Monday, January 14, 2019

WILD ANIMALS: Chapter One

Hello! Here is the first chapter of a long short story or short novella I wrote.

Wild Animals
She was mine and I was hers
Gambled hard and split the purse
A patient and her patient nurse
She was mine and I was hers
     
1
Wild Animal

Some of the damage caused by my mother, Gloria, scorched the earth, and sometimes those who adored her wished we’d never known her, wished we’d never even been born.  I adored her, but to adore her, one had to figuratively roll one’s eyes at about half her declarations, especially when they were slurred.  One had to figuratively shrug one’s shoulders in a gesture like “That’s our Gloria,” though only in response to a benign destruction.  Only when she was just telling white lies or asking to borrow money while joking that she’d never pay it back.

“I never, ever imagined myself with kids,” she said once.  “I know, you hate it when I talk about having you -- you think I sound too objective when I talk about how much it hurt to give birth and all the drugs they had to give me and everything like that.  But just listen to me a sec -- I didn’t want to have a kid because, when I was a kid, I always thought I needed to grow up to do something; I thought I needed to be, like, some solitary woman just living and breathing art all the time, no kids or anything else to distract me from some lasting work.  But then I had you, and you are my purpose.  You’re what I did, Maria.” 

She’d woken me up to tell me this in the middle of the night, of course, because she’d gotten sad watching some movie on TV or something and wanted the company.  For much of my childhood we shared a bed (it was always the perfect amount of warmth or coolness under those covers, always the perfect firmness of my bottom pillow and soft lumpiness of the pillow I had on top), and now she was climbing into our bed with all her clothes and even her shoes and jewelry still on; she turned on the little tabletop lamp and the light shone right in my eyes.

I was fully awake by now, so she kept on: 

“Remember that man Jake who used to come into the bookstore?  Did I ever tell you he was a writer?  He had two novels published, and he was really great.  He got everything just right on the page, like, the most perfect way to describe something.  And he was really handsome too, remember?  But when we’d talk sometimes he’d just sound so self-obsessed and depressed, and after a while I couldn’t stand it – I’d just avoid him when he came into the store.  It was really sort of maddening that he thought his ideas were so important.  Sometimes I’d hear him talking to George and I’d just want to go over and shake him and tell him, ‘Stop thinking so much!’  I wanted to tell him he’d be happier if he just gave up and had a kid.”

Now here I am trying to painstakingly record the details of my upbringing.  It seems that I’ve been saving up all these details over the years, though I thought that I’d been throwing them all out or forgetting them along the way, trying to keep my story spare and current, like Mom tried. She spent so many unsuccessful years trying to teach me an unfettered enjoyment of good sensations, like when you know you don’t have to record or remember a significant moment later on, and you can just move beyond bad experiences, no reflection necessary, the way a pet that gets lost outdoors will accept the stranger who takes it in, with no apparent longing for its old family.  We’d taken in several stray cats over the years – at least eleven -- and without exception, each animal eagerly adapted to its new life.  Or at least I think so. 







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