Monday

Dropped car at body shop for new bumper,
got a Malibu for a week.

Picked up sweet Nora to clean my house,
who doesn't drive
and speaks more English than I do Spanish,
not much

She doesn't bring bottles and rags, mop or spray cans,
so I show her what I have and what needs doing
and she sends me to buy a duster and Pledge.
When I get back, the porch is cleaner than
it 's ever been.

Then comes Edward, who speaks Spanish, and is all set
to install the medicine cabinet with the mirror doors,
after he paints another wall,  mows the grass and translates
back and forth from Nora to me.

All is well, so I go to yoga.

When I come back, Edward is cussing,
which he does when he can't figure out directions.

I read the pages to him and he tries, really tries,
for three blessed hours.  I stand in the bathroom
and encourage him, reading what to do,
and he says, "This is a piece of shit."

It's not.  It's what men say when they are confused.
He's frustrated because he can't get the cement walls to hold
the screws and because he's broken his fingers so many times
they don't work right.

So I go to Home Depot and get a smaller butterfly screw.

"I'm just a f******* g****** ignorant crack head!" he said. (He's neither)
When Edward starts cussing, which he does impressively when things
don't work, I know he's hit the wall.

He's a good man, funny.  Would have been a natural
stand-up comedian or actor with a different start in life.
He has the timing.  He posts his imaginary characters
at a certain spot in the room and talks to them,
keeping them where he wants them,
and they talk back, but he only has an audience of one, me

"You can do it," I say--but I'm late to dinner at Freda's
so I leave.  He calls me there an hour later: "I'm sorry, I can't do it.
My fingers are too messed up."

We go outside and talk while he smokes.

"When I get frustrated, I dread going home
being with my two deadbeat brothers who don't do a G******thing but
park their asses in the chair and watch TV.  If only my mama
hadn't made me promise not to throw their sorry asses out."

We come inside for water, and he picks up a photograph of my daddy fishing--
the third time in three days.  "I love that picture," he says, again.
"You should blow it up bigger."

I give him a bag of charcoal I'm never going to use
and some other things and we stand in the grass and talk about drugs.
"I've used every one in the book," he said. "Coke and meth, all of it.
But no more, They put all kind of shit in drugs anyway and they
can kill you.

He tells me about hydroponics in Colorado, how thugs break into
legit marijuana farms at just the right minute and kill people and steal
all that weed, about how you have to keep the male and female
plants apart after they've pollenated or it will all turn to seed,
and how if they see one tiny bug or mite, the crop is done for."

"If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to Denmark.
I would like to, just once, stand right beside and cop
and smoke me a joint."

"So what are you going to do when you leave?" I ask him.

"I'm going to do what I always do.  Go home and take a shower,
then thank God for this day
and ask Him to take care of people
and forgive me for  being
such a F******* stupid crack head....and then I go to sleep
and tomorrow is another day, working my ass off, just like every day."

Today is Tuesday, my house is clean, and I'm going to rest up until Elena comes
to help me mess it up again making a cake or something.  But first, I'm going
over to CVS and blow up a picture and frame it.