Manifest Destiny

I remember the hair on his fingers spiralled and curled like a little hair forest just above the knuckle which was boney and thick. His nails were too long for a man and one had dirt under it. I wanted to hate his long bony hands and hairy fingers, but I loved him. Despite everything I still loved him. I tried not to cry. I sat there and listened. The therapist said, it was good to take a pause and listen to one another and so I clenched my jaw shut.

“I’m not ready for marriage or a baby. I can’t, I’m just not. Sorry, Lil, I’m never gonna be that guy.” I breathed and focused on his hands. “I know this is disappointing,” he conceded.

No, this wasn’t disappointing this was devastating, but more this was the end. It had to be. I wanted children more than anything on earth. I wanted babies, his babies and mine. And there sitting in the hot muggy jungle on our vacation, the one where we were gonna make babies, he killed every last one of them and then...us. Well stating his truth wasn’t murder, but…

I tried to forget it and just enjoy the last few days we had together but it nagged at me like a gnat in my eye. When we got home, I packed up and made my excuses.

“I’m sorry, Zephyr, who’s real name was Matthew. I’m sorry. I know you’ll be okay. You always are.” And I left.

He was okay, denial is a nice town, a lot of people live there. I couldn’t stop crying. My eyes were so raw I took another few days off work. I vomited. Ten years together and now I was staring at a white space with white walls and white cheap plastic slatted blinds and white countertops with ugly pressed wood cabinets. I had nothing, just a bed and a hand me down couch and I didn’t want more. Zephyr came over too many times but never stayed. We were through, but we loved each other...there was always love. Damn love.

I was told to take up one vice and stick to it and one virtue and commit to that. My vice; scotch on the rocks. Such a big drink for such a small woman, but one glass laid me flat on my ass...I loved it. My virtue? I walked into a fancy artisan store in West Hollywood. It was one of those brightly painted places that seduced you with color, Nag Champa, and a chance to dip your toe into the impossible cult of cool. I was faux cool, a nerd hiding in a beautiful body. I searched the store crammed with over priced, needy things. And then I saw it, stacked with the others in a wicker basket. A tiny black book banded with elastic just sitting there plainly being. I picked it up and felt its smooth cover. It smelled like the backseat of a Mercedes Benz and the lingering cologne of a man you wanted to fuck, if only in your dreams.

I bought it, and despite everything being overpriced it was within my budget. But what to write? I now had a couch, a bed, and a book...Ironically I was a writer, so writing wouldn’t work. At least not in this black book, not in this vessel of my salvation. I had other black books that were tattered and worn and had pages thick with words. Those were my writing books, but this one, this particular one, this was my tether to wishes.

My writing had been translated into a computer, pitched to a producer and the people who blended into one expensive suit with a head and the perfect beige modernist office furniture. They had just given me my first installment check; twenty-thousand dollars! I sold a screenplay about wishing on a Christmas star and suddenly I was doing what I loved. I was a legitimate writer in Hollywood, that messy little town and had enough money to be a mother all on my own. The black book I bought that day though would be my magic. I heard about spirit writing, you know that shit you read about when you are clawing at the great unknown.

So many people go there to the unknown looking for something in the nothing and there I was staring at the sky wondering...where are you? Baby? Would the great unknown spit you out of her womb like a massive cavernous vagina and drop you to earth? I sure as shit wasn’t going to squirt it out of mine. I tried not to cry again and thought about grabbing my scotch on the rocks, dressing in something hot, and hitting the Cat and the Fiddle so I could walk out pregnant with some rando’s sperm swirling around my lady bits. But that wasn’t me, that wasn’t my baby, that’s not what screenwriters did. And so I sat down on the floor, cause this took grounding, and opened my black book and felt her pages, soft, supple, divine.

I picked up my pen, just a regular pen, a gel pen, I loved those. Where are you? I wrote and closed my eyes.

I’m here Mommy. I’m here. My name is Arianna and I have big hair, big eyes and brown skin. I’m here Mommy. I’m here.

I closed the book. Fuck I hated crying.

I went to bed.

In the morning I looked at the book and there she was...I’m here Mommy...

I suddenly despised that damn book.

I left it for days...no months.

When Zephyr came over wanting to go camping, I turned him down, closed the door in his face and slid to the floor. My world was ending.

“Lilith, I love you,” he said.

Fuck him.

I stayed silent until I choked out. “I can’t, Z...I can’t.”

“I know.” And then he was gone.

Suddenly, I needed the book, I needed Arianna.

I’m sorry. I just don’t believe you are real. I need you, I want you. I love you! I love you! I don’t even know if I will be a good mommy to you, but I’ll try.

I love Mommy.

Then I need a sign, I think I’m going crazy. You need to give me a sign to let me know that you are real.

Okay Mommy, pink balloons, sometime between today and tomorrow you will see pink balloons.

Fine kiddo. Pink balloons! You’re on!

I closed the black book feeling weird.

“Hey, Lil, it’s been a minute!” It was my best friend Mike, the gayest man in America.

He rang me six times in a row.

“I’m still wallowing. I’m in Wollowskotia, I’ll talk to you later.” I was about to hang up.

“Oh hell no. We’re going to the Abby tonight and I'm getting you good and drunk.” I knew when Mike was in Mike Mode I wasn’t going to escape.

“Is there any way to stop this?” I asked, knowing the pointlessness.

“Girl, please. You better be ready to look like sex on a stick,” he cautioned.

“Woo for a bunch of gay guys!” I lamented.

“I ain’t draggin’ no nasty ass girl to the club. You need to be fine arm candy. Now get yourself up and dressed, bitch I’m on your doorstep.”

What was it with people just poppin’ in on me? I opened the door and there he was.

“Tada. Oh hell no, no no...oh no. Get your ass naked right this minute. I’m picking your wardrobe, you can’t be trusted, you sorry ass, wallowing, housemaid. When was the last time you brushed your hair?”

“Ugh.”

And so off I went to the gayest club in LA, looking like a supermodel, thanks to Mike’s monumental effort. We talked, I danced, I drank, we met people, the room got loud, the music got louder, the place blurred.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU FINE ASS HO! HOPE YOU HAVE A WHOLE HELLUVA LOT MO!”

I looked over to a gaggle of men in the corner celebrating a birthday when a gust of wind came. It was one of those random blasts that made you grab your drink and cocktail napkin cause you didn’t want to be that dick who littered. A bunch of balloons unleashed themselves from the back of one of the chairs where several stood sentinel. They flew across the courtyard strewn with bar tables and hot men and landed on my face. Three pink balloons. I cried.

“Lil, you have got to get over him! You’re perfect, there are going to be other men. You’re doing the right thing going cold turkey.” He sipped his Grey Goose and Seven before untangling the balloons from my hair.

“Pink balloons,” I cried.

“Damn helium balloons, probably just put them on those chairs half ass.”

He pulled the strings out of my curls and I stared at him, tears dripping down my face.

“She said pink balloons. What time is it?”

“Eleven fifty-nine, what you gonna turn into a pumpkin or something?”

“Sometime between today and tomorrow....”

“Well this will be fun to see. You’re drunk. Good. You need to be drunk. Hell I need to be drunk. Let’s get more! I’m not leaving here until you and I are slathered in drunk!”

I didn’t turn into a pumpkin that night. The next day my neighbor, Mrs. Hippy Dippy with the guitar came out of her apartment at the very same time I did.

“Hey, how are you?”

She didn’t really know me, so… “Fine.”

“Where are you headed?” she asked.

“Production meeting. You?”

“Staff meeting. God, we just don’t have enough foster parents for all of these kids. We’re having an emergency meeting; there aren’t enough homes…”

And then heaven opened up and angels sang and there were a shit ton of pink balloons, and gays in tutus and Aretha Franklin. Then nine months later, after piles of paperwork, a home study, and countless meetings, Arianna Amelie Johan Braves was born addicted to crack cocaine to a prostitute mom who didn’t know her own name. My brown skinned big haired baby was here! She cried a lot, crack babies cry a lot, but we got through it. Later after the tears, hers, not mine, there were princess dresses, clippy cloppy shoes, bounce houses, cupcakes, natural oat grain puffed thingies...and she was my daughter. Her birth mom cleaned herself up and got to see Arianna from time to time. I opened my black book and wrote. Thank you!

Zephyr realized he’d been a turd. He was worse at spoiling her than me and didn’t even flinch when I opened my book and wrote Hello baby...again.

Three years after Arianna was born, Indigo Paisley Brown Braves came to us. We struggled with tantrums and night terrors, but she became a gorgeous person with a strong will to match her strong personality.

Motherhood had been the happiest, hardest, most heavenly thing I’d ever been blessed to do and...this story is only partly fictional. I still have that black book. Arianna is fifteen and goes to an arts high school. Indigo is twelve and has a scholarship to a music conservatory. Zephyr and I are still us...so I opened the book again...and let the magic come.

Hello Mommy, my name is Avalon...

We never know our journey and sometimes we can’t always see our path, but that little black book knew my destiny...and now I am a Mommy to three.

****21,000 children in Los Angeles county need homes and I’m sure it’s similar in your neck of the woods. If you find it in your heart to reach out to a child in need, guaranteed there is someone out there waiting for you!