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I stand in a perfectly pristine kitchen. The counter tops are covered in flour. She stands at them, waiting for me. She's rolling out the cookie dough in deep, even strokes, like the ocean kissing the beach. Her soft humming fills the kitchen with love. Her hands lift me up; I'm in a navy blue sundress with little yellow sunflowers on it. ?Here, sweetie,? she hands me an apron and I lift my little arms obediently to her. She ties it around my waist. A little teddy bear clutching a rolling pin in one soft, brown paw is splashed across my tummy. And beside me, she rolls. I watch the muscles in his taunt arms ripple with the pressure The sunlight makes the sugar glisten and sparkle like glitter. The room smells sweetly of the confections we are working so diligently to create. She smiles at me and gestures at the cookie cutters.
There's some part of me that knows that these cookie cutters are Mama's. Why does she have Mama's special cookie cutters I wonder. They are a deep copper color and Mama got them from her mama who got them from her mama. For 11 and a half months out of the year, they're stored in worn gallon sized baggies with zipper seals. The bags feel rough on my little fingers, but Mama says they don't need to be replaced yet. When they cascade out of the bags, they play a chorus of music that sounds like their own Christmas carol as they crash onto the wooden table. Maggie's fingers and mine grasp and reach for our favorite shapes. Mama tells us that we need to cut out the big shapes on the gingerbread dough first, as she nibbles a morsel. So Maggie and I press the big giant angel; her wings are the span of my palm. ?Press down firmly,? she instructs, placing her soft palm onto ours. It hurts for a moment, but when we release we can see the shape of the angel. Delicately, Mama scoops the angel onto the cookie pan. Maggie is in her corner, pressing the cut out of holiday bells into one corner. When we've done all our little hearts can, Mama balls up the dough and rolls it out again. Maggie and I nibble on the cookie dough giggling while singing, ?Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!? So why does the woman have Mama's cutters?
When she looks at me, I notice she's Asian. Like me. I trace my almond shaped eyes and examine hers. I trace the slope of my button nose while memorizing the slope of hers. She smiles and her eyes crinkle just like mine. ?How can you possibly see when you smile like that,? the white school photographer asked me so I stopped smiling in the photos. But she doesn't ask me. She knows. Her long fingers indicate Mama's cookie cutters, but I don't feel right using them without her. I shake my head, so the woman grabs a cutter. She cuts out the shape of the bells. ?Mama says you need to cut the big shapes first,? I protest and reach for the big angel. But she disappears. I search the counters wildly. Then, I reach for the biggest gingerbread man instead, who is as tall as the angel. I grasp him tightly and press him into the dough.
The woman nods encouragingly. She presses her hand into mine and since she is standing so close I can smell her perfume. The scent of almonds fills my nose. It's sweet and light. And I want more of it. Her hand is cold against mine. Mama's is never cold. ?Where's Maggie,? I ask. Mama says we can't make cookies without my little sister by my side. It's the rules. The woman doesn't answer, just shakes her head. Her long, black hair cascades around her shoulders. The woman reaches up and ties it with a long, single, thick, red ribbon. I notice she's wearing earrings. Little pearls. Like the kind I asked for when Mama let me pierce my ears.
I hear the sound of a timer going off. The woman begins pressing shapes into the dough with expert speed. She chooses the bells, a small angel, two little men, and one snowman. I just stand back and watch. The dough dries on my palms and I dust them off. She has filled a tray. The woman grips the silver nonstick sheet tightly and opens the oven. When she turns I see she's in a cashmere, cream colored sweater. The kind I have only ever seen Granny wear, not one Mama would wear. Mama wears bright red sweatshirts with Snoopy from Peanuts decorating his little red house for Christmas on them. I also notice the tan pants and little ballet flats on the woman's feet. They have a big gold belt buckle. Those aren't Mama's shoes, either. She wears bright red Converse All Stars with her bright red sweaters. When the woman opens the oven door, the heat engulfs me
I'm a little uncomfortable and I fumble with the straps of my little dress. The woman returns to the counter and scoops up the dough. She balls it tightly and flours the counter. I watch her roll out the dough and begin the process again.
The timer sings loudly. The woman has filled the next cookie sheet. She walks to the oven, releases the cookies, and sets them on top of the stove. With expert precision she spins on her heel and pops the tray of dough in. I want to ask her why she left me, why she let me be adopted. But the words don't come. Instead, she begins arranging the cookies on a silver cooling rack on the counter by the tan stove. Mama never uses cooling racks. She just lets the cookies cool on the trays. Once the cookies are arranged the woman returns to me. The once monstrous ball of dough is now very small. She tears a chunk of it off and drops it in the palm of my hand. She smiles and tears some for herself. I notice her impeccable white teeth. The way her eyes crinkle makes mine crinkle. The dough is sweet and just a little bit spicy. It melts in my mouth.
The woman places the first cookie sheet in the perfectly white sink. It has no other dishes. Mama's sink always has other dishes. Maggie's colorful sippy cups and plastic plates that are all sectioned off so her broccoli doesn't touch her Mac and Cheese which doesn't touch her fish sticks. The woman places the second tray of cookies on the stove as she did with the first and begins arranging the cookies onto another cooling rack. I stand on my little step stool and reach for the dessert plates. They're decorated with llamas wearing holiday lights and Santa hats. There are little leaves of holly along the edges. The woman takes the plates from my hands and loads them with some of the cookies from the first batch, all cooled and ready to be devoured. She also pours a couple glasses of milk. That's just like Mama. ?A little protein with your treat, my loves,? she'd say to Maggie and me. The woman and I sit at Mama's kitchen table. The cookies are crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. I bite the head off the big angel which makes the woman laugh. I want to hear more so I tear into her left wing, then her right. The woman is laughing loudly. I wonder if Mama can hear and I wonder where Mama is. I feel tears pricking the back of my little black eyes. My eyes look just like that woman's. She offers me a hug. But I don't want her. I want Mama.
I awake to the sound of eggs being fried. The morning sun cuts through a thin pink curtain. Maggie can sleep through it, though. ?She's always been a heavy sleeper,? says Mama when I tell her she doesn't want breakfast. Mama marches up to me. She lifts my chin so I can gaze into her soft blue eyes. Eyes, not like mine. ?Are you ok, sweetheart, you look like you've had a rough night,? she says. Her voice is soft. It sounds like home. My eyes nervously dart to the tallest cabinet in the kitchen. To the home of the cookie cutters. I don't have to answer as Maggie stumbles in. My sister devours her eggs and pancakes that Mama has cut into achievable bites for her. ?Now remember, today we're going to the eye doctor after school,? Mama says. She always reminds us of our schedule during breakfast. Mama glances at the kitchen clock; the one with the big cat eyes that dart back and forth as time passes. She claps her hands and begins clearing the table. I gulp down my glass of milk and race Maggie to our shared bathroom to brush our teeth. My mind is drifting to the woman.
Mama is waiting by the door, clutching our backpacks. Maggie's is blue. Mine is pink. We rush into the car. I am still haunted by the woman in the dream. By her smile most especially. Mama picks Maggie and me up in the pickup lane at school. We pile into her white civic and she asks us the best part of our day. Maggie says the cafeteria served Mac and Cheese. I say I am sick of Mac and Cheese. We drive to a big, red brick building with lots of windows. Mama drives up and down the lanes of cars for a while. Maggie is singing some song she learned about the four seasons and swinging her feet. Mama tells her to stop kicking the seat. Maggie doesn't stop. We finally park and Mama takes our hands. My left hand slips into her right. Mama's hands are warm and soft. I like them more than the woman from my dream's hands. We walk into the air conditioned building. Our feet sound loud and squeaky on the tile floor. There is a large water fountain which Maggie rushes up to. Her little fingers reach for the water. ?We'll come back when we're done,? Mama promises. She ushers us into the office with the blue eye on the glass door. I take in the large room full of glasses. Mama marches up to the counter and brushes her gray hair from her face. She talks with the lady with the red lipstick and redder hair who tells us to stand against the white wall for a picture. I don't smile.
Mama sits in the middle of Maggie and me. I can feel my palms getting sweaty and reach for Mama's hand. She strokes mine gently so I open up my palm. I press my fingers into hers and giggle because the top of my nails only reach ? up her finger. ?You're growing so big,? she whispers. A woman in blue scrubs calls out Maggie and my names. We jump up and follow her into another big white room. ?I'm going first because I am the oldest,? I proclaim. Maggie does not protest. She has us sit in a chair and look at an image of a red hot air balloon soaring through green fields. The woman smiles a lot and while Maggie stares at the balloon, I read her name badge says Becky. Becky tells Mama some things and we follow her out of the room down a long white hallway with wooden doors on either side of us. She flicks a few colorful plastic flags posted above the door before letting us in.
I take a seat in the big, black, leather chair. I sink back in it. The room is cold and smells too clean. Mama and Maggie sit in green cloth covered chairs. The same one from the waiting room. I notice a mirror. Becky comes back in. She takes a seat on the stool across from me. I am handed a little wooden spoon which I use to cover my left eye and the lights click off. Becky shows me a chart of letters. She instructs me to read the last line I can. I am desperate to pass the test. I mumble out: M, P, Q, Z? The last letter is certainly questionable. Becky just smiles and has me switch the spoon to my other eye. I repeat the test. But now I'm not so sure on the Q, too.
Becky just smiles again and tells me this machine will help me do better. I lean forward against the black alien contraption with hundreds of little lenses. Becky is right. She has me select from two different options, but with each click the letters become clearer. I hear her say to my mother that I will need glasses. She tells me that it's time to ?dilate my eyes.? My heart begins to race as Mama stands and holds my hand. Becky tells me to hold open my eyes and look directly up. The first drop hits like acid. I scream. Maggie screams and jumps up. I can see her rushing to me. Becky says, ?We have to do three more.? I demand to know why to which she replies, ?It's because you have such dark eyes, sweetie.?
I don't want to be her sweetie. Each drop feels like salt and chlorine from the pool is rushing in and burning my eyes. Maggie is thoroughly freaked out and Mama is trying to convince her to be brave. I dab at my eyes with the provided tissues. I feel better. Maggie takes her seat and completes the same ritual I did with Becky. When I spin to look at the mirror beside me I realize I can see the letters clearly. The Q was an O and the Z was a T. I feel like a fool. Becky has Maggie and I switch seats because the doctor will be in soon.
Once Becky is gone, Mama tells Maggie and me that we were so brave. Maggie's eyes are red and her pupils are huge We stand and giggle at each other while Mama watches. There comes a little knock on the door and the giggles subside. I diligently take my seat. The woman who walks in is the woman from my dreams. I have to stumble to pick my jaw up from the floor. She sits on Becky's stool. She wheels over and intrudes herself as Doctor Yang. I mumble out my name and she smiles that same crinkly eyed smile from my dream. She leans forward and tells me to do the same. A bright light hits my eyes. She tells me to look at her earring. It's a little pearl. With her this close I can smell the almonds again. I concentrate on her earring as she concentrates on my eye.The woman's long fingers brush a lock of my hair from my eye. As instructed I look up, down, left, and right with my left eye. Then, I repeat the process with my left. Maggie takes her turn. I wonder if she feels as connected to Dr. Yang as I do Probably not because Mama says Maggie and I have different birth mothers. Dr. Yang is not her birth mother. She is mine. Mama talks with Dr. Yang for a while and we walk back to the waiting room. ?I'll see you soon,? says Dr. Yang. I nod and smile as I do my best to memorize her soothing voice.
Mama takes us to a man with curly brown hair and square glasses. He sits at a glass table and welcomes us as we approach. Mama hands him two pieces of paper and instructs Maggie and me to ?take a look around!? Maggie and I gaze at the colorful frames like kids in a candy shop. We try on red ones, black ones, blue ones, and purple ones. Some frames are square, others are round, and a few are oval. Our noses crinkle at the clear plastic part of a handful of frames that pinch slightly. Some grams don't have that feature. Maggie settles on a blue square frame and I choose a pink rounded square frame. Out of the corner of my eye I see Dr. Yang. I wonder if I ran to her now if she could answer my questions. Since it's no longer a dream. But she walks briskly to one of the doors and shuts it behind herself. Maggie and I stare at ourselves and each other in the mirror. Our pupils look like they came off our stuffed animals. Our little eyes are now so big. Mama hands over her credit card and we bounce away with the promise to return soon to pick up our glasses.
"Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; 'Tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. 'Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man even. There is only one thing that I dislike in sleep; 'Tis that it resembles death.?
- Don Quixote
?I have to practice staying alive and preparing to die at the same time.?
- Christopher Hitchens
?Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.?
- Theodor Adorno
CW: substance abuse
Sleep Story
by John Merino
Insomnia runs in my family, afflicting both sides of it with equal intensity. That's nearly four centuries of Mexican tossing and Italian turning, with fits of German cursing and crying in between. A long heritage of discomfort, and, according to family gossip, one that has only been interrupted by the rotting medicines that tempt anyone who's had to put up with an extended period of lost sleep ? drugs, alcohol, compulsive anger, and every possible combination of the three. With the advent of psychotherapy, and the discovery that trauma is an actual illness and not a defect of character, many of us have learned to deal with insomnia in less destructive ways.
In 2010, my father was prescribed a small dose of the sleep aid Zolpidem, brand name Ambien, by his psychiatrist - a neat, gentle little drug that has chemical kinship with tranquilizers like Valium and Xanax, but without their addictive and narcotic qualities. To my dad, who had long suffered from sleepless nights and long days spent dragging himself through his work as an electrician, this was the answer to all of his prayers. After his inaugural dose, he smiled and drifted off into what I'm sure was the finest sleep he'd had in decades. I'm also sure this is all he remembers of that first night, and he's better off for it. Zolpidem has a blackout effect on the mind, like a drinking binge without the hangover. My mother and I recall it in deeper, less relaxing ways. For her, it brought on the uncomfortable squeeze of an abused past, and, for me, it brought forth the very shadow of death. It was an alien shape seen in my peripheral vision that night. We all have to see that shape at least once in our lives. Knowing I'll have to see it twice frightens me.
Watching my dad's face slacken at the dinner table after taking his first dose was distressing. It bore the stamp of deep intoxication, and it was immediate, without any intervening period of jollity or talkativeness. No time to acclimate to it. Only a high-school junior at the time, I was unfamiliar with the actual sensation of being drunk, but I would later come to know it well as a solitary confinement for the soul.
In certain quantities, liquor utterly disables your ability to step outside yourself. For the constructive drinker, often an artist, leaving this ability behind is useful and focusing, like a monk retreating into his cell to pray. Booze simply becomes a chemical means of getting to that same, isolated room. For the drunk however, who often harbors a deep hatred for what he sees in the mirror, this blind isolation is an addictive, absolute deliverance, and an absolute terror for those around him. There are few things in this world as wonderful as being drunk, and even fewer as awful as seeing someone else drunk. (This is why I've always thought of the designated-driver concept as something nice in theory and unimaginable in practice. Drunk people are only bearable when you're also drunk, and being sober among drinkers has the same world-shattering effect as catching a glimpse of yourself having sex. ?Is this what it really looks like when I do this??) Blissfully sliding about inside his cell without mirrors, or even the faint reflectivity of a window, it becomes nearly impossible for anyone to make the drunk see that he is trapped, or that there is a world outside. My mother watched helplessly from outside like this for most of her childhood as my grandfather, Andrew, committed himself to this living death, dumping frightening amounts of alcohol into himself and raging as if there were no one else in the room. My dad's face that night, so relaxed it might have melted right off of his skull, brought these times closer to her than she'd felt in years.
By the time I began to know him, Andrew had long been sober, and the sleep story he told me when I was seven was an isolated horror from an age so far away I could barely imagine it. I had no idea that he was, in his own way, doing a dry run of the apology he would never get to make to his own children. A veteran of the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Second World War's bloodiest passage in the Pacific, and the first and only battle in which American casualties exceeded the Japanese, he recalled trying to sleep in the rare moments between fighting, curled up against the black volcanic dust that blankets the island like a mourning veil. This dust is soft and pliant, and might have been comfortable for him to lay on, drawing him down into sleep for seconds so split they barely existed. The Japanese had dug a vast network of bunkers and tunnels through the island before he arrived, and he would wake up again, and again, and again, to their muffled voices only a few feet underneath him. Imagine drifting off to the sounds of men planning how best to kill you. It's the boogeyman in the childhood closet made real. It's the suppressed nightmare of ancient humanity, resting in caves and clearings while hungry beasts waited behind the trees. Who wouldn't try to drink until they'd totally drowned such a memory?
Some, but not all, of these thoughts were with me as my dad began to nod off over his unfinished dinner. The absent ones, the adult ones, the ones I've laid down here, made themselves known that night as a warm tightness in my chest, my body figuring things out for me long before my brain did. My mother and I woke him up with a gentle shake and told him it was time for bed, but he simply hovered above his seat for a moment and plopped back down under the weight of his medication. We approached him, realizing we would have to actually walk him to his bedroom, but before we arrived, he pointed across the table and into the kitchen, calmly informing us there was a little girl standing in front of our refrigerator.
I once saw a production of The Crucible in Austin, Texas, and at a climax in the play, one of the bewitched girls feigned seeing a demonic bird perched just beyond the tribunal. The actress pointed to it, and roughly half the audience turned around in their seats to look where she had pointed. I looked at them looking, and silently judged them fools. It was only a play. Did they really expect something to be there? I can't remember if either one of us turned around to see the little girl. Such a decision, to look or not to look, is the whole ancient struggle with the material world in embryo, and it is too freighted with pride for me to remember it accurately. I'd like to say I didn't look, my refusal a harbinger of the staunch atheism that would eventually develop out of my catholic upbringing, but that's just wishful thinking.
If my mother and I had bothered to read the literature that came with my dad's prescription, we would have known that hallucinations are a common accessory in Zolpidem's package deal of side effects, especially upon its first dose. This harmless hiccup in my father's nervous system nonetheless had a chilling effect on us, and we quickly gathered him up from his chair and into bed, where he curled up and left us to stew in our thoughts. Here is where I must speculate entirely, because, after my dad fell asleep, there is a patch of nothing in my head that looks to be about the length of an hour. Guided by my current habits, I can safely assume that, in my distress, I listened to an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on my iPhone while I milled around the kitchen, munching on a hastily stacked turkey sandwich, the kind where the lunch meat is constantly sliding out from between the bread on a slick of mustard. There was a threat in the air that I had to escape. Birds come down onto branches and stay put before a thunderstorm, and cows lay down to sleep. I should have just stayed in the kitchen.
My memory picks up again as I cross from the kitchen into the dining room, feeling in the corner of my eye the tall window that looks out onto the lawn. A warm flood light brightens the first few feet of our concrete driveway and the right edge of our boxwood hedge. Beyond that is total darkness after nine P.M, and nothing can be seen for twenty yards except the neighbors' porchlights across the street. Although small and narrow, it is a picture window in the most wonderful sense. At any time of night, you can see raccoons, opossums, squirrels, cats, dogs, and all manner of mammalian life slinking by to sniff and enjoy the food and water we leave out for the neighborhood strays. Sometimes, an enormous moth of exquisite pattern will flutter over and land with a thump on the glass, allowing anyone who happens to be in the dining room to admire it for hours. It's like our own private zoo. But that night, there wasn't a creature stirring anywhere. No crickets, no thumping moths, no hideously sleek roaches trying to get inside ? a bad stillness that made me want to look away from the window as I sat down at the table to finish my sandwich.
But it still beckoned my gaze, pulling my eyes towards it like a private letter left open on someone's desk, and, as I looked up from my sandwich, the little girl my father had seen passed by the window. I remember snapping my head back towards the kitchen, thinking my mother had come into the dining room and that I was seeing her reflection, but I was alone. When I looked back, the little girl was gone, but I was sure I had seen a tan, diaphanous dress, fluttering in the humid summer air, and young skin on a solid face, free of any adolescent blemish, shining in the porch light as thick and alive as my own. I can still see the turn-of-the-century brocade of her outfit, and the unsettling way she quickly floated by the window, as if on roller skates.
A trick of the light no doubt, primed for a ghostly vision by my father's hallucination, could easily explain away what I saw that night. But, in my memory, I can feel the weight of that girl's body. Her reality is indisputable for me, but reality has shrunk for me as I write this. All of us are pining for physical connection like we've never done before. The world we miss, the one we think will finally satisfy us, is the unmasked closeness of parties and movie theaters and sex that we once knew without limit. Perhaps, for the first time in history, we wish that this really was all that there is. Hamlet's terrifying assertion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy has only been sharpened in the meantime, and our reunion with material life will find us totally unequipped, or, worse, totally unwilling, to confront it.
I still don't believe in ghosts, or gods, or prayers, or blessings and mystical vibrations, or any of the lies people tell themselves and their children so that life doesn't seem like a succession of random cruelties. This is a function of privilege. I've never really known the dire, physical desperation that is a rule for most of the proletariat world ? desperation for food, for shelter, for a face that doesn't regard you as an obstacle, for a day spent without the wounding anxiety of poverty and parenthood. My worries have been wholly neurotic. There's no inherent honor or intelligence in being worried about death and the process of dying. It's a cheap anxiety that everyone buys the moment they are born, and it's most sharp for me whenever I'm falling asleep. It's how I react to this fear, when I'm clamped inside the space between consciousness and sleep, between life and death, that seems most important to me now. My generation likes to sneer at the ones that came before it. They were all asleep at the wheel of history and willing to take whatever heinous orders they were given to preserve their sense of security, but us millennials are still utterly unable to be alone with our thoughts. Sensing the responsibility we carry as stewards of a rapidly crumbling world, we search for disciplines that will show us the way forward, and healthier ways of beating back the impish mental chatter that comes for us when all the lights are off and there's no one to talk to ? meditation, exercise, natural supplements like melatonin and valerian root, soothing whispers and roleplays ? but, come morning, we still find ourselves upright and emptyhanded, like every generation before us.
I still do believe that my father's drug, by bringing him closer to real sleep, brought him closer to death, and that this closeness allowed death to bleed into my waking life. It doesn't matter if what I saw was real in the supernatural sense, and I don't claim to have a better grasp on my own life because of it. Cigarettes, Benadryl, booze, and my phone are still the only ways I can get to sleep, and I remain as slavishly dependent upon artificial tranquilizers for comfort as any child with his favorite blanket. What matters is the telling of this sleep story. What matters is that I don't keep what I saw to myself and pridefully let the strain of keeping it a secret rot my insides and emaciate my conscience until I start denying that it ever happened. What matters is that we take pride in our collective heritage of insomnia, and recognize our resistance to sleep as an impulse against death and towards life, as if the history of every society's struggle against its own demise were being recapitulated every time we close our eyes. This is what distinguishes us from the birds and the cows that land and lay down in the face of extinction.
As I finish typing this story, there is a pleasant drowsiness tugging at my eyes I hope that as I fall asleep tonight, no matter how drugged or drunk or distracted I am, I will try and feel myself sink into it, fighting all the time while knowing I am, like everyone, destined to lose. I hope my sleep is long and restoring, and that I lift myself up in the morning like a wiser, stronger generation, knowing the enemy better and ready to face it in the light of the new day.
Outside the office, the indoor water feature rushes around. As we step closer, I inhale the pungent scent of chlorine and cringe. But Maggie is ever fearless. She boldly skips over to the big, square bowl and takes a seat on the tiled edge. Her little feet dangle and graze the tile floor as her fingers reach for the water. ?It's cold,? she says as Mama digs in her worn, red wallet and hands her a penny. She gives me one, too. It's cold in my hand and I know if I bring it to my lips for a kiss for good luck, it'll smell metallicy. The water rushes louder beside me. I want to burst back into the office and throw my arms around Dr. Yang. I need to apologize for not trusting her last night. But will she take me away from Mama? ?Make a wish and toss the penny in the fountain,? says Mama. I squeeze my eyes shut and wish to stay with mama.
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