Black as a Trash Bag

“You know why you sweat so much?”

The gym is full of bleary-eyed workout freaks getting their day started with an increased heart rate.  I am not one of them.  Well, not a workout freak, but I’m there, in the gym, at 5:50 a.m., trying to make good on my goal to lose 20 pounds.  I’ve just been on the elliptical machine kicking my own ass among the bizarre confederacy of soccer moms, New Year’s resolution newbies, 90 year olds in slacks and button up shirts, and tired middle-aged professionals, all huffing and puffing beneath the dull whine and stomp-stomp-stomp of cardio machines, all of them transfixed on the multiple screens showing local and cable news.  One of the screens in the far corner shows an elderly man in a suit behind a desk, speaking earnestly to the camera.  The scrolling black and white text at the bottom of the screen tells a rapt woman in yoga pants a story from Corinthians.

But now I’ve finished with the cardio portion of my morning routine, and am pouring sweat on a bench press downstairs in the strength training section of the gym (don't worry I always wipe it down).  Twenty-something dude-dudes are proudly walking around wearing Affliction tee-shirts and oversized Beats headphones.  They’re animated, speaking to one another with a lot of hand gestures and body movements, taking up far more space then they need to be.  I can tell they’re trying to calculate the amount of weight I have on the bar.

Whatever.

I lift what I want to lift now.  Not like when I was 25 and in the military.  I halfway want to tell them that I used to press a hell of a lot more than what I see them doing each morning, but realize that would sound weak.  And petty. 

I would sound like this 60 something fat man now looming over me, a wry grin spread across his puffy pink face.  He’s the one asking me the question. 

I see this guy almost every morning.  He’s like a cat.  If you make eye contact with him, he’s going to slink over to you and demand attention.  He’s also like a cat because I can’t stand cats. 

Here are the things this gentleman has disclosed to me over the past few months:

1.      He was a Marine before he was a special agent for the CIA.

2.      He used to work out with an Olympic weightlifter and once bench pressed 760 pounds.

3.      A carjacker once tried to get into his car (remember this is Amarillo, not Los Angeles) so he pulled out his 457 Magnum and the guy ran way.  The carjacker was, of course, Mexican.  And I am a fool if I am not armed all the time.

4.      I am apparently a huge pussy because I was in the Air Force (“Air Force?  Air Force?!?  You guys are barely military *Hyuck hyuck hyuck*”) was an officer (“officers don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground! *Hyuck hyuck hyuck*”) and a meteorologist (“you can be wrong all day and still get paid! *Hycuk hyuck hyuck*”).  Apparently I don’t live up to his standards and has every morning since given me a stupid dumb-shit sarcastic salute before he waddles his ass up to me and delivers some bit of what he believes to be a folksy witticism and what I believe to be total annoying bullshit.

5.      “We” (he means men) should keep women believing they are just as smart as “us,” but that “we” know better.

6.      There are a lot of women in the gym with “fake tits.”

This is obviously not your standard sweet old man, but a creepy fat guy (and he is fat…I usually would never comment on a person’s weight, especially since I’m a husky fella, but since he sucks and the only exercise I ever see him doing is wandering around and annoying people I will emphasize his monumental girth) that I seem to always attract.  I don’t know what it is.  Maybe I have one of those faces that says “Hey, come on over and say awful things out of the corner of your mouth under your breath…your shitty nature is safe with me!”  I swear to God, the next person that gives me the “Come on over here, son, let me tell you how it REALLY is” talk is going to get a kick in the nuts.

But I did not kick this man in the nuts. 

I sighed, racked the weight, sat up, and smiled at him.  Because that’s what I do.  I do that because I feel I am a polite person and I avoid conflict.  I always have.  I’m the quintessential middle child.  The peace maker.  I’ll listen to whatever horrible shit someone says and will mull it over and try to counter with rational reasoning or will simply nod and say “Ah, ha-ha, yeah, I get it…” and then will be mad about it all day just to avoid a moment of awkwardness. 

“So do you know why you’re sweating so much?” he asks again.  The striped sweatband he wears around his forehead is now hopelessly askew, and as he speaks a ball of spit transfers from one lip to the other, occasionally splitting into an unctuous strand.

“No,” I reply, resigned to hear whatever sophomoric nonsense he has to say.  “Why?”

“Well,” he says.  He looks around like he’s making a drug deal, and I know what he’s about to say is hideous.  His voice lowers to a murmur.  “Do you like watermelon and fried chicken?”

About a week ago, while the girls were doing their homework, I asked them about their upcoming Valentine’s Day party.  They had to make Valentines at home (I remember that when I was a kid we had time in class to do this activity, but whatever) so I got out all their art supplies.  Shay told me that she had to make 14 Valentines, and that the teacher said she had to make a card for every student in the class, and that no one was to be left out.  I told her that was a good policy, because how would she feel if she got less Valentines then everyone else?  She nodded, said she understood, but that she really, really didn’t want to make one for a specific girl in her class.  I asked her why.

She looked up at me and said, “Because yesterday she said I was as black as a trash bag.”

 

As black as a trash bag.

 

I was stunned. 

I knew one day this would happen.

I stammered a bit.  “Well, that’s…uh…”

Then Mo stepped in.  She was making her own Valentine’s Day cards.  “Who was it?” she demanded.  At first I thought it was a “who-was-it-I’ll-beat-her-ass” question.  Shay just shrugged and gave the name.

“Oh,” said Mo.  “I know her.”

“Did she say anything else?” I asked.

Shay looked at her hands.  They were rubbing one another.  She was nervous.  “She said that I had a wide nose because I pick it.”

Mo burst in before I could say anything and said “Well you DO pick it!”

They both laughed.

I did not.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“She said my hair was ugly because it was curly and messy and that hers was straight and pretty.”

And that is when Shay started to cry.

I was paralyzed with anger.  I knew if I started talking, I would say something awful.  I would voice the thoughts going through my head, stuff like You tell that little white trash piece of shit that if she ever…

 

Mo handled it much better than that.

 

“Shay?” she said quietly as her sister sobbed into her arms.  “Do you know that everyone in your class likes you?  All I ever hear is how much everyone likes you, and that how all the boys have a crush on you [I refrained from interjecting at this pivotal point], and how you’re nice to everyone.  And you always look cute.  That shirt you’re wearing…well, this morning, I was jealous because it looks so much better on you than it does on me [where the hell did THIS kid come from???].  You don’t have to worry about what that girl says.  She’s jealous because no one likes her and she’s mean to everyone.”

Good GOD! I couldn’t script better things to say.  All I could do is sit there and fight the lump jumping around in my throat.  This is how I know these girls are going to be okay.  This is how I know that their bonds will help them through the rest of their lives.  These two are blood.  They will always be blood.  Amy and I do the best we can to help them navigate murky waters.  But these two have to go through waters Amy and I will never have to go through and we therefore cannot draw them a map.  There are parts of their journey where we can only shout encouragement from the shores.  But God damn it, we will shout loudly.

Shay jumped up and held on to her sister for a while. 
 

Then Mo made a joke and Shay started laughing, and they asked me if they could go outside and play.  Outside where the sun was warm and the neighborhood kids were running around, waiting for our daughters to join in.

I sat at the table where this exchange had occurred and stared at my own hands for a while, trying to grasp all that had just happened. 

How big of a deal to I make this?

Do I call the school and demand that heads roll?

Do I sit the girls down later and talk to them about all that had just happened (especially given that I had barely said anything, just sat there stunned?)  And if I do talk to them, what do I say?

That this is going to happen for the rest of our lives, so they should get used to it?

Or that they should rage against it at every opportunity?

Do I downplay it?

Do I make a big deal out of it?

WHAT??? 

Shay did not seem too much worse for the wear over the whole thing, and it would have been easy to ignore it and let it go.  But I felt it to be a mutual learning opportunity that I could not let slip by.  In the end I told Shay that it was okay for her to be angry about it, because what the girl said was not acceptable.  That it was okay to find that girl’s words hurtful but not let them get to her. 

 And that she could feel any damn way she wanted to about it.

 “I won’t make you give that girl a Valentine if you don’t want to,” I said.  “I’ll tell your teacher why, and I’ll bet she’ll understand.”

Shay thought about it for a minute then shook her head.

“No, I’ll give her one.  I don’t like her very much, but I kind of feel bad for her.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because she’s a foster kid, just like we were.”

I nodded, smiled at her, pet her curly, messy head and left the room.  If I spoke I’d lose it.  I am constantly amazed at children’s capacity to seek out and understand the best parts of humanity.

 

“…so do you like watermelon and fried chicken?”

I looked up at this piggish man and thought of Shay crying in her arms.  “Yes,” I said.  “I like those things.  Why?”

He rolled his eyes and his fleshy lips turned up in a knowing grin.  “Well, then, that explains it.  You probably have…”

“Can I show you something?” I said, interrupting him.

He stops short of saying what I know he is going to say. 

I reach up to my upper left arm and pull my phone out of the plastic workout sleeve wrapped round my bicep.  I open up the pictures and find one of the girls.  The one where they look so beautiful in their spring dresses, staring up at the camera.

“These two girls are my children.  We adopted them last summer, but have fostered them for a few years.”

I handed him the phone.  He took it, and his grin grew strained.  Confused.  At first I think he believed I was telling a joke.  He opened his mouth to say something.

“And they both like fried chicken.  But neither one can stand watermelon.”  He looked at me for a moment, searching my countenance for any sign of jest, but I offered none.  When he realized I was serious, his face went blank.

“Now,” I said.  “I want to get back to my workout.  Okay?”

He just walked away without saying a word. 

I like to think that, as he drove home that morning, he felt the world moving ahead without him.