The toothbrush (for J. ).

My Toothbrush, by Amapola Blooming

I

It was nearly midnight while I was brushing my teeth when I noticed another remain of your presence. The bright pink towel I left out for you laid on the edges of the bathtub still unfolded. The traveling toothbrush I unpacked for you this morning was resting on the sink with its damped cap covering its hard, cheap bristles.

II

I recalled how it was to wake up with you in an unusually freezing morning in early spring. We lingered in bed and you touched me patiently until I moaned and was ready to curl up against you again. It had been a while since I had  someone feel my morning dew, and you knew it.

“Natural, easy chemistry” I thought, as the foam increased inside my mouth, tickling my tongue and the inner edges of my lips. I washed away the tingly froth with lukewarm water, gargling the green freshness of Sensodyne Mint. 

I cleaned my worn toothbrush under the running tap, then firmly stroke my right thumb over the bent bristles, letting tiny sparks of water disperse over the sink. 

III

It was when I was placing my toothbrush back in the ceramic cup, that I noticed yours again. I played with the idea of keeping it next to mine, until you stayed another night. 

Holding your toothbrush in my hand I wondered: when will you give me a sign that you cherish what we just shared? It had been ten hours since the last time I kissed you goodbye, and I wished to hear from you before going to bed. 

IV

I hesitated, and resisted the impulse to place our toothbrushes tête-à-tête. I pondered for a second whether I should throw both of them away or not. After all, it is time for mine to be replaced. I placed your toothbrush below the sink. It now lies next to my many other toiletries. I don’t know until when.

I looked into the mirror while drying my chin and lips with my hand towel.  Leaving behind my reflection, I shut off the light and left the bathroom.

Epilogue

“Que sea eterno mientras dure.” I mumbled in Spanish as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, quoting my favourite phrase from Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli (“let it be eternal while it lasts”).

Outside, the cold wind played with the wooden chimes in my patio and church bells announced the third midnight of spring. 

More word melody than fast fingers.

  

It was summer 1984 in the Dominican Republic, when my mum signed me up for a course to learn how to type. Her argument was that I should invest in this skill, as in two years time I'd be in college and I'd be able to type my own papers. The cool catch was: the course took place at the university campus and I loved the idea to combine it with sitting at my mum's lectures. It made me feel like a sophomore.

Back then, electric typewriters were a luxury. I learned typing on one of those bulky, clumsy mechanic machines. I still remember how I loved the sound they made as we hit the keys. That clack-clack symphony of 30 typists in training, all chasing each other with a crescendo speed. As if we were playing the piano in allegro, then in prestissimo, something that I always dreamed of learning. But my modest parents couldn't afford it for me during that time .

My favourite part was the fastest-typist competition: we had to reproduce a piece of text under three minutes. I always ended amongst the top three. My next level was the blind-typing challenge: the fastest 'blind' typist with least mistakes was the best. I also beat that one.

I liked it so much, that I fantasised with becoming a stenographer in court cases. Later on, not only I had temp jobs as a secretary, but  I had the chance to type on an electric Olivetti.  It made me feel extra important!

When I started college, I typed my own essays and I even earned some money transcribing manuscripts for others. By that time, computers were new to education and Wordperfect was THE THING to learn!

Now I seldom use a pen. And when I see people typing with two or four fingers, I always recall my mum's gift. Like she said when I was a kid, and didn't get the piano I asked for Christmas:

"We cannot afford a piano, but we can offer you the best education".

Years went by and writing became my instrument of expression. Tonight, like piano to poetry, the hushed typing on my high-tech keyboard blends with my hasty words' melody. I close my eyes, running after the wonderful inspiration that made this memory possible.

Thank you mum.

Published in Six Word Memoirs 

Image source here

A wedding cake in four movements (true story)

I

When I married my ex-husband, we opted for a very informal, non-religious, absolutely intimate Dutch wedding. We were short of money, so we decided to prepare all the finger food ourselves. After all, we only had 10 guests.

It was the night before the ceremony, when we were avidly preparing our wedding version of our improvised movie-night tapas, that I realised that we didn't have a wedding cake! It was nearly 10pm, and the supermarket was about to close.

Before rushing to the supermarket, I decided to make a quick call to my mum in the Dominican Republic so that she could take me through the ingredients of the recipe. She used to bake wedding cakes for a living when I was a child, and I used to feel thrilled to be allowed to help her.

(But honestly, in a case like this, who would you call if not mum?)

But mum was not home and I had to be quick, otherwise I was doomed to have a 'cakeless' wedding. So I ran to the supermarket and I got all the ingredients that came to my mind as I recalled the many  times mum and I baked together.

II

I intuitively mixed the eggs, the flour, the butter, the sugar, the cocoa... and by midnight I had a perfectly shaped and neatly scooped steamy marble cake. In the same memory flow as in the supermarket, I also managed to prepare a cream with rum. I let the cake cool before I poured a generous amount of 'crema borracha' over it. It was winter and the cool drafts of the night crawling into the kitchen would keep it fresh until the next day, so I left it outside.

III

Back in the house after the ceremony: that unmissable moment where the bride and the groom cut the cake and they bite that first little piece of married sweetness they carefully put in each others' mouth.

I don't remember if we kissed, but the cake tasted heavenly.

IV

In all the times my mum supervised my baking (a habit that stayed on until my teens, long after she had stopped baking for a living), I never managed to bake a cake as soft in texture and balanced in sweetness as this one.

Traveling was expensive, so my mum and my family could not attend my wedding. But that cake, THAT cake! had MUM written in every sliced served.

It simply melted slowly, like a tender kiss.

A Feeble Fan

The soft melon and pistachio green walls reflected the shadows of the lazy ceiling fan. I fixed my gaze on the flapping wings, wishing after every slow turn that the events of that hot summer afternoon had not been real.

My books, my poems, my diaries, my photo albums, my pen-pal postcard collection, my drawings, my teen magazines, my birthday cards, my newspaper clippings, my old Billy Idol and Rod Stewart posters, my autograph collection, my comics, my dictionaries, my fashion catalogues, my “if-I-win-the-lotto” wish list, my high school transcripts, my address book, my hardly-ever-touched bible, my linen stationary paper, my funky pen collection, my freshly purchased college books seemed to have gained a life of their own before shamelessly spreading in complete disarray on my bedroom floor as if wanting to remind me of the hurricane of my obsessive desperation when I tried to retrieve that precious letter a couple of hours before.

It was in between my private collection of poems that I hid it. I knew my mother had the nasty habit of sniffing around my things, so I had to prevent her from finding it. But my mum, an overprotective fire survivor, has an incredible knack of being able to unveil a secret as easily as she can detect an iron that has been left on even as far as the next-door neighbour’s home. Nothing, virtually nothing, escapes my nosy mother, and my letter was no exception.

“Either you tell you father what you have done or I’ll give it to him. This letter confirms that the sexual innuendos in your poems are not just a product of your imagination. "I am blissful with happiness for having lost my virginity to you.” Mom quoted me with a reproachful, condemning tone, omitting the subsequent “I love you”. I locked myself in my bedroom repressing the urge to slam the door. I had three hours before dad would return from work.

On a bookshelf, a picture-frame of us sitting in our living room reminded me of better times. With his left arm warmly wrapped around me, his neatly trimmed moustache displayed a discrete cinnamon pearly smile. I was laughing, revealing that it wasn’t long ago that I had grown new teeth. I stared at the black and white photograph trying to imagine how my dad, a man of few words and a placid, quiet character would react. I was his only daughter. I was seventeen.

I lay on my bed, held a pillow against my chest and for nearly three long hours I fixed my gaze on the ever-vicious circling of the ceiling fan, which seemed too weak to disperse the humid heaviness that filtered through the half open blinds. I thought I heard distant thunder claps. It was to rain heavily that night and the lurking heat of the paved streets outside would burst into steam. I glanced through the window, recalling what it was like to shower naked and play in the rain. Those happy Caribbean childhood summers were gone and no matter how hard I wished for it, the feeble fan could not turn back time or return my innocence. I had to tell dad.

I heard the recognisable smooth vintage sound of his Peugeot 404 approaching as I counted the ticking seconds at the pace of the fan's flapping wings. It would take just a few minutes before dad knocked on my door and claimed a kiss, like he did every day when he came back from work. Thick rain drops started to fall far away and the smell of moist tropical soil gradually invaded my bedroom.

The fire and the jumping doll.

It was early morning Friday, when fire sirens assaulted my smooth running pace. A fire down Hope Street was bursting savagely and even from a few hundred meters I could see the flames flare up like a ferocious volcano at the break of dawn.

 

I ran faster to have a closer look: a fence of tightly aligned policemen was surrounding firm, confident fire fighters who were trying to convince a teenage girl to jump. “She lives on the ground floor, but she had to run up 9 stories to be able to escape the climbing fire”. I heard someone say.

I could feel her tension and her vertigo. I too, would be bloody afraid. I closed my eyes and prayed incessantly until I heard the crowd awe and clap. I caught a glimpse of the girl just before she touched the safety trampoline: she looked like a human-sized porcelain doll landing blissfully on a cloud of human compassion.

The Silent Witness

 Self-portrait.  Story inspired by The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins

I

This is the saddest case I’ve witnessed since being glued to the walls of this nursery room. You should see her: a pale cheek boned beauty, resembling Knox, the goddess of the night, trapped in the numbness of self-love starvation. 

Poor woman. Her despair pains my soul, but I’m so weak myself that I nearly can’t say anything. I see her curling up at the break of dawn, and fall into deep sleep while her onyx eyes remain wide open. She seems to be in trance with this wall to which I’m doomed to stay glued on. I too, can’t stop looking at her.

II

In all these years, I’ve seen too much misery and abandonment to be able to make a concise account. I honestly don’t know how I’ve been able to survive the grievances lingering in this room, but this time I’m certain that if I don’t save her, I’ll die with her. That is how much my tired heart wants to live.

I still remember how the playful sunlight would filter through my semi-transparent reddish petals as they swang fragilely with the imaginary wind. But those ghostly sorrows have gradually degraded my joyful wallpaper tints into horrid yellows and devastated poppy meadows. No wonder she believes that I’m monstrous.

III

I see her surrender to her husband’s patronising sweetness. I want to tell her that he’s evil, and in my effort, my patterns choke and make ugly faces. I think she noticed me. I can see her look away to the musty ceiling and tremble with childish apprehension, but I cannot reach her. She’s still too feeble to trust me. I have to wait.

IV

Today was one of those days where the masquerade of her husband made me nauseous again. Just like my case, he wants her to disintegrate bit by bit, by making her believe that nobody, including herself, can save her. What a despicable man.

When he left the room, I saw her helplessly scribble on her secret notebook "he truly loves me". She was crying again.

I tried to scream by cracking loudly and harshly tearing my pieces off the wall so she would notice me. And dear heaven, this time she did.

She observed me with her studious, bone-shaped expression. Her dark hollow gaze carefully followed every convulsing pattern of mine. She stared at me perplexingly until I sank into her drowning eyes. I had to tell her my story. I had to save her.

Eyes tightly shut, I recalled when I was a firm wallpaper sheltering bright Amapolas, which spread under the sun like graceful frescoes over emerald valleys. I fiercely tried to regress to my robust forms and glowing tones while telling her that she was mesmerising, that she deserved better, that I loved her.

My tearful passionate efforts softened and moistened my dying paper. With fervent determination, I crawled and held onto the porous wall until my fading poppies slowly burst out giving birth to blossoming, full-bodied Amapola trees.

With diamond-like tears revealing her bewitching onyx eyes, she timidly smiled and delicately caressed my dancing colours, as I held her hands and invited her in.

Doing the dishes

I live alone and I love doing the dishes. That's what I’m doing right now. I wonder what my mum would say if she just saw me. Me, the rebellious teenager who used to avoid the sexist chores in our ever-busy Dominican kitchen, now finds this daily task soothing and fascinating.

I feel the softness of the foam and the sponge caress the most inanimate and necessary objects. I’m washing round plates, which are my favourite, because I love to draw hearts and circles, and that is exactly what I’m doing: I’m drawing circles and hearts and circles and hearts and thinking of David, the man I love to cook for.

I rinse the last plates as the hot tap water runs through my hands. I switch to a fresher temperature. Now I'm dreaming of tropical Dominican rain and summer with David as my bachelor kitchen begins to look spotless.

May 2011

An Unexpected Intruder

I arrived at his place 15 minutes earlier than agreed. The table was neatly set but he was still busy in the kitchen. Jokingly he reproached me for being early (“I didn’t expect that from a Latina") and politely offered me a glass of wine.

There is nothing I like more in a man than a strong sense of simple perfection and the natural ability to please with the most surprising little details. I carefully observed his confidence in cooking, his fine taste in arranging the table and the cozy and balanced display of candles. I felt his solid, yet smooth presence in every movement, in every word spoken, in every brief look exchanged. And yes, he was strong, simple, a charmer, a pleaser, and a gentleman; and even though he claimed that his cooking skills were average, I could not see a single flake of flaw in him. I felt fragile, pampered, desired, special and safe. In those fifteen minutes in the kitchen, the irrevocable epiphany of love madly possessed me. I had indeed, without a single doubt, fallen for him. I was in heaven.

At seven fifteen we sat at the dining table. As the charming host he was, he agreeably explored every topic that seemed to be mutually fascinating. With Piazzolla as backdrop music, we ate slowly while he talked about his latest diving assignment and asked about my recent trip to Argentina. He was careful with his choice of words, and elaborated every sentence as if he was preparing himself to say something important. The easiness he had shown in preparing the last details of the food we were about to finish gradually disappeared.

He felt his voice break as he struggled with trying to disguise that in spite of the intimacy he had staged, he was about to announce he needed distance. He felt a lump in his throat and took another sip but the wine felt too bland. Nervously, he poured another glass and drank it in another long, single sip. “I love you” he thought he heard himself say. That voice that seemed to be his had spoken and damn! he couldn’t prevent it. The three fugitive words had escaped before he could handcuff them like he had done in the past three months he had been dating her. “Yes, I love you, and every day I love you more and more and more”. The words kept pouring as he hastily emptied the last bottle. He felt ashamed at his loss of control and tried to correct it by firmly holding his glass and steadily gazing at her. “But I think I'd better find a woman from here, a Dutch woman”. Still staring at her, he lifted his glass and took another long gulp. As if wanting to hide the imminent liquidity of his sad and embarrassed blue eyes, and avoid her puzzled, piercing expression, he lowered his gaze and fell silent as he drew circles around the rim of his empty drink.

And this is how it ended

"... and this is how much I love you" he muttered.   Nearly resembling a day-time thief, he  disorderly pulled out the cables from the blue wall and hastily put the remote control into his coat pocket.

"Be careful! you are going to break something".  I said, annoyed.

With an ungracious and nervous effort,  he tried to lift the expensive television.  Barely bearing its weight, he held it tightly against his chest as if it was his only and most precious possession and, without saying much, walked away.

To my relief.

The Day After the Storm (a sailor's tale of tsunamis of the heart)

They said to have seen a heart lingering along the coastline. It was floating on the water as it was being pushed around in circles by the weakened wind, the only air left alive after the hurricane. They said that the heart was pulsing and breathing. They said they even heard it talk with a female voice.

They said she said that she was lost and mistakenly abandoned; that she belonged to someone she feared had drowned the day of the storm. She said the sea seemed so innocent, something hard to imagine after it all she had seen the days before. Like if it never saw its waves, like claws, fetch chunks of sand and shells, dragging everything they could swallow to the deepest ends of the black-blue ocean, taking away the life she was supposed to live for.

They said the heart was pale, that it had the shape of a flower which hasn’t blossomed yet. They said that she was soft and tender, that she was aching as they touched her, when trying to rescue her from the shore. She cried, they said, as she pleaded to be left alone. She had hope that she’d be found again. She said that she was ready to sail to the Island of Ghosts.

They said they were puzzled. That island was doomed and never appeared in their naval charts. Whoever ever reached it never came back. Not being able to understand her determination, the sailors left her alone by the coast. The heart sailed direction north. That’s where they told her that errand island is sometimes found, and just as its name lauds, it was an island full of spooks.

They said she’d be about long mornings and long nights, so many, they had lost count. Under the full moon, under the furious sun, day after day she waited, as the spectres appeared one by one. They all had unfamiliar faces. She’d longed to be recognized by someone or to recognize somebody that would save her, but all they did was to play with her. They all wanted this heart to possess them as they pretended they could implant her in their dead souls, as if they were surgeons or miracle makers.

They said she was exhausted. Tired of being thrown back and forth like a play ball, she had no tears left; she had lost her speech and her heart was beating vulnerably. She pretended dead so they would stop laughing and calling her ‘sweetheart, come to daddy’. But they wouldn’t notice. These ghosts were all frustrated. What a curse it was for them, to live in death, to find a living heart which didn’t match their shapeless chests.

Soon after the ghosts got bored. They made a crown of shells and palm leaves and wrapped the heart with it. They felt they had a trophy, which they knew they couldn’t win and laughing in anger, carelessly placed their new found toy on the top of the reefs. To her luck, they soon also forgot about her. She regretted having sailed to the Island of Ghosts.

They said she was asleep when she felt him approaching. He grabbed her and she tried to scream loudly, but no sound would come out of her. Her skin was burned, her lips were wretched, the pain of his touch numbed her and she fainted before she could look at his face. They said that unlike the others, this ghost was gentle, that he held her against his cheeks and kissed her. They said he cried as he caressed her, mumbling words of love and despair, ‘it’s too late’, ‘its too late’, ‘I will never live again’ he said repeatedly. He sobbed and he cried, so much they had lost count of his tears. All they remember is that at some moment, the unusual weight of his thick teardrops had made the ocean suddenly awake.

They said that the ocean spoke gushingly as he woke up. With waves bumping heavily against the reefs, and with a hollow voice, the ocean told him:

“She’s just asleep. I will take you to another shore where you both will be safe. This island is the wrong place for you and for her. You two belong down south”.

The ghost wrapped his new found heart with his hands and held her firmly against his chest. He jumped from the high reefs into the restless waters as he was rapidly sucked by a fast twirl. They said the last thing they remember seeing was the heart spinning on her way down, almost crunched by the protective arms of the ghost which had turned liquid and transparent.

Suddenly the sea was again calm and everything looked abandoned. It seemed as if nothing had just happened in the Island of Ghosts. The island drifted from the reefs, sliding through the masses of water that would lead it to another place. “The mean ghosts get bored easily from stranding too long in the same place. That’s why the location of the island is never known”. They said.

The next day they said people were talking. They said that a man had been found by the shore down south. His skin was burned and his lips were wretched. They had believed he’d drown. Nobody can explain how he could have survived for so long in the water. They said people heard him talk nonsense, about an island of ghosts, about a sucking twirl, about aching hearts, about the secret promise he’d been told by the ocean, about a woman he needed to find now that he lived again.

They said he almost went mad when they showed him another heart they had just found. They said they believed it belonged to a woman gone missing. But they thought that wasn’t possible, as it had just spoken its last words with a male voice. They said this heart had begged them to be left alone, but they refused it. They believed they could save him. But it was too late. The heart was speechless and looked so fragile. They believed it was dead. They handed the heart to him. He seemed to know better what to do with it. After all he probably wasn’t that crazy if he too said to have found a similar heart.

The man took the heart in his hands and as if looking at himself for the first time in the mirror, he studied it carefully before throwing it into the ocean. Like a pebble thrown in horizontal line, the heart jumped several times on the surface of the water before disappearing in the horizon. They said they believed the heart never ceased jumping, that it stayed hovering above the water. Nobody can explain how a man that just had been rescued could have such strength.

An echo evoked his words incessantly as he screamed “find her!” As if shaken by the vibrant sound of his voice, the sea lost its calmness and violent winds came about from all directions, creating a sudden tempest of hurricanes and liquid tornados. The echo would return like a boomerang of angry screams in desperation, increasing its volume as the wind blew harder.

The people he had just met ran away in panic. But the man stayed, serenely watching the storm which seemed to know he needn’t be touched. The gusts of wind didn’t reach him. He was the only standing figure among the turbulent waters, blown leaves and branches and bended palm trees.

The echo ceased slowly. It soon became dark and it started raining. The man remained serenely waiting, as he felt the sweet pouring water freshen his lips and lessen his thirst.

He was certain they were about to meet. His love, his woman would be brought to the shore and would find him. He felt asleep on the white sand until sunrise. The next morning he woke up in front of a tranquil, clear, whispering sea.

“Today, the day after the storm, you will find her”.

They said it was at sunset when they found her lying on the wet sand. She was almost unconscious and she seemed delirious as she mentioned ghosts and drifting islands. They say that when she recovered her senses she asked if they had seen a missing man who was also believed to have drowned. They pointed to the far right, by the splashing waves against the rocks, where a man was seen sitting on the top of a reef. He was throwing pebbles to the sea, staring with fixation at the horizon. “He’d been there the whole day”. They reckoned.

They said she smiled widely, with a painful gesture as she touched her dry lips. They said they helped her stand up, as she stumbled before she began walking towards his direction.

“She had just found the one she was supposed to live for. Just as the ocean had secretly promised her”.

The end.


Manuela Hernández
9 April 2005