Snapshots from Texas: Melonie is inside HEB. I come outside while she settles up with the cashier to sit on the grass a spell and watch people go by. I need these moments alone, and they come rarely because Im here as Melonies helper and moral support during this important pre-wedding week. Even Herself, so capable and competent, is a Bride. And no bride is relaxed and okay a mere few days before the wedding. So Im sitting outside in my long, white-eyelet sundress, taking in the fact that Im in TEXAS, so close to my Oklahoma family homeland, so familiar, so missed yet not-missed, its smells and the quality of the air and heat a world away from my home in Paradise. But it is Texas, and I owe it a lot. A big piece of my heart is here in the form of womenfolk whove observed my loves come and go, my courtship and union as Larrys wife, many nights of too much whiskey and dancing, and my career as it changed from black apron to black power suit. And its a land so near to the place My People staked their claim hundreds of years ago. Yes, Im having these deep thoughts as I sit on a median in the Circle C HEB parking lot. For the fifteen minutes I sit there, I feel small bits of discomfort, all over my body. Im the tolerant sort so I let it happen. Little itchy feelings, little feelings of ouch and whatnot. Maybe its just a physical manifestation of the vague pain I feel at all the displacement Ive experienced in my life, having homes that are no longer home to me: loving New York City and leaving it, loving San Francisco and leaving it, in turns loving and hating Austin and leaving it, loving my home, family, and small cluster of extremely important friends back in Roseville, California, and (for a brief time, but hard on Your Sensitive Writer,) leaving it. Suddenly, it dawns on me what these feelings are, and I jump up and start slapping at my body, reaching up under my dress and swiping, confirming my suspicions: fire ants. Im dancing and jumping and cursing, remembering this loathsome gift of Texas, how these critters would attack Zeke, especially, with extraordinary fury, covering his fat toddler body with bites and ultimately little white pustules. Melonie comes out at that moment and gives me the swirling index finger that means, up and at em, girl, and I yell, GODDAMN FIRE ANTS, MELONIE! I HATE TEXAS! I HATE IT! THEYRE ALL OVER ME! And shes pushing her overloaded cart filled with wedding food and other necessities, not stopping, not one bit of pity in her voice, and calls over her shoulder as she makes her way to the vehicle: Whyd you sit your ass down in a fire ant mound then, sister? And she looks at me with a sweet smile on her devastatingly beautiful face at just the right time to see me flip her the bird, viciously. Laughter. And Im slapping at my dress periodically for the rest of the day.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 18:45:18 +0000
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