Nicole Homer
Things Daryl Hannah Will Never Know About Me
The near-drowning happened when I was three. My brother was supposed to be watching me but I am not a sandcastle. I waddled into the ocean and no one noticed me gone. I made it to my mother’s left leg and wrapped my arms around it. At first, she fended me off with a kick, thinking I was a tangle of seaweed. She spanked him so hard. *** After Splash, I soured on happy endings but I still have a crush on Tom Hanks. I loved him in Castaway. I thought of you while I watched it; I wondered when you were going to show up and rescue him from that island, from his co-dependent relationship with Wilson. *** My ex-husband had been dreaming about me for a long time when I traded my name for his and I thought This is what love is like. *** Madison is a near-perfect name. It’s almost gender-neutral and says: don’t expect lace or pink or even legs because I could be a sea creature or I could be the girl you’ve been dreaming about since you were five and almost drowned. That’s what every name should say. *** When I was six, I poured all the salt in the kitchen into the full bathtub and sat there for hours. Nothing happened. *** Daryl, in the beginning of Splash, you walked up to feet of the Statue of Liberty naked. You had a man’s wallet and a vivid memory of his five-year old near death experience. You were blond and tall and your legs, your legs, were such a benevolent lie. Later, you traded your necklace for a fountain because he said he liked it and I thought If ever I love, I will love like this. *** I loved you in Blade Runner. It was the first time I’d heard anyone say, “I think therefore, I am” and it was you, Daryl. I know you are only an actress, I know the words weren’t yours; I know you traded your voice for money but, still, it was you. Nothing can ever change that. *** If I were Jackie O., I would’ve let you marry my son. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he flew into the Atlantic Ocean; I think he’d been dreaming about a girl. *** I’ve never been ice skating but if ever I need to break up with a lover, I will go to Central Park in the winter. I will wait until the cheap rental skates are laced all the way up. I’ll let my goodbye hang in the air, cold and wet. I’ll sprint away as into the open mouth of a yellow cab. This is the most stylish way to break a heart. Thank you for the advice. *** I still live near the beach. When I walk out of the water, there is a thick stripe of sharp waiting for my soft: the shells of unlucky animals, crabs still full of fight and meat, glass not sea-tumbled enough to have lost its jagged. I have calluses, Daryl. *** Sometimes I stay in the shower until my hands and feet get waterlogged and wrinkled. Nothing ever changes. Things I Want to Say to Rae Dawn Chong Rae, I want to call you Rae. *** Rae, you don’t have hair like mine but – close enough, so I think I understand, Rae. You should have been in more movies. *** You always make me think of The Jeffersons even though you were never on that show. The neighbors were two-tone comic relief. Nothing like my parents. But you and Arnold in Commando. Oh, Rae, you two were unlikely and perfect and snapshot one-liner. You were the first people on TV that I understood. You had nothing in common. My father hated grits. My mother is from the south, Rae. Do you understand? What do the Chinese and Scottish or the Africans and the Canadians have in common except you? *** You might think I would be crush and yearn watching Soul Man but C. Thomas Howell only got the skin right. Plus, you two were so perfect together: young and promising and pretending to be black. Rae, what did the casting calls say? Was it as straightforward as “brown”? As honest as “almost black”? *** When you were cast in that movie, it was like you came home to me. Me and C. Thomas Howell. There’s a scene, all soundtrack and moral, when the archetypal wizened black professor says to your blackened boyfriend: “You've learned something I can't teach them. You've learned what it feels like to be black.” This is the moment on every VHS copy of that movie when I can hear white America sighing and commiserating and imagining checks made out to the NAACP and handed to a dignified black man in a tuxedo at a ceremony held in their honor. But then C. Thomas Howell says: “I don't really know what it feels like sir. If I didn't like it, I could always get out.” The quick sudden inhale of all those pale faces, the glow of the television casting them whiter than they are. The living room sucker punch quick as a line of dialogue. *** But the professor offered a reprieve: “You've learned a great deal more than I thought.” What did you learn, Rae? All those years you spent as a black woman, your Chinese and Scottish and Irish and Canadian tucked into your pocket neat as a freedman’s papers. |
Nicole Homer is (a): Writer. Teacher. Nerd. Mother. Backyard deer watcher. Stovetop popcorn popper. Treehugger. Gardener. Curmudgeon. Part Roseanne Conner, part Sarah Connor. #Sockcurator of an immaculate collection. Collector of #cheesyworkoutshirts. She lives online at http://nicolehomer.com/ and would love your support at https://www.patreon.com/nicolehomer.