It is said that the average American moves every five to ten years. In my lifetime, some fifty-plus years, I have dwelled in four homes. I’ve lived in my present house for the longest period, nearly three decades.
The longer a person remains in a home, the more things they are likely to have accumulated. When they move, they may face having to relinquish much of their possessions, especially if downsizing into a smaller home. This purging can be challenging, but surrendering things can also be liberating, a cleansing of sorts. I went through this process twice. And not by choice. I was forced to purge after being displaced by catastrophic events. Not only was I faced with rebuilding my home, but I also had to surrender things that I held dear.
In 2009, my house was devastated in a fire. My partner, Drew, and I were on our way home from a weekend down the shore. The pet-sitters had stopped by in the morning, and shortly after they left, lightning struck the house. Neighbors heard the thunderous bolt but at first, they didn’t realize our house was hit.
The fire started on the lower level. It simmered, burning slowly in the laundry room for hours. A dresser in which I kept acrylic paints for art and craft projects caught afire. The paints ignited and accelerated the fire to the point where it quickly spread upward to the ceiling and along the rafters. It became what the Fire Marshall called a rolling fire.
The whole structure did not burn down as one might imagine, but the smoke extensively damaged the house. Since it was late summer, the house was air-conditioned, and the windows were shut. The house became filled with smoke, and the smoke finally seeped outside through the windows. Neighbors at first marveled at the unusual mist forming along the creek before they realized it was smoke and that it was coming from our house. They panicked and many called 911. The fire trucks came swiftly, and when we arrived shortly thereafter, the firemen had already broken down the front door with a hatchet and were inside the house. I could see them through the doorway, dragging furniture around, searching the fire’s angry ascent throughout the insides of the walls. Fallen things were scattered everywhere, but the firemen’s work was not about our items of importance and value. Whatever was in the way was thrown aside. Saving the house was their priority.
In the ensuing months after the fire, we saw the house gutted to the studs. Everything was removed, even the toilets and bathtubs. All that was left was a shell of the house, and we rebuilt it from within. It was a long ongoing, project that lasted nearly two years.
Just over a decade later, in September 2021, during Hurricane Ida, our house was flooded by the tiny creek that runs along the back of the property. The creek became overwhelmed in a deluge of rainfall, and it came up to the back of the houses of our neighborhood. It was quick and sudden. Many neighbors, including us, were flooded out.
Earlier in the evening, before the flood, we had retreated downstairs due to tornado warnings. We watched the news on television, and when the warnings passed, we went back upstairs. The phone rang. It was a neighbor, asking if we had a wet-vac that they could borrow. This should have been the first sign for us, but it didn’t register until my partner went outside on the deck, and he heard the roar of the creek. We shone a flashlight to see how high the creek was. We couldn’t see much, only that the ground seemed to be moving. That’s the creek, I said to my partner, stunned with disbelief. We are being flooded.
We raced downstairs to the garage to move the cars. When we opened the garage door, the creek roared inside, and the entire downstairs became flooded. The cars started to float, and one of them got dinged up as we backed it out. We were able to get both cars up to the top of our driveway.
Shortly afterwards, the police showed up and ordered us to evacuate. We left with our two dogs and found out later that we were lucky, as a neighbor had to be rescued by boat and others had to jump out of their windows to escape the rising creek. Our cats were left behind, unable to be found, but hiding on the second floor, which wasn’t being flooded. Fortunately, they survived by remaining upstairs beneath perhaps the beds or a dresser.
Both events, the fire and the flood, were of biblical proportions. What’s next, but locusts as a friend pointed out. (Instead of locusts, in the subsequent months we were consumed with an invasion of stink bugs and centipedes.) Creatures ranging from raccoons, rats, and opossums roamed through and around our house. Deer stalked the perimeter as if to claim the house as their own. Nature claimed our lives.
However, as the fire was devastatingly slow; the flood was swift. After the fire, we stayed in a local hotel for nearly a week and then rented a condo for the duration of the rebuild that took nearly two years. After the flood, we spent most of the night at a firehouse where an emergency shelter was set up and we returned early the following morning despite the evacuation order still being in place.
In both instances, we were forced to go through and clean out what was left of our house and determine what could be saved and what was deemed to be destroyed. I had to evaluate everything that I possessed. I cherished the many items that I had collected over the years and those that had been passed down to me through generations. Every object represented something to me, whether it was a link to my childhood, a connection to a relative who was no longer with us, or a significant moment of my life. I grieved over the loss of the upright piano that was passed through my family, made by my great-great-grandfather’s piano manufactory company during the early decades of the last century. I mourned for the elaborate pair of three-foot-tall porcelain statues of French courtiers: a man and a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothing and posing as if watching people dancing around a ballroom floor at Versailles. During my childhood, my grandmother had them poised on a round end table in her living room. We’d always said it was King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and from my grandmother, I learned all about the tragic history of the French Revolution.
I have an accumulation of dishes. My grandmother collected Lenox china. As a child, I was very inquisitive, and I shared my grandmother’s interest in fine china. To her chagrin, when we would go to dinner at someone’s house, I would lift a plate and look at the bottom while asking if the dishes were Lenox or Noritake. My relatives were delighted by my interest, so unusual for a little boy. My grandmother always told me afterwards not to do that. It was rude, she said. I have and hold on dear pieces of her fine china that survived both the fire and the flood.
An aunt gave me a favorite piece before she passed, a deviled eggs platter. I treasured it even though I rarely made deviled eggs. This dish survived the fire, but it did not survive the flood. It disappeared, perhaps washed off a shelf in the garage by the raging water and shattering against the cinder-block wall. This is most likely what happened as later I found a large fragment of the dish’s scalloped edge in the driveway, probably having been carried out there as the water receded. I was heartbroken, not because I liked the dish so much, but because it was a lasting connection to my Aunt Violet.
Fires have always frightened me. I’ve read about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire where workers, in an attempt to escape, leaped to their deaths. My grandmother told me a story that has haunted me to this day. When she was in her early teens, a house, allegedly of ill repute, exploded down the street from her home. This was during Prohibition. There was a distillery in the basement, and it had blown up.
Neighbors rushed outside and watched people running out of the house that had exploded, many in flames and screaming as they shed their fiery clothing. My grandmother said the smell of burning flesh was ungodly. People died right there on the spot.
Before my house fire, I once worked delivering newspapers. A house on my route had caught fire and was reduced to mere shell of charred remains. The neighboring houses on both sides were impacted as well, and they had melted siding. This was during the holidays, and I speculated that the fire was caused by Christmas tree lights. Ever since, I have always been wary about using them in my own home. And I always wondered what it would be like to lose your home in such a manner. What it would be like to watch your house in flames, knowing everything that meant something to you was inside.
Everyone from the Fire Marshall to the restoration crew said that our house fire was a strange one. It was deemed as suspicious at first because the inferno was centered in one specific place from where it accelerated centrally due to the poorly placed jars of paints by the furnace. Also, many objects survived, while others were destroyed. In some closets, metal melted, yet candles on another shelf remained intact. Everything in the house was covered with soot. It seeped into drawers and even inside the refrigerator and stove. Most things made of fabric, such as clothing, mattresses, pillows, and stuffed animals, absorbed the smell of the smoke and were ruined. The things that could be saved had to be cleaned professionally. We had to decide what was worth saving and faced having to pay to restore these items.
All four of our pets died in the fire. Two dogs and two cats. The carbon monoxide got to them, and they had no idea what hit them. At least that’s what the firemen said. They just went to sleep. I always wondered: Isn’t this what is always said? He never knew what hit him or It was so fast they didn’t realize what was happening. The dogs were found huddled together in the bathroom. A cat was found wedged beneath the sofa as if to secure the last few gasps of oxygen. There was the imprint on a smoke-covered duvet in the guest bedroom where the other cat eventually collapsed and died. I do not believe they didn’t suffer. To me, they did not appear to have simply fallen asleep, but and seemed have experienced some level of terror during the last moments of their lives. A neighbor told me a dog was still alive when the firemen arrived, but I did not press her for further details. I know I am unable to handle knowing if this is true.
When we were evacuated the second time, after the flood, I reexperienced the trauma I went through after the fire. I feared for the cats we left behind. I felt I couldn’t go through the loss again, but I came to realize that I had no control over the situation. I had to let go of my fears and remain strong.
In both events, I lost nearly all my books. My office survived the fire for the most part because I, by chance, left the door closed, and that prevented much of the smoke from entering the room. But the pages absorbed the smell of smoke. Due to the generosity of the faculty and my peers in graduate school, many donated titles to replenish my library. Over the years I collected even more books, but the office was then destroyed in the flood. My books on the lower shelves were soaked. The one on the higher shelves absorbed the dampness, and the pages became bloated, crinkled, and curled. It broke my heart to see my books once again being thrown by the restoration crew’s workmen into oversized garbage bags and then tossed inside an oversized dumpster at the base of our driveway.
It’s time to use a Kindle, Drew tells me. I prefer having the actual book in my hands, and not a gadget. But this way, Drew explained, I can have all my books in one place, no piles of books everywhere, and in the event of a tragedy such as a fire or a flood, I won’t lose them. Does this mean we are expecting another catastrophic event? I asked him. He simply shrugged. Having experienced two such events in a decade surpassed all the odds. You should be playing the lottery, friends have told me.
Now it is the same house that we bought thirty years earlier, yet it is different as we have made changes. We redesigned the layout after the fire. Then, after the flood, we kept the lower level as is, but redesigned how we would utilize the rooms. For example, in the drawings, I created reading space for myself in Drew’s man cave so I can sit there with him and read while he watches a sporting event or a movie. It is a simpler arrangement that involves a pair of recliners. No more oversized sectional sofas with a humongous ottoman in the center. This means that our aging German shepherd we got after the fire will no longer has a spot on a sofa to sleep, and she will have to adjust to sleeping on the floor. I promised Drew we can get her a dog-bed.
Because the fire destroyed the entire house, we lost a lot of things. The flood, however, only impacted the lower level. Fortunately, our main quarters are upstairs and weren’t flooded. Downstairs, anything porous had to be thrown away. I was filled with sorrow to find that nearly all my Christmas decorations were destroyed. I was able to salvage several small porcelain figurines of elves, pixies, cherubs, and Christmas carolers that belonged to various grandparents, along with the many mementos that were stored on shelves above the waterline.
Yes, I have a lot of stuff. Some friends tease that I am a hoarder, yet they marvel at my collections, from the DeGrazia artwork to religious icons, old books, antique family photographs, Native American jewelry, and the many bee-themed dishes and pieces of silverware that I have accumulated over the years.
I do not believe that I am a hoarder; I am a collector. I have heard horror stories about people who hoard and cannot move from room to room with ease, or who drop dead and are not found for days, buried beneath piles of newspapers or bags of old clothing. This is not me. My clutter is organized and provides me with a connection to the world. My past, present, and future are all represented within every significant object. Each beautiful piece means something and has a story behind it.
We treasure these items that we still have after the destruction of the fire and the flood. I treasure them even more than I did before. Beautiful things. I may have lost a lot in both events, and on some level, it was liberating, a purge of sorts, but I have come to realize it is no longer about what I have lost. Not anymore. It is about what I have now, what I still possess. These are the things that matter most to me. I hold on to these precious items as I never know if they will one day become lost possessions too. These pieces are lasting survivors as I am.
BIO
William Vandegrift is a freelance writer. He’s written author interviews and restaurant reviews. He’s also have published short stories. William graduated from Bennington College with an MFA in writing and literature. His work has appeared in various journals including Agni, Quarterly West, The Writer’s Chronicle, and US 1 newspaper.
Aesthetic Transmissions: A Conversation with Robert Hass
By George Guida
Robert Hass, U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus, Distinguished Professor in Poetry and Poetics at Cal-Berkeley, and long-time environmental activist, published his first collection of poems, Field Guide, in 1973, and his latest, Summer Snow, in 2020. In all he has published seven collections of original work, eight volumes of translation (seven of Czeslaw Milosz’s writing and one of Japanese Haiku), and four volumes of criticism. Hass has won a myriad of awards and prizes, from the Yale Younger Poets Award to the Pulitzer Prize, and for five decades has been a presence on the California literary scene.
George Guida: Did you understand from an early age that you wanted to be a writer?
Robert Hass: I didn’t know how you got there from here, whether it was a pipe dream or not, but that’s what I thought I wanted to do. When I graduated from college, I was writing poems, stories, essays. It was in graduate school, when I was 21, 22, 23 years old and had access to a library that had lots of literary magazines, where I really started reading contemporary poetry. I also took a couple of graduate classes with teachers who were very charismatic.
GG: Who were they?
RH: One of them was Ivor Winters, who was an incredible reactionary. I didn’t agree with anything he said. Actually, I didn’t know enough to agree or disagree, but I had never heard anyone talk so passionately about anything in my life as he talked about poetry. He was extremely contemptuous of his students. He’d say, “I’m an old man, but you’ve come to hear me, because I said, ‘Crane got sold the Brooklyn Bridge by Emerson and Yeats is an overrated poet and a fascist.’ Let me tell you this: Poetry is a serious art. People go into it with almost no apparatus to defend themselves against their feelings. My friend Heart Crane killed himself. My friend Ezra Pound ended up in an insane asylum. Coleridge was an addict and a depressive. I don’t have much use for you. I think you’re going to become sentimental old college professors, dabbling, to the destruction of your betters,” and he walked out the room. First day of class.
GG: This was at Stanford?
RH: Yes, in 1963. I thought, “Wow!” But he interested me, and, again, I was reading the literary magazines, which featured novelists of the period: Bellow, Roth, Updike, Cheever. And I read the poets and thought they were way more interesting.
GG: Who were those poets?
RH: Gary Snyder, for sure, for California writing. I was also reading Ed Dorn at that time, and William Stafford, because they were also Western writers. Then too I read the New York School and the Black Mountain School. The Donald Allen anthology, The New American Poetry, had just come out. It seemed like there was this incredible range of ways you could go about writing poetry and also of materials you could get to from writing it.
GG: At that point did you feel not only that you wanted to write poetry, but also that you wanted to be a part of that world?
RH: No, I didn’t imagine such a thing. The world that I imagined joining existed in the literary reviews—The Partisan Review, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The New Republic—but it wasn’t particularly about poetry. The world I was signing up for included James Agee writing about movies, Clement Greenburg writing about art, Delmore Schwartz writing about Kafka and existentialism. It was a world of ideas and art. It was thrilling to me.
I could see that among the poets at Stanford there was this little clique of people who were trying to write in a way that Winters would approve of. And I knew that there was a Beat scene, where something really interesting was going on, and that was also a community, I didn’t particularly think of it as a literary community. I thought of it as a countercultural—though we didn’t have that word then—community.
GG: What was your relationship with the countercultural community, other than seeing it from afar?
RH: In high school our older brothers and sisters, not mine but my friends’, were in North Beach. They were the people who were sort of the outsiders in high school and who listened to Jazz.
GG: Were you a city kid?
RH: No, I was a Marin County suburban kid. In the city we got snuck in with fake IDs to the Anxious Asp, to hear Jack Spicer read his poetry on Blabbermouth Night. At the time I didn’t know what I was seeing. It was only years later that I read about the event.
GG: So you probably ran across a lot of the figures of the era without knowing who they were?
RH: I knew where City Lights was, and I recognized who Ferlinghetti was. Another thing that would give me a sense of community were the journals in the basement of City Lights.
GG: The mimeographed magazines?
RH: Yes. I remember that Ferlinghetti published a magazine called The Journal for the Protection of All Being. It came out once a year for a few years. There was an essay in it by someone who, at the time, I’d never heard of, Gary Snyder, called “Buddhist Anarchism.” And I thought, “I’m not sure what Buddhism is and I’m not sure I know what anarchism is,” so I started reading. And then there was the symphony and the kids in my high school who were interested in classical music, which I knew nothing about. Wednesday night was a student night in the balcony and I would see these older students, now college kids, wearing black jeans and black turtlenecks, alongside all the fancy folk who had symphony tickets and were dressed up.
GG: Did you come from a family of intellectuals?
RH: No. My parents were socially a bit unusual. They were from the Depression Era. Their parents had been to college, but they didn’t go. They were plenty smart, but they were just raising kids. My dad was a tax attorney for an insurance company. They read the Saturday Evening Post and subscribed to the book of the Month Club.
GG: But you had this younger generation around you and your grandparents.
RH: My grandmother would recite poetry
GG: What would she recite?
RH: “Godfrey Gustavus Gore / would you please shut the door? / I’ve told you again / I’ve told you before.” But she could also recite some Joris-Karl Huysman and the poets a literate college girl of her generation would have known.
GG: So your entrée was mostly the older kids and what you read when you got to college.
RH: Also the Donald Allen anthology gave me a sense that there were poetry communities and a poetry world. At that point I was trying to write stories and poems both. I was involved in activism on civil rights and against the war. I started a weekly newspaper with friends, called Resistance. The first issue we called Commitment: A Journal of the Asylum. It reflected the existentialist ideal and our political commitment. The more radical people in our group wanted a more militant sounding name, so we changed it to Resistance. A lot of what we did was research into military contracts. The Stanford Research Institute was helping to prosecute the Vietnam War.
GG: I know when your first book appeared, and I have a timeline of when you start publishing your work, but when did you start perceiving yourself primarily as a poet.
RH: Sometime after 1967. At Stanford there were a group of people–partly around Ivor Winters–and each of them was going around writing poetry, saying, “I’m a poet.” Robert Pinsky was one of them. James McMichael was another. John Mathias and Kent Fields, who was Winter’s replacement. I I thought they were conservative in their practice. Then I met Mitch Goodman, who was the husband of Denise Levertov and an anti-war activist. He was a lecturer for a couple of years. He saw that I moved around Wallace Stegner, and he thought, “Here’s someone who isn’t a Winters person.” He would say to me, “What poets would you like to hear? We’re trying to invite some that Ivor”—”Arthur,” they called him—”would disapprove of.” I said I’d love to hear Denise Levertov and Frank O’Hara.
The last couple of years at Stanford I started to write more poems. When I thought of a line, I couldn’t wait to get home and write it down. I had little kids, so I would go home and take care of the kids and take out my notebook. And I saw once that a copy of TheHudson Review had the last fragments of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, and they said there would be more in another issue. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to be published in the same magazine as Ezra Pound, so I sent poems to The Hudson Review, and they took two of them. To me that was an incredibly big deal, and I had absolutely no one to tell it to except my then-wife, and she said, “That’s nice.”
Then I got my first job at SUNY-Buffalo. I went there because it was teeming with poets, though I didn’t quite understand how much. The summer I arrived, I saw this whole rich—I wouldn’t say community. “Network” is certainly a useful word for this purpose. That is, many different groups interacting, and playing out their rivalries. I thought I was going to Partisan Review heaven. Leslie Fiedler had taught there. Joe Barber. Michelle Foucault was on the faculty. Susan Sontag was there for the summer. My second year there, Merce Cunningham and John Cage had a joint appointment. Robert Creeley was on the faculty. Charles Olson was on the faculty, and he’d hired a lot of Black Mountaineers to teach in the night school. There was a very intense group around Creely and Olson. There was an intense group around John Logan, and around Irving Feldman. The younger generation of poets from the New York School, Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, and Tom Clark, were very active. That was when I came to see that it was a scene. By then I was trying to focus on writing poetry. I had done my academic work in a completely other area, and I didn’t even tell them I wrote poetry when I was hired at Buffalo.
GG: Your degree is in?
RH: A Ph.D. in comp lit and the novel. I’d done a dissertation on Dickens and Doestoevsky and Freud and capitalism and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was still thinking that stuff through, because I had finished the dissertation when I was there, but I had lost interest in it. I was really interested in writing poems.
GG: And you entered into this world of poetry silos at Buffalo. These were not overlapping circles of poets. Were they camps?
RH: It’s difficult to describe.Here’s an idea: I had mixed feelings about the social position of Elizabeth Bishop. That was a period when Howard Moss was Poetry Editor of The New Yorker. Bishop’s poems appeared there regularly, and they seemed, at that wild and wooly moment, very well-behaved—but subtle and musically kind of amazing. Creeley would ask me, “What poets are you reading?” and I happened to say Bishop, and he said, “Oh, dear.” I thought, you may not like her, you may think she’s conservative, but how could anybody who writes poetry not think she has an amazing ear. Hearing Creeley read, you understood his poetics. Logan read in this rich, orotund way these off-rhymed Lowell-ish poems. Irving Feldman was outside of poetry scenes and contemptuous of them. He was writing out of the Jewish Eastern European experience.
GG: When and where would you hear these people read?
RH: Almost every night. In coffee houses, on campus, all over the place. I had gone from Stanford, where you just didn’t hear much poetry at all, and then suddenly there were readings everywhere. The summer I arrived, there was a reading from summer visitors: the Irish poet Austin Clarke and William Empson. Empson was there for 2 summers, and I was put in charge of taking care of him. He was a serious drunk. Paul Carroll, who was the editor of Big Table Books. Michael Rumaker, who was a fiction writer and poet from Black Mountain. There were tons of poets reading, and there were overlapping communities of interests. The Olson people were either, “You’re cool or you’re not one of us.” Logan’s circle of friends included A. R. Ammons and James Wright, Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, Isabelle Gardner, Adrienne Rich and W. S. Merwyn. They were a group of poets who were expressive, while the avant garde poets were more interested in analytic technique issues. The bars were full of poets.
When Creeley was going on leave, he said, “Why don’t you try teaching my contemporary poetry class while I’m gone?” I was teaching these courses on the novel. I said, “What I’d really like to do is take the difference between your salary and my salary and bring in a bunch of poets. I can teach the poet’s work on Tuesday, have them read on Wednesday, and they could teach the class on Thursday.”
GG: That sounds like a perfect world.
RH: Sure. So I invited Alan Ginsberg, who said he would only come if I invited Gregory Corso. Years later I stood on Corso’s grave in Paris and said, “Gregory, you owe me 400 dollars.” Anyway, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, William Merwyn, Ed Dorn, Ginsberg and Corso taught the course. Corso gave a talk on the origins of cave drawings of people getting stoned on morning glory seeds. I was suddenly submerged in this world. And there were many other things going on that were interesting. Ray Federman was part of a group of people, along with John Hawks and Jon Barth, the new fictioneers.
GG: It may warm your heart to know that Buffalo still has a vibrant literary community on many levels, including the local community level, but the scene you’re describing is remarkable.
RH: There were readings at bars with local poets. I remember one guy with a Greek surname, from Buffalo, who read a long poem that went on and on about the Marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis. He didn’t quite get booed off stage, but after a while people said they’d really heard enough. He came to the bar, and I said, “That was a long poem,” and he said, “Onassis is going to be so pissed off.” Delusions of grandeur.
GG: The distinctions between academic poets and community poets have, axiomatically, eroded over the last twenty or so years. What was your experience negotiating those two milieux?
RH: I was aware of the distinction early on, and my impulse was not to buy into it. The way the allegiance thing worked was that if you were in the Creeley camp you had to think Joel Oppenheimer was a great poet and Galway Kinnell was a terrible poet. I would think, “Joel is a charming guy and he’s kind of writing like Creeley. He’s very funny, but his poetry isn’t very deep.” At the time Galway Kinnell was writing The Book of Nightmares, trying to write Rilkean poetry in America. The place asked you to choose camps, and I didn’t want to choose. I also saw that, in ways that seemed to me not completely healthy, they formed affiliation gangs. Each one drew on the energy of the star poet in the center of that group. It’s perfectly natural it would happen. It’s the way aesthetic and spiritual transmissions get made.
GG: How do you mean?
RH: Around that time, I was in New York visiting a friend. She was taking acting class. We went by to pick her up and we were standing outside the classroom where Uta Hagen–who had been in Lee Strasburg’s class and had done the first blind reading of Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando–was teaching this group of students And it raised the hair on the back of my neck, thinking about the way artistic transmissions happened. It’s very much like the way transmission happens in Buddhist communities: You find a master, you learn from the master, you eventually become a master yourself. It’s through that semi-erotic attachment, complicated by power relations. I loved the work of several of those poets, but I didn’t want to sign up particularly.
GG: So at some point you left this community in Buffalo?
RH: I would come back here in the summertime, and I would see the silos in San Francisco.
GG: Do you agree with that assessment, that it’s a siloed city?
RH: Yes and no. There’s leakage all over the place. I came back in 1971. I published my first book in 1973. At that point what I was interested in was poetry. I also saw here versions of what I’d seen in Buffalo: this group, that group. There were the San Francisco State poets. Berkeley was pretty dead, actually, in terms of a poetry scene, but here were terrific poets. Thom Gunn was here, but he was interested in the Castro and that world and not interested in a poetry scene. Ishmael Reed was here. Pinsky was teaching in the English Department. Josephine Miles was at the edge of retirement. So Berkeley had a rich tradition of growing poets–Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer—so there was a lot here, but the graduate program was not a creative writing program. After I got a book published, I got invited to read in Berkeley, and someone said—maybe it was Jack Foley—”Good luck. It’s like beating a very ancient carpet.” It didn’t feel welcoming and alive.
GG: San Francisco did?
RH: San Francisco did.
GG: When you say San Francisco, are you talking about City Lights or other venues?
RH: I’m trying to remember. I was raising small children, so I didn’t have much of a social life. But I would get out every once and a while to poetry readings at the San Francisco Poetry Center. But from here that’s a long schlep over to San Francisco State. Intersection was the place that tried to make an art community in the city at that time, and that’s where a lot of the cool readings were. It’s gone now, but I think for 20 years it was a venue. I forget what year New College began. The language poets as a group in the 1980s gave a series of talks at 80 Langston St, which is a little alley between Market and Mission. And that became a kind of downtown place for all non-academic-centered ideas, particularly linguistics and critical theory and language poetry. That was the cool scene, and they were interested in their different kinds of community. Folks like Ron Silliman. They would read for a couple of hours outside BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] stations. At the time Silliman was helping to edit The Tenderloin Times, which was a newspaper for street people to sell, in order to have something to do.
GG: Now the reading that happens at BART station is an impromptu spoken word event where they draw a chalk circle at the 16th and Mission Station, and there’s no order. It’s just jump into the circle, jump out of their circle.
RH: The language poets’ writing was extremely heady, but Silliman would tap his feet to the rhythm as he read. So it was poetry that denied having a body, even though it was totally bodily in the way that it was performed. There were a lot of people working in different ways. There was still a kind of Beat scene, though Gary Snyder was gone and Ginsberg was long gone. Jack Hirschman and Neeli Cherkovski were there, among others. There was a group of poets around Robert Duncan at San Francisco State. Stan Rice, the husband of Anne Rice, was a hot young poet in San Francisco, before they moved to New Orleans. Jack Gilbert and his partner Linda Gregg formed a kind of group.
GG: I want to go back to your idea of community in a more platonic sense, regarding poetry and being laureate. What’s your perception of the situation now in San Francisco? Of the community’s poets? Of poetry here generally? The power of it, relative, cultural?
RH: I don’t feel at all on top of what’s happening here, but one of the things that’s definitely happened is this: When I started reading poetry in 1963, ’64, ’65, I could read every book of poems published in America in a given year, including the mimeographed stuff. There were maybe 17 books of poems published a year. Last year there were 1400 books of poems published.
GG: Those are just books by the presses acknowledged as national presses.
RH: There was no thought that you could make a career writing poetry. When I was graduating college there were two creative writing graduate programs: Iowa and Stanford. I was in Stanford, and I wasn’t in the creative writing program.
GG: But you were aware that the MFA existed.
RH: I wasn’t actually, I don’t remember being aware of it as a choice. I thought at that point, “I want to be a writer.” I’d already gotten married, I’d worked 2 summers doing research at a bank, and it made it perfectly clear to me that I didn’t want to put on a suit and go to an office from 8 to 5. And it seems that’s what you do when you graduate from law school. I went to graduate school for a PhD in the same spirit in which I might have decided on law school. There weren’t models of poets teaching in the university, particularly, yet. What changed things was by the time I was back here in 1971, there were creative writing teachers at every college, so there came to be MFA programs, which exponentially increased the number of people writing poetry, and the number of people publishing poetry, and the number of communities usually organized around the aesthetic of the charismatic teachers in each program. That was also true of New York at the time.
GG: Those developments have had enormous implications in a couple of ways. The first of which is for the state of poetry. Do you have strong opinions about those implications?
RH: The writers of the older generations were extremely suspicious of the academy. There’s a poem of Theodore Roethke’s era about Roethke raging in the cage of the university. Kenneth Koch wrote in “Fresh Air,” that poets were “trembling in the universities and publishing houses,” “bathing the library steps with their spit.” They feared the university as a trap.
The greatest period in the history of lyric poetry was the Tang Dynasty in China, which produced, over 100 years, five or six of the greatest poets who have ever written in any language, and they all had to take exams in poetry in order to get the jobs as secretaries, in the waterworks, and in the other administrative jobs for Confucians. The evidence is that the more a culture encourages poetry, the better the poetry it produces.
GG: You would say generally that there’s more good poetry being written now than at any point in American history?
RH: We don’t know. Great poetry is mysterious. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are. On one hand the history of American poetry is the original work came from people who were on some level profoundly loners. I mention the Tang example as a counter argument to the idea that there’s a kind of static uniformity.
GG: Not a static uniformity, but let’s say we have a large number of programs producing poets who then become solitary poets, and they’re all over the place, and you can’t throw a rock without hitting a poet in the United States.
Robert: I think that’s a really important thing. Look at early 20th-century American literature. In 1915, roughly when Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost and Pound were getting started, only 16 percent of Americans graduated from high school.
GG: It makes me think of poetry scrapbooking in the early 20th Century. It was a time when many people had scrapbooks of poems, but not everyone was writing poems. Now not too many are keeping scrapbooks, but everybody’s writing poetry.
RH: It was middle-class people who were keeping scrapbooks. In Sherwood Anderson’s stories of small-town life, people were going crazy and running through the streets naked in the middle of the night, in these oppressive environments. Now every disturbed and upset person in the country can find their way to some community college where somebody who loves poetry or painting or musical composition is teaching them. What’s not good about that?
GG: There is no downside to that.
RH: But this was the point I was coming around to, what’s been interesting about the Bay Area in the last 20 years. The creative writing program at Dominican University at San Rafael, the old hallowed one in San Francisco State, the College of Arts and Crafts, St. Mary’s, Mills College, they’ve each spilled into their surrounding communities. The graduates from my wife’s program from Saint Mary’s now have two or three different weekend poetry reading programs. There’s an audience of 75 to 100 people every couple of Friday nights. There are salons. And the groups intermingle and overlap–some, and some they don’t. The young poets want to take their art out into the community.
GG: That’s the experience that I’ve had, that just as you can’t throw a rock without hitting a poet, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a poetry reading, Everywhere, every night of the week almost.
RH: You’ve got people saying that Americans don’t like poetry.
GG: That’s hard to believe.
RH: There were maybe 5 poets working in every University in America in 1948. Now every single college, university and community college in the country has two poets and two fiction writers teaching creative writing.
GG: It’s an amazing industry.
RH: And somebody’s paying for it, tax money mostly. We have on this campus our monthly poetry reading series and a biweekly one. Meanwhile there’s the Starry Plough and Studio One, off-campus venues
GG: So this is progress? Socially?
RH: Absolutely.
GG: The effect on society is positive, because…?
RH: It’s hard to say exactly. Everyone loves to quote William Carlos Williams: “men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found [in poems].” Jeremy Nobel, a doctor at Harvard, started a non-profit called The Unlonely Project. He started working with veterans, writing and reading poetry. There are things like that going on. Lyn Hejinian has said that poetry coteries, her word, are necessary, because young poets need support and nurturing to find their little groups.
GG: I’ve discovered that poets leave coteries.
RH: People have talked about that in different ways. Somebody asked Robert Pinsky about being a Jewish poet and he said, “It’s the neighborhood I come from.” Some people stay there forever, or at least they become professionally associated as a spokesperson for that neighborhood of poetry.
Jane Jacobs, who is great on the subject of community, said, “New ideas come from old buildings.” Most new social initiatives of all kinds have to do with creating community. Another background of all of this is the distinction between community and network, and the networks that capitalism, a market economy, creates; and the kind of community good that has become the rhetoric of poetry and of the people who try to raise money to promote the arts as a way of promoting community.
GG: There’s a network of practicing poets in the academy. I have poet friends who know your wife professionally. I didn’t know that until two days ago when one of my friends mentioned it. There’s a reason they meet at the AWP conference every year. Then there are many communities that I’ve encountered in which people have absolutely no interest in networking, less than zero. They don’t care to get out beyond their specific communities. And I would say that’s the majority of people who write poetry. Were you aware of this when you were Poet Laureate? Did it feel like part of the task to encourage any particular sort of community?
RH: I had been traveling around the country, giving readings, for maybe twenty years by that time. I knew that in Yakima, Washington, you might think you’re going to get four people at a reading and the place is full, because somebody happened to have taught your poetry in their class, and you go to another place and nobody shows up. From that perspective, a poetry community feels like a pond where the temperature keeps changing.
As Poet Laureate I was interested in creating readers for poetry, figuring out how to do that, and using the position to confront fundamental issues of literacy. Because I was also the first person from the West of the Mississippi to have this job, I thought I should do something related to the environment. And they said, “We have $30,000 for you, to have some kind of conference.” Newt Gingrich’s Republican Congress had just been elected. For the first time in fifty years, a Republican was in charge of financing for the Library of Congress. So I said, “I’d like to get the environmental writers together, because I hear that the lobbyists are sitting in the offices of these new freshmen Congressmen, rewriting the environmental legislation.” I went back the next week and they said, “We thought we had money available for a conference, but turns out we’re not going to this year. Sorry”.
GG: The Contract with America.
RH: So I said to them, “If raise the money, could I go ahead and do it ?” And they said, “Sure, if you raise the money.” I had never tried to raise money for anything. I called around to some people. Very quickly somebody called me, a guy named Charlie Hopper, who was the director of a foundation that used the Sara Lee Cheesecake family money. He said, “I hear you’re thinking of doing an environmental program at the Library of Congress, and I think that’s wonderful, and maybe we can give you some help”. I said, “I could use about $30,000.” He said, “How about 100,000?” I went to the Center for the Book, at the Library of Congress. It’s a place that produces those maps of writers that you see in schoolrooms. I thought “Bingo! If you just add environmental responsibility and the natural history writing tradition to these maps, you’ve got exactly the community poetry is interested in.”.
GG: But this could apply to other issues as well? It’s just a sort of paying attention that poetry demands.
RH: When Rita Dove had the job, she organized the first literary conference on the great diaspora, on what took black people out of the Jim Crow South and into the cities of the North, and created the art scenes that happened in places like New York and Chicago. It was about literature creating communities for people.
GG: As a white male Poet Laureate, were you very conscious of the imperative to diversify perspectives in and on poetry? We’re to the point now where many of the most celebrated books are by poets of color, gay poets of color, immigrant poets.
RH: I was certainly aware, because I grew up with the civil rights movement, so I understood very well the need for it, especially sitting in the Library of Congress where almost all of the employees were black and all the appointed staff were white. One day I went to work, there were an older guy and a younger guy, like they were in an August Wilson one-act, sitting on a bench outside the entry. The young kid said to the old guy, with tears in his eyes, “I don’t have to take this shit anymore.” And the old guy said, “Son, you do.”
I’d also started this environmental poetry program for children, and the first place we did it was in the Anacostia district in D. C.. I met a guy, who was a descendant of Daniel Boone, who created the Friends of the Anacostia River Society. Washington has a dual-store sewage system, like most American cities. Every time there’s a heavy rainfall in D. C. the sewers from the Federal Triangle overflow into the Anacostia River, and all the Congressional shit flows through the poorest neighborhood in the city. How’s that for a definition of community? So I was discovering a lot of stuff from doing that and feeling like bringing poetry into these communities that were concerned with the environment and with social justice was part of the work to be done.
GG: Is this something inherent in poetry which lends it to alliance with social justice movements? Or is that something that’s just happened?
RH: Well, that’s an interesting question. What do you think?
GG: The thing that occurs to me when I think of this possibility is that I have a friend who’s a a good poet, a professor, and a very conservative Christian. He rages about having to be a poet in an academic environment defined by the constant imperative for social justice. He thinks it’s all a bunch of…
RH: Bullshit.
GG: Right. To my mind poetry usually attracts people who are concerned with social justice, because it’s the people who reflect the most who are most concerned with social justice. I don’t know if that’s right, but that’s what it feels like.
RH: You can date the imperative for social justice of the kind that we have now, poetry arts in general, from Romanticism and the French Revolution. Was Shakespeare concerned with social justice when he was writing the Sonnets? I don’t think so. Were the great 17th-century religious poets concerned with social justice?
GG: I would think about Blake, but I would say poets of those times were concerned more with the awareness of social injustice, not so much with campaigning for social justice.
RH: So Blake is the turning point.
GG: The Industrial Revolution.
RH: Somebody said that The Vicar of Wakefield is the first novel in which someone mistreats a child. And it’s the same period when poets started writing poems about wounded animals, like Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse.” The moment of the birth of modern liberalism comes from romanticism and poetry of that period. Resistance to power has been an element of the arts since the end of the eighteenth century.
GG: At the risk of sounding ill-informed, when I think about the Modernists, I don’t think particularly that that’s a group of poets concerned with social justice. Eliot, Pound, even Stevens.
RH: In the Depression they turned themselves to that question, each of their own way.
GG: So you look at the poet of The Four Quartets as a different poet from the poet of The Wasteland.
RH: At the same time, Langston Hughes was writing, Carl Sandburg was writing. In his way Stevens, in “The Man on the Dump,” tried, from his lofty heights, to address the Depression.
I have a friend who was reading applications in the graduate program he’s in, with a couple of younger poets on the faculty. One of the applicants said that she particularly wanted to come to this program, because she really wanted to work on issues of gender injustice and inequality, and this older poet said, “This is not a program in gender and social inequality. It’s a program in poetry.” A younger poet on faculty went to the chair of the department and made a formal complaint against this poet for making a racist remark. Somebody else, somebody teaching at Harvard, told me that he was teaching Donne’s “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” After class a woman came to him and said that, as a survivor of sexual abuse, she was very disturbed by how casually he had used the term “ravished.”
GG: I’ve heard people put this more vulgarly: that having the correct pronoun is not the same as having someone grab you.
RH: So right now that’s the moment. On the other question, of the spread of graduate programs, which has caused people who want work and who love this art to want it in more communities, I remember when Dana Gioia published the book Can Poetry Matter? Czeslaw Milosz was enraged by that title. He said, “This assumes John Carson matters.” He meant Johnny Carson and late night t. v. It was evident to him, who had seen whole generations carted off to the gas chamber, that the conversation that went on in poetry was a matter of life and death. That way of thinking also belonged to a time when it was only an educated aristocracy who read and wrote poetry.
GG: I did take issue with Gioia’s argument. It seemed to me that he was talking particularly about a subject of his next book, about San Francisco and the way the publishing industry here had disappeared.
RH: There’s another aspect to that discussion. First of all it’s only from the middle of the 19th Century that most people could read. And right around the time of Whitman’s debut there began to be cheap enough printing to make books.
GG: Compulsory education began in 1840.
RH: 1840. Unless you were black, and then you could still get killed for trying to read. During that period from about 1840 to 1920, the main source of information was newspapers and magazines, so people who work in the print media created celebrity. And what happened, beginning with radio and then with t. v., is that celebrities became people admired by the producers of news and entertainment. So the Modernists, who disliked popular poetry, which people had been working very hard to use in the spirit we’re talking about, for creating a community, were basically biting the hand that fed them just as it was being withdrawn. And they remained stars, so they–you know, Eliot and Pound, would show up in Bob Dylan’s songs. That was the end of that particular kind of celebrity for writers.
GG: I often look back on the 1980s, when I was in undergraduate, as the last gasp of the New York literary old line. I interned at The Hudson Review and The Paris Review then, and that was the last gasp of seeing literary types go to Elaine’s or seeing John Updike get into an elevator at a swank party. That sort of literary celebrity doesn’t appear to exist much anymore. And that’s not all bad. I can come here and interview you. You were Poet Laureate. And I was able to ask another Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, to visit with my class. And I’m just some guy at the City University of New York. It’s not the same sort of exclusivity.
RH: I have no clear picture of the way things are now. It’s clear that the Internet is changing the whole discussion about community and how you make it. Virtual poetry communities are everywhere and nowhere. I think the rise of identity politics is a subject for poetry, is connected to everywhere and nowhere. You have to talk about this carefully, because it has a blood and soil element. It was complicated for me, figuring out how to do environmental poetry without talking about how important attachment to community is, at the same time that cosmopolitanism is the solution to small-town prejudice. You encourage Nebraskans to be Nebraskans by taking care of their environment and stop polluting their rivers.
GG: I talked to two people this week who have said outright or implied that when push comes to shove people retreat to their tribes. Last night someone very close to my age who was running a poetry slam said basically as much. Berkeley is for Caucasians. Oakland is for brown people, as she put it. And last night at the Oakland Slam, there was as diverse a mix of people as I’ve seen, and I come from a place that was diverse and have taught for 30 years at a university that is.
RH: Fifty-five percent of undergraduates from Berkeley are not European-American in one way or another, and twenty percent of them don’t speak English as their first language at all.
GG: The definitions of diversity are interesting too, because back at my college in Brooklyn, the students speak one hundred and fifteen different languages. If there’s a dominant group, maybe it’s Latino students, but even they are from various places. I’m staying by Lake Merced in San Francisco, in an area that is predominantly Chinese American, almost entirely. Is that diversity?
RH: In my growing up, San Francisco was very much the patchwork model.
GG: Yes, and that’s New York as well, in terms of ethnic neighborhoods. I perceive that this generation of students is different. They really are blending together in a way that previous generations have only lip paid service to. But there still seem to be lingering doubts, especially among people who are part of communities of color, that there is a kind of final blending of communities, which includes poets. Do you believe that poetry is an effective vehicle for social change? Not necessarily for social justice, but for change.
RH: Here’s my formula for understanding poetry this way. For reasons that nobody quite understands, in the middle of the 18th Century, theologians were really puzzled by the existence of mountains, because they were such a waste of space. By the 1790s Friedrich Holderlin was writing these amazing poems about climbing up mountains. Coleridge and Wordsworth read Holderlin, and Thoreau read Wordsworth and Coleridge. John Muir read Thoreau. And Teddy Roosevelt read Muir. And we got national parks. Poetry isn’t responsible for what happens, but it’s the archive of everything human beings have thought and felt, more powerfully expressed than any place else. The idea is that the seeds of new things find their first shape in music, images, lines of poetry.
GG: What distinguishes poetry from other sorts of writing that could effect social change is that it’s got those elements that are part of the subconscious, that consciously work on a subconscious level.
RH: In the way that metaphor does. The oldest associations of poetry in every language from which written language emerges are with memory. It’s the power of poetry to invoke memory, making the way you say things memorable by making it rhythmic. If there is a world community, it’s that community. You were talking about poets belonging to networks on one hand and communities on the other and kind of moving between them. But I want to talk about this other thing, about spiritual traditions of transmission that happen inside and across communities. That is to say that people who love and practice an art are companions to everyone who loves and practices the art. When a painter dies it means something to the community of painters. That’s why the elegy of a poet for a poet is such an important form. I respect the work of almost anybody who gets work done.
GG: Did you continue to teach when you were Poet Laureate?
RH: I taught on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I caught planes on Wednesday mornings. What I did first, before I got involved with the environmental stuff or with writing the column, was to talk about literacy. I got invited to a downtown Oakland business club, and I called somebody in the school of education, and I asked, “What’s the graduation rate from Oakland high schools?” and they told me. Then I went to the Oakland Rotary’s breakfast and said, “How many of you can name all of the linebacker corps of the Oakland Raiders?” And everybody could. Then I said, “How many of you know the graduation rate from Oakland high schools?” And nobody could. And I said, “I couldn’t either, until I asked.” Then I said, “They’re you kids. If they can’t read, it’s your fault.” That was my attack on community at the outset. I ran around saying that imagination makes communities. Self-interest makes networks. Imagination makes communities. I just said it as a mantra. Poetry, by feeding the imagination and describing for us our shared world, makes a community of value. That’s partly true and partly a wish.
BIO
George Guida is author of nine books, most recently the novel Posts from Suburbia (Encircle Publications, 2022) and the collection of poems Zen of Pop (Long Sky Media, 2020). He is at work on Virtue at the Coffee House: Poetry and Community in America.
George Guida
Professor English Department New York City College of Technology
Author Posts from Suburbia (2022) Zen of Pop: Poems (2020) New York and Other Lovers: Poems (2020) Pugilistic: Poems (2015) The Sleeping Gulf: Poems (2015) Spectacles of Themselves: Essays in Italian American Popular Culture and Literature (2015) The Pope Stories (2012) The Pope Play (2009) Low Italian (2007) The Peasant and the Pen: Men, Enterprise and the Recovery of Culture in Italian American Narrative (2003)
“The real function of art is to change mental patterns, making new thought possible.” Jean Dubuffet
To Carson Grace Becker
After a tortuous renovation, I hang the artwork back on freshly painted walls. Three framed Soviet posters on this side, three male nudes here, and three Ionesco lithographs over there. My friend Kim approves: “Everything looks better in groups of three.”
A fissure opens on the wall I’m facing and inside, a cavernous tunnel. I’m not saying that nature, life, and art do not have any other underlying code, don’t get me wrong. But all I can see, as of right now, is the master, organizing principle, the permanence of three.
“Methodic writing distracts me from humankind’s current condition,”, says Borges in The Library of Babel. In that infinite library that will outlive humans. a curious reader will find an encyclopedia of everything, everything, on the number three.
Khepri, one of the three forms of the Egyptian sun god, surfaces from the horizon and is represented in the shape of an ovoid scarab. Re, or Ra, the sun of the midday, supervises creation and fertility. Atum, dusk, sets on the horizon to complete this world.
I learned in school: “Living beings are born, grow, reproduce, and die.” That version of the maxim is not entirely accurate, loaded with implications, because not all living beings, me for one, end up reproducing. Birth, growth, and death: the three absolute constants in life.
Birth is the beginning, growth is the middle, and death is the end. Life rendered as the daily sun or an Aristotelian climactic narrative in three acts. The moment a storyteller messes with that primordial, organic expectation, the audience moves uncomfortably in their seats.
I’m sitting at a table across from my guy, and he tells me he can fold anything into a trifold brochure. He grabs a piece of paper and folds it into itself, in three. Then, he folds a plate, then the table, and when he is about to three-fold the room with us inside, I wake up.
I kept having these night-long dreams that I’m in a department store as large as a city. The layout, the clerks, and the shoppers change every time. In the final reiteration, the dream becomes a nightmare when I notice all products in the store are in the shape of a triskelion.
When I’m pregnant with new writing, without fail, the anxious dreams start. Tonight, I dreamt of my arrival at a palace, where I met a king, whose name I didn’t remember and whom I needed to impress. A menacing third person I couldn’t see was surveilling us.
My graduate advisor, Amy England, emails every day an original translation of a traditional Haiku. “A cold moon:/amid the withered trees/a stand of three bamboos.” Each haiku, three Japanese vertical lines, dances in my head softly, bamboo shoots in the wind.
“I’ve been down so long/That down don’t worry me/Repeat/ I just sit and wonder/Where can my good man be?” sings Billie Holiday. The blues repeats the first two stanzas and then surprises with a rhyming third. The loopy pain of the blues, a musical swinging razor.
What if I could declutter sentences, chopping the output of my brain with a machete? What if I could streamline all thoughts and ideas into something that could be three mere whistles? What if every new thought could fit in a small index card, three horizontal bamboos?
Anu was not only the god of the sky in Mesopotamia; he also was the father of other gods and, most surprisingly, demons too. Enlil was the Lord of the air, and he separated Heaven and Earth to make room for agriculture. Ea completed another godly triad as the Lord of Water.
The ancient spiritual and medical practice of Ayurveda defines the three doshas as vata (air), pitta (fire), and kapha (water). Vata relates to the nervous system, pitta to the enzymes, and kapha to the mucus. Health means the doshas are balanced and in equilibrium.
In The Timaeus, Plato discusses the order and beauty of the universe. He declares the existence of four primordial elements: fire, air, water, and earth. All of them are formed, everything is formed, he believed, by the most basic of shapes: the triangle.
Pythagoras thought that there were three types of men. Those who came to the games to buy and sell, those who came to compete, and those who came to watch. Those who love wealth and material possessions, those who search for honors, and those who look for wisdom.
The three states of matter are liquid, solid, and gas, as it happens with water, ice and steam. The states correspond with our three basic animal needs for life: drink, food and air. At the atomic level of matter, another triad: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Three is the first non-symmetrical plurality that is not perfectly divisible in half. You can have one or two, but it is at three that a pattern kicks off. Three is the first number that gets things slightly off-kilter, and therefore, I would argue, when they finally get interesting.
Creation, preservation, and destruction are the forms of the Trimūrti of Hinduism: Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. Brahmā, the self-born, is often the mind, Viṣṇu, the protector, the heart and Śiva, the destroyer of evil, is the body. Of course, mind, heart, and body, the braid within us all.
The three Hindu Gods have a trinity of companions, the Tridevi. Saraswati, Brahma’s wife, represents learning and cultural fulfillment, and Lakshmi, Vishnu’s wife, material and spiritual fulfillment. The third, Śiva’s wife, is Parvati, is the goddess of both war and love.
Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakur was a wiseman from the 17th century of our era and wrote poetry and rhetoric. He established three types of merits in excellent poetry: sweetness, energy, and perspicuity. Perspicuity is, in my case, the elusive goddess of clear thinking.
Three sons of three merchants were given refuge in the middle of the night by a beautiful widow who offered to marry the one who could tell the scariest tale. Each young man told a horrific, bloody story. To this day, she has not decided which of the three was the scariest.
While three princes went to war, a maid ordered their fiancés to be gouged. The three blind queens delivered three baby boys while hiding away in a cave. One of the boys cured the queens by blowing three candles, so they all returned home and roasted the maid alive.
Once upon a time, a girl was granted three wishes, or maybe it was three guesses or three opportunities to crack a riddle, I am not sure. Once upon a time, there were three bears, three little pigs, and a three-legged cat. Once upon a time, humans built all tales around trinities.
The Golden Triangle was the preferred compositional form of the European Renaissance. Raphael used it in all of his portraits of Madonna and the child. In art textbooks, they superimpose the triangles over the paintings as if to show its secret code, its x-ray.
The rule of three divides any visual composition into three vertical columns and three horizontal rows. In the intersections lay the focal points. They are like the beginning, middle, and end of a story, or the sun’s daily journey, so ingrained, we don’t even notice them.
Three kinds of light illuminate opaque bodies, observed Da Vinci. The “direct light,” that of the sun, the “diffused light,” of cloudy or misty weather, and the “subdued light,” when the sun is entirely under the horizon. Was he talking about painting or my moods?
In the Book of Revelations, God is that “who was, and is, and is to come.” When he became human, according to that tradition, he had to face three temptations. And the ending of the story, a re-start: he was dead for three days before resurrecting.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The three Archangels are the Catholic tradition’s mega-angels, and the Wise Men who visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were also three. In the Last Supper by Da Vinci, the Apostles sit in groups of three.
Providence, both omnipresent and omnisapient. At the Uffizi in Florence, in The Supper at Emmaus by Pontormo (1525), the Eye of Providence supervises us, mortals, from inside a triangle. The same eye that watches us from a pyramid in the US dollar bill.
“I’m writing about triangles,” I mention to my friend Margaret Mary. “You mean the musical instrument?”, she asks. This makes me laugh, and then I remember that when I was a Catholic kid, the triangle was the only instrument they let me play at mass.
My first communion at age nine was the culmination of a year-long process of Catholic indoctrination. Among other things I learned: the Confiteor. Hand in fist, one knocks three times on the chest while confessing: “por mi culpa, por mi culpa, por mi grandísimas culpa.”
In Persia, third century of the common era, a new doctrine that boils everything down to two principles, Good and Evil, takes shape: Manichaeism. Two create an illusory comfort. The third idea, object, or person crashes in and makes room for something that is not as simple.
The French say: “Liberté, Égalité et Fraternité“. Franco, in Spain, cried: “¡Una, Grande, Libre!” Jefferson applied “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” like lipstick on John Locke’s lips, because, let’s face it, Property, not the Pursuit of Happiness, is the ultimate American god.
A new generation has shattered the binary perception of gender. Still, so many false binaries are assumed in the American conversation left/right, red/blue, right/wrong. Manichaeism’s righteousness (us vs. them) is alive and well in this irritable capitalism of late.
Populism, fundamentalism, authoritarianism offer those tired of complexity a respite from the messiness of a nuanced third: you’re with us or a heretic. At one point, oversimplifying catches up. Binary dogmas will continue to implode because their falseness is not sustainable.
The North-Atlantic democracies seemed a given, but are now just brittle. In life and online, I’m surrounded by loud Roman emperors, displaying a thumb up, or most often, a giant Pollice Verso. So here I am, doing my best to resist by longing for moments of messy maybes.
Two is company, three is a crowd, they say, but I beg to differ. Somedays, one is a crowd, and I guess that the experience of finding two to be a crowd may not be that uncommon, mainly when the novelty, like dead fish, expires. But who says three could not be good company?
Finally, a portion of the hetero-world has become more accepting of certain forms of queerness. How many friends, straight and gay, have casually denied to me the existence of bisexuality? Bi is not here or there and therefore is a threat to the false safety of the simplified.
When I watched Cabaret on TV, as a young teen, I loved the songs. The bisexual love triangle at the heart of the personal drama either totally escaped me, I found unremarkable, or maybe both. In the song Two Ladies, the MC sings: “Twosie beats onsie. But nothing beats threes.”
Growing up in Spain, in the last years of General Franco we only had two TV channels. American Hollywood classics played in rotation. On my bedroom wall, I collected posters of old movies with a trio of characters at their core: Casablanca, The Apartment, Some like it hot…
Lubitsch, Wilder, Hawks, all the great directors seemed to recognize the primordial balance and tension of the triangle. Most of the time one of the two men won over the woman. Only, in Lean’s Blithe Spirit, the love triangle of one man and two women sublimate in the afterlife.
Barthes: “The three trials of the writer are Doubt, Patience, and Separation”. The first one is an abstract trial, what to write; the second a practical one, the step-by-step process; the third one, a moral one, how society will judge. He was so blocked, he died before writing his novel.
I have no doubts: I’m compulsively researching the implications of three. The process is limited and helped by the three-line constriction. The third one: if I were to worry how anybody will judge my musings on three, I wouldn’t be able to put down one word.
Author Emilio Williams passed away last night in his sleep. He was known for his essay “Thrice,” a piece credited with ending all two-person entanglements. It was adapted into an Academy Award Winning film starring Antonio, Brad, and Denzel, as the perfect threesome.
Growing up, my family. My father and two brothers, my mother and two sisters, my two brothers and me, my two sisters and me, my parents and me. Me, the baby who came a bit late, could take two at a time, but the minute three of them got together, there was no entry point.
Our sense of time passing is measured in days, months, and years. If I drill down, it also is measured in hours, minutes, and seconds. The first set of times is easier to remember, more historical, but the second just gets lost, it dissolves in the blur of a non-existent present.
I finally move the debris of my father’s life from a storage locker into our new garage. Not absolute chaos, things are contained in boxes, but not proper order either. Here it is now, the cruel randomness of the private archive in all its brown-boxed glory.
My dad takes me to the Prado, and I hold his hand, afraid to get lost. We come into a room where people are waiting in front of a box on the wall. A man in a grey uniform and white gloves unfolds the covers, and there it is, Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights.
The left panel includes Jesus, Adam, and Eve in a bucolic paradise. The right panel is a scary, grotesque black scene of Hell. But the mystery of the triptych is in its central panel, a paradise where hundreds of human figures give themselves with complete abandon to hedonistic joy.
Purgatory is that space where souls are triaged before ending up in heaven or hell. My father passed just before the COVID-19 lockdown, and his boxes arrived shortly after. I started opening them in the early summer, but by box number three, I had to stop, it had become too much.
According to the Cleveland Clinic website, there are three types of tears. The basal covers and protects the eye; the reflex appears when a foreign object enters the eye; and the emotional, well, that one you know. “Humans are the only creatures known to produce emotional tears.”
In the Catholic tradition, tears can be a gift, not a curse. Holy tears can be penitential (regret), tears of love (grace), or tears of compassion for those suffering. In my all-boys Catholic school, like the song, we were only taught one thing about tears: “Boys don’t cry”.
Cranach, the Elder, painted several versions of the Allegory of Melancholia. The most famous is at the National Gallery of Denmark, and it is as abstruse as melancholia proper. This 1532 oil has three naked toddlers trying to pass, with two sticks, a ball through a hoop.
Few thinkers have had a more decisive influence on our messed-up sexuality than St. Augustine. The ordeal started when, as a teenager, he had an involuntary erection in front of his father who reacted with pride and joy. The mother, Monica, who was very devout, shamed them both.
After a long life of “sin” and belief in Manichaeism, Augustine developed the doctrine of peccatum originale. Based on the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Augustine codified that every human being is a born-sinner stained by voluntary and involuntary desires.
For Augustine there were three types of lust: that of the senses, that of power and that of curiosity. The first two are better known and more straightforward. The third one is a lust of the eyes, a craving that includes an interest in theater, the sciences, and knowing more.
Quintilian was a Latin master of oratory who was born only an hour away from my mother’s birthplace. He established a binary between “clear” and “obscure” speech. But the French enlightenment came later to save my day with a new concept, that of “Je ne sais quois”.
Woolf said, “life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.” Attempt to discuss the semitransparent nature of life, and they will make you pay a high price. Although the pathology is in dichotomous thinking.
Who is afraid of the “Je ne sais quois”? Why is every piece of writing, every play, every artwork only as valuable as some desire to have it explained? Let’s celebrate that certain experiences transcend our ability to pin them on a cork board as if we were collecting butterflies.
Early movies were called the theater of silence, just a camera sitting there while the actors moved around the stage. Then, montage helped movies find their mojo. If you place this image here, next to this other image you get a third thing pregnant with symbolic meaning.
At the Studio Museum, in Harlem, artist Fred Wilson reorganized objects in the collection, as part of his project “Mining the Museum”. By placing a 19th-century chair, next to a slave whipping post, Wilson created a third thing. Parataxis is the dot, dot, dot between two ideas.
In 1982, three major events took place in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s life. She married, published her avant-garde “novel” Dictee, just a week before being murdered. In her cult book, she combines two elements (text and image) to create a third thing teeming with new connotations.
Bierce famously defined good writing as “clear thinking made visible”. Who gets to decide what is good writing and how do they get that job? Oh, how I hope that by now I have made translucent to you my current lack of clear-thinking!
Refranes are popular sayings, proverbs, that usually have a rhyme or work as a couplet. In Spanish, they are considered the wisdom of the people. “No hay dos sin tres” literally asserts that there are no two, without a third.
In English, the “where” adverbs are binary: here and there, this or that. In Spanish, there are three forms aquí, ahí, allá, and esta, esa, aquella, with gendered options to the latter. So ahí, and esa, eso, ese allow a vagueness to be in a middle-range, a place in the in-between.
Duermevela in Spanish is a type of light sleep between being awake and falling asleep that I thought had no exact translation into English. But apparently there is a word, a term that sounds more pathologic than poetic, no wonder it is not commonly used. The word: hypnagogia.
The Japanese concept of Ma is usually translated to English in a binary sense: negative space. A better translation could be the in-between, for example the Ma between two karate fighters. The kanji symbol for Ma is a door with a sun peaking, the life between the edges.
A door has three frames, two vertical, one horizontal on top, but it is the empty space that creates a threshold. To cross a door, for an instant, I walk in the liminal space that is not here or there. Like breathing, travels in the in-between are so constant most times they pass unnoticed.
Laudonia, one of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, is divided into three: the city of the dead, the city of the living, and the city of the unborn. The city of the unborn feeds the city of the dead like sand passing through an hourglass. The amount of sand is, of course, finite.
As the first anniversary of my father’s passing approached, I couldn’t procrastinate any longer the opening of old boxes filled with the debris of a lifetime. In one folder among my old letters to him, somebody else’s letter had been misfiled. Its secrets were not for me to read.
Deleuze in The Logic of Sensation discusses Bacon’s triptychs by quoting the theory of rhythm by the composer Messiaen. There is an active rhythm and a passive rhythm. But there is also a third one, a rhythm he names attendant, a witness to a conflict, who remains inactive.
The Borromean knot receives its name from the Italian House of Borromeo which used its shape in their coat of arms. The knot is made out of three, inseparably linked shapes, usually circles that connote the eternal. When one of the links is removed, the structure falls apart.
Lacan borrowed the metaphor of the Borromean knot to explain the human mind. The symbolic ring is linguistic and the imaginary ring involves images and mirrors. The third one is the real: everything that is impossible to represent with images or words, the unknowable.
Lacan defined three functions of the father related to the three rings. The symbolic father represents the law and the imaginary father is a construct of our ideas of the father. Even people who understand Lacan (I don’t) consider his third definition, the real father, difficult to grasp.
The Classic era of Athens and Rome eclipses two and a half thousand years of history in Northern Europe. The three matrons (the mothers) were the triple goddesses of Ancient Europe. Their function was the protection of the family and fertility and, at certain times, war.
Myth, life, and that space in between called the stage. Lear had three daughters and Macbeth, three witches. Later, Chekhov created The Three Sisters, Genet three women role-playing The Maids, Beckett three old friends in Come and Go, and Albee, Three Tall Women.
Pessoa wrote three women mourning a dead body in the play The Mariner. In a night-long wake, they sit still, uttering non-sequiturs, each line more beautiful than the last. The third watcher says: “It horrifies me that soon I will already have told you what I am about to say.”
I’m thinking of the three graces in Botticelli’s Primavera interlocking their fingers playfully. I’m thinking of the three fates, the Parcas: Nona, Decima, and Morta, spinning, measuring, and cutting the fine thread of life. I’m thinking, mostly, of my mother and two sisters.
I’m Theseus in a labyrinth of cathexis and amnesia. In 2011, when I moved back to Chicago, my father’s hometown, I saw an arresting exhibition of amateur snapshots, women posing three at a time. I reorder the old catalog online: I don’t remember a single one of them.
The photo reads on the back “Lindau, c. 1920’s,” probably snapped from a boat. The black silhouettes of three women on a pier walk away from the camera, back towards land. Maybe they came to see the boat off, to wave goodbye to the photographer, this time probably for good.
PHOTO CREDIT: Untitled (Lindau [?]) c. 1920/29. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
BIO
Emilio Williams is a bilingual (Spanish/English) award-winning writer and educator. His fragmented essays have appeared in Hinterland Magazine, and Imagined Theatres, among other publications. His critically acclaimed plays have been produced in Argentina, Estonia, France, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. Emilio has lectured around the world, and taught in several U.S. universities, including DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Georgia State University. He holds a BA in Film and Video and an MFA in Writing. He is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists where he is also a faculty member. www.emiliowilliams.com
I called my mom from the yearbook office phone—being on the staff had its advantages, including dialing home without the need to find a quarter or wait in line at the payphone—and told her I’d be driving around with Laura to sell ads as part of my official duties of cataloging the 1995-1996 academic year. Laura was a junior, one of my best friends, not even on yearbook staff, and not old enough to have a license; but her dad allowed us to use his old powder blue Chevy Celebrity station wagon as long as I drove and neither of us got in trouble.
“Not today,” Mom said, letting out a drag. I could tell she was smoking, and probably holding the phone between her cheek and shoulder while doing dishes, all with a lit cigarette. It was like she had three hands, always.
“Why?” I asked. I was never told no. Like ever. Especially now that she was busy with the kids.
Christopher and Brittney were still in diapers, and they shared the middle room in a small cabin-like house we moved into right after the owner died (we’d kept all his things, even the spaghetti in the cabinet), shortly after we moved back to Pennsylvania from four years in Oklahoma—where they’d been born and I’d lost my virginity.
“Just not today,” she repeated. “Take the bus home.”
My school district was big. It’s vast and rural and woodsy here in the Poconos, and it takes me almost an hour on windy backgrounds to get to school on Bus 31—only about 35 minutes, though, if I catch a ride with Wayne, who has a black pick-up truck and good radio. Laura lives in another direction, and I have an unofficial-permanent pass to ride her bus. (I lived with her for a few months when we first moved back to PA because there wasn’t room for me at my step-dad’s parents’ house. And the bus driver liked me.) The plan was to take the bus to Laura’s, get the Celebrity, and then drive up and down Route 940 to visit restaurants and video stores and ski rental shops to talk the owners into buying a full page ad—or, please just at least half, sir—to support the Cardinals.
I twirled the tan cord around and around while taking stock of the closet I was in; we call it the yearbook office, but this is actually a storage room that happened to have a phone jack, so Mr. Jeffries (or maybe the yearbook advisor before him) equipped it with an extra school desk, chair, and telephone. We worked on the yearbook in an actual classroom, in the basement, next to the graphics arts room, woodshop, and ceramics studio. I would sometimes get a pass out of class to come to this office-closet to do official yearbook business; I’d bop into Jeffries’ English class and I didn’t even need to say anything; he’d just take the yearbook key off the main ring and hand it to me and continue talking about Chaucer or whatever he was teaching that day. Laura joked that I was in love with Jeffries and that we’d do it, right here against this desk. [Maybe I had a mild, mild crush, and maybe I fantasized about it once or twice, but only after she put the idea in my head.]
What could be SO important that I couldn’t go to Laura’s after school? I thought. And then I finished that thought by thinking aloud, “What? Did you get me a computer or something?”
“Just. Come. HOME.”
***
My uncle Matt—my mom’s little brother and one of the twins [Melissa is the other]—was at the house when I got home. Came all the way from outside Philly. He was in business school and was getting rid of an old computer, so my mom bought it (promised to pay him one day?) as a surprise for me.
I was happy, but also I felt terrible. I’d ruined the surprise. I didn’t know if I was smart or psychic, but somehow I knew.
I knew that my mom knew my deepest desire was to write and that I longed for a computer more than anything in this world. I knew that deep down my mom wanted to make me happy if she could. So I knew that if she was telling me to come home after school that it must be something big. And the only thing big enough, special enough, to me, would have been the miracle of a home computer.
Things had settled down and I was in my room playing Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, and I was in heaven.
“Donna got a ’puter,” Chrissy kept saying, and it was adorable as the time he shoved a pea up his nose and started to cry.
***
I still called them “the kids” long after they were out of diapers and big enough to microwave themselves hot dogs for dinner.
“How are the kids?” I’d ask my mom every time I called, which I know wasn’t often enough. I was out of the house at 18, never to look back. It wasn’t her, exactly. It was her choice in men. I was old enough to know better before I should have been old enough to know better. That’s why I had multiple after-school jobs, and seasonal ones, too, because the Poconos was a tourist area and there was always work at the ski resorts in the winter. [That’s how I met Wayne, with the truck.] If I was awake, I did not want to be in that house. Not ever.
So I remember them in diapers, maybe training pants. And they remember me as the older kid with the ’puter.
***
If I’m being honest, when I asked my mom, “How are the kids?” I already always knew the answer, especially as they became tweens. And if I’m being really, really honest, I was asking my mom because I wanted her to say it out loud. And hear herself saying it. I wanted to be right.
That procreating with a monster meant these poor kids’ lives were doomed.
When I was working on my MFA thesis in 2009, even though it’s almost two decades since that first IBM interrupted my afternoon of official sales calls, I still thought of it as the ’puter. Still do. And when I think of the ’puter, and the tiny voice that said it, I want to cry.
***
My thesis has been in today’s digital equivalent of a drawer for more than 10 years. It’s not that I’m NOT writing, but I write so much in my day job and read and edit so much in my passion project literary journal that sometimes my creativity is drained. My emotional energy, spent. When people ask about my memoir-in-progress, I remind myself that I can’t even call it a work-in-progress because, progress it doesn’t. But I was once told it still counts as writing when you’re constantly thinking about your story, working it out in your head.
I could also be fooling myself. It might not be lack of time or lack of energy — or not JUST lack of time or lack of energy. It could also be that when you’re writing about your own life, it’s a never-ending story. But it — that “it” being a specific piece of that story, a story within a still-evolving story — has to stop and start somewhere. And, sometimes, I feel that I don’t yet know my destination.
***
I haven’t seen my sister since my cousin Adam’s funeral. He’s OUR cousin, I know. But “my” always comes out. Just like my mom never referred to “Grandma” as “grandma” when talking about her; instead, she’d say things like, “My mom grew up in Jersey….” or “My mom is coming over today.”
Adam, only 39, died not long after his dad; our Uncle Paul. Which was not long after our mom, my (adoptive) father, my cat, my same-age aunt Theresa—and just before “our mom’s mom.”
It was a rough couple of years.
Then my (our) brother Christopher Then their (not our) dad.
***
“I have nightmares that Britt kills me,” I tell my other childhood best friend, Jasmine. “Like, they’re crazy vivid.”
“That’s some shit,” Jasmine says. We’re talking about my gradual approach to getting back in touch with my sister. Jasmine lost her dad many years before I’d experienced the loss of the parent, before that few years of terrible family losses; at the time, I know, in my heart of hearts, I was not there for her like I should have been. It’s true what they say: you’d don’t know the gravity of losing a parent until you do. I want to be a better friend to her, forever and ever.
***
This is why you need distance when you’re writing a memoir. I’d added an epilogue because it seemed important at the time, but it didn’t belong in my story, at least not in this way.
But, at the time, when I called my mom and asked, “How are the kids?” I found out that one of the kids would be having one of their own.
I told you so, was what I wanted to say. But instead, I asked the due date.
Later that night, I lamented how it was so unfair that these two kids shared their DNA with a monster, while also realizing that they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him, and, now, neither would this baby, and this tortured my conscience. Then, a thought came to me. I’d lost my virginity to a much older man at about the same age my sister and brother are now; it’s just that no one had to ever know about it because I did not become pregnant.
A few months later, as I left work early to rush 45 minutes in one direction to pick up my brother from Red Rock Job Corps., where he was living/working/learning at the time, to race to Lehigh Valley Medical Center an hour in the other direction to meet my mom and sister (and new niece or nephew), the adrenaline told me, this THIS is the end of your book.
***
We come from a family of halves. My mom has a half-sister and a much older half-brother, but they are still my real aunts and uncles. So I promised my mom that I’d consider Chrissy and Britt my “real” siblings, even though we had different dads. Even though HE was their dad.
In my late 30s, as I became distant—and grew ashamed of their actions—I started referring to them as half-siblings in conversations with newer acquaintances, people I’d just met. I wanted to ensure 1) that people knew that half of them came from something I have zero part of and 2) that nothing was their fault, really.
***
All I knew about my sister was via her public Facebook posts. I was usually scared to look; but sometimes I would, especially on days on which I had dreamt or night-mared about her the evening before. In 2021, the content of her posts began to change significantly. I accepted her lingering Friend request.
***
I run a literary magazine and one of the essays we published in the March/April 2021 issue hit me in a way I didn’t expect. Empathy poured out for my sister, instead of my anger toward her father and resentment for my mother’s choices. These thoughts were overwhelming and definitely something I’d need to talk with someone professionally about, to sort through all of these memories and grudges and emotions—and grief for the years with her I’d lost, and for those with our mother and brother neither of us would get again.
But, in that moment, I knew those feelings were the start of something big, something healing. I suddenly saw my sister as a whole person, her own person. I reflected back to the time I thought I had an epilogue to my story (I’d still need 10 years to figure out what I was actually writing and why). I also thought about superheroes and supervillains and origin stories and the rising popularity of prequels in Hollywood/Streamingwood—when the beginnings help us better understand the end.
It’s not that I no longer have a story to tell. It’s just that—that little diapered girl I left behind when I packed up my ’puter and headed off to college and then to forever—I want to know what happened to her.
This is more than a realization that Britt has a book in her, one that might pick up where mine left off. Rather, this metaphor of the prequel is helping me understand that she’s not a bit character in my story, but a main character in her own. A survivor.
She is my sister. She has a story. And I can’t wait to learn it—and learn from it.
BIO
Donna Talarico is an independent writer and content marketing consultant in higher education, and she also is the founder of Hippocampus Magazine and its annual conference, HippoCamp. She writes an adult learner recruiting column for Wiley, and has contributed to Guardian Higher Education Network, The Writer, mental_floss, Games World of Puzzles, and others. Her creative nonfiction appears in The Los Angeles Review, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. Donna teaches or has taught about branding and digital identity in graduate creative writing programs, including Wilkes University and Rosemont College, as well as at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Make It Go Away: Love, Loss, and What I was Reading
By Joan Frank
Quick: what’s the first goal for a writer—for artists, for anyone—living in a time of worldwide plague?
Easy, on the face of it: Survive. Keep strong. Stay well, and alert.
Shut up and do everything it takes. Care for beloveds. Minimize risk. Obey the Surgeon General. Stay put. Get the vaccine when it shows up.
Soon—maybe by the time you read this—we’ll be looking back on the scourge in relief. Trading memories of how it was.
At this writing, we’re barely able to keep up with the now.
That’s become—putting it gently—the trickier task.
For this moment, breaking revelations still blizzard down nonstop, burying us past our eyebrows. By revelations I don’t just mean the progress of vaccines, political wars, riots and insurrections, gossip, ecological cataclysm, mortality numbers, or dwindling hospital beds.
I mean revelations about meaning. Hide-and-seek with meaning.
With the advents of all the above, meaning itself seems to mutate almost hourly, twisting, collapsing, shredding. Life’s under siege. Nothing can feel the same from the moment one steps outside the door—though if you squint, things on their surfaces appear familiar. It’s what’s directly beneath those surfaces that decimates. The news screams death, destruction, chaos. Our minds struggle to look straight at it.
Unsurprisingly, our responses have popped forth in waves, a surging of flung-open jacks-in-the-box. We’ve had awful trouble sleeping. We’ve experienced bad dreams, anxiety, stress; muzziness; depression, manic panic. We’ve felt spaced out or angry or glum, tired or twitchy, scared or numb or listless; wanting to eat or drink ourselves insensible or just to stop eating and never get out of bed. We’ve burst into tears at odd moments. Former goals (productivity; social gestures; acquiring things) have flattened and bled out, unrecognizable as road kill.
The known world shrank to the size of domestic floor space. Fastidiousness seguéd into neurosis, childlike irritability, and straight-up freakouts. You’re standing right where I want to be. I like that cup best. Get dressed? Why?
Analogies for lockdown realities have varied. One is Ann Frank’s attic. Another is living under house arrest. Another—repeated ad nauseam like the particulars of our days themselves—is the movie Groundhog Day, which I’d only reprise here to highlight one refinement. Our predicament’s best captured, I think, by one crucial cut in that film—to the scene in which Bill Murray calmly reads a book at the lunch counter of the local diner. With that inspired shot (which no one, to my knowledge, has yet singled out for major praise) we’re slammed by the totality of Murray’s character’s surrender. Forced to accept his entrapment, sentenced to live out the same day into eternity, he’s done a poignantly existential thing.
He’s made himself at home inside it.
To a large degree, many of us have done the same. We’ve resigned ourselves to reading quietly at the eternal lunch counter.
It’s consoling—sort of—to find oneself inducted into a huge club by default. But that does not change the unspeakable conditions of membership. A dear friend commented wisely: “I know we’re lucky and that so many people we know are lucky [to have] good health, homes, enough food, etc. It sometimes strikes me that complaining is a luxury. Even so, I complain—and malls are closing and small businesses can’t pay rent, so the outside world is a twisted art installation of shuttered doors.”
It may be that when this thing is past—if it will ever be past—we’ll promise each other never to forget it, to be and act and do better. Then we’ll quickly forget every last speck of it and go back to being heedless, grabbing idiots. It is possible.
Meantime? The prime internal bulletin for me, during the deep-vault exile of lockdown, has been one I don’t see a slew of writers admitting.
A saggy joke throughout this pandemic, from well-meaning friends and family referring to us writers—well known to be introverts, cranks, hermits—went like this:
“Jeez, you must be in heaven. You don’t have to go anywhere or see anyone. You can live in your pajamas and eat popcorn and write your heart out.”
Cue everyone’s sour laughter. Utterers of the quip sounded proud of its fresh wit, waiting for the writer to find it hilarious, too.
Technically, it’s true. We’ve gone straight to the work every day. We’ve maybe felt some guilty thankfulness for being able to do it, without preamble or apology.
But that’s where the joke breaks down. Have writers viewed this new, enforced working time as perfect heaven? Did we feel clear and purposeful about whatever we’d been tapping out in our plague-buffered hidey-hole?
Yeah—no, I don’t think so. No. Would you easily celebrate hunkering down at the notebook or keyboard while an asteroid sped toward earth, or a tidal wave raced toward your home? Feel compelled to restyle interior decor in the Titanic’s cabins?
I couldn’t. Can’t.
No question, in the old days certain jolly distractions—travel and recreations imposed by my dear spouse and innocent others—seemed a zombie-conspiracy to drink my blood, to block my blazing love affair with reading and writing.
Yet if you asked any number of writers during a plague year, I’m suspecting they might well confess the unspeakable, as I do here:
We’ve missed everything and everyone. Teeth-chatteringly.
That could, I know, be another way of saying we’ve missed the enemy.
We’ve missed Zorba’s “full catastrophe:” the pulse and chaos of life, the fussing and yammering, juggling and chafing. The endless, draining noise and dance.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ve missed ground-level hubbub—even if it was always something I routinely fought. Like Kingsley Amis’s battleships laboring to turn around at sea, I’ve begun to grasp the stunning lesson of plaguetime: the utter primacy to us as animals, of gathering.
Take away gathering; little remains. Commerce, services, systems implode or go wonky—and with them, culture, and close behind that, mental health. Without familiar shapes, motions, and networks, we lose our bearings. Who’d guess that even within the saddest, most people-hating hearts lurked an actual, physical longing to hug and be hugged (even those lucky enough to live with a beloved partner)? Some of us have also painfully missed the very small beings (not, alas, in our pods) whom we once could unthinkingly hold in our arms. By the time we can safely hold them again, we fear they may be grown.
I never could have accepted this, had I not felt it.
But the revelation goes deeper. It’s been about more than animal hunger to hang out and be held.
What’s also gone mushy and mealy is identity. One defines oneself, as a rule, against a witnessing backdrop. If you say to a wino crumpled on the curb hey, I’m a writer, he or she might or might not deign to grunt back at you. But you’ll have named a calling in recognizable language before a fellow-member of your species. Something happens. You’ve defined yourself—if only for yourself—before another’s gaze, another’s sensibility, however weird.
If witnesses vanish, do we exist? Crisp boundaries loosened during lockdown, disassembled, floated off in motes. This weightlessness seems related to the riddle of a tree falling in a forest with no one near to hear. It also feels connected to the futility of dressing in street clothes—street suddenly such a telling designation—or wearing makeup or jewelry. By extension: why fuss with meals? Why arrange the green beans in their own little pile beside the veggie burger? Why anything? Why not just stare out the window watching the light change for, oh, twelve or fourteen months?
(Bathing, I do hope, won’t fall by the wayside.)
Parents raising kids? You’re hereby given a complete pass on everything. Not for you such lazy whithering. More: You deserve medals and prizes. The same for healthcare workers; also service workers, first responders, and everyone on the front lines: everyone who’ll have acted, in Mr. Roger’s words, as a Helper.
At the beginning of all this, an astronaut wrote an article advising us that if she could live in space alone for a year, we could manage living in isolation under lockdown. She itemized her principles: make a routine, exercise, care for your brain and emotional health; stay connected. Turns out these sane basics did not prove so easily adaptable by earthbound types. Are we inferior creatures? Certainly, later historians will feast on the naughty-nice list of our small triumphs and cavernous failures. And without doubt a ton of zingy post-facto studies will appear, like thousand-piece human nature puzzles (shadows of Lord of the Flies flickering through the window).
Except, guys? To hell with it.
Like everyone, I never wanted to be part of this experiment. I want back the simple luxury of fighting people for private time. I crave the clarity of knowing, without an avalanche of second (third, hundredth) thoughts, what I’m doing and why. I want to embrace friends while eating and drinking with them—if later grumbling about them.
More than anything I want people to stop getting sick and dying, to get jobs, food, health care, schools, and decent life restored to them.
In the words of my then-very-young stepson when my husband, telling him stories, channeled a scary invented ogre named Mr. Meany:
“Make it go away!”
It’s worth noting here that in many an artist’s heart a tremendous deadlock has raged, around which all the above-named commotion twirls—like that symbol for medical doctors with its famed righteous sword entwined (menaced) by snakes.
How can writing—any art—matter during mortal terror?
“Leave me alone to make—”
To make what, exactly? More to the point, why?
Who wants to make up stories or discuss vagaries of style when people are dying in swaths? What can any of us produce that will be of real use—or even make sense in this context?
Cue the slow, deep breath. Cue the lowered head.
Multiple times the above question has reared its big angry head. And my reflex each time is to surrender, conceding the worst: that mere art, during a plague, can make no more difference than morning dew—that it can scarcely matter. If bombs are falling, how puny art must seem.
Yet in the next instant I’m forced to remember the heroism of European museum curators who, during war years, evacuated precious inventories and hid or buried them in secret locales until it was safe to exhume them. How this fact repeatedly fills us with wonder as we gaze on incalculable treasures, generations later.
Then I begin to think about our own personal choices, daily, hourly, for the use of time during isolation—with no observer taking notes or holding a gun to our heads.
I notice what I’ve seen myself reach for constantly as comfort, nourishment, reinforcement. And from their reports, a lot of friends have appeared to be doing pretty much the same.
I’ve reached for music, films, and books. Simple as that.
I’ve never stopped playing the music I love, Bach to Barbosa-Lima. Evenings we’ve watched movies that distracted, beautified, stirred, soothed, or made us laugh like maniacs. Documentaries. Dance. If anything made me happy-cry, so much the better.
But above all I’ve been constantly immersed in the reading I sensed would fortify me, the language that would feel irreducible—even if bombs fell.
This reading has included some horrific material, stories others might consider nihilistic or weird. Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye (my paperback edition introduced with fierce relish by Tennessee Williams), proved as powerful a nightmare as they come. Yet something about its calm recital of human peculiarity and darkness felt like release, pure and invigorating as lungfuls of alpine air. The terrible truths embedded in every word of its eerie murder story—of jealousy, erotic confusion, inchoate mortal longing—reassured. I couldn’t question this odd chemistry. Most of what I’ve been reading could not have been written to address someone stranded in frightened isolation during a plague year. Yet there was no escaping the awareness that the material had been written because it had to be written. Thus, the writing that most mattered felt as if it had been murmured in the dark to a secret friend—me—with that gorgeous one-on-one urgency that reverberates in a reader’s skull like a struck gong.
Meredith Hall’s novel Beneficence, an epic, glittering novel chronicling an American farm family’s ordeals during the early 20th century, was one such discovery. So was Nicole Krauss’s dreamlike yet ruthlessly cerebral story collection To Be a Man, and Robert Hass’ latest book of glittering, gritty poetry, Summer Snow. Wright Morris’s Plains Song (I’m late to it) struck me as wondrous. I was swept away by Peter Cameron’s dark, austere, nearly perfect What Happens at Night, and wished it would never end.
Other reading that “gave good weight” during plague-time included Henri Troyat’s brilliant, bristling biography, Tolstoy. (Troyat’s oeuvre proves eye-poppingly vast.) Another was Rachel Cohen’s deep dive into her own experience interleaved with that of Jane Austen, in Austen Years. Another still was Margot Livesey’s luminously compassionate The Boy in the Field.
I’ve got a queue of waiting titles at the library (via curbside pickup) as tall as me. In that queue are some surprises, if what I’ve cited sounds too draconian. I’ve ordered plenty of what’s making the rounds (Ayad Akhtar, Charles Yu, Yang Huang, Robert Jones Jr.) but also essays: Homo Irrealis, Andre Aciman; My Lives, Edmund White; The Way of Bach, Dan Moller. Black Futures, Kimberly Drew. Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl. Wintering, Katherine May.
Underpinning the above also runs a series of impulses to reabsorb some timeless icons. The Russians. Shirley Hazzard. Marguerite Yourcenar. Tove Jansson. Virginia Woolf (A Writer’s Diary was written while real bombs fell, and describes them).
Not every title works. I’ve had to abandon some. It’s a waste of time to pretend otherwise. And time’s still precious, even as it collapses and bubbles like lava. The oldest criterion applies: given horrific straits, what insists we stick around? What reaches into us; what puts something back? Engagement’s slipperier than ever, given our pulverized attention spans. I’m after whatever works—aware too, very sadly, that for plenty of others this might mean video games.
As my canny young granddaughter notes, shrugging: “What’re you gonna do?”
Maybe good art (in any form) fixes a hard ground-floor of honesty that can be stood upon calmly while the planet shudders; a sturdy roof when the heavens open: Here is the church, here is the steeple. The works that feel talismanic, as if they emit lifesaving signals, demand we hold them tightly: Here’s who we are. Here’s who we’ve been. Here’s what we have meant and can still, may still, mean. Certain books act like emergency-relief parcels dropped straight into the yearning heart. Their voices—all some variant, per Louise Glück, of “the solitary human voice, raised in lament or longing”—still talk to me, telling me things it helps to remember while the shitstorm rages outside. In truth, the exact same chemistry applies post-shitstorm. It’s the only answer to inarticulable anguish I can locate for now—one I’ll keep taking as I find it.
BIO
Joan Frank (www.joanfrank.org) is the author of eleven books of literary fiction and nonfiction. Her newest novel is THE OUTLOOK FOR EARTHLINGS (Regal House Publishing). Concurrent works include WHERE YOU’RE ALL GOING: FOUR NOVELLAS (Sarabande Books), and TRY TO GET LOST: ESSAYS ON TRAVEL AND PLACE (Univ. of New Mexico Press). She lives in Northern California.
My
terrified run across a freshly plowed field, the earth exploding around me, is
a frequent memory. Then I wonder why my father would shoot at my nine-year-old self.
Being
plowed is one term for drunkenness. Besides describing tilled soil, the word is
also used to describe a ponderous, plodding way of walking.
Drunkenness
is a condition that can foster a tendency to walk carefully and slowly. I have
been drunk a few times in my life. Brandy and I are no longer speaking.
My
first foster family was my favorite. When I faked an illness, giving social services
grounds to take me from my mother, I demanded a new family. And got the Brady
Bunch, replete with three girls and three boys.
A
favorite animal of mine is Doona. Under five pounds with no tail, Doona is a
black cat who tends to remain elusive when I want to pick her up. But when she
relents to be hugged, it feels like a reward.
Doona means dark maiden in the language of Manx, the native language on the Isle of Man, and is where the tailless Manx cat originated. A friend found Doona in her Virginia driveway, a tiny kitten a long way from her ancestral island.
The language of animals, and
especially cats, has the same tonal value of human language. They speak of
anxiety, want, anger and contentedness. My cats understand that books make me
deaf, so one of them always jumps onto whatever I am reading.
Cats have always been a family
member. I once had twenty-seven rescue cats residing on my farm. One day, I
heard screeching above my head and saw a kitten clutched in the talons of a
bald eagle. Poor baby. Mama couldn’t save you from that.
The member of my blue eyed, white stallion is often on display as he dances around his mares in the pasture. Even when the mares are not in estrus, Mykael feels obligated to remind them of his manhood. But, when he comes too close, they reward him with a kick to the chest. Like a player waiting for his turn off the bench, he waits.
White is supposed to be the color of sheep, but my Katahdin ewes are brown, black and tan. All four were to be lawn mowers to save me from the tyranny of grass. But, instead of munching grass, the girls decided the asparagus, Japanese plum and forsythia bushes were better eating. So they were fired from their day job and are doing the real work of mothering.
Color is a motivating factor in my life. Right down to my farm gates (hunter green), driveway gates (a subtle light gray) and my animals. Charcoal gray, Burmese white and black with green eyes are the cats. Blue merle and black tricolor are the dogs. And dun, dark bay, golden bay, chestnut, paint, palomino, and perlino white are the horses. But the ducks: all buff.
My central theme for farming is subsistence. But planting, watering, hoeing and weeding is arduously repetitive. No wonder farmers always kept a crop of children on hand to do the chores. I farm because I am a closet prepper and have memories of food insecurity. I should be thinner.
Subsistence living is akin to a prisoner lifestyle as the need to grow food imprisons me on my farm. A diverse crop is key to ensure enough vegetables for the year survive if weather or insects destroy some varieties. It’s a lot of work to live without grocery stores. No wonder fast food is popular. Less work.
A prisoner by choice, my vegetables and animals are my inmates. All look to me for care. Every morning I am a minor celebrity when I appear on the front porch, all animal eyes on me, waiting. Will I pick up the buckets first or load the hay cart or fill water tanks? I change it up just to keep them guessing.
The animals are my family, more honest than most humans and accepting of multiple hugs. Some let me sit next to them to meditate. Bugs, bees and wasps buzz around us as we zone out, listening to our breathing.
Honest reflection at times makes me desire less responsibility, to answer the urge to thru hike to see. Just see. This need for movement motivated my long-distance bike rides, marathon running and competing in endurance races of 50 miles or so on horseback.
Desire for a life of meaning awakens me every morning, along with my latest “why” question that needs an answer. My father, now eighty-nine, says he is waiting to die, when he can remember. Long after the incident, I asked him why he shot at me, my sisters and Mom when we ran from his rage all those years ago.
“I was trying to get you to stop.”
“Dad, people run away from gunfire.” He remained
silent until I asked, “What does a deer do when you shoot at it?”
“Run.”
“And people?”
“I think it is going to rain today.”
BIO
Ruth
Heilgeist is an
MFA student at Lindenwood University and a volunteer tutor for an adult
literacy program. Ruth writes about her life past and present. An avid
opportunity-maker, Ruth’s experience ranges from paper girl, modeling, belly
dancing, waitressing, actor, portrait artist, horse breeder/trainer, fraud
investigator, endurance rider, marathon runner, voice over artist, mortgage
underwriter, farmer, illustrator, bartender, equine sports massage therapist,
cartoonist, writer and a receptionist for The School for Private Detectives.
Ruth lives on her farm with seven horses who think she’s the bomb (but only
when she feeds them), three cats who complain when she’s late and two Aussies
training her to get up early. In the near future, Ruth hopes to survive tandem
skydiving.
What you will start with: You’ll be supplied with one mother, 36 years old when you are born. She will have many fine qualities and, of course, some baggage.
Your mother grew up on a farm, during the Great Depression, in a religious family, one of seven children with a stern father and a mother who was chronically ill. Your mother was kept out of school the year she was 13, but not told why. She resented her mother that year. Partway through the year, though, her baby sister Fran was born. Fran’s arrival was a surprise to all the children, because Brethren in Christ parents in 1933 did not speak of such things as pregnancy. Your mother adored baby Fran and took care of her. When their mother died less than a decade later, your mother, now married, took Fran into her home. Your mother felt guilty for the rest of her life for having resented her mother and the lost year of school. “There will never be tension between me and my daughter,” she vowed.
At
your birth: Be
your mother’s long-expected daughter, her girl-gift from God after four boys.
Be her great joy. Be an easy baby, in tune to her rhythms as she is to yours.
Be a peaceful toddler, such a contrast to her rambunctious sons. Be the child she
can take anywhere, to any meeting, and put in a corner with crayons and paper. Don’t
let her leave you in the church nursery, though; sit right next to her on the
hard pew, perfectly quiet, through the whole Sunday service, including your
father’s sermon. Draw neat little pictures and letters on scrap paper, using
the tiny pencils provided in the pew racks for filling out offering envelopes and
“Pray for me” cards. You will never deface a hymnbook or a Bible. After church,
while your mother meets and greets church people as the pastor’s wife, hold
tight to the hem of her gray wool skirt so you can’t possibly lose her. Keep
your eyes down to avoid fawning parishioners who think you are cute. Be quiet
as a mouse. To get your mother’s attention, just give the hem a little tug and
she’ll bend down to see what you need.
As
you grow: Be
your mother’s creative outlet. Be the child she can finally sew for, a girl who
wears dresses. Even let her dress you in pink, though it will not be your
favorite color later. Learn to cook with her; browse Woman’s Day magazine at
her side; learn early how to make the family’s special oatmeal cookies. Be her
little helper, a child who likes to dust furniture. Be the daughter she can
count on; feel bad when she has migraines and give her get-well cards you make
yourself. Be the one who reads your
mother’s moods better than anyone, better than your brothers or your father,
and hugs her when she’s sad. Be her companion. Be that girl for many years.
When
you are nine:
When you go away to Bible camp for the first time, hide your feelings, because
the camp handbook says, “No homesickness allowed! Playpens available for crybabies.”
Be afraid of the consequences of breaking any rules — there are so many — at
this strict place where children get fined real money for talking during rest
hour, being late to chapel, or wearing play clothes when dress-up is required,
which is almost all the time. Be grateful for the seven dresses your mother
sewed and packed for you, a different one for each day at camp, and try not to resent
it when your counselor, a young missionary wife without much sense, tells another
girl (without asking) to borrow one of your dresses because you have so many,
and the girl takes one you haven’t worn yet. Try not to be upset when someone
steals your spending money, and be forgiving when the money is suddenly
replaced, appearing on your freshly made bunk while you are down the hall cleaning
the bathroom with PineSol as your cabin chore. Turn your homesickness into a
stomachache by the last day of camp, and cry just a tiny bit when you visit the
camp nurse, who gives you aspirin you can’t swallow unless it’s crushed up into
tiny bits, because all you’ve ever had is chewable baby aspirin. Be so glad to
see your mother when she and your father come to pick you up. She is an angel,
beautiful and comforting and smelling of Lily of the Valley cologne. Give her
the present you bought her at the camp store: a ring, fake silver, with a Bible
verse engraved, because you know she never, ever had a ring before, not even
for her wedding, and you want to grant her deepest wishes.
When
you are twelve:
Start going to a new camp run by strong, confident, athletic women in their
twenties and thirties. No one brings dresses to this place. Your mother, now
49, is unsure of herself, fears deep water, and wears frumpy clothes. Fall in
love with the bold young female energy of the camp counselors. Paddle a canoe
on Lake Bunganut; get stung by yellowjackets; sing your heart out at campfires;
cry when you leave. Tell your mother flatly, “I didn’t want to come home.” Fail
to realize how that stings. Disappear into your room for hours, writing your
new friends; watch for their letters and dream of being back in the Maine woods
with them next year. Be furious when your mother snoops, when she reads your
letter to a counselor you have a crush on; know from your mother’s face that
you cannot say so. Let it smolder while you hide your letters more carefully.
Pretend it doesn’t bother you. Pretend you aren’t embarrassed and afraid about
having these crushes. You’ll have no context for envisioning a future life with
a girl. You won’t even know the word lesbian yet.
When
you are fourteen:
When the Jesus Revolution comes to your youth group, have a spiritual crisis.
Get fired up for God; also vow to be kinder to your mother. You can still
rebel, but in a complicated way your parents won’t forbid: wandering the
streets with hippies and staying out late—but witnessing, not drinking;
praying, not doing drugs. Let out the hems of your jeans so they fray; innocently
sew pink buttons down the fly, horrifying your mother. Buy men’s work boots at
the Army Surplus store; avoid wearing dresses. Praise God with your hands in
the air, in big hugging circles of singing, swaying Jesus Freaks, accompanied
by candlelight and guitar.
Some of your freakiness will fade in time,
but not your vow to be a better daughter. Hit upon a way to survive: be
pleasant and agreeable, but never tell your mother about your deepest feelings,
your doubts and worries, and least of all your yearning for attention and
affection from women who are not her. Keep this vow for the next two decades.
Also move away, farther and farther, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Seattle. Live your
life; go to therapy. Write sweet letters and remember Mother’s Day. Send delightful
homemade Christmas presents but live too far away to visit on holidays.
When
you are thirty-five:
Mail your parents an audiotape you record on two rainy Sunday afternoons in
your tiny Seattle apartment, drinking tea. You know they’ll be able to listen
to it because you recently gave them a cassette player as a gift, hoping they
would record memories for their grandchildren (something they’ll never get
around to). On the tape, tell them first that you are no longer an evangelical
Christian, and then that you are a lesbian. Ask them not to argue the Bible
with you. Be more honest than since you were twelve. Also tell them you are
moving to Wisconsin to be with the woman you love. Be terrified when the tape
is in the mail. Wait a month for their response, which, when it comes, is in
two separate letters on identical stationery that say almost the same thing and,
ironically, arrive via overnight mail.
“We love you so much and we always
will. You know our beliefs; we cannot approve. Our hearts are so heavy. But we
love you so much.” They will not quote the Bible or argue; you asked them not
to. But you will know what they now fear: that you are lost and bound for hell;
that they will lose you forever. Still, you will be relieved to have been
honest. You will be glad not to keep this secret from them anymore.
You will have careful, tentative phone conversations with your mother now; she will not speak directly about your revelation, but she will tell you she loves you, every time, her voice breaking. You will talk about less frightening things, like your new pet guinea pig, for whom your mother sends presents, and small details about your upcoming move. After you move, she’ll call less often, sounding afraid if your partner answers the phone. “Hello, may I please speak with JoAnne?”
Find out from your oldest brother that your mother confided in him, and he defended you: “Don’t say you’ll keep praying for JoAnne; say you’ll keep loving her.” He’ll tell you what your mother said: “Oh, of course we will! I think I love her more than ever — if that’s possible.” Don’t find out for many years that she also confided in your cousin Doug: “This woman JoAnne is with; I think she has influenced her.” Don’t find out for many more years — until your parents have dementia and have forgotten so much — that in those early months they acquired some conservative literature about the misguided path you chose. (When you do find this literature years later, in the bottom of an unused drawer in your mother’s dresser, spirit it out to the dumpster and never mention it.)
After you buy a house with your beloved, invite your parents to visit. See them relax, especially your mother. Your partner is a midwife, she delivers babies on Amish farms, she is making a quilt — cozy, familiar things your mother can relate to. Your partner can also drive a nail, wield a power drill, and cook hearty food — things that impress your father. “Well, Martha, you pass!” he’ll blurt out at dinner, and you’ll know he doesn’t realize all he is saying. They can’t help but love her, no matter what they believe. “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” your mother will say when they leave. They’ll send Martha presents every Christmas, although at first those gifts will be separate from the ones they send you.
Then give them a harder test when you invite them to your Quaker wedding, which is planned for Valentine’s Day. Again they will take weeks to reply. Finally your mother will call in tears. “We can’t come,” she’ll choke out. “You know our beliefs. But you know we love you, and we love Martha too.” You’ll be angry: “That’s hard to believe right now,” you’ll say. But you will write again: “If you come,” you’ll assure your mother, “no one will assume you approve. They’ll just assume you love us.” Also say, “I wish you could be there with me when I get married. I wish you could see my wedding dress.”
Then, just one week before the
ceremony, your mother will call again. “We’re coming,” she’ll say. “We got
flights. We won’t come early, and we’ll stay at a different hotel. And we don’t
want to be in group photos the grandchildren might see someday, that might make
them think we were okay with this.”
You won’t be able to eat on the
morning of your wedding. You’ll be terrified to see your parents, and you’ll wonder
what they’ll do. But to your surprise, they will ask to wear the same lapel
flowers as other close family and friends. Your mother will sit in the Quaker
silence before you speak your vows, trembling and quiet. You will catch her eye
and say silently, “I love you,” and she will mouth it back. She and your father
will behave perfectly at your reception, shy but friendly, eating cake,
watching and listening. For years afterward, notice that your mother doesn’t
refer to your wedding as such, but as “that time we were there, that February.”
And when you write to your Aunt Fran — her baby sister — you’ll find out your
mother hasn’t told the relatives you are married. You’ll also learn that Aunt
Fran doesn’t approve of your lifestyle either.
When
you are fifty:
Watch your mother losing memories but never her yearning to be close to you.
See her trust and confide in you. Travel many miles, many times, over many
years, to care for her with tenderness. See her confusion about the passage of
time. “Did you go to my one-room school too?” she’ll ask, and also, “Are you
old enough to remember when the Twin Towers fell?” Take her to doctor’s
appointments and be her advocate; do not discount her complaints of pain.
Measure out Tylenol, and Vicodin, and keep careful track. Help her in the
bathroom. Hear her mention “your wedding.”
Be amazed when your mother, in her mental
fog, wonders whether another of her sisters — a spinster missionary — had a
female partner. “Who was Anita with?” she’ll ask you. “Was she with
Martha?” Hide your surprise. Say nonchalantly, “No, Martha is with me.”
“Oh, that’s right,” your mother will say. She’ll ask again and again why you
can’t move in with her. “Martha, too!” she’ll insist. “We can make room.”
See your mother mistake you for her baby sister. Feel her turn to you as if you are her mother. Assure her you won’t leave while she’s at daycare. Put stuffed animals and dolls in her arms. Recognize she is human and vulnerable; understand how many decades it has been since she had any power over you. Wish you could give her more power over herself; wish you could grant her deepest wishes. Have no resentment, no regret. Know that your own heart is on the mend.
BIO
JoAnne E. Lehman edits a gender studies review journal at the University of Wisconsin. She has an MFA from Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing. Her creative nonfiction has also been published in The Cresset, and she is a book reviewer for Good River Review.
It’s snowing and there is no power, which means there is no water. We have an electric pump in our well. But, thank God, it is snowing, so we will never, ever run out of water as long as the snow comes. The worst is when there is no power in the summer and I think for a moment we will have to collect water from the small stream on either side of the ditch on our road, and boil it to drink out of like dogs.
Three
of my useless neighbors are over. I could write a book. I could title it “Tania
and the Three Useless Neighbors” and read it to my children. The only neighbor
that I like, a retired artist that my daughter calls “Uncle Jack”, is upstairs
playing polly pockets with her. This is more for him than it is for my
daughter. Him and I are having a competition to see who can hate Scott and
Beth, the other two neighbors, more.
Scott has offered to make us hashbrowns. I can make my own hashbrowns, but I am pregnant and Scott
wants to feel like he helped. They invited themselves over. His wife, Beth, came over first, with canned
gravy. Canned. I asked her if the
gravy was vegetarian and she faltered for a
moment. “I suppose it’s not,” she said, doing the embarrassed laugh that
drives me up the fucking wall. I didn’t hide my annoyance. She
knows I’m a vegetarian. She doesn’t register my expression, either oblivious or
choosing to ignore it.
“Scott’s going to make a hash!” she says, clapping. Scott
leaves our ranch sliding door open when he is out on the deck fussing with the
grill. Fussing is the correct term; I don’t think this man has ever
successfully used a grill in his life. I keep shutting the sliding door shut; I
keep telling him he’s letting out all the warm air and there’s no way to reheat
my house when the power is out, and his wife said “Oh, you need a generator
like we have!” and I tell her that’s fine but right now I have no generator so
her husband needs to keep the door shut and she laughs. I get up and shut the
door myself.
Scott comes back inside. “Just a few minutes longer!” he says, beaming. His wife looks up at him, beams harder. I think to myself that hash should only take a few minutes to begin with. He didn’t even use fresh potatoes–they came pre-shredded and frozen in a bag. I can’t stop thinking about how these adults are like children, overgrown. I wish I could drink wine. I think maybe one glass won’t hurt the fetus–how much of it will really even go to the fetus anyway–but then what if it is a really selfish fetus? What if the fetus drinks all of the wine and I get none of it and I’ve compromised the baby’s health for nothing? I have no idea if the fetus is selfish or gracious, so I don’t drink the wine.
Last Thanksgiving, Beth made raisin salmon patties. Raisin. It was disgusting. She stared at me with her giant, too-wide face while I dragged out cutting the salmon patty for as long as possible. It was my turn to be the child. The raisins were the size of grapes, no, bigger, the size of baseballs. They were so large I felt like I had to unhinge my jaw the way a snake does with a rodent, just to get some of the disgusting, half-deflated raisin into my mouth, soaked with salmon juice. I wanted to kill myself. The dog wouldn’t even eat it. I can only imagine what these hash browns will taste like. I wish my husband was at home instead of his business trip. The burden of entertaining these idiots would fall on him, the more courteous one between us. Why did she even bring gravy? Scott should have cooked veggie sausages or something to go with it. Or a grilled sandwich. We will look entirely ridiculous sitting around our table in the dark, candles lit, eating hash browns. I could have made myself veggie sausage and vegetable kebabs.
I do not bother to make conversation with these people. I am too pregnant. Not really, but when you are pregnant you can use it for any excuse you want. Beth tries to make small talk. I look at my belly, patting the fetus, asking it telepathically if it is a selfish or gracious fetus. It doesn’t answer. Is this because the fetus is aloof? Shy? There’s really no way of telling with fetuses. They like to be mysterious.
Scott returns from outside, holding a serving plate given to me as a wedding present. It will be a fucking nightmare to wash. They smell the same way a hot car does. He leaves the ranch sliding door open, and I bark at him. Not really. I wish I had. Instead I get up and shut the door loud enough for their attention to be drawn to it. Scott looks embarrassed, but otherwise the two of them say nothing. Why does his face look like that? Then I see it. He’s melted the black plastic spatula over the hashbrowns, like tar poured over gravel. Why aren’t they acknowledging it? He cuts into the hashbrowns, serving himself first. The serving knife struggles with the melted plastic, wobbling a bit. Scott is determined. Beth is served next. I haven’t seated myself at the table. I cannot. I’m waiting for them to acknowledge that Scott melted a plastic spatula all over the hashbrowns. They say nothing.
“Scott,” I say, slowly, speaking to him like he is a child. “I can’t eat this.”
Scott and Beth exchange wide-eyed glances.
“Just eat around the crunchy parts!” Beth says, smiling too
much. She is confused as to why I still haven’t sat down. She’s set the table
for us like we’re entertaining royalty. I could actually kill her. I think, for
a moment, I might, but I’d have to kill Scott too, and I am too pregnant to
kill two people. Who is going to clean all of these dishes? We have no power. I
go upstairs to get Jack, who my daughter has made wear a tiara and monarch butterfly wings. In return, I see Jack
has painted both of their fingernails a bright fuschia.
“Don’t I look stunning, darling?” he asks me when I walk
in. He always calls me darling.
“Jack, I’m going to kill these people.”
“Hmm.” Jack sips his gin and tonic, eyebrows raised. His
miniature dachshund, Fritzel, sniffs my pant legs.
“Help me.”
“I’m busy,” Jack answers,
intently studying two pairs of plastic high-heeled slippers Jamie is holding
up.
“Jack!”
“The green ones suit your eyes better, sweetheart.” He
doesn’t look back up at me. I leave, Jack and my daughter laughing hysterically
at something Jack’s whispered.
Downstairs, I find the ranch sliding door open. Scott’s
muddy snow-slush shoe prints cover the surrounding carpets. They’ve finished
eating, managing to get as many dishes dirty as possible. I know Jack will
offer to help with the dishes, but really he’ll sit across the kitchen counter
and drink wine and smoke and gossip and whatever else he can do to avoid
dishes. If he wasn’t elderly and ill, I
might be more annoyed, but Jack is charismatic enough to get away with
anything.
The house is fucking freezing. I send Scott out into the
backyard to get the firewood covered by tarp. He returns in less than a minute,
without the firewood. More mud is tracked into my carpet. The ranch door is
left open.
“There’s termites,” he says before I can say anything.
I explain to him that the fireplace has doors that shut,
much like my sliding ranch door. None of the termites can get out and damage
the wood.
“I don’t want them to burn,” he says.
“The termites?” I ask in disbelief.
He nods.
“The
house is freezing. I’m pregnant and I have a small child,” I speak to him
slowly again.
He
doesn’t move.
“I don’t care about the termites.”
Scott looks at me, horrified. I look at him, wondering if I could scream loud enough for my husband to come home, loud enough to induce labor so I can drink sooner, loud enough for these people to get out of my home, loud enough to kill him without it being my fault.
BIO
Jamie Good is a queer English undergrad at Western Washington University, where she works as the nonfiction editor for Jeopardy Magazine. Her work has been previously featured in small literary magazines such as “Sincerely Magazine.” https://www.sincerelymagazine.com/volumenineserendipity
When I say that I’m a Rangers fan, I don’t mean the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League. Nor do I mean the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball or Queen’s Park Rangers of the English Football League. No, I am a fan of Rangers Football Club of the Scottish Premier League.
My father was a Rangers man, and his father before him. Like me, they had no choice in the
matter. Rangers were the Protestant team
in Glasgow, just as Celtic were the Catholic team, and my grandfather, father
and I were all brought up in that most Protestant of Protestant denominations,
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. We got
to choose whether we would practice that religion: I became an atheist in my
teens; Dad lost his faith much later in life.
We also got to choose whether or not we participated in such ancillary
activities as joining the Orange Lodge, becoming Freemasons and commemorating
King Billy’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne. But whatever our choices, at the end of the
day we were still Proddies. And in
Glasgow, “Proddy” meant “Rangers supporter”.
Celtic Football Club was somewhat more ecumenical than Rangers. In my days as an active Rangers supporter – I’m
talking about the 1970s – Celtic had several Protestant players. But in 1972 Rangers F.C. celebrated its
centenary having never fielded a Catholic. How did the club manage to maintain its
religious purity? For native-born
players, a simple enquiry about the candidate’s schooling would suffice. Scotland has both non-denominational and
Catholic schools, with the latter easily identifiable by having names such as ‘Lourdes’,
‘Holyrood’, ‘Notre Dame’ and ‘St. Joseph’s’.
In the case of foreign-born players, weeding out the Catholics was a bit
trickier. So Rangers erred on the safe
side by restricting its scouting efforts to reliably Protestant
Scandinavia.
I started going to Ibrox Park, where Rangers played, when I was
about twelve years old. At that time my
family lived in Greenfield, in the East End of Glasgow; Ibrox is across the
city, on the South Side. So my friend Kenny
Cairns and I took the Blue Train into the City Centre and travelled by subway
to Copland Road station, in the shadow of the stadium. A bit later, we also started attending away
games. From The Drum, a Rangers pub in
nearby Shettleston (every pub in Glasgow was either a Rangers pub or a Celtic
pub), a chartered bus took us to Falkirk or Dundee or Edinburgh, with a couple
of stops along the way so that supporters of drinking age could relieve
themselves of the beer they’d drunk before we left.
As I said, my father was a Rangers man, and after retiring he worked
as a steward at Ibrox. But the only game
I remember going to with him was the most infamous match in the history of the
club. On January 2, 1971, Rangers played
Celtic at Ibrox Park. When the visiting
team scored the first goal of the game in the ninetieth minute, my dad, brother
John and I left the stadium. We thereby
missing Rangers’ tying goal in injury time.
We also missed getting trampled to death, the fate that befell 66
supporters – men, boys and one young woman – on the very same stairway we had
descended a few minutes earlier. Until
1989, when 96 people died at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, the Ibrox
Disaster represented the largest loss of life at a British football ground.
This near-death experience didn’t stop me from going to Rangers
games. When I was working on a Ph.D. at
the University of Glasgow and living in the West End of the city, I went to Ibrox
with my friend Ken Brown and his dad. We’d
take the Govan Ferry across the River Clyde and walk to the stadium from
there. After the game, we’d have a
couple of pints at The Overflow. A Rangers
pub, of course.
Those Saturday afternoon trips to Ibrox Park ended when I
completed my Ph.D. and moved to California for a postdoctoral fellowship at
Stanford University. My supervisor was
Merton Bernfield, but I worked most closely with his research associate, Shib
Banerjee. Before I found my own
apartment, I occupied the spare bedroom of Shib’s house in Menlo Park. He’d recently split up with his wife, and was
too gregarious to live on his own. On
January 20th, 1980, Shib and I went to a student pub on El Camino
Real, just outside the university gates.
There I watched my first National Football League game: Super Bowl XIV,
in which Pittsburgh Steelers defeated Los Angeles Rams.
San Francisco’s N.F.L. team, the 49ers, played at Candlestick
Park, about a half hour drive from Palo Alto.
But I didn’t go to any of their games, or those of the Oakland Raiders,
whose stadium was just across the Bay.
The only live football I saw during my fellowship involved Stanford
Cardinals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Football wasn’t a big deal at Stanford; the Board
of Trustees valued Nobel Prizes more highly than Heisman Trophies. But the Big Game against the University of
California at Berkeley (another brainy school) was always fiercely
contested.
The first Cardinals’ game I saw was against San Jose State
University. On the first play from
scrimmage, the San Jose quarterback dropped back to pass and was promptly
flattened by about four Stanford defensive linesmen, who then high-fived and back-slapped
each other with hands the size of dinner plates. “Hey, we just beat up a guy half our
size! Good on us!”
The only other home game I remember from the Cardinals’ 1980
season was against the University of Southern California. And all I recall about that game was the
half-time show. First, the U.S.C.
Trojans Marching Band came onto the field in their plumed helmets, scarlet
cloaks and plastic Bronze Age armor, playing their fight song while executing
precision manoeuvers. When the Trojans
left the field, out swarmed the groovy Stanford Band, its members casually
dressed and wandering at random across the playing surface. It was Bach versus jazz.
The Cardinals ended the season with a mediocre 6-5 record. And, more importantly, they lost the Big Game. But that 1980 team did have three players who
went on to have distinguished careers in the National Football League: wide
receiver Ken Margerum, running back Darrin Nelson and, most notably, quarterback
John Elway.
I planned on spending three years at Stanford, and then, having
completed a B.T.A. (Been To America), find a real job at a university in the
U.K. But my research project was a bust,
Mert went on sabbatical to the East Coast and my fellowship renewal was turned
down. By December of 1980, I’d Been To
America for a mere eleven months and my time at Stanford was already over. I found another postdoctoral fellowship, at
the University of Toronto, but that wouldn’t start until February. In the meantime, I went back to Glasgow.
I had to fly via New York, so I stopped off there for a couple of
days and visited an old university classmate, John Logan, who was doing a
postdoc at Stony Brook. He took me to my
first in-person N.F.L. game, the New York Jets against the New Orleans
Saints. Unfortunately those were two of
the worst teams in the league, and my California winter coat wasn’t a match for
a snowy day at Shea Stadium.
Back in Scotland, my dad picked me up at the airport (Prestwick,
in those days).
“Good to see you, son!” he said.
“How long can you stay this time?”
“Two months,” I replied.
“Two months!”
In the meantime I signed on the dole and paid rent to my
parents. My mum, at least, was glad to
have me around. (I think.)
The U. of T. fellowship was for two years, so I was back on track
to spend three years in North America. But,
as my national bard observed, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft
agley. I’d hardly set foot in Canada
when I fell in love with a young woman who, for reasons that will hopefully
become clear, I’ll refer to by a nom de plume.
“Ruth” had been/still was/never had been (take your pick) married to
“John”, who played linebacker with the N.F.L.’s Houston Oilers/played
linebacker but not with the Oilers/didn’t play linebacker/didn’t exist (again,
your choice). If I’d been more interested
in the N.F.L. in those days, I’d probably have suspected a lot earlier that there
was no “John”, at least in the form that “Ruth” presented “him”. But in fact I was only interested enough to
have a favorite player: number 72 of the Dallas Cowboys, Ed “Too Tall” Jones. (The quotation marks in this case referring to
the fact that “Too Tall” was Ed Jones’ nickname, not to cast doubt about him
being called that, or to dispute the fact that the 6’ 9” Mr. Jones was, in
fact, tall).
By the time my on-again, off-again relationship with “Ruth” finally
ended, I’d missed my target date for repatriation. Still planning on returning to the U.K., I
applied (unsuccessfully) for positions at University College London and the
Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen. But
then I fell in love again, with Francine (real name), and decided to make my
career in Canada instead.
An English couple I knew in Toronto made the opposite decision,
returning to Britain on the grounds that the beer in Canada was too cold and
you couldn’t get a decent pork pie. But
before leaving, they took me to the University of Toronto’s Varsity Field for a
soccer game between Toronto Blizzard and Chicago Sting. This was the second leg of a home-and-away
final to decide the 1984 champion of the North American Soccer League. The Sting had won 2-1 in Chicago; now they
won 3-2 in Toronto. The N.A.S.L. went
bust before another season could start, and thus the Varsity Field game was the
last one ever played in that league.
Francine and I attended a couple of Toronto Argonauts’ games, but
the Canadian Football League was not for me: too big a field, too many players,
too much pre-snap activity. It wasn’t Francine’s
cup of tea, either, but then she wasn’t a sports fan. Nonetheless, we did go to quite a lot of
baseball games. In those days the Blue
Jays still played at open-air Exhibition Stadium, so Francine could at least work
on her tan. I got quite heavily into
baseball, to the point of reading box scores in The Globe and Mail every
morning. I think I liked the fact that
baseball, like chess, has almost endless permutations. If there’s one man out and a runner on first base
in the fifth inning of a 2-2 game, with a 3-1 count on a right-handed power
hitter and a left-handed line-drive hitter on deck, should a left-handed
pitcher: (a) intentionally walk the batter, putting the go-ahead run on base;
(b) try to pop the batter up with an inside fastball; or (c) throw a change-up
in the hope of getting a ground-ball double-play? How does the calculation change if the runner
is a good base-stealer, or if the wind is blowing out, or if the centre-fielder
is nursing a leg injury? When, after
many years of watching baseball, I finally knew the answers to questions like
those, I lost all interest in the game.
In 1988 I was offered, and accepted, a faculty position at the
University of Alberta. Francine and I
got married and moved to Edmonton. We’d been
dating for four years, and now wanted to start a family as soon as
possible. But first we had a decision to
make: what, if any, religious indoctrination would our (hypothetical) children
receive? Francine was a practicing
Catholic; I am, as noted above, a born-again atheist. So I offered her a deal. She could have our (hypothetical) children baptized
and confirmed, first-communioned and first-confessioned; she could take them to
Catholic churches on Saturday or Sunday, and send them to Catholic schools on all
the other days of the week. In return,
all I asked was that I be allowed to bring them up as Rangers supporters. It was a good deal, and she accepted it.
But she had a question: “What are we going to say if the children
ask why you don’t come to church with us?”
“I’ll tell them I have a different religion,” I replied. “N.F.L. football.”
Despite shivering through a game between the woeful New York Jets
and the even more woeful New Orleans Saints, I had become a fan of the National
Football League. I could claim it was
because of my unrequited man-crush on Too-Tall Jones. I could claim it was because the former
Stanford Cardinal John Elway, subsequently of the Denver Broncos, won two Super
Bowls (XXXII and XXXIII, if anyone’s counting in Roman numerals). But really it was because football is the
only sport in which men with beer guts get to be “athletes”.
What I don’t like about N.F.L. football – hate, actually – is all
the commercials. The game has umpteen
unavoidable stoppages: half-time, the end of the first and third quarters, six
timeouts and four challenges, injury timeouts and video reviews. So there’s no excuse for inserting additional
commercial breaks between (say) a kick returner fielding the ball and the offence
running out onto the field. But the
television companies do “step away” on such occasions. As a result, an N.F.L. telecast consists of
60 minutes (or less) of actual football and two hours of commercials for
“best-in-class” pickup trucks, fast-food restaurants, investment advisors and
upcoming TV shows. (In Canada, at least
we’re spared the political attack ads.)
Fortunately I came up with a cunning way of watching football
while preserving my sanity. I program
the game to record, then start watching the recording about an hour after
kickoff. This means I can fast-forward
through all the commercial breaks and the inane, testosterone-fueled half-time
panel, and still arrive at the end of the game at the same time as the chumps
who watched it live.
But every February there’s an N.F.L. game that I do watch
live. It’s the one that decides which
team will be world champion of a sport played only in the United States. The Super Bowl has truck commercials that I
haven’t seen before; a pregame show with heart-warming stories of good deeds
performed by N.F.L. players when they’re not beating up their domestic partners
in a fit of roid-rage; a flypast by U.S. Air Force killing machines; grown men
learning how to toss a coin; the solemn moment when the stadium announcer says:
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, please rise, remove your MAGA hats and honor
America by singing the national anthem”; a country “artist” warbling: “O’er the
land of the free-EEEEE! And the home of
the bra-a-a-a-a-ave”; and a half-time show featuring superannuated pop stars
and frenzied choreography. (Why not
invite the U.S.C. Trojans Marching Band instead? The N.F.L. wouldn’t have to worry about
“wardrobe malfunctions” with those clean-cut young people.)
Long story short, the University of Alberta didn’t work out for me. Edmonton didn’t work out for Francine, who
described herself as a “hot-blooded Italian” and wasn’t a fan of cold
weather. So after three Prairie winters,
we and our Catholic-baptized daughter moved to London, where I had found a new
job at the University of Western Ontario.
By then, soccer hadn’t been part of my life for a long time, but I
started to watch the occasional game from Italy’s Serie A on the Telelatino
channel. As a result, I soon learned
Italian terms like “fuorigioco” (offside), “tiro in porta” (shot on goal) and “cartellino
rosso” (red card). Sometime in the mid-1990s,
English Premier League games became available on The Sports Network, which,
like TLN, was part of our cable package.
I got into the habit of doing my ironing on Saturday mornings, with one
eye on the shirt, one eye on the game.
In Scotland, soccer had gone into a long decline from the glory
days of the 1960s and 1970s, when Rangers won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup, another
Glasgow club won the European Cup, and the national team held its own against
England. In 2012, Rangers Football Club suffered
the ignominy of going bankrupt, and the even greater ignominy of being cast into
the outer darkness of Scottish football.
Now the former Cup-Winners’ Cup winners weren’t playing Celtic – they
were lining up against the part-timers of Elgin City and Annan Athletic in the
Scottish Third (actually fourth) Division.
But three successive promotions got Rangers back up to the Premier
League. And today, midway through the
2020-21 season, my team is cantering to its first top-division championship in
a decade. Rangers even qualified for the
knock-out stage of the Europa League. (Which,
back in my Ibrox-going days, was called the Fair Cities’ Cup. Rangers played in this competition not
because Glasgow was a fair city, but because it was a city with a fair.)
When my children were young, I didn’t get back to Scotland
much. But on one visit I showed my Uncle
Gibby photographs of Francine and the kids.
Gibby was the husband of my (paternal) Aunt Agnes, and very much an
Orangeman (possibly also a Mason). One
of the photographs I showed him was of my middle child standing in a
schoolyard. Behind her was a sign saying
‘St. Marguerite d’Youville Catholic School’.
“What’s this, then?” Gibby said.
“You’re sending your kids to Catholic school?”
Fortunately I was able to extricate myself from an awkward situation. “Yes, Uncle Gibby. But they’re all Rangers supporters.”
BIO
Graeme Hunter is a gentleman writer living in London, Canada. His essays have been published in Queen’s Quarterly, Riddle Fence and Talking Soup. See www.graemehunter.ca.
Pauline Butcher Bird is a unique and remarkable historian. Not only does she write about life in Los Angeles during the wild and wonderful 1960s and 1970s, she actually lived it. Her fantastic book, Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa, is a personal account of her life when she lived with Frank Zappa and his family in their legendary Laurel Canyon home. The “Log Cabin” as it was known had become Rock ‘n’ Roll central in the spring/summer of 1968. Pauline, a British citizen, found herself mixed up in this wild life of big personalities—and was clever enough to write it all down as it happened. Her memoir of this time is one of the best books on life in the famous Canyon.
Pauline graciously agreed to an interview and let us know a little bit more about her life and work. Thank you Pauline!
Pauline Butcher Bird
How long did it take you to write Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa? When did you first begin the book?
Freak
Out! Started as a radio play. A producer was working with me but Germaine Greer
got wind of it and made her own documentary on Frank Zappa (full of errors) and
the BBC said they would not do two programs on Frank Zappa in one year, and
mine was dropped. I was so mad, I decided to turn it into a memoir. I wrote to
every suitable publisher in the Writers’ and Artists’ book saying I was writing
this memoir about Frank Zappa and 12 wrote back and said send the chapters, so
I knew I had a marketable product. Of course, I hadn’t written any at that
time! But
The period your wrote about is from 1967-1971. The book was published in 2011. What was it like to relive all those memories some forty years later?
It would
not have been possible without my diaries and more importantly, the letters I
wrote to England which both my mother and my close friend kept. It took me nine
months to type these out into chronological order and it was from these that
the memories came back.
Why did you decide to write a book at that time in your life?
I have
always wanted to be a writer, but my life was taken up with raising our son. I
was a very hands-on mother. I don’t know how female writers who have children
manage it. But when our only child, Damian, left for university, and my husband
was constantly abroad with his work, I knew I had no excuses left. This would
be 2001. I spent six years sending off play after play to the BBC until a
producer told me, ‘Write something that no one else can write,’ and I thought
my Zappa experience is the only story that no one else could write. So, I wrote
it as a radio play as I state in my answer to your first question.
So, six
years after struggling to get a play on the radio, and Germaine Greer intervened,
I began the memoir, and it took four years to finish it. Therefore, from the
moment I decided to write, after Damian went to university, and publication in
2011, it was ten years.
Your book is very well written, extremely engaging and highly detailed. I often felt like I was there with you. Did you keep a diary of this period in your life?
Absolutely.
I have kept a diary all my life. But the letters were more informative and
thank goodness my mother kept them in a shoebox for 40 years because I wrote
them in great detail, some of them ten page long, as if I was writing a novel.
Pauline and Frank Zappa
What do you remember most about living in the log cabin? Looking back, was it like being in another world?
It was.
As you know, I wrote the memoir very much ‘in the moment’ and did not look back
and make judgements from today’s perspective. Now I am able to do so.
Looking
back, many questions are raised in my mind. For example, Frank and Gail were
newly married with a young baby, just like millions of other young couples. So
why did he choose to live in a huge rambling house in the middle of Laurel
Canyon and have living with them eight others? And in the process, he ignored
us all. Only once in the five months we lived at the log cabin did Frank join
us in the kitchen to socialize. We had to tip-toe round him.
I
remember feeling buffeted between Pamela Zarubica and Gail. I was out of my
depth with those two and was never sure if they were friends or foe which gave
me a constant feeling of unease and anxiety.
And of
course, the man with the gun, a terrifying experience which I’m not sure if I adequately
conveyed in the book.
On the
other hand, I loved the experience, despite the house being such a wreck
although as I describe, I did make my own room the jewel in the crown as it
were.
Paradoxically,
I loved the times when Frank was away, although I missed him and wrote letters
to him when he was away telling him so. Which is why I think when he returned
after two weeks away the first time, he knocked on my door and wished me good
night. I remember that moment.
But when
he was away, we had lots of fun in the house, especially later on, when no one
bothered to visit any more, and it was just the ‘family’. We showed films and
played silly games.
Talk about the writing process. How did you begin the book? Was it written chronologically? How long did it take to write a chapter?
I wrote
the first chapters in Australia because we were travelling at that time. I
still have them, and they are awful.
I wrote
the chapters chronologically, following my letters and diary entries and as
they appear in the book. Of course, the first part, in England, was done
completely from memory, but the whole experience of meeting Frank Zappa in
London was imprinted on my mind because it was so life-changing.
As were
the two meetings in New York though they were more hazy because my sisters were
very against any connection with Frank Zappa, his image of a drug-crazed hippy
not helping!
I sent
the first three chapters to my agent, Laura Susijn, and she wrote back and
said, ‘Can you make it more literary?’ She was also concerned when she read
more chapters that I was not conveying the charisma and dynamism of Frank Zappa
that got to me personally. So I had to make those changes.
How do you write — at a computer, in a certain place, at a certain time? Describe your work space?
We were
in Australia six weeks, and then on to Singapore. The book was written in
Singapore. We had a huge mansion set in two acres of land with a pool outside
under jungle trees. There I sat, under the arbor, each day.
We had a
live-in maid who lived in a two-roomed cottage in the grounds. She brought our
breakfast in the breakfast room, our coffee, lunch and afternoon tea outside
under the arbour by the pool, and dinner inside. I helped her one hour a day to
dust away cobwebs and such in the eves and skirtings as an attempt to keep
lizards at bay – I was terrified of them.
So, I had
the whole day to write, and even so, it took over two years. My husband and son
kept urging me to send it off, which I did, and I regret because it got
published straight away, and I wish I had put it in the drawer for three months
as you are advised to do and then read it and edit again.
My
publisher is putting out my revised re-structured version in August this year.
It takes out many of the peripheral characters, brings most of the stuff about
the Mothers together instead of all over the place, and ditto Gail and the
GTOs.
I am
present writing a novel and try to start in the morning but I usually find
there are e-mails and phone calls and domestic issues to deal with, and I
always stop for coffee and while listening to an audio book, or BBC radio 4, I
solve a killer sudoku to keep the maths side of my brain awake.
So,
usually it is after lunch when I start writing with a break for a short walk
with my husband. I continue into the evening, usually till 10pm.
I
sometimes write sections by hand, but mostly it’s at the computer. I am a fan
of Anne Tyler, and she writes her novels by hand, then types, and then writes
it all out again by hand! I don’t have the patience, but I have tried writing
out certain sections by hand after I’ve typed them. But overall, I would say
mostly I write at the typewriter.
Who edits or sees your work first?
No one
except me. I had no editor. It was published as I wrote it.
Were you an avid reader as a child? What books did you read? Who were your favorite authors?
Yes, an
avid reader. I don’t remember what I read as a child, but as a teenager, I read
everything I could get hold of but again, I don’t remember what. I presume it
was romantic female novels.
When I was
in California and after I stopped working for Frank full time, I visited every
few days a local book shop on Melrose Avenue. I decided to work my way through
the fiction section starting in alphabetical order of author’s names, and
started with ‘A’. If I liked the author, then I read others by that author, but
if not, I moved on. I don’t remember where exactly I got to, but I think it was
about ‘G’ which, paradoxically, included the newly published and sensational
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.
The writers I turn to while I’m writing are: • Anne Tyler – everyone of her books except those with a male protagonist. • Gone With the Wind – no explanation needed • J M Coetzee – Boyhood, Youth, both of which I think are wonderful And of course, I believe I’ve read every ‘how to . . . . ‘ write novels/be a better writer genre that is going.
The GTOs at the log cabin
Have you been back to Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain since you lived there? Would you like to return again?
We
returned in 2008. My husband and I had dinner with Gail in the Valley. She did
not mention Frank once but wanted to talk about Bill Clinton whom she’d met at
the White House after she’d donated to his campaign.
She
showed me round the house which I did not recognize as they had made so many
changes.
We
visited the site of the log cabin which of course was a wild site, no sign of
the house, and all the others mentioned in the book.
What are some of your favorite rock ‘n’ roll memoirs?
I don’t have any.
What are you working on now? How is the process different? Has your writing changed?
I am
writing a novel set in the 2nd World War and finding it very
difficult. I am 80% way through. I just want to get it finished!
Was there a wine cellar in the basement of the log cabin?
There was
a vault and that may have been used as a wine cellar, but not in Frank’s time.
The GTOs used it to write their songs. It had pine walls.
Did they call Frank Zappa’s home on the lot a “Tree House” back then?
No. It
was called the log cabin. The tree house was simply the end part of the house
above the kitchen and my office. It was Calvin’s apartment and was called the
tree house because the enormous tree at the end of the house had a stair-case
wrapped round it that led up to a balcony sticking out from the bedroom up
there and you could step across from the metal staircase on to that balcony.
But the real entrance to the ‘tree house’ was up wooden stairs outside the back
door and they left up to the main door into that apartment that was called the
‘tree house’.
Did anyone ever mention architect Robert Byrd in connection with the log cabin? He allegedly built one of the structures on the property?
No.
How do you want people to remember Frank Zappa and Gail Zappa?
Not a
question for me to answer.
Who are you favorite authors today? What are you reading currently?
I’ve
listed those above. I also like ‘Flowers for Algernon’ and ‘Alone in Berlin’
but I can’t remember the author’s names. I’m currently reading everything about
life during the second world war.
Talk about the letters you wrote to your mother back then. How long were they, how often did you write her, etc.?
Some of
them were ten pages long or even longer, single spaced on American A4 size sheets.
I wrote every week in the beginning, sometimes more often. As I became immersed
in my life there and no longer an outsider but part of the team as it were, I
wrote less and less. This is shown in the memoir which has 200 pages on the log
cabin and 100 pages after we left.
Did you take any mementos with you when you left working for Frank Zappa?
I have a
lock of Frank’s hair that Frank gave me when he was having his hair cut in the
bathroom.
Pauline, 1971
If Frank wasn’t married at the time, would you have been interested in having a serious relationship with him?
Yes. But
I think I would have been swallowed up. I could not have coped with his
womanizing. I have every admiration for Gail’s stamina to have withstood it
all.
What is your life like now? What do you do for fun?
We have
had a year of lockdown. My husband was an academic when I met him, but became a
banker and adviser on gas/electricity/oil/nuclear power stations. We live a
comfortable life. Our son lives in London and we have not seen him since Christmas
because of Covid-19. We are soon to get our second jabs, so life should start
to open up again. We socialise by inviting our friends here. I love the theatre
and cinema but all that has been on hold.
Do you spend more time writing, or editing your work?
The two
are interchangeable. They run together – write, edit, write, edit.
Any advice for anyone wishing to write a memoir?
Don’t try to write your whole life. Choose a section. Know the ending.
Try to
make each chapter change in emotion – happy to sad, unknowing to knowing, anger
to peace, and so on and vice versa.
Make each
event cause the next event – the biggest difference apparently between those
who get published and those who don’t. They just write random events. It
doesn’t work.
What music do you listen to today?
BBC Radio
3. Classical
Do you have a timeline for the book you’re currently writing?
Yes, but
I’ve already over-run it.
How much research is involved with your current project? Is it all online, do you spend time at the library as well?
Masses.
My dining table is covered with books by people who lived through the war.
What is your favorite Zappa album?
I don’t
have one. I have been promising myself since time began to make my own because
I like some tracks from each album, but not all the tracks.
Was anyone living in the Houdini mansion across the street during your stay at the log cabin? Did you ever visit inside the home?
No.
Pauline’s book has been translated into several languages.
I love the ending of your book. Talk about what happened next, and what you did for the next five years.
I went to Cambridge university, studied economics and
psychology. Met my husband. Moved to Scotland. Lived there for seven years
where our son, Damian, was born. Lived in Norway, Australia and Singapore. We
are now back in England.
It is dark outside the plane. You see
your face in the window, harsh, more committed than ever to its path of decay.
The plane hurtles across the night sky, carrying you from suburban Maryland all
the way to Rome. You remember reading about Romulus
and Remus, twin founders of the city,
suckling at the teat of the she-wolf thousands of years ago. You are hoping to
save your marriage, heavy with its own history. Rome will transform us, you
think. You lean back in your seat, inviting a miracle. Loaves and fishes. Something
holy, sanctified, but also useful.
II.
You arrive to find Rome closed. It is
August and the Romans are at the beaches, flirting with waves, swimming in crystalline
lakes, hiking through olive groves on Monte
Subasio. They are laughing and drinking elsewhere—the city an empty vessel.
Corks, bottle caps, bits of confetti, and flyers promising the perfect mattress
lie crushed among the cobblestones, the only signs of life. You forage for your
supper, try out your new skeleton key, ride up and down in the little red
elevator. It will lead you up to and away from your husband all year, rattling
along with the weight of daughters, grocery carts, time.
III.
A bag is misplaced. Argument ensues. You
storm out into the blazing heat, find a loaf of bread, a ball of cheese, some
anchovies. You remember the words for bread and fish. Pane.Pesce. You go home,
feed your family. Does this count as a miracle?
IV.
Your apartment is eight flights up. A
narrow balcony allows you to look down over Via
Celimontana. You think this means “heaven’s mountain,” but foreign languages
have never been your strong suit. Still, it can only bode well.
V.
You visit your husband in his office, the
United Nations’ modern-day palace. He is preoccupied. He fills his tray with
rabbit and duck and sauvignon blanc,
everything cheap and good, but you suspect he feels no joy. The view from the
cafeteria balcony should give anyone pause.
And yet they all chew, swallow, talk about crops droughts euros banks as if the rocky skeleton of Circo Massimo were not spread out
beneath them like a second banquet.
VI.
San
Clemente lies a few blocks away, an architectural
palimpsest. Three levels down, the ruins of a Mithraic temple. Above that, the
remains of a primitive church with bits of fresco visible in dim light. At
ground level, a basilica with a golden tree of life that takes away your breath,
rewriting—but not erasing—everything that came before. Here it is: The
possibility of making something new without wholly replacing the old.
VII.
You’ve always wanted to visit Rome. As a
long-time fan of ruin porn, dilapidated grandeur, the remains of what was once
magnificent, you’ve sought out ghost towns, abandoned churches, the crumbling
cores of industrial capitals. You love entropy in action, feel vindicated when
weeds spring up between the paving stones, when vines take over walls. Given a
choice between old and new, you always choose decay.
VIII.
Lying side by side in the darkness, you ask your
husband:
Do you ever think of laying waste to what you love? Reducing it all to rubble? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
IX.
The children are speaking Italian. You
marvel at how quickly this happens. Yet now you are locked out of their world
as they prattle of bambole, orsi, palle.
X.
And so, Italian lessons twice a week. Not
enough to speak of the sky, the lush feel of vowels rolling around on your
tongue, your slow promenade towards death, but enough to buy garlic, bunches of
parsley, greet the man in the wine shop downstairs. Your teacher commands you
to open your textbook and read.
Do you speak Italian? Parli italiano? I do not speak Italian. Non parlo italiano. And yet you speak of ruins. Ma tu parli di rovine. You speak of nothing else. Non parli d’ltro.
XI.
You make friends at the children’s
school. Giulia and Maurizio
and Lilli and Alberto and Ludovica and Giovanni. You
drink coffee and giggle like a girl. You’re not a girl, and you get a bit loud.
The café owner asks you to be quiet. She has other customers, and they don’t
like American noise.
XII.
What are you reading? Cosa stai leggendo? I am reading about noise. Sto leggendo del rumore. What does European noise sound like? Come suona il rumore europeo? I do not hear anything. Non sento niente.
XIII
Your younger daughter is turning five. The
mothers at the school, a chorus of Roman fishwives, tell you where to buy a
cake, special order. It is spectacular—Spiderman hazelnuts zabaglione, fit for a tomboy king. It costs a fortune. All her
little friends in the scuola materna
eat the cake with their hands. Constantine’s barbarians, they leave you none.
XIV.
The Italians know how to throw parties. This
makes you a bit jealous. You only know how to throw potlucks. The host presents
a magnificent loaf of porchetta.
People roll up their sleeves, sigh with pleasure. A knock at the door
interrupts all of you mid-sentence, mouths full of meat. A guest sweeps into
the room. Helmet in hand, he grabs you by the waist, plants a kiss on your
lips. You’ve never seen him in your life. His girlfriend laughs, Welcome to Rome!
XV.
Some days you can’t bear the splendor. Basiliche and glittering chapels and a
million pizzerias and big looping graffiti on stone walls that insists on now
at the expense of then. There are no trees, but the flowers in the market at Campo de’ Fiori are flushed pink and red
like women dying of rheumatic fever.
XVI.
Some days bore you to tears. You drink a
cup of hot tea, use the bidet, check your email. You might even mop the floors,
but you’ve never been a very good housekeeper. You watch a YouTube video about objectum sexuals, people who fall in
love with—and want to rub up against—the Eiffel tower, Statue of Liberty, bells
of Notre Dame. You understand this urge. How many times have
you stood on the rooftop, hung laundry out to dry, fantasized about lying down
among the ruins, becoming one with Roman stones?
XVII.
You watch your husband fix the bathroom
sink. He remains an enigma after all these years. Solid and fine as Roman rock.
You have spent your marriage trying to crack him open, lay him bare. Seeing him
on his knees, head bent in concentration, you think: He is master of band saws,
nuts, bolts, all things mechanical. Yet
of you, he has no inkling.
XVIII.
What do you want from Rome? Cosa vuoi da Roma? I want abundant life. Voglio una vita abbondante. And what of you? E tu? Will you never choose abundance? Sceglierai mai l’abbondanza.
XIX.
Lying awake at 3am, you can’t remember
why you came here. Your husband sleeps beside you. You haven’t touched in
months. You are suddenly hungry beyond belief. Standing in front of the open
refrigerator—cold air, white light pouring out into darkness—you think of all
you want to eat. Chicken legs, black cabbage, stuffed pigeons, marzipan. But
more than that, you want to fill your mouth with marble columns, Bernini’s
ecstatic saints, Caravaggio’s red lipped boys.
XX.
Your husband comes home from work, stretches himself
out on the couch like a dying god. You pour him a drink. You know you should leave him alone—he is tired.
But you can’t help yourself.
Do you ever think about desire? No, not really. Do you ever get the urge to grab everyone you speak with, kiss them hard on the mouth? God, no. Do you remember the scene in Microcosmos, where the snails mate to the sounds of Wagnerian opera? Rise up on their glistening feet and merge from head to toe? That’s what I want. Good luck with that.
XXI.
Steeped
in Roman history, you’re tempted to forget your own. You came to Italy with a pocketful of pills
that keep you from flying too close to the sun, getting lost in serpentine
darkness. Work has always protected you. But here in Rome there is little to
hang your day upon. You and your husband tried all this before, many years ago
before there were children—pulling yourselves up by the roots, planting
yourselves in Mexican soil. You remember how you sank into depression like a
stone into well water. Even though you wanted to bring your family to Rome, you
are not without misgivings. History is so often a story of return.
XXII.
You discover Facebook and the middle-aged
men come out in droves. This feeds your vanity. It’s too much, yet never quite
enough. You refresh your screen. You find the waters irresistible. You type
faster, fingers on fire. Your children have to pry you away from your desk.
XXIII.
Half a dozen confessions of ardor appear
in your inbox. You think about the wooden gates of Santi Quattro Coronati, opened silently by slippered Augustinian
nuns. They usher you into a frescoed room, life’s possibilities unfurled across
the walls: Constantine is cured of leprosy, crowned Emperor, holds the wide
green world in his fist. Now Byzantium is yours. You think, at last I will be
loved as I deserve.
XXIV.
The language teacher, eyes thick with
mascara, mouth a red smear, little black hooves where feet should be, tells you
that what you are going through is pronounced crisi di mezza età—mid-life crisis. You like this. You like it so
much that you go out and buy a pair of knee-high boots—gli stivali. You take a photograph of yourself in the boots, post
it to Facebook, wait for the silver-tongued flatterers to sing.
XXV.
It’s Thanksgiving and Rome doesn’t care,
but your American friends are joining you for dinner. You special order a
turkey from the butcher shop across the street. Tacchino. It’s got a nice ring. You go to pick it up, and the
butcher gives you two chickens instead. You try to explain that this is not the
same thing, but your Italian fails you. You mutter something about a festa americana. The butcher shrugs. You
give up, head home, eat pollo and
apple whiskey cake, go to bed with your back to your husband.
XXVI.
The stranger climbs steep hills. La straniera sale colline ripide. She sighs as she climbs. Sospira mentre sale. She finds herself among the clouds Si ritrova tra le nuvole looking down on granite tombs. guardando dall’alto tombe di granito.
XXVII.
Your Italian friends think you are
sleeping with another woman’s husband. You are surprised to hear this, a little
bit sad and a little bit proud. You really are a Henry James heroine now, wandering
the Colosseo at night with your
gentleman friend, hopelessly lost in translation.
XXVIII.
The crack in the bathroom mirror splits
your face down the middle. You lean into the glass, peer closely at what is
left of you after forty-five years. You see a web of lines and think of lace,
broken china, the inlaid gold tilework of the Cappella di San Zenone, backroads connecting Umbria with Tuscany,
the Fiume Tevere snaking through Rome. Yes. Even in ruins you are
beautiful.
XXIX.
Who am I? Chi sono? Green eyed. Occhi verdi. House divided. Casa divisa. I paint my face each morning. Dipingo la mia faccia ogni mattina Comic, tragic, forgettable. Comica, tragica, dimenticabile.
XXX.
The man in the cigarette shop sees you
walking past the Colosseo in your
rabbit fur hat, a child’s hand clutched in each of yours. He approaches the
three of you, says you look just like Julie Christie in Dr. Zhivago. For a few golden minutes you forget your children,
your failing marriage, are lost in talk of long-ago movies and far-away places.
XXXI.
You walk down Via Merulana in your black dress and boots, your skin alive,
electric, your legs longer than ever. You stride past liquor stores, butcher
shops, displays of shiny knives—the street is yours for the taking. A man on a
motorbike stops dead in his tracks, blows you a kiss.
XXXII.
Strung out on espresso granita, you find the technicolor glow bright
and gaudy in the winter sun.There
are halos around everyone’s heads, and
not just the saints on the walls of San Giovanni in Laterano.You turn to your personal
intercessors—Cymbalta, Olanzapine, Ativan.
XXXIII.
On a whim, you enter Santa Maria Maggiore, settle into a pew, pray for healing of this
bone-deep restlessness you feel, this hunger. After you light a candle, you
descend into the crypt beneath the church, where you find a hair of the Virgin,
the arms of St. Luke and St. Matthew. Proof, you think, of the Italians’
abiding affection for bodies—even the bodies of the dead.
XXXIV.
In
the Capuchin crypt beneath Santa Maria
della Concezione, you find yourself drawn to the artful arrangements of
skeletons, macabre valentines to death. There’s poetry to the names of each
room—Crypt of the Skulls, Crypt of the Pelvises, Crypt of the Leg Bones and
Thigh Bones. Later, you spot your reflection in the plate glass windows of Via Veneto, hunched, formless in your
black coat, and think of what lies just beneath your own pale skin—scapula,
clavicle, iliac crest. You turn and head east. Towards home. Relieved to find
your children adamantly alive, demanding suppers and baths.
XXXV.
The family is eating another dinner from
one of your Italian cookbooks. Not on the roof tonight—it’s still too cold. No
one is talking, and your husband is more remote than ever. You think, maybe you
overcooked the pasta. Maybe you over-salted the meat. Maybe the silt that
filters in through the windows and settles on the book shelves, counters, beds
and tiled floor—maybe this dust of ages is burying you all alive.
XXXVI.
Your husband once told you that after his
first time unzipping your dress, watching you step out of it, trembling—after
the first year of playing house, growing lettuces, hanging bed sheets out to
dry in baking sun, painting all the walls bright shades of blue and green—after
the first baby bursting from your womb, wet with blood, loud as thunder—there
wasn’t anything left. He’s been around the world half a dozen times. Perhaps
for him, Rome is just more of the same.
XXXVII.
The children ride ponies in Villa Celimontana,
your husband lies on the trampled grass,
basking in silver light. He is noble, you think. His wants and needs so few. Not
unlike the turtles sunning themselves on the lip of the fountain.
XXXVIII.
How can you stand it? Living in a world where nothing’s ever new? Boredom’s the price you pay for peace.
XXXIX.
You lean back on your elbow and take
stock of this man beside you. You are struck by his beauty. How like a turret,
you think: silent, steadfast, insular. But you want to lose yourself in talk, to
speak of the Milky Way, the vast universe outside and within you, to love with
abandon. And he wants none of this.
XL.
It’s a lovely spring morning. The ruins
are calling. You and your American friend make your way down Via Appia Antica. You are surprised by
how quickly the city turns to countryside. It’s 10am. You step into a small
shop and your friend buys a bottle of wine. She’s a poet. She promises you that
drinking this early will be a revelation. There is laughter and the twisting of
an ankle on cobblestones. You can’t believe how much you are enjoying yourself.
It is your turn to offer her something. You give her the Catacombe di San Callisto which extend beneath the fields for
miles, are home to half a million bodies. In the dimness, you come upon
Maderno’s statue of Santa Cecelia—hands
bound, head neatly severed, face covered with a marble rag. You are both
abruptly sober.
XLI.
All the families are out walking. You
arrive at the gates of Villa Doria
Pamphilij, littered with grottos, hedges, putti, artificial ruins. Why build crumbling towers? you ask. Why
begin with endings? No one hears you. Your husband is far ahead. Your daughters
busy chasing after swans.
XLII.
You think, if only you could make him see Rome as you
do. Layered like a vast cake. You propose dinner with Italian friends, music by
Monteverdi in the chapel at Santa
Prassede. He declines your offer. You go without him. You find you don’t really
miss him. You come home and he’s in front of the TV, doesn’t even look up when
you enter.
XLIII.
After your night of stained glass and madrigals, the long
walk home cloaked in darkness, you are surprised by how readily ecstasy morphs
into anger:
I want to scream. You make me want to scream. Don’t start up. I’m not in the mood for your hysteria. Hysteria is the only thing that keeps us honest.
XLIV.
Today you choose self-denial, crawl all
the way up the Scala Santa on your
knees. You and a friend do it for kicks, but the feel of stone scraping skin,
each step worn down by centuries of penitents creeping toward salvation, brings
you close to tears. You bend over, let your forehead rest on the stairs for
just a moment, try and strike a bargain with god.
XLV.
Today you choose Bacchus. Your husband
stays home, watches Netflix reruns. It’s already midnight and you are just
beginning. Your Italian friends take you to the Forte Prenestino, abandoned military complex, labyrinthine
squatters’ lair. The whole place is illegally occupied, you sneak in under
cover of darkness. You feel like a rat. See a few scuttling down shadowed
halls. You are already thinking about how you can spin this to your American
friends. You are drinking too much grappa,
smoking hashish with people you’ve never seen. You are ridiculously free you
are dizzy giddy rushing spinning burning liquid on your tongue you trip over
your teeth speak in broken sentences hold up a few Italian phrases like bright
jewels in the darkness.
XLVI.
You’ve reached an unspoken agreement.
Your husband stays in Rome, while you and your daughters travel deep into the
countryside to visit a Swedish friend. The children watch Jaws dubbed into
Italian. You are all horrified by the blood, fascinated by the shark’s gleaming
teeth. Clothes come off and everyone is naked in the river. Your friend’s
father gathers mushrooms for dinner, lays them out on a big wooden table. They
are larger than a man’s hand, bold shades of red and green. You think of fairy
tale endings. They are surely meant to kill you—bad mother, failed wife. Who
will live to tell the story? You close your eyes and eat.
XLVII.
How many mushrooms would you like? Quanti funghi vuoi? No thank you. No grazie. I do not eat the red ones. Non mangio quelli rossi. I do not court death. Non cerco la morte.
XLVIII.
You pass the whores on the way to the
beach. They stand by the side of the road, hard-eyed, unsmiling, spread out at
equal intervals among the scrawny pines. It goes on like this for miles. You
wonder, what would sex feel like on a bed of dry needles, a stranger in your
arms?
XLIX.
The beach is mobbed with Romans reaching
for the sun. A big fleshy woman, all ass, hip, belly, rosy areolas, dances
frantic in the surf. Bare breasted maenad,
transistor radio in one hand, sandwich in the other. She is everything you wish
to be. Untethered, glorious, entirely without shame.
L.
The children run wild. You drink cold
coffee from a can, sit listless on a park bench, watch your daughters climb
gates pick up trash hide in dormant fountains walk on walls spray-painted all
the colors of the sunset. Slim-hipped boys swagger amidst the rubble of
Trajan’s baths, conquistadores with
cigarettes, tight blue jeans, attitude to spare. Your elder daughter appears
victorious before you, holding up a broken plastic figurine. For her—a
princess, mermaid, treasure. For you—a tiny naked martyr, neither hands nor feet
to call her own.
LI.
You seek signs and portents everywhere,
wander the streets, stumble upon Largo di
Torre Argentina. Mussolini excavated these derelict temples. Julius Caesar
was betrayed and killed here. Now the place belongs to packs of feral cats who
strut, sleep, breed among the ruins. Perhaps you should join them.
LII.
You return home after your wanderings.
Your husband speaks to you through clenched teeth.
You make a terrible housewife. I never asked to be a housewife. I ask so little of you. Exactly. If only you’d ask for more.
LIII.
You’ve been here before. Always an ocean
roiling inside you. Always a forest of thick black trees shooting up between
you.
LIV.
You’re like a dead man. And you’re just looking for drama. I bring you Italy hand it to you on a platter and you won’t fucking eat.
LV.
Your family climbs down from the bus,
tramps through the fields and farms on the outskirts of town. You take pictures
of the girls. You take pictures of your husband, moving through the grass in
silence. You put the camera away. Why commemorate pain?
LVI
You pass the nymphaeum you love so much, take in the vivid green, the
bubbling spring, imagine your daughter water nymphs bathing naked, pure.
LVII.
Do you like the water? Ti piace l’acqua? Yes. May I join you in the nymphaeum? Sí, posso unirmi a te nel ninfeo? I am sorry, age and pain have no place here. Mi dispiace, la vecchiaia e il dolore non hanno posto qui. What did you say? Cosa hai detto? Your age and pain have no place. La tua età e il tuo dolore non hanno posto.
LVIII.
Time is running out, the year is almost
over, your life in Rome a reckless scattering of stones. You sit on a park
bench in Piazza Celimontana, watch
your children playing for the hundredth time. They plunge their hands into the
ancient fountain, pull out turtles, hands dripping with water. They shriek with
joy, turn to show you, faces radiant, turtle shells glistening in the sun.
LIX.
You lure your husband into yet another argument:
What do you think? Was it worth it? What are you talking about? Coming to Italy in search of miracles? In case you haven’t noticed, your Rome and mine are two different cities. I work all day in an office. I’ve no idea what you do.
LX.
Your husband comes home early. You are
playing memory games with your daughters. They are winning. He tells you the
house is a mess. Filthy, he calls it, fed up with your Facebook housewifery.
You exchange insults. Tears begin. You tell him to stop. He does not. A line is
crossed. Neither of you sure how you got here. He standing above. You below.
The children in the wings. Forks stones plates pins rain down from his mouth.
You a heap on the floor. You don’t ever want to stand up share a mattress
again. You lie face down for hours, kiss the cold stones.
LXI.
You awaken bone chilled and stiff, peel
yourself off the hallway floor, survey your kingdom from the balcony. So much
for heaven’s mountain.
LXII.
You command yourself to go on. Continua. Breathe. Respira. Hold your daughters tight. Tieni strette le tue figlie.
LXIII.
You give your husband an ultimatum:
If you really want me, talk to me. Tell me our happiness matters. Promise me we’ll rise up together like snails.
He turns away without a word.
LXIV.
His silence spills into days and then weeks.
LXV.
You can’t stand it. You tell him it’s
over. You will move out when you return to America in a few weeks’ time. You
will take your daughters with you and live in a friend’s attic. He is
mystified. But you are unyielding.
LXVI.
It’s almost midnight. Your husband has
gone to sleep, left you with nothing. You walk out alone into the darkness. Men
stand in doorways. Call out to you. Make lewd gestures with their tongues and
fingers. You don’t understand a word they are saying, but are pretty sure it
goes something like this:
Le gambe tue sono colonne di alabastro. Your thighs are alabaster columns. I tuoi seni come cervi che saltano. Your breasts like leaping deer. Allungo le braccia attraverso la tua finestra, e le mie mani sono piene di miele gocciolante I reach through your window and my hands are filled with dripping honey. Vieni a casa con me. Come home with me. Sdraiati con me. Lie down with me. Non te ne andare mai. Don’t ever leave.
This is the Song of Songs they’re whispering to you. It feels like your
swansong. Your finale. You are sure of it. You walk for miles, past throbbing
discotheques, bells tolling in the distance. Rome’s songs of desire and
mourning poured out for your ears alone.
LXVII.
Wandering the narrow streets of Trastevere, noonday sun beating down, your elder daughter finds a
speckled bird dying on hot stones and gathers it against her breast. She turns
to you, eyes soft, and asks why the bird has to die. Some things cannot be
saved, you say, and you both burst into tears.
LXVIII.
Your younger daughter joins in. The three of you form
a forlorn chorus at the edge of the piazza. Behind you, water tumbles out of a
stone mouth and into a fountain. You wonder to yourself, is this the sound of
Rome falling?
LXIX.
The bar is filled with jazz piano and the
weary voice of an older woman, tired of singing for tourists who care for no
one but Beyoncé. You have asked your Roman friend to drink with you tonight.
There is no one else to talk to. You are wretched, but you cannot stop. You
cannot believe how lonely you are. She listens, passes silent judgment on your
American grief.
LXX.
Have I been unfaithful? Sono stata infedele? Yes, you have loved a city. Sì, hai amato una città.
LXXI.
It is dark outside the plane. Your younger daughter squirms in her seat. The elder leans into the warmth of your body. Both girls are bathed in the glow of their personal TV screens, rapt, angelic. You have no idea what you are doing with your dolce vita—sweet, sweet life. The plane shudders, turbulence right on schedule. You are overcome with nausea, retch until there’s nothing left, your body an empty vessel. You lean back, close your eyes. The plane’s engines lull you into fitful sleep. You dream of stumbling over mounds of broken stones, chasing after your daughters as they climb and gambol in their summer dresses, voices shrill as birds.
NOTE: With thanks to Alberto Zezza, who generously corrected my Italian.
BIO
Eve Müller makes zines and paper cutouts. She is a relative newcomer to the world of literary non-fiction/memoir, but has published extensively on autism and language. She is a single mom who lives in College Park, MD, with two breathtakingly reckless teen daughters, two cats and a rabbit.
The Torah forbade the Israelites from incising their flesh to express their grief. They were instructed to rend their garments instead.
My father’s hand shot up to his
eyebrow, his finger poised there, as if he were about to stroke his brow. A
gesture I’d always considered deeply imbued with his personality. The gesture
he performed when pondering a problem. While reading a book or talking on the
phone. Whenever he was thinking.
Was he, or whatever was left behind
of him, still capable of thinking?
My father was dying. He’d had a
massive bleed in his brain, the final in a series of strokes. I sat at his
hospital bedside; my mother, two brothers, and I were all there. Intent on his
every faltering breath, I could not take my eyes off the spectacle of his body’s
failing. His face was inordinately pale and blank, while his body, under a
white blanket, twitched and seized. Small jerks and larger rumbling quakes.
They had taken out all the tubes; he was attached to only a heart monitor. I
tried to distract myself by looking at those numbers rise and fall, but his
body pulled me. They told us his organs were shutting down.
Dying suffused the atmosphere in
the room; it was inside him, it was outside him, it felt like it was everywhere.
The more I stared, the more I feared I would be consumed by it.
We were seeing autonomic
reflexes, the doctors told us. He was unresponsive, they said, on the way to
brain death. Yet all day long, his hand kept shooting up to his eyebrow in that
familiar gesture. As if he were on the brink of telling me something. The motion
repeated and repeated.
The next day, I could not bear to
go back to the hospital. That was the day the doctors predicted he would die.
The rest of the family gathered there; I was expected to come. That morning I had
gotten my period. Death was a shark circling his room; I knew the shark would smell
my blood and get confused. I was confused.
My father and I had always been too close, too connected. I had been too susceptible
to feeling everything he felt. What would it take to sever this connection? My
uterus seized. If I were in the room, would I have to give birth to his death from
my body?
That night after my father died,
I went to my uncle and aunt’s house where the family had congregated. On my way
up to the front door, their new cat wandered across my path. It had been a stray, still half-feral. I impulsively
picked her up, craving some comfort from the cat’s warm body, its soft fur
against my face. She reached out her claw and scratched me. A deep, mean,
diagonal scratch across my nose. It bled and bled. I cried, this sudden pain
amplifying the deeper wound of grief. When I went into the house, I hid this
bleeding from my family. It was too naked a show, rhymed too closely with the
other blood rushing from me.
Years later, my nose still bears a scar. My hand shoots up now, automatically, over and over again, several times a day, to run my fingers over it. It reminds me of my father. And then, of his dying. His death found its way to inscribe my body despite my efforts to hold myself inviolate. I could not keep it out.
BIO
Deborah A. Lott is the author the recently published memoir, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me. Her creative nonfiction has been published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellingham Review, Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, the nervous breakdown, the Rumpus, Salon, Los Angeles Review, Cimarron Review, Crazyhorse, and many other places. Her works have been thrice named as notables by Best American Essays. She teaches creative writing and literature at Antioch University, Los Angeles. You can learn more about her at deborahalott.com
We are in England, in a house with a garden. My mother and I are visiting her friend, Penny. Penny: born into wealth, solitary, childless, tall, educated at Cambridge, elegant. I am holding onto my mother’s hand. Penny shows me to a staircase and tells me that a fairy lives under the stairs—a fairy who has hidden treasures for me all over the garden. Penny hands me a large wicker basket. “Go on,” says my mother, removing her hand from my grasp, and she and Penny return to the table where they are having a meal, laughing, and talking.
The garden
is unmanicured, even wild in places, and filled with rosebushes. I
have no experience of treasure hunts and Easter eggs, but, once I get the hang of it, I scamper
about, finding chocolate eggs and little toy rabbits everywhere. Into the
basket they go, and now the basket is filled and things are spilling out as I
run, so I stop, pick up the things I have dropped, and return to the table,
where my mother has prepared me a plate of small sandwiches and cakes. My piece
of cake is laden with pink roses with elaborate green leaves, all made of
frosting. I take a few bites and then set about looking for the fairy who
created this wonderful surprise for me, but she proves impossible to find. And
then it is time to leave, and Penny tells me that I can keep the basket and she
hopes to see us again soon.
I
begin to wake up the next morning in our house in London—the house my parents
and I have been living in for several months at this point, but it is also the
house that my parents are shortly planning to sell because the three of us are
going to live in America from now on. Our house is a modest one with a tiny
garden. Yesterday begins to take shape in my mind, and I lie in bed thinking of
Penny’s garden and the white wooden staircase where the fairy sleeps.
Did
my father ever visit Penny’s house with my mother and me? I cannot recall, but
I think not. Penny belonged to my mother’s world and not his. How old was I? I
must have been three or four years old. I had never before seen such a place,
and Penny was a stranger to me.
My
mother’s childhood in Warsaw had included some degree of luxury and art of all
kinds; my father’s childhood in Warsaw had not. They had both wound up in
wartime London with nothing. Where had my mother first met Penny? I have no
idea, but running through my mother’s adult life was a longing and a
gravitational pull toward places that felt like her childhood home—graceful
places, rooms where music and art and literature flourished. The house, the
garden, the spring air, the china, my mother’s laughter, Penny’s elegance, and
the rosebushes not yet in bloom: I remember all these things from our visit to
Penny’s, but most of all, I remember the fairy who had hidden the treasures for
me to find.
Some
of my grade school and college friends have had houses like Penny’s where I
have wandered beside the botanical prints and the chintz armchairs, never quite
feeling that I belonged, but returning time and time again to spend the night
or be caught up in the magic of parties that took place there.
*****
Right
after college, I am scheduled to be in London for ten days. My mother writes to
Penny to ask if I can stay with her, at Penny’s apartment in the city. The
answer comes back on one of the thin blue paper aerogrammes people used in
those days: Yes.
In college, I had been startled by the effect
on me of a live performance of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. When the
dancers waved long blue cloths to represent waves and stepped into those waves,
I felt the cool water, the heat of the sun, and the force of the waves. As I
watched, I could feel my hands quiver at the intensity and magic of the
performance.
In London,
I want to see more live events as I had heard that this was the place to
experience live theater. I also want to taste the things I had eaten as a
child: Ribena, biscuits, mashed potatoes, and milk chocolate with hazelnuts. I
want to have a Guinness draft in a real pub.
I
land at Heathrow and take a taxi into the city. We pass gardens and row houses
and small stucco houses with tiny gardens. I think of the rosebushes, the
basket full of sweets, and the fairy under the stairs.
The
woman who opens the door is bent over, with unwashed hair pulled into a bun held
with a plain elastic band.
She
walks me around the apartment. Her eyes are aimed perpetually at the ground
because of the curve in her spine. The place is filled with stuff: newspapers, old letters, three capsules and an
apple core on a plant saucer. The fridge is empty and she is apologetic and
visibly ashamed. I am tired, and my clothes are damp and stale, but she
immediately proposes a trip to the grocery store, fumbling around for her list
while talking about a range of unconnected subjects.
We
set off at a slow pace, her face turned downward. She asks after my mother but
struggles to reach the store, stopping at every bench to rest. At the grocery
shop, she cannot find her list.
When I
wake up the next morning, I am still tired. The room is dingy and loaded with
piles of clothes and magazines. I lie in bed, thinking of the garden and the
stairs from long ago, of yesterday’s empty refrigerator and lost grocery list
(which, as it turned out, had been in the woman’s pocket all along.) I think of
the Penny I remembered– especially of her elegance, and how the things she
said had delighted and amused my mother. Had my memory been so inaccurate? Was
I confusing her with someone else? For a while, I wonder whether I have gone to
sleep in the wrong house. When had my mother last spoken to Penny or seen her?
Was this what my mother had expected when she had proposed that I stay with
Penny?
The
woman has managed to make coffee but is visibly frustrated as she tries to find
the food we bought last night. She is shuffling around the kitchen, face
trained on the floor. When she needs to look at something higher, she has to
tilt her torso backwards and I am afraid that she will fall. I pick up an
envelope that has fallen on the floor and there is Penny’s name, so I am in the
right place after all. This is reassuring and not reassuring at the same time.
The only phone I have access to is in this apartment. I think of calling my
mother, but what would I say?
I ask Penny
about the house and the garden. “That was sold a long time ago,” she
says. I tell her about my memories of
the fairy under the stairs and the Easter egg hunt. At this, Penny stares off into space for a
while, but she never answers.
*****
My
trip does not go as I had fantasized. Mostly, I try to help Penny as she
struggles to get things done. I do manage to have a Guinness at a pub, and it
is as rich and acrid and reminiscent of molasses as I had imagined it would be.
At the market on a trip I make by myself, I discover containers of yoghurt stuffed
with hazelnuts and buy 12 pots of them, adding them to the basket already
filled with biscuits and Ribena.
There
are no outings to the theater, but Penny insists on that we go by train to
Cambridge for the day. When I see her contend with the mechanics of buying a
ticket and locating the correct platform, I realize how much she has wanted to
see Cambridge again, how much pleasure the sight of its buildings might give
her—and how incapable she is of traveling to Cambridge on her own. I feel a
surge of warmth towards her that I had not felt before. When I comment that
Cambridge looks like Princeton, I see a flash of the old Penny I thought I had
been coming to visit when she replies acidly: “No, dear, Princeton looks like
Cambridge.”
I
do take the Tube to see some old friends of my parents at their flat. This
couple had also emigrated from Poland, and they knew my parents when they all
were young and living in London. They live in an elegant stone building, but
the staircase leading to their apartment is shabby and full of litter. The
apartment is glorious, with wood floors, interesting artwork, and bookshelves
lining many of the walls. The wife is vivacious and an excellent cook. The
husband is a raconteur, and they tell me many stories about my parents that I
had not heard previously. They treat me like a real grown-up, and the husband
pours me a glass of cognac in exactly the proper glass for such a thing. I have
never tasted cognac before. It is fiery and metallic, and I like these people
immensely.
But when I
settle back into my chair and start free-associating because of the cognac, I
recall the story of my grandmother
telling my parents that my father should have married the woman in whose house
I am sitting. That is a story I do know, and the thought of the pain felt by my
mother when my grandmother said this shoots through me. The warmth generated by
the cognac and the armchair and the books fades to a chill. Was my immediate
reaction to this woman disloyal to my mother? Or is it unfair to blame the
woman for the cruelty of my grandmother’s remark?
When
it is time to leave, the husband offers to drive me back to Penny’s. His wife
will not accompany us and, as they explain why, the disconnect between the
condition of the stairwell and the apartment becomes clear. The building has
been partly taken over by squatters, and this has occurred when apartments have
been unoccupied for even a time as brief as an hour. The couple owns their
apartment, but there is an ordinance that has prevented rightful owners from
reclaiming their apartments when squatters take over, and long legal battles
ensue. So, for the past two years, this couple has never gone out at the same
time together. I think of this often, years later, during the pandemic.
*****
When
I return to Providence, my mother is shocked and despondent at the news I give her of Penny and she also
feels guilty about sending me to stay there. I have not yet started medical
school, and I am unable to put the pieces together, but my mother and I surmise
that Penny has developed some sort of dementia. My mother and I write Penny a letter
to thank her but no reply arrives. Three years later, in another aerogramme,
Penny tells us that she has been suffering for a long time from undiagnosed
hypothyroidism and memory loss, and now that the diagnosis has been made and
she has been prescribed medication, she is hoping she will get better. That is
the last communication my mother receives from Penny, and neither of us learns
anything more about her. When I Google her name, nothing informative appears.
*****
When
my children were small, and I was overwhelmed with the joy of hearing their
happy sounds and the sounds of their friends reverberating through the house, I
sometimes dreamed at night of finding a whole corridor in my house that I had
not previously known existed. I would run through the new parts of my home,
throwing open doors and thinking of what I would do with these rooms. How would
I furnish and decorate them? What could I make of this new wing in my house? A
suite for visitors? A study? A place for the kids to hang out with
friends?
When
I woke up from these dreams, I would try to place the rooms, for they would
often turn out to be from houses I had seen before or from places I had
imagined when I lost myself in the books of my childhood. Here was Sara’s
bedroom from A Little Princess, the
one she occupied before she was banished to the attic. Another morning, I awoke
from a dream in which I had been wandering in an immense house with views of
the water on three sides. The house was open and airy, filled with shells and
maps of the Bahamas, and pillows with images of flowers and birds. On the
ground floor, hibiscus blooms were visible from the many windows and a breeze
lifted the slight curtains away from the window frames. I remembered passing by
this house long ago when we were on vacation in Eleuthera. I had peered inside
and wondered what it might be like to live there.
*****
Now,
years later, I wake up from a different dream. My children have grown and the
house no longer bursts with the sounds of children playing. My first thought
upon awakening: it is still the pandemic. In recent dreams, I am being moved
against my will into a tiny space, consisting of three tiny rooms. I see my
belongings being flung into a large garbage bin and when I cry out and ask them
to stop, no one seems to hear me.
Some
of our neighbors throw parties when the weather is good. Through our open
windows or during our solitary walks, we hear the laughter and see the gardens
lit up with lanterns and the outlines of the guests inside the houses. A
pandemic walking route takes me by a property that reminds me of Penny’s garden.
The house is rambling and white and sits on a hill, the gardens filled with
hydrangea blossoms that spill over fences and masses of rose bushes. I remember
the parties there—especially the walk I would make up the giant driveway and the
times I waited on the doorstep to be let in.
The
evenings spent in those houses were, for me, filled with the same sort of evanescent
magic as Penny’s garden, but my memories are always coupled with my memories of
myself, standing outside on those doorsteps, hoping to be let in to these other
worlds.
My husband and I have always enjoyed visiting homes for sale when there are open houses near us. During the pandemic, we embark on virtual tours of the places someone might choose to buy. If the house is elegant enough, it will have been photographed from many angles. We move through these houses, from room to room, in three dimensions, and once again find ourselves lost in the houses of others.
BIO
Anita Kestin, MD, MPH, has worked in academics, nursing homes, hospices, and locked wards of a psychiatric facility. She’s a daughter (of immigrants fleeing the Holocaust), wife, mother, grandmother, and a progressive activist. She is now attempting to calm nerves and stave off longing for family by writing (memoir, short fiction, nonfiction, poetry). She submitted her first non-scientific piece in her sixties (during the Pandemic) and is thrilled that over a dozen short pieces have been accepted for publication.
California’s
Central Valley is a 450-mile-long stretch of rich soil irrigated by an
extensive system of canals. This extraordinarily productive region abounds in
fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains, and poets. The hot sun and wide sky have
nurtured many noteworthy poets, including Philip Levine, Mai Der Vang, and Juan
Felipe Herrera. Another is Modesto Poet Laureate Emeritus Stella Beratlis. Dust Bowl Venus, her new book from
Sixteen Rivers Press, is poetry of place grounded in the Central Valley city of
Modesto.
During the Great
Depression, thousands of people displaced by drought and poverty made their way
to California. One of them was Hazel Houser, a migrant from Oklahoma who
settled in Modesto and became a prolific songwriter of gospel and country hits.
She is the muse of Dust Bowl Venus, memorialized
by Beratlis in poems exploring their shared passions and common struggles.
Beratlis writes
about desire, folly, and reverence in stanzas that juxtapose incantatory fervor
with plainspoken determination, as these lines from “We Write Songs in His Rent
Controlled Apartment” illustrate:
I beseech thee, stainless quivering leg of bone and ligament, allow me to finish the entire song. I’m no lead guitarist. Is the song better served by a sharp tidy solo or the Janus tremolo of pure feeling? I wonder. Do not counter with what is known. Fingerpick the hell out of these strings, in this small apartment with its brief luxuries and cigarette smoke.
Many of the poems
make reference to ligaments, bone, and the heart, most poignantly when the
speaker reflects on her daughter’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. “Animal,
Vegetable, Mineral” lays bare the terror felt by a mother shown the image of a
tumor lodged in her daughter’s chest. “Castle of the Mountain” brings the
reader chairside to behold the bag of bright red chemotherapy drug and hear the
tick and beep of the infusion machine. Bertatlis depicts a mother’s anguish,
endurance, and tentative faith with sensitivity and precision.
Dust Bowl Venus is replete with love and
its flip side, loss. “All About Birds: An Elegy” is dedicated to the
assassinated Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. As in many of her poems,
Beratlis here employs questions and anaphora to powerful effect, emphasizing
the grief of the beloved survivor:
Which
galaxy
contains you now? Which bird’s throat? In the pines, the wind swept through the thicket, and I saw.
I
saw.
But not all is
gloom in this collection. Beratlis plays with language in asides contained
within dashes like a hand slyly screening the speaker’s mouth, “et cetera”
waving away a rueful reflection, and parentheses cupping a muttered justification.
Numerous poems apostrophize with “O,” and sometimes “Oh” precedes a thought like
a sigh. Archaisms such as “whence,” “woe be unto us,” and “thou” echo the King
James Bible that Houser, a minister’s daughter, transposed into gospel hits. Simultaneously,
the occasional “goddamn” or “busting” keeps the reader in the rough and tumble
West. This excerpt from “Conversation with a Lover About the Louvins”
exemplifies the poet’s whimsical word play:
First, step down into street; in darkness delight. Next, rye paired with pear, the pair pared
to leather, bluejean and thigh. Hazel’s rules for songwriting: Dip from the deeper well. Well, we are.
Intimacy and
distance are balanced by scientific allusions interfused with the human condition
in references to physics, botany, astronomy, and geology. The long poem “water
wealth contentment health” alone contains “neurotransmitters,” “epigenetics,” “atmospheric
river,” “genomes,” “fractal,” and “gut-brain.” These notes of erudition
embellish poems that prove both emotionally and intellectually satisfying.
Affectionate
address—“my love,” “my dear,” “my citadel fortress”—connects the speaker with
people and things that inspire joy and spark recognition. A tribute to Modesto,
“Republic of Tenderness and Bread” marvels at the community’s kindness. Even
poems of disappointment and heartbreak hold commendable grace as in “Fracture
Mechanics” and “Instant Messaging with Broken Glass” which invoke hard-earned
wisdom with dry humor and a shrug of resignation.
Throughout Dust Bowl Venus, music conveys wonder,
vulnerability, and revelation. As well as Houser’s gospel harmonies and rhythm
guitar, the poems evoke Paganini, reggae, assouf
and corridos, blues, punk rock, and christos anesti sung by the speaker’s
Greek family in a Livermore cemetery. Beratlis composes verbal music by means
of repeated sounds and careful rhythms, with phrases that cycle back like the
chorus of a song, and in the counterpoint of silence. Her judicious use of
spacing and punctuation control the tempo to compelling effect. These lines
from the poem “How to Possibly Find Something or Someone By Praying”
demonstrate the poet’s understanding of the power inherent in end stop and
enjambment:
I’m a typewriter wreck on the highway; don’t look at me. You are throwing your voice into every corner as I hunt and peck the light fantastic.
A
neon Lucky Strike sign, vintage automobiles, and other carefully chosen objects
conjure the zeitgeist of Houser’s Modesto. “Historic Structure Report” tenderly
addresses a specific building downtown—“Hush, my monolith”—and describes its
architecture in detail:
The asparagus fern of commerce overspills your planters, thrives along your bones, while inside, borrowed-money ball gowns and loggia daydreams consider a dance. Your glass, columns, composite floors, and floral-stamped metal— those vertical striations raked in cement— all expressions of a certain mid-century mindset.
Dust Bowl Venus is the cartography of
two lives. Led to the canneries and dance halls of the “beloved city” familiar
to both Houser and Beratlis, the reader is urged to observe, consider, and cherish
people and places. In “All About Birds: An Elegy,” the speaker counsels:
Remember to etch images and locations into your mind— this poem is a memory palace:
In a region of relentless heat and meager precipitation, nonetheless, plants, people, and poetry can and do flourish. In Dust Bowl Venus, Stella Beratlis maps one Central Valley city and the intricate traces of the heart.
Linda Scheller is the author of Fierce Light from FutureCycle Press. Her writing prizes include the 2020 Catherine Cushman Leach Poetry Award and 2021 California Federation of Chaparral Poets Contest. Her book reviews and poetry recently appeared in Entropy, The Inflectionist Review, Oddville Press, West Trade Review, and The American Journal of Poetry.
Hit That Ridge Again But This
Time Hit It Full Speed
By Riley Winchester
In the summer of 2003 I flipped a go-kart on its head in an attempt to impress my dad. I didn’t intend on flipping the go-kart, because my dad didn’t have some weird fascination with upside-down quadracycles, but in my attempt to impress him that’s ultimately what happened. What I was doing was following a simple order he had given.
Before
the flip, I had been putzing around in the go-kart all afternoon with my
younger sister Kylan in the passenger seat. We drove back and forth and around
in laps in a brown barren field across the street from our house. I imagine we
looked so tiny and slow in our cherry red 110cc go-kart, traversing the dry
vast field like a Ford Focus driving through a Mad Max movie.
Across the street from us, my dad stood in our driveway and watched while he ate from a bag of cheddar cheese curds. At the time, I thought he was the biggest and toughest person in the world. He stood six-feet-tall; he wasn’t heavy but he was by no means thin—he had a small swell for a stomach, a flat chest, muscular biceps, and broomsticks for legs.
I grew bored of driving the same routes and Kylan was
too scared to drive, so I turned the go-kart back toward my house and started
home. I was ready to take a break from driving and do my usual summertime
activities, like reading lowbrow juvenile literature or paralyzing my mind with
Nickelodeon.
On the way back I hit a small bump in the ground that I hadn’t ever hit before. I was going slow enough that the go-kart only did an underwhelming little jump, bouncing maybe half an inch off the ground. I didn’t think much of it and kept driving toward my dad.
The closer I drove toward him, the more I noticed how excited my dad looked. His eyes had ballooned bright and his cheese curd chewing had been enlivened into cheese curd chomping. I stopped the go-kart about ten feet away from him and he ran up to the driver’s side and squatted down to talk to me.
“Did you feel that?” he said with a wide smile and raised eyebrows.
“Feel what?”
“That jump!”
“Uh,” I thought for a second, “yeah, I did.”
The smell of cheddar cheese emanated from his mouth and pervaded the air between us. My eyes squinted as I looked at him, attempting to block out the sun. Kylan sat silently in the passenger seat, not yet old enough or familiar enough with my dad to know what was about to come out of his mouth. But I knew, and I could already feel the nerves building up and the knot in my stomach cinch tighter and hotter.
Then he said it.
“Hit that ridge again but this time hit it full speed.”
———
Nobody asked for the go-kart
but one day my dad came home with it and surprised us all—my mom, two sisters,
and me. He had somehow jammed it into the bed of his pickup truck, and when he returned
home he fashioned a homemade ramp to drive the go-kart down out of the bed. But
since it was a kid’s go-kart, he couldn’t fit behind the wheel to drive it. So
my first time behind the wheel of a go-kart I had to drive in reverse down a
steep decline on thin planks of wood that had been rotting in the back of our
barn for at least two full presidential terms.
I think
it took me forty-five minutes to drive down the five-foot-long ramp because my
foot was anchored on the brake and only let off it for millisecond-long
intervals.
It was
around the time of both mine and Kylan’s birthdays, so my dad justified the go-kart
purchase by saying it was a shared birthday present for us. That summer I was
hoping for either some new Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards or the latest releases in the
Captain Underpants series—Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the
Bionic Booger Boy, Part 1: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets, and its sequel Captain
Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 2: The
Revenge of the Ridiculous Robo-Boogers. And I doubt Kylan had a go-kart on
her birthday wish list. Nevertheless it’s what we were stuck with that year.
This
wasn’t the first instance of my dad coming home with a new toy—as he
called them—nor was it the last. At least a couple times a year he would come
home with a quad or a UTV or a golf cart or some other small engine vehicle
either packed into the bed of his truck or hauled in a trailer.
The
funny thing was my dad always claimed the toys weren’t for him, even though we
all knew they were. If he came home with a youth go-kart that he couldn’t fit
in and drive, we knew his reason for buying it was so he would have something
new to tinker on in the barn, a new engine to tear apart and figure out, a new
project to consume his evenings and weekends.
My dad
was a worker, blue-collar as they come, and he believed in the virtues of work,
work, work, and then, when all the work is done, find some more work or make
some more work. This was something I never understood. I didn’t like work, not
one bit. It made me tired and sweaty, so why would I ever seek out more of it?
I
thought my dad had some rare, still undiscovered mental illness—or at least
some shades of masochism—because of his psychotic predilection for work. To me
it was an unhealthy obsession with labor and an equally unhealthy aversion to
leisure. We couldn’t have been more different in our philosophies.
My dad
never sat still or slowed down. When I would help him finish a project in the
barn, I thought I now had the freedom to sit and relax inside, read a book, study
for tomorrow’s spelling test, level up my team in Pokémon Ruby on my
Game Boy Advance. I would turn and start walking toward the house, then my fantasy
would be interrupted by something like, “Grab me a 9/16 socket and a
flashlight. And get under here and hold the light for me. It’s darker than rabbit
shit—I can’t see a damn thing under here.”
His go-go lifestyle never allowed him to sleep in either, not so long as there was work to be done. And there was always work to be done. If I ever slept past 7:30 a.m. on weekends, my dad would Kramer-burst into my room, turn the light on, peel my eyelids open, and say, “Get up, don’t sleep your day away.” It was 7:30—the moon still hung hazily in the sky, the grass was blanketed with morning dew—and my day was already in danger of being slept away. When I would grumble and plead to sleep in for another hour, he would say, “Tough shit. When I was your age I was waking up at four in the morning to go milk cow tits.”
He wasn’t a man to ever slow down and stop and smell the roses, simply because he was too busy digging up an area for a new rose garden somewhere else. I didn’t understand. I liked slowing down and smelling all the pretty roses.
———
I swallowed down the gigantic nervous lump in my throat and said, “OK.” The word smacked of cowardice as soon as it left my mouth. I didn’t want to hit that ridge again, and I sure as hell didn’t want to hit it full speed. But I knew this was a rare opportunity for me, an opportunity to show my dad that I wasn’t weak or scared, and prove to myself that maybe we weren’t as different as I thought we were.
I turned the go-kart around and drove back toward the field, toward the ridge I was supposed to hit full speed, and away from the safety of my house. I sat at the end of the driveway, neurotically scanning back and forth across the street, checking for cars that I knew weren’t there. We were way out in the boondocks, no cars or any signs of civilization were within a country mile. And I knew that, but I needed to bide my time as long as I could before my imminent ridge-hitting death.
The go-kart trundled through the field. I stared at the ridge as I drove past it. I stared at it like an abandoned baby zebra stares at a clan of hyenas during a hungry summer in The Serengeti. Once I had driven what I thought was far enough past the ridge, I turned the go-kart around so I could hit the ridge while driving toward my dad. I figured if I was going to die trying to impress him, he ought to see it.
I looked at Kylan in the passenger seat—quiet, innocent, blissfully unaware—and wondered if I would be posthumously charged with murder after I inevitably killed us both.
The go-kart and I were still. My arms were rigid, hands glued to the wheel, right foot scared of the gas pedal. Sweat percolated through the papery hairs on the back of my neck. I licked my lips. They were dry, like the field I was about to barrel through at full speed against my will. The go-kart engine hummed, soft and unassuming. I took a couple deep breaths. I looked across the street toward my dad but all I saw was a fuzzy outline. The field ahead of me was speckled with heat mirages, looking like I was about to drive through a dozen little puddles.
Something possessed me—I don’t know if it was a murderous demon or a surge of dumb courage—and I hit the gas.
The engine screamed and I felt the stuffy air wash over my face as I charged toward the ridge. My foot pinned the gas pedal to the metal frame below it. It felt like I had broken the sound barrier in that brown barren field. I was going too fast and my mind was too scrambled to see where the ridge was. I started to panic, but my panicking was interrupted.
I hit the ridge.
And this time I hit it full speed.
The go-kart did a weak one hundred eighty degree flip, slammed back into the arid, compacted dirt, and kept moving forward on its head, sliding through the dirt and leaving a trail of red paint chips and indents in the earth.
When I finally came to, and when I finally found the courage to open my eyes, I looked straight ahead, out at the tree line off in the distance. It looked different now, like the trees were coming out of the sky instead of the earth. Kylan cried and screamed, castigating me for being stupid enough to flip the go-kart. Physically we were both unharmed—the roll cage, seatbelts, and helmets ensured that. But we were handling the mental trauma differently. Me, in shock and silence. Kylan, in tears and screaming.
I heard a familiar voice over Kylan’s screams.
“God damn! You really hit that, huh boy!”
My dad squatted down and looked at Kylan and me, still dangling upside down.
“I didn’t expect you to flip the damn thing,” he said.
He manhandled the go-kart back upright onto its four wheels and pulled Kylan out of the passenger seat.
“I’m gonna walk Ky back, OK?” he said. “You drive it back and pull it into the barn, bud.”
I tried to tell him I was too scared to drive it back but I couldn’t get the words out. It felt like concrete had been poured down my throat. It was then I realized I was nothing like my dad. He could flip a go-kart and get right back on it. I didn’t want to flip go-karts, let alone even drive go-karts. I wanted comfort and stillness and safety. I wanted to be anywhere but behind the wheel of that stupid go-kart in that stupid field.
———
Years went by and things remained the same. My dad continued his busy lifestyle, and I continued to do, and be, the opposite of him. He spent his time playing around with motors and listening to classic rock on the old radio in the barn. I spent my time playing online video games and listening to prepubescent boys call me slurs and say how they all had defiled my mom.
Then in November of 2013 my dad was diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer.
Life hadn’t just thrown a couple speed bumps his way, it had laid out miles of spike strips ahead of him.
Still, he continued, to the best of his ability, to live the same life as he had before. He underwent a total colectomy in March of 2014, and his colon and the cancer were removed. He was fitted with a colostomy bag, which was now, without a colon, his only method of releasing excrement. He joked that he now saved so much time without having to stop what he was doing to use the bathroom, and he could be even more productive than before. Life, he thought, had regained a sense of normalcy.
But the normalcy was short-lived.
Seven months after the total colectomy, the cancer came back, and this time it refused to be defeated. The cancer perniciously took hold of his body and destroyed it from the inside out. It spread to his lymph nodes, his peritoneum, his lungs, tumors invaded his back and lumped along the crease of his spine.
By December of 2015, the cancer had completely seized his body and there was no hope of recovery, not even a miracle could save him. There is nothing else in this world that weakens and destroys someone like cancer, not even the most destructive war or brutal fight. Nothing else can strip someone of their essence, of their self—these always remain, even after the worst defeat. But cancer will. It will take these elements of someone’s being and shatter and trample them into the dust for everyone to see.
My dad was admitted into hospice care where he was put into a medically induced coma. His body was plastered with Fentanyl patches, his veins ran heavy with Dilaudid and Oxycodone and Alprazolam and Methylphenidate and other pharmaceuticals to alleviate his physical pain and shut off his mind.
I spent five days in a sofa chair by his bedside. I had never seen him sit so still, never in the eighteen years I had spent with him. He had never looked so small. His body had shriveled; bones now outlined the parts of his arms that were before inhabited by muscle. His face was sallow and pruned to the jagged corners of his jawline. The biggest and toughest person in the world had been beaten, abused, and destroyed into a frail little fragment of what he once was. For the first time in my life I was bigger than him, and I hated it.
The man I saw in the bed, I thought, wasn’t the same man I had known, the man who raised me. The man who was always on the move, never living a passive life, the man who told me to hit that ridge again but this time hit it full speed—because he wanted me to live fast and take chances like he did—was no longer there.
He died Sunday, December 6, 2015, at 2:25 p.m.
Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t the metastatic cancer that killed my dad but the stillness. For five days he lay in that hospice bed, motionless, unable to get up and move and live how he always had. I imagine the back of his mind was filled with little anxieties the entire time he was in hospice—the oil change my car needed, the water softener that needed to be refilled with salt, the shaky stair banister that he planned on replacing. It must have driven him crazy.
After he died, my mom, sisters, and I individually spent some time in the hospice room with my dad. Although his body had been essentially dead since he arrived at hospice, and I had spent five days with him like that, it was strange to see him now eternally still. I sat in the sofa chair by his bedside and stared at him. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t. There wasn’t anything blocking my ability to speak—my throat was clear and my voice box was smooth and ready. I didn’t say anything because I thought nothing needed to be said between us. Everything that needed to be said had already been said, and it was now the time for silence.
As I stared at my dad longer, I created this image in my head of him opening his eyes, turning toward me, smiling, and saying, “Get up, we gotta go home and snow blow the driveway!” Or, “Come on, we gotta run to the hardware store right quick!”
Part of me thought it would actually happen. I convinced myself enough of it that I inched my right index finger toward my dad and poked him on the shoulder to check if he was actually dead or just faking it.
He wasn’t faking it.
I laughed when I thought of how ridiculous I must have looked, how ridiculous I was for even having a thought like that. I like to think my dad, wherever he was, laughed too.
———
Had my dad been born in the Neolithic Period, he would have taken the newly developed scrapers, blades, and axes and cultivated a thousand acres of land overnight by himself.
Had my dad been born in Antiquity, he would have given Plato a wet willie and said, “Shut up with all that science talk and gimme that hammer over there.”
Had my dad been born in the Age of Discovery, he would have circumnavigated the world three times over before Magellan had even left port.
Instead, he was born on a summery day in April in 1966, and he was my dad.
At times I thought the only thing we had in common, and the only modicum of proof that I was his son, was how much we looked alike—we’re basically twins born thirty-one years apart. We thought differently, we acted differently, we lived differently. He liked to work; I liked to think. He was fearless and outgoing; I was demure and reserved. He lived fast and didn’t think about consequences; I preferred to take things slow.
My dad once said that people have a lot more in common than they realize, but it’s just that differences stick out a lot more and that’s what we notice. I had never given that much thought until after he died—I had always discredited it as another one of his hackneyed little aphorisms he liked to throw around sometimes to seem intellectual. The differences between my dad and me stood out much more when he was alive. But now with time apart—physically and emotionally—I’ve become privy to all that we shared in common.
We had the same sense of humor and laughed at the same jokes—whenever he heard a new joke somewhere, he couldn’t wait to share it with me. We never took ourselves too seriously, no matter how serious of a situation we were in. We both liked mindless action movies with no plots. We both liked Detroit sports, and we even went to some Tigers, Lions, and Pistons games together. We both liked to eat our French toast smothered in ketchup.
They’re little things, but they’re little things that mean a lot to me.
And I know they meant a lot to him.
The day I flipped a go-kart on its head I thought I would never in a million lifetimes understand my dad. I thought I could never understand someone so different than me, someone maniacal enough to convince a six-year-old kid to attempt suicide by go-kart. It was a confluence of confusion and terror. I wasn’t even sure if my dad was human. But, as it turned out, I just didn’t yet understand the simplicity of his life philosophy.
My
dad wasn’t content with putzing around in a go-kart in the brown barren field
across the street. That wasn’t enough for him. He believed that, sometimes, you
just gotta hit that ridge again but this time hit it full speed.
BIO
Riley Winchester’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Ligeia Magazine, Miracle Monocle, Sheepshead Review, Ellipsis Zine, Beyond Words, Pure Slush’s “Growing Up” Anthology, and other publications. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I was a school bus
driver, and proud of it. But I needed to make some summertime money until
school started back up in September.
Both my brothers were
cab drivers, and they both talked me into trying it. It had no real time
commitment. As an independent contractor the cab company didn’t care who came
and went. They just rented expensive yellow cars on the daily.
Trying out a new career
would only cost me the price of getting a taxicab driver permit and a map book
or two. What did I have to lose?
I had just finished my
last run of the year as a school bus driver. My uniform shirt had served as an
autograph collection device. One of the junior high school kids drew a fouled
anchor on my sleeve, and wrote under it, “See you next year, you old sea hag!”
and other nicer sentiments were all over various parts of my shirt. Nothing
risqué, nothing written on any suggestive body parts. But it did look… silly.
I went to pick up my
taxicab permit at the Santa Ana Police Department. If I recall correctly, I
submitted my paperwork already, and returned later with my passport style
photos and to get my fingerprints taken. It was Friday the 12th of June in
1981.
Time Twister by Katy Wright
So there I sat in the
lobby of the SAPD. I was asked to take a seat, and told that an officer would
be with me shortly. Then an officer did show up. He approached me in the lobby,
asking me my name. Confirming my middle name, my date of birth, and my driver’s
license number, he then put down his clipboard. He said to me, “I have to tell
you that you have an outstanding…”
I knew he was going to
compliment me on my perfect driving record. While I was honest enough with
myself to know that I would probably never win the “Driver of the Month” award
at Orange Unified School District, I knew I was probably an outstanding example
of a safe driver. By cab company standards, anyway.
“…warrant for your
arrest. Please walk this way.” He led the way to the guts of the building.
My reverie was
shattered. I followed him, thunderstruck. There must have been some mistake
that would sort itself out soon.
“If I could walk that
way, I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.”
The officer looked
puzzled.
“Old joke. Sorry. Not
the right time for a joke.”
“What’s the joke?”
“Guy goes into a
drugstore and asks the pharmacist where to find the talcum powder. The
pharmacist says, ‘Sure, walk this way.’ The guy answers ‘If I could walk that
way, I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.”
The cop politely
chuckled. I bet he knew the joke, but was trying to put me at ease, or
determine my demeanor. I don’t know.
The officer asked me if
I remembered signing a ticket while driving a non-registered vehicle. Damn. The
light dawned immediately.
I was pulled over while
driving my dad’s pick up truck. He had procrastinated about getting it registered
into his name. He had received it in exchange for sheet metal work he had done.
It was an old work truck. I had signed the ticket and gave my dad all the
paperwork. He said he would take care of it. I had even asked him about my
ticket just a few months prior to being arrested.
“Don’t worry about it.
I’m taking care of it all.” I believed him. I forgot all about it. It then led
to a warrant for failing to appear.
The officer had me place
my belongings into a locker, and then he led me down the hall to a holding cell
to await the next step, which was to be processed into the Orange County Jail.
The holding cell itself was dreary. I seem to recall it was a dull yellow
color. The bench in the cell had a large brown stain. I wouldn’t sit. I just
stood near the bars, not touching anything. Holding my arms in front of me, by
each elbow, hugging myself. Before much time passed, I suppose, another officer
collected me to take me to jail. It just felt like forever.
“Sorry you had to wait,
it’s shift change.” He handcuffed me with what seemed like a ziptie. Then he
collected my things from the locker, and put me and my stuff in the patrol car.
When we reached the sally port, he announced us in on the two way box at the
gate.
“One cooperative
female.”
It hit my imagination
how, under different circumstances, having a handsome young cop call me a
cooperative female would have definitely been foreplay.
There was what looked
like a loading dock, with an open air bank of public phones. I was able to make
a phone call. I called home but nobody answered. They allowed me to make
another call. I asked my neighbor, Pat, to make sure somebody picked up my son
Patrick from the day care center. And of course, pretty please, contact my
brother Mike so that somebody can figure out how to get me out of jail.
I was then led into the
building, and underwent processing. My belongings were stowed away. My identity
was confirmed, pending additional processing that would happen when it was
convenient for the system.
I was led, autographed
work shirt and all, into a large holding tank with about 10 women. And a big
stainless steel toilet on one side of the room. Wide open to the elements, as
it were. One lady had to use it while we were all waiting for the next step,
and everyone tried not to look. Dignity is often either acknowledged or
disregarded depending on the group of people you’re with, ever notice that?
There were brief
conversations around the room. Not exactly introductions, more like, “What are
you in for?” One lady, dressed kind of like Peg Bundy (but not as brassy)
embezzled from an employer. One lady was in for writing hot checks. I think one
was in for burglary, I was never sure. There was one biker mama whose crime was
never mentioned. And there were about a half a dozen prostitutes. The biker
chick was after them like a Eugene O’Neill character, badgering them about
giving up their hard earned money to pimps. They raged back, defending their
bastard bosses to the bitter end.
Someone kept staring at my
shirt.
The district did not issue
an actual uniform. There wasn’t an actual dress code. But a lot of us
voluntarily bought nice looking long sleeve button down shirts and sewed on the
official Orange Unified School District Transportation patch. The circular
patch was mostly orange, gave the name of the district in a circle around the
outside perimeter, and had either a wheel or a bus logo. I don’t recall the
graphics. But it was really neat looking, on a par with the kind of patch
motorcycle cops wear, the kind with a wheel on it.
While staring at my shirt,
and reading the “sea hag” quote below the district patch, the burglar asked me
what my crime was.
“Failure to appear.”
She stared me in the face
as if to question my intelligence.
“I got a ticket for
driving my dad’s unregistered pickup truck, then I forgot about the ticket
because –“
Just at that moment, an
officer came to the bars and told me that I would be going upstairs for
fingerprints. I was glad. I felt like they were all about to move away from me
on the Group W Bench anyway.
Details blurred once I
left the holding cell. The sheriff’s deputy was helpful, telling me what to
expect next. It seemed like everybody knew I didn’t belong there. Not everyone
who gets incarcerated is entrusted with the lives and souls of up to 79
kindergartners at a time in Southern California traffic… as my shirt proclaimed
like a billboard. Hold the fat jokes, okay? If not white privilege, maybe it
was school bus driver privilege? Maybe it was not unusual. But I appreciated
the courtesy.
“In an hour or two, we
will be processing everybody from the holding tank into the regular population.
You will be given jumpsuits and dinner. But in the interim, you will just be
shuffling here and there. And waiting.”
We went into an elevator
and then a maze of corridors as she told me what was happening next.
“This next step is your
mug shots. Then we will take your fingerprints. Ah. Here we are. Walk this
way.”
I bit my tongue so I
wouldn’t repeat the talcum powder joke.
I was positioned. I was
given the obligatory black sign with the little plastic letters that went into
the felt grooves. My name, never thought I’d see it like this. My bad. I was
positioned and repositioned as the shots were taken.
“Well, Katy! I never
thought I’d see you in here.” Chuckling arose from a voice that I couldn’t
place.
Then Kristi Howison
stepped from behind the camera.
We had taken a speech
class together at Santa Ana College a few years back. Her talks were about her
efforts to join the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (no trade secrets were
revealed, just generic clues on how to get a decent government job). She also
gave a self-protection lecture aimed at women.
“Oh my God, Kristi! I
never expected you to see me here either! What are the odds?”
I went on to explain my
embarrassment at having done something so stupid. She told me not to worry, it
probably wouldn’t ruin my life. Then we laughed about my shirt. Some of the
autographs on it were Hallmark quality cute. Then of course there was the old
sea hag jab, which I assured her was good natured.
“Your brother is
downstairs, trying to get you released. He was already admonished for yelling
at the desk clerk. He was getting close to being arrested, himself. Kept going
on about you not belonging in here.”
“Whew. I was wondering if
he got my message.”
We exchanged more
pleasantries while she took my prints. I’ve had prints taken for the bus job,
so I knew the drill. Still got my fingers all blackened. We wished each other
all the best.
‘You’ll notice I’m not
wearing high heels, I am teachable.” We chuckled, that was my biggest takeaway
from her shtick about street safety for unaware women. Heels are not safe in a
crisis, too hard to run away.
Back to the holding cell.
More awkward stares at my shirt. More ragging on the hookers from the
Harley-attired chick. She was a true feminist. She wasn’t judgmental about
their profession, just giving away a percentage of their take to their
manipulative managers.
I was called away, my
release was arranged. We collected my purse and stuff, then I was led through a
door to a lobby where my brother Mike and our family friend Steve “The Greek”
Chronopoulos were waiting for me. They were both amused by my shirt, by the
looks on their faces. But we didn’t talk about that.
On the ride home, much
information was covered. Steve drove, bless him, because neither of us was
operating on all cylinders. Mike was still red in the face from his emotions.
He said that when he told our brother Noel, he had a fit about it.
“‘You’ve got to get her out of there! She doesn’t belong there! She won’t know how to act!’,” Mike quoted Noel as saying. Noel would have come along, but he had a long drive home after a long day, if memory serves.
“And by the way, what was
all that about picking Patrick up at day care? Don’t you remember he stayed
home with Nita because he had a cold and you kept him home?”
All I could do was shrug.
I thought they’d all rag on me, but any anger and frustration was saved for
Stan. If he would have not blown me off about the paperwork on the truck, I
would have seen that I screwed the pooch on the overdue traffic ticket.
I suddenly realized how
catastrophic it would have been had I been involved in any kind of fender
bender with a school bus full of kidlets. Because even when an accident is not
your fault, you still have to provide all relevant info. In an idiots way of
thinking, you could say I got lucky.
“I guess this means we won’t be taking my training day tomorrow, huh Stavros?” I asked Steve. He was scheduled to take me out for my first-and-only day of training the next day. Newbies got one day of riding along with a veteran driver, and to get that one day, they had to show their Santa Ana taxicab operator’s permit. I still didn’t have it yet. Something interrupted me … oh yeah. I remember. I got arrested.
The legal ramifications
were minimal. I had to pay a hundred dollar fine to the courts. I had to show
that I had registered my dad’s truck. The judge told me not to worry. He said
that most people get arrested at least once in their lives. He predicted that I
would learn from this one mistake and never let it happen again. The school
district made me fill out reports, but it didn’t jeopardize my “real” day job
of bus driving next year.
Monday I got the taxicab
permit. Tuesday, Steve The Greek took me out and gave me the best cab driver
training that the company allowed.
But that’s another story.
BIO
Katy Wright is a retired Jill of trades, and avoids recidivism after rehabilitating herself. She can be found on Facebook as Katy Wright Arts and Letters.
In
sixth grade the music came to us. Sister Antoinette brought her mouth organ to
our classroom. That’s what the boys called it, no matter its official name. The
instrument was a piano-like keyboard the nun blew into, while playing the keys.
Never saw one before, and haven’t seen one since. To us, she was old but I bet
no older than I am now. Hard to gauge a nun’s age when her hair was covered
with the wimple and her body hid inside a shapeless dark habit. The old-lady
black lace-up shoes and the round rimless glasses she wore didn’t help. Most
nuns were sexless and old, in our experience. Sister Antoinette taught all
three sixth grade classes music. She brough it to us in Room 206 on Tuesdays
after lunch. She changed classrooms, we
stayed where we were, all day in that one seat, arranged alphabetically by last
name so I sat near the front, with a prime view of Sister’s spit when it leaked
out the end of the instrument after fifteen minutes of off and on blowing.
Our
school had finally purchased music books. Prior to that year, music instruction
had been church hymns and mass hymns and hymns for sacraments we were preparing
to receive: First Confession, First Communion, Confirmation, and the school-wide
yearly May Crowning. The new books had words and music, the staff and the
cleff, whatever those were. Words, to me, mattered, as they do today. What we
learned: As Those Caissons Go Rolling Along; Roll On, Columbia, Roll On;
This Land is Your Land; I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair; Fifteen
Miles on the Erie Canal—The American Songbook.
Sister
Antoinette may have been hard of hearing, not swift for a music teacher, but
Catholic elementary schools invested more in religion than the arts. Her slight
deafness, or pretended deafness, allowed the boys to make fun of her, her mouth
organ, the songs, and the spit. She was the butt of their jokes, and they piled
on while my anger increased like rain in a barrel.
Here,
in the person of Sister Antoinette, good was tackled and taken down. Bad would
not always be punished. Disrespect slithered along and the boys’ mocking
accrued as the music classes added up. I ached for Sister Antoinette, what she
acted blind to, or was blind to. That she let bad run riot disgusted me. She
was either blind and deaf, or a coward. They were just puny sixth grade boys,
who held our lives in their hands, in their words, in the ways they cut us down
or spared us. Us being the girls.
At
the end of music class one day, Sister left our room for hers. I rushed to Mr.
Miller, our usual teacher, who’d returned to assume his class.
“I
need to tell Sister something,” I said.
He
waved me on. “Well, hurry up.”
I
dashed next door, to a classroom like the one I’d just left, full of trapped,
mopey sixth graders.
The
nun’s bleary eyes took me in their focus.
“Sister,”
I said. “I’m not like those others. I’m sorry they won’t listen, won’t behave.
But I’m not like them.”
She
nodded, she probably thought I was nuts. Or a suck-up. And I guess I was.
Because it was a lie, and
not even my best lie. With no spick of rain or salt. The lie lacked the fork.
The lie lacked spice. Bold-faced, it was the lie trying to get across the
border, the one where an adult would take note of a child, where the spotlight
shone down through the young one like a knife pinning her to the earth. The lie
was in the child’s mouth, there right now, glinting on her molars, x-ray-ing
the wisdom teeth still inside her gums. Nothing else in the world was so shiny
as her standing before the woman, and making the child, herself, into a spare
truth. She was a tattle tale. She was her own livid dream.
May
Crowning arrived, an evening of whole-school procession, class by class, grades
one through eight, around the school and church grounds, praying and singing to
the Virgin Mary statue in the parking lot, amid her circular bed of flowers.
Children were instructed to bring a flower from home, then the flowers were
collected in each class and one representative brought the room’s bouquet to
the Virgin, stepping out from the rest of the children.
Mr.
Miller couldn’t attend, so he sent his wife to organize our class. Mrs. Miller
didn’t know us, she was ignorant of who merited the bouquet. She deferred to
Sister Antoinette’s choosing.
Thus
I earned the great honor with great treachery. I wanted the privilege and I
also didn’t want it, a chance to grandstand, to draw my classmates’ attention.
I processed with Room 206’s bunch of flowers, for all to see, and who was
watching anyway, except God? My skin burned with my-only suspicion Sister had
chosen me due to music class piety. I had always been a head-down
don’t-make-waves girl, complete your work, do it well, make your parents proud.
Up to then, every “A,” every holy card, every gold star I earned, I earned, but
I snagged the May Crowning honor by tattling. What’s worse, I bore it alone–punishment
of sin, demerit and demotion, demolition of a child’s small will.
Look
at me, at an age older than then-Sister Antoinette, still flush with this sick memory.
Priests and nuns, with their voodoo, they really needled us good.
Folz
Boys
were smart but girls were smarter, until junior high when boys wised up, quit
their high-jinks, or they managed high-jinks and high math like salt and
pepper, one in each hand. Where girls suddenly found the allure in dumbing
down, noted how not-so-smart girls, even slutty girls, caught the boys’ eyes.
We noted and absorbed as if by breathing, that knowing wasn’t all there was to
knowledge. We were twelve.
Then
the rumored math teacher walked in. Newly-minted, he set to teaching us seventh
grade algebra. Mr. Folzenlogen, only the second male teacher the school had
ever hired in those heady experimental days of 1970. Even nuns had to nod to
the changing times. They let their crow ranks be infiltrated. And we were ready
for pants.
Mr.
Folzenlogen charmed us from the start. Blue-eyed, almost twinkly blue-eyed if
you must know, he had a few freckles across his nose, just the right amount.
Black-rimmed glasses were his one cast-back, in this wire-rim time, to his own
school days. He had a kind voice, a manner wrought with good cheer, with making
math fun, and for the boys, sure for them, utter jokiness, for he knew he had
to win them over first, and he did, with a maneuver he displayed on his first
day.
Math
was for figuring, and figuring was chalk on a blackboard, and chalk was Mr. Folzenlogen’s
lasso. My uncle had a wart on the underside of his forearm, about an inch up
from the elbow. Look for yourself and you might see a slight dimple on your own
arm there. In this spot on Mr. Folzenlogen’s “almost-elbow” he set the stub of
chalk he’d chose to write with and then in one motion snapped his arm, let the
chalk drop and caught it in his hand. His signature move. First, we were
tickled by it, then we took it for granted. It was his nervous tic, his
trademark. He roped us in; we were caught.
During
out-of-school time, the boys worked at mimicking the move, then perfecting it,
doing it swifter and cleaner than Mr. Folzenlogen, if they could, as they
bragged they could. What boy doesn’t want to best his brother, his father, his
teacher, his boss? Because here was the time when the boys we grew up
with—those boys we’d sat alongside in classrooms since first grade, who we’d
tottered behind at school skating parties when they rolled past us faster and
ten times more recklessly, who we’d passed notes for while trying to earn their
favor—these boys were coming into their own knowledge that they were bound to
outpace the fastest skaters, the nuns’ crabbiest lectures, the most charming
math teacher.
If
life was a race—and at that time junior high encompassed all of any life importance
to us—then Mr. Folzenlogen drew our starting line with his chalk.
Facts in Five
In
a ranch house, in a house of achieving, lived a family of smarts. To you he was
a just a boy. A smart boy, but still a boy. Boys didn’t much take notice of
you, except that you were smart, too. Not smartest, but among the smart. Also among a group of boys and girls, all
smart, in a certain geographic radius within the same Catholic grade school, in
the top reading and math groups. All on the accelerated tracks of ninth grade.
It
was a wretched time, especially for smart boys and girls. Yes was on the
stereo. A cinnamon cake baked in the oven, its welcome aroma in place of the
parents who were gone, or at least unseen. Danny was your host for Facts in
Five.
Invited
were Sue, John, Tim, Danny, Karen, you.
Sue.
A girl among brothers, lived just over a short hill, a distance your mother permitted
you walk when you were six, if you carefully crossed the street. Sue’s backyard
had a tall slide like those at playgrounds, and a sandbox, a fence where the
large yard went larger. There were sleepovers at her house. The morning after
one slumber party, all were carrying cups of hot chocolate down the stairs to the
finished basement. You slipped on the carpeted steps, splashed hot chocolate
all over.
Karen.
Came to the crowd later, later being fourth grade; the rest started as one group
from the first grade gate. She played the flute, she had a beagle named Penny
who you adored and petted every time you visited. She enjoyed a free rein that
made you green-eyed; she attended Seals & Croft and Yes and Alice Cooper
concerts on school nights. As her Biology lab partner, you heard of these
escapades, what your mother would never allow.
John.
A brainiac in a family of brainiacs. He wore glasses, for many years
black-rimmed plastic, but in 1972 they were gold wire rims. You invited him, as
your “guest,” to Straight A ticket baseball games once or twice. Double dates,
parents still driving, dropping off and retrieving, no romance, no matter how
much you wished. The baseball was forget-able.
Danny.
His brothers and his baby sister were all freckled. Some few, some many, Danny
many. Blond haired, a little bit of a tic in the slight way he often adjusted
his head on his neck. A math whiz. A prodigy. You didn’t know the select classifications
they have for behaviors and personalities. Your junior high classrooms had
acoustic tile ceilings. And Danny counted the length and breadth of dots on one
tile, and then counted the tiles and multiplied, or whatever math to determine
the number of dots in your classroom ceiling, an astronomical number that didn’t
stick with you. Just Danny being Danny.
Tim.
Another genius, or maybe he memorized facts and trivia really well, maybe he
had everyone snowed. In fifth grade he gave you a gold and crystal ring from
the gumball machine, so for a brief time you considered him a boyfriend. He
taught you how to roller skate one Saturday afternoon in Price Hill, that
roller rink long ago demolished. He took the errant path during the ascendance
of grass, those heady high school years, where he got lost in the weeds.
You
were all smart, and backward in boy-girl relations. To develop a sexual self,
to flirt, to tease, to be honest—where are the books for that? All had sat in
the same accelerated classes in Catholic school until age fourteen, then split
for sex-segregated high schools, and Danny helped mend the rupture with his
Facts in Five.
You
stumped each other with questions, five facts, a pre-Trivial Pursuit trivia
game. The boys played air guitar. Rod Stewart was Maggie May-ing. Later, you were
on the Roundabout.
“In
and around the lake
Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there”
Cinnamon
cake that Danny baked—a boy that baked!–and the time it took to devour
it. Boys wolfed it down, girls licked
fingertips and then pressed fingertips into crumbs, brought crumbs to tongues,
tongues being the point. A keep-away game devolved from tossing a ping pong
ball, to tickling, wrestling, touching.
No
boy dove for the ping pong in your belly or armpits. Karen and Sue
whirly-dervish- kicked, the shag carpet electrified their hair. They had tears
in their eyes, happy tears, fever tears. Never had they been more
clear-eyed. You barely contained your
want to suffer a rug burn, a pinch, to tear up from over-tickle. Shrieks– the
good kind–crabbed and died in your throat. In your diary you would call the
afternoon half-hearted, hard-hearted, a catalogue of rust.
You
slumped in Danny’s living room, on the floor because everyone was on the floor,
the rug a comfort that equalized heights. It was hotter on the floor since you were
closer to the core of the earth. The boys’ top lips, where they would later
grow moustaches, dimpled with perspiration. They were in every game to win. And
you? You didn’t know one fact, much less five.
There
was little color to these memories except…
The
pale pink of the fetal pig Karen and you flayed and labeled.
The
iron rail you gripped amid skaters shouting and wheeling, and Tim encouraging
yes, yes, yes alongside you the whole rink’s circumference, the din-filled
cavern where you bloomed.
The
blond table where Danny rap-rap-rapped his knuckles. He dumped Facts in Five
from its box, and your crowd took the kitchen. Your elbows dug into cake
crumbs, as you leaned in with magnificent feigned ardor.
Pokeberry Interlude
See
these poison berries? An elemental player in our summers, in our games, in our
imaginary world of princesses and queens. A girl imprisoned, a boy must rescue
her. She was carried away in a wagon into the woods. The wicked queen brewed up
the poison berries which grew plentiful in every damp corner of the woods,
alongside the long hill that was our backyard. The gullies especially favored
the pokeberries. In the sandbox, with the muffin tin, we “made” muffins topped
with pokeberries. We never thought of
eating them. Pokeberries were props, they stained our fingers, they made the
birds crap purple.
Israelite Village
My
Israelite village could not be transported by bus to school. Our classrooms and
busses were overcrowded. The bus drivers insisted we sit three to a seat. Small
skinny children could pack in like sardines, but we carried school bags and
lunch boxes and we wore bulky winter coats, girls clad in uniform skirts and
white anklets. Our little bowling pin legs chapped and went numb at the bus stops,
so some girls in the coldest of weeks wore leggings but had to shed and store
them in their lockers.
Three
to a seat provided no room for my Israelite village anchored to a very large
rectangle of poster board. It would be
smashed in transit.
“Your
daddy will have to drive you to school,” Mommy said.
My
daddy was an up-and-at-‘em guy. As usher at Sunday 8 o’clock Mass, he arrived
at the locked church and had to wait for the priest to let him in. Weekdays at
work he was first to arrive, and started coffee brewing for his colleagues. He
left home in the dark and he came home in the dark, especially during winter.
And he dropped me off at the school in the dark—except for the parking lot
spotlight and green glowing emergency exit lights– before anyone but Mr. Burke
the janitor stirred.
My
fourth grade class was in the new annex, off the basement cafeteria, an area
that had housed the Undercroft until the summer’s renovation. The rooms down there had windows at the top
of the wall where we could observe feet walking by– three fourth grade
classrooms and a one-room library. Before that we had Bookmobile visits.
Outside
my classroom I slid my back down the wall, tenting my legs and warming them
under my uniform skirt. My Israelite village I placed carefully flat on the
floor. I straightened the pipe cleaner
men and women. I pressed down on the edges of the short cardboard tube that
formed the village well. Alongside my project I poised my school bag and my
lunchbox, handles straight up and ready to be grabbed once someone came and
brought me light.
Groundhog
I
was a child who could not bear the spotlight, nor the teacher’s disappointment,
my classmates’ rubber necks, the soul-deficient shotgun-shouldered lack. I
completed extra credit like a demon. I was already in Sunday night bed when
horror struck me. I jackknifed to sitting beside my snoring sister, my heart a
mallet beating the bars of my wispy chest cage. I forgot to write a school
report due first thing Monday morning!
Daddy
lounged on the living room couch watching television, but my mother stood
ironing in the kitchen where the glow of the wall lamp my sister made in Girl
Scouts turned everything, including Mommy, soft and golden. Soft-gold-Mommy, in
her untucked button front shirt and pedal pushers, penny loafers yawning over
her insteps. She never slouched at the ironing board; she shoved into the press
of the iron, every item flattened, hot perfect percale. Her hands adeptly
wielded the sprinkle bottle and the Procter Silex. Solution, heart salve,
comfort – Mommy!
“What
are you doing up?”
“I
have a report to write for tomorrow.” I was unlatching my school bag and
fumbling inside for pencil and lined paper.
“Just
now you remembered?” Her tone doubtful, or Sunday night-weary.
“I
said I forgot.” I sat, the scalloped shaped wood of the kitchen chair cool
through my nightgown.
I
chewed the eraser, my mind blank, my heart skipping madly along with the
elapsing minutes. Time and fear held hands, embedded in Al Schottelkotte’s report
from the living room TV. Whenever I heard the 11 o’clock news pipping through
the walls, I panicked. Why couldn’t I fall asleep? I was a child insomniac who
chewed orange baby aspirin to help me relax and hoodwink sleep into my lair.
Panacea, placebo, no words on paper. It was late and I wouldn’t be back to bed
for a while. I had no story, no report.
“I
can’t think of anything!” Goody-two shoes anguish.
I
cried, I chewed baby aspirin, my teeth marks mucked up the pencil that was
cramping my hand. My life lacked story, spark, lift, surprise. I had nothing to
shape or build a report around.
Mommy
said, “Why don’t you tell about Mary and the groundhog?”
Downstairs
neighbor Mary Clements, bottom tenant matching we top-floor renters, she’d been
about to drop trash into one of her outside metal garbage cans when she
was…think of a good apt word—ambushed? surprised? scared out of her wits?—Mommy
challenged me to describe it like it happened to me even though I never
witnessed the animal popper. The story was my mother’s heresay, and she passed
it to me like an heirloom.
“Go
on, use it. Make up the rest.”
You
might as well accuse me of knitting the fabric surrounding Mary, her groundhog
and his shiny barreled hideout. I fashioned my report, and thus a fiction
writer was born. Thank you, Mommy. When I sleep, because of you I dream.
Rosary
A
verbal prayer formula, a mantra, its rhythm and pronouncement, bears power. This, the Sisters would have us believe.
Prayers have less sense and information inside them and are more like the
Essence of God. Such words repeated, or even better, chanted, create a sound
temple, a sealed sacred place, a zone of contact with the divine. Spoken prayer
surrounds and envelops us in holiness.
Prayer
then is the trance, the ecstasy, an insensible mantra that facilitates rapture—like
the trance brought on by praying the Rosary. When I was a little girl I prayed,
especially when I couldn’t sleep, Hail Mary after Hail Mary, decade after
decade, rote and repletion that ran together in my head like a stream or a
train, failing eventually into nonsensical babble, the words eliding, skipping,
no thought, no real thought, in the praying. But while babbling, inside the
babbling, my mind closed off other things and spiraled me into something both
smaller and larger than prayer beads and prayers. The Rosary, as mantra,
brought my smallness closer to the bigness. As a child, this ecstasy slayed me.
I believed utterly, not a whiff of doubt in God as my Savior, in Jesus my
rescue. I’m not much able to get inside that prized babble anymore; too much
noise, too much right brain-halt, I’ve lost the naivete and trust. But I’ve got
a Rosary stashed somewhere, I know.
Voting on Arrow
Without
speaking the words, we somehow knew since the time of President Kennedy that we
were Democrats. Mommy and Daddy weren’t political, and it was the rare family
discussion that touched on government. We knew that Tricky Dick was mocked and
pitied, Bobby Kennedy revered, and Ronald Reagan dissed for being
movie-star-folksy. What crested the waves of our supper table talk: Daddy’s
commission check, what could be froze from the garden, the knocking noise in
the car, quiz me on my vocabulary words, and sign this permission slip. I will
say this– and it was not shocking, it was no ripple in the norm, it just
was–my parents voted every November.
They
did it quietly, without discussion, almost ploddingly. Once they took me with
them to vote, this in the days when polling places had sometimes been assembled
in the basements of neighbors. It’s true we lived in a rural area. They took me
with them to Arrow, a street off Boomer Road, about a mile from our house. I
was small because I remember standing among their kneecaps in the tiny lighted
booth areas. From over my shoulder in that rearview far-off, I can see me
wanting to more than stand alongside them in their civic duty. I wanted to vote, to pull the lever or color
in the box (I excelled at coloring!). The Arrow basement appears green-hued in
my memory, grassy and with hope. The green lighting in each of the individual
voter stations told me “go,” be positive. You there, it’s a privilege.
Kreimer’s Interlude
A
gaggle of girls sat on Kreimer’s front slope, that small dip to the Stop sign
plugged into their yard, or rather into the ten feet of public property at the
intersection of Boomer and Race. The four way Stop slowed plenty of hot rods
for our inspection, the drivers and riders offered up, or so we expected, for
our perusal. All of us under fourteen, a couple only ten or eleven years old.
Tanned summer girls, aimless. Barefoot, short-ed, middy-shirt-ed or haltered,
with nothing much to halter. Not smoking yet, but we might as well have held
cigarettes. We posed and screamed and shouted to boys as they slowed or
screeched to their stop. Race Road had the hills they liked to hop. Hot-rodders
passed by, windows all open and they smiled, hooting at us. Or convertibles,
maybe on their way down to the Par 3 Golf Course, the driving range, the snack
bar, but heavens, no liquor. We tried buying cigarettes there. That didn’t fly.
The boys, teenagers, not very often men, but yes, sometimes young men, even old
men (in our minds they were old) they slit their eyes at us, estimating,
split-second rejected us. But nothing wrong with a little jive at the Stop
sign, dusk coming on fast, the clover and onion grass perfuming our butts, the
sweat pearling at our hairlines and pasting long hair and ponytails on our
necks. We would slouch home to watch innocuous summer re-runs, the riders and
the drivers meant for darker, dirtier ruin. We had no truck with that. We
tossed it all off like sweat, sweat that blackened the already black road, the
newly set tar, just another summer job that brought workers to our street and
men into our lives. Men and their whistles, which we craved without
understanding.
Christmas Coats
Aftershave,
perfume, leather, cold gusts trapped in molecules of wool and fur collars,
mothball smell, heady in the spartan bedroom where the coats were piled on
Grandpa’s bed. The cranked heat and the laughter, your grandma’s cackle and the
booming baritones of your uncles, the warm light downstairs, curled around your
feet in their patent leather shoes, your good shoes. Christmas seeped through
the floor boxes for cold air return. You called them radiators, but they were
really the opposite. Radiators were free-standing metal monoliths you must not
touch lest you burned. They were seething pieces of furniture.
Christmas
coats were shed in the spartan bedroom shared by Grandpa and Uncle Joe, your
bachelor uncle, the good timer adored by every niece and nephew. Handsome,
happy-go-lucky, in service to his mother and father. Only later, many years
later, would you consider him chained to this tan room, with tan bedspreads on
the twin beds, tan furniture, real wood, but not Grandma’s rich and dark dresser
set across the hall. The blonder wood was spare mid-century modern, though you
didn’t know that style-name yet. Two beds and a chest of drawers. Atop the
chest presided a familiar Virgin Mary statue. Your own chest of drawers at home
had one. Mary was blessed and beautiful, hands folded as she stood forever
looking down on you, praying for you, because you needed those prayers.
Grandma’s
room across the hall was a womb of dark wallpaper, coral pink bedspread and
draperies, the dark polished wood of her dresser, which was stocked with
glorious perfume bottles, just as your mommy’s dresser. Here Chantilly and Lily
of the Valley. Mama’s had Tigress and Ambush. Your mommy was no sexy thing but
she bought with the times. Her party dresses would be your dress-ups one day.
Till then, you stroked her satiny skirt when you sat on her lap. She drew you
close, you little imp, protecting you from what?—the cold? the booming uncles
with their sloppy kisses?. Your family was somehow outsiders in this Catholic
bosom, though you were as Catholic as children come. Mommy was the outlier, the
Protestant who attended no church, and who ushered you girls out the door with
Daddy to eight o’clock Christmas Mass so she could enjoy a bath.
Aldona
Our
1960’s American neighborhood, more rural than suburb, with roads hilly and twisty,
no sidewalks, had backyards that declined into woods, ravines, and pastures of
cows, sheep, horses. Our neighbor to one side had ponies. Our neighbors’ family
names: Sanders, Donahue, Taylor, Griffith, Mueller, O’Donnell—Germans and
Irish. We celebrated Sunday Mass one mile up the road at St. Ignatius Church,
our parish for church and school. Our—everyone’s–parish. We spoke English,
except the Binder’s old German grandmother. That grandmother didn’t count. You
only met her, and smelled her, when she opened the door to you peddling Girl
Scout cookies.
One
across-the-street family had emigrated from Lithuania–a country you’d never
heard of. The boy and girl were called Algist and Aldona, with last name
Liauba. Their language crunched consonants; the one word I recognized from Mrs.
Liauba was her daughter’s name—Aldona. I felt between us a special link, since
with my name Donna, we were called nearly the same. Likeness begun and ended.
Aldona, blond and fair-eyed, paled beside my dark brown hair and eyes. My hair
was curly, hers straight. We were both skinny. She was older, and a loner, you
hardly ever saw her.
We
didn’t know the word immigrant. Friends at school and on our street were the
same in my eyes, our families had been Cincinnatians for at least two
generations. Even most of the grandparents spoke English, owned farms or
houses, were established Americans. What
to think of the Liaubas? Their house smelled like no other house, with their
particular cooking. Their language abrupted the scenery. The parents didn’t pal
around with neighbors, and the children kept to themselves. Maybe three times
at most Aldona invited me to play in her finished basement. It was
linoleum-floored, with impossible light for a basement and airy because of
block glass windows set high up in the walls, sparsely furnished. Today I would
know to call the décor modern. Liaubas were miles ahead of us in style.
The Tall Book
It
was a tall book, one that fit only into the double deep desk drawer, bottom
right. This book of fairytales had a
cover shaped like a tall tree trunk. Depicted around its roots and the ground
where it anchored were mushroom, chipmunk, ant, acorn. Halfway up, a hole where
a squirrel peeked out and a woodpecker at work on a knot. The branches at the top
of the book sprouted off the edge. I carried this book like a log in my armpit.
Each
page featured a complete story. There were known stories like the Billy Goats
Gruff and The Woodsman, but one story I’d never read or heard before became my
favorite: The Pot That Would Not Stop Boiling. A gruesome-looking young girl
(horrible drawings on purpose?) was given a magic pot and brought it home to
her poor mother, poor home, poor village. All she need say was: “Boil, little
pot, boil,” and soon it filled magically with piping hot porridge that satisfied
her and her mother. “Stop little pot, stop,” were the words that made the pot
cease cooking. But satisfaction was rare, fleeting, if not downright absent,
and in that absence rooted greed.
One
day when the girl was away, the mother wanted to show off to the villagers and
got that pot’s magic going. But when the time came for quitting, she couldn’t
remember the command. Porridge overflowed the pot, then the kitchen, and onto
the streets of the village, sweeping all the people down a huge river of
porridge, until the flood rushed past the girl, who’d been visiting a neighbor
village. She rushed against the porridge current, all the way up the long tall
page to her home where she yelled, “Stop, little pot, stop!” Mother suitably
humbled, village destroyed, villagers mollified and ugly girl back “on top.”
What was porridge anyway? This story stuck with me, all its elements, down to
the white apron the little girl wore, her knobby elbows poking where she had
pushed up her sleeves, her hair thin and fastened in a sensible bun, her ears
big, even her lips gross in their largeness. The repelling illustrations
dizzied. For the first time ever, words came in second.
Santa
brought me this book one Christmas. It has long been torn, tossed, lost. If anyone knows it, please please tell me its
name or how I can find it.
Rock Of Ages
David
Cassidy’s was my first rock concert, the summer between seventh and eighth
grade. My then-friend Sharon and I raged with adolescent silly over him, the
kind of innocent yearning I doubt exists anymore. Adoring boy-man idols used to
be a rite of passage.
I
papered one bedroom wall with glossy covers and inserts of David Cassidy from Tiger
Beat and Sixteen. I swooned over The Partridge Family TV show and
The Partridge Family albums. I knew all their lyrics. David Cassidy’s favorite
artist, reported by the teen mags, was BB King. Who, I thought?
David
Cassidy announced a summer tour, and I begged, pleaded, whined: “Daddy, please
please please, if he comes to Cincinnati, promise me I can go.”
Daddy
resisted and then caved, the way he said okay to nearly everything we wanted, a
funny and unenforceable response since he was never the final arbiter.
A
Friday evening in June would be the breathless event, a night in which I could
barely stay in my shoes. I felt sure I’d levitate. But before that, a wedding
invitation arrived for the very same Friday, at the very same time. My oldest
cousin was getting married. Out of the question, our refusal to attend, or
further, my dragging a parent from that wedding so as to drive me to a David
Cassidy concert. My dad would not miss his nephew’s wedding. We’d already
bought the concert tickets. In my family, if we’d paid good money for
something, what had been bought would not be forfeited.
In
the back of church, Mommy lingered with me while the bride walked the aisle and
met my cousin at the altar. We slipped out before the vows, picked up Sharon,
and then drove on to Cincinnati Gardens, where I’d only before been to see the
Shrine Circus via free tickets from our landlord. Once we passed through the
admission, from the opposite side of the turnstile, Mommy said: “I’ll be right
here to pick you up when this is over.”
An
opening act played too long, and David Cassidy took the stage later than
promised, wearing a white-fringed Elvis-like jumpsuit. With the concert behind
schedule, I wondered if Mommy would return and drag us out before the end. I
wanted my “money’s worth.”
Driving from the Gardens to Cincinnati’s west side, and traversing the highway, fighting traffic, not to mention parking hassle or cost, meant she never went back to St. Theresa’s Church, or on to the wedding reception. She stood outside Cincinnati Gardens or sat in the car or remained planted at the turnstile where I’d turned my back on her. Waiting for four hours, in place, is what I would have done for my own children. I was just twelve or thirteen then, barricading against her moment by moment. One long, cruel I Think I Love You story, hardly about David Cassidy and all about my mommy.
BIO
Donna D. Vitucci has been writing forever, and publishing since 1990. Her latest novel, ALL SOULS, is offered by Magic Masterminds Press, as are her previous 3 — AT BOBBY TRIVETTE’S GRAVE, SALT OF PATRIOTS & IN EUPHORIA. Her work explores the ache and mistake of secrets among family, lovers and friends. She writes whatever in her head sounds good, and then she chops and squishes and compresses until it pleases her. Cadence has a lot to do with it. She lives in North Carolina, where she enjoys her cherished grandsons and burgeoning gardens. Her work appears most recently in Red Coyote and The Sextant Review; forthcoming at MemoryHouse Magazine, SinFronteras, and Gargoyle. Read beginnings from her novels and selected stories at: www.magicmasterminds.com/donnavitucci
“Ma, whaddya wanna do fur yer birthday?” I nervously ask my mother. Her fifty-fourth birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks and I am calling to find out if I need to take the day off to spend time with her. She still lives in our hometown, Staten Island, N.Y., while I live in Brooklyn—only fourteen miles apart, but a world away. I’m half hoping Mom says I don’t need to miss work. I nervously play with my short, black two-strand twists and wait with bated breath as I walk into my bathroom. Glancing at my smooth brown skin in the chrome-rimmed medicine cabinet mirror, I adjust my nose ring.
“Oh, I dunno,” my mother comments. Somehow,
she manages to make a two-syllable word (‘dunno’) have three syllables.
I’ve been asking Mom the same
question every year for the past four years, and each time, she seems surprised
by my question. Four years ago, when I turned thirty, I realized that if I wanted
our strained relationship to improve, I had to be more accepting of her and be
the one to make the effort to change it.
As a child, I was a satellite in my
mother’s world, soundlessly orbiting her. Mom often worked overtime at her job
as a psychiatric nurse so that she could send me to parochial school. That
meant she was usually either sleeping or getting ready to go to work when I
came home from school. The few times we were around each other, Mom rarely
spoke to me. She raised me to speak when spoken to, so I learned to be silent. I
interpreted Mom’s silence as disinterest in me and because she often complained
about being tired, I studiously stayed out of her way. A voracious reader, I secretly
wished that Mom was like those White, middle-class mothers I read about in the
Judy Blume and Nancy Drew books she bought for me each month—warm, doting, and attentive.
I assumed that she too, believed in the stories in those books and I didn’t understand
what I was doing wrong. So, I worked harder at getting good grades.
Before I started contacting my
mother for her birthday, I barely called her because we have nothing in common
except being Black women and even that we experience differently. Mom is a Baby
Boomer who never discussed race and racism with me, while I, her Generation X
daughter, constantly fumed to friends about the racial microaggressions and systemic
racism I faced at the historically White schools my mother worked so hard to
pay for. As a result, I always think about race and racism. I imagine
that we’ve both experienced racial discrimination and microaggressions, but Mom’s
response is to ignore them and work harder, while mine is to call out people and
fight back. An example of this was when I was called a nigger, the ten-year-old
version of me cussed out that little White boy the best I could. When I told
her about it, Mom simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “People are stupid.”
But the main reason I barely speak
with my mother is because she rarely calls me. I’m not sure if it’s because Mom
doesn’t want to talk to me, she forgets about me, or because she’s busy with work
and other family members. However, when we do talk on the phone, the ‘conversations’
tend to be soliloquies for her. This is a continuation from my childhood—all of
our conversations revolved around her: her work, her life, her
thoughts. But I am working to change our relationship and making the effort to
spend time with her for her birthday is part of that process.
As a result of those books and 1970s
television shows, I subscribed to the societal belief that every daughter should
want a good relationship with her mother. But by the time I turned thirty, I’d
accepted the fact that we would never be like those White TV families. As working-class
Black people, we had more important things to focus on, like surviving in a
borough that didn’t want us there and working twice as hard to get half as far
in work and in school. I wanted our relationship to improve not out of
obligation, but because it was the right thing to do. As a Black woman, I
believed it was my duty to foster a relationship with Mom in a world where we are
all we have. Also, I look like my mother: I have her almond-shaped eyes,
oval-shaped face, and very expressive eyebrows. Even though she annoys the heck
out of me, how could I not have her in my life when I am constantly
reminded of her when I look in the mirror?
So, today I pace while Mom thinks.
“Whaddya mean, you don’ know?” All
my life, I’ve worked hard to suppress my Staten Island accent because I think
it sounds ugly and coarse. It reminds me of the anti-Blackness I experienced
from White Staten Islanders. But when I’m speaking with my mother and I’m
frustrated (these two things often go hand in hand), it slips out. Staten
Island-ese sounds like a cross between Brooklyn-ese (think Saturday Night
Fever, Do the Right Thing, or Just Another Girl on The IRT) and New
Joisy-speak, but a little slow-a.
“I dun-no.”
“Ma-a-a-a-a-a-a!” Exasperated, I
try another route. “Well, if you could do anything for yer birthday, what wouldja
wanna do?” I’m still pacing.
“Oh, I dun-no…”
“Ma, yuh know we go through this
every year, right?”
“And every year, I dunno what I wanna
do for my birthday. I know what I want for my birthday, but I nevah know
what I wanna do for my birthday.”
“Well, whaddya want?” I ask
with trepidation, even though I know what’s coming next. I put my hand on my
Gladys Knight forehead, as if it will ward off the impending headache.
“A million dollas!” With that, Mom
cracks up. She has made herself laugh so hard that she doesn’t even notice that
I’m not laughing at the same old, tired joke she’s been making for years. I roll
my eyes, hold the phone away from me, and stare at it incredulously for a
minute. Then, I sigh.
“If you could do any-thing for yer
birthday, Ma, what wouldja wanna do?” I ask again, hoping this time will be the
charm.
“Hmm. I nevah really gave it that
much thawt.”
“Give it some thawt now, Ma. We can
do whatever you wanna do. We can go wherever you wanna go, and you can have
anybody you want present.” I plunk down on my futon and sit cross-legged. I glance
over at my orisha altar and silently ask Obatala to give me strength and
patience. Conversations with Mom are like walking with a toddler—slow-moving at
times, wandering to whatever topic catches her attention.
“Oh…” she responds finally.
Mom has never considered the fact
that she can choose who to spend her birthday with. I know this is foreign and radical
to her. I give her this option because my mother is still angry with my dad for
losing their rent-to-own home last year. My family had lived there for
twenty-four years and, in keeping with their overall lack of communication
about challenging topics, Dad didn’t tell Mom that he fell behind in the rent. As
a result, they were evicted. I figure not being with Dad will make her birthday
easier for all of us.
I can hear the cogs of Mom’s mind turning
through the telephone wires. At times, they creak as if they haven’t been oiled
in years and at other times, they quickly glide against one another.
“I wanna go to a casino,” Mom says.
I shake my head, astonished. In the
process, my hair shakes a bit and my large silver hoop earrings gently slap the
side of my face.
“A ca-seeno?! You wanna go to a casino
fer yur birthday?” I stop myself from climbing on a soapbox about gambling and
pissing away one’s money because I did say that if she wanted to do
something, go somewhere new—besides going out to eat at her usual spots, Perkins
and Charlie Brown’s—I would go with her.
“Okay, Mom. We’ll go to a casino.
Who do yuh wanna to go with, besides me? It can be just the two of us or you
can invite anyone else you like.” I half expect her to say that she wants Dad
to join us because they go almost everywhere together.
“Nobody.”
“Hunh. Okay, do you want to invite
any of your friends?”
“No.”
I am relieved. The prospect of
spending the day with Mom and her girlfriends would drive me to drink. They’re nice
enough, but my mother doesn’t seem to know any other reserved middle-aged women;
her friends talk non-stop and they would talk at me. In her friend group,
Mom is the quietest of them all. There’s Pat, a boisterous African American woman
who laughs so loud that God covers their ears; there’s Beverly, a garrulous Jamaican
woman who’s always got some rip-roaring tale about her family members, and then,
there’s the other Pat, an Irish American woman who claims to be a witch. Of
course, all of these women are psychiatric nurses like my mother.
“Is there any particular casino that
you’d like to go to? One that you’ve visited before or have wanted to visit?”
“No. I mean, I’ve been to Atlantic City
and that’s fine.”
My face involuntarily wrinkles in a
disapproving frown. Hmpf. You can go there any time! If I’m going to schlep
to a casino, it betta be someplace we can explore togetha, I think to
myself. Because Mom lives in Staten Island, she can get to Atlantic City in two
hours. Less, if she’s driving with her usual ‘lead foot.’
“How about we go somewhere you
haven’t been?” I ask.
As if on cue, the catchy jingle from
the 1996 Mohegan Sun casino commercial pops into my head. “Moe-hee-gun Sunnnnn!”
The first time I saw the commercial in the 90s, I thought, “Oh, cool!” But then
I realized that it was land owned by the indigenous Mohegan people in Connecticut
and I was ambivalent about the fact that an Indigenous tribe needed to make
money through casino ownership. Questions about reparations for Indigenous
people and the morality of facilitating gambling addiction, alongside images of
busloads of barely ambulatory senior citizens clutching walkers with those greenish-yellow,
Wilson tennis balls on the bottom, and smoke-filled rooms ringing with the
cries of people losing their life savings danced in my head. Shaking these
images out of my mind, I suggest we go to Mohegan Sun and Mom is game. She’s
not usually an adventurous type, but if she’s driving, she’s down to go almost
anywhere.
With that, it’s a done deal. Mom
and I are going to spend the day together, at a casino! I’ve never been to a
casino before because they’ve never appealed to me and even though it’s my idea,
I’m nervous about spending the entire day alone with my mother. Did I mention that
my mother doesn’t really talk with me, that she talks at me, without
pausing or coming up for air? It’s as if she’s throwing pasta at a wall and
seeing what sticks.
Most of the time when we’re on the phone,
I take a break by gently laying down the receiver while she’s talking and walk away
to tend to something more pressing (cooking, dusting, folding laundry, etc.).
When I pick it up again, I’m sure Mom didn’t even notice that I was off the
line (she never does). But driving together for almost three hours is daunting
because I can’t remove or shut off my ears, jump out the car window, or
anything subtle like that. No, I’m going to be stuck listening to my mother
talk at me for almost three-long-Gawd-forsaken-hours. Alone. Did I mention
that we’re going to be alone? I just want to make sure.
***
The
day of Mom’s birthday, I call her soon after I awaken at around 6:45 am, because
I’m fairly certain she’s awake.
“Heh-low?”
Mom sounds groggy. I doubt she’s slept soundly. Mom sleeps with the TV on; she
says she listens to it while sleeping.
“Hi, Ma! Happy birthday!!” A few
years ago, I began what I think is a cute tradition where I call my mother
twice a year—once for her birthday and once for mine—to wish her a happy
birthday. Mom never seems to fully get it, but she always humors me, says,
“Thank you” and then falls silent. In keeping with said tradition, that’s what happens
this morning.
“Whaddya doin’?” I’m trying to be
chipper. I’ve prepped and psyched myself up for this trip for the past two
weeks. I talked to all the people in my support system (i.e., those to whom I
have complained about Mom’s emotional coldness and seeming indifference about
my life): my girlfriend; my closest friends; my spiritual godmother; and various
people from my 12-Step fellowships. They all assured me that this would go
well, or if it didn’t go well, it wouldn’t go too badly. Honestly, I expect the
latter.
“Oh, just watchin’ the news,” Mom
replies.
“Where’s Dad?”
“In the living room, I guess.” I
imagine her shrugging as she says this. The living room is so close to my
parents’ bedroom that she can hear if Dad is there. I decide not to probe about
Mom’s lack of interest in Dad’s whereabouts. Since the eviction, Mom doesn’t have
a kind word to say to or about Dad; it seems as if he can do nothing right in
her eyes. This breaks my heart as Dad is the parent who taught me things
(chess, using hand tools, cooking, gardening) and let me ask questions. Although
Mom provided for my material needs, Dad nurtured me in his quiet, patient way.
“Okay,
so are we still goin’?” I ask with crossed fingers.
“Yeah,” Mom affirms.
Drat! I think to myself.
“Why? Did somethin’ come up?” Mom asks. She almost
sounds like she’ll be disappointed if we don’t go.
“No, just checking. What time do you
wanna meet up?”
“I’ll pick you up at eleven.” I
know that really means eleven-thirty, noon.
“Okay! See you then, Mom.”
***
Like clockwork, Mom picks me up at
noon. It’s just above seventy degrees, so I’m wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans,
and a pair of navy-blue sneakers. I’ve got a tan, lightweight jacket, my Nikon camera,
and a few toiletries in my forest green backpack. As my mother pulls up in her
navy-blue car, she’s smiling a bit.
“Hi, Ma!”
“Hi,” she says weakly. She stiffens
as I give her a peck on the cheek. For years, I thought Mom didn’t like it when
I gave her a kiss. I’ve since realized that she freezes up and moves
away when anyone (except young children) is physically affectionate with
her.
“I printed up the directions, so
we’re good to go!” And with that, we’re off! With WCBS-FM playing in the
background, I direct my mother to the first leg of our journey.
“How’s Cassandra?” I ask. Mom’s
relationship with my twenty-year-old sister has grown progressively worse over
the years. There’s a fourteen-year age difference between my sister and I, so
we’ve never been close. Although Dad and my sister had a great relationship, my
parents only found out that Cassandra was expecting because my mother snooped
in her things. By then, she was seven months pregnant with my niece, Kira.
“Oh, yuh know… she’s workin’
fifteen ‘ours a week at Sears. She’s makin’ signs and puttin’ them up around
the store. She seems tuh like it.” Mom shrugs and frowns.
“Fif-teen? Why so few hours?” Since
my sister isn’t paying rent and doesn’t have to buy anything for my niece, I
figure she can save money so that she can move out of our parents’ home. In my
mind, she’s taking advantage of them.
“Oh, I dunno. Yuh havta ask her.
But she took Kira to see Gabriel and his family.” Gabriel is my four-year-old niece’s
father, but he and Cassandra broke up soon after she became pregnant. My parents
didn’t even know my sister was dating someone, let alone that she was having sex.
“And, she’s been disappearin’ for ‘ours and then, comin’ back like nothin’s
happened.” Mom sounds indignant.
“Ohhh.” Glancing over at her, I
notice Mom’s thick hands gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter. Her nails
are freshly painted in Fire Engine Red, but her cuticles are dry and cracking.
Her Jheri curl is as moist as a freshly baked, Betty Crocker Bundt cake. Two
short, dark brown hairs sprout from her jawline and a few gray hairs insistently
peek out from her dyed, ear-length bob. My eyes get wide and I gulp. The
situation doesn’t sound good and I’ve avoided giving my parents advice on how
they should handle it. I steer the conversation to neutral territory—the song
playing on the radio. It’s Nelly Furtado’s, “I’m Like A Bird.”
“Hey! Didn’t this song win a Grammy
last year?”
“Oh, yeah! It did.” Significant discomfort
averted. For the next two and a half hours, Mom and I chat about her job,
Kira’s capers in daycare, the latest thing Dad did to piss her off, my mother’s
friends’ drama, and wherever else my mother’s mind goes. Much to my relief,
it’s a relatively smooth conversation. Mom typically only sees her friends two
or three times a year (even though they live in the same borough), so Dad ends
up being the person she talks with the most. However, she’s still pissed at
him, so she vacillates between berating him and chatting with him as if nothing
happened. It occurs to me during the ride that talking with me provides Mom a
much-needed outlet, so even though it’s draining for introverted me to be ‘on’
for this long, I oblige her. It is her birthday, after all.
When we finally reach the casino,
Mom parks the car, and calls Dad to let him know that we’ve arrived. While she
does this, I take out my little digital camera and start snapping pictures of her
and the place so we can have something to commemorate the day. I’m twisting and
turning like Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe and Gordon Parks, trying to capture the
way the sun’s rays land on my mother’s nut-brown face. Mom rolls her eyes at my
antics as she adjusts her oversized denim button-down shirt over her grey t-shirt.
She hefts a navy-blue tote bag over her right shoulder as she holds her cellphone
to her ear. Her gold-tone eyeglasses sit perched on the bridge of her angular
nose. I never noticed until now, but Mom stands upright like a solider—with her
feet about a foot apart.
“We’re heah! Everything okay?
Whaddya doin’?” she inquires, rapid fire. I don’t know how Dad does it. The way
Mom asks him questions, it’s like he’s completing an oral obstacle course.
“Oh. Okay,” she replies. I suspect Dad
said something satisfactory to Mom, for there is a smile creeping across her
face. I exhale a bit. It’s become difficult for me to spend time around them
when they’re together, because it’s too brutal and painful to watch. Mom is
harsh and scathing, while Dad says nothing in response. The rare moment he
snaps back—like a snapping turtle awakened by a child’s prodding—seems futile
in comparison to Mom’s vicious verbal attacks. It wasn’t like this when I was a
child; Mom was civil then.
“Alright. Well, I’ll give you a cawl
when we’re leavin’. Bye.”
My right eyebrow creeps up on its
own accord. I’m surprised that there was no badgering, no snide comment about
how “pitiful” my dad is. Mom seems…peaceful, placid, like the man-made lake
alongside the casino. I seize the moment and ask, “You ready tuh go in?”
“Yeah,” Mom says eagerly, as she
stretches and arches her back a bit. That slight smile remains on her face as
she steps forward in her black leather Reeboks and her navy blue, polyester
elastic waist pants. She looks as if she’s heading in to do a shift at the
state psychiatric hospital where she’s worked for most of my life. Her house
keys, car keys, and some keys from work all dangle and clank against one
another from the royal blue fabric lanyard keychain around her neck. I smell
the flammable Soft Sheen Care Free Curl Gold Instant Activator—even though I’m
standing four feet away from her—and am trying not to gag. I am well acquainted
with that smell, having had a Jheri curl when I was in high school in the
1980s. Twenty years later, Mom is still hooked and loves the look.
As we walk into the casino, I notice
the stacked stone veneer on the walls and the lit metal sconces. All the colors
in the casino are muted, as if we’re in the desert. That is, a desert that’s
actually a resort, with hundreds of slot machines and table games, several poker
tables, forty-seven bars and restaurants, multiple nightclubs, a hotel, a spa, a
golf course, a planetarium dome, concert and sports venues, and thirty-four
shops. There are lights everywhere—bright lights, flashing lights, dim lights,
and for some odd reason, strobe lights.
“My gawd! I hope there aren’t any
epileptics here, with all the strobe lights.” As a nurse, Mom always notices
the medical aspect of things. Meanwhile, I’m agog by the never-ending line of boutiques
chock-full of gorgeous things. I’m a sucker for jewelry and nice clothes; I
suspect it’s because Mom was never into those things. Both my grandmothers are
clotheshorses; Mom is a workhorse. I’m a cross between the two, a workhorse trying
to be a clotheshorse, but never quite succeeding. As I flit from store to
store, oohing and ahhing, Mom chuckles with her hands folded behind her. After
about two minutes, I realize she’s not even remotely interested in any of these
things, so I flit back to my mother’s side like Black Tinkerbell and steer her
towards what we came here for: the casino.
Once we enter the first casino room,
Mom is in her element and I’m getting whiplash, looking from side to side, up and
down. I quickly notice that almost all of the people here are middle-aged or
senior citizens. There’s an East Asian posse of seniors with canes and large, colorful
twenty-ounce plastic cups filled with something that’s making them guffaw and smile
broadly. Just past them is an equally large group of Black senior citizens channeling
the 1970s, wearing matching t-shirts, baseball caps, berets, and jeans, giggling
with glee as one of their own has just struck it big. On the other side is a
gaggle of White senior citizens in velour lounge suits chattering to each
other, as they pull down their slot machine levers in sync. The only people under
forty-five are Indigenous workers and me.
“Whoa!” I exclaim. “I had no idea…!”
“Whaat?” Mom asks. It’s also really
loud in here. I make a mental note to check my hearing when I get back home.
“I had no idea so many…older people
come to these places!” I’m not sure what the lingo is these days—‘old people’,
‘older people’, ‘senior citizens’, ‘elders’, or something else—and am trying to
be respectful.
“Oh, yeah! They spend hours, even
days heah. They come by bus!”
Just as I suspected, I think, pursing my lips in disapproval.
“Hunh.” I eye the elders, looking them up and down, trying to figure out their
deal. Where on earth did they get the money to be here? And what happens if
they lose it all? I wonder. But it’s too loud for me to think clearly and
too dimly lit for me to see much.
As I ponder the politics of the
place and grimace at the intermittent mournful cries, Mom finds a slot machine
at the end of an endless row of them and whips out a little black Le Sportsac
bag. I inch closer, peer over her right shoulder, and realize the bag is filled
with quarters.
“Ma! Ma!! Ma-a-a-a!!!” I shout
until my mother hears me over the din.
“Whaaat?” Mom barely gives me a
sidelong glance, transfixed on her mission.
“Can I have some?” I meekly point
to the bulging bag.
“There’s a change machine ovah
there,” Mom gestures over her left shoulder. This is the same woman who’s never
given either of her children a sip from her cup or a forkful from her plate. Why
on earth did I think she would spare some change?
“Okay.” I trundle off glumly to the
change machine. I warily gawk at everyone I see seated in front of hundreds of slot
machines that fill a room that has the size and acoustics of an auditorium.
“Cling-ca-ching! Ding-ca-ching! Clunk-a-dunk!” These sounds bounce off the walls
in supersonic stereo.
After getting thirty dollars’ worth
of quarters, I wander back to where my mother is seated. Serendipitously,
there’s an empty machine right next to her. It’s obvious that Mom’s done this
before: her eyes barely leave the screen as her hand dips into the bag of
quarters, picks up a quarter, drops it into the slot, grabs the lever, and
pulls it down. A broad, toothy smile fills the bottom half of her face, as the
light from the machine emits an eerie glow onto Mom’s face, making her look
like a zombie. I don’t know whether to be horrified or awed, so I silently mimic
her actions. Unlike Mom, I’m not numb to each successive loss of a quarter. It
feels as if pieces of me are dying each time. I grimace, groan, and barely
manage to stop myself from falling onto the floor, bawling in the fetal
position. This goes on for two solid hours. Mom and I seated side by side, both
losing money—I am the first to call ‘uncle’.
“Ma? You hungry?” I plead to God
that she is; I’m not sure if I can take much more of the overwhelming sights,
sounds, and loss of money.
“Not really… but I do havta go tuh
the bath-room.”
“Hunh. Well, I’m hungry and tired.
This place is wearing me out, Mom.”
Mom chuckles and flashes a smile.
“Shucks! Just when I was about to start winnin’ again.”
I blanch at the thought that I took
my mother away from a winning streak on her birthday, so I ask her if I am
taking her away at a bad time.
“Kinda… I lose some, then I win
some, then I lose some, and I keep playin’ ‘til I win it back. I was just
beginning the part where I play to win it back.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mom!”
“It’s okay.” Mom glances at her
gold-tone, stretch wristwatch. “We should be heading back soon anyway. It’ll be
dark soon and I wanna avoid traffic.” And with that, Mom gathers her things,
meticulously and unhurriedly. As she turns to me, I notice she walks like a
grizzly bear—slow and heavy.
We leave and grab something at a
McDonald’s on the way home because it’s her favorite restaurant. The car ride
back to New York is smooth and easy, as I ask Mom questions about her previous
experience at casinos. As she talks, there is a light in her eyes, and she
looks free. I’ve never seen Mom look free before and I am taken aback by both
the image and the realization. At some point, she mentions Dad and something he
recently did that pissed her off. Feeling emboldened by the ease and levity of
our conversation, I take a chance and ask Mom something we’ve never discussed
before.
“Ma, do you love Dad?” My breath
catches, for this is a question that I don’t know the answer to and I don’t
know what possessed me to ask this. A pregnant pause follows as Mom’s mind
registers the question.
“Yeah?” she replies as if she is
half-asking herself.
“You do?” I’ve never seen my
parents show any verbal or physical affection towards each other or talk about
one another in even remotely loving ways in the twenty-eight years they’ve been
together. I’m beyond shocked.
“Yeah….” Mom shrugs her shoulders
as if to say, ‘I can’t explain it, but I do.’
“Hunh.” I’m not sure what to say
now since we don’t discuss feelings in my family. But another question tumbles
out of my lips before I can stop it. “Did you love my father?” I’m referring to
my biological father, the man who co-created me. “Dad” is my stepfather, the
man who raised me.
“Oh, yeah! Even afta he made me
have an abortion.”
My head jerks involuntarily so that
I’m staring at Mom’s profile with the sun setting behind her. “What?”
“He made me have an abortion after
I had you.” Mom says this off-handedly, as if she’s talking about what she had for
breakfast this morning.
Another question forcefully pushes
past my lips. “How many have you had?”
“Two. One with your father, and the
other with Harold before Cassandra was born.” Harold is Dad’s name.
Feeling as if I’ve been punched in
my stomach and all the air has been sucked out of the car, I lean back
in my seat and quietly hyperventilate. I didn’t know that my mother had any
abortions, let alone two. As someone who’s never had an abortion or seriously considered
giving birth, I can’t imagine Mom as a young woman making such a life-changing
decision, nor can I imagine what it was like for her to undergo this procedure
as many times as she’d given birth—twice. I catch my breath and stare out the
window, barely noticing the lights from the storefronts and strip malls we pass
on I-395.
As I collect myself, I recall that
in my sophomore year of high school, Mom woke up early one weekend morning and quietly
rushed around before leaving the house.
“Where you goin’? It’s seven o’clock
in the morning!” I asked. I was reading the Sunday comics in the living room. Mom
isn’t a morning person, so seeing her moving around so quickly and so early in
the morning was unusual.
“To Washington. There’s a march,”
she replied, as she grabbed a tote bag and her jacket. Mom only walks to and from
her car, so I couldn’t imagine her marching anywhere, with anyone, for any
reason. Sixteen-year-old me stood with my mouth agape, watching Mom brim with excitement.
Mom’s pretty impassive most times and hardly ever looks excited about anything.
It was odd.
Bringing myself back to the present,
I ask, “Hey, didn’t you go to some march when I was in high school?”
“Yeah, the March fer Women’s Lives
in ’86. It was organized by NOW.” Mom responds, as she looks at the road. The
lights on the highway are all we have to guide us now.
“Wow! You marched?” I gaze at my
mother in awe.
Mom chuckles. “Yeah, for a bit. But
then I got tired, so I stood on the sidelines and listened to the speakers. It
was thrilling!”
“Wow. I had no idea.” I murmur,
turning back to look out the window. “You are full of surprises, Mom.”
Mom laughs and says, “I don’t know
about that….”
“I do.”
I’d learned more about my mother in one day then I’d ever learned in the thirty-plus years that I’d known her. All this time, I’d only seen her as someone who loved her job more than she loved her children. I never considered Mom’s inner life or what her life was like before she had my sister and me. Clearly, I really didn’t know my mother. The word ‘love’ was never spoken in my parents’ home. So to hear Mom say that she loved the two men she’d only ever been with is both jarring and oddly reassuring. Weary from the day, I lean back in my seat and ponder what to do with this new information and more importantly, how it will change how I see Mom from now on.
BIO
Lourdes Dolores Follins is a Black queer woman who comes from a long line of intrepid women and working-class strivers. She’s been published in Rigorous, Watermelanin, What Are Birds, HerStry, Feminine Collective, Writing in A Woman’s Voice, Writing Disorder, and elsewhere. When she isn’t writing, she works as a psychotherapist with QTIPOC and kinky people. Check her out at www.lourdesdfollins.com
Prev
