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 Pushing past me she tore through my kitchen like a prison riot, banging drawers, slamming cupboards, silverware clattering skittering across the floor, plates and glasses breaking, shattering, crashing as she ripped her way like a maddened baboon through the whole agonizing feeding process. Finally she emerged with a plate overflowing with cold pizza, chocolate cookies, cheese, olives and the usual sticky goo of sugary doce de leite topping off her Daily Mess. She plopped down on the sofa like a stuffed bag of garbage and began tearing through the food.
Crumbs were flying as she talked a nonstop stream of incoherent shit, olive pits scattering to the four winds of hell. Even the roaches on the wall seemed to back off to give her plenty of space.
   “You’re gonna fucking die if ya eat all that shit, baby,” I pleaded.
    “You gonna die you don’ shut the fock up Cigano! Go down the boteco an’ get to me the Coca Cola. Go!”
By now I knew better than to argue when she was recovering from a mission. I moved towards the door.
. “Get to me the packet cigarette too… The good one, you cheap gypsy e’sheet,” she shouted behind me, blowing huge scraps across the room like a witch’s curse, even as she shoveled more gobs of food into her demented little face. I had my hand on the doorknob.
   “An’ da morthes,” she said.
   “What?”
      Was it Portuguese or some weird new favela hooker slang I’d never heard before? You always had to wonder with Narcisa. I looked at her, a standing question mark. Swallowing a mouthful of food with petulant determination, she looked at me like I was an imbecile.
    “The matches, you e’stupid e’sheet, matches! You have go deaf, retard like e’stupid old man, Cigano…”
   As she rolled her eyes like lemons in a broken slot machine, I beat it out the door.
   When I got back she was passed out again. Face up on the sofa, snoring. Her mouth open like a gaping grave, big dirty feet pointing toward the ceiling like a pair of crooked tombstones. I stood over her, holding the sweaty coke bottle like a wilted bouquet, a jilted love-struck farm boy standing there. A survivor in a tornado’s wake, surveying all the damage… Pizza crust and candy wrappers, ashes, cigarette butts littering the floor, the sofa. At least the plate was still intact. A small miracle in itself, I thought gratefully… And she was still alive too.
   There was still hope. I cracked open that blue book called Alcoholics Anonymous and read for many hours, spellbound… The book seemed to be all about Narcisa. And me. Finally I fell asleep…

   Twenty-four hours later she came to. While I was still sleeping, of course. Groggy at first, soon the orders flew at me like squawking birds of prey across the room as I tried to sleep on, covering my head with the pillow. It was no use. Like a foot soldier booted out of his bunk with angry shouts and orders, I was up on my feet running before I was even awake… Back and forth to the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets like an overworked short-order cook in the Devil’s Diner… The feeding frenzy was on again. She finished the last of my food sitting on the toilet, crapping.
    “Today’s the day, Princesa!” I said beaming despite my exhaustion. I opened the shuttered windows to a beautiful sunrise, suddenly grinning at the idea of our long-awaited trip to the Country. The Beginning of
a New Life for us.
   “Shut the fock up, go, e’stupid e’sheet! Close it these focking door an’ get the fock out from here, Cigano, go!” She snapped. “I trying for def’cate. Go!”
    I slunk away like a wounded mutt, started clearing the table and sofa of her latest wreckage. I went into the ravaged kitchen and got busy with that battlefield. Death and devastation everywhere. Many casualties.
   Soon the infernal maddening idiot chatter of the TV filled my ears. I looked back into the darkened room. She’d pulled the shudders tight again and was sitting there like a dummy, hypnotized before the giant glowing eyeball. Zoned out, totally absorbed in a moronic hellscape vision of inane children’s programming. Animated
teddy bears with screeching rat-like voices squeaking lunatic phrases, people dressed as clowns, farmers, witches and goons, all running around squeaking like deranged rodents and butchered pigs. Sweet
bleeding Jesus!
  I watched on in horror as a giant cockroach pranced into the center stage. All the other repulsive creatures made a circle around the wretched thing and began singing, squealing in infuriating high-pitched shrieks. I felt a red cauldron of hate well up in my chest. She just sat there riveted before the screen, sitting in the darkness picking her nose, wiping a cocaine-encrusted booger on the arm of my sofa. Bitch.
    “Baby… We should probably be leaving soon,” I reminded her.
     She responded by throwing the nearest object at me.  An overflowing ashtray, scattering butts and ashes all across the floor I’d just finsihed sweeping clean.
    “Shut the fock up, Cigano, go! Moo-oove, e’stupid! I watching these–”
    That was it. She didn’t finish her sentence before I shot across the room like a disturbed alligator and grabbed her by the throat. I hauled her up off the sofa and pinned her to the wall. Shocked, hateful eyes of outrage popped out of her pimply face as I banged her head against the wall, screaming, spitting in her mug.
   “You have gone too far, bitch!”
   It was on. She fought back and we struggled, knocking plates and furniture asunder. I pinned her to the floor, putting both knees on her arms, gripping her throat firmly in my hands. Finally she relaxed, gave up. She knew she was no match for me. Not when I was pissed like that, anyway.
  But I got over it soon enough. Like I always got over it… Suddenly I felt bad sitting there on top of her. I told her I’d let her up if she promised to stop breaking shit and screaming her lungs out at me.
  She nodded. I let her up… For once, she even kept her word. Maybe she had a headache. But she still wasn’t done.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009