The Words We Never Say, The Things We Never Do

On the bus, the windows mirrored our reflections. I moved my lips to decrease the solemnity of my expression. Wetting three fingers, I ran them through the left side of my hair hoping it’d look shinier. No one was talking or even looking up. Women were digging into their purses and shopping bags and men were staring at their hands. I wondered why we weren’t asking each other how our days were and who we were going home to. I wondered if simple gestures like that could prevent a lonely suicide.

I thanked the bus driver on the way out. He didn’t say anything. From the aid of the streetlights, I looked for rocks to add to my collection. I liked things with histories. Most of my clothes, books and accessories came second-hand from thrift stores. I liked to Google them up and do a day trip going to different areas, commonly the boroughs of NYC. My favorite possession was a watch that didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t tell if it was a fake or real.

It reminded me of the watch this boy used to wear in middle school. We were partners in Biology. We were given a pig named Sir Porkalot. I smiled while Stephen cracked his ribs. Sir Porkalot was just a baby alone in the world, stinking of vinegar. No one noticed when I took him home. Everyone else handed theirs back in zip-lock bags to Mrs. Watts who didn’t bother to count. She couldn’t do math so she chose to teach science straight out of textbooks. I buried the corpse in my backyard and made it a gravestone that said, survived by his parents, Stephen and Lillian. Stephen was a long time ago. I hadn’t allowed myself to be that obsessed over a boy since then. I liked to sleep with the watch heavy around my wrist.

Approaching a row of two-story apartment buildings, each separated by high wooden fences, I noticed that only the lights from the second story of my building were on. I could hear the yelps of children. The woman who rented that floor had five children. I watched her boys come and go, but I saw her only once. She was beautiful only in a way that single mothers could be beautiful, slender but with very wide hips. Her aura was a little worn but not defeated. She seemed like the kind who loved to kiss infants’ foreheads but wouldn’t think twice about smacking the bottoms of the older ones who didn’t behave. Five children. I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her.

I gave my roommate the bigger bedroom so I could dominate the basement. He agreed because he didn’t have anything to put in the basement anyway. I hooked up my computer down there. Late at night, I liked to have cyber sex with older men. Sometimes he bought his weights down here and the sweat only made the experiences more vivid.

“Hellooo,” I called out, walking in, flipping on the light.

He sat around the dining room with a fork in one hand and Catcher of the Rye in the other. A plate of meatballs sat in front of him.

“That book, again?”

“My favorite,” he said.

“I know.”

“Meatballs are on the counter. You going to eat with me?”

“Maybe. How do you read in the dark?”

“I know every word.”

“Maybe I’ll read Ask the Dusk again.”

“Memorize it.”

“That’s pretty pointless.”

“Your rocks are pointless.”

I laughed though it wasn’t funny. Closing the door behind me, I dropped three more rocks into the vase. Sometimes when I first woke up in the morning and didn’t want to leave my room, I liked to spread them out on the floor and arrange them by either size or color.

My cell phone blinked from my night table. I didn’t like to carry it around even though there weren’t many people who cared where I was. One missed call and two text messages from Andy. Andy wanted to be a professional football player. He was now a tax attorney. I pretended for a month I loved all sports though I had to recite Plath in my head so I wouldn’t fall asleep or worst, scream at the crowd to shut up, that the world couldn’t be changed by running after balls and tackling each other for a pussy victory.

Andy stood over six feet and I liked him a lot. I liked most walking down the streets with him holding my hand. I liked the way our shadows danced together at strange angles. I liked how he was different from my father who spoke with a lisp and stood with slouched shoulders and passive eyes. I liked how he shoved a drunk guy off my chest at a bar in the city at 2 am. I liked how he never felt depressed and was just an endless supply of optimism and laughter. I liked how he escorted me to my cousin’s wedding and no one could say anything about my abusive, slutty mother or my obese, taxi driver father as they were too distracted by the gleam of his teeth.

Returning to the kitchen, I grabbed a plate and sat down with the book flat on the table, beneath my palm. He turned the lights off.