Cassandra

            I’ll call the character Cassandra after the Trojan princess who was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo. When Cassandra bought her cherry Quartz crystal ball, the first thing she considered was the atmosphere of the Tucson Rock and Gem Show; the weather was warm and sunny that day, the mood of the shoppers and sightseers was friendly and inviting, and most of all the old Chinese salesman had a sense of enlightened sincerity. She held the beautiful ball in her hands and right away she felt her mind clear and the clamor of the bustling shoppers around her disappear. It was big and heavy, and it felt good in her hands whose every line was magnified so perfectly in the crystal – she had to have it! The first thing Cassandra did when she got her ball home was to gently wash it in warm soapy water to clean away any excess or unwanted energies, after all, who knows could have touched at the Rock and Gem Show. From that point on, Cassandra allowed no one else to handle it, and she kept it safely away from unwanted prying eyes wrapped up tight within a white silk scarf and hidden away in a cherry wood box.
            At first, Cassandra didn’t try to interpret the images she saw in her crystal ball; she just let them come and go. But then, the more she practiced, she began to see images she could recognize and remember like a red car or a red-haired little girl. More and more she wondered what these images meant given her current situation. Sometimes she saw whole scenes with buildings and trees and people talking, and if she listened hard enough, she thought she could hear the wind rustling and the words the people were saying. Most of the time the words filled Cassandra with the wonder of hearing them at all, but sometimes a word or two or the sound of a person’s voice would make her happy, yet sometimes she felt frightened, and she hid her ball away for days not wanting to look.
            The more Cassandra gazed into her ball, the more she wove together the images and scenes into stories. She even began researching the stories and soon found herself spending hours trying to piece it all together from old newspaper clippings and the thousands of histories of people she searched for on the internet. And sometimes she would lay awake at night wondering if all the images she was seeing were making her crazy; that’s when she would get out her ball and ask the powers of the crystal if everything was real. But the ball would always say, “Don’t fear the images that you’re seeing, Cassandra, it takes a lot more than seeing the past, present, and future to make a person mentally unstable.” And so, Cassandra thought of her crystal ball gazing, much like the visions it sent to her in dreams: just because she dreamed of dark things always watching didn’t mean they were there in real life.
            One day, Cassandra’s worried mother asked her about the crystal ball. “Why are you so fascinated with that silly crystal ball you keep hidden under your bed?” Cassandra’s mother asked. “I found it at the Rock and Gem Show last year, and it is made from beautiful quartz that heals colds, flu, and infections. It even helps me study for school,” Cassandra said. “And besides, I only look at it sometimes just for fun.”
            But Cassandra’s mother was worried. Cassandra seemed to be living in a world of her own; she spent all of her time in her room and rarely saw her friends anymore. She knew Cassandra had developed an eerie dependence on her crystal ball. So, she asked, “Cassandra, do you know where that old Chinese man got it or what it is made of? Believe me, Cassandra, cherry quartz is something that’s like a faux diamond–it’s not pure quartz, but something that’s imitation and not real.”

            “But it is real momma,” Cassandra said. “The Chinese man told me it was real, and it told me it was real too.”
            “Listen to me Cassandra,” her mother replied, “it isn’t real, and it can’t really do any wonders for you… I’ll put it in my closet for a while, and you will see.”

           Cassandra cried. Her crystal ball seemed to be calling for her, all her friends, all the people she knew. But then that night, as she lay awake after her mother had kissed her good-night-sweet-dreams, Cassandra realized that all the dark things were gone.

Five Quarters

            It would be much too dangerous to talk about beating up Michael Harper in Junior High School if I was in the courtroom of political correctness today. It wouldn’t matter to those in that courtroom that he pushed me and hit me first. It wouldn’t matter that he severely bullied other kids in the lunchroom and stole their money day after day. And it wouldn’t matter that he said, “Give me all your money white boy” right before he sucker-punched me so hard that I blacked out and fought back out of an instinct for survival.

            “Give me all your money white boy!” then BOOM!
            And the next thing that I remember was the Vice Principal pulling me off to the sound of other kids yelling, “Man Harper, why’d you let that white boy kick your @#%&ing ass!”

            It was self-defense, but that didn’t matter in the Vice Principal’s office when he pulled out that Louisville Slugger baseball bat shaved down flat into a one-half-inch-thick paddle with holes drilled up and down its length to increase the speed of corporal punishment. And it didn’t matter that I couldn’t hold the chair that he forced me to bend over because my hand hurt so bad.

            “It doesn’t matter who started it, now bend over that chair and spread your legs,” he commanded.
            I said nothing and bent over that solid oak desk chair, and then WHACK! – and it hurt so bad that it made my eyes water.

            Afterward, I stood in the hallway and listened to Harper get his turn. “Bend over Harper,” the Vice Principal said. And all I heard was the sound of Harper’s whimpers just before the whack. Then he sent us back to class with black eyes, open cuts, swollen scrapes, and all.
            Later that evening, when my mom got home from work, I told her that my hand hurt, so she took me to the emergency room for some x-rays. And as I sat there getting the cast put on my right hand, I reached in my pocket with my left and smiled and squeezed the five quarters that I still had for lunch tomorrow. And yes, I bought my lunch at school the next day, and every day after that.
            And now I sometimes wonder about Michael Harper. Did he make it out of there? Did he turn out okay? Five quarters… it was worth it for me, and I hope it was for him too.

“I Can Still Taste the Brylcreem”

            I was four the first time I pushed open that big wooden door and smelled the earthy scent of her bedroom. Her clothes always had that earthy scent. Her clothes, closets, chair, and the entire room was infused with the smell of that the rich, black Kansas topsoil. Oh, that rich Kansas soil; it’s a smell that always makes me think of home.
            Maybe that scent emanated from the 19th-century Kansas farmhouse that was part of the land. Or perhaps it came from the rusty well water she washed everything in, including herself, but that scent was pure Great-Grandma Beem. She claimed that water was the purest anyone could drink, but as a kid, it tasted like moldered roots to me. She boiled it to make tea, and then doused the Constant Comment with milk; that’s the way they drank tea back then. She was wrinkled, but not too bad for a Kansas pioneer woman of at least eighty. Her sun-darkened skin was the consequence of the hours she spent bailing hay, shucking corn, and plucking chickens. She was a bit burly, and it went with her enduring resilience and personality that knew what it took to get a job done. Back then, my brother Troy called her “Mean Grandma Beem,” and my sister Gina called her “Gamma Beem.” I just called her “yes ma’am!” because I used to think of her as the living incarnation of “spare the rod and spoil the child,” but now I see all the fruits of discipline and wisdom that she taught me.
            All of my relatives that knew her say she ran that farm with the same strength and tenacity that never let anyone dare to be late to the dinner table. There was always plenty of food in that farmhouse, and maybe that was because she’d seen the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl days, and perhaps that’s why she always had a prayer to say before anyone could take the first bite at dinner. And that dinner table if an unsavory conversation ever arose she was sure to squash it down with just a look. She split the chicken into pieces with her bare hands and divided it up for everyone else before she ever took a bite. But I have my doubts about her and the homegrown tomatoes she devoured because the bowl was always empty before it got to me. And clean platers, you can bet that I was because I never saw anyone eat chicken by stripping the meat off the bone with such completeness as she did. After dinner, as we sat on the porch and told stories about Jesse James and The Hole In The Wall Gang, I often heard her whistling “Amazing Grace” as she whittled down a sycamore switch just in case we kids ever “took the Lord’s name in vain.”… Great-Grandma Beem, she was religious, yes, she was, but gosh I like Jesse James.
            In contrast with other people her age, and many much younger, she did real work. Tending the garden was one of her daily chores, and she grew more rhubarb than the entire nearby town of Washington, and I know because I can still taste that bittersweet taste whenever anyone says “rhubarb.” She grew tomatoes as big as eggplants and cucumbers as long as zucchinis, and none of us, not even Uncle Bob who lived on the farm too, dared to refuse a single bite. She came back from the garden every day with bushels of string beans and sat on the front porch swing with a paring knife for hours cutting off the ends. Then she’d soak those beans in that mineral-laden well water, as she told stories of how things used to be in the old days. Often, she’d step of the porch as quick as a switch and snatch a Rhode Island Red chicken or two like a Kansas Jayhawk and step off their heads if a butcher knife wasn’t too handy. Man, that was a sight to hear and see, so matter of fact I’m hungry, the “step-down-twist-and-pop,” and then those chickens running around with their heads stepped off! But I have to say, the memory of those string beans and chickens taught me to be thankful for what I have, and certainly not to waste food.
            She had another unyielding puritanical ritual: after lunch, when Uncle Bob and the farmhands were working the fields, all of us kids took turns practicing on her antique Blüthner piano. We learned those lessons at the receiving end of a sycamore switch without question or complaint even though we wanted to play outside,. And my Uncle Richard being an expert piano player didn’t make those lessons any easier. He would always play “Maple Leaf Rag” and turn our lessons into endurance sessions in the hot, sultry, no A/C Kansas summers. So we’d devise devious methods to get out of those lessons. One time, we sawed down the legs of her piano stool a quarter of an inch each day until she was sitting just a few inches off the floor. Another time, to get back at her for the crack of those sycamore switch lessons, we squeezed half a tube of Uncle Bob’s Brylcreem into her tube of toothpaste. The result is a memory that none of us can ever wash out of our mouths, but Uncle Bob’s roaring laughter made the sting of that sycamore switch feel pretty darn good.
            But when those lessons were over, Grandma Beem gave us free rein of the farm. We’d run as wild as Jesse James ever was up to the creek that fed the Big Blue or down to the pond on the south forty and go skinny-dippin’ until the turtles were snappin’ and it was time to roll in the hay. Sometimes, when we felt brave, we would cut a switch like Great-Grandma, and race past the mean old Angus bull and down to the hog pen to smack a few pigs until they got so mad that they chased us up into the barn. Boy, up in the hayloft with my cousin Dawn, wishing Grandma’s call for dinner wouldn’t come to so soon, I think that was when I learned about love. But when Grandma called us for dinner, by gosh it was time for dinner, kissing cousins or not, we’d race back to the house  under penalty of Proverbs 13:24, and that’s a verse I still know by heart.
            And now, with a tear in my eye, I think of the last time I saw Great-Grandma Beem. It was on a Saturday, the day she liked to watch tennis on her black and white TV. She knew all of the players by sight, and mostly by sound because the reception out in the middle of nowhere Kansas isn’t so good. Her favorite players were John McEnroe and Ilie “the Nasty” Nastase, especially when either played bad-boy Jimmy Connors. She was always a whoopin’ and howlin’ and getting’ that whole farmhouse a-rockin’ as she roared out with a holler, “Jimmy get that ol’ Nasty Nastase!” Oh, how I love to watch tennis, but where did all those great plays go today!
            Great Grandma Beem… I don’t think they buried her in town because “those town folk just don’t seem to know too much” she’d say. I guess I’m halfway town folk now myself because I don’t know too much else about my Great Grandma Beem except she’s part of that rich Kansas soil. I don’t know too much about all the droughts, dust bowls, and prairie tornadoes except that she pulled us all through. But I do know where a lot of my tenacity and ambition comes from… And I do know that I still love the sound of my Blüthner piano today.