SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

DAISY CHAIN

I make it through the first two weeks at the Miranda's place without a catastrophic disruption. I sleep in the guest room. The wife washes the sheets once every three days. Of course it's my bacteria which has such an immediate need for decontamination. Over lunch at a nearby deli, I was informed by the them that Vanessa is a lawyer. Lin is a writer n' actor n' singer. Sebastien eats. Sleeps. Drools. Plays his glockenspiel. 

Domestic hospitality is different than Hope House. For one, these people give me my space. There are no spit-faced children ripping me apart limb-by-limb. I eat more, here. At Hope house we got three meals a day and multiple cases of Salmonella per year. I will forever wonder what was in that mystery meat. Lint? Mouse droppings? Human feces? My gag reflex has gotten a well deserved break. 

The elbow room? Fantastic! The food? Not so bad. Actually eating meals? Aargh, there's the problem. Breakfast is quick and painless. Lin eats on the go and Vanessa feeds Sebastian in the kitchen. Lunch? No problemo. Lin is usually at his theatre and Vanessa has work. It is just me and Sebastian, who makes himself a sugar sandwich and eats banana Gerber with his fingers. That leaves dinner, the scourge of my exhilarating days. Lin, Vanessa, and Sebastian say grace and chat and enjoy each other's company. I count swallows until I excuse myself and retreat to the guest room. My record is ten mouthfuls, on a night when Lin wouldn't shut his trap about Micronesian weddings. I work to minimize the amount of tête-à-tête. Close proximity is a big fat no-no.

Vanessa works nine to five on weekdays. Lin works different times on different days. Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays: Lin in the morning, Lin at night. Thursdays and Saturdays: Linless. Sundays and Wednesdays: Lin all day. Sebastian used to go to daycare, but I've become his babysitter. Unpaid. Take this, throw in meetings and extracurriculars, and that, folks, is our schedule. Ugh. I know. The rich person's timetable is so unpredictable.

I am hiding out in the guest room. I've taken to sitting on the furnace beneath the window. I like to imagine the glass breaking, the feeling of gravity taking me where it will. My view is the brick exterior of the next building over. The mehndi on my arms is faded. Ghosts of birds fly over ghosts of daisies. I grab my mehndi cone from the desk and lay my arm flat on the swirly wooden surface. I trace each daisy, loopty-loop centers and thin hills of petals. Birds are easy. Wing, wing, feather, feather. You don't need Picasso in your veins to draw birds. It is miraculous how art creates itself. I think of balloons, or anything flying, I guess, and there they are: pasted thick on my arms, fluffy wings and pointy beaks high in the sky.

There's a knock on my door. I turn and see Lin standing in the doorway with one hand on the doorknob and the other pulling at the collar of his shirt. "Dinners' in five."

He wobbles on the threshold and waits for me to respond. When the silence between us veers past polite, he shuffles a few steps into the room. "So this is your lair." He giggles like he's out of breath. I give him a look like, get on with it.  He regains composure and widens his eyes when he sees my arm slung on the desk. He comes next to me and leans over to get a closer look. His hands are in his pockets. "Neat," he says. "Elaborate on this, I'm interested."

"It's drawings." Is this sufficient elaboration? "On my arm."

"No, I see that."

One hand leaves his pocket. He grabs my arm and outlines the fresh paste. He puts his other hand on my shoulder, and everything blurs together: the walls, the smell of dinner cooking, the freshly drawn paste. He leans closer and runs his finger up my arm to trace lines of faded mehndi. No. No this does not feel right. My heart beats faster to catch up with my breathing. A scream climbs up in my throat.

"No. No!"

I swivel around in the chair and my foot slams into his calve. I shoot up and push him away with both hands. He's saying something I can't hear over the alarms going off in my head. That must be why I'm yelling. "Get lost. Get the hell lost!" 

He puts his hands up in surrender and says, "Okay, Okay, Okay!" I have stopped pushing him but he backs up into the wall. He looks real spooked, and that plucks something in me, a chord of guilt I didn't know I had. 

I watch him try and calm me down. "Take it easy. I'll leave you alone. Just take it easy, it's okay."

No, it is not okay. I can't look him in the face. He gets the hint and shuts the door softly behind him. I waver for a moment before sitting in the desk chair and cradling my freshly mehndi-ed arm in the other. The paste is smudged. Looks like a heart monitor.

Mehdni generally fades in one or two weeks, depending on where it's drawn. Effed-up mehdni seems to fade much slower. I didn't anticipate this onslaught when I started to draw the paste. It'll take weeks to heal.