Contest Time

Not to keep harping on Colleen's awesomeness, but she forwarded me something that turned into quite a little challenge. Basically, I was forced to condense several of my past posts into segments no longer than 200 words. (NO EASY TASK BEING AS HOW IT USUALLY TAKES ME 85 WORDS JUST TO ORDER A BEER).

1. Romania
They write a postcard to their mother, who works through these summers, and tell her they miss her. She has grown shorter with them as they've gotten older, and rough, pulling hair and slapping; frustrations manifested in midday rants and midnight regrets. At home they pretend to sleep when their father stumbles home drunk, looking for a conversation, to speak loudly over the jealous sobs of their mother. Sometimes they cannot help but give in to bathroom urgings, and steal quietly so as not to rouse his attention. He usually hears and calls them into the kitchen, where he asks them about their days, running through cornfields, and reminds them that summer camp looms, like the promise of an impossible gift. His eyes light up like the child, his shirt stained, as by perfume; the alcohol burns their eyes. Their mother cries louder and screams at the girls to go back to bed if they do not want lashings with their breakfast. But he doesn't release them, and talks even louder, slurring the joys of his life, and they stand next to him at the table, knowing they will get those lashings, and bear the welts meant for him.

2. Romania
He stumbles home late, and they hear laughter at the door; keys dropped time and time and time; at first by accident, but not subsequently. The door is unlocked. When he finally commits to coming inside, he actually locks the door with the key, and the laughter outside sounds like ridicule launched their way. The lines draw tightly around their lips.

The girls smell like salt water, and they breathe each other in, in voluminous comfort, to drown out the gasoline. He is exhausted on these nights, so they don't fear midnight conversations. Their mother is back home, 7 hours and a week away, so they don't fear the sting of vicarious abuse. It was always meant for him. Their sweet father who taught them to swim and carried them across mountains and through valleys on his back. It was meant for him. Their dear father who never grew tired of their whimsical tales, when sober; who never touched them in anger. Always meant for him. Who had forgotten the pictures of childhood that his own wife once painted.

3. Romania
As a child, you stand outside at 2 in the morning, impossibly cold, and quite possibly bitter; You shouldn’t be here in this moment, shivering, waiting for a bit of food. As a girl, you stand outside a bar mustering the courage to enter and drag your father home, his paycheck already spent, but you walk in anyway and navigate the darkened room no safer than among the flying bullets of a revolution. I think I understand your fear of bears. You told me once that in the middle of a game, your coach hit you in the face for not following his instructions. I dare not think about this scene too often, or how desperately I want to catch his hand. But to do so would rob you of your moment. You stand up to him. For the first time, I’m sure he knows what it’s like to fear a woman. He never touched you again. I would let you keep this memory, though I would wipe it from my own mind.

4. Dandelions
Entire industries intent on the dandelion’s demise, legions of chemists sent to extinguish a solitary blossom.

Can I tell you a secret?
Tell me your secret.
And you’ll keep it?
I’ll never share.
Not even with him?
I have no secrets from him.

There are creatures who surprise me with their ability to survive, and when we allow ourselves to be inspired by that resilience we call it hope, because to give credit for another’s will is to lessen our own. And when that resilience angers us we call it stubborn, and they become like weeds.

My son helps me place the ladder against the eave. My wife encourages me, tired of the backed up rainwater.

I find the blockage, a clump of moss, tar and pitch, enveloped in pine needles. Amid this detritus a small tap root, rosette of shiny, hairless leaves spread out to collect moisture along the grooves of jagged teeth, which the French called Dent de Lion.

“I can’t see anything.”
“Some husband!”
“I know.”

Why do you call me a dandelion?
Because that’s what you are.
I am not! I’m a little boy!
Yes, you are that, too.
Then catch me!
I have you!
Again!

5. A Break-up
Do you remember that old cartoon where the man down on his luck finds the frog who could sing and dance, but around other people remained oddly silent?

When I cleaned out the last of my items from her drawer and moved out, the shadows along the road had a carbon quality. They seemed drawn upon the pavement, black dust that blew away with the wind gusts from passing semis. In those moments, I wondered how unfortunate she was to have lost him, how much taller and more beautiful and more sensitive. I imagined them together, in some perfect union of youth, and wondered if she occasionally thought of him. I wanted so much to best him in a struggle, but you cannot compete with a ghost. The ghost always wins.

The imaginot line was that emotional distance separated by time zones and Great Divides that existed only in my head; An excuse, not a true barrier. More of an unconfessed invitation I wanted her to cross.

Still, it’s an awfully lonely feeling to be the only one who believes in you.

6. Arkansas
The hatred I learned in childhood is my world-is-flat truth. I constantly fight my belief that the world of my memories is flat, not wanting to believe that the past is three-dimensional. The photo of that pretty, uneducated girl from Arkansas haunts me. Unlike the other people who have left my life, she hasn’t forgiven me. That photo of her, lodged in my memory like a truth, reminds me that I once visited those hills where she was born; that she came from my side of the tracks. She reminds me that while my grandfather was taken from her, I chose my exile.

When she fell ill, I had already sworn never to cross those tracks again. I didn’t answer her letters, which shamed me with their 8th grade vocabulary. The prettiest girl in Arkansas had never finished school.

You hurt those you love at your peril. Just see now if you’ll look back upon a happy childhood, a wonder year amongst the adolescence. You won’t, and it’s because of what you do now. Karma doesn’t wait ‘til after the sin. She’ll gladly pay your future debt at any time, and let you live on credit.

7. Arkansas
When the cashier turns around to get the pack of Viceroys he asks for, my dad takes the Matchbox and slips it into his jacket. He pays for the gas and cigarettes and we leave.

“Get up,” he breathes into my face. We wake in the darkness, and the warm air tells me we’re home. He has brought us to my mom’s apartment at Rachel Arms, where we moved when he left. It’s much smaller than our old house, but there are more kids and we’re happy.

When my mother opens the door, she covers her mouth with her hands and reaches down for us, taking us both into her arms. She is shaking, and holding us too hard. She pulls us inside and tries to shut the door, but he pushes his way in. She begs him to leave, and my sister and I take each other’s hands and back away.

We watch and grow full of memories that seem like time lapse photography of county fairs and carnivals, and magnolias coming into bloom, white blossoms opening and closing like fireflies through foggy hills.

8. French Class
Ms. Houchins repeats the conjugation of avoir. J’ai, Tu as, Nous avons.

Nobody notices me at this new school. Except Natalie, who sits behind me, takes the end of her pen and begins to write on my back, tracing intricate shapes and patterns. It’s paralyzing.

Wonder become torturous, leaving me only able to concentrate on when she might stop, hoping I will at least remember that final moment.

Now she’s creating flowers and now she presses slightly harder, carving riverbeds and valleys. Now she’s redrawing the borders of the countries in this New World so quietly I can feel my pulse along the back of my neck.

The next quarter, Ms. Houchins rearranges our seating, and now I sit behind Natalie. She hands me a pen and says, ‘Write on my back.’

Whereas Natalie drew shapes and traced endless, winding paths, I can only spell. I write my name with hers, in cursive and in print. I describe the places we visit and how we feel when we leave. I learn by her breathing that she likes most the faraway foreign lands with long, unfamiliar spellings. And I conjugate the new words I learn, ‘J’adore, J’adore, J’adore.’

9. Rural EMS
I dread the dirt-road calls. In town, you can turn around an alleyway and suddenly come face to face with an underworld of poverty, neatly hidden away. That’s how it is here, too. The ambulance turns onto gravel, passes through an abandoned orchard and there is our poverty. The kid in elementary school who didn’t have a jacket and quietly disappeared after 5th grade lives here. Last night, he passed away quietly, an unfinished cigarette has burned a hole in his flannel shirt.

Outside, his daughter is there with a man. He’s rubbing her arm, encouraging her to go inside. She hesitates, flicks her own cigarette. Wipes her eyes.

She returns as soon as she enters. Just long enough for her to curse that old man for whatever he did. We feel the need to defend the dead, but we don’t. We assume he suffered from remorse, that he was once a little kid without a jacket who got picked on and forgotten in grade school. But we don’t know what he put her through, so we keep our mouths shut, other than to ask her if she knows where he kept his prescriptions. She doesn’t know.

10. 10:55 AM February 28, 2001 Nisqually Earthquake
At 20 seconds, the walls shake loose of their bookshelves and photo frames of smiling children. At 25, the lights go out, and the library wails. The screams punctuated by the breaking of a water main above the only entrance. At 30, the first of my co-workers rushes through that water into the light. An office that seemed to hold only 20 people suddenly produces 60, all in full sprint. At 35, I stand at the exit and hold it open, amazed that no one has come running through the glass itself. I am passed by angry, determined eyes that have either seen their lives flashed before them, or worse, nothing at all. I am struck enough times by flailing arms that I am no longer convinced the blows are all by mistake. At 49, the library falls back to sleep and I walk through the office calling for any good boys and girls. Only one managed to stay underneath his desk the entire time. He thanks me for waiting and we walk out. I grab the first aid kit and apply a bandage to a person I see crying outside, a 50-year old woman holding a scraped knee.

11. Uncategorized
At your lowest, after the bonds are broken, she knocks.

Words fall from her lips like honey feathers, gently landing and sticking. She lives for the making up. The hug and the tears. The never agains. It's her way of strengthening the bond. Breaking and re-setting the bone until it's thick and solid at the site of the fracture.

I think ahead to the future and wonder at how pliable we are, like the bones we break when young. How quick to heal. Hello Kitty stickers on a cast.

After the worst episode, I wait at the door. She enters.

If you ever lock this door, I'll take it off. He does, eventually. I watch him line up a nail at the bottom of the hinge pin, tapping it out with a hammer. He strikes his hand and curses. Another break.

He brings a sheet of paper to me. Letters scrawled, broken and jagged. I look at the words, at what he's written. I wonder, will he be okay in the world, bones unbroken? How will he possibly cope with the hurt we inflict upon ourselves? He still thinks that honey is sweet, and that feathers float softly like forgiveness.