Royalty: A King Sits in His Castle in the Sky by Mallory Shingle

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2019 Spring Print Edition.

There are some things people can never know about you. Like the way you kiss me right in the center of the top of my head to say I love you, as though it were a target, and that you can name every battle and general who fought in the American Civil War. Have you noticed how our left legs shake when we are concentrated. When I was born, your heart began to tremble so fast that you too were given your own bed to sleep on by me and Mom. A blessing in disguise without a priest and a blessing in disguise without a costume does not rob a chaotic moment of its sanctity. All three of us laying side by side, an imperfect trinity, being carefully monitored by angels in white coats. Who knew your heart was more fragile than mine.

Meerkats live in underground burrows in groups of two or three families, called mobs. Each mob is led by a dominant female who charges the group in foraging trips, finding new tunnels, and settling disputes with neighboring mobs. Maria Corazon Cojuangco Aquino led the People Power Revolution and served as the Philippines 11th president. Before his assassination, her husband, Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. championed for the fall of President Marcos that eventually led to Corazon’s victory. Meerkats, much better than honeybees, do not spread their matriarch’s power too thin. Her power depends on the mob’s faith in her, her investment in the collective, rather than the male’s simple ability to perform tasks. In teaching us how we can be a throne for Mom, I realized the way in which you are a king.

OCD is gambling for a chance at fulfillment on a series of nonconcentric circles. You spin your mind on one wheel before spinning for another. 3,000 miles apart we sometimes land on the same wheel. When you call now I pretend that I am busy because it is hard to talk to myself, but I want you to see the way that you think reflected in me so you do not feel so alone. Yet, I hope that if you wave at your reflection, I can openly deny it by staying still, and people will believe me over you. Stock trackers on Wall Street display numbers in looping patterns that still manage to seem sporadic for the obsession with the value they denote. Careful observations of minute changes exaggerate the catastrophe and delight of the large ones. Birds squawk with or at each other in large choruses using similar indistinguishable noises, hinting at the unintelligible and bathing in its mess. “You look so much like your dad” a friend will say when they meet my parents.

A professor calls on me in class, telling me my comment about the reading is genius, dressing my mind to look as it always should. I will go to his office and ask him what steps I can take towards intelligence, trick him into revealing his secrets, and undue your sense of dissatisfaction with the satisfaction of so many right turns in my life. Still a housewife, Aquino declined to join her husband onstage at his campaign rallies, instead opting to stand in the back and listen to his speeches. Sinking into the pillows of our worn brown leather couch or gliding over meandering streets in the passenger seat of your Volvo, I have spent my life listening to you. Our conversations sat suspended in mid-air doing somersaults and toppling over each other in a mess of sometimes eloquent disasters, while Mom or Amir look on without awe for the tower of thought we created. A castle in the sky we both sometimes flee to when the earth is too much to bear. If you never let me back in to your fading mind, I’ll reconstruct these beautiful dance routines of conversation we called the drive to school with every sound of static on NPR.

Unfocused eyes. Feet shuffling. You mumble and throw your hands, arguing yourself onto a path that failed to meet your feet through years of snow and wrong turns.

St. Francis is our common image of the monastic lifestyle. Renouncing his wealth, the room in his castle and drunken days, he shed himself of every last material belonging, even the clothes off his back, as he walked through the streets of Assisi. Proclaiming his loyalty to God, he fled to the mountains. I remember the stories you told me about growing up in a political household, what it was to have thirty influential people gather round a table. How this lifestyle was all lost in an instant when your own father had a stroke. How you chose to stay in Sacramento mostly because you have never been one for decisions. You pursued work as a social worker with some of the most dangerous youth in Sacramento because you were good at it. As he wandered the coastal region of Umbria, there was said to be a wolf terrorizing the town of Gubbio. When the wolf ran towards him, Francis knelt. Sometimes you can tame the wildest of things with passivity.

Swim back to me. A kingdom of one needs no ruler. Jump in and do not be afraid to sink. The ditch is deep but not so broad. When it is light, I fear you will again be unreachable. Retreating to your fortress. Insular.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. In the original riddle, there is no indication that Humpty Dumpty should be depicted as an egg. Yet, the image stuck after Denslow’s original graphic depiction of the rhyme. Every Friday morning when I was little, you would pick me up from Nana’s house and ask me where I want to go. We always knew the answer would be Fairytale Town. And I would always ask what’s your favorite color. Then you would take a long hard stare at the shirt I was wearing, and if it were purple, you would say purple. I remember going to sample all the ice cream flavors even though I always left with a double scoop of vanilla. Atop your shoulders, I felt like we were one device, a captain commanding a ship that would steer in any way I directed it. When we reached the gate of Fairtytale Town, I would come eye to eye with the large egg statue that sat on its gate. Heavy concrete in its fragile shell. After pulling me off your shoulders, you would duck into the entrance. We would both turn to the left and enter our favorite attraction. Cross the moat via fake wooden bridge.

You will soon be suited in your starched shirts just for a visit to the store.
You never leave the house without showering.
You always carry too many books.
You search for floss after every meal.
You reach for death only to show that this is the best way to live.
Your eyes are hazel like mine.
You have watched Zulu more than thirty times, your favorite scene is
three minutes long.
You smooth out every wrinkle when you wash your sheets and tuck the
corners like they do in hotels.
You remove cancerous patches of skin that hide in the wrinkles of your
face.
You sigh creamer into hot coffee.
You cry a steady stream with the wail of any bagpipe.
You shoot lightning bolts into whoever wakes you.
You have curly hairs on the first knuckles of each of your fingers.
You worry about the next part of your life, forgetting this is what you used
to look forward to.

You taught me that crying does not mean sadness.
You leave restaurants with their coffee mugs.
You have accumulated quite the collection.
You buy lemonade in bulk and spend hours organizing it into the fridge.
You don’t like messes.
You cut your ear each time you shave.
You rub your gut with every slurp of wonton soup.

You collect pens and hide them so Mom won’t see.
You never snap your suspenders all the way closed, so they swing at your
face when you stand up.
You are really good at accents.
You will go all day without eating so you can share a meal with
me when I get home.
You listen with a deep baritone.
You dip your sourdough in my hot chocolate the moment I turn around.
You pray the surgery puts a stop to the pain this time.
You polish your shoes with the same set of fifty strokes.
Your dad used to have milk and cookies with you in the middle of the night.
Your favorite midnight snack is still pink and white frosted circus animals.
You make Amir turn down the TV when I am venting about class.
Your eyebrows sit perched on your lids like furry caterpillars.
You buy expensive hair products, though you could probably count the
strands you have left.
You never stopped learning.
You are what I look for in my best friends.
You and I, reflections of each other.

I would give anything to remember which play it was you read to me when I was sixteen and you woke me in the middle of the night. Tears filled your eyes but your voice became steady with the iambic pentameter and I fell back to sleep. In Hamlet V, he states “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.” Funny. The less we give, the more we both cry. Standing over the stove, I peer into the pot of Cream of Wheat. Cold and Clumpy. Waiting for its insight into the human brain, memory. William Randolph Hearst built the nation’s largest newspaper chain on yellow journalism. You still read to me from the New York Times over the phone despite my insistence that you not. A battle neither of us wants to win. Sometimes it’s the same article. Ten years ago, you drove me to the palace Hearst built in San Simeon. Parading through each of the rooms, I pretended to be a tour guide, that Willy was my great granddaddy. When people giggled, you smiled and said “that’s my daughter.”

Porous wood. Firm hugs. Memories morph into something permeable, so I wonder if it is worth the energy to keep their walls insulated.

Book 2, Verse 4 of Daniel reads “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.” You were born up there in your castle in the sky. How unfortunate when the rest of us sit so rooted in Earth. I’m sorry it takes so long waiting for the rest of us to join, but I hope you enjoy the passing of each cloud, each sunset. The way your leather satchel carrying all your books stretches and becomes softer with the ongoingness of it all. This is how you are. Your heart always expanding, to fit more and carry it, carry me with you. Sometimes it wrinkles. But ultimately it is soft and it is home.