Double Dribbling

Double Dribbling

“There was this Halloween store,” I say.  “I can still hear my Aunt Kelley in my head.  And here’s the bottle, and you can hold the diaper bag.  She said all of this in her mom’s voice, a sweet, cuddly voice that she used to coo at the baby.”  I didn’t tell Mickey that I knew Grizzly’s days and mine in her house were numbered.

A big glob of mustard squeezes out of the side of my sandwich and plops on the counter and distracts me for a moment from the words I want to say.  Sunshine streams into Aunt Ally’s kitchen like thousands of arrows from a ghost Indian tribe.  And I slide my sunglasses down to finish making sandwiches for Mickey and me.  At least this becomes another possibility for the afternoon than what actually happens.  Some things I say in my head and some things come out of my mouth.  I am not sure if it is what Mickey asks or what happens later with Julio or maybe both of these things combine, but I feel black and white at the same time and not sure of anything except my hunger to be a typical girl.

I wipe up the mustard so I don’t stain one of my few good shirts.  The pink wig is off.  But everyone including Mickey thinks my blond hair isn’t real either. 

“My plan was a rainbow on my entire head,” I say.  “At first I was thinking of spray painting my hair different colors.  But Grizzly was too out of it to understand.”  And Mickey seems to get what “Ask Aunt Kelley” means. 

Big Sister pushes her face into our conversation.  “Are you blind?”  She asks.  “At nine I figured out your mother has a problem.  Your boyfriend isn’t so brilliant.”

I turn away from Big Sister.  “The baby,” I say.  “He was the excuse for my Aunt Kelley’s blindness.”

“Tell me more about how you got your pink wig,” Mickey says.

“It’s funny about my hair.  My mind has it a certain way, but then there is this situation, what I think you want to hear about my hair.  And then there is the memory of what happened and how I wished everything would have gone.”

“Can’t you see he isn’t eating his sandwich?”  Big Sister says.

I glance up at Mickey.  He leans in as if he knows, as if he can see what’s in my head.  My mind becomes a TV we both watch.