Living Room Anecdotes

“You know, they always show the weather in Chicago right before Philadelphia. So I always keep an eye on what it’s like out there.”

This is the fourth thing my grandmother says to me after we embrace, right after:

“Hi, sweet! How are you?”
“You look great, you really look wonderful.”
“How is Chicago?”

No matter how many times I return home from school for a holiday, no matter how many times I may see her during that holiday, this is how our conversations always start.

And I smile and nod and assure her that all is well and I am so thankful that she is looking out for me.

The sliding door to the back porch is open, a cool breeze coming into the living room through the screen. I can hear the chirrping of heat bugs in the dusk. Every now and then a car hums by. I know that the next time I sit in her living room, the door will be shut and the chair I sit in will have been moved to the spare bedroom. A fake Christmas tree proudly wearing the wooden ornaments once made by my grandfather in their garage will have taken its place. Maybe she will decide to put candles in the window this year.

“So, is the car all packed and ready to go?”

When she speaks in such a sweet voice, it is impossible to remind her that I am flying back to school. To remind her of these things she forgets, or to tell her that she has already asked this question, or has told this story, feels like smacking the nose of a dog when he’s had an accident on the kitchen floor because you weren’t home in time to let him out. To bring these things to light makes them no one’s fault but your own. And yet she blushes is internally furious with her mind.

So I just take a sip of water and nod to give her the consent she needs to hear.

On the coffee table in between us are loose photographs, black and white, delicate paper borders. She smiles back at me one hundred and forteen times.

“You know, at seminary, they used to serve us hot meals every night on white table clothes.”

I’ve lost count of how many times she has related this annectode, of how many times I have tried to tell her how different univeristy is today. There are no white table clothes, no servers, no single sex dorms (sometimes bathrooms), no curfews, no designated Saturday date nights. When I tell her these things, I don’t know what sort of image forms in her mind. Whatever it looks like, it slips from her memory like sand through fingertips.

That’s all I ever want - to feel sand run through my fingertips. To be standing on the Northern shore of an Eastern island and see nothing but ocean. For wind to whip my sunbleached sand speckled hair into tiny knots that will cause me to curse Aeolos when I try to comb them out. To feel the waves lap back and forth over my feet, shifting the sand in off beat rhythms underneath my toes.

When I am in Chicago, softly crying in the public bathroom of some univeristy building, questioning irrational graffiti that someone scratched into the paint with a pencil, that is where I try to drive my mind. An empty beach. Salty water. Salty air. No more salty eyes.

“Will you please hold Nana’s arm?”

One girl holds the frantic dog on his leash, another gets the surf board, another the brown bag filled with sandwhiches, another the cooler filled with Nantucket Nectors and candy bars and dog treats, another the bag of towells, another Nana’s arm.

While the others parade through the grass and down the dunes with a sense of urgency to get to the water, the last girl lets her grandmother set the pace. Linking arms, she listens as her grandmother reminsces of when she used to stay at her aunt’s house on the lake every summer. They would float in black inky inner tubes for hours and make up songs that they would later perform after dinner for the adult guests. Sometimes they would go fishing. Sometimes they would kiss boys on the dock after the sun went down.

By the time the two make it down to the beach, the rest of the party has already set up camp. The dog runs back and forth from the water to the girls, tail shaking uncontrollably. The towels laid out, the sandwhiches distributed. The empty chair is for the one who’s legs can only bend to greater angles.

Two empty chairs.

Summer night, just like this one of the last of the season. Window open, breeze through the screen, heatbugs in the darkness. She sits cross legged on her bed, alone. Everyone else in the house is asleep. To the voice of some acoustic surfer turned down low on her laptop speakers, she glues a magazine picture of two empty chairs into her notebook.

But they never sat on chairs. They always laid on their towels. He would only carry a towel, his book, and a shirt. He rarely even brought shoes. She would drive the jeep, with a foot of sand at the bottom and muted paint forever speckled with dry salt, into down. He would stand on the street corner and would around the front to jump into the passenger seat when she stopped.

Bumpling over cobblestones, breezing down fresh pavement, blowing through clouds of sand - the windows were always down, the radio was always blasting. They would make it to the beach right before the tourists crowded the shore and you had to park a mile away before you even reached the water.

From the car, they would carefully slide down the red dirt dunes, taking baby steps. Turning left, they would walk  away from the abandoned life guard stand. They would walk until there were no more people in sight. Laying down their towlels, they claimed that land there own.

He was reading The Sun Also Rises, and she remembers how her belly had cartwheels when he described the story to her. She thinks of how now she has been with dozens of boys at parties who have also described this story to her, how her stomach never flinched.

She was reading East of Eden for the second time. She told him how it was her second Bible, how he needed to read it before he left to go back to school. He smiled at her enthusiaism, told her that he would. Looking back, she doesn’t think that he did.

When her parents gave her a first edition of East of Eden for her graduation present, she burst into tears. All these years of “you don’t understand me,” “you don’t know who I really am” were suddenly nothing but self determenting lies she told herself to write terrible poetry in the margins of her biology notes. They knew she wouldn’t want diamonds or pearls, Tiffany silver or Michael Kors handbags. She cried becuase she didn’t think they even knew what her favorite book was, let alone that this copy would mean more than the world to her.

“Nana, do you remember when you gave me those books for my eigthteenth birthday?”

The tiny woman on the couch crosses her legs and leans back into the coushins.

“Now was that last year?”

“Mmmhmm.”

She shakes her head slowly, eyes concentrating on the ceiling.

“You gave me those books you read while at seminary.”

A Farewell to Arms, Edith Wharton, a book of sonnets. Each were a different combination of muted greens and blues and reads with gold script ingrained into the binding. The pages were yellow. They smelled like “Nana’s house.”’

Whenever she looked at these books on her desk, wedged between two book ends, she thought of her grandmother walking across a plot of grass holding the books under her arm. In her daydreams, she is always wearing a long skirt, heavy fabric the color of olives and wine. She is wearing a turtleneck and her hair is pulled back into a braid. She doesn’t know if this was even the style at the time, but this is how she imagines her grandmother.  Her blue eyes are magnificent.

A boy greets her and her mouth slowly forms a toothless smile. They stand outside the threshold of a brick building. Ivy cascades down into the bushes. He is softly holding her hips and she is hugging her books to her chest. He turns his head and leans in something to whisper in her ear. She closes her eyes and laughs through perfect teeth.

“Did you read them?” Nana asks. She holds her claspes her hands on her lap, folding them around her middle. The lamp in the corner of the room shines directly on her face, highlighting wrinkles and sunspots on her cheeks. Her eyes have faded to gray, the color of fog against a morning sky. Her white hair is not her own.

“This is the last house she’ll ever own,” my mother told me as we were pulling out of the driveway. “She knows it.”

What goes through your mind when you know your time is getting short? That one day soon you will not wake up, leaving an empty niche in the world where you once breathed? To move to a nursing home would mean facing the fact that you will never live in a house for the rest of your time on this earth. You’ll never again have a home to yourself. You’ll never again have an attic filled with family artifacts. You’ll never open the front door that overlooks a quiet street and invite family in for a meal and conversation. You’ll never have a driveway. At least on this earth.

What goes through your mind when you slowly watch all of your neighboors die? When the couple from next door that used to come over for coffee oneday stops coming and you realize it is because she head a heart attack at the dinner table and he cannot bring himself to go outside. Shortly after, he dies too. The doctor says it was caused by overwelming grief.

A few days before our conversation in the living room, we went to view a private art collection in the city. She loved Renoir. As we strolled through the cooridors, arm in arm, she would comment on the children’s porcelain skin bleeding into the dreamy colors of French gardens. She did not understand VanGogh.

“Why are they so dark?”
“Why is their so much paint?”
“Why can you see their veins so clearly?”

These were the questions she asked everytime a certain portrait hit her the wrong way.

“I’m not sure,” was my consistent reply. “Let’s move on.”

opening to an unfinished story

“I do not know how the pieces of my life all fit together,” she told him that night.

Only earlier that day, the morning ferry had rolled into the dock with the fog, heaving a heavy sigh as it’s body was once again tied down tight with heavy ropes to keep it still, let it rest. As the fog horn softly moaned its montonous, regular moan, the cars filed out of the boat, down the ramp, and onto the cobblestone streets. Normally, windows would be rolled down, hands would be reaching straight out as if to grab some salty island air, radios would be crackling summer tunes. But this morning, the first boat was heavy with people with heavy lungs filled with the heavy fog.

Not her though. Her lungs had become immune to the fog. For many summers and the occassional winter, fog had rolled in through her nose and out through her mouth. The fog had no affect on her. The only thing it told her body was that she was in fact on the island and this was the only place in the world she needed to be. No, the only shapeless shifting body that filled her lungs that morning  was the smoke of her cigarette.

Now a cresecent moon was climbing a ladder of stars. The sky was black and bottomless so that if it weren’t for the lights from the houses that dotted the horizon, it would have been near impossible to determine where the sky met the sea. There they sat on the dock that was folded inside one of island’s sandy bends, he sitting cross legged, she swinging her feet over the edge, leaning back on her hands.  An open bottle of wine sat between them next to two half empty glasses. He played with the cork in his fingers, ocassionaly holding it up to his nose to breathe in that beautiful intersection of earth and art. He was wondering what to say next to this girl with lungs full of cigerette smoke when his own were still processing the weight of the fog.

“I do not know how the pieces of my life all fit together.”

She Blamed It on the Air

The air made her feel restless. Unconsciously, she would take up the edge of whatever loose fabric happened to be in her reach (a blanket, the end of her shirt, a curtain) and she would rub it between her thumb and forefinger, faster and faster. When she caught herself doing this, she knew something was not right. Although she rarely knew what. So she blamed it on the air.

Alice Berkley Chaste had spent July with her grandfather on the island for the past seventeen years.  She always looked forward to coming. Her grandfather’s weathered, low-lying cottage, overtaken by runaway bushes of Black Eyed Susan's and Rosa Rugosas, had, what she eventually decided was, “a quaint kind of charm.” The house had a kitchen, a sitting room, a bathroom, her grandfather’s bedroom, and a guest bedroom with twin-beds. For many years, Alice’s mother and father would come and stay in the guest bedroom with Alice sleeping in a collapsable crib, and when she grew too big, a makeshift bed of pillows and comforters on the floor. One year, Alice grandfather surprised her with an air mattress, although it ultimately went to waste since the following year, Alice’s father demanded a divorce. From then on, Alice spent her July’s with her grandfather alone.

This particular July (her seventeenth), Alice felt particularly restless. One evening, after the dinner dishes had been washed and the leftovers stored in the fridge, Alice grabbed an old knitted blanket out of the trunk in her bedroom. She sat on the wooden rocking chair on the front porch with her feet pulled up, draping the blanket over her knees, and began to rub her fingers along the fringed edges. Despite the air, the sunsets never failed to disappoint Alice. From her vantage point, over the thick brush in the yard and above the gray roofs across the street and up the hill, she watched the sky slowly pull apart the lingering clouds, illuminating their edges with gold. After a while, she heard the muffled boom, and she knew that, somewhere, the sun had sunk under the horizon. When she was a little girl, her grandfather told her the boom was the gun of a soldier on the beach, paying homage to the sun as she underwent her temporary death. But today Alice knew it was nothing more but a boy in kaki shorts at the yacht club downtown setting off a small canyon.

She loved this time of day. This was the time of day where she felt the most free, although, as she would willingly admit, she often failed to embrace it’s potential.

Alice heard the screen door screech open and she turned her head to see her grandfather stepping out onto the porch. She quickly put her feet down and began to stand up to offer him the chair (the porch being so small, the chair was the only real piece of furniture and took up about half of the area) but he just as quickly motioned for her to sit back down, pressing his eyebrows down, never making eye contact. He sat down on the top step of the porch in front of the rocking chair. The soft hum of bicycle tires passed by on the other side of the brush.

As the colors in the sky began to fade into hazy dusk, Alice watched her grandfather.  She often did this, forcing herself to memorize his features.

He was a bit taller than most men and, over the past several years, had grown a bit of belly. His hair, a mixture of white and gray strands, was bushy around his head and fell down to a short beard around his chin. He was wearing his green pants, the ones with a stripe of white paint stained on the left leg, and a navy tee shirt that was frayed along the edges of the sleeves. Whenever he went outside, he would put on his Nantucket red baseball cap. He held it in his hands now.

Alice’s grandmother, although she never met her, used to say his eye’s were the shade of the still water of the harbor and held the power to calm any storm.

Two dragonflies sped  along the front hedges, swerving in and out along the flowers. Alice sunk deeper into the chair, pulling the blanket higher up to her chin.

Something had not felt right inside Alice for a what felt like a very long time. It was as if her perspective had shifted overtime so that everything in her view stood on an angle. Nothing felt normal, whatever normal means. Every night, Alice would go to sleep with a prayer that in the morning she would wake up and feel okay again, but the morning never brought anything new.

Time after time she flipped through her memories, desperately trying to pinpoint what could have possibly triggered this unbalance. She found no clarity. She wanted to give up looking, but she couldn’t. So she blamed it on the air.

Alice loved this island.  She loved how it stood on a history of independence and self sufficiency, and how these morals carried through the centuries. She loved the way the people who lived there year round were devoted to some trade that helped the island function, whether that means upholding the role of the head of the fire department, or running the corner bakery downtown where fisherman and school children alike would buy a doughnut for a dollar just as the sun was rising. She loved its physical beauty, the vast moors that stretched for miles, the patterns of sandbars along the Northern shore that shifted with the tides, the driveways made of white shells, the hydrangeas that flowed over white fences. On nights that follow sunny days, the stars were as distinct as strings of Christmas lights.

Strolling along the docks, watching the sailboats tack back and forth around the bend with the lighthouse, she would think to herself “I am happy.” But the next morning she would wake up and before she even swung her feet onto the floor, she would force herself to admit that this found sense of happiness was only a lie she told herself to try and move a step forward. In admitting to this lie, she knew that she was taking a step back.

Alice’s grandfather was a year rounder, a local (although not a native). After dropping out of college, he joined the crew of a massive sailboat named The Essex owned by a young, wealthy couple. For three years, he tied ropes, hauled sails, and slept in the bottom drawer or a dresser when it rained. He learned how to read a barometer to detect approaching storms, navigate the sea with only a map and a compass, and make even the limpest fish come to life with flavor. Every summer, The Essex would make its way to the docks of Nantucket Island. There she would rest, sails down and stored away, for a week or two. Alice’s grandfather would spend a small sum of money to rent a bicycle and would explore the far reaches of the island, biking through the rocky paths in the moors, around small ponds, along the sand that the ocean waves had flattened hard and smooth. At night, he would drift in and out of the local bars like the way the fog rolls over the gray rooftops most evenings. He fell in love with the island. One summer, he decided to stay and become an apprentice for an old ship builder at the tiny marina on the outskirts of town. Many long winters and blissful summers down the line, he came to inherit the marina and has been the been there ever since.

“You have to learn to love your own company,” he would tell his family and tourists alike who asked him how he ever survived those endless, empty winter months. He never regretted his choice to stay.

Alice and her grandfather both loved the island. The object of their love was the same. Although sea and wind and sand may erode the sensuous curves of her land, the island hardly ever changes. But their love was different. The island was the home of Alice’s grandfather. He felt as if he belonged to her shore and sea just as much as she belonged to him. Alice could not yet fully understand her relationship with the island. She desperately longed to belong, to fall into the hills of her bodice like a warm friend, but she did not feel that comfortable quite yet. They were still learning about each other. It felt awkward, and Alice, loving from afar, disliked it.

Oh how she wished she could come to the island on her own, keeping nothing but a backpack with her necessities (a few dresses, her straw hat, a Bible, some paper and postcards, a ballpoint pen, a leather pouch of cash) and a rusted bike. Like her grandfather did before her, she longed to explore the depths and crevices of the island on her own. To go beyond what meets the eye of the ones who only stay to simply see what they had seen on the posters hung in travel agents’ offices. She fantasized of working on one of the island’s many farms, helping to weed flower beds and sell vegetables off the back of a trucks in town. The land of the island produced vegetables, fruits, and fish- what more could a man need?

One night, Alice dreamt of carrying a canoe from her grandfather’s house over her head. She walked on the side of the deserted roads under a full moon until she reached a familiar opening in the brush. There she turned and crept down through the moors until she came to a cranberry bog, the moon’s reflection cratered with thousands of floating, dark bodies. Carefully, she shifted the canoe off of her head and placed it into the black sea. Climbing in, she began to row through the black water, parting the berries as she went. When she awoke, still trapped in that foggy purgatory between sleep and waking, tears began to drip from her eyes, for her dream had broken apart before she was able to reach the end of the world.

Twenty Dollars

I carelessly lost $20 today, so I decided to turn my self-loathing (and my self-loathing for being self-loathing) into art (or shit).






Lying in the snow, there was a twenty dollar bill. Johanna saw it when she stepped off the bus. The other two passengers just walked down the stairs and turned in their predetermined directions, but Johanna noticed the money, stuck in a pile of dirty snow piled up against the base of a street sign.

The bus sighed and drove away.

Johanna flung the end of her scarf around her shoulder and crouched down to pick up the bill.

The city sidewalk was crowded with pedestrians. She looked up and down the street to see if anyone was searching for the money they had lost. Any second now, she thought, someone was going to come flying around the corner, frantically looking at the ground, a distressed look on their face. But the people just kept on walking by, looking straight ahead, determined to get where they were going.

There was no way to tell if someone had come back earlier to look for the money. There were no tracks to trace. Commuters’ boots, runners’ sneakers, and stroller wheels had worn down the snow on the pavement to a thin layer of gray slush. A map with so many roads, there was no distinction of one from the other. No way to tell where each lead.

Johanna stood where the bus dropped her off, paralyzed in her ambivalence. Should she wait to see if the owner of the money comes back? Should she just leave the money where she found it? Should she take it? (God knows she needed it)

Had Johanna found herself in this exact situation six months earlier, she would have taken the money without a doubt. Her addiction had rearranged her priorities and, with that, the hierarchy of her morals. But now she had been sober for half a year, a huge accomplishment in her eyes.

Still, this huge accomplishment was only made possible because of her many small victories. The first, saying yes to an old friend’s invitation to attend Sunday chapel. The second, returning for the same service the following week. The third, listening. The fourth, responding. The fifth, believing.

Now, three blocks north, the bells in that exact chapel rang out into the winter air, chiming five o’clock.

Johanna suddenly had an idea.

The twenty dollar bill wasn’t hers. Even though it was pretty clear now that the owner of this money wasn’t coming back, the money still belonged to them. So, as Johanna’s train of thought followed, it would make sense to spend the money on something that would be considered a kind of universal good. Something that any rational human being could look at and say, I wouldn’t mind spending money on that.

Just across the street from the chapel was little theater where the neighborhood theater company put on productions. Their new show had just opened last week and already word had spread of how wonderful it was.

“From the time the curtain goes up, to the time the curtain falls, your heart will feel strained,” a reviewer for the local paper had written. “You will laugh. You will cry. You will forget where you and are and who you are. It is a marvelous feeling.”

Those words had resonated, loud and echoing, deep in the hollow corner that alcohol had created in Johanna’s chest. How she yearned to feel that marvelous feeling.

Now, she clutched the bill in her fist and began to trudge through the slush up to the theater. At the box office window, she purchased two tickets, $6.25 each. This left $7.50. Just enough to take the bus across town to the home of the old friend who had thought to invite Johanna to chapel, and then for the two of them to ride back for the eight o’clock show. Somehow, it had worked out to the dime.

Johanna put the two tickets, the five dollar bill, two ones, and two quarters in her coat pocket and walked back into the flow of people. She couldn’t help but smile as she imagined her friend’s face when she presented her with the tickets.

When she arrived at the bus stop, she sat down on the bench and crossed her legs, swinging her foot in the air. She put her hand in her pocket to take out $2.50. Her foot stopped swinging and her heart dropped her stomach when she couldn’t feel the cold metal of the two quarters. They were gone.

Johanna leapt up and walked back from where she had come from, frantically looking at the ground, a distressed look on her face. Fifty cents. That’s all it was. And in this city, that meant it was practically nothing. But this particular fifty cents was more than just half a dollar. It was Johanna’s pride. Part of her method of appreciation for all her friend had done for her. That’s what this whole affair was, a method of appreciation. To Johanna, that meant that she would supply everything herself. Even the $2.50 bus fare. She didn’t think she would be able to find the gut to admit that she was short on cash and needed some help when she knew her friend herself didn’t exactly have money to spare either. Even if it was just fifty cents. But it wasn’t just fifty cents. It was more than that.

But the bus was coming.

The next bus wasn’t coming for another half an hour and it was a good twenty minute ride across town to her friend’s home. If she were to catch the next bus, they would be late for the play.

The bus sighed to a stop. A rush of people filed off. Johanna got on.

Now she had two tickets, four one dollar bills, two quarters, and a racing mind. How could she have been so careless? She just had the money. It was just in her hand. She held it. She could feel the cold, rounded metal. And now it was gone. She had no idea where it could be now. How could she have been careless.

But there she sat. There was nothing she could do now. She breathe in, breathed out, and let her foot begin to swing again.

Another little victory achieved, surrendering.

A little while later (although it was what felt like three days to Johanna), she buzzed the intercom at the entrance of an apartment complex. The gate unlocked, and Johanna walked inside the courtyard, up through the front door.

She knocked on room 158. Her friend answered, and immediately took Johanna into her arms, laughing, delighted to have an unexpected visitor.

The door shut behind them.

“So, what brings you here today?” she asked, cordially, without a trace of annoyance.

Johanna explained what had happened, that she found a twenty dollar bill and wanted to do something nice for her, to thank her for all that she had done over the past few months. She had wanted to pay for everything. She wanted every part of the evening to be a gift. But she had carelessly lost fifty cents in the snow and she no other money to spare. She knew her cheeks were dyed the color of humiliation.

Her friend’s eyes were wide, her head slowly shaking back and forth.

She reached out and held both of Johanna’s hands in her own.

“My darling, I consider fifty cents an incredibly small price, as long as it is the price I must pay to see you smile again. You must learn to forgive yourself.”

And, over a bit of time and prayer, Johanna did. One final little victory achieved.


~~~~~~~~

Later that night, the girls walked out of the theater arm-in-arm. They were silent, each contemplating the happenings they had just watched, not exactly sure how to identify the strange emotions the play had evoked in their hearts. A little ways down the street, in the path of a street lamp’s light, Johanna’s old friend saw something shimmer. Two quarters.

Up To Their Birth, Shooting Like Stars

(A work in progress.)

The morning light caused me to stir, but I awoke with a feeling of peace. The thick curtains, hanging by an iron rod, brush the wooden floor as a gentle breeze comes in through the open window. Their fiber, the color of heavy cream, mutes the light, allowing me to pass through the world of dreams into reality with ease.

I close my eyes and stretch my legs, turning over so I am facing you. You smell like sleep, sweet and calming. I can smell it on your skin, milky in the shadows of morning. When you exhale, I smell it on your breath. I marvel at your eyelids, a thin film of skin and lilac veins embracing the pearl of your eye. Your eyes see a place far away from me. The one place you will go that I will follow.

The old quilt had fallen away in the darkness, and I pull it back up around our bare shoulders now. Its pinks have turned to whites, it’s yellows to grays. Worn thin from sleeping generations, its little stitches have become strangling threads. I bury my nose into the soft fabric and think of home.

I let my head stay enveloped in the white pillow and let my mind get lost in the white vastness of the ceiling. Time slips away down through the cracks in the floor. My train of thought saunters with the seagulls in the harbor. I can hear them in their flight, threading between dock posts and sailboat masts. The distant foghorn is the steady beat behind their rhythmic calls. I know that a layer of fog is covering where the land meets the sea. But not here. Here, there is light.

I see your feet stir under the folds of the quilt from the corner of my eye. I am warmed by the heat of your skin as you draw me close to your bare chest, gently kissing my hair, and in an instant, I am brought back.

My head rises and falls as you take your first breath.

“Need to go into town today. Running low on wire, need to pick up a few more lures. And my prescription.”

My silence is my concession. The haze of the morning’s magic slowly begins to break as you sigh these first words. The light seems harsher now and my muscles begin to feel restless. No longer does everything seem to fit together quite as well. Silent harmony falls to soft cacophony.

I roll out of your arms and let my legs swing over the side of the bed. On the nightstand is a stack of books, upon that, my teacup from the night before. I take it now and drink up what little tea is left at the bottom, cold and grainy in my mouth. The liquid leaves a ring, stained along the inside, marking where one day ended and the next began. What has been and what now is.

I place the teacup back on my tattered copy of a compilation of poetry entitled “What You Are Thinking But Cannot Say”. Next to that, an open notebook, with the single line written in blue ink,

“up to their birth, shooting like stars”

I must have woken up after a dream and instinctively grabbed the pen. It was becoming a habit. It was rare that I could recall a dream in the first place, but if I did, I struggled to find a connection between the hazy content the remained in my memory and the few words on the paper. It was as if they appeared by magic.

The grandfather clock down the hall chimed 7:00, beckoning us to get out of bed and begin the day.

I shivered as I let my bare feet drop to the cold wooden floor. Quickly, I grab my sweater, two sizes two big, limp at the foot of the bed, and pull it over my head.

“When will you be back?”

You sit up in the bed, rubbing your eyes.

“Before dark. The fog is supposed to roll in heavy at dusk. Want to try and beat it.”

I nod, searching under the covers for the pair of socks I was wearing the night before. When I find them, balled up and inside out, I sit on your side of the bed to pull them on.

“Please. Make sure you call the harbormaster too. Make sure there is a slip for you.”

Now it is your turn to nod as you slowly make your way out from under the quilt. You sit on the side of the bed with you head in your hands. I turn and run my fingers through your mangled head of hair and kissed the top of your head.

“I know.”

I pad across the bedroom floor and down the hall into the kitchen. We tell people we bought this house for the kitchen. It was exactly what we always wanted; old hardwood floors, a small marble island, a large bay window encompassing our kitchen table. The bay window leads right up to the boulders that make up the escarpment leading down to the water. At night, the beam of the lighthouse sweeps across the table and through the kitchen.

I ski over the wood floor in my socks to the table, covered with a red -and-white-checkered tablecloth. In the center was a single daisy in a Mason jar. We usually only kept two chairs at the table. That was all we really needed.

Like almost every morning, you cannot see out the window past the escarpment. Dense fog covers the shore and sea like a weightless blanket. The horizon is nonexistent. Only the first few rays of sunlight are beginning to break through.

Noises commence. The soft cacophony of our mornings. The faucet in the kitchen squeals as I fill the coffee pot, the sink in the bathroom where you keep your toothbrush echoes down the hall. Ceramic clatters as I bring two plates, two cups, and two mugs down from the shelves. Silverware clangs. The radio in our bedroom hums, perpetually streaming advertisements and heart-breaking news. Refrigerator bangs. Coffee pot rumbles. Orange juice gurgles as it hits hollow glass. Toaster pops. Knife chops. A sneeze. A yawn. A sniffle. Knife scraping against toast, spreading strawberry jam.

The radio is switched off. I hear you walk down the hall, into the kitchen. I turn from my work and grin. You walk over to the counter and place my dirty teacup in the sink. You pick up the coffee pot, still rumbling and gurgling and steaming. No longer do you smell like sleep, but like soap. This smell has corners, edges. It awakens my senses. I know, though, that as the day goes on, these corners will soften again, beaten down by other scents of life, like the sea and the fish and the coffee you now pour into the mugs. When you come home tonight, you will just smell like you.

            “Time to eat.”

            We carry over the mugs and the glasses and the silverware. Two plates holding toast with strawberry jam. A bowl of strawberries and chopped bananas. A tiny blue pitcher of cream. A tiny jar of sugar with a tiny spoon. We sit down. As I reached for the cream, I catch you looking at me, smiling.

            The fog has almost completely cleared now. You can see the water over the escarpment and catch just a sliver of sea. The water in the morning is beautiful, the way the soft yellows and pinks of the rising sun cause the waves to glimmer the way stars do in a cloudless sky. I can see a few sailboats now, just leisurely meandering. It isn’t very windy. The American flag hanging from the back porch was lifeless.

            “You’ll have an easy trip,” I say as I pour the cream into my mug.

You nod, gazing out at the water, munching on toast. I can see crumbs caught in the stubble on your chin. You take a long drink of orange juice without removing your gaze.

“Beautiful day. Tides are timed just right. Just pray the fog doesn’t roll in too soon.”

I stir the cream with a long silver spoon, the white mixing with the black, a liquidly yin-yang settling into that beautiful shade I see every morning.

When the plates are empty and all that is left at the bottom of our mugs is cold, forgotten grounds, it is time for you to go. I scrape scraps off dishes as you lace up your boots. I rinse the dishes in the sink as you shrug into your tough field coat, the one lined with soft red plaid.

You slap your palms to your knees and rub your hands together.

“Time to go.”

We walk out to the porch, pushing open the glass door, pulling open the screen. I push the glass door as far as it can go, placing the hook nailed to the back of the door to the loop nailed to the side of the house. You let the screen door slam behind us. I take off my socks and leave them in a lump on the doorstep.

Now the sun is well on its way. As we walk out of the shadows and down the porch steps, I can feel its warmth on my neck. The narrow path that leads to the edge of the escarpment is lined with hydrangea bushes, big, round flowers flecked with every shade of blue and purple possible. You can hear the hum of the bumblebees as they attack and retreat the nectar of the buds.

Standing on the very edge of the escarpment, you can see either end of the island, the points where the shore turns to touch the other side. Small waves lap upon the sand. Boats rock back and forth on their moorings. Sail clips clang to the masts. Clumps of seagulls bob up and down in the waves, silently, sleepily. Long, wispy clouds stretch high across the sky. They seem to curve above me, winding paths along a limitless dome of blue expanse.

There’s that line from “White Fang” you love to quote, “sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles realizes he is a maggot’s life no more.”

            The wooden stairs that sit in the side of the sandy cliff creak under our weight (or just you and your boots). We trudge across the sand, soft and cool between my toes as I place each foot inside the imprint of your boot. Standing on the dock, you can see the down to the bottom of the water. Along the sandy floor, shadows dance as schools of minnows frantically dart back and forth. On the surface, a dozen little boats bumped and tottered together as one unit. Some rubber, some wooden, some with motors, some with oars, each attached by a dirty rope, all tied to a single clamp. Ours is a red dingy, only big enough to hold two adults, possibly two and a child. Its rope is a bit longer than the others, so it tends lingers in the back of group. It smells like low tide.

            You reach down and rub your thumb softly along the back of my hand, interlocking fingers.

            “See you later?”

            You smile and lean down for a kiss. You brush a stray hair behind my ear, and then you are gone.

            Stepping off the dock, you balance yourself in the closest boat, then using each boat as a stepping-stone, you make your way over to the red dingy. You settle onto your knees and lean over the bow. I bend down to untie the attached rope and toss it into your outstretched hands, setting you free.

Our Buried Golden Years

Old words, new accompaniment.

“He was a great man.” That’s what they all said, over and over again, as they shyly exchanged conversation between sips of champagne in old, fragile glasses.

            “Ebony was just such a great man. Wasn’t that old either. I guess the good always die young, huh?”

            This was their safe talk, the buffer zone in the postmortem eulogy. They weren’t offending anyone, they weren’t bringing back a surge of memories that would break down some newly constructed damn which held back a loved ones tears- they were simply telling the truth. They were telling what they knew.

            Outside the wind howled and rattled the shutters. It was as if the world was suddenly a hallow, abandoned place without him. The noise outside overpowered the hushed whispers of the mourners, and Tabitha continuingly found herself listening to the wind instead. The past weeks had taken a toll on her. Not necessarily the energy needed to put the funeral and reception together, but the pain of coming home to an empty bed every night- that was what took the most from her.

            Two and half hours later, Tabitha sat on the couch alone in her small, outdated living room. The grieving family and close friends had finally left when they were sure she no longer needed that imperative human touch that those need when they lament for their loss, and that now she just wanted to be left in personal solitude. A mass of empty glasses crowded the counter next to the kitchen sink. No one had offered to help wash them.

            The wind shrieked erratically, while, in contrast, the grandfather clock ticked of the passing seconds. Tabitha rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. On the mantel stood a little tin box, rustic looking, but polished. Ebony had left a will, stating very clearly that he wished to be cremated. But that was all he had demanded. And now, looking at that tiny enclosed box, Tabitha had a feeling that that was not where he belonged. She stood up, cupped the box in her palms, and walked outside into the wind, letting the screen door slam behind her.

            In the far corner of the yard stood a massive apple tree. Its trunk was thick and sturdy, with deep grooves that swirled in every which way. The branches had grown sturdy and anchored, proof of many years of climbing and hanging and swinging. From the braches sprouted embryonic apple buds, surrounded by a sea of transparent green leaves that seemed to reach out at every possible angle. Its colossal presence pronounced itself extremely against the surrounding brush and planted flowers, but like a grandfather, it did not overpower- it simply protected.

            Tabitha stood under the tree, and looked up at the austere, gray sky revealed between the leaves, frantic with the winds touch. Then, she took a deep breath, opened the box, gathered a handful of Ebony in her hand, and tossed him into the air. The ashes were carried up by the wind, and then settled between the bulging roots, stretching along the frozen grass.

            A burden had been graciously lifted off her back. Everything was finally at peace, because he had found his place. He belonged with his tree; dwelling in the surrounding soil as its fuel to feed it, help it, to let it grow. Ebony was now not dead, but very much alive, still living to serve those he loved.

            Is a gust of wind ever the same as one before? Do they travel the world, wherever a windstorm is called for, or do they stay close and return to the same places? Only science could prove such a theory, but sometimes our hearts make more sense than reason. That day, Tabitha knew it was the same wind, for the song in the branches was exactly identical to that of a day 56 years ago.

            Ebony and Tabitha lay on their backs, staring up at the quivering leaves and the maze of their veins that the bright sun illuminated. They listened to the music.

            Fingers intertwined, Ebony absentmindedly let his free hand graze over the diamond on Tabitha’s left. She smiled, and turned her head to meet his eyes. Her beauty was seen by his eyes, and perceived through his mind, spreading like smoke through his blood until it settled in his heart, causing it to stutter. His mind felt thick, his skin burned an embarrassing shade of red.

            “My gem,” he whispered. He couldn’t help but smile at his words.

            Tabitha’s eyes were small- to small to hold all the heavy stories they had lived. And too often, they could not carry the weight any longer, and they overflowed, trickling drops of the saddest brown Ebony had ever seen.

            Above her left eye was a thin ribbon of as scar that ran from the side of her head to the corner of her eye. It only brought pain and excruciating remorse for Ebony to look at those eyes, for it is said that eyes are our connection to our pasts. Her past was nothing but undeserved suffering, a Job-like story- one with an uncontrollable whirlwind of pure evil only the Devil himself could do so directly and deliberately. And Ebony was too late.

            That was what ran through his mind that night, like a frantic bird captured in a cage. I’m to late, I’m too late, I’m too late. It was sheer luck that he happened to see her limp body in the ravine, just by the dim light of the street lamp. He followed the ambulance to the hospital and patiently waited hours until could go into the room to see her. “Love at first sight” did not apply to them. When he saw her for the first time, bandages covering her head, a brace on her wrist, dark swollen eyes, he simply saw another human being- one that had been seriously abused and mistreated.

            She was so quiet at first, only offering a few blunt responses to Ebony’s constant chatter to fill the awkward silence. He came back to sit by her bedside every night- first out of civic good will, but then turning into absolute personal desire- and he began to look forward everyday to their innocent meetings under the florescent lights of the hospital room.

            Every time Tabitha opened her mouth, which she began to slowly do more, a calloused layer of her internal world fell away, as well as a bandage, or a shade of fear that painted her face. Ebony gradually began to uncover her enigmatic being, though how she ended up in the ravine that night was still a mystery to him, even after the two weeks he had spent with her.

            One night, they laughed together at some comment now forgotten. Their laughter dyed down, leaving the hum of the radiator to hang in the silence.

            Ebony could not take the anticipation any longer. He believed if he didn’t ask now, he never would be able too.

            “Why are you here, Tabitha?”

            The question did not seem to faze her, as if she had known he was going to ask it all along.

            “Why should I tell you? I hardly know you. You are only a stranger to me.”

            “Well,” Ebony replied with a smirk, “I guess we’ll have to work on that.”

            Then, Tabitha told him her story, as flatly and stoically as humanly possible,

No words had ever hurt Ebony more in his entire lifetime, never caused such a build up of emotional rage to strangle with his own hands the man who could have done such a thing, such a heartache of sorrow for what this girl must live with for the rest of her life, resentment and omniscient shame.

How was he to respond? No human words could possibly express his thoughts, no words could possibly take away her pain and provide the comfort and serenity she needed. So instead, he gently but undoubtedly leaned across the bed to kiss her.

From that day forth, Tabitha believed those lips were the work of some divine figure, forever pure and sacred, crafted perfectly to be in flawless sync with hers. Never did she really know how many others pairs of lips they had met before they arrived at hers.

For a summer in college, Ebony had the privilege to travel to England and shadow art historian, Martin Kemp. Ebony had recently declared a major in Art History and took his potential career with great seriousness. For two months, he lived with Martin in his 19^th century mansion, settled in the quiet of country right outside the city. Vines crawled up the crumbling stonewalls, and the interior was furnished with the finest British antiques. Accommodating servants were always available to meet Ebony’s every wish.

The basement was Martin’s workspace. A door was hidden in the living room, disguised as a bookshelf, which led to a flight of stairs, and then finally to another door with an alarm system, and a padlock that only responded to Martin’s thumbprint. He was a detective historian. Eager collectors and art dealers from all around the world sent him anonymous paintings they had come across to see if Martin could detect their original creator.

Their summer project was a 13x9 canvas, with the painting of a young girl’s profile, her skin translucent and hair tied in a long braid down her back. They called her “La Bella Principessa”-The Beautiful Princess. Martin strongly believed it could possibly be the work of Leonardo Divinci himself; an idea which put the entire household in excited spirits. For hours at a time, Ebony followed Martin’s lead; hunched over a canvas with a microscope, analyzing brush strokes, paint samples, and hidden finger prints.

Ebony was a good student and a fast learner. As long as the sun shone, he eagerly worked in Martin’s footsteps, doing whatever he could to uncover the great secret of this ancient piece of art. But he was still a kid- a boy not yet even 20.- young and oblivious to most of the world. Martin’s home was only a train ride away from the eye of the pulsing city, and at night, the kid inside Ebony emerged to have some personal fun and enjoyment.

Every night after a four-course meal with Martin, Ebony would slip away from the world of Divinci’s princess, and go to find his own among the neon illuminated side streets of London.  His ID (professionally and expensively copied) was his ticket to endless possibilities after a day of work.

Once Ebony had a few drinks, he would usually find someone to his liking. Blurred with alcohol, his mind became dysfunctional, yet his senses carried on, sharper than ever. He would hear the vibrations of the music, smell the overpowering smoke rising from mirrors, and sweat that reeked of booze, see the face of his current princess for 20 ₤, feel the skin and protruding bones, taste the lips so often tasting like an apple- but too sweet to be genuine, to be the best.

The best apple Ebony had ever tasted came right from his very own backyard. He was 15, yet till the day he died, his mouth still help the perfect memory of that piece of fruit, as if he had just bitten it that very second. The color was the ultimate color of a Gala, a blend of pale reds and yellows, grown to perfection by his own labor. The skin was tart between his teeth, but the fruit itself was both crunchy and juicy- a paradoxical sensation only the very best apple can achieve.

Juice dripped from the corners of his mouth, and he greedily licked his lips, making sure to savor every drop. He sat on the lush grass and rested his head against the maturing trunk of the apple tree. Through the open windows of the house, he could hear the voices inside, deep in some argument of who-did-what and why-can’t-you-do-this. He tried to tune out their voices by instead think of sweet taste on his tongue, and of baseball cards and football games…

There was a football on the kitchen table. He wasn’t sure why it was there, or who even walked into the kitchen with it. But he remembered tracing the lace over and over again with his fat, toddler finger while his mother made lunch. She came over and sat next to him, placing a plate with a PB&J sandwich on the table. As he hungrily nibbled at the bread, avoiding the crust, his mother asked,

“Do you want to know a secret?”

Suddenly very curious by such a suggestion, Ebony nodded enthusiastically, forgetting all about his lunch. His mother brought a ripe apple and a knife to the table, and cut the apple in half, making quite a show of it.

“See what is hidden inside? Can you see the flower in the seeds?”

Ebony smiled in delight, having seemed to have just discovered one of the greatest mysteries of life itself. Indeed, the tiny brown spots formed the shape of a flower.

His mother removed one of the seeds, and pressed it into his palm. Even in comparison to his undeveloped hand, the seed still appeared amazingly tiny and fragile.

“If this seed is buried in the ground, someday it will grow into something much bigger and more beautiful for everyone to see,” she explained.

He could not understand. He could not see how a wrinkled brown seed could someday be beautiful, and could be seen by every person if it was under the ground. Even in his hand, it was smaller than his own thumbnail. Yet still, Ebony had that relying faith a child holds to their parents, and he somehow believed her word.

His mother took the seed and held it between her thumb and pointer finger, right at his eye level.

“Like buried treasure, it is most valuable when it is buried beneath the earth. Do you want to see?”

Ebony still didn’t understand what she was trying to say. But, he was now very curious, and wanted to experience for himself what his mother described. So he took her hand and followed her into the far corner of the backyard, to see what wonder could possibly surface.

                                                                                                                  2010

Unripened Fruit

"Finish a story and be satisfied" was #5 on my summer bucket list. Tomorrow, classes finally start, so I am technically considering this my very last night of summer. I felt like it was time to put this story to rest, for not only does it embody a few timeless questions, but also many summer sentiments whose time has come and past. Tomorrow marks a new chapter.

Unripened Fruit

ACT 1

We stood at the very tip of the island, where the wild ocean meets the placid sound in perpetual combat. The sky was gray. The horizon was beginning to blur due to the approaching fog. Typical weather in October, or any month of the year really.

            Heidi rose up on her tiptoes, her turquoise windbreaker zipped up to her chin and the hood pulled tight over her head. She stuffed her hands inside her jacket pockets and bit on the zipper with her front teeth.

            After a while, Heidi let go of the zipper and began to rock back and forth on her heels.

            “You know,” she casually spoke, “I wouldn’t really care if I died right now.”

            “Wait, what?” I spat, surprised at her sudden revelation.

            “If I were to walk out into the water right now and let it take me away, or if I were to die in a car crash on the way back, or if someone were to drive along and shoot me, I’d be okay.”

            “Well none of those things are going to happen, obviously,” I quickly reassured her, inching a little closer with the fear that she might plunge into the sea.

            “But why do you say that, Heidi? You don’t really mean it.”

            Heidi turned to face me, her hazel eyes piercing me with their honesty.

            “Why, yes I do.”

Heidi stepped up on a little boulder alone in the sand. She threw her arms back and lifted her face up into the wind, closing her eyes.

            “Why would you say something like that, Heidi? Don’t you realize how many people you would hurt if you were to suddenly stop breathing? Don’t you realize how many people would miss you?”

            She didn’t move from her position.           

            “I have nothing left to give,” she said, the wind carrying her voice in a hundred different directions.

ACT 2

            She’d never been off the island before, never in her seventeen years. Never been farther off the shore than she could swim. Off island trips were just a part of life for me. I’ve had the same pediatrician on the mainland ever since I was born, I rode the ferry across the channel to nearby towns with the high school softball team, and I would always spend the holidays with my mother’s family who lives in a landlocked suburb.  Heidi’s family saw plane tickets and ferry passes as economically unreasonable. The island had a hospital (though the quality was questionable), Heidi’s asthma made sports anathema, and the little extended family she had lived right down the road.

           

INTERLUDE

Heidi May’s mother was the superintendant of the local school system. Her mother’s position gave Heidi deep roots into the island. She could not see very far beyond. An only child, Heidi lived with her mother and father in an old farmhouse in the rustic, brushy town away from the heart of the island. If it weren’t for the American flag flying off the porch and the Ford parked in the dirt driveway, some may have deemed the house abandoned. Half of the fence surrounding the property was painted white, the other half the same dispirited gray of the house itself. Nevertheless, it was May’s home and it had been that way for as long as I have known.

            The first thing someone noticed about Heidi was her posture. What was it exactly? Her limbs were long and lean, not very muscular, though not cadaverous. Even her torso seemed to be unnaturally extended. She often stood with her long legs crossed, one over the other, her hands on her hips. Something about Heidi made her look like a paper doll, only much more pliable. She seemed to fold into herself, her body taking on strange shapes, simultaneous obtuse and acute angles. Her wild white blond hair was always tied into a loose bun hanging to the side of her head. She wore overalls.

ACT 3

            The summer we were sixteen, a boy named Peter Place came to town, and Heidi fell in love.

            “I don’t care that he is only here for three weeks. I don’t care that I don’t know if he loves me back. I still love him,” she told me one night, lying on her back, stretched across my bed, letting her head fall over the edge, her hair touching the floor.

            Peter’s father was a marine biologist and was assigned a project recording whale calls off of the island. I never heard about his mother. Peter brought along a friend named Dylan. What Heidi and I were, whatever we were, Peter and Dylan were the male equivalent. Heidi would be Peter, so I guess that means I would be Dylan. There really was some kind of connection between Peter and Heidi although I wouldn’t call it love. They were incredibly similar, almost the same person. Both did not know where they were going. They were wanderers and Dylan and I were the ones always by their side reminding them that they were not lost.

            The following September after school had started, Heidi confessed to me something that she had never confessed to anyone besides her diary.

            “I need to tell someone,” she explained, “and you are my best friend. So I think I should tell you.”

            One afternoon while I was off island, Heidi had gone to the beach with Peter and Dylan. As they were lounging on their towels, somehow the conversation turned towards the topic of kissing. The two boys began to playfully argue over which one is the better kisser. Heidi had an idea. She would close her eyes and each one would kiss her. Then she would have to say which one was better. But, she explained, there was a disclaimer. Sheepishly, she broke the “ awfully embarrassing” news that she was a prude. So, whichever boy kissed her first would be the first to ever kiss her.

            Dylan was the first. But Peter was the best. She told me she could tell which kiss belonged to what boy by the way they smelled. She told me when she smelled Dylan’s breath coming towards her lips she wanted to cry.

            “Whatever,” she sighed the day their ferry left for the mainland. “I didn’t really like them anyway.”

ACT 4

            Public tragedies are a rarity here on our island. Of course there are fatal diagnoses and confessions inside each home but it is not very often that the entire community shares a common sorrow. Still, that does not mean that they do not happen.  Two days after we started our junior year of high school, two kids from our class were killed in a boating accident. A boy and a girl, a brother and a sister. The girl was in our class. The boy was just a year behind.

            Heidi and I were sitting on her front porch steps, drinking lemonade and trying to soak up as much warmth as possible before the bitter winter cold rolled in. We heard the screen door screech as her mother pushed it open and carefully closed it behind her. I leaned over into Heidi so she could squeeze past us on the steps. At the bottom she turned to face us and squatted down to our level, folding her hands on her knees. There, she explained to us what had just happened earlier that morning. As the superintendant, she was one of the first people on the island to know.

            When she asked if we understood, we nodded slowly. When she asked us if we were okay, we both let our shoulders give a loose shrug. Neither one of us were very expressive when it came to emotion. I’ll never know whether that is a trait innate in each of us or whether one adapted it from the other.

            Mrs. May placed a hand on each of our heads. She took her one hand off of mine and let the other run down the edge of Heidi’s face until she was holding her chin with her thumb.

            When I heard Mrs. May turn the kitchen sink on in the kitchen through the open windows, I turned to Heidi. She stared out into the empty road, and beyond that, the thicket, and beyond that the sea. Her glass was pressed against her lips, but she wasn’t drinking.

            We were silent for a long time.

            Mrs. May was doing the dishes. I could hear the clatter of silverware scraping against plates and being placed in the dishwasher.

            Finally, the sink stopped running and somewhere in the house a television was switched on. I could hear the laughing of a sitcom, but I couldn’t hear what the characters were saying.

            “Say something.”
            My head snapped to look at Heidi, who was looking at me.

            “You say something,” I retorted.

            “I asked you first.”

            I shifted my body so I was sitting upright and placed my glass on the step where my feet rested. I wiped my wet fingers on the side of my jean cutoffs.

            “I think that this is going to change the atmosphere of this school year,” I said.

            Heidi nodded in agreement.

            “I think that now they are free.”

ACT 5

            It was February, but the only pink in the kitchen was the color of our cheeks, flushed by the harsh draft.  Outside was nothing but night. The small lantern hanging above the kitchen door on the porch even failed to shed a bit of direction upon the darkness.

            Heidi and I sat at the May’s kitchen table, knee deep in impossible physics problems. Her parents sat in the living room, separated by a wooden half wall, watching the evening news.

            9. You have a glass of water that is 70° F. You then drop an ice cube into the glass. What is the temperature of the water after all the ice has melted?

            Heidi groaned and dramatically let her forehead fall onto her textbook, sending her pencil to shoot off the table and across the tile floor. Her bun flopped onto my own notebook.

            “I. Give. Up,” she announced in a muffled voice.

            “We could just circle it and go in tomorrow before school. He’ll practically give us the answers,” I suggested, chewing on the tip of my eraser and staring at the light fixture hanging from the ceiling over the table.

            “Tell me again why I took this class?”

            “We ask ourselves that everyday.”

            “That is just awful.”

            Heidi’s head snapped up and we both craned our necks over towards the living room. This kid-homework-parent-news-situation was pretty routine, but very rarely did Heidi’s parents speak, let alone comment on what they were watching.

            “What’s the matter, Dad?”

            Mr. May sat with his elbows on his knees, running his fingers along his brown, prickly scruff.

            “It’s this earthquake. The destruction just breaks your heart,” he responded in his deep voice.

            Heidi stood up and leaned over the half wall to get a better look at the screen.

            “What earthquake? Where?”

            “Haiti. It happened earlier this week.”

            I got up to stand next to Heidi. On the television, an American male reporter was standing speaking into a microphone, pointing off into the distance. There was a road, a wide gravel road that seemed to travel all the way back to the horizon. On either side of the road, makeshift tents of driftwood, blue tarp, tattered cloth, and pipes stood shoulder to shoulder. However far the road went, it seemed as if the tents would be lined up beside it. You know how usually the sky makes whatever is on the ground appear to be so small? Well, this sight seemed to make the sky look thin and weary. Insignificant.

            The screen changed to the view of a new camera, where a blond woman dressed for the office sat on a plastic chair, also speaking into a microphone. She held a little Haitian boy in her lap and there were about fifteen other children surrounding her on the ground. All wore faded, unraveling clothes, all had gaping, frantic eyes, all had thick, parted lips. I saw clouds of smoke behind them. Or was it just dirt?

            All of these children around me are orphans. They had either lost their parents before the earthquake struck, or they lost them in its aftermath…

ACT 6

            “Rise up! Rise up from those ashes! Because, my friends, if you have your face buried in the ground, however will you be able to see the light?”

            “Amen! Amen!”

            “Rise up, my friends, my friends in Christ! Let me read you somethin’. This  here comes from the book of Philippians, Phillippians 3:8-11:

I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but which is through faith in Christ. I want to know Christ- yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”

            “Amen!”

            “Friends, love is a complicated word. A word that stretches from as far as the East is to the West. No one understands its expanse. But, friends, I can tell you, one of the reasons why I love Jesus Christ with all my heart and soul is because he was once a man!”

            “Amen!”

            “He was a man who has walked this earth and has felt this pain, this sorrow, this heartache! Friends, we are NEVER alone.”

            “Amen! Amen!”

            “And why did Jesus do this? Why did he agree to take on the burden that comes along with a beating heart and warm flesh? So he could rise again, brothers and sisters! He died and fell into the pits of Hell so we, as sinners, would have the possibility of eternal life!”

            “Amen! Amen! Amen!”

            “We, we look ahead into the eyes of paradise. Where there is no pain! No sorrow! No heartache! My friends, someday we will see the Lord with our own eyes!”

            “AMEN! AMEN!”

            “But before we leave this earth, before our hearts stop beating and our flesh runs cold and stiff, we have a job to do-“

            “Amen!”

            “-we have job that we must do for the Lord! Brothers and sisters, we are the face of Christ! We must live so that the people we pass in our lives can look into our eyes and say I have seen the face of God!”

            “Halleluiah!”

            “We are the body of Christ! We are His arms, His legs, His eyes, His ears, His mouth! He lives inside our hearts as long as we have faith!”

            “Halleluiah! Amen!”

            “There is a light before us, and it will not be long before we stand before God Almighty. But until that day comes, we must never take a minute for granted. May we use each to the benefit of God to the best of our abilities.”

            “Amen, Amen, Amen!”

            “Brothers and sisters, my family in Christ, do not be afraid of death. Be afraid of dying with a life that is unfulfilled and a story that is unfinished.”

ACT 7

            In Art History, we were learning about Oriental art. For homework, we were told to write a haiku. Three syllables, five syllables, three syllables. Simple as that.

            We stood up in front of the class to read them aloud.

Sun in the blue sky

Little fish in the blue sea

Blue: color of life

I saw a flying

Butterfly land on a branch

Wings settling down

Meow says the cat

Arf woof bark bark says the dog

Fun in the barnyard

What I fear the most

To hold a blank page and an

Empty ink bottle

ACT 8

            We trudged through the snow, soldiers in heavy boots making their way home.

            “So, I think I am going to ask my parents about traveling overseas this summer. The government sponsors trips for students, you know. I guess they want us to be more cultured or something.”

            I couldn’t help but let out a little HA but quickly buried my mouth inside my scarf, wrapped up to my chin, when I saw Heidi’s face, obviously hurt.

            “What’s so funny?”

            “Heidi, you have never even been on mainland. You have never been anywhere else besides here. How are you going to get on a plane and go to a totally different country?”

            “Why not?”

            “Well-“

            “It’s not like you’ve been to another country either!”

            The wind blew in circles around us and we shrugged out backpacks higher up on our shoulders and snuggled deeper into our winter coats. We marched along in silence.

            “So, where would you go?” I broke the silence.

            Heidi stared straight ahead.

            “Um, maybe Haiti.”

            “Heidi, I don’t exactly think the government is going to pay for a young girl to travel to a country currently in ruins.”

            She snapped her head around to give me the death stare. I’ve seen that face before. Recently, I have seen it quite a lot.

            “Why not?”

            “Well, for starters, its dangerous.”

            “So what? Do you know how many people are there already with the Red Cross and-“

            “Yes, but those people aren’t sixteen years old.”

            “So you think I should just wait until I turn twenty five? What difference would that make? What if I don’t even live to be twenty-five? What if I died right now, huh? What if I dropped dead right now?”

            “Well, you told me you wouldn’t care.”

ACT 9

            I stood on the stoop outside the kitchen door. The same lamp was hanging above me as the one when we watched nightmares unravel on the television, worlds away. It still refused to shed any light into the darkness. But now, it wasn’t because of the thickness of the night, it was because the night was already ablaze by the clearest sky of the year, a sign that spring was approaching. Every star was bright and distinct, each in their precise place throughout the dusty Milk Way.

            Each star does not move itself. Each has its own spot. They all move together. One unit, I pondered.

            The austere winter weather seemed to have pushed into the May home, leaving room for this crystal night. It was a Friday and I had come over to pick Heidi up to go downtown to a friend’s. Before I even knocked on the door though, I could feel the tension that had built up inside the house. I heard the screaming. The slamming. So I stood, waiting for the storm to pass.

            I heard stomping through the kitchen, quieter through the living room, the foyer. The screen door squeaked open and crashed shut. Stones scattered and clacked as Heidi stormed across the driveway and across the road to the thicket. I could see her in the light of the stars, her hands balled up into fists, stiff at her side.

            There was one thick trunk among all the thin saplings lining the road. That is where Heidi took refuge. She sat down on tree’s protruding roots, wrinkled but strong, and leaned against the trunk. There, she finally let herself cry, weeping into the night up at a nonexistent moon.