A Triple Shift at the Waffle House
Connor Watkins-Xu's poignant collection explores the raw realities of working-class Alabama.
For Stephanie
You wanted to run from life since you were a girl,
leaving your drunken, loveless mother for Miami
then finding your way back to Alabama,
marrying young, having the kid you never got to be.
You gave up Stephanie for your middle name, Meagan,
then Mom. You seemed happy, the early years I can remember.
Splashes at VisionLand in the summer, nights fading into mornings
watching you play video games before I could. You say
I was always telling you where to go, what to do next.
We shined the most in the sunflower picture, both of us
in pale yellow, you flashing your teeth unprompted in that field
of rising gold faces. Now you never show them, hiding
a chipped tooth. You look like a twin sister to yourself, a kind of dream
mother, the energy of two. You still want your hair that shade of brown
again, like mine, but can never find the right dye. The family curse
came in seventh grade (maybe you were the same age)
and the right man to ruin you again. Your boyfriend and I threw
a Frisbee with a hollow center in the yard, played Madden ’09 inside.
He shared your love for thrifting and staying crispy tan, riding around
Tuscaloosa with no plans. Then, as suddenly as I had seen his naked,
tattooed body trailing between rooms, Bruce Lee staring from his calf,
the house was empty. You told me, eventually. The marks he’d left.
I was even quieter after that, woke at 6 AM to read or build
with Legos upstairs. Other days, I skated around town, miles
of dust dirtying my wheels as I found the stability in leaving. Desperate
texts each day, I wanted to die, never able to be enough for the older girls
who couldn’t carry my weight and all of yours. I couldn’t stop you
from losing yourself like gold pack Marlboro ash floating down cold.
~~~
Depression made you numb, made your work suffer.
The orthodontist let you go after a while. That’s when we left
the house for an apartment. Soon you needed a roommate
to keep it. Then another blow, when I left for school at sixteen.
You’d start fights like fires, those three hours of distance
you couldn’t take. Then a full day in the car for college in Texas.
When I was back in the summers, we had to sleep side-by-side
in the canopy bed you’d wanted since childhood and finally bought.
I’d sneak in through the dark, always up late. Didn’t care
when you’d walk past while I made out with the girl I loved
on our cramped loveseat. You and I were lost somewhere
in that two-bedroom, looking under furniture for joy.
You worked wherever you could, unemployed, then not.
Late nights at the gas station, triple shifts at Waffle House
to afford enough sleep to repeat the cycle. Our first trip
to Texas for orientation, you decided to drive through the night,
to get away from Granny’s, our life trapped in the front room
of her trailer after the apartment was too expensive to keep.
On Thanksgiving, we watched a marathon of Snapped,
didn’t leave the room when we heard our names in other’s mouths.
We only unlocked the door once everything was foil-wrapped, Granny
passed out in her worn-in recliner to the echo of gameshow. You swear
you don’t know how, but you passed on that desire to run
away from death, craft a new life each place I went. And though
I’ve wanted to escape you, though all my therapists say
it’s not my job to be your husband or father, we share
these toxic knotted veins. The farther I leave, the heavier I feel
your life yoked to my neck, making it ache. I carry the nights
we yelled and cried into the morning. When I said I can’t be
your reason to live. When you said that I don’t love you anymore.
~~~
Still I stay up late, knowing one day you won’t be lying to me when
you say you’re going to do it. Your new roommate who calls you his wife,
might push you to the gun, the blade, that tainted white Mercedes at the bottom
of the Tennessee River. Maybe it will be me who dies. Though I know
I must continue, you’ve said it many times: you couldn’t go on
after that. What else is there but the version of me you can’t get back?
Like that boy running around the park in memory, I want to create
a life where you don’t need to chase me, where I’m unnecessary,
where you understand why we can’t live in the same city, why I’m
anxious for your grandkids. I want to peel off the wax of worry,
see my skin underneath. But I don’t know if I you can find joy
anymore. Worse than the thoughts of you leaving this world
are the ones where I imagine myself at ease, no longer wondering
where you might go, which part of you depression or rent will take next.
I see you weightless with wings, maybe like those wading birds I name
for you as we walk miles along the coast. Further down, we can see
the pier, all the hotels and casinos rising high, empty of travelers
and retirees, those beautiful Spanish roofs, a festival of lights applauding
as the sun steps behind the curtain of night. I pray there’s a day before
the end where you can walk the beach without me, the ocean almost silent.
And still I wonder if I can live a life not haunted by you. Perhaps I’ve been
trying all these years, to say goodbye, not quite louder than the waves.
First All-Nighter
The thick plastic TV set illuminates me and Mom sitting
on the trailer’s sea green carpet. Neighboring homes
rise up to dwarf ours, so easily rolled away. My sandbox
stands in the corner of the yard by my dad’s pride:
the wooden fence hiding us from the forest’s eyes.
I’d sit out there alone for hours, crafting towers
in the sand. Maturity was water pouring from my mind
at five years old, holding together the grains.
She plays Pokémon while I watch. Take the controls, Mom,
I say. We sit in the forgotten hours, waiting for Dad to return
from the night shift at a factory making Mercedes-Benz doors.
All the highway’s grace barely carries his exhausted body
back home in the white Accord. Dad sleeps slumped and heavy
with tin foil on the windows to block all flickers
of sunshine; Mom still prefers lamps and sunglasses in the winter.
I don’t know that ink will come to separate night and day,
that they will agree on what can’t be fixed. I’ve got it from here,
I say. After we’ve had enough of what the 64 can offer, Mom
and I lie on the couch. I remember this image from above.
Through the blinds, I see the young sun rise over the fence.
I fall asleep before Dad returns. When I wake, placed in my bed,
I tiptoe through each room and find each object resting in preparation.
Seasoning
After the split, I’d visit on weekends,
sprawl across the arms of his office chair and drink
apple juice, eat leftover Howie’s pizza cold.
I spent hours online after AOL discs had faded,
taking care of digital pets, talking to strangers
in chat rooms, watching sports highlights
come around again on ESPN. I’d often wander
through the house while my dad was sleeping,
night-shift tired, always looking as if he’d been
awake all his life until some moment where he knew
I’d be there for dinner. Even now, meals mark
his days. He’s always telling me what we’ll eat
when I finally make it down to Mobile for Christmas
or the first of summer. When I do, he buys custom cuts
of steak at the grocery store or mixes three types
of ground beef. We eat for days, until the plates are bare,
the blend of spices blooming beneath our knives.
I remember being around 10 when I had my first
crawfish. He boiled them in a huge pot in the yard,
and while everyone drank beer, I dipped my fingers
into the container of Cajun seasoning. Last summer,
we found the largest boiling pot in the store. I might
as well get the one I want, he said. Later, we bought
forty-pounds of live crawfish, watched them fall
into water brown with zest. His beard was grey in places,
covering that face of meetings and partings. That day, even after
the scent had faded from our private festival, we sat savoring
the golden meat, throwing the husks into a bucket between us.
About the author
Connor Watkins-Xu holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming inPloughshares, North American Review,Gargoyle, Hawai'i Pacific Review,storySouth, and elsewhere. Originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he lives with his wife in Seattle.