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The first time Sitara walked close to the locked cargo section in Cargo Bay Two, the sensory anomaly enveloped her like a tingly, too-hot bath. Hired onto the Ravati to run the cargo mechs and load the fruits of the acquisitive Mr. Chopra’s traveling souvenir hunt, she’d almost turned down the contract. 

When Sitara’s boots had hit the ramp into the spaceship, her guide Padma had little to say about the ship or the mysterious Mr. Chopra. Repeated efforts to question Padma had bounced off pat replies and elicited nervous, flat smiles. Sitara’s desperation to get off-planet overcame her wish to reject the contract. 

On that first cursory tour, Sitara had been shown through the typical scratched metal passageways, confined crew berths, frugal galley, and bleak gym. The bulk of the ship’s capacity consisted of the two cargo holds of collectibles.

Curiosity was a trait of the Sensitives. On Sitara’s planet, Mynah, she’d been protected by her youth when the culling had begun. The Directorate of Protection tested and removed Sensitives from their homes at eighteen.

Sitara knew gut-deep that her stand-offish mother was the source of her second sight. Ever since her eighteenth birthday party—noisy, emotional, and overwhelming—her cursed talent had expanded. Once Sitara’s test had been scheduled, visions of future captivity filled her dreams. Sitara vowed to get as far away from her parents and Mynah as possible. 

At first it seemed that Sitara had traded her clipped-communication home life for a similarly unfriendly spaceship. Luckily, her cargo-hold domain offered forbidden opportunities to explore. Padma’s reserve broke down as Sitara shared her daily discoveries while snooping into Mr. Chopra’s relics and rarities. 

Padma became her best friend, a happiness that made the cramped quarters and her restricted existence bearable. Padma, used to following orders, falters at accompanying Sitara to investigate the locked cargo section.

“Don’t make me do this alone,” Sitara said.

“Don’t make me void my contract.”

“Don’t be a chittermouse.”

“Fine.” Padma frowned.

#

Padma peeked over Sitara’s shoulder at the nondescript box inside the locked cargo cage. 

“What about cameras?” Padma said.

“I haven’t found any,” Sitara said.

Padma blew a bubbly noise with her lips. Sitara stepped closer to the box; a prickling sensation just under her skin moved around her body like under-skin worms. Sitara clenched her teeth against her body’s reaction. 

Sitara’s aunt had warned her that many people feared energy they didn’t understand, so much so that they killed, passed laws, and imprisoned those who felt the unmeasurable. Feeling hard things didn’t always mean trouble, her aunt had told her. 

The plight of the Sensitives had seemed like distant news when she was growing up; nothing to do with her. That was, until she could no longer ignore her own flashes of knowing. Sensitivity was never mentioned in her home. Sitara’s well-behaved siblings took their cues from their mother and shunned Sitara with quiet, non-obvious behaviors. 

Her aunt had taught her meditation and drilled her focus in secret. Sitara practiced sensing who was near, and with closed eyes where they were located. Her sibs quit playing hide and seek with her because there wasn’t a cabinet or pile of blankets that could conceal the hider from her senses. 

Sitara turned to Padma. “There’s something strong in that box.”

Sitara pressed “Release.” The cables wrapping the cargo box unmagnetized and clanked to the deck. She set her corder for “Inspection” and tapped the box. A lock clicked. She opened the well-oiled door. The tart smell of animal waste made her throat constrict.

“Ick.” Padma scrambled back. 

Sitara clicked on her chest lamp and saw a multi-level cage and a rodent’s red-eye glow. Like colliding with a faulty-sensored cargo bot, a wall of anger thumped her. She fell to her knees.  

“Sitara?”

“Did you feel that?”

Padma shook her head and looked closer. “It’s kind of ugly. Why would Mr. Chopra collect that? I expected something pretty.”

Sitara drank in a thirsty breath. She closed her eyes. Hoping one less sense-portal would soften the emotional onslaught. 

“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” Sitara crooned.

“What?” Padma asked.

“I’m talking to her.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Ola. She’s scared and angry. Shhh.” Sitara unlocked the cage and reached her hand in. 

“What the tipped orbit is wrong with you?” Padma backed away. “Put that, that thing back. We need to leave. Now.”

Ola had an enlarged head. Her tiny bone structure was in sharp focus like a cruel science display.

“She’s starving,” Sitara said.

“We shouldn’t…”

 “See what’s wrong with the food dispenser and get some food.”

Padma crawled forward. “Eewww. There’s a dead one in here, too.” She yanked out the feed bowl and a blocked tube. A shower of dry food fell in a clump by the dead rat. She passed a cupped hand’s worth to Sitara. Ola dived nose-first into her first meal in too long.

Sitara sensed the happiness as yellow, glowing warmth from her upper ear piercing to her pinky toe. She lifted her head and laughed aloud.

Padma scooted closer, eyes wide. “I felt something. It was nice.”

“Close your eyes.” Sitara’s hand touched Padma’s chest.

“Oh, Goddess,” Padma murmured. “Is this what it’s like to be a Sensitive?”

Padma opened her eyes and gazed at Sitara. She touched Sitara’s face, then kissed her. When she pulled away, they grinned at each other.

“’Bout time,” Sitara said. 

Sharp claws scored but didn’t break Sitara’s skin as Ola climbed to her neck. 

“You’re not keeping her,” Padma said.

“Put the feed tube and bowl back.”

“But…”

“She’s sentient.”

“Ola, don’t pee on her, okay?” Padma said.

“Grab more of her food, eh?” 

#

Fifteen days later Ola delivered five healthy pups. By then Padma was taking turns wearing Ola on her rounds. 

#

By the time they disembarked together, smuggling Ola and three pups off-ship, the cage had been fixed. They left the two non-Sensitive rats behind for Mr. Chopra’s curious collection.

End

The rainbow-colored, balloon-patterned gift-wrapped box sat like an invitation atop the cement stoop. The ticking sound could be heard from the sidewalk. Barbie spied the thin wire paralleling the red ribbon, rising into the frothy, rosette bow on top. Barbie’s little plastic hand followed the wire to a fold in the paper, eased the wrapping open, sawed with care through the ribbon, and cut away the paper to reveal an edge-dinged box proclaiming the presence of a Spirograph Drawing Set. I really wanted one of those.

Barbie had spent enough time in the toy store to know the weight was all wrong. It was too heavy. She fearlessly sawed a hole into the side of the box, revealing wires, a wind-up alarm clock, and a small brick of tan, clay-like material. Enough to blow the whole city block sky high. With her steady fingers, she cut the green wires and, finally, the red wire to the detonator. She then flopped back into a sitting position and told me, “That was close.”

That was the first story I told Dolores, but you haven’t met her yet.

#

I watched too much TV in elementary school: Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges, Hawaii Five-0 with Jack Lord, and Get Smart with stupid Agent Maxwell. Dudes. Lots of dudes. Well, you know what I mean. I wanted adventures like theirs, but with my single mom along for the ride, not the guys on TV. But she worked, and I wore a key on a string around my neck. I also wore dresses from the Army of Salvation, and the neighbor kids were mostly boys—total booger pickers. Our small black-and-white TV with the coat-hanger antenna made me turn it on when I got home from school. Luckily, I had Bomb-Defuser Barbie.

Bomb-Defuser Barbie had started out as your average, pretty Barbie — boobs-forward, smiley-faced, matchy pink outfit with long blonde hair. Since Mama was MIA in the afternoons, and Lloyd Bridges could only hold my attention for so long, Bomb-Defuser Barbie made me go outside. We ventured forth, testing doors, opening other people’s gates, befriending lonely dogs in backyards, or running like hell from stupid, barky ones.

Bomb-Defuser Barbie got bitten a few times, protecting me. She insisted, and I had a good arm. After tossing cheese chunks to the noisy, mouthy mutts, I’d retrieve her.

Bomb-Defuser Barbie got tired of trespassing into other people’s backyards. The day the U-Haul men bent the metal door frame on the five-story new apartment building down the block, it was like that fender bender in front of the corner liquor store. Neighborhood kids flocked, scooters and bikes dropped, and balls were abandoned in gutters. The movers and two people from the apartment yelled and poked the air with their pistol fingers.            

 An hour later, Barbie tested the door, and it opened! I’d never seen a shiny entry floor like that before. We flopped down on our knees to inspect the different-colored tiny rock bits in the smooth surface, trying to figure out how Scotty beamed this outer space flooring into the apartment lobby.

We stared up at the wall of flat metal mailboxes. It was so futuristic. I wished we lived there. Then our place would look like the Jetsons instead of kinda dark with boxes in the corner. Barbie and I closed our eyes in the elevator and magically ended up on the top floor. But we abandoned the elevator when we discovered the second stairwell that went all the way to the roof.                      

Barbie and I loved the roof. We climbed on top of metal boxes with hot air coming out and made thunder noises by hitting the sides. We commando-crawled out onto the creaking glass skylight with the chicken wire inside it and spied on people picking up their secret mission orders down in the lobby below.

Best of all, we discovered that the one long apartment building we saw from the street was actually two buildings with a secret inner courtyard. The courtyard was filled with beach-type loungers, little squares of dirt with dinky plants, and yellow crime tape that Barbie said was to keep the residents from discovering the dead bodies. You’d never know it was two buildings if you didn’t live there, unless you were the trash man.

Barbie and I loved spying on the sunbathing people and tossing pebbles off the roof to make their little dogs bark.  But what really made us curious was the narrow opening between the buildings. We hung our heads over the edge and stared down at a long row of trash cans with numbers on top. It was the kind of place Jack Lord would find a clue or a suitcase full of money. It smelled like our apartment after that trip to Grandma’s when we forgot to empty the under-the-sink garbage.

Barbie wanted us to jump the gap between the two buildings, but my seven-year-old legs were too short. Luckily, we discovered the narrow walkway that hung over most of the trash can alley. Metal brackets screwed into cinder blocks held wooden planks and the wobbly metal railing. It hugged the elevator tower that blocked bad guys from escaping trash can alley into the parking lot behind the apartments.

I clutched Barbie to my chest and slid my Keds along the pebble-strewn elevator shelf until it ended. I looked down. My stomach shrank to a walnut. Cool, moldy air wafted up from the black pit below. That would be the place to drop a dead body.

The gap between the elevator walkway and the next building was only as wide as our little refrigerator, with a fall, like jumping off Mama’s chest of drawers onto her bed. I blamed our cat when Mama complained that someone was messing up her bed.

My body felt too heavy to fly. The walkway creaked underfoot as I rocked back and forth, drumming up the courage to leap off the un-railinged open end. Barbie looked back at the only row of windows overlooking the alley. The top-floor ones. She screamed that she saw a ghost in the glass. I leaped into space, falling like Newton’s apple.

I felt the wind lift my hair, then I landed on the other roof and skinned my knee. I stood back up and was full of magic energy—not enough to do the jump again, but enough to dash down the stairs, out into the street, and play kickball with the older boys. I didn’t ask; I just jumped in and started kicking. They shooed me off, but Barbie and I didn’t care. Bunch of cootie heads.

A few days later, Barbie said she wanted to inspect the trash can alley. The dank, shadowy, narrow passageway drew Barbie and me like pinching cookies from my first-grade teacher’s cookie jar. She doled them out to the good kids. I daydreamed and doodled, but I had pockets and quick hands. So, after-school cookies. They weren’t all that good, though. They were the dry and snappy kind like Mama would dip into her teacup, probably so she wouldn’t break her teeth.

Barbie said if I jumped high enough, I could reach the string that unlatched the gate to the trash can alley. And in we’d creep. But we needed a mission. Barbie took the hit and dove off the roof without a parachute because she’s brave like that. Her reason? To defuse bombs. But better than Lloyd Bridges did in an episode of Sea Hunt when someone strapped a bomb to a dolphin.

After Barbie flew off the roof edge, legs straight and arms out, I jumped the gap, snuck into the stairwell, and crept down into enemy territory, floor by floor, avoiding resident foes. We’d found the janitor’s lair in the basement days before, and the unlocked door to the trash can alley, which was good because they’d fixed the lock on the front door.

A few days after that, when I jumped the gap for the third time, I heard a quavery voice while skidding through the roof pebbles on landing. I sat up and looked at the burn on my elbow. It was a bit bloody. I pictured a hovering green alien as I crouched behind the parapet. The voice came again, unsteady but louder.

“I’ve got chocolate chip cookies.”

I tried to pant without sound. I pretended I was Agent 99 in the Cone of Silence.

“If I eat all these cookies by myself, I’ll get a stomachache,” said the voice.

I knew what she meant; I got stomach aches when I ate too much candy. Not that I cared.

“Just take the elevator. And if anyone asks, just say you’re Dolores’ friend in 540.” She did that growly throat sound that my grandpa made after sneaking a cigarette. “I just took them out of the oven.”

I didn’t mess about. Once I air-lifted Bomb-Defuser Barbie from behind enemy lines, I didn’t even debrief her about her latest bomb-defusing adventure. All I had to say was “cookies,” and she scrambled to her feet and glanced down at something sticky on her mottled, ripped outfit. I tried brushing roof dust off my dress, checked my older and newer knee scabs, and figured I’d done enough. Images of steam rising from that plate of cookies made my stomach growl.

Dolores was so old you couldn’t see the skin at the bottom of her wrinkles. She traded cookies for promises. No more jumping the gap. I agreed. After all, Barbie’s roof jumping had given her a nose job. She wasn’t pretty anymore.

Dolores liked Bomb-Defuser Barbie just the way she was and listened to me tell stories about our adventures. She made Barbie a new dress from the shirt her dead husband kept from the war. She showed me cool, black-and-white movies and knew the names of the people playing the parts. My favorite was Bringing Up Baby because it had a leopard in it. Dolores cleaned Barbie, but not too much.

#

A year later, just before my birthday, Mama introduced me to Don, her new man-friend who came over on the weekends. He frowned when I interrupted. He said he’d buy me a new Barbie if I’d get rid of “that ghastly-looking doll.” In an act of solidarity, I cut my own hair—badly—and I cut Barbie’s, too.

I told Mama not to marry Don. She laughed and said, “It’s much too early to worry about that.” Bomb-Defuser Barbie was scared of him. And she wasn’t afraid of anything. Dolores never met him, but she frowned whenever I talked about him.

Before my next birthday, Mama married Don.

“That hoyden needs supervision,” he’d said the day of the wedding when I got a bit of yellow pollen on my flower girl dress. Bomb-Defuser Barbie said that meant I was brave and strong.

By then, we’d moved into Don’s spotless temple of antiques and treasures. I was told, “You’re not to touch my collectibles.”

I didn’t know what collectibles were. Bomb-Defuser Barbie thought he meant the pretty hand-painted statue-looking things in his glass cabinet by the grandfather clock. Bomb-Defuser Barbie thought it’d be a good idea to see if the shiny, clinky-sounding blue-coated trumpet boy could jump without a parachute into the backyard from our second-story back stairs. It turned out Bomb-Defuser Barbie was way better at it than he was.

After all the yelling, snot, and tears, Bomb-Defuser Barbie and I figured out that experimenting with gravity and any of Don’s possessions was a bad idea.

Bomb-Defuser Barbie was forcibly retired by Don, who threw her away right before the trash man came while I was at school. Jerk face.

That night, in a dream, Bomb-Defuser Barbie told me she was raiding donut boxes and inspecting incriminating clues at the dump. And it was smart that I’d cut her hair because the long-haired Barbies got picked up by the seagulls and dropped onto the edge of the freeway with the boxes, soda cans, and dead animals.

The next morning, I pressed my face into the vibrating glass of our VW Bug’s back-seat side window. Don’s tall body was hunched over the steering wheel. Mama’s hair looked all poofed out from her curlers that burned your fingers when you touched them or melted Barbie plastic.

Don’s loud grumbling about how slow our car was made Mama scrunch lower in her seat as we sped down the freeway. White custard-looking stuffing was bursting out of a green couch as we whizzed by. I saw the Michelin Man wearing a flapping orange vest, snatching trash with a clawed grabber pole. I switched to looking out the back window and watched him cram a bent-up box into a bulging sack.

I was glad that Bomb-Defuser Barbie was free to solve crimes and dive-bomb seagulls at the dump instead of stuck face down, toes up, between the cushions of that ugly couch.

Huggie earrings save time, are comfortable and can be slept in. Basically that’s the blog post. But I’m a chatty gal and have more to say about them. No More Earring Backing Problems Do you have long hair? Has your hair ever gotten wrapped around the post of your earring? Knotted up around the ear…

The post What Are Huggie Earrings and Why They Are Great appeared first on Calla Gold Jewelry.

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In my never-ending quest to educate people on jewelry, I thought I’d try another instructional video. Putting on a cuff bracelet sounds really simple, but it is not an intuitive skill.  There are three reasons I made this video. First – I very often see people force their cuff bracelets on and off of their…

The post How to Put On a Cuff Bracelet appeared first on Calla Gold Jewelry.

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One of the biggest disappointments for newly married couples is feeling underwhelmed with their now dull plain platinum rings. All they wanted was a plain and simple wedding band with an expanse of shiny platinum. Yummy. Only it doesn’t stay shiny for long. This is not what they signed up for! In this blog I’ll…

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Mother Nature never made rose gold. Chance, early metal mixing societies, and the fever dreams of adventurers, gave us the subtlest of gold colors. Rose gold or pink gold is a beautiful color of gold, that on the right skin tones, glows with a warmth. This color of gold elevates some gemstones like no other…

The post Where Does Rose Gold Come From? It’s Creation and History appeared first on Calla Gold Jewelry.