We’re celebrating the success of Matt’s newest painting. It’s as long as a Honda, and as tall as our ceiling. Red-barked trees, squirrels, and naked women cover the canvas.
We discuss how great the painting is while chewing meat.
“I love these crusty bits,” I say.
“I saved them for you.”
He’s a master chef. I’d be bony if he didn’t feed me so well. Before I met Matt, I survived on lima beans, fruit leathers, and cream of wheat.
I tell him about the time my brother and I tried to scrape together a couple of bucks to buy ice cream. It was like the Great Depression.
“Those days are over,” Matt says. I look down at my plate of pork accompanied by mustard greens, saffron-and-turmeric rice, and tomato salad. There will be tons of leftovers. Tomorrow it’ll be easy for me to make myself lunch.
The next day I come home from work and find Matt doubled over on the couch (again as if he’s been punched). He blames it on the pork, but I feel fine. I run out to get him ginger ale and saltines. When I get back he confesses that after I’d gone to work, he’d eaten pork for breakfast.
“There’s nothing wrong with pork for breakfast,” I say. “People eat bacon.”
“But I finished the whole thing,” he says. “I ate it straight out of the baking dish. It was like ten servings.”
“I know,” I say. “It tasted so good.”
“I barfed hard,” he says.
I had assumed as much.
“Pork fat chunks were floating in the toilet,” he says. “It looked like boba.”
Boba are translucent tapioca balls that come in Vietnamese drinks.
“Shut up,” I say.
“I just ate a huge pile of lard, basically.”
He’s like decadent old King Louis, I think, cooking up his maid’s canary and making her watch him eat it. I love feeling like the maid.
IV. Equal Union
I’ve been reading passages from the Kama Sutra before bed every night so I can mentally prepare myself for stress the next day. (I’ll admit I read it for sexual advice too.) The section called Ratavasthapana Prakarana applies not only to the male/female union but also to unions of all sorts, both human and animal. Its animalistic mix-and-match metaphors apply to sex as well as attitude adjustment for dealing with weirdos. Sometimes as I’m waiting in line or sitting in traffic I see a guy bossing his girlfriend around and think, Horse and deer, not the best.
When I first read it, I used to dream about jungle orgies: lions humping wildebeests and boa constrictors riding panthers.
“Man is divided into three classes—shaksa, the hare; vrisha, the bull; and ashwa, the horse—according to the size of his lingam, or phallus. A woman too, according to the depth of her yoni, vagina, is either a mrigi, female deer; vadava, a mare; or a hastini, female elephant.
“There are three equal unions between persons of corresponding dimensions and six unequal unions when the dimensions do not correspond, or nine kinds of union in all. In unequal unions, when the male exceeds the female in point of size, his union with a woman immediately next to him in size is called a high union and it is of two kinds, while his union with a woman most remote from his size is called the higher union and is of one kind only. When the female exceeds the male in point of size, her union with a man immediately next to her in size is called low union and is of two kinds, while her union with a man farthest from her in size is called the lower union and is of one kind only.
Equal
Male
Female
Hare
Deer
Bull
Mare
Horse
Elephant
Unequal
Male
Female
Hare
Mare
Hare
Elephant
Bull
Deer
Bull
Elephant
Horse
Deer
Horse
Mare
“In other words, the horse and the mare, and the bull and the deer, form the high union; while the horse and the deer form the highest union. On the female side, the elephant and the bull, and the mare and the hare, form low unions; while the elephant and the hare form the lowest unions.
“There are then nine kinds of unions according to dimensions. Equal unions are the best; the highest and the lowest are the worst. The rest are middling, and among them high unions are considered better than low, for in a high union, the male can satisfy his own passion without hurting the female; in a low union, it is difficult for a female to be satisfied in any manner.”
V. Favorite Song
If we can’t sleep, Matt puts on music. I like how he takes charge of the situation instead of lying there brooding all night like I do. The desire to hear music may or may not be as primal a need as food, sleep, or sex, but listening to music is necessary.
The days of wine and roses
Are distant days to me
That’s Donovan singing my favorite song of his, “Writer in the Sun,” which he composed in 1966 during a trip to Greece. Even though the words are sad, the melody is relaxing and it has this timeless quality—it makes you feel that any situation is endurable because it’s fleeting. I play the song in my head at work when I feel like quitting. Donovan strums the guitar steadily as if he’s marching in a funeral procession.
The magazine girl poses
On my glossy paper aeroplane
Too many years I spent in the city
Playing with Mr. Loss and Gain
He reminds me to spend time outdoors contemplating what irritates me so that I can let it go. Last night I was out for drinks with some girlfriends talking about how people are always trying to beat each other out for Creative Person Of The Century. But then I can’t just bail for paradise like my friend who swims with dolphins. I envy people who can enjoy themselves.
I bathe in the sun of the morning
Lemon circles swim in the tea
Fishing for time with a wishing line
And throwing it back in the sea
Donovan saw time changing and turning back in on itself. The belief that things happen for a reason is implied in his sound. It’s a calming idea, one that I like to think is true. But why has it taken me so long to get comfortable?
SINNERS
Two Band-Aids, crisscrossed like a beige plus sign, block the peephole on my grandma’s front door. To the right, a bronze crucifix doubly protects her from the dangers outside. She recently told me a cougar was stalking her from the roof. When someone knocks she warns me that it might be the neighbor who steals her trash.
“Who cares if someone steals your trash?” I ask. I turn the doorknob.
“It’s my trash, I don’t want anyone looking at it,” she whispers.
Cruise brochures and health insurance papers describe the Twilight Years—the phase when you’re too old to work but too young to drop dead—as potentially the best years of your life. Old people can finally reap the benefits of what they’ve sown—children, retirement pensions, social security, friendships— unless they’re like my grandma, a friendless money squanderer whose children can’t stand her. She used to be tactful and friendly, but that façade wore away years ago, morphing into paranoia mixed with suicidal comments.
“I’m so tired of living,” she sighs over the phone.
“Come on, it’s not that bad. You have like twenty years left. Why don’t you go to church, or volunteer somewhere?”
“I’m too old to go to church,” she complains.
My grandma’s an Evangelist who watches ladies with pancake makeup and blue hair preach about Jesus. She donates to TBN, so sales representatives fill her answering machine with messages. I guess she likes the social interaction. When someone faints on stage during Sunday worship, claiming to be cured, she’s really touched. Her version of Faith is an understanding that as long as she only goes outside to check the mailbox, God will continue
to deliver Social Security checks.
My mom and I are packing up Grandma’s belongings because she’s moving into a nursing home. Mom says she’s not officially senile, but she can’t live alone anymore. The apartment smells fishy. The old blue carpet is crunchy with dried crumbs of canned cat food. Years of grease are smeared on the stovetop. The oven is a closet full of pots and pans she couldn’t wash. I clear out the kitchen cabinets, filling trash bags with Tupperware and old plastic forks and spoons. There are about 400 ketchup packets in the drawer by the sink.
Grandma’s in the bedroom instructing my mom what to pack or throw away. Every few minutes she calls to me, “You haven’t thrown anything away, have you?”
“I’m just boxing stuff,” I yell back as I tie up two more trash bags. I put a few things in open boxes to prove I didn’t chuck everything.
Back in the bedroom, there’s a pile of old bras that Mom wants to toss out. Grandma’s so mad she’s crying.
“These are my things, why are you telling me what to do with them?”
“These bras are from the ’60s. I’ll get you new ones,” Mom says.
The only way to get packed is to put her in another room. I bring her out to her beloved armchair.
“Stay out of this,” she tells me.
Mom and I unclog a closet while Grandma sorts magazines in the living room. I find a jewelry box. It’s full of rhinestone brooches, gold-plated clip-on earrings, with some fine things mixed in—a strand of pearls, lapis lazuli bracelet, small diamond pendant, and two tarnished rings.
“That’s my great-grandfather’s old ring,” my mom says. “I always wanted it.”
“What’s this one?” I ask, attracted to the ruby.
“That was your great-grandmother’s,” Mom says.
“You should have it,” she adds, under her breath as if it’s an illegal thought.
“You take that one,” I say. We’re excited to have real family heirlooms. They’re rare in our family. We slide the rings into our purses.
“What are you two doing in there?” Grandma calls, and I take the jewelry box out to show her.
“Here’s your jewelry. I’m putting it in your carry-on.”
“You should never have touched that! It’s none of your business.” She grabs the box and rummages through to see what’s missing.
“We’re here to help, and you accuse us of thievery. That’s it!” I yell, heading outside to smoke a cigarette. But first I pull the ring out of my purse and put it on so she can see. She’s too busy looking into the box to notice.
“Just get out,” she calls after me. “I’m sorry you have such a bitch for a mother.”
I have absolutely no faith that some god will redeem my grandma for her ill manners, but at the same time, I don’t think she’ll burn in hell. I do believe I have a right to inherit some piece of history, some birthright. When you’re born, you grow up having faith in the people who raise you, even if they’re crabby and psycho. I figure you should get some proof you belong to them, like a ring, or a few photos. It’s strange how confessional and indignant one can become while gazing into a gemstone’s facets.
A few weeks after my grandma moves away, I eat Chinese food at a Szechwan restaurant in Chinatown and get a fortune cookie: Faith is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. I think about twilight while I crunch on a chewy mushroom called Cloud-Ears. Out the window, streetlights become more and more glowey and reflective, and cars begin to flip on their headlights.
The Peking ducks hanging in a window across the street grow fiery and luminescent as the heat lamps behind them become orange spotlights in the darkness. Ordering my next drink, I think of all the drinks mixed to look like twilight: Tequila Sunrise, Singapore Sling, Blue Dragon (which uses blue curaçao as its bottom layer), Cape Cod, Long Island Iced Tea. Sunset drinks mimic their environment, which is profound considering they’re only beverages.
Twilight is the most beautiful time because you have only darkness to compare it to. Twilight precedes death. Twilight, when things are visually reversed, is the ideal time to exhibit faith in something. Twilight is a time to stop being skeptical. I guess this Transcendentalist view allows for the worship of natural wonders. It beats praying with some blue-haired lady on TV. Once a day you have faith that the universe isn’t totally evil, that there are things beyond your control, and you might as well stop to appreciate them.
I hope I can appreciate my grandma before she dies.
After I get the fortune cookie, I call my mom on the phone and ask why Grandma is such an evil bitch.
“Don’t call her that,” Mom says.
“She called you a bitch,” I say.
“She’s had a hard life,” Mom begins. I’ve heard Grandma’s Louisiana swamp stories before, so I’m not in the mood to rehash how she couldn’t even afford toilet paper. I don’t want to hear about how her family used to take day trips to go see the whippin’ posts at the port where the slave ships used to dock. That’s what Grandma used to tell me—but then I remember that this ring I’m wearing belonged to one of those backwater people, and I feel ashamed.
“Are we white trash for stealing the rings?” I ask, hoping she’ll say, Yes, we are going to rot underground for this one, just so I can feel honest.
“No. That ring is yours. Grandma would want you to have it. I could call her right now, tell her you have it, and she’d be thrilled.” Mom may be right, but I think she’s wrong. Grandma would hate me.
“Maybe we should call her and confess.” Then I read Mom the fortune, and mention that Grandma’s in her twilight years. “She doesn’t have much faith in us.”
“Neither do you,” Mom says. I breathe hot air on my ruby ring and polish it on my jeans before changing the subject.
My dream after the fortune cookie, after the phone conversation about who’s evil and who’s white trash, involves a ghost murderer floating beside me as I row through mandrake roots and Spanish moss in a skinny, winding canal. The air smells dank like rotten Band-Aids, plasticine and poisonous. The killer leads me to his lair and chops me up. Fingers come off one by one. I lie face down in red, bloody water. My extremities waft off to shore where baby gators can fight over them.
I see creatures swimming beneath me. The water’s colors are stratified like a twilight sky: red, orange, pink, green, blue, black. Crabs crawl by. Long eels slither across my peripheral vision. Fish, crawdads, and mosquito larvae hook back and forth, back and forth. But I don’t care, because I’m only parts now.
A manatee swims up close and sniffs me with his big, whiskered snout. His skin is beautiful and gray. My eyes open wider to see him clearly, and he gives me a brush with his paw. He’s my first friend in the afterlife, a savior much more appealing than any god. No, he doesn’t represent my grandma, the murderer does. I think of sailors mistaking sea cows for mermaids after long, lonely voyages at sea. Sea cows are like underwater angels, especially with their feathery flippers. I wake up wondering, Is he my mom, my dog, a cigarette, some beer, a fortune in a cookie, pretty mixed drinks, the darkening sky, Chinatown, or the ring?
It’s true. I have no faith in us. I stole a family heirloom. I drank beer and smoked while I wore it. My mom convinced me to do it. When I think of Grandma, I think of a woman possessed by the devil. I picture her head twirling 360° over and over on her shoulders. Then I picture myself possessed by a demon I don’t even theoretically believe in. I sinned. The manatee saved me. We’re all sinners, my idiotic swamp relatives too.
ANIMAL PARTY
I used to play a lot of Burgertime. I was living by myself in the Mojave Desert, and coyotes had just eaten my cat. Burgertime is a Nintendo game where the player is Chef Pepper, best burger-maker in the world. Chef Pepper positions buns so that lettuce, tomatoes, and yellow cheese will fall onto them from outer space. Since the game design is primitive, the ingredients are chunky and squared and the colors are flat. The lettuce doesn’t have the real thing’s multiple shades of green. The buns are s
olid brown, and their rounded edges look zigzaggy, as if they’re cross-stitched. Since Burgertime is my favorite video game, I sometimes think I should embroider a quilt covered with hamburgers and Chef Pepper’s arch villains: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. Quilts are also useful weapons in the fight against loneliness.
At first it didn’t seem like I’d be lonely in the desert, what with so many critters around. The day I moved in, I walked barefoot on the patio and got stung by red ants. The ants were the color of my burgundy toenail polish. If I stood still, they circled my feet and prepared to ascend my ankles. The colony was so extensive that I felt like I should’ve petitioned their queen for the right to live there.
Then a fruit bat moved in. He flew in the window one night while I sat on my couch in the dark watching thunderstorms in the distance. The lightning cracked, making neon hairline-fractures in the sky, only to reassemble in clouds that glowed on and off like a lightbulb with an old filament. The bat flew up to my ceiling and perched upside down. When I turned on the light to see its reflective nocturnal eyes, it looked back in a gentle way that I interpreted as happiness to see me. The bat lived there for two weeks, munching on insects in the rafters.
At one point a praying mantis lived inside my curtain folds. It started out tan, an inch long, then grew three inches while turning bright green. It would crawl out of the curtain to perch in front of me when I stood at the sink washing dishes. It seemed like my mantis loved me, or at least was curious. In desolate regions, animals and humans have to band together for company and social interaction, I guess.
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