YES AND NO AND MAYBE SO
BLIND BETTY SAYS YES MARRIED NO INSTEAD OF MAYBE SO. She says this around midnight which is when the roaches haven’t come outside to play yet. You can only see the roaches late at night when you turn the lights on. When I say you only see them late at night when you turn the lights on what I mean to say is I’m the only one who sees them late at night when I turn the lights on because everyone else in here is blind. This night it’s my job to bring Blind Betty her medicine so she can go to sleep before the roaches come out to play. There’s no way to hear the roaches when they are out playing but even still they don’t want Blind Betty up late regardless. When the roaches are hiding they hide behind the walls and this is why I’m supposed to spray all over and between everything. I do this even though this is another thing they don’t pay me for. Another thing they don’t me for is to bring Blind Betty her medicine so she’ll sleep through the night the same way the roaches sleep through the day. What’s funny is I spray the roaches during the day but they don’t want me to spray Blind Betty during the night. I think I’d do that for free if they asked. I don’t know what she means when she says Yes married No instead of Maybe So but I think I can almost make sense of it.
CHOP SUEY
BLIND BETTY SAYS PEOPLE IN NEW YORK CITY used to would call Chinese food chop suey instead of calling it Chinese food like everyone else in the world. She says one New Yorker would say to another you want to go for chop suey and the other one would say sure and they both knew what each other meant. Blind Betty doesn’t say when people would say this but I don’t ask about it because Blind Betty doesn’t like it when you interrupt her. Blind Betty’s fingered all the Braille books on Chinese food and New York City so she knows about these things she says. Why Blind Betty is talking about Chinese food is because we are in the cafeteria for lunch and she is sick of the food here. If they ever did have Chinese food up at the counter I wouldn’t fill up Blind Betty’s tray for her regardless. I wouldn’t put the chop in the six o’clock or the suey at ten and two. I wouldn’t give her chop suey even if they gave me what for about it because what does it even matter here. Maybe if they ever paid me I’d do it but probably not even then. Even then I think I’d give her the chicken and potatoes and vegetables instead of chop suey.
ME CHINESE
SOMETIMES I WONDER WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF PITY JIMMY DIED. Out of all these blindsters it’s Pity Jimmy seems likeliest to turn up dead which is probably why they tell me to keep an eye out special for him. If you give Pity Jimmy the wrong pills in the wrong order he will fall down and have convulsions and swallow his tongue and die. Every time I give Pity Jimmy his pills I wait for him to fall on the floor and do what Blind Betty says he’ll do. Sometimes I think if Pity Jimmy died they might let me go home. I haven’t been home since they sent me here to walk these blindsters around obstacles and take them back and forth to the cafeteria. Yesterday it was in the cafeteria when Pity Jimmy tried to kill me himself. I think maybe he thinks if something happens to me then he’ll be better off. I was coming back to our table after refilling Pity Jimmy’s tray full of French fries and Blind Betty’s full of vegetables when I saw him holding my drinking glass. I sat down next to him and he put the glass down and started shaking his head to kill the gnats. I waited for him to say something about protein or monkeys but instead he eats his French fries one at a time like it’s nothing. This is when I asked him what he did and what he said back was me Chinese me play joke me put blue pills in your coke. Things about Pity Jimmy is I seen him try to kill before so none of it surprises me. I caught him trying to smother Blind Betty with a paper bag one time when she was drunk. Pity Jimmy used to would bring Blind Betty scotch and white wine for when she had the panics. That one time he tried to kill Blind Betty I stopped him by yanking the paper bag from his hands and off Blind Betty’s face. I didn’t tell them that Pity Jimmy was a killer because it’d be me that would’ve been in trouble for it. This is not what we pay you for they’d say. This is what they always say even though they haven’t even paid me once yet. They’d say this if Pity Jimmy killed someone else or if he got killed off himself so it wouldn’t matter is what I think. Pity Jimmy is always getting people in trouble which is why it probably doesn’t matter what happens to him and why I might never get back home again either way.