by Mia Garcia
There’s a burst of laughter to my left, and a group of girls run out of what has to be a hidden public restroom. I say a prayer that it is at least semi-clean and head inside where I take one look at myself and immediately scrub my face with the hand soap. It’s impressive how easily dirt can cling to your skin, shirt, hair. After redoing my ponytail, I pull my backup tank and deodorant from my bag—just because I can’t smell the stink doesn’t mean other people won’t.
Using the dirty shirt to rid myself of the last of the sweat, I pull the new tank on and head out the door, back to my freedom.
I follow the beat of my heart down one street after another, not knowing how long I’ve walked, until I realize it’s not my heart I’m hearing, it’s music.
The beat of drums and cymbals and trombones travels up my legs and sinks into my skin as if I were the instrument itself; the beat moves forward and I move with it, weaving through the streets until I’m deep in the current of this magical, writhing mass. All around me bands of fairies, demons, and leprechauns head down the streets, inviting me into their revelry. I twist around, capturing every single amazing flash of color—blues, fuchsias, yellows—and it takes a moment to identify them as people.
What is this? I wonder when I bump straight into a fish wearing a tutu.
Not really a fish—obviously—but a man around my father’s age, his brown skin dusted with powdered gold, a vibrant pattern of blue and green scales painted all over his arms and legs, and on top of his head a coral-shaped crown made of aluminum foil and spray-painted gold. A snort quickly escapes as I imagine my quiet-as-a-mouse dad wearing a tutu and fairy dust.
“What you laughing at, girl?” the man shouts with the brightest smile I’ve seen in ages. I can’t help but smile back at him—he’s contagious.
“You look AWESOME!”
He tips an imaginary hat. “Thank you, child. Takes a village.” Looking up at me, he drops his smile. “But where’s your costume? Don’t tell me your village was out today!”
He laughs at his own joke, like my dad would, which I usually never find funny but for some reason is very charming whilst wearing a tutu.
“I—don’t actually know what’s going on right now,” I yell over the blasts of the horns. The music seems to be coming from every balcony, every corner, every plank of wood. New Orleans is made of music, and I am right in the thick of it.
“What you mean you don’t know? You in New Orleans and you don’t know it’s Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, girl?”
I shake my head. “Guess not.”
“Well”—he pauses for effect—“it’s Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, girl! One of the biggest celebrations of the year—and my favorite. You in luck.” His many-layered tutu sways with his hips. “And so is everybody here, especially me!” His laugh travels up, up into the beat. “We’re all heading up to the Maple Leaf for the parade if you want to come with. You better do something about your costume, though. Shows a lack of imagination walking around like that—plus it hurts my heart. And nobody hurts my heart, young lady, not even a pretty little thing like you.”
With a flick of his hands he shoos me away. “Go on now. The next time I see you, you better sparkle.”
“Sparkle?”
“Um-hmm.” He waves as he travels into the throng. “All that glitters! Don’t break ol’ Julius’s heart!”
“Julius?”
He nods. “Like the caesar.”
“How do I get to the Maple Leaf?”
Julius turns with a swish of his skirt. “You can walk for an hour, or take the streetcar, or you can scoot onto that van over there.” He points to a van painted just as bright as the people around it. “Don’t keep Mid-Summer waiting!” And with a wink he is gone, swallowed into the pulsing heart of the city.
Pushing my way against the crowd is harder than I anticipate—how do salmon do this? But then I spot a grocery on the corner and dive in. The cool air and fluorescent light have a calming effect I wasn’t expecting. I walk through the aisles unsure of what I’m looking for when it hits me.
I snag a roll of red cellophane, two wire hangers, and some clear tape.
“Do you mind if I stand over here and take all this stuff apart?” I ask the lady behind the counter after I pay.
She looks at me for a while. “Nah, guess not.”
I break into the hangers first, reshaping them until they look somewhat like butterfly wings. Then I wrap them in the red cellophane, probably left over from a Valentine’s Day promotion or something. When I’m done I secure them to my back with bits of tape. They promptly fall down. On my third try I’m ready to give up.
“You need extra support,” the clerk says. I guess she’d been watching me all along. “Hold on.” She picks up her purse from under the register and moves stuff around, pulling a pair of heels, a dress, and a million other things from her bag. She is maybe twenty-five? Twenty-three? Her bleach-blond hair and hazel eyes spark with amusement as she finally excavates a few large safety pins. “Here you go; this might help.”
“Thanks!”
After another failed attempt at putting wings on myself, the clerk snatches them out of my hands and motions me to turn around. “I’m going to pin these to the back of your bra—is that all right?” I nod and she pins away.
“Can I ask you a quick question?” I say.
“Mm-hmm.”
“That, like, random van taking people to the Maple Leaf out there? Is that legit or should I be worried?”
She muffles a laugh. “Legit. The OAK Krewe sometimes helps coordinate them—they put on Mid-Summer. Helps with the traffic and all.”
“Awesome, thanks!”
When she’s done I wiggle from side to side, testing the strength of my new wings.
“Not bad,” she says. “You’re missing something though.” She digs back into the purse and pulls out gold-hued eye shadow and what I think is body glitter. “Um-hmm. All that glitters, come here.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t really—”
“All that glitters,” she repeats, a bit annoyed now.
“I’m sorry . . . I don’t.”
“It’s this year’s theme. All that glitters or glistens, shines, or whatever it is.”
“That doesn’t really mean . . . ,” I reply.
She waves me off. “I know what it means, don’t get hung up on it.” She motions me forward. “Plus every now and then you need a little something in your life—something that shines so bright it pushes everything else away. Right?”
Her words echo. Something that shines so bright it pushes everything else away. It’s just what I need.
“Come on now.” Her patience is running low, and I step forward.
“Do you always carry all of that in your bag?”
Smiling, she tells me to close my eyes. “I do if it’s Mid-Summer. Store closes in about an hour, but the party is just starting! You think I can make it home to change with this crowd? No way—gotta be prepared. Got myself a nice mermaid costume tucked in the back. My skin’s already itching to put it on and head out.”
“Well, I bet you’ll look amazing.”
“Oh I will,” she says with a smile. Satisfied with her work, she sends me off and motions to the person behind me. “Next!”
I exit the store transformed with wings on my back and glittery—no, sparkly—skin ready for Mid-Summer. The van ride takes no more than ten to fifteen minutes—it’s all a blur of bumping into other fairies, tangled wings, and mermaids who share the same electricity, the same anticipation, as we near our destination. We flow out of the van like memories caught on a slow shutter speed: bursts of energy rushing into the world.
I disappear into the crowd, dancing with strangers, alive, free, and for the first time in a very long time, I don’t think of Adam.
WHAT FOOLS THESE mortals be! I think as I travel from block to block. The party is endless and unstoppable. When the wind coils around us we twirl, letting it pick up our skirts, ready for a dance. Every corner, ever
y alley is infected with music, dance, and sweat as we all parade down the street as one big entity. Ahead of me I see a sun, dripping glitter as it’s pulled along by a motorcycle, while behind me someone has recreated a chunk of the ocean floor out of pipes and streamers. I can’t help but be disappointed in the few who haven’t bothered to dress up. I shake my head, channeling Julius, although by the end of the night they will shine with us all.
I catch a glimpse of a tutu and I run, sure I’ve caught up with Julius, ready to show off my wings and my sparkle, but I end up being sorely mistaken as the man I approach is not only not Julius, but his costume and attitude lack Julius’s lively imagination. I am not impressed, and he is not amused.
I don’t let it stop me; the rhythm carries me from one block to another. I follow brass bands, dance with strangers both young and old to music I’ve never listened to. It is loud and fast but lacks the shallowness of most dance music, like it has a soul, a story. Quick but not repetitive, each swell takes turns I am unfamiliar with; the type of music you can’t overthink. For a moment I close my eyes. I want to let go and dance until my body breaks away into hundreds of little notes, floating above the crowd until I disappear. Truly free.
I bump up against a tall, broad-shouldered stranger, a deep smell of whiskey surrounding him like a cloud. I crinkle my nose as I turn to apologize. Then I freeze. He looks just like Adam.
In Hindsight
I LOVED MY BROTHER, ADAM—NO . . . NO. I LOVE MY BROTHER, Adam—I have to stop doing that, I really do. It’s the anger talking and screaming and doing most of the thinking. Oh yeah, and the guilt. Anger and guilt are what drive this ship these days mostly—but they weren’t important, not back then, not in the time before everything happened. Now it seems like anger and guilt are all I have left, anchors during this screwed-up situation that I never thought I’d be in. But that’s the now. Back then I was happy. I went to church. I smiled all the friggin’ time and ate without my mom having to yell at me. I didn’t snap at my friends or refuse to see them or refuse to talk to anyone for days. . . .
More important, back then I was just a girl who missed her brother. My amazing, strong, older brother who made the perfect Sunday pancake; who knew just what scary story to tell me so I couldn’t sleep a wink at night; who knew when I needed him to defend me at school and when I could handle things on my own; who knew I needed to share a laugh or roll my eyes at our parents when they acted ridiculous; and who went off to war to do his duty and left me behind.
Despite how proud we all were of my brother, I missed him terribly—as did our parents, of course—there wasn’t a Sunday Mass where we didn’t pray for his safe return and the return of all the other soldiers out there. “What kind of people would we be if we only prayed for our own family?” my mom would say. I never answered. I didn’t—and still don’t—understand why it’s selfish to pray just for the ones you love. I smiled and joined my mother in a prayer for every soldier in the world and their families, but silently, in my own heart and mind, I only prayed for Adam.
It had been almost a year since he’d been gone—his gnawing absence a wound that was scabbed over and picked on occasion to reveal the pulsing pain of loss. Was he okay? Did he think of us? What did he do every day? Did he . . . kill people? Would God forgive him if he did? Would I?
We went on with our days, my parents pretending to care about what I did, hanging out with friends, having fun, only to have the guilt bombard me at night, keeping me up, until exhaustion won.
Also, funny thing, when someone you love goes off to war, it’s like you aren’t allowed to say how much you miss them, at least not to other people. Well, you are, but you have to then agree that he’s doing the right thing and fighting for his country and missing him becomes this childlike statement that gets swept under the rug, like “I’m bored” or “Are we there yet?”
I’d encountered this phenomenon more than once in the year he was gone and most always from an adult asking me how we were holding up and how my parents were. “I miss Adam,” I would always say, and they’d nod and tell me all the good he was doing overseas as if it couldn’t get done by anyone else, and aren’t you just being a bit selfish, young lady? At least that’s what it felt like.
Then they’d smile that sad, pitying smile and pat me on the cheek, and I would make a note not to talk to anyone about Adam.
I missed my damn brother. Let that be that.
By then the emails had stopped between us—he simply didn’t have the time to write back, my parents insisted. But I kept going—I kept writing—almost as if to spite everyone, I didn’t care if he read them or not, I needed to write to him, to tell him about my day and who said what stupid thing in class and wasn’t it just ridiculous that such and such happened. I imagined Adam poring over my words, remembering what it was like to be back home surrounded by those he loved and maybe those he hated, clinging to the normal in any way he could.
A year after he was deployed we got word my brother was coming home. We were beyond excited—we cleaned and scrubbed every single surface of the house, bought all of his favorite snacks despite my mom’s opinion on what the Lord thinks of sugar. We fixed his room till it was so perfect it hid all our worries.
When he walked into the house, I leaped into his arms, crying and saying how happy I was that he was home. He patted me on the head—“Me too, kid, me too”—and hugged our parents. He excused himself and passed out on his bed. That was fine, of course, he was tired; he’d just come back from a war and needed rest. We ate dinner and had dessert without him. We left him a serving in the microwave in case he woke up in the middle of the night.
We did this for one week straight. I’d wake up in the morning and Adam would be asleep in his room, and he’d still be there by the time I got back from school. We didn’t pressure him—he needed time, my parents said. We didn’t know what he’d been through, and it was best not to pressure him into doing anything he didn’t want to. Lots of people weren’t lucky enough to get their loved ones back.
But I was impatient. I stayed up late and watched his door until my eyes burned, only to fall asleep and wake tucked into my own bed. I knew it was Adam who carried me to my room; my father’s had a bad back for most of his life—he can only manage a good-sized book and that’s it. I kept on watching, hoping I would catch him eventually.
I did. One night I woke up snuggled into my bed when I heard the scuffle of plates and ran down to the kitchen to join him. He slammed the microwave shut, pressing the buttons as hard as he could.
“Gee—trying to wake up the whole house?” I said, hoping he’d heard the lightheartedness in my voice. Adam and I were finally awake at the same time; we could finally talk or not talk and just sit in the same room together, which was totally fine, as long as he let me stay. I said a silent prayer that he would.
“Sorry, kid.”
“S’okay.” I sat down by the kitchen table and watched him scrambling for utensils, then searching for a glass, and finally pulling out Dad’s secret stash of whiskey, which wasn’t really a secret. He kept it at the back of one of the cabinets in plain view and took it out to mark special occasions. I’d only seen him crack it when Adam graduated college, and I’m sure he would’ve opened it again at Adam’s arrival if he’d been awake at all this last week.
“That’s for special occasions,” I said because I’m such a Goody Two-shoes and I was worried. But now, in hindsight, I think I could see it, feel it in the pauses and stilted conversation, in the cautiousness I felt when approaching him, like he would break and shatter into something sharp.
If I’d only known how little my brother was holding it together, how large the cracks were.
Adam poured enough to fill half the glass, then looked up at me. “I’ll tell you a little secret I learned while I was deployed, kiddo. Every day you’re alive is a special occasion.”
He downed the whiskey in two swigs, and for the first time since he’d gotten home, Adam smiled.
So I smiled back.
The Midsummer Boys
THE SOUNDS OF MID-SUMMER HAVE DISAPPEARED IF ONLY FOR a moment, paused, waiting for my mind to catch up to my heart.
It’s just me and the whiskey breath of this stranger, Adam’s twin, leaning toward me.
“Sorry.” I recover and try to compose myself, but I lose my rhythm and stumble to the ground. The Adam look-alike tries to reach for me, but I wave him away along with the memory of Adam. He shrugs and continues on, leaving me on the ground as the party goes on around me. I am a rock in the flow of a river. It parts but doesn’t stop.
“You okay, honey?”
I turn my head and look up into a lovely set of brown eyes and a warm smile. A woman of about eighty extends her hand to me, lifting me up. There’s no trace of the Adam look-alike, and I shake off the thought that it was in any way a sign that I should be back with the group. I smile up at my helper.
“Yes, thank you. Just lost my place.”
“Well, it’s right here.” She motions me to follow her back into the mass, and I do. “You don’t want to miss the Midsummer Boys!”
“The what?”
She’s dancing away from me, and I marvel at her stamina. I’m shaking my head, back into the sway, watching this woman who could be my grandmother shimmy with more energy than I’ve ever had, when I see him. I mean, I see the whole street band tucked in front of one of the many stores down the block, momentarily stationary, but I only really see him.
I stop staring, because I was—am—staring, and try to focus on anything else. The balconies, the half-naked ladies in costume—some just half naked; I mean, more power to them—but still I keep drifting back to him, a tall, muscular boy with a ’fro dyed electric blue and a cardboard top hat with big paper donkey ears poking out of its side. He sways back and forth to the music, his smile so wide it takes over his face. I am caught, frozen, as the parade continues to flow. I smile before I can stop myself, and our eyes lock.
