7:44 a.m. - 2005-06-22
Robbie Rant
I had so few belongings and yet they seemed not to fit into the space carved out for my recurrent mistakes, that paneled den which caught me like a trapeze each time I went free fall. Gratefully I consumed any potion that promised to diminish me, contorting my gangly body around Plan B again and again. But each loss, instead of taking something from me seemed to cling like a barnacle to the porous surface of my soul. Each subsequent leaving had thickened me so that I could barely clear the emotional corridors of my own life. I was invisible, but not without a sluggish gravity that bound me to my surroundings. Conspicuously empty, I lay exposed, barely daring to breath in the artificial light of pretense and longing. I roamed the rooms of my childhood home, a clumsy stranger reciting basic conversational phrases, homesick. I avoided the eyes that carefully avoided mine. I rocked myself to sleep early in the evenings, like a snugly wrapped child. There was something so safe and right about being back in that room. Still, I would awaken each morning with that familiar pebble in my heart's shoe. A loneliness that wouldn't quit. I didn't mean to outgrow the box that bore my name, to set loose the secrets it contained. "Pandora" was what my father had suggested they call the infant who appeared to be mostly eyes. The name was rejected by my mother and yet the curse remained. If truth be known, I would gladly have exchanged what tarnished treasures I had found within for a nod of recognition from my disillusioned captors. Over and over I curled like a caterpillar, thankfully excused from flight. Forcing my long limbs into the cradle that hugged me like a lovely prison. Finally learning that staying little was staying loved. That misplaced loyalty which rendered all of my failures a sweet smelling aroma seemed a very small price to pay for such protective haven. Very small. And so I lived on borrowed time, there in that paneled den. A changeling awaiting discovery and inevitable exile. A fraud, sitting in the sun eating pomegranates. Meditating cross legged on the periwinkle rug in the fading light. Reading esoteric books in my fold out bed. Oh, they seemed for a time to recognize me as their own. Still, I knew better. The pilgrimage had only just begun. This time, the Pied Piper arrived fashionably late with dirty blond hair yanked into a scroungy pony tail. Muscular as a convict, he was not my type at all. Not only that, but he had a Texas accent and a wink so quick you had question whether or not your own imagination had produced it just to trick you. He called me "Girl" and later "Precious" and later still, "Miss Precious". First off, he noticed my mermaid ring and asked me for it. Just like that. "Can I have it?". When I said "no", he casually announced that he'd just have to take the whole package then, me included. He had to have that ring. He told me mattter-of-factly that he had dreamt as a child of that very same ring. He firmly believed in things like kismet and here I was in the flesh, sitting in the mall with a Diet Coke reading something by Shree Bagwan Rajneesh. What about that was not meant to be? He carried a leather bound Bible under his arm, routinely blurting "Fuck the world ... I'm goin' with God!" as though it were some involuntary tic. I was intrigued. His name was Robbie. Of course it was. It had to be. Not Robert or Rob, but Robbie with an "ie" and certainly not a "y". He said he lived a "fur piece" down the road. He had moved from Mesquite because of some evangalist with a cigar. He had camped out across the street from where the preacher's show was televised weekly. He invited me along for the ride. The crowd was relatively small, but impassioned. The women were moslty squat with long dresses and baseball caps. The men were scholarly good 'ol boys. The pastor was raggedly handsome, arrogant and commanded a dogged respect from his unruly disciples. I sat beside Robbie on the wooden bleachers. It seemed the preacher's eyes never averted from mine. Later I learned that he had those kind of eyes that made everyone think he was staring only at them. Far from pie in the sky, he warned us with a grin to "Cheer up, saints ... it's gonna get worse!". The message resonated, but something in me resisted. I accompanied Robbie, week after week, but as an observor. During the week, I challenged him with my New Age wisdom. "Did Jesus ever really claim to be God?". Stuff that would have made Shirley MacClaine blush. He was endlessly patient, though, and always respectful of the one who bore the sign of the mermaid. One afternoon, I invited Robbie to come by after church and meet my parents. On the way home, we rented two videos to watch in the paneled den. One was Disney's "Lady and the Tramp", the other "Crossroads", a movie about a vagabond kid and a black musician. Something like that. I never got to finish it, because my father rather indiscretely beckoned me out of the back room and into the kitchen, where my mother sat, slumped and crying. "Why are you doing this?", she demanded to know. "We were all getting along so well," she sobbed. My father looked stern and angry. And I understood. No matter the context, allowing an unrelated male into the sanction of my room let alone my company was the unpardonable sin. Had I somehow misplaced the memo? I was stunned and, to this day, I don't know why. More than that I was mortified. Skulking back into the den where Robbie sat bewildered in front of the famous spaghetti scene in which Lady and the Tramp finally kiss, quite by accident, I announced that we were leaving. Grabbing the videos and the Bible and, oh yeah, Robbie, I made my way out the back door. I knew I would return only to retrieve the few belongings that never seemed to fit into the space carved out for mistakes such as this.
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