Fatima at 21

Fatima at 21

    Bewildered by life, I land in an asylum for those of a delicate nature. Our healing village is down by the levee in New Orleans. I am deep in Psyche hospital funk. Valerie and Shari walk by me wearing tight jeans with curves to die for. Valerie looks at me. “John, did you know Shari poses nude for artists in the French Quarter?” My eyes take a walk all over Shari’s femme form.  
    One afternoon Shari sits next to me on the couch. She is whittling on a stick. I speak and she listens. I get worked up and say “My massage therapist lady gave me unsolicited love pats.”
     Shari asks, “Did you enjoy them?”
      I am at a loss for words. She holds her carved stick up to my face. She asks, “Does this look like a human face to you?” I nod yes. Shari’s girlfriend Valerie walks up. Shari rises like Bathsheba from her bath. I sit quietly as a monk deep in prayer.  
     We are refugees ensconced in the seashell world of our village for the divinely touched. Then a girl walks into my life. She is a patient named Fatima who is a twenty-one-year-old Iraqi refugee.
     We couch sit close enough to feel each other’s body heat. She curls in fetal ache. “My ovaries are hurting like hell” she exclaims. She says her ovaries are hurting because of birth control pills. I want to reach out and hug her but hospital rules forbid physical contact between patients.
     We nestle like hungry birds in our autumn nest. We are inches apart. I feel her breath like a tropic breeze scented with bougainvillea tree. In the winter of my solitude, I cuddle her with eiderdown words.    
      Fatima says, “If you tell me your story of what got you in here I’ll tell you mine.”
     I say, “I was delusional so the doctor said.”
     She replies, “Stop right there. I don’t want to know the rest. I want to remember you as the boy with the hundred dollar words who befriended me in this hotel for those of a sensitive nature. That is why we’re here. We’re both overly sensitive.”
     “We’re a pair of travelers sharing a room at a hostel for poor but creative students.”  
     She rolls on the couch. “Thank you, John. I
needed to hear that because last night this place felt more like a madhouse. They took me to the quiet room,” she whispers. “The men pinned me against the wall. A female nurse ordered me to drop my panties. I was stunned. Therefore, she tugged my nightie up and yanked my panties down. Those males getting an eyeful of my nudist pose was mortifying. I felt the prick on my bottom as she injected me with Haldol. The nurse dressed me. Then the men released me.”
     “That breaks my heart. What utter humiliation and what necessitated such measures?” My question goes unanswered. Unashamed, her sun-flower smile beams blue sky love.
    “Straightjacket salesmen let you try it on for size in the privacy of your padded cell,” I say.
     “John, some people would call your way of talking crazy. But I consider you to be a poet whose speech spins me like a top until I come to rest in just the right place.”
     She hugs her knees. Her lipstick is a darker shade of midnight. She looks vulnerable as a winter sparrow. Her eyelashes flutter like dove’s wings. Her outward display of calm assurance belies deeper angst.
     One night she is on the couch next to me crying. I ask, “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
     In between sobs she says, “I feel so lonely. I need someone to talk to me.”
      “Dr. John is right here for you.”
     “We women have emotions which men don’t understand. But I must confess what is in my heart tonight. Just before my family escaped I had a puppy dog. I was too depressed to date men because of the stress of living in a war zone. But this puppy gave me love without needing me to talk. I kept him in a shoebox and fed him milk which he lapped from a bottle with eyes of love. Sadly dog food was a fading memory. Finally, the day came when my Mom took the bottle away from me. Tears came unbidden until I could cry no more. You see the babies needed the milk and we could no longer justify sharing it with my puppy. I watched him wither away until one night he howled. He’d always been a quiet canine until his last goodbye. I’ll try to be quiet now.”
     I ask, “Did he ever run and play?”
      Fatima replies, “Never, the milk I gave him was
barely enough to keep him alive.”
     I say, “He is waiting for you somewhere in a new body where food is abundant.”
     “I feel better now. I’ll try to be quiet and sleep.”
     One night I plant myself beside her as she lies on her stomach in her bed with ‘Under the Bridge’ by ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’ playing on her boombox. A wafer-thin fabric is all that conceals her bare bottom from the lick of fluorescence.  
     She looks up at me with her streetwise gaze and asks, “How does this song make you feel?”  
     I look into her abysmal eyes and say “Moved.”  
     Fatima counters, “The first time I heard this song I cried and cried. Being alone on the streets with the city as my only friend is a feeling I know all too well.” She is too young to be so old.  
     I counterpart, “Music can be a religious experience. One night I was listening to a woman singing a medieval song on the radio. It was probably in archaic Spanish. However, it sounded like she was saying, ‘Follow me to the end.’ At that moment I knew that if I ever fell in love it would be for life. No matter where my lover’s path took
her I would always love her.”  
     Fatima asks, “Is that how you feel about me?”
     A shepherd of our flock bursts in. “PC, PC, physical contact” he jokes.  
     Fatima looks up at him with her sleepy eyes. “But but me and John weren’t touching.”
     He decrees, “I know, but men and women aren’t allowed in the bedroom together.”
     Fatima wiles her way with the warden. “Richard you are the best. Can I kiss John one time?”
     He says, “You’re pushing it, Fatima.”
     Pleading for crumbs, Fatima says, “I know Richard, but you don’t know how much it hurts not to have a parting kiss with John. Please have mercy on me, just one.”
     Richard nods assent. Fatima swanks up to me. She plants a wet, sticky kiss on my fresh young lips.
     Fatima turns her back to me. She says, “Thanks,
Richard. I’ll behave myself. I’ll go to bed now, alone.” I watch Fatima pull the blanket over her as tears cloud the luster of her eyes.
     The next night Fatima’s girlfriend from the outside, Goldie, flamenco hip struts into the cafeteria.  
     I open with, “You know I must be crazy to be in here.”
     Fatima asks, “John, are you insinuating that I am nuts since we both bunk here?”    
     Goldie says, “I’ve never met saner people than you John and my Fatima. This place would be the perfect vacation and retreat spot for me. Folks like you all make for refreshing company. There is too much stodginess in this world.”
     Fatima replies “Goldie, you wouldn’t like it here. There is so little privacy. The decibel level must be kept low because the walls have ears. Any loud noise is suspect.”
     “On that note goodnight, enjoy each other sweethearts,” Goldie says.
     “John, I can hear the box springs on your bed squeak from the hallway. It sounds like a trampoline in need of grease.”
     “I toss and turn in my sleep,” I answer Fatima.
     “You’d sleep better with a bedmate,” she says.
     “Oh please. I’m going to join a monastic order once I’m discharged. Romance isn’t in my language and I’m not talking Latin tongues” I protest.
     Fatima says, “There is no monastery in your future. Everyone in this loony bin sees how you play the innocent while flirting with me. You aren’t fooling anyone. None of your fakeries will pass muster in the boot camp of love. Even Plato won’t save you from loneliness.”
     I rap back, “Sock it to me Sistah.”
     “Even hearts as cushioned as yours can be broken.”
     I say, “Men like me are lone wolves. We don’t run with the pack.”
     “You’re more like a lone teddy bear.”
     “Hey don’t knock my lupine kinship.”
     “Well then, howl at the moon by yourself if you must.”
     I exclaim “Are you, saying what I think you’re saying here?”
     Fatima replies, “I do it too. When I get all schizzy and crazy it is all I can do not to scream; living in a house with two brothers that would be embarrassing, though they no doubt got many surreptitious thrills from my night noises. Mom would have put me in this place long ago if she caught me red-handed.”
     “It is a birthday present you give yourself all year round. But let’s not give the eavesdroppers here more fodder for gossip.”
     “Please forgive me. Compulsory socialization doesn’t come naturally to me. The nights here are strange and it is all I can do to keep from punching out the windows of this dormitory for the divinely touched.”
     “I think it’s great to be dark, mad, and free. No disrespect intended.”
     “No disrespect perceived. That’s “dark, mad, ‘liberated’, and free” to you, bucko; a woman to be reckoned with, invincible in stiletto heels, feminist in spandex, a heretic in a world of pop icon worshippers, born-again Wiccan, Gnostic oatmeal
lover, not to mention my um... dark side,” she says.
     Once Fatima tells me, “If I fell in a pond or something, you wouldn’t come in and save me, would you?”  
     I reply, “Of course I would.”
     She insists, “No you wouldn’t.”
     What is to come will test the limits of our friendship. One dreary winter afternoon Fatima and I take a walk outside. She is quiet.  
     I ask her, “Are you ok, Fatima?”
     She says, “I feel like killing someone.”
     I ask, “Who?”
     She says, “Myself.”
     I reply, “Why? You are in America now. You’re safe.”
     Fatima says, “The wail of the lady inside took me back to a mother in my village whose scrawny child wouldn’t eat even when offered food.”
     I ask, “What did hunger do to you? Could you sleep at night?”
      Fatima replies, “Sleep was not a priority. I spent my evenings scrounging for food in the dumpsters. When starvation sets in even the tiniest morsel is a feast. I once competed with a cat over a tuna sandwich she was making quick work of.”
     I ask, “Who won the contest?”
     “Honey, my hiss is a dead ringer for a feline when that hungry. She’d met her match.”
     I say, “Here you aren’t famished. But do you ever miss the people you left behind?”
     Fatima replies, “Oh darling, don’t you know I do? In fact, they are on my mind night and day. But I don’t miss the dress code. We Yazidis women wore the hijab to blend in but I couldn’t wait to watch mine go up in flames.”    
     I say, “You followed in the footsteps of American women who burned their bras.”
     “Please don’t tell the staff. They would tell my family who wouldn’t understand,” Fatima replies.  
     I say, “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”  
     She pleads, “I promise, I won’t injure myself.”      
     That night I stop the administrator as he is leaving. The woman with him says, “He is tired. Can it wait?”  
     I say, “Fatima made a suicidal comment today.”  
     The next night at the Cafeteria, I tell Fatima, “I jumped in the pond for you.”
     “You mean you told Dave about my suicide comment,” she nonchalantly replies.
     We fly under the radar of the staff’s prying eyes for a last private meeting in her room. “What do you see when you look at me?”
     “I see my wife from a previous lifetime in Pompeii just before Vesuvius erupted, lying on our bed about to make love to me.”
     “Wherever your soul migrates let’s meet somewhere other than a place like this.”
     I say, “Remember, this hospital has a rule that upon discharge the patients are never to have contact with one another again.”
     She says, “God, all this farewell talk has me sweating bullets. I need a hot shower.”
     I listen to her sing in the shower but her mournful melody sounds like our swan song.  
    I break into her panty stash and fondle her surprisingly modest intimate apparel. Her songs end and like a shoplifter in a lingerie store, I stuff her sweet nothings into a bag in the closet.
     She emerges wrapped in a towel and digs through the dresser drawer. Her lips look like she just got a taste of lemon. “What did you do with my panties?”
     My sly smile is really a poker face. “Sweetie I only wanted a keepsake.”  
     She laughs as though she is blowing bubbles.  
     “The case of the purloined panties” she exclaims.  
     “I guess I have to give them back.”
     She sighs and smiles saying, “I should think so and please tell me what other of my intimate apparel you’ve got squirreled away.”
     “Only negligee memories of our naked love tucked away in my heart forever.” Fatima’s eyelashes flutter like black butterfly wings.  
     “Give me back my heart and you can keep all my lingerie.”
     “Of course my little chickadee, the pages will turn in due time.”
     Fatima looks quizzical. “You can tell me why they put you in here. I know you well enough that nothing you could say would sound creepy.”
     “I told my counselor about my memories of past lives. My reminiscing took me back to multiple lifetimes going back thousands of years and in exquisite intricacy.”
     Fatima’s mouth forms an O. “That is exactly what got me room and board at this motel. Now I wish I’d known your story from the beginning. You know it is no accident that we ended up together here. Here is my phone number and address. You give me yours. Hospital stipulations don’t overrule divine providence.”