"Oh don't be ridiculous! You're always prone to aching!" She was on the opposite end of the bench for the sole reason that she hated peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
"No, truly... it's been once. Every time I think of it, it comes again but I attribute it to nostalgia. I don't count that as another time," she said finishing off the last bite of P,B &J and wiping a sliver of brown peanut butter off of her upper lip, now cracking as her glove swiped across the open skin.
"Miriam, all you do all day is sit in that museum and ache, if you ask me. What do you do in there anyway?" Her New York accent was thick. The thought crossed her mind to lend Miriam her chap-stick, but disgust prevented her as she thought of getting it back with slight smears of peanut butter and bread crumbs decorating the edges of the soothing peppermint wax. "That's what I'm always like," she thought, "flat out selfish... paralyzed!... can't even reach into my purse and grab my...."
"I watch." Miriam now turned her head to look into her eyes across the bench, yet sunglasses prevented this. Miriam's eyes slightly opened with their piercing crystal blue gaze, as if trying to pierce through the darkness of the sunglasses. Her stringy hair looked as if it was depressed from not being able to keep her head warm as it fell strait against her skull, ears, then barely... lightly touched her shoulders. She knew she was not ugly and had been fairly pretty all her 26 years of life, but she was now dying, and on this grey-blue November day her eyes seemed to stick out of the stillness of the newly leafless trees, abandoned sidewalks, and thin, frosty air. They seemed to be the only thing alive, being alien to this world - two spheres of unknown origin, freshly arrived from the heavens. Just one glance at them reveals that they have seen many mysterious things and are wise with what astronomers only dream of, yet are infants in the environment of earth. Even to her body they seemed alien, and now their slight bulge and fixation upon her friend across the bench gave the entire park a silent life, alien to its background.
After a long pause, Miriam's friend snatched up her black leather purse beside her on the bench, quickly stood as though leaving and irritably tightening her purple flowery scarf that wrapped over her head, turned to Miriam with a sudden grinding of her shoes on the cold concrete and said, "What do you see?!"
Miriam looked down to her fading tennis shoes and rubbing them together spoke softly, "I saw a painting today of a woman with sunglasses and a head covering. It was one of those women from the 20's and she had a suitcase with papers flying out of it as she was trying to hold onto the leash of her little dog. She had on high heals. She was beautiful, like you, but I know you never wear high heals. But her sunglasses and scarf reminded me of you. It was wrapped around her beautiful hair. And she was trying to hold so much, it was all falling apart." Miriam's lips curled into a smile. "And her little dog barking at... well at who knows?" Looking half way up into her friends white, powdered face, staring into the leaf-covered grass she said with a slight giggle, "I love the cute little dogs that make you drop everything."
"So that's what you see all day, cute little dogs?! And what? I bet now you're goin to say how I'm that lady and how Joshua was that 'cute little dog,'" she threw her hands in the air with two fingers bending twice, "and how he made me drop everything just like that lady. I know who you are Miriam. Don't try to let me think that you see everything from one cheap-ass painting you saw in a museum because I wear a scarf like her! Tons of women wear scarves! What's your deal with scarves, anyways?!"
Miriam was looking down at her tennis shoes again, now bending them on the side, studying the fading purple stripe, "Maggy, if I'm a blade of grass, no a flower of the field, then so was Josh. But the woman... the leash was so tight, she wanted him so near and it's what made her lose everything when he was called somewhere else. But... but even when everything was in a mess, she held her scarf onto her head, so tight, so beautiful. But isn't the glory of a woman her hair, even if it is messed up?"
Rage began filling Maggy yet by the time it reached her eyes, it came out as tears, "It's Magdalena! You call me Magdalena! Only Joshy called me Maggy! You call me Magdalena! And if you ever giggle again over the death of my Joshua, I'll... I'll...!" She became overwhelmed with weeping as she began to run away down the empty concrete sidewalk. Down a short hill, falling into a valley the path curved into a long, natural tunnel of trees, their leaf-less branches reached over the path like human arms grasping the end of the adjacent fingers. As tears and wind flew through her ears she approached the tunnel full speed, flying down the hill. She did not notice the trees' erie gaze as the tunnel engulfed her.
Grey November was even darker here, and she lost her balance from the weight that seemed to press down upon her shoulders and fling her to the ground. Her scraped, bloodied hands now shaking felt for her scarf that had fallen off her head and was sagging behind her neck. The weight and the shaking prevented her from being able to find enough of the scarf to tighten it back upon her head, and she began to crawl towards the end of the trees to the busy street of New York, yellow taxis and woman just like her, walking their dogs. Miriam's eyes kept beaming in her mind and all she could see was her staring through silence, giggling, laughing at the end of the bench.
Finally she reached the street and crawling on all fours with mask-era running down her cheeks, she fell on the sidewalk, face into the concrete as her sunglasses bounced off. With her scarf now completely stripped away, fallen on the side of the path, her hair was long, flowing down to her waist. Her eyes, glistening with tears were as blue as Miriams'. Her make-up now running off her face revealed Miriam's cheek bones and even chapped lips.
There was now no rage. Peace filled her as she lay face down upon the sidewalk, her hair sprawled out upon her back and upon the sidewalk. She even smiled now as she thought of Miriam's peanut butter and jelly. She almost wanted one.
She did not mind the strange looks of passer-byes. She let her blood and tears run upon the grey concrete. No one stopped. Embarrassment and shame filled every heart that passed her. She felt it but did not mind now. Dogs on leashes sniffed her... the owners yanked and kept going.
As she lay there filled with peace that she did not understand and joy in the presence of men, she felt a hand softly stroke her long hair and until she died she never forgot the voice she heard that day - a sooting voice amidst the embarrassment and shame of all,
"Maggy." She knew it was the voice of her Joshua.
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