New Short Fiction Award
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We value creative writing and wish to encourage writers of short fiction
to pursue their dream of being published. Jerry Jazz Musician would like
to provide another step in the career of an aspiring writer. Three times
a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original,
previously unpublished work.
Kate Robinson of Chino Valley, Arizona is the third recipient of the Jerry
Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first
time on June 15, 2003.
photo by Arami Odukun & Kate Robinson 1988/2003
Author Kate Robinson
Kate Robinson writes under the sun and star-spangled skies of central Arizona.
She's most interested in the appearance of the extraordinary in the course
of our ordinary daily lives. "Dancing Universe" is her first published literary
short story.
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DANCING UNIVERSE
by Kate Robinson
Though she sat alone, Mira
wasn't lonely. Woman, chair, patio, trees and sky merged in her nightly
meditation. Mira finished her prayer, touching the crown of her head, forehead
and heart center with folded hands, crossed herself, and opened her eyes
to the East, observing in one smooth movement her indigenous heritage, Catholic
upbringing, and conversion to Buddhism.
Gathering and tossing her long raven-wing hair over one
shoulder, Mira shifted her weight from one hip to the other, rubbing her
ample belly. She turned over mental stones from the last few months, examining
the process of shock, resignation, and acceptance that marked this pregnancy.
The youngest of five daughters, she ruefully watched her older sisters succumb
one by one to the entanglements of family life. She vowed while still a teenager
to never clip her wings.
Don't ever say never, abuelita, her grandmother,
told her, life has its own way of happening.
And happen it had, in one of the most poignant and
unthinkable ways she could imagine. Marriage was out of the question. She
had fought too long and fiercely for her freedom. Anyway, the life-creating
union was just an ephemeral passion with a wandering musician too self-absorbed
to understand her or parent a child. Sol had abused her, just that once.
One lesson was all it took.
* * * *
She had met Sol one exuberant spring night, dancing World
Beat at El Casino, an old ballroom in South Tucson near her folks'
house. Mira and her girlfriends twirled sweaty and laughing in the smoky
glare just under the stage. The wooden floor thumped with the dancers' efforts,
echoing the cadence of brass and conga drums and electric guitars. Still
young at thirty-nine, she caught the eye of the multi-ethnic band's jaded
lead singer, wearily playing the first set.
"I'm glad I found you. I thought you had gone," a male
voice chimed behind her.
"Dios, you startled me," Mira said, turning on one of
the narrow steps of the hall entrance. She looked up into one of the most
beautiful male faces she had ever seen.
"And you startled my heart. I'm Sol, like the sun."
"And I'm Mira, as in looking."
"Looking radiant."
"You say this to many women. And girls, I'm sure. It's
part of the profession."
"Then you know about us troubadours." Sol's smile was
perfect, empathetic, not mocking.
"I dated a musician once. There were so many women .
. . " Mira took a step down, preparing for her escape.
"Wait, Mira. I'm almost thirty. I'm burned-out on all
this. I've been alone . . . there's really something about you. If I don't
try now, I may never see you again."
Mira scribbled her phone number on a page torn from
her checkbook, excusing herself to find her friends before the next set,
her favorite hometown salsa band, fired up. She smiled at Sol and told him
to call her from the road sometime.
She had only wanted to dance. And dance she did, this
time with Sol, who followed her back to the floor. He spun around her, a
golden satellite orbiting a planet, dance after dance, holding her eyes in
his. Her friends watched, amused by his captivation. Mira knew she would
sleep with him that night, an indiscretion she had not allowed herself in
nearly a decade.
She was not disappointed. He dove under the full skirt
of her dancing dress before she could get out of it, intoxicated by the moonlight
drenching the room.
Sol left the band and moved in with her. He wrote songs,
some inspired by Mira. She painted with more passion than she could remember,
the colors nearly flying from the palette to the canvas of their own volition.
Sol's Roman face, long curls backlit by the desert sun or moon, was often
her subject.
In a season, the attraction wore down to a nub predictably,
like a pencil needing sharpening.
"You've got to contribute, Sol. My bills are low, but
I can't keep feeding and clothing both of us." Mira spoke softly, pleading
with him.
"I'm doing the best I can," he shouted at her. He picked
up the guitar case by its handle and toted it like a piece of heavy luggage,
pacing three or four steps back and forth across the floor to make his point.
"When you met me you saw me with this. This is what I do. It's all I know
how to do. I can go back on the road. Or try to do more local gigs."
"And be gone. Or gone at night until all hours." Mira
felt surprise at her statement, but didn't retract it.
Exasperated, he swung the empty guitar case at her, catching
her in the nose. She ran to the kitchen sink, catching a stream of blood
in her cupped hands.
"Oh God, Mira. God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." There were
tears in Sol's voice. He sounded more boy than man.
He carried her to the sofa, wiped her face with a warm
washcloth, and fetched a bag of frozen vegetables for her nose. For a few
minutes he held her tenderly, stroking her hair. Then his hands wandered,
to her breasts, her belly, her crotch.
Tired, she pulled away. "Please. Not now."
He lay on her, forced his tongue into her mouth. "Babe,
you know I love you. Don't push me away."
"No," she said. "I may still be fertile." She pushed
him by his shoulders more than once, locking her legs together.
Sol uttered a sound that was half moan and half whine,
loosening his pants, holding her tighter. Mira pushed him as hard as she
could, but she was trapped. He pinned her legs with his knees, forcing them
apart, slipping himself past the elastic of her panties' crotch to her wet
warmth.
Mira resigned herself to Sol's male display of love.
It's not like a stranger is raping me, she reasoned. I've loved this man,
made love to him many times. But she lay limp, refusing to participate.
Afterwards, Sol lunged into sleep. Mira left him lolling
on the couch, tight little butt dusted with golden hairs hanging out of his
jeans. She pulled his luggage from her closet and packed Sol's clothing and
guitars with certainty more than anger. She placed his belongings on the
porch, taped a note to the back of the sofa, and locked her bedroom door.
"The end of this story," she said to herself, turning
her sheets back.
Two weeks later, Mira woke with a start from a dream.
A doctor handed her a baby girl wrapped in hospital receiving blankets. For
a few weeks the potential escape of abortion tugged at her heart. The forceful
conception worried her. How would this affect the child? One morning she
woke with clarity and knew that no matter how rough the rhythm, it was certainly
her dance.
* * * *
The last fire of sunset blazed around Mira, an ocean
breaking on a beach of sky. Stars shone, one by one, gradually exploding
into thousands against pure indigo. A gentle breeze shifted, a soft flutter
of invisible wings, bringing the scent of greasewood from the open desert.
Mira cradled her lush belly in her arms. I feel this
universe inside me, she mused. And what do I get -- the secret center
of another universe dancing in my belly. "Monkey mind," she said aloud,
her whispery giggle tap-dancing in the silence.
Mira's thoughts shifted dreamily to the black jaguar
that a hiker had seen near the edge of the city yesterday. She wondered why
it would wander a thousand miles to this stretch of rocky hills. Jaguars
had once ranged as far north as the Sonora Desert, but human habitats had
forced them out. Did the cat seek something from its ancestral home? Thinking
of it, the tropics and this cactus forest reminded her of tales her abuelita
told of shamans and their power animals. Maybe this cat was more than a cat.
"Let's walk, mija," she crooned to her belly, heaving
herself up from the rocker.
"It's almost time to meet you and I'm not so hungry tonight."
Her daughter's tiny body squirmed in response to her
voice. Mira waddled down from the porch to the wall, shadowed by the spiky
forms of mesquite and palo verde. The back gate groaned open to the glittering
mirage of city lights in the hills below. Edging along the wall for support,
she found the familiar thread of a game trail winding up a rise, then down
toward a small canyon and ultimately inside Saguaro National Monument.
A new moon sliver settled into the dark lap of the Tucson
Mountains, scattering a waterfall plume of light. She followed the trail
for a quarter mile until it dropped into the navel of the canyon, turning
to follow the meandering streambed. Mira's labored breath and strong heartbeat
filled her chest, an incantation to the night.
| The desert welled up in dreamlike volcanic formations. These
hills were sprinkled with petroglyphs -- spirals, animals and handprints
pecked into stone by native people centuries before. Mira thought of them
as stone celebrations that defy mortality and loved to sketch them in her
spare time. She passed a tributary containing a small frieze of pictures
on boulders, a favorite daytime haunt of hers. She shivered in response to
the current of cool air flowing from little side canyon and pulled her 'hatching
jacket,' abuelita's name for a maternity coat, snugly around her.
"Aaii-ii-ii!" Mira bit her lip, simultaneously stumbling
and taking needled jab to an ankle from an unnoticed patch of prickly pear.
She squatted to reach the ankle, put a hand to the ground to steady herself,
and shot backwards like a howling locomotive. She landed with a solid thump
four feet away on her hind end. |
 |
"Dios!" Mira exploded into laughing tears when she found
the 'stone' she had touched. She rubbed her aching belly. The baby tortoise,
caught on its back, had the acute good fortune of being found and righted.
She lifted it close to her face to get a better look. Maternal instinct propelled
her ahead to a jumble of large stones to find a safer place for the little
reptile.
Mira considered setting the tortoise near the outside
edge of the boulders. Perhaps the patch of darkness at the center would be
the perfect place, in spite of the danger of disturbing a snake. She reached
gingerly down into the hollow framed by night-blooming datura plants, eerie
in their poisonous elegance.
"I'll try to check on you tomorrow," Mira said to the
tortoise, her remark met by a low growl and frantic mewling. Dumbfounded,
she gazed down into the iridescent pools of a large cat's eyes, too fascinated
to jump back. The jaguar was passive, spent from her long journey and her
recent birthing. Held captive by her suckling cubs, she recognized Mira's
condition and resumed licking her still wet babies.
There are omens given by Spirit everywhere, abuelita
had pronounced solemnly, and once found, you must always look within.
The ebb and flow of soft uterine contractions that Mira
felt throughout her pregnancy took on a new urgency. She backed away trembling,
the little tortoise still wrapped in her fingers. It was time to dance to
new rhythms, adjust dreams to reality. Time to open up, feel the blinding
hot pain of expulsion, and receive her infant wet in blood and saltwater.
Time to honor life without attachment or aversion.
*
Short Fiction Contest Details
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