FRESH YARN presents: Morgasma... by Cynthia Moore

FRESH YARN presents:

Morgasma
By Cynthia Moore

I have a superhero complex. Always have. For as long as I can remember, I've awakened most mornings from dreaming of saving good people from bad people. Now, occasionally, in the dreams it's just me that's in jeopardy. But don't worry about me. I never do. Because nobody can trap me for long or torture or kill me. Because before they get a chance, their cell will ring or their superior bad guy will call them out of the room to teach them a new torture tactic and I'll quick-devise a scheme or a cunning hiding place from which to tunnel to safety or to surprise-attack them from when they return. Then I'll steal their bad guy uniform which allows me to stealthily blend in with all the anonymous bad people between me and the way out. Sometimes I even have to fake-speak a language I don't know. Sometimes this wakes me up. I've learned that the best dreams are the simple ones: I knock the bad guy out or tie him up so well, and my disguise is so good, and I've done such a thorough speed scan of the bad guy's i.d. papers, that I glide out unscathed. I never hurt the bad guy. Is it clear that the bad guy is always a man? Now back off on the man-hating theories, and think this out. Another woman could never pose a threat to the superhero dream me. Clearly the men can't either, but somehow, archetypally, they give me a better run for my dream money.

From early on, I believed that I was a congenital bad ass. Born to be. Ordained and endowed with extra bad ass-ness. And with that I felt came a huge responsibility. To live up to my potential. My bad ass destiny.

I was a high school "it girl." You name a club, I was president -- a team, I was captain. Well, the cool clubs and the teams that were cool for girls to be on. Homecoming court was a given. I graduated second in my class, was captain of the cheerleaders, was ranked as a tennis player, and drove a cool car. Down South, where land is cheap and the asphalt weaves between the pine trees for stretches of dozens of lonely miles between other little towns where boredom is driving other kids to play out carbon copies of the same cat-and-mouse dating, dog-eat-dog popularity contests, football worship, and what adds up to the Olympics of the Mean Girl games, where kids with little else to do besides cruise the strips of the bigger small towns like mine, well, these are the kinds of places where it really matters what kind of car you drive. And where stories like this take place.

I look back now and know that I was busying myself ragged so as to distract myself from the daily hurricane that blew in at whatever time my exceptionally big, tall, hard-working father's long, blue Buick would ominously float into the driveway. The Buicks changed over the years, but my father's rage was pretty consistent. I was the middle daughter, the one who stood up to him when the others disappeared into their clouds of pot or boyfriends' back seats or hibernating sleep. Standing up was a sure-fire way to incite more rage. But I couldn't back down from defending my mother or anybody else against so much undeserved criticism and chair hurling. Unaware, my father was honing in me the ultimate superhero. I needed to be strong to defend against the fist that always felt like it was about to swing my way. It never did, but the threat loomed large. And came with thundering words from way up high. My dad was a very big man. A big, tall, rageful man.

It must have all looked easy from the outside, but being my version of the "it girl" was a full-time job. Until I became the girl with the target on her forehead. Seems that my "it girl" became too much to bear - I became too much to bear - when I got to go to this sort of summer camp for, for lack of a more humble term, exceptional students. (Mind you, there were plenty of exceptional students at my school, but I got to go. I still don't understand the selection process. One day, I was just told that I had been chosen.) Anyway, I don't remember being obnoxious or bragging or even talking about it much when I got back to start my senior year. I think I knew better. I think I had a hunch laying low was a good idea. But somehow the die had been cast while I was away. The target had been tattooed while the "it girl" was sleeping. The "it" was about to hit the fan.

I have a deeply-ingrained habit of running a few minutes late. I was often late to school. One fateful morning I had cookies to buy and sandwiches to make and stacks of dishes to carry in prep for a tea that the cheerleaders threw at recess on the Friday of every home game. This was a huge game, mind you, and the tea had to be done right. Well, I knew if it were going to be done right, I'd be the one to do it. (Superhero and control freak are separated by a tenuous, fine line.)

I couldn't be late a fourth time in the quarter or I'd be suspended (a rule still in existence that I am not proud to have inspired.) When I arrived at school that morning, I screeched to a stop in an illegal parking spot in the school lot. I grabbed my tower of books, and I sprinted into the building. Luckily, Mr. Burns' AP English class was just inside the door. As I strode, in full cheerleader regalia, across the threshold of Mr. Burn's class, ready to slide into my desk and have my way with diagramming one of his ridiculously long sentences, he pointed at me. Like someone might point at a dog. As if to say, "Stop. Roll over. Stay. Don't even twitch or you'll never ever see another bone."

"To the office," he said.

My mother told me years later that Mr. Burns had had to leave town under the cover of night after being found under the covers with a male student. I couldn't help but feel a twinge of delight at the karmic retribution. After all, his stringent interpretation of the tardy bell had set in motion the bitch squad that was about to swarm and attack and throw my bad ass into survival overdrive just to be able to complete the school year.

"To the office," he repeated. "But I'm here. The bell hadn't even stopped ringing. I was over the threshold before -- "

He just shook his pedophiliac head. The class stared. Nobody spoke. They all knew I was about to be suspended which could wreck my G.P.A. and my beautiful college plans. Or I'd have to opt for the humiliating alternative: to work it off in manual labor for two weeks after school. I stared at the chalkboard. The carved-up geometric sentence that would re-define my future came into focus. Subject: Cynthia. Verb: is about to get. Object: the social ass kicking. Prepositional phrase: of her seventeen-year-old life. I stared at him, my belly starting to burn, heart revving up. Knowing I had been late so many times but that I really wasn't technically late on this day. And feeling so silly in my short-short skirt holding my tower of books. I looked back at the diagrammed sentence on the board. It said something about Mrs. Jones delivering fresh-baked bread to her invalid aunt. Robot-like, his fat little head kept rocking back and forth. This was where I needed a break. Dream style. His bad guy English teacher boss needed to distract him just long enough for me to diagram the next sentence so perfectly that he'd be stunned and forget I had been late at all. I waited. No voice over the intercom. No fire drill. No fight in the hall. His square Barney Rubble head just wagged back and forth, and now he was pointing toward the office.

I turned. I walked out . . . and hooked a left back out the exit. I heaved the tower of books into my cool car and flew home to devise my way out of this real-life mess. When I called to tell the school secretary I wasn't feeling well that morning and would be in later to conduct the tea, I got transferred to the ex-Marine who was our principal.

The woman who transferred me happened to be the mother of a bona fide mid-level Mean Girl, Marcia Hayden. A sergeant of the bitch squad, not a high-ranking officer. Not a leader. (No one looks up to the baton twirlers, and she was good. Competitive good. Flame throwing, sequin good.) She had run from Mr. Burns' class to the office to turn me in.

I negotiated my hard labor penalty, came back to school, handled the tea, cleaned up with a couple of other cheerleaders, then ducked into Mr. Conner's third period History class. It didn't matter that I was late here. Mr. Conner knew that the tea was my job. He wasn't smart like Mr. Burns. But a good man. With an outstanding Grecian Formula-blue-black toupee. The class was watching a film. The room was dark. I ducked under the beam of light, and as I sat down, I noticed that no one was in their seats around mine. The projector was humming, and the film was loud. Something about the acquisition of Hawaii. I saw that everybody had moved to the perimeter of the dark room. Everybody but Marcia Hayden, the Judas of my tardiness.

"Who the hell do you think you are!?" Marcia shouted, competing with the narrator who had segued to something about Queen Liliuokalani's being incarcerated for her supporters' having stashed a weapons cache in her garden after she had resumed her throne. They never revolted. She had never even known about the weapons.

"You think you're so much better than everybody else! You think you're hot shit!" Marcia was screaming now. Foamy spit flew from her mouth. I remember feeling it spray my face as hers contorted as she lambasted me for thinking something I'd never even considered. That I was better than everybody else? I felt like maybe I worked harder than everybody else. But, like, hello, how else was I supposed to veil the rampant insecurities etched into the bedrock of my psyche by my critical father? Thing is, I never thought I was better. And was that a reason to unleash this attack dog of a torch tosser -- for her going for my throat? And for none of the people who pretended to be my friends for my entire life to come to my defense? What had I done to them? Marcia was only the henchman. Who took her job to heart. The schemers were other "it girls." My best friends. How long had they been scheming to circle their chairs and watch their chosen gladiator take me down? It was a very public persona I was sporting. Granted in the smallest of young fish bowls. Still, that was my world.

The verbal flogging continued for what felt like an hour while crimson-faced Mr. Conner shouted for her to "Shut up!" He slammed the lights on. I'd never seen him emit any emotion higher on the intensity scale than snippy. Here he lost it. Meanwhile, I did nothing. For the first time in my life, I didn't fight back. Marcia had blindsided me. This was a new kind of verbal thrashing, and I was unprepared. I'm embarrassed now to confess for how long after this event I dreamed of pummeling her into a puddle of smoldering sequins.

Mr. Conner, toupee now ever-so-slightly askew, dragged Marcia Hayden - rabid, crazed - out of the room. Somewhere in the fray, somebody had turned the projector off. Marcia jabbed her hands through the air toward me and screamed as he carted her out. He slammed the door. Then the silence hit. And it never stopped. Until I left that creepy school in that charming little stuck-in-time town where my parents still live.

I hate going back there. I loathe everything about it. Except visiting my amazing, poster-woman-of-co-dependence mother and my father whose rage has diminished drastically with each progressive heart operation. The triple bypass seemed to do the trick. I guess something about ripping that heart chakra open mellows a person right out. It's as if the doctors gave my dad a heavy dose of psychic Drano - the valves have been cleared and the love flows freely now.

A couple of teachers called me aside after that momentous day and told me to keep my chin up and that this kind of thing happened sometimes. And my little sister became my best friend. My mother allowed me stay home whenever it was too difficult for me to go to school. I almost missed too many days to graduate.

After leaving home and the prison that was my high school, I tied on my cape and flew directly to Emory -- a competitive college that specialized in breeding little doctors and scientists and had a legacy of suicide from the top floor of the library during finals. Here I heartily embraced the first two years of a pre-med degree. I wasn't going to be some dermatologist in a sterile Atlanta high rise with mauve wallpaper. I was going to be a Doctor Without Borders or something heroic like that. Well, heavy doses of sophomore calculus and organic chemistry proved to be way too much for a little head that was already swimming from sleeping with the president of my sorority, Missy. So questions of sexuality dimmed the superhero light for a short while -- until my head was able to hold both. (And I was able to catch enough late-night re-runs of The Bionic Woman to get that a real superhero needs to be able save the world and dress like a lesbian. Lindsay had it down.) By then, the doctor dream had slipped by, and I told myself that an English major reflected a more mature version of listening to my inner calling. That I was meant for more creative things than logarithms and fetal pig dissections.

I've done way too many superhero stunts to recount. Crazy stuff like chasing burglars, saving kids and dogs, and stopping my friend's brand new car from rolling down a steep hill with my bare hands. I realized I had a problem when my little sister and I were being held up in a 7-Eleven by an angry guy with his hand in his coat pocket. "You so don't have a gun," I actually said to him. "Want me to show it to you?" he snapped. I backed my bad ass down right then and there.

I enjoy drawing, and I often find myself drawing the same character doing different things. Her name is Morgasma. She sort of emerged from the chalk as me, my anti-self . . . my superhero. Morgasma is impressive. She can perform home surgeries through cyberspace. Like if you were trapped somewhere and you had to get your leg amputated, she could do it. From her house.

For the first nine years I lived in Los Angeles, the biggest drawing of Morgasma -- a Technicolor chalk drawing -- hung over my desk in my living room. In it, her graceful naked body with a TV monitor for a head sits perched on the edge of a toilet at a table that looks like a checkerboard. She's reading a newspaper and eating from a plate partitioned like a peace sign. Her walls are decorated with nonsensical clocks (Morgasma is, after all, timeless) and crosses made of money and the American flag. Her videophone bears the image of some head of state, and she's smoking with one hand and reaching for the velvet toilet tissue with the other. This is Morgasma on a light day. But I know her power. Her potential. Surgeon, soothsayer, cyberwitch, prophet, magician, specimen of physical prowess, part human, all brain.

In looking back, I miss the superhero I almost was. But I really don't want to get shot in the face. And I probably don't really want to live in a third world country, five to a room, under the threat of contracting weird diseases. Maybe for a long weekend, but that's about it.

Last year my dad visited me by himself. A first. I was so nervous before he came out. I emailed him lists of fun, L.A.-specific activities to choose from: The Dodgers, "The Producers," The Rose Bowl Parade, The Disney Music Hall. Nix. Nix. Nix. Nix. He always wrote back that he didn't want to plan anything. I'd suggest; he'd reject. Finally, I gave up on the planning. I picked him up, and we spent the next two days driving aimlessly around Los Angeles, weaving in and out of neighborhoods, checking out open houses, taking in architecture. We people-watched at the Farmer's Market and drove to the beach, took each other out to dinner, and shopped for a nice piece of jewelry he was determined to take back to my mother.

I've always enjoyed my father's energy when it didn't jump tracks into rage. At heart, he's a charismatic, funny, compassionate guy. And he seemed doggedly fixed on making his trip to Los Angeles a wonderful memory for me. It was.

I've never really thought I'd trade any part of me for any part of anybody else. I wouldn't exchange my childhood for a more mellow one. I can tell you with certainty, I wouldn't trade my dad. Nor that venomous, redneck, baton-twirling, sequined flame flinger and her posse. Without the challenges, without those people who laid them out for me, I never would've known my own superhero strength. And the power I now understand I have to transform it into something truly heroic.

I wish I could report an epiphany, some cathartic lightning strike, a laying down of internal arms, my own personal peace accord. Instead, I guess I've just mellowed. And learned a little something about letting the robber get away with the cash. Sometimes you've got to keep the cape under wraps and use superhuman powers just to stay focused, steer clear of drama, and get through the day. Which, to my surprise, has left all kinds of time for peace and creativity, not to mention the clarity to dodge the flaming batons that occasionally hurl my way.

My bad ass, fighter instinct swoops down from time to time, but for the most part, I've realized that superhero strength is really about love. Not about what might have been. Or who might have been different. As entertaining as it is, even dreaming about being a bad ass keeps me looking backward. And tops on the Superhero Rules list is to look where you want to go.

These days, I dream less often about kicking ass. I wake up more peaceful. I still run late, but not nearly as late as I used to. I know that my superhero is still in there if I need her. Morgasma's on the wall, ready to be my muse if she's summoned. I just don't have to dream a fantasy to feel alive or safe. I can wake up, roll over, brew a pot of green tea, then write my heart out. Life may look a little less than heroic, but I'm awake now. And in the privacy of my own breakfast nook, I'm still a bad ass.