Thu, 19 May 2005

the days are near, and the fufilment of every vision
Sometimes at night, wandering around the neighborhood, I’ll hear them before I see them, the plastic clack of the stroller wheels across the broken concrete, and there beneath a streetlight they’ll be banded together, the mothers, sharing cigarettes and secrets in a hushed tone, and I’ll nod at them, so as not to wake the babies, and they’ll nod back, and keep walking. I don’t think the mothers ever sleep. In a couple hours they’ll be waking the children while their husbands head off to the factory, leaving a little early to keep the quiet of the morning over the hustle and noise of th ekids getting showered, getting dressed, getting fed, getting on the bus, at which point it’s about eight thirty, and with everyone gone but the littlest of the babies, two of the mothers, Michelle and Regan, bundle up the kids and head over to Cassandra’s house, where they put the babies in a crib in the far bedroom, turn on the monitor, and head out to the living room, where the mothers watch The Today Show and freebase heroin. I’ve hung out with the mothers three mornings since I moved here, which has been just shy of five years, each time on mornings when the thunderstorms knocked out the power in the neighborhood. I’m not sure how it happened the first time. I think I had to ask for batteries, and the nearest person who I knew would be home was Cassandra, who I shared a class with the year before, some blurry communications class that everyone took as a requirement. I was suprised to hear the television, and went in to see a small portable propped on top of the bigger Sony, some fill-in weatherman standing in front of a gaggle of screaming east-coast frat brothers talking about the midwest storm front. I sat next to Regan on the couch, all the furniture a sort-of pastel arts and crafts style, the carpet and couch deeply padded. Nobody said much of anything, which was fine with me, as I’m not very chatty in the morning, and while Cassie got the batteries I watched Regan pick up a piece of tin foil and a glass tube from a lace-doilied end table with ceramic small teddy bear figurines gathered at the center. It should have seemed weird, and it did seem weird later, but at the time I was just trying not to act weird and conspicuous. She ran a lighter under the tin foil, sucked in the smoke, and sat very still for a minute, after which she passed the tin foil, glass pipe and lighter to me. And that was the first time I freebased heroin. The only time I do it now is on mornings when the storm knocks out the power, when I head to Cassandra’s place and sit with the mothers. They tell me they only do this once a day, in the morning, and while I have no reason to believe them, I do. They’re all a few years younger than me, taking a class or two each semester out at the community college, all they can afford of time or money, aware that they’ll probably never get an actual BA, never go on to the state college an hour and a half down the highway, but taking classes is a promise of change, and I understand that as well as anyone. These girls, scrunchies in their hair and Target sweatpants, they may speak to me but it is clear that I am not one of them, not a mother, not privy to what they know, and there is a sense of being a definite outsider when they speak to each other, the words rolling off their bitten lips both languid and sharp. They listen to the sort of pop music I like to laugh at a little; boy bands, synthetic mall divas, bling-bling hip-hop. They are earnest where I am ironically selfconscious, but cold a little inside, distant behind the eyes, aware of how little room for change their lives afford. I think I am a little jealous of them, in a way I can’t quite define, as they are part of a consistent undercurrent of cool which runs beneath this world in the places where the camera can’t reach, something which I can see but not touch.
(12:14.05.19.2005) [/ana] #