MATRIARCH CITY AND THE MUD PIE PALACE
by Jayne Therkildsen

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My hair is black and my skin is the color of butterscotch syrup. The hair seems to be made of twigs and other curlicues that birds use to build their nests. I can't comb it most mornings, so I just tie it in a knot. When I look in the mirror, I see raven eyes. When I look outside the window, I see the mountain that looks like God--with white hair and a gown of bluish-moss, speckled sometimes with white or gold.

I feel safe with God living in my backyard; especially since I've come to live in New Mexico, leaving behind my friends and family in California.

My mother is an actress. She wants me to learn something outside of school books, so she brought me here to live with another actor. Now I have two fathers; one in California who lives with my mother and sister, and Brett who is going to tell me new stories. Brett has long brown hair and a hanging mustache and hides his eyes under a dusty old black cowboy hat. He doesn't talk much. He looks a little spooky.

My sister wants to be an actress. She loves bright lights and big stages and the sound of people clapping. I like to call her Jo, but she stomps her right foot and punches her fists into her waist and clicks her tongue, telling me that her name is Jotessa Nyane Ribera. It seems to me like an awfully clumsy name for her fans to remember, so I just think of her as Jo anyway.

My name is Rojo. I'm nine years old. My one grandmother calls me Adom, so actually I have two names--one Spanish; one Hebrew. Right now I follow Rojo, but you never know, I may change later. My mother's name is Ruby and she likes for me to call her Ruby rather than Mom. I guess she doesn't like to be interrupted from acting.

My father's name is Rio. The three of us almost rhyme; only Jo had to be different. I bet she'll become really famous and change her name or maybe add more names like boxcars connecting to form a long freight train. Jo has bird's nest hair also. It hangs down to her waist. Like a deep coat pocket, she can probably hide her hands in it when she gets nervous.

When I get scared, I go down to the reading room and curl up in the red velvet chair, between the fireplace and the window. It's soft like a mother's hug and I can tell myself stories as I look through the books with photographs and paintings of pretty ladies with long silky hair and pale white skin and lots of sparkly jewelry. Brett collects motorcycles and is out in the garage painting one right now. Sometimes I watch him and then we may go for a ride through town. But this morning I want to take a walk.

Brett has a wife named Michelle. She wears long dresses with metal rings underneath. Sometimes she can barely make it through the skinny doorways. The dresses look like waterfalls spilling down from her waist. Some days the colors are soft like sherbet; other days they are dark and powerful like lava flows.

Michelle calls herself a Southern Belle. I just call her Mama Michelle. She spends most of her time floating around the house and courtyard, so when I ask if it's okay to take a walk, she quickly gives her permission. I think she likes to dust men out of the house. She looks at them as cobwebs best hanging in garages or studios or collecting with the tumbleweeds that gather against the walls.

Behind the house is a very large field that goes all the way to the mountain. A few days ago I met a cowboy who said this house was made out of mud. He said it grew out of the earth while the mountain watched. Can you imagine--the earth must have burped and from her belly erupted a 22-room mud pie palace! He also said that on top of the mountain is a lake with blue water. When the summer rains fall, the lake overflows and runs down through the bumps in the land and fills the valley below. It must look like God is crying rivers of tears down through the creases of his velvet robes. Someday I want to find that magic lake, but today I want to explore the white cross that stands in the open field, all by itself.

There's a crooked dirt road that leads out to it. I can shuffle my feet and create tiny dust devils as I walk. The wind blows them toward the land where the sun rises.

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When I reach the cross, I can see that it's made of old wood. Some of the paint is chipping. Around the base is a circle of stones. Inside the circle lie dying flowers and pieces of a broken brown bottle. I feel sharp like those edges, sharp and ready to cut something open. I just don't know what it is yet.

My feet want to dance around with the circle. My voice wants to sing songs that will raise the flowers back to life. My hands want to strum the old cross with a glass shard. But I tell them to be still; to stand and watch this lonely land; to dream a little bit about the California ocean and its sandy beaches. I can almost see the blue salty waves rolling silently toward me; the buffalo grass becoming seaweed; the cross becoming a barnacled buoy to guide the sailors.

In the center of the cross, somebody has written the name Lady Virginia. Maybe she was a fancy lady like Michelle and her body is buried in this ground. Maybe she is the lady in the painting above the fireplace, the lady in the long white gown whose eyes look like salt water and whose face is stiff like taffy. Whenever I look at that painting, I want to stretch her apart like a candy pull. Maybe I can ask Brett about Lady Virginia some day when he comes out of the garage.

I haven't lived in this new house for very long, about two or three weeks, but every night I wake up around midnight. I can feel somebody standing at the end of the bed, watching me sleep. It's a young girl, I know, even though she doesn't have a face. She stands very still and waits. I think she might like to be my friend, but we can't speak yet. She is probably older than I, about Jo's age, but she still needs to ask her mother's permission. I can often see her mother swaying in the background in front of the windows, she drifts like the night wind;like a lace curtain. She doesn't have a face yet either, but I know she's a strict mother. Sometimes she is as bright as moonlight.

It's nice to have friends for the darkness. They don't visit very long, just several minutes, then I go back to sleep. In the morning my room is empty and I wait for Mama Michelle to call me to breakfast.

We eat at a very long table in the downstairs dining room. Many other women in waterfall dresses join us. They are Michelle's friends and after I'm excused from the table, they sit and drink tea and talk about books and paintings and other people. They all have skin as white as their teacups and hair that is the color of sunshine or honey. Sometimes when I play outside, I can hear their voices slipping out through the window panes. They tell a lot of stories about their husbands and houses. They call themselves The Steel Magnolias Tea Party Club, but I've never seen any metal flowers around. One day, I gathered a bouquet of dried weeds from the field and put them in the vase at the table's center. The Magnolias smiled and later giggled when they thought I'd left the house. They are hard to please, I think. I wonder if all of them have separate buildings for their husbands. I wonder when Brett will be able to start his next film project. I hope that I will be able to travel with him to another land and watch the storybook actors come alive.

Life is a little quiet here right now. I'm almost lonely, but not quite. I said earlier that I have two fathers now, but they seem to be fading like old photographs. I think I'm collecting many, many mothers instead.

This is a strange land. I want to cry, but then I remember to look up to the sky to find God in the backyard.

I think this Mountain Father will adopt me. He will make my new life safe.

Jayne Therkildsen Copyright © 2001

JAYNE THERKILDSEN was born in New Jersey and began writing as a child. Her creative spirit led her to earn a dual Bachelor's degree in English literature and textile arts. After graduation, she lived and studied in France for a year, then returned to the USA to a career in technical and grant writing and human services work. In 1990, Jayne moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to pursue her artwork fulltime. Her passion for creative writing reemerged and her current writings are an attempt to weave her artistry with the written word, meshing poetry and prose. She continues to reside in Santa Fe with her husband and chinchilla.

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