She was a loony one, you know.

When we first met, she told me her earliest memories were from atop a washing machine in an
unnamed washateria; focusing on the colors of her clothes swirl together in the dryer across the
walkway, and swinging her legs against the cold metal. She would tell me her mom and her went there
all the time, with men constantly asking for coffee dates and lunch dates and movie dates. She told me
she never said a word during all this, and that the only shoes she wore were her bright yellow ones; so
when she swung her feet fast enough, they would look like bananas.

This was our first conversation. I honestly wasn’t sure whether or not to comment or to just listen, but
she went on anyway, before I was able to decide.

She went into great detail about that washateria. Told me about the dust covered fans whirring on the
ceiling, about the one fan in the corner by the door that would get carried by its own weight and churn
as it spun. She told me about the narcoleptic owner from the orient, who just slouched in a chair behind
the register; and the permanent smoke that hung in the air from the incense in the corner where Buddha
sat.

I fell in love with the place. I’ve never been there before, but now here I was, transported by my mind’s
eye and sitting next to her, swinging my bright blue sneakers in circles to look like bubbles, and
breathing in the burnt offering.

She had a way about her, you know.

Where you can believe every word she said and every story she uttered, but somewhere in the back of
your head, you would think that she had made at least some of it up; and somehow –somehow, it was
okay with you.

Her mother looked like a doll, she said. Dark violet eyes and curled-at-the-ends auburn hair. She
always wished that she’d one day somehow morph into having at least one of those traits, but her
mother said she looked just like her father. And with the very mention of that stranger, her nose would
almost instinctively wrinkle, every time.

She told me the men that harried her mom seemed to refuse to acknowledge her and her banana feet,
while she gazed at them through her bangs. After a couple of days, she said she made this into a game.
She would count how many minutes it took for the men to come into the washateria and gather around,
and she would then memorize their names and faces. She told me that her favorite frequent flier was a
man maybe named Adelio, or Adiel. He had a nice smile, she said.

Then, standing up from where we sat, she swept her arms through the air, making extravagant motions,
pantomiming to me that Adelio or Adiel was some sort of European theatre artist. She said he had a
laugh like molasses slowly slinking over tree bark, and hair darker than the night. She said she never
told her mom of the childish crush she had on him, and the jealousy that bubbled within her whenever
her mother and him would make eye contact for too long. She said she wondered why her mom would
ever pass up the chance to date him, but it was her loss.

She then made a face that looked like her mouth was trying to crawl up the rest of her features, and she
said another suitor’s name as if it was Satan himself. Velvel. The name means ‘Wolf’, she said. And
she told me he looked just like one. She said he was German, with salt and pepper hair that was slicked
back, and sharp, wide features. He was a doctor, which she knew wasn’t bad, but she hated to go to the
doctor and refused to accept that Velvel chose that career to help people. She said his smile was the
color of urine that was held in for too long, and that he seemed too proud. Her mother did not date any
of these men.

Having not sat down from describing Adelio-Adiel; she dug the heel of her red rubber boot into an ant
pile, causing the little vermin to scatter like water droplets when a rock plops into a lake.

Our apartment was small and dingy, she said. The nights after taking care of the laundry, she told me
her mom would frantically start to smoke. She described her pretty, little fingers shaking as they lit up
cigarette after cigarette, while dainty rouge lips held the fag tightly between them with each inhale.

She told me she only smoked on those nights, while her banana shoes would occupy themselves with
the table legs as she finished eating a cold dinner. She told me her mom would always caution to her –
before the frenzy, to never, never smoke; while she nodded on solemnly as if she will keep that promise
locked in her very soul.

She said her mother would pace as if followed by demons; huffing, puffing, wherever she went. She
would walk through the kitchen into the balcony, look at the skyline, turn around and slump herself
against the railing. She never looked worried or scared, simply haggard from life. She said she hated
seeing her mother like that, but she insisted she didn’t know how to stop her.

This was when her gaze shifted from the direction of the ant pile, to me.

She had bright eyes, you know.

While she told her story, it was as if you could see the light that she keeps in there, every scene that
unfolded in her childlike imagination.

She told me that the smoke her mother blew during those nights reminded her of the Hindu goddess
Dhumavati and the dark forces that she represented. She knew a lot about religion, but she didn’t fail to
add that she never believed it. She said she wanted to, especially after her mother’s last cigarette of the
night, when both of them would watch their rabbit-eared television together, flipping the channels to
get to the documentaries.

She said her mother was a sucker for documentaries. Any type was perfect for her mom, but she
preferred the ones that talked of spirits and divinities. Each story was something new for her, like a
normal child with a fairytale, but she absorbed them as if she were their missionary. She said she had a
phase where she swore on her grandfather’s grave that she was the divine reincarnation of the Buddhist
Amitabha, who just happened to translate to Infinite Light.

She told me that during that time period, she would kneel in front of washateria Buddha and talk to it,
her knees getting ashy from the incense, and her bananas getting dirtied; but those were petty matters.
She said that during those moments of talking to the deity calmed her and squished the fear that she’d
be left by her sought-after mother, but like many childish rituals, she eventually stopped.

She said she started questioning the worth of being a reincarnated god, and because she did, it must be
a sure sign that she wasn’t. The prospect was still conceivable to her though, because she claimed many
a person approached her about her eyes –those bright eyes. They were stormy gray that changed with
the color of the clothes she wore.

She wore blue that day.

She told me that most of her clothes are a shade of blue because she wanted people to confuse her for
the sky. She told me that the sky was a gift to us mere mortals; that we should be frothing with delight
to have something so vast and eternal spread above us without any debt to whatever that made it.

She then looked up into the heavens that she talked of, situating herself next to me once again, closing
her eyes and smiling, the sky mirroring that stormy gray they usually donned.

Her mother was against the idea of having so many blues, she explained. She told me of ‘bargain’ days
when she would plan to badger her mom, telling her reasons why blue should be, and no other color
would do. She said she would follow her mother everywhere on those days, even into the bathroom.
But she never did it on laundry days.

No, she said. Laundry days were special days, when even after spending so much time there, she still
felt like a child who couldn’t reach the floor, a child who played mental games with her surroundings, a
child reincarnated into light.

She was a loony one, you know.

She could’ve told me anything and I would’ve believed it, though. She had that air about her, like the
incense she spoke of never quite left her lungs, like the washateria seeped into her skin –into her very
being.

We both breathed in the scent of the rain that surrounded us. She then sighed something about fixing up
lunch for her mother. Mac and cheese were her favorite, she said. It was easy to make. She told me she
always put a special ingredient, but refused to keep going about it, insisting that it was getting late.

She stood up. I followed suit.

I never got a chance to learn her name as she wordlessly wrapped up our one-sided conversation and
sloshed through the mud in her red boots… but its okay.

I met the sky that day.