Sunday Scribblings: Misc. people (a story in a letter)

These dolls from here.

Dear Mami,

I wish that you were reading this in English. Then maybe you could have a taste of what my life is like, Mami—spending the day listening to words that sound just like wearing a coat in winter. Like footsteps on the concrete. But then again, it would mean you having to go all the way to the Plaza Grande, dragging your skirts in the dust, asking for translations. Not that it would be so hard, not these days. I wish it had always been so. Then maybe it wouldn't be so hard for me right now.

“It's so important to us that Thalia grow up knowing her culture, and I don't just mean 'Dora the Explorer' you know? These are the years to learn—it never sticks when you get old like us, huh?” Doña Rosa had said to me, in blessed Spanish. I nod, not sure what to say. Surely Doña Rosa knows that I am spending every night sitting up in my room, tracing my fingers over every word in the dictionary, trying to absorb the smooth letters through my skin. Circling all of the unknown words in that little book of cartoons that Tomas gave me the last time I left. Six months, and there are still more circles than not. “And I told Pedro that if he'd grown up in my pueblo, he'd know the Delgados are known for being excellent teachers.” What good is it being a Delgado who teaches when I cannot learn myself?

Still, it is good that Doña Rosa remembers. It helps me remember myself.

I try to remind her that there is so much more I can do than just take care of Thalia and the house. Thalia is a placid child, content to sit in her little red rocking chair and watch me moving around the kitchen. And the house itself—luxury looks different in los Estados Unidos. It's clean, spacious, all the surfaces hard and shining. All of Doña Rosa and Don Pedro's recuerdos from home, the straw filled dolls, the framed flags, the clay pots—they seem to be swallowed by the smoothness, the glow of these American things. They look extra.

Doña Rosa is so tired after a day at work. “It is not easy to make ends meet,” she says. “People think once you get here, you are saved. But they are wrong.” She sounds angry, as though I have accused her of this myself. “It's not like home.” I mention. “No, she says again. “Not even like your home.” This brightens her, and she loses some of the harsh tone when she asks me to help her in her private office. I am excited as well. This is what I have been angling for since I arrived. Work that will feed my mind, the way you always did it, Mami. Delgado work.

“Please sort these bills into piles, and then I'll ask Pedro to file them.” She showed me how to recognize each bill and match it to others, without knowing the words. Like the card game we used to play.

We worked in quiet, equal silence. Every now and then I would hold up an envelope, and she would tell me, “Just put that aside.” When we were done, that “aside” pile was rather large. She swept them all into a folder marked, “Misc.”

“What does this mean, this word wrote here?” I was proud to ask her in English, but she made no comment on that. She was too busy making notes on a pad, a pencil between her teeth. “Oh, it means miscellaneous.” I waited.

“Uh, its just important paperwork. It's important.”

I filed this away. It seemed a useful word.
(more)


The other day, Don Pedro came home from work all excited. It seemed he had invited a new friend home from work. Bob. The man mooned around as though he was preparing for his Quinceñera, the joy flushed on his face. “Bob says not to worry about cooking anything special. Bob is a very understanding man. He is an important man at work. He does not often go out to people's houses. This is a very good thing for us, Rosa.” Of course, Doña Rosa left me detailed instructions for what dishes I should cook, and as soon as she got home, without even removing her coat, she began lifting the lids off of the steaming pots, and then she starts chopping the vegetables for her special sofrito. She was pleased when I complimented her on it later. “Even the Delgados don't know everything, right?” She said, smiling big as she went up the stairs to get dressed.

I was bathing Thalia, elbow deep in two year old and soapy water, when Don Pedro walked in, pulling his tie straight around his neck. Six months, and he is still hesitant around me. He averted his eyes as though I was the one taking the bath. “Uh, Nilda...” He began. “Perhaps you would like to go to Carmen's house tonight? Or even to a movie?” It was not a question.

“Of course, Don Pedro.” I was not surprised, but it does not feel good to be asked, all the same.

Well, Mami, I decided to make a night of it. I called Carmen and we made arrangements to go to the Rinconcito and then the Copa for dancing. We were both going to speak in nothing but English and enjoy ourselves as though we belong here. I have heard that Miami is a beautiful city, and I am sure it looks better when you are not in the backseat, next to a screaming baby.

Tell Tomas that I did my hair the way he likes it—dance floor hair, all swirls and dips and spins. I only wish he could have seen it.

I could hear their voices carrying up the stairs as I stood there, wondering if maybe I should just go past, quickly, towards the kitchen door. But I was curious about this Bob man. So I went down, directly into the living room, where they all sat, balancing drinks on their knees.

He immediately stood up. “Pedro...you didn't tell me your sister was here.” He was very tall, with blood energy reddening his skin and gentle blue eyes and hair almost white, like the sun over the water at noon. I took the hand he offered, but couldn't think of anything to say. Sometimes this English feels like a funnel, like all of my thoughts are being drained through a too-small hole.

“No, that's... that's just Nilda. She knows my wife's family. From home.” He made the introductions, while Doña Rosa just looked at me and said nothing, loudly.

I'm not sure how it happened, but Don Pedro offered me a drink and I took it and sat down on their white couch, careful with my wine.

They spoke in English, and I felt pulled along by it, always a few ideas behind. But finally, Bob turned to me and asked me how I liked “the States.” Usually I just smile when someone asks me if I need to say it in English, but something about his blue eyes looking at me, so admiring...it was the 'courage of the red dress' like you always say.

I wanted to say something to help them, Don Pedro and Doña Rosa, something to thank them for their kindness and impress this nice American man.

So I opened my mouth and I said, “They are very misc. people.” Silence. Bob looked confused, “Mixed?”

“No, misc...miscellaneous people.” And, ay, Mami, somehow I lost control of that word even as it passed through my mouth, and it came out like Spanish, like English, like everything other than what it should be. I flung it down like a dead fish at the table, and it just lay there, stinking.

Bob smiled like he'd forgotten how to stop. “I don't see what you mean.”

“Important. They are...important people at home.”

I already knew I was wrong, but it was too late. I couldn't do anything about the twist on Doña Rosa's face, or the way Don Pedro's face looked white like playa sand. So I smiled and threw my hands in the air, like a surrender, and just then Carmen came and honked the horn and I escaped.

Before I closed the door to her car, I heard Doña Rosa saying, “Poor thing...not very well educated, you know. Trying so hard. She teaches Thalia, but I think Thalia teaches her so much more!”

And we still went out to dinner, where the sounds of Spanish all around us was like a balm. But I begged off dancing; told Carmen what I said. She patted my hand and told me what the word really meant. Different people or things, from a bunch of places, not all the same.

When I got home that night, Don Pedro was waiting by the door. You charmed Bob, he said. He thought you were funny. Then he said, “You know...business is so...it's not good right now, Nilda. We have no extra anymore. You understand...”

And of course, I do.

Because I know I am extra, because Don Pedro and Doña Rosa are miscellaneous in this new land.

So I need to look here, hard, or you will see me sooner than you think. And I know we can't have that. We also have no extra.

Wish me luck, querida mama. And tell Tomas that his mami misses him more than words can say. In either Spanish OR English.

Love,
Tu Nilda
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For more misc. tales, go here.

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Sunday Scribbling: Misspent Youth-Psyche

From here

Ed Note: Thanks to everyone who commented below. Things...have been better. And if you don't have anything nice to say... Anyway, I didn't intend to come back, but I couldn't resist this prompt. My story is a bit of a retelling of the Cupid/Psyche myth. Happy Thanksgiving (belated!)

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Beauty was the coin of my realm and I was beautiful—or so they said. “Don't waste it,” my abuela warned. “Beauty misspent is like youth...gone forever.” But I couldn't help it...I was looking for something. I wanted to see this beauty that everyone else swore they saw. When I looked, I could see shiny, pretty things, but in pieces—boxed away from me. “You have eyes like cuentos.” My abuelo said. Like gems. Or stories. So I drifted in and out of bars, lured by the glitter of hard lined men who fell before me and swore, “Oh, baby, baby, I want to wor-ship!” But when I squinted past their electric lust, I saw the darkened temples they left behind them, full of dust and despair. And I steered clear. My coins wouldn't go too far here. I moved on.

And my Mami and Papi—no help there. “You are so beautiful, mija,” they would say, pursed lips disapproving, like I had gotten away with something.

So it was no surprise when I fell for the Dragon and his promises of “everything, baby.” I shivered on the mountaintop, white dress lapping against my bare ankles, and waited.

But the Dragon...he never showed. Maybe it was all too easy.

Someone Else came and gave me shelter. And we rose and fell and I could see myself, whole. It didn't even matter that I couldn't see his face because I could feel the beauty for the first time, and it was in him, and oh, I wanted to wor-ship.

Only one thing. The coins, again. “We gotta save it all up...now. No seeking because what will you find?” And I ran my hand over his eyelids and saved up the words that would have fallen spendthrift from my mouth.
(more)


But I couldn't keep my cuento eyes closed forever, and the voices—the ones that hate on through to the other side—curled up under the spent sheets and hissed their doom song. “What is he hiding? Is he a monster? Are you?”

I had to look, I had to, and the candle shook. One, two, three drops of wax round like coins, and he was gone, in a wordless sigh like smoke.

And then I broke all of the worthless mirrors. I sat in the middle of a pile of useless gold, my heart a barren field. And my records played until until the needle slipped, hissed its nothing song.

Then I gathered up, me to me, and went to search.

Mami and Papi shook their heads and closed the door.

Abuelo and Abuela tried to make me hide, wait until it passed. And so I ran.

I dug my fingers in the ground and the ants ran around them, their spindly legs tapping out urgent rhythms. “Give us some coins,” they said, and so I did, and watched as they glinted off into the earth.

The reeds gave covered me with golden fleece during the rimy night, and whispered secrets into my dreams, twirling around my coins while I slept.

But I was still lost. And so I looked to what I thought was real—back to the world of bars and men. If I couldn't see him, I wanted to be seen. I threw my money around now, but it didn't do any good. The men glanced twice and waited and moved past me. The women whispered of beauty's resurrecting potion, sold for a price. And I paid it.

When I finally woke, fog choked the walls, which grew thick honeysuckle vines and the air swooned as he walked in. And all I could see was my anger, and all of the youth and beauty that I'd thrown away.

“I got no more coins. Beauty's dead.” I said, defiant. “Nothing left to lose, nothing to save. But if I did...I wouldn't close my eyes and turn away again.”

He said nothing, just held out his arms with that sidelong grin, and then the fog burned away and I could see burnished gold at the base of every vine that grew. And I knew. Useless coins might be seeds, after all, and a misspent youth the tilling of a seeming barren field.

And your field, even yours, can shatter into a million violet flowers, and bloom.

To read more tales of misspent youth, go here.

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Sunday Scribbling: First job (a story)

You can see my mother's first job on basic cable everyday at 5pm EST. Just Us Kids is one of those annoying family-friendly sitcoms that seems to have no beginning and no end, but exist in some alternate, candy colored universe without rain designed to make you feel, well, unfriendly towards your own family, I guess. My mother played the pre-teen princess on the show, Carrie Butterhill. On her character's birthday, the producers got Neil Diamond to do a cameo and sing “Sweet Caroline.”

That's the kind of show it was.

Now, I am sure you've seen this tele-wallpaper at some point in your life. An airport gate, a doctor's office. A hangover. And it slid past your eyes and off into oblivion, as it deserved.

But that never happened with us. No, every day, we gathered in front of the television—Josie, Todd, and me—Carrie.

Yes, I am well aware about how creepy that is.

It wasn't always that way. I remember spending hours with Mom, reading books and singing nursery rhymes. I swear, she had more energy for all of that stuff than I did. I felt like I was keeping up with her. We never watched television.

Things changed when Josie and Todd were born. Mom had looked blank, confused. “I didn't plan for twins,” she kept saying to me, as though I had been the one to change the script on her. And they were a handful. They screamed when she tried to sing, threw their books instead of listening to her read them. I could see Mom staring longingly at the door. I hoped that she would remember that I'd never been that much trouble, and would take me with her.

One day she said “OK, FINE” and turned on the television. While she was flipping through the channels, Josie suddenly shrieked, “Mommy!” And so it was—Mommy, about 20 years or so earlier. A lot thinner and a lot blonder, but still...something around the eyes was still, and always, Mom.

“Oh.” Mom said, pausing to look down and fiddle with the remote. A small smile bloomed on her face.

“Did you know about this?” I'm not sure what I was accusing her of.

“What? No...I mean, yeah, I knew about the SHOW, obviously, but it's been off the air for so many years...” She trailed off, and stared back into the small glassed in box that held her former self. “My first job.”

I feel like I had known that, somewhere, like Daddy had sat me down solemnly when I was smaller and told me. It had felt important, like a secret. “Your mother was on television,” he had said. “It was a long time ago.” His voice had gone quiet. He had looked off towards the window, then back at me, as though pressing me to hear whatever he wasn't saying. But I couldn't. I was only eight or so then; the twins newborns. He left us shortly thereafter. Mom never held it against him. “He said he couldn't 'do Ohio' anymore.” And then she would laugh, once.

Now the twins sat, silent, and watched that dumb show from beginning to end. Every time Mom's character walked into the frame, they clapped, and whispered, “Mommy.”

“Shouldn't we be turning it off now?” I raised my voice slightly, to be heard above the moronic laugh track.

“Shush...I remember this scene.” The remote hung useless in her hand and it was as though she was lost.
(more)


Well, after that, Josie and Todd demanded to see “Mommy” everyday and Mom gave in, everyday. It became a regular part of our day—our time with Carrie Butterhill. We watched her fight for more allowance, struggle with homework, cry over boys—always looking perfect. Always fixing everything by the twenty-eighth minute or so (I counted). I think the twins were beginning to get confused, honestly. They had Mom, then the “TV Mom,” and, always, Carrie. Sometimes they would look at me as though they couldn't quite place me.

One day, I came home from school and found Mom alone, sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a fat photo album. I leaned over her, expecting to see pictures of a smiling Josie covered in mud, or Todd on his trike. Or even a baby me.

The pages were crowded with publicity pictures, magazine articles. Mom smiling coyly, blandly, sweetly. Carrie everywhere. I stared hard at the pictures, until I could see them behind my eyelids.

“Where are the twins? And why aren't you at work?”

“Did you know that Scott Baio gave me my first kiss? Well, mine and Carrie's.” Her voice went up when she said kiss, like she was channeling a twelve year old.

“Who?” I grabbed four cookies, then put one back.

She sighed. “I always forget you're just thirteen, Car.”

“You didn't answer me.”

“The twins are with Grandma and work, ugh...I think I need to try something new.” She fluffed her hair then, and I was filled with horror.

“New, like TV? Another show?”

She giggled. “That's so sweet that you think that!” Twelve year old voice again. “But no...” she tugged on one of the publicity stills. “Just something with better hours. You know...more of a future.” She glanced out the kitchen window. It was so dark outside already that the window reflected the kitchen back to us, in frosted miniature. “Maybe it's just winter.” She frowned at me, picked at one of my split ends. “You need a haircut.”

“I don't need one, and anyway, dental work doesn't have a future?”

“Not unless you're the dentist.”

While Mom was picking up the twins, I looked at her album again. At my age, already earning money. Famous. Beautiful. And now she was forty, still beautiful, stuck in a strip mall dental office, checking insurance cards on the phone. “Doing” Ohio because Daddy couldn't.

Maybe what I needed was to find a job.

On Monday I cut school after lunch and went to the mall to think—something about all of the noise made the inside of my own head quiet. And then I saw the line. Have you got what it takes to be a model? The wannabes were already lined up, some two and three deep in places. I weaved myself in and out of the line, always needing to get past them to check myself in the windows of the stores. Tall for my age. Gangly. I didn't look like Mom, or Josie, both beauties. I looked like Grandma—like I'd seen something I wish I hadn't, and I didn't think I should tell . Have you got what it takes? Suddenly, it was though Carrie Butterhill was asking me, and I wanted to answer.

It moved faster than I expected, that line. It was like standing line to get a picture with Santa, that same sense of fear and joy crowding in your throat.

Soon I was behind the wobbly fake-wall. No Santa throne; in fact, it didn't look like much—rolled down beige background, like the maps at school. Wires and black carry cases everywhere. A single metal stool, rusted a bit around the foot rest.

The bored photographer took pictures of everyone, obligingly, and two women looked at them, whispering about hair color and crossed eyes. The women looked glamorous. They didn't belong in a mall in Ohio on a January Monday.

It occurred to me that this was a scam. The mall heat dried up my eyes and I didn't want to look at anything. I started to back out of the line.

“You gonna stay still, or what?” Before I knew it I was sitting on a stool, the photographer moving me before eyeing me in his viewfinder. Then he looked back, startled.

“You're not bad. You ever done this before?” At his tone, the two women both stopped and stared at me.

“No.” I'm not sure what made me add, “But my mother did.”

“Huh. You got good bones.” And then the photos went click, click and something inside of me went click, click back.

The women looked at my pictures, then at me, then back at my pictures again. “You know...we could use you. Maybe.” The photographer handed me his card. “Call us. We mean it.”

Taking the bus home, clutching my pictures and the card, I was dizzy. The smoke curls suspended in the blue winter sky were like happy question marks, and I was the answer. I could see the bus, the road, the dirty snow piled between the parked cars...I was a camera lens. And they were all beautiful.

I burst into the house, my mouth already open, the pictures snapping in my outstretched hand like a flag. It was time for Just Us Kids, but for once, I didn't care. We would all move to California. The two Carries merged, and I wanted everyone to see. I was fixing things.

Mom and the twins sat on the couch, reading. The twins sat on the couch, eyes half closed, mesmerized by Mom's story. A crumpled newspaper lay next to her, text boxes circled with red ink, like little surprised mouths.

And the television was off.
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Get hired by going here.

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Sunday Scribblings: Goosebumps (a fairy tale)

(From A Tribute to Adrienne Segur)

Once upon a long time ago, before our mothers' time, and their mothers' time, there lived a beautiful Princess in a kingdom on the edge of the world. This Princess lived a very solitary life, with only scores of moonfaced, silent servants and no playmates except her Shadow. Her own dear mama and papa, the Queen and King of the land, had both passed away when the Princess was just a baby. She hadn't thought much about this—it was just a vague, dull ache of confusion—until she heard the whole story whispered in the hallways of the palace.

Her parents had hosted a large, sumptuous dinner to celebrate the Princess's first six months of life. All of the nobles from around the land attended. and merriment went on far into the evening hours. But all was not well. The door knocker banged—one, two, three. And then there was one unwanted guest, a disgruntled fairy who had been overlooked for the Chief Fairy position one too many times.

“Bumps!” she had shrieked without preamble. “Bumps will end your lives...all of them—and doom this kingdom forevermore!”

Well, no one wanted to upset the fairy further, to be sure, but, as far as curses went, this one wasn't exactly menacing. So first a footman grinned, then a lady in waiting giggled, and before long, the room was engulfed in helpless laughter. Even the King and Queen smiled, wanly and carefully, as they had the most to lose. The infant girl on the Queen's lap paused in her nursing to clap at the tumult.

The offended fairy might have forgiven the servants in their witless merriment, but the sight of the King and Queen smiling sealed their doom. She turned red, then blue, then green, then striped (very difficult for a fairy, unless in a right fury). And then, she vanished without another word.

She was as good as her word. Every single person who attended that dinner fell victim to some bump or the other. The Queen perished from an infected bee sting. The King tripped over a bump in the royal carpet and bled to death. Only the small Princess was spared, because in her infant wisdom, she had merely clapped, not laughed.

After the endless time of tragedy, the people of the kingdom grew deathly afraid of bumps of any kind. Carpets were smoothed ritually every hour. Bees were kept under strictest supervision. The mashed potatoes were stirred until they were smooth as milk, to say nothing of the gravy.

Thus, the Princess grew up in a world as wide and flat as a piece of unlined paper. The horizon stretched endless, like the monotony of her days. She sat with her Shadow where the garden had once been. It was now a patch of perfectly even dirt.

They were bored.

“You know,” she said to her Shadow one day, “I'll bet if we rode hard for three days, we could reach the end of the land. Maybe we could find the fairy and beg for her clemency.”

“At the very least, we'd see a few shrubs.” agreed Shadow. They packed food and water, and set out.

On the evening of the third day, as the Princess drowsed by the (perfectly level) lake, she heard a scream. Her only friend, her faithful Shadow, was gone!

Immediately, she mounted her horse and rode after the abductors, but to no avail. Her Shadow was gone. The Princess fell to the ground, weeping. By the by, she heard a soft voice. “I can return her to you...for a price.”
(more)


Instinctively, the Princess knew the Fairy's voice.

“I'll do anything.”

“Are you sure about that?” The Fairy asked again. “Seems you didn't lose all that much. You could go on, much as before, without your Shadow.”

“I don't want to.” the Princess whispered. “Tell me.”

“I get cold in the winter.” the Fairy said. “Make me a quilt that contains one patch of fabric from each peasant hovel by the border. You must earn them—they cannot be given to you. You've gotten enough handed to you. And don't forget...one bump will spell your end.”

With that, she vanished.

For the first time, the Princess knew real fear. The peasants lived underground, as any dwelling they built after the curse would be considered a “bump” on the land. She ruled over them, but had never seen them.

But then she remembered her poor Shadow, lonely and terrified. She couldn't bare to think of that utterly even palace without her Shadow there. So she rode off towards the border.

When she arrived, she knocked on the ground until one of patches of earth slid open. “Who goes there?” A deep voice asked.

“The Princess.”

“And what does she want with our humble abode?”

“To cook and clean—do whatever it takes to earn a small patch of fabric from each of your houses.”

“That could take a long time.” The voice sounded amused now.

“I have nothing but time.” The Princess replied.

Finally, the voice rose up and became a young man, covered with dirt and dust and the occasional bruise. He was not handsome, but his dark eyes glowed with intelligence and good humor.

“Come on in.”

He took her down into the Under-kingdom—dark, dank, but...not flat. At all. The hovels went down into the bowels of the earth, and rose up almost touching the perfectly smooth lawn. They were ugly, but individual.

The Princess was fascinated. And the peasants were, as well. By her.

“But...we're just give you the fabric, your Majesty!” they said, bewildered. “Is this some sort of loyalty test?”

“No, no...and thank you for the offer, but the Fairy stipulated that I needed to earn them.”

After a long silence, one of the woman said, hesitantly. “I...I could use some help with the pigs.”

And with that, the Princess lived among the peasants. Hours turned into days turned into months. She slopped pigs, swept floors, tended babies. She also became bruised, dirty, scratched. But miraculously, no bumps marred her smooth skin.

In between her work, she got to know the young man who had opened the Under-kingdom to her. He shared his most secret dream with her—to build dwellings like those he had created underground, but that touched the sky. “We all want to see the sun again.” he confessed. And she told him about her loneliness, the vast emptiness of her life without her parents. He was the only person who understood exactly why she needed to rescue her Shadow, without asking.

“I'm not beautiful anymore, but bruised and dirty.” She said to him, ruefully.

He shook his head. “Before you were merely beautiful. Now you are beautiful and interesting. You tell a story.”

She blushed at all she felt at that, and could not say.

Soon, the Princess had all of the necessary patches to make a glorious, if somewhat grimy, quilt. But she didn't know how to sew.

“I'll teach you.” The young man said. And he did. They stayed up for three days and nights until it was done. When she triumphantly unfurled it, the young man took her into his arms and kissed her. And a million butterfly wings batted in her stomach, and she shivered with her first ever case of goosebumps.

“Now I will surely die.” she said. “But...I die knowing love. I must thank you”

He held her close as they waited for the curse to be fulfilled. “There are many ways to be dead,” he whispered to her. “Take me with you.”

And they waited. And kissed. And waited.

Instead of the death, the Fairy appeared, hand in hand with the Shadow. “You have pleased me well, my child. You've always shown great promise, even as a baby. And now that promise has been fulfilled. The curse is lifted.” The Princess and the Shadow embraced, weeping. Then the Princess introduced her young man. “This is the man I will marry.”

At that, the hovels rose out of the earth and became splendid houses, and the thrilled peasants were suddenly rich landowners. Music sounded in the background, and the Princess and the Builder became King and Queen.

The King fulfilled his dream of buildings that scraped the sky. The Queen ruled compassionately and well. And the Shadow enlivened them with story and song.

And they all lived happily, and bumpily, ever after.
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For more tales that go (goose)bump in the night, go here.

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Sunday Scribbling: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow (a short fiction)

Medusa by Carvaggio

Ed note: Yes, that is an unforgivable pun in the title...but what can I say? It fits my story. :)
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It wasn't once upon just any old time. No, it was May 24, 1980—the day my sister and I were born.

“Gemini twins!” shrieked my Tia, happy to flash her astrological know how. “And they're right on the cusp.” The cusp of what, she refused to say.

We were not identical twins. Marta, my sister, was a whole pound heavier than I was. I know they say you can't remember your time in the womb, but I can imagine it—her using those fetus fins to sweep in more and more foody goodness, which I spun around in confused somersaults of starvation.

But that wasn't even the main difference. No, my sister was blessed with something else. The most beautiful, wavy, fairy tale hair you ever saw. Never frizzy, never flat. The kind of hair described as “raven tresses cascading like a waterfall” down some heroine's back.

And the rest of her lived up to the promise of her hair.

As for me? My hair also reminded people of a story—the story of Medusa. Kinky, curly wild hair that stood up and snarled at you. It would bite if you got too close.

I'd like to think the rest of me was an improvement over the tale my hair was telling people.

Things went along, we all grew older, and then one day, just before I turned eighteen, I woke up and saw that my hair was about six inches shorter. I thought it was a joke.

“Marta...did you cut my hair while I was sleeping?” It's kind of an odd question, but if you knew us, you would understand why I had to ask.

She sniffed, “Me? I don't go near that stuff without a rosary and a bottle of holy water!”

So it wasn't her. And if it wasn't her, then it wasn't anybody.

The next day, and the day after that, more inches. My hair seemed to be getting sucked back into my head.

I can't say it was any great loss.

On our eighteenth birthday, we had a huge party. Sometime after the cake was cut, I heard it.

Pop.

My scalp had finished drinking in the last of my hair. I was now completely bald.

“Ay, Dios mio!” My mother said. “It wasn't very good hair, but bald! Hair is the crowning glory of a woman!”

“Not Jiselle's hair.” said Marta, trying to be soothing.

“And her with those freaky eyes, too” said my Papi. “Ojos que tragan.” Swallowing eyes.

Well, it would have been enough to depress almost anyone. But truth be told, I was happy to be rid of that hair. It never really felt like me.
(more)

Not that I didn't try to grow it back, or grow something back. I used special shampoos and conditioners and creams that made me feel like the first human Chia Pet. But at stubbornly wild as it had once been, it stayed just as stubbornly gone.

Nothing to be done. So Marta and I go off to college—different ones, thank goodness. And I played with wigs and hair color—pink for the punks, blonde for the party people, brown for the studious intellectual types.

It was with that latter group that I met Victor Rana. “Like the frog,” He said cheerfully, holding out his hand. “Ha,” I said, weakly. “You know your Spanish.” But Victor Rana did not look like anything at all like a frog. Quite the opposite—straight black hair that fell over his green eyes (I always look at the hair first, of course), tall, handsome. It didn't matter if his nose was a little bulbous, or if his lips a little too frankly full and feminine. He was my ideal man, my Prince Charming.

Which, of course, meant that he didn't think of me as anything but a good buddy, someone who always took perfect notes in class and was willing to share.

“What can I say? Those eyes, those eyes of yours see everything, know everything. They can see what the professor is going to write before he does it." Then his voice would drop and get all serious. "What else do they see, Jiselle?” I would never know what to say to that. Hope had never worked out for me before. So I would say something smart-ass and after a weird moment, he'd always just shrug and laugh.

Right before Halloween, Marta calls me and says she wants to come to campus. “I heard you all have an awesome party every year!” Typical. I was going to that school and I had never heard that.

She shows up a few days later, and we spend the whole day before the party getting ready. She's going as Rapunzel, of course. She's even prettier than I remember.

I fuss and search all of my wigs, looking for inspiration. But I can't think of anything to wear. Finally, I tell Marta, “You go on ahead. Just let me finish getting dressed.” Of course, I had no intention of showing up. Why should I? I could see where this was going to end up—Rapunzel and my Prince Charming would meet, fall madly in love. It had happened before, you see.

At around 11pm, there is a knock on the door. Marta must have forgotten something.

“Forget to let down your hair?”

It was Victor, looking adorable and confused. “What?”

Now I'm the one who looked confused, and not even close to adorable. Plus, I hadn't even put on a wig. So I was standing there, in front of Victor, totally bald.

“What...what are you doing here?” It occurred to me that he was looking for Marta. “She's at the dance,” I said, trying to pre-empt his question, act like I was all cool with the fact that he was infatuated with my sister.

He stopped at that, took a deep breath. Like he needed to prepare for whatever he was going to say next. Finally, he said “No,” and took my hand. “She's not.”

Turns out he hadn't just liked me for my note taking ability. And the bald thing didn't phase him at all, once he confirmed that it wasn't because I was ill. “It's kind of sexy.” He said. “Brings out those amazing eyes.”

Marta came back to the room after the party, and found us there, talking furiously, holding hands. She was thrilled for me, and so was the guy dressed like Prince Charming that she brought back from the dance.

And happily ever after? There's no after yet—just a beautiful now.

But the day after Victor and I started going out, I looked in the mirror and saw a slight peach fuzz growing on my scalp. And I smiled.

“Welcome back.”
_____________________
For more curly tales, go here.

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Sunday Scribblings: Fantasy--Pretty Things (a fiction)

But do they look like fairies? From here

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’ve always had a weakness for pretty things. Back when we first moved to this house, I opened all of those boxes that I had been saving—the ones full of small figurines and china dolls and little pink tea sets. Oh, I loved dainty, and overstuffed cushions for the couches, and framed pictures on the wall. It was the prettiest house on the block, not for nothing. I guess I thought it was all practice. I was so sure I would have a girl someday, and that we’d look at all of that stuff together.

And then the boys came. One, two, three of them, one after the other. Those years were tough. No sleep, tantrums, worrying about them putting Draino in their mouths and ending up in a little coffin (those things gave me nightmares). Not that I didn’t…don’t…love them, because I do. They are still the most adorable things ever, even though I don’t tell them that anymore. They hate to hear it, duck their heads down like colts and sigh, “Aw, Mom…”. That’s my cue to stop it. They’re boys, after all.

During their toddler years, when they weren’t trying to plunge themselves head first down the stairs, my boys loved nothing more than taking all of my little dolls and my little dainties and smashing them on the ground, with a great big war whoop of triumph. “’Gain, ‘Gain, Mommy!” And what could I do? They were babies, couldn’t even talk yet. So I got out my boxes and I packed everything away again—all of the china dolls, and all of my little figurines, and my picture frames. I figured I’d take them out again when the boys got old enough to mind their manners around them, but somehow, days went around turning into years and I never got back to them. So the boxes stayed in the attic.

I didn’t expect to have any more children. Not that I was too upset about it. I got into a real comfortable routine with the boys—I understood them, their hurts and their games and their victories. It was home, my husband and my boys and I. And I was getting older, so it stopped looking like it made any sense. I don’t mean to give you the impression that I was resigned or anything. That makes me it sound like I felt a lack of some kind, and I honestly can say I didn’t. My boys were plenty for me, a gift, and they filled up my whole soul.

But when I found out I was pregnant again…and with a girl this time, well, I won’t lie about that either. It was like sunlight was curling around corners, streaming through every space in the world.

And she was a beautiful little thing, my Hazel—and I don’t just say that because I’m her mother. She was the kind of baby that made you feel like your insides were crumbling a little whenever you looked at her. Like you wanted to die, or something, to devote yourself to her.

I would take her up to the attic, show her the boxes, tell her what was in each one…all of the little ceramic horses, and tea sets, and all of the fun we would have with them all. I’d pull out a doll or two, and hold it next to her, the two of them almost the same size. And she’d reach out for the doll, and I’d put it away again, but with a different feeling than when I did it with the boys. This was temporary. I had hope again.

As Hazel grew up, though, she grew with her brothers. All rough and tumble, and scratchy edges. She wanted to follow them everywhere, spend all of her time with them. I swear, it was like she needed to be the most destructive one of all! So, again, I kept everything in the attic, safe. Until it didn’t make much sense to pull any of it out, at all.

This past summer, Hazel turned twelve, and the change was quick. She’d always been a big reader, begging me to read her Goodnight Moon until the boards fell apart, but now she was spending all her time holed up in her bedroom, reading these fat fantasy books—you know the kind, the ones with fairies on the cover, with long drapey wings, or magic wands shooting sparks that looked like dying stars.

The other thing that happened, happened more slowly. Hazel went from being a fat, rosy baby and toddler, to a tall, solemn little girl, to…well, I don’t know WHAT I would call her now. Awkward, I suppose, all angles and squints. “It’s a tough age, babe.” I’ve tried to tell her more than once. “Your body’s just trying to decide what it’s going to be when it grows up.”

She’d cock her head at me, considering. “What if it doesn’t want to be beautiful?”
And I’d rub her shoulders and hold her close, for what could I tell her? Nothing’s promised.

So all this is to explain when I didn’t think anything of the box she got in the mail yesterday. I just thought it was another box full of books—she gets those every now and again from her father. He feeds her those fantasy novels she loves so much.

But when she didn’t come down for breakfast this morning, I went up to her room. Mother’s intuition kicked in, or something.

I found her there, standing teetering by the mirror, staring anxiously at herself. On the floor was the box, half opened, with all sorts of tubes and potions and powders. Not quite makeup. Maybe what passes for makeup in those books of hers. It all looked like a science experiment.

“Hazel…?” I asked, trying to sound gentle. I got a tear stained face back. “It’s not working!”
“What’s not working?” Again, gentle. Four kids have taught me that they’ll confess in their own time.
“The magic!”

Ok, now I was flummoxed.

“The magic…I saw this stuff advertised in the back of one of my magazines. Guaranteed to work…”
“And do what?”

“Make me beautiful!” she wailed. I was caught up. I honestly didn’t think she cared all THAT much.
“I mean…the world…it’s so beautiful and I love to look at it, and I think that if I was beautiful, the world would love to look at me too. It’s only fair. Except it’s not working, so I’m just taking from the world and it’s not fair and…” and then the tears started again.

“But…who says the world doesn’t love to look at you?”

“You don’t.” she pointed out. “Look at our house. It’s the ugliest house on the block. Because you think that if you put out any pretty things, they’ll grow miserable because all they have to look at is…us. Because you know it’s not fair!”

What could I say to that? I wasn’t even sure I understood it. Until I looked in the mirror myself, looked and saw a woman who wasn’t quite pretty herself anymore. A woman who kept all of her dainties in the attic waiting for…what? For some fantasy to become a reality?

I looked at Hazel again, and the fantasy fell away with some shock and I saw her. As changable and beautiful as those magic fairies in her books. Sometimes fantasy can be a way of not knowing your own heart.

And after I assured Hazel that her magic box was already SURELY working, even if it took a little longer to finish up, I went up to the attic and got out my own magic boxes.

Maybe keeping beautiful things around us is a way of saying thank you to the beautiful things inside of us. Maybe it's a way of really seeing ourselves, after all.

Time to stop protecting my pretty things from getting broken, and give back to the world.

It's only fair.

____
For more fantasies, go here

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Rose's Gift (a fairy tale)

Beata Beatrix circa 1864-70 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti from the Tate Online

(Ed. Note. As always, sorry so long! I kept trying to make it shorter and it kept getting beyond me! Hope you read and enjoy anyway.)

I’ve heard it carried in the sigh of a certain wind, caressing the eaves of my house at night, or on the weary backs of the eagles as they return from their journeys to far off lands. This tale drips from the whispers of raindrops as they land on the black thudding earth.

Once there was a City fashioned with stardust and the vines of summer creepers, visible on the horizon between dusk and dawn. This City was blessed with rich, fertile lands and people as good-hearted as they were industrious. Soon they grew owl-round with prosperity. People in the neighboring cities would look at the glinting buildings and try to shield their children’s eyes, for they didn’t want to lose their young ones. But even they sighed at the wonder, and took a moment before they turned back to their own workaday tasks.

The land all around the City was ruled by a wise king and even wiser queen, who showed their people a life of celebration, communion with nature, and everyday magic.

It was a good place to live.

Until one day, inevitably perhaps, fortunes began to turn. The city’s allure was too great, and too many people began to steal into its borders in an attempt to seek their kismet there. The population explosion taxed the black earth until it could provide no more. The rains stopped falling. Food grew scarce, and finally, ran out. The City was gripped by a severe plague of doubt, disease, and famine.

And worst of all, the good Queen, the wise Queen, died of grief at the sight of so many of her people suffering. And the King grew weak and confused, and soon lawlessness reigned where there was once order, and ugliness where there was once magnificence.

One would imagine that the neighboring areas would harbor a little bit of satisfaction as they watched the City falter and fail. After all, they had all lost loved ones to that glinting Promised Land. They had watched their own lives look dull and squalid by comparison. They had sat in disappointment at the mundane direction of their lives.

But these were basically kind folk, and if they felt that way, they didn’t let on. Immediately, they began to organize vast caravans of aid to traverse the now barren, arid lands surrounding the City—lands that had once been so laden with riches and crops that they seemed to stretch in every direction. But now, only dust and remnants remained.

In spite of all of the much-appreciated help, though, the City remained stunned by hopelessness and loss. It seemed nothing—no food, no drink, no money from foreign lands—could restore it to its once celestial glory. Old timers blamed the death of the Queen, and subsequent withdrawal of the King. “Without them,” they would sigh, “what examples do we have? Who will show us the way to go on living? We can fill our bellies, but our hearts and souls remain empty and lost.”

A small, plain woman named Rose watched these happenings with a secret grief in her heart. She lived in a small, thatched little cottage, chosen so many years ago because of its views of the City from every room. As a girl, she has thought that someday she would like to live there, very much, once she got married. But, no one ever asked her, and she couldn’t imagine moving there by herself. So after her parents passed away, she used her small inheritance and bought herself the cottage, and in it she lived content enough, watching the City from afar and imagining the glories that surely surrounded the people who were lucky enough to live there.

At first, she didn’t want to believe it. It seemed to be growing faint, like a star at dawn. The fields around it, normally so verdant and lush, became parched, withered, and then finally died. The malaise was spreading its poisoned fingers throughout the land, until finally the City was on the verge of annihilation.

She had to do something.

So she gathered everything she could find of value in her small cottage—her healing herbs and her pots and pans, her books of poetry, her small store of jewels—and wrapped them in a rucksack and began to make her way to the City. Not inside of it, oh, no, she still did not believe she was worthy enough to live there, even in its present condition—just to the outskirts. Just close enough to find some kind person to carry her load inside, to offer her small help to the suffering denizens of the City.

Before long, she came across a richly appointed caravan, a gift from another city from beyond the horizon. Exotic animals cawed and cooed in the dead air. Palms waved languidly, cooling the servants who carried boxes laden with gold, with rare herbs and plants, with life-giving food and wines. Shyly, she approached a man at the head of the parade, and offered her own rucksack. “Could you take this along to the City for me?”

He laughed.

“Why, that puny basket looks completely out of place around our treasures! It might even insult the King of the City, even in his fallen state!”

The woman shrank into the shadows and said no more. She watched the caravan until its people were merely dots along the horizon.

She waited, and soon saw a grouping of young girls and women, lugging baskets of fragrant fruits and herding lowing cows, heading towards the City.

“Could you please take this to the City for me?” she asked, a little tremulously. She was still smarting from the first man’s response.

“We’re all full up.” A woman replied, not unkindly. “Got no more room for anything.”

And Rose nodded sadly, and let them go on their way.

Days and nights went by, and Rose felt as though she was rooted to her spot in the desert, watching the sand blast its way north and south, and east and west. No one had passed her for some time.

Finally, a small child walked by, carrying a small sack of potatoes and pulling a reluctant goat, making his own determined way to the City.

Rose hesitated, but desperation made her bold.

“Little boy…can you take this to the City for me?”

The little boy glanced at Rose, and the rucksack. His eyes were wise pools in his sunburned little face.

“It’s your gift, ain’t it?” And with that, he walked away.

Rose stood, thunderstruck. Her ancient fears warred with the boy’s wisdom, and before she knew it, she was putting one foot in front of the other and moving towards the City.

When she arrived, she faltered once more. But the City was in its death throes. It needed all possible aid.

“I’ll just sneak in, drop this off, and leave.” She told herself. “No one needs to even see me.”

But as soon as she passed through the threshold, trumpets blasted on all sides. People stopped what they were doing and looked at her curiously. The commotion even caught the ear of the King, who rushed down to look.

She wanted to sink into the ground. Well, I’ve come this far.She sighed, even as she quaked with nameless fear. Whatever happens now, happens.

Soon, the people approached her and began taking things out of her rucksack. The herbs were exclaimed over, and soon midwives and nurses were busy creating salves to cured the sick and plague ridden. The seeds fell unbidden on the ground and the earth already looked healed. People began reading the books in groups, laughing and light hearted once more.

It appeared she had brought exactly what the City needed.

When the King saw Rose, he took her hand and said, “My dear departed Queen came to me in a dream last night and said, ‘Today you’ll meet a woman with long green hair, like a mermaiden. Take this woman and make her your Queen, and you and the City shall suffer no more.’”

Confused, Rose backed away. “Green hair? Mermaid? No, no…I’m just…ordinary. I’m nothing.”

The King smiled and led her to a small stream, where he showed Rose her reflection in the waves. Now, maybe it was a trick of the light, maybe it was the shimmering of the water, but her hair DID look green and it DID look long. When had she grown so beautiful? And when had she stopped looking at herself at all?

“You are far from ordinary, Rose. You saved the City. You saved us all.” The King appeared young and restored once more.

And with that, a great wedding feast was prepared, and all of the members of every aid caravan attended, with the little boy and his goat in a place of honor.

And Rose wore her own jewels, having learned well the lesson about bringing her own gifts.

And the City celebrated and prospered once more, never again taking for granted their good fortune.

Or so I hear told in the hush of the winter’s first snowfall, as the sun burns the clouds away between dawn and dusk.

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Inspired by Laini, a small story

I wouldn't quite call this a tiny story, but reading Laini's latest inspired me to try my hand at something shorter. My medialess day led me in strange directions, and some things are better examined slant, with story logic, first.

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She had a secret coat hidden in her room. When she put it on, she could feel herself growing and flowering like a wisteria vine. Ribbons of stories spooled from her mouth and twined around her head like a turban. However. Every time she wore the coat, she noticed that her sister would get locked away in a dungeon and beaten severely until she took it off.

It took a while for her eyes to see this and make the connection.

But soon it could no longer be denied, and so she placed her secret coat in a lead box, and buried it out by a fast-moving stream. Of course, then she promptly stopped growing at all, but she took comfort in the fact that her sister ‘s suffering had come to an end, even if hers had just begun.

One day, though, she couldn’t bear the strain of being stifled and stuck any longer. She stole away to the mound where the magic coat was buried and wept bitterly. Some visiting Gods heard her lamentation and were moved to pity. They knew her story, being Gods, and after conferring for a time said, "If you can ask us the right question, the coat will be yours once again and your sister will be safe from harm’s way. But if you do not know the question, you’ll both wake every day with misery, eat your bread with sorrow, and lie down every night with regret."

So she went home and pondered their challenge until the night kissed the morning. She called her sister and together they waited for the Gods.

When the Gods returned for her answer, bearing the lead box between them, she asked them simply, "Why must it be a choice, at all?"

And the coat flew out of the box and both sisters took refuge under it. They spent the rest of their life under its protection, growing into the beauty of knowledge and flourishing like wisteria blossoms.

And they learned that the Gods will always listen to those who ask the right questions.

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All about books, a meme

I've been tagged by my dear friend at Earnest and Game, and as the meme is about books, and as I've never done one of these, I thought it would be fun. Unfortunately, I absolutely CANNOT just leave it to one book, so...

1. A book that changed your life:
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss
Yo by Julia Alvarez
Of Women Born by Adrienne Rich
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Howl and other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

2. A book you've read more than once
See all of the above (except the Estes, and I am working on that...) and...
I could do anything, if I knew what it was by Barbara Sher
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott

3. A book you'd want on a desert island:
Women Who Run with the Wolves
A collected Shakespeare

4. A book that made me giddy:
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Writing a Women's Life by Carolyn G. Heilbrun
The Treehouse by Naomi Wolf
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Succulent Wild Woman by SARK

5. A book you wish had been written
How about the “No, seriously, THIS is how you live” book?

6. A book that wracked you with sobs:
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebald
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

7. A book you wish had not been written
Mein Kampf by Hitler

8. A book you are currently reading
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
Focusing by Eugene T. Gendlin
Letters to a Young Artist by Julia Cameron

9. A book you've been meaning to read
Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan
The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

I’m tagging Jessie and Ally Bean and Beansprout. And anyone else who wants to play.

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Mama Says Om-Juicy (a fictional vignette)

I’m here to speak for the body.

Yeah, I’m surprised about it too. It’s not something I really think about, well, much, anymore...not since my Henry passed away last spring. I look at these new tree buds and I don’t understand why they’re here anymore. My Henry loved spring, so it’s wrong that it should be happening and he’s not here to enjoy it.

But enough about that...I said I came to talk about the body--the body in all of it’s juiciness, its soft places, hard places, and everything in between. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but...I’m juicy, too. Or, I mean, I used to be. I don’t pay much attention to that now. Or I didn’t, but I do again.

I work in the library--that’s where I met Henry, all of those years ago. I’d see the kids come in, with their piles and piles of paper and books...but that wasn’t what was on their minds. No, they were like little trees, sap rising and pooling all of the time inside of them. I watched them watch each other, and I tried to stay out of it. Not that it was hard. They were in the dance, and I was on the sidelines again, with my too-old body, nothing extra anywhere--practical like an ironing board that slides back into the wall--that was me. It was like working inside the TV, on one of those nature shows.

But I still loved the library. It was quiet, and devoted to books, and, well, quiet.

Henry walked in one day. Of course, I noticed him...tall, distinguished, impatiently flipping through one book and then the next and the next.

Of course, he says he was looking for me. He always said things like that. But it’s true that as soon as he looked up and saw me looking back at him, he stopped looking at the book and started looking right at me. A strange kind of look--the kind I saw the kids giving each other all the time over their notebooks, but not the kind anyone ever directed at me. I always got the intercepted looks...the ones that never met their destination because I was in the way. But it was obvious that I wasn’t in Henry’s way at all. It makes me blush to this day to think that I was the way.

Nothing special happened during our courtship. It just changed my life, that’s all, and everything in it.

Marriage to Henry was like being a Persian kitten...he stroked and nuzzled everywhere, lengthening my shadows by sliding his own inside of them. You’re so juicy, he used to say as he nibbled and kissed. Like a peach, a mango, passionfruit. I tried to tell him how I felt right back, but I was wordless. A whole library of words, but not a one that told him how I really felt...how he made me who I always wanted to be. I wish I could tell him he made me feel like an orchid...all rare and unfurled and glistening. I’d like to think he knew that even without my telling him.

But then the day came...the day when the shadows started to overtake him--little things. A pallor. A cough that caught in his chest and exploded. I know the doctors told me what it was, but all I remember was white. And red. The whole world boiled down to those two colors. A buzz, a bad hum like an angry nest of wasps.

And then the day came when I had all the words in the world, but no one to tell them to. The spell he put on me was broken...I was never that heedless orchid, that Persian cat. I was just...me. Like knotty pine, like a piece of driftwood all gray on the beach.

I would have lived the rest of my life this way, too...making sure to stay straight and plain and quiet. My time as a tempting morsel (another of my Henry-isms) was over. And what good had any of it done, after all? Just showed me what was out there, only to take it away?

Oh, I was plenty mad at this body. I stopped speaking to it after Henry’s funeral. Just clothed it and kept it clean and dragged it around like an unwelcome sack. It hadn’t done anybody any good. A transplant might work. I tried. It didn’t. Useless, useless me.

I don’t remember how long this lasted, this divorce.

And I don’t remember where I was when the tears started. I think I was at work, and bumped my backside into a book trolley. Like a jukebox, it started humming Henry back to me, and it was like he was right there, touching me. It startled me out of myself, and liquid rushed to my eyes like a summer shower. I could feel this old body of mine quake in thankfulness. Finally.

I was curious, wanted to see if it was one time thing. So I put my hand, gently, on the small of my back. Oh, Henry was there too. His words were sliding all over me, his hardscrabble hands so soft, like furred paws. He was in the hair that rose on the back of my neck. He was in the watery sunlight that leaked through the thick matted library windows. And most of all, he was in the tears that fell and fell and fell endlessly.

I went to his grave the other day. You know something? It’s the one covered in flowers. Did my tears do that too? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

But I’m here to speak for the body, because Henry always did. He always said it was juicy, and I finally agree with him. Juicy with his memory, juicy with our history together. Juicy with my new moist grief...the grief that gives him back to me over every part of my body.

No, my body couldn’t save him. But maybe it didn’t have to. Maybe it was enough that we saved each other every day of our time together.

Maybe that is enough.

Mama Says Om

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