Zola runs

After one hour. One hour. Not a talkative child, not really, but after one hour of riding in the high nest of a truly big semi cab, the girl starts to talk to the man behind the wheel. Ever been behind the wheel? Lot  of things to hear, and that high seat, looking out over the great highways, it’s a map, it’s a history. That driver, old-ish at 50 from driving hundred of thousands of miles, he’s like the pope, or a grand wizard, looking down on people like ants, and the girl is an ant. The man behind the wheel starts feeling himself to be a spiritual advisor. Life is the road. The road is life. He says stuff like that. So she starts to talk, and he listens in his big head Wizard of Oz way until he realizes no, this kid and her kid, that he picked up on a black road in a deep night, they’d really need to be far away from here.

This is where not too much can be said, or folks who are still here might suffer, might find sudden bad luck visited upon then. Even still, even now we can say that the girl brought her belly and her secrets with her on the road between Abilene and Padre, thanks to the big rig driver who was not the wizard of Oz, who set her off a little bit away from where she’d been going, back toward family who were willing not just to hide but to twist her secrets to keep the family looking right into the eyes of God.

Here is where time challenges some of what we know, because the woman, the child, the birth, the release of life into the open space – they push us uncomfortably toward the primitive, the unsanitary.

Zola labors

She refused a cigarette and did not want to sit down.

“I have been jealous before, don’t think I haven’t. This just isn’t it.” She said. She paced and the light in the room was hard and white. She was soft and brown. Soft and brown and angry, in more trouble than she knew. Too young, this girl. Odds were against her, if you want to know the truth.

“Tell us again why you shot him,” said the younger man, who might have been good looking if it weren’t for the bad skin and that expression. A flat expression, flat like a sidewalk, that gave nothing back. Zola stopped pacing and smoking for a minute to look at him. She had the cigarette hanging out of her mouth, like she’d practiced when she was learning how to smoke, and it was burning her eyes. She wiped them dry, and put the cigarette out.

“Going to tell you again that I didn’t shoot him. You got a hearing problem?” She said and she looked at him and dared him to tell her fuck-all. She rubbed her big belly and said she needed to sit down before she went into labor. The younger man looked away, sudden discomfort marking his face, adding to the acne scars and he looked too young to be hard like a sidewalk. She felt sorry for him, with that bad skin, maybe he might not be such a bad guy if…

The older man interrupted this line of thought with a sudden hard bang on the table. Hey, she thinks, suddenly energized by loud noises at this late stage of her pregnancy, these two are playing good cop/bad cop with me. The fog and the hormones cleared like a rough weather front all of a sudden and she played her one and only card. Childbirth. Clutching the belly, she crouched suddenly down and commenced a good primitive wail, like she’d learned in that Lamaze class her social worker had been taking her to. She leaned, she wailed, she tried to pee herself but couldn’t quite manage it. Bubba one and two couldn’t tell, though; she’d scared them already with that first round of deep breathing.

Zola prayed to the gods of delivery to spare her from an actual early labor, and they were listening. She was out of the hard tile room with the sharp white light and into the warm unconditional arms of her social worker and a maternity ward, where she spent the next three weeks as a ward of the state, eating good and with blankets, stuffed animals, and unlimited cable TV. They cut off her cigarettes, but this was better than jail and interrogation, she figured, and when she did finally give birth to that hairy little girl, she was happy to see the pink skin and the long newborn fingers, and all in all, she was glad she scared holy crap out of a couple of redneck cops if it led to this cadillac delivery, all nice and clean like she’s a lady with full medical coverage and a husband somewhere waiting in the hallway to come in after all is birthed and bathed and settled to pretty rights.

On more than one occasion in the life of Zola Gorgon, she’d fallen into a hormonal trance that convinced her that all was well and safe and easy. On more than one occasion, she’d snapped out of it in time to avoid permanent damage. This was one of those times.

 

Another English Mystery

The front room was dusty and smelled of something, I couldn’t decide what. Old house, some cooking smells, ashes in the grate perhaps – Nigel had told me it would need a bit of care, but not bad overall. He’d dropped me off at the front gate, then took the Peugeot into the village to shop for me, getting sausages, tomatoes, baking soda, lemons, vinegar, hard soap, a rag mop, and a tin of shortbread.

While he was gone, I walked from room to room, pulling sheets off of worn armchairs, small tables, bookshelves, a fainting couch, a low embroidery rocker and an upright Victorian sofa covered in blue velvet. Most of the house was put away for the season, or for ever, I thought, without sign that anyone had recently left or recently been back.

Until I stepped into the kitchen. This room, which sat at the back of the house with a door leading out into an unkempt vegetable garden,  was in full and current use. Mac n cheese burnt into an aluminum saucepan, dishes stacked high in the sink. No running water, but a large jug of water apparently in use for general washing up. An old army cot with wool blankets and a flat pillow with dirty pillowcase. When I first opened the door into the kitchen, I instinctively backed away when I saw the signs of inhabitance, but realized almost immediately that there was nothing in the room to suggest that someone was in there at the moment. Still, after a quick look round, I closed the door behind me and went outside, where I stood awkwardly in the drive wishing Nigel hadn’t taken the car.

All around me in the yard were the peaceful sounds of a warm summer morning: bees buzzing in the snapdragons, a small white cat with a black spot on her nose passing through, stropping me briefly on her way somewhere else. In the distance, I could hear someone mowing their lawn. From the house, I could not see any of the neighbors, I realised, and thought what a good, safe place it would be for someone who did not want to be seen. I tugged on my skirt and walked down the drive to the gate and opened it, cautiously. It opened without a sound. I had remembered it as a creaking, loud gate that I could never sneak out of at night, and when I looked I found, as I had half expected, that the hinges had been recently cleaned and oiled.

Nigel came back, half an hour later, to find me sitting on a stump in the lane, picking at my cuticles. He’d been thinking about selling the house. I had decided to keep it. I quite understand the kind of situation that would lead a person to hide in an English cottage, and I thought I might know who this person could be.

Mothers, daughters, sisters – a Christmas story

I had a happy rooster once. He was bright and loud and disappeared one mid-winter day just before Christmas. This was long enough ago that when I look at my legs in my memory they are thin, with pale fine hair on light brown skin. Kid legs. I can see my kid legs and they are not here any more. I still have the tin tree ornament nena gave me to replace the happy rooster, though.

The vatos who inhabited my sister’s dreams in seventh grade dressed better than I did. Their hair was shiny, remember that, hita? My sister (who is actually my daughter but we didn’t tell her yet) kept pictures of all the boys she loved for about a year, and then she stopped. When you marry a bad boy, it’s better not to look back, is the way I always heard it. But later, when we are all comfortable again and certain things have been forgotten, we can get out the box of pictures. For years, she kept them in a cigar box, but she moved them into a metal dental tool box she got when she was dating that crazy periodontist. Hector Altamirano, moved here with his family from Mexico City when Hector was 6; his mom cleaned houses in a damn good neighborhood, got Hector the grades to get into the right schools, and next thing you know it’s rinse and spit and a piece of prime real estate in the Silver Lace neighborhood. When Hector and Zola broke up, she moved to San Antonio and opened an office as an investment banker. She knew as much as anyone else, was how she figured it.

One day when Zola was still too little to talk about family, she and I were lying together on the porch in front of my mother’s house. We had our heads together and we were looking inside of a wooden box with metal hinges. Inside the box was a mouse. The mouse was small, probably immature, with tiny white paws and smooth brown fur. We were lying on our stomachs, cracking the box open enough to let some light in. The mouse inside looked out, sneezed and trembled, wrung his mouse hands together. I think he’s praying, said Zola. No, I said, too logical and mature at 19 to let even a mouse have prayers. Is too, said Zola, and then she started to cry. Big baby tears. The hinged door fell open, baby Zola ran screaming and crying into the house. I followed her, and the mouse’s prayers were immediately answered.

At Christmas time, we alternated between Christmas trees, glitter, chunks of coal and runaway hysteria. Nena knew the importance of light in wintertime, especially in cold winters when nothing is enough. Especially in winters when we are moving from one secret place to another, and there is never enough to put deposits on all the utilities. Moving is damn expensive, really hard on the poor, but we are the ones who have to do it most often. Sometimes we played the midnight mover, packed our bags and left with rent owing. I can’t say I knew what else to do.

If you take a cold five year old, dress her in yellow pajamas, the kind with the feet in and printed ducks and geese all over, then wrap her in a sleeping bag in a cold room with an unlit fire, then you sneak out while she is sleeping and buy a fire log at the mini mart with the three dollars in change that you had been saving in a pickle jar, then you light the fire and wake the little girl up and she sees the old artificial tree with the scrubby plastic ornaments in the firelight at midnight and you tell her santa has come at last, she believes you, and you believe too, for a little while, until the child is asleep again, and you are holding her against your chest for warmth. For her, for you, for Christmas.

Sisters

Samantha loved peppermints when she was a little girl. She loved to go to her grandpa’s diner and order one cheese omelette with hash browns and white toast with orange jelly. She always had a cream soda with extra ice and a cherry to go with it. But the high point of her breakfast was always the peppermint. She got to stand behind the cash register taking people’s money while she sucked on it, and said “thank you and have a nice day” to each and every customer as she gave them their change. I always thought she’d take over the diner some day, when her grandfather got ready to retire. Things change. That’s okay, that’s okay.

Samantha was adopted. People said things back then, Samantha being the one who brought on our “real” child, Sarah. That’s how it happens, they said, adopt one child and then next thing you know, bang, you’re pregnant. She and Sarah were only three months apart. Sarah was bigger than Samantha by the time they were a year old, and faster, and stronger. That happens even with natural siblings, I know, but it seemed like Samantha didn’t stand much of a chance, when I look back at it now.

Adaptation is a function of survival and evolution. To succeed in a given environment, not just in an individual life, but in the long run, adaptations happen in part to ensure reproductive success and the continuation of species.

In successful adaptation, more happens. I need to be green to protect myself and my offspring in this ecosystem, therefore I am green. My orange sister, on the other hand, stands out and calls to the predators, here I am, here I am. It’s not easy being orange. I try not to blame Sarah for Samantha’s failure to adapt, but sometimes I dream about her, seven years old, drinking her cream soda – that little girl loved cream soda. She loved graham crackers, too, and bonfires. We went camping a lot the year after she left us, out in the woods where we could picture her still, with marshmallows and graham crackers, the gap between her front teeth.

Samantha and Sarah started going to that church when they were in seventh grade. It was a holy roller church, with speaking in tongues and people throwing themselves on the ground as the spirit filled them. I said no, no I don’t want them to go, but we talked about it and decided we couldn’t in good conscience call ourselves fair and open minded in the matter of religion if we didn’t let the girls explore. There are phases in childhood. Explorations of place, of friendship, sexuality, spirituality.  All perfectly predictable, and we did not want our children locked into a single limited perspective, even if it was our own.

You know I place a high value on being open-minded. Sometimes, now, though, I wish I’d been less tolerant, more restrictive, and most of all that I still had two daughters, not one daughter who I love no less than ever, and a big gaping hole in my heart where the other one used to be.