010. Dirty, Sloppy Hearts
That afternoon, we walked together to Nina’s house.
As I walked up the stairs, the wood creaked, whispering to me about how long it had been nailed together, and how it wasn’t sure it could hold me up any longer. The doormat read: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord - Joshua 24:15.
“This place is really old looking,” I whispered. The burnt red paint on the door was pealing like a flakey scab.
“My father built it. Isn’t it pretty?” She turned her key in the lock and the door popped open.
“Yes,” I lied. It smelled like a hospital, but without death. If anything, it smelled like the comfort a hospital gives when you’ve cut yourself open. You’re comforted by the fact that they can put all your guts back inside, and that everything will be better when you leave.
Her living room was in the front of the house and Nina dropped all of her things on the couch. I did, too. “I have church on Wednesdays and Sundays,” she said, walking to the kitchen, “and youth group on Tuesday and Thursday. But you can come over all the other days.” While walking to the kitchen, I noticed how white the carpet was. It was shocking white, nearly blinding. So pure. I thought nothing else could be as white, until I saw the kitchen floor.
Nina’s house made my trailer look worse than normal.
She sat down at the table, and I sat across from her. It, too, was wood. I wondered if her father had carved it with his bare hands. “What don’t you get about math?” I asked. I was trying not to stare at her, not to look her in the eyes for too long.
“Oh I don’t get any of it. All those things with the numbers and the letters.” Nina got up suddenly and left the room. She came back with her math book. She started to flip through it. “I really don’t get any numbers. They’re weirder than atheists.”
“…What?”
“My father says atheists are weird, but I think numbers are weirder.”
I stared at my feet. I’ve always believed that if a god existed, he would have better monitored what crap got born into the world. So far, he’s failed.
“What are you learning in class?” I whispered to my lap.
“We’re doin’ this stuff about lines.” She found the section in her book and pushed it at me.
I stared at it for a few minutes. Equation of a line. “What don’t you understand?”
“I don’t get any of it, Miss Joephine.”
“Josie.”
“Huh?”
“You can just call me Josie.”
Nina pulled the book away from me and stared at it. She pointed to something and said, “This stuff about slope, and the equation, and all. Maybe you can explain that first, Josie?”
When she said my name, it sounded more beautiful than I knew it really was. I wanted to trap her lips in my fingers, forever, keep them for myself, just to hear her say my name over and over and…
“Basically, you just have two points,” I started to explain, “and they make a line. And then you can use those numbers, from the points, to find the equation and the slope.”
Nina nodded.
“And the slope can tell you if the line is going up or down or if it is parallel or perpendicular to another line.”
Nina nodded again. Her lips were parted, ready to ask a question.
“But where are these lines? I mean, in the world. You know? Do these lines exist somewhere? Or are they just imaginary lines? Because that is real weird if they don’t exist.”
I spent thirty minutes trying to explain the concept of lines.
Just about the time I was in the middle of explaining the usefulness of math and how it pertained to our everyday lives—a fact I tried to ignore—Nina interrupted me.
“Goodness, Josie, this is a lot of stuff. But you should probably be going.” She closed her book, without question.
“We’re… done?”
“Yeah, you can leave now. I’m real sorry I didn’t get any of that. I bet you think I ask real silly questions, dontcha?”
I felt a giggle tickle my throat, but I suffocated it with a deep breath. “Math is just confusing. I can keep coming over until you understand it.”
Nina smiled. My toes tingled. “I’d let you stay longer, but I’d be real borin’. I gotta clean the kitchen floor.”
I stared down at it. “I think the floor would disappear if you cleaned it anymore.”
“Oh, shucks.” She giggled. “If I didn’t warsh the floor every Monday it wouldn’t look like that, trust me.”
I smiled at her. I hoped my smile would make the moment last longer. Maybe I wouldn’t have to leave if I smiled long enough.
She stood and pushed her chair in.
“I don’t have to go home right away,” I mumbled. shut up shut up shut up shut up… “Maybe I can stay and help you clean the floor?”
Nina laughed, covering her lips with her fingers, like a girl would do in an old movie. I could spot her teeth between the gaps. “Now why on God’s beautiful earth would you want to help me warsh a floor?”
I bit my lip.
shut up shut up shut up shut up
“Why wouldn’t I want to?”
We were on our knees, scrubbing the floor with rags, a bottle of bleach between us. Like the smiley face, the bottle of bleach was my boundary now. My hands couldn’t pass, and I made sure to grab the bottle only after she had.
“So what does your dad do?” I asked.
She poured bleach on the floor and scrubbed. “He builds things with a construction company. You know that playground at the elementary school? My father built that. Little John is mighty proud to play on a jungle gym his father made.”
I poured bleach on the floor and scrubbed. “Who?”
“My brother. The young ones stay at school ‘til Father can pick ‘em up.”
When I pushed the rags across the floor, the bleach squeezed out and crawled up my fingers. I’ve bit my nails since I was ten, and it burned. I felt like someone was shoving a knife under my nails.
“What about your mom?”
“Oh, she went away. Father said the devil took her.”
I wasn’t sure whether to ask. “What did she do?” I thought maybe she tried to kill herself, or someone else. The real answer was worse.
“She wanted to get a real job like all the other women, but father says a woman’s place isn’t in business. So Mamma left and now I think she’s a devil worshiper down in Arkansas.”
I didn’t say anything. Nina moved forward and poured more bleach.
“Do you think your dad will get married again?”
Nina gasped. “My father is still married to my momma! He would never marry another woman just because she went to the devil.”
Only the rags made noise as they slopped around and scraped up the sin.
Then, in a small voice: “I don’t think he’s lonely or nothin’. He’s got God to make him happy.”
“That’s…good.”
“What about your parents?” she asked.
I scooted to the corner of the kitchen, near where the cabinets met. I didn’t want to see her face when she heard my answer.
“My dad works in a bar and I’m pretty sure my mom is a hooker, but I can’t be sure. She doesn’t live with us, either.”
Slop.
......Slop.
.................Slop.
My rag was banging into the corner and more bleach squished out and for the first time I was glad I bit my nails. I squeezed the rag as hard as I could. My finger tips burned and I had to bite my lip to keep from whining.
I thought for sure Nina would throw a crucifix at me, kick me out, pray that God cursed me and my soiled family.
“I’m real sorry about that, Josie. You’re a real nice girl, so’s far as I know. I’ll pray that God keeps your Momma safe.”
I stayed in the corner. “Why would you do that?”
“God loves everybody, even if they are sinners. I love everybody, too.” She paused, then, “Just don’t tell my father what your Momma does or he’ll not want you ‘round here no more.”
I grabbed the bottle of bleach behind me, but instead of the plastic handle, my hand was gripped around something soft and warm.
My hand was touching her hand. Her tiny, beautiful fingers were wrapped around the handle and my ugly, sinful fingers were wrapped around hers. I should have let go. I didn’t let go. The moment lasted too long. My thumb unconsciously stroked her knuckle. It was a muscle twitch, an accident, nothing.
The moment lasted too long and when I finally let go and mumbled that I was very sorry, my face was redder than the apple’s that grew on her dad’s tree, redder than her front door.
I leaned my head into the corner of the cabinets and closed my eyes. If I wasn’t certain that Nina would notice, I would have banged my head into the wood until my skull cracked.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered again.
I listened to the sound of her rag moving back and forth. I imagined what her fingers looked like, boney but beautiful, with the rag wrapped around. The bleach could kill everything on Nina’s floor; make it clean enough for Jesus’ own feet.
But even if I drank the whole bottle, I knew my heart would still be dirty.
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I'm obviously reading too much Faulkner. His style is starting to leak into my first person, though that may not be a bad thing? There are some parts I'm not particularly fond of, but maybe I'm overcritical. Your comments would be ever-so amazing.
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