Newness

Fortune could be so cruel. She had been a real beauty in her day; rosy cheeked, blue eyed, with hair of strawberry gold. A sun bonnet, a crisp blue and white striped dress, two dainty white booties, she had had them all. People, women and children especially, had passed her by and paused to look at her. She could see how they longed to hold her, to touch her dress, to stroke her silky hair. They looked at her with such wanting, and it filled her with pleasure and pride, exciting her beyond measure. That had been when she was new.
She had long since learned that it was not her that they had coveted, but rather her newness. She had possessed this quality then and they had adored her for it. Those had been wonderful days, when she shone bright and clean behind a wall of plastic. No one had dared handle her roughly then. The desire of these passing strangers had awakened desire within her, and soon when they stopped and admired her she wished that they would take her out of the box and clasp her to their breasts. She yearned for them to stroke her hair and touch her dress and cradle her in their arms.
One day a woman with soft white gloves fastened at the wrists by tiny pearls had stopped and smiled at her. Then, joy of joys! The woman had lifted her box from the shelf and carried her away to the man with the black mustache who sometimes dusted the shelves. As the woman carried her away she caught a glimpse of many other beauties behind plastic. They lined the shelves, some smaller, some larger, all watching her leave their ranks with apparent envy. It made her giddy inside.
In the woman’s home she met her first disappointment as the lady left her in the box and did not take her out and hug her as she had supposed would happen. She consoled herself with the woman’s charming smile, and the way she held the box and looked at her with such immense satisfaction. Then the lady put her in a dark closet and left her there for a few days. They were a terrible few days in which she thought that the woman must not have liked her at all. It seemed that she must have thought her so unattractive that she should be shut away in darkness where no one could ever see her again. But after those few days the woman took her out of the closet and smiled at her again and her fears were eased for a moment before the lady wrapped her box up in brightly colored paper. She was once again encapsulated in darkness and suspected that the woman was very unsatisfied with her and it depressed her very much.
She was carried away and heard so many strange sounds during the travel and wondered what was happening and whether she was still with the woman or not until the noise reaching into her dark cell was a positive uproar. She was set down and left stationary for quite awhile and she listened with a certain degree of fearfulness to the din outside. Then suddenly the paper was torn and she was abruptly blinded by the brightness of the world. As her vision came into focus it was the face of a little girl that peered down at her through the plastic. The girl beamed, and shouted,
“Oh! She’s so pretty!”
“Thank your Aunt Gertrude.” Another woman’s voice commanded and the child complied with a sugary sweet,
“Thank you aunt Gertrude.”
And she heard the woman who had first worn the gloves with the pearls say,
“You’re welcome darling.”
Then she had been set aside where she could see a number of children sitting around on a green rug and the little girl continued to open more brightly colored parcels. Each time she was reminded who to thank and then she would deliver another mechanically sweet,
“Thank you.”
And some little girl would smile and say, you’re welcome, or a little boy would stick out his tongue or blush. Then at last they had all gone away and sang and it wasn’t until much later that the girl had returned and opened the box and taken her out.
How to describe that first moment, as the box opened and she felt her spirit whirl like a dozen butterflies and then hot little hands had gripped her, and at last, at long last, she had been hugged. She was pressed against a beating heart and listened to its rapid thumping.
And after the girl had been helped into her pajamas and had brushed her teeth she had been tucked into bed, and who was tucked in beside her? Who was snuggled and cradled in little arms? Who listened to a child’s breathing grow quieter and slower until it was a soft rhythmic whisper and then listened to the heartbeat slow and join the chorus of sleeping sounds? That had been the best night of her life. She had been so happy. That was the first night that her newness began to be rubbed away.
The rest of it was stripped rapidly from her in the following days. She was taken into a garden and made muddy during a tea party with a stuffed bear. A shoe was lost during that same trip. Then her clothes had been stripped from her, and with horror she watched as they were placed on another, another whose face was already dirty and whose hair was already matted and who sneered at her after she was clothed in her dress. She was given something else to wear, something ripped and torn. She was spanked for being a bad baby who cried too much and was pushed under the bed. She was taken into a bath after which her hair lost its silky shine. Her head was pulled off another time and had to be put back on by mother, and another time she was even forced into a sexual encounter with the stuffed bear she had met at that first tea party.
There were moments when she felt a glimmer of that first happiness, when the girl hugged her again and seemed to love her. More often she was subject to every sort of humiliation that a child can contrive for a play thing, or simply neglected entirely.
Years passed by. She could not have said what had become of her shoes or her dress. A new baby doll wore her bonnet. She lived most of the time in darkness somewhere, under a bed, in a closet with other sad things.
Then one day a smaller child with big blue eyes had stumbled into the girls room and found her under the bed. This child was more of a baby than a little girl, but for the first time in a long time she felt a glimmer of happiness as the little creature rescued her from the gloom beneath the bed and cooed at her and giggled and sucked on her hands. When this child was put down for its nap it held her tightly and nearly never let go of her after that. She still saw the girl from time to time, but she was never bothered by her again. The littler blue eyed girl loved her now. As the blue eyed girl grew up she attended more tea parties and was given different dresses to wear. Mothers help was enlisted to clean her plastic skin of grime. The games were gentler than they had been with the first girl. Most nights she was kissed and tucked in bed beside the blue eyed girl. All in all it was a nice time and as the blue eyed girl grew and was home less, she was given a place on a shelf and no longer was played with or carried to bed. During that time though, she was safe and clean and given a place where she could see the comings and goings of the blue eyed girl until one day when blue eyed girl was much taller she left and never came back.

That had marked the definite end of newness, although in truth it had already worn off some time ago. Mother put her and many others in boxes and they were all sent away. She fell into the hands of several children after that, none quiet as kind as Blue Eyed girl had been and a few nearly as cruel as the first girl. Head on, head off, clothes on, clothes off, in a box, out of a box, under a bed, in a box, out of a box. But none of the boxes that she was put in during all that time was ever like the first box with its plastic window that could protect her. At last she passed out of the hands of children all together.
Then she lived in a musky old shop in an antique baby buggy with a handful of others. It was a retirement home for things whose newness had been done away with long ago. Everyone had been cleaned. Everyone had something to wear. Now sometimes people passed by as they had done in the very beginning and paused to look at her, but never with the longing that she had seen in their eyes in her youth. Now they looked with curiosity or sympathy and occasionally with something like fear. She had been a real beauty in her day; rosy cheeked, blue eyed, hair of strawberry gold. Now she was faded. Now she was among those things which had passed far beyond the interest of the young and lively, but just because they no longer wanted her, it did not mean that she no longer wanted them. Despite all of the pains that had bit at her heart, she still longed to be held, longed to have someone touch her dress and stroke her hair, just once more.

Violins At The End Of The Day

The late afternoon wind plays with the stray hairs from my pony tail, little strands that escaped the tight clutches of a pink rubber band. The wind sends them armed with tickles to dance on my forehead and cheeks, and through the fluttering mask of hair, I squint in the late afternoon light, looking to the young violinists that have begun to play.
The multiple memories of a bustling farmer’s market are captured in the song of two musicians. The day had been hot and crowded. The strawberries of the season had everyone excited, there were new babies in strollers and the park across the street was a playground for adults dancing and doing yoga in pairs. The small street had been jammed with people, familiar faces who wave at me and those I recognize but have no contact with. I watch them walk by, with their carts and bags and children who have larger vocabularies each time I hear them. The day had been full, there were street musicians every couple of feet and little kids eating ice cream. I had been talking, chatting, pushing the people who were somewhat curious of me into interaction. I had used a lot of energy, and if I sat back slightly, just listening to the violin players, I could feel the pull of tiredness.
Now, even though the day was still very warm and light, the blocked off street was nearly deserted, the market had closed only minutes before and the shoppers had scattered into Berkeley. There were just a handful of late shoppers looking for a good deal and vendors sweeping up piles of lost spinach and stray strawberries that had fallen to the asphalt.
The sounds of violins wound their way around me like a cyclone, coating me in a moving song that held softly to the melancholy of a movie approaching its credit roll. Yes, the market day was almost over, the energy of a Saturday was being folded and packed up and put into trucks and rolled away in large vans that smelled of the fields they had journeyed from. This was the song of the end, the finale in golden light and swaying plains and drifters headed for a train car that stood idle on the tracks. This song was everything we did, everything we were, everything that was...everything that IS.
I was folding my tablecloth when a man stopped to look at me, his hands holding plastic bags full of produce.
“I love walking around here at the end, it’s so cool, I get to see what’s under the display. Like, under your display, it’s just a couple saw horses and wooden planks.” He smiled at me.
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s like seeing the man behind the wizard’s mask.”
We smiled at each other and he walked on. The violinists played on, holding the moment for me just a bit longer.

Goals and Movement

He pushed the heavy shopping cart by leaning forward and resting all his weight on the metal handle. The cart was specially heavy today because they had loaded it with many extra supplies which they intended to use for trade. His woman had found an abandoned baby stroller just a couple of days earlier.
She was so happy when she came running up to him in the late morning, right when he was sitting among a group of friends close to the old smelly tunnel covered in moss and moist with old rain water. She ran right up to him and said: "I found something good. You have to come and help me get it!" but he was too aware of the looks that the other men gave each other as she approached, so he replied: "I don’t have to do nothing woman. I am free as a bird. That’s what makes us special. That’s what keeps us going! Look around!" and he signaled to all the men that sat around him, with their eyes bubbling up red and crisscrossed with sharp red veins and their blackened gloves which protected their blackened hands and their pants that smelled of old sweat and piss and shit and their chins still dribbling with beer and all of them nodded back at her, acknowledging their freedom, their carefree lifestyle which allowed them to do as they wished, and he nodded once again, looking back at her: "See, free as birds and you don’t tell me what to do!" Right then she realized her mistake and slid backwards a little and she whispered, as if to nobody: "I know where it is. Just tell me when you feel like getting it. I can wait." And she walked away and sat by a tall tree and slowly chewed on an old chocolate bar that she had been saving in the side pocket of her old ripped up pants.
About an hour later, he came over to her and said: "Don’t ever pull something like that again! You know that we have little, but at least we have our reputation!" and she nodded and agreed that she had made a mistake and then she led him to where the baby stroller was hiding, where someone had thrown it away in the middle of a web of branches that hung over a pit of trash. He saw it and smiled and nodded to her and he could tell right away that it would come in very handy for them, so he said: "Look after my cart and I will climb around the trees and will get it."
All of that had been a couple of days earlier. The next two days they spent begging pedestrians on Haight street for a little change here and there and they bought old things from other beggars and they scavenged through trash bins and they looked in the metal bins outside of the houses and they even stole a few beers from the local liquor store and finally they were ready. They wrapped it all in bags and loaded up the shopping cart, which always keeled over to the side because one of the wheels was bent, and they loaded up the baby stroller which she had found and he had managed to rescue.
When everything was ready, he said to her: "Now we will go for a long walk, you understand? I know you haven’t been with me long, but now you have to walk with me." She was still fixing the baby stroller just right so that things wouldn’t fall off when she pushed it. When the sound of his voice came to her, she looked up at him, clearing some thick dark snot from her nose, "Sure thing… but where are we going?" He smiled and looked at her with sharp eyes, "We’re going all the way to the beach. There’s a whole other crew over there and I’m friends with some of them. They always have some good stuff, it’s easier to get it over there, but other things you can’t get at all. So we will bring them some of this stuff and they will go crazy happy and then they will give us some of what we want." She nodded, "You sure? I wouldn’t want to go all the way over there for nothing." He frowned and leaned over her, suddenly terribly disappointed that he had shared this knowledge with her. "Look, I’m going all the way to the beach, I’m going to see the crew that’s over there, they’re friends of mine. You can come along if you want to, or you can stay here and wait, or you can go to hell for all I care…" She looked up at him with wide eyes and he was breathing hard and looking down at her with a smirk in his face, and his cheeks were stained with grease and old dirt and his eyes were bloodshot and his chin was all gooey with trails of saliva. He took a deep breath and then he talked again. "Look, it’s better if you come, because I can’t push the cart and the baby stroller at the same time, and now we have more shit, so we have more responsibilities… you can push the stroller, I will push the cart... are you ready?" She shrugged and stood up and said: "Yeah, I’m ready. I don’t have nothing else to do right?" "Right," he said and they started on their way.
Now they were just over a third of the way there and he couldn’t say out lout what he was thinking because what he was thinking resembled too much what she had said: "What if they don’t have nothing? What if they’re not even there?’ and the sweat was dripping over his face, and down his back, and his arms were hurting and his legs were hurting and he was pushing as hard as he could but the heavy cart moved so slowly that it sometimes seemed that it wasn’t moving at all. She was quiet next to him, also drenched in sweat but not as bad as him, and pushing on the stroller and looking ahead, all the way to where a sliver of white and blue outlined their final destination.
They came to a corner and stopped while a loud truck passed by. He grunted and gasped for breath and she said: "You alright?" and he said "Yeah, I just need to rest for a bit." She nodded and took a deep breath herself, looking up at the trees and at few birds that were flying among the branches. "Let’s rest a little, but let’s not stop too long. We have to make it all the way to the beach today. You said so yourself." He nodded and grabbed onto the handle of the heavy cart again. "Yeah, I know I said so and we’re going. I can rest a bit later. I think we’ll make it today." She nodded and pushed the stroller across the street. "Oh, we will. I know we will. You said so yourself." And they slowly crossed the corner, and kept on slowly making their way to the beach. "You said so yourself. You sure did…"