Deodorant Ballerina
Searches
The kid is blind.
That’s visible to Edwin Jarrish. The kid’s face looks different, his closed eyes sunken in somehow. It’s the kind of thing that Edwin’s mother would say “don’t stare,” while she was staring or at least noticed it first.
Connie Jarrish took all the computers out of the house.
Edwin wants to take his mom’s makeup and hide it or smash it or burn it.
But he can’t right now, because he’s sitting in a barber shop watching a blind kid on tv carve a bar of soap.
The kid makes mermaids and elephants and ballerinas.
Edwin doesn’t know what a ballerina is but it’s a girl with pointy legs and boobs made out of soap.
He’s not gonna ask the barber what a ballerina is.
Obviously the blind kid his age on tv knows.
Connie Jarrish has a new religion, and her new religion won’t let computers in the house.
Edwin is pretty sure his mom found the new religion on a computer.
Her religion was yoga for a while, then having a girlfriend named Rebecca who smelled like vanilla Bundt cake. Rebecca was utterly crumbless, full sick hot fire at Mario Kart.
When Rebecca bounced hard Edwin waited for his mom’s new thing. Looked like it might be wine for a minute, but then it was God, but like a Temu God by some pastor whose church was the picnic area behind Performance Soccer Academy all the way in Florian Heights.
Edwin missed his laptop, but he was pretty proud that with the proper placement of his backpack he could get away with skeeting to digital swimsuit catalogs, the closest thing he could get to full skin at the Van Beegen Library.
He was going to go there after he got his haircut.
He was thinking about Googling ballerina, or maybe skipping the library and trying to get a burner phone at the Glass Palace vape shop by the bus station, because Connie had confiscated his phone for God too.
The barber spun Edwin around to the mirror and asked him what he thought of the haircut.
Edwin was looking in the mirror, but not at himself, back up at the TV.
He was thirteen years old.
His mom was always obsessed with something.
And right now, this minute, with all the questions Edwin had about his own life, he really wanted to know who the first person was that gave the blind kid a knife and a bar of soap.
***
And, as always, if you like this or anything I’ve written, the Struggling Substack Writer Fund is James-Graham-80.
Sincere gratitude to those of you who have added to the piggy bank in the last few days. You know who you are. Thank you.
Interesting vignette.
How did the blind boy learn to soap carve?
Someone must have taken the time to demonstrate and explain what a ballerina is.
Without exception, everyone has a God.
The question is: Does your God build you up or tear you down?
I have to admit: I don't always like your stories, but they generally always have a powerful tug in some direction showing life as I may not know or understand.
You have an uncanny ability to give voice to a piece others will pass by without thought, and I appreciate you for it.
This one is giving Demon Copperhead vibes and I love it. I’d read an entire novel with Edwin as the protagonist.