The arms of our adobe house, roofed in wobbly rows of red clay tiles, reach to form a courtyard, visible only to the inhabitants or the hawks riding the sky.  It is a sunsink on the leeward side of the house, a trapezoid of privacy for we two who built this place, planted that big elm that shades the low table and wide chairs, hung the La Morada sign near the front door.  Snugged onto its acre, halfway down a steep ridge and tucked behind a high wall, this place is our refuge; I respect its heavy door.

I’m sitting behind a big iMac at my desk in the only room that opens its paned-glass door to the sun and the baking pavers in the courtyard.  The glow of the monitor lights my face, plastic cheaters midway down my ski-jump nose.  If I tip my head, I see the peeling buff-and-gray bark and lime-rind leaves of the elm, the blue agaves and grasses, pocked rocks, gold and charcoal and brown, at its feet, the tiny tinny bells in the shape of owls hanging from its branches where hummingbirds pause midflit, and an enormous web of platinum strands spun by the spider that hides in a brass light, waiting for the unwary, the foolish, the blind.

Through heat and rain, bloom and shed, cold and punishing wind I have sat here, writing words and sentences on this computer, telling stories, trying to be honest and clever, sometimes serious and sometimes funny.  I haven’t always succeeded, but I keep trying, stringing letters together like beads on a filament, hoping for a necklace someone will wear, a pretty bauble of colors that please the eye, turquoise and dark coral, the bluegreen of Key West water, the red of raw salmon, persimmons and seaglass.  I take some words away because, like gems, fewer is more beautiful sometimes.

As a shy and shaky teenager, ashamed of being smart and tall and oddly-named and a thousand more things, I spoke with a quaver and tried not to disappoint.  A quirky, innate talent was the cog that wheeled me eventually to a very public job where I learned to speak and teach, to persuade, eventually to love a microphone.  I became, to my astonishment, sure-voiced, my shoulders square, pockets heavy with the unfamiliar currency of pride.  A few years ago, after decades of working, my hands wounded, I retreated here, far from questions and answers and colloquy, objections and verdicts, lawyers and parking lots, honking horns.  I was very abruptly very unbusy.  My own voice is sometimes the only one I hear until Tom comes home from work, my square, solid love.

I began listening to the words in my head and writing them down for strangers to read nearly two years ago.  I told almost no one I had assumed a moniker and was impersonating a writer in an online salon.  As time went along, I let my first name slip sometimes but otherwise remained invisible, piling the paragraphs into a tall stack, learning how to put the words in order, how they sounded when I said them out loud, in my own voice.

My own voice.

I have been, to you and the few with whom I shared the secret, femme forte, a name that means strong woman.  I know that borrowing the name lent me strength, enough so I can choose to say I’ve stayed long enough behind this monitor with a name that isn’t mine above my cartoon picture.  Long enough that now I can choose to write under the name my parents gave me with every good intention and that I last used when I was 22 years old, the name of that frightened, awkward woman.  She deserves another, better chance.

My name is Candace Mann.

image: licensed from iStockphoto