another

 The television says it's Christmas. Jimmy hears the familiar piano jazz of the Peanuts Christmas Special, soft and comforting like the hush of the snow that is starting to fall. The log burning down to embers in the fireplace is one of those cheap paper jobs since dad hasn't restocked the wood pile this winter. Mom, dressed in her pale green nightgown, is hanging the stockings. She pauses as she holds David's in her hand, runs her finger across a plastic race car sewn into the red felt. Mrs. Allen made a stocking for every kid in the neighborhood when they were born, embellished each with these tiny plastic trinkets. Boys got things like tiny footballs and motorbikes, girls dolls and kittens. None of the things on Jimmy and David's suited them. They were not really football and motorbike kind of boys.

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 She runs her fingers over my tattoo. “I've seen something like this in class. Its from an African myth” she says. She's an art history major, still in undergrad, and gorgeous. “See these tears?” she runs a finger now over the abstracted lines that fall from the mask-like face. Honestly, I never really thought of them as tears, though it seems obvious now. “He's crying for his lost brother, who has to go into the world first, to make it ready for him.” I'm not sure about this myth or this tattoo's origin, but I choose not to argue. We are doing well today, and she's not a woman to argue with.

She is a Miami Latina, working class, her own tattoos look more of the jailhouse variety. Big earrings, a lot of attitude, tough as nails. She resents the Florida blondes that she considers competition for male attention. One Sunday I make the mistake of proposing a morning picnic in the park and she says, “ I'm not really a park type of girl” and pours herself a glass of vodka. It is, at best, 9 am. This is a safari I am taking in someone else's life, I am passing through.

That summer she leaves for New York, not certain that she will return for a final year of college. She asks me to hold on to a few boxes for her, though we are seeing less of each other these days. When I go to pick up the boxes, there are other men around and I know she wants me to see that. One night, much later, when I must admit that I miss her, or at the very least, someone warm in my bed, I open the boxes and find them filled with books – real literature, Russian translated into Spanish, Spanish translated into English. The Somerset Maughum book Cakes and Ale is heavily worn and underlined. This woman is a mystery.