girlperson

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home

I’ve seen my dad cry twice in my life. When I was ten, his stepfather passed away. Passed away is actually too peaceful for what happened, his stepfather owned a small store and he was shot by some teenagers trying to rob the place. I remember my dad looking stern the morning we found out, shuffling around stirring cream into his coffee. My mom drove me to school that day and told me quietly what had happened; I didn’t cry, it felt very distant from me. When I got home from school that day, my dad was still at home, sitting at the dining room table where a gift basket full of muffins and fruit with a condolences card sat. I left my backpack in the foyer and sat down opposite him. I stared at him and he stared at the basket. Suddenly, he picked the whole basket up with his big hands and walked towards a hall closet. He opened the door, shoved the basket inside, and slammed the door closed. When he turned to walk back towards his den, I could see tears streaming down his cheeks, into his mustache. My dad looked really small then and somehow I knew better than to follow.

My dad has never been one to cry. He looks like a small, round Jewish accountant, actually when I was a kid I was convinced they modeled the Pringles guy after him. He’s lived a big life in his sixty years. He grew up in Spain and Cuba and lived in Mexico for a while. When he was young, he spent summers working on sailboats and fishing boats. He taught me everything I know about the ocean. When I was little, we used to go out on the boat with a fishing net and catch these tiny little fishes, hundreds of them at a time. We would come back to shore and he would show me how to cook these by rubbing them in your hands in salt and pepper and then frying them in a sizzling pan over a fire built on the sand.

“If you get sand on them, it’s okay, they’ll taste better,” he said, as he tossed another handful of tiny fishes onto the pan.

Once they were fried to a crisp, he would take them out and lay them on brown paper to cool for a bit. Then he would pick up the crunchy fish by its little tail and stick the whole thing in his mouth and eat it.

“Their bones are so tiny that when you fry them, they become crunchy. You can eat them whole,” he said to me. No matter how many times we did this together, I would never eat one, content to just rubbing the little fishes in salt and pepper and sand, and throwing them on the fire.

My dad was a teacher of the practical things for a childhood. If my mother taught me about literature and good films and fashion, he taught me how to fish, how to ride a bicycle, how to build a quality experiment for the science fair. In the fifth grade, he helped me build an invention which would hold a nail in place while you hammered it. My dad was a crafty parent due to his being a contractor and he built me things with his hands, doll beds and the perfect desk chair. We went camping together and he shared with me his love of mountains, just as strong as his love of the ocean. He and I became tan in the ocean and the mountains, watching the way nature surrounded us and made us feel infinite.

I claim my mother to be the patron of the arts in my life but my dad also helped greatly to develop my tastes in this area. I love spaghetti westerns and action movies because of him; I listed A Fistful of Dollars as one of my favorite movies in our first grade “About Me” project. My dad also instilled in me a lasting love of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Let me tell you, you have never heard the Beatles sung if you haven’t heard them sung in a Spanish accent. He would let me play Hey Jude all the way through in the car, singing every na na na along with me. When the song would end and I would look at him shyly, he would rewind it and we’d sing it again. He played drums in a band when he was a teenager and he respected music in a very serious way. When my mom was pregnant with me, she laid down the law and declared that she alone would be selecting my first name but told my dad he could select my middle name. Being the Dylan and Blonde on Blonde fan that he is, he chose Marie from Absolutely Sweet Marie. To this day, he’ll still call me Absolutely Sweet Anaïs Marie from time to time.

My dad is not only a great man but a good one. He has always told me to study whatever I want in college, being more concerned with my happiness than how much money I’ll make or if I’ll have a corner office or not one day. I’m his only child and he has grown comfortable in his role not only as father but as friend. I’ve always been able to have a drink with my dad and talk about anything and vent. He tries to shut his ears to talk of men but he’s been a good sport about the boyfriends who have run through my life. Thus, all these reasons explain why I feel so bad that I was the reason I saw my dad cry the other time in my life.

The same year I was born, my dad was blessed with another baby: his 1967 blue Ford Mustang. To be honest, I’m still not sure which arrival, mine or the car, he was more excited about. My earliest memories include my dad underneath that car in our driveway on Saturday mornings, tinkering with it and fixing it up. He had it reupholstered in gorgeous leather, replaced a shattered back window, repainted it a beautiful smoky blue. He helped my mom create me in less than twenty minutes I imagine and was proud of me, but he spent years nurturing that car into top shape; if he could have given birth, that would have been his child. He finished that car when I was about four years old, and I remember Sunday afternoons driving to brunch in it, my parents and I all in sunglasses. We were never cooler than at that moment.

He was living the life, my dad was. Wife, daughter, nice house, dream car. My dad was probably on top of the world right then when someone decided to give me a present. I remember my mom’s friend from high school sending me this amazing glitter t-shirt painting kit. Being four years old, glitter was literal cocaine to me and I grabbed it like a junkie. I followed my mom around to help me get set up for painting but my mom knew better. She sent me out to the driveway and put down cardboard and my t-shirt and my painting supplies and left me to paint away from her new rugs.

Nothing is more magical than glitter when you’re a child. The way it shimmers on everything and reflects light, it’s fantastic. At the time, I lacked the part of my brain that says, “That’s enough glitter, Anaïs, you look like you belong in Labyrinth.” That’s the same part of my brain that sometimes malfunctions when I see truffles now. I painted my shirt along with my arms and it was glorious, a creation of hot pink and gold and silver wonder. As I sat hopped up on glitter fumes, I realized that glitter could only make things better so I began to leave my mark on the sidewalk. I looked at my work and thought myself as the Picasso man who was in my Art for Toddlers book my mom had bought me.

I looked around for something else to make beautiful and set my eyes upon my dad’s Mustang. For a split second, I worried that he might get mad but I really didn’t see how making something prettier could be a bad thing. I grabbed my little paint tray and brush and went to work on the back chrome bumper. I painted swirls and tiny flowers; it was really quite subtle work, mostly in silver. I worked on it for a bit and then stood back to admire the masterpiece. It looked amazing, silver glitter popping from the blue paint and the chrome. I ran inside to my dad’s den and grabbed him by the hand.

“Daddy, come outside. I have to show you something!” I said, barely containing my excitement.

“What is it, princesa?” He smiled at me and got up from his chair. He was always really good at paying attention to anyone who required his time.

“It’s a surprise for you.” I led him by the hand down the hall and out through the garage door onto the driveway.

“Is it cake? You know I could go for that right now,” he replied, smiling as I led him to the back of his car. I pointed to the back and grinned, beyond pleased with myself.

“TADA!” I threw my arms in the air and stood back so he could take it all in.

My dad’s brown eyes widened in that Ricky Ricardo way and he opened his mouth but no noise came out. His face got red and he put his hands up to it, shaking his head no again and again.

“Don’t you like it, Daddy?” I said, still not entirely sure why he hadn’t hugged me and thanked me for taking the time to do this.

“My.. oh my god. Ugh,” he groaned. He sank to his knees and began to cry with his head in his hands.

I sensed that perhaps this audience was not yet ready for my art and so I creeped behind him and ran inside to get my mom. By the look on my face, she didn’t even ask questions. She ran out to the driveway and I followed close behind.

“Hiram, are you alright? What happene-” she asked as she laid her eyes on the back of the Mustang, covered in glitter.

My mom stared for a while in shock. She tried to inch closer to my dad and put her hand on his shoulder but he just pushed her away. The man was a mess. My mom looked from me to the car.

“It’s ART.” I mouthed to her and she tried not to laugh. She began to pick up my painting supplies and she grabbed me by the hand to take me back inside. We left my dad outside, hysterical on his knees.

My mom sat me on the bathroom counter and used a washcloth to wipe my arms and face clean of glitter. She tried to scold me but she kept laughing every time she started talking about it again. There was no need for her to reprimand me, I felt bad enough seeing my dad cry. I tried to peek out the living room window to see what he was doing but only caught glimpses of him pacing around his car, inspecting the damage. He came in before dinner, washed his hands, and kissed me on the forehead; it was rarely mentioned again.

He had the paint fixed and pretty soon the Mustang was back to her glory, although I still thought she looked pretty grand in glitter. My dad picked me up from school in that car every day and no matter how much time had passed, I still felt nervous about doing anything to that car even though my dad didn’t hold a grudge. Hell, I wouldn’t even drink water in that car. I was careful to never make my dad that upset again which was hard anyhow seeing as he was the most laidback person in the whole world. The glitter was forgiven by him but not forgotten by me.

My parents got divorced when I was fifteen, and my dad sold the old Mustang; he said it didn’t feel right to ride in it alone. He sold it to a friend of a friend and I was there when the man came to pick it up. The man was busy paying my dad for the car while I walked around it, looking at the car that had chauffeured me around my entire childhood. I stopped at the back of the car and looked at my former canvas. I squatted to inspect the back of it and found that near the edges of the Mustang logo, there was still some silver glitter in the paint. I smiled and wondered if my dad had noticed that after the paint was fixed. He had to have noticed, he knew every inch of that car better than he had probably ever known any woman. I realized he must have left the little bit of glitter there for reasons I still don’t know.

I walked back to him as he gave the man the keys. We watched the new owner drive away in the Mustang and my dad put his arm around me as we stood on the driveway. He and I stood still for a long time, neither of us letting the moment pass; we soon would be moving out of the house we’d lived in almost my whole life. We watched cars come and go in the cul-de-sac and stood together until the sun went down. I thought of how we used to stand on the sand together, frying fishes. He turned toward the house and walked inside with his hands in his pockets.

This time I stood on the driveway with my head in my hands; it would be a long time before we would stand anywhere together again.

Hooters

The first time I ever went to a Hooters restaurant, I was 20. My friend Nick, who you have heard about before on here, called me one day to ask if I wanted to go to Hooters. I was half asleep in the middle of the day, having nothing to do with my life at that point besides sleep and hang out with my friends since I was aimless and depressed. I thought i misheard him when he said the word Hooters.

“Why do you want to go to Hooters, Nick? You think women are gross and that sex between men and women should be illegal.” My cheek pressed against my phone.

“It’s not all boobs, you know! They have really good food!” He answered huffily. “Also, that’s not true, I think sex involving any woman should be illegal.”

There was no arguing with him and he picked me up ten minutes later. I was still pulling on a shirt as I ran outside, hoping he would stop pressing on the horn. We drove and parked. It was around two pm and the lunch rush must have been over because we were one of two parties there. Our waitress walked up and smiled a toothy grin. Caps.

“Welcome to Hooters! I’m Amanda, would you like to start with a drink today?” she chirped at us. She had weird tights on that weren’t her natural skin color. Then again, her skin was orange.

“Yes, Amanda, I would like sangria and my friend here would like sangria and I want hot wings and I want you to keep them coming. What do you want, Anaïs?” Nick asked, sliding the menu towards Amanda with one pinky up.

“Oh.” I looked through the menu quickly, feeling on the spot. “I guess I’ll have the gourmet hot dog.”

“Can I see your id’s please?” Amanda looked like she was following a list of internal Hooters laws in her head; I could see the wheels turning.

“Amanda. Really?” Nick laid his palm facedown on the table and gave her a scathing look.

Amanda swallowed slowly and nodded at us before turning and walking away to get our drinks. She knew when she had met her bitch match. I was fascinated by how unsexy these women seemed to be with their tights and weird very white sneakers. I think I foolishly had imagined something more real or at least for these women to not be wearing bras or something; perhaps I had wanted them to shake more.

Our drinks and food soon arrived. The sangria was watered down and my hot dog was less than impressive. Nick’s wings looked a bit better but I’ve never been a fan of wings. He took a deep breath as if about to sing or begin a chant and picked up the first one and bit into it. I nibbled on my hot dog, watching the show unfold in front of me. He ate at least 40 wings in such a short amount of time that I was sure we were being secretly taped for some televised eating contest. Wings freak me out, with the little bones and pieces, and to watch him tear into those former chicken parts scared and exhilarated me all at once. It was surreal to watch this man who dabbed at his mouth with a napkin more daintily than my grandmother become an animal in front of me. He finished finally and exhaled deeply, seeming to shake off the trance that had possessed him. He looked up at me and rolled his eyes up to heaven.

“Oh, girl.” He took a tiny, elegant sip of his sangria. “I told you I love Hooters.”

Said the gayest man since Liberace.

Love Notebook #6

While you were still at work, I went to your house after school let out at 2:30 to wait for you. I had the key you had given me and I parked in your gravel driveway and walked up to the door with the hibiscus flowers growing around it. I unlocked the door and let myself in. Your wood floors felt flexible beneath my shoes and I put my bag down on the couch. I kicked off my shoes but left my socks on. It was one of the few cold days in Florida and I could feel the wind creeping in through the unsealed edges of your windows. I went into your bedroom and pulled your U of Guelph hoodie from the back of your closet. I slid it over my head and pushed my hair out of my face and into a ponytail. Your sweatshirts were always huge on me and I liked to tuck my arms inside while wearing them and hold onto my arms the way you did when we napped together.

I stepped into the hallway and walked to the kitchen. From the first time you took me to your house, I had always felt at home. It was unlike the cold, ornate house I grew up in and quieter and more still than the place I considered home, my grandparents’ house; it was warm and small and I knew every corner and nook to it almost instantly. I poured myself a glass of sweet tea from the pitcher I had left you in the fridge before I went to school, before you went to the library. I sat with my feet up at your table and sipped my tea as the blue-tinted afternoon sun filled the window. I had helped you pick out the yellow curtains that hung around that window. You could care less about how it looked but you were excited about my desire to leave my mark in your house. The light that filtered through the curtains was cool and unlike regular Florida sunshine. I shivered and took my tea into the living room.

I set down my glass on the coffee table and walked to your bookshelves. They were built into the wall just like mine were at home and filled with more books than most people could ever imagine even skimming through. You had read them all. You brought them from Guelph, from your parents’ house in Wisconsin, and now they sat on the shelves you had painstakingly hammered into existence. You dusted your books regularly, you kept them more pristine than your appearance. They were exquisite. I ran my fingers over each one, my eyes quickly reading the spine of each one. I knew the moment I saw these books that I would be yours.

These books said more about you than your eyes or your hands or your words did. They told me that while your brothers were wrestling in the living room as kids, you were hiding on the back porch turning the pages of The Portrait of Dorian Gray as fast as your eyes moved across the page. They told me that you read things not assigned in sophomore English while waiting for your mom to pick you up from track practice. They told me that you had to buy a second copy of The Poetics of Space after you dogeared and highlighted it into oblivion while writing your senior thesis. They told me that you knew more than most people did and that those people would probably never learn about the worlds that lived beneath your floppy blond hair. This was my first step into those worlds. Every talk over breakfast, every whisper before we fell asleep at night, every conversation as we passed sections of the newspaper to each other on the couch, they just showed me another glimpse of the things I wanted to know about you and about life.

I pulled Life Studies by Robert Lowell off the shelf and made my way down the narrow hallway. I was still freezing and grabbed my coat out of the hall closet; it had been in there since we had gone to New York for the weekend two months before. I slipped it over my shoulders and pulled the hood up on my head. It had funny fake fur around the collar. I hated it until you said I looked like I should be kissing Omar Sharif in Dr. Zhivago.

I went into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. I stepped into the dry tub and sat back with my book. You always laughed when I did this but I loved being fully clothed and laying against the cool surface of the tub. I opened the book to “Skunk Hour” and began reading. I made it through a few poems when I heard the front door open and close.

“Honey?” You called to me, your voice deep but sunny.

“In here,” I said. You knew exactly what “in here” meant.

Your footsteps made the floorboards creak as you came closer to the bathroom. I heard you round the corner and then you stood in the doorway. I saw your lean runner’s legs in their jeans first and then looked up to see you smiling quietly at me. You leaned against the door frame and crossed your arms.

“Come here often, miss?” This was the game we always played when you found me reading in your bathtub. You were almost too tall for the door frame, the tallest man I had been with up to that point.

“Now and then.” I turned my fur-framed face to you. “It has a nice atmosphere and the drinks are swell, sir.”

“Are they now?” You walked in and lowered the toilet lid and sat down, your forearms resting on your knees as you leaned towards me. “What are you having?”

“Scotch and soda, it’s what we ladies drink.” I put the book down on my thighs and leaned forward, my arm on the edge of the tub.

“Ladies? Where?” You looked from left to right as I giggled. “I thought you were just an eskimo girl in that coat.”

“Well, it’s drafty in this bar. What else could I do?” I smiled at you and placed my hand on your arm. “Give us a kiss.”

You stood up suddenly and held your hand up. I protested as you backed out of the bathroom quickly.

“One second, one second,” you shouted as I heard you rummaging in your bedroom.

“Fine,” I sighed, laying back against the tub again.

You came back two minutes later with your camera in your hands and a shit-eating grin on your face. You kicked off your shoes and climbed into the tub, standing over me.

“Now,” you said, looking through the viewfinder. “Smile for me, eskimo girl.”

“I hate you.” I tried to keep a scowl on my lips but I couldn’t help smiling as you put the shower curtain over your head like an old time photographer.

“Look at the birdy, little eskimo girl.” You waved your hand above your head as you snapped photo after photo of me laughing at your shtick.

“Are you done yet?” I reclined in the tub and looked up at you.

“No.” You kept taking photos as you knelt awkwardly over me, your long limbs splaying out of the tub. You took a photo of just my face as I smiled a real smile at you. “Now, I’m done.”

You leaned down and gave me my kiss. Your face brushed against mine and against the fur, your tongue darting inside my mouth. I opened my eyes while we kissed and saw yours were open as well. Your eyes were so green at that moment as you looked into my brown ones. I still haven’t met anyone with eyes as green as yours. My hands found their way around your neck as we kissed lazily in the tub. You pushed back the hood to kiss my earlobe.

“What are you reading today?” You bent your chin to kiss my fingers that seemed to be made for your mouth.

“Life Studies.” I sat up a bit and we faced each other almost level now.

“Again?” You motioned that you wanted to move around me and I moved forward as you laid back against the tub. You held your arms out for me to lay against you.

“Don’t again me.” I sat against you and leaned back against your chest, your arms wrapping around my waist. “You’ve read that copy so much it’s falling apart.”

“You’ll put the final nail in its coffin though.” You kissed the back of my neck.

“Whatever.” I picked the book up and opened to where I was when you got home. “Read to me, semi sweet man.”

“Fine.”

You read “Man and Wife” in a soft voice and I stared at the ceiling as I leaned my head against your chest. We were at home like this. If this was all that life involved, books and secret games and making love, we would have stayed in that tub for the rest of our lives, our hair graying as we struggled to lower our arthritic limbs into the bathtub for an afternoon of Amy Hempel’s short stories. Instead there was your job, my school, my parents, my supposed future, the difference in our ages, my insecurities that seemed to halt me at the doorway of actual happiness, the way I felt you loved me too much. Our chemistry was perfect but it couldn’t exist outside of this space. As soon as it hit oxygen, we would shatter. For a year, we would hide out until we had to face the world again.

We stretched out our legs, my short ones in between your long ones, and we read until the still of twilight fell over the house. You were still as you breathed into my ponytail and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world to have found you. The way you loved me made every nerve ending fire on all cylinders and made me feel as if I could take on anything. You cradled me for a year and when it came time to make decisions and see where we would go, I was the only one who did any going. I left you behind because we couldn’t continue living our lives away from reality. I hated the idea of wrenching myself from the comfort of your arms, your couch, your kitchen curtains but I needed to face the ugly things alone. You couldn’t hold my hand, you couldn’t protect me, you couldn’t go through things for me, you couldn’t fix me; I had to grow up on my own.

You loved me like a man but I could only love you like a girl. I wasn’t a woman yet, we weren’t equal. The fact that I needed you to become myself seems cruel but maybe that’s what you were for me. Maybe I was something else for you and now the world is different as a result. The world around you always changes when something ends or begins. Each lover that doesn’t work gives you a new set of eyes and another piece of baggage to carry around with you. Sometimes though, some of the baggage gets taken by someone who loves you enough for the both of you.

I dream of your bookshelves sometimes, your books deeply cared for, lovingly treasured belongings held on a pedestal. This is how you loved me, how you took care of me. We’re sitting in front of your books and you’re holding my hand. You tell me to pick any book I want and take it. I stand and look for a long time at all the choices and pick up a slim blue volume. I open it and the pages are blank. I turn and look at you only to see you mouthing something to me.

“Go.”

I hear a crack behind me and I back away, watching the beams of your bookshelves crumble and all the volumes on it fall in a pile of rubble. You sit watching it fall, standing only when the debris was still. You pick up a torn book from the pile and look at me over your shoulder.

“Time to begin again,” you say.

I wake up and look at the ceiling. My book is not entirely empty by this point in my life but you’ve left me plenty of room to keep filling it. I think of you now after this new heartbreak and begin anew.

Rock & Roll Suicide

As you have learned, I was a sassy kid. I never did anything really horrendous like burning things down or killing small animals just small things that I got yelled at for. Such as that time when I was nine that I convinced my dad to help me repaint my bedroom red one weekend while my mom was out of town. She came home and screamed.

“I guess you’ll just be living in a bordello now, Anaïs,” she said, storming out of my room.

My dad shrugged before leaving my room. I jumped on my bed and enjoyed my scarlet walls until they started giving me bad dreams about raw meat.

Another time, when I was seven, I started a rock selling business. I recruited my friend Stacy to be my employee and in a single afternoon, we had painted thousands of rocks from my mom’s newly landscaped garden. Okay, we painted maybe thirty but that’s a lot when you’re seven.

We put all the rocks in my Little Mermaid lunch box and told my mom we were going to ride our bikes. Slyly, we took my Power Wheels Barbie Corvette out of the garage and began the long trek down the sidewalk of our suburb. Parking outside of my next door neighbor’s house, I rang the doorbell as Stacy held the heavy lunch box. The old lady who lived there opened the door wearing an apricot track suit. She smiled at us.

“Why, what can I do for you, little ladies?” She had the biggest teeth I had ever seen in my life. These were rabbit teeth, Hilary Duff post caps teeth.

“We have a great offer for you today, ma’am.” I spoke clearly, thinking of the Vitameatavegamin episode of I Love Lucy.

“Oh, you do?” She was grinning at us. I worried about what would happen when she opened her mouth.

“Yes. Do you have pretty things in your house? You probably do, don’t you?” I asked, becoming more confident with each word.

“I do, yes. Some paintings and things.” She had her long-nailed hands on her hips.

“Well, we have some things you could add to your collection.” I nudged Stacy’s arm. “Show her.”

Stacy tried to unzip the lunch box but it was too heavy. She put it down and unzipped it, lifting out several brightly painted rocks.

“Oh, those are lovely, girls,” the lady said as she peered at the rocks in our hands.

“Which one do you like?” Stacy chirped after being quiet so long.

“Well, how about this one.” She pointed to a large one that was painted in pink and yellow swirls.

“That’s a good one. Worth a lot actually but I can give it to you for $2,” I said.

“Isn’t $2 a lot for a um, rock?” The lady looked skeptical but amused.

“It’s not just a rock, it’s art. It has become something very precious with the paint. $2 is a good deal. I sold one for $5 once.” I shrugged trying to look casual.

“When you put it like that, I guess it sounds alright. Let me get my purse.”

She walked inside and Stacy and I smiled at each other. She came back out and tried to hand a dollar to each of us but I grabbed both.

“I’ll take that. We’ll like to keep the money together so we don’t lose it.” I stuck both dollar bills in my Hello Kitty wallet and handed her the pink and yellow rock.

“Well, you girls have a good day and good luck with your rocks.” The lady waved and closed the door.

Stacy and I zipped up the lunch box and walked back to the Barbie Corvette. We drove to the next house and repeated this same door-to-door saleskids routine at every house on my block. When we finally drove the Barbie Corvette home, the battery was dying and the Hello Kitty wallet was $27 fuller. Stacy and I sat in my playroom and counted out the money. My mom walked in to find us surrounded by singles.

“Where did you get this money, Anaïs?” Her brow furrowed as she could already tell she was not going to like this story.

“It wasn’t just me, Stacy helped, too.” I nodded in Stacy’s direction while she looked ready to dash from my mother’s wrath.

“Okay, what did you two do then?” Her eyes were getting dark.

“We just started a business. We sell painted rocks,” I said, scooping up the cash into the wallet again.

“Where did you get the rocks?”

“I don’t remember,” I lied. “Just outside somewhere.”

“We got them from the backyard, remember? By the flowers.” Of all the times Stacy could choose to open her stupid mouth, this was the worst of all.

“FROM THE GARDEN?” My mother roared. I swore I saw those little velociraptor wings sprout out of her back.

“Just a few, Mom, really.” I tried to stay calm in an effort to confuse her into mirroring me. “It’s okay.”

“Stacy, go home.” My mom was staring straight at me.

“No, Stacy, don’t leave. You said you would be the dad when we play house!” I looked hard at Stacy.

Looking back and forth between the two of us, Stacy stood up and shrugged.

“I’ll see you in school, Anaïs.” The traitor left. Recess would be long and lonely for her. It was just me and my mom ready for battle.

“Now. You are going to give me all of the money that’s in that wallet, young lady.” My mom wasn’t playing around.

“It’s my money, I made it!” I held the wallet tightly in my grip, Hello Kitty’s mouthless face squeezed under my small fingers.

“Yes, you did but the supplies were mine so I’m entitled to half of the money. Also, since you took them without asking, your half will go towards replacing those rocks.”

“No, that’s not fair!” I was incredulous. “It’s not fair, Mom, it’s not.”

“That’s your only choice, Anaïs, or would you rather not go to Shannon’s birthday party next week?” She had a fucking trump card.

“Fine,” I mumbled.

“I didn’t hear you, what did you say?” She was so pleased with herself.

“FINE. I SAID FINE.” I shoved the wallet at her and crossed my arms. “You’re going to be so sorry.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” She took the money out of the wallet and handed it back to me, Hello Kitty’s face now deflated.

“Yeah. You’re going to be really sorry if something bad happens to me. You’ll miss me then.” I stormed out and walked down the hall into my bedroom and slammed the door.

This was a common threat of mine when I was a kid, Child Suicide, I like to call it. Faking my own disappearance or death is a good way to describe it. I would make this threat and then wait a little while before finding a fantastic hiding place where I wouldn’t be seen but I could hear everything going on in my house, the kind of hiding place only serial killers know. After grabbing a snack and something to read, I would hole up in my hiding place and wait. I am the most impatient human being in the world but for this purpose, I would wait for hours for the show to begin.

After my mom took my hard-earned money, I began to plot. I figured out a location and a way to make my mom really feel bad for what she had done. I took my Greek mythology book, a flashlight, a handful of Oreos, and a juice box and climbed up into the attic, sitting in a place where I could see slightly and hear perfectly everything going on in my house. No one would think I was up there because how could a little girl pull that ladder down? Oh, but that little girl did. I sat and waited. I read my book and ate my Oreos and finished my juice. All that waiting until I heard those golden words from below me.

“Have you seen Anaïs?” My mom asked my dad who was probably cooking; he loved being in the kitchen on weekends.

“No. Isn’t she in her room?” I could hear them walking around.

“No. I hadn’t heard any noise from in there for a while so I opened the door and she wasn’t there. She’s not in her playroom either.”

“Well, she’s probably outside or somewhere in this house. Let’s look for her.” My dad was calm when there might be a crisis.

I could hear them opening doors and calling my name. I smiled. Operation Child Suicide was a go. Obviously, I wasn’t really killing myself nor did I want to but this retaliation for being unfairly punished was the kind that would really serve my mom right. They started pulling open the pantry doors and the cupboards and the furniture and closets to look for me. They were actually yelling my name by this point. I heard them open the back door and go out to the backyard, probably checking the pool and the jungle gym. I heard them come back inside after a little while and continued looking.

“What if someone took her, Hiram? They could have just snatched her.” My mom sounded really upset.

“We have an alarm, they couldn’t have,” my dad said. Even he was sounding nervous.

“But what if she was outside, they could have taken her and we’d never know.”

“You’re right. We need to call the police.” I heard my dad walk into the kitchen for the phone.

I heard my mom follow him and I heard her blow her nose and whimper. I knew that was the sign that this mission was over. I felt bad. I left the scraps from my snack and grabbed my book. I pressed down on the attic door so the ladder would pop out. It opened and I went down with it. My parents ran to the attic as soon as they heard the noise and found me climbing down the ladder. My mom’s face was puffy and red and my dad looked pale. She grabbed me to her and I could feel her wet tears against my neck. I squirmed a little bit but I hugged her tight. She put me down and looked at me.

“I told you that you’d miss me,” I said as I looked at my mom.

“We thought you had been killed! Don’t ever do that again.” She sounded hysterical and rightfully so.

“Then don’t be unfair and take my money!” I scowled at her.

“What’s this all about?” My dad looked confused as the color began to return to his face.

“She took the rocks from my garden, painted them, and sold them to all of our neighbors. I took the money from her to replace the rocks and also as a punishment.” My mom looked simultaneously weary and homicidal.

“Who’s punishing who now?” I said this and stuck my chin out.

“You see this? You see what I have to deal with?” My mom sighed.

“Oh god. This is ridiculous.” My dad ran his hand through what little hair he had and then looked at us both. “Ileana, give Anaïs the money back, I will buy you new stones for the garden. Anaïs, apologize to your mother and go to your room, no reading.”

“Are you kidding?” My mom’s eyes bugged out. “She not only took the rocks without asking but then she proceeded to hide for hours to punish me, and you want me to give her the money?”

“Just do it. You’re both insane so just make peace before I finish making dinner.” He walked out of the room.

“Say it and then I’ll give you the money,” my mom said.

“Give me the money first.”

“No, just say it.”

“I want the money.”

“Fine.” She left the room and returned a minute later holding the wad of singles. She put it in my hands. “There. Now say you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry that I punished you, I didn’t mean to scare you.” I really didn’t either. I felt my eyes tear up as I said it so I looked down.

“What about taking the rocks?” I could feel her looking at me.

“Why would I say sorry for that? That was just smart.” I turned and walked to my room, victorious.

Closing my door, I sat on my bed and spread the money in front of me. I smiled as I realized I had won this round in the ongoing war with my mom. I looked at the money and counted it over and over again. I enjoyed it less than I had thought I would. I put it back inside my Hello Kitty wallet and tried not to think about it.

I went to bed right after dinner. I brushed my teeth, put on some pajamas with puppies on them, and got into bed. My mom tucked me in and she kissed me on the forehead. There was no lullaby like on other nights. She closed the door behind her and I tried to fall asleep. I tried sleeping on my back and my side and my stomach but nothing worked. I could feel Hello Kitty’s eyes watching me, judging me. I got out of bed and put the wallet in my nightstand drawer and climbed under the covers. I still felt the pull in my tummy towards it. I grabbed it and made my way down the hallway.

I knew my house by heart in the dark. I had night vision when it came to navigating the hallways and I made my way around end tables and the slippery parts of the wood floor to arrive at my parents’ bedroom. I opened the door carefully and tiptoed in. I walked around the bed to my mom’s side and put the wallet on her nightstand. I turned to walk away when her breathing changed.

“I hear you, little mouse” she whispered groggily. “What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to give you the money. I felt bad for scaring you.”

“Come here.” My mom sat up and lifted the covers for me. I climbed in next to her and she hugged me. “We could make a deal.”

“A deal?” I put my feet on top of hers.

“Yeah. I’ll buy my rocks back from you and then we both have what’s ours fairly, okay?” She held me close to her and she smelled like Chanel No. 19.

“But I stole them and painted them. You were so mad.”

“There’s always more rocks to be found, there’s only one bratty Anaïs.” She kissed the top of my head.

“I learned from you.” I pulled the blanket up to my chin.

“This is true.” We fell asleep like that

The next morning, we made the exchange. I followed my mom outside and watched as she placed her now colorful rocks in the garden. I laughed as I looked at the rocks.

“Why are you laughing?” my mom asked me, brushing soil off her knees.

“I can’t believe you just paid me for those.” I turned to walk back inside the house and my mom followed me.

“Yeah, me either. I can’t believe I have an asshole for a daughter.”

I feel your burning eyes

I accept and I collect upon my body the memories of your devotion.
-Antony & the Johnsons

I’ve been talking and thinking a lot about scars lately. I don’t really know why, things seem fine on the surface. Maybe it was my childhood, I was an only child and an only grandchild on my mom’s side, and I was treated like a tiny fragile bird. That’s what girls are after all. Any time I’d attempt to climb a tree and do something unsafe like attempting to skateboard, my family would automatically put a stop to it. Don’t get me wrong. I was a kid who also enjoyed dolls and wearing dresses and being girly but there was this overwhelming attempt to shelter me from everything. I never got those childhood badges of courage that other kids get except accidentally now and then. I have scars from mosquito bites and a tiny scar on my hand from when a firework landed on my hand on the 4th of July when I was almost two.

I think I have a desire for the visual, I like seeing the results of something in front of me. When I write something, no matter the audience or format, I always print it out to have it physically tangible. I feel guilty for killing trees with all my printing but I can’t help it. I need the evidence of an experience gone through or created right in front of me. I need to feel it, I need to look in the mirror and see it.

As an adult, I’ve earned my own badges of courage like that gash in the pool and the seemingly innocuous fall in front of the bagel shop a few years ago; it was nothing but I still have a perfectly round scar on my left kneecap. I’ve never worn leg makeup nor wanted to, if my legs are visible, you may notice everything on them, faded to a soft pinkish white. Maybe you’ll see slight stretchmarks on my hips from when I grew into them during puberty.

You’ll definitely see the self-inflicted badges of courage. I got a few tattoos with a broken, heavy heart in my throat. Only the first one was completely joyous at the time; he tattooed a star in between my shoulderblades with india ink in our bedroom. I felt his hands on my back and the tiny prick of the needle as blood dripped, following the curve of my spine. At that moment, nothing seemed more perfect and true. It was beautiful, a hollow star, burned out on my skin.

It was only when he left and we broke that it became a burden. I noticed the star’s legs were slightly wonky. Everyone asked about it, touching my back without asking permission when I wore a backless shirt. My next lover was not understanding. She was insecure and jealous of this physical bond with my past, and felt threatened by a ghost seemingly bigger than her and I. It should have been my first sign of something awry with her. I was sick of carrying this around on my back, having it speak before I even opened my mouth. I tore a much-loved image off my bedroom wall and took it to a local tattoo artist. He said he couldn’t cover it. The next artist I visited said the same thing. I finally found someone who would cover it and made an appointment. As a side note, I’ll say that this was a glorious day because I lost something but gained something new: I met my best friend, Heidi.

Regardless, when I arrived for my appointment, I was ready. I wore a blue bra and my red hoodie on backwards, zipped up my back so he could work on the space in between my shoulderblades. I straddled a very comfortable chair and lowered my head. He placed the transfer of the image of a hamsa, a talisman of protection in both Muslim and Jewish cultures, on my back. It peeled off cool and wet and I prepared myself. The first line of a tattoo hurts the most and then your adrenaline kicks in. Some people spend the whole time getting a tattoo in pain but I’m the opposite, it’s pleasurable. I have a high pain threshold but I must have messed up wiring because I get off on that kind of pain. He drilled and soon I just rested my head and let the soothing vibrations lull me into a state of bliss.

My girlfriend soon arrived to sit with me during the tattoo and she looked smug. I could see all over her face that she thought she had won. I wanted to slap that look off her face. I wanted her to understand that this had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. The look in her eyes made me realize that no matter how hard we tried, it would never work; she was too small, too weak of a person to ever be with and be truly myself with. If she was threatened by the past and only interested in covering things up and rewriting history, how would she face the future? I rested my face in my arms and let the man with tattooed knuckles drill a new image into my back for over three hours. My girlfriend and I went home. I slept in pain on my stomach that night. After two weeks, the tattoo had scabbed over and healed. Two days after the last scab fell off in the shower and two days before Valentine’s Day, I asked my girlfriend to move out. I gave her back her ring as she almost slammed my bedroom door off its hinges.

The hamsa covered the star well and I liked to believe that it protected me from the evil eyes of my girlfriend and everyone else who would have liked to see me dead at that time in my life. I don’t know if it protected me in the ways I expected but it helped me start what would be a new life. Like I said, I met one of my dearest friends, one of my soulmates, and I remembered what it was like to live a life for myself. I carried something new between my shoulderblades but my back was straighter; it was heavier than before but my shoulders were straight back and I lifted my past easily. Eventually the star began to show through a bit and I felt it was appropriate. You can’t escape anything in life, especially not old love. You’ll always carry that with you no matter how you try to forget, it will always be there; it’s how you carry it and how you deal with the past that matters. It’s as if love is something ever evolving. Once created, it may change form but the tangible emotion will always live between two people as something linking them by their guts, a pull or a push that keeps them orbiting each other whether they know it or not.

A while after I covered it, he and I saw each other again, and one thing led to another. As we were lying on the floor afterwards, my neck marked by his mouth, his back scratched by my nails, I turned onto my side and he noticed that I had covered it. I tensed a little bit, wondering if he would be angry that I tried to erase him. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to it.

“It’s still there,” he said, with his mouth to my back. “I can see it.” His eyes burned into my back and I let it go. It was his now. I slept easily on that floor.

Morning Sickness Becomes Electra

I was an accident.

I don’t mean that in a really dramatic, “I wasn’t wanted!” Lifetime movie way but in all seriousness, I was an accident. My mom confirmed this after my parents got divorced when I asked her once while she was drunk.

“So you just told me you had wanted to divorce Daddy since early in your marriage. Why did you have me then?” I said to her as her glazed-over eyes swirled.

“Well, you weren’t planned. I wanted you, I wanted a baby but I was all set to leave,” she slurred. “It just never worked with your father, we weren’t a good match.”

She then tried to tell me about her apparently nonexistent sex life with my father but I stopped her before my therapy bill became astronomically high.

What happened was that my parents were married for about four years during which things just weren’t really working out. As they were about to hit their fourth wedding anniversary in early 1986, they decided to go on a final trip to see if they could work out their problems. They went to North Carolina and stayed in a bed and breakfast in the Blue Ridge Mountains; unlike me and my dad, my mother is not one to rough it. After a long weekend which apparently involved some kind of sex or at the very least, some sperm got inside my mom somehow, they left for Florida, having come to the resolution that they weren’t meant for each other and that they were going to get a divorce.

My mom started packing up some things and she told my grandparents about the end of her marriage which pissed them off to no end. They were traditional and at that time, much less open minded than they have since become. Regardless of their reaction, she continued going about her business of getting divorced. After a few weeks, she went to go see the lawyer she had hired to handle her side of the divorce. While going over paperwork relating to assets, my mom gets the urge to vomit and ducks into a nearby wastebasket. The lawyer looked at her curiously.

“I bet you’re pregnant.” The lawyer smirked while looking nauseated at the vomit in her formerly paper-only trashcan.

“That’s ridiculous, you have to have sex to get pregnant,” my mom replied, quoting what sounds like every romantic comedy about a pregnant woman ever.

“I’m just saying, make sure.”

“It’s probably something I ate.”

Leaving calmly, she freaked out as soon as she got home and made a doctor’s appointment for the next day. She was indeed pregnant. She told my grandmother and said that she wanted to continue with the divorce, that she wanted to raise me alone. My grandmother did not react well to this bit of information and threatened to not be involved in her life if she didn’t give this mystery baby a proper home. Head hanging, my mom went home to tell my dad, who had been sleeping in his den, that she was pregnant.

My dad who was older at this time, almost forty, was over the moon that he was going to be a father. They decided that the universe had taken the decision of ending their marriage out of their hands and so it was. My mom had an uneventful pregnancy with me where she drank a whole gallon of milk per day and got really, really fat and a few months later, I arrived late and healthy with a tiny baby fauxhawk.

My parents remained married for 15 years after I was born. 15 years. They really made a go of it and even though I knew since I was little that they didn’t love each other how my grandparents did or how people did in movies, they cared for each other greatly. They never fought or had disagreements in front of me and until my mom told me one day after school during my freshman year of high school that they were getting divorced, I would have thought that they would just stay content to be sort of in like with each other for the rest of their lives.

It’s weird how things work out. I was my mom’s first and only successful pregnancy. She miscarried something like, five times after I was born, and some late in the pregnancy. I remember her being pregnant when I was little and then nothing. Every Christmas, I would ask for a little brother or sister (to rule over, naturally) and I would always begin to think I was getting my wish sometime in August but then nothing; I just thought I was being punished by Santa for never picking up my toys or something. All the pregnancies that they tried for were literally fruitless and yet, this one random instance of fornication in the mountains produced me, springing from the womb fully formed, personality intact. It’s strange.

I’m glad they stayed married. I used to feel guilty that they stayed together for me, unfulfilled in many ways, but now I can see that we had some good times together. Despite their issues as a couple, we were, we are a family. My dad’s remarried now to an awesome lady and my parents are friends; we all hang out together and it’s the most natural thing in the world. I don’t know if this is common, my experience is perhaps unique. I just had a good time growing up as their tiny sidekick.

I don’t know if I believe that everything happens for a reason but I do to some extent. Things seem to click in place like puzzle pieces at times. I came to be as a bunch of cells in the place where I feel most at peace and I was christened with a name that has seemed to guide my fate in life in certain directions. I grew under the tutelage of two very different but cohesive people who have helped shape my views and opinions and tastes but have left me room to seek knowledge and experiences on my own. It doesn’t really matter how you came to be though, planned with the help of doctors or entirely accidental in a serendipitous way. You will be the product of many things and how you came to exist at this exact moment matters little in the long run. If you weren’t wanted, not even by your parents, someone will want you and at the very least, the universe wanted you and here you are.

I am my mother’s stubborn and passionate dark eyed fire and my father’s wry, wandering dreamer’s heart, filled with the haze and poetry of the mountains. I exist.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home

Reposted. I was thinking about my dad today.