03 - 03 The Empress

“Hey kiddo, you need some help with that?” I’m lifting a long fold up table on my own. Lifting it off the ground means it sits against my lower side but with how short I am, it goes up to my ribs. I carry it sideways, so I can walk around without it hitting my legs.

“No, I got it!” I say enthusiastically and it’s true. It’s pretty heavy but I can handle it. I’ve done this hundreds, well, maybe not hundreds, of times but I’ve done this a lot. We help set up tables here all the time. Me and my big sister. She’s not really my big sister. I wasn’t lucky enough to be born as her little brother but that’s what I call her. And she calls me her little brother. I was ecstatic the first time she introduced me as her little brother to someone.

I felt so incredibly privileged, so incredibly honored, so moved this strong, powerful woman considered me her brother. It wasn’t just that. It was that someone so capable of love called me her brother. More than that, she was willing to tell others I was her brother. It felt different than the obligatory introductions my parents did. Yes, this is my son. Yes, he’s in junior high. Yes, he’s a good boy. The words feel hollow, empty. They feel practiced and rehearsed.

But when she did it, it was different. It wasn’t that she said it with a moving amount of pride. I didn’t hear a gushing of love pour out of her. It was something else. Something much simpler. It was the knowledge of the choice she was making. I could hear it in her voice. It wasn’t a mundane blood connection she was talking about; it was the choice she was making to be my sister. It wasn’t something as accidental as blood which she used to bind us together. It was something much stronger. It was her choice.

As I set the tables up, she places chairs around the tables. It doesn’t take us long to set everything up. We’ve done it so many times we fall quickly and easily into a pattern. Once we’re done, we take a seat and wait for everyone else to arrive. She has a cup of coffee beside her and I have a can of pop. She sits across from me, rifles through her bag for a second before producing a familiar deck of cards.

“Wanna play speed?” She asks, already shuffling the cards. I nod eagerly. We’ve always used cards to pass the time. She taught me all kinds of games, but she knows speed is the one I like the best. We play as we talk.

“How’s school?” She asks me as she beats me to a card.

“Boring mostly.” I tell her. “I taught my friends how to play this game!”

“Really? Are they as bad as you?” She grins, beating me to three cards. I just barely manage to stop her on the fourth.

“I’m not thaaaat bad.” I groan knowing I’ve just proven otherwise.

“Uh-huh. Okay.” She nods her head, but her eyes are still fixed on the cards. Still looking for what she can play on. For what she can beat me too.

“They are worse than me.” I smile. It’s fun beating them over and over. I wonder if she feels the same way playing against me. It doesn’t matter. Even though I hate losing, I don’t mind losing to her.

We play a few more hands. When my deck gets too big, we trade decks to keep the game going.

“Any interesting girls?” She says eventually after beating me in a round. She has time to look up at me between the rounds and she catches me grimace. She probably planned it all along. “Oh?” She grins. “There is one!” She says excitedly. She’s right. I’ve been wanting to bring her here, but I’ve been too afraid to ask her.

“I don’t think she likes me.” I mumble while I set up my side of the field.

“What makes you say that?” I love she doesn’t say how amazing I am, and how any girl would be lucky to be with me. I don’t need to be patronized like that.

“Just the way she talks to me.”

“But you two are talking.”

“Only a little.” She smiles at me. A kind, gentle smile. Even though I couldn’t see it when I was looking down, mumbling to my cards, I can feel it and it makes me look up at her. At that smile. One with no expectations or disapprovals. I don’t feel hurt or guarded against it. It just feels welcoming.

“Well, I hope I get to meet her someday.” She says.

This is one of the hardest movie reels to watch. All throughout the movie, black spots blot out images. Sound cuts in and out. I’m not even sure the pieces of the piece I put together are the whole picture. Are the right picture. It feels right. It feels like I understood but I could be wrong.

“And why, pray tell, does an older sister appear alongside the empress?” The Fool asks. She looks to the darkness, tapping her finger on her chin. The question is for my benefit I know. The Fool already knows everything.

“What makes you question that?” I ask, still holding the movie reel in my hands. Still watching. I want to make sure. I need to make sure I’m seeing the right picture. That I’m putting the right pieces together.

“Well, the empress is a mother. Not a sister.” She explains, shrugging her shoulders and gesturing with her hands as she speaks. I wonder if that’s how she sees herself.

“This woman is a mother to him. They might call each other sister and brother but just look at how she cares for him. Look at how she treats him. What she teaches him. Look at how he feels about her. She is his mother.” I explain.

“You see that? In this story?” He asks me. Even though he’s questioning me, doubting me, I’m certain of it. I know it.

“Yes. I see a boy’s love for his mother. I see a woman’s love for her child. In this boring, mundane exchange, I see it. I see a boy welcomed by his mother to talk with her not for judgement or to learn or to pry, but simply to talk. In a mother, I see a welcoming embrace not to lecture or direct, but to nurture. I see a mother and a son.”

“Interesting.” She grins wide at me, the toothy Cheshire grin. He leans forward, his face next to mine but I’m still staring intently at the reel. Still watching the movie even as it begins to change. “Or is that merely what you want in a mother-son relationship?”

I got back to work with two bowls of ice cream in hand. Work is always busy. Always. No matter what day it is, there’s always more to do. Luckily for us, yesterday, we had the best possible team working. We powered through our work like there was no tomorrow. The synergy between each team member and the team was perfect. We understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses and subconsciously accounted for them. By the end of the day, we knew tomorrow, we’d be done all the remaining work by midday.

And we were. So, to celebrate the occasion, my co-worker and I decided to get something I hadn’t had in nearly a decade: ice cream.

“I can’t believe you haven’t had ice cream in over a decade.” She smirks at me. I can hear the disbelief in her voice mixed with a tincture of teasing. “It’s another thing you don’t like, isn’t it?”

“No!” I say defensively. “I just don’t like it that much.” There’s genuine humor and joy in my voice despite her teasing.

“Who doesn’t like ice cream?” She says at me sneering. If anyone else spoke to me this way, I might have been offended. But I know she’s just joking. Always joking with me. Always teasing me. I can’t get enough of it.

“I do like it! Just not that much.” I say, scooping a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth to drive the point home. I nod my head as the ice cream melts in my mouth.

“Oookay.” She says, still wearing that mischievous smile. For a while, everything is easy as we eat our ice cream and joke back and forth. She teases me mercilessly, but I enjoy every moment of it. No matter how deep she jabs, I feel safe. I feel comfortable.

“So, when are you going to go back and finish your degree?” She suddenly asks. She still sounds like she’s joking. She still has that playful tone in her voice, but the mood has changed.

“I just started here a few months ago and you’re already trying to get rid of me?” I try to joke but she counters masterfully.

“Yeah.” She says it like it’s the most obvious truth in the world. And even though she literally said she’s trying to get rid of me, I don’t feel unwelcome. “I don’t want you to be a lifer like me.” She says. The playful tone is still filling her voice. She doesn’t say it like she’s looking down on herself. She just says it like everything else: as if it’s the most obvious fact in the world and I’m silly, not dumb, silly, for not knowing it.

I try to think of what to say but the words won’t come to me. Sadly, I’m not that brilliant. And I also know what she means. This is a dead-end job. It pays the bills but it’s not the type of thing you’d be proud to say you do. It’s a job, not a career. She wants more for me. Once upon a time, I wanted more for me. Now, I don’t know what I want.

“So?” She asks again. “When are you going back to finish your degree?”

“I don’t know.” I answer honestly. “It’s the middle of the school year so I couldn’t go back now even if I wanted to. And I still don’t know if it’s what I really want to do.” I spent four years in the program and in my last semester, I withdrew. I didn’t know if it was what I wanted to do anymore so I decided to venture onto another path. I always had a direction in my life; my compass always pointed me forward. Until then. Until I decided to step off the path. It led me here. To a job with her.

“You should have just finished your degree!” She shakes her head at me but she’s still smiling. She finds me amusing and it makes me smile too. Her smile isn’t exhausted or exasperated, it’s gentle. Inviting. When my mom said it, it made me furious. Her smile looked ready to give up. She was tired of me. Not of her son, but of me. She didn’t understand I needed to take a step back. She didn’t understand I needed to find out why my compass pointed in that direction. I didn’t even tell her until it was too late to take it back because I knew if I didn’t, she’d march me right back in until I was right back on the path. But hearing it from her now, it felt welcoming. It felt like a decision I had made. It felt like a discussion about who I was.

I don’t regret my decision. It was the right one at the time. But sometimes, I can’t help but wonder how things would have been different. If I had stayed, I would be starting my career now. Maybe I’d be meeting my future wife right about now. But sitting here, across from her, it reminds me I learned important lessons by stepping away. Even if one day, I find myself back on that same path.

“But then I wouldn’t have got to meet you!” There’s sincerity in my words. I’ve only known her a few months but those few months have been some of the best in my life. I can feel my life changing, I can feel myself changing just being around her. And it’s not just her. It’s this life, this path, I never even dreamed of before I stepped onto it. They’re bringing color back into a life where every step was once tedious and boring. Where every step was scripted to a direction I gradually lost sight of.

“Pffff.” She waves me off with a spoonful of ice cream. “If you’d gotten your degree, you’d already have a real job by now and you wouldn’t have needed to meet me.” She’s wrong. So incredibly wrong.

“But then who knows how long it would have been until I ate ice cream again?!” I finally manage to catch her off guard. There’s a comical moment of shock where she tries to suppress her laughter with ice cream in her mouth. She swallows. Then bursts out laughing. Her laughter makes me laugh and all we do is laugh together. It feels like we’re laughing for a good few minutes before we finally stop.

“Well played! Well played!”

“Is that the mommy of their daughter?” The Fool asks. She knows it’s not but she asks anyways. She wants me to answer. To elaborate. To prove what I know.

“No.” I answer firmly. “She’s just another mother to him.” The story in the hourglass starts playing again, the sand reversed and falling up into the top. I watch him bring in the ice cream. Listen to their conversation replaying.

“What about his real mommy then.” He asks impatiently, shaking his head. It takes me a second to put the pieces together. To realize why the real mommy hasn’t shown herself yet. And then it hits me.

“Because it isn’t his real mommy that nourished him.” She grins at me. That wide, toothy, Cheshire grin. I don’t need him to ask before I start explaining. Not that I need to anyways, he can just read my mind. “These two, maybe more, are the women who nourished him and helped him grow. They’re the ones he loves and the ones who love him in return.”

“This woman.” I point to the mirror holding the story. “She’s the reason he starts laughing. The reason he becomes mischievous. She loves him even knowing he’s wasting his potential. She pushes for him to find his way back, but she accepts him all the same. She gives him what he needs.”

“And what does this fool of a man need? This lost boy who leaves his education at its final steps?” She asks, a childish pout on her face.

“He needs someone to accept his choice. She questions him. She wants more for him. But she still accepts him.” I smile, letting the piece go. It doesn’t fall and smash against the ground. It floats back up into the air, into the darkness. It leaves behind a new string, waiting to be pulled. Waiting to be relived.

“I believe this.” The Fool places the new movie reel into my hand. “Should be next.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.” I murmur. She places her hand on my shoulder. And another on her belly.

“It’s a little late to say that now.” She smiles mischievously at me. I smile and laugh despite myself. Despite the situation I find myself in. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This wasn’t supposed to happen until later. I don’t think I’m ready for this.

“You’re not wrong about that.” I grin. I place my hand tentatively on her stomach. Even though my baby’s inside her, I’m still not used to touching someone. I don’t feel anything. Not yet. It’s still too early for that. She places her hand on my chin and makes me look her in the eyes. I see the warmth in them, the love. There’s no concern in them. There’s trust. Goddamn I love this woman.

“Tell me what’s on your mind.” She says to me. Simple and sweet. I grin my mischievous grin.

“As if you don’t already know.”

“True.” She smiles back. She’s not mischievous the way I am. She’s learned a little from me, but it isn’t in her the way it’s in me. She’s gentle. Kind. Soft. “Tell me anyways.” Because you need to say it. I hear her say even though she doesn’t. The mischievous smile on my lips drops away. There’s fear in me. A fear only she knows. A fear she knows I need to say out loud.

“I’m afraid I’ll screw up. Afraid she won’t love me. I’m—”

“No, you’re not.” She says firmly. But the hand on my shoulder is gentle. So is the smile on her face. She wants the truth I can’t speak. The truth she only knows whispered behind vague words. A truth she only knows because she ripped it from my chest when I first began falling for her. “What are you really afraid of?” She asks me again.

My body starts to tremble as the words form in my mind. I can hear myself saying them. I can imagine my lips moving. But they don’t. They hold onto the fear for dear life. As if by speaking them, I summon the very thing I’m afraid of.

She takes my hand and places it on her stomach. Tilts my tearing eyes to look into hers. Nods at me, then lets me look back at her belly. There isn’t even a bump yet. I don’t feel our baby, but I know it’s there. I know she’s there. I manage to open my mouth.

“I’m afraid to love her. I’m afraid my broken pieces will hurt her.” I whisper to her. I never even said those words to the woman sitting across from me. She knows it. Knows I’m afraid to love even her but she stands beside me all the same. She drags the love, centimeter by centimeter from my chest, until I can’t stop it from coming forth.

I pull her in. Pull them both in and hug them tight.

“I’ll do better.” I promise. “I’ll love her, love you with everything I have. I’m sorry it took so long. I love you. Love you both so much. Thank you. Thank you for being so patient with me.” By the time I’m done, my tears are starting to spill out onto her shirt. She hugs me tighter, squeezes the tears from my body.

“And we’ll love you. Let’s make this a family we’re all proud of.” I can feel her tears starting to wet my shirt. I don’t know how long we sit there for, just embracing one another as our emotions spill out.

I smile. A warm, refreshing smile. I’m glad to see him again. I’m glad to see him happy.

“You call this happy?”

“Yes. I do.” I’m still smiling. Still watching the scene play over and over. It might not be as warming as the first stories but it’s warming all the same. “It’s a beginning.” I tell the fool.

“And not the Magician. Or even the Wheel of Fortune!” He says, sighing disappointedly. It sounds like he was expecting this to play out differently. As if the stories are out of the order he intended.

“It’s a beginning for him but it’s a story for the empress because of her.” She appears in the reel again. She radiates a different kind of warmth then she did in the previous reels. Before, she had the warmth of a mother with a daughter. She was filled with love and that love radiated her warmth. It was the love of a full family. The warmth she showed now was because of him.

“And not the Lovers then? Out of order no matter how you spin it.” She shakes her head. Her eyes dart to the darkness.

“Because she, a mother, inspires him to love. The empress is about the capacity for one to love. It’s not just about the mother. But here.” The movie reel plays the exact moment I need it to when she asks.

What are you really afraid of?

“She forces him to confront his fear to love them.” Then it hits me. Like a shattered piece of glass digging into my chest. “This is why you showed us the Wheel of Fortune first.”

The Fool smiles. For once, despite the knowledge behind it, it isn’t the wide, toothy smile of the Cheshire cat, it’s the smile of a sage. Glad her student has reached an answer.

“Indeed, it is. Because—”

“His family made him afraid to love. Because something inside him died when he swallowed those pieces of graphite. Because something inside him grew when he understood his first family. And something inside him changed when he trusted in another.”

“Because even though he allowed himself to feel again as time passed.”

“Even though he allowed himself to care as time passed.”

“It would take meeting her and having a daughter that he would let himself love again.”