October Overview (Maggie Centworth's Diary)
Momma smokes because cigarettes “keep souls from slumpin apart like pumpkin rot." She said that three weeks ago, while little Jack somersaulted into a gooey leaf pile and Danny sat on the porch rail with a steak knife, jabbing at the mouth of his jack-o-lantern. It was supposed to look like Butch from the 3rd grade, Danny said, but its’ small eye sockets and tiny oval mouth gave it the look of an awkward bowling ball.
Daddy backhands my cheek and pushes me down the stairs if he sees a Lucky Strike leaning out of my lips. Two weeks ago he found me smoking behind the garage, and he gripped my elbow and wrenched me to the top of the stairs, squeezing so tight I bruised. “You’re seventeen, Maggie!” And he raised his knee and kicked my tummy, and downwards I tumbled, a klutz of an acrobat, somersaulting—almost like little Jack somersaulted into the leaves, but I fell longer, and harder, and more uncontrolled.
Aunt Helen only smokes in the dark, rocking back and forth on her patio chair; I’ll always admire how she twirls the cigarette between her fingers, a fiery bulb in the midnight, and when she brings it to her mouth the bulb snakes through the blackness, she exhales and out flees hot smoke from her nostrils, like a dragon. “Why do you smoke, Aunty?” “Because they can’t all love me, dearie.” She suckled on the cigarette, then exhaled, a dragon lady. That was one week ago.
Yesterday, Father Pablo sat me in an empty pew and screamed to Christ that the angels of glory might descend upon me and go chip-chop on the devils in my soul, my druggy habits and ‘youthful follies’. His face brightened like a flamingo when he prayed, veins surging up and down his neck (yes, I opened my eyes during the prayer). He says cigarettes kill. Every time I light up, I might as well “set fire to my brain.” I never thought of smoking as suicidal, really; but I never thought of myself as a smoker, either.
I’m writing this on the porch. Little Jack’s gooey leaf pile looks like a scab in the grass. The face of Danny’s Jack-O-Lantern is so rotted it’s melted. My elbow still looks like an oil spill from where daddy gripped me, and my stomach aches. They can’t all love me.
Why do I smoke?
(Later)
I just took two cigs at a time and again I wonder, why do I smoke? Momma smokes to inhale sanity. Aunt Helen, peace. Daddy and Father Pablo slap me with reasons not to smoke. But, I think I smoke because cigarettes love me.
God doesn’t love me. Ain’t God the world-watcher? Doesn’t God dictate where, and how much dandruff will collect on an orphans head? Doesn’t God micromanage the rays of the sun and the gusts of air? So God also gave me cigarettes, because he needs a reason to smite me. God wants to damn me. Without this God-given noose I could make heaven by smiling, but God won’t have that.
Cigarettes love me. They burn my throat and I know they’re slowly eroding my face, but deep inside, under my breasts, they give me beauty. Warmth. And isn’t internal beauty the true gem? “If it’s not inside, it’s vanity,” I once read. Cigarettes are kind because they make me feel beautiful, which means they love me.
I once watched Momma try to quit cigarettes, try to divorce her decades-aged lover. But the cigarettes wouldn’t forsake her, they kept finding her and dragging her home.
Cigarettes are faithful lovers. They love me.
And so I smoke. Let me smoke.
