Queen Elizabeth II
People forget I was a child once, too. People forget a lot of things. They forget their brothers are dying for them. They forget their sisters are being raped. They forget the man on the street dying from frostbite. They forget the children in India who go hungry, wade is cesspools. I cannot. Do enough. I have failed. I sit in my expensive home with my conservative suit. I sip my afternoon tea unmolested. But I do not forget my duty. But there is only so much. They don't advise I act on my conscience.
Because of that, sometimes I feel like a terrible woman. Sipping tea, two lumps, I look at the pictures of those who came before and led. I have been relegated to tea and shaking hands with dignitaries. I am not to be a human. I am not to be them, the lesser. Use my power to make a difference. The difference I have made is like the sugar cubes. A few lumps. So, in a small way, I listen and act. But that's not what the people want. They want a queen. They don't know what they are asking for, or they would not.
I take the wheel, look firmly at the men watching me in Saudi Arabia. I look at them with my firm face, practiced look of stability. Reassurance all is well. I turn on the blinker and push on the gas. I have forgotten being queen can be fun. I look so strange behind the wheel. I'm to be in the back, behind bullet proof dark glass. I'm supposed to roll down the window and wave my hand, cupped back and forth. But I don't. I take the wheel. I do not smile and hit it. I am reduced to small things. I press on the gas easily or I will run over someone in the crowd. And off we go in a black truck. One small step for woman. One huge step for womankind. Tomorrow, I will sit surrounded by paintings of royalty and sip my tea. I will be above others. I will have a good life. All the things one can want. And I will not listen to my conscience. Maybe sometimes, if the world is lucky. Do you feel lucky? I am enough as I am for them. They don't know what they do. Empower me to drink my tea servants deliver. I could tell you so much, but I won't, because you would hate me.
In the bath, I hatch my next plan quietly, while no one can listen or see the smile that slowly raises my cheeks. Tomorrow, one small step.
Salome
When I dance, my body floats up, and I soft shoe on vapor, twirl in the air, drop like rain, drip by drip, and up again. Tink tink tink go the small cymbals on my hands. My hips follow the wind, this way and that, around the room. To watch me is not to see me as beautiful, but to see the unfathomable moving through us. My stepfather is king. My stepfather said I could have anything I wanted. I could have the sun, the moon, the stars. Because I dance on clouds. I tell myself it is not his lust. The way my hips sway, the jewel in my navel moving in time with his pulse.
I have never had a choice before, power. And so, I asked my mother what to wish for: to live forever, to eat Baklava and not gain weight, to fly around the world, seeing there is all to see, and flying back again.
She shouldn't have asked what she did of me. She shouldn't have asked. She knew what she was doing to me. What I thought. If the new god is real, I'm damned to burn forever. If the new god is real. And I am afraid. Afraid he is. Guilt eats at me. That never happened with the other gods. I can no longer trust my mother. I beg forgiveness from the new god and his followers. Their eyes are like swords. I have done a terrible thing, and bath after bath I do not feel baptized.
I dance, letting veil after veil drop. My tears smear my makeup, but that is part of the dance. My black eyes drip down my face down onto my chest down to my feet that only want to move because to stay immobile means to let the guilt eat me. So I spin, trip, fall to the ground, push myself back up. Too much wine now.
My mother is a hard woman to please, and with her glares and arched eyebrows, I learned to try. Or else. She sits on the throne next to my stepfather, her rings casting prism on the room's walls. I look at Herod. She arches her eyebrows. I look away. Then back. She frowns at me.
Now I know it is because I am young, and she is not. I know it is because Herod wants me and her not. My mother would kill me to take my place. And so given the opportunity, she did. The new god would not forgive such an insult. Our enemies...
All I wanted was love. Not too much to ask. A lot to ask. So I said, "What should I request, mother?"
I give you me, my present, my wish, anything you chose.
She relished the question, the power, licking her lips, sipping her wine. And then she smiled. Such an ugly smile with upturned lips and saliva dripping. She pleased Herod and killed me with one stroke. Leaning toward me, she sank her eyes into me like claws. She said, with eyes burned open, "Ask for the head of John the Baptist." And I did.
Joseph
I made all the furniture in this house. It's also my trade. I like to smooth the wood out, feel the knots, the waves of lines. Something about trees. Quiet, blown by the wind. An oak's leaves rustling. I go out into the forest, run my hands along the bark, look up. Blue sky. I have been a worried man, made small by trees.
You don't hear much about me. Mainly my wife. People pray to her, as if she could grant them salvation. She cannot. Neither can I. I have no answers. Only quiet.
So, Mary came to me. I was in my shop. She said she was pregnant. Who would believe we had not had relations? I took her away from Nazareth. I took her and spent what little I'd saved. I took her and brought her finally to Bethlehem, where too tired to go on, we looked for a place to stay. I am a man of honor and married Mary. The story of us is personal. I won't discuss it here.
I taught my son the trade. I call him my son although he'd deny it. I raised the boy. I like to think I taught him something. I like to think I taught him patience by teaching him to listen to the wood as you smooth it. The story of knots, rings, bug holes. One has to listen to hear the wind rustle the leaves, the branches creak. I respect the wood. Smooth, I run my hand along it.
At the temple, my son left us. We left him. We were worried. He scolded us for it.
Not long after the temple incident, I was carving a bowl when my arm began to hurt. My son ran into my shop but stopped at the door and looked at me as I fell over, face down in the dirt, silent. He did not try to save me, but I felt the peace of the wood and it was okay to let go. It hurts a man to leave his responsibility. But honestly, who cared if I did? Mary would be fine. Jesus would be fine. The other children. I would only get a few mentions in the Bible. Joseph, unfather. Joseph, lonely guy. But I could hear the woods, trunks creaking, leaves rustling. He held me. I let go.
They buried me under a Sycamore whose trunk was thick, knotted, and old. With the rough bark, the termites, the woodpeckers. They buried me where I could become part of the bark, or the marrow, or the sap, a leaf, water reaching toward the blue yellow light.
True Fiction: A Pseudo Autobiographical Chapbook in Three Parts Page 2