[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY SIXTY-SIX

I am standing in an L-shaped turquoise tiled kitchen in front of a table in the middle of the floor. The table has a white Formica top and I can see my shapely hips in the reflection of the chrome edging: Sugar. I hear a coo, and my head snaps back to see the fat baby with the mop of hair, spitting mashed beans at me in a wooden high chair.

I smile at Sugar’s baby, relieved it’s alive and Sugar’s alive, and am about to hand it a baby biscuit with my creamed coffee hands when the clunky turquoise phone hinged to the wall rings.

I answer it, untangling the long squiggly cord with my fingers.

A husky voice on the other end says, “Is that you, Eden?” and I feel Sugar slip away from me as we are both pushed out of her body by the “resident,” the presence that had evicted me out of Sugar’s body that time she had met the MagiCIAn with Hunter and Trudy.

It’s the resident that now answers in Sugar’s place. She talks in quiet dull affirmations to the dry instructions given out on the phone that I can’t quite hear.

I am left to hover around Sugar’s body as her hands hang-up the phone robotically.

Sugar’s body paces out of the kitchen like a foot soldier, ignoring the baby’s sudden lonesome cries, but I can’t turn back to comfort it as I’m tethered to her wandering body like a balloon on a string. Sugar’s body walks into a frilly canary yellow bedroom with a froufrou bedspread. Packs an overnight bag. Walks back out the bedroom. Walks through the long and narrow living room with dark brown velvet drapes and mustard shag carpeting toward the front closet. Walks past the potted palms with macramé covers.

I can now hear the baby choking on its own sobs. But then we are already out the door, into the car, and pulling out away from the bungalow with the verdant green lawn and white picket fence.

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