A young barefoot child in a tattered pair of swim trunks stares under her hand, beyond the ocean and hazy distance, north towards Miami. Such stories she has heard, tales of foot long submarine sandwiches, that she does not have to share with her brothers. Long fresh white soft bread filled with different meat and cheeses, which can be eaten in large unapologetic bites. She imagines the cars that chase down paved roads, lined with shops carrying cell phones, and new shoes, fancy hats, and ice cream. A magical place where her vision can be corrected with lenses so that she can see well enough to understand what her teacher is printing on the chalkboard. She gazes down to her chest and pictures a bikini top to match her weather worn, thread bare bottoms.
She stands on this shore and yearns for a land, and a life she has never known. Far from her blistered feet, humid blankets, empty refrigerator, and weeping mother. Far from, gossiping village neighbours, Abuela’s leg ulcers, skinny cows, and squawking chickens.
She sighs and turns, back to the sun and nimbly steps over the spiny prickly grass along the rocky shore.
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His new wife has been ill for many years, her wit and ambition slow dripping loss, like grains of sand in an hourglass, one granule at a time. He sees the daily changes and tries to ignore it. He knows and yet looks through it. He gives her tasks and errands that he knows will frustrate her, and yet, while she attempts to clean the windows, it gives him some peace to go to the shop and putter.
Family members are commenting, friends are noticing. Her personality is changing, and absent lapses in her memory become more common. She was once his best friend, especially after his wife died, suddenly, Isabel had a great plan to pool their resources, and move in to “see each other through”. She was once a surgeon of stature, his intellectual equal, and stimulating conversationalist. In the early years of their marriage, they were surrounded by exciting groups of friends, travelled to exotic places, danced into the wee hours, and made love, with a smoldering lust that clung to them like smoky damp veils.
He longs for those days, for youth, health, and beauty. He examines the skin hanging from under his arms, runs his hand through his thin grey hair, and is embarrassed when one drooping testicle hits the toilet water, as he sits on the rim. He feels the familiar shame and sorrow. “It came upon us too quickly, no one prepared us for this shit, he mutters to himself as he chokes back 2 Luiten enriched vitamins.
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The erosion was gradual, at first 5 feet in 6 years, and then in the past two years another 10 feet of coastal cliff lost. Carolyn wished her sense of doom would lift. It permeated her, pulsing through her lymph, occasionally forgotten, when she was lost in her garden surrounded by songbirds and bougainvillea.
At the front of the house all was in bloom, the lush green palms, and white oleanders lined the walkway with tropical bird of paradise towering above the windowsills. She and Bert worked their lives to the bone, rebuilding after the crash of 1980. They sold their home and bought a jaded, run down Diner. It was called the Rundown Diner, and they changed the name to the Runaway. They slept upstairs in the hot attic and fixed it up one day at a time. Those working years were long, and exhausting, yet they knew with time the day would come. That day did arrive, and they put their humble savings into a small, sweet cliff side California home, and set out to enjoy out their years caring for it and each other. Hours of pruning, planting, and making the beauty they felt inside shine all around them. Colours, plumes, florets, heavily scented dripping magnolias.
The wind picked up this morning, Carolyn heard a creaking sound and a large crunching crack. She rounded the house and saw in the back left of the garden the potting shed swaying in the wind, wisteria broken pulled from the roof, and the back half of the shed had clamoured down the cliff to the ocean below. She put her hand to her heart and ran to the front of the house and started the car.
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A 20-year lover, suddenly gone. A misunderstanding, no opportunity to clarify or discuss, written off as if his years of devotion had never existed. A man is desperate to be understood. An axe had fallen, a cone of silence, an unfair, brutal, cruel barrier placed, that he tried to cross. He wrote, he called, he was refused, ghosted, and ignored. His heart was broken. He sat in deep sorrow and confusion. The injustice stung. He was not given an opening, he was being judged by one moment in time, measured against all those loving years. A shocking, abrupt excessive and unwarranted final shredding. He missed his lover, and the glimpses of anger he felt were fleeting and always replaced with frustrated tears.
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The rubble was so thick his black runners were now a dusty gray white. Another light in the distance, through the dusty fog and a bomb dropped. He ran with terror to where he had last seen his brother Fahed. None of the familiar street looked the same. He got turned around and, in each direction, he saw concrete, rebar, broken glass and screaming people. He thirsted, he yearned for a glass of cold water. He ran in circles for what seemed hours, exhausted and sitting on a pile of crumbling cement, a tear creased and greased its way down and fell to the broken bits below. He saw an elbow arching out from under the rubble and stared at it in a silent daze. He ached for the days when his family played on the beach, ran with the goats in the fields and sat on towels eating fresh cheese and dates, while abundant pineapple juice dripped down their chins, bouncing on the ground in cheerful drops.
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She slammed the door and ran. She ran to the field, through the square, along the river and turned left by the farmhouse. She knew exactly where it was going to be held. She had been waiting for weeks. It was tonight. Her parents seemed aware something was up, so she had to be fast.
The music pounded inside her, and the cocaine made its way into her brain and the pulsing throbbing beat took over. She gyrated and moved her hips first slowly, undulating, and sensual and then with wild abandon. Strangers moved among, around and beside her, no eye contact, as they whirled uninhibited. Some jumping, the occasional couple grinding hips, others locked lips and tongues. The night moved on, the room spun and rotated, as she swiveled and twirled. Nausea rose and an echoing dizziness crept up from her toes to her ears and then her mouth, she quickly turned and ran to the exit in time to projectile vomit up the Tequila shooters.
Nadia sat outside on a rock fence away from the pulsing barn. She felt so alone. She wanted to be loved, and forgiven. She just needed one person to listen and to understand.
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All of them fervently dreaming, wishing, yearning, craving, aching, and longing.
For dreams to come true, to belong, to be young again, to feel safe, to be understood, to be forgiven, to be healthy, and to live in peace.
And always a voice calls out in the wilderness… bringing Hope.
Cling to it.
Wandering Wakefield 