Chasing the Rooster

by Sara Fall

Alberto Rodriguez Santana

He came up to me as I sat in the park by the Capitol, sketching and trying to fill the last hour until I had to go to work, just a couple blocks away. The day will become hot, but at 10 a.m., it’s not bad yet. It’s warm, but not uncomfortable. There’s a line of rose bushes close by, and I can smell them, smell the warm grass I’m sitting on, and the clouds of pot smoke from a couple of guys sitting close by. It’s a little shocking to me that they’re so brazenly flaunting the law, but it pleases me that I feel among them by geographic association.

One of them catches me looking and comes over, speaks to me in a thick accent. He asks my name, I tell him. He asks my age, I tell him. He asks for my sketch book, I hand it to him. He glances through a couple of pages, remarks on a drawing here and there, and dumps a bag of weed onto the open book and starts pulling out twigs and seeds. We’re surrounded by more smoking men, five or six, amiably joking with the guy with my book. They’re speaking together in a language I don’t speak, and occasionally they’ll glance at me and laugh. I’m not sure if I’m meant to be in on the joke or not. I’m not sure what they’re saying, but they’re smiling so I nod my head.

The guy passes my book back to me, points to my pack of cigarettes and asks if I’d like a carton, he’s sure he has my brand. I’m too young to legally buy them, so I nod my head. I’m not sure if this is payment for letting him use my book or what. My sketchbook still has seeds crushed in the spine. He asks me if I’ll come with him. He’s smiling. I think no. I have to go to work. I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re offering me a carton of cigarettes. I say yes.

***

In the moment, I felt the high brim of the ancient, chipped porcelain tub against the backs of my knees. I felt the yellow light painfully against my eyes, the filtered daylight outside only a thin reflection of itself. The room’s proportions were all wrong. A high ceiling, a lightbulb. The ceiling taller than the room was wide, its boxed-in walls barely enough room to accommodate a toilet, a small medicine cabinet, a bathtub, me, a short bald man running his hands up under my shirt, pushing himself against me. I don’t remember a sink, though there must have been one.

Tin voices from The Price Is Right, louder maybe than I remember them, barely penetrate the solid wood of the door that won’t stay shut. Zany music. I’m usually pretty good at guessing the prices on that show, I know how to strategize. He shoves it closed, it doesn’t stay, he shoves it closed again. He’s whispermumbling my name as his hands move. He tries to remove my shirt and I’m speechless, both in mouth and thought. My brain is white noise.

It doesn’t escape my notice that the room is baffling senses. The room becomes distinct from everything. There is a there and there is a here. Actually, the only thing I can say for sure is there is a here. I don’t know for sure about there. Here seems to have swallowed up there. I’m alone with a man who knows my name, my workplace, my age, and I have allowed him to drug me because I made the choice to follow him here. I accepted his joint, though it came with something extra. Angel dust? Is that really a thing or just a thing on TV? I think: I am Alice. My vision is leaning, obeying another set of coordinates, the room isn’t spinning but sliding away from me and I struggle to stay on my feet. My arms are noodles and I muster what I can to push him away from me, enough to keep my shirt on. Finally wheeze out a no and turn, my vision turning after me like a barge, my legs not really functional beneath me. I lean on the walls on the way out. I don’t remember how to leave, just find a door, a set of stairs going down. Slide down. Find myself in an alley, a few feet from my work. I stumble inside and open the door to the bathroom. I spend hours inside, throwing up, dry heaving, throwing up, passing out on the filthy floor of the record store toilet. My boss, my dad’s friend, worries about me, settles me on a couch eventually, and doesn’t ask any questions. When the bald man comes back a few days later, though, he chases him off. And gives me a look. Idiot. In this we agree. I was 17.

***

I am staring down my then-3-year-old daughter as we enter round 4? 5? of the battle to get dressed before I lose my shit. She hates that shirt, that one is too big, that one isn’t the right color, the last shirt is too tight. I argue with her on this point — the shirt is not too tight. It is as tight as it was intended to be, it fits her just fine. She dramatically humphs and crosses her arms, scowling. My body, my choice! she yells at me.

I bust out laughing as her scowl melts into a smile into laughter. I grab her and squeeze her and tell her how proud I am. Big tears roll onto her back and she hugs me tighter. We pick out a new shirt.

***

We are sitting at the coffee table eating soup and fresh-baked bread. I bought fancy butter for this dinner, and we’re watching a movie together as a family. There’s finally a break in the school semester, my shoulders approaching normal, my face lighter-feeling, even though I am still so tired at my core. We sip and smile at each other, watch the magic of Harry Potter flit across the screen. My husband and I are eating potato leek soup, the kid is eating tomato bisque. I dip a large chunk of buttered bread into my soup and savor its warm comfort melting deliciously on my tongue. My 4-year-old daughter is horrified. What kind of GIRL does THAT!? she demands.

***

It’s a hot day. The lawn, the street, the cars all a similar washed-out color as I squint out from under the stark shade of our front porch. There’s an alien chemical tang in the air from the thick black bars my mother is striking across a new Sesame Street book, Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood? She is furiously redacting the picturebook, exchanging the genders of each of the people in my neighborhood. The florist, the nurse, the elementary school teacher become men. The police officer, the fire fighter, the postal carrier, the construction worker, all women.

***

My mom and I are driving somewhere in the mountains close to where we moved the summer after my sister was born in 1983. This is a few years after the move, I’m about 10, and she’s lecturing me about staying thin. I had always been thin, always been active, always aware of my athletic strength, the length of my strides a source of pride for my New York Grandpa, my mom’s dad, who was a runner and swimmer and lifetime smoker. My Mother is telling me it’s a good thing I’m thin now, that I will shortly hit puberty and I won’t add any more fat cells to my body, that we don’t add fat cells as we age but rather the fat cells we already have get larger or smaller depending. She congratulates me on making life easier on myself when I get older, that I’ll have fewer fat cells to contend with.

Now, after age 40, I guess I have the same amount of fat cells, but they’ve proven harder to contend with than advertised. I’ve hovered around 200 pounds since just before my daughter was born. My parents don’t look at my body. They talk about other peoples’ bodies, but my body seems to be invisible to them, except that in their studied avoidance I am hyper-aware of my body around them.

***

Sometime between wanting to be a ballerina and wanting to work for the FBI I wanted to be a stripper. I carried around a box of Crayolas like a pack of cigarettes and, along with my best friend, performed a strip tease in front of the mirror to a Madonna tape at a sleepover. Her dad walked in mid-butt swirl and yelled at us to put our clothes on. Her parents were Christian Scientists or Lutherans, I don’t remember which, and they wouldn’t let me play with her anymore for a while after that.

About a year later she told me girls get pregnant when they let boys pee in their mouths.

***

I was flat-chested until age 24. I know this because I went to visit my folks in the mountains. As I walked down the steps from the driveway to greet them, I stood in front of the host of my extended family, my dad’s dad, his brothers, my cousin, my sisters, a couple of family friends, my parents, my date beside me. You’re finally a WOMAN! my grandfather blurts out as he’s staring at my chest, the stripes running and bending across my breasts. I cross my arms, my boyfriend inhales sharply. Everyone else just says hello.

***

I can catalogue all the moments I thought no and said yes. I went with him not knowing where he was taking me. I walked into the rundown lobby of the residential hotel. What felt like a thousand eyes watched me enter the lobby. The man behind the counter kept looking at me like a problem. He demanded I sign the guestbook. I signed it with my name, fearing I would be held accountable. I followed the short bald man up the stairs and entered his room behind him. I accepted a carton of cigarettes that wasn’t, in fact, my brand. I sucked in the smoke from the chemical-smelling joint. I made chitchat with the roommate of the short bald man, who talked to me about The Price Is Right and then walked away as I had a hard time standing up to try and use the bathroom, followed in by the bald man. I saw him again on the street and said hello. I didn’t want to offend him.

***

I told this story for the first time to a guy I dated in my twenties. He was a writer, of plays and short stories, when I was too scared to write anything but schoolwork. No, that’s not true. I had a few flat, paltry poems. A strange essay about my parents that I didn’t recognize at the time was about alcoholism. He hated my writing. Loudly. When I told him about the bald man in the hotel bathroom, though, he praised me and said maybe I was a writer after all. He said writers always say yes. I still thought no.

---

Sara Fall is a teacher and a mom who writes poetry, creative nonfiction, and is banging her head against a wayward mystery novel that will likely never be found in a bookstore near you, or near anybody else for that matter. Sometimes she’s so tongue in cheek she forgets and bites down too hard. Publishing her work is a new and exciting goal in her forties.