The dream is gone
But the baby is real
Oh, you did a good thing
She could have been a poet
Or, she could have been a fool
Oh, you did a bad thing
And I’m not happy
And I’m not sad
“This Night Has Opened My Eyes”
- The Smiths
Apollo lays on his back, belly up, like an otter at sea, tail swishing briskly against the hardwood floor. He licks the side of his paw, dips his head, runs the paw over his face, washing it lazily. Little Prince. Center of the room. In the middle of every shot, like he likes to be. I call out, he leans back and gazes at me, 10 seconds of lazy blinking, then returns to grooming, wiping the bridge of his nose.
Above him sienna’s fingers twist a joint deftly into existence. Long and tapered. But bitten and blunt at he ends, damaged by anxious habits. I once read in a palm-reading guide that such dynamic shapes signify the Fire Hand. “A long palm, oblong, topped with shorter, tapered fingers…. Vital, dynamic, lively and enthusiastic… cannot bear a quiet life…burns the candle at both ends…passionate and charismatic, the ‘Extrovert Hand’.” The book had placed an image of Liza Minelli below the primer, her palms stretched towards an invisible crowd, recaching reaching, eyes shiny and manic on the glossy paper. Liza was a perfect example of the Fire Hand, the book claimed; her dramatic temperament and magnetic personality was natural evidence.
On cue, a flame bursts into existence and swallows the tip of the joint. Sienna takes a long drag, and her eyes lift, glint mischievously, meters away. Exhale, smile. She pushes a tumble of unruly hair out of the way. “Wanna smoke?” I address the Logic Games on the table in front of me, feel the air conditioner behind me, blowing goosebumps across my back. My short, square Earth Hands. Back up to Sienna, reclining now, warm smile, hazy eyes. Fire, Earth. Okay. Either a campfire, or a volcano, my mother says, when this pairing lands with each other. She loves riddles and puzzles above all. Logic Games. “maybe later,” I say, even though I want it now, all the time, even though I’m lying again and i’m tired of games.
Copper Haze
Story by Alison Owens
Artwork by Sienna Berritto
I usually quite enjoy the Logic Games, their methodology, their strict, obsessive rules, constant riddles and tricks. It’s my favorite part of preparing for this ungodly exam. When I find a seat on the F train, I can open the heavy binder and completely lose track of time, a feat on Brooklyn’s most unreliable orange steed. Until I get to work, or back here, or whatever. I have fallen in love with the act of studying, forgetting where I am and thinking only one thing, meditating wholly on the tricks and twisted language, forgetting I even have body, forgetting all else besides the square hands that hold pencil to paper.
I once had a vision of me doing exactly this. Except I was sitting on the floor, Apollo lounging across my papers. And she was standing up, and maybe it was years ahead or decades behind. Same house, because I saw the printed Tweet poster, dated September 2nd, my first clue. This was before we even dated, and so vivid it took my breath away; I dropped the ice cube tray I had been holding and leaned against the freezer. But you can always pass these things away as clumsiness, as being stoned, etc.
A vision - I mean those last a second, 3 seconds, in real life. They feel like much longer, of course, and then you blink and you’ve gone back, and the person in front of you hasn’t even noticed you were somewhere else entirely. And If the person you’re speaking to does notice, its just a brief lull in conversation, a stilted return. You can laugh thoughtlessly, and they’ve already forgotten the pause. Say you’re going to the ladies room, and they’ll never ask a question. Offer them the joint, the drink, whatever you’re holding, right, and walk away. They won’t remember and sometimes you won’t either. At best it’s a few comfortable seconds of spacing out among stoners. Most people will keep talking right through it, and you’ll keep it to yourself and dive back in. Sometimes it manifests and sometimes it sits and nags you until you dispel it from your mind. But always, even if it does manifest, you keep the secret to yourself. Cue stevie nicks, blah, blah, blah.
​
My mother says it’s normal, that they come and go often. Of herself, of us kids, of people she barely knows. A touch cue, a dream that sneaks its way into reality. An accident, like me. Sometimes I really resent her for how causal she makes it sound, some regular shit, for women at least, like getting your period every month. Moms will do that though. Her hair is vivid copper, unruly, but her hands are square like mine, always buried in the earth, digging, digging, nests for herbs, fruit-bearing trees, flowers, vegetables. Rosemary, tomatoes, rhubarb, orange trees, persimmons, aloe - everything grows like weeds, unruly, all fighting righteously for dominance in her small garden plots. I tell her once if the apocalypse does come at least we can support ourselves, and she loves the idea, she casts her head back and giggles like a child, and says “yes!” like I’ve already spoken of our secret plan. She said she hopes she can stay behind after the apocalypse. It’ll be so much more fun after we all die out. She’ll plant her gardens, patch everything up again and kiss the earth better. It would be an honor.
My mother once told me of one vision she had while pregnant with my eldest brother Alan, her first son. It plays out like a horror movie. Way before my time; I’m the fifth little one to pop out. The vision spelled out his death, obviously, callously. She was driving in her car, a rusty Chevy Suburban. Red and tan, stained carpets, sporty and sturdy, great for children, a bargain at the time, she says. Alone, she’s alone coasting down a highway, headed somewhere long-distance. She had just passed a rest station. Her belly is so swollen that it grazes the steering wheel. And as she pulls pas the station, she sees, in fractured frames, a truck with a long trailer spin into view, and the truck’s cab slams into her driver’s side.
The next moment it it is crushing the side of her vehicle, collision bloody screaming through the side of her van, splintering the windshield, screaming across the highway, there is so much noise and she is so alone. The truck tailspinning off the side of the road and she is fractured, there is blood everywhere, she is gushing blood and no, she is not alone because she feels her son, he is bleeding too, bleeding so quickly she can feel him outside of her own body, feel the warm blood cooling as it leaks onto the seat. she can see the bright cord connecting them short-circuiting and its all so violently wrong. Her son is dying, she knows it, and she is dying, spilling the vital blood of a dying fetus onto her seatbelt. She is weeping, the blood running thick and burning through her hands, blood staining the seat, blood smeared across the driver’s window, blood in the rearview mirror.
And here, pause, some sort of spirit or voice, whoever the fuck shows up when you are dying and your baby is dying along with you, materializes. Its presence lends no comfort. It tells her they cannot both survive the violence of this crash. She must choose. And she begs, because she cannot. The entity does not understand. It does not care about her husband, it already knows her son will have a hard life, with or without her. It tells her so. And she begs, keeps begging to let them stay together, to let her protect him, she must. As she pleads, she feels the bright white cord in her belly tied to her son fading. It is splintering as she heaves out more pleas. She is covered in heavy, sticky violence all over, she can feel every cell screaming to release the cord from her belly. The spirit, shapeless and stubborn somewhere in her suburban, simmers. It asks if she is sure. Tells her she cannot protect him, tells her it goes against the grain, to do something like this, but… it is possible. She is sure. She refuses to leave him in life or death, and she already knows he will wear his father’s abuse the rest of his life. And somehow, the spirit concedes. And the chord from her boy glows, swells, so bright it blinds her and burns away the spirit’s shape. And she is connected again, two heartbeats again, bound to her son, vibrant and strong, and she is not in the car anymore, she is waking from the movie, sweating and weeping (alone).
My mother is driving again. IRL. Pregnant as fuck, sweaty, belly just skimming the steering wheel. Little you know who is kicking away in his temporary home. And his older sister, Kari, still a fiesty little infant, squirming and storming the back seat, ready for war. I mean she is really going hard here, she will not shit the fuck up (her words, embellished). Alone, sweaty, frazzled to the core of her copper head, my mom spots a rest station just ahead. Decides to pull the suburban over and tend too Kari. She’s unbuckling the baby from the carseat when she sees a truck, the very same truck, same make and model, pulling a long RV trailer. It floats in like a dream. It pulls into the rest station minutes after her, harmless. The driver hops out and jogs to the bathroom. And my mom’s standing there, and she has her babies both, about to pass out. It’s all very overwhelming, and who is she going to tell about something like this? So she weeps, with sheer relief, gratitude, and loneliness in this moment. Her son, her daughter, they are alive and with her, her deal is made. And then she gets back on the road. I’m 23 when she tells me this story. My brother doesn’t know this one, our secret for now.
My visions pale in comparison. How can I compete with that cinematic masterpiece, anyways. The are never helpful, never clear. And when they do sprout into reality, they come up so twisted and gnarly that they’re unrecognizable. Such things simmer in your mind for a few days, nagging you, and eventually recede. Never ever useful. Tricky and redundant. Mocking, but nothing like a Logic Game, because there is no end. Something like fire - impermanent, distracting, occasionally destructive, mostly an incendiary form of anxiety. I can hear my mother laughing. Stubborn Earth. You have too much water at the bottom, baby, too much of your father’s trickiness, so the messages retaliate, they’re muddy, you’ll fall in quicksand if you’re not careful, baby. I can see her in the rearview mirror, sunglasses perched on copper hair, large noisy earrings, her hands barely on the steering wheel, perpetually distracted, the sunglasses falling back behind the seat as she casts her head back to laugh joyously. I can hear my father laughing. When I’m 7 years old I call him crazy, and he laughs, says “thank you, thank you, I’d much rather be crazy, you know, what a compliment, baby” So I start saying it more often, just to hear the absurdist response, to see him laugh again. Yeah, my mom is most definitely crazy, crazy. But look, she’s functional, she’s still driving around California alone, fearlessly. I don’t have a moral for this story. I’m not my mother. I don’t have a joke to soften the violence of it; I’m not my father. I just have phone calls with my mother, every other weekend, while she’s driving home, when we talk about our visions, sharing secrets like sisters. And I’m not happy and I’m not sad, cue the smiths, cue stevie, put the radio on, keep driving.