Christmas morning. I open an alarm clock from Santa. It wakes me with my mp3 player. Santa doesn’t need to give me the receipt. I already paid off the card.
Hard beat. Heart beat. I bolt up sweating. Blood on my pillow. I’ve bitten my lip. Hand shakes as I thumb the volume up. My CK Playlist.
“Why do we crucify ourselves?
Everyday... I crucify myself.
Nothing I do is good enough for you...
and my heart is sick of being in chains.”
They wake me at 5 a.m. to tell me they’ve replaced me with a white grrl. They go out of their way to tell me the name of her live-in boy-toy lover. They use newly hyphenated words like financial-risk and quantifiable-liability and loss-and-win-ratio. They use saccharine words like pay-off and flat-fee.
Because I couldn’t conjure a lie and look like I wanted a guy between my legs.
“Where’s the chemistry, EJ?” I wasn’t aware this was AP Science. Do I have to retake the lab or can I get by with just the multiple choice? Can someone text me the answers? I was too busy not going down on my grrl to study.
Chemistry. Snap. You’re looking at the camera. Strawberry curls. Snap. You’re looking at her. Pupils wide. Snap. She didn’t mean to send me the photo. Not that photo. Oh baby. That’s chemistry. Catch-my-breath crackle. *shaking my head* No, I can’t fake that. They’re right.
So take back the Emmy and I’ll stop phoning it in.
“Every finger in the room is pointing at me.
I wanna spit in their faces
then I get afraid of what that could bring.
Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now.”
They call back at 6:15 to tell me they’ve changed their minds. The trades have printed a good review of an earlier version (one with me) and pulled me out as the heart-and-soul. They’d need an exorcist to replace me now. They’d need a voodoo high priest, poppet. Tammy is the only female EVP. They are standing around her, no doubt, clustered like vulture-slash-voyeurs while she croons to me. A lover’s voice. Intimate and immediate. Like asking me to stay in bed and touch her one more time. Tammy says, “I want things between us to be like they were.” I have never slept with Tammy. “Why do you put us through this, Angel?” I have never clubbed with Tammy. “Why do you make us do this?” Rape me? “Why can’t you just enjoy this?” Oh... Lord... I scramble out of bed and vomit before I reach the bathroom.
“Why do we crucify ourselves?
Everyday... I crucify myself.
Got enough guilt to start my own religion.
Where are those angels when you need them?”
And I yank the player off the alarm clock connector cord and grab my keys with my other hand. My jacket is somewhere, there, now here, over my shoulders, heavy like armor, like anger. The door slams behind me. A baby wakes. I don’t... can’t stop. “Not my baby...” Means so many things. New bike roars in the crisp morning. Rock her forward and throw my helmet into the corner of the garage. Bolt her out and flash on straddling you, my head thrown back, crying your name over and over and over again.
Some stand and some crumble. Some shout and some weep. The lions roar differently for every ear. “Do you hear your lions?” Grandmother used to say. “Is that why there is fire in your eyes?”
I don’t wait well. The den is cold. I step out of the darkness. Never wait for the angels. Christ is always right here... and my heart beats. If my heart beats, I want to be fighting. I don’t lay it down until He knocks me down. And He has certainly had to before.
“Not very stable... is she?” Hm. Make believe? Misheard? Rumor and innuendo? Lucky I don’t need someone to sign post my path. The white-washing of faith should be a sin... if it already is, someone should send out a letter.
Five things I'm dying to confess... but never will:
1) Leave me.
“Don't know if I could stand
another hand upon you.
All I know is that I should.”
And every moment I have spent with you comes into clarity as the truly dangerous and destructive force that it is. How you have torn my life apart and I have fallen to pieces like a scattered jigsaw puzzle on the floor. Your hands made me tremble while you remade me yourself, and I caught my breath at the picture of me, no reflection in the mirror, a magical creature. Creation and destruction, my Shiva. Your demolition of my life was more welcome than wind on the ocean and lightning over the waves. Your danger is sweeter than spring air and burns brighter than any dawn. Wreck me, take me apart, and hand me to Him.
“Give me life. Give me pain.
Give me my self again.
Oh these little earthquakes...
Here we go again.
Doesn't take much to rip us into pieces.”
Zero to seventy-five.
Forgot my wallet at home. Forgot the city limits behind me. Travelling north I’m moving toward everyone I love. I’m running after the rain.
Today is the Sabbath. I close my eyes.
Eighty. Eighty-five.
2) I have forgotten his voice.
More than a thousand miles away, my family is sweating. Hard work on the Sabbath clears the mind for Christ. They are hauling, hammering, cleaning, scrubbing. They are caring for animals and children. They are loving one another. They are whispering names in the quiet of the night. They are one heart even when shattered. They are a flock of angels, in all states of grace. They are alone, together, their own, and mine. All at once. All now.
Ringed by trees. Evergreens in every green holding up the sky. Strong bodies move across their earth, that region of Christ, living the Word. Only there does the Sabbath exist for me. While strangers pack churches and hum hymns and mutter morals, I know truly only those souls walking there on this day. Every Sabbath I know. She is true as rain on my face. She is passion, unbridled beneath steady hands and eyes. She is still as night sky. My patron saint. I pray at the stations of the cross. I contemplate Him when I imagine that sacred place.
Sixty. Fifty-five.
Want your arms around me. Telling me it’ll be okay.
Want your hands on my shoulders. Your gaze lit from within.
Want your attention. Your outside-the-box solutions.
Want your lips on mine. Silencing my no.
“But we unleashed a lion.
Gnashed his teeth.
And the boy was something
mommy wouldn't wear.
Jeremy spoke in class today.
Try to forget this...
Try to erase this....”
3) I would never let him yell at her. He’d be on the floor before her eyes formed tears.
And there’s no way I’ll reach the ocean because I’m travelling in the wrong direction. And there’s no way I’ll reach my holy land because I’ve no money for gasoline. I spot the high and dry median, pull the U-y across four and take myself home hovering at the speed limit. I feel myself coming down off the adrenaline high. I want waffles with strawberries and bacon. I want dark, strong coffee with raw sugar. I want you.
“There's a fear in me, but it's not showing.
I look ahead too all the plans we made
and the dreams that we had.
I'm in a world that tries to take them away...
but I'm taking them back.”
I park the bike and go inside. The house is empty. But it is never quiet. A radio is on somewhere spouting an en mass mass. The tv is on low with no one to watch it. A child’s toy is reciting the alphabet. I strip in the hall. Pull on old jeans and a tank. I go next door. Lillian is only in her late sixties but she is a woman of society and she never learned how to clean a gutter.
4) The Clozaril took away the nightmares... but it also stole my ability to paint.
Ten hours. Ten hours I bend over her roof line, mend fencing and tie up brambles. Three storeys up, I rip the butt off my jeans and lose both pockets to the uneven composition roofing. The slop from the gutters is just one season’s worth; she paid someone last year. I fill buckets, up and down I shimmy because she doesn’t have a ladder. I turn it into her flower beds, the shovel growing impossibly heavy after the first five hours. There is a dead crow in the attic eaves. There are nests of doves tucked into the observatory dome. There is a view of unbroken sky from the highest peak.
I sing “Oh Holy Night” horribly off-tune and burn away everything in me by sweating until I want to strip nude and every muscle in my body aches with the tension of not breaking my neck by falling off the roof. Ten hours. This is a Sabbath. The highest peak is my pew. My God asks that I worship under His roof, this sky. In His world. In His way. My worship is never easy. It sweats and bleeds and aches and *works.*
Ten hours I celebrate this body that Christ made me.
Lillian invites me inside when it gets too dark to see. She hands me a plate of hot scones with blackberry preserves. She hands me a gold-rimmed cup of steaming espresso. I drink it like wine, like salvation, like poison, like choice. I drink it and count the days in my head until it will be out of my system. I drink it with my eyes closed and tell myself it will strengthen my will. The bottle said, “Drink Me” and so I did.
“Cause when push comes to shove
you taste what you're made of.
On your knees you look up...
You get mad. You get strong.
Then you stand.
One more small piece of you
falls into place.”
Lillian plays harp music. It pipes through the house. I recognize it. But how can I recognize it? I am too tired to ask. She does not speak because women of class do not make idle chatter. She gazes at me quietly, appraisingly. I feel my body humming with strength and purpose and faith. I sip my espresso, roll it over my tongue. I eat my scone with a fork. Spread the blackberries sparingly. I am sweaty and I stink. But the scent is like wild roses and maple leaves and green moss and growing things almost ready to wake. In the high-backed cherry wood chair with the very white upholstery, I am out of place... and more in my place than I have ever been before.
“You’re a very beautiful young woman,” Lillian says. And she means it just as it lays. There is nothing more behind her words. She says it like she’s telling me my eyes are brown or my skin is cinnamon or my hair is raven. She is just telling me a fact because she knows I don’t believe it and she’s disagreeing with me.
I look up at her. Her eyes are slate grey. Her hair is silver and white. Her skin is like honey oak parchment. I say softly, “I’m a lot of things.” and my voice is so much smaller than I intend it to be... but it has been said and the truth is steady.
I am steady.
EJ
5) Sometimes, I want them to be right. Thirty is long enough.
