Book in a Week [or 10 days, 2 weeks tops] March 9-10,2009

- for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
I go to the restroom, washing my hands, my face, my teeth, or there only to see the image above the running water - the mirror image of my face, me looking at me. My eyes lock with my own eyes. There upon my face is ever face flashing, the flashing of every face I have ever seen, the faces of those I’ve never met but words I’ve read, their script written across my face. And the face of the gardener I said a high-pitched ‘hello’ to as I walked the dog the morning after the rain. The next door neighbor, his face, talking up to me as I puffed a cigar and listened to my friend’s words through the cell phone. The face of the lobbyist I once joked with over long business conversation and interviews made on my company’s line. My father, my mother, the woman my father married and their biker friends that revved their harleys and choppers when they proclaimed “I do. I do.” - The Annihilator, Preacher, Pastor, the Bandit decked out in his wheel chair. The face from the first daydream I ever had that distracted me from my teacher’s words, and yes, Mrs. Haw’s face too. Mamacita, a portrait, ghost-like, hovering above my features - my grandfather, never met, never given hope that he’d be walking the streets of gold after this world has given up on containing me and truly let me fly free. The Polish priest, Wieslaw, round features, round nose, wavy black hair, the streaks of white making a strong thrust for domination. “You are a good woman,” he told me in Warsaw, he says it again, now in the mirror, now spoken as a part of me, myself speaking to me. My brother, my brother, the lady my Virgen de Guadalupe, as a tattoo on the forearm of the man who passed by walking into the movie theatre, his dark skin my own, his ink staining holy features over me.
I was baptized once in the pool in my backyard. I had just turned fourteen. A Lutheran pastor and a Canadian youth minister dunked me under the clear, chlorinated water - in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Amen. I wore shorts, Hawaiian print board shorts and a Baptist church camp t-shirt to remain modest in the eyes of the church and the eyes perchance looking from above. My stick like body, devoid of all curves except shoulders and head, with a t-shirt clinging to my ribs. In the books it is written, “Lindsey Hope Bright was baptized into the Christian church on August 14, 1999.” Place, time, setting, none are specified. Now the pastors doubling as dunkers are looking at me, from me - I’m being baptized again, now in the waves of humanity. A thousand faces come over me, part of me, showing through me. The baptism happened everyday now. When I fix my hair or comb the black mascara brush through my lashes - I just high-lighted Rginald Brown’s eye, the first principal I ever worked under. His pretty eye winks back at me.
In them all, I am and they are. I touch my cheek and stroke the mirror, God is staring straight at me. I cry a tear, not all of the time, and Jesus weeps again. We are one, we are one with all the faces. And though I don’t see it, God sends a dove down and it lights up my face. He is well pleased.
It started when I was 19, the faces upon faces. The realization, divine revelation, why not? Close enough for me. The vision of my beautiful reality.
Sonic Youth, the Glass House, Pomona, California, July 20, 2004.
I turned 19 the day before, teenage years almost behind., Then, for some reason, I thought a person left years behing, after a certain click, both year and person fled opposite in the contrary gaze of Janus. A friend took me to the show, a birthday present. Really quite nice. Lauren Ashley Rutledge, my second roommate in college. Her face stretches my lines in the mirror and makes a fit that I can see. Songs are played, distrotion, a womanly looking man holding his arms, twisting back and forth in front of us, eyes always closed - he was the music’s. Let the music stop and the beat die, and he’d walk again, but the man would never again, if ever he once was, be a man walking alone. I wasn’t a fan, not of the man but of the band. I liked the one cd it’s a rule that a majority of teenagers are supposed to like - Goo. And I rocked myself as words came that I did and largely did not know, blaring into my ears released through speakers and set dancing by the launch of the amp’s vibrations.
All that was fine and some would even say dandy. I’ll say dandy, too. Then, I walked out, yes, I did. I walked out and with a brush and with a look, with a notice and heart lurch, my mind, my soul, every little part of me different.
The lights were on outside the Glass House. A warm summer night away from the cool breeze of the beach. I walked through the glass door, a boy walked through at the same time. Our arms swished together, fabric against fabric covering our young and delicate skin. He was my age, younger or older by dates that never mattered. Not in this night or those of my future I’m living and lived. My eyes searched up his features and then charged into his. It was a moment, maybe a tenth of a split of a moment, and he looked away, turning his head, walking with a group or just one other, the way away from me. His hair was dark and so were his eyes, the same as every boy I think about for years at a time. His skin was fair, it looked soft. His skin was shiny, some hormone obsessively occuppied with creating oil to strategically place around his fine face. There were shades of red and pink over a white canvas, a candy cane sucked by a child. And on his right cheek, the cheek he turned so quickly away from me, a tiny swirl of the Milky Way galaxy. Showing in pimples and zits, whiteheads and acne.
My spiritual stopped and changed and jumped a thousand leaps because of this boy, and this boy will never know.
I didn’t want to look away. I stopped in the motion of the exiting crowd, longing to look at him for as long as his steps would let me. I didn’t chase after him, only stared and glared. Probably looked like an obsessed stalker or a person who let their screws become all too loose. Maybe I was both. By some ordinance, I probably am both. I was drawn to that boy, an attraction that reached, and multiplied and leapt in my soul. There was beauty, the was truth splashed all across this boy’s face! I wanted to cradle his head in my hands and adorn each individual pipmle with kisses surpassing those given to Solomon by all of his wives combined.
The only reason I was attracted, am attracted, were the zits on his cheek, his one cheek, his right, oh so right, cheek. Beautiful, beauty - your flaw displayed fro the world to see, your weakness in front of all’s eyes.
“Ashley,” that was the name my friend wished to be called, “I have a crush on that guy over there. Look at him. So cute, so dreamy, so dear and wonderful.” I pointed and blushed and swayed my body like a little girl. She looked, but couldn’t see him all or closs - already lost to the corwd, to the night. Ashley shrugged.
When I sit on the sink counter and push the bridge of my nose together with my two forefingers, it is that boy’s black and whiteheads that exude puss. It is because of that boy that never wear foundation or concealer. I am tempted, especially when I’m going out, when my emotions are wavering, when I question my good looks. When I see those blemished on my face, I want to hide them, make them go away. Match goopy liquid with the color of my face - a ghostly white with hues of pink, shades of red - white man’s disease showing up everywhere. The first step to looking good is great, clear skin. That’s what the make-up artists to the stars tell me on TV. But when I think of mooshing on some skin colored liquid and powdering over it, the boy’s face looks back at me. Without his zits, his face never would have caught my faze. I can’t sabotage another human’s shot at revelation by smothering my face in cheap, fake skin. It’s our faults that bind us, human to human. It’s our faults that brought a god, God, to walk our land, to take our skin. This weakness makes 6 billion gods stumble around sea and land, across the whole globe. Heloise wrote to her lover Abelard, the scholar, I am greater in my weakness and therefore almost above you. We are alike, we aare weak. It’s no wonder I wanted to jump that boy - a man displaying his humanity. No apology. He was human after all that was all.
I wander and digress, losing my way in this story, but like life, what one way is there? The slogan of the Jesus Movement is now only seen on government signs for various downtown streets. It seems we’ve found too many ways, too many ways. I will choose one and release my words to march on it.
I leave the bathroom, face bare, whiter than the clouds on a sunny day., A pimple here, a ded from where I scraped the head off with my long finger nails. I know what my face looks like, the flaws that blare at people’s fce more than my dark blue eyes and black lashes. I don’t walk out with overpowering confifdence, but I hold my head somehow, someway, and I have a little smirk. I’m living true to ideals, and honestly beofre all the faces inside me.
It was in eighth grade, the year before I was baptized, that my mother chased me around the house, powder and brush in hand. Picture day. “No! It’s a lie! It’s a lie! Fake and plastic.” “That’s what I used to tell my mother,” and she brushed away, taking the shine my face. She paid for my clothes, my school and she’d be the one paying for my pictures. I let it slide, not borhtering to wash my face when I got to school. I hadn’t seen the boy, my boy, the crush of a life. Really, I thought in the mirror I loked better.
I’m older, there’s no more picture days, there’s no camera that can capture all my faces.
The faces are older now. I’m in a hotel, I forget the name. It’s in the Chisos mountains - the menu says the view is the best view out of all the restaurants in Texas. It’s not in the eyes of the beholder any longer. Big Bend Resort, sounds like it’s the name. The view is something else, I mean really, it’s something else. It’s the first time I’ve been there. The first time in my life I’ve seen the window in Big Bend National Park, past the little gap in the mountains, little peaks, mist around them, the flarind skirts of circling flamenco dancers. Mexico, there, somewhere on the other side. The disctinction of land, I haven’t learned to make. The sun is rising, maybe it has risen. Clouds are blocking the sun, lounging, sprawled over the mountain tops. Perhaps the therapeutic massage will make the land green. It’s coming season for greening to begin. In West Texas, the first week of February isn’t far from the first days of spring. After the thunder comes, the Apache woman a year or two ago told me, stop and get out of the car. Everyone must be pulled, time for the short and stocky to grow and the tall to reach the sky. The thunder hasn’t come yet, and I’m sharing a hotel room with my dad’s mother - Mamacita she makes me call her. Her older sister, Aunt Mimi is there, too. It’s some old timer, some pioneer’s reunion.
I’ve brought them out, first time either has left El Paso in three years. Aunt Mimi doesn’t expect to leave again. Five hours drive south. Mamacita pissing on the side of the car twice. I can’t see being raised without plumbing as an excuse. A sweeter more naïve gal might see the age of 90 being the reason, but I don’t buy that either. A part of it, maybe, is playing, but I see the eyes she rolls, darts, shoot my way. I know the eyes. She’ll give hell while she can, and I’m a living person. I’ll get her hell. These are the same eyes that look back at me from my own. I shudder and wash my hands and face again. Out, damn eye, out! But they’ll remain, forever. It is these eyes I seaerch, where is God? God? Any, one or all? I find none. I remember a tape, ole Lonnie Frisbee died of AIDS after the Jesus Movement got ways, he’s giving his testimony, screaming out, “God, if you’re really real, reveal yourself to me!” In these eyes, God, I’m waiting. I’m still waiting.
“Anybody need to use the john?” her voice is shrill, any expressive tone fluxuation vomes off as a shriek.
“No, I’m good.” I’m lying on the bed, the one furthest from the bathroom. Both women seemed impressed that I had made it through the night without taking a trip to the can. “You didn’t get up one time all night.” “I know, you just slept there.” So, now I’ve one the prize of bed by the window.
“No, we don’t need to go. You go ahead.” Aunt Mimi is assertive, almost fed up. Surprisingly, she’s also fully dressed.
“Nobody needs to take a piss?” Mamacita is standing by the bathroom door, not hunched over like many her age, but not straight as a board either. Her knees are bent for balance, for support, for lifting her own mighty and slight weight. She’s wearing underwear, black panties. She’s already flapped her fake tits in my face and she’s holding pajama’s to her wrinkled, waving, slacking skin, her flat chest left slightly exposed. In this state, the most helpless, unclothed, it’s the closest I’ve come to glimpsing God. But then she’ll speak, poof, vamoose. She’ll look, she’ll lift her legs over her head - she might not be able to hear like her 94 year old sister can, but she can bend and twist and flex a shit loadf more. Each rotation of the foot held above her body while she eats grapes on her back is a “take that” to Aunt Mimi. Don’t be fooled, fool, I know. I know. I swear. I swear it is.
“Lindsey, I’ve got a question for you,” I don’t know what to expect from her mouth. I don’t know what to expect from this trip anymore, every topic has been breached through tales of life and family - everything from douching to stealing a whore to abortions and a skull in the beans. “How does she stand herself?” a pause and finally I’m laughing. I can’t stop laughing, ole Aunt Mimi has started the laugh factory rolling. “I don’t see how she can stand herself.”
“Neither can I. I don’t think anyone can,” and I really, really, almost a tiny bit shamefully can’t. Respect your elders, respect those above you, respect and understand, those two, I pray, don’t go hand in hand. I can’t, not yet. Not again, before the trip, before this time. When I look in the mirror, her face always flashes, and by dern damn, it pauses. Same eyes, same nose, same small mouth and cheek bones. 67 years between us and still we look alike, everyone on the streets knows we belong to each other’s blood. Even so, when those beady blue eyes look at me, from her face or my own, where is God? Hello, Christ, are you going to reveal yourself? Why do I even care? I can roll on, go on. One life will stop another begin, and my maybe one might not be mine, maybe I’ll go on, rolling or flowing, falling or crawling, hell, maybe I’ll even be jogging.
It’s not only the boy, but yes, of course, he is part. This is waves, this is water, this is a river of life pouring out of me. Once I sang it made the lame to walk and the blind to see. Even opened prison doors and let the captives free. Well, who doesn’t flow in this river? So this boy is flowing, he’s rushing and then he’s wading, and then going on down, always a part, only a part.
I graduated college one year and 10 months after the boy - A.B. I left California, the southern part, by the beach, the land that contained the buildings of my small school. I left California the day after I walked across a stage set up at the fairgrounds. By the fourth of July, holiday of wars and freedom, I was in Old Faithful, being old faithful in a way to that old national park. Working, on a register in a gift shop. Cleaning before closing, dusting before opening. Before the boy, B.B., and then a year after, I didn’t want Yellowstone, no fucking menial job. Graduate school, yee hah, I had my one way. One way to life, one way to academia. Then I fubbed, I blubbed, I made a boo boo, something happened. The one way machine went haywire when I fell to my knees, silly girl that I am. “God, if you were Jesus and Christ was human, fully human, all human, make me all human, too. And if all these faces, these feet patting, these hands waving, clapping, shoved in pockets, if all are human, you must be there, too. Show me.” That was that, simple and short and sweet. But here’s the thing, the mistake of the blessing or the blessing of the blunder, it came from a heart, my own, and I was going to live by it, be true to my words, my prayer. What else was I supposed to live for? My one way was one of many by the time I lifted from knees. Since, I’ve been searching for God in all the places with any faces.
Day 2
> - Going to a Target restroom was probably not the best idea for a place to write. I always feel unsure and awkward in public restrooms, so I write fast, afraid that any second I’ll be discovered for what I am - a bathroom writer. Ah! - I’m sitting on the toilet with jeans on, toilet paper draped on the seat. The lid squeaked and I was positive the weight of my Levis was too much for the toilet to bear. This isn’t working, and I’m tired. Maybe the library is open. - In the library, probably a quarter past noon. Not going as planned. What does? Some things I’m guessing, for the people who plan. My own-I grabbed 4 books, poetry and Borges, something Dillard edited on memoirs. I’m on the round table facing a shelf of fiction books, E - F. I’ll open the books I took every now and then, look absorbed because I didn’t bring ear phones, even sans device, to alert the library patrons I’m zoned, in my own. There were two mormons outside, so you can understand my fear. A hill-billy shoo-bop rocker, the folks from the military, a man speaking to a woman with his hands, the greatest fear - the one the bike peddling suits were speaking to - I heard them say, “We can talk all day,” and the man in the striped polo staid and said, “You see, the Holy Spirit gives the gift of discernment.” “I can understand,” the dark haired suit finished his apple. The talkative talker walked in, “Hello, m’am. Good morning. How are you, miss?” None directed toward me, but still, heart pounds and pauses, head down, eyes away. Yes, there was God, gods waiting to use the public library - give us our pantheon! We must sort and consort. But they say to be fearful of them gods. I was. What would I say? Shit, I’d shoot the breeze. I know I could do it, but I’m tired, not finished, work to do. - <
There were faces all around, I didn’t know the names to any. My mind recognized them as man, woman, ?, curly boy, burly boy, big girl, blonde girl, not sure there and so on, so forth.
Day 2 in the big ole yellow walled park, at Mammoth, they told me it was training. An old register filled with monopoly money, the only item occupying the room. Then lunch would come, alone I’d go to the employee dining hall. And I thought I saw God, sitting there alone, a super jug chugger from Circle K by his hands, plastic and with a handle. Holds a good deal more than 32 ounces, I figure, I guess. He didn’t press it to his lips, he sucked from a straw, one that must’ve witnessed a year or so pass. I’m not sure he got any drink that way, the beige thickened saliva mixed with phlegm mixed with plaque mixed with crumbs mixed with shreds of meat mixed with bile mixed with chew. The outside thinning plastic wrinkled and crinkled. The build up blocking any puncture wounds. An analogy for the man’s own veins, I was too young to think that, then, even though really, I’ve always been old. He was set, broad and wide, a belly bouncing round over the binds of his pants. A t-shirt hanging over, letting a breeze come right on in. His hair, that’s what first got me. Wild, white, like straw bleached and dried stuck in an old pumpkin in all possible directions. It come round his face, reached his chest, looked like it irritated his upper lip. His lip, the challenge, the devil’s temptation. Not for being drawn or aroused, oh dear God, oh sweet Lord, have mercy! No. The temptation to think this man was not like Christ. What horrid monster those lips did purse over. The mouth would open, some piece of Jell-O surprise would squiggle-squish in. No matter the color, his teeth wouldn’t stain for an instance. They were mangled, taking their cues from his hair that this was not an ordered world and this universe was indeed chaos. They darted here or there, and now, were stuck still. With gooping crud dried on, his teeth screaming Scrape it off, man! Please, scrape it off. This shit ain’t right! We still got a fucking job to do! It was grey, in certain lights turning green or blue. Don’t ask yourself or me how I got into those lights, I’ll tell you, but cross yourself, you really might not want to know. That was the color of his teeth, that dark grey goo of on-coming death building a fortress upon his gums. Still, still, my vision, I was sure, was clear. What comedy and terror I now have when those teeth flash in the mirror. Part of me, oh me, oh my. Maybe always they’ve been or perhaps came about solely due to my own instigation.
Time for dinner, at 4 pm, when me and all the old men take our meal, I sat by him. Gather your gumption, Lindsey Bright, You’re on your own living life, make a choice and go, go, go. I don’t remember what I first said, but when he spoke back, I felt the hands of decay lurching at me. I smelled something rotting in there. Still, there he was, Christ somehow, similar somewhere there. Truth be told here, real quick, I didn’t see this because I’m any sort of a saint. A reader and an idealist and a big ole dork to boot is really what I am. So when I looked at this man, Richard Brautigan in his western outfit in the San Francisco park appeared. The face of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on the back of his novels. Three pictures all side by side. Father, son and the holy ghost - hot damn! And all in one? The luck. Who was I to look away? To shy away just because rotting physical neglect blared? No, no, I thought I was certainly in for a real treat.
“I’ve worked here several years,” he told me, reaching back, going for one of the tales of the forgotten old. “Started working first at Fisherman’s Bridge in 1968.”
“Really? No way.” 1968, a time I always wanted to be. I wasn’t, never would be, but this man was.
“How long you been here?” he continued to ask.
“Oh, I just got in. Still going through the training.”
“Ah. You going to stay at Mammoth or where’ll you’ll be heading off to?”
“Old Faithful in a few days.”
“Which place?” he asked with an interest and a wince.
Of course, he was drawn to me. A young woman, tight skin, even acting like he’s alive. I probably took him back years.
“I’m not sure. Don’t know.” Later I thought this answer, this sliver of spoken ignorance was my saving grace. Now, years later, who knows, I don’t know, big deal or not. I thought more then, felt a little different, it was how it was. I let my actions take me and my squeamish emotions rule my actions. So be it.
“Well, that’s a crowded place down there.”
“I bet a lot’s changed since you were first here.”
“It sure has.”
And we agreed to meet later, same day, still light out, but later for us old farty folks. At five or around six.
“So what brought you up here?” he asked, sitting outside the fancy old hotel. I answered by rambling on, bull-shitting the truth in nervous chatter.
“Wanted to leave, get away, really be around nature. You know?” Oh, I was deep alright. A regular thinker. The water in an endless well. He didn’t care.
He nodded and smiled - for me, goose bumps and swallow that nasty bile - then, “Do you know about this place? Here, let me show you around.”
And there it was, this meeting had become a date. This 70 year old didn’t see me as his granddaughter, not a young one to which he’d impart wisdom. His game was on, he was out to impress.
But there, still, was God, so clearly to me, through the likeness of Brautigan and Vonnegut.
We did the walking tour of historical Mammoth. I listened and nodded, “Oh really? How neat.” Boredom was coming, but the situation offered light intrigue. He read the sign in front of the old buildings, he read out loud, but I read faster to myself. I looked up and around, always sure to look amazed. Why did I care if I hurt his feelings? I don’t even remember his name. The Jews, some don’t say God’s name.
“Well, I’ll be, sir. Is that really so?”
When a hand of boredom has started its idle play, my tongue is always the first game it grabs, a wonderful source of thrilling endless thrills. Words flying, rearranging themselves. Meaning’s never sure until the landing.
“Wow, whoa, hey, do you think they ate people inside of there?”
“That was the old jail, from back when Ulysses’ troops were still here.” The signs, yet again. Oh bother.
“And on the prisoner’s tray, what was there? Indian meat? Prisoner’s bones? Did they only serve buffalo back then?”
He paid no mind and read the rest of the sign. Then guiding me to the next, like he was any type of guide.
“Do you want to go to the gateway of the park? Gardiner, Montana? I can show you around the town. Maybe get a beer?”
“I’m too young! Just too dern young. No drinkie drinks for me,” said in a nervous terror that I was excited to have.
“Well, how about an ice cream then?”
And I said yes to Summer Decay Santa Claus. He was still, perchance, the trinity there, though I was definitely beginning to have my doubts. It beat the signs and his voice with death’s scent pushing their words out as if that grey goop had crafted them all on his own.
To his car, out behind the workers’ dorms. The elk were nursing far away. There’s no longer moose enough to be in our way. And the buffalo, as many as they are, were treading the migration trail, south with them and they all went. I don’t know what type of car. It was older and the red paint was rusting. Inside, the seats in front had rugs, shag carpet, hanging over them. Wooden beads laid there that massage the butt. Everything inside was dust. It was a two-door, probably ‘78, it jerked as he shifted. I wasn’t sure he knew what the hell he was doing. Then it hit me, as we left on the winding road out of the national park, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even know this strange, rotting old man. I was going, puttering along in some trapezoid vehicle, wheeling over the roads. He was no longer reading signs. He was spurting out the information he’d learned from the employee packet. After working at the park over 30 years, good to know something was retained in there. The questions he asked, I could make them up, but I don’t remember. I was beginning to panic at the time, and simultaneously analyze my panic and subsequently laugh at it. Really, afraid this man would do something to me? My answers were curt and short. I think the real reason, I didn’t want to be there, stuck with him anymore.
“Sorry. Can’t have milk. Lactose intolerant.” “Oh yeah, well, I really have to watch my health right now. My blood results haven’t come back yet. The doctors really think I have AIDS. Guess, I’ll just have to wait and see and then live accordingly.”
“Really? Is that so?”
“Yes, sir, it is. Fingers crossed, I’ll make it ok.”
What I said was true, and I know I said it more times than ought. There wasn’t a need for anyone else but myself to know. But once I knew he saw me as an option for his old woman, my claws came out with mischief and I felt justified to fight this god, hah!
“There’s this program at the campground. One of the rangers’ informative campfire speeches. Really was planning on going tonight.”
“You want to go?”
“Don’t think I’d like it if I missed it.”
And we were driving back into the government’s sanctioned human/animal playground. And I mentioned having AIDS one more time, just in case he thought a grizzly campfire talk would get him some action. I suggested the event as my only way out. I had no weapon, no gun. I could jump from the car and tuck and roll. Paranoid fears, but man, I tell you, just glance at that old man’s hair. It’s a crazy world and crazier shit has happened. I couldn’t think why I was in here. The voice of my brother was in my head. Lindsey, you’re a girl. You can’t do the same stuff as us guys. Wandering about on your own. You’re gonna find yourself in a world of trouble. I was there, I must’ve been, in that world. This was trouble. So spit out AIDS one more time, yeppers, just might have that sexually transmitted disease.
He pulled the little crap box car around the tiny, coiled road into the campground. It was dark, and it was a full house. There were two young men in front of me. This was it. I was woman. Hear me roar you Vonnegut-Brautigan impostering mother fucker! And, goodness, he was still Christ, and I was letting the devil slide right on into my veins. He would speak - I’d have a short answer or pretend not to hear. But to the boys on that long log bench, I was all ears and hair twirls, little giggles and sweet arm touches. “I do hope you two gentlemen enjoy your time here and I hope I see you before you trek on back to Canada.”
“You have a good time yourself. We’ll look you up in Old Faithful.” But they never did. And the car ride back, only five minutes, was still and quiet.
“I had a good time. I hope to see you later. You said you’d be in Old Faithful, right?”
I didn’t answer. And maybe it was just for that that it was he, him, old man smell like dying but hey, sweetheart, does that make me any less human? Any less Christ? Perhaps you forgot. Christ died and then appeared to the ladies. Well, him, he did look me up. And call. And come. Karma of some kind. But fear, awkwardness, my God, the unknown. I went into hiding, highest level of avoidance code on and activated.
On the phone, “Umm. Gonna be busy. Then, too. Yup, then, too. Yeah, guess I have made a real go of it up here.” click off before too much goes on.
He was there, I went to the back. Took a smoke break without ever having smoked. And when I saw him elsewhere in the park, walking alone, like the buffalo when he’s about to die, I ducked and prayed the rapture’d zip me up right then.
Son of a bitch, is it any wonder I still see him poppin up over this face? The god I raised up and hacked down without ever having bothered to give him a reason. Sorry, man. That fear, sometimes, it gets you, gets you, gets you.
And the faces are still old that I see talking in front of me, in the old wild and old west’s mountain. “People out there just lived by the law of the west.” A fault, a transgression, heaven on high forbid a backstabbing, and it’s taken care of, right then, there, on the spot or week(s) later, if planning need be done. Problem solved in such a way. Now that old western code is dying. So are those who carried it for so long. I know. I see. I’m not blind. Not completely. I’m praying on my knees. My grandmother, Mamacita, and Aunt Mimi, they must be dying, too. But that, them dying, that’s just unthinkable. I was raised women in this family never die. We were gods alright, immortal, conniving old bitches. Circumstances, health, those points are virtually moot. Women out last the men. And then they exhaust their age, out live by far too far the ages for which they were meant.
Mamacita knows it. She used to talk more about death, talk about giving all her things away every other day. “Lindsey, like anything you see? Want to take it from me? Can’t take it where I’m going.” Those words probably spoken in some mocking manner. “I’m dying. Going on to heaven.” But now, it’s coming. Everything’s end is being brought to the doorsteps. And it’s me, I’m going to be a part of what’s left of her. Important because I’m the only woman, I might outlast the odds. Important because I bear her relief, her shape, her semblance. She knows it. This she knows, too.
She took us back to Marathon, some town, not battle of the Greeks. Not much more than some rich and artisan resort and a hunter’s get away. Pronghorn, whitetail, Mamacita, herself, sports a horny toad on her back. Some of the grades at the public school only have a handful. The grave yard, a windmill turning, divided in two sections - gray and color. It’s Catholic and everything other. They say Mexican and then the white. No grass is growing on or by or over any of the plots. The windmill keeps on turning. Loose dirt, hard rock, covers Mamacita’s family, the Henderson family, going back to my great-great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson H., mason, the last in his family. The rest, god bless ’em, found Mary Baker Eddy.
“Lindsey, come over here,” this is before she had decided to pop a squat on sacred ground. “Come over here and look at this memorial stone. All the names of the kids, myself and my brothers and sisters.” And on that rock, the rock for the dead, is Mamacita’s very own little pride and joy, perhaps her last, perhaps one that will forever remain, live longer, longer than the whole lot of us.
JANE, engraved plainly - 1918 - ETERNITY
Is she a prophet? Dear God, let it not be. Is she conjuring up dangerous spirits, playing in times made only for the immortals? Has she been one all along? Or has she ventured out of her league? Now treading hot water? Her gumption. Her pride blaring in a sacred place’s face - I’m living forever you sorry case of pathetic sons of bitches! Try and stop me! According to her, they long have.
“See there, Lindsey. I know Tom probably tried to claw it out.” the edges around her mythic word are worn, chipped, coloring to red, somehow. Did it mean eternity would bleed? “Surprised they’ve left it in. Been there over 30 years.” She gives a laugh, a hyena screech. What was there prior, false prophets had placed. 1918-1972. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It didn’t take her long to break her binding stone time chains.
Will it be pride before the fall? Tough cookies, Mamacita, we all have to die. All will eventually pay the piper. Sitting in this hotel room, I really don’t think so. That doesn’t seem to be this particular case. She must be a prophet, she’ll live forever. Her simony and black magic, or white it very unlikely might chance be, it’s transferred her to me. I’m a host body, chosen to carry the soul of the dying and eventually dead, just not me. She did not misstep her grounds. It was not blasphemy she chiseled in the yards. She’s a god amongst God, and though for the life of me I don’t see it, Christ has traveled across her face. ETERNITY, the residue that remained. ETERNITY - you greedy ole broad. What foolishness to not want to die. Wait, is Christ really still there? Or do some truly sell their very own soul to the devil? A saying come to life in darkness, blood and fire. This is poof balls, stupid vary colored gumballs. I’m talking about my grandma. Her ouiji boards and spirit writing, they didn’t turn her into anti-human. She turned herself. Oh mouth hands, stop. This is grandma! No, Mamacita. No, she’s human. Somehow. And by god, God help me, I’m gonna see you in that wrinkly mean old biddy’s face.
“Has she always been this way?” I ask Aunt Mimi, we’re talking just like gaggling high school girl friends.
“As far as I can remember. She’s the baby. A spoiled brat. She was a mamma’s girl. Always in the kitchen, while I was sweeping, cleaning, ironing. She learned to cook. I worked.” And lawdy, the dirt starts pouring.