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By Root 406 0

I went to see a therapist. The vacant-eyed woman with long black hair sat in her leather armchair and listened to my weekly monologues for nearly three months, then told me I couldn’t trust anyone or anything because I’d never been able to heal from my parents’ sudden death. Surely the sense of abandonment I felt after my favorite professor’s suicide stung so deep because it opened old wounds: the four-year-old waiting at the window of her babysitter’s apartment for the mother and father who promised not to be gone long, mint chip ice cream long since licked from plastic bowls and all the songs that babysitter knew sung and sung twice. I waited.

“You never had a chance to process that loss,” the therapist told me. I don’t even remember her name. She wore long brown skirts and button-up blouses, sat with rough hands folded in her lap. “I think it’s quite interesting that your parents are buried right here in Santa Cruz, and yet you say you haven’t been to visit their graves since your grandmother died.”

Whatever. I’d processed that loss. Crying with my Nana in her golden armchair “What kind of God?” and “What kind of God?” until all the tears in this world were cried and my hunger welled up like an empty cave, the aching reminder that I was alive. Never had a chance to process it? I’d processed it, all right. I’d wept it, watered my grief, nurtured abandonment, dried it all off, prayed it undone, bled it out. No, this restless disquiet was something else.

Barbaro sleeps under the polyester bedspread, his back curled to me like the wall of a cave. I’m wearing a red silk camisole I stole from Magdelena, can only wear it nights when she’s not around. I snuggle into Barbaro’s warm skin. Maybe his dumb trust can lull me into sleep.

The Seven Sleepers

(IF YOU NEED REST)

A.K.A. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus

FEAST DAY: July 27

SYMBOL: a dog

There were seven of them on trial that day in Ephesus. The charge: banned faith. Third-century Turkey and it was still a Pagan’s world. The emperor Decius had come to town on his high horse, imposing his persecutory decrees against Christians. The men hid in their homes, fasting and praying, but they were quickly discovered.

The emperor offered a plea bargain. “Renounce your wacky beliefs and live, or persist in them and die.”

The young men weren’t given long to decide, but their choice was easy. They believed.

The hammer of justice. The death penalty. No opportunity for appeal. They had twenty-four hours.

They gave their money and property to the poor, kept only a few coins. With their loyal dog, they retreated to a cave on the rocky northern slopes of a nearby mountain to savor a last meal together and prepare to meet the maker they believed in so wholeheartedly. They ate their eggplant and pilaf, said a final prayer together, fell asleep on the dirt floor of their unhidden mountain refuge.

In the morning, the soldiers marched up the rugged face of the mountain with a mission, but when they found the seven sleeping, they decided not to waste the crucifixion nails. They just walled up the cave. Sentence carried out, faith contained. The seven slept, their loyal dog keeping guard like an angel just outside.

A Christian came by and wrote the martyrs’ story on the outside of the cave. Years passed. Times changed. Two hundred—maybe three hundred years. The whole area had gone Christian, but the doctrine of bodily resurrection was a matter of hot debate.

Back on the mountain, a new landowner figured he’d take a pickax to that old wall, use the cave for his cattle. His masons started hacking away, but all the ruckus woke up the sleepy faithful. They rubbed their eyes, quickly hid in the depths of the cave, waited until the workers had gone.

Thinking it had only been a night, they were surprised how hungry they felt. Diomedes volunteered to go into town to pick up some breakfast. Maybe the soldiers were running late?

Ephesus appeared like a dream. Familiar, but built up in new places, crumbling where it had been new. Pastures he could have sworn were vacant had become libraries