Like Raindrops on RosesBy Avery Strangstalien

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“Rain. She loves the rain.”

Dedicated to my family, my friends,

and my animals, who are both.I love you; thank you.

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Table of Contents

My Name Page 5

Pegasus Page 6

Alien Kid Page 7-8

Wilson Rawls Page 9-10

Lena Page 11

Emma’s Song Page 12

WordsPage 13

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Hero Page 14-15

Soldier Page 16

Home, HomePage 17

My NameAvery Strangstalien. If you can figure out how to pronounce it, it feels soft and

strange and damp, like a pine forest after a storm, the grass bright green from lightning, the world vivid. Dark, with light on the horizon. Foreign; the nearly 75% Norwegian kind of foreign. A conglomerate of images and tastes and smells.

Avery Strangstalien. It means stubbornness and brattiness and intelligence and humbleness and rebellion and drive and competitiveness and a craving for justice and a love-hate relationship with mankind. It means brown hair, green eyes, freckles, long fin-gers and legs, big feet, braces, glasses, and 25 extra pounds that she doesn’t mind.

It means dogs, cats, horses, fish, under one roof. It means memories of running through the backfields, bare toes, little body all torn up by briars when she pretends she can fly in autumn because the wind is so fast and hard and sweet, and that crystalline

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smell of rain on the maple leaves… Rain. She loves the rain. That cool white-gray of a rainy day is her favorite color in the whole world. She shivers to think of it.

It means writing and reading and singing in the shower when it’s way too early in the morning. Painting, drawing- always horses. Always, always horses. It means sneak-ing out at 3 in the morning in summer to sleep on the square bales piled up like a fort by the horses. Bringing the dachshund, her best friend. So happy with the ruffling sound of grain in mangers, nickers and whines and breathing. The musty smell, the kiss of sun through the barn door when morning comes. That’s why she hates winter. It’s too cold to go outside. Too cold to be where she belongs.

It means slipping whatever money she has in her pocket over to whatever home-less person she sees. She never has enough to not feel guilty. Maybe she is trying to compensate for her childhood. But in all reality, she just loves to help other people, even though it’s difficult for her to talk to them.

Her words never make enough sense for anyone to truly understand.She hates school. Not because it’s difficult, but because it’s so mind-bogglingly

simple, far too easy. She doesn’t try, doesn’t pay attention, and has never studied for a single test, but she gets her homework done so her parents will pat her on the back and she can go off to college and be a good upstanding citizen. She gets all A’s anyway, gets on the high honor roll. She couldn’t care less.

She wants to be a scientist. Something difficult that will challenge her and make her think while she has the ability to add to the fountain of knowledge. She’d rather be homeless than be an accountant, secretary, lawyer, surgeon. She can’t stand the te-dium.

It’s funny how only a few words can hold so many memories. So many secrets. Plans for a life, an identity, based on a jumble of letters.

Avery Strangstalien.My name.

PegasusPegasus is what I named my pet pegasus. He was somewhere between a

beanie baby and a rag, and the size and shape of a soggy hotdog. He had little patches of rough hairs on him from being spilled on during a particularly unfortunate tea-party. He would sometimes ask me to brush his fur, make sure it was nice and shiny, so I pulled my little barbie brush through his mane, spit on my fingers and rubbed it on his blue sequined wings so he’d look all spiffy for the afternoon.

After a while, I had taken to making him little dresses out of toilet paper while I was sitting on the john. He told me he felt chilly and needed some clothes- I couldn’t deny Pegasus anything. Instead of just wrapping until he was all nice and non-naked, I would tear up little strips and tie them on his neck and ears and feet. He looked like a teacher’s house on halloween morning.

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And then something terrible happened.His clothes had torn apart already, so it was time for a wardrobe change. I

brought him in the bathroom, took a seat on the toilet, and got to work. I remember struggling to tie a particular piece of toilet paper- on his hoof- when he slips out of my lit-tle fingers, down into my pot of dump.

I stared at him for a little bit, bobbing around in my pee. I didn’t want to reach in there, but I couldn’t lose Pegasus. We had a dinner party scheduled in 30 minutes.

Then, a brilliant idea- flush the pee away, and scoop out Pegasus.I smiled in glee, smacking the handle, imagining my parents’ proud faces as I

show them my genius. I reached in, heading for Pegasus, but all I could see was the tail. Uh-oh. I watched in horror as the toilet coughed up a mouthful of water.

Oh crap.I flooded the house.I ran out of the bathroom, crying, running to my dad’s room. In typical fashion, he

told me to wait until the game was over, but no, we were going to get flooded, this couldn’t wait.

After some DIY plumbing from the folks, Pegasus managed to survive his inci-dent.

“Honey, he’s hurt from the accident- we need to take him to the hospital.” Mother says.

I nod. Of course. Whatever we need to do for mister Pegasus.About a week later, I realized I wasn’t getting mister Pegasus back.

Alien KidI was a multi-age kid. People don’t know that, most of them thought that I moved

to the school in 4th grade from Canada or outer space or wherever new kids come from, but I didn’t. They put us at the end of the hallway, 3 classrooms. We had a bathroom and water fountain and big open stairwell right there. I often wondered if it was espe-cially for us, a present to make this strange place a little more bearable.

I never spoke back then. I just sat in the stairwell and hummed. I loved the sound vibrating off of the walls, loved the sound of any sound at all that wasn’t words, so ru-ined by human use.

But eventually, when Mr. Langer realized that I wasn’t really going to the bath-room when I asked, he kept a closer eye on the little runaway kid who was probably a mute and had all sorts of undiagnosed mental, physical, social, emotional problems that liked to hum to herself in the stairway instead of listen to Poppy the Mouse by Avi- like all of the “normal” kids.

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Then we began to dip our toes into the endless supply of spelling tests. The other kids had studied, supposedly, but I didn’t know it was even supposed to happen. Of course I didn’t- as if I paid attention. I was too busy planning my escape.

Out of 100 words I didn’t know, I got 97 of them, missing the variations of “there”. I was a first grader and had scored higher than any of the second and third graders.

Besides that, I finished all of my math homework 10 minutes earlier than the other kids, and would just write little stories about horses and people with names that I’d read in Nancy Drew books- Dirk Valentine, the notorious outlaw, George Fayn, Nancy’s cousin turned assistant turned super kick-butt adventuress and horse whisperer.

I read all of the books in that room that were good enough to hold my interest. One, called Charlie the Horse, I must have read at least 15 times. I loved that book.

Mr. Langer would always snap at me if I was doing something else besides lis-tening to the stories I didn’t want to hear. He would come over to me, and kneel down and ask me what I was doing. I was writing a story, I told him, and I would like to get back to it since it’s getting to a really good part, with lots of action, really, and it was quite rude of him to intercept this moment so carelessly.

And then he would close the notebook, relax, until when about 15 minutes later I would open it up again and indiscreetly write the rest of my little book. He had given up after a few days of this.

He eventually grew sick of my attitude, as any first grade teacher would, I as-sume, and asked why I would not listen to him.

I pouted, taking my folder and tapping him on the arm with it, “Because this is boring!”

The class went absolutely silent. This was one hardcore little brat.After about a minute of silence, he started laughing. Hysterically. Of course, the

rest of the kids just stared at us and wondered what the heck just happened, mouths open, eyes wide, like guppies in a dirty tank. After a few minutes of this, I smiled. I think I knew I would like this guy.

He turned out to be my favorite teacher. In the summer, the whole class got to garden and pick grapes every once in a while- ripe and juicy and sweet, the rough seeds still intact. They burst in your mouth like nuclear bombs. Delicious nuclear bombs, though. And we would grow kale which tasted awful but we ate it anyway, and chives, which were actually as awful but we ate them constantly because the things never died. I think it wasn’t the flavor that mattered, but knowing we’d grown this stuff ourselves, and it was edible.

I made my first “friends” in second grade, when I actually talked to the kids. First it was a group of boys, because I liked to wrestle and spit and eat bugs. Then, girls. They were awfully moody, but a friendship with a girl was a lot more special. It takes a lot to trust a girl, especially if you are one.

I think of multiage as one of the happiest times in my life. Every day was sun-shine and giggles and writing forever.

I was no longer the mute alien kid that I had been.

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Wilson RawlsI read far too much for my own good back then. I loved Nancy Drew, Agatha

Christie, White Fang, The Call of the Wild, but my favorite was always Wilson Rawls. The way he wrote was like thick syrupy honey out of an autumn maple tree, dusty and worn and loved like an old pair of cowboy boots, like an old, good hunting dog. Like Lit-tle Ann and Big Dan.

I think that’s the first time I began to think of myself differently, in the library, gid-dily picking up a book of his I had not read yet. 4th grade. I verbalized my joy.

“Look Abby, oh my gosh, it’s Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls!” You’d think I’d have won the lottery.

And then came the group of them, shorter than me with slimy sneers on their lips, snatching the book out of my hands.

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“Summer of the Monkeys? What a piece of shit.” Throw it on the ground, laugh-ing like a pack of hungry hyenas, leave.

I paused for a moment, swallowing as I listened to myself breathe, stooping down to take the book and cradle it against my chest, vowing to protect Mr. Rawls’ work.

It happened again. Not the exact incident, but little things. Coming up to me and telling me about what a fat bitch I was and that I didn’t deserve to live. Tossing my pa-pers back and forth between them sort of like a diseased hot potato, because obviously, I was a disease. If they touched what I touched, they’d catch it.

When it was my birthday and I brought Swiss Cake Rolls but could only give them each one because we didn’t get enough to make it fair, they threw pencils and pa-perclips at me. I could hear their jeers behind my back all the time.

It was all a blur, mostly, until the backpack incident.When I was little, I thought it was my duty to save the world, like some sort of

awkward-child-female-superman. That was why I was so elated when I got to pick out my own backpack.

It was pink, with little writing scribbles and earths and hearts and stars every-where, and it was made from 100% recycled material. I was so proud of myself, loved that backpack so much, more than anything else in the world.

At the beginning of recess, we would have to set up our backpacks in a little sin-gle file line by grade. Winter had come and was slowly fading, and I remember the muddy feel of that morning, muted and gray and green and dirty.

I was off playing on the swingset. Returned to my backpack.They were there, had thrown my baby into a mud puddle, just kicking it and

laughing. Always laughing at my pain. They took turns punching it, too, like it was some sort of a first grader they were beating up for lunch money. I am sure they would have done the same to me if I were not a girl and if we were not in plain sight of the aids.

“What… what are you doing?”I could feel my eyes burn but didn’t let them cry.Snort, hahaha, fat bitch, leave. The aids didn’t even notice.I scooped up my baby, gingerly dusting off the chunks of slush. I didn’t strap it

over my arms, instead just carrying the thing. I didn’t cry until I went to sleep that night. The only thing was, I couldn’t sleep. Not for the next few years.

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LenaOne of the most exciting times of my early childhood was when little Lena Grace

was born. I was 10 years old, and it was an early January morning. Sweet chills tossing around out in the open air that pledged an escape from the routine of school and stolen dignity and crushed hopes.

After school, Mom picked us up, Shaw and I, took us down to the hospital.The room was full of flowers and balloons and cards with sobby, teary-eyed

words of endearment. Chris, my brother-in-law was sitting in the corner. Brother-in-law to-be, at the time.

And then there was Holly in her hospital gown, holding my precious niece. Hold her, it’s okay, Avery. I can’t, I might drop her- no no, don’t worry, you’ll do fine.

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She is warm, wriggly and quiet. Her little mouth moves, little face, legs, hands. Everything popped in a shrinky-oven and turned into a little chubby person who smells like pink hues and spilled milk.

I want to keep her all to myself. I want to put a little bed in my bed and she can sleep there like my pet, and she will pee everywhere but it won’t matter because she is otherwise so perfect, except for the crying, and pooping, and throwing up. I could train her to use the litterbox, and buy her little tug toys that she would bite on and I would tug, but she would always win because I would let her so it wouldn’t matter.

Nothing would matter.

Emma’s SongEmma, I have never met you.I think about you every day.Your newborn little rosy face.I wish that you had stayed.

I think about you every day.There was a hole in your unborn heart.I wish that you had stayed.If she kept you, she wouldn’t survive.

There was a hole in your unborn heart.

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I’ve often dreamt of you.If she kept you, she wouldn’t survive.I hope you understand.

I’ve often dreamt of you.Seen your little hands and face.I hope you understand.Emma, you’re an angel now.

Listening to Jack Johnson.Your newborn little rosy face.I bet that you’d have Bubble Toes, too.Emma, I have never met you.

WordsI don’t think anyone will ever know what they mean to me. That I carry it around

in my folder after I had my Mom print it off at the office. No one will know that I was the kid who thought she didn’t matter when she was 8 years old, when she was ready to throw it all away by the time she turned 12. No one will know that the first time she read it she cried. No one will ever know how much she wants to help everyone, that she ac-tually loves every human being more than there is love for her to give. These words, taken from a newspaper clipping, are the words that I will never forget:

WORDS FOR TEENAGERS

Northland College principal John Tapene has offered the following words from a judge who regularly deals with youth. “Always we hear the cry from teenagers, ‘what can we do, where can we go?’

“My answer is this: Go home, mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons and after you’ve finished, read a

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book. Your town does not owe you recreational activities and your parents do not owe you fun.

“The world does not owe you a living, you owe the world something. You owe it your time, energy, and talent so that no one will be at war, in sickness and lonely again. In other words grow up, stop being a cry baby, get out of your dream world and start de-veloping a backbone not a wishbone. Start behaving like a responsible person. You are important and you are needed. It’s too late to sit around for somebody to do something someday. Someday is now and that somebody is you!”

No one knows that these are the words I have decided to live by.

Hero

She grew up with 9 other brothers and sisters. She was the youngest. She tells me that everyday her daddy would go work out in the tobacco fields, her mother would feed them and clean them and make sure they prayed and went to school and church and sewed and gardened and

kept them alive.She was the youngest, too. She shared her bedroom with her six other sisters.

They were poor. But of course they were poor, it was typical. Her favorite time of the day was going out to the barns and seeing the kittens roll around in the hay.

She was awkward and quiet, like me. Smart and analytical, like me.Back then she had big reddish brown hair puffed out in every direction- it’s

blonde now, but she will assure you that it is absolutely natural.She wore homemade shoes and dresses and hats and tights and says she knew

they were ugly but wore them anyway, for her mama.

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She grew up and met a guy and had some kids. 2 of them. 2 girls. She named them Heather and Holly, and she, them, and the guy (she says his name was Lanny) lived in a trailer park once they moved out.

She was only nineteen.Her mother and father-in-law didn’t like her. Thought that their great big boy

Lanny could do better, even though she says that Lanny never treated her or her girls right. Gone too much, too long, never said the right things. Never was a good father or husband.

I wonder, sometimes, what all he did to them, but she won’t say.She was stuck. So she went off to law school with her two babies, silently

promising them a better life.She lies to me and tells me it was hard for her because she’s stupid, but how

could a stupid woman be the smartest person I know? She was smart. She worked so hard, tells me she never slept. Tells me she would make sure she did everything for her babies, went to their recitals and had to do her essays during the intermissions. Time was gold.

She graduated after all of the work, the endless nights, crying, and writing. I still don’t know how she did it.

She met my Daddy, then, and they bought a house together. A lawyer and a fi-nancial advisor. When they had me, and then my brother, they moved again- out in the country, to a big place with 80 acres and not a stress in the world.

Her first babies graduated. Had some babies of their own. And her new babies are growing up.

She works an 80 hour week, at least. The woman doesn’t sleep. All she knows is exhaustion and restlessness, and no matter what help I can do for her, she will wash clean floors, vacuum flawless carpets when she has nothing else to do.

She doesn’t finish her sentences, and she likes to wear dresses under her busi-ness suits with a set of bright red heels. She gets tired when she eats carbs, and takes cat naps during the day so she can work at night. She dyed her hair blonde- but like I said, I didn’t say that earlier or now, okay? It’s au natural, I assure you. She loves tulips and shih-tzu puppies and summertime.

And she is one of my favorite people in the whole entire world.She is my hero.

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SoldierWill I hear your heart trembling in your feet?You keep your timid hostage shackled thereI want to paint your breath on canvas sweetIt tastes of summer’s honeysuckle air.I would drink from the fountains of your eyesAnd pit your tears against an old card’s suitThe fabric of your life has made you blindYour sober eyes are made of wine, like you.Asleep you are in fire; so unconcernedBare arms alive in stark emb’ry shadowI’ll memorize your face, but just the curvesA sable bird sends our hearts to the crows.

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The day will come, and you will leave the room-You’re off to war, and you will come back soon.

Home, HomeIt is the sweet smell of maple sap in autumn. The invasion of ladybugs, that clean

gust of leaves and pristine air. It is nearly 75% Norwegian, dogs, cats, horses, fish, all under one roof. It is blasting Bill Withers, Jasmine Sullivan, Styx, Ellie Goulding, Carlos Santana as loud as possible because there are no neighbors to complain. It is the steady stream of music- piano, guitar, bass, all sorts of brass. It is grass longer than your forearm and corn up to your eyes. It is wild honeysuckle and orange lilies that were planted by nature, not by hand.

It is sneaking out at 3 in the morning to sleep on the hay bales in the barn, bring-ing the dachshund. It is singing sweet, sweet soul music in the shower at 6. Wearing swimsuits during that late, muddy time in spring to swim around in that mud puddle that always comes back in the same place. Where seeing deer at least once a day is the “norm”, no matter the time of year, week, day.

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Where the old dead oak on the hill wavers during a lightning storm, and you’re so afraid it’s going to fall, but wonder what it would be like to climb it, up to the top, and when the lightning strikes it you’ll grow SuperMan powers and you’ll be unstoppable.

It’s funny how only a few words can hold so many memories. So many secrets. Plans for a life, an identity, based on a jumble of letters.

Avery Strangstalien.My name.My home.My home.

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