Week 11 Exercises

Characters and Ways of Seeing: Loving

Oh. My. God. My sister, Kay.

Being ten years older than me, she left home for college before I was ten. And I was glad. Seriously, she nagged me far more than my mom, played catch with glass vases over my head, and made me practice my speech, over and over and over again. She, of everyone, recognized that I couldn’t hear or understand all spoken speech. It pissed her off, and she wasn’t haven’t any of it.

Still, there was that earthquake… We had had a huge screaming match the night before, our specialty. Yet when the earthquake hit, she ran past every other family member to belly flop on top of me, screaming, “Dolly, its an earthquake! Get up! Get up!” I couldn’t breathe, let alone move, with her on top of me.

After she left home, we just didn’t see each other that much. Holidays, mostly. When we did, I couldn’t tell her things. Once, the Christmas when I was thirteen and spent the day huddled up on the couch, she asked if I was getting my period. I was angry. God, I was so angry. “No,” I wanted to scream, “our brother-in-law isn’t having sex with our sister, because he’s got me. He married her to get to me, and he’s been getting to me for the past two years!” I said nothing.

Fast forwarding a few decades, I get a call that our dad is dying. Kay and I meet at our parents’ house, and sit with our mother. Dad was at his cabin when he collapsed, and had been airlifted to a hospital that was more than 350 miles from our home. After being assured that he was in a coma, and unlikely to live for even the next day, there seemed to be little point in any one of us hopping on a plane. Still, I voiced my policy to never leave a family member unattended in the hospital. Before I could say another word, mom was charging a hotel room for me, and Kay would pay for my plane ticket and drive me to the airport.

That drive to the airport changed everything.

She talked about how she just couldn’t imagine the house without dad. I looked out the window, not responding. That was my best defense, not responding. What? She demanded. What?

“Kay, can we try this from my perspective, just this once? You had thirteen years of a loving, doting father before he became a complete alcoholic. I was three, Kay, three years old when he started drinking morning, noon, and night. I have never known him when he wasn’t an alcoholic. Do you see the difference?”

She cried, and I was upset that I had made her cry. What I didn’t know at the time was that she cried every single day. She didn’t wreck the car on the way to the airport because she was adept at crying and driving at the same time, whether our dad was dying or not.

My dad recovered a bit, enough to come home for four months before he died. In that time, all the barriers were worn down by how much time we spent together. It was like discovering a new person that you shared a past with. Odd, but wonderful.

She is a complete mess of contradictions.

In part, I believe this is because of an illness she had when she was a baby. She ran a very high fever and they determined enough to figure out it was a blood disease. She had 42 blood transfusions. She died twice, and was once dead long enough for them to start the death certificate before she self-revived. The doctors predicted she would be a vegetable, there just wasn’t another possible future for her. Yes, she does have brain damage – she has no sense of spatial relationships and her tolerance level couldn’t be much lower because everything is frustrating. She drives by time and landmarks, of which there are many in Los Angeles but the open road, however, couldn’t be more terrifying. She doesn’t recognize the front of a garment from the back without a tag. The computer frustrates her. The DVD player frustrates her, as does her car, packaging and frankly, anything more complex than an on/off switch.

She is also a well-respected history teacher at a private Jewish high school in Beverly Hills, California, where she holds the record for the most consecutive years with 100% of her students passing AP World History. She is a single home-owner, just months from paying off her home. She works on her novels, daily, and although we don’t quite get what the other writes, we keep supporting each other in our efforts. Now, we work to reserve a week a year to spend together, which is truly the only time when we can be ourselves.

Women and Men: Smart Pets

Although she had the wisdom to name me Darwin (but frequently addresses me as kitty or katze), and supplies food, water and the cat box, in other ways she doesn’t appear, well, right. It isn’t just a matter of her refusal to nap until it is dark, to wake up when I want fresh water in the middle of the night, it is the male who shows up on occasion.

For example, she was gone for some days and when he brought her back where she is supposed to always be, he didn’t understand the need to get the bad-smelling things off her as soon as possible. We couldn’t have them in the house. I was the one who had to chew off the thing on her wrist, cutting my gums in the process. I even tried to chew off the plastic bits they left in her hind parts but she kept them covered. It was completely frustrating that no one knew that they needed to be gone.

That male, he didn’t lick her clean. Not once. He gave her smelly bits of fluff to clean herself that were damp, but certainly not as good as a tongue for cleaning. Her fur, oddly long in only one place and usually free for me to pick at, was bound against her head and again, it was left to me to try and get it unknotted. I was able to get a few bits free and chew at them, but the job was not properly done. How would that appear to others? How would that smell to others? There is another cat, not of this house, but one I permit to use the back space – there are enough things to hunt out there for the both of us. He had to have smelled her fur and wondered if I wasn’t taking proper care of her.

He came in once, just for a look about, and thankfully she was properly cleaned that day. By water, of all things. She lays in it. I mean, she lays her whole body in it, not just a toe to watch it ripple. And she stays there. When its cold, I do like the heat that rises off the water. I just can’t imagine lying in it like I do with the places in the floor where the heat comes out.

Happily, her male isn’t around that often, and I get my half of the bed, which is proper. When her male arrives, he doesn’t seem to understand that the space is mine. Can’t he smell my scent or see my fur? I have spent considerable amounts of time marking out the spaces that are mine. He can have the rest. Well, technically, anything with a padded covering is mine, but I have my special places: the top of the couch, the right side of the big bed, and the entire small bed. When she cleans them, I immediately set back to work on them.

There is also this noise that they make. She sits on my couch, and he sits in the chair, and they make noise. I don’t know what they are trying to communicate, but they can do that for hours. I give a deep yowl on my way to bed, and she gets upset. It makes no sense whatsoever.

There is just no figuring out these creatures, but as long as she provides me the basics and allows me to take her heat in the cold seasons, we get along.

Children and Childhood: Child’s Play

Her First Birthday

She understood that the day was somehow different. More people were there. She didn’t know why. They lifted her into the high place. She loved the high place – things to chew appeared on the smooth surface. She hated the high place – she couldn’t move as she wanted.

Today, they put a huge round thing in front of her. They watched her watching the round thing until someone yelled. She looked and a new shape was coming out of the top of the big white box. “Hot” they called it. The new shape was orange and yellow and moved constantly. She was fascinated. Then the people squished it. They squished it again. It reformed into a new shape.

The round thing was removed. Her smooth surface was removed. The straps were removed, but so quickly that it hurt her leg. She was angry. Her nose stung. She opened her mouth to cry her displeasure but no one paid attention.

A noise started and kept repeating, so loud it hurt her ears. She cried more. She was bounced up and down but she wanted to crawl, and the person wasn’t letting her. Usually, if she struggled enough, the people would let her go. It wasn’t working. Now she was really getting angry and threw out her arms to get away from the person and the noise.

The noise stopped. After too long she was carried back to the high place.

Again, the person strapped her in.

Again, the smooth surface reappeared.

Again, the round thing reappeared.

She sniffled. She touched the round thing, and wondered if it was something to chew. It stuck to her hand. She didn’t like things sticking to her hand. She put her hand in her mouth. It was good, but almost too much good, too much. She pushed it away and watched it fall to the ground. The round thing was now a bunch of pieces. One of them might be good to chew and she cried for the smaller pieces she couldn’t reach.

She wanted down. She could still smell something funny. It still made her nose hurt. She wanted to crawl away. Or just sit with her bottle and watch the too many people. Or even nap, if she had her blankie.

Writing Journal Assignment 9

IMAGE

She had only seen her new home town by daylight, and then for a quick tour. Now it was dark, so dark it was like a world composed only of shadows. She thought humorlessly that this tiny dot of a town in the Rockies of northern New Mexico did not need to worry about light pollution.

She’d rented a tiny cabin by mail based on a few photographs and a hand-written contract, for God’s sake. Stupidly, she never end considered that the road to the cabin wouldn’t be paved and that at night the only light would be from headlights. Even that light was stopped by massive pine trees that messily blurred the lines between sky and ground. Still, she followed the moving truck and the guys knew where they were going, so there was that.

She was startled by a movement to the left, but dismissed it as something with wings. The truck slowed, forcing her to slow as well. Something moved again, but she couldn’t quite see it. The truck struggled against some unseen force, and she stopped her car, unsure.

A telephone pole, caught in her headlights, swung gracefully by. Her first thought was that it made no sense. It had to be exhaustion. Or the 8,000 elevation. The pole swung back again, a bit shakier now. A thunderous noise filled the cloudless night, and the telephone pole began to shake and dance like a marionette. Mesmerized by that-which-could-not-be, it took a clear vision of the splintered and fractured bottom of the pole before she realized her danger. She slammed her hand on the horn, and didn’t let up.

The truck driver and passenger threw open their doors and ran for her car, throwing themselves in on top of suitcases and plants. “Go, go, go!” the driver yelled before even closing the door. “Back up to the tree line!” She threw the car into reverse and drove as fast as she dared, unseeing. “Stop!”

They sat, unspeaking, as telephone poles flipped and turned, cutting gouges into the earth and ripping out bushes. The closest one seemed to hesitate before ungracefully collapsing to the ground, its wires rippling as they settled.

It would be a full day before they learned that the unmaintained poles had rotted bases and wires stretched so much by snow loads that they had caught on the top of the truck. The crash they’d heard was a pole going through a neighbor’s living room that the owner had just vacated in favor of a late night snack. Welcome to the land of enchantment!

TIME

On that bitter December afternoon, Sarah was one of four teenagers that sat in the back booth of the A&W restaurant across the street from the Sheriff’s station. They had been there so long that the ice cream on their root beer floats had melted into dirty, foam-drenched piles, and the ketchup for the French fries began to separate with clear fluid around the edges. “That looks like blood,” Roger commented. Marie made a distressed sound. Sarah grimaced at Roger and covered the offending red mess with a paper napkin. It immediately began to absorb the liquid and the result was more sinister-looking than the ketchup had been.

“We have to go back,” Roger said, staring at the napkin.

“The homicide detectives told us to go home,” Phillip countered.

Sarah took this one. “No, they just told us to leave.”

“I don’t want go back there. Ever. I don’t want to be questioned again and I don’t want to sit in that tiny room with only one desk lamp for light,” Marie stated. “I’m not going back.”

Sarah sighed and thought, not that first time, that Marie was always most concerned about Marie. “Dale’s mother has been dead for two years, his father has just been murdered and he was stabbed. What do you want?”

The question was rhetorical, but Marie didn’t interpret it that way. “What do I want? I want you to drive me home. And I want you to stop at the pharmacy first so I can get new nail polish. I have a debate team competition tomorrow. That’s what I want!” She stood up, grabbed her purse and looked at Sarah expectantly.

“Call a cab,” Phillip offered.

“You asshole!” she responded. “I am done with you.”

Sarah stood as well. “Let’s just take her.”

“Fine,” Roger agreed. “Then we need to figure out where Dale can stay when he is released.”

Phillip made a show of scraping the trays into the trash can as slow as possible. “Look, Marie! Blood.” Marie turned her back to him.

Roger moved closer to Sarah. “Did the detective tell you that his dad was stabbed 19 times?”

She nodded. They’d all been together just the night before at the high school’s winter ball. Bored there, they had gone to Denny’s to spend the next several hours talking about petty dramas and grand plans. Those hours were crucial to the detectives, but all their stories matched, and not one of them had a clue what had happened when Dale had arrived home.

Sarah’s concern was more in the present. “Where are we going to get him clothes? His house is a crime scene, and the clerk said that Dale couldn’t wear the jail clothes out of the station.”

“I’ll grab some of mine.”

“He’s got 8 inches on you, at least!”

“Then we’ll cut them until they cover him.”

She nodded. The group of years had splintered in a day, but at least there were two of them who would stay to help Dale.

HISTORY

Before the murder, there was the Jonestown Massacre

 

“I don’t understand!” Roger’s little brother said in a tone that demanded both explanation and comfort.

“You are too little to understand,” Roger responded, grabbing the five-year-old up and tickling him. He sat him back on the floor. “Go play.”

Stephen nodded and ran off to the room he shared with his mother, for once obedient.

“Roger, he shouldn’t be watching that news! He’ll have more nightmares about the President coming to kill him!” his mother called from the kitchen. Roger rolled his eyes and laid back down. The five teenagers were laying on the open, fold-out couch which served as Roger’s bed in the tiny apartment. As the couch squeaked in protest, Sarah wondered what would happen on the day when someone tried to re-fold the bed.

“I think that Carter is going to bomb someone,” Dale contributed.

“Who? It isn’t any country’s fault that Jim Jones killed the First Lady and all of his followers before escaping,” Marie responded.

“Are you sure about that? CBS reported that Jones was a communist and controlled by the Russians.” Phillip was sure that everything led back to the Russians. For that matter, they’d all been raised to think just that. It was always the Russians.

“Mrs. Carter seemed nice enough,” Sarah offered. “I read somewhere that she wasn’t even supposed to go. It was going to be some congressman from here, and that he’d tripped on brick and broke his ankle.”

“So why did she have to go?” Phillip asked, rolling over on the bed and staring at the ceiling, away from the TV.

“Yep, that could be one for the books: World War III could have been avoided if there just hadn’t been a brick in the sidewalk of San Bruno.” Roger quipped. He always knew the details.

“God, did you see the way that President Carter sobbed at her funeral? And they had been married forever!” Marie said it like he shouldn’t have been sad, at their great age.

None of them wanted to answer that. It had been rather embarrassing to see the President of the United States so distraught, and then it got worse when he turned around to yell straight at the cameras: “Vengeance will be mine!” They had all seen it so many times that it had become a personal threat for every guilt they had. It was no wonder Stephen had nightmares.

“Moby Dick,” Dale offered. They all looked him. “AP English? We’re all in the class. Didn’t anyone read it? Moby Dick is all about crazed vengeance. It didn’t end well for Captain Ahab’s crew.”

No one said anything until Roger’s mom offered them pizza.

“It’s Bisquick pizza,” Roger offered apologetically.

“It’s still food,” Dale said with a shrug, following him into the kitchen to pick up plastic plates and return to their spot on the bed.

“Yes, we must ‘eat, drink and merry for tomorrow...’ “ Phillip was interrupted when Marie elbowed him in the gut.

 “Shut up, Phillip.”

 “… we die,” he finished before taking a huge bite.

Questions & Robbers with Parts 1 and 2 of "The Life of Alfred Death"

Questions and Robbers

Several years ago, some curious students decided to determine the most trustworthy people using only physical characteristics. Not only did their study pinpoint my sex, height and build, along with eye, skin and hair colors, they had the audacity to include curly hair and glasses. They could have just posted my picture with the word “boring” superimposed on my forehead. I mention this so you consider it when I write that I’ve had conversations with agents of the FBI and the Secret Service, and have been questioned by police detectives, undercover cops and my mother. This has led to me to conclude three things. One, my life hasn’t been boring (although, I must confess, I truly do like to consider myself trustworthy). Two, my mother demanding answers was far scarier than being questioned by any official. Three, I loathe being questioned and would no more initiate the “Ask Me Any Question” social media game than I would stand with an apple on my head and yell to a drunken archer, “Go ahead. See if you can hit it!”

Now, most stressful situations don’t make me a quivering lump of goo. I can prove it. Once, a guy came into the print shop where I worked with the intent to rob it. I got mad and told him no – it wasn’t his money. He wasn’t happy, but he left. Another time, on my way to work at the same shop, I came out of a nearby gas station convenience store to discover everyone at the pumps being robbed. I had the change from $20 in my hand but over $1400 in my purse for a nonprofit group that I had offered to deposit. I surreptitiously shifted my purse to my back while simultaneously handing the robber the change from the $20. He never noticed my purse. Trustworthy and fast-thinking – my superpowers defined!

Wait. I have an even better robbery story about the same shop. You do get the idea that it was located in a sketchy part of town, right? Perhaps then you’ll understand that despite the owner’s great height why he also kept a gun in the shop. For a time, he lived there, sleeping (ahem) au naturale in the dark room. One night, a thief broke in. The owner appeared, almost supernaturally, from the blackness of the dark room with his gun aimed at the terrified would-be thief, and he softly said, “Now you’re going to call the police and you’re going to tell them that you tried to rob my business.” The thief nodded mutely and dialed. He found his voice again when the police answered. “I was going to rob this shop but there is a really tall dude with a gun. And he’s naked! You have to save me!” For some reason, it took him awhile to convince the cops that he was serious.

Okay, back to the topic at hand. I have a solution. I could answer questions that were submitted in writing and slipped under my door as long as I could respond in the same format with the option to respond with “no comment.” 

The Life of Alfred Death (Parts 1 and 2) 

Part 1:

As he strode through the night-darkened and chilled halls, Alfred smiled as a young nurse pulled her sweater closer against his presence but he didn’t slow his pace. Still, it was always nice to know he had some effect on their world. Well, beyond the obvious one. He was almost to the designated hospital room when he heard a low, demanding voice.

“Come on, Death. This one has suffered too much. Hurry up!” He took in the scene in a moment. The older, heavyset nurse held a thin, unconscious baby who moved once reactively to pain. He flicked his hand as if tossing off a bug, and then lightly touched the baby’s skull. The baby relaxed before giving up its last breath, corresponding with a deep sigh from the nurse. She stood and carefully laid the baby in its bassinet, arranging the blanket it no longer needed. He paused and just when he thought she wouldn’t speak again, he heard a soft “thank you.” Alfred nodded, as if she could see him, before leaving the room.

He retraced his steps at a much slower pace, not yet feeling the compulsion to take the next dying soul. It was at times like this that he read over unsuspecting shoulders, watched television or just observed.

Loud laughter caught his attention, an unlikely sound this time of the night in the hospital. He paused outside the door for a moment, he then moved through and saw a handful of people talking around crib. For a split moment, no one reacted. Then he noticed they, with the exception of the baby, were dead and in the same moment, they realized he was Death. Perhaps not their Death, but Death all the same. The room silenced. A tall, old woman in a florid orange dress reminding him of the 1960s frowned at him. “No, she is doing better!”

A soldier wearing World War I field gear stepped forward. “Sir, she has a destiny.”

Death sighed internally. “Private, I’ve doing this for over 130 years, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that everyone has a destiny.”

“He doesn’t look over 20!” a youngish man commented. He, too, was dressed in clothes reminiscent of the 1960s.

 He gave them a small smile. “We only age under certain circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” Orange dress asked. He didn’t respond. Honestly, he didn’t know the answer. He had just seen it happen, like to Mary who now looked as if she were in her late 70s, in living years. Instead, he allowed his eyes to narrow slightly and he took a step towards the crib. Most of the group made way for his office, but one older, thin man in a traditional black suit, white shirt, and thin black tie stood his ground, raising a chin slightly.

“I’m just here to look,” Death offered.

The baby lay quietly, just her, restrained by a myriad of tubes and devices. She was probably a year-and-half-old with wispy patches of pale red hair. He wondered for a moment if she was sedated but then he found her hazel eyes focused on him. 

“Her parents work and have three other children. They come when they can,” the older man offered.

Death paused and tilted his head, considering. “You know, you remind me of Gary Cooper. Do you remember him? The actor?” Death asked.

The man’s face lightened. “I’ve been told that before.”

“Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. I must’ve seen that movie 20 times.”

“I saw that once, but it stuck with me. Him and his tuba playing.”

Death nodded. He turned back to the baby and briefly wondered about his own motive in insisting on learning a bit about her. He put his hand out, stopping short of touching her, and felt the tension rise in the room. He glanced at the older man, intending to reassure him, when he felt the baby move into his touch. The full contact brought a flood of images. He quickly pulled back his hand, holding onto the crib to reorient himself.

The baby smiled at him and moved as if to hold out her own hand. He stepped back further. He looked at the older man who’s face reflected confusion.

Orange dress spoke, surprisingly reverently. “She has a destiny with death and not just any death, but this Death. Oh, my!”

Death decided it was time to make his exit. It wasn’t appropriate, given his office, for the others to notice how flustered he felt.

Part 2:

He stood silently, his black over coat unmoving. Immediately in front of him, waves of heat rippled up from the ground in the late summer sun. He wasn’t affected by the temperature, but he didn’t even notice the phenomena as he watched her standing in a shorn field, wearing baggy red shorts, a blue top and sandals. Her hair hadn’t grown much since he first saw her more than two years ago, but it was a darker red and stuck out oddly. She was watching the house intently, or more precisely, watching the people outside the house.

He walked to her side and squatted down next to her, unspeaking.

She gave him a quick look, and as always, he was surprised at how completely she saw him.

“I’m thinking,” she announced, not welcoming the interruption.

“About what?”

“I want to be her. She can be me,” she responded. He looked until he saw another small girl. She was laughing as her father picked her up and set her on his shoulder, her blonde hair curled in ringlets, and he supposed the blue ribbon on her yellow dress matched her eyes.

“Why?”

That earned him an irritated look. “She’s never sick. Aunt Abby tickled me. I puked on her shoes.”

To his credit, he didn’t laugh.

“I can trade us. I just need to think. Hard

She seemed determined, and it wasn’t as if he could blame her for wanting to be the healthy kid. “Your mother has worked very hard to keep you alive, you know. How do you think she’d feel?”

As if to demonstrate his point, her mother wiped the late summer sweat from her forehead, looking tired and overheated even from this distance.

She didn’t respond for a long time but he didn’t prompt her to answer. “She’d be mad,” the girl finally conceded.

“Jess! Come back inside. It is too hot out there for you,” her mother called.

She didn’t answer but she did start to walk slowly toward the house.

She stopped several yards away from him, and turned back.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Alfred, honey. My name is Alfred,” he answered, knowing in the same moment that it was unwise to tell her. He had given her the power to call him, even if she didn’t know it.

She thought for moment, and then nodded, as if the name suited him.

“My name is Jessie Mae,” she offered.

“I know.”