ENTROPY AND ATROPHY
PITY JIMMY SAYS HE WANTS TO FATHER A DOZEN CHILDREN BEFORE NIGHTFALL and doesn’t care how many mothers it takes to do it. Pity Jimmy said this in the cafeteria yesterday in front of both Blind Betty and Pregnant Janie. Come lunchtime every day I have to bring Pity Jimmy and Blind Betty and Pregnant Janie to the cafeteria to feed them their lunch. Time was I only had to feed Pity Jimmy and Blind Betty lunch but now it’s Pregnant Janie I have to feed too. I didn’t have to feed Pregnant Janie before she turned up pregnant which is why I think they think I had something to do with it. Otherwise they think it was Pity Jimmy had something to do with it which amounts to the same thing. Anything Pity Jimmy does around here it’s me that gets in trouble for it. This is probably why they said Pregnant Janie is my responsibility now. I’d just come back from filling their plates full of chicken and vegetables when Pity Jimmy said what he said about fathering a dozen children. This is probably why all the blindsters think it’s Pity Jimmy who got Pregnant Janie pregnant in the first place. He also said once there is nothing sexier than a pregnant woman which is probably another reason they think it was Pity Jimmy did this to Pregnant Janie. The thing about Pregnant Janie is I don’t know how anyone can tell she’s pregnant. What I mean to say is that Pregnant Janie has always looked pregnant so I don’t know how anyone can tell the difference. I always have to put more chicken and potatoes and vegetables on her tray and sometimes I have to fill it up two or three times. Seems she eats twice as much as Blind Betty and Pity Jimmy put together. When I tell this to Blind Betty she says it’s normal. She’s fingered all the Braille books on pregnancy so she knows about these things she says. I don’t tell her how Pregnant Janie has always looked pregnant because I don’t like to remind these blindsters they don’t know how anything looks. I made that mistake once when I told Blind Betty where the chicken and potatoes were on her tray. What she said back was curse words and what she said after that was she knew where everything was and she finished by cursing me again. How these blindsters know which is chicken and which is potatoes and vegetables is I always have to put the chicken and potatoes and vegetables in the same spot every time. They have it memorized is another way of saying what I’m saying. This is one of the first things they taught me how to do when I first came here. The chicken goes in the slot they call six o’clock and the vegetables and potatoes go at ten and two. When I tell Blind Betty to leave me alone that I have to make sure to put the chicken and potatoes and vegetables in the proper time slot she says a monkey can do it. This is why I don’t like Blind Betty and why I secretly didn’t mind it when she cracked her head open. Pity Jimmy probably didn’t mind it either but you can’t tell with him sometimes because he’s blind. He used to would bring Blind Betty scotch and wine for when she had her panics. I never did ask him why he did this and I didn’t want to know neither. My job is to walk these blindsters around obstacles and fill up their lunch trays at lunchtime. After Pity Jimmy said what he said about fathering a dozen children before nightfall Blind Betty said he should name two of them Entropy and Atrophy and raise them up in Istanbul Turkey. In between spoonfuls of potatoes Pregnant Janie said Greek names in Turkey would never fly. This is when all three of them started laughing like they had no control over themselves. I don’t know what Braille books Pregnant Janie fingers to know this because she doesn’t brag about it the way Blind Betty does. I also don’t know what Entropy and Atrophy have to do with Istanbul and Greece but they kept on laughing for twenty minutes and I thought maybe I should laugh too but I didn’t. I think you had to be blind to think this was funny.
HOW TO MOP A KITCHEN FLOOR
BLIND BETTY SAYS SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO HAVE FOR DINNER IF THE TV ISN’T WORKING. Then she says this is what it means to be destitute and that all of us are poor here. She’s said this sort of thing before, that we are all of us poor here. I’ve stopped trying to understand what Blind Betty means ever since she cracked her head open that one time so what she says about being poor or about dinner and the TV doesn’t really bother me. The thing is there is no TV here and it’s a tragedy. So she doesn’t have a TV in her room and there’s no way it can’t be working. There’s no explaining this to her because she doesn’t want to hear it. I know this because when I started to explain that she has no choice about dinner and has no TV either she stopped me halfway through saying she didn’t want to hear it. Then she tells me she wants to write a poem called How to Mop a Kitchen Floor. She says there will be words like sponge bucket and grandiloquence in there. She says after that she will do one called How to Shower without Soap that’ll be construction boots and lunch pails. I’ve never seen her try to write a poem before but this is how she is after cracking her head open again. Although I don’t really know how she was before cracking her head open so maybe she’s always been this way regardless. I’m just glad they’ve never asked me to mop the kitchen floor on top of everything else I have to do around here. I don’t bother telling Blind Betty that I’ve never seen a poem the same as construction boots and lunch pails and I don’t think there’s any such word as grandiloquence either.