| (no subject) |
[Jan. 14th, 2006|01:01 pm] |
talk from the streets of the city--where the language speaks in a fine tune; of well written out lines.
they com e and go as they please. and still they are wordless.
now my love you know you are the paint in my brush--the slue in my palette--but fairly,
i need nothing more. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2005|02:47 am] |
an eventful chain worn as a burden
trudged across with footsteps and
a lack of...these were wordless nights,
of lovers and liars,
and to spite, to spit upon grave stones
and watch over their parting eyes.
our parting lips,
we still spoke--just not in the ways
we used to speak and we still made love,
just not in a way i could remember,
i was then too weak.
i was a set of despairing lips,
and their still was a poisoned taste on her kiss, and we stayed inside one and another.
and slept through out these eves,
and other eves, we spoke everyday,
and thought of what i could,
the appropriateness of
what i need to say,say in these last words,
with my last breath--if i had the will
i would have stayed. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 24th, 2005|09:59 am] |
Raison d'être
“Two parting voices—during the night”; the mother of the son and during the day; the father of the daughter, each day of the travel had awoken the son.
The father would, out loud, make frivolous remarks to the sons work—incanting, “you were my son…” though the son had felt at one time, a need to derive the reasoning behind his fathers words, he had soon enough let them pass. His father did give him acknowledgment to why he would say these things, first by raising his hands to the boy, whom by now had become a man and second, by telling the son from a separate languor, that he had, indeed loved him.
The father had never really known of love as anything other than expectations. This is why the mother would too, speak in her husbands place.
She had many of the times, spoken out of turn.
In the time it took the boy to become a man the husband and the wife felt free of each other’s company—in this decision they had split from the vows they took and decided their bond would be an exchange of children—the boy was to stay with the father—and daughter to stay with the mother. |
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| letter |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:17 am] |
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Asking her how she had spent her Christmas’ during her childhood; aside from your own holidays, you’d think more of her smile as if she hadn’t been lying to you about her picture family for the past three months. The thing is days become years in only so long, before Christmas you had always admired the way leaves sort of chase each other across your backyard or the way the seagulls sort of flocked underneath a series of clouds that all looked like people you had forgotten—for the most part when you met this girl you had made a pact, to be completely honest. You told her about your mother and how she would always cut her fingers on the red scissors your family had, while cutting coupons. She always would say that when a person lied, someone in some other place would be grieving over a family member resting, or nearly passed. Sometimes around the holidays, you would visit your grandmother in the hospice down the street from your house and she’d always ask for the same thing, she always wanted to remember what a smile looked like. |
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| lombado |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:16 am] |
The candy striper’s hands led you to believe that this may be a cool and soothing place, the air conditioner that runs from the day lounge smells of rust when it turns on but settles after a few hours. A series of lamps line the center of the room where surgeries take place, you can tell because regularly they are not all turned on. Only when someone goes missing here can you tell. The boy who you call the candy striper wears Latin silk and smiles more than he would like to admit. This boy came to America without a family, so he got a job working at a hospital, because without a green card you are worth less than your word. This is something else you learn growing up, that words are just that—just something people do when they get nervous. You learn that silence makes most people nervous, too.
This boy puts his thumb and index finger to your neck and asks you to breathe, for some reason they have him doing this. Could not say why.
You ask him if he knows the Lomb ado, he doesn’t say anything.
This boy had been caught trying to steal food from the pantry at night; he stays in a separate room away from the rest because he has no real home. He pays rent by working, so he never actually gets anything for himself. You saw him holding his hands together sitting by a set of stairs one morning and he said hello, but when you left he didn’t say goodbye. Since you got here, he’s worn the same thing each day. A pair of ruffled pants that seem to be made of burlap, this shows he wasn’t very rich. He also wears shoes made of cotton and the silk shirt, that’s sort of a throw off to the rest.
The boy is screamed at by other people who don’t work here because they can, these people are men of war who chase thoughts through their heads until they find something or someone to catch them. The boy is easy because he can’t speak English well, most of his words come out with a rolled R or accented lisp. These men’s scream words at him such as “Leave this place, fool!” Or “Fucking monkey.” Most of the time, the boy will keep quiet to avoid more trouble.
The day you left this place the boy asked if he could kiss you and you told him yes, but only if he promised not to tell God. The boy agreed and placed a kiss on the palm of my left hand and the only scar on my face, the one you can’t see unless I smiled—this is when he told you he knew you the way people think they know themselves, completely. He then said this was something he learned growing up. |
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| *1993* |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:15 am] |
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You held your sisters hand at her wedding but shied her when she got divorced, complaining of how the cigarettes, leaves and papered litter outnumbered the flowers in the landscaping of the chapel in which she got married. Your sister never looked so happy when you told her the news that custody to a woman is usually more invited than a man, due to the course of prejudice among the founding of most judicial fliers. She flew a plane back home to sleep in the formality and familiarity of her own bed, reciting the dreams she had all about the night, she had spoke of French liquor set next to a diamond ring, set next to a paper mache angel, set next to a paper signed in ink. She set next to herself on the plane ride home yet sparked a glass of red wine to commemorate the life she lead, whether success of failure, she drank the glass with a smile. |
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| the color gray, living for now. |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:14 am] |
I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror of my father’s bathroom since my father left the hospital; I haven’t seen him since, either. My parents didn’t get a divorce but they should have, my father’s second wife left lips of red all over his collar one night while he was just getting into the marriage with his first wife, my mother.
Growing up as an only child has its benefits and its clauses. Certain parts of it are great, because at least within siblings—there is no jealousy. My father felt the need to express himself in as many ways as he could so he turned everything into himself, he printed labels off of his typewriter with ceramic paper, both sides had this sticky substance that allowed him to leave his mark every where he went, and he did. The record player that sat in the living room had his name on it. The television set and all the videotapes, his name on all of them. The room that used to be my mother’s and his, the room they shared during their earlier years of marriage, before he married his second wife. His name is printed all over all of the walls with these stickers, the only place in our house that doesn’t have his name on it was a small closet that’s under the stair set leading to the second floor of our house, this is a shared closet.
When the house was built my father made the choice of keeping it open as opposed to closing it off with dry wall, only because the builders had become frustrated with him already because nothing they did seemed right, at least not in his mind. So, my father felt it necessary to just leave them out of this decision.
My father spent so many of the nights he wasn’t sleeping with either of his wives in this small crawl space, he loved it at the time as he hated it but stayed in it anyways. One night when I was eight years old, my father locked his second wife in it and told her that if she didn’t listen to what he had to say that she wouldn’t see the light of day again. He finally let her out to tell her that he didn’t feel she needed to live in the same house anymore—this is when he had his first stroke. Within an hour my entire family heard the news that my father was having a stroke and rushed to the hospital, that was the last time I saw him, well at least the him I knew then. In the hospital, he would complain how the paint clumps together towards the seams of the walls that in the corners where they connect with the windows, that you can still see speckles of drywall, baron as it was. It was all white to the rest of us, I mean our family. My father’s stroke didn’t turn out as it should have, he never actually got over it, even though he was discharged from the hospital within three days he said, “it’s because they couldn’t take a real man telling them what to do.”
He was telling this to all the nurses that would rampart into and out of his room, coming in with a smile and leaving usually crying or screaming. He told me that once, he scared a girl out of her pants—I don’t know why my father insists on telling a fourteen year old girl about instances such as these, more so on my part just because I’ve never been so much as comfortable with even thinking about sex. This is what my father says, he had dated a heavy set girl in his second semester at a local university, the girl too shameless to admit that she was big still wear small clothes. She saw my father and when he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed, he said, “She fell right out of her god damned pants.” What actually happened my mother told me later was that her pants just unbuttoned. My father keeps his pride in these stories so I just let him have them.
Around my father’s first wife, my mother he gets edgy, she once told him that he wouldn’t be the man he is without her—and the thing is, she’s right. He told her the truth until he met his second wife. The way you can tell the difference aside physical appearance between the two woman is that one has a southern accent the other speaks slightly with a city accent—both woman, apart from their form of speech seem to love my father. Because my mother birthed me I tend to take her side, far from the fights my three parents get into I still enjoy the company of them all.
After my father left the hospital home life wore off, the family barely talks, my mother cooks on occasion, usually just dry meat; either beef or chicken and tops it off with a green vegetable. She’ll set the table for four people but will always take her food into the living room where she watches French soap operas until she falls asleep. From the dining room, you can hear her crying. Well over the lines of, “Faire et Mademoiselle—beau jolite et petite,” or “Jai Adore Vous!” Sometimes my mother turns the television to the channel that shows news briefings all the time, were she’ll watch stories on burglaries. One specific winter I remember watching on the news that a local man who dresses like Santa Clause and lets children sit on his lap, asking them what they want for Christmas had kidnapped four children, and tied them up in his sleigh. This man, I was told ended up dying from a failed attempt to fly along with this sleigh, the children’s parents stood at his funeral throwing stones at his grave and swearing as loud as their voices could carry. This was the year I learned to ride a bicycle, a black man that lived down the street taught me by tying tube socks around my knees and sending me down the hill of a cemetery, saying, “everyone’s gotta learn sometime.”
The town we live in has it’s share of history compared to most—we were the first town to go back on legalizing slavery—we also hold a local holiday each month the honor the colored people living in our neighborhood, my dad’s second wife is colored and beat the living day lights out of someone for using the word nigger. Down the street lives a Spanish couple whose family seems to get bigger by the day, three years ago when I first started going to school I heard that we were getting a new student. In my mind, I thought we were all new students, the teacher made it a point to introduce the new child in Spanish, and I paid no mind to it though. My father’s father owned three slaves—my skin tints a little darker than most because my grandmother was a slave’s daughter, met with my grandfather’s father and had my father—who’s skin is white the way snow is. My father met his second wife at a bar, needless to say, they sleep in the same room as often as I sleep with my eyes closed—my mother has but once said a word to her. The day my father ended up in the hospital after his stroke my mother said to her, “This is your fault,” then gave her a look I had never seen before.
The year I turned fourteen my mother spent most of her time at a motel up the street, she tells the family she’s going on vacations but really she’s just running away from the life she decided to live. Do not get me wrong though, without her I would have never been born, so it is good in that sense. I have just watched her do it to herself over and over again. The second wife moved out so a nurse looks after my father. The other day he spoke as he used to, he said, “if you’re a nurses aid, then why does a doctor need a nurse?” The woman just shook her head. My father said to never trust a Jap; he uses words like these because he cannot stand himself. That is what my mother says anyways. Along with these words, my father curses every time he sees a black man win a game show. Just the other day we were watching a show where you had to place huge plush blocks into a mold before the time ran out, if you didn’t you went home—the winner though, gets a prize. The prize for most shows are appliances that display woman dressed in lacey underwear that has fringes in all the delicate places. When the man one my dad slammed his fist against the armoire of the sofa he sits in and said words that should not be repeated. The woman just shook her head. My father asked me the other day if I found myself—I did not know how to answer him so I left the room.
“For Christ sakes!” My mother is screaming down the hallway, “Tell that harlot to get her goddamn clothes off of mine.” This is what my mother says when she sees that my father brought home a new wife, this is the first time my two mothers meet. The woman, the colored one who speaks with a city accent throws her, ‘shit,’ as my mother says; on top of my father, who is lying in his bed. My two mothers’ throw words the way punches are thrown in the action movies.
When your father leaves the hospital for the first time he gets home to something that is different. His second wife left for good—everything that gave their marriage it’s meaning was gone. Something about liquor in the cabinet missing was the first thing I head out of my father’s mouth. Then it was onto the cussing, my mother had stopped by to see where everyone was within the evening. She held her hand over the knob leading to the crawl space and circled her palm across the handle, unlatching the one-way lock. When she got it open she felt around inside and got a hold of something that felt like a book. What brought her to do this, I could not say but she walked over to my father and kissed him.
Inside these books were photographs of our family, when you look inside a book like this and find out that there is happiness, somewhere deep within everything there will always be happiness it makes you smile, it makes me cry. In tears, I remember thinking to myself that maybe somewhere we can still find the children we grow out of, or even better, maybe the people we become will someday fit. |
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| telephone booths. |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:13 am] |
When you were seven years old your grandfather killed himself in the garage of your house, leaving a note tagged along with his letters to god, the door stayed shut as the smell of gasoline soaked into all the walls. This is the summer when you hold your sisters hand at your grandfather’s funeral—the only thing you remember, bleakly was the way it felt to be cut by a flower, and crying because you didn’t understand. When you got home from the funeral you laid out a summer dress and put it on over a smile put out for someone to take, you walked down stairs to the citrus smell of grapefruits and red wine.
Time passes faster after losing someone solely for your own reassurance; it is a minor advantage.
At night you’d walk against the shore that edges the seat of your house and watch as the waves caught each other’s arms and burst when they couldn’t take the pressure—something that not that many people know about beaches is that they all have pay telephones, I think the only reason I’m telling you this is because I didn’t know.
The first time you saw one you glanced, as if to think your eyes were playing their tricks again, but when you got to the booth entrance, you had to dial. Its funny, the way these pay phones work; they don’t have push buttons like most phones they have the rotary dial—the dial tone after placing a nickel in them is just one long stream of noise, you say noise not sound.
Your grandfather had told you that anything worse that what you can imagine can’t be that bad, he’d always say clever little things like this before he left us, you say left not died.
The first time you called someone you asked to speak with god, the person on the other end had not laughed harder, it seemed in his life. You sat standing, cross legged against the wall facing the moon and you told the person that when the moon is a crescent its God smiling—you then told them that when the moon is full, the way it shines across the entire world, that’s God in shock at what he’s created. |
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| breathe |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:12 am] |
Breathing in the summer air, you could spread yourself across this entire sky before anyone would have noticed you had gone missing. The sky grows up before you do—the sun chases away the night sky in one line that scatters across this entire town. It happens like this every day.
Make sure not to look strangers in the eyes when you talk to them—for the time being, this could undo any chance of an unwanted confrontation. Lock the door behind you and double check that all the windowpanes are sealed, that the chance of burglary isn’t there. When you shake people’s hands make sure that you have a loose grip, not to loose, but never hard enough to change the skin tone of the person. Don’t stare at the sun. Never smile in pictures, but never frown either. When making conversation do not speak of any sort of loss that could inhibit an argument or for that matter any sort of emotional damage. Cross center, front row—the sound of people screaming and clapping juts through the air and whistles through your ears, leaving that sting sort of silence that lingers for hours. When the man next to you drops his beer and it grabs your new satin dress, white for sympathy; do not say anything just let it go. Its seems so fraudulent, the way you could forget everything you’ve set your life up for. Empty, when the crowd cheers loud and cutting of crowd over a bang-bang play. A player slides into second, the throw comes in, the second baseman catches it and slaps the runner with his glove, and it’s over, bang-bang, no time for anyone to think about what’s happening. The crowd throws their hands in the air and you sit in the middle of this mess. When everyone’s eyes seem stretch past the baseball game and stare at you, refill your prescription. Tuesdays, every month you have to refill prescriptions. You get up in the middle of the night to run towards the windowpane, the one in front that edges towards the lights of the streets. With the sweat crowding your eyes and hand nervous and trembling, you open your window, let the cold air stream in from the outdoors, and block your entire apartment, and then that’s it, you’ll black out and fall to the floor. As if it was nothing more than a dream.
The next morning you will wake up with those yellow rings under your arms, inside your nightgown and a few stripes of blood falling from under your nose, this happens every month, one to two days before you need to refill your prescriptions. So you don’t need a calendar. The automatic doors that open up to the heather gray walls of the pharmacy scare you. The way they shake and make that hissing noise because no one has used oil on them in so long, it rings through your ears. The woman at the front desk wears a plain black tee shirt under a wool sweater, dangling and unraveling at all the fringes. She wears a brooch made of little glass beads and faux-oysters, it’s so elegant. She does not wear a smile, between her breasts hangs a pair of black-framed glasses that she brings up to her face before staring at the name on the bottle, then over to you. She says, “any identification?”
You just shake your way into a no, she says that she’ll do this one time, “that’s it, then you have to start bringing in identification,” she goes on, “are we clear?”
When you get home the little red benzene lilts and sweet surrenders start to wear off, when you walk around your apartment, pacing from room to room you shutter as the wind breathes in from the outside, when you run over to shut your window you stub your toe on your coffee table and catch yourself before falling out. On the thirteenth of every month you go to see your psychologist and sit with your back against her sofa and smoke cigarettes, she’s always asking about your past but she’ll never know. The way it looks from here its starts when your mother dies. The way it used to be with this family. Every morning you could wake up and it would be the same, the same life with the same sunrises and Sunday dresses. As we all run towards the scene of this car accident you see this smoke streaming up towards the sky and the red flashes of lights cutting through the night—
it’s sort of funny how you could give up the years of your childhood to pass a cigarette between friends.
When you get there, it is supposed to the way it seems. You’re too tired to run but too scared to quietly forget what is happening. Just remember this was the way it was supposed to look, white. When you get home you; you are alone, confused for different reasons. You walk the house and it is as empty as you are, walking down the hallway you pass family portraits and cringe on your own tears, when you pass your parents door you touch your hand to the knob and try and open it but your not ready, its too soon.
Its sort of funny how you can find revenge in the things you used to do to escape.
When you wear dresses in front of the mirror, you see the ghost of your mother standing behind you with her hands perched on your shoulders when you close you eyes she’s gone. Standing next to your father in a pew, he holds his hands close to his face and cries as the preacher speaks in a sotto sort of voice about the way god has his reasons for everything. When you look over at him you whisper to your sister, “this isn’t happening. Not right now.” She looks at you and closes her face in her hands.
Something that is not exactly funny is how loss works, there are always three steps—guilt, anger, and the actually getting over process, and it is always these three steps.
You go swimming at the local gym and hold your breath under water as long as you can, you’re here with your best friend and she flips you off when she gets out of the pool and walks bowlegged to the changing room with her towel wrapped around her hips, you go back under and count the steps it takes to drown. At night, you all stay silent around the dinner table and no one is eating, where you used to say grace you just smile against each other’s relaxed faces, turning white from lack of the sun.
Something that’s not exactly funny is how love comes and goes, it can leave faster than a cold. So this is how an appointment goes, each time you tell her more and more about your past. The day of the accident, just to look back on it. The skylights up too early for day to show through but too late for night to fall, the perfection of it all as the car slides against the pavement, creasing all the wrong corners.
This scene plays itself over and over.
When you entered the room everything seemed white, under the door if you were to look out showed a light that hung down over your mother. Her face edged across the pillow, she moves her neck over to see you, dim and silent she tried to smile. You tried to laugh but the laughter turns to tears, the tears turn into to fear, it goes on for days. When you get past it, its too late—she has already gone. They say that it takes twenty one times for something to become a habit, twenty-one nights you cried before you could open that door. Finally you get the chance to do it but it’s too late, your father had already built up enough strength to place an ad in the paper, you were moving your, you and your sister were moving on. Your father spends years building the life he had but one night took it all away. One night.
This is how it starts, when you move into your new house you open new doors and begin new habits, the old ones die harder than they could have ever seemed. They last for days but you move on, when you go to the church with your father he tells you to leave the room, so you do. Standing at the edge of the door you watch him throw himself over the alter and put his hands over the back of his head, holding it against the wood, under the cross. He sat there and cried until he noticed you there doing the same.
Look behind your back at any strangers but do not be too subtle. When talking with people do not show too much emotion, stay calm, desolate—sweet but not uncanny. Try to make conversation with people you know, pay your bills on time, and answer the phone in a sweet tone of voice. Never raise your voice or hands in public places, try not to sweat so much. Weak, stay weak around those who seem stronger than you, try not to seem better, attend meetings promptly, never be late, never be too trusting in people. Do not lie to the people you love, try to leave notice before speaking out of turn. Do it for yourself.
When a cold drift of the winter stares through the sky at you just let it slide, this is exactly twelve years after your mother’s accident. You wear an overcoat with a big red brooch made of red diamonds, not the fake ones worn under your left breast, over the coat. When you kneel down to your mother’s grave your hand has already started to shake, it has already gone too far. You hold white chrysanthemums in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, white with tiny black rivets extending from one end to the other. Crying the tears touch, to love, to burn against your skin as they carry themselves down your face in bars, after something as horrible as this nothing seems real. Nothing seems as normal or right as it used to, everything is just something else to pass the time. The sting of the snow isn’t anything compared to grief, the taste of the mint leaf in your mouth tastes like menthol cigarettes or mint tea, but not like anything out of the ordinary. How your mother actually died no one knows, maybe massive trauma due to blood loss or a broken heart, maybe it was being in a coma for two months, it could have been the pain from the bed sores surrounding the folds of her back. They had taped her eyelids shut so she could eventually see. She had said once, “I wonder what heaven looks like…”
You place the flowers against where her name is imprinted on her grave, in the reflection of ice plated over the grave, you can see your reflection and your cheeks chalked with mascara trails, your eyes seemed flooded. You cannot stop shaking with your handkerchief pressed up against your nose, dabbing underneath your eyes, one and again. Once you were kissed but didn’t let it bother you, your mother always told you that there would always be time for love.
When you entered the hospital, the second time your mother
Looked completely different, just like skin and bones, white with not secrets, her face was finally unwrapped from all the gauze and medical tape and her beauty laid somewhere behind a bed of scars, unwanted and thrown away. She’d try to smile but she couldn’t, a small red button placed morphine into her regularly and each time she would shake a little. It’s sort of funny how everything you’ve ever looked up to could fall apart at any moment. The tape came off weeks ago from over her eyes and she lifts her eyelids up to see her daughter standing over her, or her husband lying asleep on the chair next to her, to her, at least as it seemed we all must have been strangers.
You walk back to your car and close your eyes and feel them stinging, the snow falls cold against your skin but it doesn’t really seem to bother you, the actual pain of everything hurts more than the weather. When you get home to your apartment your father calls and the two of you talk about tonight being the night, he calls to remind you.
Later this night, twelve years ago this same sort of conversation took place. Everyone placed themselves in different shoes and walked miles, restlessly until they came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t get better, even if she had she wouldn’t be able to function as a normal human being, that night she passed right as your father was calling the hospital to let them know that they had his permission, all rights reserved.
You open the bottle lying next to the lamp on the end table by your sofa, red to accent the wallpaper and empty the bottle into your hand, count three pills out and swallow them. The bottle prescribes and warns you that overdose could occur, it screams the side effects, the bottle gives all the proper precautions and warnings, it tells it like it is but you swallow. The way your apartment looks is meek to say the least, when you open the door you see what the girl inside is thinking, empty thoughts. The couch folds out to a queen sized bed, you say it’s too big for you. Straggling to find the light switch on the wall you finally get to it and turn it off, lights out, you fall asleep.
Do not trust any one, do not go to the bathroom in public places, try to avoid general warnings—the last thing you need is more worries. Make conversation with your pharmacist, try not to get too personal with your doctor, get reassurance that everything is strictly confidential. Each time you check your mail look at the address, make sure your name is correctly spelled, that you got the right mail, if not—send it back to the post office and get it resent, avoid confrontation. Try not to let things bother you as much.
Morning cuts itself through your closed curtains while you sleep away the night before. When you wake up you leave the house, locked before shutting the door, closed before walking off with the dreams you have in your hand.
The last thought of that night was your father telling you about the day he met your mother and how he wasn’t so much a romancer as he had made himself out to be. Your father with tears crowded in his eyes speaks slightly, almost in whispers, “your mother grabbed my hand, sweating and shaken and walked me all across this same town, that’s all it took—just that one walk and we were in love,” each word flooding with more and more tears, “that’s it.” That morning the sun shown through. Everyone has glassed over eyes as they hanged themselves around your mother’s casket, glam beige—tinted softly white from snowfall, and everyone shivered as they cried. The way this looked was how it was supposed, pretence to pastiche; flowers draped themselves all across her body as it was laid into the ground, people huddled around in black or some color close to it. Photographs of her on her marriage ceremony and her lying in a hospital bed, bulging with one of the two of us, my sister or me. And it all sort of came together, its starts to make more and more sense.
Ready for anything you walk towards the same spot hands clutching that same handkerchief, you wear an off white satin dress with sequins, lace gloves. You wear a scarf made of silk that hangs beautifully around your neck and you lie in the snow next to where you mother rests in her grave and make snow angels. You glide your hands all around your body, hugging your hips and holding your breath. Your make up looks perfect, the right eyes catch some of the best looks you could have ever dreamed of. Then you lean your head over, tilt your face; the way it looks is that the angel wings are cast down, her arms are wide open—hands stretching as far as they can. The angels face is tilted and leaning against her own shoulder, drudgery—you lie awake through the entire night, laying in the imprint of the angel, next to your mother.
When strangers ask what’s wrong tell them broadly, tell them that the way it seems nothing could ever be more
perfect than the way it is now, the way life goes on. Day by day, these things happen for a reason. |
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| houses |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|12:11 am] |
The walls all white with brand new dry wall hanging off old, rotted out boards, the paint; that off white color, the cigarette fades and crayon markings—they’ve all been painted over. The stains on the carpet, that cat piss discoloration or spots on the carpet where apple juice was spilled or blood was shrieked from the failed marriage you tend to look back on. The old sallow colored carpeting is being torn up, thrown out; you’re starting over, making a new life. The way it should look is white, not the snow white or cotton white, but hospital white. So, you’re doing this, the plan you held back on. Painting over all these memories with a clean slate, a new carpet or new paint, new white. And how beautiful this is to look, trust me by the time this is over you’ll be wearing polyester, basking in what seem like riches to you.
But before all of this, trust me you wouldn’t want to know.
It’s ten days before Christmas and the tears are really coming down now, this is when your mother and father that you grew up with your entire life with and that hid their problems begin to let them surface. The Christmas tree is the only piece of furniture in the living room left because your what used to be father took everything he ever bought; this includes the red sofa that used to sit in front of the television set that sat next to all the family pictures, he has it all. This is when the Christmas lights that used to hang in red and green flashes between pauses now just show a bunch of nails sticking out of the dry wall, posted in a row as best as they could be. It seems like it’s the tiny things like this that you’d really notice, like our neighbor who is always wearing some kind of hat who none of us have ever talked to before, is now sleeping in the spot where your father used to sleep. Or when your mom is spending so much time on herself to even notice that her daughter, your sister’s slamming her little fists into her mother’s door at night, then just leans against it after her hands start to bleed, crying.
It’s the small things that count.
You could remember back to earlier before any of this when you were what seemed like the happiest family. The walls in your parent’s room were bright from the sun setting in their room and every morning they’d wake up with a kiss. When your mother would walk down the hall passed your sister’s room, there she was, every morning standing at the edge of her door with her beat up old bear that she had gotten from your grandmother touching the carpeting. With her thumb in her mouth, she would smile and then open her arms for your mother to take her into hers. Your would take his walk down the stair with one of his dress shirts on and everyday it seemed he’d spill coffee on it. Your mother and father always kissed before they left for work and always said I love you after. This is the way it used to be.
The first time you heard you parents fighting you were fourteen but you’ve tried to block that out, they sat up all night. They kissed you and your sister to sleep before they went to bed but they never actually ended up getting any sleep. Before they had sex they fought about having children, your sister leans her head on your shoulder and asks you to tuck her in before she ends up crying herself to sleep. When she’s crying you can hear your mother moaning and breathing deeply against the sheets covering their bed, between the moans you can hear the words I love you, it seems this is the only time they ever say these words. That night was the day you understood that life wasn’t going to always be perfect; that at some point in time something bad was going to happen to everyone.
The small things count.
On Saturday’s every cigarette your mother smokes wears the same shade of lipstick that she used to wear when she first met your father, cutting and sheik, that sort of romantic rose red. At night when your sister has already gone to sleep and you’re sitting up trying to hold your breath so you can black out, this is when your mother really lights up the house. Her and the neighbor, all you can hear all night is her panting as the face boards of the bed hit the wall, this is when you can hear the neighbor who no one ever expected scream your mothers name the way your father used to when they fought. And this is the family that’s raising you, one day at a time. Your mother quit her job and lives off the child support checks your father sends at the end of each week.
It’s eight days before Christmas and this is when your sister sits on Santa Claus’s lap at the local shopping center and all she can smell is cigarette smoke, when he breathes you smell liquor; under each breath he shrugs off a drunk smile and asks her what she wants for Christmas. “The only thing I want for Christmas is my dad back,” your sister is saying, starting to cry. She holds the tears back before she says, “Is that beard real?”
And really, that is all she needs is one more person walking out of her life. Letting her down. Your sister kneels her head against the Christmas red velvet overcoat and cries.
Right now, your mother is pawning off her wedding ring that had held her ring finger for the first few happy years of her marriage, then it was just sitting next to the rest of the jewelry she had. Your mother comes back to find her daughter, her only girl crying against Santa Clause’s red overcoat. The thing is, the man underneath that drunken smile and overcoat covered in cigarette smoke. The man under the beard was crying.
For all the wrong reasons this is so familiar.
When you get back to the house you grew up in the answering machine’s red light is blinking, which means your family still loves you, or they don’t—it doesn’t really matter so much anymore. Your mother smiles and tells you and your sister that Christmas is going to be fine.
There’s five days left and the tree’s light bulbs are starting to go out, between the red and green flashes there’s empty spaces that should have your father’s assistance, but he’s gone. This is what it feels like to not believe, and it’s just a beginning.
Before Christmas, four days before. Your mother is sitting in her room with her face in her hands, a cigarette between her middle and index finger of her right hand; curling over into an ash and she’s crying. She looks up and you and says, “Hun—there’s nothing left. Nothing at all. The money—all the child support, it’s all gone.” Your mother sits here with a gray streak down her white cotton panties from where an ash had fell and trailed off and she’s telling you that the neighbor, he needed money but he promised he’d pay her back, and now he was gone. The last you saw of him, he was with your mother leaving kisses on her neck, and that was it—gone.
The fourth night; four days before Christmas when you walk down the street, you could pass the Laundromat and see the prostitutes gathering in groups, crowded around the ceiling heater vent in their lace and mascara passing around cigarettes and taking turns puffing off them, some apply lipstick and head back out for the street. Underneath some of the streetlights there are men sleeping with their backs facing traffic. This is the way it’s supposed to look though. White as the holidays are you can see a stream of smoke passing through the sky coming from the steps of the courthouse.
The Santa Clause, the one that your sister cried on is lying against the steps on his back. He looks up to see you walking along the sidewalk and puts the cigarette up to his face and lets the smoke trail out of his mouth and then sips back a bottle that he was sitting next to. As you come closer, his hands hold his face and he starts to cry then when you reach him he looks at you but under that beard there was something so familiar.
When you get home, your mother is dialing everywhere asking about the neighbor. “Where is he?” She’s saying to someone on the phone, your sister is lying in her room playing with two dolls, one a man, the other a woman. She makes the two dolls kiss and then she says I love you. Right now your standing at the edge of the door and she doesn’t even know your there, it seems better that way, this seems more like one of those things that children need to do.
She makes the two dolls dress up in a beautiful clothes for a wedding and she knows everything, she has another doll be the priest and the three together say what they’re supposed to. The man doll, his hands holding hers, tells the woman that he will take her to be his loftily wedded wife. And she does take him to be her husband, the priest tells the two newly weds to kiss and they do. She moves her head over and tilts it as if to whisper in their ears, as if to tell them something. This is when she closes her eyes and begins to cry after she’s done telling secrets to the newly weds she looks over at me and runs towards me and then her at my feet she says, “It’s not supposed to be this way,” crying still she says, “It’s just not.”
Later she tells you that the man doll, the newly wed husband left his wife.
Tear down the walls and pull all the nails. Behind the drywall tear out the insulation just try not to let it touch your skin—to avoid rashes, make sure you wear gloves. Through the windows behind the curtains you can see the sunrise every morning, remember to set your alarm to catch it. That hallway were your daughter sleeps, it has to go—she gets a new room next to yours, these are all things you have in mind. Amalgamation; mixing paints to match the new carpeting you picked out while shopping for new lingerie, when those men undress you with their eyes as you walk just think about what pattern of wallpaper will brighten up the house without offending anyone. When you think about your daughter and the tearstains left in all of the pillowcases you own just remember you can get them out, think to yourself that it will be all right; because someday it will.
Three days before Christmas and the chemical smell from the artificial snow is pissing everyone off. This is going to sound kind of weird but that Santa Clause, the one from earlier he was smoking a cigarette on your porch this morning when you left for school but even weirder your sister was standing at the edge of the driveway just staring at him. You keep telling your mother that there is something very strange going on, but she’ll never believe it, she’s way to busy repainting her room, pulling up all the carpet in almost every room, somehow she has money though.
Your sister tells you she knows where and how far the skies touch but that people like us will never be able to touch them, she says, “Marriage isn’t anything more than…” and then she stops talking because your mother walks by tee shirt covered in white paint and smiles at the two of you.
You tell her that everything is going to be fine.
Your mother comes over to the two of you and asks if you could give her a hand in the kitchen and you do. The way the kitchen looks now is torn, the table has a half empty bottle of red wine and a vase with wilted roses in it, that smell that you don’t know what to do with because its still beauty, just not the same as it used to be. Half the wall is smashed in with a hammer the other half has holes where you can tell somebody tried, just not hard enough. The windows has so much dust on them from broken drywall that you can hardly see the snow outside, outside though from where you can see on the porch from the kitchen window there sits that red and white suit breathing in cigarette smoke and exhaling for it to disappear. Your sister left.
Your mother has you stuff the empty wall with insulation and tells you to stuff the dead flowers in with the insulation and anything else you think should be seen as a legacy, something you’ll be remembered by. She says, “I put in a photograph of your father and I.” You ask her why she is doing all of this, if there is any reason and where she is getting the money.
She leaves the room.
Your sister comes in and asks you why the Santa Clause is here.
The truth is, you really don’t know why he’s here, and maybe this will seem worse than it should, but by now, you really don’t care. Its almost Christmas and the only sight resembling winter is the white coat of drywall dust hanging off all the walls. When you walk up the stairs, you can feel the house shaking under every footstep. Looking outside you can see your mother and Santa clause holding each other, hugging under a coat of snow that falls at their feet, under that beard he kisses your mother and looks in to the window at you and your sister, looking back at him. Your mother comes back in and tells you that she’ll be back in a few hours and then leaves, she doesn’t tell you were.
When you look behind you your sisters gone.
If you looked back, you could see your family coming together for every occasion, under this roof, no body would have ever thought. Just take one breath, look further under the snow-white sting of your father walking out, without giving you a reason some how your mother is looked as a bad person. Under each something so self-absorbed, this isn’t fucking blaming anyone, this isn’t just some excuse to feel bad, this is what failure looks like. It’s something you could have forgotten but one time your mother comes home, she covers a black eye with lies and make up. “I just hit my head,” she’s saying, “trust me, I’ll be fine.”
This is all so much more than it seems, trust me.
Pretend like this didn’t happen and listen for whistling, the way your father used to and the way it would run throughout the entire house, all three floors and when he saw you or your sister he’d smile and wince at you or kiss you and your sister on the forehead and tell you he loved you and meant it, now when your mother drags herself out of her room she fanatically throws herself around the house she paints the same walls over and over again or color coordinates the wallpaper and curtains and well furnished ideas she has in her head.
Her, your mother, she’s thinning out. She doesn’t eat, she has cheekbones, you can see her hipbones when she runs around the house. She looks so much like your sister you can barely tell the difference.
This is how bad you must look now, from inside your house your mother could look out if she wasn’t so busy with this house and see you and a girl with a red satin dress holding hands and a cigarette, passing it between the two of you and taking turns smoking it, but she would never even notice. When you look down the street, you can see the Santa Clause and he just looks down, under his shoulders and somehow, for some reason he looks so disappointed.
Under a stained wooden table in your kitchen is your sister and she just sits with her dolls and whispers in each of their ears what’s going to happen with them. She tells them under her breath that they wont make it, she says, “nobody does anymore.” And as sad as this sounds, she’s not kidding. When she looks up her eyes are already filled with tears and she sets the husband somewhere away from the wife, maybe in the kitchen cabinets or in the space where your mother hasn’t layered with drywall yet.
Each wall has its own history, cigarette yellow stains from constant smoking shows how much your parents using smoking as a way to get over things, fights, marriage, themselves. Some are have cracks sitting on them and show where everyone has had their own problems. You can see where your father threw his keys when he came home from the bar, another wall that used to hang with pictures covered up your sister’s creativity. Just to let you know, you could handle your own. In your room there are holes that show where you struck the wall over and over again, some of these spots have blood on them from their failed attempts, trust me, you could have tried harder. In the middle of rooms, there are spots on the carpets where coffee was spilt or where you found out every house has a few scars. In your sister’s room, you can see where she sat herself against the wall, where she cried and cried but no one had ever come. You can see rust stains leading up to all the faucets in the bathroom there the neighbors phone numbers are written on the mirror with lipstick.
Against the sky your sister writes with her fingers when she wakes up, as if writing to god and writes—let it go. She dances through the field out behind your house and chases a path leading to a pond. She stops and writes—this is not happening. When you get down to where she is her face it trembling in her hands and she points towards the ground and writes—leaving. You tell her to get up before she freezes to death and try to laugh; she looks her head up towards you and fingers into the sky—why? You tell that everything happens for a reason.
Later that night when everything couldn’t be worse your mother is screaming about how life wasn’t supposed to be like this and picks the Christmas tree up off the ground and throws it through the dry wall she had hung a few days earlier. She picks up one of the ornaments and throws it, shattering into thousands of pieces into the open wall. When she walks out of the room, she steps on one of the pieces of glass and begins to cry, falling to her knees. She’s saying you and your sister’s names and you come. You both come. To hold her, when you ask her what happened she tells you.
“That Santa Clause, the one who’s been coming around here lately—well he’s your father,” she continues, “he wants to come back to the family, this is just after you start devoting your entire life to making your current life better. After him.” And she stops dead in her words. She’s saying that it wasn’t his decision to move out, it was mutual, it’s started with so many different things. She tells us we wouldn’t understand.
Holding her head back, she opens her mouth but no words come out, right then your sister says the most meaningful thing, she tells your mother and you that she loves you.
Two steps past the guest room in this completely remodeled house is a small rope that pulls out to a stairway, then to the attic. When you pull it out you could find everything you’ve ever tried to forget but couldn’t, in this room is everything you’ve tried to put behind you but found out that it was too hard. Underneath boxes of knives and utensils, underneath piles of clothing and boxes of life is that red velvet overcoat, that white scarf and those extra large sized pair of pants. Under all this was the year, you tried to forget but couldn’t, you try at least. Under this room is your parent’s room, this is so much longer than you’d like to believe but your parents are actually talking now, the other day they shared a kiss. They bought new rings and reassured old promises, but under this sky is the life we live, it’s the people we meet, its love in so many places—under this sky is us. |
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