A/N:

Just a quick list of Dramatis Personae, because the non-linear progression might confuse:

Oriana: daughter of Georgiana, a violinist who recently broke up with Victoria and is back with her ex, Madeline

Victoria: daughter of Caroline, a quiet woman who had intimacy issues

Caroline: Victoria's mother who came out late in life

Marilyn: Caroline's partner and second mother to Victoria

Madeline: recently divorced from her husband and ex-ex to Oriana, whom she still loves

Rosaline: possible new love interest for Victoria

Precious Things (May 20, 1995)—Victoria

Cornflower blue chiffon velvet dress, back out and sleeveless,

a dark blue shawl, hand woven in Guatemala to cover untanned, flabby arms,

foundation—fine powder, brown like the color cinnamon and sugar makes,

lipstick, crimson crush outlined in black on two lips, full but dry—added lip balm—

high heels: navy blue, stretched out from two weeks’ practice up and down stairs and from living room to kitchen,

digital camcorder, time reading 7:30pm, smiles, a mother and daughter arms around each other, a father, lumbering over them, silent pride, first big dance, a red light blinking, laughs, change the tape,

small golden clock: father’s gift from his job

20 years strong—time reading 8:57pm,

small bedroom, second floor, near the back of the house, door closed, blue dress, blue shawl, blue shoes all peeled away, replaced in boxes, on hangers, in closets,

after a silent tear, one exactly soaked into the skin of

the dress, its chiffon, now become a talisman, a charm to ward off evil memories.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: Chronology—Oriana

“Guggenheimer’s Beauty Bower—Beauty is Served”

In the first place, I didn’t want to go. In the first place, I always felt awkward in beauty parlors, even when I was having my own hair styled. But my mother insisted, from time to time, on a real girl’s day out—a day of shopping and beauty, though I had no beauty—to bond us closer together. I think she must have known, even then, that there was something about me she would never like, what with a way I had of looking and acting like my father. But what’s a mother to do? When you’ve got a little girl, you want to treat her like a little girl. And what my mother will never suspect is how much I wanted to act like her little girl, a glamorous woman, complete with shades of blue eyeshadow that brought out my dark, deep brown eyes, crimson lipstick, curves-not-bulges, gentle, sloping shoulders and a love of spiked red pumps and little black cocktail dresses.

“A coat or suit from The House of Youth”

She bought me dresses. They hung as irrefutable proof in the dark recesses of my closet that she tried. She bought me dresses. But if clothes make the woman, then someone was lying. If dresses were to make me into what she wanted, then everything was doomed. I never wore them. So, ever hopeful, she switched her focus. Slacks, fine. But colorful slacks—reds and burnt siennas and lilacs and sleeveless blouses for summer, underwear that matched. This was essential. Nothing puffy or baggy but things that showed off my figure—What figure? I asked her. Shirts, sometimes, and “would you please wear something that rises above the knee?” And “now wouldn’t that be cute if you ever went to a party?”—What party? I asked her. My mother was drowning—drowning people talk quickly—my mother was drowning trying to make a little girl out of her little girl.

“Modern Bags for the Girl of Today”

The accessory stores were mostly for her. I’d allowed her to buy me one of those large, designer pocketbooks for women and I had put away the soft, worn leather of my grandfather’s wallet for safekeeping. This one couldn’t fit in my pocket, though it was called a pocketbook, but it had made her smile when I said I liked it, played with the gold painted clasp and investigated all the various slots. Credit cards, driver’s license, money. It came with a mirror and, also, it necessitated a bag. On this, she was willing to compromise. I wore a pink, dirty messenger-type slung about my shoulder. It was pink; that was enough.

“We clothe the feet complete”

At the shoe store, I tried on pumps to humor her. This, I think, was a mistake. This, I think, gave her hope. I didn’t walk around much. I was irrational, afraid of breaking an ankle. I bought shoes with thick heels, low heels, heels I could actually move in comfortably, heels that took the impact when I strode like my father. She bought herself flat, open-toed shoes with little butterflies that changed colors: reds and burnt siennas and lilacs. We left the store. It was raining. My mother had an umbrella; she was always ready. We began walking to the car. I stopped. “Mom, I’m gay,” I said. She kept walking. My hair got wet. I walked behind her. My head was low. Later, I think, she forgave me.

At the Hour of Regret (March 18, 2007)—Victoria

“Stay,” Victoria says without much conviction, rising to put away her golden wristwatch which she looks at without seeing, never knowing exactly what time it is. In the bedroom, the oak furniture shining with the glare of the overhead lamp, she glances at the soft-shelled suitcases, looming like black curses on the blue carpet, already packed before she had come home, but doesn’t hear their irrefutable message and so, when Oriana leaves a few minutes later, she goes to bed on wine-colored sheets and never cries.

Waking alone, she replaces the wristwatch on her arm even before she gets into the tub, finds herself glancing at its face several times only to forget what hour it announced in the reaching for the pale pink soap, in the thought that the grout around the forest green tiling on the walls needed to be cleaned. She makes her bed meticulously: the bottom corners squared off, the pillows arranged by size—largest in the back with the smaller ones in front—and the comforter turned down in a triangle. This is a comfort.

On the drive to work, she sees the large clock tower. It chimes the ninth hour with big golden sounds and huge silver arms pointing, the sun glinting off the glass. Her heart breaks, sudden as a punch, sudden as the realization that she is late.

And She Called It Diaspora (March 17, 2007)—Victoria

The bedroom smelled of sweat and heat, which was odd given the vertical torrent of raindrops when the sky was opened. I was waking and you had smoothed out the imprint of your head, so it was as though you had never slept there. Sitting up, the headboard creaked, the sheets rustled the way they usually did, and the room seemed a cathedral space. I heard my breathing and the buzzing of light bulbs echoed decibels louder. It hurt, how it hurt, because your body wasn’t there for diffusion.

I found you in the midst of coffee and cigarette rituals, (you had gone through several by now); your eyes were red and your pupils contracted. I knew then, if only by the darkening of the yellow room into a dense gray, that the bell in the tower was tolling. You inhaled, one of those prolonged, deep inhalations which meant that you were tired and we were going to have a fight so I sat across from you, picking at imaginary imperfections on my milk-and-cookie pajama pants and waited.

You called it our personal diaspora, we were to be scattered, and I couldn’t help but laugh at your use of favorite devices: Fatalism and Historical Reference, as though each time we played out this scene, it would hurt less, the less original you could be. To hell with cycles, I thought, we could break ours, just this once and I wouldn’t be the one to fight with you over who got the grandfather clock.

Piece for Violin and Pen (October 2006)—Oriana

The cold clarifies.

The sun is brighter, the moon is brighter, the crack of trees is brighter. I stood in the midst of it, with theme music. My eyes spotted objects, staccato: a tree, a moving branch, a station wagon, a helicopter, a sign on one of two stone pillars that read “country gardens.” I wanted, standing there with cracked skin covering my knuckles, I wanted power, to have, for a moment, a gasp by the few who saw me control the wind, gather it in my lungs and so, exhale. So I breathed the only way I knew how. My violin in my hands, I played the wind a song of swift surges. I think it heard me.

The cold solidifies.

The purpose is two-fold. Breathe in. Breathe out. I heard the wind so clearly; it was calling, it was yelling. But for whom? And in what language? Not for me. I knew that much. And yet, standing, swaying as the wind threatened to carry me away, I felt tempted to test the bounds. If I thought hard enough, I could have levitated. I stood near the gateway and the wind called— I simply answered it, gathered it in my hands, and so, plucked it up, swirling around my wool coat, up through the winter branches and the crisp, clean blue.