Michael looked ragged, but warm and welcoming.  He could have stepped right out of a sepia- toned photograph. His sandy tone matched his gritty texture.  His  construction worker bronze skin blended right in with his hair, which stood  only about half an inch from his scalp, texturized with grit and oil.  Two small, intense eyes peered out from the deep shelf beneath his forehead, like beads of glistening pine sap.  The face around them was weathered and sand-papery, the good kind of rough, like a cat’s tongue. Even his clothes, thrift store t-shirts and Wrangler jeans stiff with the build-up of dirt and sawdust, matched his monochromatic tone.  Michael always smelled dusty and sweaty—the good kind of sweaty—organic, earthy, real.  He sometimes wore amber-lensed Aviators, and through those amber lenses, he beheld his amber world; he was all amber, all honey-warm, soft glowing, step-into-the-sunlight amber.  Even his voice was amber.  His words were molasses, slow, calm, southern-drawl, music-to-my-ears, light of the world amber molasses.  I floated in his words, thick and slow and restful.

He talked to me like I mattered, like I was a real person.  I was only a child, but he was gracious, quick to forgive my childishness, patient and gentle.  He talked to me about all sorts of things, some I understood, and some that I admitted went over my head.  And he listened to me, too.  I felt comfortable talking to him and saying what I really felt and thought, even if it sounded a little silly, or the words were a little flowery.  He listened with patience and interest, and he gave my thoughts credit, didn’t write my ideas off.  He made me feel so alive, so thrilled to be alive, so valuable.  I just wanted to sit there, wherever he was, and be with him forever, basking in the golden, honey, Aslan warmth of his amber glow.

Sometimes I wondered if he was Jesus, and I even told him that once.  He laughed and told me, no, he was really nothing like Jesus.  But he was the closest resemblance I’d come across.

Sometimes Michael teased me, and I teased him back, but he was tender and kind, and knew when to stop, knew I was sensitive, and treated me gently.  He humored me by spending time with me, sitting on the porch, just swinging our legs, eating cinnamon Pop Tarts.  He greeted me in the mornings in his molasses drawl and called me Mare.  He included me in things, let me get hamburgers and glass-bottled cokes with him late at night, shared a plate of goat-meat at the market with me one Sunday.  He talked to me about our journeys here on earth, where they took us and what they meant.  We talked about Jesus, the way he really was, without all the religion.  Mostly we talked about light.  He taught me that God is light; in him there is no darkness at all, that in God’s light we see light.

On my birthday, we all went on a joy ride to a neighboring town.  Michael named it the M.A.P. Sunset Cruise in my honor, and boy, did I feel adored.  On the way back to Piedras I rode in the back of his Jeep, the cool night wind blowing my hair behind me, and honey warm, amber thoughts flooding my mind.  Michael was a joy to be around, just his presence.  He put me at ease and made me feel warm and relaxed.  I could just sit with him, with my unshaven legs and paint-stained clothes, and be me, plain and simple.  Just me, stripped down, unwashed hair, sunburned face, and I felt simply radiant around him.  Just like a child of God, child of light—amber light—loved, accepted, cherished.

I’ve never felt very close to Jesus.  I know God.  I know he’s good, he made me, and he loves me.  I know the Holy Spirit.  I have felt him move, warm me in his light, just hold me.  But Jesus, he’s always been kind of a stranger.  I know Michael Jarret, though—honey-warm, amber-light, child of God Michael Jarrett, and he’s the closest to Jesus I’ve ever come.

I loved her–devotedly, singularly, unflinchingly.  She humored me.  She loved another.  She deceived me with her kindness, made me believe I was worth something to her.  But her heart was his, and she married him.

Devastation drove my hands to work.  I built a boat, a sea-worthy vessel, with my own strength and skill.  Gingerly I crafted her, patiently, cherishing precision and beauty.  I thought of her with every stroke of the paintbrush, and I named my vessel for her:  Ivana.

I took to the open sea.  I was lonely out there, but no lonelier than I had been back on land.  I lost track of the days.  The wind started to talk to me. I talked to myself.  I forgot things:  simple words, commonly known facts, faces.

It is not good for man to be alone.

The next time I saw land, I sailed until I touched it.  I docked Ivana on the coast of Chile, and I started over.  I rented a small apartment on a busy street, took a job at the market, and wrote about my time at sea.

A girl bought a mango from me, just one.  Not one for her husband, not one for her lover, just one for herself.  She was dazzling—golden, inky, mechanically perfect.  I asked her name, and watched her lips wrap around the word “Isabella”.  She looked me in the eye, and I loved her.

The next day she returned, and the day after that, and day after day.  She never left my thoughts.  My stories centered around her.  I forgot Ivana and my time at sea.  All I could think of was Isabella, beauty in its truest form.

We walked to the shore, void of any others.  I held her hand, tiny and smooth, in mine.  Touching her thrilled me, and I never wanted to stop.  I picked a flower from a tree.  I tucked it behind her ear, brushed her cheek with my thumb, cradled her head in my hand, pulled it toward me, whispered “Bella” in her ear.  I kissed her cheek, and then her perfect lips.  We took a few steps and found a place to rest—an old abandoned boat, rusted and weather-worn.  I held her there, close to me, and kissed her again and again—her cheeks, her lips, her ears, her neck, her hands, her fingers, her hips, her thighs—in the vessel I named Ivana.

Vera stopped buying things in 1973. After the kids grew up, she felt no need to keep up with the times. Dated furnishings in sickly colors decorated her house, which hadn’t changed since her boys left. On this Wednesday night, just like any other, she removed her slippers at the bedside and gingerly eased her achy body beneath the crocheted bedspread, which she herself had made before the arthritis had petrified her hands. She thought of her sons, one in Colorado and one in Georgia. They called about twice a month. She wondered about them, about her granddaughter. Maybe tomorrow they would call. She thought of tomorrow. Sometimes on Thursdays she played bingo at the recreational center of her retirement community. Tomorrow, she thought, she would rather stay home. She had her crossword puzzles and her housework, and sometimes they played old movies on the television. She always felt out of place at bingo. She was shy, and often sat alone. Tomorrow she would stay home. And with that decision made, sleep closed her heavy, wrinkled eyes, took her in its arms, and gently swayed her into a dream.

Her old college classroom enveloped her, the one with the creaky wooden chairs and stained glass windows. Only three other people occupied the room. Beside her sat two of her old classmates, whose images maintained their actual old age, and on the other side of the room, alone, sat Vera, at age nineteen, youthful and pretty. The two classmates angled their bodies in towards each other and away from Vera, engrossed in conversation. She sat there silently, staring into the distance, with her hands clasped in her lap, alienated and uncomfortable. Across the room, the young Vera sat alone, just the same, quiet and shy. The class bell resounded throughout the building, and Vera awoke.

Regaining consciousness, she outstretched her frail arm, grasping for her husband’s hand. But she felt instead only the crisp, undisturbed sheets on the other side of the bed. She remembered that her husband had died three years ago. Nothing had changed. Only loneliness and isolation offered her their companionship. She sighed and curled up in herself, and tried to find sleep again, but even sleep deserted her now. Tomorrow she would stay home.

I grew up in Saltville, Virginia, a tiny Appalachian valley town.  As a mining hub specializing in coal and sheet rock,  it wasn’t the thriving metropolis you might expect.  But I was determined to live a dignified, elite lifestyle regardless of my locale.

We lived in an old brick farmhouse, which really was a gem, on about forty rolling acres of Apalachain foothills.  I liked to pretend that my family was royalty, not in the usual manner of imagining, but rather in the sense that I wanted everyone in town to believe we were royalty.  I would rifle through my mom’s lingere drawer and pick out my favorite princess frock, an emerald green silk neglige, and pick out something similar for my mom, who for some unexplainable reason refused to indulge me.  All I wanted was to hang triangular construction paper flags from the turrets of our antebellum farmstead and frolic around in the front yard with my mother, both of us donning her fanciest lingere.  If passers-by could just see the flags, see our outfits, they would have to believe we were royal.

My mom was a school teacher and my dad was a preacher, so you can imagine how classy our life really was.  One afternoon, a parent of one of the kids I knew from school came to see my mom on some sort of school business.  I came to the door where they were talking and said, in my primmest, most proper voice, “Excuse me, Mother, shall I dress for dinner now?”  Surely the boy’s mom would return home telling of the lavish, sophisticated life we lived, dressing for dinner.

These are just a few examples of what I wanted the residents of Saltville to believe about me.  I was really into horses, and when I was eight I started going to an upscale summer camp with an excellent riding program.  The other campers’ lifestyles seemed to be significantly more luxurious than mine.  No need to admit that I came from a coal mining town, though–they didn’t know me–I would make up my own story as I went.

From my bunk, I kept my cabin-mates on the edges of their seats with my elaborate descriptions of my fancy mansion and, for added awe-inspiring effect, its clap-controlled lights.

At the barn, though, that’s where I really pulled out all the stops.  I told them of the hours I spent on my endless acres of upscale horse farm, which really meant that I occasionally spent the afternoon sanding rust off of my friend’s ragged-ass livestock trailer or raking the cockle burrs  from my twenty-year-old nag’s ratty tail.    I told them about Dixie, the three time English Pleasure champion Arabian mare my parents bought from some Sheik in Arabia itself.  This really meant, of course, that I had a pretty little bay Arabian we bought for fifteen hundred dollars; her owners had no use for her because she was no good at barrel racing or pole bending.  And her three championships?  That was the Beginners in English Pleasure class we entered at the Rich Valley Fair, our only opponent some incompetent child flailing about on top of an arthritic pinto pony.  I showed them the pictures of us winning, in my dignified tweed English Pleasure habit.  What they couldn’t see in the photo were the Justin roper boots with the fringe on the toes under my classy polyester pants, the essential footwear of Saltville’s redneck equine sector.

I had these people in the palm of my hand.  Daily they begged  for  more anecdotes from my decadent home life, and I rattled off lie after lie of the life I had created.

After three weeks I was home again, throwing a Western saddle over my three-time English Pleasure champion’s back, and riding through deserted tobacco fields, counting down the days until next summer, when I could reinvent myself again.  I returned nearly each summer for thirteen years, recreating my life a little, tweaking the details, until I finally felt confident in exactly who I was.

I am a creature of splendor.  Observe my broad, able breast, the swelling seat of my pride.  Behold my dagger-like beak, brilliantly painted with bold, confident strokes of the universe:  sky blue air, dazzling green earth, white water, daring, stunning, orange fire.  Perceive my determined eyes, unflinching, crystal.  See how the sun exalts me, crowns me in golden grandeur.   Regard my regal neck, elegantly poised, serpentining, pure, unaffected, perfect white.   Consider my feathers, intricate, countless, distinctly separate, flawlessly engineered.   Notice the power of my wings, self-restrained, tucked into themselves.  Survey my steady feet, gripping the edge of this rock, molded to its exact shape specifications, steady, unshaken.

Behold me, the pelican, the great paradox of nature.  I am free and I am trapped.  I am commander and subservient.  I am the universe’s, and the universe is mine.  I go as I please, following the wind, traveling the world, independent, unfettered.  Tomorrow I may master the natural world.  I may soar, my mighty wings extended, gliding through the atmosphere, mounting the strongest currents, my feathers ruffled by the wind.  I may dive into the depths of the underwater world and conquer a fish for my nourishment.  Just as likely, tomorrow I myself may be conquered, swallowed whole by some fearsome predator, and if that is so, all is well, for I am the universe’s, and the universe is mine.

Regardless of tomorrow, today I will rest for a while on this borrowed rock, the liquid crystal water crashing gently around me, glistening, bathed in sunlight, basking, reveling.  Today, this is my place in the universe.

Adelaide was simple, old fashioned.  She wore saddle Oxford shoes and cardigan sweaters.  She cherished both the trinkets and the ideals of times passed:  hand-painted pill boxes, monocles, silver compact mirrors, old books, ceremony, chivalry.  On Saturday, April the fourth, 2008, Adelaide  purchased an antique silver pocket watch, engraved with the initials O.D.D.

Adelaide’s routine was unwavering. Like clockwork, each Sunday morning she walked to the cafe in the square.  She ordered a cup of Earl Gray and a blueberry scone, and stepped outside to the park bench under the bell tower.   From beneath the bell tower she quietly observed.  The people bustled anxiously around her, all on cell phones or thumbing through music selections on iPods, frantically checking the time, late again for something of utmost importance on their never-ending agendas.   But Adelaide spent her time  differently, deliberately slow and ceremonious.

On Sunday, April the fifth, 2008, something odd happened.  Holding her tea cup and scone, Adelaide  headed toward her usual bench beneath the bell tower, and there he sat, a stranger, in her Sunday spot.  One of his long, thin legs was crossed over the other, swinging slowly back and forth, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.  The man was dressed from yesteryear, in a tweed vest and a gentleman’s cap, and held in his hands Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquarian . He looked even more old fashioned than Adelaide.  She stopped and stared, contemplating her next move.  He looked up and smiled at her familiarly.  Did she know this man?  He seemed to recognize her, but she could not place him.  His face was youthful.  A sweeping tuft of sandy blond hair peeped out from the brim of his cap.  As he grinned, she noticed the apples of his high cheekbones glowing rosily. She nodded and blushed, then approached the bench, and took her place on the opposite side.  She felt out of place, right there in her own Sunday bench, and sat awkwardly, slightly panicked by the stranger’s presence, and pretended he wasn’t there.  She saw him glance at her, grinning, several times from the corner of her eye.  Finally, she sheepishly, ever so slightly turned to see him.  He looked at her at the same time,  his blue eyes crinkled beneath his tortoise shell glasses in a full on smile.  “Good morning,” he said, and tipped his cap.  “Hello,” she replied, tilted her head to the side, stared at him for a second longer, and returned to her tea.

He studied her mahogany ringlets; the antique hair pin, holding a few of the curls away from her face, glistened in the sun.  Her skin was creamy, blushing peachy, dappled with freckles.  Under the shelter of long, curled up eyelashes,  her green eyes glanced from her tea, to the people around her, to the man beside her.

The bells chimed at the changing of the hour.  The man reached into the pocket of his trousers and retrieved a silver pocket watch.  Nine o’clock on the dot.  He slid his hand beneath his vest, removed from it a yellowed envelope, closed it in the pages of The Antiquarian, and rose from the bench.  “Well,” he tipped his hat again, “I’ll  be seeing you.”

Adelaide glanced up to bid him farewell, but he was gone.  Beside her lay The Antiquarian.  She picked it up and noticed a weathered edge peeking out.  She opened the book and found an envelope, sealed with emerald wax and stamped with the initials O.D.D.  On the front of the envelope, in emerald calligraphy, “Adelaide.”  Her hands trembled as she pried the edges of the envelope open.  She unfolded the letter inside, on stationary embossed with the same initials, and read,

There is no time like the present.

Yours,
Oliver Donald Dixon

My mother blindly believed in the traditional religion that had been passed down throughout the generations of her family.  She married a Catholic man, like her, when she was eighteen.  He was harsh to her, and treated her like property of little value.  When he drank, which he never did before they married, she feared him.  He was horrible to her, but she still clung to the cage of faith that trapped her, and was bound to him through what they call a God-ordained covenant.  She would not leave him, no matter how horrible he was to her, and submitted meekly to his every demand.

A year after they married, I  was conceived in a drunken, loveless ravage.  When my father heard about me, he skipped town and abandoned my mother there in the outskirts of Santiago.  She moved back in with her parents, who held the twisted view that my mother’s abandonment was her own fault, that she hadn’t fulfilled her duty as a wife, a help mate created to pander to a man’s every need. I can’t understand why my mother held onto this warped, misogynistic religion that somehow turned the victim into the culprit.  But she did, like a child infatuated with some intangible, imaginary friend, she devoutly lit candles and held beads and spoke to the God she naively believed existed.

Despite her fervent devotion, her God did not reward her with a long life.  Something went wrong while I was being born, and the last words my mother uttered, before she was radiantly swept into some sort of afterlife, were, “She is Deifilia, daughter of God.”

That’s the story my grandmother told me.  My grandfather died just a few years after my mother, and by the time I was eleven, my grandmother was so severely overtaken by Alzheimer’s that she forgot who I was, was frightened by me and threatened me.  I was taken to a Catholic orphanage inside the city, where I ate cardboard porridge for every meal and was told to thank God for his generous gift.  When I forgot to tuck my shirt into my skirt I was struck across the hand—God’s discipline for unruly children—sinners.  I had to memorize countless prayers full of words that meant nothing to me, and recite them several times daily, heartlessly.  If my prayers weren’t fervent enough, I was struck again to remind me that I was a sinner unworthy of God’s love.  It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t deserve his love—I didn’t even believe in him.

I was lonely.  I thought often of how my mother must have been before she died, wondered how she could have possibly believed in this nonsense, believed it enough to call me Deifilia, daughter of God.  But I loved her, and I ached for her.  I would lie down in my depraved cot at night and imagine her tucking me in and kissing my forehead, whispering my name and telling me goodnight.  I thought maybe that was why my mother pretended God was real.  Maybe she was lonely.  Maybe she knew deep down, in the same way that I knew when I imagined her, that it was all pretend, but it made her feel less lonely to believe that it wasn’t.

I didn’t do well in school.  I was constantly being chastised for drifting away in class.  I gazed through the window at the looming cathedral just outside the classroom.  My eyes roamed the unwelcoming exterior of the cathedral: its mournful stained glass depictions of Mother Mary, a lamb being sacrificed, tiny and fleecy, its helpless, round little underbelly pierced and stained crimson, and the crucified Christ, the monotonous gray stones, the gargoyle perched atop the roof, guarding whatever was sacred inside.  I gazed into his stony, vacant eyes, and I recognized him.  He was the face of this absurd religion:  fearsome, crouching, ready to attack, clawed and fanged, a nonsensical, distorted combination of various beasts, guarding something precious from the outside world, hoarding whatever it was inside that cathedral to which he clung so dearly.

I watched the pigeons perch on the gargoyle and peck around him.  They were not afraid, and as I watched them, I thought that if there was a God, surely these darling little creatures were cherished by him.  Surely they knew something that the nuns did not.  Surely they held some secret in their simple little souls, some clearer understanding of their alleged maker.  Surely they were free, and if any creature knew God, it was them.  I sat mesmerized by them.  One stared right back at me and, as if it knew my thoughts exactly, flew from the shadow of the gargoyle and perched itself on the windowsill over which I was gazing, looked me square in the eye, tilted its tiny, fragile head, and cooed.  I gasped, startled, and was struck again.

For the next month, I could not forget the incident.  I could not convince myself fully that that pigeon did not have something invaluable to share with me.  My curiosity was insatiable.  I craved so deeply to know what it was that that monstrous gargoyle guarded.  I could think of nothing else.

As I walked up the menacing stone stairs, I felt unwelcome, mortifyingly out of place.  I stopped and hesitated, then looked up again to the gargoyle, and the pigeons, and continued.  I knew it was preposterous.  I knew I only wanted to not feel so lonely, like my mother had, and I was tricking myself.  I felt embarrassed by my childishness.  How could I possibly even begin to believe that this was real?  I stopped again and stared at the menacing doors looming directly ahead of me, warning me to keep out.  This was stupid.  The whole idea was ridiculous.  I was so naïve. But what if?  I continued, trembling, and finally made it to the doors.  I closed my eyes, and rolled them at my foolishness, then pulled the heavy door slowly.  It creaked eerily, but warmly.  I stepped inside and the door creaked again to close me in.

The cathedral was empty, and wonderfully silent.  I stood in awe of the very vastness of it.  The light poured in through the stained glass windows and warmed the whole room with kaleidoscope light, dancing on the floor and walls, and on me.  I could feel the sunlight in its drops of color, and I felt warm all over, even inside.  I had stopped trembling and stood rapturously still, more still than I had ever been.  I felt like I would never be lonely again.  I laid down in the very center of the room and stared into the dome of cloudy heavens painted above me.  I closed my eyes and began to spin, and the whole cathedral spun with me.  We twirled gloriously, elatedly, heavenly.  Warmth spilled over me like golden honey, and I felt something lay down beside me and drape a sort of arm across me, kiss my forehead, and I wept.  I wept because I was so moved, because they were all so pitifully mislead.

I knew now what my mother must have known:  that we are all valued, loved, cherished by this God; that he delights in us, that he made us just the way we are; that we are not meant to be eaten away by guilt and cling to it as if that guilt itself is our salvation.  We are meant to be loved.  I wept, and sat cradled in this unknown affection.  I am Deifilia, daughter of God.

And then I was awakened, three minutes after I was supposed to have risen.  I stood up and held out my hand, and she struck me.

Sleep flirts with me but denies its intimacy, leaving me restless in someone else’s bed. I stand and walk to the bathroom, aware of my every sound in the heavy hush. I draw a bath and sit in it’s shallow beginnings, my arms wound about my legs, folded against my chest, curled up in myself, infantile. A distorted representation of me hangs upside down in the faucet, questioning.  Water rises to envelope me, baptizing me in the surreal. My thoughts are slow and detached, heavy but not grave, thick from exhaustion and the vodka-like effect of the hot water. I consider my complex: my need to be adored by the opposite sex. I am afraid of some men, intimidated by many, weirdly, obscurely, unexplainably attracted to most. I crave like an addict the affection of every male I encounter, hunger for a friendly touch. Any kind words or flattery leave me high for days and thirsting for more, their compliments the lifeblood of my complex.  Any man who withholds said affections is all the more desired, subject to obsession, overwhelmed with relentless appeals for admiration.

I rise slowly. The water moves with little grace, reforms to fill the space vacated by my body.  Dizziness briefly overtakes me. I study my body in the mirror. My cheeks and lips are flushed. I watch the way my skin folds, ripples as I move. Everything is white: the countertop, my men’s undershirt, the sheets. I bury myself in cool, crisp bedding. The silence is thinner, lighter now, and my thoughts are unchanging.

Jonathan did not have much to his name: twenty years, a job as a field hand, and a dobro. The third of these was the most significant. It was his Orphean lyre, and with it, every Saturday night, he played the bluegrass songs of the sirens. The way that boy made the dobro wail, I promise you, it was unearthly. Its mournful, ethereal groans glided right over the crowd of blue-gray-haired ladies and men in boots and bowlows, straight into the core of my being, as if, as I believed, he had created each eerie mountain ballad just for me.

I sat in the cold, metal folding chairs of local bluegrass joints as a regular weekend activity. My dad played the upright bass in the same band, the rouse under which I returned week after week. And weekly the attraction grew more intense and deeply rooted. I made my affection painfully known, ever encouraged by the winsome smiles Jonathan seemed to flash directly at me as he made that dobro sing. His eyes would meet mine, and he would stand up on his toes and work his magic on those strings. In this position, leaning into the microphone for his break, he was irresistable, and I was insatiable. The muscles in his beautiful, field-hand-tanned arms tensed and moved about with his intricate fingerings on the strings. His face was concentrated and passionate. And those hands, strong, callused, magic. The sight swelled up sensations unknown to me before. I believed whole-heartedly that my feelings were returned, and the thought consumed me.

And then it ended. Abruptly, without warning, my golden-haloed world was torn from me, and I lay crushed and innocent in the wreckage of my own self-deceit. Never had I been so aware of my childishness. The vast expanse separating me from Jonathan was blindingly obvious.

The girl was trashy, and possessed everything I lacked. Her hair was unconvincingly dyed, face caked in makeup concealing any imperfections, her symmetrical, kissable lips glossed to perfection and parted sensually. Her clothes clung to her wraith-like figure. Her skin was bared, freakishly brown. But she was beautiful–easy, cheap, porn star beautiful.

I watched Jonathan play for her, tip-toed and smiling, and I hated him. Because he gave his heart–and arms and hands and tip-toes–so cherished, so desired by the innocence of my lily white, untouched youth–to this gaudy, used, cheap carnation of a girl (and to how many like her before?) I hated him.

I was not ignorant. The embarrassing, bitter truth lay blatantly before me. For years I had deluded myself to think that this dobro player could be mine, but I was useless to him. And bitterly, I hurled my golden, chisled god to the ground, and glared at the foolish, bluegrass-playing redneck who remained.

The girl didn’t even like bluegrass.