kagablog

We drive. Rain hits the windshield hard, like quarters hitting the back of a slot machine. Ping. Pow. Ping.

She says, if it doesn’t stop, I’m going to have to pull over.

I stare out my window. My breasts feel like water balloons, ready to explode. My nipples feel like they’re cracking. I don’t say anything.

She turns on the radio and it crackles, spits out a song that’s kind of r&b, overplayed, some guy

who swears he’ll make the good girls go bad. My hand reaches forward, turns it off before I’ve processed the thought. Funny how everything reminds me of him, absolutely everything.

We stop to buy a 3 dollar falafel on the way. There’s a tanning salon and nail salon in the plaza, along with a KFC that reeks of oil, sixteen years olds smoking outside of it that smell like sex and alcohol.

The guy microwaves her falafel so the balls are too hot to bite. She asks for more pickles but the guy behind the counter, an older guy, the owner probably, doesn’t understand her. He’s surprised when he makes mine that I know the word Tahini. Your accent is good, he says, yeah I’ve been to Egypt I mumble.

I say shukran to him on my way out, after I pay, and smiles at me like I gave him a winning lottery ticket. Fuck if it isn’t easy to make people feel good sometimes. I want a moment like that everyday. A surprise moment where I feel less alone. A tiny window I can crawl through where someone understands something for a second. Something unspoken that feels real.

We get back into the car, and I kick the garbage at my feet out of the way. There’s coke cans and orange juice boxes, Mcdonald’s wrappers, Cadbury’s easter eggs in blue and yellow that crunch under my shoes. I’m so white trash, she says, look at my fucking car, then she laughs like somebody’s watching us somewhere, thinking our problems are some giant joke, and maybe one day we will too.

I like her laugh. It comes from the chest, and not a hollow spot in the back of her throat like most people’s.

See that building, she says, across the street, and I nod. It’s brick, high rise, ordinary looking.

People got shot there last week. It seems strange that those kinds of things happen here.

I don’t know what to say. We have to go, I tell her. Now.

The place is on a street close by, shitsville, apparently, this whole area.

There’s a daycare with a sign that’s falling apart next to the place we go into.

Kidsville,it’s called. Dilapidated ladybugs and a cracking plastic giraffe on the outside wall.

It looks shitty, I say. It is. I used to work there when I was sixteen. Fucked up shit goes on there, trust me, she says. No kidding.

The receptionist gives me a dog eared magazine to read, and it’s Today’s Parent of all things, which is weird. The kids look cute, in a wax apple cheeked kind of way. Like this life sized doll called Cricket that I had as a kid. I put it down. When the nurse comes, they examine me, ask if I’m sure, where the boyfriend is, all the things you think they’ll probably ask, but still feel like a surprise when they do.

The metal instruments that they poke me with feel cold. The pills make the room feel blurry and too warm. There’ll be some bleeding they say, when they finish the job. They give me stuff to take, pills and instructions, and she’s there waiting for me, leads me outside.

I stare at the buildings across the street. They’re full of empty windows that let you see right in, or dirty bedsheets that are up in place of curtains. There’s Christmas lights up in April. A fat woman on the front lawn is yelling at a younger skinnier woman. Who you calling a slut? Skinny yells back. It’s like an episode of Jerry fucking Springer, fascinating and horrifying all at once.

I used to live in a place like this, she says. Near a trailer park. People fought like this all the time.

My mom was a labourer. We never had enough to eat. Empty kitchen cupboards and all that. We lived on sugar. That’s why I’m so obsessed with eating healthy now. My immune system and teeth are shit from all the instant food I used to eat.

I’m bleeding. I can feel it, leaking through the gauze, through my jeans. I’m sure they’ll be a puddle on the ground soon. Maybe I’ll faint, and she’ll leave me here. There’s always more to learn apparently.

She puts her arm around me. I kiss her cheek. We stare, watch the scene until the rain stops. The skinny girl is surprisingly strong and the fat one is surprisingly quick on her feet.

There’s buildings like this everywhere, she says. Even in our neighbourhood. Buildings full of people that are barely alive.

In the car on the way home, Dez calls. I’m with Beth, I say. No, we just went for a drive. I’ll be home soon, maybe an hour. I’ll call you then. Click.

She says she’ll come over for a while, stay with me. Let’s watch Trailer Park Boys, I say.

Oh my god, I hate that show she says. It fetishizes the poor.

I give her a look. Plus it hits too close to home.

I nod. But we can watch it today, she says. You can pick the episode.

When we get back to the apartment I crash on the couch. We don’t have to watch anything, I say, and I’m not calling him either. There’s a tiny bit of sunlight that comes through the window onto my face before I fall asleep.