4

       The next morning started the same as the last. Andy still grumpy, Kindra still unable to keep her patience. Again, Andy refused to wake up or put on his clothes. Again, when they went to Casa de Waffles, Andy refused to talk to her.

          Today was Sunday, so it was Kindra’s day to stay with Andy. She always struggled especially with Sundays, because there were 3 meals she had to deal with feeding Andy. The problem wasn’t that she couldn’t afford it – it was just Andy’s pickiness. There’s only so many times a day you can have fries and coke. Especially with a three year old. But Kindra didn’t know how to get him to listen to her otherwise. Whenever she needed him to do something, even if it was as simple as putting on his shirt or going to the bathroom, he would sit stone still until she agreed to buy him fries and a coke.

          Andy was surprisingly thin for eating so much junk, but his unhealthiness showed in other areas. Whenever he played, he only seemed to care about what he was doing for a couple of minutes. Then he would lay on his side, face solemn, and play with his toy silently and without really moving it. It was hard to tell if he was even thinking about what he was doing – some kids will create an entire world and it becomes obvious that most of the game is taking place in their head – but with Andy, everything seemed blank.

          Kindra often watched him when he played. She usually didn’t know what to do, didn’t know if she should go over and try to figure out what he was doing and participate or anything, because usually that didn’t work. At one point, she just made up reasons for why it was okay that she didn’t play with him. From then on, she thought of those reasons whenever she started to feel guilty and she stopped herself from feeling bad.

          This Sunday, Kindra was out of things to do with Andy, again, so she picked him up off the floor and dragged him outside for a walk. Maybe they would go to a Alfonso’s, if that amused him. Or maybe to the sawmill theatre.... except the new play wasn’t actually playing on a sunday afternoon. They could try to leave the city and find a store with toy cars, but Andy only wanted to do that with his dad. Kindra decided they would just walk. She took a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it. The drag she took lifted a huge weight from her shoulders. She realized that must have been why she wanted to go for a walk in the first place.

         Andy got pissed and wouldn’t hold Kindra’s hand, which Kindra understood. She just wished he gave her credit for not smoking in the apartment. She did it for him, after all. But he was kind of young to have thoughts like that, she supposed.

          They passed the park and Kindra noticed that tents were set up. There didn’t seem to be more than 15 or so, which wasn’t very many, but the town was small and so was the park so it seemed like plenty. Kindra didn’t pay much attention to current events, she didn’t want to rile herself up over things she couldn’t control, but she did catch drift of an occupy movement – and the “we are the 99%” signs signified that this congregation was part of that.

          Kindra looked distinctly like a single mom, sporting a too-small babydoll t-shirt and no bra, smoking a cigarette, her hair in a half-assed ponytail just to keep it out of her face, and toddler in tow – so the occupiers immediately thought that she was one of them, and greeted her with their strange little finger-wiggling signals.

          Andy’s brow furrowed because, like Kindra, he thought all these people must have been pretty stupid, and now they were treating them like they knew them. Kindra let out an obviously disgusted sigh. A girl with pigtails, wearing what looked like oversized little-girl clothing, approached them with a big smile and even bigger eyes. If she wasn’t reek hippy so much, Kindra would probably label her as one of those girls who still thought it was sexy to dress like a kid and ended up looking like a cheap porn star. So, basically, an idiot.

          “Hey, are you guys here for the general assembly? We love new faces and we were about to start,” she said, smiley and eager.

          “No, we were sort of just trying to stretch our legs,” Kindra said. She didn’t smile back. She wasn’t a fan of people who tried to speak for everyone else, which she felt was pretty much all that Occupy did. Just a bunch of dirty fucking weirdos who kept trying to represent her class. She probably wouldn’t have a problem with them if they weren’t representing “the 99%” in such a negative light.

          Kindra dressed the way she did because she had to. There wasn’t much opportunity to dress any better in a town where the main clothing store is a forever 21. But these people, they looked the way they did because they liked it. That’s what was so embarrassing.

          Kindra went to grab Andy’s hand so they could go somewhere else, but he shook her off again and started to walk away. “Andy honey, where are you going,” She asked. Her nice tone wasn’t working so well today, so it came off as incredibly aggressive. This was sort of a normal occurrence with her.

          Andy had wandered over to a woman sitting on a bench. She seemed really upset. Kindra didn’t know what Andy was planning on doing, exactly, but as soon as he walked up, the woman on the bench smiled at him. Kindra could see she had been crying. Andy gestured to her shoes and the woman bent down and wiped something off of them. Kindra decided to just watch them and not interfere. Andy hardly ever openly interacted like he was with her.