Midnight is where the day begins

Day 2:
The temperature has risen into the 40’s overnight and I can hear the eaves dripping with melting snow. The luggage delivery elves from United Airlines rouse me from bed just before mom sets off to read at the early mass. She wants me to get up and get ready for the later service, knowing I’d rather go up to Sheldon than St. Mary’s any day. Just after she her car clears the end of the driveway I look out through the kitchen window and notice that just enough snow has melted to reveal the beaten up pound cake in the middle of the yard. Shit.

Donning the bright red house coat from the closet (which was a gift to mom in 1993), and some boots, I go punching through the snow. Collecting the sloppy pastry, I carry it toward the tree line at the edge of the property. The land dips a bit as the lawn halts it’s march greet the woods and so can’t be seen from the back window. I give the cake another toss into the thick collection of trees.

She’s driving me a little nuts already with the minute details regarding exactly how to walk out the driveway to tape a sign onto the penny saver box bearing our house number so that when Santa delivers my luggage he can find the right place. You’d think I’d never seen ice before, had never walked up that driveway, or that I had no experience with these things called ‘feet’. I want to snap her head clean off, but I don’t.

Church saves my sanity a bit. I never chant along with the prayers or songs as its never been quite my bag to call myself a sinner or to proclaim belief in “one holy catholic apostolic church”. I stay silent and meditate to myself. Slowly I feel it deflating lik a balloon that’s been poked. I’ve been trying to manage too much, insisting that I know what’s right rather than simply accepting. Accepting that I’m lucky I got into town with just 3 hours of flight delay and one day of delayed luggage. Accepting that there’s nothing I can do to make this situation different or “better”.

As I relax into the mass the words come to me: “to see how something is put together, look at how it falls apart.” How I’m watching mom’s mind fall apart tells me much about the expectation and structure that has held it together for decades. As each repetition of directions or whining in the kitchen starts to irritate me I follow the strand back as far as I can to some comprehension of the fear what’s held her world in place and the force-structuring her thoughts had at the hands of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. When she insists that there are people knocking on the back door and starts running around frantic, I show her the driveway containing only her car. She’s expecting people coming over and every little thud or bump that meets her dim hearing maps itself to that expectation. I realize that she’s not getting to me like she did even a few hours ago. But, I’ve never been so happy to see my siblings show up!

Day 3:
I wake up to the sound of mom exclaiming at the presence of deer in the back yard. They have their dark winter fur on, which surprises her.

“Usually they walk up through but this time they were just standing around over by the trees, straight back from the house. I wonder why?”

Yeah, gee, I wonder.

We recover from the prep for the holiday. Feast on a few pieces of candy. It’s amazing how quickly this place, this pace of life filters into the cracks of my consciousness. It’s funny how fast lessons can go unlearned, again. I whinge about tolerating my family and the conservative siblings without any thought of how many times mom’s “mhm” over my liberal talking points might be her own form of tolerance. We know we both mean well and slowly give in to the compulsive helpfulness. We each try to fix but still hold on – as if our identities depend upon those parts of ourself which the other sees as broken.

But there is a last time for everything. I stop holding back from those talking points that might cause upset. I refuse to pretend that I practice anything like Catholicism on my own, although I do respect it. I don’t pretend to be sexually inexperienced even though I don’t need to go into the details with her. I’m done playing reindeer games.

There's a last time for everything

Day 1:
Listening to the minutia of directions coming through the phone, I already felt the rage coming on. Nothing is where she says it is. She really hasn’t the first idea where anything really is in this entire house unless she wanders around it talking to her “angels”. It’s a mess that can’t be fixed. Everything one needs to use gets ‘safely’ tucked away in some mysterious location before you’re really done using it while the counters and corners of each room explode with garbage like plastic bags, six month old church missals, old penny saver magazines, tattered shoes and broken shit.

My luggage got lost. United Airlines has made sure I showed up for this holiday completely unprepared. Everything I sent ahead that I might give anyone for Christmas is lost somewhere in this house and I am really loosing it.

“Where’s the box from See’s?” I ask her.

“Oh!…” she proceeds to give me several locations of possible search for the various items, all of which prove to be false. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing on top of that refrigerator in the basement (where I specifically told her NOT to put the chocolate) except a pineapple. There’s nothing on those shelves in the freezer, where my cooking ingredients were supposed to have been stored, but butter and venison. There’s nothing anywhere but shit wrapped in plastic bags. If I see one more plastic grocery bag wrapped around some item I’m going to…

“ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” snap and scream.

I begin pulling items from the chest freezer (this is the third freezer in the house) and throwing whatever I grab with all of my might. Frozen pork roasts sail across the cluttered basement and crash into the washer and dryer that haven’t worked since I was in high school. A chicken bangs into the side of the furnace. A $2 pound cake, packed in a plastic deli container and two plastic grocery bags, goes for a sail and crashes against the wall. I spy that pound cake. You’d think this was some sort of delicacy the way she has it so carefully stored for future use. It’s just a cheap fucking pound cake! These things taste like sweetened foam! Its container has already shattered from the force of throw and impact. So, I jump on it. I jump on the cake and stamp on its slippery, gross larva form as it squirms around the cement yelling “NO MORE CHEAP SHIT WRAPPED IN PLASTIC!!”

For a moment I calm down and attempt to reassemble the freezer, only hesitating to beat the $1.99 a pound pork roast into the floor a few times before returning it to the chest. I throw the smashed remnants of the pound cake into the snow in the back yard with as much force as I can muster. It lands somewhere out there in the field of white between the house and the woods.

But the rage isn’t passed. Just looking for tape, and I can’t close a kitchen cupboard for all of the crap in there. Seconds later a plastic container of crap flies from the kitchen into the living room, spilling it’s contents all over the red rug: replacement staples for a stapler probably long gone, zippers taken off pants before they were tossed, a bit of string, and nameless and formless –

“PILES OF USELESS CRAP!!”

In the living room, hovering over the landing sight of my latest rage victim, I look around. A display of fall gourds has been left to rot in the basket on the coffee table – the coffee table which has a broken leg and which will fall over if leaned on in just the wrong way. This room, this was the room we were not supposed to ever ever enter as it was full of all those items so precious: picture windows, wall mural, hardwood floor, nice sofa, red carpet. I grab the rotted gourds and heave them at each of these features.

“I’M SICK OF THIS! I’M SICK OF EVERY THING LEFT TO SIT AND COVERED WITH DIRT AND DUST AND ROT UNTIL IT’S CRAP! I’M SICK OF EVERY NICE THING BEING LEFT TO SIT UNTIL ITS USELESS! WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHY DO YOU REJECT EVERY NICE THING? I’M SICK OF ALL OF YOU! YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT! NEVER COULD SAY A NICE THING AND WHO THE FUCK WERE YOU? IT’S NEVER BEEN NICE BEING HERE! IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A PLACE WEHERE NICE THINGS COME TO BREAK AND DIE!”

Gourds crack and bounce off the picture windows. Gourds smash into the red carpet and break open against the floor.

“YOU CAN’T MAKE ME EAT THIS! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHEW IT AND TAKE IT IN! I REJECT THIS! I’M DONE! THE WINDOWS DON’T MATTER! THE CARPETS AND THE HARDWOOD FLOORS DON’T MATTER! WE WERE THE LIFE IN THIS PLACE AND WE SHOULD HAVE MATTERED MORE!!”

When I finally run out of squash to throw I come to a rest, face pressed against the cold glass of the picture windows. My throat is hoarse from shouting against the dusty air. Years of expectation and disappointment pour out of my eyes. So this is Christmas.

This is “getting together to trim the tree” degrading into an upset argument over strings of lights that don’t work. “They worked last year!!” Dad would bellow. The first time in my adult life that I bought a string of lights and read on the box that these were ‘not intended to last more than one season’ I seriously thought I was going to hit something. Why the fuck couldn’t you people just go out and drop $10 on a couple new strings of lights each year?

This is sitting down to decorate Christmas cookies and getting yelled at for making all the cookies the wrong colors. I had made a green Santa, and as an even worse sin, my stars were red! Red stars were communist (never mind that they tasted better). Stars were blue or yellow, Santa wore red, neither creativity nor communism in colored sugar were appreciated.

This is people sitting around the tree making conversation while mom bangs pots and pans in the kitchen. She’s spied something none of the rest of us sees yet. A diamond ring on a finger.

So this is the living room, the stage of so many moments around the tree, around girls going off to prom or around a bride. This was setting of many a smiling photo and much tacit animosity.

I get up and start cleaning the living room of crushed and smashed bits of squash. I start to put the tree together, using the two strings of lights that work, the antique ornaments and the new tinsel I found last January (finally allowing us to throw away the crinkled tinsel which has been in use since the late 60’s… not joking).

As I plug the works in and tidy the room I think “there’s a last time for everything”.

Economic Recovery Plan

It’s a phrase that’s been getting bandied about more and more lately, and today I finally heard it with more than just my ears. My mind took in the magic words: “Economic Recovery Plan” as the President-elect spoke them. This plan is supposed to make us all feel better, like those guys in charge have just the recipe for national money that will put us all at rest. Soon we’ll be able to shop again, right? I can confess to feeling a bit reassured by the onset of a new administration with the word “plan” on their lips and the gaggle of experts in the back pocket. But suddenly, today, I focused in on another part of that oft heard phrase... “Recovery”.

Recovery, really? Do they mean that? Could a plan for recovery really work for us? Let’s match up recovery and the economy.

January 21, 2009. Step one. We admit that we are powerless and that the economy is completely unmanageable by us.
If this is news to anyone alive between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans then this person needs serious rehabilitation, preferably in a battered women’s shelter that's facing foreclosure. Our every attempt to theorize about and resuscitate the economy has brought about still greater mocking failure. Give up, America. Put your busted paws in the air and surrender to collective culpability. We’re all going to each have to do this economic recovery together.

Step two. Come to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Whoa. Sounds extreme. We’ve already got “in God we trust” printed on the money. Isn’t that enough? Maybe the greater power isn’t some abstract and fluctuating diety. but a core belief that we are each no better than the other at heart. Maybe we just need to see that, while we cannot and do not wish to all be literal ‘equals’ in choice and lifestyle, no one deserves to be hurt or exploited for another’s comfort. What hurts one of us hurts all of us. That’s not so bad. It’s actionable – do no harm.

Step three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the higher power as we understood it.
Not so unrealistic, really. We’ve been blindly doing that all along, trusting the government or the job to take care of us, with the gleeful side effect of being able to blame and whinge when we don’t get what we want. Perhaps the bigger challenge of this step in our collective economic recovery is for all citizens to DECIDE and to UNDERSTAND.

Step four. Made a searching and fearless inventory.
Ok, it all comes out eventually. Tricky Dick got caught, as did governor Blago and that rich fellow with his ponzi scam. There can only be one Jimmy Hoffa. Do we want to find out about this stuff generations from now, when the tapes have been combed over and the analysis done, just in time for our children to get busted making the same mistakes? Wouldn’t we rather have some transparent exposure now? It’s like the difference between pulling the band-aid off slowly or letting your big sister yank it off real fast. Pick the speed of your ouch. Money can be more difficult for folks to come clean about than their sex lives. But, its about more than just the games we play around money, fearing that there won’t be enough and that someone will take what we have. It’s a concise history of those moments when fear, selfishness and self pity have ruled the day and sacrificed the angels of our better nature like a sheep in the temple.

Step five. Admit to everyone the exact nature of our wrongs.
Admit the mistakes, the greed, the intention of harm and selfishness before you end up on Jerry Springer next to that overweight bit of trailer trash who wants to start a fight. Admit, as a nation, that while we are not all guilty of the specific acts that have made such a mess of the economy and our relationship with the world in general, we are all responsible. We all got quite used to things being this way and played the game just as much as any high roller. We all contribute to the problem just by being here.

Step six. Became willing to have these defects removed.
And we must pause, here, as some of these naughty little things we do are quite enjoyable. They’re NATURAL. We’ve done things like his for so long… what do you MEAN change? Give it up? Huh. I’ll get back to you on that.

Step seven. Ask a higher power to remove all these defects of character.
If we meant it when we did step six, then, well, nuff said.


This bit should take us until the end of the first Obama administration. And things will be looking and feeling much better. We may all well like our country much more. But it’s important not to stop. Hopefully by the time we vote him back in, the process of change will be so ingrained that no one will remember the days when it was the favorite buzz word of electioneering. Change will be an American addiction, but not a bad one like we have to fat, sugar and cigarettes. It will be a good one, like our addiction to air.

Step eight: Made a list of all persons or entities that we had harmed and became willing to make all of those situations better.
Well, we’ve had our mits in just about every pie all around the planet since the day after the ink on the constitution dried. So, this should be fun. Whom did we harm? Hm. The native American nations? The middle east? Southeast Asia? Africa? South America? The line between “that was selfish of us” and “the bastards deserved it” is pretty much a fractal. It gets more and more complicated the deeper we go. They WERE shooting arrows at us. They WERE pirating our ships. They DID kill our young boys. They DID send planes into our buildings. So lets just start by erasing “them”, whoever they were, from the equation because other people’s shit doesn’t belong on our balance sheet. In liberating our minds of what “they” did, we’ll see how collectively we’ve made decisions based upon self-interest that later placed us in positions to be hurt. WE wanted more land. WE wanted more money. WE wanted more of what was proportionally due us by nature and when we found there were people in the way of what we wanted, we figured out a tidy democratic way of saying “so what”. That right there? That goes on the list.

Did anyone notice, yet, that all this means economic recovery isn’t really just about money? Yeah. It hasn’t really been about money since step 1.

Step Nine:
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Important note: “Others” = other countries. There is no “other” who can point to any patch of dirt (or concrete) inside the US and call it home. Nobody gets to absent themselves from reckoning because their gender, race, orientation or union membership has caused them to appear at a disadvantage. Get off the pity pot, wipe your ass and get on with it. You’re an American, too. So, sorry, no remunerations for folks who can point to a slave in their lineage because we’d all be surprised how many ‘white’ folks fall under that umbrella. By way of slavery & indentured servant-hood, that categorization is another historic fractal. But, we do owe West Africa a great debt for having ripped their cultural fabric into unrecognizable shreds. It does mean that we publicly admit that we are often selfish, dishonest and wrong. What does it mean to do things differently, now? What would it look like to live in a way that does no harm? It might cost us much less than we feared and reward us much more richly than we’d ever dreamed. And won’t it be easier to stop covering up all the facts? But that’s just it. We start tasting the rewards here. Not after step 1.

Step Ten: continue to take inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.
Note the word promptly. That means now, not in the next election cycle.

Step Eleven: Continued to make conscious contact with a higher power, asking only for knowledge of its will an for the strength to carry that out.
I know, scary. Why, now I give every nutter hearing voices a license to set off car bombs in the name of their God. But that’s not what this means. The God we seek to get in touch with here is that which is present within all other people; a collective spirit. And when we reach a state of behavior so as to treat our fellows in an un-hurtful manner, it will be far easier to see a god in them. There’s one bar against the acting out of odd “god inspired” craziness. Ask: will it do any harm?

“But if we “do no harm” there will be nothing that we’re capable of doing anymore! We won’t be able to take two steps without causing harm to some microbe? We’ll all look like Jains!”

Really? Aw c’mon. Use your imagination.

Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening, we continue to practice these steps and to carry the message to others.
This should take us into the last year of the second term. Too bad we’ll have to say good-bye to Obama so soon. But think of what more can now really be done? This, THIS is the wonderful world Louis Armstrong warned us about in that song that still makes me cry.

I’m idealistic, I know. How in the heck to get Americans to stop pointing fingers long enough to accomplish such a task? Easy. Our life depends on it. The survival of our species on this planet in a manner that looks anything like “life” hangs in delicate balance. The alternative is a world that looks like Haiti: stripped bare of resources, crowded, underfed, chaotic.

How? Well, H.O.W. –honesty, open mindedness and willingness… these we have to find in ourselves, first.

Great pets

I go for a jog, just to celebrate the rare day of above – forty degree weather. I learn a few things. For example, the trail I ran all through the summer may be too messy for mid December. Gotta stick to the main drag that they keep plowed for the fire access vehicles. By the time I’m coming back the dog walkers are out. Along Sheridan it’s mostly little dogs not being kept on tight enough leashes. The lady in the fur coat wanders down one side of the sidewalk, possibly still in last night’s stupor. Her fido generally takes a path at the opposite side of the walk, effectively creating a neat snare for other pedestrians or, say, me. A hefty woman passes in front of me holding two lhasa apso’s on leashes. The dogs are each wearing mink doggie coats.

Hey lady, can I be your dog? In fact, while we’re at it, I think there are a few hundred people who have just spent a dozen cold, hungry nights wandering the streets of Chicago who find your pouch’s predicament quite enviable.

Why, really, must we have these strange beasts, with whom communication is so much left to guess work and whose bodily functions require so much vigilance, in our homes? What’s the payoff? How can the devotion of such fuzzy cuteness possibly outweigh the hassle of walkies on cold mornings, visits to the groomer and the cost of kenneling when one must go to the Bahamas for those two weeks in February?

Why not adopt homeless people as pets? I know it sounds horribly crass, like I’m talking about treating the disadvantaged like beasts. But come on. Take a walk through the Loop during tourist season or during the holidays and count, for once, those people on the margins who are so easy to ignore despite the cup full of coins they rattle. Sometimes I stop and give them money and ask them their name. They look at me in shock, and hesitate, as if they’ve forgotten they had one. They’ve compressed their own personhood down to so unrecognizable a form that it takes a second or two to cough out those couple of syllables that make up their label. Treat them like a dog? If that means a warm corner of a house, decent food out of one’s own bowl twice a day and maybe even a mink coat for taking a walk in, that is a fat upgrade.

Those two lap dogs were allowed more personality and identity than the average homeless person. Their quirks, perhaps a tendency to drink from the loo, defecate in the marble entryway, bark at the slightest noise and chew expensive shoes (a crime punishable by death in my book) are met with more tolerance than is shown the average human, especially one that we can perceive as being down on their luck.

So why not have homeless people as pets. I’d wager they can be trained to suit any household. Even the most mentally ill person can muster greater sense than a beast who speaks no verbal language. If the dog’s purpose lies in its fuzzy factor, then simply refrain from having the homeless person shave the beard that living on the street has caused to grow. They can shower themselves without the expense of a trip to the Bark Bark club. They can use a toilet. How great would that be in the middle of February when it’s all of zero outside. Oh wait, you’ll be out of town. Well, you’re pet person can watch the house or even come along on the trip! The advantages are countless. All for the cost of some love…

And what’s so bad about this idea? I mean, we may as well let the concept sink into our consciousness now. Once the Martians tire of playing with the toy robots we keep sending them as friendship offerings, they will ride on over to pay our twinkly little world with it’s orbiting trash ring a visit. And they will probably take one look at how the lot of us have mismanaged things and decide that we’d just make good pets.

Present for mom

“Hemp”, I thought. Hemp is plenty strong, there’s no way she’ll be able to destroy this cargo tote bag. Not only is it already pretty tough by design (I have 3 myself), I deliberately ordered a stronger fabric for the side panels and straps. So, two side panels of black hemp and a center in blue fabric, recycled polyester. Well then I guess the gift is ‘green’ too. I picked out the liner inside be brilliant orange. “Why that color? That doesn’t match the outside!” She’ll say. And I know this. It not only clashes with the outside but it is a color that nothing she puts into that bag will have. So that way she can find her shit and nothing going into the bag will fall into the dark abyss that makes her sound so frustrated when its time to locate something. One fat credit card charge later, Timbuk2 is now in charge of mom’s Christmas present. She can stuff her shoes and lunch into it, drag it through the grocery store, throw it around in her car and it will hold up. Good. She will have something durable to use instead of that stupid knitted bag that’s been falling apart for years and which I swear is magic as everything ever entered into it can never be recovered. Finally, mom will be able to carry her belongings in a bag that, while not haute couture, won’t scream “nouveau homeless”.

Wrong.

I think through the expensive and well-intentioned Christmas gifts of years past we’ve given her to meet painfully obvious needs. The warm LLBean coat got returned. The warm slippers still sit in their gift bag in the living room, inches from where she placed them after opening the present last Christmas. Isotoner gloves sat on top of the refrigerator unused, right next to the new tea pot from 3 years ago. The thick terrycloth bathrobe that I got her in 1993 hangs in the closet, ready for me to use when I visit, while the ratty, threadbare thing she always wore-she still wears. When will we learn?

Mom doesn’t want new things that serve her purposes exceptionally well. She doesn’t want to receive the top of the line goods. She doesn’t really take to getting anything, perhaps doesn’t know how to incorporate this sudden possession into her life. She wants to find things. She wants to discover a coat long discarded by the child who grew out of it. She wants to find the sweater that has sat in a drawer and could yet yield a few more wearings. She wants to use her old broken things until they disintegrate beyond recognition. The shoes are worn well beyond the point when her toes poke out wide holes. They are put onto her feet until nothing is left but the foot itself. And that is satisfaction. Knowing that she has squeezed the last bit of usefulness out of an item, whether it be an old coat, shoes, or the teabag she presses for a fourth cup, is what makes her happy. Never mind that the old coat is too thin for a Buffalo winter. Never mind that the shoes no longer protect her feet or provide traction. Never mind that while the second cup of tea may taste better, the fourth is surely too weak. Never mind comfort. The greater comfort is in knowing that every red cent’s worth of use has been gained. When the stuff is used to the point of disintegration, she wins.

When asked for an explanation all she says is “oh, I want to keep it nice!” FOR WHAT? FOR WHOM?

I call her up at work to tell her that a package is coming. “It’s coming from San Francisco.”

“OH! Is it See’s?”

“What? The chocolate?” Apparently, in my various trips through SFO looking for a souvenir, I have created a monster.

I go to See’s Candies online and make her up a custom box – nothing too chewy or hard and heavy on the maple walnut truffles. So, I can stop, now. I guess I knew what she really wanted all along. It's my problem that I haven't been able to bear getting a gift that doesn't try to fix anything.

in the snow

12 hours of rain, followed by a sun-down freeze plus continuing gusts of powdery snow and the sidewalk looks and feels like sugar coated slop. It’s like walking on butter cream frosting and I haven’t worn proper shoes. Step, step, slip. Step, step, slip.

My umbrella isn’t much protection against the snow gusting from all directions. The wind continually grabs at this feeble protection, giving it a hard yank. It wants in. It wants into the downy folds of coat where I hide. It wants in to my imagination for some empathy. It demands that, just before my legs and fingers go numb, I experience some empathy for all those mice I dispatched to rodent-after-life via my freezer. I’m lucky, I have a warm home that I rush toward. The powder filled wind demands that I consider the condition of those with no warm destination. Many wander with only this cold as their abode.

Some wander off and the world goes cold around them. It wasn’t this frigid 11 days ago. On that day a little old lady with some mild confusion wandered out of her nursing home. Maybe she just went out for cigarettes and took a wrong turn up the straight road leading back home. Maybe something caught her eye and she simply forgot for a little too long. Her senses come and go and usually when she meets up with them she doubles back and returns to her destination. She comes back to 3 meals a day and a warm quarter of a room. But this time, perhaps before logic could kick in, but after she’d just walked far enough away, the temperature snapped down. “Where did the weather trap my wanderer?” I ask of the growing powdery drifts. Surely she’s been seen by some snowflake. Can’t any of you tell me?

But as the snow covers evidence and muffles sound, it returns only silence. In it I see only my search.

statement...again

Another crack at an artist’s statement because someone shot me an email today and asked me to apply for an exhibit. Apply? Oh well, at least there’s no fee. I’ve procrastinated on this for 40 minutes, so that means it must mean something to me. Ok. Here goes.

I tend to start each painting from a single impression. This could be a desire to explore a particular set of geometric relationships and colors. It could be an odd congruity popping into my mind that comes from having been raised with heavy doses of both Catholic iconography and 1970’s advertising. But, like a joke igniting a conversation with a stranger, with concentration and time each piece expands on its founding premise to form a relationship. In each I feel that the paint and I together hash out a particular idea, mapping its depth and breadth and discovering the strange creatures that live in its terrain.

Painting in watercolor, primarily employing a wet-on-wet technique, forces me to relinquish a certain measure of control over each painting’s results. I bring my ideas to the composition and hopefully the paint dries in a manner that agrees with me. It feels a bit like making a deal with the devil when things work out in a pleasing manner. Often after I’ve created a solid bed of color by bleeding paint into controlled shapes on the paper, I will work ink or graphite into the composition. This brings more depth, texture and heat into the finished painting.

..ok, that’s enough self talk for one day.

nanowrimo - 25-28. End of the book!

“So where we going next?” Wolf asks as he piles into the back seat as if this is some sort of holiday excursion.

This time, I have the keys and Jack merely shrugs and waives his hand. “Driver’s choice.” He wasn’t too willing to give up the reigns to me, but there’s no way I would put up with another evening of him grumping about after spending 12 hours at the wheel. For some reason, put a man at the steering wheel and all privileges to stop, get out, and stretch are cut off.

“Massachusetts!” I announce.

“Awww why there!” Jack whinges. The man handles loss of power badly, I’ve noticed.

“What dere?” Wolf pops his head over the seat to ask.

“What’s there is some of the oldest towns and buildings in this country. History my boy! It’s not often I meet things in this country that are older than I am. Besides, as long as we have you playing hookey from school, we may as well see to it that you learn something.”

“Aww c’mon I don’t want to go to moldy old New England!” Jack complains again.

I attempt to dangle a carrot before him. “Boston has a pretty vibrant gay community.”

“Oh!”

“What!! Wait a minute! Is you a fuckin’ fairy?” Judging by Wolf’s reaction, you’d think someone in the front seat had just pulled the pin on a hand grenade.

“Wolf! He’s no more a ‘fairy’ than you are a ‘nigger’! We do not use words like that!”

“I don’t want to be ridin around with no... what I call him iffen I can’t say ‘fairy’?”

“Homosexual!” Jack is red in the face and I know he’d have slapped Wolf straight into the trunk by now had he not spent centuries perfecting his restraint. “The term is ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’, my dear AFRICAN AMERICAN friend. And for all your upset over finding that out I’d wager that I was probably the first openly gay man you have ever had the pleasure to meet. So ditch the superstition and bigotry! Because from what I can tell so far this fairy, fag, poofter has thus far done a pretty fine job of saving your black ass!!”

“Yeah, not bad for two honkeys, if I must say so.” I add. “Besides, what divides us, what we are on the outside, woman, gay, black, is feeble compared to what connects us underneath.”

Wolf’s eyes get large like two eggs and he makes a silent “oh” with his mouth. Oh here we go, here come the identity politics.

“Now I gets another sermon, huh? How you think I feel knowin here I am just another black man wit not much educatin and ridin’ around bein’ taken care of by you two spooks. Peoples already look at me strange. All my life I seen lil’ old ladies pull they purses away when I sits nearby on da ‘L’, peoples look down cause they afraid to make eye contact wit a black person. They afraid I might be one a dem ANGRY niggers. They afraid I gone hurt them o take dey stuff and all a ma life I hoped I’d be the kinda man ta prove dem wrong. And HERE I IS!! A big ole black man what hasta kill people to stay alive. If dat ain’t whitey’s worse nightmare come true I don’t know what is!”

Jack busts up laughing. Not just sniggering but laughing uncontrollably. “Wolf! Dude! Get over your bad self! We are all, each of us, someone’s worst nightmare in some form or another! Mum here is a liberated woman who goes on a killing rampage when she doesn’t get to eat enough bacon! She could snap a man in half! If I weren’t gay and her son I’d probably be dead by now!”

“Especially with your lip, sonny boy.”

“You dat scarey?” Wolf looks at me in shock.

Not wanting to lose the theater of the moment I shoot him a low look over my shoulder. “I see a diner down the road. You’re gonna drink coffee. I’m gonna eat bacon. Got it?”

“Woooo yes ma’am!” and he lies back down in the back seat.

It’s early yet and through the windows we see the diner holds only a small crowd of regulars and a few loners. Jack and Wolf goof around on the way in.

“So a nigga, a fairy and an ole lady goes walking into this diner in a middle a no place...”

“Can’t wait to hear the punch line on this one.”

“Me neither. Maybe iffen I’se lucky someone in here mistake me for Michael Jordan and we gets our coffee for free.”

“You know, you don’t all look alike!”

“I probably be the first black man these here folks ever done laid eyes on!”

“I don’t know who all you lot are calling the old lady!” I interject.

“ohh m’sorry m’sorry ma’am. Did I say ole lady? Nuh uh! I mean ODD LADY!”

They bust up again.

“I know it’s tough. But you lot could at least attempt to act a wee bit closer to normal! Don’t attract attention!” I know they register a collective complaint as I usher them through the front door.

Immediately through the door it is obvious, however, that stares are going for cheap around here.

“What dey all lookin at?” Wolf mumbles under his breath. “I done took a shower today.”

“Well if its any comfort I think you clean up real nice!” Jack tells him, with an extra effeminate affectation to his voice.

“Don’t be tellin’ me dat!”

Some of the gents seated at the counter glance over their shoulder at us and turn to chat with each other. But, I don’t sense trouble, and the waitress pops over to us with menus soon enough that I can relax.

“Whacha havin’ this mornin’ folks? Can I get ya’s started with 3 coffees?” she asks as she slaps 3 menus down onto the table.

“Yes!” Jack and I chime in unison.

“Coffee?” Wolf wrinkles his nose. “Man I never understood why you folks drink dat shit!”

“Hey, watch the language here.” I admonish him as I seem to have turned into the authority figure, here.

“Well what do you want young man? Hot cocoa?” Jack teases him again.

“Hey!” he brightens up. “I likes cocoa!”

“Cocoa it is! Comin right up!” and the waitress is gone.

Jack isn’t done ribbing yet. “Cocoa! Man how old are you, twelve?”

“I be thirteen nes’ month. Sides, what’s wrong wit cocoa? I likes chocolate! It be good for my complexion!” And he smoothes a hand over his ebony cheek.

“You two are like peas in a pod!”

“I’ve never actually tasted chocolate.” Jack muses.

At this, Wolf is incredulous. “What! Man how you live as long as you have an’ never tasted no chocolate! It against yo religion or somthin? Man dat makes me glad I ain’t white!”

“Wolf, I think what Jack means to say is that he can’t taste chocolate.”

“Right. I’ve stuck it in my mouth and swallowed it, but it doesn’t have a taste for me.”

I try to explain “Most mortal food is just, well, grey. It has no flavor and doesn’t really effect our satiety. You know what I’m talking about, if you think about it. Can you remember how anything besides chocolate tastes? But, each of us has certain foods that we DO taste. And that’s good to know, because that food can hold you over when you need to feed but perhaps can’t.”

“So, for you, obviously, that food is chocolate.” Jack continues.

“What be yours?”

“Mine is bacon!” I offer. “Jack? What’s your food?”

He blushes briefly before offering a sheepish answer. “Well, it’s mustard.”

“Mustard! Eiw! That be nasty! Like that paste they put on hot dogs! Aw man!”

“I know! I know! I realize it’s odd. I once baked Damien a cake for his birthday and frosted the whole thing with mustard! I thought it was quite tasty! But I found out real quick that this was just the wrong thing to do!”

We all die of laughter. Wolf is in tears.

We quiet down once the food comes. Wolf gets pancakes onto which he squirts abundant quantities of chocolate syrup. I get a pile of bacon. Jack’s fried eggs are soon drowning in mustard from the squirt bottle on the table. Nibbling at my bacon I look up at a woman stuffed into a booth nearby. Her belly strains against the table. Her neck is so portly that her head seems to merge with her shoulders. What strikes me the most is how she adoringly focuses upon the breakfast sandwich in front of her. Lovingly the food is cradled in her hands. As she takes bites from it she turns and eyeballs it from every angle, careful not to let a single morsel drop to the plate. Her world, one can see, has shrunk down to the size of her meal.

Wolf spies me watching her and whispers in my ear. “So dat be the normal you want us to look like?”

I just shake my head. “It just disgusts me what mortals sink to sometimes. You’d think that food was the only thing that ever loved her back.”

“Look like it be lovin her back a LOT. Mownin noon an night. m-hm!”

This time when we get back into the car, both Jack and Wolf sit in the back seat. As the road wears on I hear them goofing and chatting. Wolf asks questions, Jack answers – mostly seriously. He explains everything he can about living as a once born as well as answering various questions about the logistics of being gay such as “how do two men actually DO IT? Know whatta mean?”

Just outside of Albany I eyeball the two of them back there and it occurs to me, Jack actually loves this guy, maybe romantically, but definitely deeply. There’s a gift in teaching another one that no thing on Earth can possibly match. This must be a bit of how Zoltan felt in teaching me. That is, if I’m lucky. I wonder too if something about the act of teaching diminished him a little bit. Perhaps soon enough I’ll get to Paris and find out.

Winding into western Massachusetts the road grows narrower and the dark creeps in from all directions. We settle for the night in the Berkshires. I toss Jack the keys and rib him a little. “So wasn’t it more fun to give up control for a day?”

The air has the fragrance of spring’s melt in it. The ground’s icy crunch relents to a goosh under our feet. We all three take deep lung-fulls of air as we look around outside of the inn we’ve found.

Wolf marvels at the stars and stands in the middle of the parking lot, head turned up. “Holy shit man! Lookey all dem stars! Where dey all come from? I ain’t never seen so many like that befo!” After circling around in awe, he throws back his head and lets out a howl befitting of his name.

The spirit of the group is much improved from last night’s tense self-consciousness. But still in the middle of the night I’m awoken by the unmistakable sound of Wolf crying to himself in the corner. I move to get up and go talk to him when my arm is seized. In the dark I hear Jack say “no, mum”.

He’s right. This is for Wolf to heal in himself. No one can take him to his own truth. The best we can do is point the way.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion from all of the driving, but I sleep like a rock, dreamless and deep. Only Jack shaking me wakes me in the morning. “Mum! Wake up!! Wake UP!”

“Are you alright? What’s the matter?”

He rattles a piece of paper around in his hand “Wolf’s gone! He’s gone! Run off! Mum! We can’t just let him do that!”

He races out the door and before I know it, I’m throwing shoes on and running after him, out the inn’s back door, past the covered pool, toward the woodlands that back up onto the property.

“Artie! Artie where are you?” Jack shouts into the trees.

In the fresh spring snow that has fallen overnight I spy a clue and grab Jack’s attention. “Jack! Footprints!” I point to the marks made unmistakably by the sneakers we bought for Artie back in Indiana.

But Jack is too frantic to hear me and continues to yell at the top of his lungs, running into the trees. “Artie! Artie come back! You can’t run off like this! ARTIE!!”

I follow the prints as they lead from the manicured property onto the dirt path through the trees. Normal at first, they spread further and further apart, swishing in the snow as the walking man began to run. I follow the steps further and further into the trees as they mark strides that became a fixed gallop. And then, the two-legged prints become four legged paw prints. I can follow their direction for only a short while before the clutter of leaves on the forest floor obscures the trail.

Standing up, I take a lung full of chill air and let out one call. “Wolf!”

From somewhere in the hills full of trees, deep and directionless, muffled by snow and wood, the lone howl of a wolf returns to my ears. The sound commands a quiet reverence and for a second or two even the wind hushes itself.

Jack, too, has heard the sound. I find him resting against a tree, panting steamy gusts of air in and out of his lungs.

“He’s gone, Jack. The boy isn’t coming back.”

“Why?”

“He has to find his own way. We’ve done all we can for him. Come on, it’s cold out here” But Jack won’t budge and the wiggling chin reveals a nearness of tears so I come up to him and put my arms around him as best I can.

In seconds he’s sobbing. “Why? Why did he have to run away?” He’s not just crying over Wolf, we didn’t know the boy that long. A compounded sorrow wracks his shoulders and pours out of his eyes. It’s an answer to end all answers that he’s seeking. Wolf, with his running off to his own destiny, is the latest abandonment in a parade that I, myself, headed up.

I grab him and make him look at me. “I don’t know, Jack. But from my life I do know that it’s easier to run off alone to mould one’s destiny than to make yourself stay and feel something like love.”

“That makes no fucking sense!” He barks. But, he doesn’t release his hold on my shoulders and continues crying. Now who would be content to settle down in a small Midwestern town and let themselves fade away, I wonder.

We’re silent as we pack up the room, check out, and get on the road eastward to the coast. I spy a roadside greasy spoon that promises to have the kind of bacon and mustard to tide the both of us over. I motion my head towards it, Jack nods, and we pull over for food.

Both of us clutch heavy diner mugs filled with steaming coffee and stare out the window in silence.

I voice the first coherent set of words to enter my mind all morning. “Tell me what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“After I left, with your father, tell me what happened.”

He sighs and just looks at me for a bit, eyes full of doubt. “You sure you really want to know?”

“Just tell me. If it’s ugly, I deserve to hear it.”

He sighs and shuts his eyes for a long pause to call forth the memory. “Do you remember Mister William? Father’s ‘best boy’?”

“I remember someone running around, always at your father’s elbow. I remember that his company was much preferred to my own, especially in Mr. Fitz’s bed.”

“Yes, well that man was put in charge of my upbringing. It was he who was charged with arranging all tutors and riding lessons. He was charged with meting out all discipline should I falter in my efforts to study or to carry myself as a proper young gentleman. And he was quick with the switch, to be sure. Well, as I got older, about thirteen or so, and began to mature, Mister William began to make me get dressed and undressed in front of him. He claimed that it was to make sure I was putting my waistcoats on in a proper fashion for a young gentleman. But, I was ill at ease about it and tried to resist this supervision when I could.

“Then came the day when he began to touch me, said he wanted to show me a little game that gentlemen played together. It was to be a secret, just he and I could know, no one else. And after he had… touched me… I didn’t care to have anyone else know. I felt absolutely – soiled to the soul. And this went on for a few years. Father was arranging all manner of young ladies for me to meet with an eye to marry and I knew that marrying a woman was a commitment to somehow soiling myself with her for eternity. I couldn’t bear to look at them. I couldn’t bear my own body and it’s utterly tasteless responses and whims.

“About this time, the urge began to arise in me. I didn’t know what it was. It started like a low boiling in my belly, like an angry seed. As it grew there would be times when my whole mind was consumed with the thought of killing and feeding to be free of all torment. One day, Mister William and I were isolated in my chamber. He was… he was touching me, forcing me to arousal, and the maddening burn grew inside me rapidly. I could think of nothing else but consuming my tormenter. I seized upon him and, before I understood what I was doing, I drank his blood.

“The strength and elation I felt after that incident were the most pleasant sensations I’d ever experienced my life to date. I had to have more. That’s all I knew.” He finishes, staring off in his coffee.

“It never gets much better than that first feed.”

“No! no it doesn’t!”

“Look Jack, I don’t know how to put it after this long, but I was wrong to have left you alone.”

“Don’t! Don’t start apologizing!”

“I’m not apologizing. I’m not sorry! I just know that I was doing my best and I can see now that my judgment was wrong. But nothing I did or didn’t do was bigger than the life you were supposed to have, the experiences you were meant to go through and the man you were meant to become.”

He just looks at me in surprise. “Is this another sermon, Minister Eleanor?”

“I’m not bigger than God. You were always god’s child, not mine.”

“I wanted you.”

“Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for. Whatever it was you wanted, I was guaranteed to disappoint.”

“Are you disappointed with me?”

“Why would I be?”

“Because I’m gay, because I’m a once born, because… I don’t know what else.”

“Because you couldn’t defend yourself against a man who wanted to use you cruelly before you were old enough to really understand what was going on? A man you were supposed to trust and obey who abused the situation?”

He pauses and looks at me in shock. “Yeah, maybe that too.”

“That’s not who you are, it’s who you were, and you did the best you could. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of the man you have become. I watched you with Wolf yesterday and I saw the rare man capable of genuine honesty and a nurturing kindness. That spirit came from you, Jack, inside of you. Not from being gay, being an old once born, not from being my son, it was yours all the time. You don’t see it, yet, because you like to push people’s buttons so much, but you have such a big heart.”

He drowns his ham and eggs in mustard and stuffs a few bites in his mouth to hide the fact that he doesn’t have words to articulate whatever nebulous feelings float in his gut. After a few minutes he pauses and says “I think I’m going to go, too.”

“I don’t see why not. It’s your car. Just drop me at the bus station in Amherst.”

“You sure, mum?”

“I’ll be fine! And I’m not leaving you, you know that. You know I’ll be there when you pause to reach for me.”

“Do you have enough money? I mean, to go where you need to go?”

“I have my stash of greenbacks, some gold and some antiques. I’ll do ok. The universe always provides if you don’t get too caught up in how.”

“Huh!”

“Where you think you might head off to?”

“New Orleans!” he says with a big grin.

“A-haa! Time for some much needed fun, I see?”

Imitating a drawl he says “Why yes ma’am!”

Tires on damp pavement hiss as the black Jetta pulls away, dropping me at the Greyhound station. I watch him waive over his shoulder as he points the car back westward. He’d have hated Boston, anyhow.

From the bus window I watch the tree filled hills of western Massachusetts wind their way down to towns, flat stretches, and finally fat highways that pumps vehicles toward the hub city like metal corpuscles feeding an urban heart. Boston in March is still grey and subject to unforgiving winds off the ocean. But, there’s a refreshing familiarity to the aged quality of buildings. Those bricks what have stood their ground for over 200 years reach out to my spirit in recognition. It feels like home, not so much in place but in time. I find the “freedom trail”, a red stripe leading all tourists past both history and locations where they can feel at liberty to spend money, and follow it through the streets that wander and wind with an old world nonsense. I was on the other side of this battle for freedom, sixteen years old and hearing gentlemen guffaw over cards at the audacity of the North American colonies to think they could rule themselves and declare independence. We both spent the next seven years at war with those powers set on keeping us under thumb. They inked the treaty for their own freedom just as I stepped onto a Scottish ship headed for the French coast. I could flatter myself into thinking that this country has been my true home all along, that we are kin of liberty. But I’m not willing to sink with her into the encroaching darkness, which is sure to come if these people don’t push their collective paunches back from the fast food table and wake up. In a small box what’s been banging about in my possession for almost 200 years, there is a gift I must return, if possible, to its original owner. I must return to Paris.

I pause along the trail to touch a building dated “1639”. Here was the riot that started the war and the road for independence. The cars, the sidewalks full of modern folk rushing to and fro in their daily tread mill of life, all fall away. Through the folds of time I hear the shouts of children and see the snowballs filled with stones fly through the tense atmosphere. Whigged, propped up for the king and poorly paid, the string of redcoats looses the thin hold on all composure. Musket balls fly through the air. Smoke rises, feet scatter, screams sound from rebel throats, and a black man lies in a pool of blood. I think of Wolf, his strength of body and wild eyes. I think of the Robert Taylor homes filled to the rim mostly with African Americans all pushed to the margins of poverty and anonymity. Always this country has hinged the measure of its freedom on the life and death of the black people it refuses to own. Here, in what time has turned into a busy urban intersection, the memories will fade but the truth will not be stamped out. A black man died to begin the march toward a freedom what has yet to be found, not for any single citizen. America is a family with too many bastard children begging for a place at the big table. Words comes through the air like a whisper. “But not for long, dear country, not for long.” I feel it in my bones that this darkness of spirit cannot and shall long endure, for across the heartland, as sure as nature turns all things in proper order and good time, dawn is breaking. These dark hours of spirit cannot conceal that it is morning in America.

The centuries fold back their pages over memory, the musing fades as modernity returns. Beep-beep, Honk-honk, excuse me miss, time must march on. I wander through the old North End over to Rowes warf, finding one spot along the edge of a continent to pause, look over the bay and breathe in the briny air. The smell of salt water and fish always makes one think of leaving. Time to go.

I have cash enough for airfare, but it’s time to trade in something I’ve carried around for far too long. I spend a few hours inquiring about Downtown Crossing as to the best place to get a good price for antiques, and when I finally enter the tiny den of gold complete with tiny old man I know I’ve hit the mark.

“Do you buy antique pieces of jewelry?”

“I’ve been known to, whatcha got, missy?” he raises a snowy head and lowers the extra piece attached to his specks.

From my pocket I produce a box so small that I’m amazed, holding it in my hand, how I let the memory weight me down for so long. Raising the tiny container to the light on the counter, I crack it open, revealing two gold bands. “Two antique wedding rings. They were crafted in 1815 by a goldsmith in Baltimore.”

Immediately his face forms a frown and his mouth makes an “oh”.

“Oh my my my! Oh lets look at these!” Under the light he can see the craftsman’s stamp. He takes out a strap to test the stone set in the tinier ring. It’s a bit difficult to watch what I’ve so long treasured get handled and roughed up, but it must prove its worth. After a few minutes he comes back to me, picking up the box. “This is the original box! How did you ever get your hands on these?”

“They’ve been in my family.”

“Honey, are you sure you want to part with these? I can give you a lot of money for them, sure. But, you might regret not having them. These are family treasures!” The concern of the old not willing to part with those things that lend life a permanence and value shines through any of his commercial interests.

I love him for it, I bet we’d have a great time talking over coffee about how things used to be, but I have to keep moving and I can go no further carrying the rock of failure. For no matter how tiny that stone was, we’ve just proven that it was genuine. “I appreciate your concern, really, but it’s time for me to let these go.”

He almost looks a little sad for me despite the enthusiasm for this find. I sign certificates, hand over rings and memories and old ideas about myself once and for all. He puts lots of money in my palms. After giving me the last bill he reaches out to shake my hand and thank me. But the handshake goes long as he shoots a sharp look over the top of his bifocals. “Was your ring wasn’t it?” I give him a quick nod. “Well god bless ya, old woman!” and with a wink he releases me.

I don’t want a return ticket, I’m only going one way. I don’t wish to end up connecting through London, no matter how much cheaper the ticket. In a matter of hours I peak out the window of a 747 bound straight for Paris. As the plane turns up a runway lined with blue lights I watch the landscape speed by. When the great, grey bird lifts its metal feet from the ground I feel instant relief and turn to bid America good-bye.

“Have you ever been to Paris before?” I ask the elderly lady in the seat next to me as our meals arrive.

“Why yes I have! Just once a few years ago I traveled over for my daughter’s wedding. I’d never even been on a plane before in my life!”

“So what takes you over this time? Visiting your daughter?”

“Yes, she just had a baby so I’d like to see my new grandson. And …” she holds herself up with a bit of pride “it’s going to be my 75th birthday in two days! So I wanted to celebrate in style!”

“Well, happy birthday, ma’am!”

I get her talking about her family, her children, her life, mostly because I just want to know. I hear stories about being a little girl during the Great Depression. “We lived out in the country so it wasn’t as bad for us. Dad would find work when he could but Mom would always raise a vegetable garden and we’d can all through the fall, all the tomatos, corn and beans and vegetables. Corn isn’t real acidic so you had to boil it for a long time to can it good. Squash you just had to keep cool and watch for spots, can’t can squash. But there weren’t these big freezers like folks have now so if you wanted to eat it, you had to can it. Then Dad would raise chickens and so we would kill and dress those and sell those. I remember when we got a machine to take all the feathers off, because we had been doing it by hand in hot water, you know, and mom went to use it for the first time. It was just a wheel with all these little suction things on it to pull the feathers. Well, she didn’t have a good enough hold on the chicken and it went flying across the room! Ha ha! They were such good people! It was such a shame that they had to die so young. But they were smokers, you know.” She goes on to talk about her other daughters and through the conversation a disappointment begins to seep through. None of the children stayed with the Catholic faith she tried to give them. One even married a “black” man – a word she spits out as if it were a cuss. She never visits that daughter, won’t hold that grandchild. “What is it?” She asks. “What could it ever become?”

Despite some discomfort, I don’t editorialize on any of her attitudes. It’s more important, with an old one, to simply let them talk and to listen fully. As she goes on it occurs to me that those confines of culture and religion against which I chafed actually provided structure and solace for other women. But I look at her fuzzy little head full of graying hair and just wonder how well she’d do against those chains of gender and religion if she were looking at the prospect of living with them for more than just eighty years or so.

“Tell me, what is your favorite memory?”

“Oh, taking trips with mom and dad! We’d plan where to go, mom would pack the basket full of food, I’d get the car checked out. Dad and I would pool our money and we’d take off for West Virginia or Texas or all over the country.” She trails off telling me about buying goober peas and picking up stinky turtles.

At Charles de Gaulle my little grey lady slips into the receiving crowd and back to her own life. I’m sure she’ll have a grand time going around all of Paris’s great cathedrals. I hoist my old pack onto my back and find an Air France bus into the city. The place has grown so big! Neuilly, which was once a distant town, now abuts the western border of the city. The little round map I remember has fattened and fattened through the years like a tree adding more rings to its girth. The outer arrondissements, with their boulevards netted together by winding streets, confuse me. I keep finding myself back at the Ile de la Cité and trying to make my way to somewhere that feels the same. No spirit here reaches out to recognize me. I go through museums to visit the articles and attitudes of the Paris I remember. I return to the Louvre only to have difficulty finding the entrance. A pyramid in the middle that takes one into the basement is the lobby? Why not just let the door be the door! The whole construction almost outlandish enough that I’d attribute it to Napoleon’s tastes if it weren’t so bloody modern.

My French is a wee bit rusty and antiquated. I lack the vocabulary for many modern items and speak in an older idiom. I collect funny looks just as if I were to land in New York speaking Elizabethan English.

Within a few days I grow accustomed to using the Metro to get about town and decide to brave a journey to the Bastille. So this is where the whole bloody terror started. And now it’s filled with coffee shops, youth lounging about, and a street musician abusing a saxophone for the sake of torturing some Euros out of the tourists. Currently said musician stands poised in front of an older woman who has merely stopped to rest her feet. From the sour look on her face I can tell she will soon toss him some coin simply to leave her in peace.

Over a week of searching, and I have found no sign of Zoltan. The location where once we enjoyed our abode was long ago blasted through by Napoleon to pave the way for a boulevards. I’ve come to this old place in hopes to find some familiarity, to let the narrow streets wind around me and weave me toward some setting where I feel known and connected to a people. I pass through the gates of Place des Vosges and breath a sigh of relief. “Home again.” Modernity and commerce go on, but the air here is pregnant with memory. Parisians take in the early spring’s warm day and enjoy the wide park. This used to be homes. Tradesmen sympathetic to the Revolution bustled their wares and renamed the square. This covered entry still echoes with the wheels of horses and carriages carrying men and knights to tournaments and games in the center. Breathe deep and you feel the time open its pages to all welcoming eyes. Do you remember me, old city? Do you hold a place for an old woman who just wants to come home?

I collapse onto a bench under a tree. Children chase a ball around me, parents call out to them. I reach through the carpet bag I’ve been toting around and pull out a now battered brown package. Maybe Zoltan really meant this for me, knew Agnoletti would refuse the gift and that I would only open the present at that moment when I could truly accept it?

I toy with the box in my hands, looking at the mangled corners, feeling the subtle jostling those contents inside of it. Hope it wasn’t a breakable gift.

“Open it” something whispers in my head.

Should I really do that, though? What if I’m wrong – just deluding myself? What if I’m just rationalizing?

“OPEN IT!” The whisper turns into a chorus.

I turn the box over again and spy a tiny tear in the enclosing paper. This is all the invitation I need and in seconds the wrapper comes flying off. The box inside consists of thin wooden slats that slip apart easily to reveal wood shavings. Fishing through the shavings, my fingers sense a swish of silk in their midst. I grasp and pull gently. A silk bag containing something hard emerges. This must be it. I open the bag to find a simple gold goblet inside.

“A cup?” I have to say out loud. I’ve been carting around a cup since 1808? I shake my head in disgust for a minute. All that trouble over an empty cup! Then, figuring that it’s at least gold and may have some trade value, I hold it back up to look at it more closely. It is gold, for sure, my fingers tell me that much. And while the work on it is fine, it lacks the sort of crafted symmetry of surface that post-medieval pieces possess. It’s old. It’s VERY old! But what is it? I look at the markings stamped into the surface. After some inspection I realize that in Hebrew, maybe Aramaic, it bears the tetragram of God’s name. “Zoltan, what on Earth is this?”

With a click the answer dawns on me. This is a seder cup. This is the seder cup used by his good friend Yeshua in the celebration of his final Passover meal. This stupid box I’ve been carrying around contained the holy grail. The vessel fairly rings in my hand, vibrating its recognition. Somewhere, I hear Jack laughing himself silly.

I want to jump up and run around from a mixture of excitement and panic. Yet I can’t move, frozen in place with horror. When you find yourself in possession of one of history’s most sacred objects of lore, what do you do? How do you explain how this thing came into your possession? The truth would be stranger than any story I could make up. All that I can do with this most esoteric of gifts is to simply, well, sit here and hold it.

I stare into the goblet, mesmerized by the frail bits of spring sunlight refracting around its curves. What is the true legacy of Christianity? What is the imperative of the Christ? After all Yeshua’s calm words and miraculous acts what are we left with, really, but an empty tomb? No sun reigns in the sky as a daily vestige of a god’s protecting its people. The moon no longer pretends to watch over her children each night. No bird takes wing from the ashes and flies again. No single thing survives the gospel as a true symbol rich in meaning. There are flowers and butterflies and items of nature which emulate the resurrection but do fall short under the curse of the flesh. The cross? It’s just a relic of torture; a slap to the face of each true seeker craving something to clutch in an hour of need. Nothing is left for a Christian to grasp but save for an empty black hole in the ground and the myth of an empty cup. “Christ” quantifies no thing. Christ is emptiness.

Observe my reflection in the curving gold. I glimpse Wolf racing through snowy tree-covered hills of North America morphing from man to beast with a grace no one could have taught him. I follow Jack, smiling his charms upon an unsuspecting lover. I see Zoltan fading off to a gentle sleep, handing me a box that through time would convey one last lesson that he was too weak to say in words and knew I was too stubborn and young to hear with my heart.

After all the ages I have survived and fits of emotion I’ve force marched myself through, my present is an empty vessel. Sitting on this little bench, surrounded by the wreckage of discarded packaging I gaze into that void. It is there, in the refracted beauty of empty, that at long last I recognize priceless gift of now.

Nanowrimo - 24

Pennsylvania finally provides a vista with some variety from the flat-scape we’ve been crawling through. I never thought I’d be glad to just see hills again. This is also a state with two major urban areas book-ending a whole lot of backwater. So, when it’s time to stop and get a motel room we tell Wolf to crouch down in the car (with extra orders to stay there no matter how much he wants to get his wild animal self on). I feel horrible asking him to hide, but the lady running the place even gives Jack and I a funny look as we ask for a room. She eyes our left hands with a theatrical suspicion and provides us with the keys to a room containing two single beds. Knowing what I do about mortal sexuality, this attempt at control seems a rather futile gesture. Oh well, if all she has in the world to obey her orders are the crumbs, let her have at it. I’m just glad that the room is at the end of the low, ranch style building. Without much effort we sneak Wolf into the room under the cover of dark.

Even curled up on the cat-scented floor and despite the parched air of the room, I drift off into a dead sleep within minutes. At times I’m dimly aware of the television’s noise. The boys are scouring the channels to see if there is any national news about “vampires”. I’m resting, blissfully lost in the soft blackness of night when something that feels like the ground shaking calls me back.

Against the window I see what looks like a boulder, rocking back and forth and producing a mewing sound. For a few minutes I stare at the shape, wondering if it’s just a branch moving outside? Sleep does funny things with perception. I don’t register that it’s Wolf until I’m right next to it and that familiar musk of sweat and French fries on his skin greets my nose. He’s curled up in a ball, sobbing.

“Artie! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” I try to put an arm around him to calm him down. He just seems to start crying harder.

The booming male voice of daylight hours twists in his throat and he can only manage to let out a squeal. “I killed my momma, miss. I did that! I couldn’t stop myself and she didn’t even know what hit her. I can’t believe I killed my own momma!” From there his words break down into incoherent pleas for his mother to forgive him.

“Listen, Artie, you didn’t understand what you were doing, yet!”

“I done sent her to hell! She belong to the devil now!”

“NO! Listen to me! We are not creatures in league with Satan! That’s just the same superstition that people used to have about black folks. Saying they had no souls. Or how they used to say that women were all in league with the devil because of Eve’s sin. It’s just some limp piece of mythology called out in the service of a whole lot of fear and ignorance. Listen to me!” I grab his chin and make him look into my eyes. “There is no devil. The only devil in the world is in our own mind. It’s those thoughts and actions that keep us from getting closer to God. There’s no way you could have sent your momma to the devil be cause hell and the devil DO NOT EXIST.”

“You said you is a minister.”

“I am. I’ve been a Unitarian minister for, well, almost one hundred fifty years now. I’ve seen a lot of what folks might call evil in my day. But I don’t see that in you, Artie.”

“But how could I have killed my own momma! What wrong wit me? What kinda monster I become?” his chin threatens to break into sobs again.

“You didn’t kill your momma, Artie. You can’t really kill someone. None of us ever dies. You ended her time in an earthly body that she had been using, but she was never just a body. None of us is. The bigger part of her is soul and that soul lives on. And where her soul lives is a much nicer place that what we experience while in our bodies.”

Even through the dark I still see some doubt in his eyes. But he’s calmed down enough to listen to me. “If the soul place be so nice, why come to earth at all. Why not just stay there?”

“Now there is a month of Sunday talks in that question! I wish I could put it real simple for you. But the soul place lives always inside all people. They come to earth to feel what it’s like to get in touch with it again for the first time. Like falling in love all over again.”

“I don’ gets it.”

Of course not, I realize. He’s really just twelve. The man’s never fallen in love before.

“I know. I know. It took me a long time, too. But, Artie, listen to me. Your momma forgives you and wherever she is, she’s blessing you. The love of a momma can’t be killed.”

“OK, miss.” I’ve managed to calm him down some. But somehow I’m not sure if I’ve really reached him, at least not yet. I’d like to convince him of his own comfort, but he has to earn that within his own mind.

I let him be in his own silence and return to my patch of carpet to sleep, again. From the other bed I hear a soft sound of irregular breathing. Jack is crying.

Nanowrimo - 23

There’s no question about it. Our little mummy and son adventure has just taken a different turn entirely. No trip to Paris for us, just yet. We both exhibit some bad behavior in our dismay over postponing some much needed fun. Eventually our nice hotel room is relinquished, bags get packed and more gold is parted with in order to get a used car.

“A Jetta?” I ask as Jack pulls up to snag Artie and me from our secure location.

“It gets 30 miles to the gallon and only cost three grand, so stuff it, mum!”

“Why he callin you ‘mum’?” Artie asks as he crouches into the back seat. I notice him folding himself to fit in and find it odd. Jetta’s aren’t that small.

“Because I’m his mother, that’s why. We’re both over 200 years old. I’ll explain more later.” He makes some baffled noises as I slam the door shut and pile into the shot gun seat.

Knowing how every toll booth and rest stop along the interstates to be blanketed in security cameras, we wind around on side roads. There’s sure to be a notice out for Artie by now. As it is we order him to lie down in the back.

“Where you takin’ me?” He asks with more curiosity than concern in his voice.

“We don’t know, but this is not a good place for us to be. There’s more eyes here than in a forest full of Indians!” I tell him.

After enough driving on side streets and small streets to be well outside of the city limits, I tell him it’s ok to sit up. Not wanting to continually turn around I commandeer the rear-view mirror, bending it so that I can see his face in it as I talk. “Ok, listen. I’m going to go through some basics for you so that you can separate some of the fact from fiction about what you are. Got it?”

“Yes ‘m.” He says. In the reflection his dark eyes aim at me like two smoldering coals.

“Very well, then. First, the proper term for what we are is “once-born” because we are born once, unlike mortals who must continually reincarnate onto the earthly plain over and over.”

“And who generally end up making the same mistakes over and over” Jack interjects.

“Well, that’s not far from the truth, actually. But we don’t use the term ‘vampire’ as it’s considered a bit, well, prejorative.”

“Prejawhat? What does that mean? What’s wrong with ‘vampire’?”

“It’s the difference between calling someone an ‘African American’ or a ‘nigger’.” Jack interjects again.

“Right, it’s a bit insulting. Shows a lack of understanding.”

“W-w-wonce born?”

“That’s right.”

“I ain’ never goin’ die? Not even if someone hurt me?”

“That’s right. You are the only one who can decide to end your life. If someone hurts you, stabs you or shoots you, your body will heal much more quickly than it can bleed to death.”

“Never die… hm.” He repeats as he looks out the window.

I continue “Also as you may have noticed, going around in the daytime does not kill you. That idea is part of the mythology. The only truth it may have to it is due to the fact that many once borns prefer to do their business at night so as to avoid contact with mortals as much as possible. Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah! Yeah I am.” He jolts his eyes back toward me. “I’se just lookin outside. Never been out of Chicago before.”

“Never? Huh. Well, there’s a whole lot of flat out there to see! Anyhow, back to what I was saying…”

“Look miss,” Artie interrupts, “I is real tired. I’m a lie down and rest for a bit if it’s ok whit chu.”

“Oh, sure, sure that’s fine Artie.”

In a matter of minutes we hear his rhythmic snoring coming from the back seat. Jack is being awfully quiet, keeping his eyes locked on the road. There’s a rancor in the atmosphere I can’t quite sit at peace with.

“I should have been there to help you like that.”

“But you most certainly were not. You had to run off and leave me.”

“I didn’t have any of this to help you with back then. It took decades and decades before I had the simplest tools to help myself. I wasted a lot of years doing everything wrong.”

“Tell me, I heard you tell him yesterday that you had made big mistakes, too. What were your mistakes? Tell me your biggest regrets.”

“Oh where to start. From a very early age I was aware that being a female put me at a great disadvantage in this world. No matter what ideas I had for myself or what thoughts I had in my head, everyone seemed determined to tell me that I had no right to think or act on my own. It was driving me mad before I was even sixteen. That’s when my marriage to your father was arranged. He was the unkindest person I’d ever met. His manner refused to respond to any human kindness I offered. Again, I was a woman and therefore immediately a failure. Part of my realizing that I was a once born came from my desperate desire to prove my own worth and strength to him. He was demanding an heir, yet he refused to lie with me. After I had fed for the first time I possessed a strength he could not resist. I forced him to know me. I guess my first regret was that I had to become this something else, this beast, in order to gain what I wanted.

“I regret having been able to stand up for my child and demand that he be kept close to me. I regret that I listened to his influence over me, telling me that I had nothing to offer my own baby. I left because I really thought I was going to spare you becoming what I was. Every time I thought of my baby through the years, my hope was that he had lived a normal life. I mostly regretted that I had no ability to be a normal mother. Perhaps it was out of missing that normal, nurturing role that I turned to the ministry. But that was only after I was already at least 80 years old.”

“I was lucky enough to find Zoltan once I arrived in Paris, he nurtured me through the early years. All of the things he warned me not to do, I went ahead and did. Probably just like every other once born out there.”

“Mistakes like what, tell me.”

“Oh… I fell in love.”

“Love? You?”

“Yes even my icy old heart can find love! Thank you very much! Maybe it was just the circumstances. I landed in Baltimore around 1810 and the air and space over here were absolutely intoxicating. Pretty soon I met him, Gabriel McClean, God’s prettiest man. He had a wide smile and a kind nature. But mostly he was just real tall and real strong and I’d have followed him anywhere, just like some kind of puppy. He just seemed like, well, a real man. He didn’t need to put me down to prove himself. He didn’t much mind what others thought of him because he just had this air of confidence about himself. He had me swooning at the first smile.”

Jack finally unglues his eyes from the road to glance over at me. “He sounds real nice, I’d have followed him too, I imagine!”

“Oh my yes. Well, he was heading into the frontier, through Indian country, doing his trading and trapping. So, off I went into what was then wilderness. Now it’s just ‘Ohio’! Well, after the Federals cleared the natives out the whole area got more settled. We ended up settling down but I could tell that’s not where Gabriel’s heart was at. He was a man who needed to wander.”

“What happened?”

“What happened was that I fooled myself. A man can be as kind and as generous as peach pie and still have a heart so stony no love can make a dent on it. I thought that man loved me. Hmmm. Nope. He had it in his mind to head out west. Wanted to see the territories where no people were living. He needed to be in those wild places and felt the wringer of age creeping up on him. One day he was just gone. No note. Nothing. His stuff was gone, his horse was gone, he’d up and left.”

“What? Well you must have seen that coming, didn’t you? Even a mortal doesn’t make up his mind that fast.”

“Oh the signs were there when I looked back for them. He’d be reading the stories about the goings on with the western territories out of the papers. He slowly became a little less, well, affectionate. He started looking at me funny. Like he was suspicious.”

“Were you continuing to feed?”

“Yes, so I wasn’t aging. He didn’t quite know what to make of that. I told him that it was my French origins, our skin ages less quickly. Didn’t matter. He was gone. After that, I went on a rage. My urges were completely out of control. I must have killed dozens of people.”

“You? You who up until a week ago was so squeamish about feeding?”

“Well, I personally don’t believe this urge can be so well trusted as I’ve always been taught. I’ve found that it can be manipulated by emotions. It’s not always at hand for our self preservation, it can be greedy, too. Well, I would catch someone, mostly men, alone in a barn or something and I got them in the most awful of ways. I’d let the venom into them but not drink them right away. I’d put just enough in to paralyze them, not enough to really sedate them. Even without being able to move a muscle their eyes still registered fear. I would kill them slowly, relishing the fear. Letting them feel the life draining out of their bodies.”

“Mum, that’s absolutely horrible!”

“And that’s what I regret. I regret loosing control. I don’t trust the urge. I don’t think feeding is always merely life sustaining. Sometimes I think feeding merely keeps alive something horrible that lives inside of me that would be better dead.”

Jack is drives on in silence, but the strained atmosphere has slackened. Noises of dreams, grunts and even animal growls come from the seat behind us as Artie struggles through dreams.

“Tell me about you. Did you ever fall in love, Jack?”

His face melts into a bit of a grin. “Why yes I sure did ma’am. I was in New Orleans in the late nineteenth century. I just loved New Orleans, still do. There are more of us there than just about anywhere else, you know, except maybe Paris. Well, anyhow, I met this boy, Damien, a beautiful octoroon with honey colored skin and lovely green eyes. He had me wrapped around his finger from the start. Same as you I just followed him right home. I just wanted to be with him and do everything with him all the time. It was nice, for a while. Being able to be seen out in just about the only place on Earth where that was allowed was like a breath of fresh air. We could hold hands on the street. Go out for a brunch. Our colors didn’t matter, our gender didn’t matter. What mattered was our love an that’s what folks on the street responded to.”

“Alright, what happened.”

“Damien just got tired of me after a while. He didn’t like the close comfort of being with the same man day after day. And I guess I began to sense that – that growing distance. One day it was just time for me to move on, I guess. I saw him in a café flirting with another man and realized that it didn’t bother me so much at all. Not like it would have years earlier when we started.”

“So you left?”

“I did. I guess I’d have been the bad guy in your story.”

“hm. I think mostly I was jealous of Gabriel’s ability to leave. As a man he could do that, make up the rules as he went along and not worry about anyone else. I always envied men’s social license to do that.”

“Still feel that way?” He turns to look at me.

“Yes”

The air is silent for a while as we pass through yet another small Indiana town.

“I guess this is what we really wanted after all.” He volunteers

“Indeed.” For a second we share about the only honest grin to pass between us thus far.

The growling in the back seat has grown quiet again. Soon Artie wakes up and sits up in the back seat.

“Nice nap?” I ask, looking into the rearview mirror. But, to my surprise where I once saw his dark eyes staring back at me, I now see the top of a chest and an adam’s apple. I turn around and am shocked to find a fully grown, strapping black man sitting in the back seat and busting out of Artie’s clothes. “Artie?”

“Don’t be calling me ‘Artie’ no mo. My name be ‘Wolf’.” Booms the base voice of the man.

“Well!” Jack says “I guess we don’t have to worry about harboring a minor anymore!” and he aims the Jetta for the interstate.

There’s something not right here, something not right about the way he’s transforming. Both Jack and I know this. I’ve never met a once born who was born after the 1950’s and wonder if perhaps the change in human blood that has affected our reaction to drinking may have also changed the entire nature of new ones of us that emerge upon this earth? I can sense that neither of us are sure, but it becomes abundantly clear that this new creature, Wolf, is not like any of the older once borns we have known. And despite his adult stature, the man is still only twelve years old.

We stop off at a shopping mall to get Wolf some clothes that will fit his grown body. Quickly he proves that the juvenile delinquent lives on inside of him. We go to the mens section to pick out clothes for him to wear. But, rather than participate in the activity, Wolf lies on the floor lighting matches and letting them burn down to his fingers before blowing them out. He just lies under the racks of clothing, humming and mumbling to himself with a pile of stubbed out matches growing next to him. We hurriedly buy extra large sweat clothes and drag him out of the store.

We’re almost to Cleveland when we realize that we need gas and so we get off the highway and pick one of the smaller gas stations in the area to fill up. Wolf says he wants to stay in the car. But, once Jack and I are inside the mini-store paying for the gas we hear shrieks from outside. A woman comes rushing in screaming “there’s a wolf in the parking lot!”

I race outside, ignoring the yells of people around me to ‘not go out there’. Sure enough, there is a lone grey wolf growling and leaping around the lot of the gas station. He zeros in on a car full of shrieking children and circles the vehicle, menacing look on his face.

Slowly I come up behind the beast. “Wolf!” I shout.

When he hears my voice he turns around and his ears turn back. But he holds his ground. I advance towards it. I can only call on some greater power within me, that which all once borns share, that which binds us together, I bid that esoteric power to speak through me in that moment. I shut my eyes and feel it rush forward, from an ancient and deep well. As I open my eyes I know that from them comes the ancient glow. I can feel my teeth emerge, this time not to feed but to protect and challenge a misuse of power. From my own throat a deep growl emerges, simply saying “No”.

“No” the voice repeats through me as I continue moving toward the animal. “NO!” I’m within three feet of him. The rest of the world, the squealing children and onlookers shouting “what is she doing, lady get out of there!” fade to nothing in that moment where the old power inhabiting my features locks eyes with the wolf. Its ears back, the beast relents and runs away, tail between its legs.

In a matter of seconds I feel the power recede and dim. My teeth disappear and I see the world around me with fully human eyes again.

I turn around to see astonished faces coming from car and store windows. “Lady, how did you do that?” a man runs up to me asking feverishly.

“Something I learned while living on an Indian Reservation.” I tell him, eager to get out of here.

Jack meets me at the car wearing a panicked look. “He’s gone! You don’t think…”

I raise a hand to cut him off. “Wait” is all I say.

We sit silently in the car for a few minutes. Jack looks nervously at a map, hoping we don’t attract more attention and trying to ignore the people who are talking and pointing over toward our car. Soon enough I see the tall figure of Wolf come loping towards us from behind the gas station. He gets in the car, settling quietly in the back seat as if nothing has just happened.

I grab the rear view mirror and re-adjust it to find his eye level again. “No more tricks, young man.” I say to the dark eyes in the mirror.

“Yes ma’am” is all I hear from the backseat. We head off toward Pennsylvania in silence.

Nanowrimo - 22

Apprehension rises out of my gut like bees swarming from a hive, but I cannot avoid this boy.

Jack tugs on my arm “Let’s just go!”

I turn to him briefly, shaking my head, and step over to intercept the boy. He notices my shadow on the concrete before him before he notices me standing there. Looking up, the sunlight makes his face squirm and he squints to make me out. “Hello” I volunteer.

Must be not even 12. He certainly hasn’t had any sort of growth spurt, yet, and he certainly doesn’t exude the milk of human kindness. He steps back, keeping his arms folded tight at his chest. “w-chu wawn, lady? You another social worker comin round here to pester me and ma momma?”

“No, I’m not a social worker at all. My name is Eleanor, and I think you will find we have quite a lot in common. What is your name?”

“I gots nothin’ in common whit chu lady! What you come draggin’ yo sorry white ass around heya fo? You is a social worker, I can tell.” And with this he tries to push past me. But, I’m a little tougher to push aside than he realized.

“You’re not like other kids, are you? They’ve always seemed to stay away from you and you don’t know why. You think maybe its something you did or how you talk, or maybe you smell, but you don’t know.” He slows down a bit. “You have violent dreams in which you are a wild animal and you often wake up to find that you’ve destroyed the room where you sleep. Torn things up. Chewed on things. You don’t eat food. It tastes like nothing. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t hungry, does it? Sometimes you crave something to eat but know it would be unacceptable” He has stopped and looks up at me, still suspicious but interested. “Your top jaw sometimes aches. You wonder what blood tastes like. You see it spattered around in a TV show and it just looks sooo delicious! Doesn’t it?”

“What chu tryin to say? How you know ‘bout all that?”

“ I went through it, too. So did Jack, here. We, all three of us, have the same nature.”

Black eyes like two beads dart back and forth from Jack to me. “Whuzzat? What nature is zat?”

“First, my question. What is your name?”

After yet more hesitation he volunteers “m’names Artie. Now wha chu talkin’ about? What my nature?”

“Artie,” how does one explain this to a 12 year old? “We’re what you would call vampires.”

“WHAT!!! NAW SUHH! You is crazy! Nuh uh!!” I guess I should have expected that explosion. “You git on outta here!” he starts to back away, as if to run away from us.

Jack steps in to intercept him “Listen to us! You know it’s true. Think about it. Think about what you find yourself craving to eat – you want blood, don’t you? Tell me I’m wrong and we’ll leave you alone, but I’m not wrong – am I?”

He stops backing away and I see the incredulous fear in his eyes melt into recognition. “You means other folks get that way?”

“Yes, lots of people actually. We two, you, many many others live off human blood. We’ve always existed. It’s just the way we’re born.”

“I was born wit dis? Like I caught it from someone in my family?”

“It’s not a disease! It’s as natural as the fact that you’re a boy.”

“You twos is vampires?” He asks incredulously.

“The proper term is ‘once born’.” I inform him.

“Once-wha? I don’t gets it. Aren’t vampires supposed to wear black and have pointy teeth? You folks look like ten miles of bad road!” And he breaks into laughter. Ok, so I didn’t clean up too good after my morning feed and the patchwork quilt coat and denims are a bit, well, Iowa. Jack just looks like a bit of a dandy.

“Well, black isn’t really my style. We only need our teeth when we, uh, feed.”

“YOU kills people?”

“When I need to drink, yes I do. We all do.”

The twist this takes in his little mind surprises even me. From a skinny, shy, distrusting kid, right before our eyes he morphs into a little megalomaniac with dreams of terrorizing the neighborhood. “Cooool! This means if anyone bug me I can just kill ‘em! I’m a have super human strenth! I’se can fight now and throw people aroun’! An if anyones bugs me I just show em the fangs! AHHHH! An I make people pay me to not kill ‘em!”

While Artie jumps around with excitement planning his oligarchy of terror over the Robert Taylor homes, Jack turns to me. “I knew we should have just left him alone. God! I hate dealing with kids.”

“I know what you mean!” I share as I grin back at him. “We have to do this, Jack.

Finally, I catch Artie’s attention. “Look, Artie, man you gotta calm down. It’s not like that. It’s not like the movies at all – those are just stories people have been pulling out of folk tales for centuries. It’s just entertainment, not real. And most of that is just about repressed sexuality, anyways. And it is certainly not something you want to have attention called to. ”

He looks so disappointed. “You means I won’t be able to kill people I hates?”

“You will only kill to preserve yourself. The same way mortals eat. No one kills chickens for pleasure. Even normal people kill to eat.”

“Won’ I git super human strenth?”

Jack steps forward. “You can be strong but you’re going to spend a lot of time being hyper sensitive and grandiose.”

“Whazzat mean?”

“It means you have a lot to learn, young man.” I volunteer

“It means you can’t stay here, not for long. You need to be around your own kind, at least for a while.” Jack continues. And then Jack makes the kid an offer, which surprises me. “You must come with us. Now. Now that you know what you are things are only going to go badly for you here.” And he extends a hand for Artie to take.

But Artie slaps the hand away. “I ain’t goin wit no white folks. Can’t just up an leave momma like that! Nuh uh! I’m a stayin here! Make people afraid of ME! I’m a be rich and famous!”

“Look, I know that’s not going to work. We’re not going to force you. But if you change your mind, here’s my cell phone number.” And Jack hands the boy a slip of paper. “C’mon mum, lets get out of here.”

He grabs my elbow and aims us back toward the elevated train. We get on heading back downtown. “Someday, just someday, I’d like to go somewhere and not step into a hornets nest of trouble!” he whinges just after we find seats on the train.

I lean over, rubbing his shoulders “that’s part of reinvention, isn’t it? The alternative is death, remember? Or worse, Iowa.”

We find a decent hotel near downtown where I hole up in the bathroom, taking a long bath and shower, for about 2 hours. Embarrassed about my country-wear, Jack insists that we go shopping. Fashion and I have never gotten along too well. I like some of the new things but simply find the old more comforting. The absence of pinching tight undergarments cinching me into place still feels odd. After our spree is over, we’re passing through a drug store, bags in tow, to get some makeup for me when Jack nudges me and chuckles.

“Heya mum, it looks like your stunt made the papers!”

Sure enough, across the front a paper at the checkout the title “Vampires attack small town in Iowa!” is sprawled.

“Ah, the Weekly World News, now I’ve made the big time! I’m famous!”

The next morning Jack is trying to show me how to put all the make up onto my face when his cell phone goes off. After listening to the caller for a second he hands it over to me.

On the other end of the line, it’s Artie Jones. “M-miss Eleanor? Dis Artie, you remember me?” He’s sobbing.

“Yes I remember, of course. What is it? Did something happen?”

“I-I killed my momma! I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t stop myself. When I wuz done I realize I done killed momma! What I gonna do!”

Shit.

“Artie, calm down. Listen to me. Do you have a safe place? Do you have a place where you can go and no one finds you?”

“yes, I does. It’s under the overpass.”

“We’ll meet you there. Don’t worry, we’ll find you.”

I’m sure Chicago is a lovely city, but I continually manage to arrange these tours of its unsavory underbelly. Under the overpass leads us straight through a no-man’s land filled with the roar of cars. Artie crouches at the edge, looking so small I could miss him if I weren’t careful.

When he sees us he comes running up to me, then proceeds to start screaming and hitting me with his flailing arms. “It’s you fault! You fault I kill my momma! You hadn’t a come around with your ideas she’d be alive now! You fault!”

“Stop it!” I grab his shoulders. For the time being, I’m still stronger than he is. “We gave you the opportunity to come with us and we TOLD you that you had best leave. You made the choice not to listen! YOU did that Artie!” The struggling rage relents into shame and grief. I pull him close and hug him to me while he sobs. “Oh young man, if only the nature and the strength came with super intelligence, but it don’t. We never get past making mistakes, we just live long enough to work it out. I did something horrible, too. It’s okay. It’s okay.”