So why am I measuring out these mornings with reference to the weather? Because we haven't had a break in cold--no January thaw--no "midwinter spring" being "its own season." But, really, I've always checked the temp. to see how cold or hot I should feel. But that's not the whole story, really. The whole story is my skin sensitivity to the slightest change in terms of heat, but not of cold. Now what is that about? I keep a cold house--or, rather, a cool house. Doug will often try to surreptitiously punch the thermostat up a degree--one degree, mind you, or not turn it all the way down to 58 or 60 for the night (we do have a down quilt, after all). But that change can send me straight out of a sound sleep into a pouring sweat and a real mental, physical discomfort, as if I'd suddenly been transported to a sauna against my will or as if I was a lizard left writhing in a heat that I couldn't escape, such as happened to my own lizard when I left him in the window sill and went away for the day--third grade.
That lizard was my pal, and I proudly wore him on a little piece of chain pinned to my blouse. Daddy bought him for me when we were at the circus. I loved it when I was "wearing" him and he would suddenly move and people would say, "Is that a real lizard?" And I would proudly nod. But he wasn't just a showcase. He was my pal, as I've said, and I took careful care of him--giving him his lizard food and water--and placing him in the window, between the screen and the window, then shutting the window, so he could have his "freedom. I had all sorts of twigs and leaves in that window for him.
But the one time I was gone all day and the only time I'd left him there all day--I didn't know about the sun shifting--and lizards of course are cold-blooded and need sun, but they themselves seek the shade in the desert, and this one had not shade to seek.
I am often, more times than not, very hard on my mother. Neglectful. Should not have had children. Vain. Male-identified. So here's what that "terrible" mother did:
When I came in the house, she met me at the door to say that the lizard was dead. she was near tears herself. And then she told me that she had done everything she could to revive him. She had taken into the bathroom sink, and bathed him softly with cool water. But that did not work. I can still picture my mother there, in the bathroom, her curly auburn hair with sweat ringlets--this was, after all Corpus Christi in the summer and air conditioning only a far-off dream--her bee's kiss lips a bright red, her flawless skin, trying to revive my little lizard, heartbroken that she couldn't.
Sobbing and gulping, I told her that "the first person I want to see when I get to heaven is my lizard." (No question in my own mind that I would be going to heaven--no question about the lizard either), but my so-called terrible mother nodded in sympathy. That not being her theology, she nodded anyway.
It was a grand funeral. pink satin in a jewel box, tiny white flowers, singing and making the sign of the cross we buried him under the Kumquat tree. And dug him up the next day to see if he was a skeleton yet.
We have long left the cafe, where Niko and I began talking as the woman behind her slumped over in her chair sound asleep, no doubt, with the aid of drug. Bright red strands of hair over darker ones, a red hat on, she slumped over as her friends, finished with their game of checkers, left. When she woke up, alone, she got up and put on hat and gloves, walked outside, sat down on a park bench, slumped over, and fell sound asleep again in the warm sunlight on a cold day, as shoppers and hikers passed by with their paper coffee cups, wide awake.
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