Gerald Yelle

Morning in Squirrel City

The tub overflowed, there’s water on the floor, and this dude on the radio is saying they put a bag on your head before they hang you –that way they don’t have to see your tongue and eyes bug out. And they ask if you can breathe okay. Yeah, we’re comedians alright. I go next door for a mop –there’s too much to push out with a broom. The mop stinks and I have to wring it out with my hands in the sink. As if that’s all I had to do.  

I have to pick up my niece and it’s raining and my father borrowed my car and can’t remember where he left it. He had to borrow his boss’s truck and come all the way from the factory on his lunch break to help me find it. He apologizes for the ways humans kill each other. Where’s this coming from, I say. Has he been listening to the radio too? He says no, it’s original sin, you’re implicated from the moment you’re born. I say I don’t have time for that. I have to find my car.  

We get his buddy Bob and let him drive. He knows where my car is: behind a tree on Magnolia Ave, in front of the Rossos. There’s a pile of trash behind it, and Bob uses the plow on the boss’s truck to push it into the Rossos’ yard and up against their shed, making a crashing sound. Why’d you do that? I say. It’s all over Facebook, he says: Rosso is a racist and he’s woke. That’s vague, I say. The Rossos are reclusive –we ought to know –we used to live here. They weren’t racist. They were the gentlest people. Both of their kids died young, and they were gentle too. Anyway, I’m getting out of here, I say. My dad heads back to work and Bob gets in with me. The car keeps stalling. A cop’s blue lights flash off to our left.   

He asks if I’ll drop him at his dispensary. Sure, why not, I say. It’s only a little out of my way. He asks if I’ll wait then give him a ride to his girlfriend’s. I tell him I have to pick up my niece or the daycare will charge an extra hour. I tell him I can swing back and scoop him up after I bring my niece home.  

I get pulled over a block from the daycare. They say I almost ran over a woman with a baby carriage. I say I wasn’t pushing a baby carriage. They warn me about being a smartass, and write me a ticket for failing to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk.  

I’m fifteen minutes late to the daycare. They push my niece out in a stroller that looks like a wheelchair. I look at her –so small and dark and neatly-dressed. I have to make sure it’s the right kid. I load her into the car. I can’t help wondering what else will go wrong.  

I push the stroller into the house and up to my sister’s room. I knock. My other sister comes out and says I’m being rude. I knock again. No answer –even though I’m pounding now –really rude. I take my niece out of the stroller and hold her awhile, in case she starts crying. She babbles a bit out of her tiny mouth, and I swear she says the word autobus. Now my sister is talking through the door –we argue over who’s ruining the family business. Are we talking about ruining or running? I said there is no family business. We’re people with jobs. She has a shorthand language she learned from my other sister when they were kids. It sounds like babytalk –and I figure that’s what she’s doing now: talking to her kid.      

END

Gerald Yelle has published poetry and flash fiction in numerous online and print journals. His books include “The Holyoke Diaries,” “Mark My Word and the New World Order,” and “Dreaming Alone and with Others.” His chapbooks include “No Place I Would Rather Be,” and “A Box of Rooms.”