Her Life in Bed

Lydia had her own bed, but it provided cold comfort, especially after she’d wet it, making the climb into the Everest of the parental bed all the more desirable. She snuggled between her parents and their body heat lulled her into a secure sleep, the best of her life.

            Her parents divorced, and Lydia had her own room, but she still slept with her mom more often than not. Her baby brother slept there, too, and the dogs, and the cats. She never noticed any bad smells. One Easter, she took a baby chick into bed with her family. Her mom rolled onto it during the night. 

            Lydia didn’t cry when she found the chick in the morning, its eyes closed. She petted its feathered body, now flat and peaceful and utterly beautiful. She wished she still had it. The after, not the before. She’d keep it in a clear plastic container in the freezer and take it out on stressful days.

           A nest of dreams, her teenage bed threatened to never let her go. Every night the music and adventure of her sleeping life grew more vivid, rich and lovely. Lydia slept for fourteen hours straight. She awakened only out of curiosity, wondering if the world had changed. Not only had it not, but no one had noticed her absence. She got up to eat and to change her sheets. Fresh and crisp, the flat coolness of clean sheets calmed her overheated imagination.

            Lydia floated on the magic carpet of that clean, cool bed into her twenties. Not the same bed, but its essence. She exchanged the intangible for the physical. She traveled far from the free flow of fantasy into the hard reality of total control. A life raft, her bed provided entertainment. Lydia was the captain and peopled it as she chose. She doesn’t remember sleeping. Afterwards, she changed her sheets and fell into them exhausted and dreamless.

            Her box spring and mattress sat on the floor. Lydia and her husband—not yet her husband, just a good lover—changed the sheets together. They faced off on either side of the bed, senses on alert, muscles flexed. Same height, about the same weight, they were evenly matched. The last tuck, a flat playing field, and the attack began. Full-on wrestling, dirty tricks allowed—tickling, pubic hair pulling, pinching, a finger up the butt—his trick, not hers. The giggling was ferocious. Glorious, feisty sex followed, and then a mellow straightening of the sheets.

            She worked. He worked. They had children, a dog, and a housekeeper. A decade and more of never making her own bed passed. They no longer wrestled. Lydia doesn’t remember the sheets.

            The children left. The dog died. Lydia and her husband bought a mattress that silenced the existence of the other person. No rolls, no ripples, no creaks or groans. Lydia could pretend she was in bed alone. She liked the pretense, not actual aloneness. So did her husband. For extra insurance, they placed a king-sized pillow between them. 

            Lydia hugged the pillow in the night. Sometimes her husband stole it from her, but they didn’t struggle over it. That would have required interaction. Her new life in bed made no allowance for that. 


Appeared in the Spring, 2015 issue of Pilgramage, the SLEEP edition, Volume 38, #3
pilgrimage press.org

ADOBE DUST AT DAWN

Lydia smelled the dawn–a hint of dew-laden dust sifting through her open window–before she heard the grinding gears whining in the distance.  

         

         At first she thought it was a garbage truck. Too early.  A hard gust brought the acrid scent of exhaust.  The sound grew louder.  Her mother was not home from work yet.  Outside, the dogs barked.

         Standing on the front porch in her nightgown, Lydia looked to the east.  Dawn backlit the transit of three gargantuan steamrollers.  They mowed down adobe house after adobe house.  Each mechanical giant stood five stories high, their rollers a relentless tsunami cutting a swath through the squat homes of her neighborhood.   A gauzy, virulent haze from the exploding mud bricks surrounded the machines.

         She reeled back into the house, grabbed her infant sister and awakened her young brother. "Get the cat!"  

She ran with them to the hill behind her house.  The bird!  The colossal contraptions were at the Montoya's, two doors down.   

Lydia ran back and lifted the birdcage off its hook.  She tucked the hamster cage under her other arm and took one last look around. 

         The whine of the machines changed pitch right before they tamped down a house.  They were next door, the smell hot and sulfurous. Lydia remembered her mother's tip box, hidden in the lingerie drawer under the fur scarf of glassy-eyed minks biting each other's tails. The money clanged in time to her run up the hill, where her brother and sister waited. They watched the devastation below.  Their mother would return home to a pile of dirt, but they were safe.

         The thumping of her heart and gasping breath awakened her.  Her muscles ached.  In the kitchen, her mother spooned mush into the baby’s mouth.  "I could sure use some help around here."  When Lydia didn’t answer, she focused on her daughter’s dream-confused expression and shook her head.   

“Always dreaming," her mother said, and wiped the baby's mouth.  "Always thinking of yourself." 

Another Socal Halloween

The deciduous trees in my neighborhood flare weakly with autumn color this time of year. They give up the ghost of their comely birthright and drop like the dead almost overnight. That other hint of fall, a breeze with a clean, brisk scent is overwhelmed by its studly cousins, the demon-ridden Santa Ana's. They burn and churn through our canyons, trample our dreams and herald our version of winter in Socal. Instead of rain, we get ash fall. My nose tickles, and a sulphuric odor permeates the city, or am I just getting ready for Halloween?

Demons and fairies are often malcontents which are at the heart of much storytelling throughout history. Sultry temptresses and mischievous sprites make cameos not only in mythology, but also in Milton and Shakespeare. Demons and fairies and other supernatural entities are the essence of human storytelling. It's a way to transmit values. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "Demonology is the shadow of Theology . . . "

Much of the information posted here is taken from The Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, and Fallen Subversive Sprits  by Carol Mack.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Changelings:

Changelings are a type of fairy who steals human babies. They are also the “thing” left behind to fool the human parents. If your baby breaks stuff, or has teeth or speaks while still an infant, chances are you have a changeling.

One woman suspected she had a changeling. She was advised to boil eggshells, discarding the eggs. The Changeling, a newborn, asked, “What are you brewing?” This terrified the mother, of course, but she replied, “I’m brewing eggshells.” The Changeling became agitated, “Oh! In the fifteen hundred years that I have been alive, I have never seen anyone brew eggshells.” (From Carol Mack, A Field Guide to Demons, p 204-05).

The changeling knew it had blown his cover and disappeared, leaving behind the human infant in its place.

In Scotland, mothers were advised to feed their infants whiskey mixed with earth, apply hen excrement or salt or both, or stick pins and scissors or knives around the crib.

Shaitan:

Shaitan (also Satan) is a kind of djinni created by the fire of Allah.  Their modus is to lead humans into sin by temptation.  They also have a muse aspect, and can inspire artists and poets.  I want that job!

They also eat dirt and excrement.  Never mind on the job.

Shadow:

According to Carl Jung the Shadow is a person's inner demon.  It includes all that we hide.

Many people control the shadow with sheer will, but it will spring forth in projections and dreams.  Archetypal images of the shadow are vampires, devils and hybrid beasts.

Disarm the shadow by listening for it.   ". . . when the Shadow is recognized and respected as a natural part of each psyche and no longer repressed" spiritual growth can begin (Jung).

Like all demons, the Shadow is always changing its guise, so recognizing it is a lifelong process.

Review: Walking Home

          Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston by Sarah Cortez is a 76-page mixed-genre literary memoir. Using a stained glass window and its colors to frame her memories, the author looks back at three generations of her family, setting the foundation for her today. The cover of the book is the Annunciation Window found in the Villa de Matel Chapel.

          I flipped to it often while reading the poetry in the first section. It’s the usual flat two-dimensional religious rendering of the Madonna accepting her destiny, but this window is not an exact metaphor for Cortez’ poetry.  Rather, it is the radiant, albeit humbling, effect of this depiction on the prayerful masses to which I responded, and this made her family come alive for me. I’ve never experienced the pure essence of that spiritual belief, but appreciated that there is no judgment in her words, just pure acceptance and love.

          Her mother’s hopes and aspirations also spoke to me.  A mother’s wishes for her child’s future reveal a great deal about her own hopes and unfulfilled dreams. The dichotomy between the then in Sarah’s memoir and her now is what intrigued me the most, especially toward the end of the first section when she changes POV from female to male.  Who of our generation and gender have not done so? For Cortez this meant going to war in “Blood-red” and “Vegetation.”    

          In the second section, Cortez’ family life and growing up in Houston is vivid and filled with scent, humid Texas nights, and gastronomic delight. Her father appears in most of the poem’s here, while her mother recedes, except in relation to her kindness to a dwarf in “The Gift”; her reaction to a handsome gutter salesman in “Joe Angel”; and, perhaps even to the milkman in “The Delivery”.  These poems are lessons learned and depict the growing sexual consciousness of the young Cortez.

          Sarah Cortez is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.  She has edited five anthologies of poetry, memoir, and crime fiction for both young adult and adult audiences for the publishing houses of Arte Publico Press and Akashic Books. Her work is widely anthologized in collections by Penguin, the Great Books Foundation, and other international publishers.  She is the author of How to Undress a Cop, and edited Windows into My World: Latino Youth Write Their Lives (2007); Hit List:The Best of Latino Mystery (2009); Indian Country Noir (2010); and You Don’t Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens (2011).  She lives and works in Houston, Texas.

Dreams and My Life

My adult dreams are always an indication of my deepest concerns, the kinds of things that I shove aside in the day.  They are not matter-of-fact; symbolism is rife in them - people and places are not the same - but their meaning is still plain to me.

My adolescent dreams were vivid and full of music and art and love: they were my escape from an ugly world. I dreamt entire symphonies then, sparkling bubbles floating in the sky, and color-washed paisley landscapes populated with fantasy creatures.

I was not on drugs, maybe too much co2 from slumbering so much, and so deeply. My dreamworld was my life; I slept sixteen out of every twenty-four, more if I could get away with it. I missed school and dreamt. I missed meals and dreamt. I missed all family involvement and dreamt. When I awakened, my unfinished dreams would continue and prevent me from hearing or seeing. Even when I tried to focus, the dreams would cast a web over my consciousness, their siren call impossible to resist.

On my few forays into public education, I'd come home and struggle with my algebra homework. I solved the equations in my sleep. That's when I discovered a measure of control over my dream life, which led to more control over my waking life.

That was a good and necessary feat . . . then.

Now, I seek release again into the chaos and delight of no control and imagination set free from worries and responsibility.  Dreams are an escape valve, a diary, canvas, sieve, an internet (internal networking) of all things past and possible.

Does age diminish the siren call of dreams? Does the sum total of one's past overpower the x factor in what is still possible? I'll try to solve for that tonight.

Sister, Sister

Now for something personal:

This is my sister. She recently forged our elderly mother’s name and stole thousands of dollars from her.

My mom worked six nights a week for years to support me, my brother and my sister. In her fifties, she took the GRE and got a job with the state. She was only able to save this money by living like a pauper. Once she retired, Mom insisted on subsisting on her social security checks, and banking the small pension she’d earned from the state.

It’s amazing how much interest can accumulate if you save every nickle and never spend a dime. She said the money was for her old age, so she wouldn’t be a burden to her children. Mom was sure she’d get cancer. She did. On her tonsils. Had chemo and radiation (The Tattoo Lady, Mother and Me), and beat it, although she still smokes.

Mom rescued my sister countless times from abusive relationships (White Lies), bought her cars, paid for repairs, saved the cars from repossession, paid down payments on homes, rent, and the list goes on. Every single one of my sister’s husbands and boyfriends were welcomed into Mom’s house where they mostly laid around. In order to discourage them from staying too long, Mom engaged in a peculiar form of domestic warfare where she put the lowest wattage light bulbs in their room and hid the toilet paper.

We — the sibs and Mom — laughed in those days at our mother’s eccentricities. We thought my sister would change, that things would get better. Why not? She’s smart and articulate, just has bad taste in men, and an addiction. To substance, yes, but more to a losing way of life. She's dedicated herself to bad decisions.

Mom’s heart is broken. She tried so hard to fix my sister, even lying to protect her when it put me in jeopardy. Mi familia. I got out, that’s my salvation, but my escape is only one of distance. I used to feel sorry for my sister, but this latest cut to our mother goes deep, beyond the blood, all the way to the bone.

"She’s bad, bad, bad," Mom says, all the orneriness gone out of her voice, making her sound feeble and old.

I think I might lose her any day, any hour, any minute, and it makes me so angry that my sister did this now.

All photos by author.