THE TREES UNDERGROUND
IN CAFETERIA WHEN BLIND BETTY SAYS THE TREES UNDERGROUND ARE OUTSIDE BLOOMING ALL OVER. Blind Betty is blind so you don’t know if you should believe her sometimes. Thing about Blind Betty is she’s fingered all the Braille books on flowers and nature so she knows about these things she says. To regular people the trees underground are dandelions but to Blind Betty they’re trees. Blind Betty says when she was a kid she had a baby brother who was a retard and she’d tell him that dandelions were the trees underground. Blind Betty says this is the kind of thing you tell retards but she doesn’t say why. She’d tell him there was a world underground the opposite of the aboveground world. So if you were blind aboveground you were deaf in the underground world and if you were a retard in one you’d be a genius in the other. It don’t make no sense to me that if you’re blind aboveground you’d be deaf in the underground but I like it when Blind Betty tells us stories about her retard brother so I don’t say nothing. Blind Betty says her mother made her call the baby brother special instead but he was a retard just the same. The neighborhood they lived in was filled with old people who didn’t have the sense to move to Florida or get killed off is what Blind Betty says. The few kids in the neighborhood were all evil and Blind Betty would know since Pity Jimmy says she was born an agent orange of evil herself. All Pity Jimmy ever says about people is how and when they were born. Me I was born in the middle of monkey in the middle but Pity Jimmy never says what that means. Blind Betty never says what it means either though if anyone knows it’s probably her. Pity Jimmy doesn’t like Blind Betty so I don’t think it’s a good idea when Blind Betty sits next to us but I act like it is. My job here is to walk these blindsters around obstacles and land mines and listen to their stories about retard brothers sometimes. This is what they pay me for though they haven’t started to pay me yet. Blind Betty says the evil neighborhood kids would make Blind Betty’s brother eat doodlebugs and play with himself in front of the whole school. Blind Betty says this was before they had special schools for retards. The other thing is this all happened before Blind Betty caught the disease in her eyes and went blind. Time was Blind Betty wasn’t blind but I don’t know if you can believe her. She looks like all the rest of them boys and girls born blind even Pity Jimmy who is the blindest one of all. She says old people in the neighborhood used to wish their own evil children and grandchildren could be more like her and would tell them so to their faces. They would say why can’t you be more like Blind Betty except they probably said regular Betty back then. They used to would say this because Blind Betty was always taking care of her retarded baby brother like she was Saint Blind Betty. She says that none of them evil neighborhood children could’ve been like her anyway because that’s not how the world works. If you want a child like Blind Betty you’d have to have one like her baby brother, it’s always a tradeoff she says. Me I don’t know about these things but Blind Betty does so I keep listening. She says she thought maybe she’d put a curse on her retarded baby brother because she didn’t want one in the first place and used to would wish he’d not get born. God made him a retard as revenge but Blind Betty’s mother says it was because he didn’t eat his vegetables as a baby so you don’t know what. She says she was always getting into fights sticking up for her baby brother but it got so she was tired all the time from fighting so eventually you learn to pick your spots when your baby brother is a retard. Also Blind Betty’s brother would only want to eat cereal for dinner each night and would splash milk all over the kitchen table. It was Blind Betty’s job to clean up the little pools of milk surrounding her retarded brother’s bowl. She says her mother wasn’t a good mother to the baby brother because secretly she hated him for being a retard and wouldn’t wipe up the pools of milk for him neither. I say to Blind Betty that maybe her mother didn’t know how to be a good mother and that maybe it wasn’t on purpose. Blind Betty doesn’t even listen to me when I say this. I don’t think Pity Jimmy is listening either. He’s too busy trying to spoon-feed himself the chicken soup he’s spilling everywhere else. Or maybe he’s thinking how and when everyone underground is born. You can’t tell with him sometimes because he’s blind. Me I never think about the underground world because this is not what they pay me for. Blind Betty goes on with her story and how next that her baby brother died. She didn’t say how he died just that one day he was dead and that it wasn’t unexpected. She said that her mother seemed to turn into a different mother and the house into a different house and not long after it was when she caught the disease in her eyes and went blind. After that all she remembers is what she calls the acrid smell of flowers making her sick and that her mother never mentioned the baby brother again. Blind Betty doesn’t say if acrid is a kind of flower or what it smells like. What she says instead is she wasn’t sure if it was because you weren’t supposed to talk about dead people or that nobody missed him. Blind Betty’s mother cleaned out his room the week after and never kept any pictures around so it was like he was never even there. Right then Pity Jimmy spoons the last of the soup into his mouth and stands up. This means I have to walk him back to his room so he won’t bump into something and crack his head open like Blind Betty did that one time. I stand up to go do this. Before we go I ask Blind Betty if she can remember what her baby brother looked like and what she says back is I don’t think that was right neither.
HERCULANEUM
BLIND BETTY SAYS SHE’S STARVING HUNGRY and if she doesn’t get to eat soon she doesn’t know what. Blind Betty says this all the time so you don’t know if you can believe her sometimes. Also Blind Betty is blind and blindsters lie more than regular people do I think. I’m not saying that all blindsters are born liars the way they were born blindsters but it’s something close to that. Maybe only some of them are born liars and the rest learned how from the born ones. Maybe that’s what they teach in these schools for blindsters. Blind Betty is one of the blindsters who wasn’t born blind. Time was she could see things like apples and dandelions. Blind Betty says she can remember what apples and dandelions look like but not much else. Could be Blind Betty remembers what everything looks like but you can’t tell with her sometimes because she’s a liar. The blindsters are good liars because they don’t have to look anyone in the eye when they do it. My job here is to walk Blind Betty to the cafeteria whenever she’s starving hungry so I have to listen to her when she says it even though she might be lying half the time. The one time I wasn’t there to listen was when she went by herself and tripped and cracked her head open on Pity Jimmy’s roller skate. I don’t know where it is I was when Blind Betty cracked her head open. I may’ve been out in the shed getting wood to burn. Sometimes they send me out to the shed for wood because they can’t send any of the blindsters to go do it. I don’t like getting wood because the wood has things in it like maggots or faggots or whatever it is Blind Betty calls them. Sometimes Blind Betty calls the worms faggots and calls me and Pity Jimmy maggots and sometimes it’s the other way around so you don’t know what. They never said why they let Pity Jimmy have roller skates because he’s as blind as the day he was born. Instead they gave me what-for when Blind Betty cracked her head open. This is not what we pay you for they said. I think I shook my head yes but they haven’t paid me once yet. Sometimes I think they won’t ever pay me. Sometimes I think what I do here I do for free. None of the blindsters care if I get paid so I don’t even tell them. If I did say something I would probably say it to Pity Jimmy because he won’t say nothing back. All he ever says about people be they blindsters or regular is how and when they were born and he’s an idiot anyway. This is why they didn’t give Pity Jimmy what-for even though it was his roller skate Blind Betty tripped on. Pity Jimmy is the blindest one of all these blindsters so he can do no wrong in their eyes. People around here say pity Jimmy was born the way he was and now I say it too. They say this because all he ever does is rock back and forth like he is in a rocking chair standing up and snaps his fingers without making any snapping sounds. Also he jerks his head around like there’s a gnat flying in his face. So here it is I have to walk Blind Betty to the cafeteria so she won’t trip over something and crack her head open again. Next time she trips and cracks her head open it might kill her they told me. I don’t know if regular people get killed this way but maybe blindsters do. So I walk Blind Betty to the cafeteria and she says she gets low blood sugar but she doesn’t say what that means. She’s fingered all the Braille books on anatomy and nutrition so she knows about these things she says. Blind Betty is always fingering some book when she isn’t talking about what she’s fingered. I ask her what low blood sugar has to do with the price of fish because that’s what she said to me one time. I forgot what it was I said to her that made her say what does that have to do with the price of fish back. Blind Betty doesn’t like it when you interrupt her which is probably why she said what she said about the fish. I don’t know what Blind Betty means most of the time when she talks. On the walk over she talks about how Herculaneum was just as destroyed by Vesuvius but all anyone ever remembers is Pompeii. She says it’s a conspiracy and says that the people of Herculaneum have been victimized twice. She doesn’t say who Herculaneum is or what Vesuvius did to destroy him and I don’t ask questions either. She doesn’t mention anything about the price of fish or why they let Pity Jimmy have roller skates or why she is always fingering her Braille books. I sit Blind Betty down and set her a place. There is a paper place mat and on the right side you put the napkin with the fork knife and spoon from left to right in that order. I go to the counter so I can fill a tray of food and get a carton of milk for her. This is what they pay me for when they do finally pay me. I fetch a carton of milk from the refrigerator. On the tray I put beans where the beans are supposed to go and the chicken and potatoes where they are supposed to go. This is how they said I should do it. You have to put the chicken and beans and potatoes in the same spot every time otherwise I don’t know what.