Close to the Train Tracks

Grandpa was in this nursing home when he was dying.  It was close to the train tracks.  Every room was either a dusty teal or dusty pink.  More than anything else, I think I remember this big cage with all kinds of birds, in the lobby.  Blue and yellow finches on fake branches, hopping around.  There was a fake background behind them that had trees and flowers and a red barn on it.  So melancholy, depressing.  And I think of this glass case, and of the birds, at the strangest times. 

Oh, and I left you there.  To die.  And there was nothing I could do.

Behind the New House

The growl of faint thunder, the tickle of humidity on the tiny hairs on my neck.  Dad isn’t finished with putting up the fence in the back yet, so I know what we’re going to do.  I get in my bright pink swimsuit.  My toenails are painted red, but chipped and scuffed in some spots—Mom did it for me weeks ago.  I pull the straps up over my sunburned shoulders and run downstairs.  Koby just got into his trunks.  We dash out the back door, barefoot, running and puffing as fast as our little legs can carry us.  My brother tosses one arm into the air, squealing with delight, his soft white tummy sticking out a little as he runs.  His smile is missing some teeth, and his hair is getting darker as the rain soaks his cowlick.

 

Past the swingset, the garden, and the boundary of our backyard, down the hill and into some of the trees, it levels out.  The ground gapes with a long and wide trench, where the shallow river is.  It’s quickly being filled with rainwater.  The smell is fresh and moist.  We skitter in from the side and begin to paddle and kick, the way our swimming teachers in the summer teach us to do.  Thousands of drops hitting our canal sound like distant applause.  Floating on my back, staring into the everlasting gray of the sky, I see how the raindrops begin from nowhere and suddenly land on my face.  I’m giddy.  The neighbor kids bring toy boats and tubes and jump in.  Our makeshift pool at this new house is all ours, doesn’t need to be cleaned, and doesn’t take long to fill. 

   

Tomorrow, when it’s nearly dry, we’ll look for crawdads that washed into the river bed from the lake.  There’s that sour and muddy smell the day after.  But the thrill of poking at dead crawdads is too much to pass up. 

 

To read some of Kendra’s fiction, go to http://karielle.wordpress.com/. 

To read some of Kendra’s academic writing, go to http://kendrarel.wordpress.com/academic/.

Winter

It smells different here in the winter, something that can’t quite be put into words.  You can notice it, even in the car, speeding along with others, maneuvering between lanes.  It’s heat, fire, being alive against the forbidding landscape.  It’s the heat against the callous cold.  There are the cold dead people in the ground, and there are the people who are alive above, with their heat and their breath and their souls.  And their love. 

Balloons and Pumpkins

I don’t know where we used to get our pumpkins when I was a kid.  The field probably wasn’t even close to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, but still, I’ve made the connection that it was. Maybe we got our pumpkins on the same day Mom and Daddy took us to the Fiesta, I don’t know.  These events were at least closely related: they both signified fall for us.  But, for the sake of the story, we’d go to the Fiesta and pick our pumpkins on the same day, every year. 

 

Mom would help me put on my little jeans with the purple flower patches on the back pockets.  However, she reminded me, I was old enough to put on my own shoes, so I’d struggle with them while my eyes were glued to Sesame Street.  Then Momma would chastise me gently for trying to sneak out without my jacket.  And someone, probably Grandma would stuff my slightly chubby arms through the purple holes and zip it up to my chin.  That’s when I would detect the familiar smell—it was of other jackets in the closet, mixed with winter and cold, and a little dog hair and dust.  And Grandpa’s spearmint Certs—the ones he always left in his front pocket.  Koby would proceed to totter over to me in his puffy blue jacket, revealing his tiny white teeth below a few freckles on his full cheeks. 

 

We’d get in the old brown Honda; it wasn’t that far.  Out in the valley, my nose got a bit pink and it was nippy, but I didn’t even notice.  (I still see it in the pictures—Dad’s holding Koby in the crook of his arm, kneeling next to me and looking at me.  I have my hand on his shoulder, that mischievous smile on my face, my light brown hair in a loose ponytail.)  Some balloons were still on the ground in wrinkles, and Dad would take us around to those so we could look in at the basket and equipment.  Mr. Peanut seemed bigger than a house up in the air, tilting his hat to me and winking.  Garfield was huge and orange and looked bored.  I loved all the colors, the gusts of fire and noise and air blowing upward.  To me, there were a million balloons above us.  

 

Then we’d get hot chocolate.  It left those crusty marks on the corners of Koby’s mouth.  We went in the field, laden with pumpkins as far as I could see.  There was a barn on the top of the hill; I heard horses in there.  Dad had taught me how to “rap” or knock on vegetables in the garden to see if they were ripe; I wanted to find ones that were my size.  He would humor me and take a little one home for me. 

 

After we drew our designs for the pumpkins, Dad cut them out and put a candle inside.  They’d go outside with his luminarios, which were dotted all the way up the driveway.  I remember the smell of wax and baking pumpkin seeds.    

Love, Drew

It’s the first time I’ve heard this song, Meteorflower by July for Kings.  In fact, it’s the first time I’ve heard any song by this band.  But I’m quickly learning that Drew adores music and likes all kinds of groups I’ve never heard of.  I’m driving home from Ft. Collins, where he’s living for now.  We’ve been dating for a few weeks, since late June.  As we were saying goodbye tonight, he said with a sheepish smile, “This is for you,” and handed me a CD he made.  ‘To Kendra, Love Drew,’ the silver surface reads in black Sharpie.  I find his handwriting hunched, puerile… endearing.  Heading west on Harmony and getting onto I-25 South, I put the CD in.  The garish light at the gas station on the corner fades in my rearview mirror.  Sparse rain stops peppering my windshield.  A guitar plays, and I glance up at the cool, vast sky through the sunroof.  I smell cigarettes and gasoline for a second.  I’m passing by that huge neon sign for the RV Park near the highway, one tan arm out the window, drawing in the air as it sometimes whispers, sometimes whips by my ears.  The faint hissing noise coming from the tires on moist asphalt is calming.   

Meteorflower, you settled in my life

Shine among the cut-out stars and fireflies

Singing careful songs across a Technicolor night

I think I want to fly away with you…

I’ll hold the stars above your life…

Write our names across the galaxy, Meteorflower… 

Then I’m near the exit for Loveland or something, and I hear the beginning to one of my very favorite songs—it’s a live version of Yellow, by Coldplay.  I allow for a little thrill.  I remember saying I loved it when we went for a drive in Horsetooth Reservoir.  

 

I open the sunroof and witness how close the stars are, survey the contrast created between the bright white and the cavernous dark.  Engrossing.  I think I can keep my eyes on the sky for a moment more; the road is laid out straight in front of me.  The light air that rushes in carries the scent of damp trees and leaves.  I’m the only one on the road.  Now all the windows are open; my hair flutters, floats around my head and face.  I think I feel myself blushing, even though there’s no one around to see it.  One hand is out the sunroof in the wind, and my new CD is turned up on the speakers, pulsing in my arms and neck and chest.  Artlessly, I sing along and fumble to feel the beat, the drums through the steering wheel.    

Look at the stars, look how they shine for you

And all the things you do…

I came along, I wrote a song for you…

You’re skin, oh yeah, you’re skin and bones

Turned into something beautiful

‘Cause you know, you know I love you so…

It’s true

Look how they shine for you…                                                

I break into a wide smile.  It’s the first time I think, maybe Drew is falling for me.

House Red Wine

I guess I’m no writer.  I doubt myself all the time.  After all, I’m not a lesbian, and I don’t smoke cigarettes.  I didn’t drop out of school and I don’t have a drinking problem.  I don’t have tattoos (although I think of getting one here and there) or multiple piercings.  I’ve never tried drugs.  I don’t hate my parents (granted, I have a complicated history with my father), and they are still together.  For the most part, I had a good childhood.  I don’t think everything we read in lit class is “amazing” or “beautiful” or even literature. 

 

These circumstances and conditions just don’t make for someone that everyone wants to listen to.  They don’t create the “jaded but beautiful voice” to which everyone is drawn.

 

By no means have I had it easy, mind you.  It just has always seemed to me that you need to be damaged to be interesting or to be able to write. I have been damaged, but I have not been overcome; I’m better for it.  That, I suppose, is not enough to give me that “character,” the necessary element to do what I so badly wish to do.

 

I do get depressed– that’s got to be something to write about, right? 

 

We were talking about that, me and the tall thin girl, over glasses of the house red wine.  Her earrings were big hoops that dangled against the fair skin on her jawline.  Sometimes it would be great to be ignorant and stupid.  You wouldn’t have these unanswered questions or feel that life was hard or wonder what the hell you were doing. 

Canyon Road

Yeah.  Santa Fe is known for art.  But this is the street—the area of town where one gallery is right next to another and another, and across the street from ten more.  Canyon Road stretches for a couple miles, branches off from one of the main roads through town, and heads higher up into the foothills.  There are little cafés every once in a while, and people are having drinks outside under coral-colored umbrellas.  I always detect that smoky, rich smell here, from the restaurants.  Everything’s green and it’s warm out.  The streets are shaded with ancient trees that rustle in the faint breeze.   Residences are sometimes right in between a couple galleries, and their front yards, though small, are well-kept and dotted with huge, bright poppies: pink, red, yellow, orange.  I could stay here all day, and Drew will most likely humor me because he can see how much I enjoy it.  And I love him for that. 

 

 

These galleries, they are in no way groups of similar buildings just clumped together.  I mean, a lot of the structures have been around since the 16- or 1700s, and they are all different sizes.  It’s true most of the buildings in Santa Fe, no matter what their purpose was originally, are adobe-style, but there are a lot of different takes on that.  Some have borders made of stone, some have ristras outside; others, the wooden posts near the roof or the bright blue windowframes or the angular roofs.  These buildings were peoples’ homes or shops or something long before someone bought them to display their artwork.  One gallery has all these windmills made of spoons out in the yard, and when they spin, they turn into interesting symmetrical shapes.  Another uses the yard it has to place sculptures right next to the road—there’s one of an enormous man made of metal, sitting in water next to the white picket fence.  He lays back, his head resting on a tree trunk, his torso and crossed legs emerging from the ground, making the gravel and stones look like the water in which he relaxes.  There’s a Turkish art gallery, with rugs and pottery.  A Russian gallery with beautiful paintings that take up entire rooms. 

 

Up the road, we’re at the house that’s preserved by the Historical Foundation.  It’s an older one, built in 1612, in a hacienda sort of layout.  Branches of the home lay in front and back, stretching into the yard.  The entrance is through a vast courtyard with gardens and creeping plants.  The main hallway is straight in front of us, and three or four brightly-colored wood benches rest against the wall.  Some of the doors are not open to the public, and these are mostly the old bedrooms, which I really want to see.  There are old lace curtains covering the windows.    At the end of the open hallway is more of the garden, which reaches out around the house.  A cat that was lounging in the hallway takes an interest in Drew and follows, his smoky brown tail curling and rubbing on the wall. 

 

 

So I bring the camera out.  Stopping at the end of the corridor and looking back in, I can see the worn arches fashioned around the hallway.  Parts of the house are crumbling, but I think it is so beautiful.  It’s that sun-baked color.  I don’t think the pictures do justice to this place, so I just put it back in my bag.  The leaves are still rustling in the trees behind me, almost a whisper, a murmur.  And I’m taken aback—by how much history is here.  How many people lived here before this?  Who stood where I’m standing right now and who sat in the swing down the path in the garden?  Who walked along the road out there before it was paved?  Where did these people come from, what were their lives like, what were their stories?  Are they still here?  This place, in 1612, had so much going on, and I desperately wish that I could see it, hear it.  But for a moment, I think I almost can.  I’m stirred, staggered.

Tug’s Bar and Grille

Tug’s “Bar and Grille.”  One of the signs we just drive by every once in a while, and I think about it.  I would never go in, and certainly would never be a regular.  Why, I don’t really know— it has that ARC or Salvation Army feel to it.  Those places—you walk in and they have the brassy, unnatural lights and the beaten brown or orange carpet, the kind that I think used to be shaggy but has seen so much that now it’s compacted, kind of sticky, hard.  I mean, I can just imagine inside this “Bar and Grille”:  the faded orange Formica countertops that only belong in old bowling alleys.  Then I’m sure there’s the “taco salad” with questionable meat, a stale shell, and browning iceberg lettuce.  The nachos, one of the more popular orders, have cheese the color of the countertops.  If you let it sit for a minute, the cheese will start to harden and change texture…  warp.  It comes from one of those warm metal containers with a dispenser and a picture of nachos and jalapenos on it.

 

I feel bad for people who go to places like that, for those that have to, for those who like it.  Maybe I’m a bitch.  But there it is.

God, Choices, Truth

When you, in a way, abandon what you’ve been taught and seek the truth for yourself, and you ruminate over this new possible way to believe, things happen.  You sweat over it.  You choose not to talk to God.  You fight with yourself and struggle with it.  You choose to think of life from an alternative perspective.  You begin to think, we’re all just here by accident.  You see the world as if you were isolated, completely on your own.  You think, when I die, I die, and that’s it.  You get depressed, and the people around you are gray and the words and days are gray.  But when you’ve been through all that and you still find the same answer, the fact that someone who matters completely knows and cherishes you—it becomes something else entirely, something real to you.  When God is yours and not someone else’s, and you realize He wants that for you, it’s salient.  It’s your choice, something you can fully embrace and comprehend.  It’s familiar and welcome… and authentic.  You’ve earned it, and it is your truth. 

Neighborhood

6048.  This is that house, the house where the girl killed herself.  I remember they repainted it a few years ago—the worst combination of mint green and a sort of magenta.  I remember her younger: bunched and gathered lips against her white, freckled baby skin.  I worried about her—her father like mine, unpredictable in his anger.  Her mother, big, soft and quiet.  Her brother was a pervert.  Weeds tangle themselves in the white picket fence like mold, and if they were touched, they’d crumble their grayness onto the dirt.  Nothing is heard inside.  Just looking at the front of the house makes me sad.  I feel cold.   

 

6047.  There’s an old gray Aerostar in the driveway, and a dinged-up blue Bronco parked in between the houses in the cul-de-sac.  I sense a strange smell, and it resonates high and deep in my palette.  There’s a very strained friendship.  Surprising strides, chapped heels in the wood floor.  I wonder if they really knew God.  Allergies.  Carob.  Green grass against white, thick legs.  Strange discussions.  Long and yellowed fingernails.  Bitter tea.  Awkward people.

 

 

6046.  Warmth.