The Next-to-Last Mistake
By Sarah Crisman
scrisman@juno.com

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Life is a chess game. We move, life moves. Those who know how to play the game well can hold out against the opponent almost indefinitely. People like Jaqueline Natla played life to a stalemate for thousands of years. She knew the rules, obviously. In the game of life, she was a queen, and because of that, not even two kings working in unison could checkmate her. So the board remains unchanged for centuries. And then I came along.

As far as chess pieces go, I was more a pawn than anyone else my age. Stifled as a girl, brought up in a society where children are seen and not heard, shipped off to a finishing school before I was legally a woman...someone else was moving the pieces. They played pretty well, too, leaving me behind when all the other, more important pieces were moving about, setting up strategy, beating some pieces, getting beaten by others.

Plane crash. Snow, snow everywhere. Somebody upset the board pretty badly, I suspect. And yet...some of the pieces survive. That's all in the past. History records it with a cool, unwavering hand, then goes on to write about something more interesting, like the outbreak of a disease in Africa.

When it comes down to it, we usually remember the hurts and enemies much better than we remember the joys and friends of this life. It's only natural, after all. Consider how much longer the scar stays than the kiss that takes away the pain. All your life, you can look behind yourself and recount stories about all the times you were injured. People like to ask about it, too. "Hey, where on earth did you get that one?" Battle stories where one comes out on top entertain better than the story of how that boy winked at you back in school and made you feel absolutely wonderful. Nobody asks about that sort of thing. They don't care. They want to know how you hurt yourself. That's how they'll rank themselves next to you, by comparing scars. People are morbid like that.

My list of scars is longer than that of most other people. But I still remember every one of them. You don't forget people like Marco Bartoli, Pierre DuPont, Skip Larsen, that annoying brat on the skateboard who thought he was Robert DeNiro...and Jaqueline Natla. But out of them all, only the last name means anything to me. The rest were small obstacles to be overcome. Natla, on the other hand, was the penultimate opponent. Like a master player of the game, she knew exactly where she stood at almost every move. She anticipated, she plotted, she schemed. Behind the scenes, there she was. But when you pulled aside the curtain, she had magically appeared behind you, spoiling yet again your chance to beat her at her own game. She used her pieces well, sacrificing them whenever necessary, and with nary another thought about them.

How many of us feel remorse at the loss of one of our Knights? We play the game, but we don't see beyond the pieces. It's what makes us all master strategists in one way or another at Chess. If we stopped to contemplate what the family of the Knight will think, hearing that the Bishop of his rival smote him with a holy mitre, if we paused to reflect how selfish it is to send a Pawn in to die in place of our Queen, we could never make a single move. Emotion would overwhelm us, bury us alive, and leave us struggling for just a few more moments of life. In Chess, the player detaches herself emotionally from each of the pieces by telling herself that it's nothing more than a game, that nobody really dies. And so we play.

Natla, I am certain, would have taken Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, and the Deep Thought computer all to the cleaners, because she knew the game all too well. She took all this away from the board and into real life with her. It's what made her such a powerful persona in this world. It's what distinguished her from the two-bit thief on the street. A sacrifice here, a swap here, a power play there. Natla was always in control, and she would have it no other way.

Then we crossed paths. Of course, just like a master manipulator, she never let on to what her true goals were. She used me as the pawn in her own scheme to recover the Scion, always assuming that I would never catch on. If she had continued being the player behind the scenes, there would have been nothing I could have done to stop her. Can a Rook rebel against the player controlling him? Can the Knight jump the boundaries of the board, to attack the opponent? Of course not. And thus, Natla remained untouchable.

But what player of Chess has never envisioned himself as one of the pieces? Who has never dreamed of being the Knight helping to topple the enemy king from his throne? And Natla saw her opportunity. Instead of staying outside of the board, she transformed herself into the Queen and entered the playing field. As soon as she did so, she lost all track of the board. She saw only what she could see as a Queen, not the omniscient view enjoyed by the player. And in her blind devotion to getting rid of me, she pushed me closer and closer to the edge of the board.

Everyone who plays chess knows what happens when a pawn reaches the other side of the board. The lowly foot soldier rises up in the rank to become any other piece the player chooses. And suddenly, Natla was dealing with another Queen, one who could now match her, move for move, piece by piece.

As the Queen of her own side, Natla used her pieces very well. She even seemed to sacrifice herself to get rid of me. But the odds were too even. If you've ever watched masters playing the game, you'll see them concentrating intensely, contemplating every move. They never make snap judgements. Yet Natla did just that. Losing the view of the playing field, she brought herself down to my level. Who can say why... Perhaps she wanted more of a challenge. Maybe she was, in her own twisted way, offering me a handicap of sorts. My thought is that she felt what every other Chess player has wanted to feel: the absolute power of being the piece that captures the enemy.

And so, Jaqueline Natla becomes the victim of her own game. Even though I won, even though I went home at the end of the day, and she did too in her own way, I still respect the player. So I'll pour a glass in your tribute, Natla. To the girl who made the next-to-last mistake.

Cheers.