SEPTEMBER WHEN THE CICADAS DIE
BLIND BETTY SAYS WE’RE UNDERWATER NOW. After two hours riding aboveground we go underground to cross some river is why Blind Betty says what she says. We are on this train to go visit some museum somewhere but they don’t say what for. Last time it was a bus they put us on and Blind Betty said the toxins were toxic and that if we breathed in our lungs would bleed out our earballs. They did up the floors so you could see yourself in them was the problem. I never see myself in the floors but they said I could if I looked. They say the floors shine like pool water like a mirror ball and that you can skate on them floors if you’re not careful. They put us on that bus so they could do this to the floors. Me I don’t know what good shiny floors are to blindsters or why they make me walk these blindsters around so they don’t trip over things and crack their heads open instead of someone else. They all of them gave me what-for when Blind Betty cracked her head open that one time. This is not what we pay you for they said. I think I shook my head yes but I don’t remember ever getting paid by them even once. I think what it is I do here I do for free. I said this to Blind Betty once and what she said back to me was curse words. Blind Betty tries to teach Pity Jimmy curse words but it never works. Pity Jimmy didn’t come with us on the train because Blind Betty says Pity Jimmy is sick and might die soon. Part of my job now is to give Pity Jimmy his pills after he eats in the cafeteria breakfast lunch and dinner. Blind Betty is the one who taught me which pills to give Pity Jimmy and in what order. She said it was her job before it became my job to do this. Blind Betty says if you give Pity Jimmy the wrong pills in the wrong order he will fall down and have convulsions and swallow his tongue and die. I don’t know if this is true but it’s what Blind Betty tells me. Blind Betty has fingered all the books on health and anatomy so she knows about these things she says. Thing about Blind Betty is you don’t know if you can believe her sometimes. 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. It’s because they don’t have to look anyone in the eye that makes it easy. So when I give Pity Jimmy his pills I don’t know if I’m doing it right or if I am killing him. I don’t know if Blind Betty wants Pity Jimmy dead. She hasn’t said so out loud but you can tell she thinks about it sometimes. This is why Pity Jimmy says she was born an agent orange of evil. Pity Jimmy was rocking back and forth and snapping and jerking when he called her an agent orange of evil and then Blind Betty told us about her baby brother who died. This brother was a retard that would spill milk when he ate his cereal for dinner and other retarded things like that. The way Blind Betty talks about her baby brother you wonder how he died when he died. She never tells us about that part only that one day he was dead and that it wasn’t unexpected. Blind Betty used to would make up this game for her brother about the underground world. That it was the opposite of the aboveground world and so if you were blind in one you’d be deaf in the other and so forth. Sometimes Blind Betty don’t make no sense when she talks but I like listening to her stories so I don’t say nothing about her not making no sense. This happens too when I ask her if she is looking forward to the museum. I think maybe this museum is a special one they have for blindsters. The kind of museum where you can touch things instead of just look at them. What she says back is all she looks forward to is September when the cicadas die. I don’t say anything to her when she says this to me. I don’t know who the cicadas are or why they die in September. This is when Blind Betty says we’re underwater now. Blind Betty doesn’t mention the underground world when she says what she says about us underwater. I think maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to think about her dead baby brother and that maybe her baby brother died in September and his name was Cicada. When she says what she says about us underwater it almost feels like we are flying down a roller coaster but not really. None of them blindsters put their arms up in the air and scream when we go underwater and neither do I. All I feel is my ears plugging up and then unplugging and I look over to Blind Betty who is fingering one of her Braille books like it’s nothing. I move my jaw like I’m chewing gum and watch Blind Betty finger two whole pages without stopping her finger even once. I can’t tell if her ears are plugging and unplugging like mine and I wonder if this can’t happen to blindsters because they’re blind.
WHAT DOESN’T MATTER HERE
THEY HAVE ME SLEEP IN A ROOM RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE PITY JIMMY SLEEPS. Pity Jimmy is the one I have to keep an eye out special for because out of all these blindsters he’s the blindest one of all. All Pity Jimmy does is snap his fingers without making any snapping sounds and shakes his head like there’s a gnat flying in his face. This is why they say pity Jimmy was born the way he was and why I say it now too. This room next to Pity Jimmy’s has no closet to hang clothes in and no windows to look out of. Pity Jimmy has both a closet and windows but I guess they think I don’t need those things. I have to keep my extra clothes in a valise I keep under the bed. I have two extra shirts in the valise and an extra pair of pants but I almost never have to wear them because they give me clothes to wear for free every two or three days. The pants and shirt are always gray and are always too baggy for me to wear right. I have to fold the pants over and down onto my hips because I forgot to bring a belt with me and they never seem to have a belt for me to wear neither. The shirt I button up to the top button because there’s no reason not to. Most times I never button the top button of my shirt because it feels like I’ll choke to death but with these gray shirts here it doesn’t matter. These clothes would fit someone twice the size of me is the problem. Every two or three days I’ll come back to my room at night to find the baggy shirt and pants on my bed waiting for me. Sometimes I think this is what they mean when they say this is not what we pay you for. What I mean is I think they think that by giving me clothes to wear it is the same as paying me actual money. I don’t know this to be true but there’s no one to ask neither. If I asked Blind Betty what she’d probably say back is curse words. Along with no closet or windows there’s no mirror in my room neither. This is probably good because I don’t have to see how stupid these clothes look on me. Sometimes I feel like an idiot in these clothes but then I realize it doesn’t matter here. Blindsters don’t care about what you look like because they’re blind. This might be the only good thing about being here if there is a good thing about being here which I’m not sure there is. The only two things I do in my room is sleep and either put on or take off my clothes and none of that is ever good. Walking the blindsters around obstacles and land mines isn’t good and neither is taking them back and forth to the cafeteria. Going out to the shed for wood to burn isn’t good and the maggots and faggots in the wood aren’t also. What’s good is in my old room back home I had a TV that squealed like a wounded bird. I’d watch the TV and do whatever else I used to do in my room at home while watching the TV and what I think I remember is that it was always good.