Mamihlapinatapai is a word from the Yaghan language of the Tierra del Fuego , and is considered one of the hardest words to translate
It describes "a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start."
PART 1
For a while, I was a crisis mediator. A crisis mediator is someone who usually gets to a scene before the EMT’s do and stays after they leave, trying to calm everybody down with mantras like “Let go and let god” or “Know things for what they are.” People will also call a mediator if they are feeling suicidal, or if someone has just died.
I didn’t do it because I was particularly interested in the work, or even very qualified, but because I needed someone to need me. I also liked the idea of having a beeper that could go off any minute and would allow me to drive erratically or walk out of dinner without paying. I was living in the apartment of my friend Maeve who had gone to Utah for something called Leap Further! A Life Purpose Retreat! and needed me to take care of her three cats, but Maeve ended up moving in with her life coach and never came back to Jersey so I just let the cats out the door one day and kind of resumed her life where it left off. I had made some money before taking Maeve’s place so I didn’t really have to get another job besides EMS Crisis Mediator for a while.
1. I found myself at a carnival and at this carnival was a bell jar full of jelly beans and a sign that said “GUESS HOW MANY JELLY BEANS AND WIN!”, I guessed 405 and was exactly right. A bucktoothed man in overalls gave me a check for four hundred and five dollars. I left the carnival feeling like my whole life had been leading up to this moment.
2. I posed for a “mermaid themed” calendar of questionable decency. They glued bits of net and shells into my enormous wig and dressed me in an awful green sequined fish tail skirt. I was paid in cash and was told that the calendar would be distributed only in Thailand and Malaysia, I felt okay with it all because if anyone I knew ever came across it on the internet, I could say the whole thing was a fundraiser for Sirenomelia, don’t get so uptight.
3. Then I had a brief stint as a professional griever. This is exactly what it sounds like. I was paid to attend funerals and cry, sometimes I would get extra to make a speech. I was given details about the deceased and concocted some really good stories about volcano science projects we did in fourth grade or that time we got stuck at the top of the ferris wheel with those boys from Sigma Delta! I was very convincing. I had a whole slew of bodily reactions I’d punctuate the stories with, there was the silent heave which was a real tear-jerker, then the fist-pound which was usually accompanied by a WHY! or GOD! and then the choke-up which was my quick exit strategy if a story was going no where.
I am sitting on the window sill in the kitchen clipping my toenails and having a cigarette when Maeve finally calls. I haven’t spoken to her since she left three months ago but I know her well enough to know she’s never coming back.
“Hello?”
“Hi! It’s Maeve!!!”
“I know. You have caller ID.”
“Oh. Then why did you say Hello instead of Hey!”
“I don’t know. It’s just one of those things you do. How is Utah.”
“I moved in with my life coach. His name is Darren.”
“Is he helping you leap further.”
“He is a very centered man. I would even say he is enlightened.”
“I’ve been living in your apartment, by the way. I probably won’t leave. My old lease expired anyway, so if you ever come back from Utah I won’t have anywhere to live.”
“I won’t come back, Darren and I are twin souls.”
“Good. Do you miss Nevada.”
“No. My eczema went away as soon as I left the desert.”
“That is because you saw the dermatologist before the retreat.”
“How are the cats?”
“Fine. Oh shit, my beeper is going off I have to go.”
“What beeper?”
“I’m doing your job now.”
I hang up and head out. I just don’t have enough room in my life to hear about twin-souls.
The call is at 45 Mercy Street in the left side of a double-family house, half of the house is painted yellow and the other blue, so there’s an awful rash of green where the two sides meet and I suspect it will always be this way. Some meager cacti are planted in clusters around the barren land in front of the porch. There are balloons tied to the yellow side’s mailbox and a sign that says “MAY’S PARTY IS HERE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAY!” Someone has gotten injured at a birthday party. It could even be May. I am suddenly wildly anxious over the prospect of walking into May’s birthday and possibly having to step over a pile of presents or having to sing. Someone may even offer me a slice of cake and I will be too overwhelmed to speak. I walk into a room, the birthday room, the crisis room. The walls are covered with pictures of smiling people sitting on beach towels and eating ice cream cones. There is a pile of presents, oh my god the cake the cake is frosted with pink icing and white flowers. What if we all spent our days lounging on beach towels eating beautiful cakes. Every day is someone’s birthday. I am in love with everyone in the room already. They are caving into themselves, they are crying into the frosting,
“Hi everyone. My name is Lydia. I am your crisis mediator.”
Be willing to sit in silence.
Accept and acknowledge all feelings.
These are the rules.
“Is everyone alright? This is a stupid question and I know it.
The woman in the orange tent dress sitting on a rocking chair, face mottled with tears knows it.
The twin boys crouched by the fire place know it.
I take a seat as far away from the cake as possible.
“What can I do to help?”
“Who sent you here.” The woman who has obviously been crying the most asks me.
“I was paged by Emergency Medical Services, someone thought you could use an ear to listen during this time of shock.”
An ear to listen. This is a phrase I thought I would use before I took this job. I was also ready to say, ‘I can’t imagine what your going through.’ and ‘Go ahead and cry’
“We don’t need your help right now.”
I nod like a person with infinite caverns of unconditional love for every living thing, like a person who is born a mother, a person whom people feel comfortable asking for directions. Hitchhikers would get in the car with me if I nodded like this.
“I understand. Are you sure there is nothing at all I can do to make anything easier for you?”
They say nothing, they nod but it is the nod of someone who is very far away. You would not get in the car.
“Okay, here is my number. Again my name is Lydia Lynch and I can be paged anytime day or night, for anything at all. Please don’t hesitate to pick up the phone if you feel you need someone.”
“Wait,”
I turn and open my eyes a little wider, make sure my body language communicates openness and acceptance. The woman in orange glances towards the cake then skittishly back to me. It simply too large of a thing to stay in the room, in the house. Anywhere, really. The twin boys look into their palms like soothsayers, like they are reading tea-leaves and the leaves are swirling into the shape of me walking out the door with this impossibly large thing, it is the shape of me taking away the things that would otherwise stay there forever.
“You could take this cake, here. We’re not going to be eating it. We don’t really have room. It just reminds us.”
The cake sits on my fire escape. I sit on the fire escape. I smoke cigarettes and watch the cake like it may become something else. Jesus Christ, the candles are still stuck in it. Number candles, white and blocky 1 6
May was sixteen today.
I was sixteen, one time. I had one summer, one Christmas, a boyfriend who fixed cars.
Someone took a lick of icing off the back of the cake.
Sweet Sixteen wasn’t dead yet, it must have tasted better. What if they still had the taste in their mouth when it happened. What if the taste is on their tongue forever.
I can’t possibly bring this thing inside my apartment, it is too large. It is larger than anything I have ever owned, it would not even fit in the fridge. It would create a vortex, a ravenous black hole. I would be sucked in and never get the taste out of my mouth.
It is warm enough to sit out on the fire escape in a night gown and this is all I want.
The person above me is playing flamenco music, cooking something. Below they are speaking Russian, watering a tomato plant. Next door there is a man sitting out on a plastic lawn chair. He looks at me and then the cake and says,
“Birthday?”
and it is the most intimate gesture in months.
“It was someone’s birthday.”
He nods, like a person who is obviously detached. A helium balloon drifts in and out of my peripheral vision, stuck in the electrical wiring.
“Whose?”
“Someone who’s dead now. Or very close to being dead.”
“How’d you end up with the birthday cake?”
“I’m a crisis mediator. And I went to these people’s house and they couldn’t keep it, it reminded them.”
“Why’s it out on the fire escape. It’ll melt out here, gona reach 110 today.”
“I don’t really have room for something like this.”
