mmmcdxcviii

Hopscotch Bottle Rocket

Someone hollers “Hot
body, lost in space,
what the hell are you
gonna do there,
sister-girl?!!” in
the general direc
tion of a family of
three or four or five.
The screaming lady
pauses afterwards,
staring a bit over
the heads of the
family up toward
the sky, then she’s
off as quickly as she
appeared and is
soon out of sight.
The family starts
a bit at the loud
query seemingly
addressed to them,
or to the twilight-
soaked sky that’s
just above their
precious heads.
If one were to

witness, as some

did, they, too, would

have assumed that the

screaming woman 

was addressing the

family members.
The slightest of them
all, who might be a
little girl of five or six
stops the quickest in
her tracks and be
gins to look more
and more alarmed,
even after the yell
ing lady is long
gone; she is com
ing undone, has a
stark look of alarm
covering her entire
visage that inevitably
transitions into a
transparent pout,
which soon has a
quivering lip that
predicts a stream
of crocodile tears
that come only
moments after. It 

turns out the little
girl with the heart 

of gold is overwhelmed 

with worry and grief and
is trying desperately
to devise a plan to res
cue whomever it is
(and she has some
ideas about who the
unfortunate soul is)
lost in space. The
father of the crew –
I shall call him that –
aligns in rapturous
thought with those
(thoughts) of his
teenaged twin
boys for all
three of them,

shaken, lost focus
directly after the
first two words
of the diatribe
that had been
screamed at or
over the general
direction of their
identical haircuts,
“hot body,” which
has them each em
bark upon separate
and quite personal
trips (oh, they’re
not going any
where physically,
the entire family
stands stock still
for what seems
like an eternity
after the loud
words are so
hurled) – which
is to say that a
certain electrical
zing begins to per
meate their mid-
sections (or directly

below the belly button, 

as it were).  As for 

good old (and do not 

even think of calling 

her that out loud) 

Mom? Well, who 

can truly tell

what she might
be thinking. It
might be as
cliché as
something
about lunch,
which had
more than
likely been
ordered a
few minutes
previous to the
family’s stroll
to a pizzeria to
which the family
gave patronage,
might even have
been the establish
ment’s best weekend
customers (not that
there weren’t the
occasional week
days, as well)
the dough of which

was therefore turning 

a rather perfect shade 

of light brown as
the order of
pies sat in the
rather uniquely
sloped oven that
the parlor’s owner
had had shipped
special some de
cade and a half
previous all the
way from Sicily.
But what if it is
true, as well, that
Mom has taken the
earlier screamed wordsa 

bit more to heart? What 

if she is heard to utter,

with a voice that sounds at 

first shaken, a bit weak, that
crescendos up toward the decibel
level of the words upon which this
story began, that rises into a scream
that forever alters the history of the
family that had been so casually
strolling the familiar blocks of
sidewalk just minutes ago?
She starts with a snapped
“Damn right!” expressed
in an unsure vibrato,
but then comes,
“What. In. The.
Hell. Am. I.
Doing. Here.”
It is deliberate, 

her confidence 

rising as she admits 

in verbal assault at
the universe,
“Lost as I am,
lost as I have
been for SO
MANY YEARS!!”
And then she
turns a quick
one-eighty,
walks her
self ‘home,’
(Dad and the
boys, with pizza
on the brain, give
her a brief look that
might be a combination
of disgust and surprise,
and then begin to amble
their way without her to the
pizzeria) walks in, pulls a few 

things from drawers and 

cabinets and closets and
tosses them into bag that 

isn’t quite large enough to 

be called suitcase, walks the

bag out to the beige-colored
sedan that is parked in the
carport, hops into it after
tossing the bag in the back
seat, keys the ignition,
and reverses the car
out of the driveway,
kicking up a bit of
gravel along the
way, backs
into the
highway
in front
of the
house
in which
she’s some
how existed
for nearly
twenty years,
(aptly called
Main Street),
and speeds
off into the
distance,
never to be
seen or heard
from again by
what will become
a more out-of-sorts,
disturbed and depressed
family of now only two
or three or four.