YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOUR HANDS UP, IN FRONT, LIKE THIS. And I do, for a bit, keep them up, in front of my face, like that.
THE OVEN IS HOT. NO, FURTHER. FARTHER. STAND BACK THERE. And I do, for awhile, even back behind where it is she points.
I do almost everything they tell me to do. And sometimes they yell and I listen then too. I listen all the time. I am listening.
JESUS CHRIST JACK THE PROBLEM IS YOU DON’T EVER STOP. THE PROBLEM IS YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN TO SAY NO, WHEN TO CALL IT, WHEN TO STOP. JESUS CHRIST JACK.
Jack is my dad.
WHATEVER. WHATEVER. YOU DRAG ME AROUND BY MY BALLS ENOUGH I MIGHT START LISTENING HUH, THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. RIGHT. RIGHT? IT’LL NEVER WORK, MAN. NOT LIKE THAT. NOPE.
Janet is my mom.
YOU WANT THAT FOR HIM. YOU WANT JONAH TO SEE THAT. YOU WANT HIM TO THINK WOMEN CAN TALK TO MEN LIKE THAT.
I CAN TALK TO YOU LIKE THAT. I CAN TALK TO YOU ANY WAY I WANT.
TO HELL YOU CAN.
DON’T YOU FUCKING TELL ME. DON’T YOU EVER FUCKING TELL ME.
FUCK YOU JACK.
I am Jonas.
The water in the duck pond makes me think of times like that, when I am listening, when I hear the things they say. The water is dark and too green, a fake green blue, like a pretend color, like one that isn’t supposed to be but is. That is how I feel when I think back to them, talking like that, Jack and Janet, their open mouths. They yell and these ducks in this water could fly, most of them, but their wings have been clipped or pinned back and so they can’t. They could have sometime, before, before their wings were pinned or clipped, but now they just swim around in that water that is too blue, too green, or stand on the cement patches made to look like rocks or shore. I feel bad for the ducks. I think the ducks probably want more than this too green too blue water with feathers floating in it, with wrappers from around the bottom of ice cream cones and their own white stuff all around.
I am Jonah. This is Jack and Janet. We are at the zoo.
J. A. Tyler is the author of four chapbooks, three novellas, and countless stories and poems. He is the founder of mud luscious (magazine & press). He is deeply in love with the ampersand and profoundly at odds with publishing pictures of himself. He blogs here.
Story archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/flash/54-jat-0709-ducks
