I find myself at my grandmother’s home in Rio Linda, California and it looks exactly like it did in the 1980’s. Nothing has changed from the cloying feel of brown mossy shag carpeting to the air being fumes with the same presence and power as one of those little pine-tree shaped car-air-fresheners except the smell is somewhere between chlorine and funeral pyre instead of pine. I can’t take it in here, I know my grandmother is angry and waiting in the kitchen waiting to pull my pants down and swat the gentle flesh of my butt and thighs with the wire end of a fly swatter. I peek into the kitchen and can see her hair white as bone pulled tight to pink curlers like some sort of bizarre inverse army of skeletons sitting at the ready against her skull. An old barely working stove is behind her and a shabby table with a kitschy floral yellow and white patterned table cloth sits on top with matching dishes. The plastic table cloth has scorched cigarette burns in it, and a Marlboro Light smolders hatefully in a glass ashtray. She hasn’t seen me yet see I scurry away and go to hide in her bedroom which is back through the living room across the carpet. I get to her door. The smells from the other side are all baby powder and pungent old woman perfume I reach up and turn the knob and as I open it I’m tall enough that the door handle is now below my waist coming just to my hip. Despite my now adult frame I am still scared of everything my grandmother represents behind and I rush into the room. My eye’s lock with the only woman I’ve ever asked to marry me, we are both naked but she is here with another man who seems familiar but I can’t place him and she looks actively annoyed. Her body is angular, and still womanly. I am lithe and built much like I was in my early twenties.
“What are you doing here?” her tone could peel bark.
“I don’t actually know, I think I’m lost and now my clothes are gone?”
“Well, I wish you would have told me, but I’m glad you came.”
She reaches out begins trying to initiate some sort of sexual congress between us and I just want the fuck out of this room, off of this property and away from this person. A part of my mind registers that this is the plot of land that I’ve had associated my childhood sex trauma with my whole life and I suddenly feel like I’m coated in crude oil. I shove her away from me.
“Fuck you Koorisa, get off of me!”
“What did I do?”
“Nothing! Everything! Where were you when I needed you?”
“I’m sorry.” her voice sounds resigned.
I have already turned away and I’m sprinting towards the door.
“I’m sorry.” she repeats.
My hand is on the handle and I glance back over my shoulder as I step through because, you know, I love her.
“I’m sorry.” says my father with Koorisa’s superimposed image ghostly framing his features.
As my hand leaves the doorknob and the door clicks closed I realise I am a child again.
My small hands feel shaky and weak as I reach up and grasp the front doors handle, I pull it open and I am blasted by the scent of dry grass, and hot pavement, on an arid wind is strong with odor of chicken shit and upon smelling it I awake in my bed.I'm covered in sweat that smells like my ex lover, my throat is crackly and my mouth tastes like campfire.
