The Finger, Part 2

(When a little girl finds a severed finger on the road, the finger evokes different responses in each person it passes to. If you're just joining us, go back to Part 1)

Carmen wrapped her arms around her little daughter in her lap. A third police car rolled to a stop along John F. Kennedy Boulevard. The cops already there laughed to themselves. They seemed bored. Filling time. Itching to stir trouble. The severed finger sweated in a plastic baggie in the middle of the sidewalk.

She turned her face from the red and blue strobe lights.

"All this is scaring my daughter," Carmen said. "Can we go?"

"Just sit tight," narrow-eyed cop said.

She forget their names before she was done hearing them. Officer Asshole and Officer Shit-for-Brains.

Carmen pulled a tissue from her purse and wet a spot with the tip of her tongue.

Shit-for-Brains freaked. He leveled a finger at her. "Don't touch that! Wait for the detective!"

"Can I clean this bloody fluid off her face?" Carmen said.

"Absolutely not! It's evidence."

"Christ Almighty. You've got to be kidding me," Carmen said.

"Ma'am, if you touch that evidence, I'm going to arrest you for obstruction of justice."

Celine hid her head.

"Screw. You," Carmen said.

She wanted to say fuck, but she failed as a parent enough for one day.

The cop glared at her, then yukked it up with his buddy.

The finger in the bag kept intruding on Carmen's thoughts. She squeezed Celine and kissed the top of her head. The girl's flesh was yielding and soft. With a deep solidity underneath.

She dialed her cell phone. As it rang, she stared at the dismembered finger. It wouldn't be human much longer. No warmth. No miracle of movement. Soon it would be putrid chemicals and a hollow stick of bone.

Celine's living fingers twined in her blouse and crumpled the fabric. Her tiny hands mirrored the dearest thoughts swimming in her head.

"I'm not going to be in today," Carmen said to her secretary.

She smiled downward.

"I don't care," Carmen said. "Let them take care of it. They'll survive without me."


Go back to Part 1.

Mom and Dad, Part 2

Now that you've shared the greatest achievements and greatest failures of your parents in raising you (and you've let your answers percolate in your mind), I have a follow-up question for you.

If you are married or in a long term relationship, what is the greatest part of your relationship? What is the worst part, i.e., the thing that causes the most disappointment or strife?

Now, can you find any similarities to your answers regarding your parents? Are there common themes?

We often depart childhood with unfinished business, and that business will be taken up with our future partners. Why do we tend to choose to be with people who remind us of our parents on some deep, subconscious level? First, because they seem comfortable and familiar. But more importantly, they offer us another shot at taking care of that unfinished business from childhood. As an extreme example, suppose that you grew up with abusive parents. You may drift toward abusive partners in the hope that you can finally take whatever action is necessary to make them love you and stop hurting you. Just as you always wished for your parents to love you and not hurt you as a child.

How about you? As you've thought these questions through, are you chasing after unfinished business? If you are, it may very well be poisoning your happiness. These cycles often bury themselves beneath our ability to see them. How do you find them? Their footprints will be on those areas where you've tended to feel threatened, unsatisfied, or unhappy in your relationships.

If your relationships follow cycles, you may very well be carrying unfinished business.

Mom and Dad

I'm curious about something. Are you game?

I have two questions for you.

#1: What would you say was your parents' greatest achievement in raising you?

#2: What would you say was your parents' greatest failure in raising you?

Part two of this post will be up Friday after you've had time to ruminate on your answers here. (Feel free to answer anonymously if you'd prefer.)

The Finger, Part 1

(It has been quite a while since I did a series here at The Clarity of Night. My last was the historical fiction series Ventilation back in June, which followed the life of a polio victim in an iron lung. We'll see how this one turns out. Welcome to "The Finger.")

Five-year-old Celine walked with her mother on the summer sidewalks of Philadelphia. Eleven o'clock, before the lunch crowds came.

Mom's suit skirt stretched with each stride. Celine like to sneak touches on her pantyhose. Raspy and clean. But Celine was careful, because Mom still didn't like that Celine took too long to find her shoes.

The crosswalk flashed from the white stickman to the red hand. Mom hissed and stomped her heels to a stop. The teacher at pre-school promised to make daisies today. Celine liked to rub the green pipe cleaners across her cheek. Mom didn't like to be late.

Celine looked down at the dirty sidewalk. At the cigarette butts. Bits of stepped-on paper and food.

Something was laying just off the curb on the edge of the street.

Curious. Very curious.

She broke hands and bent down.

"Celine!" Mom shouted, pulling her back as a taxicab whizzed by.

The horn blared and swept on.

"My God, Celine! Don't you ever do that again! You'll get hit!"

The white stickman came back. Mom yanked forward and across the street. Celine clutched the thing she picked up in her fist. It was cold. Squishy. Hard.

"I might be a little late picking you up today," Mom said in her planning-ahead voice. "I already let the school know."

Celine liked the feel of the thing. She squeezed it. Especially the hardness in the middle.

"I packed you pepperoni," Mom said. "I stopped at the store yesterday."

Celine brought it up to her cheek and brushed it on her skin.

She traced cold circles.

Smooth. Very smooth.

Mom looked down, and her eyes jumped wide. Crazed, she grabbed Celine's hand and shook it.

The severed finger flipped into the air and fell in front of them.

Celine started to cry because Mom hurt her hand.

Mom choked out a scream.


On to Part 2.

Too Cool for School

I don't even remember how it happened.

Maybe I wasn't seeing the board in school. Maybe it was a routine eye screening with the school nurse. Maybe it was my dead-on Stevie Wonder impression. Either way, my six-year-old self was faced with the life-changing news that I had to get glasses.

Not the end of the world.

I guess.

But I sure didn't appreciate my new term of endearment. Four eyes.

Looking back now, I'm kind of pissed. I mean, LOOK AT THOSE THINGS!! Could my parents have chosen a more hideous, shockingly lame, bargain pair than that? Would that have been possible??

Geez. Throw me a bone over here. No tasteful wire rims in the store? Nothing that wasn't, well, square? Why don't you make me wear a leisure suit while you're at it.

Oh wait. They did that too.

Iceberg

Float a smile on the ice
An Arctic melting sea
Harpoon blade sharpened
With bone and brittleness
Ride the decks
With wrist-twined rigging
Lean and watch for me

Message in a Bottle

Just a castaway
An island lost at sea
Another lonely day
With no one here but me
More loneliness
Than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair
I'll send an SOS to the world
     --The Police, Message in a Bottle

"You used to have this amazing belly laugh when you were a kid."

"Yeah."

"Your smile would light up your face. Huge smile."

"Yep."

"And you used to come in and jump on the bed Saturday mornings. Laughing and laughing."

"I remember."

"You'd beat on me and wrestle me, and I wouldn't want to get up."

"That too."

"I miss that belly laugh. I miss that smile."

"Mmmm."

"Everything changed when you became a teenager."

everythingeverythingeverything. "No. Not everything. Just me."

Have a Seat

                      TEACHER

1A       2A      3A       4A     5A       6A
1B       2B       3B       4B       5B       6B
1C       2C       3C       4C       5C       6C
1D       2D      3D       4D      5D       6D
1E       2E       3E       4E       5E       6E

*********************************

You walk in the door to an empty classroom.

There are thirty empty chairs (numbered above). Which seat would you naturally choose?

Comfy?

Okay, now that you're seated and Teacher is putting you to sleep, any thoughts on why you sat where you did? Any strategy at work?

Do tell!

Sundew

The cancer solstice
Welcomes grey forgotten rains
Feet will sing again

Frozen

You're broken when your heart's not open
If I could melt your heart
We'd never be apart
       --Madonna, Frozen

She sipped the aromas of her coffee and stared through the cafè windows to the street.

She watched the shapes moving. The strangers with not-quite-strange faces. The ballets of the city.

Her stare sharpened when she caught a flash of him.

Walking fast, he danced around a couple talking. He nodded a quick apology to a man he bumped into. At the front of the bookstore, he held the door for a woman with a stroller.

Night moved outside, painted in car headlights.

Long coats hurried across crosswalks.

Quiet for a Friday night.

He unzipped his coat and fixed his hair. He hurried past magazine racks. His cold-bitten cheeks turned as he scanned for her. She watched a few more moments before he spotted her tucked off at a side table.

"Sorry I'm late," he said.

"Are you late?"

"Yeah. A little," he said.

He wiggled out of his coat. As he sat, he noticed the cup in her hands. "Is that good?"

She nodded.

"Maybe I'll have one in a minute. After I catch my breath."

She watched him settle in. Watched the thoughts in his movements. Watched his hands work.

"Better?" she said when he stopped.

"Yes. Much." He smiled.

She drank again.

"Are you alright?" he said, darkening a shade.

Interesting.

She let her mind taste it. Are you alright? She clothed it in the lights outside. And the crowds. And the lonely cafe. And the laugh across the store as she swished the half a cup of coffee.

"I'm alright," she said.

"Good," he said, smiling again. A bit uncomfortably. "Because I want to ask you something."

"Oh?" she said.

The red in his cheek dug deeper.

Her eyes narrowed.

She waited. Dissected his nervousness. Pinned each of his movements like a butterfly in a macabre display.

He straightened and clasped his hands to make them stop fiddling. "I want you to go somewhere with me."

Her eyebrows raised. Certainly unexpected.

The fiddling hands returned. "A trip," he said. "A vacation, I guess."

"Just us?"

"Yeah, I know, I know. We haven't been seeing each other very long, and all. And you may not even be that into me. But I want to. I really want to take you."

The coffee cup lowered down to the table. She leaned back in her chair. "Where?" she said.

He leaned closer. "Someplace warm. Someplace away from all this cold and crappy winter. Well, not someplace, exactly. A specific place. Kind of special to me. And I want to drive there. Down south. The back roads of Virginia and Georgia and the tobacco fields and the old, forgotten little cemeteries...."

The sharp angles in her mind couldn't grasp why, but her chin quivered. The hard focus of her thoughts washed into a melting sea.

"Me?" she whispered.

The night moved somewhere far away. People walked in the distance.

And the beginnings of tears welled in her eyes.

Cemetery Reflections ~ Pain

Inscription:

LOUISA E.
Wife of
JAMES BURHAMS
Died
July 22, 1854
A. 25 yrs 11 ms
& 25 ds.

CEMETERY REFLECTIONS: What would the sleeping generations tell us about living? What would we go back and tell ourselves?

~Pain is the friction of life moving forward. But I don't know yet how to embrace it. Or whether we're supposed to embrace it at all.

(Featured on this stone: A beautiful rendition of weeping willow symbolism, signifying loss, sadness, and grief.)

Jaye Wells: RED-HEADED STEPCHILD

Some of you already know that I have this secret life as a roast master over at the book promotion site, BOOK ROAST. Today, we are roasting a long time friend of mine: Jaye Wells and her about-to-be-released first novel, Red-Headed Stepchild.

In addition to being a classmate of the blogging class of 2005 (we started blogging at the same time), Jaye has been a blast in the many Clarity of Night contests over the years. In fact, Jaye took her Honorable Mention winning entry in the blow-out "Lonely Moon" contest with Anne Frasier and expanded it into this world-conquering first novel ready to hit the shelves in just over two years! Some serious rockage going on, don't you think??

Stop over at HER ROAST and get the barbecue flamin'!

Snow Day

The night thickens with grey and silence. A flight of ghosts in the air. Sheeting.

I lay in the embrace of blankets. The night is listening. Like I am listening. Even my dreams are listening.

You stir.

My warm and your warmth mix.

The clock glows the time, but numbers are meaningless. Just the wide spaces between pillows and dawn.

And dawn will come white. With more silence. Except for the plows rumbling. First a mile away, then thundering by with their scraping booms.

Day will embrace blankets too, as sunny sleep is often sweeter.

"Time to get up," you might say, not meaning it.

I'll flip the blanket up over our faces.

It's dark there. Dreamy warm.

Night and day forever.


(Written in honor of a night before a snow day. We're getting blanketed by a big snowstorm in the northeastern U.S.)