From the Closest Waffe House

Abstract

From the Closest Waffe House Janelle M. Williams (bio) summer 2017 When he says, let's go to Atlanta, we're in front of a big clock, and he is quietly staring at it, almost smiling. I count the time, and I count the miles, and it will probably take us thirteen hours to get there, maybe more, because I swear Eric is narcoleptic. I've never brought anyone home, but it's a long weekend, and maybe it feels like the right thing to do. My mom could use the company. I read somewhere that it's possible to dream down, that you can let your dreams fall into your children, force them there, maybe even actualize them. I think if she sees me floating, she'll know that her weight doesn't have to hold her. Eric's white Kia Optima with black rims is new. It still has that new smell, and Eric just sits in it sometimes, because he can't believe it's his. I'll call him after the workday or on a late Sunday afternoon, and he'll eventually let on that he's just sitting in his car, outside of his house, going nowhere. He's quirky like that. fall 2004 My old car was champagne colored, the shimmery shade of Malik's wet skin, my parent's third car, a 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I was the first of my friends to get a driver's license because my birthday is in September. This was before the windows stopped working and before a speeding car bashed the back bumper, when my parents were still together but had stopped sleeping in the same room, so our maroon leather couch had the persistent indentation of my dad's ass. My parking spot was on the far left side of school, across from the Dandy Donuts, best donuts I'd ever have, and not too far from the trailers where Mr. Macon taught pre-cal. I thought of that Jeep as mine, and it sort of was, as I used to cart my friends around in it, some all the way back [End Page 43] to Lithonia, a forty-minute drive without traffic. I lived ten or fifteen minutes closer, in Decatur, just off of Covington Highway. The baseball diamond was behind my parking spot, and I always found myself checking for a game night because maybe we were playing Douglass, and maybe I'd get to see Malik in his uniform. It was never the tight pants that did it for me but the way he walked in them. The Jeep gave me a sense of freedom that I never had when my mom picked me up from school. We two screamed at each other at the top of our throats, because I was my dad's child. She saw him in me, and I think she hated him, and that only matched my animosity toward her. She let me drive the better, newer car because she liked the space of our old minivan, and I always thought the van suited her, in the way that it allowed her room to collect all the different people inside of her, all of the work folders littering the backseat, all of the screams and shouts she could never stop crying. My dad drove a 1984 pickup truck because he was the only one who could work a stick, and I think that saved his masculinity in some sad, sordid way. summer 2017 Eric likes overproduced music, and I like him in spite of that, so we're listening to Bryson Tiller for the hundredth time, and I'm itching for my chance to control the playlist. "The lack of instrumentation is making me nauseous," I tell him, and he side-eyes me, doubtful. "I'm serious. I can't take it anymore." "Change it then. Something upbeat though. No ballads." I am used to, even enamored by, men wearing bedazzled blazers singing in high octaves. I love oldies. But Eric wants upbeat, so I sardonically put on Janet Jackson. "No," he says. I laugh and put on Noname Gypsy, a Chicago-bred female rapper...