Flash Memoir: The Fit

 (c) 03/16/2022

1968 and we were eight and nine, the butt-end of the baby-boomers, city kids whose working class parents didn’t flee to the suburbs. Nixon was president. The Vietnam war raged across our black and white television screens. Kennedy and King had been assassinated, yet we didn’t know a thing about racial unrest or civil rights. Zoning red lines had lifted in Seattle; our student base still looked like it was segregated. None of us had parent’s contemplating divorce, and we were shielded from those older cousins who started taking the pill.

The world rarely broke through our slumber-party TV nights, the homogenous Brady Bunch and the strangely matriarchal Partridge Family. The three of us, Kanda, Stephanie and I, had Davy Jones posters on our walls. A couple of times I wiped boogers across Davy’s face.  

Kanda was already talking about how many babies she would have. Three, maybe four and at least one of each. We were allowed to look at, but not touch her baby doll. It was expensive and looked real. Stephanie didn’t talk about babies. She was already focused on what her husband would be like.

The last thing I wanted was a baby, and the attention of grown men either made me uncomfortable or terrified. It was clear to me that I’d would never quite fit the mold they both so easily slipped in to. I didn’t know what else to want.

Kanda’s mother worked at Fircrest which is an institution housing the intellectually disabled. That was not the label we used in 1968.  We went there on weekends to play on the trampoline, but just us. Not the residents. I was confused by their visible inabilities to do simple things on their own, such as walking. Kanda’s mom seemed unfazed by it.

Stephanie’s mother volunteered at the church. I tagged along sometimes to youth events. I’m sure someone, somewhere hoped I’d become a believer. For a while I did.

We lost touch over the years, got back in touch, lost touch.

In 1980, Kanda had secured a job for me as a housecleaner for anarchists. There were guns on the floor and in cabinets and hunting knives on the kitchen counter. I cleaned one day and never went back to collect my money.

When I introduced her to my infant, Kanda held my daughter for two hours.

At our twenty-year high school reunion, Kanda brought one of her gay male friends and introduced him as her husband. We made eye contact. He shrugged.

As it turned out Kanda never had any children. She died of alcohol poisoning before she turned forty.

The last time I checked Stephanie had already been divorced three times. She is still committed to her church community.

I kept trying to fit the mold our parents set before us, even while the world all around illuminated that the mold was faulty. That if it wasn’t the mold that would break, it was us.