Fallen Soldiers (A Story For Dan That I Hope Won't Give Him Nightmares)

My fiancé collects bobblehead dolls. Tokens purchased only at ballparks, emblems of true baseball fandom. They sit on a shelf in my living room, visible, eye-catching from the moment you ascend our apartment stairs. It’s like a little shrine to artificial happiness, this shelf. An altar of fake, stretching smiles and unsolicited nods. They remind me of a little army. Row after row of tiny fighters with oversized heads and toothy grins, standing at attention, ready to wage war against good taste and flattering home decor.

But they are precious as well. Delicate. So tender. Like infants that must be coddled and protected, I have to carry them with two hands, one palm supporting their heavy bobbing heads, their necks weak and worthless. I must lay them gently on a pile of blankets, a soft but secure surface, when I wish to dust the living room shelves. Their paint is cracked and chipped from times when I was careless, disinterested. Moving from one apartment to another, I placed them too close together in an unlined box, didn’t think twice when I heard their bulbous heads clink and clack as I set the box on the floor, pushed it haphazardly to the side with the toe of my shoe. A chunk of the neck is missing from one, there’s a chip in the arm of another. Their smiles, in light of these injuries, these rough abrasions, have become menacing, taunting even. They don’t beam stupidly like their agreeable peers, but sneer at me when I pass, their enemy identified.

I am more careful now, gentler, seeking redemption for former abuse. The cat leaps from the floor to the shelf and weaves between the tiny ball players, his tail flicking back and forth. They nod their approval, but I disagree and lift him slowly, cautiously from his perch back to the floor, reach out and steady their bouncing heads. I have given up dusting altogether, hardly move them at all anymore.

And yet, there are errands to be run, work to attend, fresh air needed from time to time. It is when I am gone, when I take leave from the base, that the danger sets in. I come home, in the mid-afternoon, my arms heavy with grocery bags and find a massacre laid out before me. The smiling face of a wide-eyed tiger, the bill of his Detroit hat cracked down the middle, stares up at me from the living room floor, bodiless and alone. The chipped, broken red pieces of a cardinal’s smashed head drift down from the shelf to the floor like an oozing wound. The tiny men, with their wide, silly smiles and their great, bouncing heads lie together in a pile, one on top of another, crumpled, busted, maimed. And right in the middle of all this destruction, triumphant and proud in the center of the battlefield, his back long and straight, his chest puffed out, the cat sits. Seeing me, he mews softly and bobs his head to one side.

The Air Mattress

The air mattress—which my mother set up in the back room for my visit, the room that used to be mine—has been leaking. Slowly, throughout the night, air has escaped from some microscopic hole or improperly tightened seal; and now, with the morning sun filtering through the blinds of my east-facing window, I sink low into the mattress’ center and the sides billow up around me, puffed up like wind-filled parachutes.

Every movement of my body, a roll to the side, a stretch of my leg, sends a rippling wave of motion through the deflating bed, and I rock back and forth, as if floating on the ocean. I dream, first of being stranded on a boat. The sun beats down on my tattered clothes and bruised skin. The wind around me is salty and burns my eyes. I have long since eaten through the better part of my rations, and all that remains is a fat, juicy, perfectly cooked steak. It was a Christmas gift, from someone who didn’t know that I don’t eat red meat, or that I’d be lost at sea without a fork and knife. I smiled when I opened it, thanked him kindly, returned it to its box. It stares at me now from across the boat, and as my stomach gurgles and churns, I can see the steak pumping in and out like a beating heart. I hear it grumble softly, vibrate, purr.

My parents’ cat makes his way across the bobbing mattress and settles in beside me. His body, curling into a U, jars the bed and wakes me up. I roll to my side and dip back to the floor. The air, pushing up behind my turning body, lifts the cat onto the crest of a wave and he slides down and rests against the small of my back. His purring vibrates my spine.

A new dream, I am in an airport, awaiting a last minute flight. The mayor of Baltimore—whose name and gender I don’t even know—has called me personally. “There are chickens loose in the city, Claire,” the mayor tells me. “We need you back now!” So I book myself on the first available flight, and take my sister with me, because she knows how to speak to chickens.

They’re running amok when we arrive. From BWI to Hampstead and all the way over to Highlandtown, chickens fill the neighborhoods of Baltimore like a poultry-themed Where’s Waldo. We find one dining at Acropolis in Greektown, eating Spanakopita and drinking a beer with a drawing of the Parthenon on the label. We stuff him into an over-priced garbage bag that I purchased at an airport newsstand and I carry him over my shoulder.

There is another one in the Inner Harbor, shopping for sports gear. He pauses in front of store window and adjusts the bill of his new Orioles cap. “Why don’t any sports teams have chickens as their mascots?” I ask my sister, and she has no idea. “What are we?” I cheer. “Chickens!”

“Sounds good to me,” my sister says, and we can’t fathom why the chicken, of all birds, has been so long ignored.

It takes us three hours to round them all up. Two have spent the afternoon barhopping through Fells Point and stumble up my apartment steps wobbly and hammered. I make them rest on the couch, place trash cans on the floor beneath them, just in case. Clucking fills my small apartment, feathers float around my head. “We should make them some nachos,” my sister says. “Chickens like that.”

I lay tortilla chips on a cookie sheet, cover them with black beans, shredded cheese. “There,” my sister says. “Now just put them in the oven to bake. Nachos, oven, make,” she adds. “Stair, cool, lake. Hey Claire are you awake?”

I blink my eyes open, and my sister’s face hovers before me like a mirage. “Claire,” she says. “Claire, it’s time to wake up.”

“Did you feed the chickens?” I ask her.

“What?”

“Did you feed the chickens?”

“Uh…yeah. I did,” she plays along. “Come on and get up.”

“Okay.” I roll onto my stomach and push up with my arms. The mattress collapses beneath my weight and sends a wave of air up and under the sleeping cat. He hisses and races from the room.

“I think this thing might be leaking,” I say. It is almost noon.

A Story For A Brother (Who Lives Very Far Away)

I thought of you yesterday, when it was cold and snowy, and I was Christmas shopping downtown. You, hours and miles and practically a whole other world away in Prague, but still shivering, like me, no doubt. The snow, soft, large flakes that stuck to my eyelashes on their way to the ground, reminded me of a time when I hardly knew you at all. A transition, from Texas to Michigan, and you got lost somehow in the move, faded away, blended into the new, unfamiliar background. You were blurred by the snow that fell that Christmas—the first snow we’d seen in seven years—and every Christmas thereafter. And we lived separate lives those first few years, you and I, connected by blood alone: Nick and Nick’s sister.

The snow, falling on the Harbor, rippled the dark water and made me think of Texas, the river, the Christmas when we all got Rollerblades, and the one when you got a Sega Genesis. I’d lie awake at night and listen to you play; the electric beeps and chimes of each new level drifting through the wall that separated our bedrooms sounded like quarters hitting the bottom of an empty tin, or a distant wind chime, swaying back and forth in the night. Sometimes, you’d yell with excitement. Others, curse with frustration. In the light of day, you’d let me have a turn, or watch, which I preferred, embarrassed to play because I might lose in front of you. I’d pass you the controller when a level got too hard, a double jump was needed, or a kick move that required a complicated combination of keys was necessary. “Here, do this for me,” I would say, and you did, while talking about Green Day, your love of Jazz not yet developed.

But in Michigan, we were separated by another room, or a hallway, in the second house, and I could no longer hear what you were doing at night, was no longer invited to sit with you during the day. There was no more river in which to play Olympics. No more good hiding places for Capture the Flag. Just flat land, a bare yard, a strip mall around the corner with discounted movies, and a mediocre diner that served rubbery eggs. You had your friends, I had mine, and our lives moved in separate directions, each of us becoming someone we’d never been, someone we no longer are.

I bought gifts in a fair trade store, earrings for a variety of girlfriends, as the snow kept falling outside. Dangling, turquoise circles made in India, shiny red squares from Peru. Wooden triangles, made in Kenya, made me smile and picture your face, the wide grin, your round, white head in the middle of six dark faces, laughing through a cloud of smoke in a Nairobi slum, one of many pictures. I was wearing the scarf you got me, carrying the purse, handmade in some African marketplace, material possessions that reflect your good taste, your consideration, your love. And it made me miss you, contemplating Kenyan jewelry, and thinking about how much has changed.

On the way home, I passed a restaurant with outdoor speakers. Small, white Christmas lights sparkled on lamp posts. White Christmas, performed in a high, female voice, broke the quiet snowfall and I thought of Christmas trees. Some ten or twelve feet tall, towering above our tiny family in the high-ceiling den of our San Antonio home, held up by ropes attached to patio door handles. Or smaller trees, in the corner of our Ann Arbor living room, and one in the basement as well. At first decorated with red chili pepper lights, and old, kindergarten classroom ornaments, our childhood faces smiling out at us after all these years. Then decorated by Mom alone, with red or white bows, and lights to match. Each of us coming home from different schools. I wrapped your presents in a cold bedroom, placed them all beneath the tree. We ate seafood, stuffed mushrooms, Italian bread.

And I thought of this year, a tree not yet purchased, decorations still in boxes stacked in the cold, narrow attic. I’ll wrap my gifts alone in my apartment, just two miles from the Harbor, where the snow hits the cold water and disappears. I’ll put them in my trunk, piled in paper bags from a local grocery store, and drive nine hours to get home. We’ll sit in front of the fire on Christmas Eve, Mom, Dad, Lizzy and I, open gifts like we always do, in between appetizer platters and black and white classic movies. But there will be no you. You, far away, living in Prague. The gifts we got you will reach you by plane. Your face, when you open them, we won’t see.

Outside my apartment door, I stopped with my keys and shopping bags in hand, and looked up into the falling snow. The sky, a dim, soft gray, was slowly turning black. A street lamp, blinking on, cast a soft glow across the road, and the snow sparkled and shined as it passed through the light. I turned the key in the door, hours and miles and so far away from where you now live, and shivering, realized just how much I love you.

In My Mother's Garden (A Thanksgiving Story)

In my mother’s garden, when the air turns cold and the morning dew becomes frost that crunches beneath my father’s footsteps as he leaves for work, the Japanese grasses begin changing colors. Bending and stretching beyond the clusters of wilting daisies, drooping lavender, the grasses fade from green to gold, blinking and shimmering as they turn their faces to the late autumn sun.

I come home for the weekend, in a car packed full of dirty laundry and clean clothing choices, different options for each different day, and find the backyard sparkling like El Dorado, the air pulsing and throbbing with a golden glow.

It is November, and the thriving grasses, dancing and willowy in the cool afternoon breeze, remind me of corn husks, of dinners at a Texas table, rolled tamales, spiced meat. The ground outside was brown and brittle, the river surface coated with fallen leaves. We wore shorts and bulky sweatshirts, played football in the yard. The dogs ran around the house, trotted over the wooden deck, paws slapping the cold wood, they barked at nothing, and we listened, their curious voices echoing over the water.

Here, in my mother’s garden, the seasons change much faster, the heavy saturated air of summer retreating, running, hiding from the brisk evening of fall. Winter creeps up in an instant, closes the door, locks us inside. We huddle beneath blankets beside the fireplace. We drink hot chocolate, warm tea turned cloudy from skim milk. We cook Thanksgiving dinner, my mother moving through the kitchen like a programmed machine: sauerkraut in the crock pot, chop the celery and onions, stuff the turkey, pumpkin pie was done the night before, don’t peel the potatoes too soon or else they’ll brown. I help by being in the way, standing in the middle of the kitchen without a task. Here, I’ll wash that spoon. Hand me that whisk, I’ll stir the gravy. Outside, the Japanese grasses cast their blinding golden glow across the yard, as the sun begins to set and dinnertime approaches.

It is warm in the basement, where my mother has pushed two tables together. Each place is set with fading china dishware, pink flowers rimming a plain white plate. The black and tan cloth napkins I’ve brought with me do not match, but this dinner is informal and my feet are cold because I’m not wearing any socks.

We fill our plates with mashed potatoes. The turkey is moist; the green beans are seasoned with lemon juice, which burns the small cut on my lip. We have forgotten to say what we are thankful for. Everyone’s mouth is full of food, and as we eat, the sun goes down and evening turns to night. The Japanese grasses in my mother’s garden no longer glow and sparkle. Huddled together, they shiver against the cold night air.

A Story With No Title

Rebecca O’Neal has taken up drinking in the morning. Her 3rd story apartment overlooks the playground of the Wolfe Street Academy and she sits out on her balcony, sipping gin and tonics while the children play kickball before the first bell. Before, she’d just smoke a few cigarettes and marvel at the little girl who always wore her hair in perfect pigtails; but after reading several articles about the harmful effects of cigarette smoking and the high likelihood of developing conditions like lung cancer or emphysema, Rebecca switched to gin and tonics. They’re better for her in the long run, she figures, and they get the day going with a sweetness that borders on tart, rather than a dismal cloud of heady grey and a stifling heat against her gums.

She watches as a young mother kneels down to hug her son, kisses him on the crown of his head. “Now you be good today,” Rebecca imagines her saying. Or, “Mommy will see you this afternoon.” The woman’s hair is long and dark, pulled back into a low ponytail that trails down her spine. She is thin and fit, probably takes kickboxing lessons while her child’s at school, or runs with a dog. Some type of lab or golden retriever. A good dog, though maybe a bit wild. A sweet animal who doesn’t know better than to jump up and put his paws on your chest, or bury his snout in your crotch, but who also licks your hand gently when you aren’t watching, or nuzzles his big head against your leg. That’s the kind of dog this woman must have. A dog that keeps you fit.

Rebecca takes another sip of her drink and fishes her fingers beneath the ice to grab the single wedge of lime trapped on the bottom of the glass. She holds it to her lips and sucks the sour mixture of gin and lime flesh onto her tongue. Two children argue over whether the ball was fair or foul. One of them is round and heavy across the middle. His stomach, folded over the edge of his belted blue jeans, reminds Rebecca of soft peanut butter sliding over the crust of sandwich bread. It just hangs there, drooping ominously, suspended in space. She watches the argument intently, waiting for the fat kid’s stomach to drip the rest of the way down his legs. The other kid, with his orangey-red hair and spotted face is a sure know-it-all. Rebecca rolls a piece of ice around in her mouth as he yells and points repeatedly at a non-exist foul line on the ground. Leaning forward over the railing of her balcony, Rebecca studies the ground for some faded yellow paint, any semblance of a demarcation, but there is none, and the argument ends unresolved, interrupted by the morning bell.

Most of the kids rush off in a hurry, grabbing their book bags, lunch boxes, discarded jackets. They race off to class, hoping to avoid tardiness, as Rebecca tilts her head back and finishes the last of her gin and tonic. But other kids—older, cooler, unashamed—take their time. They kick at the loose stones on the schoolyard’s asphalt. One or two bend down to slowly, carefully retie their shoes. Two boys take turns punching each other back and forth, as they walk to the corner where they’ve stashed their backpacks. A pretty girl, with blonde hair and a ponytail hovers over the right shoulder of what is perhaps a would-be first boyfriend. She laughs cautiously as the boy jokes with his friends, follows close behind when he finally makes his way across the playground towards the school’s doors. She hangs on every word, glances down periodically to check that her just-forming breasts are obvious to those around her, her back arched into a half moon, her chest pressed up and out. She forgets about her neon pink jacket. Leaves it lying in the corner of the schoolyard, soft and bright against the dark asphalt.

When the playground is empty, and Rebecca hears the heavy, metal school doors close behind the last of the children with a dull thud, she gets up from the balcony and goes inside. Finding her shoes, a pair of black flip-flops with a red cloth flower attached to the thong that runs between her large and second toes, she grabs a light jacket and takes the stairs down from her apartment two at a time.

Looking both ways, Rebecca crosses the street and walks toward the schoolyard’s gate. It creaks slightly as she pushes it open, and Rebecca brings her finger to her lips, as if to silence the rusty metal. She walks softly across the asphalt, careful not to kick up too many loose stones, until she reaches the corner of the playground. Kneeling down, Rebecca picks up the neon pink jacket, runs her thumb and forefinger across the collar. She holds the jacket up in the air and shakes it slightly, listens as the zipper lightly jingles.

Back inside, Rebecca O’Neal drops the neon pink jacket on her counter and pours herself another gin and tonic, nearly cutting her finger when she slices a wedge of lime. Walking through the kitchen and living room, stooping down to pick up the sofa pillow that has fallen to the floor and returning it to its rightful place, she makes her way to the bedroom and pulls open the closet door. She places the neon pink jacket on the shelf next to all her other poached treasures: a half-deflated red kickball, a trapper-keeper binder with Dora the Explorer on the front, a pencil kit, a hair bow, a tin lunch box complete with thermos, a red winter hat, a blue mitten for a right hand.

She goes back out onto her balcony and looks out over the empty schoolyard, the sound of children laughing, fat kid and know-it-all kid’s argument still hanging in the air. She takes a sip of her gin and tonic and thinks to herself, “I really ought not drink in the morning. It’s a terrible habit.” She lets the liquor linger on her tongue. Closing her eyes, she turns her face into the sun and swirls the glass in her hand, listening as the ice cubes clack together.

A Thing Or Two About Haiku

It’s not haiku if the poem has fifteen lines. I tried telling him this time and again, but he didn’t want to hear it.

“I think I’d know a thing or two about haiku,” he’d say, his voice above the acceptable volume for the reception lobby. “I’m the one writing the haiku, so I think I know a little something about haiku.”

“Okay, okay,” I’d always reply. “You know all about haiku.” But he didn’t.

“It’s a form of Chinese poetry,” he’d tell me.
“Japanese,” I’d reply.
“Each word has to have five or seven syllables.”
“You mean each line.”
“It goes seven, five, seven.”
“Five, seven, five.”
“And you have to have at least 10 lines.”
“Nope, only three.”
“And every line has to rhyme.”
“Actually, there’s no rhyming at all.”

It was always the same with him. “I got a new haiku for you to read.” And I’d have to push 99 on the phone to keep it from ringing, or tell him to hold on for just one second so I could finish dealing with a call. Then I’d just sit and listen as he’d go on and on: 10 lines, 12 lines, 15. One haiku about waking up a new man, feeling sorry for all the mistakes of the past. Another haiku about what one “young punk” said to him that made him yell and curse.

“All these young guys think they’re so tough. Those damn punks make my life rough,” he’d read.

“You know, none of those words have five or seven syllables,” I’d tell him.

“So what?” he’d reply.

“Well you said each word in a haiku is supposed to have five or seven syllables.”

“Yeah, seven syllables. Those-damn-punks-make-my-life-rough. Seven,” he’d count off on his fingers. “I think I know a thing or two about writing haiku.”

“Right, of course. Sorry. I’m just saying.”

“Well you go ahead and try it then,” he’d challenge me, anger mounting in his voice. And then softer, “Will you write me a haiku?”

“Give me ten minutes,” I’d tell him. “I have to take care of a couple things first.”

In precisely ten minutes, he’d be back. “Let me hear the haiku,” he’d say. “I want to see if it is better than mine.”

“Okay,” I’d reply. “Here you go.”

Haiku are short poems
They come to us from Japan
Lines: five, seven, five.

“That’s terrible,” he would say when I was finished. “You really don’t know anything about haiku.”

And I’d just smile and nod my head. “I have to take this call,” I’d tell him, answering the phone.

Why The Hiatus

There are times when I feel as though I have nothing good to say. Nothing worth noting. So I don't write. It isn't so much a writer's block as it is just a loss of words, a blankness. My mind is just empty.

There are other times, though, like lately, where my mind is too full. My whole being becomes saturated with ideas, opinions, songs that are stuck in my head, images from film and television that I play over and over again in my mind. I feel so wholly and completely filled up by sensory intake that I don't know where to begin. I can't figure out how to expunge all these thoughts, these images, these sounds, and they almost start to suffocate me. It is like they all just clump together in my mind and I can't separate one from another, can't put any of them down on paper. I can't make sense of what I'm thinking.

My dad, for as long as I can remember, would organize his thoughts into diagrams. At the dinner table, when explaining some complex theory or some new idea that he was planning to present to one of his classes, he would draw figures on paper towels. Three squares all in a row, a line connecting each square to the one before it. Or sometimes he'd draw a large triangle, and within that triangle would be circles and each circle would contain a word, some representation of a larger idea. It never made much sense to me when I had a mouth full of pasta and couple of TV shows that I was worried about missing, but it makes sense to me now.

I have never been a math person. I don't like numbers, equations, complex algorithms. I never saw the value of learning algebra. I remain certain that a calculator can easily do all the math I'll ever need. I like to think in words, not numbers. But I see now the value in math. I recognize its ability to structure and organize a complex world. Squares, triangles, circles on a piece of paper towel, are all just basic geometry. Simple math that creates a sense of order in disorganized world of words. Thoughts go into boxes. Ideas and opinions are grouped by theme, connected by a line drawn from one square to another. This is what I've done, taken the jumbled mess that was rolling around in my head and organized it into diagrams. I can see it more clearly this way. I know now exactly what I'm thinking. It helps to look at my thoughts in this ordered form, each square a different project, a different starting point.

And from this brief foray into the world of math, I have developed a better sense of how to handle my complex world of words. Separation. I have decided to create different spaces for different kinds of thoughts. Thus, from this point forward, this blog will be for creative writing only. Poems, stories, novel excerpts. Feel free to track my progress here. And for other writing, to know what I am thinking, or what is going on in my life, I have created a new blog.
I am hoping that these changes will help me make sense of my own thoughts and keep my head from becoming a jumbled mess. I am hoping these changes will keep me writing and prevent another hiatus.