Prehistoric Smiles

Prehistoric Smiles by Marialexa Kavanaugh
I awoke for the first time when I saw Lily dancing. The moment was born outside on the patio. I was washing my hands at the kitchen sink in such a belligerent way I felt as if I was raking off the memory of everything I ever caressed, ever held. She was letting the muscles of the wind boss her around as she swayed rhythmically from side to side. An army of fire flies were enveloping her in a cylinder of light and wings. It was the type of vision that makes your heart crumble to an unidentifiable lump of ashes- ashes of beauty, hope and above all, pain. It was the type of vision that makes you want to write savvy poetry, and then proceed to cry at the melody of your own words.

I awoke for the second time when Lily executed the trance I was in, and came cantering into my wide open arms, into my barricaded heart. This is what the stories are all about. Those snippets of illusions that conquer your soul, the reason we unglue our eyes each morning. The things that aren’t suppose to happen but do, and we never fully swallow them. I guess being alive defines exactly that: being utterly, enchantingly beyond belief.

That day was the first and last time I cranked the music inside of me to full volume, where I felt completely in my element. The rest of my wisp of an existence didn’t sing, didn’t dance. It only ever whispered. But Lily, Lily my immortal butterfly has so many chances to attack and consume and nourish herself. Lily will inhale vitality, and send it bulleting back into the air, into all of our hearts.

We used to walk through the neighborhood, a serene oasis that charmed the rest of Menlo Park, California. Linking arms, Lily and I waltz through suburbia. This page of my life is etched away by the gray hairs of time, yet I sometimes have to remember. Memory is an angel, demon ,savior. While we were walking people would just gaze at us as if we gave birth to moonlight, we were the original goddesses. They would pass us on the side walk and gape, and we triggered that.

Sometimes men would come up to us, wink, and say “what a gorgeous day it has turned out to be.” Then they would look me up and down like I was their prize turkey. Many times the men would kneel down and breathe unctuous nonsense into Lily’s ears. She would nod and smile wide enough to liquefy the hearts of any axe murderer. Then she would just shoot her gaze through every particle of me that hurt. I just melted for her. We would walk back home, my hands cocooning her innocent, unscathed ones.

“He said you were gorgeous. He said so. He did.” Lily murmurs to me as mom and I tuck her in.
“That’s called being greasy. You stay away from guys like those.” I say with the steely earnest presence I was donated by my mother.
“But Suzy he was right. He was telling the God honest truth.”
I punctuate the conversation with a stroke of my lips against Lily’s forehead. I bolt out of the room, trying to strangle the smugness infecting me. I was only 18, and 18 year old girls can’t help but bathe in the juice of a compliment. Mom was waiting in the kitchen. She was the dictionary definition of angelic. Her passion colored hair spewed from her scalp and onto her shoulders. Her pale complexion mirrored to me all that we ever lost.

I grip a bushel of her blazing red hair in the palm of my hands. She turns her stare to me. Those leprechaun-green eyes make my insides quiver. I was never afraid of mom, just afraid of her loneliness. Our kitchen was a desperate attempt at scrubbing away our pain. The Easter egg wall paper and delicate china look like practical jokes now. But they masqueraded us from who we were slowly becoming.
“You thinking about Daddy?” I say in a fragile whisper.
“Huh?” She says as if I stomped on the beautiful moment we just split between the two of us.
“I know you always get sad this time of night and I just want you to know that we don’t need him. Nope we are survivors. We won’t bend.”
“Damn it Suzanna! Stop with this poetic trash you always give me! Can’t a woman just sit in her darn kitchen in peace!” She says this and I am stabbed, mutilated, torn apart. This was the first time my mother erupted, and certainly not the last. This was the first time Lily and I felt fear, for the little angle waddled out of her room and buckled her arms around me. I nuzzle my face in her night gown, because I knew she heard the explosion. I also knew that she would be the only one to survive it.

So here is the story, the beating, pulsing, circulatory system of the story: My daddy killed my mom. Everything else hit us like debris from 911. It stuck its fingers all the way down our throats and latched on to that beast we call a heart. Lily once was right, I was enthrallingly beautiful in a modest, shy lady-like way. I was the spitting image of a southern bell, in my floral sun dresses and blood-colored lip stick. My beauty decayed with the loss of my parents.

Nowadays I walk around our house like a zombie in sweat pants, but to tell the truth I never did go through that big of a transformation. I have been stiff all my life. Sure my appearance enabled me to carry the title of “hottest ticket in town,” but inside I am a statue. I write this knowing that you will probably feel annoyed at my incessant self-deprecation, but I never intended for you, reader, to fall for me. I just wanted someone to listen.

The day after mom died, Lily became a dancer. I let her twinkle around the house, sure, but I always caved in to my anger when she did. I taped my eyes and my heart shut. I never knew that Lily dancing would be my hero. She started going to ballet class, I started crying. This routine stapled itself to our lives.

I was 18 when she died. Lily was 7. We were young. We lived. I was beautiful. She was passionate. Mom woke us up in the infant stages of morning.
“Let’s go.” She said.
“Mom! It’s like zero in the morning!” I exclaimed but to tell the truth her sense of adventure squirted sunlight into the corners that had been darkened from her anger.
“Suzanna Sachs! You get that butt of yours up! We are going for a ride .Help Lily get dressed.”
I had no clue where why she was corralling us, or where we were going. My mom had problems, though, and if a simple little car ride would nurture her aches, then why not?
We bundled up and bolted into the car. Lily sang show tunes and the melody wafted around the car like a lovely scent. I hummed along gleefully, munching vigorously on a bar of chocolate. The munching came to a slow demise as the knowledge of our destination pummeled me in the face. Mom wanted to go to San Francisco, and I knew her dreams would be tackled and garnered as I saw Golden Gate Bridge standing upright and proud in front of us.

We pulled over at one of the look-out points. By this time Mom’s laughter had been aged and faded to a simple melody of sighs. The supernatural power that bridges withhold is that they give you a sample and sort of packaged experience of what the edge of the world must feel like. They are telescopes to eternity. Gaping, Lily and Suzanna Sachs salivated for the fatty hugs of the water. Mom smiled that smile we thought had gone extinct.

Then as if receiving a to do list from the Gods, she regained composure and face me.
“Suzy-Q. Ya gotta do me a favor. Girls like me with enough charm and modesty to win
over some yummy guy end up hurting. In you I see my teenage innocence. Honey, life is
a bully but you gotta look it in the eye. I tried and failed ‘cause it hurt like hell. You
can be the survivor for the both of us. A pretty girl like win the you can game with a snap
of your fingers.

“You make sure my little Lily grows up just great. I always saw the mother in you. She
deserves a mama like you. Now be bold and brave and honest. I love you.”

My mother’s final contribution to humanity left me astounded. My body felt like it was
manufactured out of play dough, for all I knew there was no distinction between me and a carcass. Numbness slaughters our opinions as well as soul, and all I could do was bounce my head up and down. Cascades of tears now drizzled down the mattresses of her cheeks. She mopped her lips against Lily and I’s forehead, muttering “I love you forever.”

I know I should have yanked her away from the edge of the bridge. At that moment however, my heart was a pacifist and it viewed my mother as a martyr. She plunged, and never came up to tell us how cold the water felt. She never told Lily what to do when she got her period. She never told me how to conduct a job interview. She never showed my father where to find a secure rehab facility. She never taught me how to fall in love. She never taught Lily what love is.

Her last words were, “I will always, always, always, always love you Alec Sachs.”
Alec Sachs is my father. When he found out about it, he hibernated. I haven’t seen him out of his dungeon since the funeral. He calls sometimes, to rub my scars away with small talk, or to guzzle down as much of Lily’s wind chime voice as possible. I raised Lily from the cautious bud she was when Mom commit suicide, to the booming, overflowing rose of a teenager she is today.

My father killed my mother with the bullet-holes he abandoned in her memory. My father killed my mother by coming home polluted with alcohol 5 nights a week and beating the sensitivity out of her. My father killed my mother by never letting her cease to adore him, even when he pushed her off a bridge. Quite literally. Daddy loved me though, he was head over heels for his little Suzy. He also thought Lily was a gem which would never perish.

This story isn’t meant to fuel you with yearning to go jump off a bridge. It is entirely about laying out a fresh foundation. Lily has straw colored hair and eyes like grey stained glass. Her body is nimble and healthy. I am a twenty five year old senior citizen that looks too much like her mother. These features now decorate fresh family photos, consisting of just the two of us.

I got a job as a waitress and now I manage the restaurant, earning enough to steer Lily towards success. My Lily, whose newly born teenage temper could both melt a heart and blow it up to smithereens. Yesterday she sauntered through the door after school, and caterwauled like she did when we still had a mommy. “What does everyone want from me. What am I becoming?”

I injected my stare into hers and, with one of my prehistoric smiles, said, “Your at your peak. You trip and fall and die and begin all over again. You search within your own personal encyclopedia and come up with junk, passion and fear. You don’t look up or down at anybody, you look them straight in the eye. You are undergoing one of the most excruciating, emotional, exciting, terrifying, beautiful processes of all time. You are the most intense creature made by God. You are a teenager.”