The problem with this sort of blue screaming is that, contrary to the first law of thermo-dynamics, it doesn’t help me blow off steam. It just adds to the rage.
I don’t see red when I go ballistic – I spill it, or rather, it spills from my nostrils in scarlet dollops that explode on my striped shirt. I should’ve had my sinuses cauterized a long time ago. As the blood soaks the fabric, I realize the shirt’s colors have faded to what a paraplegic friend of mine calls the “revealing threshold”: the point at which an impartial observer will realize you can’t be a socially acceptable human being if you’re wearing a shirt like that.
Then again there’s the wheelchair, the great chrome giveaway.
I let go of the joystick, cock my head back and pinch my nose, listening to the electric motor die down with a disconsolate whirr. The Contrapshun stops short of the counter by a foot.
As my head rolls back I see two blurs of motion: Baby Scallops recoiling from me in her attempt to protect the seaweed-green strapless gown she is wearing as a misguided enticement to her morgue-white shoulders; the other blur is Pennsylvania Mud’s hand whipping out towards me, stuffed with an immaculate piece of silk.
While I contemplate the starless blackness of the ceiling, I feel the hand land softly below my nostrils, several times. She’s dabbing at me with her silk handkerchief.
“I’ve seen your face before” I hear her say.
Roberta’s Turn
There were no mirrors in my nana’s place, and that’s probably why I’m so good at remembering other people’s faces but so bad at seeing my own. “She seen you once girl, she could pick you out in a po-lice line-up any tahme” my mom would say.
My Dad left when I was three years old, and wherever my Mom and I went I’d scan the crowds to see if I could find him. Once you start looking at people, you realize how different their faces are. My friends say they can’t tell white people apart, but that’s because they’re lazy. They don’t really care to look. Noses, lips, cheekbones, eyes, ears, even the creases on a forehead come in all shapes and sizes. And if that’s not a testimony to the power that constantly invents the world, I don’t know what is.
Yes, that’s how the power shows itself to me: through people’s faces. I can’t help but see it, each face a bold new take on an old theme, a fine work of art forever engraved in my mind. Sometimes it makes me cry, and when I drink alone, as I was doing tonight before the man in the wheelchair showed up, it’s because I can’t figure if I should be crying or not.
So much for peace and quiet. The man is bleeding and my hand flies to his thin wide mouth. A strange bead of flesh gives the upper lip a bit of a curl right in the center.
I know exactly where I’ve seen him before.
