ISSUE 1 — Spring 2016

creative nonfiction

Letter to My Fifteen-Year-Old Self

For every pregnant teen who thinks, feels, she’s alone.

Alma Luz Villanueva

San Francisco, the Mission Barrio, 1960

I see you standing at the very edge of the rooftop, gazing down into the darkness. The garden below. Where the roses are blooming. Your step (real) father, Whitey, tends these roses. Your mother doesn’t believe in roses. You lean into that darkness. No fear. Not really. You were the tomgirl who jumped/leaped roof to roof to avoid the streets for blocks. And just for fun. The thrill shot through your body. You leaned. You leaped. Sometimes barely making it. Barely landing. Fear. Then laughter. Your tomgirl pal following you. Roof to roof. San Francisco, the Mission. Your childhood city.

Why are you leaning at the edge of the rooftop, gazing down into the darkness? The roses blooming. No scent from the edge, but you can see the blood red petals shadowed in moonlight. Some are fully blossomed, ready to shed their beauty. To touch the earth. Die, transform. Some are tight, baby blossoms; tiny slivers of blood red barely revealed. Still in the womb. They sing their whisper song of blood red. Beauty.

You’re pregnant at 15, gazing into darkness. Listening to the songs of the blossomed roses, and the whisper songs of the baby bud roses. Still in the womb. You’re pregnant at 15, alone, at the edge. Leaning. Into the darkness.

Stars pulsing overhead. Some brighter than others. Alive with light. Your favorite place. The roof. View of the city lights. Silence. You sit down at the edge, letting your feet dangle. Night breeze on your sweaty face. You wishing, suddenly, that you still passed as a boy on the city streets. Your night time visits to Dolores Park, sitting high in the pepper trees. The Bay Bridge a shiny necklace across the dark water. A few times you had to run for it when a pervert spotted you, perched so high and happy. Sometimes you sang the old Baptist church song, “I have a joy joy joy joy down in my heart…” And sometimes you sang parts of “Canta, No Llores...Sing, Don’t cry,” the parts you remembered that Mamacita knew by heart. You whisper sing those parts now, your sandaled feet dangling over the edge. And you smile because you see Mamacita, so clearly, in the alive stars, lifting her long skirt. Dancing. You join her, dancing.

You remember the morning ritual of sharing dreams, the hot chocolate, cinnamon on top, steaming your face. You almost always woke up to Mamacita praying, singing to the Child Sun in Yaqui. Her rattle. Tears and joy in that strange, beautiful language you never learned. But you loved to hear. She told you it was a song to El Niño Sol, to be born safely every dawn. You thought if Mamacita didn’t sing that song every morning, there would be only darkness. Night. No Child Sun. Birth. Dawn.

You didn’t know what birth was, being born. Except your mother, Lydia, once told you she almost pulled a sink out of the wall, in the hospital, when you were born. That it hurt like hell, that’s what she said. You asked Mamacita once, “Does it hurt the Child Sun’s Mamå when he’s born?” She laughed, “Every birth has pain, niña, but when la Mamå Tierra gets to hold her child, el regalo de luz...the gift of light, that warm little body, she laughs. Now, tell me your dream, mi Alma.” (All conversation in Spanish, Mamacita never spoke English.)

You would tell her your four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten year old dreams, and she would tell you hers. When you were six you told Mamacita you kept falling in your dream. She gently, then firmly, touched your shoulder blades, left and right, massaging them.

“These are your wings, niña. When you begin to fall in your dream, remember them, where they are. Right here.” Left and right, massaging each one firmly. Gently. “When you begin to fall, remember your wings, open them wide.” She’d spread her arms wide, smiling, her eyes on fire. “You’re ready to fly, niña, remember, open your wings wide. Your wings. Right here.” Left and right, each one.

You remember stealing your first bike as the pre-dawn wind begins to chill you on the rooftop. You lay on your back, the old blanket you hide up there under you. Some of it covering you as you gaze at the brightest star, so alive with light. You don’t know the star’s name- Venus, Quetzalcoatl. Years later you would call this pre-dawn, dancing with light, star by name. This night you remember seeing a brand new bike lying on the street by itself. You were eleven. You walked by the bike twice. No one claimed it, so you did. Riding to Golden Gate Park with your tomgirl amiga, sometimes alone (instead of boring school); riding down the final hills to the so green forest entrance, the scent of green, felt like flying. The magical fern forest, as tall as trees, the sun barely peeked through. Damp earth. The tall fern trees, large flowering plants beneath them. Large purple flowers, the size of a baby’s head, always made you laugh. And when the fairies welcomed you- their small, tinkling voices- you knew you were safe. If they didn’t, you rode away as fast as you could. Flying to safety.

You woke up one morning- your first flying dream- the large mirror over the bed you shared with Mamacita. She was singing to the Child Sun. You stood up and looked down at the bed and saw your self sleeping. You felt so sorry for her, that she had a to be in a body, that you knew how to fly and didn’t need her body. In fact, at that moment, her body disgusted you. You didn’t want to return. You looked into the mirror and didn’t recognize your six year old face. What scared you back to life. Back into your sleeping, dreaming (flying) girl body.

When you told Mamacita your first flying dream, she made you cafécito con leche with still warm pan dulce from the store down the street. But you never told her about the girl in the mirror that didn’t need a body- who returned to live. Your life. Who saw your life and stayed. You sipped your cafécito con leche and ate two fresh pan dulces, celebrating your first flight. At six. With Mamacita.

* * * * * *

You wake up to warmth on your face. The Child Sun licking you with warmth. The bright star fading. You sit up, facing the Child Sun and begin to sing your own song to his birth. And the baby bud roses join you. Still in the womb. You’ll wait for your mother to leave for work, taking your baby brother to his sitter. Then you’ll go downstairs to Whitey’s house (your step/real father), use your key to enter. Fix hot chocolate with cinnamon on top in his clean kitchen Some toast with jam. Go down into the garden to pick some blossoming roses, leaving the baby bud roses to dream. Still in the womb.

(The Birth)

“I can’t marry you. My parents say you’ll have ten kids in ten years.” The boy is crying as you both walk to your favorite restaurant where no one goes. For tea, coffee, a piece of pie. Sometimes the dinner special. He pays. He has two parents and their house is always clean. You go there once. His parents are white and their eyes say, Dirty Mexican. Sometimes you and the boy walk clear to the ocean, talking, laughing, sometimes crying, telling sad stories, and funny ones too. He tells you, “My mother used to tie me up in a chair with clothesline and gag me. She made me stay there for hours and sometimes I’d fall asleep. I learned not to cry or scream, just wait. Till she untied me. When I cried and screamed the rope made me bleed. She’d say, ‘Are you ready to behave?’ I’d nod my head yes.”

Then you and the boy take the trolley back to the Mission, from the ocean. Home. Promising to meet at the corner of 16th and Guerrero. Then one time he doesn’t come. You see him at school and he turns away, his friends laughing. Years later you find out that the word Guerrero means warrior.

Your mother, Lydia, tells a neighbor, “She didn’t want to marry him.” The neighbor smiles kindly into your eyes, “Only the good girls get caught, honey.”

You’re two weeks overdue. The doctor at St Mary’s Clinic, just three blocks from your place, tells you, “It looks like your baby’s small, so that’s okay. Plus, you’re just a kid yourself,” kind smile. But the nuns hate you. They can barely contain their contempt. An unmarried fifteen year old, pregnant, about to give birth in their Catholic hospital. The nuns want you to give your baby up for adoption. They bring in a different nun each time after the kind doctor leaves.

“How do you plan to take care of this baby, child?” Thin lips, contempt. Eyes hard, trying to kill you. You hate them back, refuse to cry. Guerrero, warrior.

“You’re going to suffer for this sin and your baby too. Do you want this for your baby?” You just smile and they finally leave you alone. You also give them los ojos de bruja...the witch eyes. The eyes you’d give to the old church ladies when they’d call you gringita and you knew they went home and broke an egg over their head for protection. You pictured the nuns breaking an egg over their bald heads, and you had to keep yourself from laughing. Guerrero, warrior.

The pains begin around your belly, and your best friend, Judy, is there at your mother’s place. Whitey cooks you special food so the baby will be healthy, and you go upstairs to his place to eat. You also bring your baby brother, John. It’s always clean, some music playing softly, his voice, “Ya look pretty damn good, kid, must be the food so chow down, and your favorite dessert, cherry cake. Hope that baby likes cherry cake, kid,” he laughs.

You’ve been taking care of John, cleaning the apartment, cooking breakfast and lunch. Dinner at Whitey’s. You even go to open house at John’s school, and a field trip to the zoo. When you and John enter the Lion House, just as they’re feeding them, and they begin to ROAR so your bones rattle, he begins to cry. Scream. You pick him up and run for it, like fuck those lions, caged. Their only moment to pretend they hunted, killed that raw mound of meat they’re devouring. That roar. John clings to you, safety. Fuck those sad assed lions.

The pains get worse, so Lydia brings you a ‘screwdriver,’ she calls it, and one for Judy. Orange juice with something funny in it, but it tastes pretty good. You have two. Judy barely finishes hers. You, Judy and Lydia walk the three blocks to Saint Mary’s, joking and laughing all the way. Even the pain is funny (still). John’s with Whitey- “I’ll be up ta see ya, kid, and don’t you worry, women been having babies for-ever!” You think of the baby, the tiny rosebud, trying to be born. Come out of you. You felt her move just once, but clearly, from one side of your stomach to the other. Her foot, that bump. You dreamt her, so you know, her. Her name, Antoinette Therese. You want her to be a queen. You tell no one about the dream, especially the nuns. If Mamacita were alive, you’d tell her of course. But you know Mamacita knows everything anyway. You heard her voice deep in your right ear. Guerrero, warrior, “No te dejas, niña.” She’d toss you out the door when you’d come in crying, to take care of yourself. Fight back. La vida. Guerrero, warrior.

The nuns are shocked, your laughing face. They take you to a room, all by yourself, and leave you there. There’s a window to the street. Guerrero Street. Some trees. You push the window open. Wind. The birds are singing to the Child Sun grown old, tired. Stretches of blood-red-violet. Mamacita had a song for the Child Sun grown old, tired. You hear her voice, the rattle, but not the words. The pain in your belly comes and goes, making you double over and moan. You begin to walk the room between pains and it helps. You’re still a little dizzy from the orange juice drink but fading- no one to talk to, joke with.

You remember how Mamacita floated you when you were sick, so you focus on the fluttering leaves, the sound of the wind, and begin to sing softly- “Old Child Sun, don’t be afraid, go to sleep, dream, in the morning you’ll be born again, Child Sun, don’t be afraid.” Then you double over with the pain but keep floating like the wind, straighten up to breathe the fluttering leaves and walk the room. “Don’t be afraid, old Child Sun, don’t be afraid…”

The door opens. “You should be lying down, not walking around, what are you doing!” the nun shouts. She shuts the window, hard, and leaves.

You get up and open the window, begin to walk again. The pain is like dying lying down, and you’re all alone, but not really. There’s the wind, the trees, the birds still singing, and Mamacita’s rattle filling the room. Her voice. Flotating.

The nun returns, her face full of hate. “I thought you’d be up again, you people!” And you know she means Mexicans, you people. She’s very white, she’ll never have a baby, she thinks God loves her better than you, a fifteen year old girl giving birth, alone. You hate her back, don’t cry. And you think of the baby Jesus born in a manger, his parents poor and wandering. The story goes in the Baptist Church. And you always loved the baby Jesus, and you think of his mother, Mary, giving birth in the cold ass manger surrounded by stinky farm animals. You smile.

The nun slams the window shut, hands you a tiny paper cup. “Here, take these, it’ll make you sleep, it’s bad for you to be walking around like a wild animal.” Face of disgust, hate.

You give her your best malo ojos de bruja and think, sleep. The room is dark, a thin light from the bathroom. Sleep.

You wake up to such pain you scream once, catch yourself and begin to moan. You can’t help it. You wonder how this baby, your daughter you’ve dreamt, is going to come out of you. At this moment it feels like she’s killing you, and, again, how will she come out, you wonder as you moan, the killing pain the killing pain the killing pain…

(Fast forward)

Years later this 5lb 4oz daughter, Antoinette, as Head Nurse Critical Care, will come upon a fifteen year old girl on her rounds, giving birth all alone, screaming. They can’t sedate her. She fights them off. My daughter, to the doctor’s shock, climbs into bed with her, behind her, wrapping her arms around her, telling her, “Breathe, breathe, I’m here with you, you’re not alone, breathe…” The doctor orders her out of the bed. She tells him, “I’m Head Nurse, Dr_____, and you can fuck off!” The birthing girl laughs, relaxes, and gives birth, screaming as the crowning begins, while my daughter holds her tight. “Breathe, breathe, now push…” Later as the girl holds her daughter, she tells her, “My mother was your age when she had me, and you’re going to be fine. You’re a fighter like my Mom, so you and your daughter will be just fine.”

Saddle block. Numb from waist down. They wheel you into a bright, white room. “Turn the mirror, she shouldn’t watch this.” The birth. Your daughter. You’re too young to insist, “I want to watch.” You finally see the doctor holding up a blue baby by her ankles. You felt nothing. Where she came out of. But there she is and she begins to cry, a thin wail. Her tiny body pulsing pink, alive. Later on, your Tia Ruth tells you Antoinette was born on Mamacita’s birth day. A sliver of Mamacita’s spirit, la curandera, the healer, this daughter.

You begin to cry. You want to hold her, but you’re too young to insist. They take her away. He stitches you up. No one speaks to you except for the doctor, once. “Are you glad it’s a girl?” He tries to be kind, but his voice conveys duty. Not the same one you saw in the clinic, whose hand felt warm on your shoulder, kind.

You nod your head yes. The nurse nun says, “She refuses to speak, doctor, don’t waste your breath.” She wheels you into a room with other mothers and she asks, “Do you plan to breastfeed?” Your mind whirls, breast feed, as in how in the fuck do you do that?

“No,” the word comes out of you.

Look of disgust, the usual hate. She returns and wraps thick bandages around your still-girl breasts. “So your milk dries up,” voice cold.

They promise to bring your daughter the next morning- the Child Sun’s warmth filling the room- you’ve been waiting for hours. One nurse nun said she was bringing your daughter right away, but it’s been hours. You finally insist, “I want to see my daughter.” The woman next to you says, “They promised to bring her baby a couple of hours ago. I’ve already held my baby many times.”

“You’re breastfeeding,” the nurse nun says, warmly. Warmly. The woman is older and white, and she later tells you this is her sixth baby, that she’s Catholic. And she asks, “Are you going to keep your baby, hon?”

She’s so tiny, your daughter. You open the blanket. The wonder of her perfect body. She’s perfect, her so tiny, pink rose toes. Her perfect, translucent hands, each delicate finger. There’s a wound on her belly button, still bloody. You open her diaper- a girl a girl a girl.

A young nurse nun brings a bottle of milk- you’ve never seen her before. “What’s her name?” she asks, handing you the bottle.

“Antoinette.”

“What a beautiful name for a beautiful baby,” she smiles. “A friend is here to see you, so when you finish feeding Antoinette I’ll let her in.”

“Thank you,” you smile into the young nun’s kindness. Sweet face. She’s probably eight years older than you, her twenties, you realize, and you wonder if she’ll become a nasty ass nun when she’s older.

As you feed your daughter, your breasts begin to ache under the tight bandages. It would be this way for the next four days, as they change the wet, sticky bandages. The young nun nurse changes them twice, each time tears come to her eyes. She bathes your girl-breasts in warm, soapy water- the other nurse nuns with cold, soapy water- and she strokes your hair.

Your mother, Lydia, finally comes on the third day after work. “You’re a mother now,” she says coldly. Just those words.

A week later, when your daughter’s wound on the belly button falls off, you think she’s falling apart. You bundle her up and run to St Marys crying. The kind doctor explains, “That’s where the cord was between you and your daughter when she was inside of you. That’s how you fed her, that cord. She doesn’t need it anymore, so it fell off. Now you feed her without the cord, isn’t that right?” He touches your shoulder, that warmth.

You stop crying, nod yes, and walk back to your mother’s place, holding your daughter tightly. So you don’t drop her, ever.

Your daughter would have colic and cry/scream for a long time after you fed her, every hour or so, in the beginning. You found that laying her on your chest, your heart, she’d fall asleep, and so would you.

One night, she was in her bassinet- the one you decorated with lace and ribbons (yes, you stole them from the five and dime store). You woke up to Lydia’s voice yelling, “SHUT UP SHUT UP!” She was shaking the bassinet, hard, yelling. You were up in one movement, throwing Lydia against the wall- you’d not ever touched her this way.

“If you ever touch my baby again I’ll kill you!” you screamed. You picked up the bassinet with crying Antoinette, taking her to the front room with the sad assed couch. Brought your blankets and slept on the sad assed couch with her on your chest, your heart.

The next morning the cops came. She told them you threatened to kill her. You told them why, crying- your baby, your daughter, barely a month old. Both cops looked at you with pity, telling your mother, Lydia, to work things out and left. She banged things around; it was Saturday, no work. She didn’t touch the bassinet, but she banged things so loudly your daughter woke up crying.

You took your daughter, your baby brother, up to Whitey’s place. He fixed you all a pancake breakfast with bacon. “You could live here for awhile, kid, I’ll take the couch. There’s no talkin’ to that woman, I know.”

You tell him what happened, why you threw her up against the wall. His face goes red. With anger. “Yeah, you and that baby stay here till we can work something out, maybe your own place.”

You’d go to welfare, holding your daughter tight. You’d stay at Whitey’s for a while, taking care of John, but not going into Lydia’s place. You’d never return to her place again, to live. To trust her. She was your birth mother, that’s all. She was not Mamacita.

When you finally got your own place with a roommate, one year older- she worked as a waitress and she was Mexican like you. You stopped taking care of your baby brother- and that broke your heart, but you couldn’t be your baby’s mother and his at the same time. She would yell, “Shut up!” when he cried and forget he was just hungry. You told Whitey to make sure John ate, especially dinner.

“Don’t you worry none, kid, I’ll be on it.”

“Even when you drink cause I’m coming back to check on stuff.”

“Dinner’ll be ready every night, so you and John eat here, you understand, Pocahontas.” This made you smile, your old name. “I’ll make sure things are okay before I get friendly with Jack Daniels, don’t you worry, Pocahontas.”

Whitey would pay your part of the rent and bring groceries every Saturday when he wasn’t being friendly with Jack Daniels. And when he and Jack got together, he made sure to bring you money before he did. And he’d bring your baby brother, John, leaving him for the day. Your daughter in a stroller, your brother in a swing, laughing. Hamburgers, fries and a milkshake later with the $20 Whitey gave you. Later, he’d give you $60 more for the week.

You don’t tell your roommate, Jeannie, about the Child Sun. She wouldn’t understand. She lived in an awful foster home and ran away. She tells you she was beaten with a belt all the time and shows you the scars, and you cry with her. And sometimes you have to throw out some guys she’s drinking with, and you know you have to move again. One of them grabs you by the arm and calls you a fucking bitch, and you won’t allow them in the apartment anymore. So now Jeannie’s mad at you too- “So what if he grabbed your arm, what are you a princess?” Her scars. The one on her face from the belt buckle.

You begin to plan, the edge of things. But not the roof- you don’t want to jump into the darkness. You want to live in the light, the Child Sun, with your daughter. The blossoming bud rose. Antoinette.

Guerrero. Guerrera. Leap into the light.

—Alma Luz Villanueva is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently, Gracias, and four novels, most recently, Song of the Golden Scorpion. She lives in San Migeul de Allende, Mexico, and teacches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program, Antioch University Los Angeles. Read more at www.almaluzvillanueva.com.

Polaroid

Brent Watkins

Recently, I happened to catch CBS Sunday Morning. The program is an oasis in the otherwise parched landscape of morning television news shows. It was Labor Day weekend and they were doing a segment related to notable celebrity’s work ethic.

John Waters was talking about how he owed his success to being persistent in his craft. The idea of seeing John on a major network morning show made me feel old, much like when I first heard Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” as the background music for a Carnival Cruise commercial. Funny how songs that used to piss off my parents now show up in ads for Viagra and pain relievers.

When I met John, I was a student of cinema studies at the University of Iowa. While my dorm mates were pulling all-nighters cramming for their exams in computer science, biology, electrical engineering, or whatever, I was out drinking, smoking dope and pointing my super 8 camera at whatever I thought was amusing. I’d edit together these little vignettes and, thanks to the fact that I’d had a camera in my hand since I was 8 years old, would get an easy A.

In 1981, John Waters was unknown to respectable society. For the counter-culture artsy types like myself, he was a god. Anyone brave enough to film a drag queen eating dog shit – REAL DOG SHIT – was aces in my book.

Jamie, my girlfriend at the time, idolized him just as much as I did. When we heard he would be the featured speaker in the monthly film studies lecture series, we were ecstatic. He was touring college campuses for the release of his third film, “Polyester” which would debut “Odorama.” As attenders of the Iowa premiere, we received 5 X 9 cards with a series of large numbered scratch-n-sniff dots. John’s brilliant innovation in cinema was the vision of an entire movie theatre full of people with these cards, all scratching and sniffing at the same time. The room would immediately fill with the odor indicated by the flashing number on the screen. The smells he chose were disgusting: Dirty shoes, flatulence, model airplane glue, to name a few. Too bad I didn’t buy an extra movie ticket so I could save an untouched Odorama card. I could name my price on EBay.

Instead, Jamie and I chose to buy John’s first book, “Shock Value,” as a memento from the event. There were no more than 50 or 60 students in attendance. After he concluded his hilarious, profanity laden lecture about the simplicity of his films, Jamie and I approached with his book in hand, asking for an autograph. I didn’t think twice about buying the book together, or asking Waters to reference both of us with his signature. In a flash of an eye, Jamie hesitated. Whatever thought pursed her lips was arrested by the joy of the moment. With the flourish of his pen, John waters wrote, “Jamie, Brent – so glad to meet both of you. See you in hell! – John Waters.”

We lingered, chatting with him as long as we dared. John seemed to enjoy our company. That’s when he pulled out his camera, a Polaroid SX-70, and pointed it at the two of us.

“Smile!”

A press of the button, flash of light, and there we were, the image of a couple in love slowly fading into view. He pocketed the picture, then excused himself to greet other well-wishers.

Imagine! John Waters was so impressed with us, he took our picture.

Jamie broke up with me 18 months later. We divided our shared possessions from the 3 year romance. I let her keep the book, though I scarcely imagined her wanting it -- a book now stained by her ex-boyfriend’s name.

Fast forward to a week ago. Depressed, I was lying in bed binge watching movies on Netflix. A new doc about the Polaroid camera caught my attention. About halfway through the film, a 20 something girl with braided red hair and a lacy cotton blouse began crying.

“I know there are people dying in Haiti and children being trafficked in Thailand, but this is a big deal to me. Life won’t be the same without Polaroid film.”

She was overwrought that Polaroid would no longer be producing their SX600 color film stock.

To my surprise, the documentary cut to John Waters. He explains how he’s kept a library of thousands of Polaroid pictures that he accumulated over the decades. He too lamented the demise of the Poloroid as he thumbed through trays and trays of head shots. My heart stood still, knowing that in one of those trays, was a picture of me and Jamie from 34 years ago.

I would like to say we were among the handful of Poloroids he chose to share with the filmmaker. Sadly, we were not. It didn't matter, really. My mind was already spiraling down a wormhole. I couldn't get Jamie off my mind. I spent years suppressing the memories of our relationship. The rapture of being twenty-somethings in love, all to come crashing down when suddenly, and without explanation, she broke up with me.

Three years later, I would be engaged to marry my wife, Jackie. A woman I adore and who excels in every regard beyond any other woman I've ever been with. Unfortunately, it was only a month or so into our engagement when Jamie would re-appear quite unexpectely. It was at a party of a mutual friend's. This mutual friend had also gotten engaged. Instead of a large, expensive wedding where hundreds of guests would be invited, they opted for a low-key ceremony with their immediate family. The party we were attending was the opportunity for their larger social circle to offer well-wishes prior to the happy day.

There she was. I thought, what with the few years that had past, I might briefly chat with her. I hoped I could get the closure that was lacking. After making introductions, I asked Jackie if it might be OK for me to speak with her for a few minutes. She knew about Jamie. When it came to my past relationships, Jackie had been the grand inquisitor. She was determined not to make the same mistake as she did with her first husband, who betrayed her with a broad swath of secrets that would surface less than a year into their marriage.

Jackie reluctantly agreed to our having a brief chat. Unfortunately, the time it took to exchange superficial pleasantries was all the time Jackie was willing to allow. At the point Jamie told me there was something she wanted to say to me, Jackie made it clear that if I spent any more time talking to Jamie, she would call a taxi and there would be no wedding. The threat made my choice a no-brainer. In fact, I was relieved I could tell Jamie, "Thanks, but no thanks," and return to the side of my bride-to-be.

In the years the followed, my preoccupation with the conversation that never was began to grow into an obession. Not an obsession with the thought of what might have been, or regret we were not meant to be. No, simply the obsessive curiosity with what exactly it was she was going to say? Surely it would have given me the closure that might cleanse at least one compartment of the vast recesses of unresolved issues that contributed to my lifetime of self-loathing.

While I binge watch television when I’m depressed, when manic, I obsess about past regrets. I mean really obsess. Now it was Jamie. The conversation that never was. I thought about it every waking moment. This led to an appointment with my therapist.

He had an idea.

“You’re a writer. Why don’t you script the conversation you would have had?”

Brilliant! I didn’t have to think twice about it. I knew he was on to something. That evening, I sat down to my desk and penned the conversation we never had.

“Brent, could you walk for me for a few minutes, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I’m sorry I never gave you much of an explanation about why I broke up with you.”

“Go on.”

“When I moved back home I felt like I was such a failure. Dropping out of school was the last thing I wanted to do. I realized I used you as a crutch for trying to hang on to something that wasn’t working – and I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about me. I was depressed. I blamed you for my depression. I’m sorry. Really, it wasn’t you as much as it was me.”

“You broke my heart.”

“I’m sorry. Seems like you’ve landed on your feet, though.”

“Yes. Yes I have.”

“Are you in love?”

“Uhh…well…I think so. Nothing like how I felt about you, though. What can I say? You were my first love. You still haunt me. I keep waiting for the feelings to pass, but they haven’t.”

“Give it time.”

“It’s been three years.”

“Seriously, your fiancé is gorgeous. Strange, but I feel a little jealous.”

With an awkward chuckle, she catches my eye for a moment, then looks towards the ground. Nervous silence. She finally looks up. We smile at each other.

I turn towards Jackie. This time, she waits patiently.

In some kind of mystical reverse process, that old Polaroid snapshot fades from view

…and the camera dies a quiet death.

Brent Watkins has worked as a pastor, writer, filmmaker and television producer. According to Brent, “I’ve spent much of my career telling the stories of others. I now think it’s time I tell my own.” As a writer, Brent blogs about faith, life and living with an emotional disability at www.authorbrentwatkins.com Brent currently lives with his wife and children in Iowa City, Iowa.

Gone, Always Gone

R.T. Castleberry

There were moments--I count two, my mother could have stepped forward as a hero, when she could have brought her children to safety. Instead, she died frightened and worn, in a charity hospital, a widow alienated from her children and rooming with a beer joint companion.

Both my parents began a descent into alcoholic neglect when I was 8, after my father’s only business venture failed. By the time I was 10, he’d abandoned us. (I have 2 older sisters and a younger, now dead, brother) At the time my oldest sister, a teenager, was estranged and living with another family. My mother was trying to keep the rest of us together on the 5 bucks and nightly tips she made as a barmaid.

I remember a particularly harrowing eviction, a short stay at a barmaid friend’s motel and at least three other squalid apartments we lived in during this time. At one point, there were regular door-pounding visits from truancy agents when we missed school, along with an especially humiliating Thanksgiving when I came home to find we’d been the recipients of that year’s school food drive for the needy.

After struggling for several months, my mother turned us over to the care of the county child welfare department. (I was picked up on the street walking home from school, with my mother hanging out of a car door urging me to get in. I went like a sheep. Two hours later I was processed in and being shown a bed.) We were installed in a large, comfortable campus for abandoned children, where we lived for about 3 months. (There were actually 3 large houses on the grounds; two for young girls and one for boys, up to the age of 16. I think the youngest kid I saw was about 4.) The kids were bussed every day to a local elementary school and were clothed, fed and cared for in a professionally-run group home environment. There were chapel services on Sundays, sports and occasional parties on-campus or trips to films or other special events, all provided for us by local charities. Our parents were allowed one Sunday visit a month and I saw my mother at least once when I was there. My father was still in the wind—to this day none of us know where he was, and I wouldn’t see him again until I was nearly 12.

In January of the following year, my youngest sister, brother and I were sent to live with a farm family in the Texas hill country. It was a smaller group home—with 3 other kids there, two brothers and a young woman, and the “parents” were an older couple who’d been taking in kids for about a decade.

Again, we went to the local school, in a small town near the farm, bussing back and forth every day. Despite being in the area for many years, the parents were very adamantly against any of the foster kids involving themselves in school projects. I was chosen twice to appear in after school assemblies and was harshly prevented both times. We did minor chores on the farm, roamed the hill country acres pretty freely, were well-fed and clothed (one of the annual chores was planting rows of vegetables in a truck garden on the property.) and generally treated compassionately.

. The parents were much older and, unfortunately, carried an older generation’s ration of impatience and racial bigotry. I was chastised once for reading a library book about a “n…,” the star baseball player Jackie Robinson. I remember their sneering glee when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

My sister, a pudgy, conventional girl, bonded closely with our foster parents and went back to visit at least twice. She also kept up a steady correspondence until they passed away some time in the Seventies. My brother and I never felt that tug and, though we paid one visit—for a week the summer after we returned home, he and I shied away after that.

My parents were still allowed one visit a month. But due to the long distance (we were about 150 miles from our hometown) and their lack of a car, we seldom saw them. My mother did write, sending birthday cards and Xmas gifts.

At some point towards the end of our 18 month farm stay, my parents reconciled and began a successful campaign to win back custody. One weekend in early summer, we were allowed a visit to their new home—a large, 3 bedroom apartment in a working class area. And after interviews with our caseworker, just before the school year started, we went home.

Although both of them were employed (my father in a manufacturing plant, my mother in a crew of night maids for an office building) they lived as functioning alcoholics. My father tended to drink heavily only on weekends (he had a single 16 oz. beer every night with dinner) though once or twice a year he would go on week-long whiskey binges, foregoing work and leaving us to cover for him with his ever-understanding bosses. Sometime in the 2 years we were in foster care, my mother had taken a nasty fall while drunk, breaking her left leg and leaving a horrific scar above her knee cap. She sometimes drank heavily during the day and from time to time, we’d arrive home from school to find her too incoherent to work. One of us, whoever found her or whoever lost the argument, would make the covering call of “Mom’s sick today” to her boss. She would bounce back the next day. My father tended to ignore her episodes, barely bothering to check as she slept away.

Their work schedules were set so they rarely met up during the week--my father working 4- 10 hour days, my mother from 3-10 in the evening with a half day on Saturday. He made dinner for us and was in bed by 7:30. She came home as we were angling towards bedtime. I did hear them occasionally whispering to each other before he left for work. They tended towards conversations about something we’d done that required disciplinary attention. In the years between our return and his death, they never shared a bed. My mother slept alone in a single bed in the smallest bedroom. My father shared a double bed, with either my brother or me splitting duty. The story we were told was their disparate habits (he was a noisy, restless sleeper) made it impossible for them to share a bedroom. My father was a tall, attractive man and later there were hints that a history of adultery kept them apart.

They did make a weekly habit of meeting on Saturday afternoon, joining up at a local beer joint when she returned to the neighborhood around 3 and he’d finished his own bar rounds for the day. They drank steadily until 10, when they’d buy several six packs of beer and return home to fight.

I was in my forties, having a conversation about family with a girlfriend, before I realized how truly odd my stories of a weekly drunken, parental, bitch fight were. I have an indelible image of the two of them, hammered, swaying into the apartment, a grocery bag full of beer under my father’s arm. They would deposit the contents in the refrigerator, then rage and drink in the kitchen until the early morning hours. We would slip the telephone into an adjoining bedroom for long conversations with friends or sit in the living room, reading and watching television, resolutely not hearing the details. We never interfered and were usually not included in the quarrels. Though the beer and rage often outlasted us, at some point all parties would collapse and head for sleep. The next morning, my mother would lay in her room, usually not dressing out of her sleeping clothes, while my father cooked breakfast and later, dinner. Both meals were normally served to her in her bedroom while the rest of us ate off tv trays in the living room.

My mother was a pack rat. And her job as a maid in a business tower allowed her nightly opportunities to indulge the fetish: an endless stream of letterhead from defunct businesses, discarded ring binders, dry pens, mechanical pencils without lead, desk calendars of every size. In her mind, it was all usable for home and classroom (flip the ring binder over to hide the logo; calendar pages make good memo pads for phone messages). However, the letterhead came in 500 sheet reams, the calendars in rubber banded stacks, the pens and pencils in handfuls that eventually over-flowed the apartment.

Her job was also a source for unceasing, gossipy complaints. She’d found an archenemy in Margie, one of the cleaning crew members, and every shift would end with tales of injury and conspiracy. As she arrived home, unloading her haul of office supplies, my mother’s plaintive recitation was filled with schemes hatched by, favors granted to and insults extended from…Margie.

Perhaps because there was ready, daily supply of newspapers, my mother became a consumer and dispenser of bad news. Forever diving into the pages of both local newspapers looking for stories of crime and sudden, shocking death, she was always prepared to send us out to school and play with warnings of out-of-control buses, cars careening onto sidewalks to crush pedestrians and the lurk of drug addict killers in search of junior high school victims.

My father began to die midway through my junior year in high school. A long-time smoker despite his asthma, he began experiencing chest pains during the winter. (One of my chores was going to the VA hospital monthly to pick up his inhalers; the other was to insure his drinking clothes—blue jean painter’s pants and a heavily starched white dress shirt, were laundered and available for him on weekends.) He’d injured his back slightly in a jobsite accident the previous year and the doctor had given him hot packs to relieve the strain. He dug out the packs and began applying them to his chest, hoping to alleviate the nameless, gnawing pain. By late spring he checked into the VA hospital and in late July died there of lung cancer.

When my father went into the hospital, home routines began to fall apart. Active and in charge of housecleaning, he’d been able to ward off my mother’s pack rat predisposition. With the start of his hospital stay, she soon overwhelmed the house, ignoring our pleas to stop and refusing to allow anything to be tossed away. The best my brother and I could do was carve out bedroom spaces for ourselves. (My sisters had long since departed. The oldest to live with her musician/day worker boyfriend, the youngest in marriage to her high school sweetheart, a sergeant in the Air Force, and their growing family.)

Despite the animosity that saturated their marriage, my mother seemed genuinely frightened of life without him. At his death, she quit her job, filed for his Social Security benefits (my brother and I were eligible too-- as minors, and those were filed for as well), and then, like a Southern belle who’d lost her dear husband in the War, took to her bed. She never left it.

Very quickly, the relationship between the home survivors became one of roommates rather than siblings and parent. Torpor, fear and alcohol gripped my mother and, except for the occasional complaint, instruction or cooked meal, she let her responsibilities as parent slide away. The three of us received monthly government checks and split the bills and rent. My brother and I had high school years left to finish but my strongest memory of this time is signing my own report cards and writing any school notes that would excuse an absence. I assume my brother did the same. My mother never questioned the arrangement or our schedules.

After my brother graduated high school, we were forced to leave the apartment we’d lived in for 7 years. (The landlord had decided to remodel and we were politely asked to vacate.) We relocated several miles away, in a huge, dark, rather crummy complex near an older shopping mall. My brother and I were both working but the living situation continued to decline. I had begun a years-long battle with my own growing alcoholism. He was spending time with friends he’d met carousing in the local gay bars. And we were living with our mother in a corrosive, bickering, mutually boozy collective. I specifically remember one incident that perfectly illustrates the relationship: my brother had given me a bottle of poppers—butyl nitrite, a drug popular in the clubs he frequented. I smoked a joint in my bedroom and went out to watch TV in the living room. My mother was drunk on the couch, burbling incoherently. At every commercial, I would jump up, rush to my bedroom and do as many popper hits as I could during the break, then stumble back to Starsky and Hutch and Charlie’s Angels. That was a Wednesday.

At the same time I had struck up an easy way of buying pot from my older sister. She would breeze in past our mother, go to my room and trade the cash I’d left in a dresser drawer for a stash of weed, then breeze back out. I’d arrive, ask if big sister had come by. If my mother said yes, I’d head directly for my room. We did this for a year. My mother finally caught on when she popped into my room once when I was smoking with my sister and a friend. She stopped, gaped and exited without a word, then or later. Even one Christmas Eve, when my sister and I tried to get her high—as a replacement for the cheap local beer she drank, she only giggled through her haze.

One spring, about 4 years after my father died, I bailed out. I’d been prepping a move for several months, buying the necessary items to stock an apartment. Then a woman I’d been seeing asked me to move into her high end apartment and I accepted, leaving the next day. My brother was understandably pissed at being left with more of the bills to pay. But he followed me out the door six months later, taking with him most of the goods I’d left behind.

Unable to pay for a two bedroom apartment on a government check, refusing to work, my mother ended up living for a few weeks with my oldest sister. That situation quickly blew up (my sister has a vile temper and her common law marriage was freighted with breakups, drugs and violent tantrums from both parties) and soon my mother was sharing an apartment with a friend in our old neighborhood, a block or two from the beer joint she and my father had once spent Saturday nights. I would occasionally hear from her, usually requests for money or complaining news about my siblings. And there was little to no contact with them. My youngest sister was following her airman husband to various overseas assignments and part of the time my brother was living in the Midwest. During this period, my girlfriend had left for college in another state and I started a new, manager’s job, in a new apartment.

Alcoholism, beery indolence, smoking and no exercise left my mother in dangerously poor health. The years of inactivity following her decision to take to bed after my father’s death had left her with six inch long embolisms on veins in both legs. Just after Thanksgiving, I received a phone call, either from her or my older sister, telling me she’d checked into the local charity hospital. She was waiting for her doctor, a well-known surgeon who volunteered time, to find a break in his schedule to operate. When I broke from Christmas work to visit, I could tell she was terribly frightened; the operation was a risky one. And there was the hint as well, that she was wrung out and ready to surrender a hard, disappointing life.

She didn’t make it. The operation was pronounced a success and when she woke from the anesthesia, she was bright and cheerful with the nurses. But the first of four strokes hit her later in the night. And before the last, fatal one, she’d fallen into a permanent, vegetative state.

I got the news at work, midafternoon. I ran for a bus and made it to the hospital as quickly as I could. Reaching the correct nurse’s station, I was led in to see her body, then left alone. I don’t believe I got closer than within 4 or 5 feet. My mother was short, barely five feet tall. I looked at her small, bloated body and uttered the prayer children make over ravaged parents. Then, thinking like a dutiful son for the first time in years, I went out and got drunk.

A 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee, R.T. Castleberry is a widely published poet and critic. He was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has appeared in Santa Fe Literary Review, Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, The Alembic, Pacific Review, Iodine, Foliate Oak and Silk Road. His chapbook, Arriving At The Riverside, was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2010. An e-book, Dialogue and Appetite, was published by Right Hand Pointing in May, 2011.

contributors

A 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee, R.T. Castleberry is a widely published poet and critic. He was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has appeared in Santa Fe Literary Review, Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, The Alembic, Pacific Review, Iodine, Foliate Oak and Silk Road. His chapbook, Arriving At The Riverside, was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2010. An e-book, Dialogue and Appetite, was published by Right Hand Pointing in May, 2011.

Alma Luz Villanueva is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently, 'GRACIAS,' and four novels, most recently, 'SONG OF THE GOLDEN SCORPION.' This non-fiction piece is from an ongoing memoir she’s writing, piece by piece. She’s taught in the MFA in Creative Writing Program, Antioch University Los Angeles, for the past seventeen years. She has lived in San MIguel de Allende, Mexico for the past ten years. Visit her Authors Guild site at www.almaluzvillanueva.com