Straight No Chaser

J.F.

the beauty of it is, kailani would have missed out on a lot of what makes the world a complicated and sometimes ugly place. and not just because she'd have had an island paradise as backdrop to her childhood, two parents entirely focused on and devoted to her.

for starters, can you imagine trying to explain to her about race? about racism? it would be impossible, totally impossible. the distinctions between black and white, female and male, would have been, in her mind, as fundamental as the differences between mommy and daddy. and totally incomprehensible for that reason. can you imagine trying to explain to her that some people looked more like sand while others looked like coconuts, how ridiculous that would sound? or that there were places where mommies and daddies had to deal with other, external issues and people? the concept of other people wouldn't make sense, not unless we excavated for graphite and learned to fashion homemade pencils, sketched her pictures of the palette of humanity. she'd never be us, our selves wouldn't be interchangeable, and so she'd never understand how it was that if we were all the same, she could see daddy's face but never her own, though she could see her hands and body and legs quite clearly, floating somewhere beneath her range of vision. just saying.

my grandmother is doing fine. she stayed with us for almost a week straight, the longest she ever has, and now she's back home, a bit sore but none the worse for wear. she's fine, the problem was real but fixable and now it's fixed, and she maintains her complete faith in the doctor who treated her, the same one who delivered my aunt forty-seven years ago in germany.

and now she's flying south for the winter, the way she always does, every year, to spend the next three months with her three sisters in tiny, insular bolivar, tennessee. close to but smaller than memphis. granna and her sister ruth moved away from bolivar years ago, but aunts mabel and ruby stayed; they have a brother there who had a stroke a few years ago. apparently that kick-started their collective sense of their own mortality, and they started making a point to spend those months together, to wait out the cold together, to welcome spring together from the front porch of their childhood home. i wish they were writers. there is nothing i wouldn't give to know what kind of feelings the reunions awaken in them, whether it feels like coming full circle for my granna to sit chattering with the women who were girls with her. i bet the wrinkles melt away when they look at each other. i bet they see sunburnt brown skin and cornrowed hair, hear each other's thick childhood accents and sink into their ancient routines.

i know the last is true. aunt mabel is the oldest and therefore always boss, even at eighty-two and four foot eleven. you call her when you want to be lectured, realigned, even if you are seventy-three years old and have life pretty much figured out. she orchestrates everyone's travel plans and directs the making of dinner, even though they've all headed homes of their own for decades.

none of them drives. not one. except granna, which doesn't really count because she will not leave the two-mile radius surrounding her house in maryland. you don't really need to, in bolivar, because aunt ruby lives next door to aunt mabel and the grocery store is walking distance. and there's nothing to do there anyway, and they really just go to be together. i don't know why i'm thinking about this today. i guess i'll miss her. we spent a lot of time together this week and she likes me again. not that she ever didn't, but people are disappointed, sometimes, that i'm not my mom.

anyway. i will see marcus in two days, a shocking truth that makes me tingle, now, thinking about it. he'll pick me up from the train station, which means i'll probably make a point of wearing something halfway cute, which means my fellow flyers will be nicer to me than they would otherwise. and it's always nice to have an excuse to make that happen.

he will give me my christmas present, which for now he says is "inspiration." he will kiss me. in a new year'sy way. it will mark the anniversary of our first new year's kiss, even though i won't mention that because i hate anniversaries. he will apologize for a couple of things and accept my apologies for a couple of others. i'll tell him what happened the other night, why my arm is sore. he'll cuss. and then, i don't know, lord knows what'll happen then, but whatever it is it'll be the first whatever of the semester and of the new year, and important for that reason.

i haven't had an orgasm since the last time i saw him. don't really care whether he remedies that on tuesday. i just want to see his face when i show him what i made him.

preparations are in the works for another project, and i am very excited.

thank god this isn't my last night at home, as it was meant to be. honestly, i postponed the flight till tuesday because of marcus, because fifty dollars seemed like a pittance to spend on the chance to ride back to school with him. but also because i'm not ready to sleep in my bed for the last time till march. it's the best bed in the world and it's only a short walk from a fridge full of food and i'm generally glad to be going back soon, because a few more days of this and i'd gain ten pounds, but i needed one more night to play cards with my parents. and, tomorrow, trivial pursuit (which we call wedges) with mom. to be a nerd and not care, which doesn't work at school.

for the past couple months, whenever i've needed a character, it's been kailani. she's taken on different circumstances, i've given her different names, but no matter what she's always who she'd have actually been; she's the girl we would have raised, i think. on an island or elsewhere. sometimes she's more me, sometimes more him. sometimes freckly and talkative, sometimes dark and reticent. sometimes a mermaid, with a little too much hair and a tail like pliant bronze, and a delightfully oceanic laugh.

strange asked about her, asked who she was and whether she was the same person (yes, i said, embarrassed she'd noticed) and when i was going to get her pregnant and turn her into a symbol for artistic frustration. maybe never, i said. which spells progress.