One Hundred and Forty-one Post-its54—92

THE PICKLE FORK DOG

She woke up and there was a starling at the small, high window.

"I'm in a pickle," she said, and the deer on the hill agreed.

"I just need to learn how to be a horse again," she said, and renamed her dog Jones.

Jones's feet were a bouquet. She slang.commed "jones" and learned that it meant thing or problem. Also addiction, which was more like it. There wasn't much she wasn't addicted to, but she called her main addictions "The Four Things." Like in Buddhism.

While out doing one of The Four Things, she thought she saw a ghost.

"Is there such thing as a tree ghost?" she asked the crow in the road, who reminded her that the first animal she'd ever loved was a cat, get over yourself.

She knew ravenspeak and wolfsong, but she didn't know from goats or chickens or lambs, let alone llamas. Although it was obvious Charlotte was one pissed-off pig. You would be, too, if it happened to you.

"In the end," she sighed, collecting a stool sample, "we're all Gary Larson ladies."

Once she went to California and met a boy in a dish. Next she met a shepherd on a beach. Soon after, she was born again. Now she knew for certain there was a Dog.

"I don't know who has a harder time with change, me or Jones," she pondered, moving from chair to chair to get a different perspective.

In dog years, she was dead. Meanwhile, Jones bit her nails in the other room.

THE OTHER SHOE

They woke up and there was a baby on the doorstep. They named the baby The Other Shoe.

"Birth is a violent act," said the Accidental Mama, and the Accidental Papa quoted Shakespeare.

"Some people have motherhood thrust upon them."

God, or maybe it was Shakespeare, knew the number of hairs on The Other Shoe's head, but did He know the number of headlice? Aye, there's the rub.

The Accidental Mama eschewed the first Dr. Spock in favor of the second, who arched an eyebrow and cautioned that babies on the doorstep grow up to be teenagers on the roof. When this happened, the Accidental Mama took The Other Shoe shopping.

Eventually The Other Shoe overdosed on Abercrombie and called the cops. But not before swallowing enough Advil to stave off headaches for seven years.

"If you want a kid to be skinny," The Other Shoe said from her hospital bed, "name it Casey."

The Accidental Mama repaired to the belfry and Googled "portable morphine drip." When this didn't pan out, she turned around three times, laid down, and began rereading old childhood favorites. Halfway through "Scoundrels, Fiends and Human Monsters," she had an idea.

"HALFTIME!" she yelled, and started writing a memoir.

She called her memoir "Live Long and Prosper" and filled it with white lies. The Girl Who Died in the War, The Girl Who Danced with the Bears, The Girl with the Sewed-together Fingers. After five years, or maybe it was yesterday, she looked up.

"My daughter's gone to church," she lamented, "where have I failed?"

In the corner the piano began, by itself, to play.

One Hundred and Forty-one Post-its1—53

OUTSKIRTS

They lived off the reservation on Resurrection Road at the Last Resort. He smelled things burning, she was architecturally-challenged.

On the third hair day, she wrote him a letter:

"You didn't get together with me because I could fucking make fudge!"

He used sample cologne from magazines to get her attention. She wore mascara to talk on the phone.

"My life would've been very different if I'd've had hair," she said when she called.

"I wish I could see your hair," he said, and she said,

"In the end, everybody looks the same."

She gave away jackets—and once a jellaba—but a girl could only do so much. Twice she was almost killed, maybe three times. She voted with her vagina and wore France pants and liked to fuck with her earrings on. If her name had been Lois, somebody would've bought her a drink.

She believed everyone should, at least once, have a gay affair and take acid. Not necessarily simultaneously. A late bloomer, she took acid for the first time when she was thirty. Yet she was rarely, and only for brief periods, able to live as that girl.

"I'm not an asshole," she told him, trying to go cold turkey on Free Cell, "I'm a drunkard."

"I wish I could see your hair," he told her again.

Meanwhile, with help from a west wind, her alter ego published a novel, although it was ghost-written. He called her Mothwoman, she called him over. She had no idea what she looked like and was rarely, and only for brief periods, a slut.

Other than that, she enjoyed the play.

A LIFE IN D MINOR

It was Dia de los Muertos and she was harmonizing with a jackhammer. Earlier that same day she'd injured herself playing Free Cell.

"What train am I on?" she asked the conductor, and he said,

"This song is called 'Dawn of the Gods,' hon."

Given half a chance, she'd take it. Her idea of the American Dream was to own a pot kiosk in southern California. She changed linen on a crisis basis, it brought out her inner Edie Beale.

But she was losing her train of thought. Her plan was to drop back nine yards and punt.

Which rhymes with cunt, which she wasn't. She was, however, a Yellow Dog Bitch, somebody had to be. You might think you are, but you're not. They're few and far.

"A funny thing happened on the way to therapy," she said to the mummy in the passenger seat, but the mummy was too wrapped up in herself to respond.

When she came out of her stupor, or maybe it was torpor, he was waiting. She wasn't one of the driven ones, but she liked to drive.

"Last night," she said, checking her watch, "this would've been early."

"Well, she's at it again," he said to himself, and ditched his National Geographic.

She drove. After awhile she said,

"Is it just me, or are sneezes actually tiny orgasms?" and he said,

"In the end, everybody wants to go home."