by N. Godwin
“Right on,” I laugh and raise my fist.
“Oh, brother,” Eunice sputters, “alright, it’s your call, Jimmy-Sue. But I’m telling you to keep that baby hid.”
Cecile squeals loudly again and Eunice jumps as the laughter grows in decibels. Eunice just closes her eyes, covers her ears, and groans. “I hate toddlers!”
The other voice is calling me again from somewhere nearby. It’s a familiar voice that I don’t recognize for some reason. Which is good because I think it might be an unholy beast of some sort and I am afraid. The beast keeps calling me by a name I can’t understand. I can sense him all around me. I smell him on my skin; its musky scent coats my mouth and tongue. I hear and feel him on the wind, in my ears, on my neck and stomach, and in between my fingers and thighs. His sensation is intoxicating, too intoxicating and I should run away, I should, but I want to follow the friction inside the music and can’t because something is pressing too hard against my stomach and I can’t breathe. I reach out to open air and try to swat the beast away as its sounds buzz insistently all around and inside me.
I am under some curse or enchantment and I only want more and it frightens and chills me because it is painful and wrong, and I do not understand. In alarm I realize I am dressed only in my underwear and I hug my breasts in fear and shame until I hear His voice above all others as He soothes gently in my ear, “Be still and listen for six.”
His words reverberate in my head and I am confused. Now, I’m being followed by something else, something huge and dark and insatiable, something too big for me to fathom, and I struggle against the damning sensation because I know it is another beast I must face, and I cry out, “No! No! Not again!”
I hear another sound, shrill and alarming, like peeling bells and I recognize the sound of a phone ringing in the distance, a familiar phone, my phone, I think, and it is urgently calling to me. If I could just reach my phone I could end this nightmare, I could go back, safely back. If I could just only reach it...
Somehow I manage to shake myself awake and clumsily reach for where my cell phone should be, only to find I am on the floor with my hand touching my dress and bra on the floor beside me instead.
I vaguely remember being so tired and drained that when I’d found the girls asleep I had uncharacteristically peeled my clothes off and let them fall where they may beside my Lamb Chops sleeping bag on the floor. I didn’t have the energy to bathe or even wash my face or put on my night shirt and had fallen asleep on my back on top of the sleeping bag. I hadn’t meant to, I was just going to lie down for a moment…
I get on my hands and knees and groggily find the phone over on my bedside table and open it even though the ringing has stopped. I see one missed call. The number was restricted and I growl because I hate my phone, it seldom brings me good news, which is why I always leave it on my bedside table in the first place, but I sigh gratefully because this time I was relieved to be wakened from the eerie dream that haunts my sleep.
My headache is gone but I feel hot and I need to bathe the sticky residue of my day from off my skin before I can fall back asleep. I groan softly and I wobble on my hands and knees for a moment as I crawl over to the girls. They are sleeping soundly. I lean forward and strike a match and reach up to light the candle on my desk. I startle when I see my reflection from the tall mirror on the closet door just across the room. I turn my head around slightly to look at my reflection just to make sure it’s only me and can see a dark red stain on the crotch of my white cotton panties. I had been so bone tired I’d even forgotten to deal with my period, too, and my fresh blood makes me feel nasty dirty. I am still too weak and can feel predatory eyes still burning a hole into my soul.
I notice the moonlight streaming in from the window and almost swear because I had even been in too deep a funk to bother closing my blinds, and I have crossed my heart and promised the dudes I would always keep them closed at night. I stand picking up the candle and make my way over to my dresser and pull out a pair of panties then walk inside the bathroom and close the door behind me.
When I finish showering, I come out of the bathroom dressed in my favorite faded black t-shirt that I wear when I am feeling vulnerable, the old threadbare and oversized one with the frayed neck that hangs on the back of my bathroom door. My shirt had long ago lost its magical imagined scent and now smelled like Tide, but it comforts me even still. I look at the painting of my melancholy Jesus and pause drying off my hair with a towel and I close my eyes, make a wish, and pray for one more day without too much interference.
When I open my eyes I see Cecile and Kelly curled up fast asleep on my bed. I study their sweet faces and vow that tomorrow after their AIDS test I will go buy them each their own bed and chest of drawers, retail even if need be. I will buy them the solid feel of permanence, of home.
I sit down in my rocking chair and stare up at the stars, relishing the silent cover of night. It is 2:59 a.m. and I begin combing out my wet hair as I study the surface of the moon, searching out the man in the sea of tranquility, thinking of misnomers and revisionist history and how I need to go back to sleep. I comb my hair with long lingering strokes and stretch. I love my hair because its soft and I can hide in it. I stretch out and cover up the girls then blow a kiss to the moon just as that crazy cat begins to howl from one of the trees outside my window.
The soft ring of my phone makes me sit upright. Three a.m. straight up. I hate the phone even more this time of night, seeing how the odds are ten to one against who is on the other end. It’s almost always pubescent teenage boys with the need to shock me awake with their potty-mouths. Tourists, locals, it didn’t matter; they seemed to ooze out of the woodwork this time of night. How they all still manage to find my yet-again-new, unlisted phone number every other week is still one of God’s own mysteries to me. I hate my flipping phone!
I listen to the second ring and consider the options on the other end. It could be a breather, of course, or some deviant who wants to share his particular fantasies about me with me (a special treat when I’ve gone twenty or more hours without sleep), or it could be one of my own worst family nightmare. It could be my once-adored but now barely-tolerated twin cousins, fresh in state for the summer as of late tonight, all eager to tell me goodnight, yet again. That possibility was doubtful though, I know my cousins would be snoring long before now.
The phone rings again and I look around and chuckle knowing Cecile and Kelly could sleep through a nuclear explosion. I think about turning it off anyway but then I remember my one out of ten, and I pick the phone up cautiously.
“Hello?” I sigh, counting slowly to ten. No heavy breathing, no obscene words, no crying, no anything I can sense. “If you need help tell me now because I’m very sleepy, it’s been a…a day, you see. So if you need me please tell me now.”
I can hear Blue’s voice howling. There is also breathing, faint and rapid, suddenly emanating from my phone. It ricochets against my mirror and bounces onto my walls and out of the window beside me. And I can sense the lonely resonance of need.
“Won’t you pretty-please tell me if you need me now, okay?” I pause, waiting for a response and can only hear Blue suddenly screeching in stereo I think as if he’d just fallen out of a tree. “Look,” I yawn. “I can’t sense pain coming from you. Just some weird need I’m too tired to deal with tonight. Okay?”
I hear a faint intake of breath, a gasp maybe or a sigh, on the other end of the phone. I try to stifle another yawn but can’t.
“Look, you’re too wound up, dude, as Killer would say. You need a chill day and should go to the beach tomorrow or something relaxing like that. Get some fresh air and sunshine. Meet the girl of your dreams or whatever. Be young, be foolish, and yada yada, but leave me alone tonight. Okay?”
Something to Consider
Ken, Horst and Hobie have stayed behind today to teach Mandy and Genie (our newest Halflings du jours, who after a night of partying, had arrived on our doorstep at dawn this morning) the 7 Deadly No-Nos of t
he DemiMonde while I’ve attended to the issue at hand. Determined to make today a national silly day despite the obvious, I’ve enlisted the help of John and Alan, who have the day off from the amusement park, to drive us over to Escambia County for the girl’s AIDS tests. We’ve purposefully decided to have their tests done two counties over so no one knows us and might place Kelly and Cecile at the café.
The girls are sitting in the back of Alan’s mini-van while my cousins, the Godpods, stare each of us up and down, one by one. My twin cousins have no need for verbal communication right now as they randomly pick one of us to pieces with not so much as a syllable; just the shared baited language of their eyes. Despite being in the back with the Godpods, John seems oblivious to the draining silence of my cousins’ dissection. This only incites their fervor as John keeps spinning his bathroom humor, one right after the other, like sheets of toilet paper spinning uncontrollably off the roll.
I keep finding myself studying John even though I don’t want to have to think about my ridiculous list today. I have almost three months to accomplish my task and I am still drained from yesterday’s encounters and eliminations, and I don’t understand what the heck the rush is all about! I could use a break but I can’t turn off my restless mind as I steal another glance at John.
John Alazar is number 8 on the list and is one funny guy. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him utter anything but jokes. He lives to ham it up, brighten the room and tease everyone mercilessly with good-natured humor. He has this thing about his fecal matter and can spend hours sharing his bathroom tidbits and somehow still manage to make you laugh. It stands to reason that he would choose to work at an amusement park over his spring and summer breaks from the junior college. Silliness reeks with John. He’s convinced he’s going to get us all up on his bungee jump before the summer is over even though Alan always tells him pigs would have to fly first.
John’s angular body is primed and conditioned because he and Alan pump iron for a couple hours every day. John wears wife-beater t-shirts to show off his muscular body and the girls go nuts over his Latino characteristics. Even menopausal women sigh when he walks into the café. His angelic beauty confuses people because there is absolutely nothing angelic about John Alazar, other than the fact that if he likes you he will defend you like a pit bull and keep you laughing. He’s harmless when he’s going after girls, a relative lightweight. Politely attentive blended with the right mixture of grotesque innuendo to keep the other guys impressed. He seems to be an equal opportunity masher. I mean, I’ve even seen him devote fifteen minutes to flirt with Eunice for pity sake. He asks me out every time he sees me yet he never waits for an answer, just glides on by cracking another joke.
John’s got this great collection of bandanas which he wears over his hair at all times. This one has the American flag on it. He wore a top hat to prom so I’ve never seen the top of his head; he could be flat-headed and bald for all I know. The rest of his long brown hair hangs out from underneath his bandana and falls across his shoulders. He’s pretty and he knows it, and he doesn’t care that you know he knows it. Yet despite all his charming folly, it is his underlying pathos that fascinates me. I wonder which of the deadly sins hold him captive. True, he is prideful and more than a tad vain about his appearance (which leaves physical sloth in the dust) but there is no anger or wrath in John, or avarice or gluttony, and I don’t think it’s sloth of the soul because he goes to mass when Hobie decides to go.
I tune back into the girls and try not to groan over my cousins proximity. Cecile, Kelly and I are trying to ignore the mood of the Godpods as best we can. I’m really trying hard here but if I have to remind them one more time that only silly and kind are allowed today I might start screaming at the top of my lungs and never stop, which is what scares us most, you know, that we’ll never stop screaming once we start. Well, it scares me anyway.
Alan just keeps driving but has stepped up to bat and keeps showing the Godpods his knowledge of the Bible with his favorite happy verses. The twins are enraptured, Cecile and Kelly are confused and John and I are out-numbered. At least Alan only quotes the New Testament now and today’s verses are the uplifting, prophetic, Beatitudes or, as John calls them, Barney quotes.
“Hey you guys,” John says as prelude to any joke, “do you know what a Picasso dump is? No? Well, let me tell you-- it’s the quintessential masterpiece of all dumps. It coils out smooth and lanky in your bowl, a profusion of righteous colors. It’s so beautiful it makes you want to haul in guys from the other stalls just to show off your masterpiece!”
John is laughing raucously as the Godpods’ faces fall even further than they were a moment ago. The rest of us are laughing, even Kelly has begun to giggle. I look over at Alan and he gives me a look of mock indignation.
“Please forgive John,” he tells my cousins again. “He turns seven anytime he gets around lovely ladies.”
Alan has offered this whitewashing every time John manages to offend the Godpods, which, needless to say, has been often. Alan’s barely finished saying this before John rolls out another.
“Hey, you guys, know what a corn dump is?”
I study Alan Mulligan, my number 12, while he drives along rolling his eyes heavenward. Alan is my height and stockier that an orangutan. All his strawberry blond hair seems to continue blending onto his face in an eruption of freckles. His green eyes are even tinged with red and gold, and his immense smile is quick to curl in welcome or surprise. His arms extend the orangutan imagery by being long, large, and covered in his strawberry fur. Like John, Alan is pure muscle and, unlike John, Alan is a straight arrow. If he’s says it’s so then it’s the gospel truth. You can bet the family silver on it.
Alan is twenty-one going on thirty-seven. His hair has even started receding. He wants to be a man of the cloth and can often be seen explaining the extent of God’s kindness to some poor unsuspecting tourist. He prays a lot, too, much more than he used to, I mean, back before he became more than a childhood acquaintance.
I’ve seen Alan every Sunday I can remember because he goes to my church. I just figured he was sent to spy on me and the café when he showed up two years back on that hot summer night. I always smile over this particular paranoia because it took Alan less than two weeks before all his careful indoctrinations went right down the drain with the first tropical storm and we became his living room.
Alan’s straight arrow approach belies the hint of the devil lurking back there down deep in his Scottish-green eyes. I think this is why he prays so often, to keep his lurking devil at bay. Although, I must say that hint of the devil raises its head when needed most, like in Sunday school when the evils of women are being explained again or during an AIDS test on tiny children with a nurse who curls her lip and looks down her nose at you and yours. Alan is a good shepherd with a killer sense of humor.
“Hey you guys,” John says again.
I watch as Alan pulls off the road and turns down one of my favorite roads in the entire world, winding the van through the hard-packed sand behind the tall sheltering dunes. As he parks, we all spring into action, grabbing beach stuff and convincing Cecile that she positively cannot take that still wrapped and slightly tattered pink present with her because none of us want to cart it around. She already has enough beach paraphernalia, compliments of everybody as it is. KIS is how I do the beach. Keep it simple because this is the beach, all you really need are your feet, a blanket and a book.
This hidden two miles of beach is sheltered behind tall sand dunes and pine trees and is one of the last undisturbed gulf fronts in the county. The trek to the water isn’t easy through the hot sand but the reward is hidden behind those dunes. Only the most devout solitude worshipers show up here.
I pick up Cecile and carry her on my hips as we begin our silent pilgrimage. When we finally walk from out behind the towering dunes, we are suddenly rewarded by the magical sight of the vast, emerald-green gulf. Its salt-kissed wind immediately begins to work its magic on
each of us as if it was etching stubborn cocoons finally open. I am grateful for the cleansing warmth on my tired skin and study the others as they react to this bliss.
I watch Cecile’s reaction to the beauty and snuggle her close in my arms and feel a warm glow from the sun on my face and the child in my arms. Although Cecile hasn’t spoken a word and Kelly still surveys us with suspicion, we have promised the girls a fun day at the beach after their tests and nothing is going to intrude on the silly mood of beach day. Nothing! Not even my unrelenting mind or the Godpods.
Ah yes, the Godpods, Karen and Allison-Ann, my former best friends, my cousins who come from that nightmare realm of fanaticism, which I personally believe is hell on earth. I don’t spend much time with these zealots any more even though they show up on my parent’s doorstep every Christmas holiday and each and every summer just like weeds. Their mama died when they were eight and their daddy abandoned them the moment puberty hit, so they’ve been shuffled from uncle to aunt throughout the years, always reserving Santa Claus and summer for my room and my beach. This used to be an awesome arrangement until three years ago when my cousins discovered that nutty vein of religion that seems to be sweeping the globe, and embraced it with their heart and soul. Now their devotion to this cause clouds each and every conversation, often ending in laced barbs of their dogma. They somehow even manage to make Alan look agnostic.
Warm, sugar-white sand crunches beneath our feet as we wind around the sea oats and the last sand dune, heading against the wind toward the shore while I think about how close my cousins and I used to be, and sigh because it makes me very sad.
So far, I consider them in the top five of my life’s disappointments. We used to catch fireflies in mason jars and ring doorbells and run, silly adolescent stuff that usually got us in trouble. By the end of each summer they got to go to Aunt Mary’s house, I was still locked in the attic. I spent a lot of time locked in that spooky attic.