Origin Issue

The radiator spits and pops and puffs beneath the single open window. Big torn holes in the screen seem to breathe the cool breezes that come in from the waning winter air. Mary shuts this window with more effort than one would think necessary. There is a large thud, then the temperature inside the kitchen rises by ten degrees.

Mary circles back from the window to continue tending the stew she has simmering on the stove. Turmeric and garlic and steam season the narrow and long family apartment. Mary takes a small amount with a ladle for tasting. She singes her tongue a smidge, taking a sip of cool water before deciding that the stew needs more hot sauce.

The front door lunges forward then stiffens to a halt. Mary hustles over with oven mitten clad hands to undo the chain lock. “Back up, chain’s in.”

“Why’d you put the chain up, you scared of your own neighborhood?” This came from Richie, who was dating or not dating Mary’s aunt Debbie.

“Don’t blame the neighborhood, I’m scared of you people.”

Mary pushes the door open with her foot, mittens hanging in the air. Aunt Deb and unspecified Richie stand there, not moved an inch from the typical by Mary’s atypical appearance. The kitchen is not usually used for cooking food in this apartment.

Aunt Debbie wasn’t looking Mary in the eyes. Debs was usually pretty cool, but right now she had her arms coldly folded over a powdery blue sweater, hands resting limply upon the cuffs of a white blouse peaking from underneath. Mary stared at her aunt’s seasonally painted nails, which dangled from her long fingers like pink and white and glitter ruby red stalactites.

Debbie rolls her eyes in the kind of quick way where she wouldn’t have recalled doing it if someone recounted it to her. She begins to move briskly, targeting the bedroom where she needs to be as soon as possible. The second the door opens, aunt Deb quickly hovers toward the master bedroom at the end of the apartment paying no mind to the linoleum floors still glistening from a recent mopping. She flies by the newly organized coffee table, whose many stacks of purposeless papers now held the more respectable shape of a clean paper stack sitting in the corner of a clean table. Deb didn’t seem to so much as catch a whiff of the stew. This initially saddens Mary.

Richie has a different trajectory. “Something smells good, did you order pizza? How much do I owe you?” Richie starts to take out his leather wallet as Mary takes a second to recover from the pungent disappointment her aunt has very recently caused her. She then replies with “I made stew. There are tomatoes in it and stuff. I really appreciate the help you guys have given me this month...” Seeing Richie’s bearded face scan hers in a concerned sort of way makes her transfer trains of thought. “I guess I‘ll save it for when we’re all seated.” Richie is still standing in the open doorway, still scanning the room with worrisome urgency. He begins to say something “Wow Mary. This looks really special. We both think that, uh, the day you had to come...I don’t mean you had to come here. You could’ve gone anywhere...” Richie decides to wait until they are all seated as well. He makes his way to the bathroom without any further words.

Mary is again alone in the kitchen, though the bathroom isn’t far enough away and she can hear subtle sounds of Richie’s bowel movement. Mary ignores his distant grunts as she stirs the stew with a wooden spoon for probably the thousandth time that day. She sees the boiling swirls of greens and browns and yellows and reds as the innards of her brain, or whatever other part of the body digests fear.

She sees her futon in the living room, with sheets and blankets and various small items that all fit into one relatively large duffel bag. Mary stares at the sautéing liquid and recognizes the reflection of a girl who should not be in New York City. The stew then reveals the image of a beautiful piece of paper.

It’s a comic book, a green cyborg monkey with a cybernetic extendable laser gun arm adorns the cover. This is Pew-Paw, the cyborg time traveling Monkey warrior. Mary began drawing him when she was fifteen. The first drawings were pretty rough, pretty much standard doodles.

The robot arm went through many sizes and versions. Sometimes it was a barbed hook. Other times it was an arm cannon. Sometime in college, Mary decided on an extendable metal arm capable of stretching up to thirty feet and enabling Pew-Paw’s spider monkey body to swing around any environment. The palm could also transform into an energy blaster.

The more Mary grew, the better and more polished Pew-Paw became. The shape of the character became consistent and confident. The backstory went from third rate drama school assignment quality to a real fleshed out world with rules, characters, and even original cuisine. More accurately, a recurring gag saw Pew-Paw chowing down on odd banana centric meals like creme bru-nana and banasagna.

Pew-Paw had real potential to connect with people. Mary felt this deep down, but her dream of making Pew Paw a real, tangible comic book never seemed more far away. Here she was, miles away from home in cozy central Florida. New York City seemed to have the answers and resources Mary had been seeking. Her aunt Deb gave her the couch in her Brooklyn apartment, just until she got on her feet.

The past month made Mary feel as though New York had lied to her. Opportunities seemed far away and impossible, the right people seemed to exist only on paper. Mary quickly felt the size of herself on planet Earth, an insect no matter how big her dreams were.

Mary then felt a sad sting of accountability. Everything that made her unhappy had been her fault. Pew-Paw was supposed to be the beautiful part of herself that she could share with the world. The problem was that she never showed Pew-Paw to anyone. Drawing was a secret Mary kept from everyone she cared about. Pew Paw had only ever been shared to classroom acquaintances and anonymous online forums. If she couldn’t even gather the courage to show Pew-Paw to the world, she should just go back home and run a furniture store.

The beef stew she had prepared was sort of the finale to Mary living in New York off of her aunt’s generosity. She would be flying back home in the next two days. “Hey kiddo, you buy that?” Mary looked up at her aunt standing like an obelisk.

“No, I made it. It’s for-“ The toilet suddenly flushes. Richie forces the stiff bathroom door open moments later and Mary very briefly winces at the fact that he did not wash his hands. He stands next to his label-less companion and Mary continues.

“I made you guys this beef stew my friend’s family has a recipe for. We had it all the time in school, it’s awesome. I used Kobe beef and everything, it’s the good stuff. I just really appreciate you guys putting up with me this month. I’m going home Tuesday, but I got an opportunity to do something really big and that’s because of you, so thank you.”

Mary places two bowls of stew with Rosemary garnishes on the table. Aunt Deb doesn’t budge before saying “Mary, sit down. We have something to tell you.” Mary suddenly throws up in her mouth before dutifully swallowing and sitting down behind the large pot of stew still on the table. “Not now Mary I’m being serious.” Says Deb, hurrying to some kind of point. Mary lifts the pot from the table to the counter, hiding the heaviness of the stew with a performative coolness. Mary sits down again, this time in full view. Deb sits, followed quickly by Richie.

The two look to Mary in this moment like teenagers about to explain a bad report card to their parents. Richie places his hands vertical and parallel to each other on the table before bailing on it and then recommitting. This happens maybe ten times throughout the conversation.

Deb begins to talk. “Richie and I just got back from the bank. We’ve been thinking a lot this month about the future. I know you are too kiddo.” She stops. She doesn’t know how to continue. Mary hasn’t seen her aunt struggle to speak before. Before Mary can ask her uncharacteristically tense aunt what’s going on, Richie begins to speak in an urgent cadence.

“The first week you were here, we both thought it was kind of weird how much paper you packed. It seemed like all you had, which was fine but you were moving here to pursue history and you didn’t have any text books or anything like that. The paper didn’t even have words on them most of the time, it was just pictures.”

Mary began to grow red. “What the hell, why were you going through my stuff? What the hell?! Auntie Deb did you know about him peeping on my private work?” Deb looks at Mary with long sought calm. “Let him finish Mary. Go ahead love.” Richie looks lovingly at his non labeled life partner before turning around to pick through a closet. Mary gives her aunt an annoyed look, which Deb seems to proactively ignore. Richie sits back down with something behind his back.

“So I was sitting in the living room one day and found this in between the couch cushions.” He pulls out a small black notebook. Mary didn’t know exactly what of Pew-Paw was in that notebook, she had too many to count, but she knew one terrible truth; her secret was out.

Mary began to sink into her own knees. Richie began to choose words pretty carefully. “I’m in love with this spider monkey Mary. This is like the coolest comic book character I’ve seen in a while, and I actually read comics, not just the movies. And the supporting cast is dope! Boom-Pap, a mutated pig with a bazooka in his chest who acts as a mentor and father figure? That’s incredible!”

Deb tries to be gentle as she chimes in. “Mary, he showed me and I thought they couldn’t possibly be made by you. Just because I didn’t even know you draw, let alone this well. Anyway, I looked it up to make sure and the artist turned out to be someone named ShinjiValentine34xx.” Mary turns the shade metal gets when molten. “It was hard to tell with that cat filter over your face, but that profile picture was definitely you kiddo.”

There is silence. Mary tries to gather her emotions and become human again, but she finds this to be too tall an order at this point in time. Richie suddenly speaks again with a pointed determination. “Mary, Pew Paw is a great comic book concept. I believe in you, your aunt believes in you.” Aunt Deb replies “You can’t leave New York this soon. What you have is special. The world will be a better place with your ideas in it. That’s why we’re giving you a gift.” Mary raises her head just enough to make eye contact. “Gift?”

Richie gets to the point “We put some money together. We’re giving you twenty thousand dollars as an investment in you and Pew-Paw.”

Gravity stops functioning sucking Mary up into the cold vacuum of space where she will surely implode into a bloody blue mess. Back on Earth, Mary is crying and trying to speak. All she can get out is “Thank you.”

She holds the hands in front of her as the stew starts to become cold.