Filed under: Uncategorized
June 7, 2010
What Is That In Your Junk Drawer?
(Thanks for stopping by to check out my censored post. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think – could I have ruined someone’s life/career/family with this piece?)
I’m going to break some kind of land-speed record for how many times I use the word penis in this post. Just so you are prepared. Those too virginal or squeamish should turn away now. And so we’re all on the same page, junk is the term used for the whole package – the male genitalia as it were.
I am always somewhat shocked when a man displays his junk – who can ever forget Michael Douglas on Leno or Derek Hough on Dancing with the Stars? When it’s on TV you can just snigger into your gin and tonic, but when it’s in person I don’t know where to look or whether or not he wants the world to see it or just had an unfortunate case of pant size confusion. Especially fascinating are Italian men who wear their clothing to deliberately advertise their junk. From what I’ve heard, Brazilians and Argentinians are happy to stuff their junk in a package that’s meant to display their wares like cellophane-wrapped ham hocks around New Years. Then you have entire regions of American men who wear pants baggy enough to be skirts and you have to wonder . . .
What was that you said? It’s like cleavage on a woman? Oh no. It’s not. Boobs are universal. Junk is not. And junk is an illusion anyway – it’s not like the package on display is really telling the whole story. Of course, then you have the picture above – now if men with their junk all out and about looked like THAT perhaps junk exposure would be more appealing?
I grew up with only a sister so until I started my foray into womanhood the male junk was sort of a mystery. Then I had husbands, and a son, and it became just one more thing around the house to maintain. So, here is my practical guide to the junk drawer.
Five Penis Facts from, I swear this is true, CBS News:
1. A penis does have a mind of its own. Men in fact have less control over their penis than they do their arms or legs. It’s tied to the nervous system. The arms and legs, however, should remain under the man’s control, which should allow him to walk away and put his hands in his pockets. Tiger Woods and Jesse James may not have known that this is how it works.
2. As far as size, there are two varieties: Growers and Showers. A penis can grow anywhere from the width of a paperclip to the length of a Blackberry. Hey, I’m sitting at my desk and that’s all I had on hand. So, that penis that looks puny may be a grower and the one that looks temptingly like a good nudge might yield results may be a shower and it’s already given all it can give.
3. The Penis Is Shaped Like a Boomerang. The root of the penis is tucked way up in the pelvis and when actually detailed on an MRI it’s, yes, a boomerang. Which explains why it’s always getting itself stuck in the same old spots, doesn’t it? And you can totally picture how that MRI session started. The copier was broken and the techs had to do something besides photocopy their asses . . .
4. A Penis Can Be Broken. Contrary to the whole “boner” thing there’s no bone, but a penis can be fractured. Those of us with husbands over 30 ought to be really thankful because a broken penis tends to be a young man’s problem. Now, if anyone is going to take up Courgaring be warned, the younger the guy the more rigid the penis, which can lead to great joy and happiness, but also a chance of accidental breakage.
5. Most Penises in the World Are Uncut. Only 6% of Australian men are circumcised. 20% of Brits and 30% of Canadians. Who’s up for a field trip to do “research?”
Beyond the basic facts and junk exposure – there’s that question most women have pondered at least once. Why are men always adjusting their junk? Is it to get our attention? They don’t quite understand the female mind if that’s the case because when I see junk-adjustment going on the first thing I think of is: infection. I don’t adjust my boobs in public and I’d like to ask men to refrain from adjusting their junk. Although I’d have to guess frequent boob-adjustment would earn me a fan club.
Five Reasons Men Adjust Their Junk:
1. They have junk pinchage
2. Their junk is sticking to their leg
3. Their pants are too tight, causing junk compression
4. Their junk ventilation is insufficient causing suffocating junk
5. A woman is within a mile and she might like to be reminded that they have junk to share
I’m sure previous generations of men would have scoffed at this, but the current crop of men (none among the men I know – I did an informal survey) seem to be more sensitive to junk-aroma. Did you know they have begun making toiletry products aimed specifically at junk? Don’t believe me? Go to www.manjunk.com and see for yourself. I think this is great payback for the past fifty years of Summer’s Eve commercials.
If you’d like to see the worst instance of Man Junk ever on record, here’s a You Tube video for you:
And people wonder why I live intown! So, who has a good junk story? What are your feelings about junk exposure and adjustment?
June 4, 2010
The Freedom to Read. The Freedom to Write.
My daughter recently went on a trip to the Midwest with my mother and encountered some pretty narrow thinking. She came home and said, “Mommy, I’m glad you’re raising us in a place where I know all kinds of people and how good they are.” She has friends who are of every racial group. She has friends who have two mommies and friends who have two daddies. One of her best buddies is Jewish, another is Presbyterian. We attend a Methodist church and I sometimes read her tarot cards for her. She reads voraciously, yet I do manage a little what she reads by allowing her to read controversial stuff and then talking with her about what she’s read. If a book is questionable, we read it together and then discuss it. I’m against censorship. I don’t understand how someone’s moral core can cause them to think that they have the right to say what can or can’t be put into the world. Censorship hurts artists and it kills the artistic process. Is everything ever composed, written, painted, or photographed appropriate for every audience? No, of course not. But no one has the right to say that something should not exist or not be allowed to come to fruition because it rubs the wrong way against a morality belonging to a select group.
Neil Gaiman has a great letter from a librarian on his blog and it’s worth reading.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/last-last-word.html
Some books you may not have realized were censored:
Aesop. Fables.
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice.
Boccacio. The Decameron
Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Brothers Grimm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
Cervantes. Don Quixote.
Cinderella
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Eliot, George. Adam Bede.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Frank, Anne. Diary of Anne Frank.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther.
Hanford, Martin. Where’s Waldo?
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Homer. The Odyssey.
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon.
King, Stephen. Carrie.
L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time.
Lawrence, Margaret. A Jest of God.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Diviners.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Stone Angel.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Little Red Riding Hood.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.
Molière. Tartuffe.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women.
Orwell, George. 1984.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Rumpelstiltskin.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Sanders, Lawrence. The Seduction of Peter S.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear.
Shakespeare, William. Othello.
Shakespeare, William. Richard II.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night.
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men.
Suzuki, D. T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Thoreau, Henry James. Civil Disobedience.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Lord of the Rings.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Voltaire. Candide.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House In the Big Woods.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House On The Prairie.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. On The Banks of Plum Creek.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.
As an English major I’ve actually read every single book on this list. And I’m proud of that.
If you care about censorship and want to take a stand, please visit:
http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/
Why am I writing about censorship today? Because until today I was part of a blog group of romance writers. I’ve just tendered my resignation because a post I wrote was read in draft form and found to conflict with the moral sensibilities of some of the other writers. The blog group had everyone from writers of erotica to inspirational writers. For those unfamiliar with what “inspirational” means – that refers to books that are in the romance genre, but that are sweeter, more innocent, and of a bent to be more acceptable to those of a religious nature. I support the rights of those writers to speak about religious topics, but apparently the support of divergent view points is not a two-way street.
My post – the one that was questioned by the group and suggested had the possibility to do one or all of the following:
A) Ruin careers
B) Keep people from being published
C) Be used as ammunition should one of the other blog members ever be sued for sexual harassment
D) Cause us to be labeled as man-haters
E) Lose the religious audience
F) Shame other members in front of their families
Well, it will appear in this space next Monday. I would welcome you to see for yourself if my post had the power to do any of the above.
Filed under: Uncategorized
May 5, 2010
Kitteh Love
I live with executioners. Unblinking, unwavering, undaunted killers. And they both LUV me. How does a kitteh show his love? (Put your lunch down right now if you’re smart) He leaves you presents – furry, feathered, used-to-scamper-and-frolic presents. The first week of spring yielded my very own horror show version of the 12 Days of Christmas.
On the first day of spring my beast of a kitteh gave to me: One dead white bunny.
On the second day of spring my beast gave to me: One stiff robin.
On the third day of spring my beast gave to me: A still twitching chipmunk.
On the fourth day of spring my beast gave to me: A field mouse, gray with pink little paws.
He stopped there THANK GOD because if I came out the front door and screamed for a fifth morning I’m pretty sure my neighbors would have been miffed. They’re musicians and they don’t get up at the ass crack of dawn like I do. BTW, all their musician friends greet my chief killer cat by name affectionately as if they are on intimate terms. I think he’s over there sitting in on jam sessions when he’s not out killing things.
So, how do I know all these delights were meant for me? (really, put the sandwich down) They are always left on the front door matt and are in perfectly preserved condition. The bounty he takes for himself ends up in pieces and parts and requires a hose to get off the porch. I hated dissection in school, but I passed, so I can tell you what a mouse spine and a chipmunk liver look like as the water wooshes them off the porch.
The carnage had stopped for a while until this morning’s offering of a beautiful little gray mouse. The creepy part is that said mouse had been totally licked clean – maybe like a kitteh Popsicle or something. I gave the cats a little bowl of milk yesterday. Really, I would prefer to have been thanked another way – maybe by a nice lap snuggle or a keyboard crawl.
Have you ever been given a gift out of the “heart” (get it!) that you really would prefer to have not gotten?
Filed under: Uncategorized
May 4, 2010
The Drunk Girl In My Bathroom
Last night a drunk girl came to visit. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me. Yet, there she was – clothing somewhat optional and drunk off her ass – in my bathroom. Her name began with a J (I do know her name, but I think she’s suffered enough indignity to end up drunk in a stranger’s bathroom, don’t you?). So, Miss J had a bad day. And if I can infer enough from her tears, Miss J’s bad days had come in a series that began when she was 13 and her mother died. Miss J was somewhere in the vacinity of 30 so when I say drunk “girl” really, please don’t picture a 17 year old. Miss J should have known better than to be drunk off her ass at 7:30 pm at her age, but those bad days have stacked up against her.
My sister happened to come over somewhere in the midst of me getting Miss J out of the bathtub and into her skinny jeans. Have you ever had to get a fully grown, drunk, woman out of a bathtub and into a pair of skinny jeans? I should add that Miss J is my height – so please don’t picture a petite little 17 year old. My sister and I have both been drunk girls in bathrooms at one point or another – typically, I can speak mostly for myself here as my sister will have to answer for herself – in our own or at least friend’s bathrooms, so I’m not calling pot shots out at anyone, okay. But if you are going to go out on an all day bender perhaps skinny jeans are not your best option. So, my sister and I got the drunk girl out of my bathroom and into my kitchen. “Oh, look a dog. Cute doggie. I like dogs. Oh, look, are those children . . . there are small people here?” (cue my husband literally shooing the children out the front door and off to get pizza with his arms akimbo like a blue oxfod wearing father goose.) And no, I don’t usually wait until 7:30 to feed them, but it was Cub Scouts night. I am sure there’s not a badge for drunk girl saving.
So, Miss J’s phone was dead. The one person Miss J wanted more than anyone else in the world was – her father. This part did surprise me. My father would absolutely have killed me. Luckily for Miss J her father was listed on the white pages website. Thank God he’s of the generation that still has a landline and actually answers it. So, Miss J’s father is on his way and we’re still feeding Miss J Ritz crackers, water and ibuprofen. Have I mentioned how happy I was that Miss J declared, “I’m not a puker” when I handed her a bucket to put on her lap? The skinny jeans had been enough for me.
So, here’s where this is going. Miss J, while attempting to smoke a cigarette with me holding my hands underneath hers so she wouldn’t burn herself (I don’t smoke and yet I facilitated a drunk girl holding a burning object – surely there is a badge for this in the Senior-level Girl Scout handbook!) looked up at my sister and said, “are you married? cause my dad is totally going to hit on you.” (he did not, for the record) So, should I feel guilty because the only thing I could think of is “wow, this would make a great story – the couple who met over a drunk girl in a stranger’s bathroom.”
Filed under: The Writing Life
April 27, 2010
To the Men Asleep Under the Dogwood, 1958
They do not rest, peaceful as fallen petals
backs pressed against hillocks of new grass
overcoats smelling of lawn onions, hooch,
the quarter for a bath they did not have.
They do not speak companionably, men
on an outing, chums, passing their stories.
They close their eyes against the limbs, the sky,
the landlady – her key, her lock, her rules.
She’s a minotaur tugging the curtain
with her hoof, her nightgown ripped by her horns.
Limbs catch on the insides of their eyelids;
the cross-hatch becomes the river Elbe
on a mortarman’s much-folded field map;
or slim brown legs tangled in sheets, not his;
or the cracks in the mirror’s silvering
as it hung above the bar where time ran out.
The men rise up from the earth, now specters
from tales told by my elderly neighbor.
Their failures cling to me like the fallen
petals I’ll find buried in my knotted hair
when I wake in the early morning hours,
asleep in my nightgown, feet bare, chilled,
the house key against my palm, my failures
forming shapes in the tangled weave of limbs.
Filed under: Poetry
March 1, 2010
Somewhere Only We Know
Where I live in my head is a jumbled mass of ideas and impressions. Sometimes, there’s a really angry troll in there trying to use a machete to cut through the overgrowth. Like today.
I keep trying to get the people close to me to understand, but unless you’ve been somewhere, how do you know what the landscape looks like? I have this overwhelming desire every minute of every day to create something. That’s why the vines grow and the buds come out and the webs get spun. My interior life is all about solving problems and making stuff – I don’t walk down the street without re-imagining what everything *could* look like. I don’t meet someone or see someone in line somewhere without instantly describing them in my head as if they were a character I was introducing. I don’t go through my days half asleep. My head is buzzing. All the time.
Being misunderstood is probably the most profound of all human problems. I’m pretty angry sometimes because my time to be creative is limited. That makes me grumpy. And I know grumpy gets old to the people upon whom you inflict the sharpness and bitterness of a constant grump. I’ve read endless biographies of artists and writers and a common theme really is the tendency to make enemies out of your loved ones simply because the constant frustration of a creative life spreads like a ratty old quilt across a bed. Lumpy, full of holes and with a tell-tale musty smell at times. I just wish everyone understood that if I could make myself be upbeat and happy and carefree I WOULD!! But that’s not the temperament nor the brain I was given. I was given this rich interior space full of creativity and brimming with the ability to “see” what things could look like transformed. It’s crazy-making even though I do try for sanity. The one strategy that works for me over and over again is searching out the creative struggles other people endure.
I love the Dar Williams song, After All. Perfect description of creative angst and my favorite line is:
It felt like a winter machine that you go through, and then, you catch your breath and winter starts again, and everyone else is spring-bound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28N_A-dy52Y
Anyone else end up being misunderstood?
Filed under: The Writing Life
January 20, 2010
My Studio
If you saw my post “During the Reign of the Oak King” today on Petit Fours, and would like to see some pictures of my studio, then here they are! Most of my pictures are focused on the ideas I used to create things and the sewing equipment I’ve planned around. Writing really only takes up the space between my elbows.
Filed under: The Writing Life
January 12, 2010
The Chaos Box
Disclaimer: This is not my original idea. I stole it from my friend, Nicki http://www.8headedhydra.blogspot.com/ She’ll probably blog about this as well – only in a much more beautiful manner than moi.
One of my resolutions this year is to contain the chaos. We all have it – like the dust under the refrigerator that you try to ignore. Sometimes the chaos seeps around the edges of my life and makes fulfilling my mission impossible. Let me be real – I like drama. It’s easier to engage in drama than it is to write. Drama is exciting – look! An emergency! I must attend to it! Somehow over the past five or six years I’ve allowed everything to become a drama.
Here’s the solution: chaos box. If something seems in the least bit likely to spiral into drama I’m going to put it in the chaos box and shut the lid. Typical of me, however, my first impulse was to actually make a chaos box – I’ve got a great shoebox. Wait! there’s that little metal box I’ve just been waiting to decoupage! I could get out my rust-stopping primer and some images I’ve been saving up. What color is chaos? Black? Too easy. Teal? Hmmm. Red! I could hit the fancy paper store and get a box of pretty paper to write down my chaotic situations and people to put in the box – maybe a new marker!
In the middle of this creative frenzy it hit me. Turning a chaos box into a chaos project is exactly the wrong path to take. My chaos box is now a virtual box – industrial sized for all the crap I think it’s going to have to hold this year.
Score: Me=1, Drama=0.
Filed under: The Writing Life
January 11, 2010
Poetry – The Night We Danced Sequence, II
2. Evensong
La Rosita cranks up for the after-game rush –
the heavy smell of corn oil hanging over the parking lot
drifting toward campus, slick tendrils sliding
toward the bleachers. Masa coalesces
into the hands, slippery and smooth, of three sisters in the back
who slap the balls like new babies
into the churning tortilla press. Their father handles the long wooden spoon,
leans his face into the heat of the chile verde,
testing with his nose for cumin, green chiles, garlic.
Their ears perk for the roar of the crowd’s choral
lamentation or exultation depending on the score.
This is their science: put the carne asada on the grill when the marching band
thunders into the first mournful notes of the alma mater.
We agreed to meet after the game – sit with other faculty –
bump our fingers into one another reaching for the cilantro.
Maybe the garnishes in the Styrofoam bowl – sour cream, juicy tomatoes,
jalapeño slices, translucent onions
make me reject the safest choices,
see in your eyes a brightness, a delight, a delirium.
Eating cilantro for the first time is an act of faith.
The small chopped leaves so like clover, the long, long stems
still with the smell of damp earth – these things should taste like the lawn,
should be grassy, sharp, bitter, but instead they infuse
spicy foods with the mellowness of morning sun on soggy fields.
And the air, as it often does with these things,
sucks itself up and away in the crush of teenage bodies
and the hum of victory dances,
when you take my elbow and steer me out into the busy night
and toward the empty campus, to the low white plaster buildings
done in the smooth, old, Spanish style, falling
against the wall under the shadow of the eucalyptus,
and into your hands, slippery and smooth,
“Come Inside. Come Inside.” you whisper.
And I reshape myself to your palms.
Notes on Evensong Evensong is an Anglican tradition dating back to the 1500’s. Evensong is the choral service sung at vespers. In this poem the singing of the crowd triggers the events of the poem.
Filed under: Poetry
October 29, 2009
There’s No Goodbye – October Prelude
Welcome to my entry for Petit Fours and Hot Tamales October Treasure Hunt! I feel honored to have been assigned Halloween. The story that follows is a pre-quel to my current work in progress, There’s No Goodbye. It’s about a magical florist who must save the life of a doomed soul and it begins on Christmas Eve one year from the story you are about to read. Enjoy and I’d love to read your comments as I’m always looking for feedback!
The bottle of Jameson picked a bad moment to bang against the plastic container in the bottom of Marchand’s knapsack. She stopped and ducked into the doorway of a mausoleum, her fingers deftly wedging the whiskey bottle into place again. She crouched lower as a flashlight played out in a faint arc in the Jewish section, illuminating the dull red of shedding leaves. For October the night was slightly warm, but Marchand wore a black sweater to blend into the shadows and was thankful for the warmth against the chill she felt coming from inside her body. The guard patrolled in a pattern, allowing Marchand a slim belief that she’d complete her mission before he caught her, but not if the bottle that had cost her a day’s tips gave her away. Atlanta was not New Orleans; she couldn’t pay a guard to look the other way for a bridal ancestor ritual.
Marchand timed her advance through Oakland with the clacking of the Marta trains running every thirteen minutes along the northwest perimeter of the cemetery. She knew exactly how many steps it would take from each stopping point to get her across the original six acres and onto the back side of Oakland where the McCarty plot faced the old Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill. This deliberateness, the precision of her plans, had not come as easily to Marchand as she would have wished. But a skill acquired in counter to the natural order of her personality had given her spells a resonance that increased their potency.
Brick walkways, humped and misshapen by a century of rain, were laid out in a tidy grid. Moving quickly, she turned left at the juncture of four paths. At the highest point in the cemetery the Austell plot rose up in a solid brown mass; huge blocks forming the base with Gothic arches and spires rising up into the sky. Marchand crouched against the iron gate and waited; cold pinpricks rose up on her back from the metal pressing through her sweater. From this vantage point she could see the lights from the taqueria just across Memorial Drive and the slight wind carried the heavy scent of cooking oil. In the thirteen minutes she waited the sound of cars traveling down I-20 rose in a distant swell before the trains drowned them out again. Oakland had once stood out in the country, but the thick brick walls rimming in the forty-five acres now provided a bulwark against urban encroachment instead of errant cattle. Inside the cemetery the Victorian world, with its heavy symbology and efflorescence of ritual mourning and devotion, held its power in spite of the industrial complexes and light pollution pushing in on all sides.
Marchand dashed from her spot at the sound of the approaching train and headed down the final path to her destination. The contents of her knapsack remained silent and complicit.
*******
The McCarty’s final resting place was a few plots away from the northern boundary of Oakland Cemetery and fell under the shadow of a massive column dedicated to Governor Joseph Brown. Topping the column was the Archangel Gabriel himself, trumpet raised to his lips, wings outstretched, ready for all eternity to blow in the apocalypse. In twelve hours, Marchand would be a McCarty, which seemed apocalyptical enough. She thought of Gabriel giving the news to Mary of her favor with God, answering Mary’s wavering voice, her questions.
Then Mary said to the angel, How shall this be, since I do not know a man?
And the angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit shall come on you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you. For with God nothing shall be impossible.
For every penance Marchand could think of, the idea of entering into a barren marriage seemed too great a crime. She made the sign of the cross in the air. If Mary could make it work, she could as well.
Marchard stepped up onto the marble carriage step leading to the plot. She’d mentally rehearsed the ritual, making adjustments to suit graves that were in the ground instead of raised as they were back home. The ritual she was going to perform was as old as time, a remnant from an age of magic few could still claim. A pull of power flowed up into her sternum. She could feel Eulalie’s fingertips radiating circles out onto her temples.
Eulalie. The missing of Eulalie sliced through her. In her childhood Marchand often listened at Eulalie’s private office door as she advised her clients. She’d delved through cracks and around columns until she knew the instructions as well as anyone living, but never did she think she’d be the one practicing the rite herself. Or that she would be practicing it without Eulalie to advise her.
Marchand Boniquet had been born to be lonely. Marriage was not in her birth chart. Eulalie had calculated a new chart every year, hoping to find her own mathematical error, but the stars had never been aligned. Marchand could only imagine that her grandmother, powerful as she was, re-arranged them herself once she ascended.
God, as usual, had the last laugh at the meddling of a cranky old woman. Her marriage was a ritual incited to produce nothing so much as an illusion. Were it not for a good cause, she’d worry that the hand of God would smite her on the spot.
Sham or not, however, Marchand did not cut corners when it came to ritual. She knelt in the exact middle of the family plot, brushing aside leaves fallen from a crepe myrtle to reveal the bare ground, then flipped open the lid of her knapsack. She slipped out the ancient linen cloth, the lace edging nearly yellow, placing it on the ground with care. Rows of initials embroidered in white on white ran down each side and, with fingers shaking in memory, she touched Eulalie’s flourished E and P. The cloth belonged to the Boniquet family and her mother’s initials were there, but Marchand did not trace them. Her father was a typical Boniquet male, having turned her mother to disenchantment and misery in their short lives. Her own initials would be added at the next new moon, but tonight only the fluorescent lights from the Marta station lit up the cloth.
The eggplant she pulled from the sack was without flaw, skin deepest purple and shiny as it nestled onto the middle of the cloth. The eggplant, meant to represent her own uterus, made Marchand gag as she placed it on the cloth. The Boniquet family was meant to die out with her. She pulled out the plastic container and removed the four objects nestled in paper. Orienting herself for true north, Marchand pulled out the sixteen-penny nail and held it in the palm of her hand for a moment to feel the weight of the metal before plunging it into the eggplant with the head pointing north. The requirement of earth was the element of metal – something to give strength for the long haul of marriage.
She moved to face south, then removed a long incense taper, hand-made from a recipe she carried in her memory having left Eulalie’s spell book behind in New Orleans. Only the possessions that would fit in her duffle and not be subject to theft from the other refugees had come onto the bus with her. With fingers steadied by her faith in her magic, she struck a match against a grave marker and lit the taper. The small red tip of the incense released a trickle of cedar-scented smoke; the line running straight and true for four inches before it broke into wispy patterns. Fire. Engine of passion. She stared into the burning incense. Her passion would play out in her work.
West came next and to invoke water she’d chosen the small pink sea shell she’d carried with her from home, remnant of a trip to Gulf Shores with Eulalie. The shell curled around on itself forming a small maze pointing up into the sky. She’d glued it to a small twig and the wood went into the eggplant with some force; anchoring her wishes for her married life to flow and ebb as the tide.
The last object required the greatest care, both in creation and in placement. East was the domain of air, and air was the primal life force. In six months, perhaps less, she would be a widow. As she held her offering to air up against the dark sky, Marchand felt as if she were back home, on Canal Street, close enough to water to feel the land sway. Affixed to a long florist’s pin was a bright yellow butterfly she’d managed to catch in the yard, out of place against the dying beds of autumn. Eulalie, always firm in her rules, had not allowed her clients to substitute silk butterflies, “Don’t you think God can recognize one of his own? Marriage will require sacrifice, and often it’s beauty that gets tossed along the way.” She pushed the pin into the eggplant, the tip of the needle easily piercing the shiny flesh. She rocked back on her heels and stared at her creation.
Four Objects. Four Elements. Four Directions.
The divine number, twelve, was met. She had two last things to do to complete her work. She grabbed the bottle of whiskey out of the bottom of the knapsack, quickly cutting through the seal and twisting off the top. She walked the entire perimeter of the plot, pouring the liquid in a steady stream, being careful to use exactly enough to cover every inch of the outline of the entire plot. At the very back, where the family crypt was sealed firmly shut, she poured the remainder of the bottle. She then repeated the entire process with a quart of goat’s milk. When both containers were empty at her feet, Marchand dropped to her knees at the door of the crypt and bowed her head.
God, Goddess, Everything That Is, I ask that you grant me a fruitful and happy marriage. I join this family with honor, bearing whatever talents and gifts you have given me, and ask only that I be accepted and allowed to share them.
She waited, for what Marchand was not sure. In her experience no great crack of thunder would come, no ready acknowledgement that the universe had heard her. Whatever God, Goddess, Everything had in store for her was a mystery. When her knees could not bear her weight any longer and the sound of the Marta train rattled down the tracks, Marchand rose, placed the eggplant with its adornments in the door of the crypt, carefully folded up with earth-dampened cloth, and then tucked it back into her knapsack. She left the whiskey bottle and the milk carton at the base of Gabriel’s column.
May you be appeased for a time.
********
A church pew hard and uncomfortable under her, the back of her calves rubbing against the cold leather of the kneeling board tucked under the pew, the air rent by loud blasts from a trumpet. The trumpeter materializes – his cheeks puffing and the sound hanging in the air like ribbons from a pennant, his black face shinning with sweat from the effort of his notes. Her hands clasped in her lap, she hears the notes, understands the call is to something evil, she looses her fingers, begins to draw the protective sigil in the air. Spell unfinished, her right hand no longer has fingers as it rises up to the call of the trumpet, the back of her hand grows scaly, revulsion rises up in her throat, her fingers web together, black eyes open where her knuckles should be, the notes crest, slow, her arms begin to move, syncopated, beyond her control. Her arm turns, a small forked tongue flickers out, testing the air, the black eyes do not blink. The trumpet grows softer, enticing, the man blowing seductively, his eyes closed. Ridges of new bone rise out of the sides of the flesh that used to be her hand as the hooded cobra at the end of her arm stares into her face . . .
Violent shudders wracked Marchand as she struggled to rise to the surface of the living world. Her room was still dark, the only sounds her breath and the dripping leaves outside. Shadowed shapes rimmed her bed, square and resolute as the mausoleums she’d slouched amongst the previous night.
Only a dream. Only a dream.
Under the sheets Marchand could feel the fingers of her right hand as they flexed and moved. She pulled her hands out from the covers, holding them up to her face and turning them around to view every familiar line and wrinkle. Her fingers worked in unison, reflexively finishing the protective sign she had failed to make in her dream.
The waking world moved into her head, sense returning, the dream slipping away. A horror to worry over as time allowed.
Today she was a bride.
Craig and Russell had seen to every detail, but Marchand still had to finish packing her belongings and get ready.
She pushed herself out of bed, climbing around the boxes lining every spare inch of space in her room, and nearly ran to make coffee strong enough to get her through the day.
********
Marchand debated with herself, alone in the bride’s room, the hovering church lady having been sent on an errand of little importance. The church lady was a fan of brides and seemed rather confused at her lack of attendants and even greater lack of attention to the details.
No civil service for her, Craig needed their wedding to be real and that meant church, dress, flowers, honored guests. She could only imagine what her side of the church must look like. At least the bar where she’d cocktailed was closed this early in the day, perhaps she’d have a minor contingent of drunks to stand up for her.
Her veil was fine lace and mellowed to a lovely color the shade of an expensive taper candle. Russell had produced both the dress and the veil, borrowed from one relative or another. Begged or bought, they suited her slim frame and dark hair and eyes. The veil helped to disguise the fact that she had the hair of a Marine, cropped as it was into close waves against her scalp. The spell she’d put upon herself, appearing indistinct to anyone who looked at her for more than a second, seemed ill-suited to a bride. False as she was in this undertaking, she didn’t want their guests to find it odd when they could not describe Craig’s mysterious new wife. She could break the spell, but the dream of the cobra had haunted her entire day, making her want to disappear even further into the veil.
The soft knock at the door gave her no time to whisper the words and make the signs, giving the decision entirely to the Goddess. Hidden she’d remain, her features fuzzy, her smile bland.
“Come in,” she called out, trying to at least inject a small amount of cheer into her voice.
The head peering around the edge of the door was gray with curls tightly styled into rows against the dainty skull. “May I come in dear? I’d like to look at you before you walk down the aisle.”
“Of course, Mrs. McCarty, please come in.” Marchand backed away from the mirror and tried to settle a smile on her face. How such a diminutive woman had produced a bear of a man like Craig, Marchand could not comprehend. Yet, small as she was, Criag’s mother was a fixed chamber, controlling the rise and fall of her family as a lock controls tidal water.
“You look lovely, Marchand. It’s a shame, though, that my dress did not suit, it would have looked beautiful on you.” Mrs. McCarty fixed her blue eyes on Marchand, trying to measure her for flow and ebb, but the spell held and the old woman was driven to look elsewhere in the room, her brows coming together in confusion.
“It’s rather too bad I have seven inches in height, your dress was indeed lovely and I would have felt beautiful in it.” She had no interest in antagonizing her soon to be mother-in-law. Marchand knew what Mrs. McCarty did not. Her son had mere months before he slipped away from her. Russell had shot Craig up with enough steroids to bulk up two ninety-pound weaklings just to get him through the ceremony.
“Well, dear, dress or not, I’m so glad Craig is finally getting married.” She smiled, the relief tipping the corners of her mouth into more of a smile than the worry lines edging her face would allow for. “I always thought he’d find the right girl, but I just never imagined he’d make it to a sight past fifty.”
Marchand felt an uncharacteristic tenderness she had thought gone with Eulalie. Mrs. McCarty would never need to know the truth about her son. She’d doubted Craig’s plan, doubted the fact that his mother did not at least guess the truth about Craig and Russell, but he’d been right. She was without the first clue.
“Well, he’s found the right girl, now, Mrs. McCarty. I’ll try to make him very happy.” For the time he has left, I’ll be the perfectly complicit bride.
“Thank you Marchand, I’m sure you will. It all seems rather sudden and I’m still trying to get used to the idea, of course. I just haven’t heard of such fast weddings when there wasn’t a little, um, situation to be covered up. You know what I mean, dear?”
Underneath her bouquet, Marchand’s hands made the sign for tact. “If you’re asking me if I’m pregnant, Mrs. McCarty, the answer is no.”
“Well, alright then. Goodness knows I’m too old for grandchildren, why Craig has a nephew who is older than you are!”
Mrs. McCarty stayed for a moment longer, then rushed away in a small wake as the church lady returned to announce the beginning of the ceremony. Marchand gripped her bouquet with her right hand, relieved to find her fingers had not been replaced with scales.
********
The pen in her hand felt too smooth, the metal cool, the barrel hard. Craig had handed it to her, his smile faint and his own hand trembling uncontrollably. He and Russell had chosen a morning wedding, followed by a lovely brunch at their restaurant, knowing that Craig would not make it through a longer day. With the festivities over and the day drawing to a close the toll was beginning to show, on all of them.
“Marchand, this is where you sign.” Craig pointed, his thick index finger nearly obscuring the line where she needed to sign. When she continued to hesitate, he reached out and tipped up her chin, his eyes searching her face. Russell had trimmed Craig’s beard into a semblance of order and, combined with his flowing hair, he looked like Walt Whitman. He smiled at her, nodding his head. “I know. It’s hard. You are not signing my death warrant. It’s a living will and a Do Not Resuscitate, the warrant was issued long ago.”
A single tear dropped from her eye and fell onto the paper. Marchand could not say she’d never felt more alone, that feeling being reserved for the moment when Eulalie’s hand had slipped from hers and she’d clawed to grasp her grandmother back from Katrina’s flood waters, but the sign of death was already on Craig. A black fuzzy outline like the wing of a crow. “I’m okay. I’ll sign it.”
The lawyer who had come with papers, a long time friend of Russell and Craig, quickly affixed the notary stamp as if Marchand might renege and snatch the documents back from him. He was the type of gay man who saw women as breeders and therefore beneath his interest. His frown indicated his hearty disapproval of the whole plan.
As if her thoughts had given rise to his voice, the lawyer turned to Russell, slumped and spent in an arm chair next to the front window, and said, “I suppose now we sign over assets to her?”
Russell looked up from his study of the ruby leaves dropping every few minutes from the dogwood tree in the front yard. “Yes, John, we’ve already gone over this. Please have Marchand sign the papers for ownership of the flower shop. Lord knows, she deserves that at the very least for putting up with our little charade.”
Marchand could feel Craig bristle, the fight rising up in him and then hissing out as if he’d been a punctured tire. His voice when he spoke was deep and filled with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Russell, this is the only way. I love you, and I hate that I’m leaving you, but it’s too late to change.”
Russell’s skin, the color of a weak café au lait, clearly showed the two spots of pink that rose up in his cheeks. “I know. You can’t tell your mother after all these years that we share more than a restaurant and I can’t risk her trying to keep you alive. It’s impossible.” He looked away from them, back out into the gathering darkness, “And I am thankful, Marchand.”
“I know, Russell.” She turned back to the lawyer, taking the papers he held out and placing them flat on the table. With fast strokes she affixed her name, sealing all of their fates and ensuring a future for herself where she swore her magic would only be used to heal the kind of heartache that pulsed through the room like a flood of polluted water.
Contest Question: Oakland Cemetery is located in the heart of Atlanta and is open daily for contemplative walks. It’s a beautiful place. In my story the events of Hurricane Kartina are bookended with the tornado that ripped through Oakland in March of 2008.
While Marchand is in Oakland she uses a vegetable as part of an ancestor ritual. What vegetable does she use?
Filed under: October Treasure Hunt Story
