How I Almost Moved On

Flash Fiction

Francine and Buddy Keep Moving On
                                    for Alix Klingenberg, who gave me the prompt and the prompting

I almost moved to Atlanta, I almost moved to San Francisco, I almost moved into the bathtub on the roof of the apartment building next door, I almost moved into my granny’s high-topped leather shoe. And to the Big Apple. And to Paris, France. 

Where I moved to was North Carolina, one of its flat ugly places just about sea level, full of soldiers and army brats; my husband jumped from planes, I spruced up a tiny furnished apartment, scrubbed the walls the shelves the ancient shower curtain rod. 

I almost moved inside my own navel a kind of orange was growing in there– I almost dug it out with a grapefruit spoon, it kicked me in the face, it drank up all my blood, it came out of me wailing and shaking its thick black hair.

I moved into a place called “screaming”; I moved into a place called “I’ll-never-sleep-again-I-swear”; I moved into the cheating heart of the deadbeat paratrooper; I moved into someone’s bed and lay there a long, long time dreaming now what? now what? now what? I almost moved off the roof into the open air, I almost grew a pair of legs way up to there, I almost moved to Vegas, I almost entered a beauty contest, I almost danced on a million laps. 

What happened was I took the black-headed pipsqueak cross country on a Greyhound bus, what happened was I almost left him at a rest stop in Oklahoma. What happened was, I moved back home for a minute. I almost ironed the wrinkles out of my mother’s face, I almost gave in and trimmed my father’s beard, I almost didn’t didn’t didn’t care. What I did do was drive away in their Oldsmobile, what I did do was move into it, what I did do was park it in a KOA Campground. Me and the little shithead ate canned beans, smoked a pack a day, poked some of my daddy’s under-the-mattress bills into vending machines, ate some Frito-Lay, ate us some Lance crackers.

Then I moved into a little stream at the foot of some man’s sleeping bag—I brushed my teeth, I plaited my hair. I moved up in the world. I moved into a box with four walls and four windows and what seemed like four kitchens, four new leases on life. I taught the little weirdo to wax the floors, I taught him to say what the fuck, I taught him to fight, I taught him to never look back. I taught him to pack up and move out into America—Route 66, the PCH. I taught the little asshole to beat time on the windshield, I taught him to busk, to sing bloody murder; I taught him  to say I-am-a-window-washer, I-am-a-fish-gutter, I-am-a-chicken-plucker, I-am-a-cocksucker, I am down on my luck what I wouldn’t do for a buck. 

What I wouldn't do for a cardboard sign and a Sharpie, so I could set the little motherfucker out on the corner of Mainstreet and Please Give Us a Dime, so I could spruce up my hair and go all devil-may-care, go all nonchalant up the avenues, up the boulevards, sashay myself up to a fine mister for a kiss-kiss, sway-sway my body up to God himself for a cigarette, lay my fancy ass down in a ditch water pond on somebody’s dried up farm, hold the little monster on my chest and dream of Montana’s big sky, the Miracle Mile, this place called Bell Buckle I saw on a freeway sign, dream of sliding under in that bathtub so close to the sky, dream of breathing in the water, dream of folding up the little cocksucker and stuffing him back inside me.
 
What I did do was lift myself and the little dumbass up from the water. I figured I’d moved heaven and earth to get this far and what a woman can’t do when she musters herself up. I stuck out my hip, I bared my dimply leg to the world and said, hey mister, please, won’t you give us a dime? Give us a boost up and I’ll give you a fine time. I’ll call you sugar, I’ll call you Daddy. I’ll give you the long and the short, the front and the rear, if you ask me real nice, I’ll give it a year.