Write to Live

There was a squirrel’s life between me and the edge. It was late May and my sister and I were driving down the tree shaded road leading to my father’s house. My mother’s car is a big graceful ride so we took our time; truth be told rushing was beyond us that day.

For reasons fathomed only by acorn obsessed minds the squirrels kept dashing—kamikaze—into the road, dodging our mother’s tires only by the skill of Shaina’s turning of the steering wheel.
“Please don’t hit them Shaina,” I whispered, scanning the road for suicide scamper missions. “I don’t think I can take it.”

I knew, the way we all know things in moments that stutter and can’t be explained, that my sanity rested solely within the madness of squirrels and Shaina’s ability to turn the wheel just so. My hands gripped the dashboard and I asked my brother “How?”

I saw my Aunts Mona and Corinthia that week. It was the first time in over half my life and I loved them like it was genetic memory, loved them instantly—again. Loved them because they were mine and I was theirs and they held my mother, sister and I together like some space-aged epoxy. They couldn’t mend us but they held strong so we could start to heal ourselves. During the night I laid in my mother’s bed, neither of us sleeping but both of us silent, and I asked my brother “how could you?”

My father cried that week. I had never seen it before.

They all cried that first day at Russell’s and I sat there. Rubbing their backs and patting their legs—I was thinking, “Where’s the superhero you’ve always imagined yourself to be? Huh? Find her why don’t you.”

Later, in my mother’s front yard a bee buzzed around my head. Insistent. I don’t speak the language so couldn’t understand. I still don’t know what it wanted to tell me and now so many of the bees have disappeared. Suddenly gone. I let the wind lick my face and asked my brother “How could you?”

We all decided to wear orange for ‘the’ day—I don’t remember the date. Perhaps because I’ve always been very good at not doing things I don’t want to do. Perhaps because May 27th 2006 is burned indelibly into my skull so other dates have no purchase. At any rate, orange is a color of joy and it seemed right. In the back of the limousine I stared out at the city I love. My Winston-Salem, rich with southern hospitality, culture, art, sassiness and familial bonds reaching back through generations. I was not pleased with my city that morning but I could do nothing—only wipe my face. Wipe my face and try to smile. Reach out and squeeze someone’s hand and then turn back to the window.

When we got inside I paused at the top of the aisle. Took a deep breath and because my brother may have been there somewhere I asked him,
“How could you? How could you drown?”

Tarik had always been able to get out of the any—even the most desperate—situation unscathed. He was better than Houdini. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never will.

When I looked down into the coffin I knew the butterfly had flown. What remained here was only a cocoon, a shelter to the soul’s metamorphosis. The butterfly had flown.

The following week I stumbled down the dock at Mallard Lake leaving my shoes behind me. Silence plugged my ears. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed and I felt stuck between that moment and the one that would eventually follow. Having reached the edge I sat down, closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed. I prayed and when I looked up there was sunlight dancing metallic on the dappled lake. A golden butterfly with black tips to its wing floated like hope over the water.

“Look Sherin!” my Aunt Sylvia said, “A single butterfly, a free spirit! He’s letting us know he’s okay.” I wanted to rub her calf as she stood beside me weeping, but I didn’t feel alive…until…the lake…burst…into sound.

Three ducks flew a slow graceful arch and landed like faeries on the golden waves. Bugs sang buzzing symphonies and we cried, my Aunt Sylbo (Sylvia) and I, while my twin Aunts, Linda and Brenda, stood silent vigil.

That night my Mother went into her garden, drawn to the spot where my brother used to smoke his smelly cigarettes. At first she thought it was a moth, that fluttering of wings at the periphery of her vision, but no. Instead, dancing like sun at midnight over my brother’s smoking spot was a golden butterfly with black tips to its wings. A spirit freed.

Three months later I began to write. Not for the first time but this time in earnest. I wrote the things I had reserved for ‘one day.’ Now had become paramount and one day seemed foolish to await.

Writing was solace. It blocked the quickening of dark worry that had begun to dog my every thought. I worried constantly for the health and safety of those I love and, though not as frequently, I worried with just as much fervor for those I like.

I read almost as much as I wrote. I’m an escapist so I had to get somewhere. Words did the same job they’d done in my childhood. Words were wings.

2006 was relentless. My cousin Rashad was shot. My sister’s godfather Bill had a brain aneurysm. My godfather Cannon died so suddenly that it seemed the skipping of a heart’s beat and then he was gone. On New Year’s Day my friend Carlisle’s mother, Ermine, left us. Requiems seemed a steady soundtrack. Even as I rejoiced in both Rashad and Bill’s healing I struggled limping but hopeful into 2007.

Good thing pens make great crutches.

***

This morning a dog's life brought me to the brink. I stand here on tip-toe and flailing; my pen dug deep into the precipice; a lever and a place to stand stopping the world from titling.

May is an especially difficult month these days. This Mother’s Day, my mother’s memory lingered on the last she’d spent with my brother, the year before. He’d woken up that morning and decided he wanted to go to church. So they did. They went to Gloria’s church. Gloria is my mother’s best friend, my sister’s godmother and my good buddy. Gloria is bedrock, so solid many a person has built their life on the foundation she provides. All the ladies kept saying how handsome Tarik was and he and my mother must have beamed those identical smiles at them. Smiles that reflected what a wonderful time they were having. Because that day was so wonderful this Mother’s Day was wrenching. It was only a week after that good day at church that Tarik left this place. May 27th 2006, three months before his 25th birthday.

Last week the doctors discovered that Gloria has breast cancer, stage four. We do not waiver in our faith. Our knees are bent and our heads are bowed…

My mother’s other best friend and beloved companion, a tiny gray Shi Tzu, called Yuri, died this morning of an aneurysm—just a week before the anniversary of Tarik’s death. May…again. I ache for my mother and I simply ache.

This morning a dog's life seemed the breaking point—I know mine is not the greatest of pains but it is my own, and it knows me—so I dipped my spine in ink to keep my heart from sagging into my feet. I chose a place to stand so it wouldn’t soak into the void and be lost to me. I choose to find solace in words and in The Word. And I write to save a life.