 |
 |
by Kylie Garner CABBIT WAKES UP around 2:00 in the afternoon. She walks out of her room wearing only a thong and an outgrown shirt. Her hair is a wild corona. Wearing glasses but not makeup, she looks much younger than her 20 years. She pads over the stained carpet of her apartment to the cold linoleum of the kitchen and sets to work. Opening the dishwasher, she rearranges its contents and makes sure fork prongs, knife-edges and the smooth inlays of spoons are turned up in the same direction. Cups, plates and pans are more efficiently packed in: mug handles must all curve in the same direction; matching plate sets are grouped together. Her mother never uses incomplete diningware sets. Cabbit often recites this fact like it is a parable; the point being that domestic compulsiveness is passed down genetically. Also passed down genetically are Cabbit’s wide blue eyes and petite frame. These attributes will probably always make Cabbit look much younger than her years. This morning’s wake-up procedural is a small way for Cabbit to normalize the previous night’s events. A makeshift system for making amends, she can build the day upon its order. The ritual is disrupted this afternoon by her ex-boyfriend Mark who walks out of her room fully dressed. There is a cordial goodbye scene: Have a good day! A quick wave; Mark leaves. (The previous morning involved a scene much like this one but with a different boy who sang loudly in her shower and played piano for a living.) Cabbit throws away an empty wine bottle from the night before and sanitizes a countertop. She switches on the coffeepot then sits down at the glass-topped dining room table wedged between the kitchen and pantry/storage closet. She draws her bare legs up so the bend of her knees is level with her chin and does not say a word. Cabbit has the Imperial March as her ring tone; her screensaver is programmed to mimic the falling, fluorescent green numbers from the Matrix movies. She owns a medieval wench costume she wears annually to the Renaissance Faire.
She reads manga and loves anime porn. Last year, for Halloween, she dressed as a murderous Alice in Wonderland wearing platform shoes and a blood-spattered apron. She is studying abnormal psychology at Irvine Valley College; she has memorized the biographies of infamous madmen like Albert Fish and Jeffrey Dahmer. Cabbit traces her interest in dark material to her childhood: “ When I was growing up people would describe me as being intelligent for my age and mature. But I was the one in class always getting picked on. I was the scapegoat in the group. If things went wrong it was my fault.” Her mother yelled at her so often that Cabbit remembers her as always having a raspy voice. “Later my mom and dad went to a class called Growing Kids God’s Way at Pacific Hills Christian Church, and she stopped yelling as much. She told us that God was making her voice raspy to get her to stop yelling.” Cabbit remembers her teenage years as being full of conspirators; her description of high school politics implies the bloody coups of Latin America don’t just happen in Latin America. Cabbit’s involvement in extracurricular activities reads like a list of deposals. She was ousted as President of Anime club by her own members because they believed she was less dedicated to the well-being of the club than to her dictatorship of it. She was stripped of the Editor-In-Chief title by her journalism teacher. Cabbit believes a young rival was whispering into the teacher’s ear. She recalls the advisor of her high school’s stand-up comedy troupe Comedy Sportz as a “total bitch” who also “had it out” for her. The boys on the team may have always been rude to Cabbit but the advisor was the one who kept her from going on to the video production team Diablo Heat. “She must have badmouthed me to the judges,” says Cabbit. Her image of herself as a scapegoat stayed after childhood left. And, in this regard, Cabbit’s perception of herself is not far off. It has something to do with her habit of divulging intimate secrets to strangers and, occasionally, misapplying her social confidence. It makes her an easy target. Toward evening on the same day, Cabbit’s cell phone rings. She looks at the caller ID and smiles. It is the boy who sings in her shower. Her hello is flirty and eager. He wants to know why Cabbit petitioned his girlfriend for a threesome last night at the bar. “I was talking to her, and I just got this vibe that she was into it,” Cabbit enunciates carefully. “So I floated it out there- I just said if you’re into this and if you are it is totally cool and if you’re not do not even worry about it but what do you feel about threesomes?” The disconnected voice at the other end sounds insistent and angry. Cabbit’s eyes lose some of their shine. Continuing to speak coyly, Cabbit responds: “Well, Allison is a sexy girl and I have to admit, the fact that she was wearing panties at the bar last night really turned me on.” She listens some more. Her face stiffens. “The threesome proposition was innocent. It was supposed to be fun!” Cabbit pauses. She begins to cry. |
|
| UCI | School of Humanities | Literary Journalism |