18 Brahma
Above me were ribbons of stars. I no longer knew what time it was. The trees there are the oldest in the cemetery and their branches form a canopy under which it is always night. I went out through the iron gates to the east and cut across the lower part of the hill, walking parallel to Colony of the Elect. Several blocks from Credence’s someone yelled my name.
“Della!”
I looked up. It was Mirror. She was sitting on the fire escape of a newly renovated building smoking a cigarette.
“What are you doing?”
“Cat-sitting but the cat ran away. Come have a drink.”
I was nowhere near sleep, and so why not? She buzzed me in.
“We’re in the back,” she called down the stairs.
The apartment was spotless with white couches and white carpets and at least two Tom of Finland prints in every room.
“They’re originals,” said Mirror, “The guy’s dying of cancer and he won’t sell one of them. Not one. That’s some f*cking principles.”
Sitting behind Mirror on one of the couches was the woman with the lavender hair from the party at the Glass House. She was winding a red ribbon around her wrist, unwinding it and winding it again.
“Della, this is Tamara. She thinks she’s only in town for a few days but she’s going to change her mind and stay for my party.”
“Maybe,” Tamara said.
“Shut up, Mara!” Mirror threw a towel at her, “You are so staying.”
“We’ll see. Either way I’d have to go back soon.”
“Mara lives on a collective farm out near Breaker’s Rise,” Mirror said, “They have chickens, goats—all sorts of shit. She’s pretending to be some neo-hippy chick but she’s just a big old faggot and…” she threw something else at Tamara, “she’s definitely coming to my party.”
“Will you be there?” Tamara asked, “or will you already be in Goa?”
She grinned and I saw that one of her incisors was partially broken off.
“Honduras.”
“That’s right, Honduras.”
Her eyelids were thin and this time she was wearing green glitter shadow. She was shorter than me and had on a dark gray t-shirt. They must have just dyed her hair because her fingertips were pale blue.
“So, Mirror says you’re a scientist.”
“I’m a waitress.”
“What do you study?”
“Patterns of extinction.”
“Important things to understand.”
I felt my pride burn and resented it.
Mirror got out some hummus and made Greyhounds.
“That stupid cat better come back on its own,” she dropped a bag of carrots on the coffee table, “I’m not making flyers. I already have to go to that stupid work meeting tomorrow. By the way, when can you get the van?”
Tamara shrugged, “I’ll ask when I get back to the Cycle.”
The Cycle was a squat turned urban farm collective on the other side of the river. Once a year police made a show of trying to close it down, anarchists threw bricks at them, and they left. Mostly because anarchist squatters are cheaper than fences and developers weren’t ready. I’m waiting for the headline that reads: HOWLING MAW ACCIDENTALLY SWALLOWS SQUATTERS LIKE PLANKTON IN PURSUIT OF REAL MEAT.
“More hummus?”
Yes, because a last meal should be vegetarian.
“So what are you going to do with all that education?” Tamara asked.
“My brother says education is what you make of it. I made a papier-mâché head of John the Baptist out of my school papers.”
She laughed.
“It’s a piñata.”
I started to smile slowly then I laughed. I couldn’t remember the last time I had. It felt like something was being lifted out of me.
We spent the next few hours talking about the bombs.
“I think the bomb threats are far more interesting than the actual attacks,” Tamara said, “I mean, Citizens for a Rabid Economy? It’s f*cking brilliant.”
We made Greyhounds until we ran out of vodka. Tamara asked if I wanted to go out for more and I said yes. We left Mirror sewing some kind of bronze lamé shroud for the sex party.
On the corner in front of the liquor store I pulled out the fortune cookies I got at the Chinese restaurant. I offered some to Tamara.
“Sweet!” she said and grabbed a few.
“What do your fortunes say?” I asked.
“This one says…” she squinted, “You were never closer to reconstructing the world than you are now.”
“It does not say that!” I howled.
“You’re right,” she said, “but I do.”
Tamara ate the rest of her cookies without looking at a single fortune.
Daylight crossed the couch. Tamara and Mirror were both asleep when I left and stepped outside, still drunk. I unbraided my hair. Brown and crimped, it fell around me. I shook my head. A car started. I turned. Steam rose from the windshield as it warmed. It was Sunday. The street with its shuttered bistros and gated shops was half in shadow and where light struck the road, gray vapor shimmered. I walked out and set my feet upon the centerline and headed home.
I saw a group of pregnant women by the yoga studio. They rubbed their goldfish-bowl and snow-globe bellies. I could have gone around them but I walked until I was deep in the abyss of that winter aquarium. Annette and Jimmy. The Black Ocean and the baby rats. Credence, Grace and Miro. Everything, all of it, was on fire. The only thing to do was pass through cleanly. Everything would still burn. My cheeks would still blister and my hands blacken. The only thing that made any sense was the bomb threat because that’s where instinct met action, clarity.
I turned onto our street and leaves blew across my path and skittered sideways like crabs, rattling up the sidewalk and settling on the grass. They were all over our porch. I put some in my pocket walking up the steps.
Annette was hanging a black lace shawl over a mirror in the entryway. The rayon fringe angled down leaving a corner of the glass, splattered with yellow paint, exposed. She hung then re-hung the shawl but there was always one part of the mirror uncovered.
“It’s a Jewish thing anyway,” she said and let the shawl drape like a sash across the frame.
She sat down in a chair by the door. In her hand was a cordless phone. I stayed back because I smelled like vodka and didn’t want her to think I was out partying while she and everyone else she knew were getting ready for the funeral and police riots that were certain to follow. I tried to tack the shawl up again and finally got it to stay. Annette watched me the whole time but I wasn’t on her mind. I was just another thing in the distance. She wandered into the kitchen.
On my way up the stairs I thought about something Tamara said. She said the black community is our Lord Brahma and that every time we try to escape their gaze another head grows and looks down at what we’ve done. Then the conversation had descended into debates about exoticizing minorities and ended up somewhere on the banks with the rest of the mud bricks of the pyramid. I went to sleep and dreamt of tidal waves. When I woke, the world was washed clean and the streets empty of water. But then I realized it wasn’t over. It was only the drag of a great wave calling all of itself to itself, gathering. I looked at the dry road and knew that I was between moments.