Scrub Daddy Quotes

I step behind her at the sink, reach my arms over hers and pump some foamy soap into my palm before I start scrubbing her hands with mine.

And what’s the purpose of all this?”—“Ah Daddy, maybe just to see you again and we can talk about purposes anywhere: you wanta go on a lecture tour to Utah university and Brown university and tell the well scrubbed kids?”—“Scrubbed with what?”—“Scrubbed with hopeless perfection of pioneer puritan hope that leaves nothing but dead pigeons to look at?

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

I wake the next morning to a gentle tap, tap, tap on the side of my nose. I blink my eyes open and startle when I see a face looking into mine. Hayley grins at me. “You sweepy?” she says quietly. I was until she tapped against my face like a hungry bird. I scrub the sleep from my eyes and look over at Logan. He’s lying beside me with one arm flung over his head, his mouth hanging open. I snuggle deeper into my pillow. “Where’s your daddy?” I ask. “Sweeping,” she says. She’s dragging a bunny by the ears. “I’m hungwy,” she says. I cover a yawn with my open palm. I probably have awful morning breath. “Can you go and wake your daddy?” She shakes her head. “He said to go back to sweep.” I look toward the window. The sun is just barely over the horizon. “I want a pancake,” she says. A pancake? “How about some cereal?” I ask as I throw the covers off myself and get up. I take a pair of Logan’s boxers from his drawer and put them on. “Dos are Logan’s,” she says, scowling at me. “Do you think he’ll mind if I borrow them?” I whisper at her. She shakes her head and smiles, taking my hand in her free one so she can lead me from the room. “You don’t got to whisper. Logan can’t hear,” she says. I laugh. She’s right. And what’s funny is that it took a three-year-old to remind me. I hold a finger to my lips, though, as we step out into the hallway. “But your daddy can. Shh.” She giggles and repeats my shush.

Hey, baby girl. Daddy needs your chocolate ass to get better. Me and you got some unfinished business, young lady. Plus, daddy needs some more of those scrubs. They are working for my hair and my face, Nae. I never told anybody this before, but I need you, baby.” Wait a minute… I think I know that voice, or do I? Damn it, my brain is starting to hurt. “She smilin’ a lil’ bit, bro. Keep talkin’.” “Baby, you need to get better so we can figure out what hoe ass nigga did this to you. I promise they are gon’ die. You mine, shorty. I don’t care about that wack ass nigga you got. You can believe that shit, T-Rose.” Is this the guy from California my dad was talking about? He knows me. He sounds good as hell and he likes my scrubs. I hope he looks as good as he sounds. T-Rose? Someone called me that before. Damn it! No one can hear me. Why can’t nobody hear me? “We have to go now, Trenae. Get better.” Finally,

I scrub, wipe like I could wipe the love of Manny, the hate of Manny, Manny, away. And then I get up because it is the only thing I can do. I step out of the ditch and brush the ants off because it is the only thing I can do. I follow Randall around the house because it is the only thing I can do; if this is strength, if this is weakness, this is what I do. I hiccup, but tears still run down my face. After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying. Crying ain’t going to change anything. We never stopped crying. We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked out of my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run.

Living’s hard,” Doris said. “I got three kids with different daddies. I’m fat, can’t stop smoking, and I’ve worked in this cave since God was in diapers. My momma scrubbed toilets most her life, worked sunup to sundown until she got the cancer. When I tried to sell the TV and get her some chemo, she said, ‘Don’t you dare, Doris. Don’t you dare drag this thing out.