Because of her bulk, my sister smuggled scissors into places like JC Penney, Belk, and Merry-Go-Round. She\u2019d pretend to interest herself in both blouses and dresses hanging on those circular silver garment racks at Casual Corner, Kmart, and Cato, work her way around to the Size 4s and 6s, then snip off the labels. I don\u2019t know if she stuffed them into the pockets of her own Size 18 moo-moos, stick them in her mouth, shove them into her enormous armpits, or slid them into her size 10 moccasins. Because Carlinda took\u2014and thrived in\u2014Home Ec, she knew her way around a Singer Touch Tronic sewing machine. She\u2019d clip off the labels to her own clothes, then attach her stolen tags seamlessly. We didn\u2019t notice until she got caught. By \u201cwe,\u201d I mean my parents, plus me. Why would I even care? I had enough problems with weird half-inch-in-length eyebrows, set at the far ends of my forehead, which looked like someone pausing or forgetful making a dash mark in typing class.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother\u2019s busy, so you have to go with me, Melvin,\u201d my father said to me one day, maybe an hour after I\u2019d gotten home from tenth grade. This was a Thursdayday in April, and I wasn\u2019t one of those kinds of students who participated in sports, nor got involved in various after-school clubs that all our teachers seemed to hate. I don\u2019t want to say that I held my classmates in contempt, those who chose to play baseball or run track, the others who sat around playing chess, or speaking French to one another while eating, I don\u2019t know, crepes, but I preferred to go home mid-week and stare at the wall.<\/p>\n
I could run two miles in ten minutes, if it matters. I just chose not to do so. I was the Bartleby of my particular high school. I\u2019d rather sit home and read, than participate with fools.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo where?\u201d I said to my dad. He didn\u2019t make eye contact. I didn\u2019t look up from my book.<\/p>\n
My father wore blue polyester pants that held a maze-like pattern. \u201cYour sister seems to be in trouble. We have to go now.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got off the couch and, I\u2019m sure, huffed with agitation, as I normally did when things got thrown on me, like having to cut the grass, or clean up after our dog because I forgot to let her out. My father put on his special wingtips, the Size 15s, even though\u2014I found out later\u2014he wore a regular sized 10 1\/2 at best. My father, who worked on and off part-time as a salesman, plying anything from vacuum cleaners to Better-than-Brillo, wore oversized shoes because he thought it gave him an advantage. Later on I learned that there was some kind of correlation between large feet and penis sizes. Did he know this? Was he going door-to-door and showing off these shoes in order to both mesmerize and conjure unsatisfied women? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
Full-time my father supposedly sold life insurance. I guess when people wouldn\u2019t buy the, say, snake bite kits, he\u2019d go straight into the importance of life insurance.<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d<\/p>\n
My father put on the outsized wingtips and said, \u201cWhy can\u2019t your mother ever be here during these times?\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother worked as an emergency room nurse. I don\u2019t know about every other hospital in America, then or now, but it seems like her schedule changed sporadically, from first to second to third shift. My memory might be wrong, but I remember my father serving breakfast more often than not, and it usually being nothing more than bacon. No eggs or toast, just bacon. Maybe he had something against pigs.<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t have I thought to be on the Geography Club Team, which meets every Thursday gearing up for that year-end competitions?\u201d because I kept a sullen tendency. As an aside, I probably knew more about Africa than anyone else in my high school, because I had a certain fascination with Maasai warriors, ostriches, and distance runners from the Rift Valley.<\/p>\n
I felt glad that my father didn\u2019t walk with a cane. He gave me a look like he would\u2019ve hit me, had he walked with a limp. I can\u2019t be certain, because he turned his head somewhat, but I think he said, \u201cGoddamn you, you son-of-a-bitch, sometimes you burn my balls.\u201d He said something, I don\u2019t know. He said, \u201cGet in the goddamn car. We got to make our way to a place called Debs and Brides to figure out your sister.\u201d<\/p>\n
I knew he meant business. I\u2019m not sure why I envisioned my mom standing around with a mask on her face, unaware, handing a scalpel to somebody I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They held Carlinda in the employee break room. A security guard sat there with her. That\u2019s what they told my father when we entered Debs and Brides, a place with linoleum floors that used to be an S.H. Kress five-and-dime store in our town. I mention \u201clinoleum floors,\u201d because my father strode down an aisle, flanked on both sides with what appeared to be prom dresses. I lagged behind, thinking about Idi Amin. My father\u2019s wingtips kind of flip-flopped, that\u2019s how hard he walked. I don\u2019t want to say I found myself daydreaming about going to a senior prom in a few years, on a date with a woman wearing a backless sequined ruby-red dress like the one that caught my eye, but the next thing I knew, I found my father sprawled out on the floor, next to one of those knee-high yellow CAUTION WET FLOOR signs, except this one read CUIDADO SUELO MOJADO, Spanish for the same predicament.<\/p>\n
My father yelled out, \u201cOwww!\u201d of course. I stopped in my tracks. One of his shoes flew off and kicked a red, white, and blue dress that, to be honest, might\u2019ve caused a young woman to unintentionally start line-dancing.<\/p>\n
I should\u2019ve rushed up to him. I should\u2019ve said, \u201cAre you all right?\u201d From the back of the store, I\u2019m pretty sure I heard my sister yell out, \u201cI\u2019m back here,\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m innocent!\u201d I should\u2019ve run up and grabbed one of my father\u2019s elbows to help him up. If cell phones had been invented by this time, I should\u2019ve called 911. He\u2019d cracked his head hard on the linoleum, and some blood\u2014not a lot, but still, blood\u2014spread beside his right ear.<\/p>\n
Then I got to thinking about how weird it would be if my father got sent to the hospital, and needed some kind of surgery, and got wheeled in to where my mother stood there. I thought about how Carlinda might start screaming, with no one there to get her, how she was hungry, and wanted some bacon, or at least a few packs of Nekot peanut butter cookies.<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cYou\u2019re embarrassing me. Get up.\u201d My father\u2019d either gone into a coma, or was playing possum, I couldn\u2019t tell. I said, \u201cHey, Dad, there\u2019s a woman back here who wants to buy some insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t move. I thought, What would he want me to do? so I tiptoed around him, and went to find my sister. I figured this was one of those \u201cYou\u2019re the man of the house\u201d times. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I knelt down to make sure he breathed. He did. I looked at his face, but his eyes had kind of rolled back, which scared me somewhat. I thought about how my father looked a little like what I imagined Hiempsal looked like back in 117 BC, when Jugurtha ordered his cousin\u2019s death back in ancient Numidia.<\/p>\n
Someone working at Debs and Brides must\u2019ve noticed what went on, because over the loudspeaker a woman called out, \u201cWe need some help on Aisle Two.\u201d Over the years, when I tell this story at parties\u2014now that both my parents are dead\u2014I always say the woman said, \u201cClean up on Aisle Two,\u201d but it\u2019s not the truth. At family reunions, or Christmas parties, when Carlinda\u2019s around, she stares non-stop, almost daring me to re-tell the story. I won\u2019t do it in her presence, basically because something happened on this day. She joined a gym, she lost a hundred pounds, and she became a weightlifter who won a number of southeastern competitions. My sister could beat me up with one punch, the kind of right jab that would make me hit the floor and bleed from both ears.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I got there with the security guard and Carlinda. I said, \u201cDad\u2019s had an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n
She sat on a plastic chair. On the table between her and the guard sat at least ten scissored labels. I said to the guard, \u201cDo you speak Spanish?\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head No. I said, \u201cNeither does our father. You might want to go help out back there.\u201d I pointed my thumb behind me. I said, \u201cYou might have a dead guy in the prom dress section.\u201d<\/p>\n
My sister put her head down in her hands and cried, but I don\u2019t think it had to do with Dad. I think she realized she owned a problem or two. I\u2019m no psychologist or soothsayer, but I think Carlinda might\u2019ve thought about how she either wanted to lose some weight, or quit snipping tags, or quit eating bacon for breakfast. Me, I thought about Kip Keino\u2014who won gold medals in the Mexico City and Munich Olympics\u2014and wondered how he would deal with this situation.<\/p>\n
The security guard\u2014why would there even be such an employee at a small southern town dress shop?\u2014grunted up and went out to check the situation. I said to my sister, \u201cGrab those tags and let\u2019s get out of here before anyone notices.\u201d This might\u2019ve been the first sign that I would choose a fitting way of life, either as a docent at the History of Slavery in the South Museum, or as a voice-over actor who offered PSAs for CrimeStoppers, if not both.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My mother wasn\u2019t happy, certainly. Sure enough, she got word about her husband between helping out with appendectomies. An ambulance took him to the hospital, but he got checked out in the ER and got sent home with Tylenol. Meanwhile, Carlinda and I sat in the den, trying to think up excuses and lies. I wasn\u2019t old enough to drive without a parent in the car. When Carlinda and I escaped Debs and Brides we took my sister\u2019s car out of the parking lot. Dad\u2019s Buick remained there. My mother showed up right at dusk, my father shuffling in, wearing one shoe, behind her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the fuck is going on?\u201d my mother said, still wearing scrubs. I\u2019d never heard her curse before.<\/p>\n
My father sang, I swear to God, the theme song to the Jetsons cartoon. He smiled at Carlinda and me. He held up his palm. He said, \u201cHey, kids.\u201d He wore a white gauze headband, like that dude playing the flute in that painting.<\/p>\n
I started thinking about Idi Amin again, and later on would wonder about the connection. Maybe \u201cMeet George Jetson\u201d had the same number of syllables as \u201cIdi Amin,\u201d I don\u2019t know. Same with \u201cDaughter Judy\u201d and \u201cHis boy Elroy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, Carlinda and I agreed that she should say how she got mislabeled, so to speak, as a shoplifter, that it had been a mistake, that someone else clipped label sizes and she\u2019d been almost-arrested illegally. But my sister blurted out, \u201cI might have a problem.\u201d She said, \u201cI can\u2019t believe you\u2019ve never noticed when doing the laundry,\u201d to my father, who normally put clothes in our ancient, leaky Maytag.<\/p>\n
My father smiled so much we could notice how he missed a molar on the left side of his face. He said, \u201cWhoa! It looked there for a minute like I might\u2019ve succumbed. Good thing there\u2019s a life insurance policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit that, there for a few years\u2014maybe straight through college\u2014I dropped a fascination with Africa\u2019s ostriches and supplanted it with any kind of research into personality changes after traumatic head injuries. I found out that my father shouldn\u2019t ever drink, that he might be prone to future seizures, that he might become colorblind. He\u2019d sleep a bunch at first, then go forty-eight hours as an insomniac. Driving at night would be a problem, because he might be prone veering off the road, blinded by headlights. There were a hundred symptoms, some of which might\u2019ve been \u201cnot scientifically proven.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother stared at Carlinda, then glanced my way. She said, \u201cHow long have you known about this little problem, Melvin?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrugged. I said, \u201cMaybe four or five hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now my father began singing the theme song to Gilligan\u2019s Island. I didn\u2019t have any kind of African-related places or names to fit in with the lyrics. My mother took my father by the bicep and said, \u201cHow\u2019s about you go lie down for a while. I\u2019ll come bring you supper in an hour or so.\u201d<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cHey, can I go take a run?\u201d because I\u2019d not done so that day. Normally I got up before dawn and ran six miles in thirty-six minutes, which, I found out later, would be the cause of my shin splints and tendonitis. Later in life, it would be the cause of bad hips and knees and ankles.<\/p>\n
Carlinda said, \u201cCan I go with Melvin?\u201d She\u2019d never said such a thing. It would turn my thirty-six minute run into a couple days, I thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither of you are going anywhere,\u201d my mother said when she returned from taking Dad to bed. \u201cWe need to go pick up your father\u2019s car. Carlinda, you\u2019ll have to drive, and I\u2019ll drive the Buick home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Normally my mother took a shower straight after her shift. I don\u2019t know if our local hospital didn\u2019t have shower rooms for doctors and nurses, but sometimes she came home looking like a gunshot victim. The driver\u2019s seat in her own car\u2014a normal Plymouth\u2014probably held more DNA than the Avalon Cemetery in Soweto, South Africa.<\/p>\n
We got in Carlinda\u2019s car. She drove. I sat in the back seat. My mother said, \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to be ashamed, Carlinda. Good god. I work with a nurse who weighs at least three hundred pounds, and she\u2019s brilliant. Unless she drops a sponge or something, leans down to get it, then wallows around on the operating room floor for a while holding up someone getting his gall bladder taken out.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought, Kip Keino beat Jim Ryun by three seconds in the Mexico City Olympics\u2019 1500, then won the 3000 steeplechase in the Munich Olympics. I thought, Mama Cass was a big woman. But then I couldn\u2019t think of any of that band\u2019s songs. Thank goodness, so I couldn\u2019t replace lyrics with, say, Robert Mugabe, or the Mau Mau Rebellion. I sat in the back seat and didn\u2019t think about how my father may have gotten out of bed, found the phone, and called a lawyer friend of his who, years later, would be one of the first attorneys in our area to buy TV ads.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My mother might\u2019ve been a good nurse, but she wasn\u2019t much when it came to looking into the future. She didn\u2019t have any expertise in logic, or cause-and-effect. We got to my father\u2019s car and my mother said, \u201cYou ride with me, Melvin.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got out, huffing and groaning, drooping my head, shuffling. My mother jangled car keys as if she were about to throw dice in that craps game.<\/p>\n
Carlinda drove off before we even got in Dad\u2019s car. She went in the direction of our house, but we didn\u2019t see her for another, oh, year. My mother filled out a missing person\u2019s report the next day, and so on, but Carlinda\u2014even with her size\u2014seemed to disappear. They say that obese people tend to be invisible, and evidently it\u2019s the case. I\u2019ll just go ahead and say that the next time any of us saw Carlinda, she\u2019d dropped a good hundred pounds. Maybe she went to live with a relative who promised to keep the secret, we never found out. Carlinda returned, she re-enrolled to finish her senior year of high school, and then she ended up in subsequent years on ESPN, either arm wrestling or power lifting.<\/p>\n
That section of my life\u2014my ninth and tenth grade years\u2014kind of blurred together. I worried about my sister, sure. I know my mom did, too. Somehow, though, my father rarely mentioned it. No, he found himself engrossed in not knowing Spanish, and meeting with Mr. Clardy, his lawyer\u2014a man who wore a black clip-on Kentucky gambler tie.<\/p>\n
While Carlinda fled, and while my mother and I drove the thirty minutes back home, my father got on the phone with Mr. Clardy and explained his situation. Understand that this was a long time before all this \u201canti-woke\u201d nonsense, or about how people thought \u201cYou better speak English if you live in America.\u201d Sometimes when I think back on this period of my life, I wonder if my father unknowingly started a Revival of Xenophobia so prominent in the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n
I quit running. I got tired of the track coach saying he\u2019d get teachers to fail me if I didn\u2019t join his team. My mother tacked photocopies of Carlinda on every telephone pole in the<\/p>\n
Carolinas. I guess my father went back to work, but who knows? It does seem like we went from pot roast to near-goulash\u2014elbow macaroni, hamburger, paprika\u2014for most evening meals. While my father accidentally started a right-wing hatred group, my mother tried to run the nascent Hamburger Helper industry out of business.<\/p>\n
\u201cBilly says we have a case. We\u2019re about to get a house in Myrtle Beach!\u201d my father said when my mother and I returned, not knowing that there\u2019d be an empty bedroom in our ranch-style house.<\/p>\n
I turned on the TV and sat on the couch. We got three channels back then. Because it happened to be a Thursday, Benson came on. I liked Benson. I liked to think that somehow the actor Robert Guillaume\u2019s relatives originated in the Rift Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know who Billy is,\u201d my mother said. Peripherally I could see her grab my father\u2019s bicep again, like she wanted to take him back to bed until his head cleared.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d my father said, way too loudly, \u201cthat sign didn\u2019t say anything about \u2018wet floor.\u2019 It was all in Spanish, nothing in English. Billy says we can sue Debs and Brides, no problem. He said there\u2019s been\u2014I don\u2019t know the word. He said it\u2019s happened before.\u201d<\/p>\n
I yelled out \u201cPrecedent,\u201d from the den. Sometimes when I took those morning runs, I carried a paperback dictionary with me.<\/p>\n
My father, for some reason, said, \u201cWatch your mouth, son. You don\u2019t know how easy it would be to paint a bull\u2019s eye between your far-apart eyebrows.\u201d What did that mean?<\/p>\n
My mother called back at me, \u201cIt\u2019s his head injury, Melvin. Don\u2019t worry. You dad\u2019s going to say a number of non sequiturs for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d not gotten to \u201cnon sequiturs\u201d in the dictionary. The actor who played Benson said, \u201cThat\u2019s two words,\u201d while watching TV when an announcer said something about how the basketball team can change the way things are going with one word, \u201cfast break.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought, of course, It\u2019s as if someone is watching over me, seeing as \u201cnon sequitur\u201d might be two words. I thought, Poor Carlinda, probably driving from one drive-through window to another, over and over. \u201cCan I go out for a run?\u201d I called into the kitchen. \u201cPlease, please, please?\u201d<\/p>\n
I got no answer, so went into my room and changed. Understand that by this time darkness had hit. It wasn\u2019t that much different than mornings when I ran, with streetlights on. I took off, not cognizant of how my father would eventually win a six-figure settlement, even after payment to Mr. Clardy. I didn\u2019t know that Debs and Brides would end up closing altogether because of my father\u2019s lawsuit, and that\u2014because of our town\u2019s small size\u2014prospective debutantes, bridesmaids, and brides would, in the future, travel sixty miles away to gather their appropriate finery, or wrestle with a Singer Touch Tronic while turning curtains into evening wear. I ran at a six-minute pace, looking for my sister\u2019s car along the way. Bats flitted above, casting shadows, which made me flinch. I thought, Don\u2019t trip and hit your head, don\u2019t trip and hit your head, something I\u2019d say to myself every day of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father, who worked on and off part-time as a salesman, plying anything from vacuum cleaners to Better-than-Brillo, wore oversized shoes because he thought it gave him an advantage. Later on I learned that there was some kind of correlation between large feet and penis sizes. Did he know this? Was he going door-to-door and showing off these shoes in order to both mesmerize and conjure unsatisfied women? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":19979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-george-singleton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19980,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19412\/revisions\/19980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}