La Dominicana

She speaks to me. Every day I hear some new aspect of her being, crying out to me. She wants to be written. She wants me to tell her story.

She was born into poverty on the sugar cane fields, the neglected third child of five. She compulsively sought out hiding places. She would sit in darkness, letting the images of her mind overtake the shadows shrouding her. She stole chalk from the schoolhouse, lipstick from her mother, anything she could find to paint her world. She drew on the adobe walls of her secret nook under the house. She drew on the stone pillars that kept it off the ground, away from the insects. She scraped faces in the sand with a stick, the faces of a happy children. She plucked flowers, staring at them in silence for hours.

It wasn't until a few years after puberty that she became aware of her beauty. Older men would touch her in the street as she ran errands for her mother. Local artists would sell their paintings at the docks. She always passed longingly, so many colors. She received her first paintbrush and bottle of tomato red paint from a man whom she let see her newly formed breasts. When she became wise to this ancient bartering system, she collected sixteen different colors, three brushes and a canvas she used over and over again. She learned that the less she gave them, the more they wanted and the more worth she accrued.

By the time she was eighteen two of her sisters had died of pneumonia, and her father was weakened beyond the ability to work. She provided for her family through the only trade and talent she knew. It wasn't prostitution, not like those dirty, diseased women on the streets cackling at passers-by. She was a companion to lonely men, unhappy men, with only their money to show for a long wasted life, which they were only too happy to shower upon her. Her mother shamed aloud her each night as she prayed to Sta. Maria over the meal that her sin procured. Though she kept little money for herself, what she did take, she spent on painting supplies.

She took her work to the docs each weekend, the only woman with the audacity to merchant her work in such a way. But, she had long since abandoned listening to the interminable whispers and snide hissing from the townspeople. Occasionally, she sold a painting to one of the tourists that had arrived on the boats from Miami to Santa Domingo. The paintings of calla lilies, fishing boats, and broad views of the cane fields with the mountains towering majestically in the background always sold better. But, she really loved painting the old women who sat on the stoops in front of their blue doors chewing sugar canes, the drunken men collapsed in front of the market still passed out the morning after, children clustered ominously around the tour buses begging for an American Dollar. These paintings never sold, but they freed her.

She knew she could never marry, women of her kind, never did. She had offers, certainly, but they were not sincere, only half-hearted musings of men desperate for her sex. She was in love once. A painter who often discussed art with her for long hours. They would make love in the cane fields and he would paint her nude. She watched hungrily at each stroke. She lost herself in her love and admiration for him, and found herself dreaming aloud of a career as an artist. Bent double in laughter, he cupped her naked breast, tickling her nipple with his extended thumb, and assured her that her only advancement in the art world would be to model her curves. "Nobody wants to see the world as it is, and certainly not through the eyes of a whore."

After her mother died, and her siblings had married off, she let an apartment in town. She never sold her body for money again. She painted until her wrists shook. She painted with the desperation of a hundred starved soldiers in a trench. She painted to atone for her sins, each stroke a lashing on her back. She painted her sexual encounters with men, the feverish ogling expression of a man watching her undress, the blissful calm of a man asleep and satisfied by her, and she painted self-portraits of each emotion that arose whenever she remembered these events. She was purging herself, lusting after salvation.

the layers of my life: a memoir in the making

this is a project i began in the summer of 2002 with my grandmother, Barbara Helen Seufert. She passed the following February before she could take me to her Dominican. she did make one thing very clear, however. she wanted her memoir to be called, The Layers of My Life, and so it shall be.

i have long known that i would need to separate her into several women to give any kind of genuine representation to the degree of fullness which depicts her life. so, i intend to write a fictional biography utilizing the following characters to tell her complex, dramatic, dark, magnificent story.

i haven't named the women yet, but here they are:

only child: deceptive, controlled, fearful, constant correspondence, co-dependent
thespian: flirtatious, confident, independent, glamorous
major's wife: hostess, gossiper, resentful, gimlets, japan
mother: distant, secretary, demanding, well-meaning, jealous
dominican artist: sensual, mysterious, passionate, legendary, suicidal
nana: exuberant, humorous, community director, unwitting caretaker
cancer patient: girlfriend, distrustful, intelligent, beloved

i'm in desperate need to finish something, for the sake of knowing closure again. but, this project in particular is winsome to me. i look forward to embarking on this project with you.

Cave des Oubliette, scene 1.

"I dreamt of you, wandering, deserted."

"Have we met?"

"The suffocating task of inspiration. Always striving, pulling from gutters, you scratch on walls creating a world for yourself."

"Is it you?"

She trembles, nodding. Half believing herself to still be in slumber, for so often she has seen that face whilst adrift in her sub-conscious. The hand is real that clutches hers, pulling gently.

"Come with me."

She quietly follows into a dark pub closed from the gray morning light, and slinks into an oaken booth stained in shadows. A dirty washrag draped over a black apron approaches. She doesn't look up.

"Scotch. Neat."

She nods in agreement, assertively this time. They don't speak until the wash rag returns. A bare wrist littered with wiry brown hairs and amateur tatoos faded teal with time drops a tumbler in front of her, which splashes the amber tonic on her wrist. She draws her hand to her parted lips, suckling off the drops.

"How do you know me? What have you seen?"

She looks up from her hand, slowly closes her lips and drops her fingers around the glass without losing eye contact.

"I..."

A sharp inhale whistles down her throat. Her eyes drop as she exhales. The scotch glows in the negligible wake of a tea candle set inside a dusty globe of pocked yellow glass. The light extends just to the edges of the table. Only leaning forward are their faces visible to one another. She takes a tenuous sip and revels for an instant at the sting, the woody fumes rising into her nasal cavity.

"You are lost. Forgotten. Trapped. Is this so?"

"Yes, but... yes."

A tenderness sweeps over her face, softening the furrowed brow that concealed her youth.

"I have dreamt of you. I have seen the labyrinth of your wanderings. The cement walls would be your prison unto death, but you have not ceded your sanity to the gray world. Not yet. You paint the walls with images from your childhood, both from memory and fantasy.

"I have seen your cedars, your rainbows, your faeries, your lions, your chimneys, you leather shoes, your mother. You paint your life as it was, but also as you wanted it be. Every day you create, and yet, as you turn the corner you see only more gray and forget from whence you came. You lose all the effort of your paintings, only to paint again.

"Tell me, from where does this fortitude come? Why do you persist so vociferously?"

The face disappears into shadow as the figure reclines against the tall wooden back of the booth. A large hand emerges from the abyss, wraps around the full glass of scotch opposite and lifts it until it is likewise enveloped. With little delay, the hand returns with an empty glass and as it is laid gently on the table, the face reappears.

With a sincere,handsome smile, he says, "I, also, have dreamt of you."

Fretful Reunion

It took a bottle of blended Italian wine to prepare me for this meeting, and still I'm awash with turmoil and acid reflux. The aroma of roasted Romano cheese on the wings of the wind was replaced with vintage book dust and burnt espresso as I shifted my weight to swing the unexpectedly heavy door. Dizzy from an effort like that of gazing at a hungry hummingbird, I carried a forlorn cloud into the bookstore.

She's in here somewhere, I thought. But, my search has not yet ended. I browsed the window display, more out of judgmental curiosity than consumer affinity. What has she deemed worthy of display? East of Eden (predictable), Augustine's Confessions (romantic), Milton's Paradise Lost (classic), yet another book by Kooy, and several first editions by Plath, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare. I heard the echo of her voice from the back, "Pulitzer Prize, my ass."

She continued on some rant about Cormac McCarthy. I'm greeted in Italian by an uncommonly beautiful youth who can't help but tuck her coffee black silken hair behind her ears. When I ask for the lady of the store, I'm met with a knowing smile. She arrives before beckoned, clairvoyant as ever. Perhaps she smelled my musty odor. We embrace before speaking. All is right. The only thing amiss has been my absence, too long, inexcusable.

Our Zen moment is interrupted by another staff member clutching a telephone, "But, they need to know how many copies we want."

Without having to think, she replies, "What is it with Portland? Oregon brews these freakishly, fantastical authors - fascinated with the off color beauty of the grotesque." Here, I warrant a wink. "Not to say that both Palahniuk and Dunn are not geniuses, but it's weird man. Weirdly coincidental."

We embrace again. She points. I hear milk steaming. I'm guided to the crevice of the corner of the darkest moment of the store. She finds a door hidden to strangers. A wall moves. We enter a room that feels like home, only no home you've ever known: artistic, consoling, warm, dimly lighted, amber, earthy, cushioned, expectant.

Above her desk (older than her grandmother's grandmother, but just as lovely) is an embroidered tapestry which reads, "The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow." Her plants are thriving, her candles depreciating, her carpet worn, her tea kettle ever at the ready. She's here to stay. As am I, at last. "At last," she insists. I've come here to die. She's been here, living. We're older than our mothers, perhaps even wiser. They'd intended for us to supersede them.

She unravels a vine tangled at the root as she inquires after my journey. "Long," I say. "Liquored," I explain. "Tired," I excuse. "He's unpacking our things, of course. I had to come right over, naturally. I've missed you, desperately. We'd always intended, too long, I'm sorry, but you understand, what really mattered, we needed to, let's get a drink." Beaming, as though nothing I say went awry, "I know just the place."

Mme. Whimsy

The realities of hot climate had long since made their mark on her once deliciously somber wardrobe. So the woman I knew, the woman who loved me so well all those many years ago was nearly unrecognizable in all her bare glow as she sauntered down the steep cobble stone steps. She still sauntered. Chin parallel with the ground, intentional hippy steps, brisk, but gentile, determined, but overly familiar and content with her surroundings.

Her black fedora, abandoned, and in its place flounced a wide-brimmed stone sun hat. The mountain breeze flitted her caramel hair across her naked shoulders. She was more olive. I could see the heat rolling off her acclimated skin. An indiscernible pattern in satsuma orange hugged her trim figure where once a plethora of grays would layer her look in wools, tweeds,and cashmeres. The charcoal and chocolate crocheted chenille scarf that once coiled cozily around her neck was usurped by a white pashmina draped organically around her arms. I could barely make out her delicate leather sandals, unlike the formidable tobacco boots with a respectable patina from loving overuse.

Perhaps the most incongruous aspect of my old friend were her hands. Empty hands. No water bottle. No phone. No oversized hobo bag, not even a clutch. A spontaneous gale arose as she walked under the arches of the Basilica de San Francesco and I watched as her left hand gripped her shawl and the right circled around her wide brim and stamped firmly on top of her hat. She paused. Breathed. Taking in the sea blue sky and blurs of vibrant green shrouding the vista. Then, she turned several corners of the stone labyrinth with instinctive speed and I had difficulty following her.

Just as I caught up with her, risking perhaps to call out her name at last, she tucked into a charming storefront gilded with hanging ferns, climbing ivy and a cherry red begonia sprawling happily over its indigenous habitat. A wrought iron lamp crested the store's sign. My soul smiled.


To be continued...

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