Improved Vocabulary

The first time I called him a lothario, he thought I said lethargic. “What do you mean I’m such a lethargic?” he jokingly asked, lifting me gently in his arms and burying his face in my neck. “I’ll show you.” My vigorous laughter caught him off guard and he nearly dropped me on the floor, right on top of Naobi. Has it really been five years and five thousand miles? He confessed to me several months after we first met in the windowless room of our physical science class that my beauty and diction both intimidated and inspired him. I looked into his guarded hazel eyes, noticing how the traces of green glistened like a pool of algae brimming with life and foam. In that moment I was trapped, powerless to stop myself from drowning in a sincere body of swirling emotions, from sinking into a couple of words uttered by the one person who would redraw the lines of my future and erase the precarious margins keeping me from tumbling headfirst into a world of insanity. I was silent. Then I gathered my books and walked out of the coffee shop, hoping I wouldn’t tumble down the stairs and land in a heap on the landing, because I always like to make a graceful exit. Four months of sitting in aching proximity to each other twice a week, with our notes taking up every inch on those cold lab desks and I couldn’t tell him to stay. I would inhale his potent smell, the heady traces of musk on his smooth skin and feel the dangerous currents radiating from his rugged frame. He knew it was me walking down the hall towards our haven by the sharp sounds my heels made on the slippery floors. I studied every traveled line on his face as if it were an open map, sensing I was foolishly lost and thinking maybe I could find a way out of the desert I had taken a detour into as I was coasting along on a barren, solitary road. He held my shivering body close to him that afternoon, so close I wanted the earth to stop moving underneath my feet if it meant feeling protected from the many reasons why we couldn’t be. All the while, I digested fact upon fact, chapter after chapter in a heavy textbook I couldn’t open long after he walked away, or maybe it was me who fled. Yes. Me. “We would have never been happy with my conscience in the way,” I shouted to the unconcerned wind, but mostly because of his hollow confession on that chilly afternoon. He married the woman after me and now I need to work on my language. The language he idealized and memorialized, waxing poetic and vowing to uphold in the presence of philistines. My words fell flat after we parted ways- I slept a deep sleep and I stopped writing. Three agonizing years of fighting to regain a natural rhythm in my daily activities mundane as they were, and instead of seizing the sad experience by its tail and relying on sweet catharsis to heal my listless soul, I quit words and syntax. They became useless to me and I refused to write one single letter as a form of punishment for what I had done. We saw each other again several months ago, two days before my birthday. We hugged but I didn’t cling to him and I knew I was free. He clasped my hand tightly in his palm and I rested my head on his shoulder. Towards the end of the star lit night, we calmly said our good-byes and went in opposite directions. Five years ago, I thought his ghost would follow me around for the remainder of my bleak days, but time has been my constant companion, taking me away to live out my days as they should be lived: in the presence of creation…never far from the experiences that compel me to write.

He stole her laundry cart

I’ve been thinking a great deal about my mom lately. As I struggle daily from sinking into a deep, dark hole, I can’t help but compare myself to her when she was my age. 29. We sat on my futon a couple of weeks ago when she dropped by for an impromptu visit. I don’t see my mother much nowadays, ever since she moved back in with my younger sister. I haven’t spoken to my sister in almost two years. I don’t know how I feel about that anymore. My mom talked about the man who battered her during a horrific turning point in her life. I tried not to bombard her with tactless questions because I know I can be blunt and forceful- a frightening interrogator whenever I’m seeking answers to the numerous questions bouncing around in my head; or whenever I’m just being plain ol’ nosy, eager to hear all about the unorthodox upbringing of our family. She met Alfredo from Nayarit at a plastic factory where they both worked during the mid-1980s. He was a tall, lanky, beautiful man with dark curls and a quiet smile. His teeth were perfectly even and white, which was a startling feature for me as a child to contemplate. I could tell she felt uncomfortable discussing the particulars with me. In fact, she couldn’t even bring herself to say she had been abused. I guess maybe in her eyes the level of violence was minor given the fact she never ended up in a hospital. But he did bust down our kitchen door with a couple of swift kicks while we fled through the front door, not bothering to grab our jackets in the process. I know she never openly discussed being hit by Alfredo with anybody. She showed up to work with bruises on her face and shame weighing heavily on her shoulders. Coworkers openly stared, appalled at seeing the brutality and senselessness that would drive a man to desecrate the face of a woman: a mother. Her friends told her she needed to move out and offered their homes. My uncles vowed to kill him, but when the time came to demonstrate their might and physical prowess, they all backed down. I confess to having mysteriously blocked the event from my shadowy memories. There were many “incidents” from those years I somehow managed to erase from the recesses of my fragile child’s mind. It wasn’t until David refreshed my memory the night after we bailed him out of jail that I dimly recalled the fear and violence my mother endured at the hands of this man. When I look at her, I see a tired but strong woman; a woman with an immense reserve of compassion and determination but also capable of uncontrollable wrath in an instant if provoked. One time when I was 14, she slapped me so hard against the mouth I tasted blood and seethed inwardly because she embarrassed me in front of strangers while folding socks and underwear at our neighborhood laundromat. I should’ve kept it shut when we started arguing about the amount of time I was spending with my best friend, a girl with a questionable reputation. Another time, she waged an all out war with me and a broom. She scared the hell out of me when she picked it up and came charging towards me while I was in a lotus position. I quickly reacted by unfolding my limbs and attempting to stop the impending attack. Both of us held on tightly to the damn broom that hot, summer afternoon, neither of us willing to relinquish the rights to an object of domestic duty and now domestic violence, until my brother stepped in. He looked at his mother and sister half collapsed on the living room floor, the rug in a ball underneath our knees, disheveled hair flying in all directions and calmly removed the broom from our sweaty hands. We laughed about it years later and sometimes I miss that woman the most: the one who fought and loved at the same time with such fierce savagery. She could stop me dead in my tracks with one chilling look and I hated the day long silent treatments she would subject me to when I overstepped the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable daughter behavior. Yet, she has always been my number one defender against my overbearing father and she never once made me feel like a failure when I showed up at her doorstep with my child after the collapse of my marriage. It’s difficult to reconcile the woman I picture in my head, warding off the heavy blows that landed with vicious pressure on her face, with the woman I still see sitting stiffly next to me, an aura of resignation enveloping her softly, as her voice fades away in silent remembrance of the time her life came to a screeching standstill.