Longer on Moon
Photo by Henry Burrows on Flickr
If we took worry — blasted, ineffectual worry — to its endpoint, we would arrive at — instead (yes, instead!) — a perpetual state of open, courageous concern. I reach for it, yearn toward it —
And wake. My dozy brain leapfrogs. I shift and remember the squawky air mattress below me. The sun is on my arms as the shadows of wide ginkgo leaves gambol about the old parquet floors. I lift my head. The leaves glancing and glancing upon each other sound like water sluicing out of a faucet. Glinting, then lambent, light makes the corners of my mouth pull skyward. Joy like wispy feathers fills me on the inside — into quads, into calves! I smile and smoosh my face into the musty pillow. To the bar, I think. Later today I will go to the bar.
I flop onto my back. My name is Lyly. Pronounced like “lily.” It is a Finnish name meaning “from Lydia.” Lydia being my mother. My mother being someone who’d love nothing more than if I remained, forever, an unopinionated derivative of her. She thought she would name me Liddie, a nickname from her youth, until, seven months pregnant, she found Lyly in a name book. Never mind that Finland has a Black population of less than 1 percent. Mother named me Lyly so that I might always know from whom I came. From Lydia. Her. Well, harmi, Mother, har-to-the-M-I-mi. That means “too bad with a dash of annoyance” in Finnish, though deep down and squirreled away, a part of me is sorry whenever she is mad. And she is mad now, so mad; she churns with maximum distaste for me. Knowing this, I still check my phone and confirm she hasn’t texted or called. My ferocious mother, who is 134 blocks north and five avenues east of me. I miss the carapace of her overwhelming love.
When I slide off the overinflated bed, it makes a long, mournful oiiiink. I pad quietly to the bathroom. My host has a cat named Rumple (short for Rumpelstiltskin), and she sits eagerly on the edge of the sink. I turn on the tap as I lower myself onto the toilet. As I mat Rumple’s fur with water, the vibrations of her purr tendrils up my arm. After my pee, she moves her head so that I, too, might have access to water. I’ve never shared a sink with a cat before, and the perma-sweetness of the experience — my brain bubbling-burbling words of affection, my insides soothed with warmth whenever she’s near — symbolizes for me the kind of living I find myself, well, living. The kind of living I’ve always wanted to live, but by soft temperament or mother circumstance found impossible until now.
I dry my face and, time enough to pause, consider my reflection in the mirror. Like my mother, I have brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes, brown brows, brown hands, brown arms, brown — no, wait, painted them last night — blue nails and toenails. Unlike my mother’s, my anger doesn’t sit well in my body. My nervous
