Still Strangers - Chapter 1

As promised, the first chapter of my novel. Posted upon writing. Enjoy!

This grief is a well. A monsoon that bends and loops over unexpectant waters. On afternoons when I’m feeling alright, I come home to cook dinner, wash bottles, play with the children, and put them to bed before greeting the day’s first moment of silence. And there it is—the sorrow—coming quick against the horizon.

This grief is a well. A sandstorm so thick sometimes I cannot see despite how well I shield my eyes. I am covered in dust and debris, blinded by yellow powder as if these small grains make up the entire sun. I trace diagonal lines with my feet, curve the earth with my toes just like Paul Atreides—moving slowly, dancing gently, trying not to hold my breath as I anticipate the sandworm.

This grief is a well. My thoughts, emotions, memories spill over fossilized stars in stones as I drift through the murky ocean, wondering: Will all this negativity contaminate my desires? Will all this good inside of me become blacker than the oil that left behind a shore of feathers? I pray to my ancestors, the ones who lived by the sea, the ones who were named after la mar, that they help clean out the plastics so I can just be myself.

I had a rage dream—the first of many—where I was standing in my brother’s driveway next to my car, screaming at him from the driver’s seat. It was the same scene that had occurred two months prior when I had gotten out of the vehicle to say hello to my extended family. In real life, I was stopped. My brother was standing at the threshold next to his wife behind their front door, and he shouted to his oldest daughter: Go back! Don’t touch her! Go back into the garage! He looked at me—they all did—like I was a plagued woman. And maybe I still am.

They were all there that evening—Marisa and Stephen, my mom and my dad, and the kids who were all bare-footed. It was a physical manifestation of the war that had almost begun one year earlier but would instead start tomorrow. I hurried out of the driveway—my tire digging itself in the mud, the look of horror on my father’s face, the shame spiraling from my red cheeks to my foot pushing harder on the gas pedal—and I realized I was not OK. I had never been—not since I moved to Portland. I was still hurt and angry, still wounded by our conflicts. The niceties I had been sharing were all just pretend.

So, in this dream, it’s no surprise my car was parked as it had been on that afternoon with my cousins in the driveway. Only, this time, I was smashing glass on the cement. Each time the dishware shattered, I would screech a sound so guttural, so primal, so achy that my sleeping body, paralyzed as if in a straightjacket, could feel the well of grief rising as it fought to wake, but couldn’t.

My dream-brother was looking at me with helpless eyes, the way he has often looked at me in our waking-life. There was a longing to be close to me but he was torn by his loyalty to our father so he couldn’t be close at all. There was a yearning to bigger and better buried beneath the disappointment he has felt toward my alleged self-importance. My dream-brother was standing in his dream-driveway wearing a baggy blue t-shirt and black athletic shorts and I saw his armor, the heavy steel that weighs him down and reinforces his duty as eldest son.

I get out of the dream-car and slam the door behind me, staring into my brother’s black eyes and scream at the top of my lungs: TELL ME YOU NEVER WANTED ME. TELL ME YOU NEVER WANTED ME HERE. TELL ME! JUST TELL ME!

My sleeping body was restricted, tight, watching this whole dream happen, experiencing this long-held torment—a complicated mess of emotions and feelings and narratives and demands and, even as I am dreaming, I am still so fucking confused about how all of this has happened, what anybody wants from me, if anybody wants me at all.

There are so many expectations I just can’t seem to keep up with, so many perspectives I just don’t understand, so many roads paved for me I just can’t seem to follow.

But I don’t wake up yet then because next I am running to the sidewalk. I jump onto a tricycle, a little red one with a silver bell, and put my feet on the pedals. I am way too big for this thing, but I ride it anyway with my knees veed out.

Suddenly, I am in the caul-de-sac of our very first home, the house I had come home to days after I was born. The house where, I swear, I have memories of being in a crib and my two older brothers looking at me through the bars wondering, who is this alien? From what planet did she come? It was the house where my head got stuck between the bars of staircase and I cried Bloody Mary; the house where I crawled into bed with my mom and landed with a thud after falling off the mattress; the house where I used to balance on a brick wall in the backyard next to green hedges wondering, where is everyone? Why am I alone?

I woke up from the dream only to realize that I have been feeling this way—heartbroken—for a long, long time. I woke up from the dream and wondered if I ever was wanted here, in this family of five that somehow has made me feel beside myself. There has been so much ache inside my heart, so much heaviness on my shoulders, so much sadness on my face I catch myself frowning every once in a while.

I have never been so defeated, deflated—even though I’ve done this to myself—and I’ve never been so overtaken by my own shadow. Each morning, I wake up, examine my aging face, and stare beyond my tired eyes and stuffy nose into childhood memories I still can’t seem to make sense of.

I am a sensitive person. I am an emotional child. I am a grown woman, mother of two tangled deep in my own web, a narrative with a perspective I am not quite sure is even real yet. I am lost in the underbelly of my own existence, the dregs of an underworld I have never wanted to acknowledge. I am reaching for the sky, trying to let the light in, but down here is mostly darkness. Dampness. The quiet sound of water dripping into a blackened well.