Guest
Writer - Cheryl B.
Celebrating her life...she will be dearly missed.
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The Persistence of Memory The teenager behind the counter at the pizzeria is checking me out as I place my order. Then he says, “you look like somebody.” “Oh,” I say, “I get that a lot.” I sit down and think he must be thinking I look like Gwen Stefani. I get her a lot. I can sort of see it too, in the face, the mouth, the eyes, definitely not the abs, or the wardrobe or the fame and fortune. She seems like a nice person. The other day I tried to sit on a chair that did not exist. I could have sworn it was there. But I wound up on the floor in front of all the other customers at the nail salon. “I can’t wait until you turn 30,” a friend a dozen years my senior once said to me after I laughed about something age-related and absent-minded that she had done. I remember saying to myself, obnoxious twenty-something that I was, “I’ll never do anything that stupid!” The sound of my 30-year-old ass hitting the floor was phenomenal, like a thousand flower pots breaking on concrete; at least that’s what I heard. As I stood, magazines from the shelf I’d brought down cascaded off my body, their pages a glossy mess spread out on the floor. Smiling faces frozen in photographs looked up at me There used to be a commercial on TV featuring an old woman. I can’t remember what the commercial was for but the old woman would say, “You know something? Some people tell me I’m senile. You want to know something else? Some people tell me I’m senile.” Given the pervasiveness of senility in my family, we all found this hilarious. And it became a catchphrase we would say to each other— when my mother forgot something she’d just been told, or my father just wasn’t paying attention to us, or my brother’s ADD was in full throttle or I was deep in the adolescent funk — entire family fights were staved off by those two lines. Last month I slipped and fell down the stairs in the hallway of my building. The pain was unbelievable, as if I’d been broken in half. Turns out I fractured my coccyx, which sounds like it should be some daring sextoy. A friend suggested a cat o nine tails but
I imagined more of a large, nubbed dildo. told me. I left the hospital with an ice pack and a prescription for painkillers that I threw away—too many friends with prescription drug dependency. Also, I was told to purchase a donut-like apparatus to sit on. The woman behind the counter at the drug store blurted out, “Whaddya got, hemorrhoids?” Turns out they don’t sell them. The feel of the ice pack against my skin stimulated my bladder and I limped to the bathroom every five minutes for the rest of the day, the icy load packed into my pants.
Certainly, a Depends undergarment can’t be far in my future. shopping one afternoon, notices her mistake hours later and finally turns it off. The next day she leaves a candle burning in the same kitchen overnight while she is in Atlantic City. The slot machines she patronizes are operated by buttons, no need to pull a lever or pump coins. Just insert your bill in the slot, press one button to place your bet, another to spin the wheels. My mother keeps one hand on her purse, the other interacts with the machine. Her cigarette burns in an ashtray, her coffee goes cold nearby. She is surrounded by women just like her: lonely, perhaps widowed like my mother or divorced. Some thin and frail, others wholly round like grapes. They wear sweaters adorned with jewels, satin teddy bears or leopards made out of snakeskin. “The kids don’t call enough,” hit the slot machines. “I’ve wasted my life taking care of other people,” hit the slot machines. All are lulled into denial by the whirring and flashing of these tiny evil robots. I’ve heard that she refers to me as “the mother-in-law” because I scold her, Remind her to go on a daily walk and organize her bills. Some months she forgets to pay them. Other months she pays them twice, then all her checks bounce. I remind her that her father was senile, that these things are hereditary. I say to her, “Some people tell me I’m senile…” And these days instead of laughing she tells me to shut up. My grandfather walked to the A&P everyday and bought exactly six Dannon yogurts and a gallon of milk for my grandmother’s osteoporosis. He also snuck a candy bar he wasn’t supposed to eat on account of his diabetes. When he got home my grandmother, noticing all the yogurts, would scream at him. Their Frigidaire was already full of the small wax paper containers in a variety of colors. It took a while but eventually he started mistaking his wife for his mother, my mother for his niece and I became the little girl who used to live down the street. Meanwhile back at the pizzeria, the kid motions for me to come up to the counter. My order is ready. On my way, I can see him looking at me up and down. He hands me my slice. “Is it hot enough?” he asks, looking right at me. I felt the crust, my favorite part. “Seems hot enough for me,” I say without looking at him. “Okay, ma’am.” I shudder at the word “ma’am. ” At what point does one stop being
a “miss” and become a “ma’am?” I wonder
as I head for the door. half on its paper plate I hear the kid yell, “Hey lady!” I stick my head back in and look at him. “I figured out who you look like!” He was wiping the counter and didn’t look up to talk to me this time. “You look like my friend’s mother,” he says. “I’m glad I figured it out; it was driving me crazy.” “Oh, okay,” I say and turn to leave the store and I wonder at what point do you go from looking like a rock star to looking like somebody’s mother.
Out on the sidewalk I could hear the kid yell. “Hey Ma’am!
Have a nice day!” Cheryl
B. is a poet, spoken-word performer and Cheryl
cut her performance teeth at New York City’s A
native New Yorker, Cheryl is a graduate of NYU and
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