I’m not a full goddess – but my father did love my mother so even though I am only a half blood, he favored me. But, more than his favor and praise, which meant little to me as he was always off with one consort or another, I longed to fit in with my siblings. But, because of our father’s favoritism when he was around, I spent most of my time perched on a pedestal of loneliness.
And one day, I was leaping from one empty, crumbling pedestal to the next when I saw it. A break in the veil, as in the gap between two draping curtains. Only, I knew not of any veil, nor of any curtains in the luxury of our reality. I asked my elder brother about it, and he replied: you’re dumb. My sisters never climb the pedestals and lack any curiosity about the world outside our own, so I didn’t bother going to them. Then, I debated waiting until Father came home to ask him about it.
But, I hate waiting. And so, I went for it. I jumped from the highest pedestal, leaping through that crack and squeezing right between the two fragments of our world and into what I imagine is the real one.
As soon as I emerged I was on my back next to a man who looked ill and covered himself in ugly blue plastic. He smelled gnarly, but then again, so did the air. And yet, an excitement, a thrill leapt up to my throat as did I to my feet. Where am I? I cried a loud. The man rubbed his eyes, looked up and smiled at me and said: the only place that matters. New York City.
I thanked him for his kindness and though it was quite hard to breathe, still, I felt FREE. A lightness I had not ever known put a spring in my steps. Within moments, I detected so many problems in this little, busy world – none of them mine! And yet, I was moved to do something, anything about them.
I could tell everything was expensive. The way the same bread costs one hundred grantas on Mount Magpie but fifty in Vulture Valley. And even though I try not to be a snob like my sister, I too prefer the view from Mount Magpie and pay the tithing without batting an eyelash.
But here inNew York City, I pay nothing. I am a goddess after all. Well, a half goddess but no difference here on Earth where there live only a scant few. And so when I go to buy a fruity juice or chicken cutlet sandwich, the vendor of the bodega store inevitably takes one look at my stunning visage, bathes in my aura for just a few moments and sends me on my way with a thank you, thank you, thank you.
I made the tough decision to put away my other arms while I was here. I would never blend in but I felt it best to try. Humans love and respond to decorum. At least the ones I want to get involved with.
One time there was a close call. An ugly woman with unfortunate eyeliner who had chosen to put her own legs into a type of casing turned up at the bodega store at the same time as me. Unlike the ones we use at home where we save that type of casing around dead ground meat, this type around her legs were opaque and did not hold dead meat, but the living legs of ladies and, even, some men. My own legs began to pant just looking at them.
Well, she saw the bodega cashier wave me along without paying and she cried out, “Stop! You thieves! It isn’t fair! Why must I pay and she not?”
When she spoke I realized she wasn’t ugly at all. But, she thought she was. And, sometimes that is enough to fool people. Before the cashier could open his mouth I sharpened the nail on my pointing finger and drug it down the seam of her sausage casing pants. Her limbs liberated from their suffocation – a smile, a lightness a breath. I am a lonely goddess, but I will say that type of power is easy to get drunk off of.
I had freed this woman from her own prison and thrust the cheese Danish in my hand into hers. “Come with me,” I commanded and she did. “Take me to your domicile.” And, she did.
She led me to her home and gave me a place to rest. It was much more pleasing than the crunchy blue plastic the man who lived near the portal outside had shared with me. I never had the heart to complain to him. We do not consider generosity lightly and it is a well known factual oddity of the gods that humans with less tend to be the ones who give more.
Cushions elevated off the floor with attached wood planks sat in the middle of the room facing a blank, black rectangle. I’ve never seen such an arrangement but I intuit the plush squares to be a place for repose. It was not until this moment that I realized how weary I was. How little I had slept. How tiring it was to live on Earth. In the only city that mattered, according to my smelly friend.
Contrary to what humans believe of our lives, we spend much of our time dormant and in rest. Their lives are so short, though, all they do is hustle and bustle as if they will all die tomorrow! In that way, we have more in common with our cousins the lions than with those whose image we share. When humans cry out for us, when others shake their fists at us in disgust askin g why we do not do more to help….We allow assumptions of our malice to remain as I suspect we are a little embarrassed about the truth. We are a group mired by fatigue.
My liberated subject whose face has grown more lovely now we are in her domicile motions for me to do something, I cannot tell what.
“Move over,” she says, she seems exasperated like she does not know why I’m even here. I oblige when she sits next to me. I resume my pose, laying my legs upon her lap. “Hey! What the fuck! Personal space, get off me!”
My neck retracts. I do not understand all she says, but I can indeed tell she is bothered. By what, I do not know either. This is just like at home! Before I can compose myself, my chest is heaving, swelling and retracting like the wings of a hummingbird. She is rejecting me! It was not her suffocating legs that was souring her attitude, but, but…perhaps…me! Nobody likes me! Not in the heavens and not on earth. Maybe I belong in the great nowhere- the akashic record – the place many call HELL.
“Are you…crying?” she says, placing a hand on me, her cherubic fingers wrapping around my demure shoulder. And that warmth from her body to my soul, it is too much to bear! “Stop, what the hell, stop! Fine. Just fine,” she says, taking my leg into her meaty arms and laying them back upon her lap. “There. Is that better?”
I nod.
“Jeez,” she says, shaking her head. She hands me a piece of paper and says, “Here you go. You need it.”
I take it from her and see it is not a paper. It is floppy.
“Haven’t you ever seen a tissue before? Wipe your nose. It’s disgusting.”
She points at the juice coming from my nose that is almost reaching the floor. I see no problem with it, but look at her as I bring the floppy paper tissue to my face, encouraged by her approval. The juice smears across my face and I do not like it.
“No!” she cries out laughing. Her laugh makes me laugh, too. “Here. Like this.”
She takes another tissue and takes my nose roughly in it inside her own hand. Reflexively, I slap her hand away. She slaps me back. Could you imagine? A human slapping a goddess?
“What the heck, haven’t you ever used a tissue before? You’re too pretty to have lived under a rock all your life. Say, where are you from anyway? Who are you?”
Her eyes have gone back to the way when we were outside in the bodega store. Her brows knitted together, her pupils zeroed in on me, examining. I hold my cheek, which still stings though I must admit, I have never felt so…alive. “Thank you mortal human,” I finally say, bowing my head. And, I mean it. Whatever was weighing so heavily on me, to send me away from the only home I’ve ever known and into New York City has lifted.
Air blows from her mouth like a horn player who does not yet know how to use his instrument. And then the human says, “You’re weird. You know that? But, you know what else? I like you.”
Weird. I say the word first inside my head and then out loud. Once again, I’m overcome by the impact this mortal human is having on my life in such a short time. Who is the goddess and who is the doomed? Weird, weird, weird. That is what I am.
“Human, you have done good. What is it that you most want?”
She giggles. She is wearing a cloth over bosom that does not cover it all and when she laughs the flesh ripples and shakes in a delightful way. “Well. Gee. No one’s ever asked me that before. Not back home in Cleveland and definitely not here in the City. Who are you? Are you what I think you are?”
“What is it you think I am?”
“A genie,” she says, her eyes glittering.
I spit on the floor. “Excuse me? How dare you?”
Human chews on her cheek. “Don’t spit on my floor okay? Forget I said anything. I know it’s stupid to believe in things like magic, but, I mean, if I don’t I just want to die.”
“You want to die?” I ask.
“Well, not literally, she says, gathering herself as though she has let her entire being unravel before me and is now having remorse. “It’s just, it’s just really hard, you know? The human condition…some days all it seems to be is pain and suffering.”
“Pain and suffering,” I say. “We have those, too.”
“Who?” she says, her voice unreadable. Now, I am standing, traipsing through the domicile and what I see are the faces of many humans. If they are all here, on display, how is it this woman is, too, so alone? Could it be none of these smiling faces have ever asked my friend what is her deepest desire? What is her highest hope? Then it seems our meeting is destiny. And, it is no wonder she is so angry and bothered by an unknown stranger receiving gifts of food and libations.
“What is it that you most want in your one pitiful life of which you occasionally want to cut short?” I repeat.
After many moments, finally she sayas, “Love! Okay. I just want to find love.”
“Pathetic,” I say.
Her cheeks flush and I feel steam rise in her chest. I have upset her. I do now know why, I did not mean to. My own father has told me not to bother as no one will ever be my proper match. But, maybe for this sad human woman it will not be so hard to find a proper suitor. Before she can speak, I cut her off. “Settle down.”
“Settle down? Settle down?” her voice shrieks higher the more times she repeats my words. “You asked me that question. I gave you my answer. How dare you mock me? You are cruel and vicious beast!”
“Silence! I am not a beast, I am a goddess!” She need not know I am only a half breed. Admitting so now would only lessen the impact of my claim. I have one hand in the air, my head pointed skyward with bravado. But then as let my gaze drift back to my human friend, I see her eyes. They are leaking. Just as my nose had been moments earlier. We are bonding are we not?
I take a pad of my finger and drag it across her cheek to sweep up the liquid. A drop sticks to my finger and I place it on my tongue. “Salty,” I say, before noticing her looking at me the way my sister does when I interrupt her time with her friends with questions like, why are we up here, and they down there? Why do they starve, when we have plenty? Why don’t you like me? “Weird?”
She nods.
So then I do as she did. I take a fresh piece of floppy paper from the store of them and thrust it to her eyes. “Ouch! That hurts!” She pushes me away.
“Fine,” I say. “Please turn around.” She eyes me suspiciously. “I promise to not hurt you again.”
The hands of my earthly flesh makes the gentlest of contact with the powerful space between the blades of her shoulders. In time, my palms pulse in rhythm with her beating heart. I instruct her to breathe.
“I am breathing. If I wasn’t breathing, I would be dead.”
My eyes roll. No wonder she is alone, I think. But, then I remember I am, too. But together, we are not anymore. So, I breathe and with each breath comes patience. Her tears have stopped. So now the waves of her being begin to hum. I see them. They are slow, undulating curving lines, unlike my own which are tall and jagged.
“What is happening?” she asks. I hush her. I am patient. I am patient. I am not annoyed by her need to know what I am doing. Maybe we both are annoying. Maybe we are both hard to love. But unlike her, I do not need it for I am half a goddess. I am here to pick the lint off of her vibration so she can have more and not be so angry about trivial matters. By the time I am done the room is filled with a lilac haze, so thick, even she can feel it.
“Wow,” she says. “Is it okay to breathe this in.”
“It will cure you of what ails,” I say, confidently, wiping my brow. “I will take my leave now.”
“What? You’re leaving me?”
It is not but ten sunrises hence my sturdy leady meets the human of her dreams. From the other side of the portal, now back at home with my family, I gaze down upon them, her in a flowing dress and he in shorts. Unfortunate, no man should ever show his knees. But, when I see my new old friend, a radiant glow thrums all around me. He has her hand on the small of her back, then drags it upward, gently and sweetly. She is happy. She is free. She is not like me.
But in this moment, I know I have found my work. My purpose. It is this!
For when I returned home – no one- not my stepmother, nor my father, nor my siblings asked for me. They did not even know I had gone. And in that moment, I realized what had happened. Why my questions bothered my sister. Why it is forbidden to go to Earth and therefore, while it stung, it was truly wonderful no one caught my little transgression.
Some rules are meant to be broken. You have to know them well and why they were made to truly savor breaking them in half upon your thigh.
By helping the lady who had no sense but to stuff her thick thighs into casing, suffocating them, to treat her body like a sausage… By placing my divine hands upon her flawed and rotting body… I healed myself of my own misery.
When I came home and saw not one fellow God had missed me – well, my own body went soft. It lost its mighty tone and that same liquid that leaked from her eyes was now seeping out my own.
What is this? I thought. Goddesses don’t cry. Even half ones like me.
I fled to the holy forest before it could be witnessed. For sure no one noticed I was gone, but they would notice the moment I showed weakness. I bolted through the golden trees with their plump, juicy fruits and towards the portal. Back to the dingy city in search of my next lost soul on the precipice of their happiness and joy.
The loneliness! The burden! They threatened to return if I didn’t find another. I am not like my family, I cannot just lay about in wanton pursuits. I care not of the gossip of other religions. The painting of pretty pictures.
I went straight to that same bodega no longer an immortal goddess of unknown purpose and spoke of the injustices of the land. I spoke of horror and famine. I won their favor. Their pain I took and swallowed and held because it did not affect me at all. And in so doing, I relieved them the anxieties of their lives.
The harder their pain fell on me, the greater I felt upon my return home. And, that is when my family, first my older sister, took notice.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Have you gotten into the special leaves again?” my brother asked. The same one who called me dumb.
I don’t blame him, though. I indeed felt drunk. “No, Brother. I leave that for you.”
That caused a roar of laughter at the table.
“Well then don’t be coy. Tell us your secret. We too want such a glow. We too want such a giggle.”
I picked up a hunk of bread from our supper table, smeared it with butter. Then I tossed my hair over my shoulder and said, “No.”
Leaving them behind, I sashayed out of the room, gnawing on the fresh baked sourdough wondering what their faces looked like, wanting so badly to know what see what being left behind looks like from this angle of being within…but I refuse to turn back and ruin my moment.
I have grown, but I still have a long way to go until enlightenment. I have found my purpose and I cannot risk having them take it from me. Not yet. Not until they, the humans, show me how to need love, to be so vulnerable, without fear of death. Or to have the courage to fear death and love anyway.
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