To Have It All
It’s a thick table, wide too, hard for me to inch my itsy pint-sized hands to the middle. She lays down a book and a baking sheet. “Choose.”
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It smells like hotdogs, even in the bathroom- where I hide so I can read, read, read and not be disturbed. Ryan is playing baseball, hitting homeruns, throwing strikeouts, and I am hiding from the world in a small corner I’ve made my own. I even wrote my name on the mirror in black marker, comes off with just one wipe. There aren’t any real windows in here, just little open crevices near the bottom of the floor where you can hear the boys peeing if you get low like a sneaky crocodile. I’ve never done it myself, never been like that. But Nancy does, she listens. Says the boys are talking about her and how much they’d like to take her behind the last field where the little kids play and kiss her on the cheek, maybe even the lips. She doesn’t know they call her Nasty Nancy and that I think she’s lying all the time. We’re not exactly friends. I’m not mean to her, but she isn’t coming over to my house for a sleepover anytime soon. Not with a nickname like Nasty Nancy. She’s always busy French braiding her hair while I collect rocks and count the stars. See, we’re different.
I turn my attention back to my book and let her good for nothing behavior lose its favor. Told myself I’d finish this book tonight, even if Mom made me go to the baseball fields.
I used to read on the bleachers but it got too loud, too hard to listen to the author. The man who sat beside me smacked his bubble gum real loud and real close to my ear. It’s like he didn’t even know I was there. And the kids who don’t wear shoes, or have parents close by- they yell and scream and act like they live at the zoo. And there is the lady with the white-cotton-ball-hair whose dog drooled all over my leg. In my head I said, “Hey, if you want to bring your dog to the fields that’s okay, there aren’t any rules or anything against it, but at least tell it to drool on someone who likes dogs.”
I told my mom I was going to read in the bathroom where I could hear myself think. She rolled her eyes because she thinks I’m getting too big for my britches, tells me so all the time. Whatever that means.
Anyways, I just sit in the bathroom on the empty counter top, wipe off all the soapy water first, and read each page until the words disappear. Sometimes ladies ask me what I’m reading, but mostly they don’t even know I’m there. They just come out of the stall, wash their hands and move around their hair a little hoping to make the mirror happy. They pull out crayons for their lips and color them real bright so everybody stares. I want to tell them that ladies don’t need crayons for their lips and that they could color the sidewalk with it instead.
After what feels like forever I look for Ryan and Mom.
Two more innings. I wait quietly and finish one more chapter- fold down the corner of the page when I’m done; don’t give me a bookmark, I don’t use them anyways. Mom gets me a corndog and some Sprite from the concession stand and I peel off the bread part. I eat and read and am ready when the last ball is hit. When I hear the crowd stomp their feet against the metal bleachers and roar like the monsters under my bed I know it’s finally over and we can go home. Everyone is happy. I finish my book, Ryan wins his game, and Mom doesn’t have to cook us dinner.
Tomorrow we do it all over again. Different team, different book, and probably pizza.
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Twelve years later.
I sit next to the pretty girl with the shiny ring who talks about babies and families and stuff like that. Goes on and on and smiles ever so slightly; is dreaming of when she’ll have her own kids running around, pulling at her blouse.
I look down at my book, at my naked fingers, and smile ear to ear. These are happy fingers that belong only to me. Tap, tap, tap, they type on my computer; they say what I will them to say. They aren’t for wiping noses or for cleaning up juice, no they are far too young for such things. I don’t have aprons or diamonds or names picked out. I have different dreams. Dreams of writing books and making things happen for myself. Maybe her mom didn’t have a big wooden table like mine. Maybe her mom didn’t let her choose.
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My hand promptly lands on the book. “I choose the book.” Mom smiles and says I’ll be better off for having done so.
She didn’t tell me I could have it all and that perhaps there is no better or worse. There is no pedastal, sans the false one floating in my head. The teams that I’ve created, domesticity vs. everything that is worthy, only exist in my private world. She didn’t tell me that to choose one you don’t have to forfeit the other.
Now I know I can have it all. I can carry an iron in one hand and a computer in the other. That’s what it means to have it all.
