Rudolf’s Diner

I can see myself, sitting in the kitchen. Light is streaming in, kissing my back, filling the already yellow kitchen with buttery waves of heat. The big vinyl daisies on the wall are popping out of the paper. I believe that the linoleum is squishy. I do not touch it. My feet are tucked under me; they are falling asleep in their Keds, and my knees are almost touching my tummy, which is poking out from my t-shirt and pressing against the cool wood table.

This table is massive. It will never be moved, it is where all of the important things happen, like beer drinking and occasional cursing and my mother giving my dad looks to remind him that I am there and that his friends should watch their language. My little brother and I use this table as a hideout; underneath is safe, particularly with a tablecloth on top. We like the way it smells––like lemon floor cleaner and old wood and spilled spaghetti sauce and shoes.

Today my brother is nowhere in sight, which is good, because I am doing important things, grown-up things. Everything around me is melting. Blonde twists of hair press against my forehead, sticking with dampness. My crayons are deliciously soft; the wax is leaking through the ragged wrappers. The sourgrass bouquet in front of me, a gift to my mom, sags slightly. This near-drippiness, the uncertainty, somehow makes what I am doing even more urgent. I can’t hear a thing, not my dad singing in the hall, not the neighbor’s scary biting German shepherd, not the lawnmower across the street. I am working.

I press the pencil folded into my hand around and around, letting it glide across the paper. Because I am working so intently, am so sure of my purpose, I can see everything. My K’s are the edges of the tiny marigold butterflies I sometimes catch with my short fingers, the L’s are the bent branches of the cherry tree I climb. There are O’s like the moon and S’s like the trails left by the snails in the yard. I write miniature teepee A’s, my favorite, over and over and over and over until they parade, like a line of inchworms, right off the page. This startles me. I rub my eyes, unsuccessfully push my hair off my face, look straight up, take a breath, and then begin something new. I have decided on a funny-looking man. No arms, no legs, no clothes. Just a head. And as I begin this–P P P P P P P P–my mother walks up.

“What are you doing?” she says, curious. Can’t she tell?

“Words! See? I made them! Read!” I lean back, careful not to tip my chair over, because she doesn’t like that.

“What do you…hmmm. Let’s see. Well. These aren’t words,” she announces, after far too little consideration.

“How? Yes they are, mommy…like this. See?” I point frantically. It’s so obvious. I can’t let her leave just yet; she needs to understand this.

“I’m trying to think. Do you have enough letters…well, the S’s are backwards…oh, here’s one. You can spell ‘pal.’ Look,” she says, as she begins to write on my page, “P-A-L. PAL.”

This is very interesting. I stop and consider this option. Can’t I write anything else? PAL doesn’t seem like something I want to write.

“I like writing my name. Look!” I say, pointing again.

“You know what? Your name is very long. You have a hard name to spell! But you can write ‘pal’…look!” My mother is clearly pleased with this chance to improve me, make me do something the right way, the adult way, the way that involves a language I don’t even want to understand.

“Okay.” I take a deep breath, I choose a tiny corner of my paper. P-A-L. P-A-L. Go away, Mom. P-A-L. P-A-L.

“Look at you! Good job, pal! PAL! See?” my mother says. “Keep practicing!” She pats me on the head and then heads to the counter. She liberates a jar of peanut butter from the overstuffed cupboard, deftly avoiding an avalanche of crackers and tea, and begins to make my lunch.

While my mother chops carrots into perfect wedges, I examine my page, turning it sideways, then upside down. I hold it very close to my face, which tickles my nose, then as far away as my arms will allow. My mother is wrong, she seems a million miles away. My letters dance and sing and talk; they love the sun. As I watch my lines push up off the paper, the words keep growing, just slightly more slowly, towards places I have yet to imagine.

©Nathalie Parsons, 2008

Nathalie Parsons is a child of the 70s but thinks she might have been happier if she had been born 100 years earlier. Lamentably, her current kitchen does not have vinyl wallpaper. She would not mind hiding under a table every so often. She still likes to play with words.