Wind

The wind has always inspired me.

A gust can bring the spirits of the dead whispering into my ear.

A breeze reminds me of the past or a sort of mental nirvana where I have no care in the world.

A gale can generate fear in my heart and noise in my soul.

The windy day I stepped into the park wasn’t sunny. I hate sunny days. The light burns my eyes and stings my skin. I feel like the sun is trying to burn me out faster, igniting me, firing me up until I am nothing but ash and bone. Cloudy days cushion me like a dimmed light, cradle me in grayness where the sun doesn’t exist, but the lighting is better, softer, diffused.

The air was swirling through the trees on the bluff leading down to the Hudson River. Leaves followed its path, snaking in and out making the invisible visible. The October atmosphere carried the promise of a coming winter, and the mystery of the approaching Halloween.

I sat on a bench near the entrance, too tired to go down the slope to sit near the mall. The smell of leaves decaying perfumed the air with a loam where when I closed my eyes I saw fat pink earthworms wiggling through the soil creating a fertile base for next year’s seeds. Like the wind they circled in and out of the dirt, taking little bits of rotted trees in their wake.

“Mister? Are you okay?” A teenage girl was standing in front of me about five feet away.

I stretched my neck before answering her. “I’m okay, I guess.”

“You were moaning. I thought for a second that you were singing, but it sounded like you were in pain.”

I patted my leg. “Maybe I was a little. My hips really hurt sometimes.”

“You should tell me about it.” Her long, reddish brown hair had a glint to it as she swung it back over her shoulders.

That’s odd. It’s not sunny at all.

“Why should I tell you about my pains?”

“I’m a very good listener.” She sat on the next bench and turned towards me.

So I told her. I spoke about how I had arthritis and had just gone through a severe depression where I didn’t go outside of my apartment at all. The doctors at NYU said that I’m de-conditioned and it made rehabilitation much harder, even if I did get a hip replacement. I confessed that to her too.

She seems genuinely interested in my story. She asked about my depression, and I told her how alone I felt after the death of my partner. Leaning towards me, she beckoned with her hand. “Come one and sit next to me so I can hear you better.”

It was a struggle to stand up and limp with my cane over to the bench where she sat. I didn’t know why I was doing what she was asking me to do, but I did it anyway. Talking to anyone was hard, but a teenaged girl?  It was remarkably easy, quite unlike me. I felt like I was somehow changing. As I spoke I felt lighter and lighter.

The breeze picked up and chased brown and yellow leaves down the paved mall. The girl spoke and it sounded like the wind sprinkling itself through a wind chime. The gray day darkened, and she kept talking, lighter until it was just a whisper. Then it was dark, and the girl was gone.

I got up to walk back home. My back and hips weren’t tight and aching. I left my cane behind. Every step I took was easier and easier until I was floating up above the trees, above the clouds, and into the starry night. I reached out and the air felt like silky water running through my fingers. I looked far below and saw a little old man, sitting slumped on a park bench, blue lights flashing around him.

 

 

She’s There

Last night, after the 10,000 Maniacs concert (thank you, Beth), I waited about 20 minutes on the bus at Sixth Avenue. After it pulled up and I boarded and sat in the last single seat on the side. A man wearing a black leather jacket and a black watch cap got on after me. He was grizzled, wearing sunglasses, and using a walker.

 

“Hey man.” His voice was loud and deep, his tongue twisting in and out between prominent, large teeth. Although he seemed a bit impaired, he was not incoherent.

 

“Hi.” I replied.

 

“I been lost all day down here. Glad to be on the bus home.”

 

“Lost? Are you sure you’re on the right bus?”

 

“Yeah. The five take me up to my apartment.”

 

“Well, as long as you’re sure. It’s no fun being lost.” Yeah. I know. I’m effing Pollyanna sometimes, but someone has to do it.

 

“I couldn’t find that employment place and I went from Battery Park all the way up to Canal.”

 

“The unemployment place? It was on Vandam, but I think part of that program was discontinued or shut down.”

 

“Vandam! That was it! I never even went past there!”

 

“Well, it wouldn’t have done you much good now anyway. It’s 11 at night. Good thing you’re going home.”

 

He held out his hand for me to shake. It was so dark, almost the darkest hand I had ever seen. His palm was warm, dry, and calloused. After we shook hands he launched into a very long story. He talked and talked. He told me about his family when he was a teenager. They seemed to be a physically violent family, but as he told his tale, it didn’t seem to be something that bothered him so much as he expected it.

 

He started working at the Beacon Theater many years ago preparing seat backs. He had been a security guard at the Naval Yard, and had ended up back at the Beacon where he ended his career. He launched into visceral detail about a terrible infection he had that had put him into intensive care, then a long hospital stay, then a rehab stint to help him become mobile again. His mother passed away (at 99, it seems, after climbing six flights of stairs) while he was out. Then he got even stranger.

 

To my surprise he told a ghost story. He heard his mother calling him while he was in his bed in rehab. By the time he got home, she had passed away, and though she was gone, she still slapped the back of his head as she liked to do in life.

 

“It’s nice to know my mama’s there.” His voice had gotten thick and soft.

 

“I’m so sorry for your loss. And I’m glad to know you’ve got some comfort. Hey, this is my stop.” The bus had traveled from Soho all the way up to the Upper West Side.

 

The man took off his sunglasses. He was crying. “Thank you for listening to me. I don’t know why I told you all of that, but I feel better.”

 

“Any time. Happy to lend an ear.” I smiled and waved at him. As the bus pulled away, I looked back at him through the window. A small woman who was not on the bus when I got off was slapping him on the back of the head.

Gullah Video

I am editing my Gullah trilogy, so I found this article to be quite interesting. It’s short, but it gives a brief explanation of how Gullah came to be, and a few phrases of the beautiful language. While you’re on my page, check out some of my past stories and essays. I am working on a new (belated) Halloween story which should be up in a few days.

How To Get Into A Bad Mood

I have been trying recently to let a lot of things go. Cut in front of me in line, I just sigh and go on with my life. If the bus is really late, no problem- I’ll just listen to a full concerto or the complete Tales of Mystery and Imagination on iTunes. You run out of food at a fast food place and I have to wait a few minutes, ok. I’ll write some on a story I’m thinking about.

But today tested my limits. I made an appointment to see the orthopedist for today at 11:45 two weeks ago. I schlepped all the way down to Union Square, a place I truly, truly hate. So many horrible, inconsiderate people swarming just everywhere. People with baby carriages using them as force shields. A billion students walking down the sidewalk in lines all the way across the sidewalks. Aggressive panhandlers. Crappy box stores and hipster joints. Just awful. I hobble with my cane feeling like a salmon swimming upstream.

I get to the doctor’s office, and the buzzer is weird. It takes me a couple of minutes to figure it out. Maybe I’m just slow, but there was nothing intuitive about that thing at all. The assistant finally buzzes me in and I get upstairs. Very chic. I tell her I’m there for my appointment with Dr. (Insert Doctor’s Name Here) and she tells me she called all of the appointments on Friday. The doctor had an emergency.

Well, okay, but I didn’t get a phone call. I had emailed them and we corresponded that way. I gave them my phone number and made the appointment through that. I can’t take the crowds during morning rush hour, and I told them that too. All nice and written down in email. But I didn’t point that out. If the doctor was out, the doctor was out. No point in hashing over something that couldn’t be changed. She apologized to me and made another appointment, even though I’m sort of in a weird constant pain. Then she told me her name, and I knew it was the woman who I had corresponded with. Still, what could being cross with her accomplish. At least I could walk over a block and catch another bus uptown and it would just be a transfer.

Lucky me, I catch the bus fast. But even though I was the first person at the stop, people bum-rushed the door, and I had to get in line behind some woman that decided to chat up the driver while digging her transit card out of something that looked to be a tea cozy for a 20 gallon cauldron, but was actually a beach tote she was using as a purse. I get on and there’s a slew of people, non-handicapped (not that I am permanently handicapped, just temporarily I hope). I need those seats. I can’t hobble to the back of the bus while it’s moving, which by that time it was. I look at a young man sitting in one of those seats and ask him to move. Politely. The bus driver had to tell him to get up. Really. How was he raised? By wolves? I’m beginning to lose my patience.

So I’m riding along, letting the tension of the moment go, and looking out of the window. Zombies were everywhere. People have stopped looking where they are going and have instead taken up screen-gazing. I want to shout “You’re in New York city, you dolts! Look around you or go back to wherever you came from.” Really. Even obvious tourists were nose-deep in their phones.

A little old man gets on the bus. He has a large rolling walker. I mean huge rolling walker. I’ve seen big walkers, but this one is the biggest I’ve ever seen. He pauses at the driver, and people moved got up from the front seats. But that was’t good enough for him. He screamed obscenities because his wide load walker is actually bumping the sides of the passageway to the seats. He made a big deal out of it and finally sat down. Again, I tried to mellow out, and stared out of the window. The walking dead stumbled around on the sidewalks and I let that roll off. I can’t stop people from wasting their lives constantly updating Instagram. It makes me sad more than mad.

The bus turns off of Sixth Avenue onto Central Park South then onto Broadway at Columbus Circle. We stop by the Trump Monstrosity (formerly known as the Paramount Building) and something goes wrong with the computer or something technical. The driver has to wait. Okay. I don’t sweat that. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m just happy to be in a seat instead of walking and having my hips burn. We finally depart, but the driver was ordered to take the bus out of service. He has to put up the “Next Bus Please” sign, which means he can drop off passengers but he’s not supposed to take in any more. Oh well.

The bus veers off onto Amsterdam and stops to let people off at 72nd Street. A woman who had been waiting for the bus with her little snowflake child marches up to the open door. She doesn’t even give the driver time to say “Please take the next bus. This one is being taken out of service.” Instead the woman starts screaming, “I pay $160 a month! I’m getting on this bus!” She keeps it up while the bus driver tries in vain to reason with her. She pushes her kid on in front of her, maintaining her shriek. She drops her Metrocard into the slot and marches to the back of the bus, still yelling about how important she is, and how crappy the MTA is, and what a jackass the driver is, and how much money she pays for a Metrocard a month and how she has a car and could drive places faster than the bus.

The driver tries to get her to be quiet, but she keeps it up. He sighs and drives on. One, two, three, four stops he stops and because the cow won’t stop bellowing, he takes on more passengers. He’s just doing his job and the witch won’t really let him.

Now all this time I’m listening to Cannibal Corpse. Loud. It’s a coping mechanism I have. Thrash metal or death metal where the singer sounds like he’s making Satanic burps into a microphone and the band plays a G chord as fast as they can usually drowns out the hoopla. Not today though. The woman came through loud and clear.

So after I have tried to let things go all day, after I regained my composure and patience again and again, I had enough of her.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I could barely control my mouth to form the words. I turned around to face the back where she and “Snowflake” were sitting. “CAN YOU SHUT UP? NO ONE CARES AND ALL YOU ARE DOING IS BEING FUCKING ANNOYING! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” My voice, which is usually quite high and edges on the effeminate came out of me like a testosterone-ladden pro-wrestler. It surprised me.

Maybe tomorrow I can have a stress-free day. I don’t have any appointments and I don’t have to go out into a loud, ruthless crowd that tries my very soul.

Sanctuary Of The Poisoned Mind

I feel I’ve given up connecting with the congregation. Every Sunday morning I slip a black robe over my head, and put a stole around my neck, satin and smooth, brightly colored according to the liturgical calendar. And every Sunday morning I go up to the pulpit and guide everyone like a director leads an orchestra. Everyone knows their parts but I set the pace. The Methodist service is like the menu at McDonald’s- the same everywhere. Much easier than the free form Baptists where the preacher shouts and the church swoons at will.

          I raise and lower my hands. Everyone stands. Everyone sits. We recite the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Responsive Reading from the back of the hymnal. No one really sings the songs; they just read along in time with the music in a monotone that barely makes a breeze.

          Above my head is a vaulted ceiling with large and ancient octagonal chandeliers swaying like ominous pendulums over the congregation. Their action is almost hypnotic, giant metronomes of narcolepsy . The yellow glow from them doesn’t really light the church. There are modern spotlights that illuminate the pulpit and supplies the pews of people adequate light to read. Still the giant chandeliers send a message of quiet beauty to the sniffing sinners adorned in their Sunday best, like the beauty of a hearse slowly creeping to the grave. But the light isn’t warm, just a cold and lifeless ochre, bright but sulfur like a welding arch.

          Each Sunday the pews are spotted with the dozers and overzealous. There are wives in dresses and hats just fine enough to make their neighbors jealous. There are husbands who would rather be playing golf, their bored faces a daydream reflection of greens, clubs, and drinks from flasks. Little old women clutch worn leather bound Bibles with tissue pages curled. Most of the little old men are absent, already gone to glory. The old ladies are living in fear that each breath could be their last. They are wasting their fear on the inevitable.

       But this particular Sunday when I raise my arms up then lower them, when I direct the sparse spattering of the devout but rote, something tells me that it’s really for nothing, that going through the motions is just that, no thought or belief behind it. This feeling has been growing inside me, the only thing growing in my soul in fact. No understanding of the mystical, no realization of the divine spreads to fill my being- just an echoing void.

          Now a void is necessarily hateful. Where there is no love, there is only hate. Emotions work like material things. A bottle is always filled with something. Once it is empty of its contents, it filled with air. In the vacuum of space, the bottle is filled to the lip with potential. But an emotion like love and with it the physics being metaphysical, hatred spills over to fill the void. It is not replaced by disinterest, sadness, or any other human emotion or state of being. Absence of love creates hate.

          And I hate my robotic congregation.

          The air conditioning is on, but I am sweating anyway. My revulsion for everyone in front of me feels solid, like it sits in my hand, a small brittle bird that I can crush if I wanted. Instead of being inspired by their plights, in place of being sorrowful for their human sinfulness, I feel rage, anger at them for remaining the same group of intransigent fools they were four years ago when I was assigned to this church.

          I open my mouth, suddenly filled, and my voice booms out. “I would die for you. That’s what Jesus said. By taking that cross, by not divinely intervening to ease his own mortal pain, He took his sins onto Himself.

          “But what have you given Him in exchange for your salvation? You come here each Sunday morning exactly the same as you came here last week, last month, last year. You tithe exactly what you’ve always tithed, dressed in your Sunday best, ready only to hear what you want to hear. Your faces and hearts are stone that only eons of time will erode.”

          They all gasp. That took them by surprise as if one of the giant swaying chandeliers had crashed down into their sparse ranks. The sour looks on their faces tells me that they don’t like what they’re hearing.

          “Now, who among you is ready to meet God? Which one of you has cleared your conscience?”

          I know the video cameras up in the balcony are capturing everything. I raise my arms and feel my physical body dissolve, my robe falling to the ground, empty, a black hull molted and left behind. I see the congregation below me. This is going to go viral.

The Restaurant

I’ve just gone through a bout of writer’s block trying to create a fairy tale. So I put it aside and asked my Vine and Facebook friends to give me three words for writing prompts. I told them that I would chose three and try to write a story using them. When I got the list, it was so juicy and challenging that I decided to use ALL their suggestions in one story. So from Vine I’d like to thank Jimusey, Marlinsmash, StrawberryCam,and Tracey Sarno. I’d like to thank Marius Weyland Riley, Karen Faris, Deanna Aronchick, Kerry Ottenson, and Mary Autumn Hale from Facebook. Thanks for putting up with my dry spell, and I hope you enjoy this story. It’s a little different from my “darker” fare. XO H. R. Christian

Charlie opened his eyes and looked at his hands. They were raw- pink and fragile. His nails were dirty, the ends ragged and crammed with dirt the color of a wood frog’s skin. He didn’t really know why they were like that. The thing inside his mouth felt more like the dry leather tongue of a shoe than the moist tongue a man would have. His black canvas sneakers were wet, an unpleasant swampy mush of water and foot filth mashed between his toes that he could only imagine was his socks. His pants were wet up to his knees, his legs sore like he had been on a march through the Burmese jungle with the Chindits. But that was impossible. It was 2017, not 1944. This was New York City, not a southeast Asian jungle. The last thing he remembered was being very sad and standing in the rain in a state of inebriation, then boarding 6 train and riding to 125th Street.  There was a fuzzy memory of waiting on the B15 bus to take him up Willis Avenue in The Bronx, then nothing. He couldn’t even remember why he had been sad. Alcohol truly made him forget.

The rooftops around him were flat and covered with huge piles of of large-grained gravel. He stood up carefully, the sharp edges of the rocks digging into his palms as he pushed himself up. His ancient iPod hung around his neck on a lanyard like a pair of birding binoculars. He looked at it and saw that it was drained of power. “Well, I can’t listen this until I find a power cord and an outlet.” His thoughts ran, concentrated on his music rather than his surroundings. The songs might have given him a distraction, an escape from the pounding confusion in his head while he scoured the roofs for any clue that would have told him where he was. As far as he saw, it was a just chaos of flat roofs with occasional buttes of buildings rising from the general level. It almost gave him the feeling that he was on the ground. He came to his feet and tottered over to the edge of the roof he was on, expecting to be no more than a story or two in the air. To his surprise he was perched on a virtual eagle’s nest, far higher up than he thought. The street below was a thin, gray thread, and the traffic noise no more than a slight ringing in his ears.

“We’re pretty high up, aren’t we?”

The voice came from Charlie’s left. He whipped around so fast he nearly lost his balance. There was a man sitting on a bare spot on the roof, leaning up against another building that was about four feet higher than the one he was on.

“What? How did I get here? I mean, I was waiting on the bus then I was here.”

“Sounds like you had a blackout. You’re a drinker, I can tell.” His cheeks, red as a ripe strawberry, quivered as his voice boomed out, echoing over the surrounding buildings.

“How?”

“Well, you’re as dirty as I am, number one. You look like you had a rough night. And I can smell you from here. Your breath is pretty strong. I’m guessing you drink bourbon?”

Charlie thought a moment. “I like it, sure. But I’m not a drunk. Just had a bad night is all, I think.”

“Sure, son. Just one bad night. It took you one night to wear down your clothes and get them filthy like that.” The man’s voice rose. “ Yep. You haven’t been a wino sleeping in the streets at all.”

“I wouldn’t consider myself a wino, mister.”

“Ah, but would everyone else think so?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve got an apartment. I live somewhere. I mean, I’ve got a place in Manhattan.”

“Are we in Manhattan?”

Charlie was stumped. He didn’t know exactly where they were. The cityscape around them was familiar, but at the same time unfamiliar. For all he knew they could be somewhere in Brooklyn. New York was a big city, and he hadn’t been everywhere in it. “I’m not sure, but we’re in the city somewhere. I just can’t place it.”

“You can’t place it because you don’t know where you are. You’ve never been here before so how certain are yo that we’re in New York. We could be in Newark, or even Philly.”

“I’d know if we were in Newark. I could see the Manhattan skyline from there.”

“Could you now? Well, it just so happens we’re in New York, but I’m not about to tell you where. This is very amusing to me.” The man laughed. “I’ve been in the same boat you’re in- stuck in a place, not knowing where you are or even how to get back to where you came from.”

“I’m not even sure I really want to be anywhere right now. My head feels wobbly and my stomach is upset. I think I need to get on the ground.”

“Good luck with finding your way down, then.”

“What do you mean? I got up here, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can get back down.” Charlie turned and looked at the buildings around him. They were so packed together that he could only guess that he came up some stairs and though one of the many doors that opened out onto the roof. “All I have to do is find the unlocked door.”

“Did you notice that when you came through the door that it shut behind you? Lots of these doors open from the inside but are locked from the outside.” The man chuckled and pulled out a bagel from his jacket. “I’d be glad to share my breakfast with you. Are you hungry?”

It was then that Charlie realized he was hungry- very hungry. The bagel in the man’s hand looked huge, much bigger than a regular one. It seemed to be at least eight inches across. The cream cheese filling looked strange. “Yeah. I am. But what’s that in the middle?”

“We’re near loads of restaurants, brother. The better question is  what’s not in it?”

“What do you mean?”

“By loads of restaurants? What do I mean by loads of restaurants?”

“Yeah.”  Charlie peered over the edge of the roof. “There doesn’t look to be anything like a restaurant below us.”

“They’re not down there.”

“Well, where are these loads of restaurants then?”

“They’re up here.”

Charlie looked around. All he saw was roofs, chimneys, and fire escapes. There were a few sheds here and there, but over to the horizon there was no sign of a restaurant. “Still don’t see them.”

“Come over here and sit down. Eat, and then I’ll show you where they are.”

He sat next to the man who had a thick blanket covering the coarse rocks. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it kept the sharp points of the gravel from sticking them too hard. The bagel was dripping with butter. As he inspected it he saw specks of other things that looked like herbs, bacon, cream cheese, and vegetables. “There sure are a lot of things inside this. You were right. What’s not in it?”

“I told you. The people up here are really talented. There’s a place just over there.” The man pointed across the street at something that looked like a green house on the other roof. “They make the most exquisite artichoke pizza with goat cheese and a stuffed garlic crust.”

“I kind of like just plain pizza, you know with just tomato sauce and cheese.”

“Well, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it.”

“I thought it was pizza.”

The man laughed, and when he did it was like music filled the overcast day. A light breeze ran across his hair, and fluffed out the great white beard billowing out from his chin. His eyes matched the gray blue of the sunless day, but more intense than the sky above. They were large and it was as if the man could see beyond the cloud cover into the brightness of the sun. He had a long, straight nose and a wide smile that showed a small gap between his two front teeth. His long fingers held on to a similar bagel as he took bite after bite. “Why don’t you eat your bagel, Charlie?”

“I am.” Charlie took a bite. He never tasted anything like it before in his life. The bread was dense, chewy but with an airy texture. The filling had so many complex flavors he couldn’t identify them all, but they delighted him. Then he thought a second. “How did you know my name is Charlie?”

“You said it last night when you got up here. You were, well, more than a little drunk. I’m not surprised you don’t remember much. Like I said, you look like a drinker. And drinkers black out.”

“So you’ve been up here all night?”

“I’ve been here for a long time.”

“You sleep up here?”

“I never go down. Never. There’s everything you would ever need up here.”

“You can’t be serious, man. You never go down? You sleep up here? So these restaurants, they just give you food?”

“Eat your breakfast and then I’ll show you around. You’ll see what I mean.” As he spoke, a cloud of banana yellow butterflies appeared on the horizon of the far away roofs, soared upwards to the sky, and disappeared, growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

They finished. Charlie never felt so satisfied with anything that he had ever eaten before. The man stood up and extended his hand to help him get to his feet. They walked over the gravel, which seemed to get easier and easier to Charlie. The rocks didn’t impede him as much as he thought they would, like he was actually floating over them. They went towards an old fashioned caged fire ladder.

The man worked the complex bolt and swung the door open. “Go ahead. Climb down.”

“I thought you said the restaurants were up here, like on the roof.”

“Don’t you see the other roofs? They aren’t all as high as this one. We’re just going down to explore some other places.”

“All the way down?”

“Oh never. Just down a level or two. You’ll see. Just climb down. You’ll know where to get off.”

“How?”

“Like I said, you’ll know.”

“Okay, but why should I trust you? I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Guilliam.”

“Like William with a ‘gu’ instead of a ‘w,’ right?”

“Exactly. Now go.”

Charlie descended the ladder. His feet were a little shaky. He kept looking down, and the tunnel of metal rods appeared endless. He couldn’t even see the street level below, like by getting inside the ladder’s cage it had elevated him to a dizzying height. His anxiety engulfed him, a manifestation of fear. “Guilliam, is it much farther? I’m kind of unsteady on this thing. How did I ever get up it last night?” He turned his head to see the older man above him.

“I never said you took this ladder to come up here. I just said we’d use it to go see some of the restaurants. You came through a regular door, not this fire escape. Don’t be  scared. There’s no way you can fall all the way down.”

Suddenly the ladder ended with a floor made by a basketweave of iron rods. There was a cage door like the one on the upper level. Unlike the one above, this one swung open easily. Charlie stepped out onto another roof area, this one covered with similar large-stoned gravel as the one above had. He held the door open for Guilliam who stepped out and waved his arm like a maitre d towards the rear of the roof.

“Go this way. I have some things to show you. Just walk over to that wall.”

Charlie made his way to the low wall that separated one building from another. On the other side was a gently sloping roof with the same gravel. But buried under the gravel was produce, and lots of it. There was a row of artichokes with everything but their green conical tops hidden by the bluish rock. A few feet away were rows of green and red apples peeking out in the same manner. Carrots with frilly tops lined up like orange pencils in a box. Arugula, spinach, and kale were bunched together, leafy football players in a huddle. Beyond the vegetables was a small building that connected with a few more buildings on the roof, creating a maze of small alleys. The other buildings had porches with all manner of fruit, vegetable and herbs buried in the stones. There were even wheels of cheese and crates of eggs, all strangely interred.

“What’s the deal with the groceries?”

“That’s what the restaurants use. They store their produce out in the air where God can see it.”

“What?”

“It’s an expression up here. It just means the air keeps the things fresher than sticking them away in some dark refrigerator or pantry. Come on. There’s the restaurant that I wanted to take you to.”

Charlie looked around. “I still don’t see a restaurant. I don’t see any restaurants.”

“There’s a lot of them. You’ve got to know where to look. Come on.” Guilliam climbed over the wall and walked gingerly down the roof to the small building. A rusty barbecue grill stood next a worn green painted door with a window in it. He knocked on one of the thick glass panels. It opened and a young woman with thick auburn hair and a small mouth poked out her head. She looked about thirty years old. A single oboe was playing a haunting tune inside the building, and the notes snaked through the opening in the door past her head and into Charlie’s ear.

“Guilliam! You’re here early today! And who is your new sidekick?”

The old man stepped aside and pointed. “Oh him? That’s Charlie. Hey Charlie! Let me introduce Josephine. Josephine, this is Charlie. He just got here last night.”

“Hi Charlie! Come on over. Any friend of Guilliam is a friend of mine!” She swung the green door all the way open and stepped out onto the roof. Her white dress crested like a wave in the light breeze, and her hair spread out like wings.

She looks like an angel. Charlie’s thoughts raced as he walked over to the porch. He extended his hand to her.

Her fingers went to his palm, and traced the lines. “Welcome to my little restaurant. Won’t you come in?”

“Um, I don’t have any money. Guilliam gave me a bagel this morning. I just don’t have anything.”

“Did I ask you for money? No, my dear. You don’t need any money for my restaurant. Just come on in, okay?”

Charlie let her lead him inside with Guilliam trailing behind them. He was amazed at how roomy it was. The light glowed from ample globes mounted on the ceiling, and the tables all had clusters of small votive candles. Each table had four chairs, four plates, and four goblets. On each plate was a small haystack of fried crispy noodles, his favorite food. Next to each plate was a pair of silver chopsticks. The oboe music faded into a melancholy but somehow upbeat guitar song that reminded Charlie of something, but he couldn’t place what it was.

“What’s this music?” He touched Josephine on the arm. It felt as warm as her fingers did.

“It’s called Thaumaturgy. By a group called The Orchids. I have the CD if you’d like to add it to your iPod.”

“It sounds like The Dream Academy. That’s a band from the 1980s.”

“I know. They did a song called Life In A Northern Town. I love that song.”

“I like them too. I really like this, but I don’t have any way of getting songs onto my iPod any more. I don’t have a computer or even wifi.”

“You don’t need it here. Hand me your iPod.”

“It needs to be recharged.”

“That won’t matter. I promise I won’t break it.”

He gave it to the woman and she slid her finger across the screen. She smiled slightly and handed it back. “Here you go. It’s all ready. You like music a lot, don’t you?”

Charlie stared at the iPod in his hand. It was fully charged and the song Thaumaturgy was showing on his music list. “How did you do that?”

“Let’s just say that the atmosphere up here is charged. Now, what would you like to eat?”

Guilliam spoke from the corner of the room where he had gone to look at a small shelf of books. “I’d like another bagel please. And my friend there would probably like to clean up. He doesn’t seem to be like me. I like being a little rough and dirty. It gives my soul grit, so to speak.”

“I’d like to wash my hands and face, if you don’t mind, miss. I was sort of indisposed last night, and, well, I think I’d like to feel a little cleaner than I am now.”

“You’re already clean, Charlie. And don’t call me ‘miss.’ You should call me Josephine.” Charlie stared at her again. Her smile was beatific. There was a scent about her of  spices. He breathed in deeply. “I like your perfume, Josephine.”

“I use cinnamon essential oil in my hair. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Very.” He then realized he hadn’t been to wash his hands. He looked down at them, and they were clean, not raw and aching any more. His clothes that had been damp and dirty now looked freshly washed. He put his hand up to his face and felt his beard. It was dry, not greasy, and felt like down. “What happened?”

“You wanted to be clean.” She grinned at him. “So you got clean. You were unhappy last night. Are you unhappy now?”

“No. I’m very happy to be here.” He thought for a moment. “I can’t even remember why I was unhappy. I don’t remember being unhappy. I mean, when I first woke up this morning, I felt something, something awful. But now I don’t even know what it was.”

“That’s how it’s like up here, Charlie.” Guilliam stood next to him. “Everything on the roof, every restaurant, every ladder, every fire escape, you find happiness and peace. Isn’t it nice? It’s like our own nirvana up here.”

“Guilliam, of course it’s like a nirvana!” Josephine laughed. “Up here there’s no need to worry about what goes on at street level. Everything is timeless. Eventually everyone ends up here. Everyone is fed. Everyone is content. We aim to please here, and countless billions are served.”

“Wait. Billions? What are you talking about? Where am I?” Charlie felt puzzled, but not anxious. It was a happy sort of puzzled, though, and he had no desire to leave the restaurant to go back down to the street.

“I think you know where you are, Charlie. Just stay up here, and you never have to be sad again. You won’t even remember the feeling of sadness and depression any more.”

“You mean, well, I’m… I’m…”

Guilliam walked over to him. “Charlie, you are exactly where your journey took you. You don’t need the details of your life before here. And now you’re with the friends you were meant to have. Nothing else matters any more.” The old man put his arms around Charlie’s shoulders and gave him a long, warm hug.

Thanks everyone! It was a good first year for me and this blog! I hope your 2015 is as hopeful and good as I want mine to be!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 18 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Life Isn’t Short

I apologize for my long absence, I’ve had some problems with my laptop and connectivity. I’m hoping that things are turning around. Below is a little story I’ve been thinking about for a while. I hope you enjoy it.

People say that life is short. I always wonder what makes them say that. I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes watching a small speck of dust drifting in a sunbeam. There are millions of sub-atomic particles in that dust, and every one of those particles has been around since the beginning of time. Every electron, proton, and neutron has existed through eternity, and those tiny pieces are in me, and in that speck of dust, all the way to galaxies and stars so far away that I can’t see them. Well I can’t see them right now but I know they are there. All the energy it takes to make electrical impulses in my brain came through forever to form a single thought, a solitary impulse, a lone tear. When you’re made up of immortality, how can you say life is short? It’s not. It just takes some interior awakening to see it, to feel its reality, and to take comfort in that fact.

I knew all this by the time I was five years old. Yes, that is a very young age to have such an epiphany, but age has nothing to do with wisdom. Not really. Some of the wisest people in the world are five years old, old enough to experience life but not so hardened by suffering, still un-calloused by the thin veil of reality we have cloaking our lives. They still see the unseen; they still hear the unheard. Their energy is raw from the stars, fresh, but billions of years old. I felt this when I was that age, and I never forgot it. I learned it all because of, well, I have to explain.

Today we have much more modern and safe Christmas decorations than when I was five years old. Injection-molded polyethylene trees give new meaning to the term evergreen. They soften in hot attics over the summer, stuffed into boxes on high shelves in stale garages, hidden away in backroom closets only to bloom forth every December. The balls that go on them are all unbreakable plastic, collectable kitsch, child-proof and non-toxic. And the lights- UL Approved LED color-changing chasers, energy efficient and hundreds to a strand- are draped cooly all over the tree.

But when I was five, everything was different. The trees were real, sticky with sap, grown on distant farms to be cut down by crews right after Thanksgiving. By the time they arrived at our local Christmas tree lot, they were already dying, leaking life out through saw cuts on their trunks. The ornaments that dangled adorning the limbs were thin glass held to the firs by wire hooks that often failed, leading to the delicate baubles crashing to the floor erupting in shards. There was shiny tinsel made of lead strands, and flocks of “angel hair” which was spun of fiberglass that scratched and inflamed the skin when you touched it.

Then there were the lights. The bulbs were huge, the size of large grapes, strung on heavy rubber-insulated wire. They were painted bright colors on the outside, red, green, yellow, and, my favorite, blue. There were about fifty lights on the whole tree, enough to illuminate the whole room and reflect off of the ornaments. Because they were incandescent, as they glowed, they heated up to the point where they would give harsh red burns if you held one. My parents warned me never to touch them. I don’t know why they would even bother to say anything because telling a small child not to touch something bright and colorful is about as useful as telling a man dying of thirst not to drink a cool glass of water as you hold it in front of his face. To top off their foolhardiness, they left me alone in the living room for hours after dark when they lit the tree. I begged them to allow me to sit on the couch and listen to Christmas records from the big stereo enclosed in a cabinet on the far wall, and they gave in. Children can be good at wearing their parents’ conviction down. My mother loaded up the vinyl discs on the turntable, and went into the den to watch television with my father.

At first I sat on the couch just marveling at the beauty before me. Carols floated on the air around me, and the aroma of the tree was heavy in the air. I turned off the lamp on the table next to the couch and allowed the lights to shine and the ornaments to glitter, spinning in the breeze created by the heat register just to the tree’s left side. As the songs went on, I became more and more attracted to the tree. I got off the couch and tiptoed over to it, standing near the limbs with my arms at my side. My fingers twitched, then I reached out and touched the candy-colored lights.

They all burned me.

I touched a blue one again, very quickly. I did it again and again, each time letting my fingers linger longer on the light. Still, I couldn’t touch it for very long, but I wanted that brightness, that color, that energy on me. So I crawled to the back of the tree and took the plug out of the socket at the base.

The carols continued. The room dimmed.

The bulbs eventually cooled to the point where I could hold them without pain. The only lights in the room came from the red plastic “jewel” on the front of the stereo cabinet and the silvery fluorescence from a mercury vapor streetlight streaming through the parted curtains on the picture window. The shadows were deep, dark, but not scary. I still had the music. I still had the scent of pine. But the color was gone.

Then I decided to turn the lights back on. The record player was spinning the last disc, and there were only four songs before it would quit and turn off. I had maybe ten more minutes before my mother would break the spell and take me to bed. I held the large round plug and reached towards where I thought the socket was, scraping the wall with the metal tines. Finally I found the holes, inserted the plug, and the tree came back to life.

The bulbs had not yet heated up, so I held the blue one in my hand. It amazed me how translucent my fingertips were, a fiery pink against the deep blue of the light. It was warm, but not hot. I stared at the filament through the clear blue paint, letting its light burn little spots on my retinas that danced about before they faded away.

Then I put the bulb in my mouth. I don’t know why I did it. It was a compulsion, something I couldn’t stop. My lips wrapped around the glass which felt smooth and warm on my tongue. At first I only touched the tip. The light got hotter and hotter, but not unbearable. I slipped more of it into my mouth until I had all the glass inside on my tongue. The metal base was fractions of an inch from my lips.

The blue light whispered. “All of me,” it said.

The metal was very warm, almost too warm while I pushed it deeper. I had plastic base of the bulb’s socket touching my teeth. I wanted to swallow that blue light. I wanted to taste its energy, feel what it felt, but I had no words for what I desired. But I did know that I couldn’t stop myself. Then everything tingled, went bright, and mind mind exploded.

I saw the middle of a sun, a distant star. I was only five, but I still somehow knew what I was seeing. There were small things inside it that were trying to escape, flowing and dancing before they were thrust out through the surface of the star, then jetted through black space, faster than I knew possible. I was suddenly one of the things, flying along, traveling for millions of years. Nothing could stop me from going as fast as anything could go. There was music echoing in my ears, though I had no real ears. I was only consciousness. Space was dark all around me, yet I knew I was light. Time meant nothing. I was everything and nothing, all at the same moment. And that moment didn’t exist, not as I had known it before, but something else, like the space between thoughts in your mind, sweet, irresistible, calm.

I saw other things around me, other objects from billions of other stars. They were made of nothing and everything. They too were the spaces between thoughts, little bits traveling just as fast as I was. Some bent downwards and disappeared into darkness further away from me. Others whizzed right beside me, arching and skipping while we went aimlessly and purposely forward. Then I was alone, going forward into the unknown.

Large things manifested as I whirled onwards. They were round and colored like the Christmas light, a cold blue that warmed me despite their frigidness. Ahead of me was a bright light and I streamed towards it. Suddenly a big blue marble was in front of me, beautiful as anything I had ever seen. I burst through into air and oriented to the center of the marble. I crashed through clouds, through dark into flesh. A thumping filled my being, replacing the music with a heartbeat. I felt my feet, my legs, my stomach. Finally I felt my arms, hands, and my head. The thumping ended. I opened my eyes.

My mother and father were standing over me, their faces contorted into things I didn’t recognize, but I knew who they were. I blinked a couple of times, the living room coming into focus. I felt oddly refreshed, reborn. My mouth tasted a little like metal and a little like blood. My tongue began throbbing. My lips felt hard and brittle.

They say I was knocked out for about five minutes. My mother told me later on that my eyes were rolled back in my head, and my father couldn’t find a pulse. I was dead, she said. I was a lucky child to be alive. It scared them both badly, she told me. When I woke up, they both held me tightly until the ambulance came and took me to the hospital. The doctor in the emergency room warned me to never do something like that again. He said I was a lucky kid that got a second chance. It’s what everyone said.

I don’t think I was lucky. I don’t think I got a second chance. What happened to me was that I became aware of things beyond me but all around me. These things are made up of everything and nothing at the same time. I now know that life is a dream, a gift and a destiny at the same time. If I didn’t exist, nothing would exist yet everything would exist in possibility. I am made up of the same stuff that everything else is made of- stars. I know that space is eternal, and that makes me and everything that comprises me, my soul, my being, my body eternal too. Air, birds, earth, water, light, all creation is never-ending as long as I am aware of it, and even after I’m gone. So I’m glad I went to the blue light. I’m happy that I got that shock. And every Christmas when I see blue bulbs I feel a peace and happiness that I don’t know whether anyone else has experienced or not. But I hope they have. I really hope they have, because I know that if they do, they’ll know they’re eternal too.

A Little Christmas Essay

Here’s something worth remembering: Success in business, abundance in material circumstances, fortune, or even general safety have nothing to do with how much you pray, how pious you think you are, how you separate yourself from those you consider sinful, or how literally or figuratively you interpret whatever scripture or holy writings to which you are culturally accustomed.

No matter their religious affiliation, people who preach prosperity gospels, condemn “sinners” by ugly speech, pray for the death of others, or other such abominations are as far from God as one can possibly get. Fundamentalist beliefs are no guarantee of salvation, a trip upwards during a rapture, 72 virgins waiting for you on the other side, or even some earthly reward. When Jesus said no one gets into the Kingdom of God except through Him, do you know what He meant? He meant a belief in God, a oneness with His spirit. In the New Testament God is Jesus is the Holy Spirit, all united, three in one. And that is just one sector of humanity’s view. Period. Others may believe in a different manifestation of God, but He is still within all of us. Everything in all religions is just cultural frosting on a cake baked up by different groups.

If you can understand and feel that God is in all of us by belief Jesus, or being an Episcopalian, or becoming a Buddhist, or being Jewish, or being Wiccan, or following Islam, or any other of the machinations humans have cloaked over the Divine, that is fine. But condemning other people to a hell of your own religion when they do not believe as you do? You have separated yourself from the Holy. If you think you have to support a religion that proselytizes and evangelizes on “fundamental” scripture whether it be Torah, New Testament, Koran, or a Grimoire in order to be one with God, you have completely missed the point of God’s spirit. That is the problem with Christian fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, whatever set of beliefs that claims to be the only path to spiritual oneness with God.

Declaring that governments must follow this religion or that religion in order to serve man is a fallacy. Morals transcend religion, and religions who tell you that they don’t are wrong. Kindness, acceptance, love, respect, and compassion are universal truths, and those truths are universally God. Even atheists who embrace a moral compass are connected with God, whether they believe in one or not. God is the stuff between all of us, the stuff between atoms, electrons, protons, and neutrons, the glue that sticks us all together. I say it all the time: God is great; God is glue.

While I chose to have fellowship with Episcopal traditions, I am leary of the self-pious, the literalists, and the powerful of any religion laying sole claim to God. It’s time people grew up and accepted others along their differences as part of Holy creation. While Christianity celebrates Advent, Shia Muslims recognize Arba’een, Judaism observes Hanukkah, Wiccans celebrate Yule, or whatever religion gathers to commune together whenever, it would do everyone well to remember we are all on one planet; we are all stardust; we are all destined to become one with the Universe and God one day; and we should treat everyone with love, compassion, generosity, and respect.

Merry Christmas, to one and all! Let love rule!

H.R. Christian

Aunt Eva, Granny, and the Pancake Makeup

I was eleven years old when I went to live with my Granny and Great Aunt Eva. Betty June and Daddy, my parents, were killed in a freak pontoon boat accident at Lake Murray on Memorial Day, 29 days before my eleventh birthday. I was left on the shore with some other kids while Betty June sat on the front deck of the overcrowded boat, drunk and dragging her legs in the water when Daddy gunned the engine about 50 yards out. The entire front end dipped down making 16 people, including my father, fall forward and pile on top of my mother. Naturally no one was wearing a life preserver, and Betty June, who could not swim, sank 56 feet to the muddy bottom along with Daddy who was too full of PBR and Wild Turkey to put up much of a fight with the water. Three other people died in the accident, but they were of no consequence to me, so I couldn’t tell you their names even if you offered me a prize. Anyway, after divers found their bodies, and the coroner did the autopsies, and the preacher did his burying, it was June 30th, my birthday. Seeing as there was no one else to take care of me, Granny and Great Aunt Eva told the social worker assigned to my case that they would come by the foster home where I was staying and fetch me. They were next of kin, they said. They packed my suitcase, threw it in the trunk of Granny’s Pontiac, and we headed off for the wilds of Kershaw County, South Carolina.

Now you might think that I was  pretty torn up about the preceding events, but I wasn’t. I mean, yes I was sort of sad about losing my parents. They did provide for me, sort of. I did go to school every now and then when we were living in one place for long enough. We moved all over South Carolina and Georgia, from Greenville to Columbia to Charleston to Rock Hill to Athens to Charlotte to Savannah to Macon then back to Columbia over a period of six years. We’d get a run down apartment, or a worn out trailer, or a shotgun shack in each place. My parents would register me for school and everything would be sort of okay until Daddy lost whatever mechanics job he had, or Betty June got arrested for public intoxication, or the utility company came by and cut off our electricity. Sometimes the sheriff came out and evicted us for non-payment of rent, throwing all our stuff out in a pile on the side of the road. Daddy would scoop up what would fit into the trunk of whatever beater car we had at the time, and we’d be off to the next town or county, and pick up our lives again. By the time Betty June and Daddy took the Big Gulp, we were living back in Columbia, and our luck had changed for the better. We were actually doing pretty well I guess. We lived in the Dentsville Trailer Court, and I had gotten through all of the second grade, enough to go to third grade the next term, just three years behind. Betty June had a second-shift waitress job at the iHop, and Daddy was working at the AutoZone on Two Notch Road. In fact we had enough money to be able to afford a used pontoon boat and a 75 horsepower Mercury outboard motor.

Come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t so lucky for my parents, but since I wasn’t on that boat, I guess maybe I was the only lucky one in my little family.

Anyway, my birthday was on a Saturday that year. Granny and Great Aunt Eva pulled up outside of the group home where I was staying, then took me all the way out to the little two bedroom house they shared about five miles outside of Camden. They put up a curtain in the tiny dining nook so it was like I had my own room. There were chickens in the yard, and plenty of sweet tea and Kool Aid to drink. All in all, it was a pretty good deal, I mean besides my parents being dead.

Three months later I settled into a pretty nice routine I never had with Betty June and Daddy. First of all, I started fifth grade, thanks to Granny and her filling out the forms at North Camden Elementary School. She told them she couldn’t remember the name of my previous school, and the school secretary just put me in the grade she thought I looked like I should be in. Nobody really asked me. Given the same situation, some kids would have complained about the harder subjects, but I didn’t. To tell the truth, I was sort of tired of being in a classroom full of babies. Going from three years behind to only one year behind made me feel more confident. There were even kids in my class my age. I studied in school, and did the homework. It’s not like Granny and Great Aunt Eva lots to do like a good television, or a record player, or anything much besides those chickens. So I was quickly caught up with the fifth grade.

The second thing also related to school. Granny didn’t take me there in her huge Pontiac. A big yellow bus stopped about a quarter mile from the house every morning and picked up several kids from the area. The only clothes I really had were a few jeans and a bunch of gas station, car, and mechanics T-shirts: Pennzoil, Exxon, Gulf, Craft Master, Thrush Mufflers, Hurst, Chevrolet, Ford. Daddy got them free wherever he worked and he usually took a couple for me. I always wore worn out Chuck Taylor Hi-top sneakers. The boys all seemed to want to dress like me, and the girls liked my hair which was longer and blonde. I was a quiet kid and that ended up being a plus. The kids on the bus took me as a strong, silent type, and lots of people wanted to be my friend, especially when I told them how my parents drowned. It gave me an air of mystery.

The third thing made me really popular for some reason. One summer day right before school started, my Great Aunt Eva sat on the front porch with me and taught me how to smoke Salem shorts. They were strong menthol cigarettes without filters, and the first few times I inhaled, I nearly coughed up my lungs. I got sick. I threw up near the side of the house, and the chickens scratched through it looking for feed. That made me a little sicker. It was that sort of cycle for a few minutes, then I got used to the cigarettes. Great Aunt Eva was very old, much older than my Granny. She didn’t believe in the warnings on the side of cigarette packs. “I’ve been smoking since I was nine years old,” She growled in her deep voice. “It ain’t never stopped me or hurt my health. I ain’t see no reason to keep this pleasure from you.” And she’d pass me another butt.

When I went out to wait on the bus every morning, I always had two cigarettes in my shirt pocket, and one behind my ear. Granny told me I looked like a hoodlum, but Great Aunt Eva hushed her, told me to give her some sugar which meant for me to kiss her, She smiled and waved as I left smoke clouds behind me on the way to the bus stop. The kids there were impressed, even more so when they learned I was actually allowed to smoke. One girl, Patsy Mae, was thirteen and going to the junior high next to the elementary school. She told me that by the time I got to junior high, I would be the coolest guy there. I just gave her a smile and spit on the ground. “I guess I already am, Peggy Mae.” I said, and she flushed up. I think she liked me, and I secretly thanked my aunt.

Everything was going pretty good. Granny, unlike Betty June and Daddy, expected me to actually do well in school, even beyond my efforts to get into a class with kids my own age. Even Great Aunt Eva told me that if I studied, and eventually graduated from high school, something none of my kin had ever done, she would buy me a car. Not a new car, but at least one I could drive and work on myself she said. So I set myself up every night with my books and cigarettes, studying way after the old girls went to bed. By the way, they would have tanned my hide if they knew I called them “the old girls.”

By the time I got into high school, I felt like I was on top. Most of the time when I was with Betty June and Daddy I felt like a useless withered arm. You know, I was always there but really didn’t serve a purpose other than to fill up a sleeve. So to speak, you know. They didn’t really put me in a sleeve, but there was the time Betty June accidentally glued my fingers together while I held her fake nails in place. She ran out of regular glue and was using super glue. That stuff only comes off with acetone, and we were waiting for a social worker to come by. During that visit Betty June made me keep my hand up my sleeve while the worker quizzed me on whether I was eating regularly and going to school, both of which I said yes to, but it was a lie. After the woman left, Betty June forgot all about my stuck together fingers for two more days until I got loud enough about it while she was drunk. She took me to the gas station and ran my hand under gasoline. It seemed to work, but my fingers were sticky for a couple of weeks, and I smelled like 89 octane so bad she made me sleep on the porch for three days.

Anyway, there had been none of that while I was at Granny and Great Aunt Eva’s place. I even felt a little welcome because I did things for them. I fed those chickens, robbed the nests for eggs, and swept the dirt yard of their leavings. We had breakfast, lunch, and supper every day. My Granny and Great Aunt Eva put on makeup each morning, with tons of powder foundation spackled into the cracks and crannies of their faces, not actually hiding the flaws, but putting a fine layer of dust over them to make the spots and lines look less bold. The waxy tube of red they applied across their wrinkly lips  was the same rouge they used on their cheekbones, the flush of youth they no longer had. Granny said that once. Great Aunt Eva said that the bloom was so far off their rose that the only thing left was to approximate where the petals used to be, but she still thought she looked good. She was pretty enough, as was my grandmother, but neither of them could be mistaken for younger women. My mother once told me before she took that final drink in Lake Murray that Granny and Great Aunt Eva weren’t fooling nobody, that they did the makeup out of habit. Betty June said it with a mean edge to her voice, like saying that somehow made her better than them, that she held on to some of her own beauty. But if you asked me, she was only a few years from going from dewy to dusty herself.

Great Aunt Eva always smelled like rose dusting powder. She always wanted me to kiss her on the cheek before I went to meet the school bus from fifth grade to seventh grade to eighth grade on up. The makeup brushed off on my lips with a smokey and candy taste. It was something that I always took with me to school, like a reminder of her and her expectations.

Smells and tastes like that always reminded me of things, like when I started high school and kids were sneaking beers in the back of the bus. The smell of them alone took me back to when Betty June and Daddy had me. I was just a drag on their lives, a surprise that happened because they were careful, just not careful enough. Daddy told me once that the condom broke and that was why I was born, ha ha. When I lost those two, that I held no particular grief wasn’t really a surprise to me. They had been around me, but not the world’s best family. The only reminder I ever got of them other than smell of the beers, which I never drank, was when Granny used real vanilla extract in her baking. There was just enough of a whiff of alcohol to send me back to the days when Betty June and Daddy drank the rent money.

So life with the “old girls” was kind of good. I was actually pretty grateful to them. I got through high school and even got to go to technical school afterwards where I got my mechanics certification. Great Aunt Eva came through with her promise to buy me a used car. I stayed with them in the little house until I finished getting certified, then I got a job in Columbia about 45 minutes away. It was with a Honda dealership working on used, non-Honda cars. I had benefits like insurance and days off. They even offered to send me back to school to earn a master mechanic license. I got a small apartment by myself close to work, but I spent every weekend with Granny and Great Aunt Eva, you know, to help around the house. They weren’t getting any younger. Granny called it the slow march to the grave, but Great Aunt Eva would just laugh at her. She told Granny that she herself planned to outlive everyone. By the way, neither of them would tell me how old they were. I don’t know what they were so vain about, but that was fine with me.

I thought they both were going to live forever. I was wrong.

Great Aunt Eva went first, just by going to bed one night and never waking up. I guess that’s a pretty good way to go. And when I went with Granny to Grayson’s Funeral Parlor and Chapel to make arrangements, I looked at the death certificate. I saw that she was 93 years old. The coroner said she passed of “natural causes.” Granny huffed about it a little. She said that there was nothing natural about Salem cigarettes.

The funeral was held at the parlor. I sat next to Granny in a suit I bought just for the occasion. She insisted that it be an open casket event. “Eva always prided herself on her looks, you know. She’d want everyone to see her to say goodbye.”

We watched as a few older cousins, some old ladies that I guessed knew her when she was younger, and a few strange ancient men that I couldn’t place tottered up, and held on to the coffin to whisper words to Great Aunt Eva. The room was warm, and there was a strange odor. It was like regular Listerine, mint, and bad breath, like dirty dentures. I turned around and looked at the people attending. Everyone was old, very old. Their thin skeletons held dried up flesh or melted mounds of candle wax. I don’t know why that came to me. It just did.

When everyone else had walked up and had their say with Great Aunt Eva, I turned to Granny. “Come on. Let’s go say goodbye. It’s time now.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ll help you up there. I know this is hard.” I took Granny’s arm. As we walked, I was looking down. The carpet had a pattern to it, repeating gold diamonds on a burgundy background. The windows in the room were covered by sheer white curtains, the panes outlined by the bright daylight which reflected off of the bronze of the casket. I don’t know who had pushed the heavy blue outer drapes open, but I was glad they did. The room was pretty in a quiet sort of way, and I was thinking how much Great Aunt Eva would have liked it.

We stopped at the coffin. I held Granny by the shoulder and squeezed her slightly. She cocked her head towards me, her eyes wrinkly with folds and wet with tears. I looked at my hands and noticed I still had some black grease underneath my nails. I never could clean my hands enough any more. Granny’s hands were now holding onto one of the brass handles. She reached up and stroked the white satin surrounding my aunt. Her hands were turned up, and the backs of her hands made a swishing sound on the cloth. The palms were very pale, deep with lines, and spotty with red, like they were chapped in places.

“Eva, you didn’t outlive me.” I could barely hear her voice over the noise her hands were making. “I can’t believe I’m saying goodbye now. It just seems like yesterday we was out in the yard waiting on Papa to come home from the mill.”

I hadn’t known that my great grandfather had worked at a mill. I was so glad to have a home with my grandmother and great aunt that it never occurred to me to ask about the rest of their family other than the odd cousins who sometimes came by. All I really knew was my mother and father were gone, and that wasn’t such a bad thing. I really wasn’t too curious, I guess, and the two old girls were pretty closed-lip about most everything except the day to day things. Now I realized that they had lives before I came. When my mother told me that time that Granny and Great Aunt Eva wore makeup that didn’t fool anyone, she didn’t look any further than their skin. Neither had I, really, but at least I was nice.

I looked down at my grandmother. She was so small. “Come on, Granny. Let’s go sit down.”

“Not yet. You got to kiss her.”

“What?”

“I said you got to kiss her. She’s so pretty there. She looks so natural. Kiss her.”

“Granny, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I already said goodbye in my heart.”

“Kiss her.” All of the sudden her hand was one the back of my head, pushing me forward and down. I couldn’t stop her. It was like she had some sort of strength, something inside of her that was stronger than me. My head went closer and closer to Great Aunt Eva until my lips were pressed against her cheek. She was cold, but a powdery taste came into my mouth, something familiar. Granny let go of my head and I came back up. I wiped my hand across my lips and pancake makeup came off. I looked down into the casket at my aunt, and she looked like she was smiling. I smiled back.