Pardon My Humanity

            by Ishan Mohindroo

 

            The breeze picked up as the sky darkened, and a dense bank of fog moved in from the west. She quickened her pace instinctively as a small drop of water landed on her bare shoulder. Claire was not going anywhere in particular, just enjoying an evening walk. She was forced to leave most evenings at this time, when her father came home. Every night it was the same; He'd waltz in through the front door drunk, yell at her mother, and sometimes get violent. It was for this reason that Claire made a habit of her evening walks. Just to get away, to not hear the fighting, to be by herself and deal with life in her own way.

            This time she had forgotten to bring a jacket, because the Autumn weather was so pleasant when she left the house. She had lived in Berkeley for her entire life, seventeen years, yet never really got used to the quick transformations in weather. It started to drizzle, and even though she had no where to go, she started walking faster and faster, as if the she would get less wet that way.

            She took a different route through the hills every day, but she memorized the paths of the most beautiful ones, so she could revisit them. As the sky grew darker and her vision became limited, she decided to visit one of her favorite spots, and think for a while.

            Claire reached the top of La Loma Avenue, and continued up the hill to her right as the rain came down harder and harder. “It wasn't supposed to rain today,” she said

 

 

aloud on the abandoned looking street. She enjoyed walking in the late evenings as she could speak to herself without the fear of others hearing. The street in front of her was suddenly illuminated by a moving light as a car came up the hill behind her. There was a river of water flowing down the side of the road, and as the car passed she was splashed violently. She didn't utter a word, she felt it was one of those givens in life, something you cannot control and just have to deal with. She felt the same way about her parents and their problems, which was why she had to just get away.

            Soaking wet, she continued up the road as it curved to the right and steepened, but at a slower pace this time – she was no longer worried about getting wet. She slipped into a meditative state as she often does when she walked, not a bother in the world, no cold, no rain, no parents, no life, just the walk.

            The pavement was wet and reflected a nearby streetlight, it's artificial orange glow cast the world in a different light, everything looked different, and was very still. Claire approached the end of the road, from where she would take a winding path up the hillside. She heard a low hum as she walked by an enclosure near the end of the road. The hum from the transformer always bothered Claire, something about its constant disturbance of the peace, and its consistency. She didn't like consistency, because it was in part to blame for her having to leave the house each night and wander off aimlessly.

            As she passed the transformer, the trees gave way to a majestic view of the Bay

Area, lights of all colors stretched out all the way to the far hills and the Golden Gate Bridge. Claire was careful not to loose her footing on the near vertical hillside as she became mesmerized by the far off glow. Her attention turned back to the path, as it

 

twisted and zig-zagged it's way up the hillside. She was used to climbing the hill by moonlight, but the clouds above shadowed the land. As the path steepened and became thinner, Claire took her cell phone out from her purse and used it's screen to help light her path. There was a level spot twenty feet above her, and she made way towards it.

            The spot was cleared of grass and debris by the many people who use it for kite flying during the day, but at this time it was all for her. Claire unfolded a small towel from her purse, and spread it over the wet dirt. The rain was subsiding, and the view of the city was becoming more clear. She only went to that special spot when she was depressed about something, and that something tended to be related to her father. She recalled the nights events in her head.

           

            “There's my fine ladies!” exclaimed her drunk father as he wobbled in the door paper bag in hand. Claire and her mother were sitting across from each other at the dining table doing bills.

            “God dammit Nate,” said her mother. as the threw and envelope to the ground, got up from the table, and left. Claire stared at her father transfixed for a few seconds, as always, even though it was the same every night. He stared back, but she knew that his mind was elsewhere, probably with some woman in some cheap hotel room, she always wondered why her mother put up with it.

            Claire snapped out of her gaze, carefully sealed the last envelope, and left the table to get her shoes. She knew that there would be a fight, as always, and she hated to be there when it happened. It would be something trivial, as always, that starts the

 

 

argument, but as their voices grow louder, the subject matter always fell back to cheating, divorce, and money.

            “Where ya goin' babe?” shouted her father as she shut the front door in his face. He wouldn't remember the interchange a couple hours.

 

            The rain was subsiding, and the moonlight began to filter through the cloud cover. Claire spotted a container ship leaving the port of Oakland, and followed it's lights all the way out of the Golden Gate into the open ocean. She found another ship leaving, and followed it as well. Half way, she heard a noise from behind her. Claire turned expecting to see a deer or raccoon, but instead saw the silhouette of a man walking towards her. She stood up, slightly alarmed, since it was uncommon to find another person there at night.

 

            “Hi,” said the man, as if it were totally normal to approach a lone girl in a forest in the middle of the night.

            “Hello... can I help you?” asked Claire, hoping all he wanted were directions.

            “Not really, I'm just chillin, what are you doing out here? It's pretty cold.”

            “Same as you,” she replied, as she turned her head back to the view. “I just come here for the view at night.”

            “Well, you sure mustn't mind the weather, you're soaked,” Claire simply nodded. She hoped that if she just ignored the guy he'd go away, she wasn't in the mood for small talk. She didn't reply for a minute or so. “Do ya want a ride somewhere?”

            “No. I like walking. In the rain. But you're welcome to leave any time you like”

 

 

            “Damn, how'd ya get that cactus up your ass?” asked the guy, in a comically  astonished way. Claire spun around, clearly enraged.

            “You want to know how I got the cactus up my ass? My dad comes home drunk every fucking night and beats the everlasting shit out of my mother, and I can't stand to be there. So I come here, hoping for some peace, but no, you have to show up. Are you trying to pick me up or something? Because I'm sure as hell not getting into that car with you. I don't even know your fucking name, how about you just leave.”

            “Okay okay, Mother of Christ Almighty, I'll leave. Just saw that you were alone and figured maybe you'd want to talk. Excuse my humanity,” the guy was not upset, but Claire could tell that he was offended.

            “Listen, I didn't mean to snap at you like that, I feel like shit right now, but I just need my space, can you respect that?”

            “Yeah, I can”

            “Good,” Claire sat down on her towel again. Ten minutes passed, and the guy hadn't left.

            “Are you going to go or what?” asked Claire in an annoyed tone.

            “I'm not bothering you, I'm just enjoying the view.” Claire couldn't help but let a small grin spread across her face, It was her kind of obnoxious and sarcastic humor but was careful to hide it from the guy.

            “Do you have a name?” she asked.

            “Jim, and yours?”

            “Claire”

           

 

            “Well it's nice to meet you Claire,” she simply nodded. “Sorry about your family”

situation, I know what it feels like” Claire turned to Jim, looked him straight in the eye, and asked:

            “Do you really? Or are you just saying that because its the nice cliché thing to do?”

            “I mean it, and you can't  assume that you're the only one with problems, the world doesn't revolve around you.”

            “I never said that, I'm just sick of hearing “I know what you mean” from everyone when in reality they don't know what I mean because they're not in the same exact situation. That's why I stopped telling people about my problems, because I just got the same shit thrown back at me, five times harder. Its classic, you know, I bring up an issue that I'm having hard time dealing with, and all I get from them is that their issues are a lot worse and that I should be thankful for the food on the fucking table”

            “Yeah, but can you think of something you'd rather they say? what can you expect if you just spill the beans on someone who, as you said, has “no idea” what you're going through? It doesn't work like that.”

            “I don't know, sometimes I'd rather if someone just sat there and listened to what I'm saying, without prodding me with their problems. I guess I know that its a one way thing, and that I'm just using them, but it helps me psychologically,” said Claire, her voice now calm and clear.

            “Listen, I have nothing else to do right now so if you want, I can sit here and I will listen to whatever it is you have to say, and I promise I won't interject my own problems or criticize you in any way,” Jim replied in a calm and friendly voice. The abruptness of this offer worried Claire, but she pushed aside her instinct and decided to give it a go.

            “Okay, I'll talk” She said as she turned to face Jim squarely. “When I was four me and my family lived in Petaluma, and my real father was murdered when his gas station

was robbed. Three men came in at four in the morning and approached the counter with a bag of Twinkies from the shelf. One of them pulled out a gun, and shot my dad two times in the head. They never caught the assholes who did it, and as if it wasn't bad enough, me and my mom had to watch the security tape and see it all happen, and compare it to the body in the morgue to “identify and verify” my dad's identity. What the fuck is that? Anyone with two eyes and half a brain can compare an image to a body. But no, they made us do it. They never even ended up charging anyone with a crime, never even had a suspect, the cops dropped the case as soon as something else came up,” Claire's vision blurred slightly as tears began to form in her eyes. She wasn't particularly sad, she simply couldn't help it.

            “Oh my god I'm so sorry, I had absolutely no idea that you had been through something like that.”

            “I never really got over it, but life didn't improve either. My mother raised me alone, and she did a good job, but I had a hard time in school. In middle school I got shitty grades, made no friends, and had to go in antidepressants after my mom found a noose made out of duct tape in my closet.”

            “That's terrible,” said Jim, thinking that perhaps Claire wanted to elicit a reaction. She continued without acknowledging him.

            “We had to move to Berkeley because of my moms work, and thats when she met the fucking monster whom she makes me call dad. Do you have any idea how painful that is? My dad is dead, I saw the fucking bullet holes in his head. No one can replace him. Maybe my mom can just move on and forget, but I sure can't. I wake up one fine morning to see this guy walk butt naked out of my mom's bedroom, and within a  month I was calling him dad. Not that I wanted to of course, my mom made me. She said it would make us a “family” whatever the hell that means to her. I don't know about you, but my idea of family doesn't include people you pick up for a cheap fuck at all night poker clubs.”

            Claire was silent for a good couple minutes, as if contemplating what she had just spoken. It was the first time she had really let it out in such a matter-of-fact emotionless way, not to mention to a complete stranger. Given this, there was a positive aspect to this as well, all these years she had only confided in people who knew her well. Too well. They always felt that since they knew her, they could pass judgment and that they understood her problems the same way she did. With Jim, it was like talking to a brick wall. Which she liked, in this case.

            “I can see why you'd want to leave the house” Jim felt obligated to speak as the awkward silence grew thicker.

            “Oh I could deal with that, I'm very good at ignoring people. But then he started coming home drunk from “work” - whatever the hell that is, and would beat my mom. It was the first day of my sophomore year, and I come home to find my mother, the only person I love in the entire world, crying in a corner of the living room, with a bloody lip, rocking back and forth like a heroin junkie. She didn't speak to me. And to this day, nothing has changed,” Claire could tell that Jim was about to speak, and abruptly continued speaking. “I didn't fit in in high school, yeah, what a cliché statement, but I fucking mean it. I had too much baggage and too much bullshit. I sure as hell didn't fit into the popular crowd, and the best part? Well I didn't fit into the reject crowd either, they probably would have accepted me, but they were so full of shit that I couldn't deal with it. They made a point to do everything differently than the so called “normal” kids. They wore different clothes, acted funny to get attention, and were so vehemently non-conformist that they created their own brand of conformity.”

            “So between a terrible family life and a terrible school life, you feel that your life just sucks?”

            “See thats the thing, everyone says that all I want is sympathy, but I never wanted to tell them about my problems to begin with. They go and they ask me whats wrong, and claim to want to help, and then just say that I'm begging for attention. Its a self perpetuating cycle of rat shit really, they ask me whats wrong, I tell them, they tell me I need to just get over myself, so in future I don't go to friends for help, and they think I'm even more fucked up in the head.” Jim put his hand on Claire's shoulder, and leaned closer.

            “I really need to pee,” he said as if it were the deepest and most important thing in the world. Claire burst out laughing.

            “Go pee then! I'm not going anywhere,” Jim got up with a heavy sigh, and went up the hill a bit and behind a tree. Claire moved her head back towards the view, but did not search the black waters for a ship to follow out this time. She stretched her legs out in front of her, and threw her head back, her shoulder length red hair slapping against her back. Gazing at the stars, her conscious mind wondered why she was being so open with this guy who she had just met less than an hour before. Underneath it all, she felt relieved that the night had turned out to be  less than mundane as the previous nights.

            “Ahhhh there we go,” said Jim as he made his way back to the dirt patch. “It's a nice feeing”

            “What is?” Asked Claire, her eyes still transfixed on the stars above.

            “Pissing. Letting it all out, its not good to keep it in there for too long. Might get an infection. I had a cousin who was hospitalized with a bladder infection once, he was at a party and was too embarrassed to ask where the restroom was. Spent a good three weeks in the hospital,” a smile grew on Claire's face, and she turned her head to face Jim.

            “Yeah, you're absolutely right.”

            “Do you want to go on?” asked Jim.

            “No, I'd rather hear about you for a while. Want to talk?”

            “Me?”

            “Well, you're the only other person here... So I would have to say, yes, you.”

            “What do you want to know about me?”

            “You said earlier that you know what I mean when I talk about life's hardships, so I can only guess that you've had some shit thrown at you as well, right?”

            “Damn straight I've had some thrown at me, but I don't know if you want to hear about it..... Don't you hate hearing about other peoples problems?”

            “Well, this time I asked...” Said Claire playfully as she crossed her legs and turned her body to face him.

            “I grew up in Guerneville, a hippie retirement town on the Russian River. Basically, it's where a lot of folks from Berkeley went in the early 70s cuz the 60s drained all their energy. My mom was from San Francisco, and my dad from Denver. They basically skinny-dipped in the river and smoked pot all day long. Which of course they grew themselves in a semi-indoor nursery. My dad put a roof on it because he read some article in some socialist magazine about how the FBI looks for pot farms by satellite. Anyway, despite my parents and their everlasting weirdness, My life was going fine, I went to a normal school, had friends, got fed, and so on and so on. Thats basically all there is to my early life – or, all of my life up until last week.

            “What happened to you last week?” asked Claire in an obviously curious tone.

            “I finally decide to leave town – had never been out of it in all my twenty-two years, but had no car and no money. So I wait along the interstate, thumb high in the wind. After a few hours, an old guy in an even older blue pickup truck pulled over and asked if I were heading south, I nodded and entered the cab. We didn't hold conversation really, but we exchanged enough words for me to figure out that he was headed for San José, and I figured I'd hop off somewhere in the East Bay. I got in his car at around six in the afternoon, and it was getting dark by the time we got into the north bay. I was bored, so I figured I'd kill the fellow and steal the truck for the hell of it. I knifed him in the throat,” Claire let out a chuckle.

            “When does the Bogeyman get involved?” she asked playfully.

            “I'm serious,” said Jim in a suddenly serious tone, with a hint of annoyance. Claire pulled her hands back from the area in between them, and sat silently for a few seconds, with her jaw trembling. The person she was looking at was not the same person she had been looking at for the last half hour, she realized her mistake in not leaving when she had the chance. She snapped back into the real world and quickly rose to her feet. Jim did the same, and beat her to it.

            “I'll give you whatever you want just don't hurt me,” Said Claire instinctively, as she was always taught to do in such situations.

            Jim practically fell to the floor laughing. When he finally regained his composure, panting, he replied to her.

            “I have no interest in killing you, I told you I just wanted to talk. Shit if you were bored on a long car ride you might do the same thing.”

            “Just get out of here, you're a fucking psychopath you asshole just leave me the fuck alone, I won't call the police,” said Claire, almost crying.

            “Oh I'll leave alright, I was just about to in fact. But I have a few words for you first. You gotta get over yourself. That old geezer that I cut? He's totally worse off than you right now. He was more or less still alive when I stuffed him into a porta-potty, but I figure he was gurgling blood so much that by now he's dead. He's way worse off than you little girl,” Claire fell to her knees and began to cry uncontrollably. Jim calmly walked towards his car, got in it, and drove off into the night.

            Five minutes later, Claire regained control, and started the long walk home.