“Close. President.”
I wouldn’t want to be President Bush right now. Or anyone in charge of anything. I just want to shut the blinds and hide.
Daddy won’t be home, so I fix your favorite dinner—mini corn dogs and Fritos. After you finish, I go ahead and light the three candles on your cake, and as I watch you licking chocolate frosting off your fingers, I wonder about your future in a world gone totally insane.
What will you face tomorrow? In a year, or five, or a decade? How can I possibly keep you safe when I don’t know what might fall from the sky? Will I spend the rest of my life looking up, or scanning the horizon for incoming planes?
Before today, I was only really afraid of two people. My mother. And your daddy. Sometimes he stares at me and I think he wants to take me apart, and I don’t know why except there’s a piece of him that only appears when roused by anger. So I try very hard not to make him mad. Now, with everything going on, he’ll be ridiculously on edge. As long as he doesn’t take it out on you, I’ll make it all right.
Happy birthday, my angel. I’m sorry this day will always be linked to this awful event, but with time the fear will fade and I’ll do everything I can to make our celebrations happy ones. For now, I’ll share a piece of cake with you. Then we’ll watch Dora the Explorer until you’re ready for bed, and after I tuck you in tonight, I’ll worry about tomorrow.
Ariel
Last Night
Post Gabe-and-Garrett nightmare
I immersed myself in the dream
that is Monica. Once Syrah’s house
emptied we smoked a little weed,
and then it was past time for bed.
You two take my mom’s bed, urged Syrah.
“You’re sure she and her boyfriend are
out of town? I’d hate to surprise them.”
I’m sure. She and the nimrod don’t have sex here. I think she’s afraid I’ll learn something a girl shouldn’t by listening in on her mom. So when they’re in the mood they get a room. And, lucky you, that also means the sheets are mostly clean.
Where’s your sister tonight? asks Monica. One of us could take her bed.
She spent the night with a friend, and if you’d rather sleep separately, okay by me.
No Judgment
Either way. I love that about Syrah. She went off to her own bed to dream about Gabe
or whatever. I was so happy when he finished the cleanup, then begged off for the night.
Not sure if he intuited my negative reaction or if the act of beating people to a bloody pulp tired him out, but he left right away, reminding me
we’d talk after my game.
Once Syrah shut her door, I asked, “You want to be alone tonight? It’s okay if you do.”
It would’ve hurt my feelings terribly, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Feliz cumplea?os, mi bella amiga.” Happy birthday, my beautiful friend, and that’s exactly how she looked there in the low lamplight. Beautiful— wild and dark and unpredictable, like some creature of the forest.
She held out her hand.
Quiero pasar la noche contigo.
We spent the night together.
Monica’s Beauty
Was blanketed by darkness,
but every unique inch of her is pressed into my memory.
All the recent ugliness melted beneath the luscious mocha
of her skin, a whisper against mine, promising tomorrows
saturated with love. Love. I hardly know how to accept the possibility that it’s real, and available to me.
We had no need to hurry, and in the tarrying, I found something unexpected—an exchange of energy so intense I think we could have come without even touching.
But touch we did, with mouths and tongues and, oh, you can hardly imagine the incredible sensuousness of the lowly fingertip when bringing pleasure to a partner is your entire realm of being for an hour or more.
More. Much more, until, completely spent, we fell asleep, safe in each other’s arms. Oh, that was sex as it should be.
What I Can Say
In retrospect
is I still like sex.
But I think it’s better with trust involved.
I didn’t have to worry about doing anything right
or
wrong.
I just had to trust we’d take care of each other, there in bed, but also after, when maybe cake becomes the determining factor, or tamales or a horror flick.
Anything except orgasm
which is not
necessarily dependent on someone wanting to spend the night with you.
What I Can’t Say
With certainty is how I feel about Gabe this morning.
Maybe I overreacted on a purely emotional level.
I mean, he was protecting me, and had he not stepped up, who knows what might have happened?
Still, pulling back from the situation and dissecting his response, I come away
not only disappointed but also a little scared.
Not so much scared that Gabe would hurt me.
I’ve never felt threatened by him before. But then again, how would I know exactly what might set him off?
And that’s what
really scares me— that I never noticed even hints of warning signs before.
Or Maybe