"I need to get some cigarettes. Can you watch Ripley?"
I wanted to say no. I DO have to go to work, even though, right now, with the asteroid of events that have happened throughout this morning, I would really, really like to change back into my hermit outfit and tell the outside world to eat a piece of shit. But her ASKING me in front of Ripley is bad enough for the kid to see, so to deny Sandy in front of her kid might make Ripley feel unloved. Ripley's life is probably bad enough living here. A prostitute mother. 4 different fathers a day. Barely any hot water. No books, no tv, home schooling (from her mother…I guess?), no real role models, unless you count her mother, who, aside from the hooking, actually shows a great deal of affection and tires to spend a lot of time with her. Unfortunately, that time is sparse simply because, well…Sandy "works" a lot. She has the respect for her daughter's upbringing enough to send Ripley into her room while she's working, though, which is more than I can say for a lot of NON-prostituting moms around here. These factors leave Ripley with one outlet: her imagination. The power of a 6-year-old's brain is fucking incredible, especially when it's surrounded by absolutely nothing to distract it from dreaming. Ripley is extremely imaginative and that's why WE get along.
Not because we are intellectual equals.
For someone to say I have the brain of a child would be just plain MEAN, and uninformed. But to say that I have the imagination of a child would be an accurate description. The only difference is that my 20 some-odd-years has taught me how to turn it on and off at the push of an imaginary button. If this trait was instinctual, the world would be run by 10-year-olds and it would be beautiful. Like Mad Max Part 3 beautiful.
Ripley liked me because I told her stories. Like a stand-up comedian, I had an audience to test out my materials before I showed them to anyone else. This particular audience, however, was an audience of ONE, and she was 6 years old. So she was a little biased.
Ripley liked the Manda stories the best, because they were full of mischief and action, and they had visuals, as I would cut out pictures of pandas from National Geographics and paste them on the heads of models from catalogs. And when it was time for manda to FIGHT, the panda head would be pasted on pictures of Conan or the HULK. I could animate my stories for her. Little paper-puppet shows. Of course, I would let her take over the story sometimes, but in her version, Manda ALWAYS ended up stealing a pony and taking it to a Sorcerer to change the pony into a Pegacorn (Pegasus and a unicorn combined), and fly into the evil volcano to fight the giant lava shark that was guarding all of the chocolate from the rest of the world. I thought that chocolate wasn't enough incentive to risk his life for, especially because Panda's can't really digest chocolate too well, but Ripley's response was "He likes chocolate, because chocolate is the best and he only needs one bite to last him forever, and he gives the rest to his friends, who are ant-people." I guess that made sense.
She didn't like the stories of relationships and "real people stuff", mostly because she didn't understand them. But I still read them to her, and she still listened. And this time would be the same.
"Sure, Sandy, she can hang out with me for a bit, but I have to go to work soon. How long are you gonna be?"
"Just a few," she said. Then she added. "I also have to try to cash this check too. Have fun, guys!"
And she "spazzed" off down the hall. Spazzing isn't what I call it. It's what she calls it. Her inability to walk a straight line, she says, springs a lot of wild adjectives to mind, but her favorite is "spazzy".
Sandy left on her journey to get cigarettes, and I took Ripley by the hand, led her inside, and shut the door. She immediately asked me to tell her a story…