As a small child, before the many different things they diagnosed her with, there was only one thing that could calm her down.

She would go into these fits. These loud, uncontrollable, maniacal, feverish fits. They were scary, intense, and I remembered in the midst of, wondering if they’d ever come to an end. To watch her during these times created some of the most intense griefhoney that I’ve ever experienced. No amount of cradling, or coos, or song, or rocking could tame her. Leaving her put to let her ride it out only made it worse.

She didn’t speak a single word until she was 4. The noises that came out of her mouth were strange coos and gurgles. Not unlike the sounds of certain parts of  French pronunciation. I was the only one that was able to find a pattern within these vibrations. I knew her language as an involuntary reflex. I was her translator, her advocate.

And then there was this one day…
When finally in the midst of an episode she started speaking in her broken language.
Red ball, she said. Red ball. Red ball. Red ball.

I knew the ball she wanted… It was my twin and I’s favorite ball.

I ran outside and found it. Rushed back in to show her.
Still screaming, still crying, Mother falling apart holding her in the rocking chair,
I waved the ball around… “Ama! Ama! Look! Here’s the red ball.”

Nothing.

I sat the ball on the floor. I ran to my Mother, grabbed my little sister, set her down on the floor near the red ball. Her legs were spread, forming a V. I sat across from her in the same position, our feet pressed closely together… She always had to have physical contact.

I grabbed the red ball, and rolled it to her.
Instantly a deafening hush filled the massive house.
She stopped.
She rolled the ball back to me.
We played that way for hours.

The little red ball, the only thing that worked.

A clown’s nose.
A cherry on a sundae.
A bull’s eye.

Last night, as the doctor’s predicted, she had a psychotic break.
Chances are, she won’t be coming back.

And all I find myself doing, is searching for the perfect little red ball.

Eight years ago I read something about a man named Grace. It moved me so, and I found myself searching for him without realizing.

Grace was my fictitious emotional cherry popper. Prior to him, I had never fallen in love with a fictional character. I was raised to believe that you love the art, not the artist. The music, not the musician. The word, not the writer. You can appreciate them as a vessel, but it goes no further. But Grace, though a product of the printed word, became real in my mind. He wasn’t a character, he was a real person that was out there that this printed word was based upon.

A few years after the first reading, I realized what was happening and I made it stop.

The process that followed was like losing a loved one to death. I suppose the timing was appropriate because that was a period of time in my life when my family, friends, and lovers were dropping like flies.

So, to aid in this process of loss, I started developing ridiculously honest relationships with strangers. Single serving people as Palahniuk put it.

And through time it became something much more than bumping into someone and starting a conversation… I had started writing strangers. I’d pick a random address. (Be it in the local white pages or an online phone book.) I’d write to them about myself, about what was plaguing me that I couldn’t shake, or random thoughts and ideas I couldn’t get out of my head. (Coincidentally, not long ago, I offered this bit to a fellow blogger that I’m rather fond of.)

Through the years I’ve received a lot of responses back. I have a box under my bed with all of these saved letters. Some of the most personal and intimate things a person could ever hear… All because it was completely safe. It was letting go without forgetting. It was the best part about being a human. And that’s all it ever was. So completely perfect. Neatly packaged in white envelopes. Black and blue inks bruising the pages.

Three weeks ago, I sent a letter out to the middle of nowhere Montana.

Saturday, I received a response…

To date, it’s the most moving, the most needed. She was immaculate, gorgeous, and I loved her as any child would love its mother.

Last night, I painted her… The image of what she is in my mind.

I haven’t painted, really painted, in quite some time. Too wrapped up in other arts and endeavors.

But last night, I painted her. Upon it’s completion, I stood there and sobbed. I sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.

It was my best work, in my opinion… It was the most honest thing I’ve ever done. There were no walls, no constraints. There was no one pushing my pace, forcing reaction, creation. It simply flowed out in a matter of hours that passed like minutes.

Her maiden name was Grace, bringing everything in my mind full circle.

And had I never gotten lost that day I found my favorite bookstore,
Had I not craned my neck to see the captivating title,
Had I not lost my family, my friends, my lovers,
Had I not developed a loving relationship with strangers,
Had I not craved to write secrets on blank papers,
I never would have found her.

This thing that ties it all back to Grace.

A word that surely from now on, will always come with a capital G.

We’re going somewhere.
We are on our way.

The bags were packed the night before and our clothes for the morning draped over thickly upholstered chairs.

The crows stopped screeching long enough for the moon to rise and the neighbors across the way fucked out of spite.

I stood by the window in this compacted city watching it play out before me. The wind leaked in through the old glass and I shivered.

The channel in the glass changed and I saw your reflection, pulling back the covers on the bed.

One more night here.
One more night that’s all.
One more night here.
We’re leaving in the morning.

Nearly uncontrollable
with little pause.
Not unlike
the longest unzipping
of your life.

Your god fucked me last night with his tongue.

He crawled under the table and lifted my skirt.

He said, “Sin for me.”
He said, “Beg for my forgiveness.”
He said, “Moan my name.”

He drank my absolution and I rubbed on Mary with Jesus between my breasts.

The devil stood in the doorway rubbing his dick,
Alighieri penned and everyone else wore the veils.

Baby,
I see you laying there, quietly reading with your legs spread.

Baby,
The wine is making my heart drunk… Leave at dawn, before I wake.

Baby,
I could love you forever if I wanted to live in a standstill.

Baby,
The tornadoes are going to hit, come watch with me from the roof.

Baby,
Someone else kissed me on Christmas when they gave me a stolen treasure from a London museum.

Baby,
I’ve left all my luck to waste.

Baby,
You’ve never been my baby.

The wind smells of trouble.
Cinder, ash, and cumin.

The wet leaves spin in clumps, loudly.

I walk down the street in a quiet neighborhood.

On nights like these, caramels are made.

June, July, and November all lived under the roof of September.
June was the baby.
July was the eldest.
November stuck in the middle.
The day June was birthed July wept like a baby and November bounced chubbily in glee.
Four years later September passed through an October.
July raised June and November played in a corner.

She sat on my lap, with those ringlet curls. Her pudgy fingers grasping my elbows, leaning back oh-so-far, scaring herself giddy.

She’d pull herself up, just to do it all over again.

I’d tickle her belly every time she stretched, her screams of glee contagious.

She pulled herself up quickly, looked me dead in the eye. As serious as a four year old could muster she asked, “If the bad guys go to The No (prison), where do all the good guys go?”

I explained simply, “The good guys live in the rest of the world. They’re free.”

She giggled, nearly maniacally.

“Sissy, that makes no sense.”

She leaned back again, waiting for me to tickle. When I didn’t right away she said,

“The goodens should be kept together. That’s why we have big houses.”

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.
Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird

And if that mockingbird won’t sing,
Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring

And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass

And if that looking glass gets broke,
Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat

And if that billy goat won’t pull,
Mama’s gonna buy you a cart and bull

And if that cart and bull turn over,
Mama’s going to buy you a dog named Rover.

And if that dog named Rover won’t bark,
Mama’s going to buy you a horse and cart.

And if that horse and cart fall down,
You’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

I’ve done this seven times now, and I still don’t understand the rhythm, the ebbs and flows.
18,16,4,
25,23,11

I lied to you, you know.

I knew that day when we sat at the airport and I begged you to take me to Philly with you.
Clutching your steering wheel.
Crying. Laughing.
One more truck ride with the windows down.
Hair blowing, music throbbing.

Of course I knew what it was. I’m not a stupid girl.
But there was no map. No GPS constantly telling us to turn left.

I was nervous about the ‘what now’ with knowing what you know.
What I know.

Last night when I got back home, I saw something and it reminded me.

I wanted to hold your hand again and call you a motherfucker.

It hit hard, deep within that home spot.
The air left my lungs, but I couldn’t call to have you tell me some wildly rotten joke to make me laugh.

And I have so many questions, but I’ve never been good with timing.

It’s funny too…
When I finally boarded the plane the flight attendant was a beautiful red headed girl.
Big eyes, pouty mouth, curvy in all the right places.
I watched her, despised her, because it reminded me of what already was.
And where I was not.
Where I did not belong.

The saving grace,
was all the ice cream.

On Thursday I was Alice.

As a child, like so many, I adored those books.
I gobbled them up. I felt a kinship.
All magic, mystery, and fear.
Things that unite.
Untie.

I drove, quite literally, down memory lane.
And it wrecked me.

The appropriate and wretched things happened.
The things that always do to me.
So real, it seems scripted.
Serendipitous, ironic, and surreal.
“Cut!”

And by the time I finally made it back to the place where I was guesting,
Agee’s words were circulating through my mind.

We all know it’s true.
But at some point or another, we all try anyway.

Because it used to be a home.
Because people used to live there.
Because it used to be beautiful.

And then,
I turned the wipers off.

As I was laying in bed finishing up some work, her littlest one lays down next to me, clutching his tummy.
He ate too many sour candies against his mother’s permission.

“Are you still all grumbly inside, jellybean?” I ask.
So quietly, something abnormal for him, he says, “Yesh. It won’t stop making noises.”
“Want some blanket? We can snuggle and watch videos.”

He nods his head, curls up next to me. Snuggled tightly, with the laptop on my lap, I open up some of my favorite videos.

We start with a short film called The Forest.
As he watches the little animated girl on the screen his hands reach for my hair. He twirls it around his fingers until the video ends.
“I knew it was a gun. I thought it might be pretend, like the forest, but I knew it was all real after all.”

We then moved onto something sweeter. How To Melt a Chocolate Bunny. The music throughout it relaxed him, and he murmured at a few parts deep within his own thought. His little toes tracing my knee. Upon it’s conclusion he said, “Shawi, I don’t want to eat any more bunnies for Easter. Will you tell Mommy and Doey for me?”

I closed the browser window and said, “I think it’s almost time for bed, little man. Let’s go find your Mom.” He got a little sad, a little more quiet before finally saying, “But I got my jammies on already. One more Shawi… Please? I want to see them. I like these stories.”

Sick kids break my heart, and I can’t say no, even though I hear his mother calling.

I start one more called The Cathedral. Instantly he hones in on it. I watched him watching it for a while. His deep green eyes aglow with the images flickering across the screen, his soft red cheeks, one hand on his heart, one on mine. When it ends he says, “Me too.” I’m a little thrown off by the small statement and don’t know what to say so I kiss the top of his head.

“Come on jellybean, it’s time for bed.”
“Will you make me snug as a bug in a rug?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”

He holds my hand and we walk up the stairs to his bedroom. I tuck him in, kiss his cheek, tell him I love him, and close the door.

I stood outside of the door for a minute replaying the soft moment from the rough and tumble boy.

Eventually I move towards the stairs and then I hear behind me,
“Ba boom boom.”

Cracked me up…
Haven’t sang that song to him in at least three years, but he still managed to remember.

2:49am: Cannot sleep.

3am: Sit on the porch and quietly sing the songs my Grandmother used to when I woke to bad dreams.

There are two things that I’m terrified of… Moths and looking out of windows at night.

Last night, I dreamt an old memory. The one that caused the fear of the latter.

I was six and she, my middle sister, was almost five.

She has some mental handicaps, which bring forth a slew of other problems, primarily her seizures.

They were really bad when she was young. Violent, unearthly, feverish, foaming. Very early on, I had learned the procedure of how to handle these episodes.

When they hit, everything else seemed to stop. Silence begging the dramatic. The hush and chaos making me hypnagogic. Like an intense scene in a movie where the director takes the sound away so you can only focus on the images. It wasn’t real to me even though I knew the gravitas of the situation.

But that night, near the end of summer when the nights started getting chilly, when I was six, and she was almost five, the worst one occurred.

Mama was doing the dishes, her husband out in the garage working on his ‘67 Chevy, and her and I idly playing in the dining room.

My grandfather had made me an extensive set of building blocks that year for my birthday. Because then, I thought I was going to be an architect. She and I sat there building elaborate bridges and palaces. She didn’t quite know what she was making, but her pieces were precisely placed nonetheless. I could hear the clatter of silverware that Mama was washing, meaning that it wouldn’t be too much longer before she finished.

And as I put the finishing touches on my biggest bridge, I glanced up at her, and saw that look in her eye before the storm hit. I screamed for Mama, and busted through my bridge to get to her before she fell backward, too hard.

Her body convulsing rapidly sending vibrations throughout the entirety of me. Causing little primary colored blocks that were near to lightly jump on the wood floors. Her teeth chattering, tiny foam bubbles pouring forth from the side of her mouth. Her skin on fire, felt like a volcano. My fingers burned as I held her chin so she wouldn’t clamp down and shatter anything, carefully watching the tongue. Mama rushed in with a wooden spoon, placed it in her mouth. Screaming for her husband. Hoping it was loud enough to be heard through the walls, the doors, the expanse of land between the house and garage.

He ran in, nervous eyes, black hands from the oil. He pushed me out of the way, scooped up his child, quickly making his way to the bathroom. We followed, Mama with a little bottle in her hands, me crying because I couldn’t save my little sister.

The old porcelain bath tub streaked in the black from his hands. My sister’s cheeks and arms painted like a warrior. She was a white child, skin like alabaster. Tightly curled hair, roses in cheeks, like the perfect dolly. But in that moment she looked like a corpse, dirt on her from being dug up.

He yelled at me, his hatred obvious even then.

Mama in the quiet voice she used in the midst of panic told me to call for an ambulance, and after to call the neighbor.

I did as I was told.

I waited in the dining room. Someone barges in, sees me, scoops me up, takes me outside just as the flood of red lights start to tint the night.

People rushed in, people rushed out.

Mama then comes to speak with the person holding me, the neighbor. Asking them to take me for the night. Saying she doesn’t know what’ll happen at the hospital. Doesn’t want me to see it. Doesn’t know how long it’ll take. The neighbor, who was a close friend of the family for many years, agreed. Said I could stay as long as needed. Kissed her cheek, said to be strong, said ‘I love you’.

I was crying then… I didn’t take well to being away from my mother. I didn’t take well from being away from home. I was scared. I didn’t want to go with the neighbor. I wanted to stay with Mama… But they had to drive away without me.

The neighbor takes me to their house. She makes up a little bed for me on the floor of her daughter’s room. Her daughter four years older than me, already fast asleep.

The neighbor stays with me for a bit. Holding and trying to comfort me. Telling me that it’ll all be alright. That my sister is going to be fine.

What she didn’t realize was that in that moment I wasn’t as much worried about my sister as my mother never coming back to get me. I was afraid I’d have to stay there forever. That they were all going to leave me behind.

Eventually the neighbor made me lay down and try to sleep. She shut the door of her daughters room, and the little fairy night light glowed in the corner.

It was windy that night and a branch of the large tree in their backyard kept knocking on the small circular window in the daughter’s room. I laid there terrified. Afraid that the noise was that of two men placing a ladder against the side of the house. One man climbing, the other man holding the ladder steady. Afraid that they were coming to kidnap me. For what seemed like hours, I was paralyzed in fear that I was going to be gotten.

I made myself get up and check.

I climbed onto her desk that was underneath the window. I stood on my tiptoes, each knock of the branch making me jump. I kept trying to look out, but I couldn’t ever fully because I was terrified of the face that would be staring back at me… I was scared of screaming.

And so it began…

No more peering out of windows at night.

To this day, if there’s an unfamiliar noise, if my dog stirs and growls, I become panicked. I call for the other person who lives with me to check. Still scared that I’ll see the kidnapping bad man’s face.

Even if wacky, even if irrational.