found objects
This story originally appeared in Talus and Scree #5, 1998. It was published under the name Mary Catherine Koroloff.
Tassie works down at the Goodwill on Southeast Powell, where they pile up black plastic leaf bags collected from the truck-trailer dropoff locations all over town on the loading dock early every morning.
She's the one that sorts the newly-donated clothes into piles marked "Oldies but Goodies", "Nearly New", and then down into piles like "Fabulous Forties", "Oh Jeans!" "Skirts n' Shirts." She has never thought of changing jobs. The bags are too fascinating.
Tassie finds the strangest things in the black plastic leaf-bags. She views every new, fat, bursting bag with a mix of apprehension and anticipation, like some big juicy fruit that could be sweet or rotten. Sometimes the clothes are just filthy and useless: old grease rags, paint-splattered overalls, shit-streaked underwear. Mostly they're just old and ugly and cheap, faded polyester echoes of the past ten years. Sometimes, though, she finds a prize: a scrap of intricate beadwork, slippery spilling satin, something bright-colored, something pretty. Too small for her, of course. Women were thin back then. Bad vitamins. She'd look silly in it anyway.
Sometimes she finds money down at the bottom of the bag, overlooked. Usually a forlorn assortment of a few pennies and nickles. Once she found a crumpled up twenty-dollar bill. Didn't report it. Bought a new chair for the tiny table in her "dining room." Tassie, maybe not the most honest one. But never bad. Never vicious. One time she found an old stuffed toy dog, gummed up, matte-brown fur still stiff with an ancient attempt at cleaning. Someone had loved it. Loved it well. Then it had been stuffed in with a ton of other baby things and thrown out. Her supervisor Vonda said she could keep it if she wanted. Not that she could understand why Tassie would want to. Tassie kept it. The rest of the baby clothes wen to the section marked "Oh You Kid!" and was all sold in two days. Good clothes. Solid, no holes. Baby clothes always sold well.
After work, Tassie usually walks over to the Franz bakery outlet store around the corner and buys a big bag of stale bread to feed to the birds in the park right on Powell, the one catty-corner to the high school. Except when it's raining, which it always is. Sometimes it's sunny, though, and then she sits crinked up on the stiff wood bench, plastic bread bag tucked between her knees, clucking and scattering crumbs to the big fat waddling glossy birds. She likes the sound of their cooing, their low, chuckling discussions. Makes her feel useful. She thinks that it's probably what she'll be doing when she is an old woman. It's always good to get a head start on things.
She watches the purple-haired teenagers skateboard off the curbs and concrete embankments, flying through the air then crashing their boards with a shattering and a clump onto the pavement. Wonders why they don't break. The boards. Teenagers don't break.
During the day, her fingers flying through piles of clothes, she covertly watches the teenage girls in the store like they were another kind of animal all together, like the ones at the zoo she rarely visits. She watches them picking through the "Oldies but Goodies" racks, holding up slinky old bias-cut ballgowns made of white satin, little-girl school middies, severe 1930's suits. The girls giggle at how silly they are being, but they buy the stuff and wear it, and the old fabric lives again, skimming their smooth unripe curves joyously, flirting with the tops of their Doc Martins. Teenage girls are beautiful, Tassie thinks dreamily, watching them. Always.
She dumps the last, tiniest crumbs out of the plastic bag, and the birds flock around her feet, a fluster of feathers and bobs. She wonders if they could all get under her feet and fly her up into the wild blue yonder. That happened in some stupid movie she saw once. Baloney-on-white-bread, she thinks scornfully. As she walks towards home, she scatters the bread crumbs using the toe of her shoe. The birds crawl over her foot, ignoring her.
At home, she heats up a can of ravioli and toasts some bread. A snowy old TV sputters an ancient rerun of "Three's Company."
Her apartment is a perfect little old Portland firetrap, butted right up against the busiest part of Powell where loud black men shout on the sidewalk at midnight and there are syringes all over the place. She's heard gunshots before. But inside is where she lives, not out there, not in the ugliness. Inside, she's painted the walls with yellow paint and put plants everywhere, begonias, geraniums, luscious grape ivy, draping ferns, a couple of forlorn-looking cacti.She doesn't mind it. The apartment. It's cheap. It's hers.
She takes her ravioli to the bay window, sits in the big frayed club chair and looks out the window. The window looks down a narrow dark alley. At the end, the alley opens onto a shining view of the industrial district, concrete buildings glowing yellow in the setting summer sun. Sometimes they're so still and quiet, defined with lines and edges that seem crisp like they've just be cut of stiff paper. So pretty, in a strange way. The buildings. Always there, always would be there. Maybe they'd crack and crumble, get run down, but they'd always be standing there out where the railroad tracks plunged under old blacktop cracked by weeds. There was something important hidden in them. Something in the lines, in the way the sun made them swell with brightness. Churches never glowed like that.
The bowl of ravioli is growing cold, and her vision is receding, and the sun sets a little further, and everything is darker orange and a little more dingy, like a gray scarf has been dropped down from above. A light warm summer-night wind picks up and stirs under the faded cotton print curtains. Tassie notices an aphid crawling on one of her begonias and thinks about mixing up some dish-soap solutions to put on the leaves. Newly comforted with such mundane thoughts, she goes back to eating her dinner. But now she's not hungry anymore. She's dropped a big globet of tomato sauce on the lapel of her worn-pink chenille robe. Stares at it stupidly for a moment. Maybe, she thinks cynically, if she stared long enough, the gray scarf would get pulled back and the blob would take on a kind of religious importance, like the stupid rundown old warehouses did.
She gets up, puts the bowl in the sink along with about a hundred other bowls--Tassie, never the neatest, never a "smart" housekeeper--and goes into the bathroom and dabs at the blob with a piece of toilet paper. It sinks deeper into the worn-thin fabric. Doesn't bother her. Festive, she thinks. Like a carnation on my lapel. Jaunty.
She stops for a moment to glance at herself in the mirror. The glance lengthens and becomes a stare. She scrutinizes every line, every pouch of fat, every thick pore. Not out of vanity, of course. Far from it. She always asks herself the same question:
"What did I do to deserve this?"
She once found a stained apron in one of the ripe black bags that said that same thing. It runs through her mind all the time now. She wishes she'd never found that damn apron.
Fat face, skin like a wrinkled orange peel, bulbous nose like W.C. Fields, narrow eyes the color of grapes covered with mold.
When she was younger, before she found those perfect apron words that summed it all up so well, she used to suffer mutely, silently whining at God or whoever. Now that she has the words, she doesn't whine anymore. She just wonders, quietly, incessantly. When she was younger, she used to pray that something would change, that a miracle might be granted to her. Now she just wants an answer. It doesn't matter anymore, but she just wants an answer.
She'd never killed anyone. Never stolen, never stolen much at least. Not meaner or more sinful than the beautiful West Hills people who swarmed the Goodwill looking for quaint knickknacks or underpriced antiques. So why?
A priest told her once that it was what was waiting on the other side that counted. Baloney-on-white-bread. Tassie doesn't put much thought to the Bible. But she knows plenty of people who do. They say that they are happy serving Jesus. Tassie wonders what Jesus has against her.
But Tassie doesn't have much spite in her now, really. These are all just questions like reflexes, unimportant, instinctive. It doesn't bother her when the doctor taps her knees, and these questions don't bother her either, really. They just buzz around her head like something to do. She has her plants and birds and the occasional bowl of ravioli and sometimes the shining sun on the warehouses. And the black bags, the ripe black bags.
Tired of standing and thinking, she wanders back into the "bedroom" and creaks back onto the old spring bed. She stares at a crack on the ceiling, surrounded by a faint discoloration where a pipe broke once. She thinks about the effort it would take to turn on a lamp. The old stuffed bear is smiling by her head. She can smell its faint odor of now-grown children and ancient vomit.
She thinks about the straight razor she keeps in the drawer of her nightstand. Still sharp. He left it behind. Probably a drunk on the streets by now. Maybe he thinks about razors too. Maybe he wishes he hadn't left it behind. He was a funny man. In and out of hospitals. She wonders if he ever heard the apron-question. Wonders if he ever figured it out.
The late summer gloom is creeping through the room, putting her plants to sleep, casting its heavy blue cloak over the yellow walls. She stares at the crack, thinking about the "Roaring 20s" and the "Fabulous 50s" and of all the women who wore those clothes. All those women probably wondered the same thing. Even the rich ones, the pretty ones, the old women with cats. All wondering, "what did I do to deserve this?"
And the thought of everyone now, and everyone in history and everyone from the beginning of time asking the same question makes Tassie wonder. Wonder what it is they think they deserve.
She wakes up early the next morning, hot summer fingers sliding over the thin blue polyester wool blanket edged with polyester acetate. Another hot day. Good. Another day to feed the birds. More ripe black bags dropped from charity's tree.
Since it's early, she decides to walk through the warehouses. She hasn't forgotten about last night. The morning sun is shining hot and bright. This morning, the warehouses just seem dingy. Like they've been woken up too early. Bleary eyed. Just like the little boy sitting on the cracked cement stairs of the Piedmont Storage and Van Company.
He's sitting stuffing an old Twinkie wrapper into his mouth, trying to get at some stiff frosting stuck on one end. Tassie watches him for a minute from across the street. Three, maybe, she guesses. Filthy. Black hair standing at all angles from a dirt-streaked brown-Mexican face. One shoe gone from a foot with a ripped sock. Angry cat scratches across one arm.
She crosses the street.
Hello, she says. She's almost forgotten the sound of her own voice. Sounds strange in among the silent buildings. Unwelcome. The boy stares at her. He has light dirt-tear streaks down his face.
Mama? Papa? She asks.
The boy begins to cry again. Tears leave more muddy streaks down his face. She crouches down, comes down to look at him eye to eye. Hopes that she looks comforting, gentle. After a moment, she holds out a hand to him.
Hungry? Lost?
He's crying frantically now, holding the plastic wrapper tight like she's going to take it away. She holds her hand out further, touches his head, speaks gently.
Hungry? She says again. She manages to get a corner of his t-shirt, and she gets him up to his feet. He goes limp, trying to pull away from her, but she swings him up easily, cuddling his bony bottom in the crook of her big round arm.
She calls in sick that day, the ripe black bags will just have to wait. She opens another can of ravioli, spoons the little squares into his mouth and they get all over him. She's running a huge tub of steaming water in the bathroom. Makes the whole place smell good, all the old bath-salts of all the other old lonely women rising up like ghosts. She takes off his dirty clothes. Everything is so small and torn. Stiff and friable like dead skin.
She looks at the scratches on his arm, bright and nasty. Poor little thing, she thinks, tears stinging her eyes. Poor little thing.
He's staring at her quietly with huge black-marble eyes, staring at everything she does, his serious face painted with tomato sauce. Sometimes he makes a little noise like a whimper or a squeak, but he does not talk. He does not utter a word. At least he's not crying anymore, Tassie thinks. She tests the bathwater, not too hot. She plunks him down into it, and he screams. She recoils immediately, terrified. Too hot? Had she scalded him? But a moment later he is back to his staring silence. He shivers a little bit--the water is warm but the bathroom is always cold. She kneels beside the big clawfoot tub and spends a half-hour scrubbing dirt off him. His fingers are especially dirty, caked, stained brown. She scrubs and scrubs, never too hard, babies' skins are sensitive. She uses only a little shampoo on his hair, being exceptionally careful not to get it in his eyes. Babies could be blinded that way.
After an hour, he's standing naked on her bed, laughing because she's ticking him. He's slightly damp, smelling vaguely like bath salts, clean and shining. Hair hangs in perfect black curls from a perfect little face. She tickles him again, chasing him like a lion around the room. He squeals, laughing again, then tries to chase her as she gets a clean t-shirt from her drawer. She plunks the shirt over his sweet moist little body like a collector plunking the next ofver a pretty butterfly. Then she sits him down in the big club chair and hands him another bowl of reheated ravioli. She sits down to watch him eat. He handles the spoon awkwardly, spattering tomato sauce all over the clean t-shirt, the antimassacars, across his bright brown face. She does not care. If she could spend the rest of her life bathing then feeding then bathing then feeding him, Tassie thinks that she could probably be perfectly happy.
What's your name? she asks. He stops eating for a moment, looks at her. She points to herself. Tassie.
He points to himself with the spoon, stares at her. Says nothing. Then goes back to eating.
She has to take him to work with her the next day. She figures she can find him some pants and a little shirt that will fit him. A pair of pajamas, the fuzzy kind, with feet.
"What the hell is that?" Vonda squawks. She picks up her cigarette, takes an outraged drag. "Where the hell did you get that?"
Tassie explains. But she does not tell Vonda everything.
"You going to keep that kid here? What the hell you thinking?"
"What else was I going to do?" Tassie snaps. "Leave him at home?"
Vonda pauses for a second, surprised. Tassie never snaps. Mild mannered, Tassie always is. Vonda puts the cigarette into her mouth, leaves it there. "Home. Yeah, you could call that dump a home, maybe. What you going to do, keep the little berry-picker? You call CSD yet?"
"They told me to keep him," Tassie lies. "Until they find his parents."
"Migrants," Vonda says under her breath. The way she says it makes it sound worse than any swear word."They better give you some goddamn money. You ain't gonna keep that kid on what you make."
Tassie shrugs, goes on sorting clothes and watching her little boy play.
"That's what you're doing, isn't it? Going for the money?" Vonda's voice becomes conspiratorial and relieved all at the same time. She thinks she understands now, and that makes her feel better. "They pay foster parents good."
Tassie says nothing.
"He's quiet, at least. They're little brats, usually. Messin' with all the toys, breaking things, they don't care ..." Vonda trails off, her arms crossed as she stares at the boy through narrowed eyes. "He got a name?"
Tassie shrugs.
"I dunno," she says. "Doesn't talk much."
Vonda stares at her for a second, then snorts cigarette smoke through her nose.
"They you're perfect for each other. Mamacita." She says the last word with a punch of disdain. She trails the odor of Camels as she strides out of the room.
Secretly, Tassie smiles.
That night, he's asleep in her arms after an evening of tickle and chase and this and that, and Tassie is staring down the alley again at the warehouses.
They're glowing again, smiling at her and at the warm little black head nestled right beneath her breasts.
The unimportant things, the things that people forget, the things that people ignore. The beaded wedding dress that took up too much room in the closet. The straight razor. The stuffed bear. The things that people leave behind and the things that people leave alone. The pierced teenagers who fly and soar with pigeons underneath them, buoying them up higher and higher. The things that no one wants. Discarded things. Strong things. Strong and proud. Perfectly apart. Perfectly alone. God made them perfect. Gave them everything they needed.
Then when someone imperfect finds them and wants them and loves them, their holiness shines through like sunset on an old warehouse, because they're treasure chests no one thinks to look in, and they have God in them. They're holy. They're not answers. But they make questions meaningless.
Tassie kisses the head of the baby in her lap.
What did I do to deserve this? She wonders.
Copyright 2007 M.K. Hobson. All Rights Reserved. Contents may not be reproduced without permission.
