“Jane, the taste the taste, you have no idea, Jane.” Typing texting toiling tighter to a tik-tok than ever paid to do in an office. This house she would never own unlike Mr. Smith and me, who saved and worked a different way. A smaller abode too roomy for our unbridled egos of largesse. Outdated economics, has-been me grown-up? Progress.

“Oh?” mild Mildred type text tolling, rolling in reverse, backwards scrolling social, intrigued at distance with first-world problems to replay, called elsewhere otherwise life and blessed, but to them another joke to pass the time they didn't realize how fleeting. Jane, she read everything aloud to comfort herself, and said Lord, it was to entertain me!: There was an old lady who lived in a....

For work (in their digital gardens) they were at it hard into this new way of so-called living, but the gossip chit nonsense chatter, about her home-brewed beverage. WFH. WTH. WTF. Me, too old to understand such words, they said time and again to me. They didn't know but I knew their code. I did and do, it keeping me awake at night and me wanting to sleep during the day because of its fatigue. We all lost track of too much then.

“Luscious or creamy, coffee milky even without--

“Oh, my!” Mildred Milly responding sigh in between her own two teas back to Jane. To please. Also at home, but hers stolen from the office the last day before release that March when it all began. Praise be. The tea. According to Jane Janet, my daughter-in-law. Milking the cow moo.

“Like Christmas.” Like hell. Like kids. High on what worse than candy. Or crack. Definitely drugged, the luck o' the elite, born their era, but on the decline of damnation. No parents to chide, both Mildred and Jane, theirs recent in the grave, fit to a cough. Save me, will they. What was I still doing here still? Fidgeting.

“Black always,” her husband Dick my boy walked by, scantily and I looked away but good genes like his dad, him also a WFHer and addict to any beverage, protein shake in his hand and the other scratching gripping ordering, unlike his pa preferring one out of the swamp still, and boxers. Dick bouncing on the way to the packaged gym in the garage. On the clock also. Bounce, bounce. Being paid, being paid. To-a-1-2-3-sets'-w-o-r-k-o-u-t. One, two three

“If ya need me to warm ya up out there?” Dick spoken like a blue-dream wish of so many today, forgotten of my presence already, the light low upon my daily morning meditation in the corner by the window, dawn's holy light. Him aglow. While harping on the ESSENTIAL workers' misbehavior, a delivery gone bad all week, another missing that day or two before. Their own form of out-law capitalism ready for a college-loan's socialistic payout. Who would, smarty, go to college, if this be the best, theirs, to become? Farmer Dan, my first man dead.

Yesterday, he'd (Dick) argued via group chat and text with my favorite, Tom his busy brother without a degree, fuming about the maskless in their demanding not knowing of Shakespeare calculus or copy-paste, out-of-office redo reflux. “We are a capitalist country,” the bros'd brushed against one another at the gym years back before parting ways on politics and who to govern me, and farther further apart the fathers of their house, them the exemplary divide of class and country, family touch?

“Hello, little ones.”

Children lurking, dog and cat and fish in awe, feeding time. Also on the dime, whose dollar on the certain side a tracks, woe be the unfed crossing of a highway's yellowed line. Off the gold standard. Yellow means yield, don't it? That always will, I hope.

Home school and work home. I could make but little other sense of their fancy maths their Englishes their vocabularies, humored times and mismatched schedules. “You don't understand computers, Granny. It all boils down to that.” A spade a spade, a shovel a shovel.

Uhuh, right. I glared out the huffed glass, my breath hot upon its cold. The trees barren, and me this old sap dried up too. I laughed at how my boys could be two and four again. They never changed from that age on. What could I have thought about living so long myself? Precious, precocious peacock, me.

“He's up early,” Janet Jane to my Tom boy's Mildred Milly who shouted now through broke-free caffeine to me. All boundaries unbordered. I shook my head in the dark once more. Trying to evaporate like the last of milk at breaking of fast, or to hide like a stubborn insane virus created and let aloose. Conspiracy a history, don't get me started.

“He's always up,” a sip, “early and late and my God, the ticker, the...of a teenager. The only thing getting me through being nailed, I mean piled up on top of one another here, the only thing.” Tsk tsk, naught nought. The reply. Laughter giggles guffaws healing chorlish. Girls. I was human too. A girl once, too. Once upon an analog notion of nature, this nation of former time nurturing me. All planted out.

Over here in the wedge of room, to me they won't say timeout, but I know what they say behind my...I should not be so harsh with these younger generations to multiply a different way. Or the next two still sleeping, their smarted video faking their presence to teacher, for I never worked, some say. Most say, a mother's duty never done. Type faster than either one of them gals, or their kids. The men, they have big hands like their father, terrible at keyboarding, good at other stuff-- Despite the games in every hand, grown-ups too. No college degree me, you see. Home school home school, vocation and adolescence, home fries with catchup the cureall. Married at 12. Three kids by 15. Five pregnancies. But don't call this work? My life my office my womb my birthright. Unite, I saw, and essential. Conquered. Flowering....

I remember the first time I heard of May Day, streamers trees, no that last bit of Arbor Day*, another season, May Day may pole may I dance dance a day off once. Bank holiday, I heard Jane's brother Bob, my bobby she says, in between calls with London, Europe, Delhi I thought it was New, Dubar? Dubay? Dun-for. I may have outlived a war myself.

“Did you want more coffee, Mrs. Smith?” I saw steam rising from her clayed pot she warmed like a genie. I pretended to fuddle with the TV remote. “Oh let me do that for you?” Don't you have to work, reading my mind. “I'm on a call.” How. “Everyone's late. We have meetings about meetings....” How. “They show up like excuses, like a kid a kid, delivery workmen.” Like men do work with masks. “It'll be my time soon enough. I never realized home-brewed coffee in your Pjs for work-day could be so...gainful.” Like does any one, like like like. Another word and way I grew too told to underst---

“Oh hey Sue, like I'll dialing right back in. Call dropped, line busy, internet congested,” a wheeze a cough, “you know how like, slow, things can like be hahah.” She flummoxed phlegm for added effect. I know, I'm a mom-by-law perspective of my younger competition. How did anyone get anything done back like before smartphones and dumb computing devices for work and play haha-ha.

Where are the children

“Mildred, you won't believe, as I was just telling Mama Sm---, Mrs. Smith

“Anne, how many times

Hand over phone. “Mrs. Smith, it just don't seem right. I was raised,” Mama said reared, “I have some manners for your son and grands.” At that, the other troublesome duo erupted first of the morning. Their tummies found oxygen caffeinated, deciding right then to fire themselves both up. Respect by different definitions of ears, eras. I ought speak of myself in third person to calm.

“Let me help you kiddos,” she said to the rousing ones, not meaning. I returned to myself, first- and third-

“Let Granny,” we both said, meaning. “Let Gran,” I concluded with motherly force.

“Jane, I have to go in a minute, the children,” the speakerphone switched on once more, “our call's about to get to something. We have that new intern who knows all the latest tricks with spreadsheets, god how those kids do with all things tech, the pittance they paid, vegan and no caffeine, but all for me, I say. What's that?”

I could hear her through the line, through the walls of house and streets of city, nothing but bonus time on their minds this quarter. I was in the kiddies' kitchen now. Almond milk splattering. Bowls crashing, everything plastic and stamped made in China, thanks be to cataract surgery and lens implant, doubled. Ladders against counters, footsteps atop. Walking in crumbs of wheat, rye, and raisin. Who knew what a bagel was back in my day outside of the Hasell Street synagogue? And we didn't go to town but for clothes shopping what once, maybe twice a year if the fields rightly rained upon for Papa!

“Not the way we did the chores when Granny sent your dad and Pops to--”

“Oh Gran-Grannny, but we don't have school today.”

“We don't,” the other swearing and arms crossed, asking about Christmas???

“Online school is school.” Under her breath, under mine, their mother eyeing me, supervising me, ready for a fist-fight with words. Where was my paycheck pension pencil set 30-year globe and watch? For staying at home. To work. With children, chores, and church. Charity's charm.

“Mildred!”

“Jane!”

“The kids do so well. The commute was killing them and me.” Another sip. Of wine at nine? I don't care if watered-down what. Garage door slam, harder and faster and longer than gone in with spit. “My man with muscle!” A peck. “No Mildred, not you, I'm not on the second call yet, silly,

I don't know when work or the world changed. When common ground became middle ground sinking and measured in a different way, unconfusing most. All A's, every bonus paid out at 150%, all stocks rated a buy (Tom and Dick in agreement on that one), everyone deserving of a tip for half-rendered service or none, for the idea that, like, what. Theft considered a purchased. Or expectations gasp! ceased to be well, grounded up in a reality widely experienced among a well-fed fleeting mirage, middle class happy and aware of who their leaders were, and why. With reason. Other than jerry-rigged along with performance, bailout payouts promised by law and based on what exactly, arbitrary how did The Independent state it, inflated beyond repair yes. (Recognition, I add.) But not of inflation by Webster's way, but of May 1^st convocations and Epiphany conflagrations on Capitol grounds, yes collations as a meal at altar, another institution gone by the way, genuflecting and preening in self-admiration, and yeah I got too much into the New Year locked cabinet myself too early in the day and unpaid by the hour to be silent like the rest. An uneducated woman too much trouble, me. One drinky poo leads to another, like an email or excuse for working remote, or a meeting about a meeting about a meeting. Not the way we once did it all, got more done with rested digits uniting. Hands holding hands in person, even if but for show to, to shout in one another's faces, the spit-saliva-shine-some-clean, remembrance of homegrown vegetables coloring complexions a different shade than tomorrow's red, white, and tarnished blue. Or green, indebted. Some colors never fade with wash. Excuse me, my face needs a cool rag before I find something in need of nurturing, a refresh they call it on their screens. Maybe I water their ferns once more; you see, each has one beside their quiet mouse, a thing of usefulness at times.

*You over there across the Pond, y'all have yours in the fall, autumn: November? Right here, sooner to come, April, nearer to Shakespeare's birth, Saint George's day, the rest. Arduous me, verified all, I think.

May 22, 2024

About the writer

R. P. Singletary is a native of the southeastern United States, with recent fiction, poetry, and drama published or upcoming in Literally Stories, Litro, BULL, Cream Scene Carnival, Cowboy Jamboree, EBB, Teleport, CafeLit, JONAH, Ancient Paths Christian Literary, Flora Fiction, Ariel Chart, Syncopation, Last Leaves, Stone of Madness, Written Tales, Fresh Words, The Chamber, Wingless Dreamer, Wicked Gay Ways, Screen Door Review, Microfiction Monday, mini plays, Pink Disco, Lost Lake Folk Opera, The Stray Branch, Bending Genres and elsewhere. https://newplayexchange.org/users/78683/r-p-singletary