Etude: a Fairy Tale

The blood rushes to my head when I think of the ground. It’s a long way down. On one side of me a window shows the sun setting over the giant boulders at the edge of the lake. I used to swim there and spread my hair across the boulders to dry in the sun. My mother’s cameo ring always got tangled in my hair when I tried to reset the braid. On the other side of me, a doorway shows Benito’s face, twenty feet tall, in black and white spray paint on the alley wall. So he’s always watching the door. 

He used to bring me flowers according to the season. Strange flowers from all over the world. Birds of Paradise to remind me of the heat of the jungle. Brown-orange mums (my favorite—so crisp) to remind me of football games and apple cider. (Why didn’t he bring apple cider?) He could be persuaded, sometimes, into trust and security. Into something like happiness. He could be persuaded to rebraid my hair with the blood-red poppies (to forget me of everything). 

I stand on the bed, waiting. Will the magic ever expire? 

I liked him so much more when he was flesh and blood and six feet tall. Now he’s paint and pigment. Never changing. Only watching my door. Never bringing me flowers. Clutching in his fist, the key to the door.

Etude: Accident, First grade fear

Another expansion of an entry in last Wednesday’s episode of 10 Things: 

In the first grade, I changed schools part way through the year. I was small and quiet normally, and on the first day in my new school, I was terrified of everything and everyone. The classroom was bigger, the desks were different and bigger, the other students seemed bigger than my former classmates. My new teacher seemed nice enough (she did, after all, have a Dorothy Hamill haircut like mine), but she had giant owl-eyed glasses.

The boy who sat in front of me that day was named Marc Soto.  On that day, Marc Soto seemed a little bit mean, or at least brashly confident — and why not, *he* wasn’t the new kid. He knew where the pencil sharpener was and how to get to the bathroom.

In my old classroom, if we needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of class, we knew to look for the pass — a big block of wood with “Mrs. Jaramillo’s bathroom pass” painted on it in red fingernail polish. If the pass was in the chalk tray, we could take it, walk two doors down the hall from our classroom, do our business, and come right back. In this new classroom, I didn’t see a big block of wood with “Miss Jackson’s bathroom pass” painted on it in any color of nail polish, or anything at all resembling a bathroom pass. So when I needed to pee, I had no idea what to do. Was there some sort of hand-raising protocol? Was the pass hidden somewhere and I had to find it?

I suppose I must have pondered the possibilities — all except for the obvious, ASK the teacher — for some time. For so long in fact that not only could I not pay any attention at all to what Miss Jackson (who was later confirmed to be very nice and who changed to Mrs. Reynolds the next summer, prompting me to wonder if she was actually the same person and if she’d remember *my* name if hers had changed) was saying, but also could not hold it anymore. So I peed quietly, hoping no one would hear it, thinking that if I peed just a little, maybe no one would notice and maybe I’d be able to hold it long enough to figure out where the pass might be (not to mention where the actual bathroom might be).

Unfortunately once I started peeing, quiet or not, I could not stop.

In spite of sitting as still as a statue, the pee didn’t stay in the chair with me. It spilled out onto the floor in a silent puddle that spread out around me. And of course Marc Soto was the first person to notice. He half stood in his chair and pointed and said something very loud to draw the attention of Miss Jackson.

I don’t remember what happened next, but I know that I survived. I also know that Marc Soto also sat in front of me in second grade and sometimes I thought he was mean and sometimes I thought he was not mean, and once he confused me a lot because he and his family didn’t celebrate birthdays. Mostly I thought that Marc Soto was ok because he ran faster than most of the kids, and, though he once called me four-eyes, he didn’t seem to care that he’d once caught me peeing in the first grade.

Etude: Accident, Truck vs. Truck

Building on Wednesday’s episode of 10 Things, a ramble about an accident.

In tenth grade I had my first and only car accident. I had been a licensed driver for less than a year. I was driving a fourteen-year-old, faded green, 1977 Chevy pickup truck with an on-the-column shift. At five feet tall (if I’m generous) and with the bench seat slid all the way forward, and if I scooted right up against the steering wheel, I could just about mash to the floor the giant pedals of the brake, clutch, and accelerator. With both a license and a vehicle, I had the righteous privilege of offering people rides home from school sometimes. In later years, I might view this as a curse. On that day, I was dropping off two friends before heading home myself.

Our high school had a population just under two-thousand students. Only a small fraction of those rode the bus, and I’d bet almost none of them walked or rode bikes because the school was nowhere near anything at the time. Everyone else got picked up, drove themselves, or bummed rides from people like me. At the end of the school day, two parking lots full of teenage drivers and a pickup lane of buses and parents spilled out onto a winding, descending, narrow, two-lane road that terminated at a busy T-intersection at the bottom of the hill below the school. In the thick of the exodus, getting out of a parking lot onto that road was usually an adventure.

My friends and I were giddy, practically punch drunk from who knows what, likely singing at the top of our lungs as we left school. We survived the merge onto the road and were sitting through a second round at the red light when another truck slammed into us from behind.

I was six or eight cars back from the intersection, and the light had turned from red to green. I had taken my right foot from the brake and pulled the gear shift back and up into first. The tires were loose, but we hadn’t started to roll. My foot hadn’t made it to the accelerator. We hadn’t yet fastened our seat belts.

The singing stopped. The impact threw us forward. All of our books and purses flew into the dashboard and spilled onto the floor. The chassis of the truck was knocked forward so that it didn’t sit right on the axles afterwards.

The guy driving the new red pick-up wasn’t a teenager as you might expect. He was delivering parts for a local auto shop, driving his shiny, manual-transmission truck with one arm in a cast. He had smashed into us going at least thirty-fives miles per hour and had never once applied the brakes.

We lied about the seat belts, puzzling everyone who expected us to have bruises from the shoulder straps. We were ok. Sore necks. Sore backs. A few days of headache. That green pick-up I was driving was a beast, and I credit it with protecting us from more serious harm.

Writing Etude: I saw you sitting at a bus stop once

I was in Albuquerque for the weekend, riding in the passenger seat of a car driving up Menaul, approaching San Mateo. The traffic was heavy. The light turned red, and the car stopped. The springtime air was getting hot and we had the windows rolled down. I could see Highland High School off to my right and immediately thought of you. You are always my next thought when I think of Highland High School. Even if I had had other connections to the school, you would still be the most significant.

I looked to my left and there you were, sitting on a bench, as if I’d thought you into existence. Your hair was longer than I’d ever seen. The sun was very bright. I wasn’t sure it was you. You were wearing jeans that fit loosely, and a pair of steel-toed work boots. You had a water bottle balanced between your legs and when you tipped your head back to take a drink, your hair shifted, exposing the line of your jaw. My heart beat faster. 

You made me susceptible to men with a certain kind of jaw.

I glanced at the man in the driver’s seat. For a moment I could see you both at the same time. See that jaw, though that’s where the resemblance ended. The driver wasn’t looking at you or at me. He was tapping his thumb on the steering wheel in time to the music and watching for the light to change. He lifted up his ball cap with one hand and swiped his hair back with the other before dropping the cap back in place. He looked in the rear-view mirror and squeezed the hat brim into a tight curve.

I didn’t want him to see you. I wanted to see you all for myself. I didn’t want him to ask me about you. I didn’t think he even knew who you were. When I looked back at you, you were looking at me too. Did you recognize me? The street was wide. I was wearing a hat. My hair was shorter than you’d ever seen. It was darker inside the car than in the glaring sun outside. You didn’t shade your eyes.

You didn’t look away.

A torrent of images flashed through my head, and emotional heat flooded my chest. Could you skate in those boots? What ever happened to the Star Wars sheets you wrapped around me? Are you on your way to work? What do you do? Who gets to kiss your jaw? Who gets to hear your raw jokes? Who do you write poems for? How do you remember me? Are you ok?

My eyes were torn away only when the car rolled forward. I glanced back once and you were staring at the spot I had just left, but your gaze seemed farther away. Did you know it was me?

Etude: An umbrella, a feather duster, and a book, Part 5/5

A continuation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

“Great, I’ll help you check out right over here.” She took the package from his hand and walked behind the counter. The manager stood and made some inane remark about the software, which he’d never used. The man wanted him to evaporate. She did too, but not for the same reasons.  

He tried not to do anything stupid as they conducted the transaction. He wanted to touch her fingers as he handed over his credit card, but then consciously tried not to, thinking he’d come across as weird. Her smile seemed more relaxed with the counter between them. She felt more secure in the enclosure of the checkout stand. Not that she felt threatened by him, just that she liked having that barrier between her and all of the customers.  

“You’ll have to let me know how it works out for your.” She handed him his receipt and his bag, incidentally brushing her fingers across his palm. Coming back to tell her whether he liked the software would be another chance to talk to her. Good. Good. He felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to think up an excuse.  

“I will,” he said. He stood there, maybe a little too long.  

“Have a great night,” she said, prompting him to go. “Stay dry out there.”      

He left the store, disappointed that he hadn’t asked her on a date, but also even more interested in her than before. Thoughts raced through his head as he walked down the mall. He had hoped that she was smart and knowledgeable, but their conversation had confirmed that and more. He was ready to go home and tear into the package so that he could come back as soon as possible to report his findings, and then perhaps in his gratitude he could naturally segue into inviting her to dinner or something.  

“Mr. S_______?” A voice called out behind him. Not very many people called him that. He was thirty, but somehow not involved in many circumstances where people used anything but his first name. He paused and looked behind him. His heart jumped into his throat. She was walking briskly up the mall. He smiled and breathed a bit heavily, wondering if she was taking the initiative to talk to him. He liked the idea of her surprising him again, of being bold enough to pursue him. Then he saw his umbrella in her hand. “You’ve left your umbrella. Sounds like you might still need it.” She smiled and gestured toward the skylights, clacking with the continuing downpour.  

“Oh.” He struggled not to show his disappointment. The smile in her eyes saved him. “Thank you.”  

“You’re very welcome.” She handed him the umbrella and began to walk away, sideways for a few steps, looking at him, but moving away. “Don’t forget. I want to know if that works out for you.” She pointed at the bag in his hands.  

“Definitely. I’ll be back to let you know.” The smile she returned took his breath away, but she didn’t see that part. She was now walking away, with purpose, in her clunky black shoes.