Sara Martin at the Fountain

Photo Credit: Come Play With Me

As a girl she played with Barbie and Ken dolls. Each doll had a gloomy and troubled past full of regrets and heartache. At least, it was gloomy for a ten year-old’s imagination.

            

“I am sorry, Barbie. I cannot go ice skating with you tonight for our date.” Sara Martin spoke with Ken’s deep and manly voice, slightly shaken with anguish.

            

“Why, Ken? I thought you liked me because I was smart and beautiful, and a good listener to your problems,” Barbie asked with delicate concern.

            

“Yes, Barb, you are my soul mate, but you must know something about me.”

           

“What is it Ken?” Barbie leaned in closer.

           

“I have a horrible…”

           

Footsteps down the hall hurried toward Sara’s room.

            

“…fear…”

           

A quick tap on the door jumped Sara back to reality.

            

“Of ice,” Sara finished as the door flung open and her mother’s face peered through the door.

            

“Ballet practice starts in five minutes, Sara, why aren’t you wearing the leotard I bought you?”

            

Sara didn’t like the color green, and she didn’t like the dead grass green leotard her mother had picked out for her. But she did love ballet, so she shooed her mom out of the room and changed.

            

She began dancing at the age of five years old and by the time she was six her mother had her entire future planned out for her.

            

“You will be trained by one of the top trainers around until you attract more elite coaches.  You will probably get a full-ride scholarship through college if you keep it up, but that depends on your commitment.”

            

Sara may have appeared to be a talented, fully committed girl on her way to ballet stardom, but her motives were simpler than that. She liked the music and the lighting, the outfits and the shoes. Her rhythm and grace was natural, but her mind was not in the dancing. It was everywhere else. She sunk into the music, thinking about what color her next ballet shoes should be.

           

By the time Sara graduated high school her coach noticed she was not picking up on the details needed for intricate dances. She had reached a level her natural ability did not cover, and to her mother’s disappointment, there was no full ride scholarship to send her to the college of her choice.  So Sara settled for the state college on the West side of town where the lower income residents stayed to get second rate educations and second rate jobs.

            

She spent the first two years in her dorm watching soap operas and imagining intricate relationships complicated with delicate aches from the past. Barbie and Ken changed their names to Rudolpho and Marissa. Sara tried to write a story of her own, but her train of thought would not settle on one storyline, and the plot would expand beyond what she could handle.

            

None of her roommates understood her taste for seclusion. While other girls her age dashed off to the next hangout or party, Sara stayed in her dorm room listening to music as her mind drifted off into distant otherworldly places with complex characters coping with unique difficulties. She had names for some of her characters.

            

“Ramsey cannot speak to Angelica because her free spirit reminds him he is weighed down by his duty to take care of his sick brother, Alphie. He is intimidated by her light feet and turns red if he looks her in the eye,” Sara said wistfully as she listened to a ballad by an upcoming band.

           

One day while Sara was out of college and working in an office for a struggling advertising company, she met a man whom she fancied. He was the strong and silent type. Someone she could share thoughts about world suffering, love, and politics with.

           

He was everything she wanted in a man. He shared his deepest soul with her, and she delighted in knowing his aches and pains of the heart, but by the time she shared her soul, he was already getting restless. One morning she woke up to an empty bed and never heard from him again.

            

Sara’s mother called a day or two later, but she did not answer the phone. Sara Martin was too ashamed to let her mother know what had happened. Her mother knew too little about her to know the bigger things.

           

Many men followed, sometimes more than one was in her life at a time. Each time they poured their pains out to her, and she embraced them as her own but found nowhere to set down her own aches.  None of them offered to see or know that part of her. So she continued to search for someone who might be interested.

            

At night she felt as if all the good thoughts drained from her body. She had troubled dreams where she unfolded herself to someone, but her story was dull and predictable. She had no crippling fears or horrible incidences to share. The only ugly part of her was her fruitless attempt at meeting her desires in men.

            

One day after a particularly haunting dream, Sara walked out of her one-bedroom apartment and went to the park around the corner. She chose a bench near the pond and slid her face into her palms.

            

When was the last time she spoke to her mother? Father had been out of the picture ever since he let his job swallow him whole. 

Why did she continue working in a stuffy office? She hated the smell of mixed cologne and perfume and she was not allowed to listen to music as she worked. Listening to her mother play the piano was the only time her mother smiled with her eyes.

            

Why was she dating three men at the moment? None of them had shared their lives with her, and she waited to see if there might be a match.

            

Mother would hate her if she knew how many relationships she juggled. Anyone would hate her for her selfishness, which was why she became skilled at hiding the truth.

            

A flock of birds landed in the lake and bustle each other about. Where was her soul mate?

            

But she couldn’t have one, Sara realized.

            

Why?

            

Because she would have to share the ugly truth that she had been with so many men. And what man would keep her after knowing that?

           

Sara dropped a loud sob and shivered with the realization. She was humiliated.

            

If only things could be like they were when she was a ballet dancer. Her time dancing was the only time she felt closest to who she was. Music, movement and other ballet dancers moving around her always gave her a rush of adrenaline.

           

But dancing was only an echo of who she was. She would never be satisfied just by dancing.

           

An hour passed, and Sara’s face dried but now, she was thirsty.

           

She walked to the water fountain and took a sip, but it wasn’t enough. She drank more until her stomach sloshed with it. Soon her stomach was full, but her throat was still dry. Frustrated she almost let out a cry.

            

“Can I have a drink?” a man asked, standing behind her.

            

Sara wiped her eyes hastily and turned to face a man in a wool coat. He had warm eyes and a tired smile.

            

“Where did you come from?” she asked, startled.

            

“I’m from the East of town.”

            

Sara wrinkled her nose, for she knew everyone from the East was high society. They rarely set foot on the Western line, since her side was known for crime and poverty.

            

“Aren’t you afraid to drink this water from our side?”

           

“If you knew the kind of water I have every day, you would be asking me for a drink.”

           

Sara laughed, “Well, if it is the water from the East where everything sparkles and shines, even the public toilets, then I would certainly ask for it.”

            

“This water is different. You drink water, and you still are thirsty. My water quenches your thirst, and you never will need to drink your water again.”

            

“That water sounds like what I need,” Sara Martin said, her throat even drier after talking.

            

“Is your husband here with you?” The man looked around impatiently.

           

“I’m not married,” the woman said, wondering why he dared to ask such a question.

            

“I know,” the man said. “But many men have known you like a husband, so in fact, you've had many husbands. But still, you are thirsty.”

            

“How do you know this?” Feeling exposed, Sara wrapped her coat around her.

            

“You long to be known by a man, but there is someone who already knows you completely, and he loves you deeper than music, color, dance, and pain.”

           

“Why?…How did you?” Sara asked as a new well of tears swelled in her eyes.

            

“He knows you like reaching out to help others in their pain. You give a safe place for them, but you haven’t found a safe place for yourself, have you?”

           

Sara Martin couldn’t speak.

            

“There is a water that can quench your thirst; there is someone who always loves you even after the ugly parts have been revealed. I know someone who knows you. Stop worshiping these men whom you don’t know.”

            

“Can I meet him?”

           

“Yes. You'll see him tonight.”

            

Sara ran home and called her mom and told her about what had happened in the park. That night she had a dream where she was playing with Barbie and Ken and she was ten again.

           

“Hello, Barbie. I got this for you because I know you appreciate nature,” Ken said as he put a flower in her hand.

           

"Thank you, Ken. You are so thoughtful whenever you give me gifts.”

           

It took a little while for Sara to realize she was sitting in a man’s lap. His hands were threading through her hair. She heard the quiet murmur of counting.

            

“Thirty six, thirty seven…”

             

“Excuse me?” Sara asked the man whose hands warmed her scalp. “What are you doing?”

           

“I’m recounting your hair.”

            

“Why?”

            

“Shh, go on. I want to hear what Ken and Barbie are going to do next.”

            

Sara continued her conversation with her dolls until the man finished counting her hair. When the man took his hand out of her hair, she got the urge to jump up and dance as her ear picked up a new melody she had never heard of before, but she could not lift her legs.

           

“Just a minute Sara, let me help you.”

            

Sara waited to see what the man would do. She felt a firm hand press against her back and a brief pinch on her spine.

           

“There you go. It’s fixed now. You can do your ballet,” the man said. And he smiled and clapped as Sara Martin pranced around as light as air.

            

“What is fixed? Did you take something?” Sara paused for the answer.

            

“I didn’t take anything. You had a hole. Now it’s fixed.”

            

She danced, full for the first time in her life, until her mother’s hand woke her up the next morning.

            

The mother and daughter spent the day together, sharing what they knew and listening to the things they didn’t know about each other. When they paused in their conversation, Sara thought about the man in her dream. He knew deepest, darkest corners of who she was, and still he called her "good."