Something tender comes to call and you're not here, she thought looking out her bedroom window at the street below. A man stood on the steps holding a bunch of balloons; red, purple, green and blue dancing above the strings, straining to get free. He held the balloons sheepishly, both hands around the bouquet. His navy suit looked out of place against the balloons' forced gaity. He peered up at the door as if he knew she was there, hiding.
Yes, she was hiding. She hid from the man, the balloons, his affection. She couldn't drag her feet to the door.
"Mama?"
She moved away from the door and looked at her daughter standing there, her soft brown hair in sleepy tangles, BooBear tucked under her arm. Emma wore an old faded Bugs Bunny T-shirt that hung down past her knees. Her feet were bare and blue and her brown eyes huge. Kate turned back to the window and saw a blue balloon escape and make it's way up into the sky. She watched Phillip start down the steps. HE turned and looked back, then slowly carried his clutch of flying color away. She cleared her throat and tired to call her daughter.
"Emma?"
The silence swelled up and pushed her into bed. She rolled up in pale peach roses and olive green leaves of her comforter. She sniffed the air for the smell of her, or the hint of storm in the air. It was still and warm; there was no scent of Emma there.
She tucked her feet in and curled herself into a tight little ball and slept.
It was night when she woke up hearing a child cry. It was dark. She was a sudden child breathing hard, heart beating fast. She leaned over and quickly turned on the bedside lamp automatically checking the room for Emma. The room held only the bed, a graceful walnut rocking chair, and her. She pulled the comforter off and fancied she could still smell Jonathon in the sheets. The smell of soap and smoke and aftershave and wintergreen lifesavers.
The clock said four a.m. and she was relieved. Dawn was coming son to scrape the dark out of the sky.
In the kitchen she filled the copper teapot and set it on the gas burner. Her vision was blurry, she felt like she was under water. She sat at the pine table that looked out on a tiny yard, bordered by tiny crimson rose bushes and wild daises. The daisies were for Emma who had begged to plant them. Now they sprung up in clumps all over the yard in wild abandon.
She heard the pad of bare feet on the floor and she bowed her head a moment, begging God. God ignored her. The daisies looked at her kindly, the roses were aloof but sharply beautiful. The sound of feed stopped and she turned in her chair. Emma's thumb was in her mouth. She wore denim overalls and white summer sandals and she clutched wilted daisies in her fist. She didn't speak.
Kate looked at Emma and wondered if she ought to start taking something again. She had thrown out the pills almost a month ago. She had tired of feeling dull and empty. She was unable to paint. Now she was able to function without the drugs, but unable to leave her house. she could move among the strangers of the world with a thick drug filter, or live it raw, in solitude. She chose raw solitude.
The phone rang. Her first thought was that something terrible had happened to someone she loved. Then she remembered, something terrible had already come and claimed them all. Kate pulled away from Emma's stare and reached for the phone.
"Hello."
Silence drew itself out and Kate waited, listening. She heard a quiet breath and said, again,
"Hello."
The breathing was soft, not obscene. She listened to him breathe. She wondered if it could be a woman, or a child, but wasn't it always a man who called and breathed and waited?
Having nothing better to do, she waited too. She listened to the breaths, slow and even, rolling down the wire to her ear. She sipped her green tea and for awhile they breathed in unison. After her tea was gone she set the receiver gently on the table and wen tin search of morning.
Morning, sunlit and full of sound, invited her to go outside. She could walk to the park and sit by the stone fountain. Take her sketchpad and charcoal, ah, she wanted to.
She looked out her window, dressed in cutoffs and a blue T-shirt that said "Emerson School" and white Keds. Feeling cautiously optimistic she put her sketch pad and wallet in her backpack. She got as far as the front door and stared shaking. She shook all over, as if an earthquake had gripped her deep inside. She put her hand on the doorknob and broke out in a sweat and her teeth began to chatter. She stood shaking, wondering if her skin would start to crack open in fissures and the fear would ooze out like oil. When the quake was over she could pick up all her scattered pieces and put them back together. A dark young woman walked by carrying a white picnic basket and holding the hand of a toddler who walked in short little steps, half running, barely staying on his feet.
She allowed herself to give up and she wandered the house, dusting. She ran a soft cloth over the picture frames on the mantle, over the mountains of books lining pine shelves, over her candle-holders and her Buddhas. Bronze, porcelain and silver, they sat in a line and watched her. Some laughing, some looking peaceful and wise. She had trouble looking in their faces.
Later she called the grocery store for supplies. She had her food brought in and her videos delivered. She ordered other things through the mail. She didn't need to work. She thought it strange that the money to stay locked up in her house came from the grief that trapped her in it.
She made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and sat on the enclosed back porch to eat it. She left the crusts on her plate, in honor of Emma. She licked a drop of jelly off her finger and noticed that the roses were looking hot. She set her plate down and stood up, intending to walk down the steps, looking forward to the feel of warm grass on her bare feet. She couldn't move. It was as if a wall sprung up between the porch and the yard. This space between the back door and the steps was her window, she could not go past it. Her heart was skipping and her face and hands were cold and wet, as she backed up into the kitchen and closed the door,
Safe.
The pone was ringing again in her clean house. She had dusted and polished, waxed and shined until the house shone like a dull antique mirror. She picked up the phone.
She was silent.
The breathing was smooth and steady. Air moving in and out. Kate tucked her feet underneath her and sat and listened. In the quiet she felt something sharp give away and a tear rolled down her face. She rubbed her cheek and cleared her throat. She said,
"Do you ever think about flying?"
The breathing stopped for a surprised moment than continued a little faster.
"Not in a plane. Flying like a bird."
"I dreamed it. I dream that I'm flying and it's so real. Someone always comes to teach me. Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, but there is always a teacher there to take me through it, step by step."
An ant walked by on the table ans she let it crawl on her finger.
The breathing continued slow and steady.
"First you have to hover. You concentrate really hard and almost hold your breath still. If you hold it you very slowly rise up in the air."
She set the ant down on the table and watched it move off, relieved.
"Then you begin to learn how to move from one place to another. The thing is, you fall a lot."
She heard a long slow sigh and then a gentle click.
She smiled and she said, "Good bye."
At six o'clock she turned the radio on. Someone was singing about time in a deep and rich voice that gave her chills. She wondered who, then shrugged. She hadn't listened to music in months. She took her sketch pad out and felt her paper cry in relief when she started making strokes here and there, finding the picture. It had been so long that her fingers felt like impostors at first. She hummed along to a song as she penciled in the balloons. Music was such a joy that she felt cruel to listen to it when Emma couldn't sing a long. Emma would sweep into a room in he long, maroon velvet dress and white silk scarf, her arms spread out like wings. She loves to sing and she would fake the words, sing off key and dance. Sometimes the two of them would waltz each other around the room till the room tilted and they fell down laughing, tangled in dress-up clothes.
She cooked herself corn on the cob for dinner and ate it with butter and dalt, starting into the back yard watching twilight kiss the roses. She drank one of Jonathan's special dark beers and listned to the sounds of children laughing in the yard next door. She tried to find Emma's favorite star in the sky and wished fiercely for just time enough to go back and pay critical attention to every word that came out of Emma's mouth. So many times Emma's words dissolved in a loaded paintbrush, to lie trapped on a bit of colored canvass.
By nine o'clock she was hot and sticky and restless. She took a long shower. The sound of the water thundering around her reminded her of waterfalls and giant water-slide and cherry snow cones. She heard the ringing as she got out and she walked dripping into the bedroom an dpicked up the phone.
"Hello."
"Hello." She was so surprised to hear a spoken word that she dropped the phone. When she picked it up she heard Philip's steady voice.
"Kate, are you all right.?"
She laughed to think she was disappointed that it was not the breather.
"Yes."
"Kate." His voice tone was serious, weighted with his concern and love and need. She suddenly felt like she couldn't breathe.
"Honey, I'm worried about you. I think you need to see someone."
"I already saw someone."
"Yes, Kate, but you stopped. Your not supposed to stop."
"It did me no good and he put me on enough medication to keep me stoned for the rest of my life."
"But it helped you."
She shook her head, a spray of water from her wet hair hitting the wall, small drops dotting the blue paper lampshade.
"It did not help me at all."
He paused.
"How can you say that? You could function at least. You could leave the goddamned house!"
"Listen to me, Philip." Her skin felt chilled in the humid bedroom. She could feel him starting to speak.
"Philip. I don't want to leave the goddamned house. I don't want to be a fucking drugged up zombie who can't think or feel or paint.
"But, I love you."
"I'm sorry. You are a kind person. You are not helping me. I can't help you. The person you wanted to save doesn't even exist. It was a drugged mirage that came your way.
"Kate." Her name sounded ragged and full in his throat as he squeezed it out.
She whispered to him.
"Sorry. Thanks for the balloons."
She could hear him say her name again as she carefully hung up the phone.
Searching the closet she found a pair of old painting jeans and put them on. She had lost weight and they fell down. She kept them up with an old black belt of Jonathan's that she poked an extra hole in. She wore a soft cotton work shirt on top. She walked slowly t the room that had been converted into her workroom and opened the door.
She would paint them in bright colors, she thought. The sky would be deep violet. Kate began to squeeze fat blogs of color from the tubes, excited by the smell of the paint. Emma appeared, just in front of her clean canvas. She wore plaid shorts and black canvas sneakers with a red tulip on each toe. She worse one of Jonathan's baseball caps. The cap almost hid her brown hair. Her eyes were wide and relentless. She had her arms crossed and a no-nonsense look on her small face that Kate and Jonathan always identified as 'The Look'. Kate looked at Emma, thinking of her hands. She wished she could feel her hot hands again, all dusty and grubby from digging in the dirt, excavating rusty treasures and fat pink worms. Kate stared at Emma as she slowly faded away. She felt a heavy pain in her chest.
The phone rang. She wanted a pill.
The breathing was the same. Kate sat down with the phone and poured herself a small glass of red wine, sipping and looking out at the moon that was visible just above the Oak tree.
"I keep seeing my daughter. I know it's just a...vision or something. Or maybe it's her spirit. Bu tif it's her spirit waht is she doing? Is she lost? Where does she sleep?
The breathing stayed with her. Kate started crying and couldn't see the moon at all.
The breathing stopped a moment. Then a whisper came.
"Tell me about the flying."
Kate wiped her face on her sleeve. The breather had spoken! She took a sip of wine.
"Well. Flying. After you can sustain hovering, and move without falling, then you start to fly higher. Just to the top a room. You have to have a ceiling at first. Later..."
She sighed, seeing it again.
"Later you can fly anywhere, as low or as high as you want. You can fly straight over the city lights into the sky, through the stars. Once I few above the whole universe. I saw everything. Then I knew I had one more step to go and somehow it would all be explained. You know, life. I would know everything.
That was the last flying lesson I ever had."
The breather whispered again.
"Flying. Sounds nice."
"Yeah." Kate said as she heard the phone click in her ear. "Yeah."
It's midnight and she is panting. She has all the lights turned on bright and the windows open. On the canvas is a sad clown with holey yellow sneakers and a small brown bag with a bottle sticking out in his hand. He looks up at the sky. The balloons have all escaped, and carry their colors, red and blue, yellow and green, up into a purple night. A child holds on to the curling string of a bright blue balloon. Her eyes are on the moon and her arms both stretch up to it. Emma stands beside the painting. She is wearing the maroon play dress and white silk scarf and a pair of Kate's best heels. She has on Kate's crimson lipstick, blush and a string of pearls. She is smiling and looking at the canvas.
Kate sets her brush down and Emma is gone, a sweet balloon, flying to glory.
When the paper came the next day it landed at the bottom of the stairs. Kate broke into a cold sweat as she tried to step outside. The paper stayed where it was and Kate went inside to paint. Still, something in her had escaped and was flying.
Renee Garcia Milvia Street 1998
Yes, she was hiding. She hid from the man, the balloons, his affection. She couldn't drag her feet to the door.
"Mama?"
She moved away from the door and looked at her daughter standing there, her soft brown hair in sleepy tangles, BooBear tucked under her arm. Emma wore an old faded Bugs Bunny T-shirt that hung down past her knees. Her feet were bare and blue and her brown eyes huge. Kate turned back to the window and saw a blue balloon escape and make it's way up into the sky. She watched Phillip start down the steps. HE turned and looked back, then slowly carried his clutch of flying color away. She cleared her throat and tired to call her daughter.
"Emma?"
The silence swelled up and pushed her into bed. She rolled up in pale peach roses and olive green leaves of her comforter. She sniffed the air for the smell of her, or the hint of storm in the air. It was still and warm; there was no scent of Emma there.
She tucked her feet in and curled herself into a tight little ball and slept.
It was night when she woke up hearing a child cry. It was dark. She was a sudden child breathing hard, heart beating fast. She leaned over and quickly turned on the bedside lamp automatically checking the room for Emma. The room held only the bed, a graceful walnut rocking chair, and her. She pulled the comforter off and fancied she could still smell Jonathon in the sheets. The smell of soap and smoke and aftershave and wintergreen lifesavers.
The clock said four a.m. and she was relieved. Dawn was coming son to scrape the dark out of the sky.
In the kitchen she filled the copper teapot and set it on the gas burner. Her vision was blurry, she felt like she was under water. She sat at the pine table that looked out on a tiny yard, bordered by tiny crimson rose bushes and wild daises. The daisies were for Emma who had begged to plant them. Now they sprung up in clumps all over the yard in wild abandon.
She heard the pad of bare feet on the floor and she bowed her head a moment, begging God. God ignored her. The daisies looked at her kindly, the roses were aloof but sharply beautiful. The sound of feed stopped and she turned in her chair. Emma's thumb was in her mouth. She wore denim overalls and white summer sandals and she clutched wilted daisies in her fist. She didn't speak.
Kate looked at Emma and wondered if she ought to start taking something again. She had thrown out the pills almost a month ago. She had tired of feeling dull and empty. She was unable to paint. Now she was able to function without the drugs, but unable to leave her house. she could move among the strangers of the world with a thick drug filter, or live it raw, in solitude. She chose raw solitude.
The phone rang. Her first thought was that something terrible had happened to someone she loved. Then she remembered, something terrible had already come and claimed them all. Kate pulled away from Emma's stare and reached for the phone.
"Hello."
Silence drew itself out and Kate waited, listening. She heard a quiet breath and said, again,
"Hello."
The breathing was soft, not obscene. She listened to him breathe. She wondered if it could be a woman, or a child, but wasn't it always a man who called and breathed and waited?
Having nothing better to do, she waited too. She listened to the breaths, slow and even, rolling down the wire to her ear. She sipped her green tea and for awhile they breathed in unison. After her tea was gone she set the receiver gently on the table and wen tin search of morning.
Morning, sunlit and full of sound, invited her to go outside. She could walk to the park and sit by the stone fountain. Take her sketchpad and charcoal, ah, she wanted to.
She looked out her window, dressed in cutoffs and a blue T-shirt that said "Emerson School" and white Keds. Feeling cautiously optimistic she put her sketch pad and wallet in her backpack. She got as far as the front door and stared shaking. She shook all over, as if an earthquake had gripped her deep inside. She put her hand on the doorknob and broke out in a sweat and her teeth began to chatter. She stood shaking, wondering if her skin would start to crack open in fissures and the fear would ooze out like oil. When the quake was over she could pick up all her scattered pieces and put them back together. A dark young woman walked by carrying a white picnic basket and holding the hand of a toddler who walked in short little steps, half running, barely staying on his feet.
She allowed herself to give up and she wandered the house, dusting. She ran a soft cloth over the picture frames on the mantle, over the mountains of books lining pine shelves, over her candle-holders and her Buddhas. Bronze, porcelain and silver, they sat in a line and watched her. Some laughing, some looking peaceful and wise. She had trouble looking in their faces.
Later she called the grocery store for supplies. She had her food brought in and her videos delivered. She ordered other things through the mail. She didn't need to work. She thought it strange that the money to stay locked up in her house came from the grief that trapped her in it.
She made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and sat on the enclosed back porch to eat it. She left the crusts on her plate, in honor of Emma. She licked a drop of jelly off her finger and noticed that the roses were looking hot. She set her plate down and stood up, intending to walk down the steps, looking forward to the feel of warm grass on her bare feet. She couldn't move. It was as if a wall sprung up between the porch and the yard. This space between the back door and the steps was her window, she could not go past it. Her heart was skipping and her face and hands were cold and wet, as she backed up into the kitchen and closed the door,
Safe.
The pone was ringing again in her clean house. She had dusted and polished, waxed and shined until the house shone like a dull antique mirror. She picked up the phone.
She was silent.
The breathing was smooth and steady. Air moving in and out. Kate tucked her feet underneath her and sat and listened. In the quiet she felt something sharp give away and a tear rolled down her face. She rubbed her cheek and cleared her throat. She said,
"Do you ever think about flying?"
The breathing stopped for a surprised moment than continued a little faster.
"Not in a plane. Flying like a bird."
"I dreamed it. I dream that I'm flying and it's so real. Someone always comes to teach me. Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, but there is always a teacher there to take me through it, step by step."
An ant walked by on the table ans she let it crawl on her finger.
The breathing continued slow and steady.
"First you have to hover. You concentrate really hard and almost hold your breath still. If you hold it you very slowly rise up in the air."
She set the ant down on the table and watched it move off, relieved.
"Then you begin to learn how to move from one place to another. The thing is, you fall a lot."
She heard a long slow sigh and then a gentle click.
She smiled and she said, "Good bye."
At six o'clock she turned the radio on. Someone was singing about time in a deep and rich voice that gave her chills. She wondered who, then shrugged. She hadn't listened to music in months. She took her sketch pad out and felt her paper cry in relief when she started making strokes here and there, finding the picture. It had been so long that her fingers felt like impostors at first. She hummed along to a song as she penciled in the balloons. Music was such a joy that she felt cruel to listen to it when Emma couldn't sing a long. Emma would sweep into a room in he long, maroon velvet dress and white silk scarf, her arms spread out like wings. She loves to sing and she would fake the words, sing off key and dance. Sometimes the two of them would waltz each other around the room till the room tilted and they fell down laughing, tangled in dress-up clothes.
She cooked herself corn on the cob for dinner and ate it with butter and dalt, starting into the back yard watching twilight kiss the roses. She drank one of Jonathan's special dark beers and listned to the sounds of children laughing in the yard next door. She tried to find Emma's favorite star in the sky and wished fiercely for just time enough to go back and pay critical attention to every word that came out of Emma's mouth. So many times Emma's words dissolved in a loaded paintbrush, to lie trapped on a bit of colored canvass.
By nine o'clock she was hot and sticky and restless. She took a long shower. The sound of the water thundering around her reminded her of waterfalls and giant water-slide and cherry snow cones. She heard the ringing as she got out and she walked dripping into the bedroom an dpicked up the phone.
"Hello."
"Hello." She was so surprised to hear a spoken word that she dropped the phone. When she picked it up she heard Philip's steady voice.
"Kate, are you all right.?"
She laughed to think she was disappointed that it was not the breather.
"Yes."
"Kate." His voice tone was serious, weighted with his concern and love and need. She suddenly felt like she couldn't breathe.
"Honey, I'm worried about you. I think you need to see someone."
"I already saw someone."
"Yes, Kate, but you stopped. Your not supposed to stop."
"It did me no good and he put me on enough medication to keep me stoned for the rest of my life."
"But it helped you."
She shook her head, a spray of water from her wet hair hitting the wall, small drops dotting the blue paper lampshade.
"It did not help me at all."
He paused.
"How can you say that? You could function at least. You could leave the goddamned house!"
"Listen to me, Philip." Her skin felt chilled in the humid bedroom. She could feel him starting to speak.
"Philip. I don't want to leave the goddamned house. I don't want to be a fucking drugged up zombie who can't think or feel or paint.
"But, I love you."
"I'm sorry. You are a kind person. You are not helping me. I can't help you. The person you wanted to save doesn't even exist. It was a drugged mirage that came your way.
"Kate." Her name sounded ragged and full in his throat as he squeezed it out.
She whispered to him.
"Sorry. Thanks for the balloons."
She could hear him say her name again as she carefully hung up the phone.
Searching the closet she found a pair of old painting jeans and put them on. She had lost weight and they fell down. She kept them up with an old black belt of Jonathan's that she poked an extra hole in. She wore a soft cotton work shirt on top. She walked slowly t the room that had been converted into her workroom and opened the door.
She would paint them in bright colors, she thought. The sky would be deep violet. Kate began to squeeze fat blogs of color from the tubes, excited by the smell of the paint. Emma appeared, just in front of her clean canvas. She wore plaid shorts and black canvas sneakers with a red tulip on each toe. She worse one of Jonathan's baseball caps. The cap almost hid her brown hair. Her eyes were wide and relentless. She had her arms crossed and a no-nonsense look on her small face that Kate and Jonathan always identified as 'The Look'. Kate looked at Emma, thinking of her hands. She wished she could feel her hot hands again, all dusty and grubby from digging in the dirt, excavating rusty treasures and fat pink worms. Kate stared at Emma as she slowly faded away. She felt a heavy pain in her chest.
The phone rang. She wanted a pill.
The breathing was the same. Kate sat down with the phone and poured herself a small glass of red wine, sipping and looking out at the moon that was visible just above the Oak tree.
"I keep seeing my daughter. I know it's just a...vision or something. Or maybe it's her spirit. Bu tif it's her spirit waht is she doing? Is she lost? Where does she sleep?
The breathing stayed with her. Kate started crying and couldn't see the moon at all.
The breathing stopped a moment. Then a whisper came.
"Tell me about the flying."
Kate wiped her face on her sleeve. The breather had spoken! She took a sip of wine.
"Well. Flying. After you can sustain hovering, and move without falling, then you start to fly higher. Just to the top a room. You have to have a ceiling at first. Later..."
She sighed, seeing it again.
"Later you can fly anywhere, as low or as high as you want. You can fly straight over the city lights into the sky, through the stars. Once I few above the whole universe. I saw everything. Then I knew I had one more step to go and somehow it would all be explained. You know, life. I would know everything.
That was the last flying lesson I ever had."
The breather whispered again.
"Flying. Sounds nice."
"Yeah." Kate said as she heard the phone click in her ear. "Yeah."
It's midnight and she is panting. She has all the lights turned on bright and the windows open. On the canvas is a sad clown with holey yellow sneakers and a small brown bag with a bottle sticking out in his hand. He looks up at the sky. The balloons have all escaped, and carry their colors, red and blue, yellow and green, up into a purple night. A child holds on to the curling string of a bright blue balloon. Her eyes are on the moon and her arms both stretch up to it. Emma stands beside the painting. She is wearing the maroon play dress and white silk scarf and a pair of Kate's best heels. She has on Kate's crimson lipstick, blush and a string of pearls. She is smiling and looking at the canvas.
Kate sets her brush down and Emma is gone, a sweet balloon, flying to glory.
When the paper came the next day it landed at the bottom of the stairs. Kate broke into a cold sweat as she tried to step outside. The paper stayed where it was and Kate went inside to paint. Still, something in her had escaped and was flying.
Renee Garcia Milvia Street 1998
