Images, Talia Natoli

Images

An image of what I once was lies in empty picture frames, the ones that lined the plywood walls of my uncle’s house. The old building is ghostly now, the negative of a colorful photo, long since stained brown. It was bright once, a sea of lights and music all mixed in together. But things stay lost when there’s no one to find them, and memories become jumbled in the mind. I was there all the time. Watching my uncle sing along to songs banged out on an old, un-tuned piano. It was that music that filled the void forming around me, but now I find these memories just make the emptiness worse. I sat by my uncle a few hours before he had to leave. He whispered quietly in my ear, so none of my other relatives could hear, saying he would see me again. I knew he was lying. Later I remember the man in the expensive suit reading my uncle’s letter quietly. There was a note just for me. Tucked away safely in a paper shield. I fiddled with the paper, the grains making my fingertips numb. ----I’m broken now. Standing alone on this dirt path lulled to destruction by time. Demolished by something that hasn’t been seen for thousands of years. There’s nothing now, save the small bit of dying brown grass still left and the unmoving air that stalls around me like an unsaid word on a hot summer day. I look up from my map, a colorful array of illegible lines. There’s supposed to be a metal pole here, a small sign of civilization in this expanse of desert. Then I see it, far away, distorted and almost hidden by the breath of heat. And I’m running now, my bag bouncing hard on my back, the key chains chiming with every step. And I know I’m moving toward it–but it still seems so far away. There’s a small bench here. Nothing to cover me from the sun, but it’s something. I sit and wait in this endless hole, this endless silence that is cruel

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enough to leave me with my thoughts. It’s grabbing me. These memories. Pulling me down into nothing. Threatening to consume me whole. But I shove them away. I tell myself, I’m not crazy… I’m not crazy. When the bus stops in front of me, sighing in the searing sun, I realize my hands are on my head. I pull them down quickly in embarrassment and swing my backpack over my shoulder. The double doors of the bus creak open slowly, looking too weak to be of much use, but I climb up the stairs placing my feet carefully on each step. I blindly hand the ticket I bought in Las Vegas to the driver, and wait patiently while he checks it. He nods and I move on through the bus where strangers sit in mutual silence, waiting for their stops. I wonder where they’re going. What stories they have to tell. How different it would be in someone else’s mind. Most of the seats are taken, so I travel toward the back as I search for one, and sit down next to an old woman, the white strings of her hair tied up above her prune-dried face. She smiles quietly at me then turns to look out the window as the bus starts forward. I follow her gaze, but fail to see the beauty in the constant brown-red of the sand that stretches all the way up to the sky. I sit with my bag huddled to my chest, and reach to pull the zipper open, but stop. My hand frozen on the pull-tab, “Not yet,” I mutter to myself. The woman turns, “You all right, dear?” “Uh, yeah…” I answer turning my growing pink face away. “You goin’ to visit your family,” she asks again. I shake my head, “My parents are dead.” “Oh, I’m sorry dear,” she says laying her hand on mine for one moment then turning back to the window. The bus trembles on through the thick dirt for a few hours. The woman doesn’t bother me after that, just smiles whenever she sees me watching the

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handbag on her lap. Her small wrinkled fingers interlace with the straw till you couldn’t tell what was flesh and what was bag. Suddenly, we’re surrounded by buildings, a strange difference to the desert. We stop. The doors open. I stand up slinging my bag over my shoulder once more, and step off the bus behind some others. Again I wonder where they’re going? Who they’re meeting? The bus pulls away. And in the window I see the ghost of the old woman, still staring out at all the invisible wonders of the world. I pull out my map again. Flip a few pages to the right till I find the imaginary “YOU ARE HERE” sign. I trace my finger along miniature streets then look up, orienting myself. The town is quiet. Not like the cruel silence of the desert that follows your every thought and bursts them out of balance. Even so I walk along the broken and fading road alone, placing my feet carefully around the cracks, and scolding myself when I tread on one. The buildings around here are too plain for my liking, with big white walls stained yellow, and thin metal doors painted bright shades of blue, green, or red. I look down at my map again and my heart sinks into my stomach. “I must have taken a wrong turn,” I mutter practically, then look around frantically to make sure no one sees how lost I truly am. “Just ask someone,” I reply to my silently frightened thoughts, “Take a chance.” There’s a man leaning against a wall a few yards away. The smoke from the cigarette in his mouth makes his hair look like it’s steaming. Every time he brings his lips to the bud the other end erupts into a fiery forge. I cautiously walk over, my hands on the straps hanging from my bag. “Um... excuse me?” I say and he looks up in silent greeting. “My uncle left me a note before he left…” I rattle off, then curse myself: he obviously doesn’t care. “Uh… anyway do you know where the Boulder Motel is?” He nods and points at a small building a block away.

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“Thanks,” I answer in relief, and start moving toward it. When I stand outside the splintered hotel with the defective neon sign, I let out a sigh of defeat. It makes no sense why he would send me here: a dirty hotel. I push my way through the office door, a jail cell from the outside world. There’s a silver bell positioned on the desk, my distorted features frowning back at me. I tap the antimony-like dome tentatively, my arms clutched across my chest. A few moments later a woman walks out. Age betrayed by her wrinkled skin. “Can I help you?” She asks in a strained voice that says on its own I’d rather be anywhere else. “Um… I mean yes,” I correct quickly. She didn’t seem like the person to tolerate stuttering, “I’m looking for a…” I searched my mind for the name, “… Victoria?” “That’s me, honey,” she sadly informed me. Yawning into her hand. “Oh… well that’s great…” I try to find my words again. “I don’t have all day,” Victoria interrupts, agitated, “Could you get on with it, or even better just leave?” “Oh sorry!” I say quickly groping around my shoulder for the backpack zipper. Victoria rolled her eyes, “My uncle left me this,” I say finally pulling out the envelope, “And I was told to come to this motel and–“ “Sorry kid, but I don’t care about your little vendetta.” she interrupted. “My what? No this isn’t–” “You should just go home,” she says slowly as if speaking to a child, “Leave.” “Um..,” I answered my courage draining like a sink. If someone said to make a wish I would wish for just that: to go home. But even my mixed up mind knew that wasn’t possible. “Fine. Just give me the note if it’ll make you leave.” I look down at the envelope in my hand and rip the paper away. I feel inside, pulling out a folded piece of paper. Victoria snatches the item away. “Hey!” I yell in protest but Victoria holds up a finger to silence me as she

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reads the note. Her face began to sag as her eyes skimmed the paper, and when she looked back up at me, a new alertness confined in her blue eyes. “So why did my uncle send me here?” I ask starting to lose my patience with this woman. Victoria answered as she slid around the desk to look at me better, “He sent you here for me.” “No kidding,” I muttered, “My question is why?” She bit her lip, “Your uncle was my brother,” she said slowly, age setting deeper into the lines that covered her face. I looked at her for a moment, “Sorry that’s not possible,” I almost laugh in spite of myself. “His only sibling was my mother, and she’s dead–” A rock suddenly dropped in my stomach making my lungs forget to breathe as my eyes, ears, and brain tried to make sense of something I had known all along. Victoria smiled in a sort of sad way. It’s as if the world is in slow motion, but it’s all happening at once, and suddenly I’m aware of everything: every buzz of the fly by the window, the feel of my feet in my shoes, all my thoughts flashing through my mind in a single moment. When are the cameras going to appear? When I am going to wake up from this cruel and horrid nightmare? “No.” I whisper shaking my head, my feet shuffling backwards, “No. That’s not possible.” “Just hear me out.” She says placing her hand gently on mine. I forced it away, my vision tunneling. And in this moment I realize how real life is. How short time is and how fast it goes by. I see how small I am and how big and wild the world is. “Your uncle sent you here for a reason.” She continued anyway, and I stop, the gadgets in my mind swirling at the thought of my uncle orchestrating it all. “So I would be happy with my mother?” I spit out at her, but my heart stings

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with a fresh wound. Victoria winced like the words had stabbed her too, “I thought you were happy without me.” “I would have been glad to know my mother was alive,” I say, the anger and pounding in my ears disappearing. She nods knowingly, and I’m startled by the silence that follows. It’s a strange silence, one I’m not used to. This stillness is not the harsh pain that reminds me of the void threatening to devour me; it’s the soft hush of Victoria and me sitting in each other’s company. Somehow unconsciously making up for years of solitude. “Here,” she breaks the silence at last, pulling an envelope from behind the desk and handing it to me, “It’s the last letter he sent me. Your uncle I mean.” I take it. “Thank you,” I mutter. And because I don’t want her watching me I pull open the door and step outside. “You have a home here, you know,” Victoria says quickly before the door clangs shut. The sky outside has turned a deep, fiery orange, and the clouds are only wisps of dye: a canvas of watercolors. The once boring buildings are shadows outlined by the fading sun. It’s funny how beautiful something looks when you see it in a new light. When you see it differently. You have a home here, I replay to myself quietly. And it’s strange, those words echoing in my mind, because I’ve never heard them before. This time last year I was bumped around from one foster home to another until I turned eighteen. I’ve never belonged anywhere, not really. But things change… I look down at the paper package still in my hand. I open it. And inside is a photo, frayed and brown, but I can still make out the silhouettes of a man and a little girl, their lips parted to show their teeth. I flip over the picture and in small, fine print it says these words:

Dear Victoria, Your Abby is fine, though I still don’t see why you had to leave after John died. I

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suppose I’ll just get to the point: I visited the doctor the other day. They told me I was sick. Leukemia. They’ve given me a few months to live. On the bright side you’ll have to take care of Abby now. It’s funny when you’re dying all the new things you notice, the hours moving by slowly and the days slipping away. In my last weeks I’ve searched everywhere for the words that describe life correctly, and I can’t find them. There is so much bad in the world. So much pain and suffering. But there’s good too. You don’t always see it in the little moments, but it’s there. Now how can you put that in one word? One sentence? And I now find how limited language is. How we have lived and died and loved and conquered for so many centuries but still don’t know the meaning of life. Yet is there one? Is there a purpose in these shiny folds of fabric that bend and shift around us? I don’t know. So how can we continue? What point is there to continue if we have none? And again: I don’t know. The only thing that has gotten me through years of this torture is to try and defy these gods that put us here. If we are at hand only for them to see us suffer, then I will hold my head high. If we are in this place only for them to see how many times we can be hurt, then I will hide my tears. I will not let them win. I have battled and loved things that they could never understand, so why should they decide my fate? Maybe I can’t describe life in one word but I know what it is because I see it everyday, in the laugh of your child, the ticks of the clocks, in the beating of my heart, and the thoughts in my head that I can’t hope to ever decipher. But, maybe life is not knowing. Not knowing what will happen next, not knowing when you will die, or how you will do in this game. Secretly, I’ve collected these thoughts, small proof of my existence in this world, but now I know that life is what you make of it. Life and living is how you look at the world that’s collapsing down around you. I know it’s always said, and it always seems so far away, but life is short. It’s a tunnel and each second brings us closer into the darkness that is death. But without it we wouldn’t know what it means to be human, we wouldn’t know love, hate, pain, or joy. And if my life has consisted of these things, then I think I consider it as one that was worth living.

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With that last line a feel something break inside of me. No, something mends. And I sink down on the cracked pavement and cry for the first time in over ten years. I cry for adventure and brilliance, memories and images, love and loss. For all the invisible wonders of the world.

Talia Natoli ’17

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