alyssumblog

alyssumblog

Monday, September 19, 2011

Here are Chapters 1 "Get the Goo" and 11 "Shopping Bags"of  my manuscript, Hands for Soledad.  They were paired for a special reading with Women on Writing (W.O.W.) at the San Mateo County Fair in June, 2011.

Get the Goo 
When Mommy told me, “Soli, get the Goo,” I knew she was having a good day.  What I mean is, she was feeling well enough to come out of bed for awhile to put my hair up in ponytails.  On this day, she put on a fresh housecoat and some make-up, even though her eyes were still real yellow because she was kinda sickly.  Nobody ever told me exactly what she had, but I overheard the grown-ups say it had something to do with her being born with a bad liver.
I opened the bottle of pink “Goo”, the hair style gel that smelled like bubble bath and dish soap mixed together. I loved the smell of the Goo. Still, my nose wrinkled up every time I unscrewed the lid and I think this is because its slimy, thick texture was creepy.  If you dipped your fingers into the bottle, you could stretch the goo between your fingertips. Goo was like a bottle of pink bugers.  Anyway, I still really loved the smell.   I dropped in the rat tail comb, and sat on the white vinyl ottoman facing the mirror. Mommy took the bottle and put it next to her on the metal folding tray with painted yellow sunflowers on it.  Her plate of dry toast from the breakfast Dad had put on the tray at her bedside still had half a slice remaining, and a clot of grape jelly clinging to the side of the dish.  Mommy took a little bite of toast, sat behind me at the edge of the unmade bed, and straddled her legs around me. She gathered up my tangled long hair with one hand, while slowly drawing the rat tail comb out of the bottle of Goo with the other hand.  The Goo drooled off the edge of the comb. Mommy waited for a bit to let it drip and then tapped the rest off and back in to the bottle.
Combing and smoothing, Mommy pressed my hair flush against my scalp, the black strands of hair shiny slick—drying in crunchy clusters of hairs all in line with the teeth of the hard comb.  She bundled my hair so tight it pulled my eyelids back and upward, making my eyes look even slantier than they already were.  After that, she grabbed a rubber band, pulled my hair through, and then tugged the ponytail hairs even tighter.
 “O-w-w-w-w, too tight,” I whined. I scratched at my neck where the hairs itched at their very roots.
“Keep still, Soli,” Mommy said. She placed her hands on my shoulders, gently turning me to the left so she could comb out the second side.  With one last dip into the pink Goo, Mommy got up from the bed, squatted in front of me, and combed down my bangs. She tied plaid ribbons that matched my orange corduroy pedal pushers over each ponytail.    I was a small kid compared to the other kids, so my pants went all the way down to my ankles.  Didn’t matter.  I knew I looked so good with my hair done up with the Goo.
3-6-9 The goose drank wine
The Monkey chewed tobacco on the street-car line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little row boat umm-hmm
                                             -Shirley Ellis, 1965
∞ 6 YEARS LATER ∞
Shopping Bags

Though me and my brother arrived at Auntie Serafina’s house in mid-December, I didn’t remember anything at all about Christmas that year:  Where we were, who was there—or whether anyone, was there at all.  Mommy’s funeral had been only two weeks before, but my dad wanted to get out of our house on Fleetwood Drive as fast as we could.
“Too many memories, Soli,” he muttered as he folded up my bed frame and slammed it up against the wall. “Too many memories.”  While cleaning out my mommy’s --his wife’s-- belongings, in the cabinet above her closet, my  father discovered twenty Christmas gifts, wrapped in red, green, and gold paper, each one with a nametag addressed to a niece, a nephew, an aunt, an uncle, and to every one of Mommy’s fourteen godchildren. Each present was decorated with matching curled ribbon and her handmade flowers made of crepe paper.
A rush of people whose faces I didn’t even recognize, filed through the house, dabbing their eyes with a balled up tissue in one hand, grabbing whatever of my mommy’s things they wanted with their other hand: her heavy -duty Guardian Service pots and pans and the matching pyrex lids for example.
“These are expensive in the department stores!” I heard them whisper.
 I wonder why I all of a sudden felt like throwing up just because I saw one of those balled up wet tissues fall out of one lady’s hand onto the rug.
 Out the door with them went mommy’s belongings. Her costume jewelry.  Her sewing machine.  Crinkled Macy’s bags filled with fabric remnants from Halloween costumes she had sewn for me and Davey. Her shoes.
“As a remembrance, darling,” the women had said ,  pressing their powdered noses against my face, then Davey’s, and sniffing our cheeks, as if smelling Mommy’s children would then become part of the remembrance they could take away with them. 
Their hands.  Snapping open brown paper shopping bags stacked by the door on  a warped and rustingTV tray with yellow sunflowers painted on them. 


Loading in my mommy’s things, one by one. 
3-6-9 The goose drank wine
The Monkey chewed tobacco on the street-car line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little row boat 
                                                                      -Shirley Ellis, 1965

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