Karolina Waclawiak - How to Get into the Twin Palms

Lev had left his clothes and they provided the perfect kindling. Cologne-soaked, the cheap suit fabric was highly flammable. I draped the pieces over dry brush and lit each corner and watched the flames lick and twist onto themselves. Trying to get bigger. I ran back and forth, lighting all of them.

The flames were slow at first. I didn’t think they would even take, or keep. The wind made it hard to light everything and my thumb became worn and bruised while I worked on the flaming. Lev’s shirt fluttered in a pile of dirt as the Santa Anas picked up and snuffed itself out. It was frustrating. I took his shirt, inhaled his smell now mixed with a thin stench of smoke and tried lighting it again. This time it took.

I stood back and watched the burn. The Santa Anas pushed the flames left and right, up trees nearby. This would get the glut moving again. This was me making it work.

I COLLECTED FUCHSIA BOUGAINVILLEA ON MYway down the hill. Tugged at my hair to interlace the blooms with strands of hair and wrapped a branch around me as I made my way down to my car.

By the time I had got there, sirens weren’t far off and the petals of the bougainvillea had begun to wither and turn oily to the touch. The sky was growing brighter. I wasn’t sure if it was the fire enveloping Griffith Park or the sun rising. The clock in my car had stopped working so there was no way of knowing for sure. All I knew was that it was time to get home.

There was bougainvillea strewn in the middle console and on the carpet beneath my feet. I had fuchsia petals in my hair. I pulled them out with some strands of hair still attached and rolled down my window. Threw it all out at a stoplight, petals under my feet, from the seat next to me. Threw them all over Western.

I wasn’t feeling any better.

I WALKED UP THE STAIRS TO MY APARTMENTand my neighbor, the mackerel-giver, was standing there, smiling at me. I sat down and there was a velvet painting of mountains and trees leaning against the metal grate of my door.

“Have you ever been to New York City?” he said.

I wasn’t in the mood for questions or conversation, so I said no.

“My daughter lives there. She’s getting married.”

I looked at his mustache, curled up over his smile. “You have a kid?”

“Yes, she’s getting married.” He stood there smiling in plaid shorts and sweat creeping out from the armpits of his shirt.

“Congratulations.”

“I was thinking of moving there. Be close to her.”

“What’s this?” I said.

“My mother wants you to have it. She has no more wall space.”

I held it up, the frame was gold flecked, ridged, and molding. The velvet was coarse and had a layer of dirt on it, the paint flecking off in whites and blues but the mountains looked majestic and popped off the velvet. I contemplated keeping it.

“I can’t take this,” I said.

“You must.”

His mother came out onto the balcony, toothless and spangle-scarfed. She looked like a gypsy to me. She smiled and shoved her hands at me. There was no giving it back.

“You should give it to your daughter,” I said.

“I’m not bringing it to New York City.”

They smiled at me and waited for me to thank them and bring it inside.

I nodded my head, turned the key to my door and said good luck. And thank you.

The apartment was dark.

I put the painting up against the wall and walked into the kitchen. I found what I was looking for and went and nailed the painting to the wall. Or, I nailed a screw into the wall and hung the rusting wire of the frame on it, hoping it would hold. I hung it so you could see it through the sliding glass door, so they could see it. My immigrant velvet painting. I stood back and stared at it. It was the best thing I owned.

My mother would hate it. It was cheap and dated, mid-seventies kitsch. Probably the Ural Mountains. Uralskie gory. Or maybe the Tatras. Tatry Zachodnie . Why would Russians have a velvet painting of Polish mountains? It didn’t make sense. They were the Urals for sure. Lev would like it, I think. I imagined him standing back and laughing, telling me all about the Urals. And then, I realized that would happen so I opened the curtains so the whole street could see my new painting, my gift. I had to share it with someone.

THE CHECKS HAD STOPPED COMING A FEWweeks before and I knew I would be in trouble. When I walked outside and saw my car was gone, I panicked at first, had the police taken it, did they know? But I was still here, they hadn’t come after me, so I knew it wasn’t that. Boris from upstairs called down to me. “They took it.”

His shirt was stained and had holes in it, and he stuck his plastic shoe through the metal bars of his balcony.

“Who took it?” I asked.

“The truck came and — ” He threw his hands up, motioned the rest.

When I exhaled he leaned down further, almost falling over the ledge. “What you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Boris.” I went back inside and closed the door behind me.

Repossessed, I thought. There was no leaving here now. Just sit and wait for them to come to me, if they were ever going to. I turned on the television. The helicopters on television were echoed by the ones in real life around me. The newscasters were using words like deliberate .

I stared at the Urals on my wall and wanted to be there, instead of here. I tried to think cool thoughts. Snow and such. Anything to get away from the oppressive heat surrounding me.

I TURNED OFF MY PHONE, I TURNED OFF THElights, and I didn’t leave the house for a few days. I ate beans and rice, chicken broth with frozen mixed vegetables and broken pieces of spaghetti, frozen burritos with freezer burn through the plastic, which I found toward the back of the freezer where I never looked.

I found more of Lev’s hair. At the bottom of the bathtub, in my sheets. I tried to get rid of it all. I scrubbed the bathtub and the toilet with bleach until my hands burned and my nostrils burned. Until I couldn’t smell anymore. I had fine cuts on my fingers and palms from scrubbing with the scouring pad, from rubbing at the bleach. I took my sheets and put them in the washer, in the laundry room with the rubber tube that let the water flow out of the washing machine, into the big molding basin, a rim of hair around the base, and I knew Lev would stay there. His hair mixed in with the others.

I could hear Boris coming down the stairs and I didn’t want to talk to him, have him ask me about my car again. Talk about the fires anymore. I turned off the light and crouched next to the bleating machine. It sounded like it was dying and it drowned out my breathing. I could see Boris’s head bobbing as he carried his trash to the alleyway. Singing something from Ukrainian television.

And then I could see Lev. He pressed the buzzer several times, then knocked against the metal grate of my door. I guessed he had come back for his things. But I had left them in the park, burning.

I saw Boris coming back around from the alley and Lev spotted him too.

“Where is she?” he asked Boris.

“How should I know?” He continued up the stairs, unafraid of Lev.

He banged on my door a few more times, peered into the laundry room at the shaking machine and tried the door. It was locked and he couldn’t see me crouching under the basin, under the dripping water pooling in the sink.

I waited for him to leave and got up when I heard him turn on his car and drive away. He was going back to his wife or to someone else. I didn’t care anymore. He wasn’t mine. Never was.