I'm working at shifting things around, so if this part seems a little lopsided, it won't be when I'm finished. ^_^ Thanks for reading!
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(a word from our sponsors)
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I guess it would be nice to give my heart to a god—
but which one, which one do I choose?
- Of Montreal
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(labyrinthine hearts)
San Jose, 1906
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For the souls of thousands, hers set itself to work, hammering in one nail after the other, building towards the sky and missing by an inch or two—close enough to touch, but never to hold. The clouds crept farther and farther away until it made her head spin to look towards the earth she was destined to crumble into.
When the ground began to shake, she paced against its shudders, waiting for the walls to come falling in like dominoes in sets of thirteen—thirteen doors with thirteen knobs leading to thirteen rooms and thirteen stairways. Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen, as the spirit-medium in her gauzy black gown had instructed.
Build until you die.
There were whispers when she left the city; whispers that filled her train car until it was almost unbearable to sleep. They followed her, swimming between her ears and humming as regularly as the heart that throbbed beneath its bony cage. All it took was the pounding of workmen and the steady banging of doors—open, shut—to drown them in sound.
In the thick smoke of the séance room, the dead who bore no numbers wailed for their maker, and they wailed for their killer.
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(the hunting of the snark)
Omaha, 2004
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“Get up!”
Alice awoke to a very large, very dark woman who was standing over her with a clipboard—purple, with white patches where stickers had been peeled off. Heart pounding, she shifted to get out of bed, but muscle coordination was an unknown lexicon in the spiderweb network of nerves that buried themselves beneath her skin.
She hadn’t left the bed in nearly two weeks.
The skin stretched across her kneecap and down her thigh screamed and threaten to split. She bit her lip and steadied herself against a bedside computer monitor, leaving a greasy handprint-smear across the mountain range that comprised her heartbeat. Her eyes met the woman’s, briefly. “So you moving, or not?”
“Not,” said Alice, her elbow threatening to lock and freeze where she leaned, suspended, over the linoleum.
“Wrong answer.”
Alice gaped at her. “What?”
“Wrong answer. Get up. We’re going for a walk.”
“But I––”
“If you don’t now, you never will.”
“But––”
“Move it!”
Alice blinked back tears. Like a helpless child, she held out her hands. The woman held them as she moved her mummy legs and bent them, oh-so-slowly, over the edge of the bed.
Underneath the bandages, it felt like her skin was burning all over again.
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(qiyamat)
Abadan, 1978
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LIDA is in the garden. In the privacy of its ivy-colored walls, she slips the veil from her head and runs her fingers through her hair. There is a SOUND, a sonic HISS that leaks from everywhere and nowhere, the STATIC that emanates from life itself—particle against particle, man against his enemy. It’s big; too large for a tiny girl shrunken with sadness. She folds her hands in her lap and waits.
ALLAH: Lida? Are you listening?
LIDA: [bewildered] Allah? Is that you? [pause] It is you, I know it’s you, I–– [biting her lip] Why are you here? In the garden?
ALLAH: I am always with you.
LIDA: You’re–– [She begins to sob.] Are they with you? Pedar? Mader? Why did you take them away from me? Why did you hurt them? Why? [pause] Are you still there, Allah?
Silence.
- FADE OUT-
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(bring your a-game)
Suburbia
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The sun was going down as Charlotte stood in the driveway, dribbling a basketball between bare feet. There were pink streaks in the sky and pink streaks on her legs, grooves made by Ringo, the cat.
Her father had been a Beatles fan. They’d had four cats, once—John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Only Ringo survived, though he was old and his hair fell out in calico clumps.
Outside, the streets were empty and the sound of her dribbling echoed against closed garage doors. She shot. The ball spun through the air, hit the rim, and hooked left—right into the shins of a boy walking past.
She covered her mouth with her hands. “OhmyGod. I’m so sorry.”
He smirked. “You could use some more height,” he said, and shot. It slipped through the hoop, its slick swoosh cutting through humid silence. It rolled to her bare feet. She picked it up, shot again. Missed.
A flick of his wrist, and it went right in. She gaped at him. “Want me to show you how to do it?”
“What?”
“Come here.”
“Who are you?”
He bent his knees, ready to shoot again. “The brother you never had,” he said, and the ball sailed, a third time through the hoop. “The father you always wanted.”
“What?”
He sighed. “I’d tell you my name, but there are so many of them. Wouldn’t want to get caught up in the affairs down here—some nasty business going on, I swear…”
“So you’re…”
“You’re Lutheran, so it’s God, I guess.”
“God.” She nodded and looked at the ground. “So I’m playing basketball in my driveway with God.”
He shrugged. “More like being beaten to a pulp. I thought the stereotype was that lesbians are athletic…?”
“Ouch.” She winced. “You know about that?”
“I know everything, sweetheart.” He made another basket.
“And you chose the cocky teenage boy guise…why?”
“I knew it would either piss you off or make you talk.” He checked the ball and passed it to her. “There’s a lot on your mind. Any questions for me, while I’m in human form?”
She dribbled once, twice. “How am I…how am I doing, I guess?”
“Performance-wise?”
“Yeah.” She shot, and missed. He dashed out into the middle of the street after it, and slowly worked his way back up the drive.
“You’re an amazing sister, and an even better daughter.”
The back of her throat grew tight as he shot, and when it came down through the net, she was crying. It felt embarrassing, standing there in the heat with her eyes and nose running, but she did nothing to hide it but look at the ground. He tossed the ball into the grass and pulled her toward him by her hands. “I don’t make screw-ups,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She listened for his heartbeat, but there was none; he was neither living nor still. “That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.”
Charlotte didn’t have a word for what she felt.
“Why did you take my dad away?”
“He needed some extra help,” he said. “You all needed some extra help. Drew’ll be fine. Your mom even better. And you—you, Charlotte, need to take care of yourself.”
“I don’t want to be me.”
“You’re afraid of being you?”
She sighed, desperate and shuddering. “I’m afraid of being me.”
“Grace?”
“Yes, Grace. You like her better, don’t you? Because she tried. She’s not––”
“She’s just as scared as you are. She needs to figure things out, what she values more—love, or fear.”
“So you don’t…”
“If I spent all my time checking up on people’s sex lives, I’d be a porn director, not the great creator.”
“You can’t not be a dude.”
He laughed. “I’m everything. Even a dude.”
“If you don’t care about what we do, then why do things happen? Why does everyone hate me? Why do people like me die all the time? And why do they get away with it? And my dad? Why is he gone? He wasn’t even gay. He just left because he was stupid, and he didn’t love us, and he wanted us to––”
“Some people can handle it, some people can’t.” He laughed. “And some people I just want with me for awhile.”
“So you’re selfish?” She pulled away. “You want people with you, so you take them away from their families? From the people who love them? What kind of sense does that make, to worship someone––”
“You don’t have to worship me, if you don’t want to. Lots of people don’t.”
“Give me a reason.”
“Love,” he said, shrugging.
“Love.”
“It’s cheesy, but whatever. Love.”
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(after the bombs)
Kabul, 2001
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There was Massoud, and there was Najma, and even though he’d never held her he knew that he loved her more than anything. It was winter when the bombs stopped falling from the sky, the last Talib shaved his chin and ran from the city. Massoud knelt at her basement window and rapped, his fingers trembling. The streets were still empty, but his heart was pounding—waiting for the gunfire, the shouts, the what do you think you’re doing?, but it never came. She fiddled with the latch and it opened, laughing as he tried to wrestle his way through the frame.
As he brushed off his clothes, they looked at each other, nervous. “There was one record they didn’t burn,” she said. “I…I haven’t listened to it yet.”
I haven’t listened to it in five years, was what she meant.
There was a record player in the corner, the spindle dulled with dust. He watched her as she slipped an LP out of its sleeve and line it up, clumsily—out of practice. She lowered the needle to the grooves and it began to play piano and English, fading in and crackling slightly.
It was a foreign sound; something beyond shouts and false prayers. He reached for her fingers and she lifted her eyes, shy. “I watched an American movie with my mother, once,” he said, pulling her closer and putting his hands on her waist. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “And they danced like this—but she made me close my eyes. So I don't remember how it goes.”
She laughed, nervous. “I’ve never seen it. But this feels nice.”
He swayed back and forth, guiding her, pulling her hips closer. She was warm, and smelled like a kitchen—rice, sweets, vegetables from the market. “It does.” The music intensified—pianos, trumpets, a chorus of horns. “Najma?”
“Yes?”
“I…I think I’m going to ask your father if I can…if I can marry you. Would you like that?”
She smiled. “I think I would.”
And outside the window, snow began to fall.
And even still, you say she, so it sounds like its a woman laboring. Yet would women be laboring in this sort of place during that time frame? I suppose you did research and would know. But I'm curious now.
