ANDRA VIGNETTES

Andra from another view.

A church bell rang a few blocks away— swallows, sparrows, and ravens all flying at the first tone. It was four o’ clock, sweltering.

Bougainvilleas crept in through the window to escape the heat, and Andra lay on her bed, reading, occasionally peeling and prying her sweat-soaked shirt off her skin.

A tower fan cooled the two of us in turns, carelessly blowing the pages of her book and both our hair around in the process. But still, she looked so comfortable, just like she always does.

I wondered how she stayed that way, even in moments like these: on my bed, blankets layered thick onto the mattress below her. The sun even blistered just outside the window, and it didn’t seem to matter.

Maybe the infrequent light breezes and cozy marine layer were comfort enough.

A vast rug is more enticing, perhaps, than a party.

I told her I wasn’t going to the party, and I didn’t.

Instead, I took a long, hot bath, and stepped out of it an old woman, wrinkled beyond recognition. In my mind, my hair was gray and thin, and I had two granddaughters who I loved dearly.

We played games when they finished their homework. Sometimes I let them try on my clothes— long, silk pieces that draped like curtains on their small bodies. Their bodies were almost as smooth as the silk itself.

I liked to light tea lights, especially on the windowsill, where they lured flowers toward them for us to see.

I often wondered how much my granddaughters lied to me under the guise of keeping me happy. Then, sitting on the bristly, deep red rug in my living room, I died.

But this was all in my mind, and I was 17 then. Even now, I am only 23.

I think I don’t mind how the bath wrinkles look. They make me feel more deserving of how tired I am.

When I have bath wrinkles, I am old and weathered and it makes sense that I find it hard to bring myself to move, that I am in pain and struggling to be a person, because my body is beginning to decompose on me: preparing itself for death.

I feel like I’ve only just been born, and I’m already so tired! So worn!

Do things hit harder when you’re new to the world? Is it good if they stop hitting hard, or does that mean you’ve forgotten to be soft?

I feel like a new shoot from a house plant, and I want to grow, but I don’t want to lose my bright green, and I don’t want to coat with dust.

How do you prevent something like that?

Anyway– I have many house plants, most with vines that hang or leaves that furl, and even some with tiny, bright flowers.

I don’t like dark green much, so I tend to stick to the brighter colored plants in general. I think they bring more energy. Dark green is cooling and calming, and I can’t have that around all the time. Only on occasion, or maybe just at night.

It’s night now, and bones are strewn across my floor.

I found them earlier, in an alley between rows of houses. The alley isn’t accessible to any of them— kind of reminds me of a Murakami book I read when I was younger.

At first, I thought it was a rat’s skull because of how small it was, but looking it up told me it’s a raccoon skull. It must’ve been a baby raccoon.

I decided to call him Creases, but deciding that got me thinking more about him. He wasn’t Creases when he was alive— I could never decide that for him. How could I name someone I’ve never met?

You could say parents do that everyday, but I’d argue that anyone with a little human growing inside of them absolutely knows that little human.

When I found Creases, his spine was a foot away from his head. On my rug, the parts of him are much closer. Some parts are missing or broken, but I don’t mind it.

I held a little ceremony for him. His death was clearly not peaceful, and it upset me— more than I thought it would. I wanted to do something for him, and in part for myself.

I lit a few tea lights and placed them in front of us, and looked up what raccoons like to eat, eventually settling on some fruit which I put in a small dish and set in front of me.

It took me a few minutes to move the major parts of him onto my thigh, but once I’d finished, I ran my thumb down his head and spine. I pet him like this for five minutes. It was slow and quick all at once. I felt my spirit calm, and his as well. He felt alive again.

But that’s not really true. It wasn’t that he felt alive again, exactly. I was still holding Creases, not whoever he used to be. But… it felt like death was rebirth.

Now that it crosses my mind, I have to wonder how his past self would feel about it: that he continued on in death, changed.

I suppose his past self can’t feel anything about it. They are dead, after all. Maybe if the afterlife exists, they have some feelings about it. But then there are two of ‘Creases’ in the present: Creases and whoever is experiencing afterlife.

If reincarnation exists, then are they Creases, too? I mean, they aren’t, but are they some version of him? Or are they entirely different? Does it make a difference if they’re a raccoon again or a praying mantis?

Anyway, I don’t know any of them. Creases is the only one who matters, unless he wants them to be a part of him, and then they matter, too. It’s sad that he can’t let me know.

After, the world was too quiet, so I took another bath.

The moon watched in a motherly way, full like a plate. I could feel the way she swelled with pride as I pressed a loofah to my shoulder and dragged it down my arm.

She watched me with only some attention. Her focus drew to other places and back to me again, waxing and waning the way she herself does, and the way tides draw in and out.

I paid full attention to myself, rubbing soap into my face and neck and collarbone and all the rest of me. The water rose and fell as I shifted in the tub.

I felt my skin begin to twist and turn, rippling, and closed my eyes to let it happen. A watched pot never boils, after all.