I Know, But--

During one of my rounds in the rink with borderline personality disorder, I found myself sitting in a couched circle of complete strangers. We were the kind of strangers that I believe Jim Morrison sings about, "People are strange when you're a stranger/Faces look ugly when you're alone/Women seem wicked when you're unwanted/Streets are uneven when you're down". On the psych ward of a hospital, I sat sipping my makeshift mocha: fat free, sugar free hot chocolate and coffee. I used the awkward silence to barely lift my eyes and scan the room as I blew steam from the top of my paper cup.

Everyone was intensely interested in anything other than being the first to speak. One girl was concerned with a fray in the little-toe area of her left slipper. She worried over it with her ungraceful fingers even when her oily bangs feel over her eyes. She blew at them and kept at her slipper. A thick, tall woman with thin hair wearing a light blue robe sat stiffly, and kept asking where she was and what she was doing here. She'd just come out of electroshock yesterday and couldn't stop crying. Tears dripped off her nose and cheekbones and dried on the breast of her baby blue terra cloth robe. The man who sat next to me shook, and wrung his hands. His hands were bulky, callused and dry. You could hear them scratch together. He kept his hands between his legs that hit together at the knees every two seconds like clockwork. There were others in the group, but I can't picture them. They're flickering Poe-like silhouettes.

The facilitator of the group sat not on a sofa with the rest of us, but in the corner on a folding chair. Other than the badge pinned to her chest identifying her as someone who was sane enough to leave here whenever she wanted, and the pile of papers on a clipboard she'd tucked between her and the arm of her chair, she could've been one of us.

Where am I going with this? I could easily get sidetracked by the surrealism of trying to get well. I started on this because it was here in this room that I came to know Joe: the man who would, two weeks later, call me from a pay phone to tell me he's at the bus station in Lewiston. He'll tell me he's staying the weekend with me, ask me to pick him up. I will allow this because our hours-long phone conversations (against psych ward staff advice not to give out our numbers) have made me trust him (and because I was desperate for the streets to feel a little more even). Still, I was surprised that he'd come down from Spokane, and I was alarmed at his forcefulness (though not enough to hang up on him, or tell him to go home).

When I got out of the car to greet him, like Santa he handed me a full giant Hefty bag.

"Open it," he said.
"What is it?" I asked, opening the sack. There were about ten stuffed animals in there: tiny beanie babies, an oversized elephant, a teddy bear holding an I love you heart..."How sweet," I said, giving Joe a hug, "My sister's kids will love these."
"No, Jodie. They're for you. I love you so damn much.

I'm not sure why I did it, but I let Joe visit me off and on all that summer. I let him believe I was in love with him.

Monga talked about Joe all the time. How sweet he was, and how helpful (he'd installed new brakes on my Oldsmobile, made Monga some wooden lawn ornaments, washed her Cadillac and her and my dishes, and would visit for hours).

If you wanted to score points with Monga you could 1)spend money on her (or not allow her to spend any), 2)do her housework, and/or 3)talk, talk, talk. *

So, even after the night I'd gone upstairs and knocked on Monga's bedroom door, sat on her bed and told her Joe'd triewd to rape me, she remained friends with him. Not long after the night that left me locked in the bathroom, laying in a sobbing mass on the cold linoleum floor with self-inflicted cuts on my arms and legs, Joe knocking on the door every two seconds like clockwork, I walked out to my car after work and found a note tucked under the windshield wiper. It was Monga's handwriting.

Joe came down. He's staying on your couch, so you may not want to come home tonight.

Stunned, I drove to my sister Jessi's house and asked if I could stay the night there. I couldn't stay with Mom because she lived in the green house behind Monga. All Joe'd need to do to find me would be to walk through Monga's back yard. As I lay on Jessi's couch, I could hear Joe a block away out on the street yelling my name. He was walking the midnight streets looking for me!

Yes, I'd told him to stay away from me, not send me mail, and not to call me. Nevertheless, I changed my number and kept it from Monga. I didn't trust her to keep it from Joe. I thought he had finally stopped sending me mail until one day I saw a stack of mail on Monga's kitchen counter all addressed to me, in Joe's handwriting.
"What's this?" I said.
"They're not all for you," Monga replied as she stirred a pile of corned beef hash on the griddle. "There's a bunch there for me."
"He writes to you?"
"Yes. I like Joe. He's nice. He's funny."

*or 4)make her laugh

I stormed out and found myself a low-income apartment. I moved that week, withholding my address from Monga. For at least a year, I didn't speak to her except on holidays. After arguing a few times about why I shouldn't give her my address and phone number, I decided I trusted her. She never did give my information to Joe.

Though, once in a while over a meal or during a TV commercial, she'd say something like,

"I know you don't want to hear anything about Joe, but--"
"--This sausage casserole is good. Just the right amount of peas. I don't really like cooked peas."
"Oh, I do."

Smooth Ride

After college and still living up in Moscow, working three jobs, I found myself without a car. The Subaru I'd purchased two to three years prior had finally decided it was through with the strain of pistons, injections, shocks, and sudden stops. Its control panel on the left side of the steering wheel was tied to the wheel by an old shoelace. It overheated, so in the summer, I drove with the heater up full blast and the window down. One morning, I turned the key and my decrepit Subaru clicked an apathetic click: the last sound it ever made.

"I told you not to buy that Subaru," Monga reprimanded through the phone when I called to tell her my stranded-in-the-desert story. She had, in face, warned me. I didn't listen because the Subaru had headlights that flipped up when you turned them on, and a gear shift that looked right out a spaceship.

I knew better than to not listen to her. Monga took annual jaunts to the Cadillac dealership and paid cash for a brand new crowning emblem to announce her arrivals. She talked the dealers down, down, down and left lifted up. She'd pull in the driveway beaming, her rings and eyes in a contest to out-shimmer each other.

"I talked them down 5,000. They tried to sell me a coupe for a lower price, but I don't want that little hunk of junk. I talked them into this for the price of the coupe." There'd be an allotted pause designed for us to soak up the glory that was Monga's. "Who wants a ride?" she'd ask, jingling her keys. We'd run to the car and fill up the Cadillac, the leather seats squeaking under our denim jeans.

I sighed on the phone with her; I sighed the next morning as I walked twenty blocks in the Palouse wind to Wendy's Restaurant. To distract myself from the cold, I counted my steps and thought about Monga taking me down to the DMV.

She showed me how to register my Subaru and paid to get my insurance started. I told her I'd pay her back. "When you can," she said.

For over a week, I walked more than the average Moscowvite, and floundered for rides.

One afternoon, hot and sweaty from working the grill, I re-tied my apron and approached a customer at the counter, who I'd noticed out of the corner of my eye.

"Can I help you?" I asked without looking up.
"I don't know. Can you?" a familiar voice fired back. Monga.
I looked up, smiled. "What're you doing up here?"
"Some grocery shopping," Monga answered, "When you get a second, come out with me to the parking lot. I wanna show you something."

To be honest, I was a bit annoyed. When I got a second? We'd been swamped all day, and I was the only person covering the front of the store for the next hour, until shift change.

"I'll see what I can do," I said, "Want to sit down? I'll get you a root beer. I need to clean all these table."
"I suppose. But no ice in my root beer. You don't get-"
"-As much pop that way. I know."

I handed her the lukewarm root beer and went around the counter to do tables. Monga followed me around to each one.

"You have to do all this?"
"Yep."
She made her yuck face. "I wouldn't like that."
"I don't like it, Monga. It's my job."

As I scraped gum from the bottom of a table, I remembered Monga telling me she'd once held a job at a candy factory...for one day. She stood there watching chocolates pass her on that belt, and just couldn't do it another second. She said all that circular motion made her sick.

"I'm gonna go see if I can take my break," I told Monga. When I returned without my apron, Monga's eyes lit up. I followed her to the parking lot, where she stopped next to a white Oldsmobile.

"Yes?" I said. She just pointed at the white car. "What?" I said.
"I bought it for you this morning. It's got a brand new engine, new tires and brakes. I drove it up here. Smooooth." She said smooth like she was talking about a tall, handsome cowboy.
I was shocked. "You drove it? Then, how will you get back home?"
"Cecil's here. He's out in the car." He'd been sitting out there by himself this whole time. I looked around. There he was, sitting in the passenger side of Monga's maroon Cadillac. We waved at each other.
"Take it for a drive," Monga said.
"I can't. I'm still on the clock."
"Oh, pooh. Just around the block. They'll never know." Monga raised her eyebrows. I looked around. The manager wasn't outside smoking. Monga handed me the keys and we fled salt and grease, feeling like bandits. It was a smooth ride.

After work, she went with me to the DMV (Cecil in the back seat) and signed over the car, then to the insurance place where she again paid to get me started. I drove Monga back to the Wendy's parking lot, walked her and Cecil to the Cadillac.

"Well, I'd better get back. I've got groceries in the trunk," Monga said. She unlocked the car and stood in the open door, clinking her rings.
"Well, thank you, Monga. This is amazing. I don't know what to say."

We both stood there looking at the ground. Cecil got in the car and sat looking straight ahead with hands folded neatly in his lap. I don't remember a hug or I love you. She backed out of her parking spot, her car beeping with an installed beep like semi trucks have for safety reasons when they're in reverse.

I sighed.

As she signaled left, I could hear like I still can now, the tinny Elvis song Love me Tender, installed to play when a blinker was flipped. It wouldn't stop until she was half a block down the road.