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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching undertow

she had freckles

Even in winter, she had freckles. More than handfuls, a constellation spread across her cheeks as she sat at the next desk her pencil held perfectly. Her small mouth has a constant half-open pucker, lips pressed forwards into the air a few millimeters closer to the chalkboard and our lesson.

Alexandra wore a very short green dress, a sort of jumper with yellow bric brack on the edges, Mary Janes, white socks. Her auburn hair in a soft bob edges flying in the air whenever I poked her, bothered her, disturbed her silence. She would turn to me, not angry like the other girls. 

No, Ali had grace.

I hounded her for years, hoping to secretly hold her hand in mine, maybe put my arm around her tiny shoulder or feel her warm breath on my ear as she whispered something wise or funny to me, only me.

I liked how she elongated words to make them her own.
“Yooouuuuuuuuuu.” She would say when I dropped a pencil to the floor or papers so I could mess up her socks or knock her desk crooked.



We took a field trip to a prison, the walls thick with layers of lime green paint. She stared at me once in the cel that afternoon.
A slow exchange beyond the simplicity of words. 

Two eight year olds scared out of their minds.

Later we ate our brown bag lunches on some grass the sun pushing through the Maple trees, splashing our legs with white light.



When we graduated she was already in a different class, already distant. Sixth grade ended with some free ice cream and a school bus full of crazy kids juiced up on sugar and chocolate, stinking of warm soda ripping our clip-on ties and shirts off, tearing our notebooks into shards of makeshift confetti, whipping papers in the air and out the windows.

I never saw her again.

She had freckles. More than handfuls, a constellation.


Ali E. 1968-2010

Comments

liv said…
merci, merci, merci.

She probably still loves you. I still love the blue eyed boy who pulled my hair.

Your writings are the very best thing that has happened to me for a long time.

I hope you had a good Father's Day. I wish I'd had a father like you.
Marco North said…
Liv - thanks for you truly generous comment. Hope to hear from you again.

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