Reading Lips
Reading Lips
a memoir of kisses
CLAUDIA STERNBACH
“Thorns” and “Islands in the Storm” were originally published
in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
“Motivation” and “Checking the Water” both originally appeared
on the Common Ties website.
Unbridled Books
Copyright © 2011 by Claudia Sternbach
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sternbach, Claudia.
Reading lips : a memoir of kisses / by Claudia Sternbach.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60953-037-2
1. Sternbach, Claudia. 2. Kissing. 3. Self-realization in women. I. Title.
PS3619.T4787Z46 2011
813’.6—dc22
[B]
2010040582
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Book Design by SH · CV
First Printing
For Teddy
Reading Lips
Lost Photos
It’s the middle of the night. My mouth is dry. I can’t move my right arm, the bandages are stuck tight. The last thing I remember is Michael kissing me good-bye as I was taken into surgery. Tears are leaking from the corners of my eyes. My eyes that won’t stay open. A nurse comes in and turns on a light. But it isn’t the cancer that’s making me cry. Not right now.
Can I get you anything? she asks.
I try to answer, but no words come out. My tongue feels thick and heavy. I open one eye and see her face. I try once more to speak.
I lost my purse, I tell her in a croaky whisper and begin to cry harder.
Here in the hospital? she wants to know. Did you have it when you came in?
Not that purse, I tell her. An old purse. It was blue. Leather. I had it years ago when I lived in Berkeley.
I give up trying to keep my eyes open. I can see the purse. Feel the weight of it. It was stolen. Someone stole it. I was shopping on College Ave.
I’m lying here in the hospital. I’ve just had surgery for breast cancer. I’m crying about a lost purse. A purse I never saw again.
There wasn’t much money in the wallet. But there were pictures. Black-and-white photos of my sisters when they were little. A picture of Sharon from sixth grade. A picture of Babs. The only picture I ever had of Teddy.
And then I am wrapped in sleep. I fall deeper and deeper until there is nothing but silence.
In the morning, breakfast trays rattle. Shoes squeak down the hall. My morphine drip is disconnected.
I wonder if it was a dream.
Hard Landings
“All’s we have to do is get on top of the Dumpster, and then we can reach the roof,” said Jimmy Z. He was one of the tallest kids in the third grade and if he got up on the roof first could help the rest of us.
“I’ll go second,” said Curtis. Curtis never would do anything first. But he always had to do whatever Jimmy Z. did.
I got to go next. The metal Dumpster was hot. Burning hot to my bare legs. Stupid school rule: gotta wear dresses every day. Stupid. Boys get to see our underpants all the time.
Jimmy and Curtis were lying on the flat rooftop, hanging their arms over the side to help me. I tried to grip the wall with my feet while they pulled me up. I landed on my belly, scraping my elbows on the tarpaper rooftop. It was so hot, it felt like the roof was melting.
Babs came up next. At the last minute, Jimmy let go of her hand and she almost fell.
“Hey,” she yelled at him, “you almost dropped me. Stupid!”
And then she flopped down next to me.
It was too hot to play foursquare. It was too hot to play tetherball. The bars were too hot to climb. To hang from. We had finished lunch and tossed our garbage in the Dumpster, and that was when Jimmy figured out that we could climb up on the roof. There was nothing else to do until the bell rang and we would have to go back to Mrs. Waverly’s class. She always read to us after lunch. She was in the middle of The Borrowers. I loved that story. The family of tiny people living in the walls of the house. I loved how the dad would go out at night and find surprises for the mom and the little girl. A thimble they would use for a sink. A spool for a table. We had no dad at our house. But we still had tables and chairs.
“So now what?” asked Babs. Babs was cranky today. When I met her on the corner before school, she was mad ’cause her sister had told her mom Babs had been snooping in her stuff. Babs’s sister was in junior high and had really interesting stuff. Babs and I snooped in it all the time. I wanted to read her diary, but it had a lock and so far we couldn’t find the key. Babs had been trying on her sister’s bras. And she had been stuffing them with toilet paper. When she got tired of looking at herself in the mirror, she put everything back in the drawer, but she forgot to take out the toilet paper. So she got caught. Babs can stay cranky all day sometimes. I’ve seen her.
I liked looking at the school yard from up here. I could see Mrs. Lawrence, the yard-duty teacher. I’d never seen her from the top before. I could see the part in her brown hair. It was crooked.
Curtis leaned over the side and spit. It just missed Cindy. She turned around when she heard him laugh, but she didn’t look up, so we were safe.
There were good things about being on the roof. Sounds were different. Floaty. And I liked watching people who didn’t know I was watching. I could see the baby kindergarteners over in their yard. They had their own playground with a fence around it. Sometimes we made fun of them. Told them they were in a cage like the monkeys in the zoo. But only when their teacher, Mrs. Day, wasn’t around. But really I liked ’em. They were so little. And cried so easy.
But a bad thing about the roof was there was no shade.
And it was getting hot on my legs. And little rocks were digging into my palms. And they were hot. I was just thinking of climbing down when somebody shoved me. I was right by the edge, trying to see the kindergarteners better. And I fell.
Mrs. Waverly got there first. I remember she rolled me over. I saw my arm. It was twisted. And my head was bleeding. But at first it didn’t hurt. I didn’t feel anything.
“Get down from there, all of you,” said Mrs. Waverly. But they were already climbing down.
“Jimmy pushed her,” Curtis said. “I saw him do it.”
I kept looking at my bent-backward arm.
“You broke it,” I cried. “You broke my arm, Jimmy.”
Now Principal Lundahl was there. He was putting his hands under my armpits. That was when everything started to hurt. He lifted me up and my arm hung down. My hand wasn’t going the right way, and I couldn’t make it turn around. Jimmy was crying. Babs was really crying.
“I