Cold Anabel

In winter, she reminded me of my mother with those suffocating turtlenecks she loved so much. Maybe they reminded her of her life, making her inner pain and metaphorical strangulation physical. Or maybe she was just cold. Who can say?

In the park, she would hold my hand and laugh and then she would start skipping, swinging my arm back and forth because she knew it would make me angry. And when I would let go and continue walking, she would stop in place and sulk.

“You know I don’t like it when you do that,” I would say to get her back to move.

Staring at the ground she would mutter “you’re no fun,” and then she would slowly lift her gaze and look at me straight in the eye and very gently and softly whisper: “Beast.” When she said that I felt like crumbling, like turning inside out and transporting myself somewhere else, far away, maybe at home on the couch, watching football, with her at my side holding a bowl of dry fruity Cheerios on her lap. That’s where I would go in my mind, to those special moments when I was tolerable and she didn’t think I was an ugly, hairy, insensitive beast.

I haven’t seen her in ages. I can still remember the smell of her blond wispy hair resting on my shoulder and tickling my ears before I swapped it away, annoyed. Sometimes, in the shower, I start singing My Funny Valentine out of tune and with the wrong lyrics like she used to do. The things I imagined of doing to stop her racket every morning were many. I even bought a turtleneck recenty - the same kind she gave me for my birthday and the same one I exchanged the next day for 2 pairs of socks and a watch.

I don’t know if I’ll ever wear it. I am slightly claustrophobic.

Bowling Night

Take me bowling, I said to him, trying to make him laugh. I want to sit in the pretty chairs and enjoy a cold one while I watch you score some fantastic gutter balls. I want to watch you lose to me. Again.

He laughed a sad, but hearty laugh as he drove his 50’s Ford Pickup with the bad seat belts. He put his beer between his legs and his arm around me. I could smell the cheap cologne on his neck and felt his prickly beard against my cheek. I laughed and pulled away.

He had just dropped off his daughter halfway between El Paso and Ft. Worth. The little girl hadn’t said a word the whole time. She held on to her raggedy doll as she stared outside, at the vacant desert all around us. She knew her time with Daddy was up.

He had been careful driving with her in the car to the gas station where her mother waited. On the way back, however, all safety precautions were forgotten. We sped back, passing cars at a 90 miles per hour, not turning on the headlights when the last of the sunlight dissipated in the horizon.

I was 14 the first time I saw him. He walked into my friend’s house and made his way towards me with the porch light shining brightly behind him. Like an apparition, he was glowing. And like an apparition he remained throughout my life - surprise visits and quick goodbyes, but never even so much as a kiss.

That night, as we made our way back to the city on the deserted highway, I looked over at him - his face pale but full of anger and despair. I wanted so much to touch him, his thick black hair, his lips, but I knew that if I even came close to him, there would be no turning back. Before I could make up my mind, he took the next exit and drove down a dirt road and stopped the truck before a locked gate. He pushed the door open and ran in front of the headlights and with his fists up in the air, he screamed into the pitch black night with so much pain and desperation. He yelled and cried and yelled some more. Then he stopped and looked up at the starry sky for a long time.

Back on the road, he was silent, as was I. He put on a Billy Joel song and said it reminded him of me and that he would play it every time he wanted to remember something beautiful. Again, he put his arm around me, and this time I didn’t pull away. We drove back the rest of the way just like that, knowing that we would never hold each other like that again.

He did take me bowling that night, and after 3 strikes in a row, beat me by 74 points. I watched myself lose to him. Again.

In El Paso

I remember that night clearly, even though I wasn’t wearing my glasses and had been gutted and left for dead behind the Motel 8 on Stanton St. I remember staring at the underside of the garbage bin, liquid splashing joyfully onto the cement and thinking about how I was going to explain to the librarian why I hadn’t returned Crime and Punishment before the due date and if she could possibly waive the fees this time.

I didn’t want to look down at myself, at the pool of blood forming around me, so I inspected the crack on the bin with my fingers. Not so big, I thought. What could have caused it? Time, some corrosive liquid dumped illegally, or was it just poorly manufactured?

The remote sound of sirens brought my attention back to the Motel 8 on Stanton St. Carefully, I touched where my belly should be and found a foreign sensation of numbness. There was no pain. I explored what I imagined to be my stomach, and this, this thing might be my lower intestine. How curious. It felt cold, wet and soft, like seaweed, floating by me as I swam in the ocean last summer in Costa Rica.

The sirens get closer and a voice behind me says “it’s all right, lady. It’s all right. The ambulance is coming.” I just waved the voice away and I was once again floating in the pacific. I hear people yell and scream for me to get back to shore, but I ignore them all. Float, float away, under the sun.

A flashlight blinds me and pulls me back to El Paso, the alley, the smell. I realize the liquid flowing from the container is yellow. I notice the air is crisp and the stars are many as they pick me up and roll me away to be stitched up in some hospital. Was it Providence? I think it was.

up for air

In the lake where I swam every day after school, I found treasures in between the pebbles and the plant life. Treasures I would keep under my bed, next to the old transistor radio my father gave me for Christmas. My mom didn’t approve of my random collection of trinkets and gold coins. Maybe she was jealous that I loved them more than I loved her; that I chose to be in my room all day organizing and cleaning the bounty instead of brushing her hair or talking about girlie things.

One year, when I went to summer camp she found the flimsy wooden box and gave it to the neighbor’s kid Pete. The poor kid had to be taken to the hospital after he swallowed every single sparkly item. The kid had a weird walk after that and the neighbor didn’t talk to my mother again. To punish me, she decided to sell the house and move to the city where the rats ate my food and the cockroaches took over my dresser.

Watching as the sun sets behind the high rises, I want so much to dive into the chilly water once again, and search through the algae for more coins, feel the water envelop me like my father did so long ago. At least, I imagine he did. I imagine he was a treasure hunter, an explorer who set out to discover other lands, leaving behind those hidden coins for me to find as proof of his existence, a promise of his return.

Summertime

More like an intestinal problem, she said as she walked away and briskly crossed the street. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned my Uncle Gustav’s mustache collection or my monetary misgivings, but she didn’t have to flip me off and yell “porker!” for all to hear. No she didn’t have to do that at all. She should have considered my grandmother, in her summer dress, sitting next to me at the café. The old woman didn’t deserve such embarrassment or the ostentatious look of the waiter.

Oh well. It’s not like it was the first time that had ever happened. Lucia and Iris had done the exact same thing, but used a different expletive. Heidi slapped me and took my grandmother’s hat. I think my grandmother is strongly considering not having tea with me ever again.

I am sure she would say something to me if she could, but since the surgery, her only way to communicate is by blinking her one good eye. When I don’t want to hear her disapproving look or see her criticism, I just cover her face with a paper bag until she falls asleep. It works every time.

All I can do is just go on with my life. What should the next craigslist ad say? “Threesome”?

Ursula

Ursula felt it coming long before the tornado failed to stop her soup from boiling over. From the basement she heard the guillotine at work and then the sighs, the awes and the pukes that came soon after. Loralee was probably the one who puked, she thought. She was the weakest, and probably the next to get it, or at least get nominated.

She didn’t like to attend such events so early in the morning. The exaltation would cause her to suffer tragic constipation, preventing her from operating the heavy machinery she needed to operate throughout the day in her farm. She preferred evening gatherings so she could be fully settled and have her tea, crackers and jam peacefully, with no digestive problems at all.

Long ago, due to a scheduling error, her husband and second child were completed at dawn. To this day she regrets not being able to see their heads roll down the hill and splash into the lake in perfect unison as she had hoped. In her basement she sat, imagining the rising sun in the distance and their shimmering golden hair framing the frozen, puzzled looks on their face. Were their eyes open or closed? She will never know. From then on, she made sure to schedule her family members in the evenings, so she would never miss the spectacle again.

Ursula knew her turn would come, but she had already lived a full life and she didn’t mind it. She was tired from working in the farm, teaching chickens to spell and goats to add only to slaughter them after they got their diploma. The whole process seemed silly, but she knew the townsfolk hadn’t nominated her yet because her work was important to the community. Nobody else had the patience to do what she did. Lord knows she tried to pass her knowledge down to her children to keep them safe, but they were too busy helping the poor and going to the university.

What a waste, she thought. What a waste.

Bemoan

To bemoan is to be in a perpetual state of anxiety and to defeat the return of the hiccups. It also helps the insomniacs rinse the dishes while the rest of the world enjoys the brain as it archives the day’s activities. All this I know because I read it once by chance in the boy’s restroom while Tina lost her virginity 3 times and a half – I know, I counted and nothing could dissuade me otherwise – unless it involves ice-cream and gummy worms.

The knowledge one gains from the hieroglyphics rudimentarily splashed on to the smooth, shiny door of a bathroom stall is nothing but straight out fact – truth that has been tested, researched and proven.

FOR A GOOD TIME CALL LINDSEY – that, my friend, is as good and as true as the day is long and my belly button is pierced.

Now, the fortune cookie – that’s all BS. Don’t believe that stuff no matter how much you feel that indeed “you should look inside for riches.” I looked and all I found was goo. Goo is not riches.

(This story is from the "Legumes Volume 1" collection of short stories to be published in the near future)