Girl Act

by Kristina Shook

  “Action speaks volumes. My father hasn’t moved on. How do you feel about that?”

  “He’s a slow learner—”

  “My God, how can you criticize him? While you’ve been happy here, he’s been ALONE,” I shouted, interrupting her, hoping for once that she’d get it.

  “I’m sorry I missed out on your high school graduation, your college, Los Angeles. Your first time at everything,” she said.

  “I’m talking about my father,” I said, like she didn’t understand English.

  “I’m sorry I missed out on your life experiences.”

  “I’m talking about him!”

  “No, you,” she said.

  “You’re heartless, and you’re wrong,” I screamed.

  “You’ve got two choices: forgive me, or hate me forever,” she said, as if my aunt had told her to say that to me, and she walked out. I pulled Aunt Helen’s box of ashes out of my LV suitcase and I threw it onto the tiled floor.

  “You’re wrong, you’re wrong,” I shouted. Then I rushed over to the box (that was now crushed) and I picked it up. I held it and I cried so hard.

  The next morning, I didn’t get up. When my mother came to see if I wanted breakfast, I told her I was too tired to eat. For most of the day I stayed in bed, I felt so depressed that I just didn’t want to get up. How could I forgive her for this? How could I? How could my Aunt Helen want her ashes spread in a circle around my mother’s two-room, unpainted house? How could she want to be left far from my father and me? And why near my mother? Why her?

  Toward the late, late afternoon, I got up and walked barefoot all over the colorful handmade-tiles my mother had made over the years. I couldn’t figure anything out and I was too angry to eat.

  Okay, so then I had a Star Wars movie moment: I thought about the scene where Luke Skywalker (what a fantastic last name) was being trained by Yoda. And Luke’s not certain about the ‘Force’ so he asks, “But how do I know the good side from the bad?” And Yoda says to him, “You will know when you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.” That scene just kept playing in my mind over and over—and then I knew I was about to fully understand it.

  I walked over to my LV suitcase figuring I should at least put on clean underwear. And that’s when I saw it: the orange post-it. It said I love you, Tristan. I smiled. It was so sweet, and so needed. Wow, I had him; I wasn’t in the past anymore. I had an old house, and love—that was what I wanted. I was sorry my father hadn’t gotten a happily-ever- after, but there was still time for a sequel. I marched over to the potter’s wheel and noticed the drawings next to it, designs for future tiles. There were photos of Panama (the coffee beans, flowers, and fruit), and then I spotted a photo of me as a baby sleeping, and one of me standing on a chair with no clothes on at age six. And then there was a photo of me and my father, posing in front of the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park when I was twelve. My father’s hair was long and he had the beginnings of a professor’s beard, and I had my hair in pigtails and was wearing a pink and white dress with white clogs. My mother had a photo of us—not what I expected.

  Okay, okay, so my Aunt Helen had wanted me to let go of my past, my disappointment with my mother; she had wanted me to know that life is imperfect most of the time. I looked down at the post-it from Tristan in my right hand. I knew I would frame it. I sighed out loud, a deep sigh, like a breath waiting to get out of me.

  After that, I got dressed and headed out to greet the six dairy cows, happy knowing that they wouldn’t get slaughtered for a hamburger. I went up to each one and said, “I’m letting go of my past, I’m no longer allowing myself to fill up with rage, or regret, or sadness. I am at peace with my past. I feel goodness all around me.”

  Then I found my mother lying in a natural twine hammock near her unpainted two room house.

  “Did you rest?” she asked, eagerly.

  “I did more than rest, I feel 100 percent better!”

  “Try the other one,” she said, pointing to Santiago’s hammock.

  “Okay,” I said, and I lay in it.

  “I made them, sometimes we sleep in them,” she said proudly.

  “You never knew you were an artist, did you?” I asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You’re who you always wanted to be” I said, and she grinned at me.

  After a few minutes of swinging in her handmade hammock, I said, “I’d like to do the ash ceremony right now.”

  I felt filled with emotions, and ready to honor my aunt—because she had truly had a hand in raising me—in a real, profound way, with one-of-a-kind experiences.

  “Let’s,” she said.

  I raced with my empty stomach back through the cow pasture and into the potter’s cabin, and I grabbed the smashed box of ashes. My mother was standing by her front door, I raced back to her. Fortunately Santiago was working in the coffee bean fields, which was perfect timing, because the ceremony needed to be just with us.

  My mother passed me a letter that Aunt Helen had sent her a few months before.

  “This is what she wanted read as part of the ceremony,” she said softly.

  “You read it, while I make a loop around your house with her ashes” I said, because I was too scared to read it.

  My mother read the following: “Here my ashes shall blend with the earth, the wind and the air. May those whom I’ve loved, know that I love them forever and ever. And that love in a memory can fill up the moments. Cherish and forget me not.” Over and over she read it, until I had completed the circle and we were once again in front of my mother’s front door.

  We went inside and ate the meal that she had saved for me, and I felt so un-angry, so un-hurt, and so un-sad. That night, we played checkers, Old Maid and tic-tac-toe, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid and it was so much fun.

  All Sunday, my mother and I just hung out, talking and eating. She even taught me how to pick coffee beans, and how to throw clay on the potter’s wheel. I felt so glad that I had come to meet her again, and so relieved that I had Tristan, Gabriel, my father, Shadow, and Twist to be with stateside.

  On Monday morning, I flew back to the United States. Wow! I was in the JFK airport once again, and as I was getting off the plane, my cell phone rang. Hurray, I was mobile. I could surf the web again, and Google for anything.

  “I’m going on a date,” my father’s voice said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Seems there are a number of random women seeking me out, accidentally, and nonchalantly.”

  “Oh,” I said. Madge the matchmaker hadn’t wasted a second.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “For what?” I sheepishly asked.

  But my father didn’t answer. Ha ha, he knew I wasn’t done trying to get him a happily-ever-after. Blame it on the movies, it’s not my fault—some of my favorite films are the ones that end happily-ever-after.

  Tristan was waiting outside the terminal, in front of his Land Rover, wearing dark blue jeans, a black t-shirt and work boots. Can it get any better? No, it can’t! I’d come full circle at last. And now it was my Breakfast at Tiffany’s moment, and I took it. He kissed me, and when our lips parted, I looked into his dark brown eyes and I asked, “Did I tell you how blissfully happy and in love with you, I am?” Okay, so in my own words—but I said it more or less like Audrey Hepburn had as Holly Golightly in the movie, and I meant it.

  THE END

  As in my happily-ever-after!

  Kristina Shook was born in New York City into a wonderful, struggling, bohemian art community. Photographed 1-18 as a documentary by her mother. A full-scholarship graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, New York). Master’s degree in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute (Los Angeles). She dwells in LA & NYC. *This is her 2nd novel, (first novel Donna Day sits on a shelf). Look out for her 3rd novel Ava Anderson: Case of the Strippers (mystery series). www.kristinashook.com

  “S
ome of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.”

  — Elizabeth Lowell, Remember Summer

  Author photo by photographer Alex Chemerisov

  Book Cover Designer Christine K

  eBook conversion by ebookadaptations.com

  Heartfelt thanks to my editor

  Huge thanks to actress Jennifer Emmaline for proof reading