All American

They all wanted me to be some sort of All American dream girl. I was the tall blonde. I should have baked apple pie. I should have spent more time at the beach. I would have spent more time at the beach, playing in the surf and dancing around bonfires and singing and strumming on an acoustic guitar if Peter hadn’t broke my heart. It has been speculated upon by a few men who liked to play papa Smurf to my Smurfette that my heart was already broken before that. If this is so, and it was already broken in half before he arrived on the scene, then he finished the job. He smashed it to smithereens and then the man who was to be my husband came and defecated on the splintery dust that remained.

Broken heart dust is one of the most shimmering lust evoking substances available. It calls like a siren and cuts like diamonds. A man can’t help but want to touch broken heart dust, but like those phantasmal stalagmites that grow in deep caverns, broken heart dust is finally completely destroyed when it is handled by greasy hands. The oil from callused man hands turns it to slimy heart goo, a substance too toxic to be handled ever more. You need a HazMat team of psychologist to dispose of it properly, so you can go around as a functionally heart less adult like the rest of the walking dead that populate the earth.

My story telling was encouraged as a child. A second grade teacher begged my mother to record my stories and type them up. My father started insisting sometime around then, (I can’t be sure exactly when, I think it would have been after he was released from prison) that I should write a children’s book and make my family rich. The idea was more than a little bit suffocating. The emphasis was not to be on telling the stories germinating in the neon green Elysium of my soul, but rather on writing something that others would approve of. All American stories perhaps.

I tried to do anything I could to please. Once my father took me with him to work. He pulled mobile homes with a big diesel truck. He had me out there trying to help him hitch the modular to his truck.(I think this is before prison and before second grade). I had no idea what he wanted me to do. He kept shouting at me, and at last something went finally quite wrong and my finger was badly smashed under the entire weight of a prefab house. Bouncing along in the cab of the truck on the way home he was miserably sorry. He looked so sad and broken and guilty that I started trying to make him feel better

That is something that I started to do habitually. Both of my parents were actually so sad and such desperately impoverished souls that I made it my full time occupation to make them happy. Like a pet. Like a clown. Like something you can smoke now and forget about later. I was such a perfect kiss ass that grandmothers all over town adored me. My friends mothers preferred me to their own children. I seemed to be the perfect young lady. And if it was an act, then it was some serious method acting. I stayed in character day and night and in my dreams I was trapped in a black and white cartoon running in place while the big bad wolf closed in on me.

I more or less spoon fed the broken shards of my heart to the man the world would call my husband. I was already in the habit. I smiled and recommended it as the best medicine for night terrors and fear of death and loneliness. I was sure with just one dose of my magick heart shards he would be fully recovered. But one dose wasn’t enough. He needed another and another… and kind of think of it, it hadn’t cured my parents either. Having had his way with my heart without finding the cure for his pain he proceeded to have his way with my body, forcing me to bend over my pregnant belly or lay on my side so that he could penetrate me from behind while I cried. Still he felt no better so we applied for credit cards in my name and he bought microbrews and video games and candy for our babies, and smashed the presents I gave him and punched the night stand to no avail.

I never then wore an apron or baked an apple pie. I did not write a best selling children’s story. I watched the episode of friends in which Monica and Chandler got married and decided that maybe that was the missing ingredient. I begged him to marry me. After the screaming and tear shedding had turned to mutual exhaustion he at last agreed. We found a minister in the yellow pages and my parents drove us to meet her at a duck pond and they held our infant children while we agreed to that meaningless list of things that all married people have agreed to. His suffering was no less and still I baked no apple pie.
We lived with my parents. He couldn’t hold a job. My hair was less blond. My skin was stretched and my breast were like balloons, first swollen beyond credibility as I nursed our children, then deflated and sagging when they were of no interest to anyone anymore. Then I said I didn’t want to live with him, I couldn’t make him happy. He shot himself dead.
By then the girl was all gone from my all American.

Then came the Papa Smurfs. Bearded men from countries I had never heard of (that at least was American of me), who tried to help me recover well enough to pass out flowers at airports. That last part is a joke. Moonies weren’t called Moonies anymore and no one was allowed in airports without a boarding pass by that time. I was pregnant with my second babe when the airplanes crashed into the towers in far off New York. Sitting with my big belly between me and a table of immigrant kindergartners, I caught a glimpse of the television set in the lounge between classrooms as another teacher came in and whispered that there had been an attack. The two teachers stood in the doorway gazing at the screen, their bright lip stick stained mouths transformed into masks of tragedy. They were horrified. I felt elated. We could be touched. We could be changed. We could be released from the life-leaching spell of the all American. Our bleached white hell might not be eternal. It could go up in plumes of black smoke and sky licking tongues of flame. One day the dream might be shattered, not just broken, and then I might be released from its terrible grasp. Some day I might escape and become something undreamed of.

Gifts From Faraway Places

Her face turned an angry red when she learned the market was out of rice. She had tried several shops in the neighborhood and no one knew when there’d be more. Her face was hot, her chest heaved as she took intentionally slow steps and long, extended breaths. Her limbs vibrated softy, it was an almost imperceptible shaking to anyone watching, but it affected her speech and walk in subtle ways, and in recent months, she had begun to move slower in an effort to disguise her constant state of fear.
It was almost a year ago since the first bomb was dropped; it was that day, while the night was heavy with the heat of August, that she became familiar with the sensation of panic. Terror traveled through her open window, wrapping itself around her like the thick arms of a possessive lover. That night became a stain in her memory, its edges dark and black, leading to the open well of wounds which tunneled deeper each passing day.
Before that horrible day in August, she had led a modest life. She was raised by deeply religious parents who sheltered her from the influences of the world. She spent her childhood confined to her home and small family garden, her mother taught her to cook, (so one day she could please her husband) and her grandmother showed her art of embroidery (so she could decorate the clothing of her children). Now, she was the young mother of an infant son and the obedient wife of a much older man. She had been introduced to her husband by an aunt during a New Year’s celebration, and after a short courtship of shy hand holding and quiet conversations, they were married. Before the one-year anniversary of their marriage, the bombs began to fall.
Now, she looked back with nostalgia, recalling the naivete of her former self, nearly unaware of the global politics that would lead to the reality shattering destruction, the ever present booms and human cries which would soon become a daily occurrence. Her husband had watched the news each night, but he rarely spoke of politics with her, he rarely spoke at all, and even though she spent most of her time in the house and the small courtyard outside, she never turned on the TV. She preferred talking with her neighbors, whose windows opened into her bright courtyard. Her small garden was full of sweet smelling flowers and overflowing with the mint she used to prepare tea. During the day, she loved sitting on the small bench made for two, letting her bones rest beneath the young tree that had begun to bear sweet fruit. In the warmth of the ever present sun, she relished the luxury of resting in the sunshine and filling the small square space of the garden with female laughter and gossip.
When the first bomb struck the earth, only a mile from her house, she was awoken from the sweetest of dreams. Even today, she could not recall the details, but she remembered smiling, remembered the feeling of lightness and air. As she was jolted awake by sirens and the sound of splintering metal, she felt the softness drain from her consciousness. Before her brain could catch up to her movements, she was already running for her son. After gathering the crying infant in her arms, she ran for her husband to ask what was happening. "The Americans" was his only reply, and then he left them to turn on the TV. She spent the rest of the long, black night alone in bed, trying to console her crying son and failing once again with the sound of a new explosion. His cries lasted through the night, never ceasing, never slowing, as if he already knew what was coming. As dawn broke, the sounds of explosions continued.
She thought of the "Americans." A vague place and people. She had had a Mickey Mouse toy once, she had seen pictures of the Statue of Liberty in a book, she could recognize the American flag and her grandfather had bought her a hamburger once, despite the objections of her strict father. Once, while shopping with her sister-in-law, they had passed an electronics shop, and she had glimpsed a TV show with people in red bathing suits running along a beach. She had never known an American. She had been raised by very strict parents, they were conservative in every sense: dress, religion, politics, manners. "Western," was a word her father used with disgust. He said it often and she feared its implications. She didn’t know exactly what it meant, but she knew it was bad and she knew she would never want to be called "western." In the darkness of that first night, she wondered what her country had done. She knew nothing of the world, and for the first time, she wondered if that was a problem. What lay beyond the boundaries of her immediate community was as foreign to her as the strange faraway country which now dropped bombs upon her land.
The days passed with more reports of bombings, and with them, her fears multiplied. After a couple weeks into the conflict, her husband returned from work to tell her he had been fired. He said his job had been "dissolved," which was the official term his boss used. She watched TV with him and saw the images of destruction mounting. Burning oil fields, decimated bridges and hospitals. She saw the crumbled remains of their water plants, the hiding place of women and children that had been bombed accidentally. The shocking images of bodies left to rot on the road filled her with dread. How long would she remain among the living? The fireworks continued each day and night. All her friend’s husbands were out of work too, the faces of the women with whom she had once chatted so happily not so long ago, all their faces were now dark with worry. The neighborhood now lived in a state of constant worry, teetering on the edge of hunger, thirst and desperation. With each visit to the market, she noticed the price of rice and milk steadily rising. Soon, she thought, they would not be able to afford the basics needed to survive…thousands of black thoughts clouded her mind.
Her husband announced he was leaving to join the resistance against "the Americans." As she sobbed, he told her she would move in with his brother and his family, which was only a couple blocks away. Although her husband seldom talked, through her tears, she could see the regret in his eyes; but she could sense his courage, his need to act. He told her there was no option. There was no work, there was no money. Without action, there would be no future for his son, he said. Soon, he lamented, there would not even be any food…the Americans had to be stopped. "I cannot just watch my brothers dying, I must move." He held her all night as she cried. And at dawn, as the sun broke over the horizon, as strong and as a fiery as a bullet, he took them to his brother’s house and said goodbye.

The Woman That Remembered

The woman stepped across the busy intersection and stepped onto the concrete path that made its way through the tall green trees. There was a chain link fence to her right and the low hum of a motor came from that direction, the actual motor was hidden by bushes and tall grass. Two younger women ran by her, both with tiny headphones attached to their ears, both bobbing their heads up and down in sync with each other, like slim little plastic doll heads that bounced back and forth in a little girl’s hands. The woman looked at them and then at herself, as if to ascertain who she was and who she wasn’t. Her body was certainly thicker than theirs, her white skin was certainly more cracked and wrinkled, her breath was rougher and she would never be able to run like they were running. Not now. The woman was wearing a light blue sports jacket and a pair of old blue jeans. Under the jacket, she had a white T-shirt and around her left arm she held her heavy leather purse close to her body, in an instinctive desire to protect the lost treasures that may be wandering around in the darkness inside. She wore large dark glasses, to avoid the glare of the sun on this warm afternoon, a glare that she once had relished and which now made her cry.
The young women ran around her without turning to look, as if she was nothing other than an obstacle to be avoided and immediately forgotten. She turned to look at them moving away, trying to imagine their thoughts, their secret wishes, their hidden fears, and then she continued walking along the path. The two runners could have been her daughter and a friend, or maybe a niece, or maybe the old friend she had in school before she got married, and maybe back then, they would have both run together, just like the runners, and they would have bobbed their heads together, just like them. She thought of walking here back then, when the trees were shorter and the streets were emptier. It wasn’t so long ago. It couldn’t be.
An old dirty homeless man with a long white beard that reached all the way down to his stomach was leaning against a tree, his feet resting on the side of the concrete path. She stepped around him and shook her head. The man muttered something under his breath and his bloodshot eyes rolled around in his sunburnt face. Back then, there had been nobody like this, certainly not here. Back then, this place had been as pure and clean as the breeze that now caressed her face. She could see her father taking her little hand and leading her up a dirt path to the lake, and she could feel the overwhelming wonder of finding this place in a world that was so vast and strange and confusing. She wondered at her father’s wisdom then. How did he know where to go? How did he know where to take her?
The dirt path had long ago been replaced by a concrete stairway and the tiny hand that her father had held had grown bigger and then stronger and then more wrinkled and then weaker again. She reached the bottom of the stairs and leaned on the metal railing to take a breath. A man in long white shorts and a dark green shirt was walking down towards her. He had black hair, a short thick nose, full dark eyebrows and, like her, he also wore dark glasses. As she examined him from her post at the bottom of the railing, he looked straight ahead and didn’t seem to notice her at all. The man walked right past her as if she was a strange old adornment on a rusty metal railing. She could once again listen to her father telling her to always say hello, to always say good morning, to always kindly greet the strangers who happened to cross her path. Somewhere in the deep well of years that had intervened between then and now, she had learned that this was no longer necessary, that two out of three people would not respond at all, and that the ones that did, only did it out of a sense of awkward obligation and nothing else and their smiles would be forced and their wishes would be fake and that would only hurt. But the impulse still remained within her, and it came up in her now, an eagerness to raise her left hand, to wave it and smile, to say "good afternoon" and then to expect an answer. Instead, she just looked at him walk by and stayed as quiet as the stairway, as quiet as the concrete on which his footsteps echoed as he quickly reached the sidewalk and the street beyond. The customs of her youth and the friendliness of strangers were all gone, as gone as the dirt path, as gone as her father who now rested calmly under the earth where there was nobody to greet in the morning, nobody to smile at during lunch, nobody to kiss softly right before bedtime.
She took a deep breath and stepped onto the stairway and slowly started to make her way up, still holding onto the metal railing carefully, still feeling the hint of dirt under her shoes. How many years had it been since she started walking here? It seemed that every year, the stairway got longer, the steps themselves got taller, her breathing got harsher and her hands grew weaker. She had learned to walk slowly and calmly, to breathe deeply and rest whenever necessary. She had learned to set her anger and sadness aside and simply rest when the pain became too great. And still her heart beat intensely and still she could see the quiet streets, just outside the park, where her husband took her one day to look for a new home. Now she could clearly see that she had picked the little green house on the corner because it was so close to this place, to this dirt path that was now a stairway, to these dark green bushes that crowded around her feet like pleading moans from the moist black earth, to this lake where her father brought her once when she wasn’t expecting it, to this gentle chamber where she could, once again, wonder at the beauty of the green water, of the thick twisted trees that stretched out over the soft little waves, of the flocks of pigeons that swirled around her as she took the same steps she had taken, once, twice and a thousand times again.
Once on the main concrete path, she got her first look at the lake, as calm as ever, as peaceful and surprising as it was that first morning when her father first showed it to her. The breeze was stronger here, but still soft enough that it reminded her of her baby daughter’s face pressing up against her own. A little girl walked by her just then, lead by a short man in a buttoned up shirt and brown pants. The little girl wore thick glasses and she peeked curiously at the ducks that danced around the edge of the water. The woman knew that the little girl could be her daughter, so long ago, when they had first come here together, when she had first shown her the ducks that had danced back then just like they danced now, and the boats, and the mountain that stood at the heart of the lake. The little girl could also be herself and as herself she would look up and stare at an older woman looking down at her with peering eyes, a strange apparition that was beyond the reach of questions. As a little girl with glasses, she would look away, and the little girl did look away, maybe distracted by a new wave of pigeons in the sky, maybe wanting to avoid her own eyes meeting her across the dark gulf of time.
The woman walked on, trying to maintain a steady pace but unable to continue walking when she first saw the pagoda across the water: the white railing, the red pillars, the green roof. Then, she could almost feel the hands of her boyfriend on her hips as he pushed her up against one of those pillars and kissed her deeply on the lips, all on a quiet morning when there were very few people around and the air was crisp and charged with the distinct taste of possibility. She could almost hear the words of her boyfriend when he knelt before her, in the dirty floor of the same pagoda, on the day when he decided to become her husband and on the day when she said yes. She could almost hear the coughing of her husband as his pale white skin became even whiter on a bed that had become his prison for too many years. Then, she could almost hear the silence when he decided to leave his bed forever and become a photograph on a mantle piece that she would always carefully clean, every morning before breakfast.
Now, the pagoda was her boyfriend who became her husband who became a photograph as much as the lake was her father who had walked her up the path, and as much as the little girl was her daughter who had become a monthly letter and a yearly kiss, and also her, who had become an old woman who walked and thought and remembered. For a moment here, standing on the side of the water, looking at the past that only appeared to be the present, she could let the illusion slide away and she could be back when her skin was smooth and her thoughts were clear and her life was real, as real as a path made of dirt, as real as the hands of a giant who took her to see a lake on a sunny afternoon.
It was for this moment that she came here every day. It was this moment that erased all moments that came before it, like a soft loving breath with the overwhelming force of a tornado. It was this moment that overcame her and left her shaken, looking at the calm gentle waves and the flocks of pigeons and the couples on their little pedal boats and the little girl looking at the sky and the old men leaning forward on the benches. It was this moment that she hoped for. It was this moment that today she got, like loving grace from a hidden fountain of invisible nectar, a generous and unexpected gift from within the well of tears and laughter. It was this moment that she treasured, a golden fleeting moment that vanished as swiftly and unpredictably as it had arrived. It was this moment that meant everything. It was this moment that made her live.
When the moment had passed, she continued to walk slowly along the concrete path. The illusion that was the present had returned and she was feeling tired. But still she would walk all around the little lake and back down the gray stairway. Still she would complete her daily mission. Still she would remember in flashes of light, sound and laughter. Still she would let the sounds of children tell her that it wasn’t the world itself that had grown old and tired, it was only her.
Once she had known that the only true wisdom was the knowledge of this lake and the path that lead to it. Once she had been right. It wasn’t so long ago. It couldn’t be.