Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt

I have a learning disability called dyscalculia, which is like dyslexia’s sister, only for numbers. I can’t read the face of a clock. To me, a minute feels like a year. An hour feels like a century. I lose days like buttons, years like pen caps. Time holds me nowhere, nowhere. Right now, there is nothing but the shifting depth of this sunlight, spilling through the diner’s window.

I’ve always believed that clocks offer, at best, a convenient fiction. They imply that time ticks steadily, predictably forward, when I know it does the opposite: it stretches and compresses, skips a beat and doubles back.

But then, my senses have always been distorted.

I can’t tell left from right, and so I can’t drive. Neither could my father. Being a permanent pedestrian is something we have in common and that’s what makes it horrible. Not that Los Angeles has no sidewalks. Not that I took a thirty dollar cab ride to this restaurant.

I’ve been taking lessons from this Mexican guy Carlos for three years.

“Marla, you drive like you are. Impatient.”

“How do you know I’m like that?” I asked.

Time scares me; it leaves so quick. I can’t see it coming back. As a result, I’m chronically early. I inherited that from my father, only he was chronically late. Chronically not there.

Somewhere else.

Six Characters in Search of An Author

"I think it's good for him, to have this modern family. Then he has to learn what we all have to, in this day and age, go with the flow, you know? Not all this, oh, that screwed me up or this screwed me up. No, none of the blame. It didn't work out and that's all. It didn't work out. That's all."

My father.

There's a book that follows me about you. I think about it how most women think about their child; what will he look like? What will he sound like? Will he love me how I love him? 

A man.

I sat in the cab with her, in a city with a different language, talking about her wedding. I said, "But, when will I meet my ...? Like, really? When?" I was joking, convinced the answer was not for a long time, not ever. Two days later you sent me a quote about love at first sight.

Life is just a big fucking joke, isn't it?

My brother.

"Yo, Kate, I'm so proud of you. Yo, man, fuck, shit is hectic in this circus. I'm gonna hang my baboon mask up at the top of the stairs and paint, WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS. Like, shit with people is hurting, too. I'm just too real for a lot of this stuff, you know? You guys gotta be gentle with me now. Real fragile. Yo, still, shit is so hectic. Are you listening? Why are you always working? Easy!"

He says "Easy!" instead of "Goodbye."

My mother.

And when she cries, I don't recognize her face. It looks like her face is breaking, melting, gone. She looks two years old. She's in a state of flux and when I explain that to her she say's that's the difficulty, that nothing lasts.

I am happy when transparency exists with a friend or lover, like child and mother, telepathic, it's magic when you love someone like that.

"It's okay, Mom. You're the child now. That's normal. That's supposed to happen."

My two girls.

We are each other's families now. Let's sit and get drunk and plan our own lives. Let's pick boys and leave for good, never come home. When our husbands die, and when our daughters do this to us, let's search Craigslist and live together in a big house in the east end and pay under eight hundred dollars a month.

Me.

Stick around, some real feelings might surface.

Out Of The Fog/Into The Myst

While it's true that everything ends, some things never really begin, either.

Do you remember when I was with you I couldn't drink coffee? Do you remember how you didn't like it when I drank alcohol, so I was sober? Do you remember how you would fall asleep and I would lay there, trying to tell my heart to stop beating? Do you remember how my eyes looked different? Do you remember how I was too tired to do anything? Only, now, I can't stop. I can't sleep. I don't feel the affects of caffeine. I'm drunk all the time. I feel like I'm flying.

What do you think of me, when you think of me, if you think of me at all? 

Human beings can't end things with dignity; not like trees that change colour, flowering, fading, falling, beautiful, alive. I am acting out but I also feel nothing at all. 

Our dreams, if they were dreams, came and went unannounced.

I don't know how to remember you and that's the saddest thing of all. 

...

There's someone that he loved before and she's probably the me to his you. I feel her, hovering around us. I want to tell her to leave, but I want to know her, too. Is she like me? Would she like me? 

I am trying so hard to stay away from lonely places.