This is how I will remember Austin, hovered indoors at the window unit, sweat dripping on the page and making flower shapes in the ink.
I will remember the back stoop – or the porch, as they call it here – my front door at the top of the stairs over the mysterious sealed-tight garage below.
I will remember my rusty folding chair, which creaks so loud when I open and close it that it scares the neighborhood cats into hiding. I like to sit on my stoop and look out over the yards that I can see from up here, smoking my cigarettes, drinking iced tea, writing.
I will remember Swede Hill Park and Oakwood Cemetery, the interstate, the capitol, East 15th & 14th Streets.
I will remember watching the big black woman across my small, overgrown yard, over the alley, in her back yard hanging laundry, large items, bright-colored muumuus and tie-dyed ones, large because she is large.
Amitodana Metta Sutta is her name. Ami for short. Pronounced “Ah, me,” like a sigh, not Amy, like a misguided arrow. That’s her Buddhist name. A name she took for herself in hopes of forgetting her past. But being that she is a large black woman in a predominantly black neighborhood, she has to make special efforts not to be seen as just another “one of them.”
There’s a Buddha statue in her back yard, the one with the snails on his head. A fat Buddha, sitting on a lotus leaf in a makeshift pond, black with mold, black as Othello. When I first saw the statue from across the way, when I first saw her, before I met her, out hanging laundry, I thought they looked the same, she and the Buddha. I thought it could be a statue of her.
Strung from the trees, crisscrossing the back yard, just out of reach of the clothesline, are “prayer flags,” colorful squares of cloth (blue, white, red, green, yellow). They hold her prayers of good will and compassion, she told me, and as the flags disintegrate and blow away in the breeze her prayers are carried into the universe. Something like that. It sounds like a bunch of Bible babble, if you ask me. But perhaps without the judgment. At least not Ami; she seems to be the least judgmental person I’ve ever met. Anyway, the prayer flags are pretty against the backdrop of her black-trimmed purple house with the pink crepe myrtle trees here and there.
I met Ami by accident, literally. It was on a rare rainy day in Austin, the first since I arrived. While climbing the stairs, my cane went one way and I went the other. I was only four steps up, but it hurt. It didn’t hurt terribly, but I just lay there in the puddle at the bottom of the stairs, embarrassed, annoyed, wanting to just stay there forever.
Then suddenly there she was, this big black creature reaching for me in her bright orange dish gloves, tugging at me, helping me. I thought she had on the gloves because she knew I had the Plague. I expressed my disapproval in words that I am too ashamed to even remember. She apologized profusely as she took them off, explaining that she had been washing dishes at the kitchen window when she saw me fall. Silence. Embarrassment on both sides.
After that, there were numerous awkward attempts at greetings across the yards, then she invited me over for dinner, wouldn’t take no for an answer, cooked me a delicious meal, the first of many, and offered to give me a massage (which is how she makes her living). I was afraid to accept. It would be the first time anyone had touched me since ks. I made up some bullshit lie about why I didn’t like being massaged. She came right out and said, “If it’s because of the cancer lesions, don’t worry, I won’t freak out, I see them all the time.” Turns out, she volunteers at the aids hospice here in town.
They have an aids hospice in Austin! I was kind of surprised to learn that. It went against everything I thought I knew about Texas.
Next, Ami fired up a joint, offered some of it to me if I wanted it, then proceeded to tell me the crazy story of her life, her Baptist upbringing, her conversion to Buddhism after falling in love with a woman named Brianne who then became a nun (Buddhist), took a vow of celibacy, moved to Nova Scotia and left Ami behind.
Ami considers herself bisexual, but Brianne was the first woman, they never had sex, and she hasn’t been involved with anyone, male or female, since Brianne.
The cats are Ami’s, or at least she feeds them. She calls them her babies or “the orphans,” keeps six bowls of kibble in the back yard around the pond. Sometimes she says she worries that people will think she is a crazy old cat lady. (Ahem.)
I’m not sure if I already explained how and when and why I moved into this apartment, or even how and when and why I came to Austin. I was in Waco when all hell broke loose, literally, so I got on the first bus heading out of town and it brought me here. I expected I would catch a bus from here to San Francisco. That was on April 19th.
Somewhere along the way – maybe even at the Greyhound Station – I saw an ad for Amtrak and decided that that would be the most glamorous way to arrive in San Francisco. But the next train didn’t leave for a day or two. I was forced to sleep on it. I was at the Motel 6 on I-35, same-old same-old.
The next morning, I was directed by the motel staff to a Denny’s restaurant, walking distance from there. Off we went, me and my cane and my latest story I was writing. After breakfast, on my way back to the room, I ventured into a neighborhood between the Denny’s and the motel, just because, and came face-to-face with a for rent sign. An old black man was in the yard trimming shrubs. Ignorantly, I thought he was the help. I asked if he knew who owned the apartment for rent, and he said, “Yes, I do: Me!”
He showed it to me. It came furnished and rents for $250/month bills paid. I said, “I’ll take it!” He was as happy as I was because it had been sitting empty for a month- and-a-half. Mr. & Mrs. Goodheart are my landlords and neighbors. I don’t see them much – they park in front of their house around the corner from the garage – but when we do cross paths, they are very cordial, sweet even.
I will remember Mr. & Mrs. Goodheart.
I will remember the couple I watched make love in the house across 15th Street in their front room with the curtain open, his naked backside, her naked front with the big purple scar from belly to breast. It was more of a sensual than sexual experience for me. I have become celibate in my last days, I don’t know why.
Most of all, though, I will remember Ami, if that is even possible. Can I take someone, or memories of them, with me when I die? I’ve gotten some weird ideas in my head hanging out with the dead folks at the Oakwood Cemetery. Because of their headstones, which bear their names and dates (some going back to 1839), it seems like they are still here, still available in some way. Are there still bones under the stones? Do their souls hover nearby for eternity, or have they blown away in the breeze like prayer flags?
And what is the fate for those of us without headstones, who burn up in cars or end up on a shelf in the morgue with the other little white boxes that have nowhere to go?
I don’t know why I care. I don’t care. I don’t know that I care. I just wonder.
Sometimes I lie on top of the graves, just to see what it might feel like, I guess. Some are soft beds of grass, others are like hard mattresses, mud packed down 150 years ago and baked in the Texas sun.
I had a crazy idea to pull up one of the worn-smooth headstones and have it updated with my name and dates on it. Across the street from the back gate into the cemetery – through which I enter – there is an old shop that makes tombstones. Some in the cemetery are loose enough to pull up. I could sneak one out after hours when the gate is chained and locked, get it engraved during business hours, and return it the next night. I can easily climb over the back gate after hours with my cane. A headstone might be a bit more difficult, but maybe…!
How will Austin remember me? Will I be remembered at all?
I’m actually surprised I’m still here. Alive, I mean. I was sure I was going to die in Waco, and, before that, I was sure I was going to die at the Budge In in Columbus. But here I am, still kicking. For the time being, death eludes me.
I guess I’m happy about that. I am happy with my life here. I like my friendship with Ami. I enjoy walks in the cemetery, with her or alone. I enjoy visits by the stray cats to my stoop. I enjoy the sound of the interstate two blocks away, rushing like water, crashing like waves on a nearby beach. A neighbor’s wind chime adds to this effect. It is unusually low and hollow for a wind chime.
I’m happy about all of the writing I’ve been doing. Here in my last days. I just finished a story inspired by Waco, sort of, and inspired by August Collins, sort of. Inspired by, but fiction, if anyone asks.
I should probably change the names to protect the innocent! But I guess it’s a little late for that. I’ve filled five spiral notebooks since I arrived in Texas. One per month. That would be an awful lot of crossing out and renaming. Which wouldn’t really “protect” anyone unless I fully colored over the names with a marker or something.
As if anything will come of all my ramblings.
I’ve thought about sending the story to a magazine or someplace to be considered for publication. Anita was the one who put that idea into my head. She told me I could send it to her, that she would edit it and make suggestions for magazines that might accept it. But she’s so distracted lately, with the baby coming and her work at Time and all. I don’t want to over-burden her.
I’m also afraid that she wouldn’t get around to it, or at least not in time…
I wrote August a letter the other day, as weird as that may sound. I even put it in an envelope and addressed it (with Lorax’s address, of course). The only things I need to send it to him are a first-class stamp and a couple of balls!
It’s a long, rambling nine-page letter. It took me the better part of two days to write. In it, I apologize to August for “us,” for not being a participant in “us,” for not trying harder, not realizing what I had until now, three years later. I even confessed that I probably was in love with him but didn’t really know what that meant at the time.
But why would he care?!
I really don’t have any intention of mailing it. It’s just another something to leave behind for people to find and wonder about.
I realized recently that August was the only person in my life who ever told me he loved me, said the words. Mona never did. Of course Rich didn’t. I have no reason to believe either of them did love me. Charles never said the words, though I’m sure he loved me in his own way. Ditto for Anita.
August was the only one.
Perhaps he was a little over-eager to be in love. Back in my New York City days, I thought there was something wrong with that. Now I don’t know. Love is a strange thing, elusive and slippery. I think it’s hard to find. Real love, I mean. I believe there are a lot of people in the world pretending but only a few who really know love.
I’m not saying I do. I’m not saying I’m any better than those pretenders. Just because I haven’t pretended along with them, just because I pushed loved away, that doesn’t make me better than those people. Possibly it makes me aware of what I missed, here and now in the twilight of my life. Possibly I feel fortunate to have figured it out in this lifetime.
But I’m only 29 years old. Not so old in the scheme of things. Maybe everyone who lives long enough comes around to this realization, that love is a gift. The difference is, most of them (who live long enough) have the opportunity to turn things around in their lifetime, in their later years, their “golden years,” as those years are called.
Not to be too terribly morbid, but I don’t think I have any golden years to look forward to. The best I can hope for is copper. These are my copper years! Copper goes better with my hair anyway.
The thing about copper is that it undergoes greater transformations than gold. Neglected gold becomes dull, but still looks like gold. Neglected copper, on the other hand, turns brown, dirt brown, shit brown. But then, when it is given attention, copper turns orange and shiny, it almost seems happy. Think of a brand new penny, how happy Abraham Lincoln seems on a shiny new penny!
I’m more like copper than gold. Copper is more common. People wouldn’t fret nearly as much over a lost penny – or even a handful of pennies – as they would a single gold ring. And so, I see as my fate that I will more likely be forgotten than remembered.
However, if anyone does care to read about me, there is plenty of my history in this notebook. The whole of my past is crammed into these five spiral notebooks, into a box of notebooks and typed pages.
Most importantly, I think I should say that I’m happier on this end of the story than I was on the other end.
The sun is setting; it’s time for a walk.