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Show Moon - 239 She stands and begins to sway dreamily. "My name is Lisa. My color is blue. My number is three. My father raped me when I was thirteen. And also my older brother, but earlier. My moon is in Pices. My rising sign is Scorpio." She looks at me and her eyes fill with tears. "I had a baby once." Then she closes her eyes, holds onto the back of the rocking chair and resumes the chant: "I ran away. I wore flowers. I danced naked at Woodstock. I have an excellent body. Also I can sing. In addition, I am very limber." She is smiling a little; she is enjoying herself. I think that she is like the tiny yellow woman I saw among the flowers, and for a moment my envy swells. In living sensibly I have lost something. She reminds me, too, of Sheila, the butterfly. I want to anchor her more firmly to the ordered world, and I say, "You're not telling me anything. Who are you really?" She bites the back of her knuckles. "Babies aren't something you can keep." "You're sad because you couldn't keep your baby?" She looks at me and I see a staring light in her eyes, which frightens me, for I'm out of my depth. The people she knows must be so enchanted by her crazy-fairy act they don't think to ask her how she feels. Or maybe they're afraid she'll answer them with an unstoppable swell of anguish like a tsuami. But I know that this danger exists only in our own dark imaginings, and I want to do something for this woman who is so much the me I narrowly escaped from being. This Irish-beautiful woman needs to know there's still time to have a baby she can keep and to have whatever else. I take her hand in mine and say, "Wait. Your time hasn't come yet." She suffers her hand to be held, even returns a |