BETH
Beth is on meth and she’s counting. She’s counting by eights trying to figure out how many eight balls are in eight ounces. I’m pretty sure she means it when she says she’s sorry she ever yelled at me and pushed me or talked bad about me. I know her, and I can see inside her, the way she sees inside of me, and I know her like I know myself. But I don’t know her last name, and it was years before I knew her favorite food was catfish, and every Thursday and Friday she sits at a booth by herself at Catfish John's and eats the six-piece with fried okra and a root beer. I’m in love with No Last Name Beth. And clinging to her is like clinging to the only thing that is real in my life.
My dad can’t walk or talk and he shakes a little in the left arm. I carry him twice daily to the toilet. He sits there taking a shit and I sit on the floor in front of him and stare at him. And nose to nose he looks back at me. I look at him sternly – not angrily just intensely – trying to breakthrough. He looks at me sternly too, not intensely just angrily. His faded brown eyes are iridescent and empty. A harsh expression. His eyebrows scrunch and he shows his teeth. Slowly that expression changes – from anger to wonder, to almost realization. There he is finally, my father looking back at me. I love you papa, I say. He laughs, his teeth rotted and missing from the root, he nods his head and lifts a hand, unable to quite place it on my face. So I touch his face instead and we smile and we close our eyes together. Now I’m putting him to bed and I give him more than a handful of my Xanax bars. Crush them up and put them in his applesauce. Quickly so Beth won’t see.
I feed him and when he’s done I eat what’s left and I get up and my head is fuzzy like clouds in my brain. Then Beth and I head back to the Eighth Street Motel, just the two of us. We smoke until sunrise, until I have to head home, it’s Christmas morning. Beth stays behind and I blink through grey faded eyes as I drive. At home all is as it should be, except Dad is a little tired I think.