Thu, 19 May 2005

sarah
1997.

It was about three months since I moved into the trailer and I was working for Servicemaster, doing janitorial, but not the kinda janitorial I like, where you’re basically the only one working and you buff floors for a few hours. This is where you’re on a five-man crew and the boss drives you around in the van to a bunch of different places and you’re always go go go and have to wear the company shirt like a dick. I was gonna quit, but I was thinking about running off to California so I figured I’d put in a couple more weeks. We started working a new place which wasn’t very big, so it was an extra hour a night, kinda out by the big Bosnian trailer court. It turns out this place was an Operation Rescue-type deal, full of antiabortion literature, at which point I thought fuck it, I’m not coming back to work again, and not only that but I’m gonna steal some shit while I’m here. I set a small trash bag inside the big plastic trashcan, up along the side, and while I do all the office trash I drop a few things in the little bag, some cds I figure I can sample, some office supplies, nothing heavy. Then in one of the storage rooms I see these seven pickle jars with little fetuses in ‘em, and my brain says just leave it alone, this is the last thing you need, don’t fuck around, but the next thing I know I have one of the jars in the trash bag. I close up the little bag, finish trash, then go out to the dumpster and dump the trash, setting the little bag right up along the inside of the dumpster. We’re back at Servicemaster at four am and I drive out and hit the dumpster and drive down a few blocks to a closed gas station, where I check the bag in the parking lot, and there it is, this little almost-baby, fingers and all.

The next day I didn’t show up to work. I guess I was fired. I did get my last check, but I didn’t go to California. Instead I did a lot of writing in my room while everyone else was out and decided to name the fetus Sarah, and I started talking to her the way you talk to a plant. I started having daydreams about where the antiabortion people would get hold of a bunch of fetuses. Eventually I decided I couldn’t keep Sarah, I had to bury her, and not just out in some field but a proper burial. There’s a small little graveyard out in the sticks off a dirt road where I’ve never seen anybody go, and I felt kinda bad that Sarah wouldn’t have anybody to visit her, but then I thought okay, she didn’t have a birthday so we’ll pretend today is her birthday, and I’ll come out on her birthday and hang out with her. That night I snuck into the little graveyard and I buried Sarah away from the other graves, on the far side of an oak tree so I would always know where she was.

I visited her every year except for the year I lived in Austin, when I had to wait until Christmas, but that seemed okay. I thought I did a good thing, and I felt good about it, and it didn’t seem as weird as it seems now that I’m actually writing about it.
(12:25.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #