"Purse. La otra noche perdi mi monedero."
"Yeah, I saw your purse, tu bolsa upstairs—arriba la escalera; but run to the convenience store or the grocery store for the asprin— whatever is quickest. Rapidamente!"
"No, dama. Hoy no tengo trabajar hasta cinco."
"For Pete's sake usted es terrible perezosa. You are floja-lazy floja, floja-lazy."
"I'm not none floja, please Miss. I'm your good illegal trabajadora. Don't throw me in the streets."
Gabriele again thought of having figuratively tossed the carcass of Rita/Lily into the thickets of weeds on the embankment."Please, Hispanic Betty, as one of our family go out to get it and then you can have the day off hasta cinco por la tarde."
"You won't fire me now for looking floja?"
"Not if you filfill my fucking request and get the goddamn asprin."
After she took the asprin she got some relief. She had Hispanic Betty get Nathaniel ready for summer school and then she sent him off in a taxi herself. When both were gone she ate a little something. When she recovered more of her strength her mind was still very groggy and painting was far removed from the agenda of the day. Since there was no painting there was no agenda and so she began to clean the house. Inaction, she thought, might lead to a void. A void in the proper state of mind could lead a strong person to philosophic discoveries and a strengthening of one's fortitude; but in weakness a void required energy to escape, and so it was best to keep busy. She saw that a string of cobwebs was dangling from one of the elements of the chandalier. She looked at it, and not knowing how to get up there she decided that this was not a good place to start on a day when one happened to be sick; and so she went into Nathaniel's room.
In the room she dusted everything from the little volkswagon that ran on D batteries to the breeches of the stuffed animal, Pluto. When she opened one of his desk drawers she discovered a child's book called "Heroes of the Bible." It was published by the Latter Day Saints. She wondered whether these dragon flies were so insecure that they even needed children to validate the stories they projected into their minds. Religious minds not only projected such stories onto all the walls of their brains but cast themselves as more Disney characters into this metaphysical film within the most salient roles. God that destroyed humanity in the flood so that something "good" might generate from it; Abraham who was ready to sacrifice his son to any arbitrary and barbaric whim that this godly tyrant entertained—the Bible was camauflaged brutality as was this book that catalogued Joseph to Joseph Smith. Plato would call it more misrepresentation of the gods and yet she couldn't call it libel, slander, or misrepresentation if there was no god and nothing to misrepresent. She took a break and had some bread and grape juice like one more cannibal eating Jesus' 2000 year old body and drinking the virulent tonic of his 2000 year old blood. She resented the Mormon flies for having given her son that book and yet she knew that sometimes people could be positively influenced by something at a certain stage that years later would be beneath them.