fictions and factions

What Would Buke Do?

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:22:52 -0700

I found this bookmark in my classroom. On one side, it’s a six-inch ruler and on the other side it’s a holographic landscape of a barren desert highway with a telephone pole and two golden retriever puppies on Razor scooters scooting down the road. After enough wine, cigarettes and cold medicine it really starts to make me emotional.

He thinks it’s silly, that I’m only acting this way for attention. Such a drama queen, he says. Blaming it on all the depressing American poetry and the quarter-life related angst.

“You need to move to Los Angeles and start sleeping around. At least try to develop a dependency,” he teases, but is mostly serious. He pours another sarcastic capful of Nyquil and raises an eyebrow, “What would Hemingway think?”

“Do you know,” I say to him, fishing for toenails in the carpet. “Do you know how fucked the Salton Sea is?”

And this is the only reason why I like him; he is so good at things like this, at being an ominous pretentious fuck. But sometimes he has these moments—usually few and far between, but moments nonetheless—where he remembers how human he is and all that enigmatic composure falters and it’s these moments that are enough to forgive him for that head of his, one of those with the non existential jaw line that blends into a chin which is just a set of wrinkly folds erupting above his enormous protruding adam’s apple. So you see I don’t have to look for ways to resent him, but I’ve made a game out of this, and out of the corner of my eye, when puzzlement flashes over that sloppy face of his I can’t help but grin and pour another shot of cough syrup.

My sinuses are pounding, I explain. He crosses his legs, kind of high for a boy, but not for a faggot, on the edge of my bed and I open my laptop and go off on how I’m bidding on miniature mid-century furniture on eBay because I have an idea.

“What idea is that?”

“Did you know,” I tell him. “When I was little I saw my dad put a windshield wiper blade through his hand?”

I wait, but it didn’t work this time. So I have to tell him the whole story. Of how it was pouring rain after school and I must have been nine, ten, maybe eleven. Anyway.

It was pouring rain, right? and I can already see my dad out there from the classroom window, messing with the windshield wipers. I have to peek, of course, because our heads are bowed in prayer. "We always dismiss with The Lord’s Prayer underneath the Christian Flag which hangs next to the American one," I explain. "Imagine all of us," I insist, in our little plastic raincoats and lunchboxes and then it was Amen and I was flying out the door across the lawn to jump in the front seat of the pickup.

It fell hard in sheets over the Nissan and in our tin can he did well not to alarm me, but asked me very normally to go and see if my teacher had a band-aid. And before I even saw the blade that had driven through all four of his fingers, I remember fighting back any reaction, clenching my jaw because my stomach turned at the wince in my Daddy’s face.

“You ask me all the time about my Greatest Fear,” I take a break in my story to look at him and address this. “Think about the wince, think about the first splinter your dad ever had to pry out of your little finger. Then think about the wince again, oh god. The unintelligible tremor in your hero’s voice? That’s enough to end your fucking world, isn’t it?”

“It is,” and those brown eyes rolled around in that ugly pinhead and I continued.

The blade went through all his fingers on his right hand, I have no idea how. Blood was oozing out in fat black drips into a blob in his lap and his left hand was wrapped around the other wrist. A steady voice asked me to look for the pliers or the wire cutters, I forget what they were, that he kept in the toolbox in the backseat.
Hurt’s a little, Daddy said, sucking in a breath.

And outside the fucking fat mothers are honking in a hurry to the brats at the canopied picnic tables and their stupid book-bags bouncing on their back as they trot to their respective minivans, minding the floor mats with their wet shoes.

The metal didn’t clip cleanly at first. I sort of had to bend it this way and that, but it eventually gave. With the blade now split into three shorter pieces, they slipped out the flesh easier. I found an old t-shirt he kept as a grease rag and he wrapped his own hand and turned on the radio, he put the truck in gear, rolled down the window and took out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

I remember the smell of the rain, the heater coughed out dust and he lit the smoke with one hand, I don’t even remember which one. I do remember though, I remember, the tires hissing against the wet street all the way home.

“Jesus,” he says. He's now reclined back on his elbows and has been turning the holographic scooter puppy ruler back and forth to see the animation. He wants to say something, but doesn’t. I don’t blame him, either.
Even I’m disappointed now, too.

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My New Job

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:05:54 -0700

Tomorrow marks the end of my second week at my new job. I work as an 8th and 9th grade teacher of a small classroom at a Summer Tutoring Academy in the Woodbridge community of Irvine. I started out as a substitute for private tutors, specifically the woman who tutored a six-year-old named Joy.

Joy, like most of the clients at the Academy, is Chinese. However she has an American last name and green eyes and light brown hair, so I think she must be a mix of some sort. Joy and I got along well at first; we had a lot in common. We both like the color pink, we both enjoy snacks and we both have sassy attitudes. I figured we’d grow to be close friends.

When I first asked Joy what she liked to do, she told me her favorite thing was to draw dolphins. Perfect, I thought. I am going to blow this kid away with my tight dolphin drawings. So I drew a dolphin with her hot pink marker on a sheet of lined paper, and she hated it.

“That doesn’t really look like a dolphin,” she told me.

“Have you ever seen a dolphin?” She ignored me, and opened her lunchbox, full of sweet and salty treats wrapped neatly in ziplock bags.

“I will share some of my snacks with you,” she told me. I politely declined. I was not going to take food from a six-year-old. Most of the food I didn’t even recognize because it had Korean writing on the packaging, but I was hungry. So I peeled open a really unappetizing granola bar from my purse and practiced my dolphin drawings.

We did an hour of reading and writing, then took a short break and continued with math. She was smart, which I appreciated. When it was time to go, she asked me to wear pink the next day and if I would bring her some treats?

The next day was also my last day with Joy and I arrived a few minutes late to find her waiting in the classroom, her backpack already unpacked with her markers and snacks spread across the floor under the desk.

“Are we having a picnic? I love picnics!” I exclaimed, ducking under the table to sit with her. She didn’t even look up from her drawing.

“Are you wearing lipstick?” She asked.

“Maybe. Why?” She handed me a blue marker and a sheet of lined paper.

“Does Dr. Wong know you’re wearing lipstick?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him today.” I was squirming, uneasy and indignant under the child’s interrogating questions.

She glared at me. “If you put lipstick on me, I won’t tell anyone you wore lipstick to work.”

That was enough. I told her to take a seat and added that my mother allowed me to wear lipstick and one day her mother would allow her to wear lipstick and when that day came, I would be more than willing to put lipstick on her.

Halfway through our grammar lesson, she refused to finish the worksheet until I gave her a treat. I didn’t tell her I had forgotten to bring a treat, so I gave her an old lollipop I got for free at some school rally months ago. I told her that it was hers if she finished her classwork before the hour was up. She worked diligently and when she finished, she did not hesitate to reward herself by fishing it out of my purse and hastily ripping off the wrapper. I looked at the clock, only two more hours.

“This is disgusting,” she said, spitting the lollipop onto the floor. “Can you please pick that up and throw it away?” She asked me. Me.

“That is so rude to insult my candy and then spit it out onto Dr. Wong’s carpet and make me throw it away for you. Don’t be bossy. The trash is right there,” I said very sweetly, trying to mask my utter appall at her behavior.

“But I said please,” she argued almost tauntingly and took her seat. I threw away the candy.

We didn’t get all the way through math because, to be honest, I really didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, I was not responsible for teaching her manners or proper behavior or even how to subtract double digit integers, I was only there to babysit and administer her lessons and whether or not she wanted to respect me and learn was her own decision.

She threw a tantrum when I refused to give her my Disneyland Princess charm bracelet that my mother had bought for me. She made me give her my granola bar even though I told her she would not like it if she didn’t like the cherry lollipop I tried to give her earlier. It was like she was trying to spite me. I watched her eat my whole granola bar, my only breakfast, while she had a fat puffy pink lunchbox packed with two maple donuts (still warm!), Chex mix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, two packs of chocolate milk and a mini-pack of Original Pringles.

“Are you going to eat that?” I asked, pointing to the donut.

“No, you can have it. I hate donuts.”

Fuck it. I tore off a tiny bite and ate it, I was starving. And it was good.

We took a short break to go hang out with her older sister who was being tutored across the hall. I carried Joy’s backpack and asked her if she wanted to eat the rest of her lunch outside and she said no, first she wanted to play Freeze Tag with her sister and her sister’s tutor and me. I said okay, but she had to promise to eat the rest of her lunch. Joy’s sister, Trinity skipped out of the classroom and asked her sister what flavor of donut she had gotten today. I felt my face go white.

“Miss Alexis ate my donut! She ate the whole thing!” She announced it to the entire Academy. I saw Trinity’s tutor raise an eyebrow as she said very tongue-in-cheekily, “My, what a nice thing to do for your teacher…”

I could have slapped them both in their chatterbox pie-holes.

After lunch break we read a short children’s book called “Little Bear’s New Friend” or something. I recognized it from my own childhood and felt a warm nostalgia rise up in me while looking through the pictures. I missed my mom. I almost forgot how furious and humiliated Joy had successfully made me feel. All of a sudden she closed the book and looked me dead in the eye.

“Santa Claus isn’t real, did you know?” She informed me very matter-of-factly. “My dad told me and he never lies.”

“Who brings you presents then?” I didn’t even miss a beat. “I always get presents. Maybe you’re just a really bad kid.”

“No. My parents give me toys. Your mom and poppa bring you your toys and presents, not Santa.”

This bitch. I looked at the clock, five more minutes. I started to pack her notebook and markers into her backpack.

“Santa brings me toys. Your dad is a liar.”

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Matilda's Dollhouse

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:42:52 -0700

Matty, whose real name is Matilda, will park around the block because Oliver has memorized the sigh of her four cylinder from two, three, four blocks away. Matty doesn’t use the garage, which is tucked underneath their second-story apartment. She’s given that to Oliver, who is there when she comes home. As for him, he is at his usual post, huddled over the aluminum card table drilling holes through thin sheets of plywood when he hears her. She mindfully avoids rickety stairs numbers four and seven, but the aging wood gives slightly under the weight of her careful steps, and she knows she’s been given away. The high squeal of the screen door being thrown open off its hinges, the clamor of wind chimes when it slams shut, and he’s already halfway up the stairs.

A flash, really, that’s what this was. The hem of her canary coat swinging around the corner to the bedroom, her red lacquered fingernails gripping the door frame to keep her stocking feet from slipping out from under her as Oliver races after his wife, his heart swelling to the size of a watermelon and if he doesn’t catch her it just might explode.

And it does, of course it does. She is doubled over the bathroom sink, laughing so hard that no sound comes out, just broken, hiccuping gasps and when she pounds her fist into her knee it’s all he can do to keep his hands off her. So he lets them hang stupidly at his sides, letting one slip into his pocket and jingle-jangles some loose change. Such the wrong thing to do, old man, nervous gesture, he'd regret it immediately and so would she. It had been one, two, three years of this. A long and strange process, this divorce, though Oliver kept himself as far removed from it as he could. It was too much to touch her this time.

The tiny gold M she wore on a chain around her throat. She slid her thumb under the necklace absent-mindedly, sliding the charm back and forth under the high collar of her blouse. Oliver looked at his wife, the way he had been looking at her lately. The corner of her mouth curled up and spread, the way she had practiced, across her face towards her ear and she swallowed. Hard, flipping the M upside down to a W.

"I forgot what I was going to say."

"Okay."

Oliver watched her hand move from her neck down to her waist, flattening out the pleats of her skirt and then landing to rest on the ivory handle of her suitcase.

Too much, he decided. Having her here always meant he'd have to watch her walk away sooner than later. Would rather just sit under the stairs and it would be fine when she'd be gone, he preferred it actually. Preferred it to having to watch the love fall out of her face and closing the door after her. No, he said. Give me days and weeks and years, all it could always mean is she's out there getting ready to love me back. On her own time.

Time, thought Matty. This time like last time and next time every step of those stairs would bite back at her and she'd hate herself because she'd know. His hands would just hang there, and he wouldn't make her stay.

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Yellow Dress

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:02:40 -0800

From the balcony you can't see the freeway or the beach, even though they run adjacent to eachother. I grew up hundreds of miles inland and used to fall asleep to the sound of traffic, pretending it was the ocean. I won't ever take this place for granted.

Right now I'm in a position that most people my age will come to face sooner or later in their lifetime. I've found myself for the first time having to deal with an apartment that isn't big enough to keep everything I've collected over the past few years. Clothes I probably will never wear again but can't bring myself to give away for fear a girl exactly my size and height will one day own My Favorite Yellow Dress and have no way of knowing it was also The Yellow Dress You Hate. I've since forgiven you, because I know how much it bothered you to see me love something that was around before you and how your blood boiled at the thought of me wearing it for someone who wasn't you.

It used to be little things. The length of space between a man's shoulder blades as he steps off the bus, or brushing past someone wearing your cologne, as it were. On days when I couldn't think of better things to do, and even on days I could, I drove twenty minutes up the freeway to see if your exit still gave me butterflies. It’s the things I can’t explain because they happen so fast I don’t remember what they are. Like bending over the bathroom sink to wash my face and waiting for those hands to wrap around my hips.

There is evidence of prior termite infestations in the wood planks. They crunch whenever I shift my weight. A heavy jealousy manifests behind my ribs and spreads down the back of my knees and I am frustrated that the previous tenants didn't take better care of their balcony. It's ninety degrees in January and I think I'm beginning to take this place for granted. I wonder if it would be a bolder statement to start wearing my Old Yellow Dress again or purchase a New Favorite Dress. Maybe by next Summer I'll figure out that they were, and are, just clothes. By then I'll be able to afford a bigger closet anyway.

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Dreamland

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:49:40 -0800

He took off his hat and put it on the piano. One million electric light bulbs, Roger had told Marie. Carousels, clowns and babies that grow in incubators.

“Babies?” Topsy and Eloise squealed.

“Little babies no bigger than the size of your fist. And midgets. Elephants, tap-dancing ducks —”

“Now, now,” Mother interrupted through her teeth, in which she held several hairpins. The twins were squirming on their older sister’s lap, rustling the tulle of their skirts against Marie’s stockings. Marie shifted to balance both of the girls on her knee, careful not to snag her dress on the bureau. Mother stood over them in her dressing gown. In one hand she held a small pot of rouge while her other hand was smudging the color into her daughters’ cheeks. “Hold still, Topsy. Those ducks aren’t going anywhere.” But Marie knew it wasn’t the ducks, even if they did dance. Since the advent of radio and now with the threat of moving pictures, their audience had been gradually dwindling and it was not uncommon for the once widely acclaimed Abbot Sisters to share the bill with a juggling Jack Russell terrier or troupe of bicycling miniature horses. That was to say, if one of the Dancing Ducks of Denmark was going to impress six-year-olds Topsy and Eloise Abbot, it had better come with a wedding gown and a saxophone.

Roger stood at the window and buttoned his vest in the reflection, his white suit especially stark against his African skin. For a somewhat reasonable rate, he had managed to get the family a room on the top floor of The Elephant Hotel. Though The Elephant was not renowned for its luxury or opulence, he knew Mother would appreciate its proximity to town, and Marie would love the view. Topsy and Eloise, on the other hand, would be delighted with the décor. The walls were covered in cheap turquoise wallpaper and patterned in gold-leaf elephants. Pink paint chipped along the crown molding and baseboards, while the tapestries and bedding were done in complimentary shades of teal and rose. Mother liked it so much that she hadn’t stepped outside for the entire week. Or at least that was the reason Roger had given the girls.

Poor Mother. The last four years had certainly taken their toll. She had gradually grown cold and resistant to the change around her; watching her daughters grow up in the footlights of the cruel Vaudeville stage without a father and sometimes even less of a mother, counting on their earnings to cover their expenses. Trapped in an endless of cycle of working continuously to afford the train tickets to Chicago, Pittsburg, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle and back to New York only to do it all over again the moment the curtain fell. Now it seemed that with the new film industry, America had grown as tired as she had of the old song-and-dance. And it was because of them that she had been forced to drag her family back to the city she hated most, the one place she vowed never to return.

When Roger’s older brother had died shortly after the twins were born, leaving Mother a tired widow and the three girls without a father, Roger stepped up to help care for the family while they were on the road. Having once been a child variety performer himself, he was familiar with the circuits and knew how to work with the bookers and stage managers of the big-time venues. But when the shows had more recently become fewer and further between, The Abbot Sisters had been moved off of the big-time Broadway marquises and onto hand-printed A-signs outside of storefronts. It’s not so bad, he used to tell Marie. The twins can’t even read their own name anyway.

“Alright dolls, go rehearse with your uncle,” said Mother, and in a flurry of ruffles and lace, Eloise and Topsy leapt from their sister’s lap and raced across the floor to the upright piano. Their tiny patent-leather shoes clicked enthusiastically against the aged hardwood as the girls beamed in anticipation of their first performance at an amusement park. Although not the main attraction, their act was to be put on outside the Opera House next to Midget City in order to promote the New Don Magnavita’s Magic Show inside the theatre. It would also be the day they premiered their new stage moniker, The Abbot Twins, since they were for the first time in their lives requested to perform alone; that is, without Marie. Roger, in attempt to cheer her up, joked to Marie that the circus industry would likely be more interested in the two little girls, what with it being in Midget City and all. Marie knew better than that. She knew a black girl onstage would still sell tickets. A black girl and her two whiter baby sisters would not. In any case, a week later, Roger landed Marie her very own spot performing four times daily at the Eiffel Cinema in between showings of the new motion picture film, A Tale of Two Cities.

“I don’t understand,” Marie complained to Roger. She got no satisfaction out of sitting and watching faces and places flash on a screen for thirty minutes. To her it seemed artificial. It’s all claptrap anyway, Roger would tell her. At least, he offered, she wasn’t one of the poster-girls for Don Magnavita, the charlatan magic-man from El Salvador. But magic was more real than moving pictures, Marie argued. That might be true, said Roger. If you believe in that sort of thing.

But I don’t believe in anything, anything, anything, he sang.

Marie moved to sit on the radiator by the window, its cast iron casing chilled from the balmy Spring morning. She could smell traces of spun sugar and sea salt. This had been her home for the first seven years of her life, but she remembered nothing besides the fatal roller-coaster accident of 1901.

“Roger,” Mother opened the top drawer of the bureau and removed a comb and a box of satin ribbon. “Will you fetch me the water basin?” She hoped it was still warm. Mother parted Marie’s coarse hair with her long, knobby fingers. Accompanist’s hands, she used to tell her daughters, even though she hadn’t touched the keys since her husband was alive. After the twins, her joints had grown stiff and swollen, and the coastal climate didn’t help her condition. That was part of why she had left Coney Island in the first place.

Mother gently pulled a tortoise-shell comb through her daughter’s dark, wiry hair. At thirteen years old, Marie was the oldest of the three sisters, and the only one whose hair grew straight out of her head in a wild, unruly fashion like her father’s. Topsy and Eloise both had their Mother’s light hair that fell straight down to their chins, cut sharply into matching bobs, a more appropriate style for show-business. Marie’s hair had to first be tamed with hot sugar water, twisted and pinned into wet ringlets until Mother finally fastened each individual curl to Marie’s pearl embroidered bodice. This process took quite a while and often called for more hands than were available, but Marie was patient and actually looked forward to what had become their only quality time alone together as Mother and daughter. After all, it had taken Mother a long time after her husband’s death to grow the strength to, at the very least, touch her firstborn. Marie knew what it was her mother saw in her, her exotic features and textured hair—the painful memory and spitting image of her father. Sometimes Marie wondered if she’d ever be able to look into her own mother’s eyes without breaking her heart. But for now, the warmth of her Mother’s knuckles on Marie’s neck and her familiar dusty lavender scent was good enough. Marie looked into a silver hand mirror, smiling quietly at the remaining frizz that hung around her face like a dark electrified halo. Yes, she thought, this was good enough.

At forty minutes till curtain, the twins were growing fussy. Mother sat silently on the foot of the bed and slipped on her gloves. After Marie helped the girls into their coats, Roger hoisted Topsy onto his hip and pointed out the window. Across the tops of buildings and sweeping power lines, Marie could see a distant glow on the horizon. She could make out the top of its Beacon Tower, outlined and illuminated with one million electric light bulbs. Like a million brilliant tiny stars, Roger told his nieces. More than God had put in the sky.

Mother studied the wallpaper. She doesn’t believe in God.

…

Topsy and Eloise, now nine years old, were sitting side-by-side in identical white fluffy rabbit fur coats, their feet swinging gaily from the bench in the police department. Marie had been in the wings of the Eiffel for the last Friday four o’clock matinee showing at the cinema until it re-opened tomorrow morning for the holiday weekend when a policeman approached her moments before she went onstage. The twins had been taken into custody for violation of the law under the National Child Labor Committee.

“But what about what we practiced?” Marie whispered so harshly to her sisters it was more of a hiss. As soon as rumors started circulating about these child exploitation laws, the girls had been strictly trained and prepared. Already, Marie’s head was swimming with worst-case-scenarios of what Mother or Roger would say. Somehow this would turn out to be her fault. “Didn’t you tell them you were sixteen?” Eloise nodded ardently, explaining that they were given a physical exam, and then pointed to Topsy, who held open her mouth as wide as she could.

“No molars.” The twins shrugged.

For a nickel a piece, Marie bought them each a bag of peanuts for the walk back to Dreamland. The twins didn’t usually work on weekdays, but today they had performed all morning and afternoon due to the anticipation that the Memorial Day Weekend crowd would be bigger than ever. It was also for this reason that the park would close early for renovations. Already, Surf Avenue was bustling with automobiles and carriages carrying fine ladies and gentlemen whose children clutched their coattails and gestured wildly to any of the magnificent attractions that glittered over the garish front gates. There was a railway that ran through a Swiss-Alps landscape, imitation Venetian canals that you could experience aboard a real gondola. Hell Gate was a ride that took you on boat through rushing waters in dimly lit caverns, and there was also a live re-enactment of New York Fire Fighters putting out a replicated New York neighborhood set aflame.

But Marie still came for the babies. There were six of them, twenty-four weeks old, and each of them slept in their own incubator that was no bigger than a shoe box. They had their own exhibit next to Bostock’s Amazing Animal Arena, where the infants were kept in a row behind a glass encasement. Every Friday after the cinema, Marie secretly took the train from Culver Depot to check up on her babies. When it was crowded, she would have to carefully maneuver herself through the mass of spectators, sometimes crouching low to push through the skirt hems and elbow her way to the front. She had even given names to each of them. Violet was her favorite. She was the biggest one.

Meanwhile, the wind was picking up, stirring the smell of sawdust, wet plaster and fresh paint, carrying them across the Island to The Elephant Hotel. It is nearly dusk when Roger smoothes the thin white tablecloth across the tea table in front of the fireplace. Mother smiles to herself as she spreads egg salad across slices of fresh white bread. She thinks Roger has hands that are too big for his wrists. She watches them arrange and rearrange the place settings on the table, his gangly appendages fumbling with the delicate flatware. A gust of wind blows through the open window, sending sheet music flying off the piano. Roger drops a butter knife, and Mother’s focus darts to the table, but otherwise there are no feeble attempts between them, no scrambling from either Mother or Roger to catch or pin the fluttering papers to the ground. Instead they remain still, watching the pages flap and flail belligerently about the room until they float soundly to the floor.

Eloise and Topsy’s foreheads were pressed against the window to the babies’ side-show exhibit, their breath making small clouds of moisture on the glass. Marie decided it would be best to cut through the carnival rather than walk around the perimeter of the park like they did when they had entered. On their way out, they slipped past Midget City while a couple of its miniature citizens smoked cigarettes with the Gypsies outside the Ballroom. The twins smiled and waved hello to familiar faces and employees while Marie kept her gaze fixed downward. The lions’ growls were muffled behind their circus tent; the workers were rolling down the awnings to their booths, painting final finishing touches to the enormous signs and locking up their exhibits. The lights were turning on.

Marie winced as they passed under the roller-coaster, the wind howling through its wooden skeleton. The Rough Rider. You would think they would have shut it down after the accident nearly ten years ago, but they hadn’t even changed it. Marie shuddered, haunted by the memory of that day. She could still hear the grating on the track, the jerking and creaking on the chains heaving and pulling until, unexpectedly, the chains snapped and sent two rear cars soaring sixty-feet in the air to smash into Surf Avenue. It was this incident that had taken her father away from her, and why Mother wanted to keep the children as far away from Coney Island as possible. Marie pulled her sisters in close and kept walking.

…

The back of Mother’s head rests on his lap, bouncing lightly as Roger taps his heel in time with the piano. She reaches up and traces the chicken pox scar under his chin. “Tell me the story again.”

The last time he remembers Mother laughing was the night they arrived in New York four years ago at a lounge next to the Casino Theatre on 42^nd. It was darkly lit, loud with the sounds of ragtime and casual conversation. The twins were thrilled. It’s a celebration, she told her daughters.

Roger asked Mother what she would have to drink.

A martini, please.

Roger approached the bartender.

One martini, please.

The bartender did not look Roger up and down. He did not look at his expensive white suit. He did not look past him to the velvet booth where two white toddlers sat with their white mother and a black teenager. The bartender looked Roger directly in the eye.

That will be one hundred dollars.

Roger’s ears burned as he quietly opened his pocketbook. He came across an old photograph of him and his brother as children on the Pier. A creased handbill for the Abbot Girls, all three of them, in their Easter dresses. The hotel key, and four crisp hundred dollar bills.

One at a time, he laid them flat on the bar.

Four martinis, please.

Mother laughed and laughed and laughed. She laughed till she cried.

…

It was in the fragile place between awake and asleep that Marie heard Roger clear his throat.

“Erin.”

Mother felt a hand on her cheek. She forced open her eyes and squinted against the dark early morning light.

“I need to show you something.” He slipped one arm under her shoulders and took her hand. The hardwood floor was icy under her bare feet. Roger led her to the window where they could hear sirens wailing in the distance. Power lines snapped and sent sparks flying in all directions before they were swallowed by columns of black smoke and massive clouds of ash rising from the collapsing buildings. The dark fog blanketed the cityscape, but the blazing Beacon Tower pierced through its veil like Lady Liberty’s torch. One by one, the tiny windows of the surrounding tenements lit up and inhabitants poked out their heads to catch a glimpse of the most spectacular show. One million electric lights, Mother remembers him saying.

Beneath them, a policeman escorted a parade of three nurses down the sidewalk to the Elephant’s lobby entrance, where they were taken in by the concierge. Pressed against their chests they gripped six tightly-wrapped bundles, one in each arm. Out of every bundle poked two tiny legs and two tiny hands that wriggled and clenched at the soot-blackened aprons and faces of their rescuers. The concierge held the door open for the policeman, who paused to politely tip his hat and usher in the last member of their procession: a white-feathered duck wearing no less than a red vest and straw hat.

It should have been awkwardly peculiar, but nothing about him seemed out of place. His orange feet slapped against the pavement and with every waddling step he opened his beak to squawk, Believe in everything, everything, everything.

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Karma, Cameltoe, and Other Things Not Included in the Bill of Rights. (All Quiet on the Western Fwy)

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:34:11 -0700

My mother and grandmother always told me to wear clean underwear, lest I should ever find myself struck by an automobile. Yesterday, no more than 36 hours after the afternoon I had spent consoling Mimi when she smashed her car, I was hit by three. Sort of.

I like to think I am a safe but reckless driver. I've gotten lucky or, as my mom would say, my guardian angels have been watching over me and the only two traffic tickets I've ever received happened to take place within the last year. I'm also proud to say the only reported accidents I've ever been involved with have been caused by other drivers.

This time however, it will turn out to be all my fault. I like to think I could have prevented this somehow but the tragedy of it all is that I just could not prove otherwise. I was going a moderate speed in the fast lane, I wasn't in a hurry but no one was passing me. After the exit for the 5, it slowed down and a 2008 silver Chevy Cobalt weaved into my lane and braked accordingly. So I slowed down, and even came to a complete stop when the car in front of me hit the car in front of them, then shot back and slammed into me.
It all happened so fast. Now it doesn't sound as bad as it was, and certainly doesn't feel as dramatic as it did then. I freaked out for about 36 seconds and finally called the CHP. The owner of the vehicle in front of me got out and picked up the pieces of my car and put them in my trunk, apologizing the entire time. He seemed to be clearly more of a mess than I was, and justly so. The freeway was being shut down entirely so we could move to the right shoulder and I got out to exchange information with the two other drivers. Amidst all the chaos that comes with morning traffic in Los Angeles and the residual aftermath of pumping adrenaline, I remember thinking one of two things:
Thank you Jesus I remembered to wear clean underwear.

I'm a college girl, I like to wear functional clothes that I can also sleep in. I also like to drive barefoot and sometimes even pantsless, as my commute home can sometimes take up to four hours and as a tax-paying American I feel like I'm granted the right of comfort and privacy in my own sedan. But you do not go to a job interview in your pajamas. You can't expect to cross state lines in your bra and stockinged feet, at least not without answering additional questions first. Everything comes with a price, and today you will pay with your credibility. The fact of the matter is: in this country, it doesn't matter what color you are. It may be America, but it is still America. Don't expect the law to be on your side if the best you can do is a hip-length hoodie and an ill-fitting orange thong. Freedom is not free and you're not even registered to vote, motherfucker.

Despite the hoots, hollers and horn-honkings of passing truck drivers, the second thing I remember thinking was that I could still possibly salvage my dignity and patriotism while taking into account the valuable lesson I had learned. It was the least I could do. I then decided that I will continue to wear clean underwear in public, but vowed to also keep a spare pair of pants in the glovebox, next to the registration and proof of insurance-- lest I should ever have to defend my honor on the side of an L.A. freeway again someday.

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Beyonce in Tights

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:01:51 -0700

I've been having trouble sleeping. For the second night in a row, I woke up in the middle of the night and didn't get back to sleep until 5 in the morning. Then I slept through my alarm, and if it wasn't for a text message from Sebastian, I probably would have slept through my ballet final too.

I never stressed out over dance finals because usually everyone passes. They're a breeze, you're lined up alphabetically and it's just like a regular class except you're divided into small groups of four, like an audition, and it's administered by a different instructor while the head of the department takes notes and scrutinizes accordingly. An old, bald Chinese man with earrings and a turtleneck who calls me by the exact name printed on the roll sheet, "A(r)exi Marie" and pronounces "musician" as "magician". Most people pass ballet, but I'm absent a lot (with classes at 8am, give me a break) so it's always a toss-up whether or not I should even take the stupid final because my attendance is so shot.

Aside from the lack of sleep, and the fact that I didn't have enough time to even brush my teeth or wash my face much less make coffee or eat breakfast, it could have been a lot worse. Take Fall quarter's final for example.

Our instructor was a very strict, (assumingly) homosexual African-American man hailing from Detroit. He corrected us a lot and talked to us like we were children, often making us repeat the same exercise over and over and over again until all of the idiots in the class got the intro musicality right. "Elbows up, ladies- your arms look like chicken wings and KFC's not open this early!" Sometimes he'd scream at the accompaniast to STOP! STOP! HELLO? I SAID STOP! and then slide on his stomach across the hardwood floor to some poor dancer's ankles and, almost violently, turn them out with his own hands. Even when he was giving us praise he sounded like he was yelling at us. So I was constantly wincing. The worst part of it was it seemed like I was singled out a lot as the class example, which was sometimes a compliment, but more often than not was just plain embarrassing. "Do it the right way. Now show them the wrong way. Thank you, Beyonce." (Beyonce, because I was one of the more "developed" girls in our leotards and baby pink tights.)

I'm not the best dancer, but I'm not the worst, either. My strengths are, well, strong and my weaknesses are, to say the least, a near disaster. For my entire dancing experience, since I was little, I had a problem with getting dizzy while turning. Ridiculously dizzy. I thought I'd eventually get over it, or someone would teach me a trick to overcome it. And yes, I tried spotting. I ended up just getting used to it and, like stagefright, learned to deal.

I'm good with several, maybe six or seven turns before the room starts to spin. In class, I'd just sneak out the door unnoticed and wait to jump back in on the next exercise. But on the day of our Fall quarter ballet final, I had no way out. The last assignment was a long sequence of chaînés turns across the floor from corner to corner. I did the math in my head and figured with the length of my stride and the distance I'd have to cover, I was fucked. I held my breath and was about three-quarters across the floor when I realized I had strayed a little off-course from my perfect diagonal line and was going to smash into the mirror, so I stopped and tried to play it off by walking the rest of the way. The floor spun out from under me and, in front of a panel of instructors and my entire class, I was completely and helplessly disoriented. I proceeded to somehow trip blindly and, in more than a few attempts to grip the baby grand piano for support, missed it entirely, ending up sprawled across the lap of our beloved "magician". Like a professional, he continued to play the last four measures of the piece and no one even offered to help me up, despite their sympathetic gasps. At this point I was nowhere near any condition to tell the difference between up or down, never mind standing up gracefully to "shake it off". As if I possessed some sort of control that granted me the power to will my equilibrium to chill out, everyone watched and waited for me to get up and wave, "Sorry guys, I'm alright!" So the only thing more humiliating than the spectacle I had just made of myself was the fact that I had to admit aloud that I could not stand upright unassisted. To which I was instructed in that intimidating Michigan accent, "Sweet Jesus. Go back and take it again, Beyonce!"

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Identity Crises

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:04:20 -0700

I just got off the phone with my Wells Fargo branch in El Centro, and after being put on hold, had to hang up because I couldn't stop laughing. The woman who answered the phone said, "GoodafternoonthankyouforcallingWellsFargothisisGriseldaspeakinghowmayIhelpyou."

Normally I wouldn't find anything about this particularly humorous, but her name struck me as familiar and immediately I knew why. It reminded me of sitting at the Starbucks on campus one morning, reading a book or something, when I was approached by a man who addressed me by that very name. As in, "Griselda? How are you?" In moments like these (because believe it or not I've had a few of them) there is always a split second where I am frozen, confused.

I started doing this at my job, but found it problematic when I'd have customers return and ask for me by name.
"The man in the business suit is back, and he wants to speak with Demitria about the charge-send to Boston."
"Tell him she's on her lunch break."

It works better in crowded places with strangers, who you won't ever see again and even so, won't ever remember your name much less which Parisian fashion designer you are currently apprenticing.

"Merchandising team, huh? You girls come here often? Let me get your numbers so I can put you on my guest list every Moday at [insert obscure venue]."
"I'm Griselda and this is Kastja. With a K. We're sisters so you can just put us under one number."
That one number was almost never fake but almost always belonged to Gisele Schaaf, to whom I would otherwise use this sentence as a direct apology, but she gives my phone number out to creepers like candy.

Your wingman can make you or break you, so if you want free drinks, I suggest investing in a qualified manipulatress. Mimi Dessert, for example, the only person I know who can sell such an elaborately fake background so well that no more than two douchebags per night per bar need be convinced of our exotic heritage in order for us to score free cocktails all night.
"Of course. That explains the accent. Two more tonics for the Austrian twins!"

But right now Griselda is frozen and slightly panicked, wondering whether or not this guy is going to question me as to why I'm sitting at the UC Irvine Starbucks when I'm supposed to be vaccinating impoverished West African infants, or touring East Asian provinces with the Royal Viennese Theatre of Ballet Corps. Vienna is Austria right?

"Griselda! I hardly recognized you without your sister attached to your hip. Is she still across the pond doing the lobbyist thing?"
Of which pond he is referring to, I know not. I don't even know what a lobbyist is.
So I look up and smile. Without missing a beat, I nod, simultaneously turning my grande latte cup so that my name faces me (incidentally reading, Chloe, with the two dots above the O and an accent on the E).

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mnemonic

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:43:52 -0700

I'm good at remembering most things. Really good. So good, that maybe I now consider it a curse. But this is after everyone thought I was some kind of prodigy. A prodigy, can you believe it? Although other people thought I might be a witch. Imagine the audacity it calls for to call a six-year-old child a witch. Maybe that's how things got so twisted. In any case, I'm not a witch, or a prodigy or a machine. I just have a good brain. Or had, rather.

I was very young when my Sunday School teachers discovered I could memorize Bible passages after they were read to me only once. I could already tie my shoes and braid my own hair just from watching my parents do it for me. I was good with numbers too, but especially obsessed with words and language, and on cue could easily recite lengthy lines of dialogue from any film or television show. My family used me for party tricks and liked to play a game where they'd turn on the radio and have me plunk out on a piano the melody to whatever pop song that had been playing.

I spent most of the earlier part of my life polishing and honing this ability to work to my advantage. When I learned how to read, I lived in the public library and made it my personal goal to read every encyclopedia and world atlas cover to cover. If it was printed on a page, I needed to know it. Facts, figures, dates, names, I thirsted for them, and they were acquired just as easy, crammed into my bank of knowledge. It wouldn't be long until this gift would only burn itself out, manifesting itself into a terminal case of apathy, laziness and eventually an attention span which now rivals that of a goldfish's.

In college, what once I considered a key to absolute knowledge and power was now a crutch; no longer having to study or hardly apply myself, I had already grown distracted, lost interest in music lessons, misplaced my library card, and outgrew the spelling bees that had made me famous. I imagined my brain eventually shorting out from all the information I had forced to fill it with. The junk I had crammed into closets, stuffed into mail bags, stacks and rows of imaginary file cabinets whose drawers strained to contain all of the contents of the past twenty years before it spilled out into nothingness, the place where things go when you forget.

I started drinking. And like magic, the weight was lifted. How thrilling to wake up any given morning and not remember anything from the night before. I was finally liberated. I took notes in class. I started tagging Post-it notes all over the place, stuck to the screen of my laptop reminding me to do this or that, I kept a planner! A planner, can you believe that? How normal. How beautiful. Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty, beer before liquor, never been sicker, and thirty days hath September... But I was not invincible, and that ugly curse would eventually creep to the surface, unlocking everything I had worked so hard to repress, finally hurling me towards my ultimate demise.

So what this comes down to is the last thing you said to me. I decided I would move to a new city, start over and work on forgetting the past nineteen months or so. I was doing alright when a few weeks later you emailed me out of the blue and told me to call you if I ever felt "up to it". I said something along the lines of Thank you but no, thank you. You said something like how you would never not be a part of my life and How could I forget who you were?

And just like that, I hated you. Almost as much as I hated the fact that I knew you deleted my phone number. So I deleted yours. But what I hated more than anything is that I know it, still. Not the same way I know my zip code, or The Pledge of Allegiance or the lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", but the way I knew that if I opened my seventh grade math book, every single algebraic formula would come flooding back to me in variables and axes. The same way I know I can still tell you every American WWII aircraft's type, name and manufacturer. Give me one line from "Romeo and Juliet" and I can recite the rest of it back to you, in its perfect iambic pentameter no less. The things I knew that could stay forgotten as long as they stayed out of touch.

I still could make a conscious effort to remember some things, but the morning I needed just one phone call (because that's all they give you) I had drawn a complete and hopeless blank. I was in a panic. I ran all possible combinations of numbers through my head, none of them familiar. I went through the drawers, ripped open forgotten files, frantically emptied out cabinets and desperately scrolled through the pages of my mental address book. Nothing. They had me in handcuffs stumbling down the stairwell when one came back to me, a man's familiar handwriting scrawled onto the back of a cocktail napkin sent fluttering under a table. Immediately I asked the detective to write it on my arm before I forgot it. And maybe I hate that I still carry them around, the numbers in ink on the inside of my arm weigh heavier than anything I ever remember remembering.

"How could I forget?" I'm still working on it.

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And if you don't love me, let me go.

nobody@vox.com(lightlyfromtheledge) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:40:04 -0700

And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones
My bones
My bones

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