Bob Bickford

When I was little, we went to San Diego to see the pearl divers. That might not have been the only reason, (I know there were Volkswagen beetles and supermarkets, and my mom clipped a bow tie at my neck and put Old Spice cream in my hair) but it turned out to be the reason that still matters. All these years later, everyone is long gone and it’s the place I go, to wait for them. The pearl diver place.

I remember wet cement and echoes and it costs a dollar. Everyone is talking loud and moving around, shorts and sleeveless dresses and the smells of beer and cigars and sweat. My dad points and I lean into a metal railing and it all goes—silent. Cold and salt and black water, and I see her a long way off. Coming, but in no hurry.

She swims up (surfaces young-and-old, with dark eyes I’ll never forget, and her smile is solemn like she knows everything) and she palms my plastic token and gives me back an oyster, so rough it shocks my skin. It’s heavy and ugly and beautiful, and it’s—revelation.

She treads water and watches my face, to make sure I understand.

Then she dives, and I’m supposed to keep the oyster because it’s strange and perfect and it came from her, but it’s taken away with smiles before I can even get to know it. My sudden tears as the man cuts it open with a knife, and my mom shows me a black pearl, nestled in her palm. Somehow, I understand it isn’t what she expected, and she doesn’t really want it, but it’s too late.

The diver was a mermaid. I understood it then, and I understand it now. I forgot, for a while in the middle, when I got lost in the real world. I’ve looked for her, and my oyster, without knowing I was.

Mermaids, however dark and frightening, generally know where green oranges grow. They teach us how to climb and pick them. Green oranges are like tangerines from far away, and we remember the taste even if it’s our first time. If we’re lucky the mermaid will take us back down with her when the time comes, because everyone goes to Askew Beach, sooner or later. Everyone wades into the dark surf, and when the water reaches our waist we’re not coming back.

All the silly things were silly, all along. We have to give them back, and they float behind us for a moment before a wave takes them.

During the day, there will be blue water, the ocean not far away, and hot sun on green hills. Trees grow inside, brush the ceilings out of the way, and the sound of breezes turning the pages of forgotten books will be the same as the leaves moving overhead. Ice and spices, running water, dogs chasing fish, you laughing.

You show me green oranges, mermaid, and how to climb and pick them.

At night the stars outside are purple-white, but lamps inside turn all the colors into shades of gold. There are no doors, so spaces melt together. The breeze can get cool, so you keep a jacket on your chair, just in case. The things that have been perfectly broken, the things nobody else wants or even sees, curl up at your feet. The water still runs after nightfall, but the fish are invisible now, floating in mid-dark.

You have popcorn in a green bowl (and dark eyes). I remember you.

Sleep.

(From ‘Letters and Fragments: Finding Sadie”)

***COVER PHOTO BY DONNEZ CARDOZA***

When I was little the library was my favorite place.I was born in Lone Pine, California. My parents liked to move and so did I, for a while. I have roots throughout the United States, but I was mostly raised in Toronto, Canada.

My father was a psychiatric social worker who grew up in the slums of Boston. He was a tough guy who got an education on the GI bill and pulled himself out of his birthright. He married twice, the first time to a woman who left him a widower. Alone with a toddler, I suppose he was determined that it wouldn’t happen to him again, because the second time he married a woman much younger than he was.

She was the product of a Southern family; royalty that included the same Duke family that bought a university and named it after itself. Wilful and rebellious, she scorned Southern convention, rejected the closeted skeletons and wide streak of alcoholism that hid behind decorated formality. She disowned her family, converted to Catholicism, marched for civil rights, and married the older man from a poverty-stricken background. I am the oldest of the seven children she bore, one after the next.

We were brought up in curious contrasts. There were the economies that so many mouths to feed on a middle class income made necessary; (hand-me-down clothes, Tang and powdered milk, peanut butter for ten thousand consecutive school lunches), but my mother’s background dictated private schools, music and dance and art lessons.

I attended St. Michael’s Choir School and studied piano and organ at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. I hated studying anything at all; my mother was determined that I should be a doctor and despaired over my future. I only wanted to read fiction, and did so endlessly. The library was my favorite, enchanted place (it still is). I didn’t realize I was in fact studying for what I wanted to do most.

My father’s plan to not be widowed again fell through, and my mother was suddenly gone when I was 16. He had been ill equipped to raise one child the first time, and now there were eight of them; the youngest only three years old. In some sense we lost him, too.

Life changed, just like that. My behavior guaranteed me a quick expulsion from my exclusive school. I did manage a high school diploma (by the skin of my teeth) but I was mostly happy to leave school for good. I lost an early love, and wandered to Los Angeles. I learned about the streets, and about living in the places that cause most people to lock their car doors when they drive through. I was blessed with the same genes that took my father through life in the mean part of Boston, and survived.

Eventually, I grew up and moved again, first to Atlanta and then back to Canada. I made a living in the ‘fixing cars’ arena. I live in a very old house on a wooded lot that is infested by dogs and turtles and parrots, and perhaps the ghost of a young girl. My teen-aged son is a light in my life who wants to be an author and a professional football player. I never tell him that both are nearly impossible, because they aren’t.

The library has continued to haunt me. When age said the possibility of a university degree was long past, I decided to try my hand at a novel anyway. Somehow I finished it, and have produced one a year since. I’m working on my tenth.

You can visit Bob’s Blog HERE.