You know sometimes I be thinking ‘bout my girl Blanquette and I get sad. Like real sad. Why? I don’t know her well. Rooster told me to move on and accept that not everyone’s going to be your friend. So I decided to visit the blood bank. We have our own system in the animal kingdom. Methods of mutation. We have a universal biaser that makes all animal blood interchangeable. Human beings aren’t included. I’m only allowed to write this because so many of the details are completely false.
But it’s basically true. I was walking down to the blood bank with cranberries and cold orange soda when I saw Blanquette by the side of the road down on her luck. She was looking like them one of them Percocet couples you see wandering around on the side of the highway. Invader Zim ass shit. Anyway I like her so I went up and started chatting it up. I didn’t see at first but she had a baby with her. Oh, what’s that? I was really curious. Not excited, but curious. Who knocked up Blanquette? And didn’t I just see her last week?
“His name is Blair.” She brushed her hackle on a fence. “I want him to live like a writer in Paris… from New York… who regrets not getting to fight in the First World War…”
Blanquette be reading on history and shit that I have no interest in. Why come she know about the First World War? I was there and I don’t remember shit. That French motherfucker Céline was nasty as hell, I thought he was the one who started that war. I thought it was all about him. I guess people don’t really do that. Maybe Bennington would, if he had half a brain and wasn’t so eager to please. You know I really do hate living with someone who’d drop me at a moment’s notice to join a world famous celebrity just so he can soak in the proximity. I’m not into effervescences like Blanquette is. “We’re teaching him to read. He’ll be three in May.” Fuck I been smoking? I thought this bitch was into cocaine. I thought we freebased last Wednesday.
She asked me where I was going, and I lied. “The post office.” She looked confused and I knew I fucked up. “But we just passed it…?” I didn’t give in. “There’s another post office down here.” She stood firm. “No there isn’t.” I decided to be quiet.
At a certain point Blanquette stopped and let me walk away; I got 20 paces before I realized she was behind me. I turned around and the baby was gone. Blanquette was back to her familiar self, a confused drug addict with a fix on death. I walked toward her and tried to speak but my mouth wouldn’t open; I tried to scream, but no sound would pass my throat. Blanquette disappeared before my eyes and in that moment I remembered that ghosts were real.
Blanquette died last Wednesday. That’s when I saw her. Closed casket. I don’t know why I imagined that we were freebasing together—I hadn’t seen her alive in nearly six months—but I suppose it was just my brain’s way of protecting me from the horror. The horror. The horror of that baby without a mother. Or wait, the baby wasn’t real or it was imaginary—which are the same thing… is this your house or my funeral? Blanquette do sometimes be messing with people’s heads. I heard the condolences and waved goodbye from inside the bassinet. I hope it’s a bassinet. It’s getting dark. Where am I?
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits