The Saving Grace of Writing Other People's Love Letters

To keep myself busy and distracted on sleepless nights, I started an online storefront offering personalized love letters in categories such as crush, unrequited love, true love… The orders came as far as Europe, Africa, and Asia. For $25, customers were sent questionnaires, based on their chosen category and asking for the details needed to write their one-of-a-kind letters. 

My obsession with love had started when I was young.  I read all the Disney fairytales in childhood, Barbara Cartland books as a teenager, and Russian, German, French, and South American literary novels in young adulthood and beyond. My favorite books were “War and Peace,” “Dr. Zhivago,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and I rewrote their rapturous one-liners about true love in journals so that I could reread and relive my obsessive infatuation with it. Great love lived in my head, far away from the responsibility and sacrifices needed to be in a marriage with children.  Not that I complained about my daily responsibilities, like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning… as repetitive and tedious as it was. I did not even wonder why there was no spark between my husband and me.  Why would I? My parents’ relationship had been hateful, violent, and manipulative. At least my husband was safe, stable, and secure. 

I accepted that our arguments were constant, loud, petty, and forgettable – what to eat for dinner, what to do on weekends - and we had no genuine interest in knowing more about the other -- not our hobbies, fears, like, or dislikes. In our defense, we married young and did not know much about our true selves, or at least enough of it to share it with conviction with each other. We especially didn’t trust the chemistry of our bodies, not fully awake, yet knowing without a doubt that we were not compatible or interested in each other, even though we didn’t know how to listen to our bodies either.  Because we were the other’s first sexual experience, we accepted that whatever the quality or quantity of sex between us was all there was to sex - a non-threatening, no-big-deal affair, that was necessary for psychological and biological functions, no matter how others touted it. 

For 16 years, we pursued higher education, fertility treatments, and adoptions abroad when pregnancy did not happen naturally. Bigger and better furniture, boats, cars, and houses were also on our list of pursuits. That is until my husband broke the unspoken understanding between us that if we could not be in love then we would be successful; that it was more important to be the envy of others than to be happy with each other or with ourselves.

On the day he announced his real feelings for me, his hazel eyes were clear, his large broad forehead unmoving, his other features stoic as if reflecting his new seismic realization, as if he was admitting the truth of his 34-year-old life. 

“I have always loved you, but I have never been in love with you,” he said clearly and unemotive, as if he was writing with gravitas the words into the space between us.

I was about to chomp down thoughtlessly on a piece of smoked beef when his truth rang like distant church bells with an announcement I could not fully grasp at a noisy barbecue restaurant, except for the cold twinge in my heart. At the time of his great confession, he had already been secretly seeing another woman.

When I returned to my mental cave where soulmates, true love, and the anam caras lived unabashedly and unapologetically, my husband had already left the house, and we were on our way to a divorce. The idea for my online love letter writing storefront stemmed from a need to return to love, to make it live and breathe, even though I had given it its last rites.  I justified creating such a venture by having a master’s in creative writing that I had never put to good use. 

With fervor, I sought out my customers’ memories and feelings. Questionnaires were sent. Details were demanded in a volley of emails. When? Where? What? How? Why? were the basis for my inquiry about their relationships.  I posted an onslaught of questions to the woman who needed to explain to her boyfriend, who was about to do some time in jail, that her body required sex from other men, even though such a physical act with others did not diminish her undeniable true love for him.  I dug deeper for feelings of loss and the hope for the return of a father who had abandoned his daughter in childhood.

Even though they never said it, my customers thought me a fevered, fiendish, and freakish raider of their emotions, too pure and distilled to be exposed to me or to a world that threatened to question it or to squash it.  Ironically, they sought out my expertise to express great feelings to their beloved.  They did not realize what they had gotten themselves into by hiring me for their precious tasks, nor could they guess at my fragile state of mind, and my grasping and groping for love’s existence to stop its demise in my love life.

They attributed the unclear qualifications for a love letter writer to tasks both daring and mad.  They hoped for the best but could not guess the outcome of my efforts. Some disappeared during the truth-letting process while others pleaded for mercy: Why can’t you just write something down? they asked in frustration.  No, no, no, truth at all costs, I demanded.  How could I write your soulful, one-of-a-kind letter if I don’t know your story, style, diction, and tone of writing, I said repeatedly.  You must allow me complete access to your experiences, I demanded without stating it in a blatant way.

 I was shocked to learn that most knew little or dared not think about the meaning of their emotions, even the hair color, smell, and features of their beloved were hard to express or describe. I wondered why they didn’t contemplate their ardent feelings and the changes it caused in their bodies, mind, and spirit, as if their brains were snatched on a magic carpet ride to love’s ethers. In the end, most of it was conjecture on my part: to write a personalized letter, I spent days and nights contemplating my customers’ lives and loves, and more than four hours every night writing their missives; still, it was exhilarating and distracting enough to be ensconced in the rapture of those others who were in love, always as if for the first time.

For inspiration, I re-read my favorite quotes and rewatched my favorite foreign movies about love, like “Children of Paradise,” “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,” “The Leopard,” “Brief Encounter….” I knew that the expression of love needed to be as subtle and powerful as its experience, and that its communication could not be hammered out in a few “fake” words but captured lightly, even when passions ran high or amok. 

As much as I prided myself on understanding and communicating love better than most, I was its greatest ignorant of all.  Many years later, I would tire of my visits to its stifling mental sanctuary.  I would realize that Love was great because it overflowed even in the measured length and width of space I allowed for it in my relationships; that it adapted to my well-read and practiced application of its labels; that it crouched to fit my containment of its eternal breath of life; and that it accompanied me on an arduous journey of forgiving, healing, and belonging with the same unconditional selflessness that it had shown me all along. But that was many years after my divorce, after I had had more battering in personal relationships.

A Customer's Love Letter 

My Papi, My Life,

The first time we walked on the old railroad tracks, I fell in love.  We walked for hours, even past the haunted depot where others said they had seen the ghost of an old man holding train tickets in his hand. Still, I never got scared or tired.  That evening, sunset, twilight, dusk, and sunrise felt like friends, and the leaves on the rotting tracks were the same color as the Fall sky. You gave me your sweater to keep me warm, and you held my hand.

Everything you said about life was true, like when you said I should face each morning with courage, no matter what I faced.  And you listened to me, even when I talked about worries about my grades in college.  It’s rare to feel pure love, like being seen and heard at the same time. Do you know I believed in you then?

God sent me a real man, perfect and beautiful with smooth, pretty skin like dark, melted chocolate. Even now after seven years of marriage, I fall in love every time I see you, like the first time we walked around the railroad track and the evening turned into a new day, and I never got scared or tired. I knew then I could count on you forever.

How do I describe you? Solid, sweet, passionate… mine. My body craves you. You give me goose bumps and make me want you all the time. You make me a strong woman because you are a strong, honest, and dependable man. I can't help falling deeper in love with you every time.

Happy Anniversary, My Love

 

 

  

Ten Days at Akiko's

 

Dear Akiko,

I hope you are well.

Being at your bed and breakfast during the holidays was a dream come true, 30 years in the making.

When I watched your documentary, August at Akiko’s, six years ago, I knew I would one day travel there and fulfill my life-long wish to go on retreat. Yet, it took many more years to get there: first, I had to take care of my dying mother; then I had to learn how to manage money; finally, I had to find the time to get away from it all.   

On New Year’s Eve, 2024, I landed on the big island of Hawaii and found myself in a room in your Sanctuary House -- a green, two-story building with books, altar, inspirational quotes, and the wafting scent, traveling through open doors and windows, of Japanese incense and Hawaiian trees and flowers.  The house’s décor of eclectic furniture and appliances was simple but charming, never distracting from the sounds of life in its surrounding rainforest: nightly songs of coqui frogs, and the morning chorus of Hawaiian birds, hens, pigs, and cats that took cover from those pigs wherever they could find it. Even the rain felt large and glorious as if it was daily washing the earth.

I expected quiet and solitude during my stay but was instead pulled into a magnificent adventure with my fellow housemates, all in their 20s and 30s (I am in my 50s), who needed respite from their stress and pressure-filled, high-powered jobs in major cities out West.

We quickly shared healing truths, hopes, and dreams with each other as we walked on the Old Mamalahoa Highway, practiced earthing at Veteran’s Park, swam at Richardson Ocean Park, hiked along Hakalau Bay, star-gazed at Mauna Kea, shopped at the Hilo Farmer’s Market...  One housemate said we could be authentic and truthful with each other because you were truthful and authentic with everyone.

You taught me how to keep my chin down during a demonstration of Zazen meditation so as not to stress the spine and shoulders; and Maddy, the yoga instructor, taught me how to stretch and how to say Aum from my belly button to my lips. I learned many things during my ten days at your place, but I especially learned the answer to a personal koan that’s followed me around for years with its popular imagery: See No Evil. Speak No Evil. Hear No Evil.

That first morning, on the ledge of the kitchen window in the Sanctuary House, I ran into a small golden statute of three laughing Buddhas holding their hands up to their eyes, mouth, and ears. Immediately, I knew the answer to my koan: withholding judgment was the only way not to see, speak, or hear evil, and therefore the only way to love. So, I loved Everyone and Everything at Akiko’s, and I hope to continue to do so in my daily life.

Forever love and mahalo to you and the ancestors,

Barbara

 

June 18 (excerpt from "Continent of Judy")

 

June 18 

I called in sick to work today and visited Judy at the hospital instead. Her diagnosis/prognosis, Terminal, was too unbelievable to comprehend at my hospital visit last night; I needed more proof that her life was cut short by a doctor’s verdict 24 hours ago.   Because I was an auditory, kinesthetic, and visual learner I needed to see, hear, and feel and then process that all parts of my world were slipping away, even my beloved friend’s life.

Now, I was in the continent of Judy.

 When I arrived at the hospital, she was alone.  She looked comfortable propped up against white, fluffy pillows and covered with a light, white cotton blanket.  If nothing else, she made sure the nurse delivered her Vicodin for pain every six hours. 

I stood at the entrance to her single occupancy room, but Judy did not notice me. Her attention was focused solely on a park across the four-lane highway and viewed clearly from the large clean windows of her 5^th story room.  

In the morning, the park was empty of people. Only the Ibis, blue jays, roc doves, white herons, vultures, European starlings, crows, boat-tailed grackle, purple gallinule, limpkin, anhinga, northern mockingbirds, and short-tailed hawks looked for food or action amongst the live oaks, cypress, palm trees, hibiscus bushes, robust lakes, and tall grasses (I visited the park on weekends in the early morning hours when my children were still sleeping).  Contrasted with the clinical white and sterility of the hospital floor and room, here was a lush and living canvas of the Everglades of long-ago.

For a moment, I thought of turning around, leaving, and not letting Judy know I was there. I was not good with words of consolation; I did not know how to slow down. I forgot we were friends. I DID NOT KNOW HOW TO TALK ABOUT TERMINAL CANCER. The words got stuck in my throat.  But she did not talk about it either.

When she noticed me, she called me over, placed a kiss on my cheek, and asked me to take a seat. Then she continued staring out the window.  There was no need for formalities or discomfort, silence was calming and comforting, but I hated silence.  My mind scanned the horizon for a topic of conversation, something appropriate to the moment, something about friendship, faith.  God, I was baffled. I started perspiring.  Still, Judy was silent, regal.

Unlike her, I was not experienced with life’s meandering journeys and stops. I did not appreciate the value of silence--the way it embraced us on its ride to her room on the 5^th story cancer ward at Memorial West where the sunlight glowed translucent, lake waters across the street lapped robustly, street cars glided across highways, and yellow roses bloomed as if for the first time, which I would all notice if I only stopped fidgeting.  I did not know that sharing silence with a friend was an honor.

When I settled down, Judy had something important to say.  This moment was her deathbed confession to me, at least the one she shared with me.  I thought it was too soon to share such a thing; yesterday, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My sense of time and time-appropriate actions governed my thoughts. Yet, from the moment she was diagnosed, Judy directed time as she saw fit: pushing it back, speeding it forward, stopping it in the moment.  She had a lifetime of dissection to do from her bed, if she wanted to leave the world on her terms.

Even now, she played at life, hitting the ball, swinging with concentration, making the game exciting and unforgettable, even as she exited its court.  Further proof that Judy was larger-than-life, a grand woman in every sense of the word, bigger than the great 20^th century spy Mata Hari, who faced her death by blowing kisses to the men in her firing squad, but even Mara Hari’s exit was quick and clean.  

She remained silent still while gazing at the park.  I looked around nervously, taking in the clean sanitized room in all its white and off-white walls, bedding, flooring…  

She waited patiently for me to calm down.

I did not know what Judy shared with others, but she knew what she needed to share with me. I had been at other’s death bed confessions (my ex-husband’s grandmother and mother). Maybe, I misunderstood the situation or their confessions:  My former mother- in- law talked about designer purses, but she might have been delirious from the pain medication; and my husband’s grandmother mentioned her famous key lime pie, but someone might have asked her for her recipe.  Maybe, I misjudged these women or the moment, but I know that what Judy told me that day resonated with me until I understood and applied it, many years later.

She began her great confession with a simple question about my date a couple of weekends ago. 

“Did you have a good time last weekend?” she asked, slowly pulling her bewitched gaze from the park across the street.

“Yes, yes,” I said, excitedly, nervously, relieved but surprised about her topic of conversation.

“Why should my love life matter while she was dealing with life and death matters?” I thought to myself.

Still, I rattled on excitedly about the newspaper man I had met on the beach, a tall, thin, bespeckled middle-aged man who seemed to be as interesting as he was intelligent. He was walking along the shore gathering seashells with his son when my children started playing with the young boy.  I struck up a conversation with the father, who invited us to dinner at his condo overlooking the exclusive Brickell Bay.  Like me, he was also going through a difficult divorce. Recently, he moved to Miami after selling his newspaper company in Washington D.C.  

While the children watched television and ate the take-out pizza he had ordered, we shared a bottle of French wine and a passionate kiss on his balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay.  He said he would call me, but two weeks later I had not heard from him. 

Already, I harbored secret hopes he would be my next husband; I was desperate to find another relationship. Only Judy recognized the depths of my desperation, but she would never confront me with that truth because I would not believe her anyway.  Instead, she listened with her clear, blue, piercing eyes and calm expression. No judgement, here.  

Only she knew I was ripe for liberation from a new but similar relationship on the heels of my most recent breakup from a 16 year-marriage. A new relationship, so soon after the end of my marriage, would only mimic personal neuroses, desperations, and untoward passions that instead needed healing, forgiveness, and release. With her soft gaze and softer expression, she communed with me that big heartbreak was a rare invitation to excavation parties beyond the “No Trespassing” signs in my soul with only three requirements for travel: solitude, abstinence, and self-reflection. Something more soulful and compatible would show up if only I took time to heal the end of my marriage. No need for search parties, want ads, desperate hookups.   She had refused the “in-between moments” in relationships at her own peril, but she knowingly and willfully did so.

Maybe it was a sign of her love for me and the simultaneous release of her own demons, but I knew that what she confessed that day was a truth she cut with the proverbial knife; I knew it her more to admit this truth than the cancerous cells that speedily tracked their way out of her gall bladder, up to her breast, and into their final destination in her brain. 

“Barbara, never let a man determine your worth,” Judy said, her gaze gentle and hands, with the perfectly manicured red nails, folded softly on her white cotton blanket.  “I did,” she continued, “even though I knew I was worth more than my men could ever realize.”

She turned and stared out the window, her gaze on the park across the street.

I nodded gently, even though I was miffed by her confession. Many years later, I realized Judy’s confession applied to me as much as it had applied to her.

That night, I wailed into my pillow for fear of waking my children who were asleep in the rooms down the hallway. Wailing was my new norm, a discovery made after hours of basic crying provided no relief from my pain.

 After pushing my head into the pillow, I whimpered, flailed, and kicked the mattress until a maelstrom of violence made me red in the face, sweaty, exhausted, and gasping for air.  Still, I yelped, screamed, and howled like a wild animal until I reached the feeling place at the pit of my stomach, the same location my classical piano teacher advised I play from when performing Beethoven sonatas, Bach fugues, and Chopin waltzes: “the true home of all feeling,” said Clara Vasquez, trained in the best musical conservatory in Havana, Cuban.

I never accessed the pit of my stomach when I played piano as a young girl because I detested the instrument and was never any good at playing it anyway, but now I became expert at finding its doorway and feeling its thundering heartbeat slow down to a tranquil breath.  There, I entered a blue-black sky with twinkling stars where I dropped off my pain and gazed at the view until there was nothing left for me to feel.

That night, I returned to the to the present feeling new, invigorated, ashamed of my strange, spiritual experience, and relieved that it would never happen again, even though that was never the case.  I jumped out of bed, went to computer in the study, logged in online, and signed up for a local dating site.

 

 

 

My Christmas Ghosts

 

The ghost of an old white man is sitting on your chair out here,” my next-door neighbor Saru, a self-proclaimed psychic, said as he exited the front door of my apartment in Northern California. “That’s my father,” I said, cringing at the thought.

Christmas Past

We were having our first-ever Christmas Eve party. My sister and I dared not ask anything about it for fear of shifting our focus from the “out-of-the-ordinary” back to the “numbing ordinary”—hot, sticky Florida weather, tight-fighting small house, and each new day more familiar than the last. A year ago, in New York City, we knew sweeping changes every minute when we lived in a two-story house with a basement and attic.  Back then, we had Christmas at radio city Music Hall with high-kicking Rockettes and a nativity scene with real camels; playtime at the neighborhood park -- the site of the World’s Fair of 1962;  Halloween walks around the block to trick or treat and jump into piles of crunchy fallen elm tree leaves;  summers spent swimming in Mrs. Omura’s pop up pool;  daily 7 trains running nonstop past our front door and deeper into Queens; and Anthony, my first love.

On the plane to Miami, I cried so hard my body shook; when my mother reached over to whisper in my ear wise sayings about the importance of change, I shook her off violently.  I was six years old, and I would not cry as hard until I was thirty-five and I had learned of my husband's cheating.

The week leading up to the Christmas Eve party, my father filled rented tables with garlic, onions, sour oranges, bags of rice and black beans, yuca, a loin of fresh pork, and boxes of Sangria, sidra, gin, whiskey, and soda.  Several trips were taken to the grocery store to replace finished bottles of sugar, salt, and herbs.  Cheesecakes with thick spoonful of strawberry jelly on top were purchased at the Cuban bakery.  My Caribbean mother seasoned, marinated, and refrigerated foods for Noche Buena, the mythical “good night” of Christmas Eve with feasting, dancing, and drinking far into Christmas morning I’d only heard adults whisper about the next day.  She swept and mopped speckled concrete floors; washed jalousie windows; and recruited my sister and me to help her push into the main bedroom the sofa, a second-hand store purchase made of thin, fading red and white velvety fabric.  “We can’t afford any of this,” she whined, even while giving into the rush of preparing for the upcoming event. We were ready!

But, on Christmas Eve, the guests did not arrive at 9:00 p.m., as promised.  My father had already played his Bene More and Celia Cruz records several times.  He left several unreturned messages at his sons’ hotel. He paced the house several times, checking to see that the string of white lights he stapled on the eves of roof on the side of the backyard still emitted a healthy glow on the muddy dirt, overgrown avocado trees, and dirty lake,  

My mother heated and reheated the food. She checked our ponytails to make sure they were high and tight, and our dresses with the embroidered vests, were perfectly ironed. But it was all for nothing. My father’s seven fair and beautiful sons, all in their mid to late 20’s, with heads of big blonde hair and light eyes, arrived two hours later, and they swept into the house with their girlfriends hanging on their arms as if they had gotten off the wrong stop on the F train. They didn’t take food or drink because they had other parties to go to. They dashed around the house in their suits, black ties, and scents of pine as if it was all beneath them.  My father said that it was their house, too. Come and stay whenever you want, he said as he pointed to this and that room in the house.  Thanks, pop. We know, pop. “We’ll give you a call, pop, when we get back, they said as if they couldn’t get out of our house fast enough.... They didn’t even notice my sister and me.  

Already it was too late for my seventy-year- old father with the four ex-wives, to make amends for swearing, cussing, and beating his sons. Already, they were estranged. Already, our hopes were dashed that this night would herald a new beginning and that our wishes would be granted: my father, a return to thrill of new and old relationships like the ones on the streets of New York City where an instant drinking buddy or new lover could be found around the corner; my mother, a stream of money flowing into our lives  like we had when my father worked as a contractor; my sister, was too young to care; and I wanted my anonymity back, like I had in the house New York city where I played on the second and third story floors of the house in Queens while my parents fought and hit each other in on the first-story kitchen, leaving broken glass and body parts in its wake. After we moved to Florida, my parents pulled me into their brawls and accused me of causing their problems. At first, I thought it was an honest mistake, and I blamed the oversight on the small 1970s ranch house, a 500 square foot nightmare with three small rooms and one bathroom, for not providing any space for me to hide.

After my father's sons left that Christmas Eve, my sister and I wandered around listlessly as if checking out the ruins of a burned-down house like the ones in the winter on Roosevelt Avenue when our neighbors’ boilers exploded. My mother picked up and cleaned as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. My teary-eyed father walked towards his room and locked the door behind him, leaving me with an image that broke my heart forever.

 

 

Christmas Present

I am in love with the Danish captain I met online.

He will love me when I’m gone, and he can hold his love for me

against another woman’s love for him. Now, I am in the shadow of his fiery,

red-headed Spanish ex, who set his furniture on fire when he cheated on her

with another stewardess. It is my turn to be with him.

Two weeks before Christmas, we run away from our countries and responsibilities

to be together for a weekend in Amsterdam on freezing nights with a full moon.

We are the new and improved Adam and Eve, strolling confidently around canals,

cafes, red windows, and peep shows.  I am quiet, but he rambles like a boy

who must explain the thrill of each ride to a soul just arrived on the planet.

“The prostitutes must be tested once a month for their health,” he says.  

His blue eyes sparkle.  His love/hate for women and violent temper

remind me of my father.  Unlike my father, he hunts Viking lands in Denmark.

“A good hunt always changes it ways,” he says about his buck,

and implies it about his women. I am not naïve: 

He scouts my deepest and darkest wounded imperfection: the one I cannot see or dig

for myself, the one he will stalk, shoot, butcher, and hang like prized antlers

on the wall of fallen conquests, the one that will make him proud and justified

for leaving me, like he left the others; the one he will gift me as sign of his deep love

and affection; the one I will see and heal during the heartbreak of losing him.

I put my arm through his.  Midnight in Amsterdam suddenly feels cold, dark,

and dangerous.  I shiver.

 

Christmas Future

Dear Diary,

I walked on Ft. Lauderdale Beach the morning after Christmas day.  Atlantic Boulevard was busy with the rich White of the Northeast who were in town for the holidays. They strolled out of their high-rise condominiums with ocean views in search of coffee and breakfast, but I no longer resented them or held them responsible for the world’s woes or my woes. My hate was always intended for my White father, but that took years to realize. It was my father, not these other people, who called me racial slurs until the day he died. Racism has always masked itself as a one-size, fits-all band aid. 

The drama of being in love or hate with others had kept me distracted most of my life. Today, I felt as free and natural as the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, crashing gently on the shore, and leaving effervescent bubbles in its wake.  I tipped my suede hat with the gold band to the restaurant hostess who gave me an approving smile.

I was in town to visit my college-age children, but they did not join me, even though I had invited them several times. I've learned to give them space and time to decide whether to love me back, or not, as difficult and painful as that has been.  During their childhoods, I treated them like my father treated me in my cold, detached efforts not to be like my bullying and violently explosive father--same difference and consequence. On most days, I work on forgiving God, forgiving my father, forgiving myself, and forgiving my children, all exhausting and unrelenting healing work. But today, I enjoyed the cool breeze and salty smell of the ocean, and I smiled joyfully when I wished a passerby a Merry Christmas.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

High (Short Story)

 

High

I was high during my sister and her family’s five-week visit.  Before she arrived, I was a nervous wreck about how to handle it. 

Out of desperation, I visited the local marijuana dispensary and asked the clerk for help. The middle-aged woman touted the cranberry-flavored spacey and relaxed Dutch Treat strain of pot with a 1:1 CBD and THC ratio, as the gummy I needed to take.  She said one gummy was equivalent to drinking four glasses of wine. I could hardly handle one glass of wine, and I’d never done pot before, but she convinced me to buy the drug after touting it as her favorite calming medicine. Twenty minutes after I left the dispensary, I was thrilled the sky twinkled in streaks of diamonds after I bit a sliver of the gummy.

I learned later that the Dutch Treat strain had the rare terpene, terpinolene, with sedating, uplifting, creative, and energetic effects. My next-door neighbor, a purist and daily marijuana smoker, who worked in the pot industry in North California, where I lived, said that new studies of terpenes were now focused on strains geared towards healing or alleviating symptoms for different diseases, which shifted the focus of marijuana industry into more niche markets, creating more confusion for consumers who were at a loss as to basic dosage.

Under the influence of drugs, I ran around with my sister, her husband, and her daughter. I lifted my arms and imagined I was a seagull, soaring gracefully off the swirling cold pond waters of the Pacific Ocean during high tide on Clam Beach;  I sang my favorite 70s R&B tunes, which played loudly on the Pandora app on my I-phone while I ran down the rocky ridge hikes of the redwood forest behind my apartment; I roller skated at full speed for three hours at the rink in Blue Lake; and I danced nonstop and with no reserve, at the reggae, folk, and hip-hop summer music festivals we attended.

My eight-year-old niece joined me with new-found respect while unrelentingly competing with my raging inner child.  She wrote bad movie scripts, which we filmed and acted late into the night. She challenged me to sword fights with the plastic swords her parents purchased at the circus, and she dared me to race her down the slopes of our forest hikes. I accepted her invitation to compete and afterwards argued vigorously that she cheated when she had in fact won.  

My niece, with the Cuban and Irish ancestry, large hazel blue eyes, and strawberry wavy blond hair broke into spontaneous Broadway song because she wanted to perform on its stage. she was wilder and more beautiful than I was at her age.  Even though my sister used her as a confidante to her adult problems--the same way my mother had used me, a pattern I warned my sister not to repeat because of its onerous burden on her daughter--Issa had Youtube on her side, an antidote to the confining, debilitating smallness of being a confidant to a misguided and narcissistic parent.   

Her imagination was stirred with audio books, toys, and fashion videos. She wrote scripts for home movies and recorded her own Christmas albums as inspired by others on YouTube.  Because technology had stretched her world beyond the confines of her problems at home, she had more spaciousness and insights than I ever did at her age, so she figured me a mix of beautiful and ugly, rich and poor, fun and serious--a tension of opposites she deduced because I didn’t own a car, but rented one when I needed it; I shared her beautiful features but was older with grey hair and wrinkles; and I laughed and played during the day and locked myself in my room to read, write, and sleep at night. Still, Issa had no clue something was amiss.

No one figured it out, even though I looked disheveled-- hair uncombed, skin tone uneven, and eyes half-shut or dilated from taking a sliver of a bite of the gummy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.   The others occasionally raised their eyebrows at my high-octane enthusiasm. Yet they didn’t notice when I started stuttering my words or replacing them with nonsensical ones: “Can you please pass the tablecloth?” Instead of salt.

My sister was determined to do what she wanted when she wanted, and her endless daily to-do lists included activities from sunup to sundown with a repeat of some of those same activities, like a morning and night visits to the sauna and whirlpool of the Finnish bathhouse in town. Her pace was frenetic, manic, and a compulsory repeat of her daily life in New York City. Not even the roaring power of the Pacific, lofty height of the redwood trees, or shifting daily weather patterns, from fog to rain to sun, could convince her to stop and take it in.  When I commented to her husband that his family was a handful, he snidely remarked, “Well, we don’t have a choice, do we?’ he said.

“You don’t have a choice, but I do,” I said, as I walked away from him, slammed the bedroom door behind me, and bit into another sliver of the gummy I kept hidden in my pant pocket.

My brother-in-law was a detached man with a head of tight auburn curls and squinty and speckled blue eyes he hated to focus on anything.  He preferred silence and spent most of his time after work listening to professional development talks on political correctness needed to be a middle school teacher in the highly diversified New York City public schools; my sister accused him of listening to bureaucratic mumbo jumbo –prejudice veiled as the right thing to say, not do--which played loudly in their home on Staten Island.  Since he was silent most days of the year, he felt compelled to be lively and interactive on his yearly family vacations, but even that got on his nerves, too.

I was determined to claim my boundaries and stake my space in my 350 ft apartment where my sister and her husband slept in sleeping bags in the living room: I shut and locked my bedroom door and insisted they leave for several hours during the morning so that I could get my online teaching work done, now suffering from lapses in memory from taking too many gummies, including forgetting to return student calls, grading papers, and holding weekly chats.

When my sister and brother-in-law argued late into night, both using a whiny, repetitive passive aggressive tone and stance to get their way about next day’s activities, I played background brown noise, a rich soothing, air-blowing sound that lulled me into deep sleep. When she knocked on my door to badmouth her husband, I said loudly that she was married now and needed to figure things out with him, even though I feared the angry look in her eyes.

She was a bully, and I cowered to it.  All my life, I was also bullied by my mother, and father, as if being a victim was my rightful place in the family. To avoid bad words, pushing, spitting, and hitting, I became a weasel--running, hiding, and lying to avoid violence. What I wanted was silence, peace, and solitude, a life on another planet.  But, as life on earth would have it, my whole existence became a loop of victimhood--friends, ex-husband, lovers bullied me, too, and I accepted it as normal because I didn’t know how to acknowledge or defend my hurt feelings. Those feelings had been calcified as trauma deep in my cell memory, further compounded with the political correctness I picked up here and there until my body and spirit were punctured, hunched over, and defeated enough to not look anyone in the eyes for fear they would hurt me some more. 

That is until my mother left me a deathbed message/order about how to handle myself for the rest of my life:

“Don’t do what you’re told. Don’t do what you read. Don’t do what others expect. Don’t worry about being good, bad, indifferent, kind, compassionate… none of it counts if doesn’t come from your heart--and most never figure out what’s in there anyway. Don’t worry about God or the Devil; I’ve dealt with both, and they’ll respect you if you do what you must. Especially, never flinch at the consequences of your heart-fueled actions, whatever they may be.”

She could have been passing the bullying baton onto me, but I took it as a clarion call to erase family programming and live life on my terms.  Not easy! Since my mother’s death a year ago, I practiced speaking my truth, slowly and cumbersomely. I told the cantankerous UPS guy to put packages under the awning so that they wouldn’t get wet in from the rain, and I told the sidewalk activists who asked for my signature on their paperwork that I didn’t believe in their causes.  Some rolled their eyes, mumbled under their breath, or confronted me for what I said.  I blushed, stuttered, and hesitated while my heartbeat raced and beads of sweat formed on my forehead, but I looked them in the eyes and stuttered through my responses.  My goal… to dissect, like a neurosurgeon with a scalpel, the muck from the brain juice that knew only my authentic, true, vulnerable yet brave self in all situations.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for my sister and her family’s visit.  It was too soon, and I hadn’t yet mastered the skill of speaking the truth. I tried to talk her out of coming by telling her it was raining in North California every day, and that there had been earthquakes, lies. I also told her my 350 square foot apartment was too small to comfortably house four people for five weeks, true. Still, she bulldozed me with her plans, insisting that time would fly and that she would be gone before I knew it.

Pot saved the day, but three weeks into her visit, I ran out of steam, so that when she mentioned going back to the bathhouse that morning I refused.

“I’m not going,” I said with no hesitation, while preparing the stove and pan for the omelets I was cooking for breakfast that morning.

“Why not?” she asked, her voice tinged with annoyance.

  “Because I’m tired of going there,” I said, nervously.

“She was quiet, and so was I. As a trial attorney in New York City, she used silence to make the opposing side squirm, as I was now doing.

“You go. I need my space,” I said, stuttering while putting the egg carton on the counter and turning around to face her.

“From me?”

“Yeah,’ from you,

We were in a face-off like we were as teenagers when she charged at me, tore my shirt, and pushed me against the wall; that is before I ran off.

“Bitch, you have some nerve saying that to me in front of my daughter.”

My niece ran out of the apartment to get her father who was packing the rented SUV for that day’s activities.

“And you have the nerve calling me names in my house. YOU have never respected my boundaries or me!” I said, taking an egg from the carton and flinging at her. When it hit the wall, I watched the yolk and sticky stuff splatter and run down the wall and brown carpet in slow motion. “That’s going to stink”, I thought to myself.

Her brown eyes fumed with rage. When she charged at me, she lifted her arms, closed her fists, pressed her lips, lowered her head, and held her breath in order to gain speed and momentum, difficult with her middle-age girth. She looked like my angry father--large forehead, thick brows, dark eyes, and round stomach—a man who beat up the post man, cashier, master of ceremonies at the neighborhood parade…. because he didn’t like the tone of their voice, remark, or God knows what.  I never heard or knew what started the fight. He had always inched up to his victim as if he was going to tell them a secret before he unleashed a horrifying volley of fists, which made me keep a good amount of distance between us for the rest of his life.

My sister came at me in a halo of light, thanks to the extra sliver of gummy I bit off that morning. Rage, anxiety, and adrenaline built up in my system, so I faced her down. She stopped hard and almost tripped in front of me before regaining her footing, pulling back her closed fist, and punching in the upper arm.

“Ow,” I said before I slapped across the face. She put her hand up to her cheek, her stare filled with rage, as was mine. My audacity was unfamiliar even to me. Heat emitted from my skull. My anger was alive and breathing.  I was like a secret agent fighting for an identity lost on such a life-long covert operation all was forgotten. My heartbeat raced and face flushed.  When she pulled my hair, I pulled hers, too. Our necks were stretched, backs tilted. I kicked her on the shin. She let out an “ow.”   She kicked me on the shin. I let out another “ow.”  Our actions were slow and cumbersomely rhythmic. “Come on now, come on. Stop it, stop it,” her husband ran into the apartment, grabbed his wife by her free arm, and pulled her away.  “Just stop it now,” he ordered, giving me the flash of an annoyed look for ruining their vacation.

I turned my back and returned to cooking, my heartbeat fast, body limp, heart smiling. After all these years, I stood my ground, and it felt like a tumorous glacier of correctness started melting, leaving me lightheaded.

“Let’s get our things and go,” she said to her husband and daughter.  When they were in the car, she screamed “crazy bitch,” out the window, so I ran out of my apartment with my carton of eggs and threw them one by one at their car, hitting the back window, trunk, tire. When she got out of the car and made a gesture to run back at me, I threw another egg that whizzed past her head. 

I stood proudly on my balcony, throwing eggs at a world I never thought friendly. Not anymore! The world wasn’t ruffled by my violence; there was enough room on the horizon to throw at it what I wanted.  The sun-soaked sky was a glassy blue, and scattered clouds moved across it like a school of fish. “Just passing by,” they seemed to say as the wind pushed them over the tips of the redwoods and into oblivion. The world wouldn’t contract, lash out, or hold up a disapproving finger like its human counterparts tended to do; it welcomed my violence, bad words, and hurt and angry heart, having waited long to receive them.

Into the distance, where the bay swirled its way to the grumbling Pacific Ocean, I heard in the early morning hours when traffic on Highway 101 was non-existent, I excommunicated all the correctness that kept me rigid from cell to soul, dooming my dried-up emotions to that of a living ghost. I remembered a quote from one of my favorite English actresses, Charlotte Rampling: “The best remedy for any sort of pain is to let it happen to you. Resistance of pain, either physical or psychological, is the most painful.”

My next-door neighbor, a student at the local college, stepped on his balcony and smiled. I smiled back as I took another egg from the carton and threw it hard and fast into the horizon like I did when I pitched softball games in my youth.  I was a divorced mother of two young adults who recently graduated from college; still, that didn’t figure in my ludicrous, age-inappropriate, and glorious actions.  

When my niece turned around to look, I saw the painful expression in her eyes, and I screamed out, “Not, you, Issa,” before blowing her a kiss. Then I took the last egg in the carton and pitched it past my sister’s moving car into a clear, California-blue sky. 

 

 

Grab Her by the Hair (short story)

 

My attitude shifted from anxious commuter stuck in early morning traffic to a woman with a purpose, albeit violent one.  Others on their way to offices in downtown Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove (destinations better suited for tourists invited to visit by billboards along the highway) on  potholed I-95 South honked horns, cut each off, flicked middle fingers, read newspapers, put on makeup, smoked, ate breakfast, dozed, chatted on Blackberry phones, sang, or gyrated their upper bodies to the beats of a loud pounding bass. That day, I was onto something bigger and better than driving to and from work. “I’m gonna kick her ass!” I said to myself, the words gnarled and growled their way to life.

Even daydreams of running away to another continent on a commercial jet flying overhead to or from Miami international had no appeal; my deepest, darkest wish had arrived as if dropped via special delivery by one of those same jets.  Calling the children’s hospital where I worked as a receptionist in the critical care unit to let them know I was running late was not important.  Adrenaline flowed in my blood, quickened my breath, and charged my purpose with clarity.  Two days ago, I had read an interview with a man accused of taking part in home invasions across town. When asked how he could commit such violence, he said he got his adrenaline going by pumping iron at the gym before driving to the scene of the crime.

For two years, my husband had been having an affair with his secretary. I raged in secret, daydreaming of hiring a strongman to pound him like chicken fillet with a rusted, nail-crusted wood mallet the size of a 2 x 4.  To others, I was cool and collected, taking the loss of the family home, stability, and security, which left me struggling to pay bills and buy groceries, in stride: I found an apartment after getting a loan from my mother for the first month and security deposit, and I took a full-time job to make ends meet. Friends asked why I didn’t hire an attorney; it wasn’t that easy. The logistics of keeping my life going while caring for two elementary school-aged children, an elderly mother, a new job, and a home did not leave much time for anything else.  Anyway, I couldn’t’ afford the attorney’s consultation fees.  So, for the sake of my children, my daily life proceeded as if nothing had happened while my husband--who refused to settle with me-- and his lover sailed the Atlantic and shared five-course meals and couple’s massages with his lover at hotels on Miami Beach, as evidenced by the American Express bills I had found uploaded on the computer.

A beating was in order (Not murder. Spending life in jail for killing my husband’s lover was not worth it, but I was willing risk being charged with assault, do time, and end up with a record) as confirmed by my husband’s lover’s name, Dawn, written in large, bold, red letters on the trailer of a semi-truck driving northbound.  A sign! “Bitch,” I screamed out my open driver’s window, a communication hijacked by the female driver stopped in the car next to mine who yelled out her own expletives. “Not you, dumbass,” I screamed back.  Before my husband’s affair, I thought cursing beneath me.  Now, I relished bad words—hissing, puncturing, and igniting my world with the same fire as my innards.

When I saw the exit to my husband’s office, I glanced in the rearview mirror: the roads were clear. Another sign! Only a refraction of light in both directions shimmered in a mirage of cars caught in waves of air and concrete pavement. I swerved hard to the right. My Toyota Corolla screeched.  I was the good cop on the heels of the bad guy in a high-speed chase across town.  Off State Road 826, The jail, hospital, stadium, rose to meet the highway extension. I knew the area but feared it--the heart of Miami, where immigrants started their lives in the lowest peninsula of the American south:  the neighborhoods of Little Haiti, Little Havana, Liberty City, crisscrossed downtown with bodegas, botanicas, dirt lawns, junk yards, torched cars, lost dogs, and two-story apartment buildings with black bars on doors and windows.

Here, rents were low, poverty was rampant, and crime was high. Everywhere else in the county was seemingly safe and pretty with manicured lawns, Mediterranean-styled homes, freshly painted exteriors, and well-dressed neighbors.  Miami was one of the few places in the world where you were either cool or not, in or out, rich, or poor, good, or bad--nothing in between; that is until things got complicated. Then you didn’t know how to handle it, so you lost your job, your money, your home, your relationships, your children, your mind, and/or your life.

When I realized I didn’t know where I was going, I got off the expressway, drove to the courthouse, and parked in the parking lot (I had been to the building on several occasions when I worked as a legal secretary for an attorney on the beach who occasionally asked that I hand-deliver pleadings to the court for fear of missing deadlines).  The early morning sun had overtaken last night’s ocean breezes, raising the temperature and humidity.  Beads of sweat on my forehead, neck, and chest were a discomfiting signal of the unbearable heat to come.

At the Cuban food truck, I ordered a cortadito, a delicious, dark roasted coffee brewed in an expresso machine with sugar and milk to reduce the bitterness of the beans. A few ounces of the drink kept me focused.  While I searched my phone for the address to my husband’s office, I glanced at attorneys, clients, bailiffs, security guards, homeless, gathered around the truck also drinking espressos and too animated in conversation for that hour in the morning.

When I saw my old boss, I lowered my head. I didn’t have time to chat when he walked over to say hello.  Ed was manly above all else.  He had a small mouth but a blazing smile. His dark eyes spoke emotions others dared not express.  He still wore the finest tailored suits and a touch of expensive cologne. Even the hems of his pants swayed around his Italian leather shoes as if thrilled to follow him around.  In the past, he had telephoned to ask if I could work as his secretary when he didn’t have one; those times also turned out to be the most confusing ones in my life (college graduation, birth of my children, hysterectomy), as if he knew I needed him. It had been three years since I last worked for him.   

“McDaniel, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“Hanging out,” I said. We kissed each other on the cheek.

“I want you to know, Ed, I once had a crush on you,” I said, matter-of-factly. My adrenaline rush made it important to speak only the truth.

“I know.  I found the online sign compatibility readings you did on the computer.”

“How embarrassing, I thought I cleared that,” I said.  He winked at me.

“I had a crush on you, too,” he said.

“I know, your mother told me.” I winked back.

“That bitch talks too much.” We both laughed even though the ridge of his eyebrows gathered like they did when he was peeved.  His mother had often stopped by the office to say hello; their interactions were as tumultuous as they were loving.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I got engaged last night, McDaniel.”

“Really?” I was shocked. He loved women as much as he loved good times. Before I left the office the last time, I recalled a rabbi stopping by often to do prayers for him to find a wife.

“She’s beautiful, classy, Jewish.” he beamed.

“We meet again on a momentous occasion: you’re getting married. I’m getting divorced.”   I had also been there for the important moments in his life--the opening of his solo practice after leaving the prosecutor’s office, the merging of his practice with another firm, his father’s death, and now, his engagement.

“I’m sorry to hear it, McDaniel.”

“It’s fine. It was meant to be. Now, I must go,” I said, reaching nervously for the car keys in my purse.

He grabbed both my arms, pulled me up to him, and gave me a warm, long kiss on the cheek.  I knew we would never see each other again.

“Take care of yourself,” he said as he walked away, smiling, and waving to clients who waited at the entrance to the courthouse.

My heart broke.  I had known Ed during my sixteen-years marriage. My husband had given me security, stability, and children. Ed had given me friendship, connection, understanding.  I never crossed the line, except in my heart and mind, but I was always tempted to do so.  Our unspoken, secret, soul contract to boost and support each other during the lowest or highest points in our lives had been paid for in full. My crush and marriage were over.  I wanted to cry, process what had just happened, but I needed to refocus, so I ordered another cortadito, chugged it down, and got back on the road.

I had the address to my husband’s office, but I got lost anyway, driving around neighborhoods with parked cars along every inch of road along the sidewalks; large government office buildings, circa 1970s, of thick concrete walls and small tiles (only large murals of faces of well-known community citizens adorned exteriors); and police stations.  There was always talk of modernizing the entire downtown with high-rises designed in glass and windows.

In Miami, power, money, and corruption did all the talking, to the consternation of conservationist who could do little to stop the destruction of historical buildings, dating as far back as the 1900s, and scheduled to be demolished, as if history mislead the future, as if the world only knew how to get taller and shinier.  Only the Miami River--running through the downtown and Miami before draining in the Everglades--with its mosquitoes, stench, lapping, brown, polluted waters, and parked tug and fishing boats gleamed bright at that time in the morning from the early morning sun and heat to come. Here was the sacred, secret keeper of Miami’s ancient history of Tequesta Indians, who once lived at the mouth of the River, Spanish conquistadors, American settlers….  

My mind wandered. I understood my husband’s attraction to Dawn.  Before their affair had started, she was his secretary and friend (they both worked at the government office where he was an attorney for children caught up in the limbo of social services). He told me she was raised in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, and that she once dated a famous boxer who made her push his broken-down Corvette on Las Vegas streets where his matches were held.  There was talk of her use of cocaine when she dated the boxer.  When she moved to Miami, she settled down, married a lawyer, and had two kids who she adored.

After her Marine husband was sent to fight in Afghanistan, my husband often invited her and the young children to come over to swim in our pool.  At the time, I didn’t know of their affair.  She was tall, dark, and Caribbean with enough physical assets to attract any man who paid attention. And, she had bedroom eyes; I’d heard of those eyes, but I’d never seen them in action.

Once, I asked Dawn if her kids needed towels, but she didn’t answer; instead, she took me in as if she didn’t dabble in plain talk or chit chat. Her brown eyes and long black lashes wandered around my nose, cheeks, and mouth. Her pouty lips smiled shyly. She liked what she saw. She always liked what she saw, in the mailman, bank teller, passing stranger…. I looked away before she reached my chest and went to grab the towels.

We all feared Dawn’s psychic undressing and call to frolic naked on a Caribbean-island beach. I felt sorry for my husband. I felt sorry for myself. We were in over our heads: Our marriage, which started with two hopeful nineteen-year-olds determined to keep the vows alive no matter what, had been battered by time and an expert vixen with enough heat of a sexual revolution to topple the status quo, especially in a relationship that had long been over. 

Even so, enough was enough. When I reached my husband’s office building, I parked the car along the sidewalk.  I remembered he had hearings in the morning, so he wouldn’t be at the office. No distractions. Yet another sign!  My heart was beating, hands sweating. For a moment, I panicked. I felt nauseous from drinking the second expresso and thought of turning around and driving to work. Didn’t I prove I could do it if I wanted? Still, my convictions pounded in my head and heart. There was no turning back.  I panicked again. I had never started a fight.  What did it mean to beat someone up? How could I start a fight with Dawn? Just as quickly, I thought of her head of soft, brown, curly hair.  “Grab her by the hair,” I chanted as I slammed the car door. “Grab her by the hair.” “Grab her by the hair,” I chanted as I walked towards the entrance. “Grab her by the hair,” I chanted as I opened the front door to my husband’s office building.