They Is Us

It is true everyone but Slawa is constipated, even the dog, Breakfast, who squats, a tortured U-shape in the backyard, slowly stumbling around for hours until finally one hard pellet drops. You might as well throw loaves to the fishes, Slawa thinks, what’s the point, how could they not be constipated when they never eat vegetables nor fiber, and besides, as soon as you poop, those things, whatever they are, no one is ever quite sure, come scrambling up the pipeline to eat the… shit. These nasty primordial-looking little creatures will, with nothing but a mouthful of teeth, leave you with a buttock full of pinholes if you don’t jump off the pot immediately. Whatever they are, you could pour bleach down the drains and it would kill the ones who are there but afterwards their brethren would be back, more furious than ever and could even on occasion hop out onto the floor, surfaced all the way up from the sewers.

A sourness permeated Slawa’s existence that hadn’t been vanquished by Volthrapeâ. Now that he was coming off the stuff he was like a rutting elephant seal swimming back up to the surface. How had he been able to live this long in such a mess? He ran around shouting until finally she had no choice but to throw him out. “It was the Dora mixed with Volthrapeâ that made me… not apathetic, but indifferent. Accepting. It was only thanks to the Dora that I have been able to accept my entire existence. I see that now!”

“Who cares, Slawa! Come home once in a while and help me clean up if you don’t like to live this way! You were the one who wanted a shoe repair place, now you have it!”

“It was something I did for you! You and the children! The dark shoe repair shop, reeking of leather cleaning fluids! What can I care about the kids steeting gluf and pait when basically I have been stoned out of my mind for the past years?”

“So? And you think everyone else isn’t?”

Anyway at least now he is gone. But… every morning – although he is not there stumping around, in his black sulk – it is still always the same thing, one thing substituted by another almost the same. “Kids! Are you up and dressed? You’re gonna miss the bus!”

“Tahnee’s already left, Ma! She went running!”

“Great.” That meant she hadn’t eaten; the child seemed to live on slivers of watermylon, baskets of those strange hairy sprouts. She would jog to school in her tiny shorts and track shoes and get a bagel at the convenience store nearby, from which she would pick out the center dough and consume only the crust. Anorexia, bulimia, Tahnee swore it wasn’t true; anyway, what could Murielle do about it at this minute? “Julie, did you see a stack of bills I left on the table?”

“No. Ma, can you do something about Sue Ellen? She is getting worse and worse, she’s really bothering me.”

Sue Ellen is Julie’s imaginary friend, a sort of unpleasant companion who Julie uses as an excuse for when things go wrong. “No, I have not seen her.” Murielle turns on the HGMTV. Some kind of infectious kidney virus… the anchorwoman is saying it’s an epidemic. There aren’t enough dialysis machines in the country.

Now the weatherman comes on. “Excuse me for interrupting,” he announces gleefully, and goes on, thrilled beyond belief, to announce “a hailstorm is coming, the hailstones will possibly be the size of tennis balls! Tennis balls, great destruction, no electricity for the dialysis, limited though the quantities may be!” What the heck is going on? Where has she been?

Bills. Vaguely a memory of a bill. Eight thousand and ninety-five dollars? From who? And where is it? There is no use in looking, she knows that by now. It was due, when, a couple of days ago? She had meant to search for it the night before, now she had to get to work and make sure the kids got on the bus, there is no time to look; nevertheless she begins rummaging through a heap.

“Everybody at school has them, Ma. Jommy Wakowski had one last week that started coming out of his nose and he got the whole thing but the teacher actually threw up! What the hell are they, Ma?”

She hasn’t been paying attention. “I don’t know. Some kind of worm, a tapeworm, I guess, that’s vermicide-resistant. If you’d wash your hands… Is this something of yours, Julie?”

Julie grabs the paper. “Oh, great! My homework! I was looking for that. See, I told you – Sue Ellen takes stuff, all the time, and hides it!”

Draw a map of the United States

– Name the relevant details

– Outline the former landmasses in a different color.

“Why can’t you get organized the night before?” Murielle looks at the homework.

“Julie, did you do this?”

“Yeah, why, what’s wrong?”

“Um, nothing… What’s the wall of burning clothes?”

“Oh, that’s to keep out the Mexicans, you know, where all the clothes get sent and formed into a wall that they soak in dirty oil and stuff, it’s on fire?”

“I didn’t even know about that! You really did this all by yourself? You didn’t copy?”

“No.”

“I’m surprised, that’s all.”

Her mother always thinks she is stupid! But Julie doesn’t say this, she knows it would only make her mother mad. “Can I have fifty dollars for lunch? Hurry up, Ma.”

“Oh God. Hang on just a second,” Murielle says.

“Ma, I’m gonna miss the bus. What?”

“It’s, you know, the worm thing. What the hell is it with these things, why can’t the doctor give you some kind of medicine that works?”

“The bus is coming! Are you going to drive me?” Julie involuntarily sticks her little finger in her nostril.

“No, don’t, don’t touch or it’ll retreat.” Murielle takes some tweezers and grabs the worm head. The face with dark eyes and no chin is unpleasant. Then with the head of the worm in the tweezers she begins to pull, slowly winding the thin white body around the nearest thing to hand, a broomstick, which she twirls. When she has wound almost twelve feet of worm, the end breaks off and falls to the floor where, though missing the head, twitches across the room toward the gap under the cabinets. Being snapped in two doesn’t seem to have killed the worm.

“I’ve definitely missed the bus.”

“That’s all I could get,” Murielle says. She carries the broomstick and the tweezers over to the sink. The two of them look at the partial worm. As soon as Murielle releases the tweezers the other half of the worm uncoils itself from the broomstick and slithers down the drain, turning around once to look at them – or so it seems – with a contemptuous sneer. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

“Gross,” says Julie. “Turn the hot water on or something. Boil it. You should have flushed it down the toilet. I’m now officially late! How could it live when I could feel it snapped in two?” She sticks her finger in her nose. “I can’t feel any of it in there, but I know you didn’t get the whole thing.”

6 (#ulink_e913ddfb-ecd2-5e9e-ba41-ea08c7012b69)

Intelligent Design – Short Version

Somewhere in the universe a child is crying, “Maaaa! I’m bored!”

“Well, Adam,” says his mother who is very tired and trying to get something accomplished. “Why don’t you go play with your chemistry set?”

“Look, Ma!” yells Adam, a short time later. “You gotta see what I made!”

“Not right this minute.”

“Come now!”

Adam’s mother wearily goes to look. “Oh, Adam, that’s terrific! What is it?”

“Can’t you tell? Maaa, it’s a new planet!” says the child with a satisfied smile. “And now I’m gonna give it the spark of life.”

“No, no,” shouts his mother. “Not the spark of life, honey! Remember what happened the last time! I don’t want to have to clean up another of your messes!”

6

(Regular version)

The girls are open-mouthed, watching the President’s boyfriend on HGMTV and eating biodegradable baked crunch poklets. “Gee, Scott, you look fabulous!” a reporter is saying. “Who designed your outfit?”

Scott is dressed in high black boots and jodhpurs, and carries a little crop. Under his other arm is a Cunard saddle, a birthday gift from Cunard – which, says the caption on hologramovision, has been given to Scott in return for promotional considerations. “It’s all Cunard,” Scott says. “Couture by Steve McQueen for the Cunard luxury line; do you know what the saddle alone would cost if I had to buy it retail?” He looks around. “Where is that stable boy? Manuel!”

Manuel is Argentinean, a shock of black hair, gumboots, short but blackly handsome. He takes the saddle from Scott.