The Stories of the Saturdays in September.

The First Saturday 

We are on my roof. It’s the first Saturday, and already–  

“I still remember the one time in my kitchen…”

‘I’m surprised you chose to remember anything of me.’ 

He bums a cigarette. Throwing my lighter back at me without looking, it hits my long skirt and clips at my ankles. 

I was always told it was nothing to you. I was nothing. Everything that happened was everything and that in the eyes of everyone else nothing. That’s okay though, I used to think it wasn’t but it is. I think in every instance, we all carry weight differently. It doesn’t make you a bad man, and it doesn’t make me a pathetic woman. It was just played out to those watching that way. Sorry ‘bout that. 

“It’s been a long time.” I want to say, but I don’t. Some things don’t need to be said to be known.

“I hope you are doing okay.” 

I am so violently wasted, but I don’t think there was any other way to enjoy the evening. Looking back I still would have done it that way. The boys leave, and my girls come knocking from down the hall. I’m in bed with my long skirt and cowboy boots still on under the covers. It’s just past two a.m. and I have Double H ‘A Tribute to Miles’ playing.

“I did good?” 

“You did good, babe.” says the one. 

“Fuck jazz!” says the other, and puts on A. Morsette from the early years. 

‘My mother would play this CD on Saturdays during my early years’ 

My girls don’t really like jazz. I can’t blame them. They don’t listen to jazz. They just listen to me listening to jazz from down the hall. 

They lay on either side of the bed. It’s funny, they take their shoes off before laying, and mine are still under the purple hue. We stare at the uncleaned ceiling, the three of us, and listen to track four, ‘Right Through You’ until I fall asleep. When I wake up, I realize someone had taken them, my shoes, off in the middle of the night. My girls have gone to sleep in their own beds, it’s six a.m. I am alone now  and I am okay.  

The Second Saturday

I let him take the bed. As this is my house and he is my guest. I must be a good house guest. So, I let him take to my bed and I to the couch. It’s still September, meaning the drain flies will reappear in tomorrow’s early morning hours. My room lives at the end of the long hall, and I hurry to clean it up a little. Putting the clothes half in the drawers. He walks trailing behind me, giving me this moment. I’m still drunk, he’s so tired. Flopping down. I thought the bed would fit him better than the couch but he’s still too tall and his feet peek out at the end. I sit at the end of my bed, babbling about the things in my room. I’m proud of my things. The things on my window sill. He asks me “Have you been to all of these places?” and I say “Myself or my family, yes.” I’m drunk, it’s four a.m. All this boy wants to do is sleep. I tell him he can listen to my radio while he sleeps. Our friend can’t fall asleep without noise and I don’t know if he is the same way as him. I offer up my writings–

“You write?” he says. 

“Yeah, sometimes.”

I pick it up now, I’m drunk. That’s not a good enough excuse though. I could say I kept talking because I was drunk. I feel like we always blame our risky moments with inhibition. We use “I’m drunk” as an excuse. Being able to have such accepted way to explain it all. When really, I didn’t do it for that reason. I think I would have wanted to talk even if I was sober. Just talk, I really did like my conversations with this friend. They were always about the times, never about the people. They always felt impactful and never life changing. 

I have a similar feeling about him as I did about her on February 25th, “I’m going to live in this room come September.” I had invited them to my home because I had wanted them in my life. 

I start at one of my favorite lines on page fifty-nine– 

“When a man talks in doleful terms, suddenly the whole house collapses and he has become a boy…”

I read my words for a while. I can’t tell if he’s awake or asleep or somewhere in-between. 

“…People, we were never meant to keep tabs on each other. It’s foreign territory to watch someone grow so exponentially post living.” I pause and look up from the loose pages I am holding of my manuscript. 

“No, no I’m listening.” There is a yawn that forms before the lasting word. 

“It’s okay, I can read to you another time.” 

And with that I leave my spot at the end of the bed. I walk across the tiny room. Quietly, I flick off the light looking back. Closing the door as much as I can before it begins to creek. He’s already asleep, so I leave it open a smidge. 

The next morning, I wake early in the kitchen swatting the flies away, making my way down the hall to wash-up. The door is still a jar, and I can see him. He is still sleeping. Light pouring in through the blinds of the south facing windows onto the sill and sheets. Onto him and his blonde hair; the radio, the books and the undusted floorboards. The boy somehow sleeps past noon mouth gaping, feet hanging through the sunlight. There is a bit of drool on my pillow and a belt on my floor. 

I didn’t want to sleep with him but I had wanted him to stay. I wanted him to stay and sleep in my bed, to see my things, to wake up and stare at my ceiling as I do.

I wanted him to know me.

The Third Saturday

I noticed that she had been crying. I think it’s just the type of cry where you cry for the sake of crying. No rhyme or reason to it. ‘Just cry’ sometimes the woman inside of us says. And so we do, because we know to avoid her is at a greater cost. 

I can tell it’s time to go now, and I call for a car to carry us back across the river. Tonight, I do not feel like waiting for the bus at this hour. I look at her, and I know it is not the time to ask. It is the time to leave, and that in the morning if there was a reason  she will tell me. I love her in the way where there does not always have to be one, a reason. I feel somedays I can see the annoyances. She reminds me of my mother when she was young, of my little sister who has always been more of an adult than I. She reminds me of all the women of my family.

 I can see her and my mother in our kitchen, standing at the peeling white linoleum counters, cooking soup. I can see her with my sister running through the sprinkler in the wet grass. Trying to get me to take off my flip-flops, pulling at my hands laughing. My young self hating that feeling of my toes in the grass. I can see her with my father’s family, sitting in the foldable lawn chairs eating pie from the garage fridge in the driveway. I can see her with my cousins and I, on my mother’s side, standing in the milkweeds, nearer the fence with our hands covering our ears as the train passes and flattens the pennies we had put down moments prior. 

She had reminded me of all the parts of myself I had forcefully forgotten. The parts I had tucked away and seldom looked at, she had helped me realize held beauty and love. That I just had to reframe my looking. 

So I am leaving now, but know that if she needs me she will call. And I know that she knows that if she calls, I will come running through the wet grass, across the river, for her. 

__________________________________________

At the steps back home, I find my Thai food. I had ordered it before leaving. That’s my happy food, and I smiled seeing it waiting on the front doorsteps. 

I slam the car door yelling “Thank you”,  skipping up to grab it.

I run up the steps with another important person; one who I have dragged through multiple home’s with me in living. She also runs, which is strange for her but I think it has something to do with the wine. ‘Maybe the wine makes her want to run.’ We run up all four flights, and collapse against the doorframe laughing as we enter. I’m still laughing on the floor of the hallway when she goes to sleep. Eventually catching my breath, I pull myself up and go to bed.

I don’t remember falling asleep but the three I live with tell me this funny story over Sunday morning coffee. I had fallen asleep with the radio on while sitting up in my pillows. Using my jacket and scarf I had taken off as a blanket. On my comforter my left knee bent and the boot on my right foot resting on it. The radio was playing 89.7, which is the same station I listened to on my radio growing up. Back then I would try to stay up past the late night jazz that runs to hear the world news. I liked falling asleep knowing the other people across the globe’s days were beginning. It felt right, falling that way.

My girls had heard the radio, and the one had come into the room to put me to sleep properly. She turned off my radio and began removing my shoes. When I asked– 

“How long have you been here?” 

“I just got here.” 

“Were you home yesterday?”

“Yes, I was home yesterday.”

I only talk in my sleep when I feel safe. I believe this as I used to as a child, then I didn’t for a long time. 

She continues to remove my shoes and pulls the blanket out replacing the jacket. She turns off the light before leaving, and I don’t even notice the differences in the morning till she tells me the story. She loves me in a silent way. 

________________________________

I think I had hoped that living here, here in my new home– That I would somehow leave all my troubles at the old house. That moving my mattress the one block would give me a fresh start as much as a girl could get these days continuing on in the same life. Though that’s simply not true as this might be a new home, but I’m still falling asleep in the same bed.