They came over on a ship loaded with coal; slipped into Baltimore matte black. It was August so they stripped down to naked and jumped into the bay, a pair of soda bottles, potato chip bags. They tied their clothes together and swam away from the cranes, pulleys and cargo freights. They spent the night at Korean War Memorial park. There were signs at the water’s edge that showed pictures of fish and crabs. Marietta and her husband thought the pictures were showing the bounty of the water until they deciphered the word poison.
He had lost his teeth in White Swan and needed something to fill out his lips. Marbles do this nicely. They pack firmly into his gums and make a vibrating ping when he speaks. His wife, Marietta, hates the sound.
“Why can’t you find a pair of dentures next to someone’s bed,” she says.
“By the time I get there, there are no beds, no bedside tables, and no teeth.”
He knew people that did evictions. After a job, upright pianos lay split down their sides the strings exposed like whale baleen, cast iron pans seasoned with old bacon fat collect water next to VCRs and turtle tanks, all pilfered in an unceremonious neighborhood scramble.
Marbles roll across empty floors in these homes. At onetime someone had been a kid and had stuffed marbles down holes in the floor, behind the fridge or into the cat’s ass.
He refinished furniture and sold it to antique stores in trendy neighborhoods. The wood shop, where he carved eagles for ten years, finally served a purpose. His hands moved while he slept. They hovered over the sharp point of the beak. He wondered could it sink into a skull.
His favorite joke: “I went in under Communism, came out to new money. Not that I’ll see any of it.” She had been in, too. Had a lover named Sorokin who was put in the walk with the dogs because she made holes in the work bench with her blow torch.
Marietta volunteered at an animal shelter. The cats especially took to her and she had no trouble placing them in homes because they purred in her lap. Of course, she loved too many of them and their house filled up with strays. She tried to convince him to adopt three-legged dogs. He told her they were too sad and she made a mock pinging noise.
Marietta’s hair grew out from the close cut she had maintained for years. Her fingers, callused, could not fathom the curls they untangled. Her cheeks filled out, the thin skin under her eyes became less transparent. She became close to many women in the neighborhood who were good at removing copper pipe. Someone found out she could weld and gave her a portable TIG for when they went collecting.
They were squatters in an abandoned block. She and her husband rebuilt the house using pieces from the homes around theirs. She had a makeshift protective visor made of a tinted windshield. He used cast iron pans as hammers. He swallowed his teeth at times. She was happy. She used cigarettes to burn off the spider web tattoo on her wrist.
The cat Alex had kittens and holed herself up in the attic. Marietta began to drag home pieces of cars. She welded the hood of a Chrysler over their front door, the doors of the same car over the windows. She did not understand guns. Alex reminded her of the cat she found and fed in prison. Her cellmates were allowed 200 paces around the room with her before they had to pass the cat back. She had left Alex with Sorokin’s daughter.
Tool sheds, carports, telephone polls. Solder ran up the spine of the house the color of new nickels. Her husband stayed in the basement and sat under the only open window. He spit his teeth at cans placed at intervals. Toothless. Marietta, Marietta.