Free Circling the Drain by Amanda Davis Page B

as a waitress.
    Since Lina was the only person I really knew, we took cigarette breaks together. I didn’t smoke, but I would go just to keep her company. Lina fascinated me. She’d explode from silence all of a sudden to tell about something she’d been thinking about for days, so that sometimes our smoking breaks were utterly quiet and sometimes they were filled with her strange angular ideas.
    She believed, she told me once, that if her hair found the perfect cut it would stop growing.
    She believed weather was controlled by mood, not mood by weather.
    She believed that stray kittens should be left to their own devices, but that dirty children should be rescued.
    I was a dirty child once, she told me late one evening. All grimy and eager and no one paid a leaf of attention to me.
    I breathed in the night air and watched the smoke curl around her sharp face. She made herself angrier as she talked and I just nodded at the right places.
    I was a well-meaning kid but no one took the time to care, they just knew my shoes were worn and my hair was full of lice. I should have been taken home instead of the kittens people were always leaving saucers of milk on their front porch. I should have had a saucer of milk. I shouldhave been taken home and rinsed off and given a biscuit and a dry place to sleep.
    She blew a long stream of smoke, stubbed out her cigarette and went back in the restaurant.
    Lots of our breaks were like that. At first I tried to tell Lina things too, but eventually I came to understand how much she couldn’t hear and so I mostly listened. Whenever I did ask for her advice, it confused me. I suspected she might be a little bit crazy, but, for the time being, she was all I had.
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    A few weeks later Lina came home with an ashy gray X on her forehead.
    What did you give up for Lent? I asked, half joking.
    She looked me evenly in the eyes. Eating, she said, and went to her room.
    You can’t give up eating, I told her, but that just made her angry. She stormed from her room to the kitchen, where I leaned against the counter.
    What do you know?! she demanded. Tell me, Miss Just Out of School, what do you know?!
    I didn’t have much of an answer and so Lina stopped speaking to me. At first I tried to make headway. I left her notes on the refrigerator that she didn’t read or answer. At work I waited out back for her to come and smoke but she didn’t.
    What’s up with Lina? I asked the bartender. She won’t talk to me, even at home.
    Oh, she’s just like that, he said. Don’t bother hanging your ass out a window over it. Her capacity for friendship runs about six weeks. I’d say your meter’s probably up.
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    The days unfolded one after the other and Lina continued to drink juice and look wildly hungry. She was always cloaked in black, which accentuated the dark circles under her eyes. At home I found her lying on the floor with her feet in the air or curled up in a corner of the couch watching TV. Every so often she flicked the remote. The sound was off.
    Are you okay? I always asked.
    Sometimes she glared at me but mostly she just ignored my presence altogether.
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    Then Lina began making new rules.
    You may no longer use the bathroom after eleven, she told me one evening, her little hands balled into fists. I was so excited to hear her speak that it took a few minutes for the words to sink in.
    Lina, that’s ridiculous, I said, but she just walked away.
    Then the rules came like flies: You may not look out the living room windows or sit on the couch. You mustn’t take a trash bag without asking me first. You may not answer the phone until it has rung three times. You must always eat in your room.
    I hadn’t any money to move, so for a while I adjusted. I did my best to tiptoe around and tried to be extremely careful about the bathroom, but it was greatly inconvenient.
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    I finally moved out when Lina forbade my use of water.
    You disturb