by N. Godwin
“It’s like a secret alleyway to heaven I once saw in a painting,” Andrea says with a large nostalgic sigh, “back when there was a heaven.”
I shake my head sadly at her words and let there be silence between us as I contemplate what the gift of Andrea means.
“Eunice says that the stork got confused with Horst and dropped him in the wrong country. Even though he’s from Bosnia or whatever, Eunice believes Horst was meant to be Southern on account of his manners, his good taste, and how he’s got the fear of God in his eyes.”
“I don’t believe in God,” Andrea says.
“I know,” I reply and shrug.
“Why should I? He doesn’t believe in me.”
“We each have our own personal journey,” I tell her solemnly as I push open the heavy, lilac door to the girl’s dorm.
I watch as a look of satisfaction dawns over Andrea’s face. For once she is silent as she follows me inside and I close the door behind us. As our eyes adjust to the cozy darkness of the long, narrow room, Andrea studies her new home with a smile curling on her bruised lips.
The dorm is decorated in every shade of lilac and purple, long voted the favorite color of teenage girls. Each mattress of the ten wooden bunk beds is adorned with a brand new Lamp Chops comforter and sheets waiting happily for a brand new master to snuggle under, compliments of Target over ordering two years back and donating sixty-nine of them to us. Even the hardest cynic to walk through these doors has gushed over Lamp Chops.
Covering the dyed cement floor are the two very large and expensive Persian carpets Grandmother Maddox had left to me for some odd reason, because heaven knows she was colder than Daddy’s blue eyes and didn’t seem to like me much. My books and these carpets were the only things I’d taken when I’d finally, once and for all, left my father’s house. I’d taken the carpets out of storage to put in the girls’ dorm because they needed something special in there to turn it into a haven, because I’ve learned a thing or two about soothing teenage girls and their hormonal angst. Sure, the carpets warm the floor when it turns cold, but more importantly they add a very comfortable and old world charm to the bunkhouse that is gracious and welcoming, and tells them they are deserving. I’m proud of this place considering it used to be an old warehouse before Killer Ken and I claimed it for the cause.
Surroundings are very important to teenage girls; they need these props because I’ve noticed how creature comforts actually seem to help them flourish. Fascinating stuff, really, studying novice eyes respond to beauty and comfort; the things I could tell you about teenage girls…. Like how they also thrive under consistent affection, security, constructive criticism, and a quiet place for inspiration.
Add a little fluff, too, and sometimes you can dazzle them towards hope. Something as simple as these silk textiles under foot, with their bursts of reds and purples and oranges, seems to civilize them. So, even despite the girls’ overflow of estrogen and their constant dramas, you can bet the family farm that I’m keeping those silly carpets under their feet come Hades or high-water.
There is a collection of old rocking chairs in the far right corner of the room in front of the homemade bookshelf Ken and I had made from salvaged bricks and wide planks of unfinished wood. This small library made up of my favorite one hundred sixty-six books is one of my most beloved spots in the whole-wide world. These golden books are part of an ongoing collection of beautiful, hand-tooled, Italian leather books, their pages gloriously bound and their edges a deeper gold, with page-by-page exotic scents when the pages fan through your fingers. These are the books of the masters from around every corner of our globe, magical and lush, the books of my youth. They fondly remain the literature that influenced my heart and my psyche and are deeply imbedded inside me. These books with their worlds of love and betrayal, envy and pride, whether murder, myth, or tall tale, play or novella, all of them a transcendent cautionary tale capable of taking my breath away.
Selfishly, I still keep my most favorite ones upstairs in my bookshelf so they remain within easy reach. Now, there are also Encyclopedias sets and dozens of other books and trendy magazines that come and go; anything to get them to read.
I stare at Jane Eyre and sigh realizing that no matter how many books I read there were still so many unanswered questions. The origin of these extravagant books has always remained a puzzle to me. Surely, these enlightened words were far too heathen for Daddy’s satisfaction, and by process of elimination these books were way too expensive a gift for my mother to give because she didn’t have an unaccounted penny to her name, even though when I was younger there was a time when I’d wished they’d come from her.
To this day there remains no logical person who could have bought such beautiful words to help guide me through my lonely teenage years. Out of the blue, these beautiful books would simply arrive by mail, one or two at a time, sometimes four, five, or sometimes as many as six came bundled together, years apart sometimes, each exotic postmark had always been different every time, and there is never a return address.
My eyes follow Andrea’s to another small group of rocking chairs sitting around the donated entertainment armoire housing the television and the stereo. I follow Andrea’s gaze upward and smile as she mouths “Awesome.” over and over again. Through the years each resident to grace this room has written some message on the ceiling. Their comments run the gamut from ridiculous to sublime and are three to one favorable of the DemiMonde or me. Since some of these kids couldn’t even read when they came to us, I’ve grown to be particularly fond of these messages. In particular the one over there by the bookcase, the one that calls me the dyke, bitch, ice-queen of the entire universe, the one with only three misspelled words. That was Crystal Lazarus, the fourteen years old who didn’t even know her letters when she first came here. We got her reading up to the fourth grade level in as many months. Like so many before her, she disappeared one day when the wind off the beach turned cold.
“You’ll be comfortable here,” I tell Andrea. “All the creature comforts of home. Comfortable beds, big bathroom, and a nice stereo system. We take turns choosing movies for our after-hours movie nights, and they run the gamut, I assure you. Our television isn’t digital or in stereo and isn’t half as good as the T.V. the dudes have, but I’m hitting Hobie up for Christmas this year. We drew straws.”
I pull open the lined purple and white curtains and the sun comes pounding in, showing off our glorious unobstructed view of the gulf just across the street.
“We always close the curtains at night and during each other’s naps. We prefer you get a nap if you can. We all take turns so nobody’s grouchy at night, especially when we’re extra busy. You may choose to read instead, either way as long as you aren’t grumpy. It hard to be kind when you’re—”
“Naps are a requirement here? You’re joking, right? I’ve died and found Nirvana.” She looks around the inviting room again. “Except, do I really gotta’ bunk with girls? I hate teenage girls! They’re like a tribe of hungry monkeys and will steal you blind, or else they talk your ear off; chatter, chatter, all the time chatter. Know what I mean?”
“Ooh yeah.”
As we pass by the large bookcase I spot the book I have in mind for Andrea, and I stop and take it from the shelf studying its binding for a moment, then hand it to her and smile because I love this part; image matching, marrying Halfling and writer, and hopefully introducing a pliable mind to somewhere tender it has never imagined.
I can match them to near perfection after a five minute conversation. If we can get them to read, we can give the jingoist a shot of Naomi Wolfe or the Bronte sisters, or give the seeker a little Rand or Tolkien, the dull, unimaginative, or disillusioned a little Twain, Assimov, or Robert Lewis Stephenson, and you’ll get at least one excellent conversation from even the most hostile, sometimes without one monosyllabic concurrence or curse word, and we can gently lead them one step closer.
“Huxley?” Andrea asks with a curled lip. �
��You read this?”
“Not my first choice, or even second, but Ken likes this author.”
“Ken’s the platinum Adonis, with the guitar, right? The blue-eyed one who makes your knees go all weak?”
“If you say so,” I chuckle.
“And he likes Huxley?”
“Yes, Ma’am. My guess is he will touch you in places you didn’t know you had.”
“Ken or Huxley?” Andrea laughs and chooses the bottom bunk the closest to the window by throwing her helmet down on the bed.
“I thought you were celibate.”
“Celibate, not blind. And which one was our gardener Horst? Was he one of the kids, the short, skinny Latino with all the mad tatts, or the tall, dark and handsome one?” She takes off her jacket and drops it on the floor then sits on the bed and bounces up and down, checking the mattress with satisfaction.
“Ah, well, he isn’t one of the kids. That’s Hobie and Robert, and Tony’s the Latino. So I guess that leave Horst, and as for him being tall dark and handsome..?” I think about this a moment. “Yeah, I guess that was Horst.”
“Who’s that?” she asks and points to the prone figure taking a nap on the top bunk the closet to the T.V.
Mandy is asleep with a pillow over her head and a faded Kermit the frog in her arms. The Secret Garden is opened and sprawled out beside her on the bed and MTV’s Real World is on in the background. I watch with amusement as Andrea steps over to the clock on the DVD player and adjusts a few buttons, and 12:00 stops blinking at us, a first for this dorm.
“That’s Mandy,” I say. “She gabs even more than you. You’ll learn to tune it out.”
“Me? I don’t gab! Hey, who’s the pig that lives on the bottom bunk?” She surveys the mess surrounding Genie’s bunk just below Mandy’s.
“Ah, that would be Genie, Mandy’s best friend.”
“She’s a pig. What’s her story?”
“Since you’ll find out any way, Genie has this problem with sex.”
“Over or under?”
“Over, way over.”
“Does she make any money off of it?”
“Andrea, don’t you dare give her any bad ideas! Sex is a huge No-No here. You’d be kicked out in a heartbeat. Do you understand?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Look, I’ve got to get back to the café. Meet me there when you’re settled. And, play nice with the other girls,” I say turning to leave.
“Okay, but one last question first. Do you like guys or girls?”
“Are you a lesbian, Andrea?”
“Can I get back to you on that one? You guys have a major phobia with lesbians around here, just in case?”
“Nope, I’m just making sure you realize no sex of any kind is allowed here, so if that’s in your head forget it fast.” I say as she kicks off her boots.
“I told you, I’m celibate.” She studies the motorcycle grease under her bitten nails and chuckles softly. “So, you guys live in this perfect little society where nobody gets judged.” Andrea’s tone seems both mocking and hopeful.
“Oh, we judge here. It’s foolish pretending otherwise. What’s the point of learning from our mistakes if we can’t share that wisdom with others? You have to learn that evil is out there, just outside the picket fence, and he has landmines that can blind or kill you. Sometimes some things are just flat-out wrong and need to be avoided at all cost, and we’ll harass you mercilessly until you learn this. If you don’t know the basic rules for dealing with our species, it’s high time you learned.”
“I have a few clues about those basic rules, myself.” She sighs and lies down, closing her eyes and entwining her fingers across her breast. “And you need a few lessons yourself.” Andrea insists sitting up and staring me down. “Your fu-frigging half world here is not acknowledging the Sacred Feminine. Women believe we must be equal in mans’ terms to achieve balance or of the same value. In reality, one can’t be of more value than the other because one could not exist without the other. Yet, we don’t have balance and there must be a restoration of the balance of opposites for us to move forward in our homes, our societies and our consciousness. I read that all classical philosophy and the well-being of civilization are based on this.”
“Do you ever wonder if we’ve got this all wrong?” I ask, and briefly wonder what this admission will cost me.
“Men always interpret equal to mean the same. I’m not the same!”
“I’m very different,” I agree.
“I don’t want to be like them!” we both suddenly say.
“Absolutely, but they don’t get it because they think they’re so perfect and assume our worth is of lesser value just because they have dangly balls and we have sacred wombs!”
“Men are so annoying!” I find myself agreeing with her loudly, very loudly, and then cover my mouth in surprise. Then I begin to laugh.
She stares at me as I laugh and then she begins to howl in laughter, too. We laugh even harder when Mandy suddenly begins snoring. We laugh until we sigh long and hard.
“Feel better?” Andrea wants to know.
“Yeah,” I say and nod my head.
“See? I’m telling you it’s therapeutic.” She stands and heads to the bathroom and looks back at me as she plays with the lock on the bathroom door. “You sure I can’t moonlight? The shower would drown me out and--”
“Andrea!” I groan. “Have you listened to anything I’ve said?”
“Okay, just checking. I thought we shared a moment,” she laughs. “I can’t decide if you’re the friendly zookeeper or the law.”
“A little of both, I’d say.”
She runs her fingers through her scalp and smiles broadly, revealing how her two front teeth cross ever-so-slightly over one another and how she is always licking her tongue across them. Her teeth are white-white and she has a great smile. It’s interesting watching her talk, the way she moves her mouth when enunciating her New Jersey colloquialisms. It’s interesting how she keeps running her fingers through imaginary locks of long, black hair that is no longer there.
“One last question, honest,” she offers holding out her hands to signal time out. “If you don’t do girls, you got a boy friend?”
“No.”
“Ever?” she asks.
“I don’t do boys, either.”
“I—see, you one of those True Love Waits holdouts?”
“Nope.”
“Sexually abused, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Never? Not one uncle, or brother, or dad?” she asks incredulously.
For some odd reason I answer her. “I’ve never been touched.”
I watch her eyes as my sincerity dawns over her. “I—see.” She stares at me harder as she slightly tenses back away from me. “If a man has never hurt you and you don’t like girls then why don’t you do men? What’s the deal?”
“I have absolutely no interest,” I say with a sigh.
“None? Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Wow!” she says and blinks in rapid succession as she absorbs this. “So that’s your story. Wow!”
The late afternoon thunderstorm is loud today. Despite the bright sunshine, the unexpected rain that appeared out of nowhere is aggressively pelting down on our beach and sounds as if angry angels are bowling on our tin roof. The café has blessedly trickled down to an easily manageable crowd, while Bob E. Lee, the general of the airways, has gone nostalgic all afternoon and insists on playing music to cry along with. That crazy cat has wedged himself in between the refrigerators again and there are two tables with at least one person openly crying, and we are selling beer like it was last call.
Andrea has proven to be a quick learner and has begun to work immediately, and was a great help over the lunch rush. The Halflings have taken to her immediately, too, and she openly enjoys Cecile and Kelly’s company. So far her transition has been seamless with the dudes, too. I watch as she zooms over to me and leans down to whisper to me
again about another outrageous observation.
“Those two over there are sisters from Atlanta and haven’t talked in years because the younger one slept with her sister’s husband,” she points to table number six. “She’s the one who’s crying. They need some weed. That’ll help them loosen up. I’d give them some if I had any. Hey, you don’t know where I can get hooked up with some weed, do you?”
“We really aren’t kidding about the No-Nos, Andrea,” I say and point to her laminated copy hanging on the lanyard around her neck. “We firmly adhere to our established rules. If you figure out where to buy drugs you’d better not let anyone know about it, especially me, because we really will kick out bad examples on account of the impressionable minds living here. Although some infractions cost more than others, this is a mortal No-No,” I scold her as she looks down while I check out the two new customers running quickly inside the door from the deluge outside.
Andrea wants to ramble on and on about how pot should be legalized and I think about sicking Randy on her and try to make myself smile over this image, except I’m too irritated at the moment because the Godpods, who are still camped out in my old bedroom in my parent’s house, the ones who can’t seem to take no for an answer, have just walked in the front door.
“Give me strength,” I ask.
They carefully scout out the closest table to the right of the door before deciding to sit, and then they look around for me. They spot me and their whole faces smile, and they wave with adolescent exaggeration as if we were still in elementary school. For a moment, I forget their bodies are inhabited by andropods and wave back just as big. Then I notice as they begin to sniff out their surroundings as if regarding Sodom for the first time, and I remember.
I must sputter out loud because Andrea leans in close to whisper: “What in the hell are they?”
“Hell is a swear word, that’s five bucks in the swearing jar, and those are the Godpods,” I sigh, “they’re from Tennessee,” I offer by way of explanation.