Before the murder, there was a marriage.

Prissy loves Pili. She has learned, the hard way, that you cannot rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued.

The pilot lives here - in the space between two people who love but cannot quite reach each other.

As the season unfolds, Prissy learns how to cope with the romance with help from her Ala-Cactus meetings. Soon, she becomes visible, admired, heard.

And Pili - who has spent years being the one who pulls away - finds himself on the other side of that equation for the first time.

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Life is Prickly is all of love’s problems. Plus a dead body. Coming soon!

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TRACTOR

I often do things women aren’t suppose to,

like this morning, playing in the sprinklers when

a man saw me.

Did you get wet enough? he asked.

No, I said, and got right up in his face.

Want to see me do it again?

He drove away. But I didn’t do it again,

hadn’t wanted to. Most things that feel good,

I don’t ever want to stop. Like sitting on

my grandpa’s tractor.

He told me not to so I got off,

until he was gone.

And then I drove

made me feel big and small

all at once.

Big because it was so powerful and

small because it was so big.

My father turned the tractor over once

and never rode again.

I would ride again. I’d get back on.

The farm where you can see forever

is stronger than the corner you get stuck in.

Yes, I do things grownup women

aren’t supposed to. Or even younger women.

Or women with make-up on or women with men who

adore them or women with children who obey them or women

who clean houses or wear suits. Or farm women -

good sturdy work horse women.

My grandma can find worms anywhere. She can

stick shovels into ground as hard as cement

because she’s strong. Knows Jesus personally.

Wakes up at five a.m. to talk to him for hours.

I wake up early and smoke cigarettes

until I have a headache. And then I say, this isn’t right.

It’s just not healthy.

But later

I’ve forgotten and I’m small again.

There are voices but I ignore them.

Knowing is not the answer.

There are voices and they whisper.

Knowing is not the answer.

There are voices and they scream.

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This post was originally published on The Scream Online and is now shared with you. Enjoy.

It was Fourth of July and Mia was entertaining with the enormous energy that blasted from her year after year, like a Roman candle no one could extinguish. On her patio, in front of the ocean, under a huge yellow hat, she laughed, her head thrown back in a show of abandon. She once told me that this particularly sexy laugh, mouth wide open and head thrown back, was how she had attracted so many wealthy men.

With her twenty or thirty guests, Mia didn’t notice me, hovering in the shadow of the doorway. I had taken a cab from the airport, and was let in by the housekeeper. Scanning the patio, I looked for my younger sister, Celia. I hadn’t told her that I was flying in from New York with a fantasy that, together as a family, we could confront her problem and cure her with love.

A couple of well-oiled bathing beauties laughed at jokes told by men with powerful voices. A few fabulous older women reapplied their lipstick or checked out each others’ purses. I had worn white, instead of my usual black, in an effort to be appropriate for Malibu. I even managed to keep my white blouse clean on the five-hour flight. But now I felt like a ghost, invisible in the shadows and fading as I stepped into the bright sunlight, and still no one saw me.

“I have the best story about margaritas,” Mia said. She held court at a table of eight while a muscular young waiter served margaritas.

Mia paused to make sure she had everyone’s attention, licked the salt off her lipstick, and began.

“I was twenty-two at the time, and they were the richest men in the world. I won’t say their names, but they were all billionaires and we were going to Brazil or some goddamned place to hunt jaguar.”

Her audience included a large male producer who evidently knew the characters in Mia’s tale. I wondered if my mother was making it up as she went along, or if she’d read it somewhere.

“All the guys had airplanes and they all knew how to fly. We just chose the best plane and left. I remember the pilot, whose name I won’t mention, had a drink in one hand and me in the other hand. This was between marriages one and two….”

Mia clearly believed this had happened, and it very well might have. But I had never heard the story before and I was born of marriage number one.

“Melanie!” Mia finally noticed me and held out her arms.

“Hi Mom,” I smiled. I didn’t move toward her.

She sat there, arms extended, as if waiting for me to run into her embrace like a long-abandoned two-year-old.

Her right hand drooped slightly with the weight of a diamond ring that could probably feed half of Rwanda. I have always thought it odd that the two things Africa is most known for, aside from wild animals, are diamonds and starvation.

“It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man,” my mother always said. But I never found it easy to fall in love with anyone at all.

My boyfriend, Tyler, in fact, once told me that I was incapable of love. I argued with him. Then I thought about it. Whenever he reached out to touch me, I became distracted, thought of something I’d forgotten to do.

There were moments I could see the man I was once so attracted to, but they were fleeting. Usually, I only saw his paunch, or the food in his teeth, or smelled the stale garlic from his lunch and listened to his annoyingly loud sighs.

The night before I left New York, we did have sex, stone cold sober, between the tears and fights. With lavish use of my imagination, I was able to enjoy it immensely.

But afterwards, when he looked into my eyes, I felt oppressed and fearful. I have never found rest or safety in a man’s arms, at least not for very long.

“Can I get you a drink, Melanie? A nice salty margarita?” Mia waited, smiling, for my answer. “Oh no, no, no, I forgot. Of course.”

She acted flustered, as if she’d made a mistake, but it felt to me like she was doing it on purpose.

“What do you drink now, Melanie?” She looked somewhat incredulous. “Coke?”

“A Coke would be fine,” I said.

I smiled hello at Mia’s best friend Gretchen, a once beautiful movie star, who now looked like she spent most of her week in bed with a hangover. Gretchen was Celia’s godmother, though I’m not sure what God had to do with it. Or even mother, for that matter.

“Where’s Celia?” I asked. I needed to see if she was as scary thin as my friend Sandra had said she was. Celia, my only sibling, who at twenty-five, thirteen years younger than me, was almost like a daughter. And I never, ever thought of her as my half-sister, though biologically she was. Leave it to Mia to give me only half a sister.

“Oh, Celia’s always late,” was all Mia had to say, before returning her attention to her guests.

“We had planned to stay two weeks, shooting jaguar,” Mia continued. “But after two days, we’d already killed all the jaguar and there was nothing to do. So, here we are in this god-awful jungle at an incredible mansion that belonged to some plantation owner, and all there was left to do was…”

“Where was I?” I said. The assertiveness of my voice shocked me.

Mia turned to face me and cocked her head. “What?”

I hadn’t meant to interrupt, but now I couldn’t stop. “I was what—two years old? Where was I?”

A maid appeared, wearing a t-shirt with MIA printed in red across her chest.

“Phone for you, Madame.”

“Can’t you see I’m telling a story?” Mia snapped. “I’ll call them back when I finish my goddamned story!”

Mia turned back to her guests and smiled. “So. Here we were in this jungle and we’d killed all of the jaguar and there was nothing left to do but drink margaritas and have sex in the pool. Well, as everybody knows, no one can get it up in a pool…”

“Errol Flynn could,” said Gretchen.

“What?” said Mia.

“Errol Flynn could get it up in a pool.”

Mia tilted her head down and narrowed her eyes at Gretchen. Her smirk betrayed her admiration. Gretchen had stolen her audience and done it well.

Mia prepared to take the challenge.

“He could not,” she said.

“He could, too. I was there.”

Mia took the phone from the housekeeper, stood and started to step away from the table, but her attention was still on Errol Flynn and getting the last word in.

“Are you sure it was Errol, darling? I recall finding you in the pool with Romero…” she said. Then, over her bare shoulder, “…the gardener.”

I pushed away from the table and leaned over the wall that separated Mia’s backyard from the beach. Several more guests sat on towels, their backs to me, looking like wax figures left in the sun too long.

I studied a large man with meat curling down around his shoulder blades, hanging in thick ripples. Celia and I used to giggle and comment on drooping skin. She saw faces in naked backs. She assigned them feelings and specific communications.

“That woman doesn’t want us to sit there,” she’d say. “See how her shoulder tensed up when I pulled out my chair?” She had insisted that I see it too. “The shoulder blades are eyes, the long backbone is a strong nose. See the mouth around the waist that doesn’t smile or frown? Don’t you see it, Melanie? Can’t you see it?”

Of course I didn’t see it. It wasn’t there.

When Mia returned, the wrinkle between her brows looked deeper and her makeup seemed lighter. She sank into the chair. Everyone else at the table went silent, but for Mia, it was a private moment.

“It’s Celia,” she said intimately, but to no one in particular.

“Oh dear, you look horrible,” said Gretchen.

“Where is she?” I said. “What happened?”

“Her landlord found her passed out in the yard. I am horrible.”

“What do you mean?” said Gretchen. “Drunk?”

“No, not drunk Gretchen,” Mia snapped. “You’re the drunk.”

Mia turned to me. “It was a horrible idea, Melanie, phoning that psychiatrist. Celia’s probably in terror of the appointment we’re supposed to go to.”

“She wasn’t supposed to know,” I said. “You told her?”

As if splashed by panic, Mia got up and grabbed her drink. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “She’s at Cedars. Come on.”

I was surprised that Mia admitted that Celia’s emergency could be emotionally induced. We’d spoken about Celia’s weight a few times, but it had always been attributed to a high metabolism or her vegetarian diet. The thick curtain of denial operated so adeptly in our family.

“Where are my keys?” Mia said, to no one in particular. “What did I do with my sunglasses?”

She walked toward the house and I followed.

“Do you want me to come?” Gretchen asked.

“I can’t drive without my sunglasses,” Mia said. She was too scattered and confused to even acknowledge Gretchen.

“Don’t worry about us, then,” Gretchen yelled. “We’ll keep the party going.”

I reached out for the keys, but Mia shook her head. “I only had one drink. You’re always accusing me, I don’t know why you always….”

“I didn’t say you were drunk, I just offered to drive. I like to drive. Please.” I tried again to take the keys from her hand, but she hid them beneath her perfect red fingernails.

“Stop it, Melanie. Get in.”

I took a deep angry breath and got into Mia’s Bentley.

Mia settled in the driver’s seat and handed me a can of Coke. “Here, I brought you this. I thought you might be thirsty,” she said.

“I don’t drink Cokes out of cans,” I said. I put the Coke on the floor, unopened.

Mia started the car and turned off the radio. She looked frightened.

“It might be a good thing, Mom.”

“How could you say that? She’s in the hospital.”

“Maybe she’ll bottom out. Maybe she’ll turn around.”

We passed the gate of the Colony. The guard waved, but Mia did not see him.

I looked at my mother and saw that the skin on her face had begun to soften and hang loosely from her fine bone structure. I remember my grandmother’s chin, and how soft it was to the touch. But I would no sooner reach over to touch Mia than I would jump out of a moving car.

“Mom, Sandra called me in New York and said Celia looked like she was going to die.”

“I hope you didn’t tell Celia that.”

“Why not? She’s got to deal with it. Why do you think I called that shrink? She’s emaciated.”

“She isn’t that goddamned thin. You don’t have to make her feel bad. I’ve seen pictures of people in Africa skinnier than that. They don’t die!”

“Yes, they do die, Mom. That’s why it’s called starvation.”

Cedars Sinai was a cold and busy place. The hospital walls were filled with lithographs from famous artists and plaques commemorating this or that donation. A banquet would be thrown in your honor, and speeches made about your greatness, if you gave enough tax-deductible money.

The halls echoed with respectful whispers from people who were not usually prone to reverence. Lives were shattered there, the process made worse by the antiseptic smell. And to be fair, many lives were saved, including some, I imagine, that would prefer not to be.

My footsteps echoed down the hall, in tandem with Mia’s.

“Every time I go to a hospital I remember that story about them amputating the wrong leg,” Mia said. “It’s ridiculous. We put our lives in the hand of strangers. Supposing they’re in a bad mood?”

“Maybe you better not piss them off,” I pointed out.

“Oh Melanie, are you going to be on my case all day? Why would I piss them off?”

Celia was on the hospital bed, alone in her private room, covered by a light green sheet. Her collarbone looked like a ledge, deep enough to shelve books on.

Beside her was a dinner tray. A miniature piece of chicken sat on a square plate. Some corn. Applesauce. Vanilla pudding. Untouched.

The doctor stood over her, studying the chart. He looked tired, stressed. Anything but wise.

“Hi, sweetie,” I said to Celia.

She smiled slightly, ironically. Her face was gaunt, corpse-like. She seemed to be in shock. Or at least in another world.

“Are you okay?” Mia asked.

The doctor answered for Celia. “According to what your definition of okay is. She’s just come out of a coma. We were feeding her intravenously…”

“Oh, baby.” Mia stroked Celia’s head. I was ashamed of my surge of jealousy.

“How long could she stay like this?” I asked.

“A human can starve for quite some time.”

The nurse came in and whispered something to the doctor.

“Excuse me,” said the doctor. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Wait a minute…” Mia said. “We have to talk. I need to know…” But the doctor had left and the nurse firmly closed the door behind them.

Mia looked helpless, her skin pale, as though the makeup had fallen from her face, and with it, the facade of power she clung to.

Celia just sat there, as composed and polite as a still photograph of Audrey Hepburn.

Mia’s hands shook, as she reached for the applesauce on Celia’s tray and struggled to open it.

“Come on baby, we’re going to eat a little dinner.”

She held a spoonful of applesauce in front of Celia’s mouth. Celia didn’t seem disturbed by it. Her mouth was closed.

I remembered Celia as a baby, spitting a spoonful of squash at me and laughing at my reaction.

“Mother, come on,” I said. “You’re treating her like an infant.”

Mia dipped the spoon in the vanilla pudding.

“Honey, this is really good.” Mia was using a baby-talk voice. “Try just a little-bitty spoonful.”

“Stop it, Mother.” I said. “Just stop it.”

No one remembered that I named Celia, but I did. I heard it on a Simon and Garfunkel song, Oh Cecilia. I shortened it to Celia and suggested it to Mia.

I was an only child until I was thirteen, and had spent most of my time shut up in my room, wearing headphones. But when Celia was born, I put music on the speakers—sweet music, soothing music. Not the kind of music I played hatefully at my parents. Not the Doors or the Stones. For Celia, I played Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles.

For hours I held her, all wrapped up in a soft flannel blanket, as if I could protect her. I played music for her, believing that it would sink into her young soul like water into a plant.

I could almost still picture that small face smiling up at me. I remembered so vividly the morning I tried to give her milk from my virgin breasts.

But I couldn’t quite connect those memories with the young woman there in front of me.

All I could think of was the last time Celia phoned.

“We will never be the kind of sisters you always wanted us to be,” she said. “Why do you say that, Celia?” I pleaded.

“We just won’t,” she answered, rigidly.

And that was the end of our conversation.

What the passage of time does to love always frightens me.

Mia stood in the hall outside of Celia’s door and screamed at the nurse on duty.

“What do you mean the doctor’s not available? He was just here. I must talk to him immediately.”

“Calm down. You will talk to the doctor. But right now, he is in an emergency.”

“I’m an emergency too,” Mia yelled.

The nurse spoke in a low, deliberate voice. “Ma’am, excuse me. A woman just checked in with her forty-six-year-old husband, who had a heart attack. The doctor is taking a moment to tell her that her husband has suddenly, unexpectedly, died. Do you think you could wait just another minute?”

“Someone died?” said Mia. She looked at the nurse as if to say, “That can’t be.”

There was a long silence. For a moment, we all stood like statues.

Mia’s face wrinkled in confusion. She wanted the nurse to comfort her, but the nurse just turned around, walked a few feet down the hall and entered an office, looking coldly toward Mia as she closed the door.

Mia let out a horrible moan, like an animal that had just been shot. She buried her eyes in her hands. I knew she wanted my arms around her, but I felt allergic to her pain. I’d long thought it was ill-advised, perhaps even dangerous, to care for someone like Mia.

I went back into Celia’s room, but I could still see my mother, several feet away, crouched on the floor in the hallway, her bathing suit visible beneath a mesh beach dress.

I looked at my little sister, all eighty-five pounds of her. A feeling simmered beneath my surface like tears I could not cry.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I said, apologizing more for what I was about to do than for anything I had ever done.

Celia stared at me, cold and distant.

I touched the spoon to her lips, perhaps hoping that a small taste of the sweet pudding would coax her to open up.

She didn’t respond.

Her lips looked dry and cracked. I moved the spoon gently across them, moistening them with pudding.

I licked my own lips, hoping Celia would mirror my action, but she didn’t budge. “You have to eat.”

I jammed the spoon into her tightly closed mouth. She looked at me in horror. Pudding dripped down her chin.

I forced three or four spoonfuls into her clenched mouth.

The nurse came in and grabbed my hand. She pushed me aside and cleaned Celia’s face.

I was instantly reminded of the last time I confronted Celia, pleading with her to eat. In a voice I had never heard before, she’d said, “Mind your own business, Melanie.”

…Click to read the rest on The Scream Online.

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Everyone’s asleep but me. I just had to tell someone what happened today. I’m almost aftaid to. The only other people in the world who know are my cousins, Mindy and Phil.

They were with me. First I’d better tell you where I am.

I’m at Grandma’s house. I get to come here every summer. The house is on a big hill and all around it are fields of wheat and cotton and corn. Halfway down the hill is a gigantic tree with my swing on it. Off to the side of the house aways, is the barn with a hayloft in it and cows to milk. And way out back, on the other side of the chicken coop, is the Old House. That’s where the trunk is.

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Grandpa is usually busy driving his tractor or seeing to the pigs, so mostly I’m with Grandma. We bake pies or can stuff from her garden or go berry-picking or make things. Last week we made boxes out of popsicle sticks. We pasted pictures of Jesus on them, then some shellack.

My favorite thing is going fishing. I have a straw hat I wear that used to be Grandpa’s. It’s got a hole in it and loose straw ends stick out. I get a lot of mosquito and chigger bites when I go fishing, but it’s worth it.

On the way to the pond, I always say, “Can we stop at the Old House?” Sometimes we pack a picnic with velveta and saltines and the best tomatoes in the world that Grandma grows herself. We eat on the porch of the Old House and then I beg Grandma to go inside with me. She doesn’t like to, I don’t really know why. She thinks it’s dangerous because the paint’s gone and it’s so old. It must be hundreds of years old from the way it smells. Grandma was born and grew up there. It used to be on top of the hill where the new house is, but they moved it back somehow.

Grandma always thinks of stories from when she was little. Bands of gypsies used to come by and steal their eggs. There were no refrigerators then or even electricity, so they used fireplace, lanterns, and candlelight. When it was cold, Grandma and all her nine brothers and sisters would cuddle up by the fire and tell ghost stories. They didn’t have televisions. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.

Grandma never lets me go upstairs because she says the floors are rotten and we’ll fall through. Except a few times.

We walked very carefully on the rafters. It was really spooky up there and wonderful. There are still parts of the beds they slept in and old clothes and toys and books. Just like they left yesterday, only a hundred years ago.

Once I found a clay kewpie doll with no arms. “I don’t know what you’d want with that old thing. “ I remember she called me peculiar but she let me take the doll home anyway. It was on that same trip that I found the trunk.

“Now don’t go messin’ around with that old trunk.”

“Can’t we open it, Grandma. Please?”

“Naw. You don’t wanta go pilferin’ around in there. It’s nasty.”

I begged her until she got mad and we had to leave. From that day on, every time I’d ask to go to the Old House, she’a say. “As long as you don’t go botherin’ me about that ol’ trunk.” I’d have to promise that I wouldn’t.

So yesterday on our way fishing -

oh, I forgot to tell you! I caught three catfish and a turtle. Grandma cut the turtle’s head off because she was mad at him for eating our bait. That turtle’s still walking around without his head.

We ate one of the catfish because he was big enough and threw the others back. Chickens walk around without their heads here, too. And their eyes blink; I always wonder what they’re thinking about, watching their bodies flop around, having just had their heads wrung off. It gives me a weird feeling. Grandma says they don’t think anymore after their necks are broken, even if their eyes do blink, but you never know. I accidentally stepped on a baby chick once. It never got to grow up and that was all my fault. Grandma says I oughtn’t to be still thinking about it because it’s over and there’s no way to change what’s done.

Yesterday, Grandma forgot to make me promise not to bother her about the trunk. I wasn’t going to go bothering her anyway, I was just going to ask. We were on the porch when I said, “Grandma, in all my years coming out here to visit the Old House, I’ve never known what’s inside the trunk.” I wasn’t asking her to open it or anything, just to tell me what’s inside.

“You don’t want to go thinking about that ol’ thing.” And that was that. It was suddenly time to go home and get ready for prayer meetin’.

My cousins were at church and they invited me to spend the night. I have a crush on Phil but can never marry him because we’re related. He’s thirteen and he smokes, but no one’s supposed to know. Mindy’s younger than me and she already wears a bra even though she’s perfectly flat and doesn’t need it. Last summer Phil told us a very important secret about married people. We thought he was lying, but later found out it was true.

So last night we stayed up very late and I told my cousins about the trunk. We sat up all night in the dark, whispering stories to each other about what could be inside. Family jewels, I hoped, or silver dollars.

Phil thought it would be dead babies or old bones. He said we were going to find out.

We went back to Grandma’s this morning and she packed us a lunch to take fishing. Since Phil’s almost fourteen, she lets us go alone.

“Be careful and don’t fall in, and watch out for snakes, and don’t get one of those hooks in your eyes -- it might blind you.” She forgot to tell us to stay away from the Old House.

I was real excited and nervous all the way there. I forgot to watch what I was doing and stepped in a cow patty. God was punishing me in advance.

While we were climbing the fence, I started to feel real scared, like maybe we shouldn’t, but Phil said, “C’mon, you’re the one who wants to know what’s inside.”

I prayed for God to forgive me for what I was about to do. Mindy chickened out and said she’d stay downstairs and be our lookout.

As we were climbing the stairs, I told Phil about the floor and how we had to walk on the rafters, but he wouldn’t listen and walked right on the floor. This made my heart beat twice as fast. We’d really be in trouble if he fell through. I was hot and sweaty and wished I was at the pond where I was supposed to be.

I took Phil to the room where the trunk is. He looked at it and grinned. Then tried to open it.

My chigger bites had started to itch like crazy. I wished it wouldn’t open. I didn’t really want to know. It might be something awful.

When he finally got inside dust flew out all over the place. He pulled out a big black coat with wasps’ nests all over it

“Look, there’s a name sewn in it. Ada Hobbs.” That was our great-grandma who died before we were born. Then Phil pulled out a box. Inside, there were more boxes. He handed me one and I opened it and found two long black braids. I held them up trying to picture them attached my great-grandmother’s head. She’s dead, gone, and there I was, holding her hair in my bare hands.

I heard someone come up behind me and whipped my head around. There was no one there that I could see.

There were other things, too. Earrings, the kind you stick in a hole in your ear. And eye glasses, even teeth. Some boxes we didn’t even open because we left. I guess Phil got spooked too, although he didn’t say so.

I never did tell Grandma. Bet I stay up all night thinking about it. I never saw a dead person, but that was sure close. It’s weird how she’s dead and disintegrated and her hair still looks as real as anyone’s. I guess Grandma didn’t want to look because it would make her sad to see her mom’s hair without the face. I hope my mom never dies.

I still feel like someone’s looking over my shoulder. Sure wish I didn’t have to feel like this. Guess my dad will die too, someday. I don’t want to think about it because I know nothing can be done. But I can’t help it.

Just think, someday, maybe my grandkids will look at my things. If I even get to grow up and have kids. My stomach feels awful.

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I was an only child till i was 15, but for a short time when I was five-years-old, I had a spider monkey, and you can see how much I loved him. His name was Charlie for Charles Darwin.

But that summer, while I was away at Grandma’s farm, my dad was taking the bar exams, and my monkey was swinging on the curtains, like an out-of-control three-year-old, so my parents gave Charlie away.

I came back, and instead of my monkey, they had bought me a bike. I didn’t forgive them for nearly 40 years - it was my treasured wound.

Then I found out that all my father wanted when he was a kid, what he wished, and prayed for, was a bicycle. Born of proud, hardy, subsistence farmers (my great-great-grandparents were literally pioneers), animals were not to be loved, as they were soon to be food.

I finally understood how hard he tried, working 80-hour weeks, so I would never have to pick cotton, as he had. And though I rarely saw him, I can feel his deep love for me. But I still miss Charlie.

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