A notebook excerpt I will not read to you, by Lauren Holguin
When I got on the plane to fly home and try to make your final hours, I looked through my notebook, hoping there was something good enough to read to you. You always wanted me to write children’s stories, but whenever I tried, I always seemed to let the darker spaces of the world leak in. An animal would die or cry, a small child may be abandoned suddenly by its friends in the forest, or once upon a time, there would be many, many little rams learning to climb up a steep mountain hunched over a desert and even though they all try, using ancestral knowledge, I would always write the one that falls. I find one of my many failed children’s story attempts—a.k.a. me just writing about being a weird child. This one started as “Once upon a time, a girl threw up a snake,” and turned into “Kundalini dream, a notebook excerpt I will not read to you.” In it, a girl struggles with anxiety, existentialism, dread, and is concerned if she sleeps, she will die. The true story behind it was that my cousin had died in his sleep recently. I heard of this from my parents trying to explain to my sister and I what happened and looking back now, I wonder if that was the actual cause of death because that’s all they said happened before doing the thing most adults do, projecting the few memories they know we as kids had with the deceased, even though we don’t remember. I was told I never really knew him, but my sister, four years older, did the moonwalk with him at a family wedding and that he held me as a baby. I suppose I do not know more about it than I did when I was nine. After I heard it, though, the concept of the dangers that also find us in our own beds haunted me. I refused to sleep in order to stay alive and keep everyone in the house living, too. I thought if I slept, something dark and evil would happen, all of our hearts might stop, or maybe I would wake up, and my sister, mom, dad, and all of us might have succumbed to the sleeping death too. To add to it, I watched the clocks because I knew 3:00 am was when demons came out—or so I heard. I would keep my light on, read, or listen to my only CD —Shakira’s Laundry Service on repeat. After weeks of back-and-forth arguing (Go To Bed,/NO/Go to Bed/NOPE/ “Whenever wherever we’re meant to be together/ I’ll be there and you’ll be near/ Turn It OFF/ and Go to Bed/ NOW/ No/), my parents called you. I guess it was getting serious after I threatened to call child services on them. My dad even pretended on a rainy night to scare me into sleeping through admirably creative yet cruel tactics. There was a loud knock, and my mom dramatically stomped to the door. I wonder now whose idea it actually was. A strange voice, high pitched yet with a depth of confidence, announced itself to be a woman named Gloria from an adoption agency. The voice stated it had instructions to take me away if I did not go to sleep, but I could tell immediately it was him. I yelled and cried and called him a faker, to which he said some bad words and came in from the rain to implore me once more to go to sleep. When nothing worked, that’s when they always called you. You brought a red light late that night and put it in the corner. I loved the glow of my red room. My mom was horrified by the light showing through my window—what would the neighbors say? You were supposed to be on the couch, but I’m pretty sure you were in my dream and in me. You were a snake, at first, not a rattler, but you did have brown-green scales about two feet long. You slowly filled my insides, curled through my spine, and then up toward my mouth. I pulled with two hands, barely breathing, sliding the snake from my jaw, stretched so far my chin grazed my neck. I tasted the scales, earthy, smooth, cold. Tail first, the sharp fangs clenched shut, and the eyes were closed when the soft palate of the snake’s neck squished against my tongue. Its eyes were closed like a sleeping baby, yet I didn’t sense it was dead. Then it was out. Heavy on my chest. I sat up coughing, and my movement seemed to do something. It was gone. I gagged and spat into a water cup, and then I saw you, or your astral projected spirit? I called after you, and as you smiled, your face morphed; it was younger, no longer my Abuela I thought I knew. Instead, it was a child in a white nightgown. She walked through the sliding glass doorway to the yard, onto the grass, and across the crab apple tree to the brick wall. I called out, but it kept walking. In the morning, I asked you why you were in the yard, and you said I wasn’t. You told me you were fast asleep in the extra room all night and that maybe I saw you in my dreams. From then on, I was able to sleep.
They say you’re gone, but I know you waited for me
You’re still warm. I read to you the children's book I never finished for you about us making apple pie tamales. I show you the illustrations of all the kitchen appliances and your favorite pink paisley Pyrex bowls as supposedly cute little characters, but their eyes are lopsided circles within circles I rushed to finish. I show you the part where you lose your memory to Alzheimer’s, and instead of apple pie, we end up making apple pie tamales. They taste good, and everyone’s just fine with it in the end. It’s a shit story. I’m sorry. I tried. I smell your hair. I lay next to you until two gothic-looking people with a gurney come in to take you. I can feel your gaze on the man’s nail polish. I look at you and see your smile—the same one you had when you told me old Trona memories like painting your dad’s toes crimson as he napped on the plastic-covered sofa. A few days later, you said they pulled him off it after the chicharrones he ate stopped his heart. I bet he still has those red toes you said the mortician laughed at. I look at you and swear I saw you smile. Por favor, do not haunt me. We talked about this jokingly, but you said you wouldn’t. Can’t you get my sister?
Lauren Holguin is a Latine educator, dancer, & writer from Southern California now residing in Philadelphia. She is a multigenre student in the MFA program at Rutgers University—Camden, co-host of the reading series Spit Poetry, & asst. poetry editor of Barrelhouse Magazine. Her poems can be read at Subnivean Magazine, The Fourth River, & No Tokens Journal. When not teaching, she can be found flamenco dancing, running around Philly, and reading on the SEPTA+PATCO trains.