Tarantulas in a Bed of Dry Leaves

by Regina Edelman

Gisela and her siblings came home escorted in a Boomville police car. Few people on the small town street saw the black and white Gol park in front of the Oliveira's house on the corner, and a body builder policeman like a flamenco dancer get out and patiently and politely push three kids from his car to their veranda. “The three Oliveira kids!” the few neighbors gossiped to each other and expected the worst of all crimes. The siblings went on downcast, but adventured to look up once in shame to the few curious gathered.

“My mom may not be home yet. I have the key. Would you like to come inside and wait for her?” the eldest, a boy of fifteen, said in agitated confidence as he unlocked the front door.

The officer said he wouldn’t wait for Audrey, and didn’t want to see them hanging at the cemetery again or he’d have to take them to detention. “I’m leaving a note for Audrey to come and talk to me at the precinct tomorrow at ten. She is always a pleasure to see,” he concluded and smiled, his dark green eyes indecipherable.

A responsible neighbor man came to see the order of the confusion but left disappointed when he learned the kids’ ludicrous crime was to be with a group of ten more like them loitering in the cemetery. He brought the news back and spoke his thoughts to the others. “How many of us never loitered in the cemetery once in a while in our lives?” They agreed, and a woman told them her story: “Once when I was twelve, I skipped class to be in the cemetery and I saw a body unburied after twenty years. I ran when I saw a dark skull with a few strings of hair and the skeleton rib bone cage dirty and dark of Earth. An image of cows’ ribs we eat came in my head. I wanted to throw up and never eat anything anymore, but when I got home, for my horror, mom cooked ribs for dinner, and I had to eat in fear she’d notice I missed class and was in the cemetery.”

“You said the officer left notification to Audrey to go to the precinct tomorrow? What for? It isn’t against the law to be in the cemetery,” another woman said and the tiny mob dispersed.

Audrey Oliveira, the mother, played harp in the Boomville Orchestra and was a music professor at the campus. Bo Oliveira, her husband, was also a musician, a dedicated trumpeter of high talent who passed most time on the road between Boomville and Rio de Janeiro on gigs. The old story of man, they generate kids and leave the woman to educate them. Bo wasn’t different.

Audrey’s amber eyes and Bo’s pale blues eyes diced their kids’ eyes green like algae from a turquoise ocean, and as huge, now their eyes seemed even bigger and more mysterious. When the officer left, the kids quivered a little bit sitting on the sofa like they would have stayed until their mother came back home had they not realized they were starving, and the oldest led his two siblings to move on, eat, have fun on the computer, whatever; they were free at home and there was nothing to hide from Mom or Dad. They were dedicated kids. The little brother, thirteen, played piano like a genius; the oldest was a dancer and waited badly for his eighteenth birthday to go abroad to fulfill his wish to dance. Gisela enjoyed reading and writing.

Audrey arrived at eight. First she went crazy saying she had class to give on campus tomorrow at ten but instead had to go the police station; then she asked what they did wrong. “I tell you, you have to be responsible for yourselves, don’t I? Why do I have to go to the police station because you loitered in the cemetery? Were you smoking marijuana or something like this with your friends?” she asked angrily though her words came smooth and in a low tone.

The kids said no and she went on thinking ill: Bo, won’t be home by tomorrow. Wait! What if I don’t go to the police?

Audrey and Bo had to work to pay for raising their three kids who were exclusively their decision to raise. Gisela felt lonely, uncomfortable, cold. Nobody ever asked her if she wanted to be in this confusion of life. She was fourteen and very offended to hear that she was lower priority than her mother’s class next day.

It’s possible that Audrey went crazy with her kids because she was confused at the time with the recent loss of her dearest father and she couldn’t get hold of her wholeness since. The loss of her father made her lose her mind to strange canals of superstition, and she took anti-depressants her psychiatrist prescribed to recover from her melancholic feelings about death. She just could not see she neglected her still alive kids, who were wasting for her attention and adoration; but the woman worked, worked all the time, and in her time off she worked to contact her father in another dimension of space time.

Next day Audrey ate very little at breakfast; coffee, a toast and cottage cheese fed her. She was a beautiful woman of thirty-nine with a firm body in spite of three kids, short, about five three, a hundred and twenty pounds, long hair she colored like honey and arranged in two parts in long curls behind her small ears. Her immense amber eyes were vivid still, but they carried a helpless expression. She was afraid she’d lose the faith to live. But Audrey was a queen and protected by forces we can’t see and understand. Deep inside she wanted to fix the agony she suffered with the death of her father. She wished to live but so far no remedy smoothed her crunched heart; but the solution for her to live long and sane as she wished was to fall from heaven soon.

After she showered, Audrey dressed in a silk dress that floated as she passed to and fro, a burgundy ribbon accenting the curve of her waist. Her breasts still firm and curved showed a little to the first button she left open. She smelled of anis and lemon, put mascara on her eyelashes, and brushed her cheeks and sensual large lips pink. Her skin was clear and delicate like nectarine. She rearranged her class agenda and went carrying her depression (which didn’t blur her beauty) to the police station to learn the behavior of her children. She knew her children didn’t commit any crime, and that she had dressed up elegantly for a purpose. What if she would talk with the muscled officer? Audrey had noticed the handsome policeman in town. Their eyes inevitably met when they crossed on the small town roads. She saw him a few times at Santo Antonio Auditorium where he’d normally take a seat in the first row to attentively hear the concert.

At the station, the muscled police officer came to talk to her. Cicero Albaz, he introduced himself, and they avoided looking directly at each other. His muscles wanted to jump through the fabric of his white shirt. He smiled uncomfortably shaking her delicate hand, and she smiled uncomfortably too. Maybe my love for her is too dirty; he feared not having a chance with such a queen.

The thirty seven year old officer’s nerves melted explaining that the cemetery needed to lock its doors for the night, but the kids didn’t come out. His eyes studied her desirable thin neck as he talked. “We answered a call to take kids out of the cemetery before they closed for the night. I brought your three kids home because I want the best for you. You know I can’t resist, you know?” he said and patted her hands in adoration.

Now it was clear to Audrey that the officer found his way to arrange a date with her. She felt his contact intoxicate her skin with the pure drug of love. She looked to his deep green green eyes that smiled ardently of passion, and she smiled timidly, and appreciating their chemistry she finally said, “Thank you for taking care of my kids. I’ll see you around.”

All the depression Audrey had felt lately disappeared. She drove her car to the road next to the ocean and sang with the radio. Protected for life, she is a queen.

Come if you need a warm breast to rest on, I promise soft kisses of love to lullaby your dream…

The next concert took place five days after the cemetery incident. A bouquet of yellow lilies was delivered to Audrey along with a note complimenting her talent signed Cicero Albaz. Before she read the card, she knew the flowers didn’t come from Bo because she didn’t believe Bo would send her lilies, or any flowers; besides he was out of town, back in thirty days, and he’d not trouble to send her flowers from Japan where he was at the time.

The last contact Cicero Albaz and Audrey had, they laid naked in each other arms in a small cabana on an abandoned road far from town. The cabana fit a bed of dried leaves where they lay, and a rectangular table on which candles, fruits, bottles of water, champagne, and a box of wipes scented of rose for their shower were arranged. They didn’t fear any beast could invade their inconsequent love and attack them. After she enjoyed the rigid body of her lover, she feared tarantulas, he feared tarantulas, and they took off.

With nothing more exciting than to think of her passion, the cure about her father’s departure from this Earth to another space came miraculously to an end. Ah, what love can do! But when soon she saw she didn’t really cure her agonies, she came to understand she was a sinful woman, she and the captain, for more than two years they risked their lives for some few hours a month, for the pleasure of their sexual discharge relieved.

Her oldest kid departed to Rio de Janeiro to be a dancer.

Her littlest kid, now sixteen, didn’t go to the cemetery anymore, and played piano better than ever.

But Gisela's favorite place to think was the cemetery. She was then eighteen, and she knew for sure nobody could arrest her for being in the cemetery. Birds sang everywhere. For hours alone she heard the tock of her walk to and fro among the tumbles while she took notes of her thoughts.

Birds sang everywhere…

At night you and I can’t hardly observe far few constellations of the moving cosmic bodies because man’s idea of illumination is too bright and obfuscates the sky from observation to what movie you and I should go to for peace and happiness I in despair procure to be with you.

At night Gisela would go to her computer and study her thoughts to fit in her song lyrics she worked on.

Birds sang everywhere…

After two years, remorse punished Audrey severely in her dreams: She turned in her white sheeted bed scented with fresh lemon. She’d rather be with tarantulas in the bed of dry leaves in the audacious hands of her lover. O my father, my father, come to me… You must have a different way to conduct life now! O my father is not happy with me! Audrey woke confused, scared of her dream so short but so full of meaning. She sniffed and sensed a spirit of death come to warn of a tragedy. Her nerves were in pieces. She needed a true friend to cry on their shoulder. She sat in bed, drank water, turned the TV on and off, and dialed the telephone to her friend in New York.

“Alo, Rê, it’s me Audrey.”

“What a good surprise! What’s up?” Rê and Audrey talked in Portuguese.

“Well, I don’t take anti-depressants no more and quit the psychiatrist, and I called, Rê, because you seem to dominate the sexuality dragon that lives inside each one, and not have that passion poison on a loose, so I called you to talk about my pains.”

“Hey! What’s wrong?”

Audrey cried and said everything seemed wrong in her in life.

“Calm down, Audrey. Controlling my sexuality isn’t an easy thing for me, or I believe easy for young or old. Reasonably, I meditate honestly on what I want for myself. I don’t want to be involved in conflict and lies with my man I love. He’s loyal to me, a rare thing. I know Bo is loyal to you too, Audrey, yet, I’m attracted to other men. My husband’s and my heads are not prepared to have strangers in our society after such horrible moments we both went through in this life. I handle my fantasies masturbating, my husband does the same, and yet I love my husband’s cock and he loves my smell.”

O god, Rê talked too much, seemed she could read Audrey had an affair through the telephone, and there were some seconds of silence.

“Alo, Alo, are you there?” Rê thought Audrey disconnected.

“Yes, yes I’m here. I think Bo’s loyal, but I have an unresolved issue with him these days,” Audrey said in a low tone, however exasperated. “You know I love Bo. I want the father of my children close to me though I confess I doubt his true fidelity. We go through long periods with no sex. I’d have no pleasure in life if Bo leaves me. I love him, but for six months…no, seven now…no, two years, I’ve been having an affair. I couldn’t hold my erotic thoughts to masturbation only. I had to feel his skin, feed my hungry skin. He’s a police-officer, my Captain. I melt remembering his body.” Audrey couldn’t get free of the prison of her sexual forces. “This is my shit I deal with for two years!” Then she cried weakly, adding, “I know you’ll simply advise me to finish the affair.”

“No I won’t advise that, Audrey. I don’t want you to finish the affair or quit Bo,” Rê said. “But, I’d like to see you don’t torture yourself divided between love and passion for more than one man.”

“I don’t think I can ever fix my agonies.”

“I think to fix is to face the truth of the pleasures and dangers of the situation you enjoy. Think, what will be a cure for your agony—to stay alone, or with Bo, or go after the Captain? If your choice is play cat and rat with Bo and the Captain, that isn’t a crime either, just don’t forget the simplest lesson on this Earth, prices are charged for the consequences of our acts. Check if you like living in agony or without agony.

Intelligently, Audrey said her firm position was with Bo. Her second option, the captain, was married too and with four kids. She couldn’t trust in his love for her, but to quit the manjar was what parted her soul in pieces.

“How’s Bo?”

“He’s fine in his endeavor to live, always back and forth from the road. He doesn’t care to know how I am. He doesn’t know of my escapes. I don’t even have to lie to him.”

“And the kids?”

“The kids are doing great. You know I raised them to be independent. I worry with Gisela; she’s four months pregnant and too skinny, but I took her to the doctor today and she said the baby is fine.”

“Does she want the baby?”

“No, but I won’t allow her to have an abortion.”

“Where’s the father of her baby?”

“Around, crying for Gisela's love. I tried to persuade her to marry him, but she wants to study literature and won’t marry her baby’s father.”

Rê didn’t say anything, but felt deeply sorry a baby was having a baby. The two friends talked about some more few banalities and then hung up the telephone.

Before Audrey slept she cooked in her head what they had just talked about. She needed to grow up, she was about to be a grandmother, and to grow up she needed to put an end to her affair, but she wanted to be with her lover once more to tell him all was over. She wanted to feel him a last time covering her body and then she’d say her goodbye.

This wish wasn’t possible for our queen however because in the morning the whole university in the cantina was talking about how Captain Cicero Albaz was found in pieces together with his mistress, the wife of Cornel Pimenta. It seemed dogs bit them to death in an abandoned cabana on a secondary road to Rio de Janeiro. It seemed everyone came to tell her this tragedy as an indication they knew he was her case. She wanted to throw up for the perversity of life, and became dizzy while people talked the news: They were naked, their bodies deformed by bites of strong dogs. The small town people suspected the Colonel sicced dogs from the police kennel on his wife and the officer because the Colonel’s wife had been the captain’s mistress for five years. Others say the wife of the delicious captain couldn’t take anymore jealousy sharing her piece with so many Jezebels, and she took her revenge. A small town is like that; everyone knows everything about everyone else.

Audrey politely dragged herself out of the cantina. She needed fresh air, and sat on a bench under the mango trees to meditate, it was difficult to breath, to understand how abrupt things are. The dead woman could be me, me. Her feeling wasn’t toward crying for the loss of her lover anymore, but toward crying for her self pity to learn what a slash life gave her. The bed of dried leaves served to accommodate the body of another woman, specifically the Colonel’s dumb blond wife with a meter of ass, and god knows who else he fucked. I hate him! And all the love she felt for the Captain vanished.

A few nights later, Bo came home with a month vacation. He tried once more looking to have sex with his wife. She accepted him back in silence, and they renewed their marriage vows.

Nobody ever came to Audrey looking for clues about the murder of Captain Albaz. She heard many in town could have easily done it, and she wished the Captain burn in hell.

©2009 Regina Edelman

What Word is not Written by a Human Being?

by Daryl Edelman


It is to eschew reason to believe that any invisible man is giving dictation for everyone to follow. That idea may have been necessary in the past, but we all know the bare truth of life by now--so you must agree then that we must all move ahead to better ways from new free ideas based on the truth of observation, and not fear of unseen mysteries and voices, that it is time to stop fearing the bare truth of life that we are animals on a rock lost in space. We only eat life and need calcium to stand up in gravity like the moon. The more we explore to know, the less pain we feel, the less pain we inflict, the better we feel. For the love of the human race, you must know every word that we know of is written by a human being.

© 2009 Daryl Edelman

The Legendary Marvel Comics Reunion

by Regina Edelman

The Saturday of the Marvel Reunion arrived. I couldn’t argue the right words with Daryl to make him go to his half hour bicycle at the gym. My Daryl hates to exercise and I tell him he must at least four times a week. His doctor told him he has to exercise too, but my willful husband’s biology is programmed to not exercise at all, especially on a day he has such a matter ahead as The Marvel Reunion. In the morning, my words to encourage him to go to the gym weren’t enough and ended in a discussion in the afternoon. We decided not go anymore, the Reunion the cause of his anguish. Daryl cried he didn’t have a job to compete with his old colleagues.

Daryl you don’t have a paying job, but we have a job—our book to sell to the market. You know damn well our book’s worth. We’re looking for an agent. It was easier to write the book than have an agent to represent my work, but we know it isn’t impossible to have an agent, I said over and over for him to calm down and focus his energy on the importance of our work together while I massaged his feet. I gave Daryl a cup of chamomile. He calmed and got strength he needed to not give up going to the Marvel Reunion at seven. I chose a black shirt we bought at Banana Republic last year when we could afford to buy our last clothing, and chose jeans I gave him at the time I worked for Mr. Z, an agent of garments from Brazil, but, but, the pant legs are four inches way too long for the hero’s size. Patiently, I told him that it was nice if I turned the cuff.

The pants have a nice green wash, baby, I said. It will be very nice like this.

Excuse me, he said harshly like a hero baby. He didn’t want to look like an idiot. O heaven, how does he not know his power? I’m in front of a god, master of the universe, and he wonders what the society of Earth will think of his stupid pants; but the fashion, my Daryl, is you who make your own. You look too handsome. Let’s go, amore.

We left home on Battery Park at six-thirty. I was going to a meeting of master heroes who made America as wife of one of those heroes, and then I panicked. I never had any idea my whole life in Brazil that I would ever some day be in The Secret Marvel Reunion, but I was there last Saturday June 6 at Legends Bar on Thirty-Third Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

We dismissed our cab, and Daryl took the address from his pocket, read the address, and sweat came out of his face. You know what…, he said reading tremulous the tiny paper.

What?

There is no number six on this block, you’ll see.

What’re you saying, Daryl? They gave you the wrong address only for the pleasure of mocking you?

I don’t know, there's no number six. You’ll see.

But we must walk past a few more buildings at least until number ten to make sure your colleagues would do such a thing, Daryl, then I'll cry with you because who would do such a horrible thing to you? I asked. He accepted my suggestion and the Legends bar with a giant number 6 was the next building a few more steps ahead. I sighed, thank goodness the secret meeting of the masters of the universe was a reality!

Now, Daryl and I agreed that we didn’t want to be the first to hang there waiting, and we two scared to be the first hanging there passed the bar to disguise whatever…, but Tom DeFalco was hanging there first, standing next to the bar in a glad conversation with other fellows of the Marvel Universe from the seventies, and Daryl and I agreed that walking to the end of the block to Broadway and coming back was enough for our time disguise.

In the bar finally, Steve Buccellato, the organizer of the secret heroes meeting warmly greeted us, gave us our identification. I shook hands with Don Hudson, and after, we walked downstairs to the party.

To find out that the other heroes already at The Secret Marvel Reunion were sweaty too; what were those heroes guilty of? But those heroes had also aged and matured, and I who came from Brazil to be here at the sacred moment of The Marvel Reunion heard only sweet words to me and my Daryl, the same from us to them, words of good wishes, felt warm hugs. The masters have compassion. They love. They forgave themselves and others for the childishness of their young age. And the masters talked peaceful; strange they said how they feel to be there after so many years, but happy to see each other after so long, a beer in the hand. Cheers!

Regina, I should have apologized to Evan Skolnick. I was a jerk to him.

Daryl don’t worry. He will know you’re sorry for whatever bad you did to him last century.

Regina, I should have taken more pictures.

I know, amore...

Klaus Janson & me

with Rick Parker

Rob Tokar & me

with Rodney Ramos

Don Hudson & me--He's tall!

Daryl

The Jew and the African King

by Regina Edelman

“This is a cemetery of Spanish and Portuguese soldiers,” my husband told me about the ground framed below our third story window on Saint James Place in Chinatown. “Seven soldiers and a general who fought in the American Revolution are buried here, Portuguese Jews from Recife, Brazil who came to the new world hunting for easy gold as the Dutch did. New Amsterdam became famous because everyone thought that free gold littered the ground for the taking.”

“I kind of know what those early immigrants thought,” I said. “When I first saw New York it seemed bathed in gold; the sunlight seemed brighter, oranger here than in Brazil, but I know that the sun is what deludes and fabricates a mirage of fresh water and coconuts to a mind lost in the Sahara, and in truth, it isn’t easy to find water in the Sahara or gold in New York. I came from Brazil to get that idiotic dammed delusional gold, and for that I have to battle like our Jew fellows buried here did to be part of human history.”

Smiling, my husband listened to me and said, “When I lived in Berlin a girl friend said the same thing about how the sun seems to shine brighter here. In search of brighter sun, the Jewish soldiers ended dead here, their graves out our window. What I don’t understand is if they came from Recife, Brazil, why don’t people say that Brazilians are buried here?”

“I don’t think they were Brazilians, amore. They were European exploiters of new lands, and Brazil was a colony of Portugal at the time. They only passed through Recife. The only people in Brazil at that time were natives just cheated by a mysterious god to them, and they had no knowledge of the existence of the European Universe or North America. Those old natives were trapped in huge trouble with intruder warrior assaulter Europeans who came to procreate in their land to give power to a king of a Catholic empire, not Dutch, but Portuguese.”

“You always surprise me, amore, and teach me something new.”

I chuckled, smiling with the good words of my adorable husband and said, “It’s you who enlightens my mind so I can teach.”

We kissed goodbye, and he hefted my bicycle on his shoulder and carried it downstairs from our walk-up to the street so that I could ride through East River Park to and from work on 28th and Park. He locked my bicycle to a gatepost in front of the brave soldiers buried in the Jewish cemetery, and from the window, I blew him kisses as he headed uptown to work.

Later when I stepped outside to also go to work, I observed a young man no older than twenty perhaps standing in front of the cemetery gate. Dressed in an immaculate white shirt, well-tailored black pants with long strings hanging over his pockets, and a black velour-like yarmulke, the young religious Jew, braces shining on his small teeth, his eyes clear blue as the Manhattan sky that day, was reading about the deeds of his ancestors on the bronze plate attached to the fence.

Girls’ laughter caught my attention. Three young ladies jeweled in brilliants and gold, dressed in silk embroidered in gold vines, fancy in molds of African couture I’d seen in magazines, stood along the spiked iron fence. Beautiful and well treated, their cheeks were rosy and their lips carmine, their soft dark skin like fresh blueberries. A tall handsome man also dressed in gold embroidery took a little while to organize his ladies for a picture. I fantasized that he was a king from Africa who owns them. So romantic was the king to his princesses that I envied them while I took the chains from my bike. I didn’t understand their African tongue.

The African king snapped the picture of his sexy princesses hugging each other in front of the historical cemetery, and then he looked around, obviously wondering who could take their picture all together. His eyes landed on me already perched on my bicycle to go, then on the immaculate Jewish boy visiting his dead forefathers. The young Jew promptly offered to take their picture.

“How much is it?” the king-sized African man asked with a submissive smile, resigned to pay any price to be in a picture with his sexy princesses in Manhattan.

“Nothing,” the young Jew answered awkwardly, innocently startled, uncomfortable, perhaps guiltily, and not understanding.

“O, thank you, thank you so much!” the dark king exclaimed, grinning, honored, and handed his camera to the young Jew.


©2009 Regina Edelman

The Visitors

by Regina Edelman

Mom came home from church after ten o’clock in the morning. Spiritually comforted, she sat on the edge of wounded grandma’s bed, and for some seconds pensively watched me feed the old lady bread soaked in warm milk when somebody knocked on our door.

“Mom, there’s someone at the door,” I said.

“Who’d knock on our door?” mom asked.

“I don’t know. You need to check to know.”

“Don’t start; I’m in peace with my Jesus.”

There were claps. “Is anybody home?” a husky woman’s voice shouted from outside.

Grandma’s neck struggled up alertly. Mom searched fidgety for a cigarette inside her bra.

“O, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the factory sold this house,” she said. “We’ll live in the streets. Should I answer? If I don’t answer, she might go away. I’m not going to give up my house that easy.”

More claps. “O, Hello! Hello! Anyone home?”

Mom was stuck in the middle of the bedroom with a firm plan not to open the door, and so I went to answer the caller.

There stood a senior man, dark skin, bald, his remaining gray hair pulled back, a long gray moustache twisted at the edges, and mysterious blue eyes under a thick brow. He wasn’t tall or short, but skinny and his belly made his profile resemble a rattlesnake digesting a toad. He wore a brown suit and tie and carried a black briefcase in his left hand. A heavy gold ring adorned with a square stone on top like ice sparkling under the sun attracted me.

Beside him stood a short middle-aged woman with short thick black hair and lively gray eyes like the ones grandma had in the past. A wart on her chin grew two long gray hairs. Her body was the same as other widows I’ve met, sweet potato-like, and she dressed in a plain black dress printed with minuscule white flowers. On her neck sparkled a thick gold chain with a gold cross incrusted of emeralds and rubies. She grinned, her small teeth stuck inside her lips.

“Hi,” she said, calmly waving her hands. “We came to visit our sister,” she said, her Portuguese with an accent from Portugal.

Mom introduced herself as the daughter of their sister and said she was pleased to meet them in flesh for the first time. “And this is my daughter,” mom introduced me.

The woman seemed pleased to meet me, but the man averred to look at me. The wrinkle in the bridge of his nosed deepened, severe and prejudicial, however slightly he bowed.

The party settled in grandma’s room. He solemnly grieved for the invalid, and made the sign of the cross. I lingered there too at the edge of my bed next to hers.

“Sister,” the man said, “I thought often of you.”

“Me too!” the woman said. “I missed you so much, sister. I swear on the lives of my children, I’ve missed you.”

Why does she have to swear at all that she missed her sister? I instinctively felt sorry for the lives of her children, and I was right to feel that way because her statement will prove untrue ahead in this story.

Mom listened at the foot of the bed, not understanding the visitors’ purpose, but smiled pleased.

Grandma suddenly perked up. “Did mama die quick as she always said she would from her mysterious disease with no medicine in all heaven or hell to cure her?” she said suddenly sarcastic and sneered as she talked.

“No, no, no,” her brother nodded, clearly doubting her words, exchanging glances with the woman on his side.

“Our mama died two years ago. She was ninety-three,” the woman concluded conciliatory and in a calm voice.

“You know, I always knew she wasn’t sick at all. And papa, what was made of papa?” grandma asked as a little girl would for her dear dad after a day in school.

“Papa just died,” the brother said and sighed. “That’s why we came, because of his will.” As he talked, he put his briefcase on his lap, pushed the zipper, and opened it. The woman blushed and smiled to hide her shame, but her smile only made her uglier.

“O, I see, a business visit,” grandma said. “We’ll go through this business, don’t worry. I’m not going to die this minute. First let me learn what became of the ones I deeply loved.”

The couple looked startled to each other.

“Why didn’t you ever write to me?”

“Well, I moved back to Portugal. Papa sent me a letter calling me back to help him on the grape plantation. His business finally succeeded, and he bought back the house we were born in. He expanded and bought three more farms for grape plantations and started to produce his wine. Business was good afterwards. I administrated business for him, and was so busy with work that I had time for nothing else. That’s why I didn’t write or ever visit,” he excused himself.

“And now you find time to come?”

“Mom,” my mom said. “Aren’t you being a little harsh with your brother?” She patted her mother lightly on the feet.

“What’s your understanding of being harsh?” grandmother asked.

“Well, the noble couple came after such a long time from far to see you, mom. I think it’s kind of them,” my mother said with a neat smile to the couple.

“Thanks, ma’am,” the man finally addressed his attention to my mother, “but I understand my sister’s inquisitions.” He turned back to his sister in bed. “I was only able to come now because I’m quite retired. My three sons are in charge of the business. I work as a consultant when they need me.”

“And are you here as a consultant?” grandma asked.

The couple danced uncomfortably where they sat and exchanged glances of conspiracy, and then she took the conversation from there.

“No! No!” the woman said. “We came to see you too, my dear sister.”

“What about you, my dear sister, did you go back to Portugal as well?” the moribund sister asked, dragging out energy to speak.

“No, I live in São Paulo. I married, but I’ve been a widow for ten years. I have four kids, two boys, and two girls. They’re god’s blessing, my kids, all married and successful, thank god, and I have ten grandsons all together,” the sister gaily summarized her life, and then an uncomfortable silence fell on the room for a few moments.

My mother smiled like an Indio in the Amazon in front of a civilized white man for the first time. Sullen, I watched the strangers.

My great uncle grunted his patience over and put his white head inside the briefcase on his lap. Sun came through the narrow window to light the room. He took some minutes to put his papers together, and even had a palm sized pillow of ink to take fingerprints. “Just in case she doesn’t know how to sign anymore,” he mumbled. “I brought some papers for you to sign, sister” he said louder like a man in power well entitled to his business, and placed the papers on top of his black briefcase that served as his desk.

Mother’s eyes became curious when she heard that there were papers to sign, and she bit her bottom lip in expectation.

“What are the papers for?” grandma asked in a business manner like the strangers spoke since their arrival.

Long lost brother and sister exchanged more uncomfortable glances. He cleared his throat. “Our father didn’t forget you and left a small piece of land in Portugal for you in his will. Its small land, Arminda, very small, very small, indeed, small.”

Did he know that he emphasized the word small too much?

He sighed and went on. “I know you can’t go there to take possession of the land, and money is what you need, right?” he said, grunted, and sketched a smile to my mother.
“Right, right,” mom replied as he wished.

“These papers are authorization to give me the power to sell your small land there. I’ll send you the money as soon we can sell it.”

“Sign, mom. We need money so badly. Jesus sent him to save us,” my mother said in agitation.

“So that’s what was made of my beloved ones who forgot me,” grandma said, and her eyes died a bit more at the moment.

“We all love you, sister, very much so. We didn’t forget you for a single minute of our lives, but your husband was too violent. Mama forbad us to contact you because we knew he enslaved and beat you. She couldn’t stand his ignorance and your insistence to stay with him. We didn’t want her to cast us out too,” the woman said.

Mom knew that what the woman said was true, because grandpa was cruel, and mom grinned trusting her aunt and uncle.

“You guys punished me even more—because of my husband’s temper?”

“You’re going to sign the papers, right mom?” my mother cut short what to her were the old woman’s senseless emotions.

“Daughter,” grandma said to my mother, “try to see through your fantasies at once. I beg you!” grandma managed to clasp her hands to beg her daughter’s attention.

Mom blinked. I couldn’t tell if she listened, and grandma went on.

“I don’t have anything to lose, daughter. If you tell me not to sign these papers, I won’t. My weak mother’s heart tells me that you’re the one who’ll lose if I sign these papers. The beautiful blue eyes of the couple you see ahead of you aren’t smart and have no compassion the way they look like they have. This is my last chance to give you anything in life. Signing or not signing these documents is entirely your decision. Are you sure you want me to?” She put in check her daughter’s desire.

My mother looked up and asked heaven what she should do. Doubts shook her mind. The couple smiled to captivate their foolish thinker.

“If your option is to sign, the money will be in your hands in two to three weeks at the most,” the man said in a desperate tone.

“Nobody sells land in three weeks,” grandmother said.

“We have the buyer, sister,” he countered steadily.

“You can deal with the buyer directly, daughter, or keep the land if you wish. Make some effort,” grandma said.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. The buyer will trick her and underpay her for the land,” the man said.

“You have to go by airplane to Portugal in order to deal with the buyer. Have you ever traveled by plane?” the woman asked.

Mom was a simple person and not courageous. She never got close to an airplane in her life, and without pondering, she decided in frights, “No! Airplane to Portugal? No! Sign the papers, mom.”

“O, sister, you were always the slyest of us,” my grandmother said. “You’re still the same, I see. You easily see the weakness of your prey.”

The woman stirred uncomfortably in the chair. Her soul was ashamed.

“Daughter, don’t you want to go through the papers to see what you’ll lose?” the moribund insisted.

“No, I believe my uncle and aunt are good people and have Jesus in their heart. They wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

They shook their heads anxiously.

“See, I trust them. I don’t need to go through the papers. Sign the documents, mom.”

“Well, at least I’ll die knowing that I attended my only daughter’s last wish.”

A commotion followed to collect signatures and fingerprints from the moribund in bed.

"I'm going to need a notarized copy of your father’s obituary certificate,” the man said to my mom who nodded and went to another room to get the document in order to trust it to him.

“Don’t you worry,” he said, taking the paper carefully from her hands. “I’ll pay the expenses to notarize a copy and bring the original back to you tomorrow.”

“All set,” mother said and kissed her uncle’s hand on top of his brilliant ring. “Bless me, uncle.”

My grandmother, forgotten, sank weary in her bed. The two relatives stood up and prepared to leave.

“Sister, I’ll come back tomorrow to see you again,” the man said. My grandmother remained silent, and neither knew what to do.

“Mom,” my mother said, “they’re saying goodbye to you.”

My grandmother’s lips didn’t move.

“Well, I understand she needs to rest,” the woman said.

“God bless you,” he said finally, making a sign of the cross, and they folded their grins mischievously.

My mother, of course, was thrilled with the agreement, and expected a small fortune from Europe soon.

“Wooh hoo! I’m going to buy this house,” she planned, and sang parading back and forth in a good mood inside revolting clouds from her cigarette.

When my brother arrived from somewhere sometime in the middle of the afternoon, she rushed to tell him the good news.

“Son, we’ll be filthy rich!” she said, and explained everything that happened to him.

“Really? Will we have steak every day?” he asked.

“Of course we’ll have steak and bread and cheese and chicken and cake. Whatever you want to eat, my son.”

“Mom, can I have Coca-Cola every day too?” he asked.

“Of course, son.”

“Hurrah!” my brother shouted, licking his dry lips and opening wide his gluttonous eyes.

The moribund sunk quiet in her bed.

Next morning, a boy knocked at our door and delivered grandpa’s death certificate with a note, which my mother read aloud in a trembling voice.

Dear Sister,
I apologize for not going back there today as promised. Business made me fly immediately back to Lisbon

Thank you for your attention yesterday. God bless your sweet home.

Sincerely,
Antonio Maria

PS: Minerva sends her regards with love and God’s blessing.

Grandmother died and mom never got a penny.



©2009 Regina Edelman

The Bicycle Basket Thief

Saturday around ten in the morning, two months after the September 11th tragedy, my husband and I stepped out onto Saint James Place to head for breakfast. I turned to check on my bicycle chained to a post in front of the old Jewish cemetary.

Another bicycle was parked next to mine on the sidewalk. A skinny shaved-head white man in black loose clothes bent busy over the handlebar of my bicycle, wire cutters in hand.

“Hey! This bicycle is mine!” I shouted. Daryl and I walked toward the suspicious man who turned red, but didn’t run from us.

“What're you doing?” I asked seriously.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You’re stealing my wife’s bicycle basket, ass wipe, that’s what you’re doing!”

“Are you stealing the basket of my bicycle?” I asked, squinting in disbelief.

“Look, I need a basket. I’ve been watching this abandoned bicycle since eight this morning. This is the third time I came to take the basket. The first time, I didn’t have any tools. The second time, I had the wrong tool, and all that time nobody came to claim they owned the bicycle,” he said with a Spanish accent.

“We're the owners. This isn’t an abandoned bicycle, and if you need a bicycle basket, buy one, asswipe,” my husband said.

“Yes, I paid only five dollars for this basket at K-Mart for pity’s sake,” I said, not understanding the absurdity of the theft.

“Hey, word to the wise! Keep your eyes on your belongings. This is New York City,” the burglar said sarcastically, perched on his bicycle next to mine, then made his splendid and furious getaway.

“Idiot! Loser! You failed three times to steal a bicycle basket,” Daryl yelled and unlocked my bicycle to carry it upstairs.

“Unbelievable, we engaged in conversation with the failed burglar of our bicycle basket!” I said. “I tell you, amore, his advice isn’t bad.”

“He's a low thief! Idiot!” Daryl said and carried my bicycle upstairs. "Look! The basket is still attached! He cut the wrong wires!"

©2009 Regina Edelman

The Anonymous Driver

by Regina Edelman

Once I watched a show on National Geographic about dolphin life. The narrator dramatically explained that the ocean is a dangerous place to be, but what about danger on land?

The weakest is the first to die, and that man ahead of me is the strongest, at least in muscles. He’d easily kill a woman to satisfy any sick passion he may have.

I scrutinized the size of my trouble. The killer was taller than me by four large palms. He concentrated on the wet ground and carried a small closed black umbrella. He could attack me with that. He put his head up! He saw me! He fucking grinned at me! Calm down. I couldn’t really tell if he saw me and cared for the easy prey I thought myself to be. Did he really grin at me or not? He quickly put his head down again, guarding his steps as he ploughed through the water next to the Delancey Street Bridge. Drops of rain fell again, and with them, doomed thoughts induced me to fear: he’ll see my breasts through my wet blouse, and that'll bring his devil out. Nobody was there to save me but the drivers on FDR Drive who wouldn’t see me, listen to me, or care for me, in such velocity they rushed. Maybe I could climb the road fence and escape that way; I had to be very quick if my fate was to escape my near future under the bridge.

Bad souls aren't the only kind of souls in the park after the rain. I was there in my innocence and my ignorance of nature’s creation, though my soul is connoisseur of how perverse the nature of ignorant humans can be, and I truly believed the man ahead me the most perverted I ever encountered. Sweat seeped up on my skin. To escape, the only way was to go ahead and confront the perverted monster no matter what. I may have to fight to save my skin. I watched the man walking, he and I getting closer and closer.

I’d escaped several times from men running after me, but never from a man ahead of me. I remember a bolt heaven sent to mock my smallness at eighteen.

I knew I was in a dangerous zone, so I walked home fast, turning my head every two seconds to make sure no one was following me, nobody…but then I saw a man coming after me ten blocks behind, walking faster than me, but he could just be a product of my imagination and turn off any street. To validate this hypothesis, I tested my luck and ran.

The man ran too and his strong legs stroked faster than mine. I panicked! I couldn’t be strong then, especially after a beer. My legs shook cowardly and I kept looking back to see how he outraced me, already four or three blocks behind. Only a miracle could save me and I had no idea what to do when that man would put his hand on my shoulder. My brain put all its strength to my heart to go ahead no matter what, total concentration if I wanted to escape from a man in the dark. My strength was no competition for that wild beast getting closer, two blocks, and closer, one, until I could hear the stroke of his legs and his anxious breathing. Only a miracle could save me from his murderous hands, and faith that a miracle could really happen kept me steady on. I ran. A silent car came from an alley. I didn’t shout for help. I thought no one would possibly care for a girl who ran dark streets from a man, a street famous for junkies after ten at night. My hunter may be a junkie. I wasn’t a junkie, I wasn’t. I wished the driver saw the lunatic chasing me. I wished whoever drove the car wasn't more trouble for me, and that the driver could see my true honest simplicity. I was just coming from meeting a friend for the pleasure of laughs and talk about boys. It’s true we betrayed her family’s orders, for her mother forbade our relationship. She lived next door to my house, but we met around town. To follow my friend’s rules, I had to hide from her mother and go the worst way back home to arrive a few moments latter than her to disguise from her mama that we were together. Believing myself a dirty girl, a man running after me as proof of how dirty, and not sure I was the strongest to live, I ran.

Hey! Hey! The anonymous driver shouted. My hunter halted immediately. Stop! The driver shouted again and pushed the back door of his blue automobile ajar, which I entered gladly and sat wearily.

A voice in the dark reached our ears: I swear to our lord god in heaven I just wanted to talk to her!

The anonymous driver glanced to inspect me terrified in the back seat. There’s no need to run after anyone just to talk! This girl is terrified! Anyone can clearly see that she doesn’t want talk to you! I’m going set the law after you right away! Stay where you are, scoundrel!

But my hunter’s legs pumped in the opposite direction and disappeared in the dark. Breathing, breathing, slowly my senses returned to life.

*

Rocks? It’s a brilliant idea! That’s it! I’ll throw rocks at the man ahead. My arms are strong. I planned, hoping to find rocks in easy reach on the accidental ground covered with water, but I didn’t quite like this miraculous idea. Did I plan to kill the man to defend my right to live? What a strange feeling.

O my goodness! He stopped under the bridge, waiting for me! Whoever ambushes doesn’t have good intentions. O, my goodness! He saw me and waited for me, but then walked from under the bridge with a lit cigarette between his fingers. Strangely, it seemed he couldn’t care less about my existence, and only a few inches before our fatal encounter, the man turned left and crossed above the cars on the FDR, smoking.
©2009 Regina Edelman