Tales From A Broad by Fran Lebowitz

the toilet,’ legs and arms pointing at the ceiling. Maybe she should have gotten me a special seat. Maybe she wasn’t such a swell mom.
    I knew that blind people had great ears and I’d have heard her galloping toward me even if she were across the road at Aunt Lois’s, which she wasn’t. And how did I know? Because I could smell her. I called out louder, more plaintively. Nothing. Blind and motherless, I turned to God, promising I would fess up to the hole in the wall I blamed on the housekeeper, I’d stop talking during Hebrew school (he’d like that one), I wouldn’t throw my apple away at lunch, please, just let me see again.
    Along with the supersonic hearing and genius nose, blind people are also more spiritual. Before – when I was whole – I only told God what I wanted and he silently took notes. Now, all of a sudden, he was handing out tests. Letting me know I was special. I thanked him and politely told him I would prefer to be especially pretty instead.
    I needed help. It wasn’t coming to me so I felt my way around the room, sliding my palms along the walls, bumping into furniture, loudly, slowly, painfully, making my way to the kitchen … seven paces from the bed to the door … nine paces from the door to the corner of the hallway … six steps down to the foyer. When the linoleum ended, I was there. I’d made it. And without a dog!
    Mom had closed the kitchen door so she and Dad wouldn’t wake us up. I bumped into it and heard Mom telling Dad that she was sorry she broke the egg yolk and would fry him up a new egg. Dad was still pissed off that the one he had been counting on, had already buttered his toast for, had tucked the paper napkin into his dress-shirt collar in anticipation of, was, in fact, not fit for human consumption.
    â€˜Just look at it, Eunice,’ I heard him say. I imagined the microscopic droplet of yellow that was pale and chalky instead of incredibly, unexpurgatedly sunny. He scraped his chair back (a bloody cacophonous sound for me now that my other senses were making up for the one that died so young). ‘Forget it. I’m not hungry,’ he said through a mouthful of toast.
    Dad read egg yolks like the I Ching . ‘Puncture in upper quadrant: bad day for signing contracts … Heavy layer of albumen: best not to schedule important meetings …’ It wasn’t just eggs, sometimes it was the fat on a lamb chop, plain as day, forecasting this or that, or the temperature of the bread or the meaning lurking within a lemon slice, as opposed to the preferred wedge, with his Chivas.
    He thundered out and encountered me.
    â€˜Hello baby doll,’ he said as he kissed me on my forehead.
    â€˜Father? Father? Is that you?’ I asked, placing my hands on his face to ‘see’ his expression.
    â€˜What the hell are you doing?’ he asked.
    Mom’s slippered feet, her morning scent . ‘Harvey, don’t use that language. Frannie, what are you doing?’
    â€˜I can’t open my eyes, Mommy.’ I started to cry and then, a second later, I could open them and see through some spiderwebs. I felt the urge to rub and soon enough I had balls of gunk all over my cheeks and hands but my sight was restored. Either I was no longer special or I was forgiven.
    Oh, to be six years old again. It’s not that I remember loving being six, but I’m sure I didn’t have hangovers. So far, I’ve only discussed the upper tenth of my body. But, down to my digits, the cellular me was protesting. My throat was parched, my stomach was angry and my feet throbbed out a warning of what they’d do if I ever wore those shoes again.
    I’m sure we came home because that’s Frank’s shoulder I’m drooling on and these feel like my sheets. I’m sure we paid Pearl because she’d still be here ratcheting up the total if we hadn’t. Frank enfolds me in his arms and pulls