Wandered

            I have searched everywhere. She is nowhere to be found. I started by following a pattern, a grid, asking neighbors, friends, trying to retrace her steps. Then I began following my spirit. She was, is, my first love, my heart, I can feel her in my gut, my heart, my naval. I try to see without seeing, blurring my vision, not seeing with my eyes.  I should be able to pick up the scent of her, not a scent, but something allusive and ethereal like scent, like an aura, showing me the path that she took. I vibrate. No, it’s not vibration, it’s anxiety, fear, that creates this shaking. It is constant, under my skin, deep, in the muscle, imperceptible to the eye, but there, it get’s deeper as the longer this goes on. I wonder if it will go in further, into my core, my heart if I don’t find her, if she is dead. What will it feel like? Like a black hole that spreading outward or gripping pain? Or more like nothing, numbness? Never mind. She is an old woman, who wandered away from home. It is simple. Someone has to have seen her. I will find her.

The call to leave has been getting stronger. For months? Years? Yes, years I think. It started so softly. It’s so easy to dismiss these types of things. Even I who has tried to get rid of all excess chatter dismissed it. 

yes, If one listened to everything the brain told it, the rivers would be full of people who jumped off bridges. They would mistakenly think that they were supposed to make the leap, when in reality the brain was just imagining the jump to warn you, to show that there is a choice to be made, to show you options.

Other than fear of the unknown, clinging to this life, it took so long because I wanted to settle things. Get rid of lose ends. I remember that when a person goes on Hajj, that they first have to have their affairs in order.  I respect this. It is tawdry, tacky, to go on a spiritual quest, to try to be clean when you have baggage: overdue bills, nagging relatives, an unclean house. That is what I respect about the Muslims, is they recognize the connection between the physical and the spiritual. It’s hard for the spirit to feel clean with loose ends.

I have cleared my debt. I buried my husband. I made sure that my child was independent.  I did not raise a man-boy who would be maimed at my leaving. No, this is a trap that many lonely women fall into. He is a full spirit, complete, who wandered, adapted anywhere; he belonged to everyone and no one. You see, I have no debts and no savings. I am leaving neither friend nor foe. I know how they see me, as kind but also as alone, aloof. But this is normal for a woman from here. Women are aloof because with women things run so deep. It was better that way, to guard, to keep everything in. Here, women don’t bother to smile at one another. Because they knew of each other’s power, and they knew of each other’s misery. Sick then dead babies, emasculated husbands, retarded nephews, disappeared brothers. No need to smile. Cheap. Silly. When you know someone like that you either have to keep them so close that you know the smell of their breath or you have to keep them farther than you can spit. Relationships between women can hold you up when you need a cup of rice until pay day or a shoulder to sag onto when your man leaves your for another woman and another baby is still born and there is no money for medicine for the coughing child on the other side of the partition. These relationships also have the power to tear you down to the ground, to cut your heart deeply, neatly, quickly like your best fish gutting knife, with just a misplaced word, a forgotten kindness; a glance that resembles pity. Depends on which way the wind blows.

Everyone knows of this and doesn’t speak of it. Because of all this closeness and non-closeness her neighbors of fifty years don’t know her and don’t think anything of it. Even though they speak every morning at dawn, when the women sweep and mop the steps and every evening when they take in the laundry. When they thought of if really, they realized that they didn’t know her at all. They couldn’t remember how they knew about the wandering son, or that she paid off the house, or that she made and sold dolls and sweets to buy necessities.  Had she told them or had they heard from someone else or had they just seen it themselves?

 Everyone had lived in this neighborhood forever. The houses were well kept, modest, clean, and efficient, like their owners. Strong, dark, and independent, they keep fruit trees in the yard and gardens in the back. The fruit is smaller and stronger than what you will ever known. They bury their dead in the yard to keep them close and tell the children old stories. Their homes were a jumble of children, in-laws, godchildren and grandchildren so it should have stood out that she lived alone. But it did not. It should have stood out that she had few visitors. This did not stand out also. It was not her who had complained about the son not visiting or of aches and pains. It was them who though that he should come more often and that she was growing infirm. But they did not realize that this was their wish not hers and they silently tsked at what they guessed was her proud loneliness. She was not discontented with his inconsistent visits. When he came they ate mangoes lustily on the porch then chewed tobacco; she enjoyed his company deeply. He told her of touring with his band, managers who tried to take advantage, women who tried to keep him, the beautiful child he had sired who looked like her. But when he did not come, she was content with her own company.

This wasn’t true. Something was off, niggling her, ruining the perfect solitude of her old age, which she had been building around herself like a cocoon. It  subtly, like grit in your teeth from rice. No, that’s not it, it was elusive and subtly achy like a stone in your shoe that you walk on too long because you are determined to ignore it, too lazy to ruin the gait of your walk to remove it, but then it grows because it was left unchecked and the source of the pain becomes more mental than physical because you are afraid of a sore forming and how it will last for days and rub against your shoe and leave a dark scar that will annoy you. 

Where to end the story?

When she leaves?

When she finds it?

When the son finds her?

Along the way?

She is dark, efficient, quietly, spiritual, works hard, isolated, alone, proud, beautiful, deeply but quietly kind, knows the world, the cruelty, selfishness,pettiness, of people

One day she leaves, wanders off, no walks off, she takes nothing with her, why? Maybe in the story it is not clear, is she lead by a greater force, something spiritual? Or is she like an animal that is going to a graveyard that only they know about at the appointed time, does she wander off to die, before she can become too old, infirm, maybe she goes to be with her protector, who calls her like a siren, maybe to corny. Is she haunted by something, is she going towards or is she running away? Or just letting go of.