The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ making even that damp and dark room seem a thousand times more cheerful. I pulled the blinds off the sliding glass door, opened it, and let in clean mountain air. I could almost feel the house exhaling around me with relief.

      I peered out at the river sparkling beyond the trees. The house had a great view, at least. I heard birds chirping, leaves rustling in the breeze and, right beneath my feet, the sound of an animal moving. I guessed it was a possum or a raccoon. I also heard a munching sound in the wall near me. I guessed it was termites. A spider crawled over my shoe. I guessed there were probably millions of them here.

      I took another swig of wine, and studied the ceiling. It had a multitude of water stains. The wood paneling over the walls, also the color of poop, was peeling off, and the carpet was alternately wet, crunchy, or almost nonexistent. The putrid diseases Rosvita could find!

      There was one bathroom. The tub was filled with mouse shit. The shower curtain was covered in yuck and, again, the ceiling was stained. The faucets on the sink were rusted through.

      Feeling adventurous, I climbed the stairs up to the second floor, stepping carefully, much like a tightrope walker.

      Upstairs, all the windows were covered with dark blinds. I yanked those blinds off again and the sun did its work. The landing was quite large, more like an upstairs loft, and there were three bedrooms. The mattresses were still in all of the rooms and smelled like urine, so I figured a few homeless people had been here in the past. There was also a collection of sick and tired furniture, including a rocking chair. Outside of the master bedroom, there was a small deck. I did not dare step on that deck. Falling through the air is not my idea of fun.

      In the distance, about 100 yards beyond the house, I could see a smaller white structure nestled in a few pine trees. It was one level, but it looked like it might have a basement. I figured it had been used as a guest house.

      I poked around again downstairs. The whole house smelled like a nursing home for old people without the disinfectant. I knew the stains on the ceiling indicated terrible water problems. The roof reminded me of the caved in part of a diaphragm. A rat scurried across the floor as my eyes located a pile of ants in another corner.

      The house that looked like me was in ruins. It should be bulldozed.

      Demolished and hauled away.

      I loved it.

      I ran back to Rosvita’s with my wine and called the Realtor.

      I asked the price.

      He told me.

      I laughed, choked a bit on my wine, offered him half that.

      He refused.

      I laughed again, as if he had told a smashingly good joke. “If you can get someone to pay that price for that mouse-infested, urine-stained, mold-growing dump, I will eat my left arm off while wearing fake vampire teeth, buddy. Have a nice day.” I put the receiver down and waited.

      The phone rang two minutes later and he agreed to the price.

      I thanked him for his time.

      When we were done with our little chat, I went back to my new house and listened to the music of the river, the high notes and low notes and all the notes in between.

      CHAPTER 8

      In my anger management class there are four other people besides me and Emmaline Hallwyler, the woman dressed in white, who yells and tells people not to be pathetic.

      There is Bradon King who is African-American, about six-feet-six inches tall, bald, and a man who favored pink, lavender, or sky blue dress shirts. When you look that macho you can wear any darn color you want, you know. After talking to him for several minutes at the beginning of the first class, where I found out he plays the piano because his grandmother insisted he do so for two hours every day so he stayed out of trouble, I could not for a minute think that he would have the slightest bit of a temper, let alone hurt anyone. He is forty-five years old, has been married to the same woman for twenty-five years, and they have five children.

      Bradon was there because he is rather unhappy with the way the city’s school system treats minorities, particularly African-American students, and at a recent school board meeting he felt compelled to stand on top of the table, where the all-white school board sat glaring at an almost all African-American audience, and refused to get down. He informed the board that they obviously didn’t care about black kids, didn’t care about their futures, didn’t care that they weren’t getting a decent education, didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care. He smashed two chairs. He smashed the chairs to show what would happen to black kids’ future if they weren’t educated.

      “Their futures are smashed. Splintered. Broken. Gone. Their futures are gone. We need to educate these kids!” he yelled to the raucous, supportive cheers of everyone in the room, except the all white board.

      The police were called. Bradon refused to apologize for not apologizing when he yelled that the people on the school board were a bunch of lazy-ass, racist, rich, white people, living in their own tight little boxes, and completely out of touch with the troubles that minority kids face every single day. The paper wrote about it-ya-dee-da-deeah and wham. Bradon King, owner of a very successful local construction company, King Construction, landed in anger management class.

      “Every year more black kids drop out of school. Every year no one cares. I think the schools are glad to see ’em go. But what happens to them? They’re teenagers, Jeanne,” he told me. “Kids. And their future is, at that moment, zero. Why doesn’t anyone care? Because the kids are black? You can damn well bet that if a bunch of rich, white sixteen-year-old girls all started dropping out of school and selling drugs on the corner that people would be screaming their heads off and demanding change. And change would happen. So are black kids dispensable? Is that what they’re saying? If not, why aren’t the schools doing something?”

      “The answer eludes me,” I said.

      “Me, too. That’s why I threw chairs,” he sighed, making his green beanbag look tiny. I could tell by that sigh he was very tired of this fight. “I threw chairs for black kids.”

      Then there was Soman Fujiwara. Soman Fujiwara was from somewhere in the Pacific Islands and has worked as an electrician for almost fifteen years. He has a ton of beautiful black braids that drop to his shoulders, kissable lips, and black eyes. He sang for us as a way of “introducing his past and present.” It was a lovely, melodious song, even though it was in a language I didn’t understand. It filled my mind with images of color-infused sunsets, the smell of cooked ahi, and the taste of mango and pineapple.

      When he was done Soman told us it was a song of suffering and death.

      Before I could even think for a minute that he was a psychopathic killer and that we were all soon going to be mowed down by an AK-47 he had hidden near his groin, he said, “I’m glad to be here.” He patted the side of his yellow beanbag. “I do have a temper. But I have rules to my temper.”

      I nodded. I had rules to my warped, selfish behavior, too.

      “I don’t ever show my temper around women. My dad taught me that. He thinks it’s disrespectful and so do I. My mama always tells him what to do and he does it. He told me it makes life easier for him. I never hit a woman in my life, no way. None of the men in the Fujiwara family have ever hit a woman and none of them have ever divorced. Ever.” He slammed one giant fist into СКАЧАТЬ