Black & White

by Cat Oars

  As the fragmented and powdered bits of bone met with the sun and water, there was an explosion of white light. The children looked at each other, then at their hands, and then back into the river, into the face of God.

  They fed their God, handful by handful until everything was gone.

  Missionary Position

  Meme_in_Situ

  MOST MISSIONARIES KNOW to avoid my house, so suddenly I’m surprised when I look out the window and see one with the standard issue brief case, the white shirt and black tie, the creased black slacks and shiny black shoes. Ding dong on the bell. I go to the door and open it.

  “Good afternoon sir, my name is Samuel Gleason and I’m going door to door with this petition – ” he pulls a clipboard out from under his arm “ – that calls for an constitutional amendment that will make all abortions illegal. Are you a registered voter?” He smiles, his teeth as straight and white as accordion keys. I successfully refrain from laughing in his face, though some of my amusement must have come through; his smile gets a little bigger, a little faker. “Abortion is murder. Babies are just as much people as you and I are. How can killing them be right?”

  I look over my shoulder at the clock. I have a few minutes before the rugby match starts. “So you want to make all abortions illegal? Even first trimester?”

  “We are people, we have souls and rights from the moment we are conceived. Abortion is murder.”

  “So you’re saying a single cell can have a soul?”

  He looks a bit confused; this one isn’t on his play list. He decides on a lateral kick: “The baby has a soul from the moment it’s created. We have a duty to God to protect our children, no matter how small they are.”

  “So a single cell can have a soul?” Are his eyes a little glazed or is it a trick of the lighting? I shouldn't take such satisfaction from making him sweat. Heh-heh. “You do know that a baby starts from a single cell don’t you?”

  His smile: He looks like he’s found half a worm in an apple but it’s impolite to spit it out or even show disgust. “Do you think it’s right to murder babies?”

  “Have you stopped fucking your dog?” I figure anyone who asks me a question like that deserves one right back.

  He backs away, his jaw clenched, smile gone. “God will remember this.” And he’s leaving. I hope he makes a note next to my address, a note something like the one the other missionaries have made.

  “Good! I have a few things I remember too.” I call to his rapidly receding back. “Like my puppy that died. And ....” Oh, why bother. I look at the clock. Time for the game. The All Blacks are going to get their asses kicked today.

  Found Floating in the River Lithium

  (for Lisa)

  R_Toady

  Mighty Eros, how great art thou! ... All things fear thee, the wide heaven above and all that is beneath the earth and the lamentable tribes of the dead, who, though they have drained with their lips the oblivious water of Lethe, still tremor before thee.

  – Oppian, Cynegetica 2.41

  THERE WERE THOSE striped stockings; I’ll start with them. You wore those black and white striped stockings as we lay on our stomachs on a yellow bed of gingko leaves and you asked me

  Would you like me to show you how to kiss?

  Your mouth was sweet from the medication

  Your lips were soft and sticky

  Your tongue was warm

  (and if I forget part of the story, I’m just supposed to

  make the rest up, right?)

  … Do you remember an

  early November evening, the sky heavy with the setting sun, the split triangles of the leaves beneath us on the dry grass. And maybe if you hadn’t started having those seizures oh no who am I kidding it would not have made a difference, there would have been something else, something that would have been just as hard maybe even harder. And oh yes, I wanted to run my fingers over those stockings, with no room for maybe, not even the existence of maybe, no lines in between those clear lines ….

  so a month later we were watching TV (Remember?) & you started shaking I pulled your head back so you wouldn’t bite your tongue (I don’t know how I knew to do this) & so it began, ended, continued. I was warned. Kiss me. The next day you fell off your unbreakable stool during art class, your burlap painting of white X’s and black O’s toppling off the canvas after you as you flopped across the concrete floor. I sat in the nurse’s office with you but you didn’t know me. Please kiss me. After that it was the hospital. No room left for indecision, no scissors and no wrists, no sky blue sterile room with straps on the bed, huh, uh … no no it would have made no difference, no goodbyes, overheard murmurs from the nurses station, unbreakable plastic chairs, no belts or shoelaces, nothing that could blur the boundaries, nothing that could cause you to end or change…overheard conversations between doctors “she’s to be kept on Suicide Prevention all night. That’s arm’s length at all times.”

  The small town hospital was not good enough for your father, nor were the doctors; not Jewish enough perhaps … a doctor himself (he was the one who’d been writing your prescriptions), he pulled some strings had you transferred to an expensive psych ward perched atop the northernmost tip of the island of Manhattan; overlooking the river, a gleaming modern palace on the edge of a ghetto. They let you out once and (closely followed by your parents) we walked around the neighborhood, kids peering out at us from behind chain link fences plastered with trash, eyes full of something, I can’t remember. White sails floating across the surface of the dark water origami cranes you picked at your food paper wrapper said you didn’t feel anything.

  They released you, woozy but officially sane; I remember how dark the circles under your eyes shone when you pulled off that mask & I remember the dead voice you spoke with when you told me it was over. “Some black guy tried to rape me in there and I can’t see you anymore” well what could I say to that I bit my tongue. Not for the first time. There was no discussion. It was just turned off. It all just reinforced what my parents had shown me: men are bad and women are, if not exactly good, then at least beyond reproach. I had waited for you & it didn’t matter.

  A few years later I was diagnosed with the same thing as you. It was weird. It was an obvious misdiagnosis but by then it was too late: the prescription was written out & filled & I just drifted along with it. I was already half lost by then, half gone. I swallowed the pills and vanished. For months. It was not a pleasant vanishing; it was not like being drunk or high … did I catch it from you? Is crazy contagious? Is wanting to die contagious?

  (Not that I could ever really completely pull it off)

  It didn’t matter.

  I don’t remember much. I could make up details. Slow motion drowning; I know it’s been done to death. I spent some time up there too, for a while, in that small town hospital, in the ward on the sixth floor just down the hall from where they’d kept you, with the same view of the parking lot out my window. Tried to end it myself. I remember it as being fall but in reality it was spring. They took away my belt and shoelaces and all my meals were served with plastic forks & spoons. It wasn’t bad up there. Everyone was nice, the nurses were pretty. The old widows and widowers loved me. The doctors asked politely if I wanted to receive shock treatment. I said no thank you. When I got out is when things really got bad. They dosed me up hard. I have no idea where I went. The lights went out. Months & months & months disappeared without a trace.

  Eventually I decided I couldn’t do it anymore; flushed my pills down the hopper, shivered through the withdrawal. It took a long time for me to feel normal. Years later you got in touch with me again. You were on something new, said it was really helping. You sounded the same, though. I wondered … we tried to be friends but I was more apathetic than ever. Never really cared enough I guess. Still don’t.

  Eventually we just stopped talking. It’s been a few years now. It doesn’t matter. Not much.

  Mist hangs low over the surface of the riv
er; the entire world has gone gray with fog. All men are the same, all women are the same. All rivers are the same.

  There was a time I could tell the difference between pleasure & pain, good & bad, but those days are long gone. One thing looks like any other thing. Thinking back on those times, and going through difficult days again lately, I now offer up a little prayer, scrawled on a scrap of paper and thrown as an offering into the water that laps at my feet:

  Please cleanse this world

  of all uncertainty

  Please give me the strength to always be

  either one thing or the other,

  to always be either fully alive or to be fully dead,

  but to never ever exist

  in that horrible vague space in between.

  And please let me find the strength

  to forget that I ever did.

  Separate Way

  TapasTonight

  “YOU KNOW, LAUREN, we love you, your father and I. You know that, don’t you, dear? It will never matter what you do, what law you break, what sins you’ve committed.”

  Lauren could feel herself tense as she braced herself for what would come next.

  “You could bring home a black man and we’d still love you,” her mother continued, as if that would settle it for all time. (Proof of unconditional love!) It both disturbed and amused her how Mrs. Wraithborn could measure the depths of parental love against the perceived uproar of her daughter bringing home a man who was not white like them. This wasn’t the first time her mother had used the black man analogy to convince Lauren of her love. She’d heard it ever since she was old enough to date. (I wonder what they’d do if I brought home a woman?) Lauren could only gaze at her mother and smile back. Mrs. Wraithborn’s attempts at bonding with her daughter had often resulted in Lauren’s realization that, in important ways, they were worlds apart. (How did I turn out so different?)

  “Mom, what do you mean when you say that?” Lauren inquired. She hoped the question would not make her mother feel defensive. She really wanted to know.

  “Say what? That we love you?” Her mother looked perplexed.

  “No. That you'd still love me if I brought home a black man. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” Mrs. Wraithborn waved her hand dismissively. “I’m just kidding about that. You know I don’t have anything against black people. Your father maybe does, but not me.” Mrs. Wraithborn went on to recount how much she enjoyed the humor of Flip Wilson and the music of Natalie Cole; her unfaltering fanhood of the “Oprah!” daytime television show, and how, during the holiday season, she always gave “that black mail lady” a hug. (Well! That proves it, then! My mother is NOT a racist!! Shout it from the rooftops!!)

  “Why? Are you saying I’m a racist?” asked Mrs. Wraithborn.

  “No, mom.”

  Lauren did not know how to approach the subject with her mother, or if it would make any difference. It was easier for Lauren to believe that her parents’ way of thinking was the result of growing up in a small town hemmed in by farmland and conservative ways. They were of an era when ‘likes married likes.’ The Wraithborn’s same-colored community must have made them that way.

  “Stay for pie?” Mrs. Wraithborn busied herself at the counter, cutting into the lemon meringue.

  “No, mom, I’d better get back to the city. So, I’ll see you and Dad at Missy’s wedding in two weeks?” she asked, upbeat. Lauren was ready to go. Her mother insisted that she take a slice of pie in Tupperware.

  She kissed her mother on the cheek and went into the living room to do the same for her father, who had fallen asleep in the leather recliner by the television. He awoke briefly and smiled at his youngest daughter and said goodbye before pulling the John Deere cap back over his sleepy eyes.

  On the hour-long drive back into the city, Lauren fumbled for the cell phone on the bottom of her brown leather purse. She could feel the grit of linty tissues and a few loose coins as she did so.

  She flipped open the phone and punched in the familiar code. It rang twice.

  “I was waiting for you to call. How was dinner?” His voice was deep and smooth and familiar. Lauren was in love with this voice, this man. It seemed insane that after a year and a half, she had yet to expose their relationship to her parents. Yet, he seemed to understand the reasons why, and it had not deterred him.

  “Will you come with me to my cousin’s wedding in two weeks?”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” Lauren inhaled a deep, cleansing breath then slowly let it out. “We’ll take Mom and Dad to dinner the night before.”

  You can bring home a black man and we’d still love you ...

  Her mother’s words ran through Lauren’s head the remainder of the drive home.

  Black Leather, White Powder

  Laiadevorah

  COPERNICUS AND I met at the Aztec Lounge. He flattered me with poetry. He was a spoken word artist with an album on the college charts. I was a regular at Aztec. I supplied mix tapes to the manager and occasionally slept with the bartender.

  I always wore black. That night’s ensemble: black fishnets, black leather jacket, black miniskirt and authentic black cowboy boots bought in Tucson. Copernicus wore a white poet shirt and jeans. He reminded me of a young deranged Einstein.

  We had drinks at Aztec and then grabbed a cab to the Voodoo Lounge where I had a gig spinning discs for the 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift for the early after-hours crowd. My music was right on. I segued Souxsie with NWA, mixed Madonna and the Belle Stars with the Beastie Boys, and The Cure’s “Let’s Go to Bed” with “Beat It.” Guys crowded my booth, asking me to play the hits and rolling up twenty-dollar bills to snort lines.

  I played with the rainbow. Nothing was ever black and white. The whole Pantone guide was my roadmap. I spoke conversational Spanish and French. I mixed Hip-Hop and Soul with Alternative Dance. I hung with homeboys, Mohawk Men, Goth Girls, and Eurotrash – sometimes all in the same evening.

  Maybe I was naive? Maybe I was lucky? Maybe I was just more tuned in to my surroundings. The color issue had never surfaced. I looked into the eyes of my playmates and knew who was safe and who to walk away from. Skin tone wasn’t an issue. Though I do believe I ran from clear light blue eyes more often than cloudy brown ones.

  I was in my zone that night. With New Years around the corner, holiday spirits were plentiful. Copernicus showed up in the DJ booth a few minutes before one.

  “Hey Tina Turntable, I wrote you a poem. When you’re done here come find us. Me and Dante wanna take you uptown to a great new club.”

  “Sure, sounds good. But stop calling me Tina, OK? That name’s a joke. I don’t use it anymore.”

  “Aww. OK, Linda. Sorry, hon. Tina Turntable is just so much fun to roll around your tongue.”

  “Roll this.” I flipped him off friendly-like. “I gotta go play ‘Pretty in Pink’ for some prep dude and his Barbie doll. He gave me a twenty.”

  After my shift I bought some drinks and met Copernicus at his table. He was sitting with Dante, Steve, and Tommy.

  Dante was a well-dressed, gold watch, shined shoes kinda dude. Tommy, I knew casually. I found his rough edged blond in black leather biker groove strangely compelling. He bounced a few nights a week at the Milk Bar. I sat next to him. He smelled like earth and had this super charged sexuality, all catlike and sinewy. His stare conveyed tangible heat.

  Tommy was the reason I left caution to the wind and went to Harlem with Copernicus and two black men doing lines of coke and joking all the way to the club.

  Steve drove us uptown in his boat sized Mercury Marquis. He wasn’t quite bouncer material but he was a well-defined black man with beautiful dark lashed eyes and nice clean effeminate hands.

  At the club we were ushered into a quiet VIP room. We sat at a table in a dark wood paneled lounge with a professional billiards table. The chairs were red and the bar was
lined in 50s era scarlet Formica. I drank Grand Marnier and made jokes. Copernicus read the poem he wrote me about a dangerous lady. It sounded like U2’s “Mysterious Ways.” Flattered, I flirted and played my part.

  When I got up to go to the bathroom, Dante followed. I didn’t think anything of it.

  After freshening up my lipstick and wiping the powder off my nose, I found him outside the bathroom door. He asked if I wanted to do another hit and motioned to the stairway door.

  “Sure, I’m up for it.” We went into the stairway. He put the powder on his hand and I snorted it from the web between his thumb and finger.

  “Thanks.” As I turned to go back he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “You know…we been giving you blow all night. I think it’s time you give something in return.”

  “I have some coke too, Dante. Here. I got the next line.” I reached into my purse. When I looked up I no longer felt safe. I honestly believe I saw red devils laughing in his bloodshot brown eyes.

  “What’s up Dude? We got a problem?” His stance changed, he stood tall and his tone went gangsta on me.

  “Yeah, Whitey DJ, my problem is you out of your place up here. You the last chick left in the club? I been watching you all night walking around thinking you so cool in that black leather. This is what I want. I want you to show me your cunt.”

  “WHAT THE FUCK, YOU WANT WHAT?” I flew out of control. I didn’t think about the danger I was in. I screamed. “YOU BASTARD, HOW DARE YOU!”

  He smacked me across the face. I felt the blood rushing to my head. I turned to go and he grabbed my arm. I looked him dead square in the eye. I tasted fear and blood and rage. If I had been packing a weapon he would no longer be on the planet. Maybe he noticed my intent, cause he paused and looked confused for a second.