Small Minutes
by Sally K LehmanA version of this stories published in Bewildering Stories
In the small minutes of night I drive past the local graveyard going from my work to my home. I pass the places where the Dead are laid and I hold my breath. The Recently Dead in their wood boxes, the Long Dead awaiting their Next Lives, the Young Dead who cry for a Life Not Lived, and the Lost Souls of the Living. "You have to hold your breath when you pass a graveyard," my Grandmother used to say. "Or else you'll inhale a spirit and they'll have your life. They'll leave you to wander the graveyard in their stead." Grandma said it, so I believe it, and as I drive past I hold my breath. I'm not willing to give up my body to some wandering soul. I let my breath go in a puff of exhale, look at the halos that come off the street lights and traffic signals. When I was little I thought the halos were ghosts attracted to humanity like bugs attracted to candle flames. Ghosts were losing themselves into the red and yellow, the green and white lights that burn them away like moths.* * * There's lots of stuff that Grandmas can tell you if you listen right. Like how you can catch someone's dreams. "Wait until night, because that's when people dream," Grandma said. "While they sleep, walk down your street and look into the core of a house, like the eye of a hurricane. Each house has it's own core, so you have to look for it. Look into the heart of the place and the dreams will find you. Come into you and find a place to settle." I don't live in a neighborhood where people think of the places they live as Home, but rather as Places to Stop Awhile. I have to run past so I don't catch their nightmares.* * * My mother tells me that I'm not using the life that I protect when I hold my breath. She said it on March 3, 2006. It's on an orange index card on the North Wall of my apartment. It's where I go to when I need caustic comments for one of my stories. 'You're wasting the life that God gave you.' - Mom, 3/3/06 My mother always says the word God with a capital letter, she booms the word out as though there are angels trumpeting behind her. She believes in her God with all that she is. Grandma said that there are many gods for many reasons, so none of them should have a capital while the others don't. My mother only recognizes the one God, so she capitalizes.* * * I drive five blocks to get to a hardware store and buy blue masking tape. I could walk it and tell myself I'm wasteful. It's a West Coast habit that we all fall into. Like turtles pulling into our shells before anyone can really see us. At the store, they have pink masking tape this time. It lies in my hand for five minutes, heavy and round and pink, but so problematic. Can the pink work for a story? Can I get more of the pink if I need it? I could ask the old man at the register. Could walk up to him and tell him to keep it in stock so it will always be here for me. Grandma would do that. My mother would do it. I could do it, but confronting the possible 'no' that might cross his lips, the 'this girl is nuts' look that might cross his face, the 'who do you think you are' look that might cross his eyes. All the 'coulds' make me nauseous. I'm not my mother. Not my Grandmother. I'd rather make the trek back and forth to see if the pink masking tape is t here still, has been replenished, can be counted on. I could risk it. Be ready to replace all the pink if I can't find more. I could use the pink for special. Still too many 'coulds' for me. In the end I leave the pink masking tape behind. Can't risk the consequences of it.* * * My mother believes in the Christian Bible. She reads some of it every night before going to sleep. Regurgitates it at me when we talk. "Your Grandmother was a Sinful woman," she tells me. "Your Grandmother was guilty of at least five of the Seven Deadly Sins," she tells me. "Your Grandmother lived a sorry existence during her time on Earth," she tells me. I don't answer. They're not questions. Grandma always told me to never answer statements. My silence says, "No comment at this time."* * * At Dee's, the diner where I work, the same people come in everyday. They sit in the same seats and drink the same drinks and order the same foods. They smile at me in the same smiles and say stupid things like 'I've trained you well' when I remember what they always order. I purposely stop remembering just to make a point after these comments. Dogs are trained to repeat the same task again and again. I'm not. It confuses people when they come in again and I treat them like strangers. Maybe they see themselves as people I know. They come into Dee's and say, "Hi, Peg!" I say "Hi" back because it's my job to say "Hi" back. They see me in my polyester wrap skirt and comfortable brown shoes and must think I always wear these clothes, that I live my life waiting to take orders from them, to take care of them. They don't know me. They don't know that my name tag has the wrong name on it. Someone who left the diner had that name and I wear her name tag. At Work, I'm Peg the waitress who is sweet and perky. Perky Peg. At Life, I'm Audinita and I was named by my Grandma and my mother hates my name. They don't know it's not my manner to take care of others. Not my nature to bring food to people when they come to my Place to Stop Awhile. If someone comes to my Place, I tell them to B-Y-O-Everything. I've got nothing to give up, wouldn't give it if I had. My Grandmother always said, "If a person must intrude on my space, they can take care of themselves once they get there." My mother says, "That's selfish. Inhospitable." I've decided that I'm Selfish and Inhospitable. I claim the names with some dim sense of glee and possessiveness. They've become mine.* * * My mother always says the things that a mother should say. Things that start with 'watch before you' and 'never do' and 'always remember.' My mother was raised by her mother who didn't say enough things that mothers are supposed to say. My mother wants to make me normal like she is. My mother told me not to listen to her mother. Told me that Grandma is too fanciful, flighty, lost a few too many marbles. Maybe my mother has too many marbles.* * * In the small minutes of night I look out of my window and search for nothing and for everything. The old woman across the street is looking out her window at me. We look at each other for two seconds. I look away and back. We look at each other for another two seconds and she looks away, closes her curtains. I can see her eye peek out from between curtain panels. I don't look back anymore. Searching for nothing is more difficult than searching for everything. Nothing is always more difficult to see. "Nothing can only be captured through the edges of your eye," Grandma always said. "It's the impossibilities of the moment. The fevered thoughts of people, lost and forgotten, until they no longer exist. Those are the nothing you can find at night." These are the nothings I look for. My right eye catches a forgotten lover standing at the window of a man across from my building. The lover's longing stands sentinel over the window corners. My neighbor can't see this man. My neighbor's too involved with the idea of a new Latin lover with dark looks and a volatile temper. Things the forgotten lover never had. The forgotten lover has gone from being a soft feeling of regret to a ghost of the desire never met. A nothing that floats the breeze. The top edges of my eyes find another nothing lurking by the windows. Above my window hangs the lost innocence of the girl living next door. It's pink and small and delicate. And it cries. She held that innocence close when she came here five months ago from some small town along the Snake River, but five months and no job and poor Karma played against her. She sold that innocence to some man for the insignificant sum of rent and one hundred dollars a week spending money. Her innocence floats near our windows and moans to the tune sent up by her keeper in his throes of pleasure. I hear the subtle thumps of the bed on my ceiling. I hear the girl's corrupt savior's voice boom through her floor into my Place. I hear that lost innocence quietly weep. My home is very noisy when I look for nothing.* * * On the South Wall of my Place, I have the blue index cards which list all the Selfish or Inhospitable things I've done or thought. There are currently thirty-seven of these blue index cards that detail my smug acceptance of these acts and thoughts. My mother has never read these cards. She's not interested in my index cards regardless of their color. She's interested in my furniture. "Why don't you have furniture?" my mother asks whenever she comes over. "There's nowhere for guests to sit." My unmade bed and my bright, plaid, Salvation Army arm chair take up what little room is taken in my Place. My mother sits on the chair so I stand. I shrug at it. At her. "I don't have Guests." It's a Blunt and Thoughtless answer. I can now claim the names Blunt and Thoughtless with the same grace that I've accepted Selfish and Inhospitable. I go to my kitchen counter where the index cards are piled up, find two blue ones, write Blunt on one and Thoughtless on the other, then tape the cards on my South Wall with the average, tan masking tape. Thirty-nine cards now. Thirty-nine cards and two new ways to describe myself. Thirty-nine cards that can list the many, many ways I've developed into the person I am according to my mother. My mother watches me do this. She looks at those blue index cards on the South Wall. She's not close enough to read them. She doesn't move any closer.* * * My mother told me that Grandma couldn't read palms. I don't believe her. I know in my heart that when Grandma took my right hand into hers and peered into my future, she saw what I'll be. That my long life line will take me safely past the local graveyard with my soul intact. My mother says, "Your grandmother only saw your fingerprints." I stop sometimes and look at my palm. I see my fingerprints there. I see the lines that cross my hand in arches and chaos patterns. I don't see all that Grandma saw, but I haven't lived as long as she did. Maybe it's something you get with age.* * * "I'm taking you to dinner," my mother says. "You're looking so thin that a strong breeze could blow you over." She laughs. She's made a joke and wants to make sure her joke is properly noted with the appropriate amount of laughter. Her laugh goes on for 4.5 seconds. I don't join in. My mother makes clichéd jokes. "Where do you want to eat?" I ask. "What's good around here?" "Nothing," I lie to her. The Chinese restaurant a block away is actually quite good. I eat Chicken Lo Mien when I can afford it. It's not the kind of place my mother would like because there's only one of it. My mother prefers places advertised on television throughout the country. "How about The Olive Garden," she says. She's already made the decision that we'll be eating there and just wants me to think I have input. "There's one we can drive to in five minutes." According to my mother, everything is only five minutes away by car. "I like The Olive Garden." I'm lying to her again. The Olive Garden is a blackhead on the nose of Italian food everywhere. I'll go anyway. Free food is good food. Especially when you live on a diner salary. I offer to take my car, but my mother isn't going for it. My '75 VW Bug leaks water and stalls out a lot. I can't get much of anywhere in five minutes. It takes us thirteen minutes to get there. We park in a Handicapped Parking Only spot and my mother pulls out the placard she coerced out of her doctor. Told him her knees get weak when she walks. I'm not the only one in my family to lie. Before five minutes have passed, before my mother could have driven anywhere else, we're drinking Chardonnay and looking at a menu of too many types of pasta. "What are you having?" she asks. "I don't know what I want," she says. "What do you want?" she asks. My mother can have an hour-long conversation with herself over a menu and never discover that one perfect dish that is always the 'thing she should have ordered.' I sip at my glass of white wine and wonder how her conversation with herself will end this time. I order Manicotti and Minestrone and Merlot. It feels like an 'M' kind of day. My mother orders Fettuccini and Salad and a bottle of Chardonnay. It's what she always orders. "When are you going to do something with your Life?" she says. "I do stuff," I say back. We're falling desperately into one of the same conversations we always have when we eat together. Food seems to bring up either a conversation about where my life is or is not going, or a conversation about other food that we're not currently eating. "I mean something real," she says and I knew it was coming. It's her next line in our mother-daughter-script. "I'm a writer," I say because I always say it. "Taping index cards onto your walls doesn't make you a writer, Audinita." "Writing things on the cards before I tape them to the wall does." Now she's supposed to say that my index cards won't take me anywhere. "Those index cards aren't going to get you anywhere," she says. Close enough. "The index cards are my stories. They'll make themselves into books one day," I say. She picks up the wine bottle the waiter has just set on the table and refills her empty wine glass. The waiter delivers my glass of Merlot, so my mother takes what's left of my Chardonnay and downs it in one shot. I'm impressed. She'll be well into her second sheet to the wind before our food arrives.* * * "Don't eat the bottom of bananas," Grandma always said. "Tarantulas crawl onto the banana bunches and lay their eggs into the banana bottoms." I look at the banana I'm eating. Thank one of Grandma's gods that I haven't gotten to the bottom yet. "And see those black dots through the banana itself?" Grandma said pointing with her chin at the half eaten banana in my hand. "Those are the baby tarantula eggs. They do that before they hatch." I lived the week worried I would belch out baby tarantulas. It would have played hell with my life. My mother doesn't believe in abortion or adoption so I would have had to raise all those baby tarantulas myself. My mother also doesn't believe in tarantula eggs inside bananas. I would have been hard pressed to explain all the Grand-Spiders.* * * "Why doesn't my mother understand the things you tell me?" I used to ask my Grandma. Sometimes, the answer was, "because she's damned stubborn." Sometimes, the answer was, "because she's a hard hearted bitch." The answer depended on whether my mother and my Grandma were arguing and what they were arguing about.* * * My mother told me to stop listening to Grandma and to make a plan for my life. I'm not like the other people I went to school with. The perfect, blond girls who had their little lives planned out by the time they were in Junior High. The overbuilt Adonis boys who lived and breathed their Sport of Season. How many of them had their plans come to anything in the end? How many will breathe in at a graveyard and have their lives stolen away from them? How many have lost, fevered nothings glancing into their windows at night?* * * I drive from the hardware store back to my apartment and the Bug stalls out twice. I try to park close to my Place, but have to go two blocks away to find a spot. My protective turtle shell must be left behind me while I walk to my Place with my new rolls of masking tape. I pretend that the three people I pass on my way aren't really there so I don't have to look at them or talk to them. With new rolls of blue masking tape, I face my East Wall. The stories on the East Wall need to be re-defined, separated, made focal to their plot lines. I've already removed the blue tape that once defined them. I pull off an arm's length of blue tape and set it horizontally below the yellow index cards, above the green index cards. Another blue strip is set vertical to the yellow index cards, separating them from the white index cards. One strip after another is carefully placed and each story becomes defined as itself. Regardless of color. Soon the East Wall is fenced. There is blue masking tape left over and it worries at me. Is there more to do? Should I start over? What else needs blue masking tape? Where does it belong that I haven't thought of? I stand in the room for a quarter hour wondering what I might have missed. It all feels right for now, and the blue masking tape gets added to the piles of Writing Supplies on the kitchen counter.* * * I wait tables at a diner and pay for things with the quarters that have been left as tips. I eat Top Ramen for dinner and listen to my stomach growl out it's dismay as I lie in bed at night. I worry about someone walking past my personal Place to Stop Awhile and stealing my dreams from me. I don't sleep well.* * * In the small minutes of night I finally sleep. My dreams lead me back to the days when my Grandmother was still alive. To the days when she was young and beautiful. In my dreams, we sit in a field of warm grass and dandelions. We pick the flowers with the thickest stems. We slice open the fat stems with our thumbnails and slide the stem of another flower through the slit. One flower after another until we have a circle of yellow flowers. The last stem being the hardest as we have to slice it enough to allow a flower head through. We are decorated in flower rings. Our necks, our wrists. On our heads. The yellow flowers glowing against our dark brown hair. Too many flowers to count. We don't talk. We sit in the absolute silence of the field with the smell of dandelions and warm grass. The warmth of the sun coming down in long, silent rays. The warmth of the grass and flowers flowing up into my body in gentle waves. "You can't stay here," Grandma says. Her voice coming into my head although her mouth doesn't move to the words. Her voice is still the voice I knew and it seems oddly right in this younger body. I look at her and we smile. She's the woman in the pictures my mother has. There are no wrinkles from time and laughter. No circles of the sick she had before she died. Her smile is one that is soft and lacking the concerns that plagued her during my life. "You can't stay," she repeats. Her lips move this time. Her way of making Dream Me listen. "But I want to stay," I say. The voice I speak with is the voice of my youth. It's a small, uncommanding voice filled in doubts. Grandma smiles her young smile. Her eyes smile her wise smile. And I wake.* * * "You need to do something with your life," my mother says. "Everybody needs a purpose." "Maybe purposelessness is my purpose," I answer. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asks. I shrug. I could come up with some answer if pressed, but she wouldn't understand. She's never understood the things my mind comes up with. When I was a kid, my mother would say, "Audinita, I just don't know where you come up with the things you say." She still says it. I used to keep a running tally of how many times she'd said it. Stopped counting when I reached one hundred. She says it now. "Audinita, I just don't know where you get things like that." New rendition - same speech. No need to start a new tally yet. "How can purposelessness even be a thing. Every soul that God makes has a purpose." A continuation of the new rendition of the same speech. "Maybe my purpose is to make you wonder what my purpose is," I suggest. "Audinita, that's just pure foolishness." I know she's annoyed with me when every sentence starts with my name. "I have my purposes." My mother looks at me. Her eyebrows would rise and allow the full stretch of her eyelids to look at me in their questioning way, however my mother uses Botox so her brows don't rise anymore. She can only look with her eyes now. "I serve food to hungry people?" No comment. "I support local business by buying stuff?" No comment still. "I write." This is not a question. Not a suggestion. I do write. My walls are covered in what I write. "Writing doesn't count as a purpose if you don't try to get it published," my mother says. It's an impasse we've reached before.* * * It's Sunday so I take hold of the oversized white index cards and begin my inspection. The yellow cards are more Tolstoy than Poe today. They used to be more Byron during my poetry phase. I fall in and out of love with different authors on a regular basis. Change my words and my phrasing to reflect my most recent crush. I write TOLSTOY on a large index card and replace the one with POE on it. BURGESS for VONNEGUT above the blue cards. SHAKESPEARE for DICKENSON on my poetry wall above the bathroom sink - purple index cards held up with some yellow masking tape I can find regularly at the craft store over off Stark Street. Changes made and the old cards get shredded. POE turning into P, O, and E. The P becoming a line and a piece of the line and pieces of the piece of line. VONNEGUT follows then DICKENSON. All the paper pieces of discarded names carefully placed into the Recycle bin. I land on the blue and purple plaid chair and look around my Place. The walls thickly covered with index cards of varied colors. The cards divided by strips of masking tape to define one story from the next. I scan these walls of my work and to see what's missing. The afternoon turns to dark and I go to bed. Another Sunday's work done.* * * My Grandmother's Grandmother was a For Sale Bride from the Washo Indian Tribe. My Grandmother's Grandfather bought her from the Tribal Council for fifty dollars which was a lot back then. I've seen old pictures of her and can tell he must have been smitten by her to pay so much. She was quite beautiful. Grandma always said that I got my high cheek bones from this For Sale Bride's blood. I got my strong jaw line and determined nature from her as well. Anything negative about me, Grandma says that comes from my father's side.* * * I remember when my Grandma died. My mother stood stoically by the Columbia River as Grandma's ashes were sent back to the world. I asked her if she ever regretted all the fights they'd had. "I never started them, so I don't regret them," she said. I wonder if she ever cried.* * * "The only reason to have children is so you can have grandchildren," Grandma always said. Mostly when she and my mother were fighting. Especially when they were fighting about me. "You had no right to name the child while I was unconscious from the C-Section-Drugs!" My mother argued this one note regularly, even though it happened a long while ago. "You know a child must be named within the first hour of it's life, or else the spirits will moor themselves to the child's soul," Grandma said. Her usual answer given in her deep, knowing voice. Grandma made up these traditions when she thought she could. She told me about it once. My mother never noticed.* * * "It's a God-awful name!" my mother would yell near the end of those fights. "It's reflective of our heritage!" Grandma would answer. "Which heritage?" my mother would yell. "All of them!" Grandma would answer.* * * When I was little, I wondered what C-Section-Drugs were. I imagined them as red things that float in the air and are shaped like the letter 'C.' That they would grab a person and force babies out. When I had the baby tarantulas in me, I stayed indoors and avoided all 'C' shaped things. I wonder why I didn't think 'Sea' - like a body of water. My mother says it's because I was born knowing how to read. Therefore I was born knowing the alphabet.* * * I asked my Grandmother once why she chose the name Audinita for me. "To piss off your mother," she said.* * * Grandma always said that my mother was caught up too much in her religion. "You know, Audinita, George Orwell said it best in that one book of his. Religion, he said, is 'the most absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for ever and because just a little cheating is allowed.' " Grandma liked to quote from books. "A Clergyman's Daughter," I said. "A what?" "A Clergyman's Daughter, Grandma. It's the name of the book." "Oh," she said. "That," she said. "It doesn't matter which book," she said. "What matters is that your mother is merely caught up in the nasty game of religion. It will lead nowhere." I wondered if Grandma had just stepped all over another of the Seven Deadly. My mother would know, but I never asked.* * * In the small minutes of morning one of the waitresses from the day shift at Dee's was raped and beaten. Her name is Alison. She was taking a bag of trash out to the dumpster in the alley behind. The manager who insists we call him Mr. Sevick found her. He went out to see what was keeping her and she was lying on the cold concrete with her bag of trash thrown on top of her. The other morning girl, Jenny, refused to go home. She insisted on waiting in the back room and having one of the dishwashers walk her to her apartment. When I got to work at six o'clock that night, four of the other people from Dee's had already called me to tell me to be careful. They'd called to tell me that Alison was alive. They'd called to tell me that Alison was having to get tested for HIV. They'd called to tell me that Alison was spending the night in the hospital. That night at work, I looked at every man who came in to eat and wondered. It seemed obvious to me that the man who had done this thing to Alison was someone who knew us. Someone who was a regular. Jenny quit the next day. She moved back in with her parents in a Portland 'burb. She called me to tell me that she would rather lose her independence than lose her life. The manager who insists we call him Mr. Sevick asked me to move to day shift.* * * My mother heard about what happened at Dee's and called me. "You have to quit your job," my mother said. "You have to move back in with me so I can keep you safe." I could tell by her tone that she didn't want me to accept. It was her 'I am doing this because a good mother would' tone. Her tone which cuts across a phone line three pitches higher than her regular voice. "That sounds like a really good idea," I said. Her voice back to it's normal tone. "Oh," she said. "Do you really think so?" she said. "Well, I'm sure I would feel a lot safer," I said. I made sure to raise the tone of my voice at the end of the sentence to make her believe that I was questioning the idea of staying in my Place. Questioning my safety. Questioning if I should move back to the haven of my mother's home. "I suppose," she said. Her tone was flat at the end of her words. Meaning she would rather I think things over a little longer. Meaning she would rather not put up with me. "You'd have to drive further to get there." "I could bring all my index cards, right?" I said. "Oh," she said. "I suppose you would have to, wouldn't you." She had put on her lower, 'if you must' voice. "Maybe I'll think it over a little more," I said. "That's probably for the best," she said. My mother tries to be the perfect mother. To say the perfect mother things. To give the perfect mother reactions. The perfect mother protectiveness. Lucky for her I'm not the perfect daughter.* * * "Every soul has a Spirit Guide," Grandma always said. "Even my mother's soul?" I always asked. "Even your mother's soul." "Although your mother's Spirit Guide is sorely under used."* * * Alison stayed in the hospital for one night. She was not pregnant. She was not infected with any sexually transmitted diseases. She was going to have to go back to the hospital in three months and six months and one year to be tested for HIV again and again and again. Alison quit her job at Dee's and moved back to Washington. Sometimes I try to remember her as more than just a name, but her face is lost to me. The customers in the morning didn't know me, so I took another name tag from someone who had left. I was now Dottie. Good ole, Dependable Dottie. Always on time and ready with a smile Dottie. There were more customers in the morning. Dee's is well known for breakfast. More customers equals more tips equals the shift going by more quickly.* * * Grandma used to talk about her family a lot. They were all either dead, dying, or no longer talking to her. "Family gets in the way," Grandma said. I got names, relationships to me, and status in Grandma's life. It was the only information she ever gave me about my extended family on that side. My mother never really knew my father - a one night stand with some guy named Phil - so my mother's family was the only family I had.* * * Sometimes my head could explode with all the words rolling around it. Time for writing when that happens. Yellow index card. Character descriptions. A man. Silver hair. Blue eyes. Thick fingernails from ranch work. Six feet tall. Now let's dress him carefully. He needs to be prepared for all the terrible things I decide to do to him. Snap down work shirt and Levi's. Thick belt buckle and a pair of old cowboy boots. The kind of boots used for work, not for looking at. And now a name. 'Phil' comes to mind.* * * "Construct your own Symphony of Life with the music your gods have provided," my Grandma would say. "Shut up and smile already," my mother would say. "Let your soul smile through any adversity," my Grandma would say. "Put a smile on your face before I smack one on it," my mother would say. As a child, I smiled a lot.* * * Pink index card. New character: woman, slender, average height Hair: blond, curly, short Eyes: two, green Clothing: long skirt, halter top, sandals, silver earrings The truth of a character is in the deconstruction of it's pieces.* * * My Grandmother was a big proponent for the Death Penalty. She wanted to put every criminal down for anything from murder to interracial marriage. "What about your Grandmother?" I asked. "That was different," Grandma said. "She was sold into marriage." That was all she'd say about it. I figured she was only against marriage between races when it was an enjoyable experience.* * * I look at my reflection in the clock face that sits silent in my hand. Look at my high cheek bones and strong jaw line. At my gold-brown eyes with their surrounding dark lashes. I resemble my Grandmother as I get older. I look at my wristwatch, waiting for 12:00 exactly. I had to buy a new alarm clock because mine was too quiet to wake me up anymore. I get used to the things over time then they don't work for me. I go through about five alarm clocks a year, each with different tones or buzzes. Different levels of loudness. I look at my watch. It's 11:48. I look back into the dead clock. Twelve minutes to wait. I have to plug my alarm clocks in at midnight exactly. I like the blinking on the clock. It makes time seem more transitory. Time is too linear. Monday leading to Tuesday and on and on. My Washo relatives would see time as circular, measure it in seasons rather than minutes. That's what Grandma said. It's 11:52. Eight minutes to go. The clock reflects my burgundy colored hair lying flat against my cheeks, dipping down to my shoulders. I know it's burgundy, that's what the box called it. My hair changes color every six-to-eight weeks and I never use the same color twice in a row. I don't know which color it'll be next. Maybe blue. It's another thing that drives my mother crazy. "I never know which daughter I'm going to see when I come over," my mother says. It annoys her the most when I choose odd, un-hair-like colors like green or orange. Next time, it'll definitely have to be blue. 11:59. I poise my hand holding the plug right next to the outlet. Ready to plug the alarm clock in at the moment the wristwatch changes. Ready to ensure that both of my clocks have the same time. My arm starts to get a tired ache in it as it holds the plug in the air, waiting for the watch to turn to a twelve and two zeroes. This last minute rides the waves of time so slowly, I feel like I'll never be at midnight. Like midnight has decided to be contrary and not come. Like the clocks worldwide will simply skip over midnight and start up again at one minute past. The wristwatch changes to 12:00. The plug goes into the socket. The numbers blink off and on, off and on. Both clocks turn quickly from 12:00 to 12:01, making up for the ridiculous length of the minute between 11:59 and 12:00. I look one last time at my reflection with the numbers now blinking over it before I set the clock on the floor by my bed. The yellow sallowness my skin wears looks back. It's the one thing I got from my For Sale Bride blood that I wish I could give back. My mother has light skin that tans easily and stays young looking forever. The sallow skin makes me look like I have one foot buried six feet down and the other foot sinking fast.* * * "Audi," Eduardo said. "Shh! I'm Peg here!" Eduardo was the only cook to know my real name. The only person other than the boss and me. The only person in my life to shorten Audinita. "You really moving to days?" "I have to," I said. "You have to?" I looked over the wavy air created by the heat lamps on the pass through. No food right then because it was slow. "Better money?" "No." "You like mornings?" "God, no!" "There's got to be other reasons." "Nope." "But you have to?" "I have to." He looked at me with his ultra-brown, Latin eyes that are always so incredibly sexy and worried right then. "You're moving because of what happened?" "I just have to know." "Is this like when you ran out after that guy who stole out of the register?" He glared at me. "That guy deserved it. He reached around while I was cashing someone out." I glared back. "That guy shot at you, Audi." "He missed, Eduardo."* * * I lost my 'Night Owl' status. I couldn't spend my nights looking out the window to see what wasn't there. I couldn't give a legitimate reason for driving to work, since I wasn't passing the graveyards in the dark anymore. I still drove. My habits had to change. I started the change with a new hair color. It's called Turquoise Morning and comes with a bleach out kit to make it as blue as possible. It made my hair into shoulder length curls the same color as the sky in the first flashes of early morning. Can't wait to see my mother again.* * * A nasty thought came to me. A thought my mother could have put into my head. "Did you do it?" I asked. Eduardo glared right through me. The only Mexican cook in the place, he'd already been asked that question by the Police. He'd already been asked that question by the boss and by Andy, the other cook on duty. "Screw you, Audi." He was so angry at me, we didn't say anymore words that night.* * * In the small minutes of morning my alarm clock springs to life. I look over and the ridiculous time of 5:30 am flashes at me like a taunt. My first day shift begins today. I want to turn off the clock and to go back asleep. To forget Dee's in favor of dreams. It comes back at me. Alison from day shift was hurt. Jenny from day shift quit. Dottie is the new, shiny, happy waitress in day shift. Perky Peg was no more. I inhale some resolve from the air around me. Getting ready to take orders from people I don't know, to cart plates to the table then away again, to let my skin and hair and clothes bathe in the essence of used grease. It requires brushing my teeth, not taking the Prozac my mother insists I take, and pulling my blue hair into a ponytail. My uniform gets picked up from the floor next to my bed and thrown on my back. My feet slide into well used brown shoes. My car keys are on top of my purse.* * * I roll from bed in the morning. There are pieces of poetry on the pad of paper by my bed. I'll have to wait until I get back to transcribe them onto purple index cards and add them to the bathroom wall, but my fingers inch toward the paper, unwilling to leave these pieces behind. Grandma always said, "Never let your arms and legs, fingers and toes, think for you." She said the same about genitals.* * * I drive the half mile to the diner. I look at the faces of the men in cars around me. Could one of these men be the one? Could it be this man's sperm that slowly leaked out of Alison before someone found her? Could it be that man's infected blood that might bring an HIV positive result in three months or six months or a year? None of them wink at me in some telling way. I just go to work.* * * My Grandmother was dying for all of my life. The first memory I have of Grandma is her saying, "You know, I'm not going to live forever." The last memory I have of Grandma is her saying, "You know, I'm not going to live forever." The last time she was just a lot closer to the truth.* * * Day shift has its own set of Regulars who all ask after Alison. Or Jenny. Or both. As Dottie, I don't have answers. Peg might have had some, but she's not here anymore. My first day goes from 6:00 am to 2:00 pm. I take the trash out the back door three times, looking each time for any sight of the man. It's starting to frustrate me that I have the question 'Who?' but no one comes trotting up saying 'Me!' Maybe tomorrow. Or tomorrow. Or tomorrow.* * * I asked my mother what Grandma was sick with. She refused to answer. Wouldn't give a name to whatever disease ate Grandma up and took her away. "What were her symptoms?" I asked. "She didn't have any," my mother said. End of conversation. Put a period on it. "But she looked sick near the end," I said. "Oh. That!" Like the sick looking that Grandma did was only done to annoy. End of conversation. End of Grandma. End of the game. Thank you for playing. We have lovely parting gifts.* * * Another day of puking out my heart and soul onto small pieces of heavy paper so I can add them to the many pieces of myself already written and inspected and rewritten and reinspected and rewritten again. Add more of me to the color that surrounds me on my walls. How many times should it take for me to put myself on a piece of paper? To make it right and whole and acceptable? How many pieces of myself can I let go of without losing all of me?* * * "She had no symptoms? So she just died?" I said. "Well, she went demented first," my mother said. "Went demented?" "Yes. You know, you know!" my mother would wave her hand around in the air. "The way old people get all forgetful and stupid like that." This was where our conversations about Grandma's death generally ended. There or when my mother said, "Of course, her soul is burning in Hell since she died Unforgiven."* * * I sit in my chair and look at the walls that surround me. The words that I've pulled from my head like knotted yarn. The yarn I've knitted together into paragraphs. The paragraphs that don't want to assemble themselves into coherent thoughts. The thoughts that are becoming more incoherent every day. I stand up and walk into the bathroom. I look at the pieces of poems that I've attached to the wall around the sink. Each piece came in the dead hours of sleep. They wake me and demand to be written down on whatever surface I find. Too many mornings with ink-stained sheets and walls, I keep a pad of paper next to my bed. Poetry doesn't come from thought and sweat. It comes through remembering nightmares. The terrible thoughts that take you someplace you know but don't know. Poems are hard and honest and unflinching things. That's why I keep them in the bathroom. The place where every surface is hard and sterile, white and unyielding ceramic. Poetry is an unwieldy thing for me.* * * In the small minutes of morning Eduardo died. He was found in the same back alley as Alison. His throat sliced across and his eyes wide open with fear. I met Eduardo on my first day at the diner. He was this young, handsome guy that I would flirt with while I sent up orders and he cooked the food to fill them. I had thought about having sex with Eduardo. I could day dream him into existence and imagine the hottest, steamiest scenes. Never did it with him for fear it would screw up my writing. My ability to think sensually. Now he's dead. The manager who insists we call him Mr. Sevick said the neck was cut so deep you could see his spinal cord. Andy the cook said the eyes had turned red where the white should be. All I saw was the dark brown puddle edges left over after they cleaned things up.* * * On a Thursday in 2007, one of Grandma's 'they ought to give him the death penalty' convicts got paroled. My mother was elated. "Can't you see?" my mother said. "He found Jesus in prison," my mother said. "So that's where Jesus has been hiding," Grandma said. I never took sides in these debates.* * * My mother used to say, "Someday Prince Charming will come and take you away from all of this." I was generally confused by what 'this' I needed to be taken away from. Why I should be taken anywhere - especially 'away.' I am sure that Prince Charming was supposed to be capitalized since my mother said it the same way she said God, with booming and angels and heralding from on high. I would ask my mother, "Why do I need to go away?" She would sigh loudly and turn away. I never asked her, "Why don't I dream about a Prince Charming?" I never told her that I was pretty sure that the Glass Slipper wasn't going to fit. She stopped mentioning him completely when she first saw the index cards on the walls of my Place.* * * At night I dream of dying. I dream that my soul walks the streets around my Place and listens to the night. That my soul stands sentinel over the alley behind the diner. I dream of slicing the sallow skin on my arms and watching it bleed. These are my silent scream of anguish and insanity. My dreams are for my Grandmother who is dead. My dreams are for my mother who seems dead.* * * My search for the man who hurt Alison, who killed Eduardo, continued another day. I woke up with 5:30 blinking wildly at me, served food to people who called me Dottie, and looked into the faces of every man I met at or near Dee's. No one was offering up confessions. I drove to and from the diner, not bothering to hold my breath near the graveyard. Death had been courting me since Grandma's death. Had almost taken Alison; had taken Eduardo. I was tired of being the mouse to Death's cat. It was time to set a trap. I took risks. Offered to take out garbage. Had my coffee breaks in back, looking toward the Dead End then the Street. Maybe Death had taken to occupying the alley, so I was prepared to find it there. Death wasn't holding up it's end of things.* * * I've got Seniority now. I've officially been at Dee's longer than any other waitress with the glaring exception of Barb who works Graveyard. It would be an impressive accomplishment if all the other waitresses working days and evenings hadn't quit after Eduardo died. It also made the place a little lonely. I know the cooks and busboys - less than a dozen all put together. None of them quit. The whole 'machismo' thing came into play on that one. I was asked to train the New Girls. I came up with Four Simple Training Steps. 1. Here's how the tickets have to look. 2. Here's where you put the tickets up. 3. Here's how to carry three plates on one hand and a fourth on your arm. 4. Go work your station. I had never realized how many tricks I'd picked up during my eleven months as a waitress. Important life lessons that would certainly serve me in the future when Prince Charming came along. And we had three children. And I was willing to wait on them.* * * The manager who insists we call him Mr. Sevick became annoyed that I kept taking out the garbage, kept taking breaks in the 'Danger Zone' behind the diner. "Are you trying to get a law suit out of this, Audinita?" he asked. "A law suit?" I asked. "What kind of law suit?" I asked. He snorted at me and walked away.* * * In the small minutes of day I take my last chance to meet him. I step out the back door with my bag of trash. Close the door behind me. In the alley, I stand between the relative quiet of the morning street traffic and the absolute silence of the alley Dead End. There between the quiet and the silence I wait. The polyester uniform I wear pulls heat from the surrounding air and holds it against my skin. A long trickle of sweat slides from my blue ponytail, down my shoulder blade, under my bra strap, into the waist band of the wrap-around skirt. My brown shoes pull up the cold held in the concrete. The soles soaking between the humid feet within and the chill below. My mind tells me that I need to get back into the diner. I need to want to be out of this place where bad things happen. The manager who insists we call him Mr. Sevick slams open the diner's door out to the alley.* * * People do odd things when they've been at a certain job too long. Like Barb who works the Graveyard Shift. Barb refuses to leave the shift, even for more money. She likes the power of being the longest running Graveyard waitress in the place. She also likes to bully people in the shifts before and after. Barb checks out the whole diner before the outgoing shift can go out. Runs a finger along the back counters to check for whatever she hates that day. "There's grease on this counter," Barb says one night. "There's water on this counter," Barb says the next night. It's not possible to make her happy. The happiness of Day Shift doesn't matter. "There was no time for cleaning," Barb says in the morning. "I was running all night," Barb says the next morning. Barb doesn't want to be happy. Barb needs to get laid.* * * Grandma's Death didn't surprise me. She had become pale and withdrawn and began to cough. She was dying for so long, the fact of her death became true long before her body and soul caught up with it. My mother shrugged Grandma's death off within two weeks of our visit to the river. She began to selectively revise the history she and her mother had lived. "I just never thought she was so sick," my mother said. "I tried so hard to take care of her over the years," she said. All of it was said with dry eyes, dry tones, and drunken disregard. My mother had already forgotten the woman who was her mother. Left that woman behind in favor of an idealized false memory. My mother has lost a part of herself by changing her own history. I never glamorized my Grandmother. She was the person she'd been born to be. She was difficult and opinionated and odd. She believed in things that other people regularly made fun of. She'll always be a part of me and I will never forget the reality of her, never forget the part of me that she made.* * * In the small minutes of day he pulls me down. Down and aside and away and back toward the Dead End of the alley behind the diner. His hand slips across my mouth. I drop the bag of trash on the ground by the diner's back door. Who is this? This man I've wondered on and sought out? This man who hurt Alison and scared away Jenny and slit the throat of Eduardo? My eyes look over my right shoulder and I look. I know this person. This man of many hats. His name is Andy. Andy who cooks on the weekends for extra money to support his family. Andy who whistles while he cooks without realizing it and annoys the hell out of certain customers. Andy who stands a head shorter than anyone else in the staff and flirts with all the waitresses and is so damned charming. Andy who's about to rape me* * * I drank my wine at The Olive Garden during the last Saturday lunch with my mother. I watched as she sipped her way through a plate of Fettuccini Alfredo and six glasses of Chardonnay. When the bill came, my mother seized it from the waiter's hand before he could set it on the table. "I'm paying for this," she half-yelled at him. "Taking my daughter out to lunch," she half-yelled to the people dining around us. She tucked the bill on its little black plastic tray next to her recently emptied wine glass. Went for the purse sitting on the seat next to her. As my mother looked down to the right of herself, looked down to find her purse, she began to slowly fall. Her face nearly landing on the table before she pulled up again. She leaned in again, slowly bringing her face to the table again, pulled up with a jerk. Her wallet retrieved and her body giggling. "D'you see that," she whispered loudly to me and the nine people at the tables around us. "Almost knocked m'self out." She was laughing now in a barking drunk way that's so unattractive in women. "Yeah," I said. "Saw that." "I think I might've drunk too much wine," my mother said in another loud whisper. "No! Couldn't be!" I wear mock astonishment well with my mother. She rarely works her way beneath the façade. "No! Really! I'm a little, bitty, bit tipsy." To illustrate her level of tipsy she held her thumb and finger a half inch apart and pulled the hand up to her right eye to make sure she and I both saw the amount. She opened her wallet and thumbed through the three cards within to decide which one to use. One of the cards was her Visa, one was for Macy's, and the last was a library card. It took her thirty seconds to choose one. She chose the Visa - or alternatively realized we were at neither Macy's nor the Public Library. She spent another ten seconds carefully pulling the Visa out of her wallet in that exacting way drunk people have of doing things. I watched her slap the card onto the black plastic and over-carefully hand it all to the waiter. who had to juggle to keep it in his own hand. He smiled tightly at me and left. My mother picked up her empty wine glass and tried to find another drop or two. When no drops found their way to her tongue, she looked at my glass. Before she could look for drops there, the waiter returned with the black plastic tray. I watched her figure in her head the amount to leave as a tip and then try three times to add the tip to the total. I watched her scratch out the amount she'd come up with twice and make large initials onto the changes. I watched her dig into her purse for the car keys she thought she was going to use to take us away. As we walked to the car, I said, "I should probably drive." My mother looked at me as if I'd suggested she go walk through the grocery store naked. "I'm driving," she said. "If you're driving, I'm walking," I said. We stood facing each other for less than a second. I walked home.* * * I watch the tendons lift and fall as my fingers tap out the beat repeating itself in my mind. It's the same beat every day. Every night. My hand is brown. It's long. It's worn from the hours of carrying hot plates and washing up at the end of shift. The fingers are hard with dry skin and bad cuticles. The tendons stand out even when my hand rests. The music my fingers make is echoed in the rhythms of the dancing tendons. I watch them strum through the song again and again and again. A diversion from the words that won't find their way onto an index card.* * * In the small minutes of day I see my body festering in the alley behind the diner. I always liked the word 'Festering' and have decided in death that it should apply to me just like Thoughtless and Blunt and Selfish and Inhospitable did before death. My body lays in stillness so complete that no one can see it but me. I can only see it because I know to look. My polyester wrap-around skirt almost covers my knees, my thighs, my underwear. The tear in my yellow panties exposes me in ways the words on my index cards can't. They expose the utter core of me to anyone who would look. And I want them to look. I stand at the street end of the alley and scream. I stand in front of a man and drench him with rage. I stand amidst a crowd of women passing the diner and try to push them to seeing me. No one hears me. No one feels me. No one sees me. An old man in a gray cardigan comes by. His poodle on a red leash tries to pull him toward me. The old man pulls back and wins the tug-of-war. My body remains the muted witness to it all as it sculpts itself into the pavement beneath it and the trash bag above it. Maybe my mother was right. Maybe my grandmother misread the long life line on my palm. Maybe this, all of it, is just another one of those life lessons that refuses to be a crime.* * * When I am found, I watch. I watch my mother try to cry through the frozen veneer of her Helpless Woman Alone face. I would follow, go to the morgue or the funeral parlor or the ovens, but I am drawn instead to the graveyard that I passed. Among the stones that mark the moments others have lived I see those Others. The Recently Dead are confused, lost in those moments before they fully understand. The Long Dead are bored, they don't greet me or waste their attention on any of the rest. The Young Dead cry but can't be comforted. And Souls Stolen are directionless in a labyrinth of confusion, their last thoughts those of a person driving past a graveyard and breathing. I find a stone with no Souls attached to it and claim it as my own.* * *
copyright 2009 sally k lehman