Wednesday, January 19, 2005

• It’s good for you, sweetie, mommy said. It’ll make your tum-tum all better. I promise, she said. The spoon is too big. It’ll never fit in little Teddy’s cute wittle baby mouth. It’ll choke him. It’ll crawl down his throat like a silverware snake and sink it’s fangs into the so-soft pinkness it finds.

   

  Mommy is shaking. She drops the spoon. It’s been a bad-bad-naughty day. Teddy’s been a bad-bad-naughty boy. But he can’t swallow the orange stuff. There’s too much of it. The spoon is too big. He’ll choke. Choke choke choke. He remembers the time the audience was chanting at the game show man, and Mommy grabs his arm and shakes him.

   

  SWALLOW! She screams in frustration, and shoves the spoon in his mouth. The hard, round edge jars his front tooth and then pokes into his tender palate. Saline rivers sluice down his cheeks, tender with wind friction from mommy’s hoarse yells. Teddy tries to swallow, but the awful taste burns him. He can feel his throat melting where the orange stuff touches it. He imagines it eating little holes in his insides, and suddenly he’s on his stomach, and tears are falling out of eyes and onto the floor, and orange drool is slobbering out from between his pale wittle baby lips and his pale wittle baby nose.

   

  Choke, choke, choke, he remembers them chanting. While the lights swirled around crazy, and the man took his MILLION DOLLAR SHOT. THIS ONE’S FOR ALL THE MARBLES JIM. THIS ONE’S TO WIN IT ALL, OLD BOY!!!

   

  He thinks about the big game show and watches orange-tinted snot drip in lazy ropes from his wittle wittle nostrils and barely hears mommy screaming. Fine, mommy says. Fine fine fine. If you don’t wanna take your medicine like a big boy you can fucking just be in pain then. I hope your stomach just plain eats itself up. That’s what happens to babies who don’t take the medicine that momma gives them.

   

  Another time, on another show, Teddy remembers they yelled CHUG CHUG CHUG instead and a man drank his juice all gone, but mommy didn’t even tell him what a big boy he was or nothing. He just had to keep drinking and drinking but no matter how much he drank, mommy never said nothing, just stared at him in the little box.

   

  Teddy smells the hot smell and sees the gray smoke out of the corner of his eye. Mommy’s on the phone.

   

  “…look, Seth, he’s your fucking kid, too, and I’ve had him every fucking night this week… I don’t care… no…. no…. but you haven’t paid any fucking child support, have you, Seth? No, you haven’t…. don’t… don’t fucking lie to me, goddammit. I’m bringing him over, and that’s fucking that.”

   

  Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Mommy jerked Teddy to his feet. He should’ve been a big boy, she says. Now he can just go stay with daddy. Burbling, crackling crying, retching sobs. There’s orange, shiny smears on his sweater. Little chubby hands grasp at stockinged calves. Teddy will eat the big spoon snake. He’ll eat it, he tries to tell her, but the audience is so loud. CHOKE-CHOKE-CHOKE! They say and whoop and holler, and mommy can’t hear because the audience in his throat is too loud and he can’t make them quiet and he’s choking before the medicine is even in his mouth.

   

  Mommy drags him to the car. The audience applauds. Mommy drags him from the car. The audience applauds. Mommy drags him to the door. The audience applauds.

   

  Open up, you fucker. Open up. Take your damn kid. And there he is.

   

  There’s daddy. Just mean black eyes and yellow stink.

   

  He yanks Teddy in and slams the door in mommy’s face. Teddy stumbles, but catches himself, and he can see the girl with the purple eyes in on Daddy’s bed. Teddy used to lay on that bed, he thinks, but he may have just seen that in the little box. But he thinks the purple-eyes girl is pretty except for her eyes. They look like the warts on Grandpa’s hands.

   

  Go lay on the couch, Daddy says. Go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

   

  Teddy wasn’t sleeping, but he goes and lays on the couch.

   

  You can take your jacket off, you dumbass, Daddy says. Teddy doesn’t say anything, just takes off his jacket and clutches it to his chest and lays back down on the couch. Daddy comes and takes Teddy’s jacket. Teddy tries to whine and hold on, but a laugh track comes out, and Teddy lets go. Daddy takes the coat in his room and closes the door. The purple-eyed lady gives him a smile like a teardrop as the door closes.

   

  Mommy. I’m ready to drink my medicine, now. Teddy tries to think about the big spoon, tries to figure out how to tell mommy he doesn’t care how big it is or how bad it tastes. He’ll drink it all gone for her. He gets up off the couch. He’ll find his medicine. He’ll find it, and drink it all gone.

   

  Across carpet plains to linoleum desert. Teddy’s seen the medicine here before. He saw the purple-eyed lady get it out and pour it in the sink. She must not like it, either. But Teddy bet that Daddy made her drink it, too. And if she could do it, so could Teddy.

   

  He opened up the cupboard, and whimpered at his discovery. There were two orange bottles. Which one was the medicine? CHUG CHUG CHUG. CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE. Little pale sausages fumbling at a lid. A sharp, acrid scent. Like Mommy’s shampoo. Teddy started drinking. It was awful. Even worse than earlier. He coughed and spluttered but kept pouring it in his mouth. It sloshed out and around and down his chin and cheeks and his soft, sweet neck. It dripped on the floor and ran in his nose. It was thick and slow sliding down his throat, and it was heavy like rocks in his stomach. He could hear someone humming. Someone big, and it sounded like they were in his head.

   

  Ten pale sausages fumble at the other lid. Open. In with the orange stuff is little white bubbles. Teddy likes bubbles. He remembers bubble baths with the leather lady. She never hurt him or yelled at him and she would let him play in the bubble bath all day. Teddy feels the bottle getting heavier and heavier and it’s hard to get it to his mouth, but he does. CHUG CHUG CHUG, he can hear the big humming man saying. But he can’t. He’s choking. The orange is foaming in his mouth and in his nose and he can’t breathe. Suddenly, he pukes, and a mass of orange mucus splashes onto his hands and the floor.

   

  He turns away from his own stinking retch to see purple-eyes girl shrieking in horror. Then he’s puking on her, too, stream after stream of pumpkin-pie puke, autumn-leaf stomach sludge, juicy and frothy spilling down onto her legs and feet. She kicks at Teddy and scrambles away, sending bubbles swirling and dancing elegantly into the air. Teddy feels his spine slamming to the floor, and then the back of his head, and his arms flop uncontrollably down too. He watches all the orange bubbles swirl.

   

  All the orange. Drank it gone, mommy, drank it Alllllllllll gone. CHUGged it.

   

  Laugh track.

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