Martha Grayson takes her tea in the backyard each morning. It’s a distinctly British thing to do – to “take one’s tea.” She isn’t British though. Not even by a mere speck of a percentage. She knows this because she’s had her DNA tested. According to her blood, she is 72% Norwegian, 12% Belgian, 10% Swiss, and 2% First Nations/Native American. Chippewa, specifically. (This would not have been enough to get her a scholarship once upon a time. So, at the very least, she needn’t lament a lost opportunity.) The final 4% rather strangely includes minute percentages from a conglomeration of West African and Far East Asian countries. Who knew? Her blood. That’s who.

Martha Grayson is also .05% Neanderthal. This tickles her. Upon discovering her sliver of Neanderthal lineage, she envisioned a tiny caveman living in her heart. She pored through caveman names on the internet and now calls him Mog because “it’s a caveman name that signifies a wise and knowledgeable individual who possesses a deep understanding of the natural world.” Were he not tucked somewhere behind the left ventricle of Martha’s heart, she’s certain that Mog would be one to also take tea in the backyard. A civilized caveman with an appreciation for flowers and bird song, to be sure.

Martha Grayson retired five years ago from her job as a pediatric oncology nurse. It had been… difficult work. But it was work she’d been called to do for reasons that baffled, worried, or entirely escaped her friends but were painfully obvious to her. At any rate, upon retiring, she’d been looking forward to traveling the country in a Winnebago with her husband and best friend of 43 years, Gregory “Grant” Grayson. Aside from being the product of questionable parenting, Grant was an inveterate hermit. When he would begrudgingly join Martha for social events, he would put on an impressive show of congeniality then suddenly disappear like an octopus blending into the ground beneath it. Over the years, they referred to this jokingly as trapdooring. Grant’s sheer dedication to mastering the art of trapdooring was achieved a few weeks after Martha retired. He had a massive coronary while mowing the lawn and trapdoored his way right out of her life. She’d begged him for years to lay off the fast food. But the man could never turn away from the siren song of crinkly paper encasing steamy French fries glistening with grease. When Martha would lament Grant’s shortcomings to her friend Bill, he’d calmly remind her, “we’re all doing our best with what we’ve got.” She wishes now though that Grant’s best could have been a little better.

Martha Grayson takes a late morning nap and then prepares for her afternoon. She walks past the one room in the house that she still can’t bear to enter. Even now, twenty-five years later. She continues down the hall and is eventually greeted by Balthazar in the kitchen. When twenty-one years ago it was clear there would never be another child, she’d adopted the giant 79-year-old tortoise. She’d been in love ever since. (Grant had sometimes joked that she loved Balthazar more than him. It was not a statement she immediately refuted.) With an anticipatory glance from Balthazar, she opens the refrigerator and pulls open the produce drawer. It squeaks in protest, but she knows it’s not a legitimate gripe. She retrieves a head of lettuce from the drawer and kneels next to Balthazar, petting his head. A patina of calm glazes his shiny black bead eyes as he tilts his wrinkled head toward her. “Happy 100th, my best of friends,” she says as he gingerly takes the lettuce from her hand. “You don’t look a day over 75.” Balthazar blinks as he chews his lettuce and she appreciates his remarkable sense of humor. He shuffles slowly out of the kitchen. A decades-old injury to his back left foot gives him the demented gait of an inebriant. This endears him to her even more.

Martha Grayson spends five afternoons per week volunteering as a docent at the zoo. As she exits each day, she offers Balthazar a parting gift of melon or cut grapes, then places her hand over her heart to ensure that Mog is with her. She loves being a docent. It gets her out of the house, keeps her moving, and places her gently in a world where animals peacefully co-exist and children are healthy. Some would argue that she’s not the perfect person for the job though. There are certainly days when the embedded trauma rears its multiple heads like some modern-day Cerberus and she can’t quite conjure up a smile, let alone a greeting, for the visitors. Other days, she opts out of conversation with her fellow docents to instead linger alone near the playful primates who make her smile or the sure-footed ungulates who give her a sense of grounding. There are even occasions when she hides in the bathroom, feigning intestinal woes. Constipation, after all, is a long and solitary affair that needs no justification. As a result of this behavior, some of the other docents or zoo staff regard her as standoffish or cold. Others have come to call her the cranky docent. She’s well aware of this. Perhaps they’re joking. Maybe they mean it as an insult. But it’s a moniker to which she takes no offense. Or, well, very little, at least. Because at the end of the day, she knows she’s doing her best with what she’s got. Even if she still, after all this time, has to remind herself most days that it’s enough.

Arriving home from school, she placed her backpack on the old wooden bench in the kitchen. It creaked and complained. She sighed in return. She set to replaying the day in her mind, as she often did. It must have been something I said, she thought. Though, as usual, she had no clue what it was.

She felt most of the time as though she viewed the world through the gauzy and gossamer walls of a cocoon. And that she was perpetually at that stage between caterpillar and butterfly. Long languid days in the chrysalis when enzymes dissolve the caterpillar into a soup-like substance while its tissues, limbs, organs, and imaginal discs strategize their move to their correct positions. Yes. She was butterfly sauce. 

What was it I said this time? She bit into an apple bursting with a sweetness that washed over her tongue like cerulean blue music. Were she to describe the experience out loud, that’s exactly what she’d say.

At the sound of her sister and brother in the other room playing and laughing, she felt that familiar surge of overwhelm – bitter in her mouth like unsweetened chocolate. So she sought solace in her bedroom closet just as a nautilus retreats to the first chamber of its geometrically perfect shell. It was a place where she was free to ponder, mull, wring her hands, and gaze through the small circular window on the eastern wall. How lovely it would be if the rest of my house were as perfect as the nautilus shell, she thought. 

From the closet and the space inside her head – that cozy attic corner where she truly resided – her words flowed into the air with seamless precision. They were white-hot percussion – clear and concise. But she suspected this is not what other people experienced. Those troublesome creatures who lived outside of her head seemed to witness something more akin to an illegible sign composed of buzzing, flickering, and fading neon letters; their narrow winding tubes filled only halfway with the illuminated gas.

“Screw them,” she said and moved to a deep nook at the back of the closet. There she had carved out a her-sized spot complete with a small lamp, a pad of paper, and a set of colored pencils. She leaned against her favorite polka-dotted dress and put pencil to paper. Her body felt at ease and she moved through the gateway to an alternate world. It was a world where colors had flavors, flowers had song, and she never EVER said anything wrong.