Where I Find Myself

There are one hundred and ten cracks in the hall floor that leads from my room to hers.
Give or take.
I’m guessing.
I’ve never even come close to being right with any of those – guess how many of this or of that are in the jar – games.
I’m no good at guessing anything.
Guess what?
What?
Really, just tell me, because if I have to guess, if I really have to, well, then we’re going to be here a while.
So, the number of cracks in that hall, could be half my guess, could be more.
And you know what? I finally don’t care.

It starts as a childhood game. Step on a crack and break your mothers back.
You don’t want to break dear old mom’s back, do you? Who wants a paraplegic mother? Who’ll do the cooking? Dad? Who’ll do the cleaning? Dad? Who wants a paraplegic wife?
Why couldn’t we have just walked to school or to the park without forcing upon ourselves all of this stress? Our eyes concentrated on the sidewalk, looking out for cracks, looking out for mom, for dad and for ourselves.
This is where compulsions come from. This kind of stupid shit. It’s what makes us crazy.
First it’s cracks in the sidewalk. Then, before you know it, your tip-toeing your way through your high schools halls. Carefully moving from tile to tile, careful not to step on any seams, because by now, seams count as cracks. Twelve inches at a time, you wouldn’t dare skip a tile for fear of losing your balance and dropping your foot on a seam.
The kids in school, they call you tip-toes. They mimic you. They exaggerate, moving very slowly, deliberately stepping too high, like stepping over something big but invisible.
Only they’re not exaggerating.

This went on for years, even after high school. No medications had yet been able to suppress it. This compulsive avoidance of cracks.
My first apartment had to have wall to wall carpet. Could you imagine hardwood floors? I would have gone completely nuts.

Later, well into my twenties, I bought a house. Again, wall to wall carpet throughout.
Then, one day, I got a phone call. And I ripped out every bit of that carpeting. Flooding my house with a sea of inescapable seams. The cracks that I have been avoiding all my life. Now, completely unavoidable.
I figured, what the hell? Why not? Given what had happened and all.

It was my father who had called.

I had always wondered how it would happen. Like voodoo? Wherever she stood, just collapsed, snapped in half, the fault of her own clumsy son.

She was driving home from work, he said.

I stood with my foot still weighting the crack. Pausing like I had just heard the click of a land mine underfoot. Like the soldier in a movie. Click. The click of a snapping vertebra. When I lift my foot her spine will explode. Shit. Poor mom. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me. Poor mom.

It was a dump truck, rear ended her at a stop light, he said.
The guy never even touched the brakes, he said.

I was too afraid to call.

I knew that, had mom buckled over with a snap, in the grocery store or at the salon or wherever, dad would call.

And he did. And of course, she broke her back.

Full paralysis.

Dad lasted just over a year. Then he left. No excuse. No apology. No forwarding address.
I later found out that he left mom for some young blond thing. Considering that, I figure he tired of making love to a rag doll with a talking head.

After dad left her, I moved her in with me. It was the least I could do, after all, I did break my mothers back.

Copyright © July 2008 Chris LaCour