Boxing Day

Countless times, on the weekends when you are here, you leave for me a stream of yellow in the bathtub. Something angled wrong in this 160 year old building. Sometimes you hit the tiles, as you whip your dick to the left to spray. Do you hold a finger over your pisshole? Do you laugh inside your head? I don't want to know. She bathes in there too. 

I have been kind even letting you here. It is only because I love your father. 

 
It is May or June, I don't remember. As sickness washes over me and the rest of the planet too, it can be easy to lose track of time. We tend to the plants, stroke their leaves and name them all. We watch the cat grow fatter, as she lolls in the sun on the stolen chair cushion she's dragged to the hard cement balcony floor. I feel like I know Gamer Chad better than myself and she complains about Jordan Peterson. She can't stand his voice. 

But I am more tired and angry on weekends. I tell my her so. I tell her my solution.

She tells me she doesn't want to do it. But she eventually agrees. I can see she thinks it is an empty threat. 

And then I tell you. 

You call me a fucking idiot. 

You tell me that I am mentally ill. 

A cunt. 

And you want to kill yourself. 

I wag my finger, Now Now, at the both of you the next Friday evening and remind you anyway. And again on Sunday afternoon, before you leave.

You call me a fucking idiot. But you clean up after yourself.

Though neither of you gives a shit the next weekend. 

Until she has to clean up after herself and her guest alone.

She drags it out for two hours. She yells about her rights as a child. How her Dad is right. How I can't make her do what she doesn't want to. How it's her mother's job to clean. How she shouldn't have to.

It's YOUR house, she shouts.

How can you make your child do this? 

She repeats this over and over again. Like the world should take pity on her picking up her own candy wrappers too. Like she is midway through a medieval torture session. 

It's so precious. 

How she sounds like you.

I tell you again.

The end of next weekend, after you've left, she yells for me. She points under her bed. Where you sleep when you are here. She says, What is that? I'm not touching it.  It is a roll of toilet paper and a large cumrag. 

Over the next few weeks, you clean up not at all for yourself. You drop your garbage behind my sofa. You stack your pop cans on my book shelf, sucking on your teeth, daring me with your eyes to say something. Wanting to make me angry so you can say to her, Look at her! She is crazy! You start leaving your underwear in the middle of her bedroom floor. After the third time, she knows that you are doing it on purpose. She says, We are putting them in the garbage. 

At least you have stopped pissing in my bathtub.

And just like that, it seems, here is winter, cold and biting, but the masks that once kept us hot and sweating, now provide a welcomed and added warmth. I tell you that you are no longer allowed here for weekends. This will be your last one, I tell you ahead of time. Your father has had the all clear for awhile now. My house feels like a prison and a dump when you are here. Because you continue to suck on your teeth. Because you still won't clean up your shit when asked nicely by either of us. 

And this last weekend, because you tell her she needs to be saved from me. That I am mentally ill. 

I tell you that you should save her from me then. 

And you start yelling with disgust.

I can't, you fucking idiot. I have a job. You fucking idiot. Your mom is a fucking idiot. A stellar fucking parent. fucking idiot, fucking idiot, fucking idiot... 

I ask you to stop.

You won't.

You fucking idiot, you fucking idiot...

I tell her to go to her room. Put your headphones on.

That's right, you fucking idiot. Don't let her see what you're really about. You fucking idiot, you fucking idiot....

I tell you to stop again. 

You won't.

I ask you to leave.

You won't.

I tell you, I will call the police again.

Do you hear that? Your fucking mother is kicking me out again. Fucking awesome parent. What a great fucking mother. All because she won't cook a chicken by herself. I will save you from this trash. I will save you. You scream her name.

And then you're off and running. Four days feel like forever, but the texts keep coming.

I am ruining our family. 

You telling me that I am a fucking idiot. 

That I am a piece of shit.

Trying to guilt me by telling me that you still love me.

Four days of all the ways I am fucking up your life.
About all the ways you are going to fuck up mine.

That I am going to make you kill yourself.  Again. I've lost count over the thirteen years. How often have I heard these threats? It's been almost eight years since I said, Last chance.

All this because, No, it is isn't her right to not help cook the supper. What can you do to, please, help us. Marty? 

But I am kind. I tell you that you are still welcome two days a year. 

It's been three weeks since I've told you no more, since  you have been taking her on weekends again, back to your parent's basement again. Every week so far you tell me that your parents are fucking idiots and they do not want her there. About how much they hate me. But none of it is true.

When this weekend is over, she tells me that you introduced her to your new girlfriend and her young daughter at a house rental viewing. 

She tells me that you asked her to lie and say just you and her would be living alone there on weekends. 

She tells me, I do not want to live with strangers. 

We look up  the new girlfriend. A 40 year old woman, Facebook and Instagram shows, who posts pictures of the pot plants growing in her backyard, who brags about smoking whole bags in a sitting. 

She says, I would be embarrassed if people thought she was my Mom. 

I ask others. My friends who still live there. 

She hasn't raised three of her kids. 

Crackhead. 

Trouble. 

I tell her and she says, No, thank you.

The second day is always the worst, but this day is very bad. There are moments where I can hardly breathe. I curl myself up in the chair in the corner. I pretend I am not here. She tells me three hours beforehand. It's coming. She peeks around, making sure you aren't within earshot. She insists we must go out. We must. We must. She keeps insisting. Keeps coming over to me and hissing, Mom, please. So, I finally pull myself up, though I'm certain she is wrong. It can't be. Not yet.

At the store, we send you off to find a supper. We say to you, We are going to look at the plants. And we do. But we grab the little blue boxes too. 

She says, It's here now. We have to go. 

It's been at least 20 minutes and you haven't picked out anything. You demand we help, but I insist we must go too. 

You drive us back. You slam on the brakes twice, as you almost hit two other cars, yelling at me. 

You call me a fucking idiot. 

A bitch who helps with nothing, who is just trying to prove a point. 

She says, You had enough time to pick out dinner.

And you say, See what you're turning her into?

The next week you do not want to pay your share, you do not deposit your child support when you are supposed to. You like this game. Sometimes you make me ask day after day after day. I wait a day without a word and then I call. I let her talk to you, call her from her bedroom, after I ask you again to place support on auto-deposit. You say to her after a few minutes, I have to go and do this. Your mother wants all of my money. 

You've called three times since. When she is in the bath, when she is sleeping, when she has the neighbour's kid over and doesn't want to be bothered with either of us. I tell you when to call back and you do not. I ask her if she wants to call you and she says, Maybe another day. I ask her if we should set up a lunch date for the two of you. She says, Maybe someday.

We are walking to the bank last week, when she says to me that she hates the words huMAN and woMAN and feMALE. I ask her about lady, she is a young one now, and she says, No, I don't like dresses. I'm not a lady.

And I say, Also LAD does mean young boy.
People, I say, after a moment, and then I pause. But it's sort of like a bad pun. 

She takes her own pause and then says, Ew. 

I tell her that  I think we need to pick a new word, one that encompasses everyone on the planet. I tell her that I like Us. 

And she says, No. That's not it. Maybe We and I ask, Like weewee all over the place?

She groans and says, Let me think some more.