Didn't Anybody Tell Her

In a cab in New York City, I quipped to the other passenger,
"You know how they say you never see baby squirrels?"
".....I guess not. So, yeah, sure."
"Have you ever noticed that atere are no baby cab drivers? As in, I've never encountered a timid, awkward cabbie who notes with some embarassment or apology that its his first day or week on the job. Cab drivers, so disaffected, jaded and full of disdain, must be hired with that disposition. Born that way even!"

A phase of mine was skipped. No adorable, downy innocence, being guided tree to tree by big squirrels, guarding me against falling. I was seemingly always a big squirrel. No memorable time when I wasn't already burdened and jaded. I can only recall almost always, no matter how imperceptively, being full of anger and frustration at being along for the ride in everyone else's world, never having a choice in where I went.

My mother remarks often on the phone how I was so smart and so obediant.
"You know,"
she'll reflect with such an odd pride,
"that when Dad was drinking, you didn't listen to him, you listened to me. I taught you that and you could tell. If I said to go to bed, you did. When I told you to call the police, you would."
I might force a smile despite being on the phone and sitting alone, because it makes my reaction carry less disappointment.
"Huh,"
I'll muse and try to reflect that pride back to her without a shadow of saddness.

It was in that replulsive, dim, piss-soaked dungeon that I found my father. As Steve and I stumbled through the filthy garage encumbered by junk and countless bags of garbage, the umistakable smell of animal feces and urine, yet tinged with something chemical, quickly became suffocating. The humidity gave it weight and made it choking. It wafted up the stairs from the basement, not remotely filtered by the rusted, decrepit screen door. Nor was the laughter, chatter and music also swelling sickeningly from below. Anxiety over the situation alone had me on the verge of wretching, it was that odor, though, that made my jaw clinch up tightly and my mouth water in acccomodation of the vomit that could follow. I took a shallow breath, as a deep one would definitely finish the job, and swallowed hard to make an effort to recycle all the air and saliva that was already inside of me and not allow anything else to assault my senses furthur. Noticing my pause, he looked back,
"Are you okay?"
"As well as can be expected,"
I mustered. I did a split over an overturned barbeque and tiptoed through soda cans to reach him near the door, I suppose he had waited there because it was befitting that I went first.

I reached for the skinny, cool, handle that didn't even appear to be holding the flimsy door shut and stopped. He was already looking at me sadly when I looked up at him,
"Ready?"
"No."
And I pushed foward. A dingy gloden light, paired with a slight haze hanging in the air, bathed the linoleum on the stairs giving it an antiquated look. Under different circumstances I might have thought it charming, but the missing risers between each step revealed flattened cardboard boxes and newspapers covered in shit and piss beneath them. Exchanging glances, we very gingerly took the stairs. Though unlikley and unspoken, I'm certain that the mere idea of crashing through those stairs into the cess below, demanded such caution of us. Or was part of it. Two mangy cats shot past us, squealing and sliding allover the linoleum, fur floating in their wake. Another reason to try not to breath in, but the thought of expiring on those stairs was enough to try to absorb a tiny bit of oxygen, as if through osmosis.

As the din from the room that lay ahead grew louder, I gave myself one last chance. No one had detected us yet, we could go and this whole scenario would be inconsequencial. He wouldn't know, these people wouldn't know, the girl who told me to come here wouldn't know that I hadn't, and Steve would never tell a soul that I'd failed. I was sure of these things.

I stepped into the room and surveyed it with my head tilted back and a casual smirk on my face, like I'd just been there last week and was amused to see who was hanging out tonight, you know? Maybe thirty people were crammed into this small house's basement. Blissfully unaware of the foulness around them, everywhere. The swollen garbage bags, matted fur and dust that draped every surface, the obnoxiousy overflowing ashtrays, and the waste waiting around the corner back through the door, didn't exist to them. Muddy-sounding cheap speakers forced an intense, quietly building industrial song into the room,
"You make this all go away..."
Trent Reznor whined through his pain.

No one noticed or acknowledged us. Just another pile of shit to add to the rest. I saw him nearby, leaned over an old wooden coffee table with mirrored panels, rubbing his index finger in a small trail of what looked like finely ground crunchy peanut butter. I expected him to be easy to spot because he was in his fifties and dressed painfully uncool: either outiftted from an expired era, like in his 80's gear that I'd last recalled being familiar with, or in something modern but obviously cheap, Walmart branded. Or because he was telling an embarassingly dumb story, some lame joke coming from the guy trying to fit in and ease everyone's nervousness at his unnatural presence. Instead, he stuck out because he had our eyes and my brother's face, but altogether seemed quite organic in the situation otherwise. The finger went to his nose where he snorted so hard that it made him sit up very straight, and he worked the finger around in his nostril, following up with many little sniffs. He laughed out of protocol and then stuck the tip of his finger in his mouth. His feigning embarassment at licking the remnants off the digit that had just been jammed inside of his nose, made it more shameless and lacking in dignity than it already was.

"AreyouMegan'ssister?"
A girl with dreadlocks, in a tiny tee shirt but a huge skirt, inquired. I was Katie's sister, Ronnie's sister, Denise's sister. Even sister to some other assorted step and half siblings. I was a daughter to the guy sitting eight feet to my right.
"Oh, yeah....Is she here?"
I fumbled nervously with my cigarette pack through the lie.
"Noooodudesheleftaboutanhourago.Ithoughtshewasgoingtopickyouupwierd."
"Huh!"
I laughed and dismissed her easily enough. I expected the hand on my shoulder to be my father's, shocked and ashamed to see his oldest daughter witnessing what his addictions had plummetted to. I turned hurridly, half shaking the hand off, and found Steve's eyes pleading with me.
"That's him, right there, just sitting there."
I nodded,
"I don't know though."
He nodded.

The music broke into a cresendo of minor chords and harmonious noise, punctuating the dizzy spin that was starting to overtake my vision. I leaned against the doorway and felt my eyes grow narrow, wet and heavy. With a grin spreading accross his tawny, wrinkled face, my dad leaned into a young freckled guy in a stunningly white FUBU polo shirt and similarly sparkling brand baseball cap, who was whispering something in his ear. Wiping away the perspiration around the brim of my eye that I would not allow become a tear, I lit a cigarette. Another lighter sparked a blunt that an obese woman with tatoos and a bandana wrapped into a fabric baldness about her head, joyfully sucked into an orange glow. A fruity aroma, not unlike a Jolly Rancher, was displaced by the cigar element of the burning brown paper surrounding the weed. More pollutants. Another lighter sparked and a girl, with shimmering blonde hair past her ass, fiddled with a broken light bulb and the lighter in tandem. She'd fashioned something to smoke the meth out of. Apparently snorting the sticky, chunky, homemade batch had gotten tedious, she explained. More reasons not to breathe. I didn't want to breathe anymore.

It must have appeared that I was thinking, leaning against the doorframe smoking and contemplating. I wasn't. All I could think was a simple chant of "What the fuck? What the fuck do I do now? How do I do this? Do what? What do I do?" Steve looked the same way, mirroring me, leaning purposefully with his cigarette, on the opposite side of the doorframe. Except, he was probably having actual logical thoughts and formulating sensible plans, cause and effect and not thinking of just walking out. I was thinking of just walking out. Screaming at myself inside to just walk out.

Back through the garage the air still stank, but was significantly lighter than in the basement piled with disgustingness, waste and bodies and feces and garbage too. As a rushed to the car, I could hear Steve's long strides taking one giant step for each three or four that I skurried. I fell into the passenger seat and began to cry. He fell into the driver's seat and pulled me tight against him.
"I know,"
he whispered.
"He didn't even see me,"
I whispered.
"I know,"
"I know,"
"I know,"
he whispered again and again and again and again.