Alive Tonight

By

 Sandra Little

i am ten years old. i am ten years old. i am ten years old.

iamtenyearsoldiamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsold.

i am ten years old.

i am a lover.

i am a poet.

i am someone’s daughter.

i am Alive.

i am Alive. i am Alive. i am Alive. i am Alive. i am Alive. i am Alive. i am Alive.

It’s on my Certificate of Live Birth. Alive.

You should hear them. People think it’s so cool to be called that. Alive.

Your mom must have been really glad when you were born.

No, i would say, but it’s never really a question.

Was it a difficult birth?

Like i remember, but yes, it was. Very hard.

She didn’t want to name me. Didn’t want to get attached. Never got attached. But no one understands.

It’s still so cool. Sorta hippie-ish.

No, it’s not, i think.

Alive Tonight.

Alive Tonight Stevens.

Should have been dead a long time ago.

But i’m not.

i am still Alive.

i am someone’s daughter.

i am someone’s daughter. i am someone’s daughter. i am someone’s daughter.

i am a poet. i am a poet. i am a poet. i am a poet. i am a poet. i am a poet.

It’s the same way every weekend at my house. No one wants to be there. We all wish that one of us would leave.

My mother hates me. i don’t blame her. She wishes that i would leave.

My father hates her. i don’t blame him, either. He wishes that she would leave.

i love them both. Just enough to wish that they got along. Not enough to wish that either of them would stay.

But you don’t care, and that’s just fine.

i’ll just set the mood and move on.

Broken chairs           pictures strewn         across           the               floor

          food scorching on      the     stove            table ½ set

flipping through         the channels           TV up           too     loud    not quite        drowning        out          background noise        of        maddened

lovers                 playing                         deadly           games.

Yes, a typical, atypical weekend in the house of the Girl-Who-Should-Be-Dead, as my mother calls me. Endearingly, of course. She would never say anything that would scar me for life, such as “If you” (meaning my father), “had never knocked me up, that little Girl-Who-Should-Be-Dead” (meaning me), “would not be here causing me so much-” and on and on.

No, my mother would never say anything like that.

But enough about being someone’s daughter. Enough poetry. We really should move on.

i am a lover. i am a lover. i am a lover. i am a lover. i am a lover. i am a lover.

          His name is Ryan. He is not tall, not thin, not athletic. He is Native American and very proud of it. He is the only reason why i am still in school. He believes in me. He and i are a lot a like. Ryan listens to my dreams, when i want to tell them to him. He says i should dream more. i tell him i dream constantly. He wants to know what i dream about.

i am ten years old, is all i tell him.

He smiles.

“I, too, am ten years old,” he replies.

i am ten years old. i am ten years old. i am ten years old. i am ten years old.

          We are not ten years old.

More like fifteen and sixteen. But, to me, ten is perfect.  It’s all about fairy tales and rainbows with pots of gold at the end and pink and God and innocence and the firm belief that there is good in everyone. It’s about wishing on stars and hiding teeth under pillows and sleepovers. It’s about passing yes-or-no love notes and best friends forever and Dad-I-want-a-pony-for-Christmas and dreams that really might come true. It’s before becoming a teenager is “cool” and algebra and sexual education and before getting abused by someone is inevitable.

It is before growing up becomes a fact of life.

It is before reality comes into play.

It is before Identity means anything other than Alive Tonight Stevens or a ten-year-old girl.

It is when i know who I am.

It is about being content with I and accepting I and I being Me and Me being Alive Tonight Stevens and Alive Tonight Stevens being my Identity.

It is about the utter lack of confusion and the unadulterated simplicity of life before age thirteen.

It is about holding on to some childish belief that there is still magic in this world.

It is a heartfelt wish.

No, a mantra: i am ten years old.  i am ten years old.  i am ten years old.

iamtenyearsoldiamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsoldamtenyearsold!

   I will always be ten years old.  If only Ryan and i could join her.

About fairy tales and rainbows with pots of gold at the end

i saw him dancing and spinning and flying through a haze of my insanity.

i saw him reaching and pulling and touching and breathing, not deeply, of a life he would have given.

i touched him weeping and longing and dying to comprehend his utter beauty.

i touched him thinking and screaming and wishing he were solid amaranth gold.

i held him needing and wanting and knowing that this world was never meant for him.

i held him living and tasting and yearning for his wordless balm to soothe.

He has never been real to me, nor is he ever truly understood. He is not so aloof as the stoic mountains, nor so close as the dawn. He is velvet and ivory and sunlight and wind. He is grace and poise and seduction and calm. He is another boy in the House of rainbows and fire. He is a torch or a herald of the coming rain. He is angelic when he dances. His speech is a gurgling brook. His eyes are before the storm. His hair is the silk of corn. He still believes in magic.

          i first learned of the unicorns from him.

i was explaining ten years old at the House of rainbows and fire when Lawrie spoke wistfully.

I had a pony once, he said. It was brown.

His face was sunlit by the memory.

I loved my pony. I liked to feed it, but it bit me.

Clouds, now.

 Then it died.

We braced ourselves for rain that never came.

It was okay, though, he assured some of the more sensitive girls in the room.

Bravely squaring his shoulders, I didn’t even cry.

Surprisingly enough, the sun shone through.

He was a good pony, and when good ponies and horsies die, they go to Horsie Heaven. So now he’s a unicorn.

A unicorn? Naturally, there are skeptics.

     When they get to Horsie Heaven, the angels give them their own wings and they fly above the clouds and run through giant fields. When a pony or horsy is there for a while, he gets his horn.

So unicorns are dead horses, we ask. He squints thoughtfully then shakes his head.

No. you see, sometimes the ponies are having so much fun that they go away from the group. They might get lost. If that happens, some of them wander around and find a beautiful waterfall. Across the waterfall is a rainbow that silly horsies fly down. That’s why people see unicorns on earth sometimes- ‘cause they came down the rainbow. But once they’re down the rainbow, they’re real again. So when mean people hunt them, they can die. When they get back to Horsie Heaven, it takes longer for them to get a new horn, but they remember to stay away from the rainbow. The lucky ones find the rainbow and don’t have to die again to get back into Heaven.

     Makes sense, we all agree. But how does he know this?

He says he learned it in a dream.

A pretty story for a pretty crowd, but i am a skeptic, so afterwards i follow him into the kitchen and ask him if he really believes it.

“Oh, yes,” he says with the utmost sincerity.

He is much too simple to be offended by my disbelief.

 “You want to see something?” he says oh-so eagerly.

 i, who am much too curious for my own good, say sure but it doesn’t matter because he has already turned around and pulled up his shirt.

In the small of his pale ivory back lies a sedate unicorn resting at the base of a blue-black rainbow.

“That’s what my pony would look like as a unicorn,” he says, dropping his shirt and turning back around to face me.

Whispering, “He was a little slow so he might just come down the rainbow someday. I hope I catch him before the mean people do.”

Then he smiles at me beatifically and walks away.