Thoughtful Thursday: My response to your response to my reponse

My response to your response to my response

is that we can’t keep having this conversation

again

and

again

dragging like heavy stones

over tall mountains

it’s senseless

it’s hurtful

it’s for the best

My response told you that

your response couldn’t mean anything to me

anymore

it’s the same old door that we keep

opening and slamming shut

and folding over in endless loads

of durtee lawndree

Your response made me think about crying

but instead I said, “I’ll think about it.”

and turned away

we used to say the right words once

to answer all the wrong questions

now we say the wrong ones

to answer the things we should

have asked before

So my response to yours is that

I can’t listen any longer

to what you have to say

Your response

might be to push me down

pull me closer

solve our grievances with

love,

not words,

but dear

My response is there’s no more love

only fears left between us

these days

and the only thing left

is to let our silence speak our words.

Bunk beds

Dear Shawn,
Do you remember how dark it was in the tiny room we shared long ago? You slept on the top bunk while Keith slept on the bottom because he would fall out of bed every night after waking us both to his night terrors, on his knees punching his pillow and pounding his head on the wall in front of him till chalky white dust lined his already chalky white forehead. He never saw the fear in our eyes when we thought he might kill himself from the nightmares we could not imagine a little boy would have. I still wonder what it was he saw at night. Do you know? Would you tell me if you did?

I slept on the pullout twin bed beneath the bunk beds that you both told me alligators lived under. I sometimes slept with one eye open towards the gaping hole in hopes that if the gator came I could run faster than the two of you even though you told me he would want my succulent flesh more than the bones that pierced through your extra small shirts as your ribs were pulled up and down while breathing. My ribs were hidden under layers of gummy bears and Happy Meals.

My mom and I moved in when I was almost five and you were so angry at first. You were angry that I would take the other bed that you saved for your friends for sleepovers, the one that had the extra teenage mutant ninja turtles sheets and got changed to princesses when I came along. You shoved me in the dark space with the alligators sometimes and laughed while cried and screamed for my mom, but I want to tell you that I think it was good that I saw the dark things in the dark spaces then because they don't scare me now.

I was never mad at you Shawn, because the first day I saw you on that little playground riding the springy horse outside of the Saratoga apartment complex that smelled like pine needles from spring through winter, I loved you. You were the first boy I met that looked like me. Your skin was olive and smooth like mine. You had a superman t-shirt on with a pair of oversized jeans that barely fit your almost five year old body. Your hair was fine soft dark brown tendrils that wrapped around your ears and made soft ringlets on your forehead. You had a wide smile and a missing tooth and I knew that we were destined to be married one day, like in Sleeping Beauty. You might say now that when I was almost five I didn't know what love was, but sometimes I think I knew more then than I know now. I knew that I would have given you all of my Barbie's if you had asked for them, but you never did, so I asked my mom for Lego’s because I knew you liked those and would want to play with me then.

We moved our stuff in without your permission, though you knew I was coming. Your mom, Dorothy was the one that told you and Keith to put the new sheets on for me as a surprise. I can only imagine the disgust you felt as I invaded your room and your lives. I was only there because my mom had brought me. I wouldn't have come if she and your mom hadn't decided that they wanted to be more than just friends.

We had played many times before this, but because we had to not because we wanted to. You and Keith always wanted to play battle games while I wanted to play Cinderella, but instead we would compromise on Hot Lava. We would jump from the slide to the bars and sometimes onto those springy horses that you loved in order to avoid the lava sand. We knew it wasn't real, but sometimes we would play for hours chasing each other around, trying to push one another in until one of us stood as the sole survivor.

Are you surviving now Shawn? Things aren't like they were when we were almost five, when we didn't realize how simple things really were. When sometimes I would swear and get my mouth washed out with soap and Keith would break things, and you would steal from neighbor’s mailboxes and Dorothy would find her belt for you both. We would all put up a fight and start crying before the soap or the belt came, but it didn't stop anything, they would always come and be over with quicker than we thought. We would go to our room with the other two musketeers, climb onto our beds and cry because there was no place in our tiny apartment to be alone. Do you remember? Those were the days when you still thought it was okay to cry in front of people.

I always wanted to hug you when you cried, but I never did because I loved you and I didn't want you to know, so I would say something like, "you know play dough tastes better than soap" or "do you wanna play with Michelangelo and I'll be Leonardo?" to take your mind off of it. We would play and you would stop crying though your eyes would be sad for a while and I would smile because I helped and I knew one day when we were married I would never let you cry. Do you cry now? Does anyone hug you?

Eventually you grew to tolerate me, maybe even like me enough. We all played together, went camping together, learned to ride our bikes together. For a little while we were like a real family with your mom and my mom watching our every move, but then a couple years later it was over. One day my mom brought me to a new apartment and asked me if I liked it. I said, "it would be better with a dog." She laughed with the "honey, that's really cute, but it's never gonna happen" laugh that I'm sure you remember well. Then she told me this was going to be our new home for a while, just till she could get the money to move us into a place of our own.

We were six then and it was just the beginning of summer. I had been excited about that summer because I knew we would get to spend all of our time together and camp and I would get to see you and your skinny, shirtless six year old body on the waterslides in Manteca. You would make me laugh with some funny story about a prank you pulled and I would follow you around and have my friends follow you around too.

We didn't get to have that summer though. It's not that I never saw you, but that I saw you less. Dorothy would bring you around sometimes, but mostly she would just bring Keith without you. I would wonder where you were and found out that you were with your biological family. I had met them once before, they were the black side of your family and I wondered what they were like and if they loved you like I did. You missed the time when Keith and I got to stay up and watch Nightmare on Elm Street with my mom and were permanently scared to get on her waterbed. You were probably watching something with your brothers in a house on the East side of town. The east side was the bad side of town, so I thought maybe it would turn you bad. Do you think that's what went wrong?

A few months later my mom found a place for us to live in San Jose, it was even farther away from you. Dorothy found Keith, her, and you a place too in East San Jose. It wasn't until then that I realized we were going to be living separate lives. I hated knowing that we would have to live separate lives for a while, but I just knew it would be okay because it would all be fine once we grew up and got married.

We’re grown up now and I really want to say something about that thing that happened when we were eight. Are you still angry at me for that? I hope I didn’t hurt you too much. Please write back and please let me know how everything’s going in prison. I just think it’s not fair that you’re there. Not fair at all.

Sincerely,

Nicole

Day #7: Temper Your Heart

Monday: I took this as a day of rest. Slept in until 11am after going to bed around 2. I knew that I didn’t want to walk after two days of endless movement. I really don’t understand how one can be a tourist for multiple days in a row without rest. Perhaps I think this too because I will be a tourist in foreign lands for another thirty days yet. I don’t feel the urgency of visitation and spectatorship. Relaxing is an essential component of a vacation and on this day I do so. A light breakfast and music. I see that Spyros has a classical guitar with one string missing and so I decide I must re-string it so I can practice or else perhaps forget my songs before my return to the states. I have never strung a classical guitar, but there are you-tube videos and so I re-string with that. It is easy and satisfying to know that perhaps I offered at least one thing to this host besides the mess that I continuously create.
After some practice and thoughts on music I decide around 2pm that I should at least attempt to venture out into the city and so I once again return to Ray’s Jazz Café. I sit to write and reflect more on life. I know that this sitting and reflecting couldn’t come to much good because I know that later I will be reminded of the past, but I am avoiding the past in these thoughts and think on the future. As I am walking to the café on this day and older Indian man stops me to tell me that I should temper my heart because it wants the wrong things, but at the very least tells me I will be falling in love soon. I am not sure I should believe him, but it was so random that I want to. I had that premonition a month and a half ago that I would fall in love within the next four months while listening to John Legend. Haha. I figured it was me momentarily being captivated by John Legends coffee liqueur voice. I am still not sure though. I have had premonitions in the past and not listened and they have in fact come true. I just am not sure I believe in them though. I will not put much stock in these. I will explain later why I am thinking so much on love right now though and maybe this will make much more sense.
After too much contemplation again it is time to meet Stacey for dinner and I wonder how people ever find each other in the crowds of London. We decide on a Korean/Japanese place called Loki. I prefer Asian food because most of it is gluten and dairy free, which makes selection much easier. The meal is large and wonderful, exactly what I have needed for a while. I feel my appetite returning again and realize it as a good thing.
Our plans this night are Les Miserables, which I have prepared for by stuffing my pockets with tissues. I already know that I will have a breakdown at the theatre because the first time I went I started crying a mere thirty minutes into the opera. I was worried I would come to the same this time around as well. This time though I had more to think on. The actual plot makes even more sense and strikes heart chords that it didn’t as a child. I feel more sympathetic towards different characters now and it is a completely different experience.
The first time I saw Les Miserables I was fifteen and my mother took me for my birthday. She spent more money than I thought she ought to for something she wasn’t remotely interested in seeing, but did anyway. I know she was bored but she smiled as I cried and loved the music and sang along with poor little Cosette in her little castle on a cloud. As I sit in the audience now I think on how much I wish it was my mother sitting next to me again with our arms locked and once again me tearing up and hoping to one day be one of the actors on stage (I didn’t realize at the time that I could never be in Les Miserables because I’m black).
I did begin to weep a mere thirty minutes in once again, but it wasn’t the plot. It was the way the singers voices felt in my body and the reminders of my missing mother. Then it became my missing mother and her last wishes for me that the opera brought up again and I had known as soon as I saw posters for Les Mis would come, which is why I have been pining for love like a beggar for food all week. My mother died alone like all of us die, but in this case I mean she lived alone and had no one to look after her. I called her that night, likely an hour or so before she passed. It was St. Paddy’s Day 2009 when others are celebrating overzealously with drink and cheer that we said our last “I love you’s” and she said, “have you met anyone yet?” and I said “no” once again because I felt too hard hearted to meet anyone at the time. We hung up with no new revelations, but knowing that we would talk again tomorrow or the next. There was no tomorrow or the next though. All there was was a phone call from Raleigh and before she uttered a word, I knew. I screamed and thought I would die, so I hung up on her because maybe it wouldn’t be real if I didn’t let her speak.
The thing is that you don’t know what to expect when someone you love dies. All I could think of as I boarded a plane hours after the call were all of the things that I never gave her that she expected of me or didn’t. I wanted to give her a home and let her rest for the remainder of her life that had been hard for most, but I didn’t. I wanted to give her grandchildren so she could see herself in them, but that would never happen either. I could only think that I had been so selfish and that because I didn’t want to be hurt I was avoiding what could maybe make me happy.
I brought a picture of her with me so I can look at it anytime I need her and she smiles at me and says things are okay. This is in fact why I’ve been too much thinking on the heart this week. When I think of my mother and some of her last words to me it makes me think of loneliness. I am not lonely though. I enjoy my independence much of the time, but I do think it would be wonderful to have a family to take care of sometimes. I just think of how nice it would be to have someone to come home to. In time that will come, but for now I will just explore and live and love and be loved and know that my mom is always with me no matter where I go. I dedicate everyday I am here to her memory and hope that people can see the good of her in me, because she was a good person that loved people and would help them even if they had hurt her. I never saw her as that while a child, but as I grew older I saw in her a woman I wanted to be. So I take her good and her bad as my own and hope to make her proud in everyday I live. Mom, I love you.