Sinister: put me in a frock and leave me to recite.

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.


i bought knee socks today. white with cable stitching, from the little 
girls' department at j.c. penney. they were 20 percent off, and i got 
excited, picking out the package from the rows and rows of pink and white 
and lavender anklets and tights and crew socks. i bought navy knee socks 
without cables, and enjoyed my dorky purchase, swinging the bag as i walked, 
imagining myself in the knee socks.

i put some on about an hour later. and i looked at myself in the mirror, 
liking the socks and the way my twenty-year-old legs looked in them.

and i wondered what i was doing, who i was kidding.

and then i remembered i was just playing a part, after all, of the girl who 
never loses the flowers she was born with, only the ones she picked up along 
the way.

***

i think living alone is getting to me.

i have started to do everything with a solitary sense of self, going 
shopping and eating and walking alone. i sit somewhere for hours, with a 
book or a cigarette or nothing else at all to keep my hands busy, and just 
watch things happen.

watch people holding hands or riding a bike down the street or making a call 
on a pay phone. i try to remember what it was like to look like i had 
someone, and i can't. but then i never really had anyone, i finally 
remember, and i start wishing a song could follow my footsteps. a soundtrack 
for me. a theme song.

but i don't know what the song would be anymore, and i can't think of anyone 
who would particularly care to hear it, or change the undoubtedly lonely 
lyrics.

so i keep walking, trying not to stare and trying harder to ignore the 
people leaning out their windows to shout through the summertime that i 
shouldn't be so down.

***

tonight i was walking to get a sandwich, and a woman approached me. she 
looked lost and a little frantic. to be fair about it, she looked a little 
like a crazy woman let loose on the streets of lincoln.

and she came up to me, wearing a matching red shirt and short set. her face 
was very tan, and i wondered if she was native american. i looked at the 
deep and many pock marks on her face, surrounded by a mass of tangled black 
hair, as she asked me for help. she was in a domestic violence situation, 
she said, and could i give her some kind of help.

i stood there, a little girl in her knee socks, and said the only thing they 
teach little girls to say to strangers who might be transients.

"no, i'm sorry. i can't."


walking on, i wondered why i hadn't told her to go to the ymca two blocks 
down the street. why i hadn't taken out my spoiled suburbian cellular phone 
to call the police for the name of a shelter. why she had to keep walking to 
find an elderly couple who gave her what she needed.

someone to help her.

i thought maybe i hadn't because i was starting to get scared of everything. 
of everyone. maybe i hadn't because i went with my knee-jerk reaction. maybe 
she hadn't been telling the truth, was pleading for something else.

but in the end, i knew i hadn't helped her because i didn't know how. i 
didn't know how to help a woman when i was already being asked to save 
another, one i couldn't save, either.

one who was me.

and i kept moving forward and tracking back, retracing the same path i have 
walked so many times, looking at my feet making the pavement disappear.

what kind of person am i?

i should have helped her. i should have been able to.

but instead i was infatuated with myself and a love i will never have. 
because i am not brave enough to love.

i am not brave enough to help.

and i am not brave enough to be myself. not anymore.

***

someone told me it must take courage to dress the way i do. and i laughed, 
because i am not brave at all. i told the girl that all it took to wear 
rainbow-striped knee socks and patent leather shoes in the middle of june 
was a tiny bit of chutspa. a tiny bit of self-assertion.

this boy named austin gave me a bit of advice, and, upon looking at my 
quivering bottom lip, decided i really wasn't that brave. and told me as 
much.

and somewhere in the back of my mind i remembered something someone wrote to 
me once. in the middle of may.

lou = brave.

and i had cried then, and i cried now.

lou doesn't equal very much some days, and the days she does she seems to 
stay inside.



maybe if i call her and let the phone ring long enough, she will wake up 
again and come outside. into the summertime she hates so much.



maybe i can learn to be brave. to be me. to help. to love.

and to not be scared anymore.


maybe i can learn to just be.

no matter what kind of socks i have on.



love,
lou
xxx


------------------
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_________________________________________________________________
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