Then There Were None
Cabinet of Heed 2020
September 3, 2020
So, my mother had six sisters and a couple of brothers and there was always someone not speaking to someone else, and if the parents didn’t speak their kids didn’t either, but we didn’t know why.
I was in my early twenties, home on leave from the service when I dropped in to see a couple of cousins and they told me our mothers weren’t speaking. I asked why, and they shrugged and told me I had to leave. How about a glass of water first I asked, and they brought me a glass of tap water and I took a sip and spilled the rest on one cousin’s head and spit the sip I was holding in my mouth at his sister.
I still had three good friends from high school I spoke with but no one left in my family that I talked to and that included siblings.
I forgot about a poker game I promised to play in the next night and two of the three friends that had been speaking to me stopped because I didn’t show and they couldn’t play without me. The last guy, Billy, still spoke to me. He was easy going and never liked the idea of not talking.
He saw me sitting alone in the coffee shop and sat with me and asked if I was lonesome not having anyone to talk to and I told him no, that my friends were like my family—all stupid and annoying.
How was I to know he’d take that personally?