Hello Dear Readers,

It’s 2020. Isn’t it time you received some good old-fashioned letters?

It’s also Valentine’s Day, and so I wanted to give you (again—for readers of my former blog, dented stars) a little love story. Did you know, once a piece of writing is printed, even on this obscure little window of cyberspace that maybe no one will ever see, it can’t be submitted for print elsewhere? For example to the periodicals that might pay, in cash or publicity. But never you mind. The world is ending in fire and ice, in flood and pandemic, and only generosity and

Velma: A Valentine

Velma lived in a brick house on Haynes Street in Memphis, Tennessee.  She sat long spells on the concrete slab that was her front porch, watching the street and yard and sky for whatever happened. Day and night she wore polyester nightgowns in pastel shades, some with lace accents.  Whenever I was around Velma, I wondered: What’s the difference between nightgowns and gowns?  Nothing really.  

Velma didn’t even try and act busy.  She seemed perfectly happy to be sitting and talking, or just looking at things.  People could take this as a sign a person was dumb.  But maybe it meant the person was smart.  Velma wore a neat bun, coiled high.  Her fingernails were always painted the same true red. Crimson rectangles look so crisp and revolutionary when prefaced by a dizzying smatter of age spots. Once Velma asked me to do her right hand, and even though it involved a foot stool pulled way too close, and even though I had only ever chewed mine, I did.  She acted as though I was like her, open and trusting. She acted as though I might grow up to be glamorous. I might be someone who told people what I felt and thought, who might even feel and think in front of them. But I just stared at people. I was always poised to bolt outside.  I wore numbered jerseys or stripes and slept in my sneakers sometimes. My short hair looked like I cut it myself—although I would never, as that would mean time spent on grooming, jail-time.  But in Velma’s presence I felt a softening, a loosening, a slowing.  My eyes caught on things that looked—though I wouldn’t have said the word—pretty.  Can a person being very much herself can make you more like her?

Velma liked to tell stories. From her life, or from last night’s news. They were all about people. Mostly what a person had done, or what a person hadn’t done. How it changed everything.  But Velma kept interrupting the plot with questions. What would lead her to think?  Do you suppose if he had gone back?  I ask myself, what if that child had spoken up?  But would you have done anything differently?  Would any of us? Velma fell back in her chair under the weight of wondering. She fell silent, leaving the story with its loose ends hanging, unraveling all ways. You could see the way her visitors’ eyes glazed over, how their bodies twitched impatiently. But I was mesmerized. A grown-up wondering about the hearts of people was rarer than a grown-up crying. It was almost too much. I kept pretending I needed to use the bathroom.  

The toilet seat at Velma’s had a fuchsia cover. I lowered down on it, the rear of my ripped Toughskin jeans settling into its shag carpet. When you lived alone, you could make your house look just like you. You could turn your bathtub into a closet.  A long line of nightgowns hung on the rod where a shower curtain would go. There was no wind in the tiny bathroom, just hot Memphis air. I could see how it might glide in, though, and whip up the pink and green and yellow and blue strips into living things. I could see how they might soar and dive freely, sticking together momentarily in surprising places, before they fell back apart.