the habit of being

My mother and I explore a flea market, a junk store, not quite the 67 Antique Mall, but in that genre, a bit more on the rustic side. A barn, somewhere dimly lit and surrounded by fields (blonde grasses, sultry) such as I do not see in the “city.” Of course, these scenes do not take place here, in my backward town, but certainly in the South; there is a feeling of rusting buckets and exotic mosses. Inside, I examine a hat or a scarf (it’s always a hat or a scarf, I should live in the cold, or maybe go see the pretty Banana Republic boy again, he has a scarf too - it matches my socks, very blue). We discuss the price, I fondle the merchandise. It is not an uncommon thing, it has happened many times, we go to this store every morning, at the same time, 10ish, it is a life on repeat, though the lighting does seem a bit too like that of a western movie. From my handbag, I extract some sort of planner-calendar, and instead of appointments it is full of little love letters, only a sentence or two per date (March 15. Your fingertips are my tightrope. I notice neither “The funny thing is..” or “You’re beautiful.”) ; I flip through and smile.

The same day and later. There is a man, a vagabond, his hair is dark and scruffy, he plays the same role every day in the repeating dream-life I have with my mother, the flea market saleswomen, the scarf (or is it a hat?), jaundiced field, etc. He is the one we are trying to save, because he is very much a hurt puppy biting its own ear off - actually, he cuts himself with a razor, being more typical, only he is not 16 and he doesn’t wear black clothing or listen to Bauhaus, so it isn’t exactly the same same same. He is someone you would imagine to think about existentialism and angels, to close the blinds in his apartment exceedingly slowly and watch the light play in horizontal lines across off-white walls with no posters no mirrors no art. Stares straight in your eyes and slices his arm when you come near him, but the look on his face still cries help me in the most urgent of ways, so we try, my mother and I. Only, by the seventh or eighth repeat of this day (yes, it is still the same one, again and again), I have grown both tired of trying to help and quite terrified of the lost soldier (furious in a way - would it kill him to do it in a bathroom, the tub preferably, feed some romantic whims, maybe there are bronze lion feet to consider).

I turn on a stove with an empty pot on the back left burner every night as I wait for her to return, she is with him, feigning therapy, perhaps, and I am worried for her. She will not give up, and I think he may be a murderer or some misplaced Roman bandit. I stand by the door as she drives away through the sand, things are reddening in our house. On the floor is a piece of purplish cloth with a very “made in India” design, walking elephants (the last glass elephant stands alone on a broken foot) upon lines of varying thickness. Motion-blur squiggles snake about, I am feeling dizzy, I grip the handle of a broom, thoroughly petrified, still in the kitchen, watching an empty pot boil.

(I told her about it. She said the bleeding man was obviously my father, and that she’d rather watch someone have their head run over by a steam-roller than the single slightest self-inflicted cut. )