as you were (vi)

the end

Nov 22, 2024

DAY 2

I’m naked in my bed. It’s morning, and the smoke trickling through the window coughs me awake.

I scramble to close the window. I look out. The yard is crawling with hoppers, hundreds of them. Mom’s dumping a load from her robe pouch into the fire, sprinting back to the front lines to refill.

I’m cursing to myself, my head throbs as I negotiate my sweatpants. I rush down the stairs, remembering to hold my breath through the kitchen, but her NutriBullet’s gone.

I slip my shoes on and rush to the hose. There are too many of them; they shift when I walk, vibrating earthquake-like underfoot. I start and stop, stumble again and again, left with no choice but to walk slowly with my hands out like a slackliner.

I drag the hose to the flames. Mom’s by the rhododendrons with her NutriBullet, throwing pink goop in the soil, smearing it around with her boot, bending down to stomp and cut.

As the water hits the blaze, I vampire my forearm again, shivering as I catch a whiff of unwashed pits. I close my eyes, wishing I were asleep as the steam lays siege. Mom’s yelling something. I open my eyes, prepared to see her charging at me, but she’s standing where she was, and the hoppers are retreating. I look behind me. The path I took from deck to hose to flame is pristine—clear grass radiates out from me as the rowdy hoard backscatters to enemy territory.

The fire is an oozing black puddle of twitching legs and Swiss-cheesed wings. Mom’s finished crushing and cutting the last of the stragglers. She wipes the knife on her robe and sheaths it. She’s in the shade of a dogwood, hands on her hips, beaming towards me, her face twisted up with that Wenatchee shit eater. I smile, too. For a brief instant, it’s a real toothy one, but the moment my teeth rub shoulders with the air, something in me retreats, something says you don’t get to do that, mutating my face into a closed-mouth smirk, my gaze shifts away from her, returning to the hose.

DAY 3

We’ve come to an understanding—she won’t start any fires as long as I stay outside and make regular rounds (at least three per hour). At first, she demanded I stay with her in the tent. We went back and forth on this but agreed to a compromise: I’ll sleep in the house, but I won’t shower, and any scatological releases made throughout the day must be done outside and used to fortify the front lines.

Me—the guy who can’t take a shit if someone’s in his apartment—agreeing to crap outside and smear it on the property line to ward off giant hoppers, writing the whole thing off as desperate times, desperate measures hoopla attests to the fact that I, like dad, have thrown up my hands (metaphorically at least)—if it gets me through the day and closer to that eastbound plane, it’s good. Sign me up. Simple as that.

All we do is walk, breathe, crush, cut, and fortify the lines with blended placenta and excrement. I feel special looking at the neighbors—at the barren sludge pits that were once their stupid yards—that were once green expanses home to bar-b-qs and bonfires but now stand devoid of life save for the random spared tree or bush. By comparison, mom’s yard—our yard—is a desert mirage, a uteral Eden where I’ve returned to power.

DAY 4

This morning, my neck started itching really bad. Mom tolerated me running inside for a few minutes to consult the mirror. I’d forgotten to clean the other night’s jizz off the tub floor—it’s still there, dried into a limescale crust.

Distracted by my neck, I decided to leave it. The skin around my Adam’s apple was puffy and red. Swallowing had become an ordeal. I poked at it. It was firm and bulging out like a bald head.

Mom started yelling.

I heard her tennis racket thwacking branches.

I moved to the window. The hoppers were racing in like picnic ants, clinging to everything in sight. She was in high gear, swatting and looking around. I could tell she was jonesing for the gas can and a match.

Fuck.

I hightailed it down there and got to my rounds.

In thirty minutes, we had the yard clear and the stragglers slaughtered, but the rhododendrons and half the buckbrush were gone.

Mom pitched a fit. Crying and slapping like that first day. She threatened to light fires, “to burn it all down,” if I refused to sleep in the tent with her.

So here I am—praying for sleep in this shitty tent, mom sound asleep to my left. A craggy rock digs into my lumbar, and the hopper purrs excite the soil with their snoring crescendos, leaping dirt into my face.

The sleeping bag is too thin and short; I have no choice but to curl into a tight fetus. She had me patrolling for hours, and I was stupid enough to go barefoot (turns out, like sand, it’s easier to walk on the hoppers barefoot.) I got swept up in the adrenaline of my neck and the invasion and forgot to sunscreen my feet. Now, they’re hot and throbbing with leftover sun, roasting me inside out.

I don’t know how late it is, but it’s pitch black. I think I’ve been dozing in and out of micro-naps, but it’s hard to tell—my burning feet keep waking me. I weasel my hand down towards them, half-asleep, shimmying close to appease them. As soon as my nails scrape the chapped flesh, I close my eyes and feel the relief of water, hear the lapping of tides and my little feet sloshing through Wenatchee’s shallows. I see the boats hanging on the horizon, dwarfed into little bobbing motes by the mountains. My periphery glows orange, and my feet burn.

I remember—it’s vacation; I’ve spent the days and nights romping in creeks and chasing fireflies. Yesterday, mom forgot to put sunscreen on my feet, and now they’re throbbing—alive with heat, beginning to peel. Bits of spent skin wave in the water like algae. I’m standing still. If I’m still enough, the little trout will emerge from the stones and gather around my feet—swarming by the dozen to nibble my dead skin.

If I cast my fist into the water, they scatter like flies off a turd, disappearing into the rocks with their bellies full of me. I am still. Frozen. As the circles of my previous thrust peter out, the congregation renews its hunger for foot pulp; their white, googly eyes peek out between the stones.

All of a sudden, cold hands shove themselves under my armpits, and I’m airborne. I squeal-giggle and kick my sea monkey legs as dad puts me in a chair beside mom. She’s wearing her black one-piece and the biggest, floppiest sunhat I’ve ever seen. She’s putting a fork full of macaroni salad through her sun-chapped lips, chewing it, and smiling.

I open wide, going ahhhhh, suddenly ravenous. She prepares a forkful, “One for mommy.” She takes a bite, chews, and prepares another, “One for your sister.” She bites, chews, prepares a forkful, “And last but not least…one for Brando!” I giggle as she traces circuitous shapes in the air, repeating cho cho and chugga chugga. I want to itch my feet, but I wait for the train to dock and bite down, feeling the cold of the fork between my teeth, and I pull back, away from her, hearing the silver sing in my brain as the fork scrapes teeth and the noodles land on my tongue.

I start chewing.

She’s given me a bite with an olive, and it makes me pucker. She laughs, and the mayonnaise on her cheek sparkles in the sun as she rubs her pudgy belly.

“Sister?” I say, chewing open-mouthed.

“That’s right,” dad says from behind, his voice semi-carbonated from a beer swig, “lil’ tiger’s gonna be a big brother!”

Mom snores and turns on her side, wresting me from the lake. Sister? I taste olives and remember the red maple—sister?! I sense it out there, through the nylon, bleeding its musk into the ground, stinking like mom’s kitchen. My nails are hungry shovels turning the earth below its sanguine branches. I stop itching. My brain is a pink piglet, curled up, fattened, and warmed from the pellets of connected dots, drifting into gluttonous remembrance while my body is left in the cold, gawking and malnourished.

Is this Dr. Horn’s levy breaking? Is this what she meant? This isn’t a flood. I’m not swept away in grief, or anger, or jealousy, or anything—memories have come, yes, but they’re a blurry trickle—hushed voices from the other room, the red maple, an uncomfortable suit, the shoebox coffin, flowers (so many flowers), everyone in black and sniffling, and mom—mom, coming into my room in the dead of night, curling herself on my floor, curled fetal like I am now, facing me.

How could I have forgotten?

Sometimes, she’d lay there, awake, just staring at me—the whites of her eyes tinted blue by alarm clock light. Other times, she’d be asleep, snoring as she is now. Sometimes, I’d hear muffled sobs. For three years, this was her nightly ritual. She’d never start out on the floor—she’d kiss me goodnight, and I’d doze off, but hours later, she’d come sneaking in. If I stirred, she’d run her fingers through my hair and shush me as she coiled in a bedside heap on the carpet. Come morning, she’d be gone. I’d get dressed and head downstairs to find her in her robe making eggs, smiling and cooing, “Morning, sleepyhead!” We never spoke about it. At first, I thought these were just dreams because when I’d confront her about it, she’d brush it off, saying nothing. If I pressed her too hard, she’d get flustered:

“Hey mom, why do you sl—”

“why what?…why…WHAT?”

If dad witnessed my inquiries, he’d stand behind her, pressing his pointer against his lips in a silent shhh, shaking his head side to side, wordlessly imploring me to give it up.

“You’re seeing things…just dreams,” she’d say, stirring her eggs, staring out the kitchen window at the red maple, “you and that busy head of yours…”

DAY 5

Come first light, we were outnumbered. Mom crab-walked through the hoard, smushing and cutting as I did my rounds, but only half seemed to heed my stench. They’d razed the whole neighborhood. Hunger had set in, turning them ignorant and disrespectful. I broke out the leaf blower and lawn mower to slaughter en masse. This bought an hour of temporary calm, but they just kept coming—they’re all awake now, flooding out from the dirt.

We did what we could, but the yews are gone, the hydrangeas are sludge, the maples, the lawn, the firs, the dogwoods, are hanging by threads. Mom’s has become monkish and unkempt—her white robe’s nearly black, and errant strands of greying strawberry hair escape the Thatcher coif to hang in her eyes.

She’s gone for the gas can multiple times. I poured it out and threw it into the neighbor’s yard. She clenched her fists, but she didn’t have the strength to yell or attack.

By noon, we made an unspoken yet mutual decision to retreat, to focus our efforts on the veggies, the blue blossoms, and the red maple (which, thankfully, the hoppers don’t appear interested in as they’ve left its branches and a shoebox swatch of soil at its trunk unmolested.)

It’s been hours.

The sun is going, and we’re tired.

We’re confined to the dry ground at the foot of the red maple, standing in the brown-black dirt, watching the hoard digest the yard. I remember how in the summer twilight mom and dad stood in front of this frail thing, dad with his arm on mom’s shoulder; I heard her sniffle as I dug up worms from the grass.

Mom’s tapping the racket against her sneaker; her shoulder rubs against mine. She smells acrid and there’s a new growth on her nape. She takes my hand in hers; she is sweaty and goop-slimed. I want to turn to her, but I can’t—my neck lump makes it impossible.

She mumbles something to herself and goes quiet.

“Her name would’ve been—,” she chokes, “…was…” she says quietly, pausing to clear her throat, “...was...” she’s yelling now, getting it out above the purrs, “her name was Emily.” Her nails dig into my hand when she says it, her free hand gesturing to the maple.

We’re silent again, letting the purrs ravage us—letting them shake us from our skins—we’re a bored girl’s Etch A Sketch doodles; she’s shaking us silly—shaking for the pure white, the do-over—shaking to make the new real again.

“Emily,” I repeat, just for myself, my voice tremulous. I stare at the maple as I say it. The sun’s caught behind the leaves, making them blurry and blood-like, showing me her veins.

“Emily,” I say again, putting my arm around mom.

We stand in Emily’s reprieve; the awning rain-soaked passersby stand under, shoulder to shoulder in absolute silence, together, for a brief moment, appreciating the absence of what they’ve fled before fleeing into the ether.

A big hopper takes an exploratory step into Emily’s ground. He’s left the bustle of the hoard, frozen in the clearing, coming to terms with the fact he wasn’t snuffed out. He is confident and moves slowly to the base of the maple. He flaps his wings, making a gunshot sound. Mom’s hand tightens in mine. Whatever decorum these things respected withers in front of us as more hoppers peel away, marching in the maverick’s wake, scaling the ornate maple, their purrs trembling it like a wet pup, shaking the veiny leaves to the dirt.

Mom stoops to gather the fallen leaves. She kisses one and slides it in her robe. She passes the other to me. She looks at me as I pinch the papery thing and slide it into my shirt pocket, her eyes empty and blue-hued like she’s been caught sleeping on my floor. I nod. She nods. I tighten my grip on her hand and start walking across the backs of the feasting hoppers. After a few steps, she stops. I see her looking for the red maple, trying to find it under the monochrome black. She’s breathing heavily, running her free hand through her hair and smoothing out her wrinkled robe. We keep moving until we’re at the garage. I pull up the door. She stands, staring at the red leaf as I pull the dusty tarp off her Honda, hoping the thing still runs. I open the passenger door and help her in. I walk around and get behind the wheel. The purrs make the car shake. She’s staring out the windshield as it fogs with our useless breaths. I turn the key and she sputters to life. I reach over and give mom a squeeze on the knee. She says nothing, but I think the corner of her lip twitched. I smile and drive east.