During the drive home from the cemetery, I picture seeing-eye people, with harnesses strapped to their torsos, leading a herd of blind dogs through the streets. The dogs carry black walking sticks and move them from side to side to avoid what the seeing-eye people miss. But then I think this is stupid and so I stop thinking about it.
A month or so later we’re both off from work on the same day. Frank Garcia is in his backyard raking and I’m finishing the deck in mine. I hear the leaves rustling through the weathered fence. Three men from the electric company are going from yard to yard, cutting down trees and limbs that hang over the lines. Snow isn’t far off. One of the men is hooking himself onto the tree between our houses, whose branches reach into both our yards. In a minute or so, he’ll fire up his buzz saw and get to work. He is wearing camouflage pants, but I can see him clear as daylight. Given how high he is, I’m sure Garcia can see him, too.
The Problem with Green Bananas
She said she couldn’t because her week was bananas. I told her I like bananas. I said I cut them up and put them in my cereal in the morning. I don’t cut up a banana every morning, though, and I told her this. Sometimes I can’t find a ripe banana. Sometimes I go to five different stores and can’t find a single ripe banana. You’d think it was a conspiracy. You’d think all the grocers, supermarkets, and bodegas have it in for me. And I won’t buy green bananas. I won’t give them the satisfaction. Green bananas are like life insurance, to my way of thinking. I’ve always been shortsighted like this, can never see myself living long enough to enjoy a green banana or collect life insurance. I mean anyone’s life insurance, not mine, of course. I know that I can’t collect on my own life insurance. I don’t think I’m anyone’s beneficiary, either. Not even my father, if he’s still alive. He disowned me years ago, but I don’t blame him for that. He had better things to do than own someone who doesn’t have the foresight to buy a green banana. It’s not like I don’t know that green bananas turn yellow in time and in theory. It’s just that I can’t believe it actually happens to real people. I’m sure if I were to buy a green banana and bring it home, it’d stay green in perpetuity. I don’t know what this says about me except that maybe I’m shortsighted or am faithless, except I’m not sure it’s true that I’m faithless. I’m sure there’s something I believe in, and if you gave me a second, I could probably come up with a whole list. My father wouldn’t be listed if he’s still alive, although I doubt he is. I never saw him as the type that’d live a long time. I probably get that from him, if I get anything at all, other than the cutting up of bananas. If he’s dead, I’m sure he died standing up and talking back because that’s how I remember him. He wouldn’t take anything off anybody and that’s another thing I get from him. This is what I told her when she said her week was bananas and before she even had a chance to reply, I said, And you’d better believe it, sister.
Goodnight Maybe Forever
TODAY I WILL HANG MYSELF in the backyard. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of this. Every day I do something and this is what I have scheduled for today. Yesterday I ate a peach. I hadn’t had a peach in years, I don’t think, since I was a child. The night before I remembered that my mother would bring home peaches from the grocer whenever they were in season. So I put on my trousers, found a clean shirt buried under some newspapers, and walked to the grocer where I picked out the peach I thought looked best. I remembered to squeeze the peaches as I was trying to decide which one to purchase. I remembered that peaches could be too hard or soft and that neither was a good idea. My mother is the one who taught me how to pick out peaches this way. She said that someday she wouldn’t be around to take care of me and my brothers and sisters and someone needed to know how to pick out peaches. This never did happen, though. Mother was always around to take care of us and I think she still is today. What I mean is I think she is still around, not that she is still taking care of us. At this point she probably can’t even take care of herself. I imagine she’d have to be close to a hundred years old now. I haven’t seen nor heard from her in years. I tried not to think about my mother or who might be taking care of her as I was picking out my peach. There wasn’t anyone around when I was testing the peaches and for this I was grateful. I don’t like to see anyone touching the fruit and I’m sure they feel the same about me. The peach I eventually did pick out seemed to have the perfect texture and tone. I was both pleased and confident as I walked to the cashier. After paying for the peach I took it home so I could rinse it properly. My mother taught us how to rinse a peach under cold water. She said we should never rub a peach on our shirt because it would bruise. She said we could clean an apple that way, but not a peach. This didn’t matter to me because I never cared for apples. My mother would bring apples home from the grocer, but I refused to eat them. I told her I found apples to be disagreeable. This always upset my mother, whenever I said something like this. She said I didn’t make any sense, that I was an idiot like my father. I didn’t know what this meant exactly, if he didn’t care for apples, either. My mother was often upset and my brothers and sisters and I always had to be careful whenever she was around, which was all the time. Mother never left us unattended. She didn’t trust us. I don’t blame her. I didn’t trust us, either. I considered saving the peach for dinner but decided to eat it right after the rinsing. The first bite held great promise, as my teeth broke the skin and penetrated the inner fruit. As I started to chew, however, I realized that the peach looked better than it tasted. I tried another bite, thinking perhaps it might get better as I kept going. It didn’t. I felt cheated, as anyone might imagine. I felt as though I had let myself down, that I’d let my mother down, that I should’ve known better. I’m not saying this is the reason I’m going to hang myself in the backyard today, of course. I’ve been planning to hang myself for a while now. Countless others have done likewise and I’m no different, not by any measure.
I have, over the years, been badly beaten. This is probably one of the reasons I’m as tired as I am now. I am almost always tired and I always want to go to bed and I always try to sleep the entire day away and I blame the people who have beaten me, among others. This is no way to go through life, no way to live one. I would tell people this if anyone cared to ask. If someone said to me, Is this any way to go through life? I would say, No, of course not. I would say, What the fuck is wrong with you, asking me a question like that? My mother used to ask me this all the time. She would stand with hands on hips, look me dead in the eye, and say, What the fuck is wrong with you? I would have to think about what was wrong with me and then answer. Sometimes I’d have to come up with a list and hand it over to her like it was homework. This always took a long time to do as there has always been a lot wrong with me. But no one asks me questions anymore, which is good because I don’t have answers, other than this one about life and how not to go through it. For instance, I don’t know why people like to beat me. I have tried to figure this out for years now. I’ve wondered if I ever did anything to provoke these beatings. If such was the case I could do something to prevent them. I could alter my behavior, avoid certain circumstances, certain crowds. To be fair, not everyone has beaten me, though certainly a great many have and many others have tried to do so. I am fleet afoot and can sometimes outrun those who mean to beat me. The trouble is I have no endurance. So, if someone who means to beat me has any endurance at all they can catch up to me in no time and then commence. I remember someone saying that once before I was beaten. They had me cornered, tied to a post, and someone said, You may commence. I haven’t always been beaten this way and I can’t remember the circumstances surrounding this particular beating. Often more than one person wants to beat me at the same time. I’m not sure why this is. It probably makes it easier on them, the division of labor. I imagine it’s taxing to beat someone all by yourself. I wouldn’t know this because I have never in my life beaten anyone, either on my own or as part of a team. I think it would take too much out of me to beat someone. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if beating someone was more exhausting than taking a beating. But this is something I don’t know anything about so I shouldn’t talk about it. This was always one of the things wrong with me growing up. Whenever mother asked what the fuck was wrong with me I could always answer that I talk when I should listen and that I don’t know anything. I remember I said something about apples once, how they were sprayed with pesticides and were toxic and mother beat me senseless. Sometimes she’d have some of my brothers and sisters help her and I think this was one of those times. I cannot say it was any worse than being beaten by a single individual. When you are being beaten it almost doesn’t matter how many people are doing it to you, although it probably is worse, now that I think about it. When you’ve been beaten as often as I have sometimes you have trouble thinking things through. This is another reason I am as tired as I am now and why later today I will hang myself in the backyard. Thinking takes too much out of me. It’s because of the beatings, I’m almost certain. My memory has been compromised, which is why I haven’t had a peach in so long. The thought of a peach hasn’t even occurred to me during all this time. Certainly I must’ve eaten some kind of fruit over the years. One couldn’t live this long a life and not had any fruit during the course of it. What’s troubling is that I can’t remember eating any fruit other than peaches and I only just remembered that the other night. It stands to reason I’ve seen peaches at a grocer’s or in someone’s kitchen, but I have no memory of actually seeing peaches, let alone eating them. It is possible I’ve subsisted solely on meat and bread my entire adult life. I don’t think this is unusual or unique is what I think I’m trying to say. Anyone who has been beaten as often as I have would have a faulty memory and trouble thinking things through and as a result be as tired as I am now. Surely others have subsisted on meat and bread alone. The world is a big place and has a lot of people in it. My mother used to say this all the time. I think she meant that I could be replaced, that I wasn’t essential. This is yet another reason I’m no different, not by any measure. It is no wonder I will hang myself later in the backyard. The question is why I haven’t done so sooner. I have no answer to this question. Clearly, it was a mistake or a series of mistakes, not hanging myself sooner. I have made a great many mistakes. To go through the mistakes now would be pointless. The more pressing concern is will I have the energy or strength to hang myself later.