ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 73: Feeling Like a Failure

Awakening this morning, I try to think of a positive thought. That becomes my positive thought — that I’m trying to think of one.

I arrive at the Charles Street house. While Joshua works with the heat gun, I begin to scrub the walls in the living room. Brown juice dribbles down the wall as I scrub.

“I can’t get this damned tobacco spit off the walls! I can’t get these walls clean! I’m just re-arranging the dirt. I’m not up to this. I can’t even wash a wall. I’m not even qualified to be a washer-woman. I’m a fucking failure.”

“Think positive thoughts,” Joshua calls out. “Don’t go nuts on me. Think positive thoughts.”

I think of Crinklestitch, Ernie’s character in The Marvelous Kingdom of Wee, who feels like a failure compared to his friends Squire Squirrel and Toothpick the Sparrow and Bumpy the Frog. I feel lower than a snake’s belly button, is how Crinklestitch puts it . . . or how Ernie, in the voice of Crinklestitch, put it.

So, Ernie must have felt like a failure, too, didn’t he?

Funny how he hid so much from me. Funny how I hid so much from him and from myself.

But not really funny.