Who Is Woman.....The Yellow Ball....

"If I have any advice," she said, "from my advanced old age, it is —to frolic. All animals frolic.
To frolic is to really live."
©marleaevans


Who is Woman (when the estrogen goes?
 
Boy in line at the superstore gives eye to the young girl clerk, takes her sweet time scanning his items, sparks fly eye to eye so hot she must lower hers, the lashes long with a life of their own like insects moving in the grass. He sighs, takes the receipt, hands out a compliment whispered, she, with a shiver smile, behaves like her momma taught her.
 You enjoy the moment unreasonably. You want to pat them on the back for an unconscious exchange of sex behind the eyes that surged blood downward raising a mighty good feeling up. You smile for the ocean you used to swim in, the sea of looks and quiet yearnings with strangers you never intend to know. The one in France, intense, a street artist, eyes of pure gold, Moroccan; you take your sweet time scanning his items. He hands you a card, points at the address, says, çe soir. You behave like your momma taught you. The sci-fi writer though, he looks across the way in the Librairie Flaubert, scans your literary items, accuses you by your accent of being Swiss. In the eyes, he has the proper distance and approach, a French man behaving like his momma taught him, so the American woman comes to his bed, an affair the ended with his running along side the train at the Gare de L'est, calling "Stay wiss me." Finally, you marry and behave, or you don’t. Have children or you don’t. It does not matter, for in the beginning of the end, you feel the ocean evaporating, a fish thrown out gasping for your element, the sea is shrinking. You do things to your face, ask your doctor for the replacement hormones, but, at un certain âge, they begin to deny your coverage, and that is at the same age men are getting their Viagra free. You don’t really care; the losses of friends and family have grown larger than the regret of estrogen fuel and heat. Death is the main man eyeing you now, in the mirror, in the hall. The young girl scans your items: hair color, aspirin, vitamins and fiber. You smile at her and look after the boy, retreating, slowly, backwards, his eye on the prize.
 





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The Yellow Ball
Mona Lee looked out the bedroom window. It was morning. It was Christmas Morning. No feeling for the holiday anywhere in her heart, mind, brain. (How to describe the empty feeling?) She did not trust heart—heart was thrown around like crap candy, too sentimental for her. Mind, that was like something you must mind, watch, take care of, or it goes nutty. Brain was more like it, but folded masses of messy matter did not explain critical emotion in the human animal. They said the brain was like a computer—they said, blah blah—she was so tired of hearing the brain was like a computer. If so, hers was three sandwiches short of a picnic, two bricks lacking a full load or a few cards shy of a full deck. She revised the old saw. If a brain were a computer, hers would be a few gigabytes short of a mother board. Like that. Maybe.

Gus was sleeping next door in the “snore bed.” She could hear him snoring. There was some time left, then, to herself, before the Mona that is not all Mona, but is too much of Gus, would start the day.

She had been in bed all day Christmas Eve day, Gus bringing her ginger ale and soup, with the radio on, hearing the carols and bits of the old stories: shepherds watching their flocks by night, come, oh Israel upon a midnight clear, joy and good tidings to you. As a child and as a younger adult, even more recently, those songs had had the power to arouse feeling in her heart, mind, brain, being?

Being, bam, yes, being was a better word, because it entailed all of the human processes in a bundle. So, starting from the beginning: Christmas was dead in her being. Her stomach had been cramping, her heart was a stone, much of her family dead, and her sister Addie's children surrounded her, two grandchildren—life went on for her—but Mona Lee's life was nearly over, even if it dragged its sore feet from her mid-seventies into her eighties. What had made her Mona Lee was being young enough to move again, to change, to fall in love again with life. What it was that had made Mona Lee Mona Lee was sliding out of not just her body's ability to move, but from her stony heart, her mind, her being.

Mona looked out. Most of her world-watching took place in the front of the apartment, peering out of the tall French windows.The ordinary sized bedroom window looked out to the back of the next street over, to the rears of large duplexes with Mediterranean bulk and handsomeness, where trees of all kinds lined their backsides and made a very pleasant view. Lowering her eyes she saw four attached garages, mottled roofs, huge telephone poll and wires stretching hither and yon, from next door to across the way. (How did the phone company keep those wire messes straight?)

A bright object sat in the corner of the garage below her. She leaned out. Grayboy jumped up beside her and hogged the window. Look, Mona said to the cat, moving him aside; look, it's a bright yellow ball. She sang a song that came into her brain, like a yellow rubber ball. No, wrong, that song was like a red rubber ball. This one was yellow to beat the band, as shiny as the submarine. “We all live in a yellow....”

She had seen soccer balls on top of the garage roof, kicked there by neighbor kids, but never a pretty round shiny yellow ball. No writing on it, just round, smooth and the color of a smiley imogee. Her mood lifted. Her being rose. Why? She could not explain this lilt, the kind that once had happened when she heard the Hallelujah Chorus. In ever changing life, there will always be another sign, that you are alive, that you can enjoy, that you can go on. The sun, a lemon, a child's rubber ball. Explain that, brain.

Gus shambled out of the snore room on his two bad knees. “How are you, today, baby?” She could see the wish in his eyes: I hope I don't have to bring her soup again.

“Better,” she answered, laughing.

She kept the discovery of the bright yellow ball to herself.











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