Mornings

The child screamed as if her hair were being torn off by a motorcycle.

I looked down to find a very upright girl of about two yelling and insisting on something I couldn't understand to her mother, who was trying to get her to come into the back seat of a car. Her father just looked over the open car door from the driver's seat. A moments later, all the noise stopped and the child got in.

Events like these fill my mornings, as the noise from the street raids my apartment at will. They are ordinary events, but they carry with them the kind of off-handed violence that I try to avoid whenever possible. I was a very quiet child for a reason -- hysteria unnerved me. My mother could go from calling upon the gods to help her find her cigarette case to benignly asking me to have a slice of cake in 15 seconds or less. Every bite of cake was useful as a means of numbing my ears and skin from the lasceration which came before.

I'm sure that little girl is eating an ice cream cone right now.