Sunday Afternoon: A Bayou Tale

Sunday Afternoon by the Window: A Bayou Tale (Submitted for a contest to Florida Weekly)

by Paula Michele Bolado

Some people may think it odd for a ten year old girl to take extraordinarily long baths on Sunday afternoons, but if they knew that was the time that the spell worked best in the flickering light of the sun bouncing off sable palms outside my grandmother’s bathroom window, they might reconsider their judgments. Yet, how would they know unless my grandmother told them. I do know that people gave me odd looks whenever I shopped with her at Bailey’s General Store, so I imagined if they knew I said incantations with lighted candles and a giant shell talisman given to me by Mrs. Ranzoni, I would be hauled away to a nut factory. They whispered through smiles and casual hugs flung at me. I don’t know most of the women who clutch me tight for a quick second while my grandma always tells them, Thank you, we are doing fine, and one time, yes, she’s all set for the new school year. 

As young as I can remember, whenever my parents fought, I made my way down to my grandmother’s dock at the edge of Dinkin’s Bayou; I had always wanted to be like any of the creatures who gathered here, where they didn’t have to deal with the troubles humans had.  One particular evening, my father had come home from the shop, gripping a bottle of wine in one greasy hand and a dozen roses in the other. My mother had been studying all day for a nursing test, but my daddy wasn’t having it. He tossed her books and demanded that she love the roses. You don’t like anything I do! He had yelled. She threw the flowers and next I remember, he threw her. 

Within moments, I found myself standing on that dock, watching a great blue heron dance like a ballerina between the knees of the mangroves. A great splash startled the heron to flight, soaring away like a gray angel, swooping all that was ill in the world behind.  Here in the folds of the warm bayou’s wake, a scaly orange tail as great as a dolphin lifted and plunged into the green waters where manatees and dolphins coalesced with the other creatures below. The sunset’s light cascaded on the ripples of the water, an evanescence of corals and lilacs, masking what I knew was something unworldly here with me. While this creature flicked its tail as it swam the length of the bayou to the east and west again, I missed hearing the gun shots. It was a Sunday afternoon.

The ambulance came, the police came, and child services came. My grandmother had been at church dinner when it all happened. She obviously didn’t know she would come home to such grief, or a missing granddaughter, who hours later turned up soaking from bayou water. There were rose petals strewn throughout the house.  

After a month, I began taking baths, so not to leave my grandmother’s side too long, and it was there that I could not be disturbed. My grandmother believed that I was a child who needed water to quench my grieving spirit and to fight the demons out of me. Outside the window lizards crept along the old glass only to leap away when black Ben Yasi swatted as cats do. Mrs. Ranzoni had given me Ben Yasi a week after the funerals. She said I needed him more. Along with Ben Yasi, she had given me an old beige king’s conch shell with brown spots the shape of diamonds along its bumpy whorl. She said they were for me to say my wishes upon.

You must believe that you can control the outcome of your desires. This is no ordinary shell. Ben Yasi is no ordinary cat. You are no ordinary girl. Light candles in the dark and set the shell where it’s safe and quiet. Control that which you cannot seem to control. 

After my wishes were said, the candles lit, and the afternoon light splashed through the rectangular window, in the salted water, my skin began rippling into bumps the size of cockle shells. Painfully my skin in coral iridescence puckered and mutated to where between my thighs converged and shaped into soft luminescent, cylindrical scales that looked like jingles found on the beach. The skin along my feet fanned out into rays, joining them together into a webbed tail. I now controlled the orange creature here.

Hot OFF the Press

My work is out in 3 Mags from Sarasota to Naples! Feature on Tom DeMarchi and the Sanibel Writers Conference, profile on John Losquito at FGCU Gallery, and a creative non-fiction piece of mine called "The Truth of a Junonia." You can see them online (you may have to put in a simple email address to read via mobile).

Times of the Islands: "The Truth of the Junonia"
http://toti.timesoftheislands.com/dm/2017/sep-oct/mobile…
Pg.50

RSW Living: Tom DeMarchi and the Sanibel Writers Conference
http://toti.rswliving.com/dm/2017/sep-oct/mobile#page/23
Pg. 21 (this magazine is from Sarasota to Naples)

Bonita & Estero Magazine: John LoscquitoFGCU gallery
http://toti.bonitaesteromagazine.com/dm/2017/sep-oct/mobile…
Pg. 18

Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam, and Vegas

Aiden thought I was edging too far off the precipice of a rock jutting out above the Grand Canyon. 

“You mean this rock?” I asked as I skittered a stone off the ridge to see it careen toward the canyon floor. My son finally could see that I can be as wild and adventurous as any cowgirl who desires to experience the Wild West.

“You’re not that.” He said as if he heard my thoughts again.

Grand Canyon

 you mean this rock?

Some people do aspire to experience a little Cormac McCarthy; maybe they desire to meet a Preacher, run a town to the ground, or put a shewolf out of her misery. I mostly wanted to see what this desert really looked like beyond my imagination.

Out of our little arguments, my son’s favorite was when I said that the Colorado River at the Lake Mead Recreational Park was really Lake Mead itself. Aiden and I argued until we got to the Hoover Dam, where he finally showed me the satellite image of where we were just standing earlier, which was in the water at Willow Beach in the Lake Mead Recreational Park, between giant gray rocks, an unforgiving desert, intense heat, and wild rams straddling the ledges above the river.

He laughed himself crazy because he was right and won the day. At the Hoover Dam, we got reflective as we noticed the water line that significantly highlighted the water problems this area of the country faces. The Hoover Dam in June was baking, like walking on a pizza stone under a hot lamp beside a glass of water, so it was time to leave.

We had some pictures taken of us there. I told Aiden that I didn’t like them. I looked large and pasty. And this was when he said, “Mom, it’s one thing for you to not like a picture; you can just say, ‘I don’t like that picture.’ But when you say it’s because you look ugly or fat or whatever, it’s not okay. You’re beautiful. You always look beautiful in these pictures.”

Tears ran down my salty cheeks and I hugged him, thanking him for being such a sweet young man. I didn’t say another word about how a picture of me looked the rest of the trip.

 Lake Mead Rec Park...not Lake Mead. Colorado River.

Hoover Dam

Damn hot at this dam

Dusted off the desert for Vegas

That night we went to Vegas to see all the lights, MGM, New York New York and the Hard Rock Café. Aiden easily let two half naked cowboys grab me for one of those tourist catching photo ops and continued his laugh-fest.  It was comedy hour for the two of us dining at the Hard Rock Café, where he ate the “world’s best macaroni and cheese.”  I was convinced the table beside us received a stash of drugs in a bag from the server, but Aiden said it was just Hard Rock T-Shirts, and after a couple hours, we had enough of Vegas, especially when it seemed pot was seeping through the sidewalk cracks and I was fussed at by a casino host for having my son too close to the black-jack table. I think the three-year old in the stroller was the youngest there in MGM Grand but who knows if the family knew what time it was, or even what day it was. Aiden now can say his first time in Vegas was with his mother—what every boy imagines.

HOT 100F

I lost a dollar

 Fortune telling

How to set up an interview with Alice Hoffman...like Bridget Jones

The Rules of Magic (the prequel to Practical Magic) is out October 15th! My interview with Alice Hoffman will be out in September.

How cool is it when a famous author calls you from her house in Cambridge on a Monday?! My interview with Alice Hoffman lasted 30 exquisite minutes and with her permission, I have enough material for several pieces for several different publications. 

One of my favorite characters is Bridget Jones because she's beautifully ridiculous; she's witty, self-deprecating, painfully romantic, always wanting to prove her intelligence, has two answers or more for a single question, and she starts off in publishing, reading and promoting pieces of literature with honest regard and hopeful enthusiasm that one day she will be known for her talents as well.

Sometimes I fancy myself to be a little bit like her, and it's not with intention, but rather through default, inordinary events happening in my life; an experience can either take a flying leap off a cliff and careen into the vast and treacherous unknown or it can soar into the sky, higher than imagined. I have experienced both events many times, but this one is like the bird soaring thingy. 

The following is regarding how this interview came to be. I would like to point out that I was writing the email to Hoffman's publicist, sitting outside the Captiva Library and facing the old cemetery while using my hot-spot. The service was shoddy at best and for some reason my email that was written on a Monday didn't get sent until Wednesday while I was having lunch with my friend Tajh, discussing the fabulous email I sent Simon and Schuster, YET I still hadn't heard back. I wanted to show Tajh the email, so I went to my sent box, and behold, it wasn't there. It was in my drafts, having never been sent! I am grateful to Tajh for this moment of realization. (Thank you, Tajh, for helping me see that hot-spots aren't always hot, specifically near cemeteries, and I needed to "resend" the email right away.)

So, what is it like to answer a call from this incredibly famous author that was set up between you and Hoffman's publicist just days ago? One word: Thrilling. 

First, yes, I set up this interview as some tiny little person in the world of literature, thinking that I have nerve to write Simon and Schuster and ask if Alice Hoffman would speak to me, tiny-little-person, me. Did I drop the small magazine for which I was writing and a name of the director of the conference that she is attending in the fall as the key-note speaker? Yes, I did; however, I believe that most of my prowess has to do with the darn fine email I wrote. 

Anne....

Simon & Schuster

Dear Anne ...:

I'm reaching out from Fort Myers Magazine, and on behalf of Tom DeMarchi, head of the Sanibel Writers Conference with FGCU, who also gave me your contact, to interview Alice Hoffman prior to her appearance as the key note speaker. Personally, and especially this summer, I have become familiar with her work, and as an English teacher and lover of well-crafted novels, her work is inspiring on many levels, especially from her historical fiction to magical realism.  In fact, some of us on the island have formed a little Alice Hoffman book club, consuming as many of her novels as we can each week. I am finishing up The Museum of Extraordinary Things and have The Dovekeepers on my Audible. Of course we are all looking forward to the prequel of Practical Magic! The Owen’s family is most fascinating and I am secretly glad I also have gray eyes [yes, I wrote this-- ugh, dork]. 

Anyway, I understand she has limited time to interview as it is summer, and I have a deadline by August 15^th for the September/October issue, which we would like to have out before the conference in order to gain more interest for the event. My best availability is anytime during the next few weeks and I can conduct the interview by phone. My questions may be geared around particular themes in her novels, magical realism, and Jewish mysticism; her ability to delve into characters so well, her overall writer’s craft and what she might talk about at the conference, as well as discussing The Rules of Magic [I asked much more and she revealed information never talked about in other interviews!].  

Again, my best times are anytime for the next few weeks, especially the next two weeks while my son is at sailing camp on Captiva Island and I’m spending my time writing at the library here across from the oldest cemetery called Chapel by the Sea, where shells wrapped in leather laces dangle from gumbo limbo trees like wind chimes for the dead. She would like to see this place, I’m certain [and she does want to go after I spoke with Hoffman directly about this place].

I would need to have the interview completed before August 7^th since my deadline is the 15th. 

I would be happy to send questions prior to the interview and we can limit the time to 20 minutes [we talked for 31 minutes holy cow!].

Thank you so much,

Paula Michele Bolado

Enclosure: I have attached a copy of my interview with Sue Monk Kidd to show my 

experience. 

---

And Alice Hoffman called me the following week. 

Heading out West

An article on our trip will be published September/October with TOTI Media Group

There's a difference between those who want to travel out to the Wild West to see the great Black Mesa of New Mexico, the Georgia O'Keefe blue skies, and seek the vortex while performing yoga in Sedona. Or there's me, the one who wants to experience the metaphysical cowboy, Mexican, and Native American dynamics in Cormac McCarthy's Crossing Border Trilogy. I know these desires only come from a crazy woman, so I'll just make sure I do those first three things mentioned just a minute of words ago.

My thirteen year-old son and I are about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Oh, these words always sounds so cliche. The opening of The Hobbit doesn't work, so how about, “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” This sounds about right: Aiden screaming out of the window and me at the wheel pointing to the cacti ridiculing us with their inappropriate poses.

The fun we will have, the adventures unknown, the fights, the tears, the bad tacos and the good ones, and the friends we will get to see again after many years, all await us out west. No wolves or pretty horses to tame, at least I don't suspect, and all the fear and loathing of Las Vegas will be set aside for this mostly proper trip with planes, trains, and automobiles, minus the trains.

Road Home

Road Home

By Paula M. Bolado

You are dead. Stick shift still in hand

and the old gravel road of Big Cove begins.

Tiny chunks of mica and quartz crackle under the tires.

Birds bounce under the rhododendron.

The car rolls to a stop beside a house, gray and green,

where an old post covered in lichen says LINQUEST.

He died thirty years ago and the old sale sign

across from his broken, red mailbox has rusted

and the realtors don’t work there now

because they too have died.

Away from the Linquest place, there’s a sharp incline.

Your little car needs low gear or it will slip back into the trees

and wrap around the poplars below—

Below, where it is dusty enough that if were you to go back,

The path would be gone;

the dust never cleared.

Half way up Big Cove, it should still be light out.

The light effervesces through the leaves of the giant poplars

and speckles the grave stones of the children who died long ago.

Long ago, when the baby pines fought for sunlight

over and over again under the poplars and always lost.

The light will guide you beyond an abandoned shack, a silo, and

another grave. Up a steeper, narrower path etched into the mountain,

where you remember the days of youth, where Danny and Tom

threw sticks at squirrels and shot BB guns in these woods.

Tom had just kissed Julie, and Julie was a secret friend on Saturdays;

the days when you shared stories Tom never would tell,

because Tom went to church, and your parents were never sober enough to go.

Watch for coyotes and black bears or an occasional stray dog or two.

The light is fading. You must watch for potholes

and deep pockets covered in leaves beside the road;

the road is not always kind it seems;

they are a hindrance on voyages like these—

these upward climbs from the purgatory below.

You want to say, “I can go no further; here I turn away.”

But your mouth is stopped with blood.

My house, golden in color, with marble floors

and cascading fountain sculptures is always

visible in the fleeting light.

I will wait for you, but will you wait for me?

Turn right, then sharply left, and follow the road.

Turn quickly or slide along the soft sand and rocks,

like when you were riding dirt bikes with Julie,

and she slipped along the dirt, screaming  in pain.

The blood splotched her clothing and you were scared,

scared like the children in the house that burned down in the fire;

their small bodies charred black like toast.

It was the fire Mr. Lindquist started before he shot himself in the mouth.

He was a lonely man for many years, like you.

But you would never do such a thing. No.

Such madness of men is treated at the bottom of the mountain.

If you’ve made it up this path, past Linquest’s place,

the grave stones, and the potholes, you have made it far enough.

Park and walk up another steep path.

Through black soil, buckthorn, blackberry briars, and multiflora rose,

and your legs will hurt just as they hurt

when you rode off for help because Julie had broken her leg,

and no one was around, and you became lost riding through

rambles of rhododendron, pushing your bike over deep creek beds

while thinking a shortcut was better. Remember?

She waited in the woods for hours, but you were lost.

Her father found her finally.  

Julie married Tom and they had four kids.

You never finished school and ran a red light one night

when it was raining, and now you are here.

You just got lost. I just got lost you have thought over and over again.

This is your second chance to find me.

I will be waiting for you in a golden house with the fountain,

Where I won’t abandon you nor do you harm.

You’ll find me; just keep heading up the mountain.

I will save a table for you with the finest of linens.

We will wear our funerary gowns, you and I.

Will you stay for dinner?

_________________

The Truth of a Junonia (excerpt from a memoir)

The Truth of a Junonia (excerpt from a memoir) by Paula Michele Bolado

As soon as the waves pulled back, thousands of rainbow-colored coquina shells glittered orange and gold along the shore before quickly burrowing back into the sand. While watching my son dig at the sand and shells, I remembered at his age what it felt like to scoop the tiny coquinas which wriggled down into my palms. Holding coquinas in his own hands, Aiden laughed at the feeling. His slim, four-year old body was covered from head to toe in white sand and broken shells. Highlighting his smiling face were the colors of the beach—a perfect creation as if the sea itself had formed him from water and sand.

He asked me to dig a hole with him. I sat beside him, just us, on our vacation—without any other family. Here on Sanibel Island, as the sun started to set, all we needed were the sand, the water, the shells, and each other: mother and child.

Shells covered the beachscape in patchy blankets of tans and creams. We dug our toes in the soft, damp silt of the beach and watched the sandpipers dance along the shore. As we scooped away at our hole, Aiden noticed an olive shell beside my toes. This type of tulip snail is olive-shaped, glossy, with a brownish-grey exterior and an undulating perfect whorl shaping a pink pointed tip, and lastly speckled with spots of black. I had never seen such an olive shell before.

“How are shells made?” My son asked.

“Well,” I started, thinking carefully how to say this: “They are formed from the animal inside, giving it protection in the Gulf, where currents and predators could harm its life. As the animal grows, so does the shell it carries. In order to house its increasing size, the animal adds more layers to the shell as time goes on.” My son nodded while he turned the shell around in his hand, the sun glinting off the enamel. All my years as a shell fair kid on Sanibel paid off in this moment. The shell in my son’s hand had been through some challenges; we observed the scratches along its back and the small hole that penetrated its hard exterior. Such a hole, as small as it was, could make the entire shell vulnerable to predators. “I’m sure the animal here tried to fix its house.”

Aiden picked it up. The spots on this olive shell reminded me of the junonia from the same tulip snail species but more rare. My mother and I spent years combing the beach for the junonia. This palm-sized, thick-shelled gastropod, ringed with large, giraffe brown spots normally lives off-shore, but on rare occasions, it washes to the beach as an empty vessel. The residents of Sanibel Island prized it for its rarity, its beauty, and the adventure in finding one. My mother never wanted to buy the shell, even though it could be bought; rather, the junonia was something to discover.

The rare junonia shell is usually found after a powerful storm. Out of the quarter of a million different types of shells washed up along Sanibel’s coast, the junonia is the most valuable and finding one is a gift. Such a gift from the sea always comes at the end of an evolutionary cycle of the shell’s life; from the animal to a speck of sand, to a chamber of beauty, to the death of the creature, to spinning around in a storm’s raging waters, until finally the junonia is exposed as a gemstone along the shoreline and ends up in the hands of a woman looking for a sign. My mother found that shell on her own one day and she believed it was a redemptive sign, as she was a single mother before she met my step-father.

The name of the junonia shell refers to the Roman Goddess Juno, protector of the well-being of women. As an immortal being, Juno is depicted as a woman of majestic size and beauty. She appears in Shakespeare’s last play The Tempest, as queen of the god’s, and her name is used in the movie, Juno, which is about a girl going through pregnancy alone. I thought about those things, about Juno, the junonia shell, my mother who had passed away years before, and looked to Aiden, who was still digging into the sand with the olive shell tucked into his pocket. My marriage was ending at the time and I was going to be a single mother; the stigma hovered over me like an ominous gulf storm. But it was something I had needed to do, as I had a hole in my own shell created by an emotionally abusive husband that I needed to repair. There were dark days ahead for us, but at the moment, I was present with my son, contemplating the beauty and strength that shells withstand as they tumble out of the ocean and into our palms as keepsakes.

After the divorce and graduate school, I kept that olive shell and others like it nearby, especially the ones with holes, because they represent how even the strong are vulnerable and the need to repair our own holes to live life beautifully.