The list

There was this punk band in the nineties, used to sing a song called Shitlist. Each verse they'd sing about how someone had done them wrong, and then they'd end it off with the line, "you made my shitlist." Except they'd take a slight pause between my and shitlist.

There's a list I keep as well. I don't think of it as a list, and I've never told anyone they were on it. But no one's ever gotten off of it, and when my phone rings, the list is the reason why my answering machine always answers.

The last time I spoke to my mother she was asking me to housesit while she went on vacation. Yellow walls and furniture with cushions that exhaled smoke every time you sat on them. Dogs that when the sun rose, they started barking while looking at their empty food dish. I said "no." I said, "but maybe instead we." Which is when she started talking. She said, "I can't fucking believe it one little favour and you have to be such a fucking asshole." She said a few more sentences that were really just paraphrases of that one, and then she hung up on me.