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Friday, Aug. 16, 2002 / 7:06 p.m. ~"My Mama Lost Me"~ I hate the sound of whispering. I hate whispering. I hate trying to hear people who are whispering. I hate it when people nearby are whispering. I always think they're talking about me. I have the live BB feed on right now and it's Danielle and Lisa whispering. For maybe 10 minutes now I've been listening to them whisper. I can't hear but every third or fourth word they say. I hate the sound of it. It makes me want to scream or break things. There are four camera views available, and Danielle and Lisa are whispering on all four. I must mute. They plot. Constantly. It is so annoying. If I were Lisa lying in that bed and Danielle was going on and on like that here is what I would say, seriously: "Danielle, Puhleeze, shut the fuck up, I am so fucking sick of this goddamned game. Can we talk about the weather or something? Can we talk about something, anything, other than your stupid plans for how to win this game? I know you're playing me, you're playing everyone, so just keep it to yourself because I don't want to hear it." At least I think I'd say that. I couldn't stand to be in there with people who only talked about how to win, who to manipulate, etc. I'd be glued to Roddy, talking about politics or hockey or constellations, or anything. He's not as smart as he thinks and I'd let him know, of course. I heard screaming and hooting and hollering in the distance, on the feed, but the cameras are not showing it. Now it's shifted. If you don't watch this stuff you are really missing out. Like now, for instance, Danielle is washing clothes, showing Chiara the proper technique for washing in a bucket. For some reason they have a bucket to wash in, one of those squeezy presses things to wring out the laundry (a wringer!)... and an electric clothes dryer. Huh? Oh, today I was my old self again, almost. I opened up, almost. I was fun, almost. I didn't mean to do it, to be it. It must have been the cramps. For some reason I am finding it really difficult to describe my life lately. I don't want to put any of it into words. It strikes me as incredibly daunting. I feel drained just considering it. Telling stories, etc. Planning, plotting, they just won't stop. They can't even do laundry without plotting and planning. Gossiping in a strategic way. So boring. I know it's crucial info I'm hearing, but I can't grasp it. I don't want to. It's like watching other people play chess. Why? My belly is full with pot pie. And I want to say pahpie. So I do. I'm gonna heat me up a pahpie. Must say it fast. FOTH. This means, "Front of the House", the camera view on the live feed when the editors don't want the public to see or hear what's going on. Suspicious. It's horrible. They play the theme song from the show and one wants to tear out one's hair listening to it. Why then?, you ask. Last night, after the LIVE show on TV, I was able to get online and watch what happened next. That was cool. I listened to them all talking for a couple hours or more. And it wasn't plotting and planning, so I lied, it's not actually constant, but nearly so. Sometimes they talk about actual stuff. Things. Life. Since Amy had left the house, been jetted off to some small town in Mexico, and won the right to be back in the house again, and sat in a tub of water, squid, pond scum, seaweed, eels and finally cod liver oil, then became Head of Household, yeah, there were things going on, and it was fucking entertaining. That's why. So much is happening. So many events have occurred. The thing yesterday, the thing today, the this, the that and the other thing. But I don't know how to write it. It's like imagining me vacuuming or dusting or cleaning my bathroom, or shopping for food and cooking. I can try to see it in my infamous mind's eye, and sometimes I do see it, but I can't execute anything. Let me try. Hard. I opened the vertical blinds in front of the porch doors yesterday morning, as I do every morning, or on weekends every afternoon (see?, this is such a long story when I think about it - I'm flooded with details, can't get past the details), and this time I looked beyond the porch to the parking lot below and saw one of the maintenance men for the complex walking toward my building. In his hand was the hand of a little boy, attached to said little boy, maybe three years old, naked save for a diaper, or those toddler Pull Ups things. On the other side of the boy, also walking toward my building, were two uniformed police officers. A strange quartet at 8:45 a.m. on a Thursday. The maintenance man is burly, big, has a shaved head, wears his khaki shorts, a belt and a golf-style shirt, possibly a uniform shirt. I stood to look. ?, I thought. ???, I thought more. What is this? I presumed. I deduced. I figured and calculated and it didn't take long. A lost child. Returning a lost child. Police were called. Off to work, I must keep moving. So I did. I do. If I write in present tense it makes more sense. As I step out the maintenance man looks up, of course, and as I walk down, he watches, he is coming my way, hand holding hand of small child. When I get downstairs my eyes meet his, the shaved head burly man holding hand of small child. He asks if I know the boy. He looks concerned, caring, worried. The little boy looks up at me, and this is when I see that is not a diaper, but a Pull Up thing, and he looks scrawny there naked like that, there, all naked except for that thing, and he is not crying, but he looks up at me, searching my eyes as I am searching his, and I look at the officers, the maintenance man, the boy, and I say I'm not sure. I hold my hand up to cover his body from my view and I say, "It's hard to tell with no clothes on him", and I laugh, trying to lighten the mood, but that was wrong. Still, I think he's a boy who lives downstairs and over two or three - eight units in this breezeway alone, sixteen in the building. I come home for lunch almost every day, and a few times I've seen a woman with a friend, a girlfriend, and they're seeing one or the other off, or going off together, talking, and I say Hi and they ignore me, or don't hear me, or they hate white people, and the latter is always my conclusion, and there is a little boy lagging behind and the one yells to him to hurry or to stop this or that, or to just come on, or whatever, and he is friendly to me, wants to know what I'm doing, where I'm going. And one time he said, "Where are you going?!" and I said, "Home". That was him. I didn't realize it at first. Shower, cup of coffee, shit, dress, out the door, and not always in that order, but I'm not ready for the day yet, not ready for drama, not ready for naked little lost boys. I had heard the maintenance man ask the boy if this was where his mama took him, if this was the place, before we spoke, and he seemed to think it was. So much thinking, wheels spinning, in my head, and in only seconds this all happened, like a brief portable lineup. "Do you recognize any of these small naked boys?", "No, officer, it was dark, uh... I can't be sure, I just can't be sure.", "Alright ma'am, you can go now, we'll call you later if we need you to come back and ID some more little naked boys". The boy says to me, "My mama lost me", and his eyes scrunch up like he's going to cry, but it's brief, and he doesn't. The maintenance man takes him toward the building, and I say Try one of the downstairs apartments, definitely not upstairs, and I look at one of the officers, and I say, "It's so sad, makes me want to cry", and I mean it. I get in my car, but I'm thinking I do know him, that is the boy who asked me where I was going that day, he is the one who told me he had chips that other day. "I have chips". I love little kids. The mom ignored me when I said, "Hey", or "Hi", or "Hello", but the little boy acknowledged me, like I was a ghost only he could see, "I see white people" kind of thing. And the cops looked so jaded, so unconcerned. Just taking it all in, waiting, playing it all by ear. Nothing serious yet, the boy seems to know where he lives, etc. I can't stop thinking, "My mama lost me". Over and over. I tell Penelope and Lulu, drag them in to the drama. Listerine and Veronica want to know, as any good story, or gossip, or drama, "What? What happened?", and we talked about parenting, about toddlers, about irresponsibility, and Lulu would've stayed to help, and I start thinking the maintenance man should've held the boy, shouldn't have let him walk barefoot in his diaper across that dirty parking lot, all the way from the leasing office. Later I realized he probably said to the boy, "Did your mama lose you?", or maybe the boy said, "I lost my mama" and he replied, "Aw, did your mama lose you?", because how else could he have been clever enough to know to say it quite like that? Not "I'm lost", but "My mama lost me"? I called the leasing office. 9:15 and I got the answering machine. 9:30 and it just rang and rang. I'm picturing disaster. People in a flurry of activity, police cars and Child Services swarming everywhere. I call back, the Assistant Manager answers, her name is Sigrid and she has a heavy accent, I like her, I've talked to her before, and she says the boy was at the right apartment, it was/is downstairs, and the police are still there, she says, "Everyone is over there now". And she thanks me for my concern, agrees that yes it was terrible, and yes the maintenance man found the boy, but I don't ask where he found him, or when, or how... It stuck with me for hours. "My mama lost me". And I'd guessed his age, I guessed three, and Sigrid said he was three, without me asking. Is three. There's a fine line, you know. An apartment complex. Anonymous dwellers. Coming and going, staying, living, doing everything people do, behind closed doors. And I am intensely private. A week or so ago my doorbell rang and I didn't even go to look out the peephole. I sat here at my computer, 8:00 on a Friday night. The next day, noonish, I was awakened from sleep by a knock on the door, then the bell, again not getting up to look. Immediately considering it solicitation, religious, otherwise, the newspaper boys wanting me to subscribe, etc. But every so often I wonder if it's a neighbor. What if someone needs me? And I remember my downstairs neighbor and the time she wanted to borrow money, I wrote about it here, and how odd it was, how I didn't know what to do, but I didn't have cash, and I told her no.... and I didn't lie. What if that little boy needs someone some time? What if he wanders off a lot? What if that one morning it was him at my door? That morning before work, 7:00ish, and I remember, but I can't go back. I was looking outside earlier, tonight, and I saw him, or at least I think it was him (this time he was fully clothed, so my perspective was off once again), with a young woman, and I didn't know if that was his mother, or if that was him, or who that was they were talking to, or were they trying to take him home again, and what goes on and is it my business and can't I just live without caring???? It's like the stray cats I see in parking lots outside restaurants, or on the streets near here, or dogs running loose, and I want to stop, I want to save the animals, I want to save the world, but logic prevails and I know my limits, I know I must take care of me and my world, selfish as it seems. The rest is not up to me. But yesterday I was filled with feelings, for that boy, for children, and anger for his mother, toward her, wanting to know what really happened. Penelope asked me this morning if I'd heard anything, and I realized she would've been knocking on doors to find out, but I respect that it's not my place and I leave it at that. Almost time for a "special Friday episode" of "Big Brother 3", then the live feed, maybe, maybe a movie on cable, maybe more food, other than my pahpie. This is why I'm not writing. It's all just too much lately. I'm menstruating. I wonder if this is why. I'm bleeding. Must be hormones. This is why. Cost of the War in Iraq
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