Astro Mother and Girl Odysseus
I. Mother
She wanted to be a dancer. When she was a kid there was the Nutcracker on TV every Christmas, ballerinas long and light and so quick no one could catch them, not their brightness inside. They had moths under their skin and their bones knew how deer feel; they couldn’t be caught, not while they were dancing. No, if you tried to grab them they’d light away and do it so pretty, you’d let them go just so you could watch. And that’s what she wanted. To be powerful in lightness and grace.
But the only dance schools around her neighborhood taught tap. Loud clacking instead of silent leaps. She went anyway. And she swung her arms in pinwheels and tapped her feet as fast as a typewriter. Her bleached blonde instructor clapped her hands and yelled “Go on, Sue. Woo-ee! She’s got the devil in her!” And she kept dancing so quick, trying in a way to run from her own feet’s racket, trying to dance so fast she escaped sound and flew right into a silent celestial time warp. She danced, spinning her arms and twisting her feet: swing step, ball and shuffle; as her blonde instructor threw back her head and howled like a coyote, and all the other little girls in the class stood back watching and glaring, and she kept dancing to the Broadway tunes muffling from the loud record player by the mirror.
She looked at her reflection in the middle of all that noise—the sharp jerks of her body and her blurring feet, and her sad eyes wide and wishing. She hated herself for being a jester. And everyone that was there was watching her legs, no one looked up and witnessed, but tears were coming down and mixing with the sweat on her face, and at that moment, they all said she’d never danced so good, but she knew that was a lie. She knew what she could really do, because in bed she dreamed that when she stuck out her stomach and her navel opened, moths and butterflies flew out, and deer licked her legs, fawns nuzzled her toes, and then she danced so light and silently, no clacks from the tap dancing school could be heard anymore, and the record players spun around and around but the only music they could play was air, and her beautiful silence was so powerful, it overwhelmed even the coyote howl of her teacher. That was when she was lovely; that was when she danced just right.
Everyone was mad at her when she quit, and they looked down at her with their eyebrows lowered so they could barely see her at all. Her mom, embarrassed, tried to explain to the teacher, “Aw Janis, she’s just lazy. She never keeps up with anything. She’d rather spend her time losing her head in the lawn, staring at the sky. Better not to waste your time on her.”
And while they talked about her and she stood staring straight ahead, listening, the girl kept putting her hand on her chest to feel the moths fluttering inside of there. Her mom jerked her arm when it was time to lead her away.
A few months after she quit tap, her brothers were running around the yard hooting and jumping, and Joe crawled on the ground growling while Rich poked him with a plastic patio chair. Then Rich called out loudly to an invisible audience, and bent down before Joe’s open mouth, sticking his face in his brother’s grimace, like a kind of horrible kiss.
The circus had come to town. “Can we go?! Let’s go!” they screamed at their parents, and Rich whipped Joe with an invisible lash, while Joe screamed, roared, and tackled Rich. Their dad bellowed for quiet loud enough to stop both boys in mid-punch, and the girl sat on the floor and waited to see what the eventual answer would be.
And so it was that she’d been a trapeze artist most of her life. She could barely remember a time when she didn’t know herself as a flyer, beyond gravity more than most people. Her life seemed blurry and sad back then, so she usually didn’t try to remember.
All she cared about was that when she was up there, whisking through the air, she didn’t hear anything: the world was calm. At first that was a problem because she wouldn’t hear when her partner called directions, and she couldn’t figure out why her hearing went away when she was fly—swinging (they sighed at her when she said flying). She tried to explain how the air rushing her ears was too loud to let anything else through. Maybe it was an imbalance in her inner ear that made her mind swim. Finally, she learned to hear his voice inside her thoughts. Maybe it was just routine she was hearing, but even when he surprised her, she followed perfectly.
Being on the trapeze was wonderful, knowing the music was crashing with each trick and the people were calling and clapping and the popcorn vendors were yelling, but to her, she was in the calm sky. Sometimes she heard thunder, but that was a majestic natural sound, and it only came when her thoughts were raining. She’d sail through the air in utter peace. When she dropped to the net at the end of her piece, the circus noises would depress pause and come roaring back. But since she knew they could be defeated, she smiled, and flipped her legs off the net for the noises, and smiled at the noises, and winked as she walked off stage. Defeating the roar of the tap dancing world was her main battle and love affair. It fueled her life and made her happy.
II. Girl
Won’t be a trapeze artist, not after seeing the fall and watching the flying mother who doesn’t fly forever and she acts like she could, that she could lift right up like she knew a secret rip in the tent top, and she’d swing as if to meet her partner, but then swoop up instead and fly away.
And sometimes she’d wonder if this would be the night her mom would do it, swoop up, squeeze out, and fly up away into the sky, on a rainy night, gotta be a rainy night, that seems right. And sometimes she’d cheer her mom on, and look past the fact that she’d be left on the sawdust and popcorned dirt ground, left without her astro mother, because it seemed all right to pay that price, just to have proof that she really was daughter to a goddess, and she knows the hero’s cycle, she knows that all real heroes are half divine and don’t know their true father, must go in search of him, but she, this hero-ine wouldn’t go in search of her father, nah because men suck and they put fingermark bruises on your neck, but guys are okay, girls are better. Especially if they wear sequins, that gets her, or if they sell the tickets to ride the make-you-throw-up Roundabout. Don’t have to wear sequins then because that girl has wide eyelids that never open all the way, and her hands can flip around and push the button, stash the money, tear off three tickets and two kids price, all in half a second—without ever totally opening her eyes.
Sometimes she’d watch her mom and concentrate, trying to detect the hint that’d give away that yeah, right now, she’s about to do it, fly away—and she’d be excited adrenaline rush because Fuck you all you cheering people waiting for her to fall, she’s not gonna fall, she never falls, but she is going to surprise you, she’s gonna show you something you’d never expect, gonna fly.
But she fell instead. Goddamn. What do you do when the world’s never read the Odyssey and doesn’t follow the pattern—or worse yet, says yeah, that is the way it goes, but not for you. Not for you. Because you are terribly mortal, just like your mother. Limping now, because she twisted her knee.
You know leaves fall all the time and seed cases, those prickly balls, pollen, all that is made to fall, so falling must not be that bad for them, that’s their joy instead, to fall, the big moment, second only to planting. But those are trees, you know. Not people. And if you’re going to impress the Roundabout looker, you have to be superhuman, do something wonderful so she’ll open her eyes finally all the way, because she’s looking at you. That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But it’s true. Because what do you do if you know that being humble is the best way, you understand it from books, all the classics and the fatal flaw, aw hubris, you always are the screwy divide in the main man, but damn. It’s hard when you open your mouth and no one understands a bit of this good stuff you have to say. You have to woo them with ACTION. Be a superwoman, a goddess.
But her mom fell. Fell. And it’s just so hard to be a tree spewing falling pollen and be okay with that when there are women in sequins that shine so you have to look at them when they walk through the spotlight, and you don’t have any sequins, just cut-offs and dreams, and no one is looking at you at all.
