Like a Woman (25 page)

“Okay,” I say. “Can I get dressed and go?” I hate hospitals.

She looks over at me, frowning. “That must have been a really awful accident you were in,” she says.

“Aw, it wasn't that bad,” I say. “See, just a few busted ribs.” I start to get up.

“No, I mean when you were a child,” she says.

“I wasn't in an accident as a child,” I tell her.

She points her stick back up to the screen, tracing tiny, pale lines running through nearly all my ribs. “See all these places where there are the faint, grey lines?” she asks. “Every one of these is a scar from where your ribs have been broken. I assumed it must have been an accident when you were very young.”

I shrug, looking toward the door. “I don't know,” I tell her. “I never was in an accident. I fell out of a tree once, wrecked my bike, got in some fights, that kind of stuff. Shit happens when you're a kid. You know. Can I get dressed now?” I ask again. I don't remember anything about my childhood before the age of five. I want to leave, get out quickly before her pity suffocates me.

“That's right, honey, just let it go. Just cry. That's really good.”

I open my eyes to see the healer looking down at me, her eyes soft. I didn't know that I was crying. My face is wet. I shiver and she pulls the blanket closer around my shoulders. “You've been gone quite a while,” she says. I tell her about the emergency room, the fractured ribs, the baby, ghostlike scars. She listens carefully, nodding. “Bones never lie,” she says. “Your body remembers everything.”

I turn away, pulling my knees up to my chest, rocking myself. It shocks me to think that my body remembers something I don't. “I've always been able to count on my body,” I tell her. “It's my body, my strength, my ability to run, to fight, that's kept me alive.”

The healer puts her hand on my shoulder. Softly, she says: “Yes, and your body remembers all the times you could
not
run.”

Back home the ranch looks different. I can't find my dog. I call, whistle for her, suddenly afraid she has been killed or injured. She is so old. I want to feel her fur, tousle her ears, wrestle with her like before, hide her blue rubber ball and watch her retriever body spring into action. Practically deaf, half blind, still she has the fierce nose of a bird dog and the eager heart of a puppy. I finally spot her way over on the far ridge of the Brehmer Ranch, trotting like a coyote. She shouldn't be that far away. Everything feels strange, different. My cat follows close to me, watching with full feline attention, but skittish, running when I turn toward her. Only the horses have stayed the same. I pull the burrs from their tails, brush their manes, curry them for hours until I'm dripping wet and their coats shine, glossy in the sun. While I brush the dark bay mare, the chestnut gelding pushes gently into my shoulder, pulls the hoof pick out of my back pocket, mouths my hair, blowing warm, sweet breath into my neck. He lets me stretch out on his back as he eats his evening hay. Both their bodies feel strong, warm, solid. Familiar. Everything else has changed.

“You're just afraid of falling in love,” says Leah. “I know. It scares me, too. But it's so good what we have.”

“But
we
don't have anything,” I say. “
You
have an idea about us. You have an idea of who you need me to be for you. Okay, maybe I saved your life. But now I'm not even here. Don't you get it? Everything I was, everything I had, everything I understood got washed out to sea. Even my fucking Levi jacket with my last sixty bucks in it. Okay? There is no ‘me' here anymore to be ‘in love' with you.”

“Maybe my dad will give you some reward money for saving my life when he comes out to California,” Leah says. “Don't worry. It will all be okay. I know I'm not in this alone and I know I'm not making it up. This love is way too good. My life is way too good.”

Every night the dreams come. The drowning dreams. The getting shot dreams. One night a vision comes to me. I can't tell if it is an old man or woman, but it is a very wrinkled elder who smells like sage and sweat and forest. The elder puts one hand on my back and one on my heart, barely touching, and I feel the heat. There are no words, yet I clearly hear the thought:
Remember, if you are ocean you cannot drown
.

I wonder who is talking and how they know what I have never told anyone, that every day I find peace in a daydream, that the only time my throat unclenches is when I imagine myself driving down the coast in my red truck. I drive slow, watching for critters running out on the road, looking at the incredible beauty of the coastline. I pull off on the gravel turnout for Garrapata Beach, park the truck, and carefully hike down the cliff. On the beach, I begin to take off all my clothes, slowly. There is a slight breeze and the air feels cool. Naked, I open my arms to the sun, arching my back, breathing deeply. Then I walk into the surf, my heart liquid, bursting with joy. Surrender.

Giving Thanks

Any work whose journey has spanned more than a decade is bound to have an extensive band of gratitude recipients, and the folks who have believed in and supported these unruly characters along the way are bountiful and impressive.

I give thanks to Ann Todd Jealous, Bettina Aptheker, and Kate Miller for first championing these girls and believing their stories needed to be heard. Big gratitude to UCSC folks Roz Spafford, for wise support, and Carla Frecerro, for framing stories as narratives of resistance; to Mills crew Elmaz Abinader, Ginu Kamani, Toi Derricotte, Julie Shigekuni, Micheline Marcom, and Kim Hall for having my back every step of the way; to June Jordan for refusing to surrender; and Lucille Clifton, whose early support of Jackson and belief that linear time-defying ancestor truths are as real as any others kept me grounded and the work affirmed.

Deep gratitude to my lovely comrades at CSU Monterey Bay and the Creative Writing and Social Action Program: Frances Payne Adler (“Deb, you gotta get that book out there!”), Diana Garcia, Pam Motoike, Annette March, Maria Villasenor, Rina Benmayor, Ernie Stromberg, Umi Vaughan, and two amazing students, Nicole Jones and Monica Murdock, who first taught some of these stories in the Women's Writing Workshop with such brilliance, grace, and expertise I almost wept with joy.

Appreciation for all the books and journals that have published parts of this novel in various forms: Eleven Eleven: A Journal of Literature and Art, Issue 15, 2013; Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape, 2014; Combined Destinies: Whites Share Grief About Racism, 2013; Fire & Ink: An Anthology of Social Justice Writing, 2009; and The Los Angeles Review: Number 4 – 2007.

Special thanks to Laurie Stapleton and Susan McCloskey, who “got” and affirmed this book at especially critical junctures; to Faith Adiele for a most timely encounter in the literary woods of Hedgebrook. Grateful to be blessed with the most supportive family one could dream of, and for Akasha Gloria Hull and Dana McRae, who had to live and/or hang with me during important chunks of the book's journey and who still loved and supported me anyway, cheering on these wild girls and their beleaguered writer every step of the way.

Huge appreciation to my incredible agent Dana Newman and the terrific crew at Dzanc Books, whose love for literature and joyful perseverance in publishing is a most beautiful thing to behold. Michelle Dotter's keen editorial eye and structural expertise has been especially astute and delightful. I feel so honored and fortunate to have such great folks shepherding this book along the way, making all this possible.

And, always, deep gratitude to all the four-leggeds—Bucky, J. Edgar, Jai, Shen, Kai, Coco, Sar, Xena, Uma, Cayla, and Luca— great beings who have taught me love and kept me in this world, sustaining spirit and giving heart for the journey.

I dedicate this book to all the kids and teens, queer and allies, who have and are currently living on the streets, making a way out of no way to find love and forge survival and resistance.