Home Alone

After seeing a developmentally disabled young woman (possibly older girl) in a park near my house with a doll in a stroller and an armload of pictures I wrote this piece. The pictures looked like they were of her parents. I have a younger sister who is down syndrome and the more I meet people who have DD siblings, the conversation always revolves around, "What's gonna happen when our parents die?"

“Wocket powah!” Tina kicked her thick legs on the swing, propelling herself higher. The wind cooled the skin under her sweat soaked sweatpants. On her sweatshirt, the black ear of Mickey Mouse flapped against the force of the air where the stitching had come loose.  “We doin’ good Carla.” Tina gave a motherly smile to a dirty plastic baby sitting cock-eyed in an umbrella stroller  sunken into the dusty pea-gravel. Frames stuck in the gravel all around the stroller with pictures of Tina--younger and thinner--held by a smiling salt and pepper haired man. Another picture showed the man holding a woman his age.

    “Cawla! Ha. Ha,” Tina laughed as she stopped the swing, each laughing breath was sound escaping as if she could barely control not laughing. A small boy stared, unsure of what to make of the young woman with her eyebrows grown together, gathering a collection of pictures covered in ashen dust. As Tina walked past him, the boy recoiled from a strong, sweaty, metallic smell coming from her as she made her way toward the park exit with an awkward waddle. At least two times the boy looked over after he heard her grunt and bend over to pick Carla off the ground after the doll had bounced out of the stroller.

***

Inside her home, (“4164 W. Berta... 4164 W. Berta... 4164 W. Berta...Awe name is on the fwont dooh. Wight dere Cawla. Watterson! Thas my name. Ha. ha. See Cawla. We home.”)Tina turned off the The Little Mermaid just as the last song finished and the final credits scrolled upward. A lone gnat lazily bounced around the empty bowl used to make Top Ramen in the microwave sitting in the sink and it disappeared as Tina turned off the light. In the living room, the VCR clicked and clanged followed by the whirr of the cassette rewinding.

Tina made her way upstairs, pulling her weight up by the oak handrail one step at a time. Her bedroom was tidy and pink with a twin bed tucked to the side and Disney posters lining the wall. Perhaps the only item which would have been out of place in a small child’s room were the two brown cardboard cake boxes sitting side by side on her night stand.

Before turning off her lamp, Tina said goodnight to Carla and then pulled the string of her lamp. A digital clock shone a bluish light on the two boxes, one reading Bill Watterson, the other reading Carla Watterson. Both read in large type--Caution: Human Remains.