Glass, fall, river, ring

He lost his ring in the river. His platinum wedding band. It was there somewhere between the bridge and the falls, but that was a long stretch.

Who would have thought his hands would shrink in the cold water. It was there when he started, and suddenly he noticed it was gone. She'd never forgive him. He needed a plan.

He would hire a team of divers to search the river! Every muddy wallow and algae-covered rock. Though he wasn't sure they'd ever find it he had to try. She'd kill him if she didn't think he'd done everything in his power. He'd drain the river if he could.

They had only been married a few short months. Thinking about their wedding day, it seemed he was just an observer watching the scene from above. He watched himself shower and dress. He watched himself walking down the aisle before it all began, bridesmaids and groomsmen wheeling around him. He was out of control--at their mercy. Stand there. Smile. Say this.

They were married in her church, a modern building of angles and glass. Her priest a small little man who was too fond of red wine. Going to church to these people was like putting on a hat--a Sunday bonnet of wisps and trim, nothing to keep his head warm. It had been years since he had been in a church. But he remembered the dark wood, the smell of the oil they used to polish the pews, the way the darkness in the room forced his eyes toward the ceiling in search of light. Here, in this church, fluorescent lights ensured he could see his neighbor's brand names, their glassy stares.

He's taken this trip on a Sunday too. It was almost impossible to get her to let him go. She didn't much see the value in floating down the river with his buddies and a six pack each when the good lord called. He he argued it was just one Sunday and he would be back in church next week and maybe he'd even think about going to that progressive dinner she'd been talking about.

This was a punishment. A sign. Maybe he should just go tell her that. Forget the divers. He would say he had a moment with God right there on the river and he understood the importance of church now. It would be better than weathering her anger.

Learning about sex

I
My Sunday school teacher is Larry. He is a gray, long man without children of his own. On Sundays, he teaches us about the Bible while all the grown-ups are in church. There's me, my best friend Ann, a girl named Candy who's the daughter of the minister, and some boys.

Larry about talking about Jesus's mom, Mary. He keeps calling her, "the virgin Mary."

"What's a virgin?" I ask.

The room stops. Everyone is looking at Larry who is now a shade of pink.He looks at me for a moment before he answers.

"It's when a woman has never had intercourse."

"Oh." I nod. I don't know what intercourse is either, but somehow I know I should not ask. Larry has moved on to something new and eveyone's eyes are locked down on to their Sunday school books.

II
My cousin Shelly and I play Barbies. We set up a whole Barbie house--making coffee tables from ashtrays and beds from the little boxes my mom gets her checks in. We spend more time setting up the house and dressing Barbie than playing with her.

Shelly is three years older and knows more than I do. Like one time I told her about meeting some boy by the creek and one of them pulled his pants down and showed me his penis, but she told me I must have been egging them on. She listens to Van Halen. She has one of their tapes with an angel smoking a cigarette on the cover. If I had that tape, I would hide it, but Shelly just leaves it out for her mom to see.

She tells me we have to undress Barbie because Ken is coming over. She makes them lie together on the check box. She makes noises for them.

"MMMM. Ah. Smack."

Shelly calls this "making love."

When she leaves I keep setting up the Barbie house, and now it's hardly worth it to dress her because I just have to undress her for Ken. Making love is the only thing she really does besides sit next to her coffee table.

I start asking my mom to buy me records. I want Oliva Newton John's Physical. I ask for a 45 of Survivor's "I've Been Waiting." Then I take my records over to Ann's house and we listen to them on her Mickey Mouse record player.

Harvest time

I found myself waiting to dig through the moistest earth, where I knew the most potatoes would be, like a child waits to eat her most favorite kind of candy last. I've never grown potatoes before. Once I started digging, I found dozens, lying under the earth like treasures.














I love this time of year. The watering is done. There's nothing more to tend to, except the harvest.

Oh yeah...and making jars upon jars of pasta sauce with all the tomatoes.

You're telling me about energy?

It's like I am a dog--my body turned slightly away from him and I do not make direct eye contact. I see he is wearing a plaid shirt, and that the pitbull is in the doorway and another man in dreadlocks stands behind the pitbull, but I do not know the color of the first man's shirt. He is saying things at me, things about positive energy and how animals can sense your energy, and he understands--stereotypes and all--but it's all about staying cool, you know?

The pitbull is in the doorway but it wasn't just moments ago. It was muscling its body toward me silently. I saw it and yelled.

"Hey! Hey! Your dog!"

And the man in the plaid shirt came running yelling "Vicious! Vicious! Get inside!" He was slapping and pulling at her.

I just want to get away. It is a dark night and it is too late but he is lecturing me as his precious Vicious hovers just inside the house.

The most important thing I have to do today: a book meme

Via Elizabeth:

1. One book that changed your life: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg.

2. One book that you've read more than once: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: His Dark Materials trilogy, by Phillip Pullman (it's technically three books, but oh well)

4. One book that made you laugh: High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby.

5. One book that made you cry: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker .

6. One book that you wish had been written: The book that I will write someday. But if it were already written, I'd just have to write another one.

7. One book you wish had never been written: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

8. One book you're currently reading: Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Other Electricities, by Ander Monson

Two things I thought of today

1. A co-worker of mine recently lost her older brother. Her parents were both long passed away, and this left her with only one surviving family member, also a brother. It occured to me what that must feel like...only one other person in the world who shares that special family bond. Who knows exactly how you grew up and those certain things your parents used to do. How, in the midst of that loss it might make you feel closer to those that are left.

I still have both parents, my brother; the people who have known me for my whole life are still here. I just saw S. and when he was here, I couldn't help thinking about that scar he used to have on the bridge of his nose. It's gone now (my mother--semi-obsessed with erasing physical flaws--had a doctor sand it down). I'm one of the few people that remembers that scar. We share a similar mental topography. The same corridors, kitchens and basements line our memory.

But, what I thought today, is that I wonder if the knowledge that they are still alive makes me free to travel the world, to live far away, to wander in my thoughts away from my family. Will I feel more tied, more relucant to put so much space between us when some of us are gone.

2. I was reading Cary Tennis' column in Salon, Since You Asked, and learned that there is an unspoken "tradition" among men in communal bathrooms. Men leave reading material for the men that visit after them. I asked T. if this was true, and he said "Yeah...I guess so." What's up with that? How is it that men get indoctrinated into this tradition, but it doesn't carry on with women? What does it mean, exactly? It's rather intimate, actually. It's like "Hey, I read this while I pooped. Now you can read it while you poop."

Rambling tchotchka

I was driving home from work this evening listening to one of my favorite books about writing--If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland. E taped it for me, maybe more than a year ago. I listened to it then, and then recently rediscovered it in the pocket on the driver's side door. I love Ueland because she encourages me to be dreamy, and resist stereotypical ideas of what good writing is, and how good writing gets done. She's like an encouraging grandma, who says "just be you...everyone will love you for who you are," and for a moment you believe her.

Anyway, she's talking about being authentic in your writing, and never lying...always writing down your true experience and I'm thinking "Okay...my experience right now. The traffic keeps stopping for no reason. We're traveling at 60 miles an hour and suddenly it stops in front of me. Why? My throat hurts. It feels like someone excavated a hole somewhere near my nasal cavity, and I know that's how I usually feel after work...like someone's scraped out the inside of my head with the edge of a blade. I keep dreaming in excel templates...because that's what I do all day and so it's infecting my dreams. My dreams are orderly and stacked, and I think it's impacting my creative life. Uh. there's a giant brown dumpster outside that house. I wonder what's going on. T will be gone tonight. Should I knit? Write? Swim? Clean?"

Anyway...I'm hoping to spend a little more time in the upcoming weeks being dreamy. I committed myself to too many real things this summer. I should know better. Triathlon training takes up much of my free time, so does gardening and all the while the half-poem about the elephant funeral sits in my journal unworked on.

But speaking of lying...it's not that I've been lying on this blog, but I've been concealing the truth. I started out wanting to be courageous and tell the truth...no matter what the cost. What did I say "go for the venom"? I have not done that. I've been scared. I am scared. So what should I do? Pick one thing a week that I'm scared to death of writing down and just do it?

Iraqi signmaker

He has put his colored ink away.
Black is the color of the day.
No one orders a bright funeral sign.
He traces out the curving letters
naming lost uncles, brothers,
wives and daughters--in memoriam.
Not writing who killed them, how they died,
death squads close in his mind.
Timid customers choose the smallest size,
their tribute will be in flames by sunrise.

Found poem

It's a ripple effect,a tantalizing carrot
sounding like chirping light rail wires
tasting like cigars and leather loafers.
Feeling like cool glass and clean metal.
A big hit for block 8.

The old fire station sits in the middle
of the trickle down development.
A cost.
An asset.
A decision.
A building?
The way they talk--in opportunities and promises--
you wonder if anything is real.

But they've brought bocce to the city,
an old, fat man's game
made new and sleek for dazzling neighborhoods
teeming with young professionals.
In their lime green and silver clothes
they toss the palino over oyster shells and sand,
speak of pinot and port.

Santa Fe wedding

Yes. We have a friend named Kip. Kip married a girl named Fancy, which is apparently a popular name in Texas. Here are some of the highlights of Kip-wed, 2006.

1. Kip's dad is named Chip. I wonder if Kip's grandfather was named Flip. Or Skip. If Kip and Fancy ever have a baby boy, I hope they name him Rip.

2. The day of the wedding, I heard my cellphone ringing, just as I was beginning a one-hour massage. I ignored it. Later that afternoon as I was sitting in Santa Fe at the Atomic Cafe, waiting for my fish tacos, I listened to my voicemail. It was Kip. "Hey! I was wondering if you could do me a favor. Can you pick up some pies? Like, four or five pies? A chocolate creme pie, key lime, coconut... maybe a pumpkin pie?"














3. Kip and Fancy held their ceremony on the Nambe Pueblo, at the Kiva Bear campsite. Kip told us twice that his shirt was designed in Japan, made in Italy. At their ceremony, the women were asked to scatter rose petals in a circle around the bride and groom. The men were asked to scatter corn meal. This represented sweetness and plenty. I cried the whole time.















4. Nimba, Kip's 15 year-old dog, cried too. She's a very emotional canine.














5. The ceremony started after seven p.m. We learned the gates to the Pueblo would close at eight! We drove our car 2.1 miles out from Kiva Bear, just past the gates, so we wouldn't get trapped for the night. But we'd have to walk those 2.1 miles to the car through the very dark, New Mexico desert. I imagined encountering scorpions and coyotes.

6. D'oh! Another wrinkle. The woman bringing the food was delayed. Her transmission died. We were afraid the wedding feast would consist of this (plus some pies and beer):

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We lucked out though because her husband was a state trooper, so the potato salad, pork and beans, and brisquet arrived safely in the back of a squad car, just before the gates closed (Mmmm. Good).

Jane Eyre on dreams

S. and I discovered we have a similar dream about haunted houses. The difference being that in her house, there's always only one ghost/scary thing. And usually she knows what it is and how to avoid it. In mine, it's always several ghosts. I'm in a big house with lots of windey staircases and hidden alcoves. I never see the ghosts, but I know they are there, and I dread having to go into the rooms they haunt.

It's always puzzled me, what these dreams mean. But maybe I just need to pick up my dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre to figure it out. Course, it's known among English majors everywhere that Bronte used the house as a metaphor for the mind. The madwoman that Jane discovers in the attic is just her own wild alter-ego.

Maybe, those haunted rooms are places in my brain I'm afraid of going. Maybe next time I have that dream, I should just march right in, proclaim I'm staying until the ghosts get out.

Suuuuuuh-mer

It's summer. Which means a few things. 1) I commute to work once a week on bike (18+ miles, one way). 2) I start conning myself into believing I'll actually lose a few pounds and be back to my normal weight by the end of the summer from all the biking. 3) I drink copious amounts of sangria, thereby negating all the positive benefits of the biking.

It's worth it though. Because here's my commute.



Usually, I'm driving over this bridge on my way to work each morning. When I bike, I get to zoom under it, then pedal along the Columbia River. Often, I see nervous rabbits and stately herons. Little birds pop up out of the tall grass after eating a breakfast of grass seed. They zoom alongside me and skim across the water's surface.



Also, another signal that it's summer: my garden is just on the brink of going absolutley Little Shop of Horrors. In another month, I'll be thinking to myself, "Oh my god, how could I let it get this way?" But right now, I have my first sunflower of the year. Oh--and the biggest banana slug ever, taking a snooze in the watering can.

Move over, Lois

Last night I was transported back to my youth when I saw the latest Superman film. What is it about Superman? No Christopher Reeve, but I got the same sort of swoony feeling. Oh, I wish Superman would fly around the world with me in his arms. Sigh. Look at his biceps. The new dude is pretty amazing looking, even if it is in an airbrushed sort of way.

I asked T. if, as a man, he wanted to BE Superman. He sort of chuckled and said "Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it?" As a woman, I want to be with Superman. There's some powerful mythology going on there.

Revelation...duh

It's a dream I've been having for ages. I'm running frantically, trying to escape or get somewhere. I'm able to leap vertical, but make no movement horizontally. I'm going nowhere even though I'm taking tremendous strides. Up, down. Up, down.

As I was doing some real-life running this morning it hit me. Maybe it's not just an anxiety dream. It's trying to tell me something. Even though I may be having great successes, achieving great heights, I'm really just running in place.

Three beginnings, one end

Here's the beginnings of three different stories. You tell me which one you want me to finish.

1.
My paws are cold. The grit at the side of the road we've been trotting feels like thorns each step I take. He kept us going all night. Nowhere to rest anyway so I guess it's not so bad to keep going. Except a thunderstorm is building. I sniffed it. Smells like a lake up there it's such a big one.

He's got me worried. Just like the rain ends up in my nose, so does he and I can tell he's not feeling so good. When we do stop, he sleeps long hours. He sleeps so deep that trains don't wake him. I have to stay awake then, or I can drift off to sleep but keep one ear up and ready. I sleep on my tail so it's not so comfortable or I lick my paws to stay awake.

Once, during the best time we were together, we were in the mountains. It was summer. The air was cool though and we slept on pine needles and thick bed of them. My fur would smell like a tree and I'd bite the slivers out of my fur. There were wild strawberries and he'd spend hours collecting them and I'd find mice and small birds and gobble them up. It was quiet at night and I could drift off pushed up against his side under the dark night, a canopy of trees. I'm not scared of big animals like I am people.

We walked all the way here from there. Except sometimes we ride in cars. When we do he opens the window for me and I get to stick my head into the wind and feel it whoosh through my teeth and over my tongue.

When I dream I dream I'm running that fast I'm hunting mice and rabbits and birds and swimming in mountain streams.

I dream of wild wolf howls and I howl back an answer I run away with them. He becomes a wolf too. We are part of the pack we live in the den. We hunt at night and sleep in a huddle during the day. He chews through my collar and it drops to the ground. I lick his wounds.

2.
Bun was a doubtful cat. Always questioning her feline abilities. She'd hesitate before jumping on to a chair or window sill as if she were judging, then rejudging the distance; gauging the height she'd need to jump again and again.

I never doubted her. She always made it. She always heard my keys at the door and sat waiting on the step as I entered the house. She knew me and she was always there.

Even now, buried underneath the bright forsythia she is ever reliable. She is there in my dreams each night, brushing past her scratching post, curling around my ankles and warming my toes as she perches near my feet.

Bun still needed to tell me something it seemed, and so I paged through the yellow pages looking for pet psychics. I needed to know! What was it she was meowing to me in my sleep?

There was only one. Reginald P. Bryce, C.P.P. (Certified Pet Psychic). And so I dialed his number.

"Hello?"
"Yes, I'm calling to make an appointment."
"Oh yes! Your...bird...She's not eating."
"No. My cat."
"Oh, of course! I see it now. Your cat's not eating."
"No! My cat's dead!"
"Well, good god, honey! Why are you calling me then?"
"She keeps coming to me in my dreams! I think she's trying to tell me something."
"That's serious. You better come in right away."

3.
Jack stretched his long legs out and unwound them from around the bar stool. He kicked them out in front of him and looked around.

Smoke filled the rool, making the far side filter out like it was behind a gauzy curtain. He loved this place. Nothing better than a stiff drink in a seedy New Orleans' bar.

Madame Julia sat in one corner at her usual table. A blinking tourist sat across from her enraptured by her dramatic tarot reading. The Madame was a little black cat of a woman who could bristle and purr on and off like an alternating current. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she read the magic cards and wove them into fate.

The old bum from the corner crouched other end of the bar. Seemed he was always there spending the change he'd collected by honking out some made-up garbage on a rusted harmonica. The songs were so bad that Jack swore the man must be deaf. He never talked to anyone--just sat there swilling cheap beer all night long.

Jack got up and walked round the bar and sat down next to the old man. He could see the wrinkles in his face, creased with grime. Jack threw a few coins down on the bar. "How about you play us a little tune?"

Suspended

I am a friend to deep lakes and running rivers.
I swim out to their middles and tread water,
spin 360 to take in the view. The low view,
my body sunk beneath the x-axis of the earth,
only my head above.

I am a friend to soft sand, piling up over my feet,
buried deep beneath it. My brother covers me and runs
away and now I feel my heart beating through my whole body--
pulsing.

Someday I will be a friend to moist earth.
Earthworms and tree roots at my side.
Tucked in for the everlasting night.

I am a friend to the sky.
What color is the sky?
Silly--the sky is the color of the sky!
As a child, hanging upside down on the monkey bars
I would pretend sky was down and earth was up
and feel the universe spin around me.

Vacation tchotchka

Bee dance

Bees
The bee hive lives. I returned home on Thursday from Portland Nursery to a swarm of bees in my back yard. I had just been remarking to T. that morning that we should call Tom, the beekeeper, because the dead hive was attracting the attention of local bees. Well...those local bees were scouts for a hive that had outgrown their current digs. The scouts led the pioneer honeybees to their new home, and marked the occasion with a swarming ceremony. It was terrifying and beautiful. The world around us works to it's own logic and rhythm, even as we humans attempt to ever increasingly control it.

Sadness
I've done little writing this week. Sadness. Especially since I've been on vacation. I think my body and mind both needed a break though. I drive so hard throughout the week, and then I don't even let up on the weekends. I'm the girl who wakes up at 6 am even on Saturdays. After a week of vacation though, I'm amazed to find that I can sleep in. I woke up at 9:30 today.

I'm afraid to go back to work. Not only because I've been having a hard time and I'm not looking forward to what and who awaits, but the idea of getting back on that moving train. Do I even know how to have fun now? Do I know how to relax? I watch The House of Elliot, and think "I'm just like Beatrice..." who obsesses about her business, whose marriage has failed, who is angry and worried all the time. Egh. We even have the same hair.

Movies
If you haven't seen Cache yet, you should. The best film I've seen in a while. Subtly political. The conflict between France and Algeria, and the current conflict in the Middle East form book ends to the story, and the film manages, through the story of a bobo family that starts getting creepy parcels and anonymous phone calls, to call attention to the way conflict can build up over nothing. Paranoia, distrust, leaping to conclusions without evidence...human failings that have global consequences. It made the war in Iraq feel very personal, in a way that no amount of CNN coverage can. Don't go if you're sleepy though. It moves slowly.

Fog
Early Friday morning, T. followed me out to Gresham in his truck, so I could take my car in for repairs. But he had a meeting at Leach Botanical Garden to start some web work for them, and didn't have time to drop me off at home. So unshowered, uncaffinated, unbreakfasted me took a hike through the garden. I was hoping it was early enough to avoid humans, but I was greeted by the groundskeeper Scotty, who told me just how many species of ferns and birds were living in the garden. I nodded politely, and sought escape in the woods. Every spider in the garden must have spun a web across the trail, because after awhile, I could feel them building up on my skin. Tiny invisible filaments everywhere. I'm sure I had a spider or two in my hair as well.

I also saw a snail crossing the trail and a cat hot-tailing it down the path as it was chased by some very angry birds. Eventually, I picked a bench and thought about what it would look like if I were to take a little nap. Would I get kicked out for vagrancy or something? But a bus of grade school kids on a field trip soon saved me from appearing homeless. And in past years, I would have felt uncomfortable under the critical eyes of children, sitting there alone on a bench--hair wild, and drowsy--but maybe I've truly grown up because I didn't really care. I just sat there and listened to the teacher until T. was finished with his meeting.

Destination: Austin

Hmmm. Let's begin with a technical confession: the software I use to loads photos on to blogger isn't working, which sucks, because I have gazillions to share. I'll have to load them later when I have patience and T. is not annoying me by prowling the kitchen, wondering whether to eat the rest of the tortilla chips, or glug milk straight from the carton.

We spent the last few days visiting our friends, A&E (so appropriate an abbreviation for them) in Texas. We timed the visit specifically so we could go to the Houston art car parade (pictures! lots of them! imagine Wacky star shaped cars and cars with huge, pink poodles on top, and funny rollerskating characters!) It's surprising Portland doesn't have anything like this, but maybe the freaks here have grown too comfortable and don't need to announce their freakiness anymore. In Houston, the land of the air conditioned tanning booth ("Darque...so good you can almost eat it"), the freaks need a once-a-year event to rally around. I felt right at home.


My fave of the art cars


M peach bush...a bold move in W-loving Houston


Who wants a tasty cupcake? Me!

We saw a few of the crazy cars later, all the way in Austin, when we were crossing South Congress. "Hey! We know those cars!"

Besides eating and drinking our way through Texas, we did some super cool stuff, including hanging out at the TGI Friday's on the river. Hey! That's not cool. Except we were there to wait for the moment just at dusk when a colony of 1.5 million bats that lives beneath a nearby bridge made their way out into the night sky. I was anticipating they would come out as a cloud and begin swarming the area around the river. Instead, a slow and orderly stream of them rushed East, beginning at one end of the bridge and made its way toward us. It felt choreographed, as if each bat knew when to take its turn and fly off, away from the fading sun. The whole thing took almost 20 minutes. It was stunning. I've never seen animals so seemingly conciously organized.

They were certainly more organized than the four of us, who by this time had each consumed two ultimate margaritas and at least one fried mozzarella stick. We headed to a local music and soul food joint and shoved our faces full of fried catfish, cheese grits and beer and listened to a great, twangy, swingy band. We clapped and hooted and hollered. We closed the place down. Then more beer at the Spider House. I floated my new story idea by E. "Hey! Do you think it'd be a funny story if there were this big old dude, and he was in the bathroom, sick with food poisoning, and he heard someone breaking into his house?" She laughed, perhaps politely. And after all the beer, we topped it all off some the sugariest donuts in all the land at Ken's donuts. Wow. Can you say "shitfaced"? How else can you explain that I ate two of those sugar bombs in less than five minutes?


Donut zombies

As if I didn't eat enough, now I can think of nothing but tamales and tequila. I can't complain about the cuisine here at home. I get all the strong beer and coffee I want, the salmon is fresh, and the berries are divine. But sometimes...I crave heat. And now that I've had some, it's gonna be hard goin' back.

A clear sign of gentrification

It's raining, and my neighbor is running her brand-new sprinkler system. Last week, several brawny hispanic men dug trenches in her lawn to lay the pipe. Now, it runs every morning and evening, whether the grass is parched or not.




Oh yeah...and the newly built rowhouses that are starting at $495k. Half a mil for a freakin rowhouse???? Ohmygod i need to run away to the mountains and never come back it is all too much.

I never thought I'd say this but thank goodness for the other neighbor who has a washing machine on his lawn and I've never been so glad to see a stray dog taking a crap in our front yard.

Fingers on silk scarf

The skin on my fingers catches against the silk--rough skin, hangnails, dry fingerpads--hands worn with work.

The little red hen ground the grain, made the dough, baked the bread. The fruits of her labor fed her chicks. The goose, the cat and the rat stood by as they ate and felt their bellies rumble.

My hands are more and more like my mother's with each passing day. A surprise to me--to recognize her there. The pattern of her veins, her red knuckles, the skin with hatchmarks like they've been drawn in rough pen and ink. These are mine now. Passed down without ceremony. Received with prayer that they will know better when to hold tight and when to let go.

I still recall a warm summer day when I was only thirteen. I stood at the washtub in the cool, moist basement, sorting laundry. I asked my mother I should use bleach on the whites. She said yes, but never get it on your hands. She regretted the damage it had done to hers. It made her look old, she said.

But she was old. At least that's what I thought then. But she was not much older than I am now. She was young and looking at her own hands, thinking of her own mother. Looking at the wide, smooth scar from her wrist all the way up to her thumb on her right hand, and once again hearing the sound of flying metal and warm, wet trickle of blood running down her fingers. Seeing the scissors he mother had thrown now lying at her feet. Feeling the rage of her mother. A bull, not a hen, but a bull.