Boots

Pulling off her boots and kicking each one to polar points across the floor, she sunk back on the couch and began to devour a bowl of potato chips. There was nothing worth her attention on the television, but between the chips and the remote, she disappeared into the blankness of repetitive activity until sleep overtook her.

She awoke some hours later and stumbled into her bedroom, and sleeved herself between sheets. Hers were not pleasant dreams, but rainbow-twisted journeys to unknown places where she jumped from one figure, one existence, one realm to another, without rest.

There were no great revelations, no truths detailed in dream speak, only the sallow sheen of ancient juxtapositions of memory; old loves, fears and wisps of forgotten conversations, commingled into a waltz of swirling metaphors. Nonexistent languages echoed from vested tongues until morning light broke through, leaving nothing of the nearly targeted bull’s eye of surprise.

She had almost grasped it. It had been that close. But now, it was time to wake up and pull her boots back on and face the day and the many delusions which harried her.

Diane

Image by Kathy Liao

She is a creature behind bars where there were no bars. Eyes peering back and forth, navigating the parameters of the room she refused to walk. Her legs would not let her. Trapped within her body, her mind, nothing moved except pulse points and eyes, even as long strings of saliva decorated her hospital gown.

“Momma” hadn’t wanted her, hadn’t held her, hadn’t cried as she was taken away; only eighteen months old, tossed from one home to another, until finally, now, here, in a place of long corridors of jammed rooms with empty souls housed within, she resided.

In dreams, she walked down tree-lined streets back, back, back to where Momma sat staring with clenched hands. No, she mustn’t return, though she always did, to this, her happy place, her escape from beatings, rapes and bad food.

Sometimes a nurse or doctor would come to examine her seeing a spark of light flash and then diminish into her deadened eyes. She was there, screaming, inaudible, but there. Howling, “yes, see me,” as they walked away; their shoes echoing on cold tiles.

An inner voice takes over as she watches them walk away.

Run, run, run, you must find a way though there is no way to make your body oblige you. He is coming again and there is no way to fight him. He, like so many others before, will take, take, take without a thought about the pain or the shame or anything else. You cannot scream. You cannot cry.

I dare you. I dare you to try.

You cannot do anything but remain still and trapped within a cage of skin and bone.

This is how it is. This is how it is, as she remembers reaching out with her eyes to “Momma,” and she turned away from her without even giving her a name. She has one now. They were up to the “D’s” that day, and so here she is. Here she is, outside of herself again, eyes darting back and forth; revealing nothing of her turmoil or terror, until another tick of the clock and time has its way with her once again.



(This story is based on a former student of mine. She was only seven when I taught her, but had the mental and emotional age of someone much younger. She was already caught in the system, going from foster home to foster home. I loved her dearly and she knew it. She used to love to sit in my lap and notice all of my jewelry. I hold her even though she was heavy, because I knew that she hadn;. It's one of the great heartbreaks in my life, that one day when I went to work she wasn't there. She had been transferred to another foster home over the weekend. There was no way for me to find out where she was, because I was only her teacher. Just the same, she continues to be in my thoughts even now, all these years later.)

Hopscotch

She hadn’t felt like herself for quite some time after the surgery. She wasn’t in pain, that had subsided after the first few weeks, and her healing was “going along nicely,” according to her doctor. Still, there was something holding her back from normality; a sense of slowly sliding through life that countermanded her need to reclaim the time before.

“Hysterectomy” was not a word she ever thought would have been used in regard to her, and yet, there it was, written across her life with thick, black strokes. True, she felt better with the tumor gone, yet her surgeon had taken something more. No, not her womanhood; she didn’t define herself in that way, even though society had made that attempt on all young girls of her generation. Her childhood room had been littered with baby dolls and miniature versions of motherhood until the first drips of blood came signaling that true motherhood was on the horizon. Yet, it had never come, but neither had a mourning for it come. There had been no inward itch towards motherhood, even as the years flew past. She blamed the fact that she had spent her early youth tending babies and toddlers by the dozens; being elbow deep in dirty diapers, vomit, tears and hugs. Still, she wasn’t certain if that was true.

Looking out of her study window, she saw a group of young girls chalking a sidewalk and remembered doing the same herself. Those rituals of games and chants that ended with how many children you would have, as a curse for your skill at hopping across chalk lines or jumping a rope. “Little boys did not/do not play games that define them by breeding,” she murmured to herself, before loudly saying, “enough,” and stomping out into the street.

She marched past the girls and their games as echoes of niceties from well-meaning friends pulsed through her temples. Not even one tear streaked her face as she padded the pavement in determined steps. She had not been beaten down nor did she accept the role of prune or parched desert. She knew she was vital, as every woman everywhere is vital whether she is a mother, a wife or not. Yet, since the surgery, there was a sense of being sucked into that particular attitude.

“I’ll have some apple pie a la mode, please,” she responded to the waitress who had asked for her order in the restaurant she found herself in after walking past exhaustion.

“You’re gonna love it. Our pie is the best in town and you’re lucky, because the cook just made a fresh batch. Nothing better than just out of the oven apple pie a la mode, in my book,” said the waitress almost skipping across the floor.

“Lucky me,” she replied back, a smile spreading across her face. “Yes, lucky me,” and she reasons to feel lucky. The doctor had removed a fast-growing soccer ball-size tumor, which had grown through her uterus, and it hadn’t been cancerous. She would no longer feel the constancy of it growing and pushing inside or ever hemorrhage because of it again. Nor would she ever have to deal with her ex-fiancé who had already named their children and beaten down any of her attempts to grow into her own skin.

It was the first time she’d remembered him and how bad health had played a role in setting her free. Still, everything didn’t come together in that moment, but it was a start. She could feel it, even as she savored the pie and nodded her thanks to the waitress. She had looked at herself in a mirror of her own design and returned with a triumphant smile that continued as she walked home past the rain that hurried the little girls into their homes, and washed away all the hopscotch boards in the city.