in the form of Stevie Nicks for a friend who wants to live but also wants to die.
*
Every day I write messages to my melancholy single mother compatriot. We are Vladimir and Estragon comparing notes. “I slept in a ditch last night.” We take our boots off and shake them out. We put them back on and tie our children’s boots. We rope the children to us and go on, having given up on Godot. “Men are so disappointing, anyway,” I say, “but maybe I shouldn’t keep repeating that, so that my thoughts don’t create my reality.” “They are mostly disappointing,” she says, “and the non-disappointing ones are shocked to find out how useless the other men are.” I slept in a ditch last night. My friend says that we think we want romance, but that we really want is care. We want someone else to be maternal for a change.
*
At the end of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, the protagonist spies into the window of an Mennonite couple as the husband washes the wife’s feet as a gesture of apology and reconciliation. My only instrument of spiritual technology is this candle and this smoothed-out amethyst the tarot lady suggested I buy to heal and tone my heart chakra. I keep setting it down on different surfaces and losing it. E is squirming in his seat, climbing onto my lap at dinner, pressing against me to know we are both here, until I snap that I just need space. The technology of comfort. The failure of energy. But how attentive he is when he asks for a word to be defined and then listens for the response, how our brain and heart waves level out and reach toward each other calmly. How I look up from my writing to see the amethyst where it fell at my feet.
* * * * * *
Dispatch
Cannot sleep all night. Sleep half the day after school drop off. Wake up depressed. Finally get up to take a shower. “Eye of the Tiger” starts going through my head. Smile at myself. Go to eat lunch. Answer an email about a medium amount of work I could do for a small amount of money. Write a friend to say that capitalism and patriarchy are getting me down more than usual today. The large amounts of work for small amounts of money in recent years. The large amounts of work mothering an exceptional child. The lack of financial recompense or social stability that comes from not getting along better with his father. The feeling that our worth and survival depend on the amounts of money. Decide to submit an essay for not much money so that I can feel like I’m here. Realize essay is over the word count for the journal. Begin trying to condense an essay. Decide it is impossible. The waiter at the sandwich counter who never usually smiles flashes a quick insincere smile as he sets down the bill.
Go to buy groceries. Find the lentils. Find the apples. Find a mother I know in the produce section. She is a more successful freelancer than me, mostly because I continue to want to focus on unpaid work, like lyric essays and sleeping. I ask how she is and she says it’s been a rough week, says we should get together after school someday this week. I say yes and remind her that they also have a couple days off before Easter. We look at each other, murmur something. Continue shopping.
I pick up the child, and his mood is milder than usual. His mouth is blue. Blue cupcakes for someone’s party. He stops to bend over at the waist and look between his legs. Says, “The world is upside down!” Looks at me and asks what would happen if he traveled through a wormhole to another “di-mension.” I say that I don’t know. Would he come back?, I ask. He says he would, unless it closed up after him. He asks a father we know why they can’t stay and play. “We have to go to Costco!” he says. “Buy me an inflatable raft if they have one!” my son says.
I feed the child all afternoon. It rains all afternoon. The child tells me that he used to love me, but now he doesn’t because I don’t give him enough gummy worms. He says he’s kidding and hangs on my arm. He eats cheese and apples. He asks for more cheese and more cheese again. I sit on the couch while he watches videos on my phone and eats cheese. I condense my essay and pay three dollars to submit it. I finish making the soup. He eats a small amount of the lentil soup and some bread. He plays with the Legos scattered all over the table. He tries the cannoli I impulsively bought at the bakery case, but doesn’t like it. He eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watches a television show about vocabulary. His father calls to say goodnight and is mildly disgruntled that the child is watching television. The child eats a whole can of tuna before bed. I feel grateful that we have food. I ignore the dishes.
I read to the child, fall asleep with the child, wake up thirsty in the middle of the night, having had another dream about a shooting at an amusement park. I pick up my phone and read a poem about a mother waking up thirsty.