Free Unkiss Me by Suzy Vitello Page A

brings them bags of jellybeans flavored like buttered popcorn and enchiladas. Tonight she’s pretty stressed out though. This is the fourth time in a year they’ve had to move, each time a reduction in size and rent. This time, thanks to Yolanda’s documented rebelliousness, they even had to change school districts.
    Bob is still sniffling and rubbing his eyes. Each sob cuts into Irene like an episiotomy. What’s wrong Robert? Irene says, not looking up from her chili shoveling. Bob says something unintelligible so Irene punishes him by not responding. The logical consequence for inarticulateness, Irene believes, is being ignored. She’s trained all her children this way. Finally, after three or four tries, Bob’s yearning for the previous apartment is made clear. Perhaps Bob is over-tired, due to the fact that they’d had to make the break at two in the morning because they owed back utilities and had three cracked windows, and the bathroom door to explain. Six people and one bathroom wasn’t a reasonable excuse, of course, not for the deformity they’d delivered. The door was actually missing an entire corner, where a particularly angry foot had broken through. A good part of the door back at the old apartment now resembles splintered kindling. The carpet had been ruined, what with the kitties Hester kept bringing home. Not to mention regular stuff, like Sharpie penned drawings on the walls and bent aluminum blinds. Irene had talked the landlord into accepting the initial damage deposit in monthly installments, but when it’s feeding your kids versus handing over money to some fat fuck who once called Morris, whose father is black, a nigger kid? Well.
    Bob continues to snivel. Something about a neighbor girl who’d promised to let him play with her Barbies. Mommy explained all that, Robert, Irene says as unemotionally as possible. We needed a fresh start. You know what a fresh start is, right Bobby? It’s when you pee your pants and mommy doesn’t get mad, she just puts new ones on you and you try and do better next time?
    Bob is nodding, but still red-eyed and sunken. The shower turns off. All the kids yank their heads up. Take in a quick breath. Only Hester, dear, sweet Hester, seems not to notice their mother’s exit from the table. Hester is doing the hand motions for itsy-bitsy spider, which is one of her affects.
    Irene waits, arms folded, outside the bathroom door. Yolanda comes out, her green-blue hair combed over the bald side, as though she were an embarrassed forty-year-old man. She has her mother’s eyes, Yolanda does. Her cheeks are pink from steam. Sometimes, her kids? They look as perfect as the day she gave birth to them. Irene unfolds her arms. Fuck it, she tells the freakish cherub before her. I’ve got some rice. There’s still peppers and onions.
    A fresh start, Irene says, walking into the kitchen. Can I have some wine? Yolanda asks.

     
     
     
     
The Remains of a System
    It was the Friday before their weekend off, and Rachel moved swiftly along the edge of the wash. Abraham, as usual, lagged behind. Getting to work early today was Rachel’s thing; it wasn’t Abraham who’d agreed to buy the crank from Doctor Rudy. But still, his wife’s leggy stride, her girlish enthusiasm as the slightly belled cuffs of her deep rust uniform pants shimmied and glimmered in the rising sun, jolted him forth. Crank was Rachel’s latest craze, replacing kickboxing, which had replaced the roller blades, which she’d taken up upon quitting smoking.
    Abraham worked in Soiled Process, and his w ife’s job was Diet Technician, at Mesa Samaritan, a loaf-shaped adobe hospital plopped down between a shopping center and a suburban desert drainage system. Rachel currently worked on the ninth and tenth floors—renal and oncology, respectively—where she altered the menus and trays of patients on restricted diets. Abraham worked mostly beneath the loaf, in the basement, scraping unwanted matter from