The Key to All Mythologies by Karen

A note from Karen: This piece is the first installment in a series of short stories I plan to entitle: The Key to All Mythologies. I wrote this story in 2005 and recently revised it.

Water and Fire

Part One: Miss Brooke

I saw Tantalus enduring harsh sufferings as he stood in a pool that splashed to his chin. He strained to quench his thirst but was not able, for every time the old man leaned eagerly to take a drink, the water was swallowed up and gone . . . dried up by some divine power. . .

I saw Sisyphus enduring hard sufferings as he pushed a huge stone; exerting all his weight with both his hands and feet he kept shoving it up to the top of the hill. But just when he was about to thrust it over the crest then its own weight forced it back and once again the pitiless stone rolled down to the plain. (The Odyssey)

Most people have a close relative, an old friend, or perhaps a former college roommate whom they’d prefer never to speak to again. We even develop, as a personal science, the ability to avoid eye-contact with old acquaintances in large crowds or on busy streets. However, in general, it is much more difficult to do so in a nearly empty Albertson's Food-Mart in South Central Los Angeles at half-past eleven on a Tuesday night. Vanessa Brooke found this to be true on a particular evening in December, when she discovered with despair that even her economy-sized shopping cart, stacked high with conspicuous baby diapers, was not quite enough of a fortress to safely hide herself, and her seven-month-old son from the burning eyes of her wild Aunt Tracey.

"Giiiiiirl! How you been?!" Tracey Johns filled aisle seven with a roar of delight; she practically flew over the shish kabob display as she ran to greet her niece. "Man, it's been a million years! Why you here so late? Ha! Like you ain't 'bout to ax me the same thing!" Tracey must have thought this statement worthy of some sort of Academy Award for humor, because she ignited it with a wide-eyed, throw-your-head-back laugh. This particular laugh was, in fact, charming years ago in circles of female friends--back when Tracey's voice was not yet altogether scratched-up by Virginia Slims cigarettes. The raspy crackling, and the tribal-dance-like nature of her laughing manner reminded Vanessa of the speed and flutter with which a well-oiled bonfire springs up.

She hardly waited for her Aunt's moment of explosive bliss to dissipate before muttering, "I'm fine. How are you?" Vanessa tried her best to be sweet in situations such as this. And she would have been quite convincing too, if it weren't for her eye-rolling ritual. Luckily, Tracey's habit of dominating the conversation allowed her to overlook Vanessa's sarcastic air.

Tracey was a red-blooded woman-- the kind who talks her way into or out of anything. She, for example, was the fiery mother who created no small eruptions of havoc in the timid hearts and classrooms of school administrators when her sons had trouble at school. Casey and Kyle were good elementary students (when they had the proper dosages of Ritalin on a regular schedule) and could not possibly be at fault for certain cafeteria food fights, restroom toilet blow-ups, or for the amputation of large chunks of female classmates' hair. Tracey knew there were always teacher's assistants or lunch ladies who could take the rap for false accusations, and she made it her personal calling to call such rap. She was, undoubtedly, a hot topic for the school board, and even teachers' union meetings. There was no sacrifice she would not make, nor burden she would not carry (barefoot, over a bed of hot coals) in behalf of her two sons. A craving for the opportunity to do the same for any member of her extended family also camped itself inside her. This is why, upon seeing Vanessa that evening, thoughts of heroic, maternal love steamed through Tracey’s head.

"So, how's yo' mama, girl? You seen her this week? She been watchin' the baby for you?" Tracey grabbed little baby Shane's fat hand, made a vicious face, and puffed her questions at him, knowing full well that Vanessa hadn't talked to her mother for at least six months now. She didn't mean to interrogate sarcastically; she only hoped that in pretending ignorance she might suggest to Vanessa that it would be proper to keep in touch with her family in general. This was, after all, Tracey's duty as a sort of hot-glue gun for the family: keeping everyone warm and connected.

Vanessa, "a private person," believed she understood Tracey's rhymes and reasons. The conversation was identical to accidental meetings she'd had with her aunt before. The routine was as follows: Tracey would run to Vanessa, ask fake questions, tell some long and illogical story, and invite her over to dinner for some night later that week. Vanessa's part was to respond ambiguously to each question, to accept the invitation coolly, and then to call and cancel, excusing herself due to some unavoidable obligation or emergency. This episode was no different.

As Tracey changed the topic to begin a somewhat political discourse on the school system's need for more female principals, Vanessa inched the shopping cart forward to the front of the store where she could check-out, all the while nodding her head up and down and keeping her eyebrows raised so that Tracey would know she was trying very hard to pretend to listen.

Vanessa was so preoccupied with her subtle escape tactics, that she almost forgot to pick up some Ketchup. Luckily, it was at the end of an aisle on the way to the cash register. Finally, they approached the check-out counter, and as planned, Vanessa "accepted" an invitation to come to a Saturday afternoon barbeque with her cousins. However, she interrupted the inquiry as to whether or not she'd like a ride to indicate bluntly that she needed to rush home to watch a special on The History Channel.

"Mm-mm!" Tracey hummed disapprovingly. "What kinda crazy 'special' could be on right now, seein' as how it's five to twelve?" She wasn't sure if Vanessa was pulling her leg or not. Vanessa's excuses reminded Tracey of the excuses Vanessa's mother made when they were children. The two sisters were on good terms now in their middle age, but when they were adolescents, there was something distinctly different about Vanessa's mother that kept her a little distanced from the hearts and hands of her siblings and the neighborhood family. While everyone else was stuffed with South-Central attitude, Vanessa's mom had an air of cold superiority, and a tilt of the chin that in Tracey's opinion made it no big surprise when she finished her studies at UCLA with a master’s degree and married the owner of the Bank of America branch in Palos Verdes.

The cashier stopped them before Vanessa could give a clear answer to Tracey's teasing questions. Food stamps were still a fairly new part of Vanessa's life, and the act of appearing nonchalant as she used them required her full attention. A handful of death sentences passed from her palm to the cashier’s. The entire store stopped to watch. Time himself slowed down for a moment to observe. Each stamp (from Hell) was like a big fat sticker for her forehead saying: "black female, single mother, welfare abuser." 
 

Vanessa had disappeared mentally, so her aunt sighed, understanding that she was still adjusting to a new lifestyle. Tracey wished her well, and pushed her cart toward the cold-cuts. 
 

Vanessa realized, leaving Albertson's, that the cart she'd chosen was just as squeaky in the store as on the sidewalk. But she didn't bother taking the time to switch carts for the walk home. She knew that if she was to slow down, the safe solitude of her quiet, midnight parking lot could be pierced by Tracey's presence. Of course, now that she thought of it, a ride home wouldn't have been all bad, especially in this neighborhood after midnight, and in the cold. But the truth was, Vanessa was more concerned about appearing incapable in front of her Aunt than of getting raped or catching cold. A typical mother's fears were the kind that rarely swam across her mind.

Ever since her pregnancy, Vanessa had developed a preference for being alone. She hated shopping. It gave her a funny feeling, like the feeling of being followed, or the sensation of getting water up one's nose. Therefore, in an effort to minimize the frequency of her appearances in shopping centers, she made her few trips very productive. That is to say that she stuffed as much as humanly possible into her shopping cart, and brought it all the way up that never-ending hill and into her apartment to unload before leaving it outside on the sidewalk for some teenagers to ride around on or dismantle. She told herself that someone might use it as a stroller the next day, or that some little lady (perhaps from Guatemala and without a green card) might attach a bicycle horn and use it to peddle pretzels on the street. 
 

But, as she pushed her load up the hill that evening, she was not thinking fondly of the Latina with the pretzels, nor was she paying attention to little Shane's whimperings; he had pulled his tiny knit cap off, and dropped it somewhere between the bananas and the Ding-Dongs. Rather, she was recalling, with a fermented taste in her mouth, the first time she stole a shopping cart. It was when the baby was one month old, and she kept him strapped to her chest. That particular day, Vanessa meant only to buy as much as she could carry with two hands, but as fate would have it, there was a sale on Budweiser, and Vanessa (forgetting her transportational circumstances) bought four six-packs, only to recall as she stepped through the automatic doors that she no longer owned a car. Too embarrassed to go back, and as if caught in a bad dream, she and the cart floated heavily forward against the current of street trash in the gutters--Wee, wee, wee, all the way home.

It's not that Vanessa was particularly refined in her manners or style, it's just that she knew that her heart, her soul, and even the little electrons paddling around in her body truly belonged to the world in which she had been raised: the world of scholarships, and L.L. Bean sweaters. Bad luck was her haunting monster. It slimed her during that first shopping cart episode. It slimed her again when Tracey found her in the food mart. She was coming to the realization that Tracey's society, a leviathan of dirty streets with bars on windows, and vagrant shopping carts in the streets, was, like a giant fish, swallowing her slowly. She tried to imagine her feet poking out of a whale's mouth, flipping back and forth--but was unsuccessful in making herself laugh. 
 

Instead, she turned the T.V. on. She cushioned her evenings with the buzz of the History Channel and the hum of Beer: an eternal routine.

Part Two: Mr. Gonzales

"Then sir, if it be of the essence of all knights-errant to be in love. . . may it likewise be presumed that you are also enamoured, seeing that it is annexed to the profession?" (Don Quixote de La Mancha)

Arturo Gonzales forced his extraordinarily large hands to be careful and silent as he shelved books in the history section of the Palos Verdes public library that day. He was not used to being cautious, and often dropped books left and right. But today, he had something on his mind. At that moment, he could see her between Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and some book about the Crusades. He stopped shelving briefly, not because he couldn’t find the spot for the biography of Abe Lincoln he had in his hand, but because his brain had turned off. His eyes were slowly spinning circles (like a dream about windmills) over and under her ears. The pretty black girl with the baby had the smallest ears he'd ever seen on a grown woman. She turned around just then, almost far enough around to see him. He pretended to frown busily at the books, which he bumbled onto the shelf just in case she had noticed.

Okay, sorry. Story-telling no-no. A narrator shouldn't exaggerate the truth. Arturo wasn't just looking at Vanessa's ears. It all started with a significant glance at her busty T-shirt, but the point is, he caught himself. And even though no one was there to hold him accountable, he tried to convince himself he should look at her ears instead of her chest. He thought it would be disrespectful. He didn't want shame in his heart.

One hath not words noble enough to paint Arturo's heart. He was a young man who passionately yearned for a chivalric cause. If only there were some need in his hopelessly well-landscaped neighborhood for a hero. Arturo was the sort who'd climb a mountain bare-foot in the snow if only there were some suffering puppy to save. He'd even run into a burning house to save a stack of photographs that somebody's mother just couldn't do without. Arturo had imagined, perhaps too often, that he would swim several miles through the ocean (even with rusty weights chained to his legs) if that mysterious woman with the tiny ears were tragically trapped on a shoddy, slipshod raft. His fingers and feet itched for the opportunity, filled with an intense, and noble kind of kinetic energy that rendered him nearly claustrophobic in between the shelves where he stacked books each day. So, I guess you could say he was horny. And a virgin. And clumsy. Although he had somehow climbed to age 23, his limbs were still too large for his body, as if puberty had shirked this last part of its responsibility in a protest against his unfulfilled aspirations of adventure and bold sacrifice. 
 

Maybe he had just been in the bubble of Palos Verdes for too long. The name of the city was Spanish for “green sticks,” which he thought indicated either the trees, or the millionaires in town. He liked to imagine places that were more like the movies, and prime time television, places with people who didn’t have their own crew of gardeners, maybe even places with people who couldn’t pay the rent.

He'd been watching Vanessa in the library for several weeks now. Actually, he recalled clearly that the first day he saw her was November 14th. Ever since that afternoon, he'd been having a hard time trying to squeeze her image out of his brain. Her ears, her lips, her legs, the way she balanced the baby on one hip while flipping through a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, all these parts of her kept pouring and pouring into his head. It's true that Arturo's infatuation with Vanessa was based in part on her beauty, but he was acquainted with plenty of pretty girls. It wasn't just any chest full of boobs that he wanted.

Vanessa was different. The first time he saw her, he sensed something extraordinary. Blah, blah, blah. Everyone believes that their object of infatuation is "different." The question is, what does that mean? Hopefully, a true romantic will be able to articulate to him or herself something more specific. Something like this:

He knew something secret about her spirit when he looked at her. It had to do with something dignified and modest about her neck, and the way she tilted her chin. It was the determined and gentle way she carried herself. And the way she slouched at the table, engulfed in her studies. Arturo thought there was nothing more attractive than a woman with an encyclopedia. He believed he knew the longings of her soul, her sorrows, her loneliness, her thirst for some cause to devote herself to. 

"She's just like me," He often thought to himself. Strangely enough, he was right.

That day, Arturo watched her finally sit down with her books at a nearby table. Before he could talk himself out of it, he marched right over, arming himself with his book cart, pretending to bring it somewhere important.

"Find everything you need okay?" Arturo could hardly believe what he was doing.

Vanessa and her books replied without looking up. "Yep."

"Um, you’re working pretty hard, I guess." He was well aware that that sounded ridiculous.

It surprised her. "What?" She blushed, realizing suddenly that his eyes were very sweet. Does he want to start a conversation? She thought, or is this some kind of customer-service trick? Was his supervisor watching?

"I mean, I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time we’ve had the honor to have you searching through our ancient history books."

"How would you know?" Vanessa was flattered, but for a moment, suspicious. This book shelf boy looked either Mexican or Nepalese to her. She couldn't tell which, but trickles of racist assumptions sometimes entered her mind when she questioned men's intentions for approaching her. However, his smile was intolerably innocent. Oh, great, she thought, he's the dorky-but-cute type.

"I'm usually the one that re-shelves your books when you leave," he teased.

"Oh."

"Sorry. I'm not trying to make fun. Are you writing a paper?"

"Uh, sort of." It seemed to Vanessa that it had been a very long time since a nice boy flirted with her. The baby usually scared the decent-looking ones away. This is probably why she was not yet ready to answer in complete sentences. It must be said as well that this kind of conversation was foreign to her to begin with; Vanessa never opened up to strangers.

"Is it bad for me to ask? I don't wanna bug you or anything. I'm just dying from curiosity." Arturo could already tell by her smiling shyness that it was okay. Please, don't let her have a boyfriend, he prayed.

"Actually, I don't mind," she began nervously. She shuffled some of her note papers, not knowing what to say about her precious research. "It's a project I'm putting together. I kinda want to write a book about, um. . . Well, actually it's completely crazy."

"I like crazy, tell me." He was bold, and invited himself to sit down.

"It's about some of my theories regarding mythology, and religion, and their origins, and why there are so many common patterns in the folklore of different cultures." It was a little painful for her to summarize her project in so few words. Her research was her best friend, it was the reason she had for living when everything else seemed so wrong in her life. She worshipped it.

You wouldn't have believed Arturo's eyes could get any bigger, but they did. 

"Wow, is it a dissertation?" He wondered if she was older than he, and hoped that if so she wouldn't mind. Her ears were so small. Mostly, he was amazed with his own conversation savvy. He'd never been one to push a chat with a girl forward like this. Something about Vanessa's presence made him strangely articulate. He imagined himself a fearless warrior, fighting social anxiety with magical words.

"Uh, um, well, I'm not actually in school right now. I can't really afford it, with the baby and all. I did finish up a couple of semesters at Santa Monica College about a year ago. . . but this project is just uh, kind of a hobby, I guess." She looked down. There was no longer a chance to make him think that the baby without a father was not hers, or that she had the impressive educational backdrop she so wished for. She knew he probably wouldn't be interested in her now, but at least she hadn't lied to him. He seemed too nice to lie to.

"Are you serious?!" Arturo's enthusiasm was genuine, but funny to watch. "You’re amazing. Seriously. Think about it, millions of students pay thousands of dollars for tuition to impress their families and friends with a degree, and only put in a half-hearted effort for most of their work. And here you are, under no pressure to make a grade, no deadlines to meet, and still working like your life depended on it, studying just to satisfy your desire to learn. I think that’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

"What? Oh, thanks." She laughed awkwardly. His smile was like candy. She knew her feat was not as great as Arturo made it sound. She even knew that he knew that she knew so. She knew he was being nice and probably had a crush on her. But she felt a strange trust for him; like, she might ask him for any favor and that he wouldn't mind, a trust that she might tell him her secrets about the fight she'd had with her parents, and even about her theory that the City of Atlantis was lost in Noah's flood, and that he'd understand everything. He seemed to be the lifeguard with the inner-tube she'd been waiting for her whole life.

Our society has spent a great deal of time criticizing one of life's greatest truths: the possibility of love at first sight. Somehow, Darwin, Nietzsche, and materialism have backed us into a corner where there is no more room to breath comfortably let alone trust our feelings. We are afraid of things that we can't explain with science, things like people and the future. We are afraid to believe in God without using the theory of relativity to explain Him, and so afraid to believe in true love that we start shopping around for a good divorce attorney before we pick out our wedding cakes.

But Arturo was not afraid, so he asked for her number.

That night, Vanessa floated on a hope she hadn't felt for a long time. Instead of dulling her senses with beer and television, she wrote down everything she could remember about Arturo in her research notebook. She wrote about his boldness, his teeth, and all the details about how his father had emigrated from Mexico with his wife and made big money in the cement business as an entrepreneur before Arturo was even born. She wrote about his beautiful mother, and the way she must have taught Arturo and his four sisters to keep the traditions of their hometown. As she wrote, her desire to become part of such a family leaked from her pen to the spaces between the lines of her notebook. Afterwards, Vanessa sang the baby to sleep. She even imagined Arturo teaching Shane to play ball. As she day dreamed, she glanced from time to time at her phone on the counter.

All week she caught herself staring at the phone, and holding her breath. But of course he didn't call. Young flirting ladies so often forget to factor statistical probabilities when they calculate their dating expectations. For girls in Vanessa's eligibility bracket Only 1 in 3 requests for a phone number becomes an actual phone call.

She didn't see him at the library either. The circulation desk lady who had noticed their mutual interest told her casually that he had requested a location transfer and was working at some other branch. Nosy people, though rarely helpful, are sometimes informative.

Part Three: Mrs. Johns

 
Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. (John 11:14)

Tracey remembered that she had left some tater-tots in the oven at home. They were probably burning the complex down. It was for this reason that she was in such a hurry to get back. She'd been dropping some things off at the homeless shelter. Where had she parked her car? She couldn't remember. It started to rain again. She cursed under her breath and laughed. As she passed an old, condemned warehouse, she slowed down to tiptoe through a puddle. That's when she noticed him. He was crouched down in the alley, leaning against a boarded up doorway. She scanned his expensive coat and his shoes. 

"Boy!" she called out. He didn't look up, so she whistled. "An’ you a looker! Boy, you don't look like a thug to me, you best get yo' self outa here, before somebody come an' pick yo' nose wid a twenny-two." His head turned itself the other way, and the young man didn't answer. He rubbed his nose just then and she realized he had been crying. Tracey forgot about the tater-tots and approached him gently, 

"’Scuse me for asking, but you far from yo' house, am I right? You need a ride somewhere?"

"I'm not drunk, and I’m not lost" he snorted, defensively. She surmised that he couldn't have been younger than twenty.

"But I betcha lost somethin'." She invited herself to sit next to him on the broken pavement. "Was it yo' job?"

"No, I work at the library." (On a whim, Arturo had accepted a transfer to the only public library with an immediate opening for his position, the one in Tracey’s neighborhood.)

"Was it your dog?" she teased. He's probably meeting someone to buy crack, she thought.

"No." This game annoyed him, but he liked her company.

Sometimes we run to solitary places, trying desperately to prove to ourselves that we are independent, and meanwhile we pray that a friend or stranger will follow us there. We wish for our fairy godmother to appear, to give a hug or a loving word, or just to sit and share the space.

Tracey tried harder to be respectful, "Did ya lose somebody?" She whispered this, and looked straight at him.

He allowed her to make eye contact only for a moment. "No," he answered, "not exactly." He nodded his head up to flip some of the rain out of his straight black hair. "Have you ever wanted something so bad, then reached out to grab it, and then the thing you're reaching for disappears, and it wasn't really there to begin with, and you have no idea what else to reach for so you just stand there like an idiot with your arm in the air?"

"Hm...It's a girl, isn't it?" she accused with a simmering smile.

He rolled his eyes, embarrassed. The rain dripped from his hair to his face.

"She pretty?"

He sighed.

"Look like Jennifer Lopez?"

"More like Rihanna. I mean, before she 'went bad'"

"Mm. I understand. You love her?"

"I don't really know her."

"Well, you like her, does she like you back?"

"I don't know."

"Well, why don'tcha know? You be tryin' to find out? How you meet this girl anyway?"

"At the library. She studies there. . ."

Tracey exercised great control to calm the fiery storm of her mouth enough to let Arturo explain without interruption.

"I introduced myself a few weeks ago. She's amazing. Loves history. I got her number, but-- " he slowed down.

Tracey's eyes seemed about to ignite with impatience.

"But," he continued, "Well, my parents probably wouldn't like her."

"Oh, I get it now. Mm. How they know her?"

"They don't."

"Then how come they be thinkin' like that? They racist?"

"What? Oh, no. At least, I don't think—no, they're not like that. They're just, well, they've got a big house, big name business friends, big donations for the Catholic Church, big educational plans for me…"

"—An' lemme guess, da little lady in question be livin' in da projec', an' da resta her family be sittin' in da slam-house?" Tracey sometimes increased the fluency and speed of her Ebonics when she wanted to sound authoritative.

"Something like that."

"Hmm. I don't know, Mr. Romancio, that sounds like a lame excuse. Is that the real reason you don't call her?"

"What?! Oh, I don't know. It's hard. What if I call her and she doesn't answer? Or what if we date for years and fall in love, but she doesn't want to marry me, cause some guy named Pimp-hair comes along? Or what if I say something dumb?!" A strange train of incoherent excuses was shooting from Arturo's mouth. Tracey found it entirely amusing, but managed to keep a straight face. "Besides," he continued, "I don't know what I'm doing with my life. She's got a baby, and I don't want to get into a relationship if I don't have a plan, y'know, a way to support somebody."

"You're a student, right?"

"UCLA. They want me to be a doctor or something." He was confused as to why she changed the 
subject so suddenly.

"'Or somethin?' What you want fo' yo'self?"

"I don't know. Just want to find something I like. Help people out, I guess."

"And you can't be helpin' in the doctor's office?"

"Yeah, but I feel like if I become a doctor, I'll just be doing it to show off, y’ know, to impress people." Arturo's frequent sighs indicated, if nothing else, that he was a deep breather. "I used to imagine that I'd be a fireman, or a cop."

Tracey couldn't help it, that explosive laugh of hers ripped right out. "Oh, honey, ain't nobody heard of a nice-guy cop wid' a nice-guy face like you got. That's some dangerous bid'ness. You a risk-taker?"

"It's a lot more satisfying to get something you really want, when you put yourself on the line for it, isn't it?"

"That's good advice Boy, you should take it."

"Hm." He grunted, and ground his teeth together; something in his expression caught fire. Who was this woman? He thought. And how did she know just what to say to him?

"What about you? What do you want for yourself?" He asked her, surprised at himself for changing the subject.

"Ha! Fo' myself? Mm. I need to quit smoking, that's what I need," she said and started to get up, suddenly remembering her boys and the tater-tots. "But I've been trying for ten years, and it's just a joke now. I mean, nothin' short of a leper-savin' miracle's gonna be enough to get dis nasty ash outa me. Anyways, 'scuse me, but I jest remembered where I parked the car. You listen now. You do what's gonna be good fo' you."

"Hey!" He called out to her as she started around the corner, "Uh, I mean," he stammered, suddenly standing up, "I don’t know what you think, but I believe God really can help people with stuff like quitting smoking.”

She backed up to give him a questioning stare. Then she chuckled softly and walked away.

****

Vanessa didn't always know when she was drunk. It happened so often, it seemed to have become part of her natural sleeping process. However, on this particular evening, she started drinking much earlier than usual. It was her parents' wedding anniversary. They had a big party each year to celebrate the event. She knew that all her old friends would be there. Someone would ask where she was, and then some rude cousin would find just the wrong words to explain it all. She felt sick thinking about it.

In her cloudy mind that night, Vanessa pictured her parents with wine glasses in their hands. Her mother wears a red shining dress. Her father, looms over her in her imagination, makes a toast to her absence. His booming voice starts a trickle of laughter that pours itself down through the crowd until it crashes and rolls like the cackling of a thousand witches and trolls. From behind her, a vicious party guest cries out with a pointed finger, "Look! There she is!" They chase after her, and drag her to the punch bowl, which suddenly becomes a cauldron. It boils a hot, sticky liquid. The demons force some into her mouth, and throw her to the floor. She looks up and recognizes that the pointing finger is Tracey's. The liquid burns and burns.

Vanessa awoke from her dream because she was throwing up on the carpet. The baby started crying then, and Vanessa forced herself to sit back on the couch. She was too weak to stand. The room was a mess. The TV was still on. She had a headache. She was thirsty. It seemed to take longer than usual to walk to the counter. She cursed the telephone on the way there. She had changed her phone number just before meeting Arturo, and because he was still the only one who had the new number, the phone had lain dead in its tomb for three weeks now. Her family wouldn't have been able to call her even if they had wanted to.

Shane cried more loudly, and the sound echoed in her head. She cursed the baby, and threw something at him. She missed, but his cries became screams. Vanessa poured herself some more and stared at the phone. She sobbed without letting go of her glass. She knew that no one like Arturo would ever love her. She knew she'd never have enough money to go back to school. She knew her parents would never speak to her again. She knew her research would never be published. Someone in the library had told her earlier that week that there was a historian in Germany with a doctorate who had just published a whole collection of books about the very same topic. How would she ever be able to prove that her ideas were original? This is dumb, she thought. Why am I concerned about world fame, when I don't even know if I'm good enough to publish in a local magazine?

When she discovered she had no tears left, she cursed God.

As an unbiased, observing narrator, I feel it's fair to consider Vanessa's perspective and reasoning. Maybe Vanessa has a point. Maybe it is worthless for her to go on living. Maybe no one would even notice if she died. It's not like she has a real purpose in life. Nothing special to live for, or accomplish. Even baby Shane. He doesn't need her. If necessary, Tracey or some other relative could raise him. No problem.

Vanessa couldn't remember how she had fallen off the barstool, but there she was, on the floor. She was crawling around looking for something. How had Juliet done it? She thought, wasn't it with a knife? But all of Vanessa's knifes were dirty, and too dull. Although the room was spinning around her, she managed to crawl to the window. She knew that she could take the screen off without too much trouble, but even in the whirlpool that was her brain she recognized that the second story wouldn't be a far enough jump to do the job for certain.

She threw up again, and this time, perhaps as a habitual reaction, she picked herself up and staggered to the bathroom. Vanessa sat on the linoleum, and leaned over the toilet. The cup was still in her hand. She imagined herself slicing her wrist with broken glass, and began pounding the cup against the floor. Then she noticed the bathtub; she turned the water on.

At about the same time that Vanessa finished the last of her beer that night, Tracey could be found just outside her own apartment. She was leaning against the railing across from her front doorway, and twirling a cigarette with her fingers. The tater-tots had indeed been burned, but no other damage was done that afternoon. Except that Tracey couldn't stop thinking about something the boy in the alley had said. It left her fully distracted the whole day. She thought, for example, that there was some place she was supposed to go to that night, but she couldn't remember what, and she hadn't written it down. At this moment, however, Tracey wasn't settling her thoughts down to earth where she might be able to recall her sister's anniversary party. Instead, she was carefully watching the cigarette spin little circles around her hand, and daring her fingers not to light it. It was a game she played with herself six or seven times a day, and she always lost. But this evening, something was different.

Tracey felt, in an instant, something pull at her emotional insides. The sensation was so cold that it put out her tobacco lust entirely; Vanessa's melancholy face flashed through her mind, and Tracey gasped, knowing, without knowing, that something was wrong.

Now, Tracey would never claim to have powers of prophecy or telepathy; this intuition, she believed, was what every mother has, the power to know when her children are running out into a busy street when her back is turned, and so forth.

She dropped her cigarette and ran to her car.

Baby Shane halted his screaming for about .4 seconds when he heard a pounding on the front door. It was a ridiculous scene, a grown woman running up the stairs, beating and rattling a door and doorknob, yelling as if there was a fire.

"I know you in there! Hear me?!" Tracey cried, "I know you der’, 'Nessa! Open the do'!" The smell of alcohol widened her nostrils. Then, in a desperation that would not have made sense to anyone else, she pulled a wire from her pants pocket, and picked the lock. In two breaths, the door was open. Shane found himself suddenly clinging to Tracey's neck. She almost dropped him in the bathroom doorway.

"Holy Father," Tracey whispered. She didn't waste time. She set Shane down in the hallway, and pulled Vanessa's blue body out of the tub. Tracey tore her own shirt off and tied it tightly around the girl's bleeding wrist. The water was cold, but Vanessa was still warm enough to be alive. She called 911, and pinched her cell phone between her ear and shoulder to perform CPR as the operator gave her instructions. The episode was one big blur of puke and sirens to Tracey. When the EMS announced Vanessa was breathing, she finally sat down. They wrapped a blanket around the girl as soon as she could sit up, and Tracey jumped to her. Vanessa found her tears in Tracey's arms.

"Oh, Trace—Oh, Trace—" she stuttered, almost choking in embarrassment and gratitude.

"—Shhh, don't say nothin'," Tracey hushed, and kissed her head. "Don't worry baby, you don't have to say nothin'."

What is more satisfying for any woman than to wring her heart dry on the shoulder of someone who loves her?

Something was ringing. It was Vanessa's phone. She held her aunt more tightly and wept again.

Somebody took a message.