gravelly snow
grey streaked skies
bleary, red-eyed
no beaming smiles, lips grimacing
grey-green skin blends with grey-brown hibernating grass
no glowing skin exposed
to the sun
all covered up in sweaters
and scarves and gloves
nothing left open to chance in the cold
cars all have salty brown patina, same color on ground and sky

colorless days make us thankful for long nights
where behind closed eyes colors explode like
shards of light, warming all the way
up through the fingertips
skin making warmth like swirls of writhing colors
carries us to the next day
like a memory of a summer’s night

 

People from nearby towns felt it was their own secret treasure, the bakery at the hospital. The sweet old Sisters of Mercy all wore white cardigans with angel pins attached. Their carefully coiffed hair seemed to be tinged a hue only slightly lighter than their matching blue dresses. They reminded people of their aunt, grandmother, Miss Marple, or the strange cat lady who lived down the street. Only the mildly retarded gurney attendant thought of Aggie, Cleo, and Truvie as Macbeth’s three witches. Most people would have never guessed he read or understood Shakespeare. They would have been correct. He just looked at the pictures and read the captions of the graphic novel version of Macbeth, not knowing the story was centuries old.

The three crones always arrived at their bakery cart in the hospital lobby promptly at 7am. They offered lemonade in summer and hot cocoa in winter. They always seemed to have batches of cookies baking or cooling throughout the day until they closed up shop at 4pm. You could smell the delicious allure of macadamia nut, chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter, and sugar cookies from the parking lot.

Aggie, Cleo, and Truvie had a system for differentiating their batches. They used various color ties to close the bags, sort of like bakers tabbing loaves of bread with different colors to mark the days of the week. Except instead of tabbing for weekday identification, they used the ties to mark which poison had been added to the dough.

For instance, most children, several nurses, and some doctors were sold cookies with white-tie bags. These were clear of any drug or poison. If there were terminal pediatric cases, orange ties were given, along with a healthy (actually the opposite of healthy) amount of a drug that would encourage swift and painless death. The biddies saw nothing wrong with this scenario; on the contrary, they saw their toxic cookie sales as their gift to those needing to be relieved of troubles, pain, and sometimes their lives.

Salespeople – pharmaceutical reps and Girl Scouts horning in on their territory – were given green ties. Somehow, the Sisters had stumbled upon a perfect mixture of medicine and cookie dough to illicit severe stomach flu symptoms, not lethal but certainly annoying. Blue ties were for the most serious cases. The cookies in these batches contained enough life-ending drugs to do their work in a matter of days for those who were in real physical turmoil without any hope of recovery.

Nobody ever guessed at the three Sister’s real objective of Mercy with their cookie sales. They were very careful to rotate affected batches with those clear of any drugs every couple of months or so. They did not do this because it was morally reprehensible but rather so they could keep their recipes secret from any copycat cooks. They long ago lost track of the number of “gifts” they had bestowed on the suffering over the years. Since they had come up with the idea of baking “with a little something extra,” twelve years and possibly hundreds of the afflicted had been affected by their generosity.

The little bakery cart turned a good profit for the hospital’s auxiliary club. People ordered dozens of the biddies’ creations for events and parties. When business seemed slow at the hospital, the ladies introduced bags of snickerdoodles bound with yellow ties to the mix. People who were sold snickerdoodles would eat them and not be able to think of anything but when they could eat them again. With crumbs still adorning the corners of their mouths, they would be jonesing for their next fix. You could say, correctly, that they were addicted to snickerdoodles. The Three Sisters were especially pleased with these “yellows” as they called them for they had come up with their own secret recipe, combining chocolate, nuts, and drugs in such a fashion that they became almost famous in their community.

To help spread the good word about their wares, Aggie, Cleo, and Truvie came up with cookie coupons that were distributed to incoming patients and visitors alike. Hardly anyone could resist a “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” deal, especially with freshly baked cookies. Business was soon booming. The witches added an oven to their cart. The hospital added nurses to their floors. The hospital grew as a teaching hospital, with a large influx of residents to help take up the glut of patients that soon became the norm.

Cleo was the only one of the three ladies who occasionally thought twice about the direction their bakery business had taken over the years. She worried that too much mixing of dough and drugs hurt the integrity of their baking. They weren’t really scientists after all. She had heard of euthanasia and Dr. Kervorkian and did not agree with either tenet. She liked the fact that those who were suffering did not have to suffer further by making agonizing decisions of whether to live or die. She and Aggie and Truvie took that burden away and helped them. Yes. That was it. She really saw them as Sisters of Mercy.

And a gooey, fresh, scrumptious cookie is as good a way to go as any.

 

She adjusted the strap of her bodysuit. The sequins were digging into her shoulder again. She glanced down at her cleavage, making sure everything was securely tucked away into the costume with just enough of the creamy swell rising above to be enticing but not indecent. Men would inevitably take notice but children of all ages would be mesmerized as she juggled flaming batons atop the high-wire.

As she sat in front of the mirror, she looked at her overly made-up face, resplendent with hues only found in nature on the tails of peacocks. She slicked on one more dab of lip gloss and smiled; teeth were all clear. She ran her fingers down her long, dark ponytail, thankful for the return of her natural color. He had always hated her dark hair so she had bleached it for years. Funny how the light hair made her world seem dark and her dark hair was comforting and made her feel light as a feather. That feeling helped when she had to concentrate on her balance on a thin wire over 100 feet above the ground.

She checked her smartphone for the dozenth time in less than an hour. No message yet. How much longer would she have to wait? The friend that worked for the lawyer was to let her know as soon as the sentencing was handed down. It should have been over long ago. She looked at herself in the mirror again carefully. The makeup covered the smudges under her eyes that betrayed her sleepless nights. As shaky as she felt though, once she climbed that ladder and lit the batons, her nerves were always steady. She woke with a purpose each day: to hear the gasps and claps that let her know her efforts were appreciated. It was something that gave her joy.

BUZZZZ! She jumped involuntarily and checked her phone. “Jury and judge coming back now,” she read.

She closed her eyes, tried to take a deep breath but it got stuck somewhere in her throat. Her mind took her against her will, much as he had done in that cabin, to dark places in the past. Why hadn’t she fought harder or tried to get away earlier? She mentally berated herself again for blaming the wrong person. HE was the bastard who had done this to several other women before her. He had pushed her into believing all sorts of lies including how she was nothing and could never escape. But she had.

Once she had gotten away, she realized she had acquired a set of balls that he seemed to have no use for; in her mind, only an impotent eunuch preys upon those he sees as weak. She sort of laughed to herself and thought, I took his balls as he wasn’t using them, the coward. She had shown bravery as she recounted to police all the details she could recall. She had gone back to the circus as soon as her body had healed, intuitively knowing it would also help heal her soul as well.

She stood and walked to a small flap in the tent. She peeked through and saw the man with the tigers, using a whip to guide them to their spots in the cage. Like a carefully choreographed dance, the powerful yet seemingly languid beasts circled the man and took their spots atop some stacked chairs. So much strength constrained by some bars of a cage! Hopefully soon he too would be held at bay in a cage.

She glanced into the stands and noticed a group of children. A school group, by the looks of the matching bright red shirts they all wore. They were laughing. She craned her neck and saw the object of their mirth: three clowns were chasing and tripping each other in the next ring. She looked back at the children. Their faces were almost glowing. She couldn’t remember feeling a joy that could and should be taken for granted. If not for her friends, she knew she wouldn’t even have the hope of finding that joy again. But as she shed her pain and shared her trials, she connected with others and found everyone had their own tales of woe.

One of the clowns’ wives died last year after a three-year battle with cancer. An animal trainer just found out last week that her husband was leaving her for a bank teller back home. A backup dancer who needs to have knee surgery is worried about insurance. The couple who get shot out of matching cannons together just suffered a miscarriage. So trite but true, friends sharing makes burdens lighter.

Buzzz… Buzzz… She had been daydreaming about her first job as a high-wire act for the circus when her phone buzzed and vibrated on the table.

“Guilty. 99 Years. No parole. Breathe!”

Whoooosh! She could finally release the breath she had been holding. She felt so light she thought maybe she’d float to the very top of the Big Top. Two Years. Over 2,000 miles. Lots of trips up the ladder. Lots of balancing on a thin high-wire.

Let’s head to the mall, shall we?

 

That sentence has different connotations as you look at different times of your life. As a kid, it was at a mall where I saw the original “Star Wars” the summer it opened. Paired with stops at KB Toys and the bookstore, it made for a good day. Being dragged there to buy clothes or shoes? I was more of a tomboy so that kind of shopping never had strong appeal. Not much has changed really. I’d rather skip clothes and shoes and head straight for Barnes & Noble. There are worse ways of wasting a few hours than browsing there, and then sampling lotions at Bath & Body Works, grabbing a pretzel, sitting on a bench and watching people walk by.

 

As a teen, the mall was the common backdrop for a first date. Remember the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of holding hands for the first time at a movie, going to the arcade, and finishing the date with a sweet Slushy and kiss. Now I see teen girls carrying Victoria’s Secret’s distinctive pink bags and boys with their hats askew on their heads and their pants halfway to their knees. They adopt expressions of disinterest and disdain, showing interest in each other via texts and sideways glances. Maybe that’s their version of sweetness.

 

If I ask my husband to go shopping (which I usually don’t), his eyes widen in panic and I know he envisions heading into battle, ready to face crowds and parking lot kamikazes. Swerving, bobbing, picking and juking, dodging the crazies driving erratically between fast sprints and parade-pace, looking for the perfect parking spot. He probably also balks because he realizes he’s not too far away from being like the old men riding in their jazzy scooters, carrying their wives’ shit. Not his ultimate goal for a Saturday.

 

Taking kids to the mall is a whole different story. For this story, let’s just go by ourselves.

 

I like to think of walking through the mall as similar to walking the midway at the fair; smells, sights, sounds emanating from each store and freaks everywhere you look. It’s a melting pot of freaks. On a recent trip, I found myself parked between a shiny BMW and a dirty Dodge Ram with mudflaps adorned with naked-women silhouettes and a slew of vulgar bumper stickers. Back inside, a woman walked out of Hollister holding the hand of a terrified toddler; afraid of the dark and the overpriced trendy clothing. Music from my teen age years was playing as muzak which made me feel old. An Indian man lunged toward me and every other woman within reach from his kiosk to try to make us sample his placenta lotion. The smells of nail polish and perm chemicals wafted out of the Chinese spa. A frazzled-looking woman was pulled toward the candy store by her small child tethered to her by a freaking leash. (Yes, a leash. Somehow this is legal.) I turned from the Midway to the Big Top/department store.

 

I was first accosted by the obnoxious scent of too much perfume, so many samples sprayed in an olfactory jumble the store entrance smelled like a whorehouse (at least I imagine, having never been in a den of iniquity I can’t be sure). I tried not to look directly at the makeup ladies, since they often remind me of the clown from Stephen King’s “It.”

 

Unfortunately one purpose of my trip was to get a new bra. This is torturous for many reasons. Just when a bra is broken in and feeling good, it decides to let itself go. I guess my girls had been giving the underwire a bit too much stress. So to the confusing and embarrassing bra racks I went where an older female sales clerk with a hint of a mustache and a measuring tape around her neck approached me, declaring that only 1 in 10 women have bras that fit them correctly. When I explained I didn’t need help, she persisted in assisting me with the suggestion that I would look lovely in a pink and black negligee. I wanted to ignore her, but somehow being around unmentionables breeds familiarity so I told her as nicely as possible that I would never wear such an item. Maybe the red, she asked hopefully. I said truthfully that my husband would indeed laugh at such a getup and that it would be a waste of money and lace. It’s not modesty. We just don’t go in for extra props and costumes generally. Being as covered up for the world as possible and naked as quickly as possible for my husband (preferably in dim lighting) is all that’s required. So I selected a bra and headed for the jeans. This is another form of torture but I will not bitch about that now. On my way past house-wares, I saw a gay couple looking at bedding. They were arguing over some striped sheets (one of them apparently was opposed to anything straight) I wanted to sit on a sample bed and watch the show but I had to keep moving.

 

Too much has already been written about dressing rooms and the hell that is reflected in their mirrors. Suffice it to say, no matter how well-put together you thought you looked that morning, you basically look like shitty death in those mirrors. It turned out to be a good day, so somehow I found a pair of jeans that worked for me, which meant they did not ride down my ass or up to my armpits or flare out with rhinestones attached or cost more than a week’s worth of groceries.

 

I finally leave the department store, purchases in hand. I pass through the den of iniquity (the perfume counter) and breathe “fresh” mall air again.

 

Hands down, the best thing about the mall: great toilet options. Barnes & Noble would not be my first choice. I get too self conscious to use their facilities with clerks keeping an eye on whether you’re trying to smuggle reading material to aid your efforts in the bathroom.  The public restrooms that you can only reach by going through a maze of hallways are just too much effort to find and only good for emergencies when you happen to be near them, which is never. Olive Garden has delightful decor, with soothing pictures to ogle while you concentrate. They also include sample lotions and nice, thick paper towels. At least in the women’s room. Men’s rooms are a different animal, to be sure, with a wall of urinals and few stalls for privacy. How do they do it with others watching? Many ladies’ rooms even have adjoining powder rooms with lounge chairs and large mirrors. As inviting as they often look, I have rarely seen anyone partaking as there are still strangers shitting just feet away. Macy’s has some of my favorite facilities, very luxe with stall hooks for your bags and coats to keep them off the floor.

 

I have the most successful and relieving experiences in public bathrooms. There’s more privacy than at home; no kids following and talking and distracting me. There’s a carefree feeling, no worries about flush capacity, as most public toilets seem to be equipped to handle large volumes (as I’ve seen with my child’s abundant use of toilet paper). No worries about running out of TP either with the extra rolls attached to the wall, although they make you work a bit to finagle to first squares through the little slot. You also have to use more TP because they seem to only stock the thinnest transparent vellum.

 

I wonder what the mall will mean to me when I am old and wearing purple. Will I choose to power walk in the mornings? Will I take my grandchildren to the arcade? Will my husband bring his scooter to carry my shit? We could ride together, catch a movie, and enjoy a Slushy and a sweet kiss. Sounds like a good day.