Chapter 20

I’m just waiting for him to prove me wrong on that one.

He wants to go in to law, he said. He certainly has the logical mind for it.

But could I be with what I have been conditioned to despise? After all, it can’t be coincidence that Bro. Baldwin, President Pace, and President Stoddard were all lawyers. Things have to make sense.

But what if they just don’t? she postulated.

Then the universe has no order, and we do not exist. I believe in deductive powers. I have faith in my mind.

I’m just fickle. One moment pouring my heart into something, the next reviling from it. Relationship schizophrenia. Romantically bi-polar.

I have a history of hurting boys, not of them hurting me, she told me. We were sitting across from each other on a cold April night, the scraps of our dinner sitting untouched for at least an hour. Sabra. Her name is unique, just as she is. Different and intriguing and lovely. An exotic animal that only avid professionals ever get a glimpse of. Milk chocolate hair with dark chocolate eyes, and skin that could make a bowl of cream jealous. Freckles scattered , flecks of vanilla bean. The first time I met her, I thought she wouldn’t like me. That she was too pretty to be nice. I was wrong.

That summer comes back in clips and phrases. I can’t remember parts of it; I think that’s my body’s way of dealing with the trauma. Omitting it completely. You can’t regret a memory that doesn’t exist.

That day, 4 months later, in our new apartment. She sat on the floor by the coffee table and told me of who she was. The characteristics that used to be intricately woven into her being, a tumor to her personality. Its not who she is now. But all the same, it brought tears. Telling those kinds of things always does. It would seem heartless and detached not to cry. She was anything but heartless and detached.

Little notes on the fridge, telling us how much she loved us. Shoe boxes of cryptic gifts, complete with post-its to bring to mind the memory they sanctified. Warm evenings and bright mornings, all brightened by her presence.

Light cleaveth unto light. So be as much light as you can. Sabra is a walking lighthouse; a beacon to the rest of us that are trying to find out way. A bane to those who are trying to hide. Her light beckoned to me, and I came as a lowly fishing rig out of the storm. She didn’t calm the waters, she directed the way back to the shore. She showed me how to fix the wound. How to get from the fire back into the frying pan, and then to pray that someone would remove me from the heat entirely.

I convinced and begged and pleaded and manipulated. All so I could go to Idaho. It meant too much to me to miss. The drive up was long and hot. My clip in extensions grated into the back of my head like cleats into spring grass. Every crevice, every part sweating. Jodi and I in the backseat, talking and bonding,. Ralph and Atkinson in the front, reminiscing. We stopped at subway, and I watched in awe as that tiny 98 pound body somehow stuffed a foot-long meatball sub into it. I wondered where it all went; there’s no way her stomach was big enough to handle all that. Maybe her ancestors evolved from birds. Maybe she had extra organs to store it all.

As we came closer, my heart beat faster and faster. The car grew quieter as the speed limit dropped, rounding corners onto streets with names like Beethoven and Mozart. Finally, we made the final turn, on to Debussy. The composer of Claire de Lune. The piece that told the story of eras, lifetimes. Complicated arpeggios rolling like waves with the left, hand, while the right hand plays a pensive melody.

I gathered everything together. All the gifts I had prepared as a collective peace offering for the emotional civil war she had witnessed inside me. Gifts I hoped she would understand. CDs, with carefree songs of the past. Songs with memories attached; dew on grass. Songs that defined me, or at least what I understood to be me at the time. My own personal canon.

And then there was that book. I spent hours making that thing; a collection of writing and memories and revelations. Of pictures. 5 weeks. And yet there was so much.

That was the first time I had cried in a really long time, she said. As I saw you sitting there, tears pouring down your face. When I looked over, I saw that Jodi was crying too. The princess dynasty, all together. Sharing the joy, the pain, the frustration, the disappointment, and the moment we had all eventually reached. Of giving up who we really were to be good at something that no one can really excel at.

It’s a special kind of woman that lives life in color. Pink, purple, orange, red, and even green. Sometimes turquoise. Rarely white. Or chocolate days. Crimson nights. Only the worst days are black. How can people live without color? Clothing stores cater to those women. Most of the people forking cash over are counterfeits, wannabes.

Not us. In a room with too many women who fit too few stereotypes, we were the real deal. The perfect cut, colorless, priceless jewels. We each sparkle differently. And when you get us in a set, there is a particular shine that emanates from the three. We compound into perfect prismatic perfection. One curvy, two slender. Blonde, brunette, redhead. Enchanting. Haunting. Staggering.

At her house, we ran out to her back yard. Bounced on the nested trampoline, safe and snug in it’s perpetual cave. It was one of the magical moments, when Jodi became a cheerleader in a pencil skirt and Atkinson stopped being so freaking creepy for a change. Childhood toys are the greatest equalizer in the world.

Her parents served tiers of sliced fruit next to a rented chocolate fountain, something I’m sure she dreamed up some endless, freezing night in Armenia. It’ll be worth it for the chocolate fountain, she probably told herself. Then she would try to distract herself from the frost-nip in the apartment by focusing on home. The colors. The sounds. The smells. Reality is so much more bearable when you put it in a time frame.

I always pictured us three together, with men somewhere in the background. The usuals who fell too quickly and understood too little to mean more than just a strong arm and a warm body. We have a talent for attracting men in general. Jodi gets the modelish pretty boys, with cut pectorals and husky voices. The kind with perfect tans and perfect teeth. Anna gets the brooding emotionals, with exteriors of sandpaper and interiors of razorblades. It just always seems to be the case that if you have to work for it, its worth it. She and I have learned the hard way: it’s not. I get the ethnic boys. The latinos with a fever for freckles and blue eyes. The persistent kind that call 3 times in one day to check how you’re doing. The ones that romance you till you’ve got clichés coming out of every unholy orifice possible. Who never contribute anything once they’ve actually caught you. Catch and release fisherman, that’s what they are.