Work by Mayuree Rao

Untitled Ode

the mellifluous petals
of the scampering rose of love
are gratingly pure.
like a toothbrush,
they have seen the fiery, hideous parts of me
and are indeed responsible
for picking out my peanut buttery flaws
and when I press too hard,
they make my gums bleed
but I still brush my teeth everyday
and I wish I had a rose right about now

Untitled

The number of steps from the doorway of my small red-brick house to my car is 56. Some days, the steps are fewer, and some days the steps are more, but most of the time 56 strides take me from my home to my car. Today, it was 56, a good start for the day. I climbed into my gray Volvo and set out on the familiar path to Jack and his mother's house.

Jack was my son, and this was the single strangest fact of my life. Jack was a product of a surreal life moment, a moment in which for an hour, I stopped counting my steps, and I didn't memorize the pattern of the walls of the room. It was a singular experience, and I preferred it that way. As for Jack, I have carried out my duties as a father for the past twelve years of his life. I don't hate him, but his presence does not arouse in me the passion I see in other parents. Jack was a mistake, and I am indifferent about my mistakes.

The needle of the speedometer steadily hovered at 25, and I made my first right turn exactly 4 minutes after I pulled out of my driveway. The left turn onto the highway came exactly 8 minutes later. My precision was excellent today, and this fact soothed me in preparation for Jack.

Jack is imprecise. He is a twelve-year-old boy with random thoughts and scattered actions. He has unruly blonde hair, and his vacant green eyes are discomforting. His scrawny being is always lost in giant tee shirts, and he wears his pants so as to expose the boxers underneath. Some days, his mother is successful in putting a belt on him, but most days he doesn't bother to look neat for me. When we are together, any meaningful interaction is lost in the space between us. I ask the same questions, and he gives me the same answers. Our time together largely consists of silence. It is a silence marked by apathy and by an understanding of the duties he has as a twelve-year-old boy and the duties I have as a 38-year-old man. I don't enjoy his company, and he doesn't enjoy mine, but I am his father, and he is my son. However vaguely this fact means something to us, it is enough for a mutual toleration.

As the interstate turned into a winding road, I noted the familiar pattern of the bricks on the houses of the neighborhood. I passed the 24th block since my home as Jack and his mother's house approached.
I met Jack's mother in an art museum. I used to visit the museum on the corner of 12th avenue and 8th street often. I can remember the first time I set eyes on it; the particular way in which the pavement in front of the museum was constructed had fascinated me. 6 sidewalk stones on the left and 6sidewalk stones on the right met perfectly in the center of the large, square building. Eight windows sat in a row on the face of the structure, and 305 strict, red bricks lined the each wall. The exactness of this museum is what first compelled me to enter it, for it certainly wasn't the art. I don't enjoy art; art is vague and phony. The indistinct manner in which colors come together to form what is supposed to be moving has always repulsed me. I entered that very museum every day for one year at my own risk.

While in the museum, I would only look at one painting. It was a piece by an unknown artist, and it consisted of straight blue and black lines traveling across the canvas; 4 blue bars and 3 black bars, each bar 2 inches wide and 3 feet long. The blue and the black connected precisely without a blur in between. I didn't see the painting as art. It was calculated and intelligent, unlike most of the scratched pieces the museum held. I would sit on the bench in front of the painting for one hour every day and simply stare into the bars of the painting.

One day, when I entered the museum, a woman was seated in the bench that I always occupied. As I stood in the doorway of the museum, I could not help but notice the squalor of the woman on my bench. Her slick hair was matted, and her face was hidden beneath a layer of grime that coated her skin. Her eyes were large and dull, and her body was entirely clothed in an enormous ratty, brown coat. Her arms and legs were not proportionate to her body, and they hung limply from her sides as if she never used them. There was a sour stench about her that even I could sense from the doorway. I left the museum immediately, irritated by the theft of my painting by a dirty woman.

Unfortunately, she made a habit of coming to the museum at the same time I did. For weeks, I simply sat in the museum far away and watched the dirty woman look at my painting. She would sit and stare at the piece for hours, and I slowly drove myself mad waiting for the day when she would decide she'd had enough. While I was fascinated by the fact that someone may appreciate the painting as much as I did, I was angry at the disappearance of my one release in life. I had grown too fond of the painting; I had let a simple object arouse a dangerous amount of emotion in me. I know that now.

Eventually, of course, on no particular or special day, I confronted the dirty woman. I still remember slowly walking up behind her as her reek grew stronger and stronger. I had no intentions of saying anything to her, but her first move made that impossible. Upon seeing me, she smiled plainly and said, "I don't like this piece." This was the first time in my life that someone had truly baffled me. I didn't respond to her, but she didn't seem to care. She rattled off inconceivable reasons for her view, and my anger and fascination melted into each other until I was no longer in control of anything inside of me. The dirty woman talked to me for hours about art, and I simply sat beside her and listened. After some time, I was no longer even comprehending her words. I only heard sounds, produced by strange configurations of the mouth. The meaning of her sentences became completely foreign to me.

The following hours were a blur. We left the museum, and I drove us both to her house. From that point on, I don't know what happened, other than having a vague memory of being outside of myself. It was an experience in which the line between hellish and magnificent blurred, and my power vanished.

I remember the morning well. As I got up to leave, the dirty woman asked me where I was going. My initial disgust with her seeped up to my throat.

"You stole my painting," I said.

Nine months later I saw the dirty woman again, and nine months later, I had a son.

As I walked up to Jack's house, I got ready to take the 78 steps to the middle of the street where we usually met, and then stopped. I would let him come to me today. I saw him exit the house and start walking towards me from across the street. I stood on the grass and watched him walk. 1 step… 2 steps… 3 steps…As he walked towards me, I suddenly noticed how old he looked. The years had aged him, and I hadn't noticed until now. 15 steps…16 steps…17 steps…I watched him walk, and it occurred to me that although to me, he was just a mistake, he was a host of other things to so many people; his mother, at least, loved him very much. 56 steps…57 steps…I had never imagined before that one of my mistakes would be manifested in a twelve-year-old boy. This thought unsettled me, and my eyes shifted up from Jack's feet to his upper body. 71 steps…72 steps…I had actually created a life by making a mistake. This boy was forever intertwined with my past and my present, and no matter how much I would like to deny it, he was no ordinary mistake. This thought instantly weakened my senses; so much so that I didn't even hear the scream when the car turned out of nowhere and smashed his small body; I didn't see the tears of his mother as she came running out of the house; I didn't smell the metallic stench of the blood; I didn't hear the sirens of the ambulance that came around the corner, and I didn't even hear the paramedic announce him dead on the spot. The only thing I saw was the blood dripping down his blue and black striped shirt, and the only two thoughts I had were that Jack took his 78th step as he died, and that he was the most beautiful mistake I had ever made.