Ketchup Soup

She stood in the kitchen, fuzzy slippers blackened at the toes, nubby slip~proof soles, worn thin. Her bottom lip sucker kissed her top lip over and over again. She was chewing.....

Chanty boy sat wedged in the high chair, a wadded up dish towel to his left, a rolled up T~shirt to his right. In case he teetered. We were hungry. I sat barefooted across from Chance at the kitchen table, toes stretching to tap, tap, tap him on his chubby thighs...make him smile. Robbie was makin' him cream of wheat and until it was ready, I had to keep him entertained. .

When she scuffed across the kitchen floor, blowing 'backy smoke on the bowl of grits, I kited past her, snapped the fridge open and stared ..... "Ugggggh"..... Milk, ketchup, mustard with crust on the cap, leftover po~cakes, a bottle of insulin, and 3 cans of Lite Beer. I slammed the olive green door shut and twirled in the kitchen, opened the pantry door. "Aint nothin' there" she murmered, never taking her eyes off the rubber spoon, off the baby she was feeding....

"Ugggghhhh"! I flopped back into the bentwood chair and without another word began knawing on my fingernails. "What the hell?" I mumbled and she never answered me. It was OK to cuss around Robbie, she did it all the time, and she wouldn't tell...
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She swirled the spoon around the plastic bowl one last time, and Chanty had his encore bite....full and happy now, his heavy little head nodding, falling into the high chair tray. Fat and content, he would sleep well... She made sure of that....

She wiped her hands on the dirty green apron, walked to the kitchen door and spit....the kind of spit meant for contests between 9 year old boys. I watched it in slow motion, rising, hurling, flying....past the steps, over the monkey grass, into the blue blue sky..... And then she scuttled back into the kitchen. No words now. She opened the fridge and did the stare down. Eyes squinting. Nose scrunching. Then she hauled a big ole pot out from under the counter and made us all Ketchup soup. I stood behind her, falling in love. Noodles boiling, tumbling, rising, falling, plumpened in the rew. I put my face as close as I could to the gurgling pot, a steam bath of magic kissed me....
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Four of us sat at the kitchen table, skinny legs dangling, tapping the floor, shoveling hot ketchup soup down our souls. Thanksgiving dinner would never be this good. Skinny beamed at me across the table, front toothless, and upper lip kool-aid stained. Curty boy slurped in silence. His tummy filling. Kimbies yummed out loud.....
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We've tried to make it a dozen times since then. In poor times, silly times, late at night. It's never been the same. We've added gourmet spices, arty shaped noodles, food coloring, and bits of bacon... It's never been the same....
.
The magic is in the moment....
and
the
love....

And we all fall down.....

It was late. Skinny and I had been on the phone for hours. Literally. It's the way we bridge the miles. Reach out and touch each other. I piled into bed, four beers and probably eight brainstorms later, and crunched under the covers, heavy and smelling like rain....line dried and fresh. I stretched. Ran the Friday numbers by. How to make payroll. What to pick up at Winn Dixie on my home. How much catfood is behind the bar.... And I listened. One child out for the night....celebrating at Kobe's....

Drifting, just barely, slightly....I heard her key. Her high~heeled feet ballet stepping down the hall. Water running. I even heard her comforter being thrown back, her body flopping down, comfy cozy....into slumberland. I fell asleep immediately, whisk into that maternal peace that rocks a Mama....

"Safe", she's home safe and sound.

Georgia flew. Her claws digging into the orange quilt, needle banging my shins on her way out....unearthly growl growing as she took flight. The banging. The incessecent banging on my doorbelless door. She howled, barked, danced in a dark circle, and I spun in the same circle, grabbing joe boxers, freaking.....at that sound....strangers at the door.....in the middle of the damn night....

The front door rattled, bumped, slammed....."Oh, God, we're being raided"....and I flew out the kitchen door....where we meet friends, family, stray dogs.....as an army of one, ready.....and then I saw them....fraidy cats in headlights.....crumpled, coming, moving, falling into me with words, stories, frantic noise.... that suddenly sounded like coins dropped underwater.....and reaching, I couldn't catch them,worthless tokens falling heavy and distorted, gobbled up by the bottomless sand.....but I could see them, Jonah's roomate, his girlfriend....their faces.....

My youngest child had overdosed.

911 had been called.

He was barely breathing.

His blood pressure was nothing.

His heart was exploding.

When I touched him, he rolled his eyes. When I held his hand, nothing. When I said "I love you son".....I dreamed he answered me. When they told me "There is nothing else we can do" they went about their business and I prayed......

JSYK, in our world, if they breathe again and they're over 18, there is nothing you can do but pray......

I prayed hard......

Raining heartstrings

Twice in the last week, I heard the boom-box rap ,rap, rapping around the corner, into the drive-way, and the humming of the engine idling for the last puff on a cigarette, the end of an angry song.....

And I went flying. Zooming down the hallway, concrete boot clomping, echoing off the tile walls, diving into bed, clothes and all. This is how much I want peace. That I would hide from my late-night wayward love child, just to not face his "Oh, I just had a beer, or two....." pinkened eyes, or hear the latest road rage story, or who ripped off who or who did who~to~who dunnit tale. And I layed in bed, concentrating on listening, and not breathing out loud....trying to decipher his mood from the sound of his size thirteens plodding about, by the slamming of the fridge, by the pssssshhhhhhht of another bottle being opened. Soda or beer I wonder. Thanking God he made it home safe. I've begged, I've pleaded, threatened, loved, tough loved and gone broke raising my youngest miracle. I've prayed and prayed again, fought, and laid my body in the road to protect him......

Last night my reactions were slow. I didn't hear the sounds until the slamming of the door. The rain had lured me, hypnotized me in to early peace, and indian-like he snuck through the kitchen door. "Love" I said. He kissed me on the cheek. I watched with one eye as he inventoried the kitchen cabinets, clunk, clunk,clunk, cabinet doors closing. He found the perfect muchies in late night Ramon noodles microwaved....and settled in. Giant shoes and dirty socks kicked off on the living room floor, bowl of steaming 39 cent dinner balancing on the armrest.

"You know, what, Ma?" he grunted in between huge bite fulls. "hmmmmmm"?

Thirty minutes later, I was on the leopard skin rug, sitting across from him, and we were telling stories, and true confessions, and "I betcha didn't knows"...... and I had to do the math for him, for him to understand....."yes, son, I've been there, too".....


And he wanted to know, to hear again, how I knew when I had to grow up. So I told him the story he's heard before, and he nodded and told me how his friend's baby boy is seven months old now and so damned cute and "healthy"...... And then he said "thank- you, Mom"........

I was 17. Partied all the time. Everyone partied. The pages of my year book were slathered with as many dedications to the dead as pages celebrating homecomings and football games. In the 10th grade, I buried my boyfriend. He ventured, wasted, across a six lane highway. The driver never saw him coming. I hope he never saw the driver. He lay in a coma for all of the fall and after whittling away to 78 pounds finally took his last breath in February. We caravanned to the funeral. The first of many. In the eleventh grade, his best friend jumped off a roof. It wasn't the broken bones that sent him to live forever in the care of the kind nurses, the 24-7 tiled walls. It was the broken heart. The broken soul. The orange sunshine. We were killing ourselves. When I was 17, I saw what else we were doing.

I volunteered at Sunnyland. An institution (yes, we had them) for physically and mentally handicapped children. Not a group home. An institution. An old industrial looking, smelling, hospital converted to a nursery for babies who would never grow up, never go home again.

Day #1. They led us past the baby beds. Little ones tied to their cribs. So they wouldn't rub their noses off. Bang their heads into concussions....again. I almost vomitted. Three volunteers did. And they were escorted back down the mold colored elevators and thanked. I held my breath. And somehow, my knees held me up.

Day#2. Into the day nursery. Where children that could play were allowed to. Toddlers with tubes up their noses, tethered to miniature walkers, babbling nonsensical words, paced in circles. They were drugged, I was sure. I looked around. There were seven of us left. All standing. I touched a little tow head. He didn't even notice. Squatted. Looked him in the eyes. He kept going. And then a hand on my back. And a slurry, drooly little voice. I turned. Davidson. I had to blink several times, not to keep from crying, but to stop the watering my eyes were doing in defense. He smiled. On the side of his face. Actually no. His face was on the side of his head. Everything distorted. Not in the right places. His gummy smile with the halloween teeth was huge, jack-o-lanternish. His eyelids were heavy tents over the second set of eyelids, thick rheumy transluscent cataract-like awnings that permanently covered his blue eyes. He had no ear lobes. His nose was nothing but nostrils. His little fingers were stubs....the muffin man. And he had a huge mop of brown unruly hair. "Do you wanta play?" he asked with double lidded eyes wide open. "Course", I smiled, lowering myself even closer to the asbestos flooring. "K"......"Simon says....."

Davidson was an "acid baby". His little mind, a miracle. He walked. He talked. Laughed. Told intricate stories. He was bright, and he smiled. And lived. And he was here, stork dropped amongst his siblings by fate.... The nurses told me that soon he would be as mentally handicapped as many of the others....from lack of stimuli, love, change.....I went every week-end. And we ABC'd and crawled on our knees, and loved. Until they closed the doors.

"Seven years" they said. For acid, LSD, other tell-tell trails, to leave your system. "Seven years". I did the math. And prayed I wouldn't fall in love before I was 24. And that I would grow up before I died.

Postcript: Davidson's Mother came clean. He was adopted by a stepfather who loved him dearly and many, many plastic surgeries later, the "boy without a face" grew up. He graduated from university and I'm sure, is still stealing hearts. I grew up a lot the year I met him, came to know him.....and last night, grew a little more. May the circle be unbroken.....
Love grows....