Drink the Water

Et notre jeunesse de miel...

Lying on my squeaky spring wire bed, facing the stark naked wall of my campus apartment, my humble abode for the summer, I was struck by a sudden sense of coming full circle. I remembered, when I was young, maybe five or six, my parents, grandmother, and I all crammed in a small one bedroom apartment in Iowa, and my room was a corner partitioned off of the living room every. And every night I would sleep facing the blank white wall, watching the colors from the television in the living room bounce off the textured paint before me and paint all kinds of stories behind the lids of my closed eyes as I drifted further and further into my dreams. And what silly dreams I had back then. I was certain, so dead certain, that somewhere along the way I would go on a grand adventure, be presented with a challenge, a quest, and save the world and meet a cute boy who’d fall in love with me, but I wouldn’t be so easy, no, I’d play hard to get until the day he saved me from some terrible calamity and then, and only then, would I give him my fickle heart to hold for all of eternity. The empty walls have not changed; they are the same in every working class apartment across the nation, blank canvases to be adorned by the hopes, dreams of every tennent, black, white, asian, hispanic, who sees not the four walls that hold them, but beyond them, as if they were made of glass.

My feet feel as if they’ve been cut by glass every time I step in the shower. There are two long, bloody strips of exposed dermis where I suppose I’ve carelessly rubbed the epidermis away with the rough leather edges of the heels my mother loves so much but I hate with a passion. First, they make me appear about a foot taller than everyone else in family, which I find strange. But I’ve come to realize it’s because I’ve never felt bigger than anyone else in my small family save for my six year old brother. Regardless of my rebellious teenage years that fostered all kinds of strange feelings within me I now push away with disdain, I realize how much I love and respect my parents even if they don’t really know who I am. But that is a fault of my own; I could never explain myself in a language that they understood. I was a fastidious little kid who whined and cried about chinese school until they gave up and gave in. Or perhaps it was the other way around—gave in and gave up. And, in a way, I feel this is what they have done now too with my decision to no longer pursue medical school. And I fear it may come out with the same result. My feet may bleed, Mother, but does that make me a lost cause? After I’ve scratched the scabs away and the scars fade, I know I will slip my hardened feet into those shoes again.

The funny thing about walking through the Duke gardens every day is that it seems to be a breeding ground for young love. The other night, as I was walking back home after an afternoon of reading, appropriately, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I ran into a large wedding reception with various couples who have yet to celebrate “their day” weaving in and out of the trees along the numerous pathways no doubt already envisioning in their heads their own glorious weddings. And as I climbed the graveled pathway I was bowled over by a teeming procession of prom goers decked with the generic black suits that make all boys look the same, framing a string of giggling self conscious girls slumbling in heels they have not quite learned how to walk in. And as I passed along the entrance of the park, I saw a younger couple, not quite dressed for prom in their cotton shirts and capris, but the skinny little boy wore his guitar like a tie which he strummed all too intently, almost as if he was so intimadated by the girl next to him that he could not lift his eyes from the strings. As I walked by I heard the girl, who was asian, say rather fussily “My parents, I feel like they just don’t understand me” and I had to bite my lip to not burst into laughter, because I had used that very same line many times before, on the boy who had taken me to prom no less.

In Love in the TIme of Cholera I found it strange what personal interest Transito Ariza took in her son’s first, and perhaps last, Love. Perhaps it was merely a result of her own stymied dreams, unfortunate past that she projected on her child. But I know my mother and I have never touched on the subject, nor do I suspect we ever will. I’ve never shared much of my personal life with my mother, perhaps because she’s never shared much of hers with mine. But I’ve never thought to ask her about it, because her personal life was us, we were her life and we already knew everything that was going on. Or so we thought. But the truth is, I never know what my mother is thinking or what she is feeling, and I realize that throughout my life, she has never had a close friend to confide in, to vent the troubles of her life to, petty or pertinent. She kept everything to herself after she left all her close friends behind her in China. And even back then, I wonder if she ever truly confided in any of them. My mother is a very strong woman; she has many secrets no one will ever know, because she is also very proud and vary vain of her image. She, above all others, is the woman of my childhood dreams who played hard to get until the right man came along and swept her—against her will of course—off her feet and took her into the setting sun on snow white stallion. Only, her sun set before her white knight ever found his way out of the forest. And so she married my father, and had me, and then my brother twelve years later.

If I could travel back in the past, I would have liked to meet my mother back when she was young. And we would have all those conversations we never had after her dreams dried up and she grew up. And maybe then I would know how to help my bloodied feet scab over more quickly, and brush those scabs away as if they were nothing, and wear my scars like subtle silver jewelry. And maybe then my mouth wouldn’t run loose like a capricious stream as I frantically seek the comforting lulls of the sea. And maybe then I will find the cute boy of my childhood dreams.

But first, I know, I must make those colors dance behind my eyelids again. Because now, when I look at my blank wall, I see only white. No crystal clear line of the horizon stretches out before me, no vision, no plan. This is something I must remedy or my sun may very well set before I have the chance to snatch a single glimpse of light. Maybe this is why I like to keep my shades undrawn, even at night. But all I see are more and more walls stacked into the distance.

musical chairs

She could feel the dull ache in her right knee again. Christmastime.

Snowflakes on the tip of her nose

she thought she could remember. The snap of a crackling fire.

Salty ice and gravel graze the sides of her shovel.

The icicles that captured her imagination,

Frozen gutter art.

Somewhere inside a baby wails, wrapped against the warm breast of his grandmother.

Her grandmother.

Outside, paradise, there’s no other word to describe it, the sun kissing your hair, your hands, your face, the sky stretching, big, bold, blue, not a cloud in sight. Gently, the palm trees sway, rocking

The baby boy calms down. The wailing stops, replaced by the sizzling of the frying pan, stir-fry, soon the smell of chopped garlic and onions wafts outside, an original oriental Christmas dinner.

Dinner with the porch door wide open to let a warm breeze into the kitchen

counter

Her mother stands shelling shrimp, quickly, deftly. Her hands are familiar with the yellow handled scissors she’s had for fourteen years. Hands that have been sliced, burned with oil, rubbed raw, scar tissue her daughter has yet to see. How many years more? She wonders to her reflection in the stainless steel sink. How many years before her memory completely goes and she won’t be able to pick up a pair of scissors without wondering what they were doing in her hand?

He was cutting snowflakes like he’d seen his sister do, little flecks of paper sticking to his yarn sweater, the one he hates, with the little choo-choo train and Christmas tree, but he wears it because he loves the way his mother smiles when she pulls it over his head. She rarely smiles.

Grandson, she wonders forlornly, why have you gone? She peers out at the cement sky. Shelling shrimp, her hands shake and she has to squint behind her bifocals to find the crack in the thin casing. Her husband’s smoking in the next room, the smell of cigarettes mingling with the chicken broth bubbling on the gas stove.

He’s been smoking again; it lingers on his tweed coat. He seems shorter, his walk slower, with a touch of bored aimlessness. Father, why are you doing this to yourself? She finishes her paper snowflake and tapes it against the clear, blue sky.

Snowflakes against edge of her sleeve. Christmastime. She could feel it in the dull ache of her knee.

wooden tables.

Without thought, his long, white fingers traced the inlaid carving of the pretentious mahogany table which stood imposing, but awkwardly so, like that chubby kid in kindergarten not completely at one with the tiny cupboards, whose fingers don’t quite fit into the loops of his safety scissors. Carefully he studied the girl before him, self conscious, he decided in his engineer’s mind, insecure, perhaps, but definitely feeling as out of place as this ridiculous halfway table, one foot in the door of a rich, mature wood, the other in a wobbly piece with the words made in China stamped across the underside. He was divulging his life story, briefly and without much interest, to her, who was nodding and smiling back, without much interest. But she seemed nice enough, at least she tried. And he wondered if she was exactly as she seemed, an empty shell, eager to please, easy to appease. Casting his slight gray eyes down, towards his flimsy paper plate, brows furrowed in scrutiny, he tried peer behind the shell to see if the chocolate éclair had a cream filling.

She wakes to find her world suddenly less real. Moving like a wooden marionette, she follows a rehearsed schedule, rehearsed in her head the night before, played over with the distinct knowledge that nothing was going to go the way she imagined. Unlike her dream world, she had no control over this one, and so she dutifully pulls her painted mask across her face every morning to shield her of what may come.

She picks at her dry salad. She hates it. But that’s okay. He looks like he’s enjoying his salad of meat and cheese. He seems bored, his fingers incessantly tracing the fleur de le engraved in the glossy conference table, a deep, amber color. But he seems genuine enough, honest and straight-forward without the pretense of wood beneath his fingers. An engineer. She knows his wired mind finds the company as incredibly dull as she does. But she can’t think of anything to say. Their minds were laid in opposite directions with no intention of ever coming full circle.

He lays awake thinking, who am I? He’s working for an old professor of his, but he wants to start his own company, be the owner of his own life. He’s got the ability, he knows this in the tips of his restless hands, but he can’t quite break free yet, he’s still a new soul to this strange world.

She lifts off her mask wondering, who am I? She knows nothing of herself. Without the mask, she no longer feels like she belongs to this strange world. But soon she’ll be wrapped under her warm covers and retreat back into a familiar world, a young soul returning home. In her dreams, a mahogany table cracks and breaks in two.

red balloon

Have you ever seen a balloon pop? The way it drifts, careless, thoughtless, aiming lazily for brilliant blue of the sky, so vibrant it’s reassuring in its lofty height, each puffy white cloud bold and stout, crying cheerfully out “Yes, come join us, just hop on up”. And the balloon happily obliges, swinging with childlike faith towards the call, for isn’t it in the nature of balloons to gravitate away from gravity? Up up and away it carries its swollen form, up up…but here it stops, wavers at its peak, struggling in a brief moment of confusion. “Aren’t I there yet?” it asks itself, and as it stumbles around its vacuous head for an answer, it has already begun to fall, and suddenly the sky no longer seems so brilliantly bright, but ominously so, and the puffy white clouds no longer inviting, but taunting, looming large and effortlessly out of reach. As the balloon arches innocently away from grace, tucked away, somewhere in your child’s mind, is an image of a rubber ball bouncing blithely down the sidewalk, bouyant, indestructable, immortal…and then the pop. Like a clap of thunder it rushes towards you and crashes against your wall of disbelief. And you look up, expecting to see the grass tremble. But it doesn’t. Because it’s St. Augustine grass, roughly hewn by the rusty blade of your dad’s old lawn mower, bristling, bellicose as a field of trojan warriors. You run forward in shock, the prickly ground beneath you pressing into the soles of your feet, as if you had just seen a magic trick and witnessed the pledge and turn, but where was the prestige? Where was the indestructible bounce of your rubber ball? Vanished, disappeared, returned to the realm of the could haves and the might haves, a possibility never birthed into the realm of reality. By now you have reached the center of your backyard, bright red patches strewn across the grass, the final, definitive blow to your rubber ball hypothesis. No, your little red balloon never made it to the sky, nor was it tough enough to survive the fall for another try. Unlike its flighty cousins who reached the firmament and beyond, it was filled with your own breath, heavy to keep you anchored firmly on the ground. And the little red balloon, fat from the dense worries of humanity, thin skinned from Dollar Tree Incorporated, never had a prayer. You can’t help but feel a certain, distinct sense of loss as you bend down to retrieve the rags of your once happy, carefree friend and you wonder, had you not opened your mouth and sent your breath to the sky, would you be holding a real balloon in your hand at this moment? Red, whole, and rife with possibility…

2/2

The black and white cover of Paradise Lost glared at me accusingly from the weathered bench. I knew that my eyes should have been scouring its pages, but at this moment I felt perfectly content letting them wander in the paradise I had just found. Laying down, I looked to the perfectly clear sky, devoid of a single cloud, stretching out above me like a vast ocean whose hue is of the most singular

blue, of babies’ eyes and morning glories

The wistful sun embraced all in a warm breath, crinkling the rosy pink oak leaves, thin as foil

leaving their dark docks with a sigh and drifting like paper boats down

to me

and in that brief moment, I was a vast lake, bound to stare eternally at the heavens. Held against the cradle of the wooden bench I felt the two halves of the world—the arch of heaven above, and her jealous sister below, left to wonder

for all time

at her beauty, all the while unable to see, that she was an exact replica of pure blueness, from behind her mirror surface.

Then

which half had the more pitiable lot? The lake who could only gaze at the beauty of the heavens, or the heavens who could not see beyond the beauty of herself. And from which direction would I rather hail? To smile down from above, or to aspire from below?