My fingers are frolicking about with delicate glass flasks and pinching pipettes that dribble crafted memories. Powerful scenes are mystically dripping into rainbow splattered beakers, my fabricated recipes clouding into an ombre of colors. I slide my fogged goggles over my eyes to protect myself from the echoing chemicals climbing their way throughout the laboratory. The wafting scents glide smoothly across cluttered countertops of cylinders, sailing adrift in the atmosphere.
Glassware overflows my arms as I clumsily manage to gallop over to our apartment’s front doorway. Twisting files of neighborhood folks have zigzagged down the street, down for blocks and blocks, all just waiting for me. I can read their scrunched up faces, knowing that they have all been cursed. Nowadays, people found themselves strolling along bustling park pathways, rallying chatter clogging their ears, yet feeling more desolate and deserted than ever. Glasses half-full have been fashioned into glasses half-empty. I have heard tales of individuals splatting their bodies miserably in bed all day and inhaling cartons-full of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream while coiled up in the darkness of blanketed pillow forts. And every time I ask them, why? Why do you do this to yourself? And they always reply with that same rehearsed response, as if I already have not heard it millions of times reenacted before: I’m an introvert. But then if you like plastering that blasted nametag to your forehead, why do you still come to me?
Many of the times, it is because they are dragged out by their parents into the crackling fumes of the outdoors, forced to snuff what the real oxygen tastes like out here. Yet that nagging answer still haunts me when dissecting the components of the word itself. What really does it mean to be an introvert? Maybe it’s a question that will never be answered, or maybe it’s an answer that will soon never be questioned.
Snow, my six-year-old little sister, took it upon herself to recognize my talents of healing, duct-taping a makeshift cardboard stand out on our front porch. My parents thought she was just going through that “lemonade stands are a good idea” kind of phase because everyone knows that a toddler without a pocket full of cash is unheard of, but they were surely wrong. Instead of plopping an empty cookie jar labeled “Tips” on the stand’s surface corner, she scribbled in sharpie “Tomorrow” on the rim. She then bounced on top of a wooden crate, polishing paint on a banner that read Piper’s Perfumes and nestled her tushie in a looped garden hose. What she didn’t understand was that the scents I concocted were not just some sort “spritz on the go” kind of take-out service. They were aromas of reminiscence.
“It can crush you, the things you will hear. The things you will see will change you, Piper.” My mom had misty-eyes trampling down the distraught stormy veins that poked out from her skin, clutching the glittering blue veins that marched out of mine. The weight of the sky almost smothered Atlas into fireworks of particle dust and now that I’ve loaded it onto my shoulders, she fears that I won’t be able to withstand it for as long as he did.
It didn’t faze me though. I wasn’t afraid to peel layer by layer of all those onions, despite having to battle the urge of my tears seeping down my blotchy cheeks. While teenagers my age were probably experimenting with the flavors of combining more than one bottle of beer, I was experimenting with how to cure the depression of the world. My efforts may have been small, catering to the needs of lonesome widows, social anxiety-ridden tweens and spouses doused in distress, but at least I tried.
People usually waddle up to my Hooverville stand with a simple memory in mind. It may be that widow’s memory of her beloved husband’s shimmering reflection in the mirror, or that tween’s memory of her lioness pride charging through the school halls, or that spouse’s memory with a drink in his hand and feet buried in the sand. I drafted these precious scenes for the people, to unbury the welt that stabbed at their chest and help them breathe a little. The experiences were substitutes for the saltwater tidal waves, stitching up the wounds of the past to make room to heal for the future.
My neighbors would explain to me what their feelings felt like in that moment of revival. They would explain to me the scents that transported them through the portal of that memorial. The tender, wrinkling creases of their eyelids would sway nostalgically, leaping into an Olympic-sized pool of sentimentality.
My butter-slathered body is bathing in a tub of budding popcorn kernels, sprouting as newborn rosebuds from cherry blossom branches.
Oozing honey is drizzling in cupfuls of rain, spilling over into a cascading waterfall of sweetness.
Spurting sprinkles swirl with the whistling wind as doodles of confetti parade from chiseled marble fountains.
Maple helicopter seeds flitter graciously through the blueberry fermenting fragrance that saturates the air.
Snow’s dew-twinkled eyes would be daydreaming of the swampy realm beneath the iceberg, exploring the unknown of the subconscious alongside me. She would snuggle her dazed head onto my shoulder, a soft little sweet smile hugging the people who tiptoed over to our stand. After each storytime, the people would pop folded papers into our “Tomorrow” jar. This idea just flourished one day, starting with the teeny seed implanted by one person, quickly blooming into a garden of folded origami.
***
Tomorrow is today, my little sister hop-scotching over as she wades through the grass with a beautiful plan stirred up in mind. She is springing off from foot to foot as though ready to catapult her body over a hurdle, quickly approaching my stand. I am comfortably settled on a cushioned stool, preoccupied with our overjoyed neighbors who collect their fizzing packaged deliveries. The hobbling little kindergartener skips over to the jar of bursting origami, to dump out the fragments, swimming her hands around in the piles as if mashing them up into lumpy potatoes. She curls up into a ball, counting the jumbled paper scraps strewn across the ground and shuffles them like a deck of randomly assorted cards. She shifts into different positions as she toys with the pieces like legos, beginning in a criss-cross applesauce, then transitioning into a flawless banana split.
Her plotted scheme is swelling to life, an innocent, devious look smeared across her face as she darts over to the shed’s mossy red, rusted sprinkler knob. The knob stampers, holding a stubborn grudge as she wrenches it full-force around in rotation, ecstatically somersaulting after her victory. Snow speedily clambers back over to the crowds in preparedness for the unveiling of her surprise and hoists a looped garden hose up to the sky.
The spout belches, streaming the wildest wallflowers of paper from its moisturized lips. The zigzagged lines of heartbroken people suddenly are glistening as iridescent bubble mirages, Cinderella ceasing her scrubbing for the chirping of the song of nightingales. No longer do people sniff about for a supplement to alleviate their sorrows, they now open their eyes to see it has been right in front of them the whole time. The papers of “Tomorrow” are fluttering their wings, a sparkling wave of laughter gloriously rippling into a domino effect. People are crying, but not in tears of grief, tears of happiness. They are prancing about as gazelles in tap dance, singing merry tunes in flurrying cheerful spirits. Splashing around in puddles of paper, they bond together as a mobile choir, shouting their names for all the world to hear.
I crawl up on my barstool to pluck a soaring paper from the air and unfold it to finally sneak that peek at its contents. It is folded up into a teeny square, my fumbling fingers delicately turning open the edges. The tiny slip of paper blooms, revealing Mahatma Gandhi written in cursive calligraphy at the top. Beneath it, a photograph of a cherubic baby girl, with milk chocolate skin and hazelnut eyes stands poised. I gape at the image dumbfounded, glimpsing at it for much longer than just a sneak-peek. My neck cricks backward at the downpour above me, gripping another paper that flies my way. This one is labeled Eleanor Roosevelt, an attached photograph of a middle-aged man with sandy blonde hair and a sloping Whoville nose. Grasping another, I read Nelson Mandela, with a photograph of an elderly woman wearing ginger curls and freckling dimples dotting her cheeks. I smile.