Pokrovka, Kyrgyzstan. December 9, 2004.

“Ket-rin!” My host mother, Mahburat, makes my name sound like a police siren. It echoes across the rooms of the small house and I wonder what I did this time. Did I leave the teapot boiling? Did I line up my shoes too close to the door? Did I throw egg shells in the wrong trash can? Mahburat’s rules were numerous and baffling. It didn’t help that every time I messed up, she saw it as a personal failing. In Kyrgyzstan, girls don’t make mistakes. They are expected to keep the house neat and tidy, bake bread so it looks beautiful, and pour tea without making any noise. They had their whole lives to practice. I’d been in the country for only six months, three of them spent in training with a host mother who was only four years older than me.

“Ket-rin!” Mahburat shows up in the doorway of my room. She looks like a cartoon character. Dyed dark red, frizzy hair frames her large eyes, tiny nose, and pursed mouth.

“Emne-boldu?” I ask in Kyrgyz, “what happened?” I wait for the spew of words that I won’t understand.

My Kyrgyz is actually very good. My first host mother talked to me all the time, and loved quizzing me on vocabulary any chance she got. She made me memorize an entire Kyrgyz song one afternoon. But Mahburat isn’t Kyrgyz. She’s a Uighur-Uzbek mix. She moved from China to Kyrgyzstan’s capital city of Bishkek as a young girl, and grew up speaking mostly Russian. She also spent 13 years living with her husband in Uzbekistan. To complicate things even further, her home (and my home now) is right near the border with Kazakhstan. If you put together all these different nationalities, you get a dizzying pool of diverse languages and dialects. As far as I can tell, Mahburat uses all of them, all at once.

She says something about washing things. I understand that much, at least. One word I know is Russian, and I’ve heard it before.

“What’s Odeyala?” I ask.

She calls my host father, Jakob, to translate into Kyrgyz for me. He’s Uighur, too, but at least he grew up in the middle of Kyrgyzstan speaking Kyrgyz. He’s just as much a cartoon character as Mahburat, with a nose that dwarfs the rest of his face, sparkling, wise eyes, skin tanned dark from working in the fields, and an easy smile.

“Odeyala is blanket,” Jakob tells me. “She’s doing laundry, and wants you to bring out your sheets.”

Well, that’s not so bad. Mahburat has an electric washing machine that looks like R2D2, but she won’t put regular clothes in it for fear of something getting ruined. I wash all my own clothes in basins out in the yard. At first, I was frustrated that there was a machine I couldn’t use, but eventually laundry became a meditative, calming process of soaping, rinsing, and squeezing. And it was nice of Mahburat to wash my sheets for me.

It was also wonderful that she respected my privacy. Most Kyrgyz host mothers would have barged straight into my room and grabbed the sheets off my bed themselves. And this wouldn’t be rude; there’s no such thing as personal space here. But since Mahburat and Jakob’s kids are all grown up, I have two small rooms of their house all to myself, and they leave me alone there.

Sometimes I wonder if Mahburat won’t come in because although I’m neat and organized by American standards, she thinks I’m a slob. But I try to remember how lucky I am that I can trust my host parents never to snoop around my room.

I disappear into my “mess:” books and papers stacked on a table, my unmade bed up against the wall with the oriental rug hung on display, and my computer on the floor with a cord snaking across to an outlet that it shares with my Peace Corps water distiller. I bundle up the sheets and pillow cases under one arm and take them out to find Mahburat.

She’s in her own bedroom, and she freaks out. “Ket-rin!”

In her hands, my mass of crumpled sheets and blankets resolves into a perfectly neat bundle contained inside one of my pillow cases.

“You’re a girl, not a boy,” she tells me, all in Kyrgyz. “You need to be more careful.”

I’ve heard this line before. Then, I didn’t have the words to explain myself. Now, even though I can’t quite understand her I know she can understand me. I decide to give it a shot, and discover a new fact about myself that will come in handy throughout my service. When I’m angry, my language gets much, much better.

“Boys and girls can do the same things. It doesn’t matter that I’m a girl. In America, my father does laundry. He washes dishes. It would be rude if he didn’t.”

Mahburat isn’t phased. “This isn’t America. Boys don’t wash dishes.”

My brilliant reply: “But boys hands can wash dishes!”

Mahburat: “No they can’t.”

Although this conversation ends quickly with both of us upset, and our senses of decency slightly disturbed, we would eventually learn to understand each other, in more ways than just linguistically. I was determined to show her not only that I could learn her rules, but also that being a girl or boy should have nothing to do with it. Some of her rules were meant to be broken. I wasn’t allowed to move sacks of potatoes with my host dad—I did it anyway. My fellow volunteer Ian wasn’t supposed to wash dishes because he’s a boy—he washed them anyway.

My discussions with Mahburat got longer and longer. We talked about American and Kyrgyz culture, women’s rights, her past, and my future. Slowly, slowly she started to understand how important individuality, freedom, and equality are to Americans, and I began to realize that Mahburat was highly respected for her skills as a housewife, and wouldn’t let her husband help her if he tried.

Against all odds, we became friends.

One day, a few weeks before the end of my service, Mahburat sat me down and told me the following story, “When my friend asked me to host a Peace Corps volunteer, I didn’t really want to. I didn’t like America from what I saw on TV. But now I am so glad that I said yes. Sometimes people in the village tell me rumors about you—they don’t understand why you’re here. I tell them that you are helping and teaching their children, and that you came all the way across the world, away from your home and family, to do this. I’ve met your parents, your volunteer friends—and all of you are wonderful people. Now I know another side of America, and I will miss you so much when you leave.” Her speech moved me to tears as I remembered all of the difficulties we’d overcome. At that moment, I knew I’d made a difference.

Oil on paper. May 10, 2008.

Oil on board. May 7, 2008.

This was a very long, skinny painting surface, and as a result, I wound up with two sort of separate pictures sharing a space.  However, they seem to be getting along just fine so I’ll let them be.

Also, the tree on the left started out upside down (right side up?  and now it’s upside down?) because I was painting the hanging branches of a pine tree through which yellow light was shining.  Upside down, the pine boughs look like a tree out of an African safari.

This is my first abstract landscape in a long time, and I think I should try to keep moving away from direct realism.

Oil on Canvas. May 5, 2008.

New Boston, New Hampshire.

“Listen, listen,” whispered Lamb.  “Listen all.”

The animals were silent and still, standing at attention around the clay bowl, but Lamb spoke again, “listen.”

Black ceramic and wooden and stone eyes did not blink, but Lamb saw dust shake on the animals’ backs and knew her audience was aware and waiting.

Soon the light would bend around the bowl, as it did every morning and evening, and in the shadow of the bowl Lamb saw dreams.

“Come closer, Bear,” Lamb said.  A small turquoise stone bear shifted out of the circle.  His movements were impossible to detect.  One moment he was beside Pig and Turtle, the next slightly over there, by the bowl.  He was small but strong, and full of memories of the earth where he had lain for thousands of years before being polished and carved and filled with a name.

“I see a great bolt of lightning!  It breaks the land apart and deep down the crevasse fills up with trees and fruits and grains.  It is the most fertile soil any creature has ever seen, but any who chooses to descend cannot climb out again.”

“Bear, that sounds like the home for you!” said giraffe from above.

“No, it’s my home.  I love fruit trees,” said Kitten, who had never seen the outside.

“It is just a dream,” said Bear, but he seemed prouder and stronger than before.

“My turn, my turn!” squealed Pig.

“Shh,” said Lamb.  But of course the animals were always silent.  Their speech was underneath sound, in the subtle movements of particles that only perpetually still objects can feel.

“Pig, I see you falling down again.”  Lamb sighed.

Pig found herself balanced on her snout and remembered the child’s hands that formed her out of clay from a colorful box.  Those hands were kind, but they didn’t form the back legs even with the front.

“Try again?” Pig asked.

“You fall down, but beneath you is grass and above you fly pink pigs with evenly matched legs and thin, light blue butterfly wings.”

Pig squealed happily, still stuck on her snout, but full of hope.

Unicorn was about to ask for her turn when a voice squeaked from behind Lamb.  This was a real voice, booming-loud, sending molecules scattering every which way in giant waves through the air. “Does the Lamb ever get a turn?”

It was a mouse.  A real, furry, heart-beating alive mouse with whiskers quivering and paws scratching and scritching so constantly that every animal in the circle felt most uncomfortable.  If Alive Mouse knocked them over, it would be years before they could gather the ability to stand.

“You hear us?” Giraffe asked.

“Oh, well, I know you’re talking.  Wouldn’t say I hear it like I hear footsteps or cat purrs or thunder and rain, but I hear you up here every morning and evening, tickling in my brain.  And that one you call Lamb never gets a turn.”

“I’m the only one who sees,” Lamb explained.

“Sees what?” asked Alive Mouse. “What is there to see?”

“The shadows.” Lamb trembled.  Alive Mouse was so close she could feel his whiskers disturbing every molecule she tried to arrange to keep herself calm and steady.  When she was first placed on the shelf with the others, a small boy came and took her and left her in a corner where she lay for days and days with only spiders and shadows for company.  It was there, on the floor in the dark, that Lamb had learned to read shadows.  When a girl found her again and returned her to the shelf, she became the sage of the Beyond.

“I can tell you all what’s there,” said Alive Mouse.  “It’s the shadow of a clay pot, and right now it’s getting bigger ’cause the sun’s going down.  Soon it will wrap up the whole room and everything will go black until the sun eats up the darkness in the morning.”

“Is that your dream, Lamb?” Pig asked, staring at Alive Mouse with awe.

“I have no dreams,” Lamb whispered.  Finally, she managed to grasp at enough molecules to  send a burst of dust rattling into Alive Mouse’s eyes.  He jumped with such force that Giraffe fell into Elephant who stepped on Pig who shook and sent Bear racing towards Unicorn and Dragon and in the end all were fallen in a heap around the clay pot.

Mouse took off without a single look back.  “Crazy mind-tickling still-things… serves you right!”  He called back, disturbing just enough molecules to knock over the pot, too.  It rolled around and around.

Lamb started to cry.

Her tears were almost invisible, made of the spaces between the ticking of a clock and the color of shadow.

“I see your dream, Lamb,” said Pig, even more quietly than completely silent.

“I do, too,” said Bear.

“And I,” said Giraffe and Unicorn and Dragon at the same time.

“Your dream is to shiver and shake,” said Bear.

“Yes, and to speak in a voice like an earthquake!” said Pig.

“And knock this whole shelf down on top of that idiot Mouse,” whispered Giraffe.  Her head was hanging over the edge.

“Your dream is as clear as the day that eats the shadows, isn’t it Lamb?” said Unicorn.

Lamb saw a shadow move, then, as the pot finally stopped rolling and sat still.  In the shadow, she saw a lamb leaping across a field.  A real, warm, quivering, alive lamb.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes it is.”

Moxie Falls, Maine. August 19, 2004.

There is mist in the hollows of my bones.  It fills me up to the tips of my fingers, rising at the sound of the waterfall, then settling as I rotate each joint.  Wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, hips, knees, ankles.  The mist condenses into running, rushing water in my veins.  I awake.

Where am I?

Memory returns with the whistling of wind through baby spring leaves and feathery pine needles.  The trees are taller since I last opened my eyes.  The trees are taller and the river deeper.  Time has etched out all trace of the path I followed out of the city.

Has the city, too, grown taller?  Or has it sunk into the earth, buried like my footprints under black roots and green leaves?

I don’t want to know.

I remember the words I carried on my tongue as I walked the path.  Words of falling and burying and black roots bursting through brick.  Words of future.  “I dream a time beyond,” I told them, and they listened.  They listened as they always have, with one ear for the sounds and one for the soul.

A soul that sees future is of the future, and must walk the path.  I walked in darkness, alone, wearing the simple white robe of one who will sleep.  Medicines soaked into the hem of the robe wafted up, up, as I walked.  I felt buzzing in my nostrils as the scent intruded, and still I walked.

I remember the sun scratching blood from the horizon, and the rushing of a waterfall as I closed my eyes to the relief of sudden sleep.

How many years have slipped past?

“Tee-ooo, teee-ooo” calls a round, brown bird.

“Tell me the time?”  I ask.

Bird flits back and forth over the river.  The question is meaningless.  It is always now when all you have to worry about are insects and owls.

“Brown bird, do you remember the path?”  I ask, and my hands rise to a triangle on my forehead.  The gesture is unconscious, but as soon as my fingers touch I realize that I have given the bird my allegiance and trust.  If he asks something in return, I will be bound to him with my life.

I must still be groggy.  At least he’s just a bird.

“Foll-ow, foll-ow,” the bird calls.

My bones drip and moan for the first few steps, but soon I am moving with all the grace of a fish gliding through rapids.  The bird is fast, and I run to keep pace.  It is agony, it is joy to move again.

“Foll-ow, give me your name, and foll-ow,” says the bird.

He has asked.  I am bound forever to a small brown bird.

“My name is Eza Sollien Tieta.  One who dreams time.”

Waterville, ME. February 29, 2004.

Once upon a time there was a little blue car who needed a name.

She was old. Seventy-seven in car years, which is twenty-two human years times 3.5. Dog years pass twice as quickly, but dogs never learn to count them. The little blue car started counting the second her odometer started clicking out the miles.

At 1,000 miles and exactly 2 car years old she decided to call herself Honda, as this beautiful word was etched on the tip of her nose.

But at 1,009, 1,023, and 1,086 miles she met a black Honda, a red Honda, and a Honda truck.

The truck rumbled through his grill, “your name means nothing. It’s stamped on thousands of cars, hundreds of trucks. I’m called MASTR, see my plates?” Indeed, the little blue car saw the plates. But hers only had numbers, no letters

At 25,000 miles the little blue car found herself sitting in her people’s yard with a sign on her windshield. Is “For Sale” my name? she wondered. She was 50 car years old.

People came to look under her hood and touch her seats. They poked her tires and asked questions. The little blue car had never had so much attention. But her odometer stayed still. Why aren’t I driving? She asked.

“Your people don’t want you anymore. You’re old, and you’re for sale.” said a brand new blue convertible parked in the driveway. Indeed, the little blue car saw her people sitting in the convertible, patting the steering wheel. “Let’s go, Blues Machine!” They shouted.

“That’s a beautiful name,” the little blue car said. “Can I use it, too?”

“No.” Said the convertible, and spat out a plume of black smoke into the little blue car’s windshield.

Little blue car sat and sat. She tried new names every day. Bird and Grass and Buzz and Mud, but none of them fit.

Her tires went flat and her seats sagged, and she began to think she would never move from the driveway. Over five human years passed. To the car, that was twenty-seven long, wasted years.

Then came the bearded man and his daughter. “Sally is learning to drive,” explained the man. “And I want her to get to know her car before we start.”

No one had ever talked directly to the little blue car before! She aimed her headlights straight in the man’s eyes and sparked her spark plugs and cleared her air filter as best she could to shout out “Yes! Please! Get to know me!”

The man handed some money to the people in the convertible and the little blue car was towed away. “I’m sorry,” the bearded man explained. “You need some work before you can drive on your own.”

The man showed Sally how to take off the little blue car’s wheels, replace her filters, and fill up her belly with clean oil. Together, they scraped her sides raw, then taped all her edges and sprayed on a coat of fresh blue paint.

The little blue car felt like she could fly to the moon. “I’m beautiful enough to be a rocket ship!” She told Sally in the pleased purr of her engine. “Will you name me Rocket Ship?”

Sally didn’t hear.

“Your car needs a name,” said the bearded man. He always seemed to know what the little blue car was thinking.

Sally drove the car everywhere. She stopped to walk by the ocean, she stopped to buy notebooks and groceries, she stopped to fill up her car with gas. Sometimes, she would try out names. “Star?” “Blue girl?” “Ranger?” “Lace?”

The little blue car loved all of them, but Sally wouldn’t choose.

Then one day Sally drove very very fast, faster than she’d ever driven before, to a large brick building in the center of a city. White trucks with flashing red lights dashed all around the little blue car. “Watch out! Watch out!” They called.

Sally came out hours later with tears drying on her cheeks.

“Grandma’s ok,” she told the little blue car. “She told me… well, it’s silly, but she told me I should call you Maude. It was her mother’s name.”

“Maude!” The little blue car blinked and hummed with joy.

It was a perfect name.

Teius, Romania. June 2004.

It was a slow day for cabbage sales.

Marvin sat by his cart, trying not to stare at the bulbous white-green heads piled in the back of the blue van. He could smell the crisp, autumn-sweet smell of them even across the street. The van was a cave of dragon treasure, a hidden room in a king’s palace where the most valuable secrets were kept under lock and key.

Oh, the things Marvin could do with a vanful of cabbage! And to think people actually ate it. Marvin couldn’t think of a single thing more terrible, more horribly sacrilegious, than calling such a beautiful thing a vegetable, cutting it open, and tearing it to shreds just for the sake of dinner.

A small girl walked up to the van, reached her hand into a pocket on her bright pink skirt and extracted a few coins. In exchange, she was given a particularly beautiful green specimen the size of her own small head.

She turned and saw Marvin with his empty cart. For a second their eyes locked and hers were green, green with flecks of silver-white. He could tell even across the street.

The girl reached into her pocket again. Looked back at Marvin, frowned, then took off one shoe. Inside, was another coin. The cabbage she got this time was paler than the first, and scarred with brown. A discount cabbage. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

She walked across the street with purpose, one cabbage under each arm, her back straight and green eyes focused on Marvin’s cart.

“You want one?” She asked when she came close. Her eyes were even brighter up close. Marvin almost asked if she was actually a dragon not a little girl. He was still thinking about caves and treasure, but he caught his tongue. He’d gotten himself in trouble before for such thoughts. It wasn’t sane.

“Are you sure?” Marvin asked, holding out his hands, hoping they didn’t tremble too much. He held them out towards the first cabbage, the jewel, but the girl twisted so the scarred one fell into his hands.

“Sorry. I didn’t have the money to get you a fresher one. I thought you looked so lonesome over here. Mama says don’t talk to strangers, but I know a stranger when I see one and you’re not strange, are you?”

Marvin thought of dragons again and inspected his cabbage. It would have to do.

“Strange… what is strange but that which is not yet familiar?” He said, and placed the cabbage in the cart.

Across the street, the cabbage vendor chuckled and frowned to his friend. “Every other day some sucker gives that man a cabbage, and what does he do? Puts it in that cart and drags it back and forth to whatever hole he calls home until it rots, then comes back and sits there with starved dog eyes all day until he gets another one. Just watch. You’ll see.”

But Marvin and the girl heard none of this. Their eyes were locked on the cart, where the cabbage was sparkling. It looked a little like the girl’s eyes, green with white flecks of fire.

“What do you wish for?” Marvin asked.

The girl hesitated longer than any of his benefactors had ever hesitated before. He started to worry that she’d gone mute. That he’d imagined her. That he really was insane.

Then she spoke.

“I wish I’d given you the fresh one.” She said, and tossed him the second cabbage. The one she’d bought for Mama’s soup.

“And this time,” she said, once the second cabbage was nestled next to the first and a pale glow surrounded the vegetables, “I wish that you get whatever it is you’re waiting for. Good bye!”

The cabbage vendor would never figure out exactly what happened. One minute he was joking with his friend, the next minute his van was gone and so was his chair. He was flat on his back by the side of the road, not a cabbage to his name.

Marvin was behind the wheel, driving away from the town, away from the watching eyes and whispering voices. His cart was on the seat next to him, and his eyes saw dragon caves, king’s castles and gardens full of cabbages, green and autumn-sweet.

Sighisoara, Romania. June 14, 2004.

“Want to meet my robot grandma?” Amitha whispered to her new friend, Dina.  They’d been friends for fourty-five minutes, ever since Dina showed up outside Amitha’s apartment building with a blue kickball.

“She’s a robot?”  Dina twisted her neck sideways as a normal looking grandmother-type person approached, towing a little boy by one hand.

“Can’t you tell?”  Amitha held out her bag of sunflower seeds and Dina took a handful.  “She’s a robot, and that little boy?  He’s not my brother.  He’s an alien. He made my grandma from pieces of his ship.“

“Stop it, that’s ridiculous.”  Dina bounced a little on the kickball, which made an excellent seat.  Amitha had to squat on the cobblestones and try to keep her jeans from touching the dust.  Robots don’t like dust.

“Found a new friend, Amitha?”  The robot grandma asked.

Her voice seemed normal.  It had just the right amount of sugar and cinnamon and paprika that a grandmother’s voice should have.

“My name’s Dina, and Amitha says you’re a robot.”  Dina laughed, expecting the grandma to scowl and scold her granddaughter for telling such an outrageous lie.  That’s what Dina’s own human grandmother would have done.  She was seventy-seven and she couldn’t put on her own slippers.  Dina had to do it for her, and she never did it quite right.

But the robot grandma didn’t scold or scowl or even frown.  She nodded and kept on walking.  The little boy frowned a little, though.

“See?”  Amitha said.

“I still don’t believe you,”  Dina stood up and held the kickball under one arm.  “Robots are only in stories.  So are aliens.  She just didn’t hear me.  My own grandma never hears anything unless I climb up on the counter to reach the sugar bowl.”

“Robots have excellent hearing.”  Amitha grabbed for the kickball, but Dina turned sideways.

“Prove it.”

“Give me the ball.”

Dina hesitated.  What kind of friend insisted her own family wasn’t human?  But she handed it over.

“Catch!”  Amitha shouted, and tossed the ball.  The little boy held up one hand, and the ball was there, balanced on his fingertips.  Or maybe, just maybe, an inch above them.

“Come on, George,” Grandma said, and plucked the ball from the boy’s hand.  “We’ll be back for dinner, Amitha.  Let your friend in and get her some tea.”  Grandma tossed the ball.  She didn’t even watch as it traveled in a perfect arc through the air, and landed exactly in front of Amitha, who sat on it.

“Robots don’t drink tea!”  Dina whispered, as the alien and robot turned the corner.

“Of course not,” Amitha answered.  “The motor oil is in the next cabinet.”

And that is how Amitha found herself to be the owner of a brand new blue kickball.

She celebrated with a tall glass of motor oil–the tea was only for company.

Pack Monadnock, New Hampshire. December 28, 2006.

Yes, this is a picture of my brother, Chad.  The story isn’t about him at all, though!  So don’t worry… I just couldn’t bear to give him a name totally different from his own.

You had to ruin it, didn’t you?  I had it all worked out.  The whole plan, flawless.  I could already hear the helicopters whirring overhead.  They were black and almost silent, brand new. Slipping through the winter clouds like crickets in a snowbank.  Out of place.  They looked and looked but they couldn’t find me. I vanished.

Then you show up.  Stand there and tap the bench with your chewed up nails, tell me to wake up.  “Wake up, Charlie.”

But I’m gone!  I vanished!  I shout inside.  But you keep tapping.  Your finger bounces from the varnished wood to my nose.  “Look alive!”

I appear.  I can’t help it.  How can you stay vanished when someone pokes you in the nose?

“Go away.”  I pull my sweatshirt hood down over one eye.  Failure.  I didn’t even managed to close my eyes for one minute before I was found.

“How can you sleep on top of a picnic table in the middle of the winter?”  You fold your stubby nails into your armpits, and your breath blurs the view of snow-covered pines reaching out for miles behind you.

“I wasn’t sleeping.”  My eyes had been closed, but that was only to help with vanishing.  It’s a trick I read about.  Concentrate hard enough, and no one will see you.  I couldn’t even see my own hands when I got really good.  Honest, it works.  Except you looked too early.  You ruined it.  I was one second away from total nothingness.

“Well, whatever you were doing, I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving in five minutes.  With or without you.  Whatever.”  You stomp away, taking your breath-cloud with you.

“I was hiding.”  I call out, thinking, so what if you found me this time?  I can vanish again.

“OK…” you say it all drawn out.  The “oh” goes on for a full thirty seconds before you get to “k.”  I didn’t have to count the seconds to know when you’d get there.  You say it the exact same way every time you don’t want to listen to me.

I pull my hood down over my other eye.  Concentrate!  This time, I’ll get it right.  You’ll get halfway home, realize I’m not following like I always do, and you’ll come back to look for me.  Only I’ll be vanished.

You’ll call the police first, but since it’s the woods and I could be anywhere, they’ll call the helicopters.  I’ll stay vanished until all but one circling cricket machine gives up.  Then I’ll stumble back visible again.  Will you poke my nose this time?

This scene was inspired by a session at the NESCBWI conference.  I wanted to try second person POV, and this was a great picture for that exercise.