Christmas and my little sister

The last time I saw my sister, Melinda, she was ringing a Salvation Army Bell outside a local store. I dropped some money in the red kettle and said, “How you doing?” She looked the other way. I waited, hoping she would look at me, acknowledge me, till I began to feel awkward standing there. I went inside the store and cried. She was thinner than usual and wore clean but too large jeans and a sweat shirt. She needed a jacket. She probably needed a meal too but there was no way she would let me buy her food.

I was four years old when my parents brought Melinda home and I was enchanted with the tiny baby and the birdlike noises she made. In time she grew to be my little shadow and followed me wherever I went. We were best friends, my little sister and I. We loved the beach where we lived, hiding in Nana’s big house and walking “up street” with our mother and aunts to buy ice cream cones. We measured ourselves by the tall hollyhocks that grew in Nana’s yard. Melinda and I shared three years as
the only children in our small family. I remember them as golden days.

As we grew we behaved as most sisters do. We laughed and played together and we fought over who knows what? We tattled on each other and sometimes swore to be “best sisters” forever. When our younger sister, Annie, joined us alliances were made and broken and sometimes we liked each other and sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we called each other nasty names and, behind our parents’ backs, we hit each other. But when bedtime came the three of us had a ritual that had to do with love and a secret “gopher hole” and I always went to sleep knowing Melinda loved me and I loved her.

We went to the same schools and took music lessons and did all the normal things sisters do. I didn’t always want Melinda around when I was a teen but she wanted to watch this sister she was not familiar with… this sister who dated boys and shared secrets with close girlfriends. After high school I moved to Las Vegas and a year later, Melinda joined me. We were young women who dated young men with serious intentions and for a while we even shared an apartment. We married and Melinda
left with her husband when he went into the Army while I stayed behind. She
came back with a baby boy, my first nephew.

As young mothers Melinda, Annie and I brought our husbands and children together for holidays, birthdays and sometimes just for fun. We enjoyed each other’s company and spent a lot of time laughing. We were family.

Melinda was a tiny, beautiful woman. She wore exquisite dresses and loved tasteful, delicate jewelry. She was soft spoken and well mannered and lived in a lovely house with her husband and son. But something always seemed to bother her; made her feel incomplete. She could not name it.

I don’t know when or why Melinda found drugs. I only know she was soon hooked and there was no going back for her. She lost everything except her son. He was hooked too. Together they lived in a deserted apartment on Stewart and 13th Street with no air, no heat and no water. You would have to be from Las Vegas to know what kind of neighborhood this is. One hot summer day I saw them walking across a parking lot carrying jugs of water, my little sister and her son. I did not stop to talk to them. I did not want to embarrass her.

Sometimes Melinda called me and asked for money. I always told her I would help her find food and a place to live but she wanted money. She became incensed when I said no. She called Annie too and Annie and I talked about what to do but we agreed giving her money would be a mistake. And we felt bad. And guilty. And sad. And Melinda was angry with us. I always believed she would someday turn herself around and we would be sisters again.

A few days after I saw her ringing the Salvation Army bell, I received a note from her. She wrote the Salvation Army was helping her and while she knew her family thought of her as trash this was her life and we could accept or forget her. She wished me Happy Holidays.

I never saw or heard from her again. The following March my beautiful, delicate sister died in the deserted apartment. Her son was with her. That was 15 years ago. She was 48. There is no moral to this story, no message.

It’s just that this time of year Salvation Army bell ringers are everywhere and they bring me vivid memories of my little sister, Melinda.

Storms

flags

Rudy and I visited the 9/11 Memorial just before sunset. There is a flag for each person who died and a wall with their names.


flags


2,996 flags
each precisely placed
stand quietly
bearing witness
and pain

long dark shadows
grow between the flags

listen
did you hear a cry
or was that a bird

look
where that flag stirs slowly in the breeze
is that a face
or a misplaced shadow

wait
stand here
between the shadows
do you feel the void
of lives that once were

10 years later

2,996 flags
silence
long shadows
and memories

painful memories

Ma’s blues

Ma Rainey... one of the greatest blues singers of all time...


“'Cause they say I do it
ain't nobody caught me
sho got to prove it on me."
~ Ma Rainey song


do I remember those times?
law yes, I remember those times
like they was yesterday
fixin’ myself up
of a Saturday evenin’
an walkin’ on down to the
juke joint
fine as I wanted to be
fine as ary one of them
fellows standin’ on the
street corner
lookin’ at the women


I remember the taste of moonshine
the sweet drape of woman arms
heat of a body sashayin’ against me
on the dance floor
oh yeah
I remember the warm musky smell
of a woman’s neck
the silk of her hands
on my gold coin necklace
heat entering me like a miracle

law yes I remember those times
and I miss ‘em honey

I miss ‘em

Delia

I met Delia at work many years ago. She was a tiny, dark haired woman with a bubbly personality and a red hot temper if you crossed her. We liked each other immediately and in time became more like sisters than friends.

Delia came from Cuba when she was little more than a teenager. Sent ahead by her parents to find a job and a place to live she was scared to death but very determined. She frequently boasted of the fact that she had no accent. Oh! She had a very pronounced accent! I loved her malapropisms. “Jet lash” instead of “jet lag” and “like a bull in a Chinese shop” were two of my favorites.

Delia and I spent hours talking about Che, Fidel, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson. We talked about our childhoods. She told me of Havana Vieja, El Malecon and El Morro Fortress. She described the courtyard of her childhood home, the synagogue next door and the laundry that flapped from balconies in the hot sun. I told her about the house I grew up in, the mighty Chattahoochee and rainy summer days in Georgia.

I learned to speak Spanish with a Cuban dialect from Delia. She often thought it was funny to tell me the wrong word and stand back and watch. I once told a woman from Nicaragua that her “chango” was cute. She was furious that I had called her baby a monkey.

Delia loved to cook and I loved to eat. She made me arroz con pollo (chicken and rice) fried platanos (bananas) and my all time favorite, fried yucca. She tried to teach me to cook. We giggled at the inedible creations I turned out and in time she gave up the cooking lessons.

I once rode with Delia to the eye doctor to pick up her new glasses. She blatantly ran a red light. I clutched the seat and squeaked, “Delia! That was a red light.”
“I didn’t see it,” she said. “I’m legally blind without my glasses. Sit back, relax and don’t worry. I won’t kill you! But just in case, say ‘Pio!’ You don’t want to die without a pio.” (peep)

A quiet week day afternoon found us alone in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Las Vegas church, looking for a statue of “La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre"
… "Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. Delia loved her and wanted me to see her. As we searched toward the front a priest came from seemingly nowhere, moving quietly in his sock feet. “May I help you?” he whispered.
“Where is El Cobre?” asked Delia.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre,” she replied.
“We do not have one in this church. We have a lovely bas relief of Our Lady of Lourdes in the apse.”
“Bas relief? You don’t have a statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre? You don’t have a statue of ANY of the saints?” Okay. She was a little loud but she got that way sometimes and there was no one there but the three of us.
The priest pointed furiously at the door.
“Get… Out … Of … My … Church!” he hissed through clenched teeth.
We collapsed in the car in the parking lot, laughing and gasping for breath.
“I wonder what was wrong with him,” Delia said.
We went to the closest botanica and bought a statue. She is lovely, soft blue, carrying her child and floating above a small boat with three men in it. She stands in my house today along with yellow sea shells and a green scapular that a friend gave Delia when she had melanoma some forty years ago.

I don’t really know what happened. A few years ago some small, inconsequential (and they are all small and inconsequential) annoyance came between us. She didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. The annoyance fed on itself and we both became proud and in time we lost touch.

There were days when I thought to call her and didn’t, times when I remembered the love we had for each other and wondered if she missed me as I missed her. I missed her but I was stubborn and fearful of rejection.

Last week a mutual friend called. I knew the moment she said, “I have sad news,” that she was calling about Delia. “She had cancer again,” she said. “She was only sick about three weeks and she left us today.

I am left with the statue, some pictures, and a hole in my heart where Delia used to be. I always thought I would see her again. I always thought we would talk and laugh and eat yucca again. But for pride and fear of rejection, we might have. I will never know.

for Martie

In May of 2006 I wrote this for my friend Martie. I had not yet met her but knew her only through her poetry.

Calico Basin
in the evening
setting sun turns the ruby hills
afire

a young breeze plays fast and loose with
buffalo grass
and Mormon tea turns its pale yellow flowers
shyly
from the glory of the
the red Indian paint brush

cliff dwelling swallows
swoop low in glee
playing catch me if you can
with the cats claw acacia

jack rabbit on his way to bed
turns for one last look at the day

deep purple cactus flowers
close in sleep

blue night slides over canyon walls
and lays comfort on the silent desert

Fiona and the boys...

Fiona and the boys…

I had lunch with friends at Einstein’s Bagel today. We were crunching on everything bagels and discussing the state of the world when Fiona and the boys came in. Everything kind of stops when Fiona and the boys come in. Fiona is a lovely woman, about 25 and she pushes the boys in a triple stroller. The boys smile and wave to the customers. It’s obvious they know they are loved and admired. Brendan and Owen are 3 year old blond, blue eyed twins and Colin is a dark haired, dimpled two year old.

Fiona pushes the boys almost 2 miles for their Saturday treat. She takes them out of the stroller and puts small containers of different foods in front of them, then goes to order her own bagel and milk for the boys. They wait patiently while she opens their milk. No shoving, complaining or screeching for Fiona’s boys. No fits or tantrums when the world doesn’t go their way. The boys talk while they eat and Fiona joins them. Occasionally there’s a “Thank you for sharing with your brother” or a “Please put your milk down and eat” and Fiona’s boys do as their mother asks. If you listen you will discover why they are so well behaved. Fiona treats her boys with love and respect.

When they have finished eating the boys hop down from the table and begin to “tidy up.” They put their trash in the trash can and sweep the crumbs from the table with one hand into the other. They think it’s great fun. Customers stop by the table to chat with the boys and Fiona. The boys are happy to answer, “What’s your name?” and “How old are you?” and Fiona gets the inevitable, “Are they triplets?” She is gracious and soft spoken with an Irish accent as she explains that Brendan and Owen are twins and Colin is a year younger.

After the table is tidied and all the questions are answered and the boys are sufficiently admired and praised by those sitting around them Fiona says, “Shall we get back in the buggy?” The boys hop back in and wait to be buckled and with big smiles they wave and call, “Bye” as Fiona begins the walk back home.

Today someone called out, “I’ll bet their dad is proud of them” and Fiona answered, “Yes! Good bye now!”

But a few of us know the truth. About a year ago, when Colin was not quite a year old, Fiona’s husband decided that he didn’t want children and he left the family. He no longer sees his children and they have simply forgotten him. He does support the boys but Fiona is left with their care and no family in town. She is grateful for her friends who help by caring for the boys while she works and she tries to remain cheerful for her children. She says she stopped crying a couple of months ago and focuses only on her boys. I am not making a judgment about her ex husband; I have no idea why he no longer wanted his children, but I am making a judgment about Fiona. I think she’s one heck of a mother and human being.