Luke. Luke. Luke.

..........Home-schooling with my mother was a joke. It was like getting a huge box with pretty wrapping and cute bows on it and opening it and realizing that the box is empty. I got to do whatever i wanted, whenever i wanted. I learned what was interested to me and i ignored completely what was boring or too challenging. Home-schooling was an autonomous project, so i graduated to the next grade whenever my mother was ready to move me on, regardless of what i had studied or learned.

..........But the home-schooling meant that my mother and i had to spend a great deal of time together alone. This was often unbearable for my mother, so we frequently went out to lunch so we could be with more people, even if we weren’t really with them. A few times a week, we would walk a mile to the Overhead Diner. The Overhead is the method of transportation used by those unfortunates who can’t travel by water. It is a system of elevated trains that don’t run very regularly or well. The cars have glass bottoms, though. The poor pitied children who have to use the Overhead lay their bellies on the floor and look at the water below. They thrash and kick whatever legs and arms they have, pretending to swim. Everyone says, “Awww...”

..........The Overhead Diner was adjacent to the Elephant Trunk Station, the station nearest to our house. I have a blurry memory of being there once when i was young enough to be held in my mother’s arms and my brother and my sister were pushed in a stroller. The hands on the stroller were big and thick like slabs of beef. Whose hands were they?

..........My clearer memories come after my brother’s and my sister’s deaths. The first time i went alone with my mother, i was terrified. Everyone was dirty and poor. The men looked like they would kill you after they raped you. The women were 1000 year-old madams who still knew how to draw lonely customers. The servers had runny noses and phlegmy coughs. I never would have gone in, but my mother held my hand so tightly that i had no choice. We sat ourselves, please, as the sign said.

..........“Hi, sweetie ” the wrinkled waitress gushed. “Do you know it’s free ice-cream day? Maybe if you’re a good girl and you eat all your lunch, your mommy will let you have a free cone.”

..........The waitress must not have known who we were. She was looking me in the eye and smiling without any kind of fear or pity.

..........“Of course she’ll be a good girl,” my mother said.

..........I ordered french fries and grilled cheese and my mother made me order broccoli. I watched the waitresses serve all the freaky, scary customers. The rejects were accepted here. There were no questions asked. There were no judgements passed. I had mistakenly thought that everyone here was dangerous, the same assumption that had been made about me. I wanted to come back here again and again.

..........I finished my overcooked broccoli and was granted one scoop of vanilla ice cream on a sugar cone. I held it in two hands as we left the diner.

..........“Hold my hand,” my mother said before we began to descend the stairs. Letting go of the cone with my right hand, my weak, unsteady left hand let the cone wobble and on the first step i lost my free cone.

..........“Can we get another one?” I asked urgently.

..........“I don’t think so, honey,” my mother said. “I think you just get one free.”

..........“Can you buy me another one?” I asked. Somehow, having the cone marked the momentous occasion of finding a place where i could be as freaky as i was without the usual repercussions.

..........“Wait! ” the waitress called from inside. She motioned to a little boy, but one who was bigger to me. He approached as she barked an order at him. He ran toward the kitchen and the waitress came outside with a wet towel. “Luke’ll be out with another cone in a minute.”

..........My mother thanked the waitress profusely and they cleaned my mess together. Luke came out while they were cleaning. In one hand he held a paper cup, covered by a sugar cone. “This way it’s easier to carry, but you still get a cone.” His other hand was behind his back.

..........“Thank you.”
We stood not far from one another. He asked quietly, “Didn’t your brother and your sister die in the water a few years ago?”

..........My face flushed with fire, but i nodded.

..........He looked out at the water. “It’s not always so gentle.” He turned to go back inside. I saw the arm he had held behind him. It was missing its hand.

..........“Don’t stare,” my mother whispered and we walked down the stairs and back home.

..........Are you waiting for the romance? I am. It is the best part of any story. But not yet. The weather isn’t right.

..........I found it odd that i should ever be warned against staring. I drew stares; i did not give them. I would have stared after the boy, after Luke, even if he had had both hands. I had stared at the words he had spoken, not at his deformity.

..........“‘The water’s not always so gentle.’”

..........You would not know that from our literature or our modern culture. There were volumes of poems and pop songs that made reference to the sweetness, the kindness, the gentleness, the niceness, the graciousness, the goodness, the gracefulness of the water.

A love song came into my head:

I know why i’m such a fool,
You’re gentle like water, just as cool.

“Just as Cool” was sung by a woman with a deep, molasses voice. It was one of the few records that my mother had. Before we did dishes that night, i asked if we could play it. As it played and we washed and dried, i asked about Luke. I knew that i was leaving the stage in which adults would accept my ignorance as an excuse for socially awkward questions. But i knew i had not yet left completely.

..........“Do you think that boy can swim?” i asked.
..........(You rush out only to rush back inside)
..........“What boy?” as if we had seen several boys that day whose ability to swim could be called into question. “Luke? From the diner?”
..........“Mm-hmm.”
..........(Back and forth, you are my second tide)
..........“I know he can swim, “ she said. “I have seen him do such on several occasions.”
..........(I dive in you. You crash on me.)
..........“Like in the kiddy disabled pools?”
..........“No, honey, in the big water.”
..........(and leave me wrecked, scattered with your debris.)

..........I was silent. He was a little bit of a freak, but mostly normal. But why was he at the Overhead Diner?
..........“The waitress is his grandmother. His grandfather - her husband- and she own it,” my mother explained.

..........“Where are his parents?”

..........(But your warmth, your wet, your blue)

..........“His father died when he was a baby and his mother is sick.” My mother said sick in the tone of voice that meant she was not expected to get better.

..........I had never seen my mother with adults who were not relatives or medical professionals, aka, THE DOCTOR. How did she know so much about these people?

..........“You know i grew up on Elephant Trunk,“ she said. “People know each other.”

..........(Too much for me to say no tooooooooooo...)

..........This was the question i knew i wasn’t supposed to ask. A year ago, i would not have known it was wrong. I pretended i was a year younger and asked, “Do you know how Luke lost his hand?” Luke. Luke. Luke. The taste of his name in my mouth was surprisingly soothing. Almost cold.

..........“He never had it to begin, “ she told me. “He was born without it.”
..........(I oughta build a dam, but HA - goddamn )
..........“Did his mother smoke when she was pregnant with him?” I was pushing into dangerous territory with these questions. Blaming the mother for the child’s woes. I was too curious about Luke Luke Luke.

..........(How strong of a woman do you think i am?)
..........“No.”
..........“Did she drink?”
..........“No.”
..........(I oughta build a bridge so i can walk over you.)
..........“No.”
..........(Or a long tunnel so i can walk right through.)
..........“Did she fall?”
..........(I know why i’m such a fool.)
..........“No.”
..........“Did she– ..”
..........“Sometimes things just happen, honey,” my mother shushed me. I expected her to sound more scolding, more upset, but i think she enjoyed the music. The song began its ending and my mother sang along. “You’re gentle like water, just as cruel.”
..........“Just as cool,” i corrected. She did not say anything. We washed dishes in silence, just letting the molasses fill in the cracks. I thought i could get away with one more question. I had to ask it; it was burning in my mouth. “Did Luke- Is Luke water-born?”
..........“I wasn’t there,” she said, as i she might have been invited for some reason, “but i assume so. Elephant Trunk is too small. I’d know if he weren’t.”
..........The dishes were done soon and the record was soon over. So was our conversation. I brushed my teeth and washed my face and prepared for the silence of the night that overtook our house. He still visited at night. My mother came into my room to tuck me in.
..........“I liked the diner,” i said. It was sort of the truth. What i liked was Luke.
..........“We’ll go back there,” she said.
..........“Can i play with Luke?”
..........“He’s a lot older than you, 8 years older,” she informed me and as if she remembered that she was to be my mother and my teacher, she asked, “What eight plus nine?”
..........“17,” i responded quickly. I liked math. “He looks much younger. He was nice to me.”
..........“He’s a nice boy,” my mother said. “But he also has to work while he’s at the diner. He probably can’t play.”

..........I wanted Luke to be my friend so badly, my first friend. In my mind, we were already friends and he wanted to play with me as much as i wanted to lay with him. I got excited repeating his cooling name over and over again in my head and when my mother left, on my lips. His concealed arm came into my mind and I wondered if he was ashamed of his missing hand. I wanted to talk to him at least once more to tell him that he shouldn’t be.

..........“Good night, honey.”
..........“Good night.”
..........Luke. Luke. Luke. I whispered to myself as i coolly fell asleep. But my dreams were on fire.



..........I wasn’t ready to burn or to drown and the fire consumed me. Indeed, i was drowning in fire, burning in water. Oxymoron. Here i am, the worst of all oxymorons. I’m ridiculous. No one likes me. Worse than that, no one understands me. That’s what they are telling me anyway. No one will ever understand me until the fire inside me gets hotter hotter hottest and begins to seep out of my skin. My pores will be like little chimneys and billowing smoke will rise from them and i will pollute everything around that is around me. I will run to cool off. But there will be no cooling off. My body will set itself on fire. No surprise -- non-spontaneous combustion. I am waiting for it. Everyday is like this: one more day of not exploding. Another day of not exploding. Again, i wake up and i have not exploded. They will find me and my body will be barbecue charred, skin burnt to the bone. Ash, most of me, purified clean, finally. Finally clean and that’s when they will begin their discovering. That is when they will begin their questioning. How did she? Why did she? What? And salvage my remains and compare them with my mothers’ and my fathers’. But where the hell is my father anyway? Who is my father after all? Where is my father’s burnt burnt burnt body, burnt down like the rest of us, DOWN WITH THIS LEGACY No one will pass it down. I see them burning even now. I see all of them burning even now and my mother and my father throwing me throwing me throwing me away into the water. Into the water. I don’t know who it was. My mother know i hated the water. She knew the water hated me. And my father was stopping her? She meant to come right in after me, but my father stopped her. Was the water burning? Was the house on the hill burning? The house was burning. The children were all burning. Daddy Da-deee My mother jumped in and rescued me, but it was almost too late. She gave me to the water. She didn’t know what it was capable of. It wanted to come inside me and fill up every last corner of me and make me dissolve into it and make me exist as it and then she swam, somehow carrying me, carrying me along. My father is screaming: “Luke Luke ”


..........When i woke up, i knew my mother had been lying about something. My birthday was coming soon. When it did, i could ask about my father.