Love Eaten By VCR

I flung a chair across the room, called him a bastard, knew as I threw myself down on the mattress in his room that I was just playing out the drama that began for us at a dance in Harper, Texas in November of 1995. What else would he do but sit on the sofa with dead eyes and stuff his mouth with saltine crackers? He wasn't there. He left me when our daughter was an embryo in my womb. Jennifer The Trust Fund Brat From Houston had it all...money, big tits, a bigger smile and she could speak French. I would have abandoned me, too.

The video was so sad that even someone without a connection to the woman with hands and voice shaky from the epidural singing Christmas carols to the newborn baby girl should shed at least a couple of tears. I would expect that from a human being with a pulse and a conscience. Some people are more emotional than others. When I waited tables at the Bluebonnet Cafe in Kerrville, Texas I had to walk inside the cooler once and clench my fists to keep from crying because I was still upset from a fight I'd had with my brother before work. I'm one of those hypersensitive sorts. If I hurt someone it is only in retaliation. I suspect the father of my daughter is a sociopath. I'm not the only woman he has flattened without a backward glance. But he did bring me gummi bears once and he did sob when I told him I was going to place our baby for adoption and he did sign the papers that day and cross out the part about him not admitting he was the father and after the water park we fucked in his car and he told me I was the best. A girl has to have something to hold onto when the fires of hell lick at her toes.

I was in his apartment in Austin because he tracked me down in San Marcos. I was lonely. I was scrubbing toilets for a living and going back to school in hopes of becoming a kindergarten teacher. I wanted to finish our business. Our business would never be finished. Closure is such bullshit. Time does not wound all heels.

"I don't really feel like she's my baby. I never met her," he said, standing over my twisted body.
"Thank god for that. Your leaving was the best possible scenario for all of us," I snapped.

It was wrong of me but I ached for him all those months. I didn't want my mother to take me to ob-gyn appointments. I needed him there pulling back my hair as I puked, taking me out for tacos or sesame chicken or chocolate milkshakes, rubbing my back, singing Beatles songs to our baby as she sucked her thumb in my uterus.

I've always wanted impossible things. I've always asked for too much. Tonight I was driving to the grocery store listening to the radio. The deejays...are they still called deejays?...were talking about inspirational people who fly helicopters in combat zones with their legs blown off, paint with their toes and run marathons with prosthetic legs. I hear things like that and hate myself for hoping and crying so hard. I've got my arms and legs. I am glad for that.