Moonwalker, Chapter 1, second time around

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always searched for the meaning behind the meaning. I’ve always wondered where the drop of rain goes when it breaks the still water’s surface, and I’ve always reached in, searching for something to hold onto. I was born this way. I slipped into this world on a moonbeam, aware from the very beginning that everything we thought was solid—from the crisp, red apple, sweet against Eve’s lips before she took that first bite, to the bile she choked on when God punished her by making childbirth so painful it became a curse instead of a blessing—everything—was a reflection of something we couldn’t touch or taste or smell, something that would burn our eyes if we looked at it. There was a chance we could hear it, but it came by grace only, and with a price. We had to give up our voice so we’d never be able to tell anyone what we knew.

The meaning behind the meaning. The raindrop in the ocean. I was born knowing. I was born with a bitter longing to find just one thing to hold onto, yearning for a story where something—anything—a mother’s love, a diamond trapped in coal—shone all on its own.

All of this changed the year the butterflies found me, raining down on me like bright, amazed jewels--amazed at the light, amazed to be flying after knowing nothing but the darkness of the cocoon, amazed at their own beauty that had blossomed in that darkness without knowing it would one day dance across the sky with all the radiance of a rainbow! All of this changed—I’m rich, I sang as they landed on me!—all of this changed when I remembered.

I remembered, one summer day while filling the empty creamer at Café Chaos, the coffeehouse I had unwittingly ended up managing when all I wanted to do was follow orders, in Providence, Rhode Island, where I was attempting to plant myself to see if I could grow some roots after twenty years of chasing the sun. I hated the dark, cold winters that wanted to drag me under ground and freeze me with no promise that spring would come. I had what’s known as a mortal terror of them. The last one I’d endured I almost hadn’t made it. I told my mother I was in hibernation mode when I finally answered her call after a month of frantic messages, but it was really a bottle(s) of Irish Whisky and a bong that had gotten me through it. I had a prescription for Prozac I kept under my pillow in case things got really desperate, but I never came to that since I never sobered up enough to remember it was there. In those days, I was good at forgetting. I had a lot of practice at pushing things I didn’t want to remember out of my mind so that it was almost like they’d never occurred, or even existed. That’s why it was such a surprise when, lost in the motion of pouring cream from a cardboard quart into the insulated steel carafe that sat on the counter at Chaos in service to the light and dark preferences of our valued customers, I remembered the moon streaming through the blinds of my bedroom window, pinning my arms down so that I couldn’t roll away from it into the shadows where I could go back to sleep, sucking my thumb until my mother showed up when it was time for my 2AM bottle.

I screeched like a rabbit cornered by hounds. I slashed the impenetrable night to the bone. I pierced the dreams of the neighbors in our cul-de-sac in the Connecticut woods, tore a layer of skin off their illusions, left them bleeding in the open ocean as the sharks moved in to pick them off one by one, but no one came to help me. I lay there, flayed by the eye of the moon, my cries feeding the pocked holes on its blank face, mocking my cries, indifferent. The moon sucked the breath from my body. I began to collapse in on myself like a fish ripped from the ocean by a steel hook. I remember it all. I remembered, that day in Chaos when the customers assumed I was either drunk or having a nervous breakdown when cream flowed all over the floor because I didn’t realize the carafe was full. “Minerva, what’s wrong with you?” my co-worker Zoe said, walking out from behind the counter to see what all the fuss was about. “I’ll get a mop,” was all she said when she saw my face, escorting me into the storeroom where I collapsed on a coffee sack and started to sob.

My mother came running. Down the long hall to my room where I squirmed on my back, where I choked on my tears, where I struggled to breathe, almost swallowing my tongue. She came. She flowed toward me on a river of milky light that came from behind the moon, enveloping it as she lifted me out of my crib, cradling my head to her breast, soothing my downy head. I latched on.

The taste of her milk was sour and sweet, sticky with murmurs. She had white wings like a swan. She enfolded me in her feathers. In place of the moon—her breast, full and white. I remember the moment it became the entire world.

Why, I want to know now? I was already weaned. Already used to a bottle. How? Her milk should have dried up weeks ago. The meaning behind the meaning. The raindrop in the ocean and where it goes. Everybody’s got their stories to make sense of their world. Like most people, I got a bunch from my family and a bunch more from a therapist when I decided my family was the reason I was so miserable. That’s why the voice I heard as I poured cream all over the floor made no sense—forget it all—the voice said. I should have asked why, but by the time I thought to ask I was slumped on a coffee sack in the storeroom of Café Chaos looking for something which I could use to blow my nose. I’d cried so much I couldn’t breathe, which snapped me out of it like a good working girl. There weren’t any tissues in sight, so I settled for a dish towel, wiping my hands on my apron and walking back out into the café where Zoe was waiting, reading a book whose title made me cringe, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon.” I almost lost it all over again, “Put it away,” I gasped.

“Hey, do you need an inhaler or something? Do you have asthma?” She said, mercifully tucking the book into her backpack. “This book’s totally radical. It’s a bisexual, biracial revisionist retelling of the founding of the American West with these crazy Mormons who try to keep everybody done, but of course they fail because of course the sex is just too good. Oh, by the way, I closed for the day,” she informed me. “Can’t run the place on my own and you seemed like you really needed that meltdown.”

“We’re going to get fired one of these days.”

“Let’s hope so, Minerva. Let’s hope so.”

“Bye, Zoe. Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said as she got in her car. “I’d offer you a ride but…”

“Sure, I understand. I have my bike here anywhere. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to deal with her hysterical puddle of a boss anymore. Besides, I knew. It was time to go back to the beginning on my own. To face the hungry moon and see if I still knew how to breathe underwater. Beneath me, I could see the vague peaks of mountains as I drifted in opalescent tendrils, utterly seduced by just the word glow.

I can’t say when it was I started to follow butterflies—if there was an actual moment when I was entranced by the promises of broken flowers and fractured light. I can’t pinpoint when I was seduced by pollen and mirrors, or when I became hungry for the golden promises I glimpsed in still water to be fulfilled. I do know one thing for sure. From the very beginning, I was afraid of the moon.