A Shirt By Any Other Name
Diane Popenhagen Streams of orange baby puke flow down my breasts, burnt sienna stripes along my pink Swiss dot blouse. Hot and clinging like sweaty legs on summertime car seats. With chunks resting between my bra and its inhabitants, I slink over to the mechanic’s service desk. My infant in a car seat, an evening attaché, hangs in the crook of my slender arm. There’s a toddler gripping my leg, head resting just at the top of my thigh. It’s the waiting we don’t like. The in between. Americans and our collective fear of boredom gripping so much tighter than our lover’s arms. “At least an hour to go,” I’m told, “before the minivan is operational.” Clearly, there are those who don’t understand all that is at stake. There are hours, like deserts, impassible. I implore the young boy at the desk for help, what kind I’ve no idea. I don’t need accompaniment, after all, we are a trio, as it were. I need exemption from this journey. Perhaps there is a “get out of jail free card” in the register next to the grimy bills. He shakes his head, shrugs his broad shoulders and goes back to get a more seasoned man. Chad, his shirt proclaims stitched in red -- indelible, an act of trust from his employer. He approaches me, cleaning the oil from his hands slowly, rhythmically with a blue towel, the industrial towels of auto mechanics and small town gas stations. If this were 1954, he would have been cleaning my windows, pumping my gas, as my husband was away at work on a three-martini lunch. But after all, this is not 1954, and I pump my own gas. The man offers me his work shirt. Chad catches my eye, warm and strong, as he methodically unbuttons his uniform. He has a T-shirt underneath, a wife beater, ironically accentuating his biceps. Chad assures me he has other shirts at home. Like a child who sees her teacher at the grocery story, confounded, I am unable to conceive of his home. He is, to me, completely of now and here, this mechanic’s shop, for but this moment. He explains that he too has children, as any virile man would, I suppose. Children, plural, he has slept with a mother. “This sort of thing is no big deal,” Chad adds to assure me. Assures me that I am not of this, merely covered in it. I know, we know, he means that he can see the sexual, sensual woman behind the slime. That missed periods and a few stitches in my perineum did not remove anything beyond a placenta. My children look on. Hot, soapy water collects in the sink with steam rising. With just a restroom door between us, I remove my blouse, and very slowly, my bra. I chase all the putrid, the mundane from my soft spots, as eyes watch me, my young. I slide into Chad’s warm covering, swallowed. Returning to sit in a working man’s lettermen’s jacket, 5 sizes too big, I feel all that it is to be a woman. No not woman; to be seen as such by a man. Through wetted lips, I promise to launder his gift and return it to him, here where we first met. Lying, I leave it dirty. Theft, my only one. It remains hidden in the back of my closet, a titillating secret. I hang it inside out, lest my husband see the embroidered truth, another man’s name once rested on his wife’s breasts. During endless afternoons of sing-a-longs and HiHo! Cheery-O, I sneak into my bedroom solitary to smell him, with just a hint of me. I trace his name with now-roughened fingers, but I let my mind’s touch linger. To remember once more my youth, my self before titles and recitals. |
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About the Author:
While in the Midwest, Diane Popenhagen’s humor columns about parenting and the perils of aging frequently ran in local newspapers and magazines. All the while, Diane enjoyed writing and editing for Good Catch Publishing. In 2012, Ms. Popenhagen loaded all she could fit into her car and moved to Colorado. Diane has since become active in the spoken word community, as well as continued working toward an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Dirty Chai, and Soundings Review. When she isn’t writing, Diane enjoys hiking, spending time with her children and crocheting.
While in the Midwest, Diane Popenhagen’s humor columns about parenting and the perils of aging frequently ran in local newspapers and magazines. All the while, Diane enjoyed writing and editing for Good Catch Publishing. In 2012, Ms. Popenhagen loaded all she could fit into her car and moved to Colorado. Diane has since become active in the spoken word community, as well as continued working toward an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Dirty Chai, and Soundings Review. When she isn’t writing, Diane enjoys hiking, spending time with her children and crocheting.