With a quiet rain at the open windows behind me, I stretch out on this old iron bed, my head and feet propped on pillows—just the way I like—and set about reading Marx. It's a Friday night, and that’s what sad and lonely women like me do on a Friday night: we read, watch TV, listen to the radio. And it’s nearly 10:00 when my phone rings. Ruthanne is in the city, with nimble voices in the background, the sound of people living their lives on a summer night in Manhattan. I can hear in her voice that she is feeling me out, trying to see if I will come to the city to join them. I tell her I am doing school work, that I am reading Marx—and she understands right away that I am not coming, that I am still in retreat. What she does not know is that being around happy people, people in love, and people falling in love, only makes me feel lonely. I see only the ways that they have managed to figure out what I have not. Their bliss only reminds me of how poorly I have handled things. How wrong I have been… And I would rather be alone. On a Friday night. In my quiet bedroom with the rain at the window. And a candle flickering on the nightstand beside me.
As soon as I hang up from Ruthanne, the phone is there again. It is the unexpected man from last week. The tall, dark man in the black hat, the noisy smile. I liked him last week—as a distraction, as a dance partner to celebrate carnival Brazil. But the music has faded, the night is over, and I am thinking only of the man I have lost. The phone goes to voicemail…
And I return to Marx. The 940-page Penguin Classic. I am earnest. And determined. But right away, I am confronted with words, with symbols, set up like dominoes on the page—and they begin to fall one into each other, collapsing neatly along each row until I cannot recognize their meaning. What I take away from this chapter is that everything is fluid, everything is in motion. And I understand that tonight. How things can change from one day to the next, how relationships change, that there is an inter-relation between so many things... But Marx is not interested in "this causes that"—like I am tonight. I know that I am here alone on a rainy August night because of things I have done, things I have said. Because I was not patient. Because I was not me.
So I continue. And read about commodity--the thing that meets a human want or need--and it makes me think about him this way. He has value to me—in his intellect, his smile, the way he adjusts his glasses when he’s working to make a point—and I see that his value is always in motion—depending on how we are relating to each other, and who else is waiting to claim him. Value, Marx says, is subject to a wide array of forces, and I see that so clearly tonight…. This commodity is useful to me in so many ways—as lover, as friend, as someone to tell my secrets to… But Marx says that exchange values are incoherent, that they are all over the place, because the commodity is perpetually in motion, and all things are commensurable in exchange. And as he orbits his circle of friends and family and acquaintances, colliding, melding, moving on, we are all finding and taking different things in and from him, and he with us... But I took too much. And now my use value is gone—at least to him. And that is all I can figure out tonight from these long rows of collapsed dominoes on the page…
The other night Rita and I have dinner in the city; we have not seen each other since last fall. She is there first, lovely in her blown-glass choker, and black & white sandals brought back from Spain. I sit across the table from her. What are you drinking? I ask. The drink looks familiar, and of course she names the cocktail that he often drinks. So I order one, too. Rita is brilliant—the smartest woman I know—and I like to watch how her mind works, how she goes about things. We talk, laugh, catch up. Finally I tell her how these past months have been. Her face declares shock, surprise—and I know the questions will come. We have been longtime friends, this woman and I, and I watch her struggle to recognize the me I describe: needy, demanding, impetuous. For the first time, she labors to make connections, to draw her conclusions. I am a stranger to her, this me I describe… Just last week my mother had cautioned that I will have a hard time with men. It will take a special man, she said, to give you the space you need, the alone time you require. And yet I revealed a different woman to him, and felt a tumult coursing through my hot veins. Gone was the size 10 foot that plods quietly along, sure-footed, content, in charge… Rita reaches across the table and says, you are in pain. And indeed I am. The bitter pain of regret—which I swallow that night with a big gulp of the drink that he so often preferred.
Yet there is nothing to be done. I have tossed my mistakes into a bag that I take out at times to look at and examine… And he is a disappointed man. With expectations and ambition that the choices he made got in the way of. He told me recently that he is on the path to the Zen of Fuck It. But he doesn’t see that he is closing himself off, shutting things down. He is a man without a home, as he moves back and forth, feeling not quite right anywhere. When he’s angry or hurt, he dreams of a place with mountain breezes and the ocean stretched out before him—a place where he will belong. He doesn’t see that the walls he’s constructed keep him isolated, unanchored. Doesn’t see that those walls prevent him from finding that home…
And so today is a new day, another beginning. The morning filters in at my back. I will shower, and pack. Get in my car, with the radio riding shotgun beside me, and drive out to where all the rich people are. But he will make me laugh, my brother—because he knows where my humor is stored. Always on the surface, ready to erupt, just needing the right thing to provoke it. And we will have one last feast together, and drinks over an open fire. Because I am losing him, too—to a lifelong dream, to a new ambition that will take him away from here. I’m getting too good at saying goodbye…
And after that, I will drive north to a room where we will discuss Marx in cool, measured tones in a brightly lit classroom with no place to hide. And from there, I will drive through a long summer night up onto the Cape—along a quiet Route 6, the sand welcoming me from the side of the road. And somewhere out there, the sea will be shrouded in darkness. I will roll down the window and listen to the ocean, rushing in and pulling away in a determined whisper. The air will be alive with the smell of all those creatures living in a prehistoric world under the water. And eventually on that long summer night, I will get to that place, way out on the tip, and hear the crunch of my tires along the gravel. I will stop. Get out. Stretch. Seventeen years of coming to this place—and it is still waiting. To heal. To restore. And, I hope, to forgive…
***
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Retail Therapy
It is two days now since the final blow landed--coming a day after hope, a day of reconciliation. Then words on a screen—those little black symbols in regular font—that leave my life shredded and quiet. My eyes tremble over the page, not daring to stop on any particular word until, finally, that last sentence, those last few words…
Like he used to do, I take to the bed. Sleep the sleep of angels. Dream of shiny new coins, a cool glass of water, music I have never heard before. I am naked between the sheets, the small fan on my nightstand fluttering breezy fingers along my bare shoulders, my neck… And then of course I wake up—morning knocking at my eyelids—and throw two reluctant legs over the side of the bed. Stand up. Stagger down the long hallway and gather the courage to look in the mirror. A new day. And I must put on a mask and ride the waves of heartbreak that wash over me this very long day. Some just licking at my toes, my ankles—and others gathering energy as they rush headlong at me, the wind at their back, and I stand braced for the collision of wave and foam against the sound of my bones breaking. I am glad, and slightly surprised, that I do not fall down this day. That I can stand there with my face to the wind and water and stare those waves down. But what else can I do?
Yesterday Amy says, let’s go to the mall. My guilty pleasure, the mall; my salvation today with a burning heart and battered limbs and no medication. Amy and I take my car, the windows down, a hot, sunny day. She says, I think you will have many lovers. Which is a good thing, I suppose, but those lovers should have been tasted before I met him. I would have known how to love through the prism of many faces, many bodies, all that space. But I did not...
At the mall, Amy and I have lunch, and walk the smooth, cool corridors. We stop to examine, to touch. We laugh—and the first time I do that, I am surprised by the sound that emerges. I remember that laugh rising up from my belly, erupting at the back of my wide open mouth. And I’m surprised to find that it is still there.
We go to Ann Taylor Loft, to Macy’s, to many other stores. At each place: patterns, color, lace. Pretty things that comfort me. I am a solitary woman without the eyes of a lover across a table from me, without a silky cursive fabric hinting at things to come. That will look good on you, Amy says, as I hold up a lavender-colored dress. For a brief moment, I imagine the first time it will come off, the first time someone will slip the filmy fabric over my head and push me onto the bed…
At the register, I recall A Pair of Silk Stockings and become Mrs. Sommers--indulging my own pleasure, my own escape. I buy three summer dresses, two scarves, a pair of black pants, a wispy top, three necklaces, a pair of sandals, one bold purple purse, and a blown-glass bangle that looks like you’re gazing through the eye of a kaleidoscope.
When I drop Amy off at her car, I am not done. I go on to Home Goods, Pier 1, TJMaxx, and K-Mart. Next to the bags of clothes in my back seat, I add a comforter, new bed sheets, curtains, a frilly pink throw pillow, a large sign that says “DREAM,” and a perfumed candle in a delicate frosted glass.
On the way home, I stop for a pedicure—and while my pretty polished toes dry, a woman works discerning hands over the tightness in my shoulders, and down the length of my spine...
Last night I was up until midnight, rearranging my room. I move the bed under the window—the moon at my back, the new day announcing itself gently in the morning. I shake the new comforter out over my old iron bed, hang curtains, light my pretty candle. And Lizz Wright sings I’m confessin’... When I'm finished, it is a new room for a new woman. And you cannot tell that he has ever been here. That he has ever stood looking down at me with want in his eyes and long graceful fingers starting to move.
***
Like he used to do, I take to the bed. Sleep the sleep of angels. Dream of shiny new coins, a cool glass of water, music I have never heard before. I am naked between the sheets, the small fan on my nightstand fluttering breezy fingers along my bare shoulders, my neck… And then of course I wake up—morning knocking at my eyelids—and throw two reluctant legs over the side of the bed. Stand up. Stagger down the long hallway and gather the courage to look in the mirror. A new day. And I must put on a mask and ride the waves of heartbreak that wash over me this very long day. Some just licking at my toes, my ankles—and others gathering energy as they rush headlong at me, the wind at their back, and I stand braced for the collision of wave and foam against the sound of my bones breaking. I am glad, and slightly surprised, that I do not fall down this day. That I can stand there with my face to the wind and water and stare those waves down. But what else can I do?
Yesterday Amy says, let’s go to the mall. My guilty pleasure, the mall; my salvation today with a burning heart and battered limbs and no medication. Amy and I take my car, the windows down, a hot, sunny day. She says, I think you will have many lovers. Which is a good thing, I suppose, but those lovers should have been tasted before I met him. I would have known how to love through the prism of many faces, many bodies, all that space. But I did not...
At the mall, Amy and I have lunch, and walk the smooth, cool corridors. We stop to examine, to touch. We laugh—and the first time I do that, I am surprised by the sound that emerges. I remember that laugh rising up from my belly, erupting at the back of my wide open mouth. And I’m surprised to find that it is still there.
We go to Ann Taylor Loft, to Macy’s, to many other stores. At each place: patterns, color, lace. Pretty things that comfort me. I am a solitary woman without the eyes of a lover across a table from me, without a silky cursive fabric hinting at things to come. That will look good on you, Amy says, as I hold up a lavender-colored dress. For a brief moment, I imagine the first time it will come off, the first time someone will slip the filmy fabric over my head and push me onto the bed…
At the register, I recall A Pair of Silk Stockings and become Mrs. Sommers--indulging my own pleasure, my own escape. I buy three summer dresses, two scarves, a pair of black pants, a wispy top, three necklaces, a pair of sandals, one bold purple purse, and a blown-glass bangle that looks like you’re gazing through the eye of a kaleidoscope.
When I drop Amy off at her car, I am not done. I go on to Home Goods, Pier 1, TJMaxx, and K-Mart. Next to the bags of clothes in my back seat, I add a comforter, new bed sheets, curtains, a frilly pink throw pillow, a large sign that says “DREAM,” and a perfumed candle in a delicate frosted glass.
On the way home, I stop for a pedicure—and while my pretty polished toes dry, a woman works discerning hands over the tightness in my shoulders, and down the length of my spine...
Last night I was up until midnight, rearranging my room. I move the bed under the window—the moon at my back, the new day announcing itself gently in the morning. I shake the new comforter out over my old iron bed, hang curtains, light my pretty candle. And Lizz Wright sings I’m confessin’... When I'm finished, it is a new room for a new woman. And you cannot tell that he has ever been here. That he has ever stood looking down at me with want in his eyes and long graceful fingers starting to move.
***
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Spirit of Odetta
I’m back at Lincoln Center, back in the south plaza. It’s another hot night, and the rain from this afternoon has made the air as thick as a New Orleans stew. The faces of the crowd collected here are sweaty, expectant. I have my 7-year-old by the hand, and we make our way to the front and find, like an offering, empty seats in the second row. We settle in with our drinks and our snacks—and I explain to my son that this will be a magical night, a night he'll remember. Why, he asks. And I tell him, because we are here.
When Lizz Wright takes the stage, I am not prepared. It is still light outside, a sequestered sun still trying to bully us. The lights on the stage shine pink, shine blindingly white as the band enters and takes up position behind drums, keyboard, the bass and guitar. And then she appears from the deepest recess of the stage—a graceful young woman in a long sequined skirt that she will clutch and squeeze when she’s inspired. She wears a beaded gold necklace that catches the lights of the stage and reflects them out to us like confetti on this breathless night. Later she will remove the necklace because of the heat of the night, because of the hot lights that bear down on her. Before she takes the stage, they tell us that she has been raised in the church, the daughter of a minister father and a mother who sang—so you’d think I'd be ready. But I'm not. Just a few lazy notes in, she steps to the mic and quiets us all. My son watches her with an intensity, listening, his sneakers stilled, his hands unemployed. In the first row, a blind woman holds her walking stick like a staff, and leans her head back in rapture to an unseen sky...
Behind a drowsy rhythm, she tells us in her smoky, sovereign voice about an easy rider; about giving the con man her all; about a man being there that she doesn’t remember letting in. As she sings, I feel emotion building from some unknown place in my belly, in the heaviness behind my eyes. I take in the smoldering sky—the sun having finally given up and yanked the night time over it like a blanket. On stage, she lifts two sculpted arms, and by the time she sings, What if I fall, and the water is cold?, I am sobbing, my chest heaving—a Roy Orbison cry tonight. Because I did fall, and the water is cold. Very cold…
And then the unexpected man appears just as I am wiping my tears and struggling to gain a quieter footing. He slips into the only empty seat beside me, here on the plaza, and I turn my mascara smudged face to look at him. He studies me for a moment and says, quietly: he does not deserve your passion. I know this, of course, but the heart is an unruly, intemperate thing that doesn’t listen, that won’t behave. I shake my head, knowing the truth, knowing that I have fallen in love with cold. That my heat and fire are not enough to warm him, not enough for him to stay.
I’m sorry, I say. To the unexpected man, who I wish was someone else beside me tonight. I introduce him to my son, who quickly peeks around me, and settles right back into his chair. The unexpected man pats my hand and says, I’ll be back—but I’m not sure he will. Yet as she reappears on the stage for her encore, there he is, carrying drinks for us all. She sings Amazing Grace a accapella, her voice thicker than this murky night. Fighting back tears, I lift the cup to my lips and swallow one small, muted sip.
Intermission.... and the stage bustles with roadies taking things down and setting things up. The crowd makes its way to the bathroom, to the concession booths scattered like children’s blocks in this open plaza. The unexpected man asks me if I’m okay—which I don’t think I am, but I nod anyway…
When Allen Toussaint takes the stage, there is a surge to the front. They are ready for New Orleans, ready to dance. Mr. Toussaint still has flecks of dark in his white hair, and he wears a suit on this hot summer night, as he sits behind the piano. Even in my sadness, I wonder how they keep the keyboards tuned on such a night as this. He strikes the opening chord, and the crowd moves, and jubilance is unleashed into a muscular sky. No dancing for me—at least not yet—because my knees ache and my heart is too heavy. I watch as people are pulled like magnets toward the source, to the open area in front of the stage. They go in pairs, by themselves, pulled by the seductive, thumping beat of that faraway city. I watch a man in a short-sleeved red shirt with seagulls on it dance with his woman. He is my age, with white in his closely cropped beard. Beside them, two older women dance together... when suddenly the man in the seagull shirt grabs the waist of one of the women, and they spin off together. She matches his step--they are aligned... She wears a black dress and pearls, and her smile is pure memory as she and the seagull man glide and spin. And with one fluid motion, she slips her purse from her shoulder and hands it off to a young man—a stranger—sitting in the front row, so she can move unencumbered. Because nothing bad could happen as she dances with a man in the plaza tonight…
And finally I, too, want to dance. Want to let my pain go. And so my son and I step out from the row of chairs and into the crowded space with so many other lost souls, and we dance together, my boy and me, on the south plaza, at Lincoln Center—the unexpected man watching us, as I think only of him…
***
When Lizz Wright takes the stage, I am not prepared. It is still light outside, a sequestered sun still trying to bully us. The lights on the stage shine pink, shine blindingly white as the band enters and takes up position behind drums, keyboard, the bass and guitar. And then she appears from the deepest recess of the stage—a graceful young woman in a long sequined skirt that she will clutch and squeeze when she’s inspired. She wears a beaded gold necklace that catches the lights of the stage and reflects them out to us like confetti on this breathless night. Later she will remove the necklace because of the heat of the night, because of the hot lights that bear down on her. Before she takes the stage, they tell us that she has been raised in the church, the daughter of a minister father and a mother who sang—so you’d think I'd be ready. But I'm not. Just a few lazy notes in, she steps to the mic and quiets us all. My son watches her with an intensity, listening, his sneakers stilled, his hands unemployed. In the first row, a blind woman holds her walking stick like a staff, and leans her head back in rapture to an unseen sky...
Behind a drowsy rhythm, she tells us in her smoky, sovereign voice about an easy rider; about giving the con man her all; about a man being there that she doesn’t remember letting in. As she sings, I feel emotion building from some unknown place in my belly, in the heaviness behind my eyes. I take in the smoldering sky—the sun having finally given up and yanked the night time over it like a blanket. On stage, she lifts two sculpted arms, and by the time she sings, What if I fall, and the water is cold?, I am sobbing, my chest heaving—a Roy Orbison cry tonight. Because I did fall, and the water is cold. Very cold…
And then the unexpected man appears just as I am wiping my tears and struggling to gain a quieter footing. He slips into the only empty seat beside me, here on the plaza, and I turn my mascara smudged face to look at him. He studies me for a moment and says, quietly: he does not deserve your passion. I know this, of course, but the heart is an unruly, intemperate thing that doesn’t listen, that won’t behave. I shake my head, knowing the truth, knowing that I have fallen in love with cold. That my heat and fire are not enough to warm him, not enough for him to stay.
I’m sorry, I say. To the unexpected man, who I wish was someone else beside me tonight. I introduce him to my son, who quickly peeks around me, and settles right back into his chair. The unexpected man pats my hand and says, I’ll be back—but I’m not sure he will. Yet as she reappears on the stage for her encore, there he is, carrying drinks for us all. She sings Amazing Grace a accapella, her voice thicker than this murky night. Fighting back tears, I lift the cup to my lips and swallow one small, muted sip.
Intermission.... and the stage bustles with roadies taking things down and setting things up. The crowd makes its way to the bathroom, to the concession booths scattered like children’s blocks in this open plaza. The unexpected man asks me if I’m okay—which I don’t think I am, but I nod anyway…
When Allen Toussaint takes the stage, there is a surge to the front. They are ready for New Orleans, ready to dance. Mr. Toussaint still has flecks of dark in his white hair, and he wears a suit on this hot summer night, as he sits behind the piano. Even in my sadness, I wonder how they keep the keyboards tuned on such a night as this. He strikes the opening chord, and the crowd moves, and jubilance is unleashed into a muscular sky. No dancing for me—at least not yet—because my knees ache and my heart is too heavy. I watch as people are pulled like magnets toward the source, to the open area in front of the stage. They go in pairs, by themselves, pulled by the seductive, thumping beat of that faraway city. I watch a man in a short-sleeved red shirt with seagulls on it dance with his woman. He is my age, with white in his closely cropped beard. Beside them, two older women dance together... when suddenly the man in the seagull shirt grabs the waist of one of the women, and they spin off together. She matches his step--they are aligned... She wears a black dress and pearls, and her smile is pure memory as she and the seagull man glide and spin. And with one fluid motion, she slips her purse from her shoulder and hands it off to a young man—a stranger—sitting in the front row, so she can move unencumbered. Because nothing bad could happen as she dances with a man in the plaza tonight…
And finally I, too, want to dance. Want to let my pain go. And so my son and I step out from the row of chairs and into the crowded space with so many other lost souls, and we dance together, my boy and me, on the south plaza, at Lincoln Center—the unexpected man watching us, as I think only of him…
***
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Carnival Frevo
Tonight I slip on a sleeveless summer sheath and a delicate pair of heels; pump a lithe perfume against the sensitive part of my shoulders, my neck—and head into the city. To Lincoln Center and carnival frevo, carnival Brazil. Applying lipstick in the dim light of my car, I drive too fast over the Henry Hudson Bridge, and down the West Side Highway. I sing along to my iPod, on my way to an adventure. Above the Hudson River, the sky is the color of wet sand, the moon hidden behind clouds, the air thick with heat and the promise of many good things. I have bandaged the other day’s wounds, applied ointment and cream, and taught myself again how to smile—practicing in the mirror, in the quiet of my car. I am so tired of pain, so tired of being left behind…
On the south plaza, the crowd is assembling, moving slowly onto the smooth gray stone, still warm beneath our shoes from the day’s heat, just beyond the Center. I pause alongside the fountain, and remember all those times I sat there—a majestic spray and the perimeter of lights mirroring my joy. Those were happier days when I was kissed with an open mouth, was loved with both arms and a man’s thirsty heart… Tonight, the fountain is under repair—like me and this wounded body, a string of caution tape stretched around my own bruised heart.
Along the plaza, sculpted trees lift long, graceful arms that are haloed in light from some unseen place below—and tall, courtly buildings stand anchored around us, like sentinels, like guards to make sure we don’t get too raucous tonight. Which is what I ache to do, what I want to have happen. Me alone and unloved on the flagstone plaza, the warm, quiet breeze my inconstant lover—like the man I knew before this. I know there is more than emptiness and pain, that my fire and heat are magnetic, wanted…
The band kicks in and the crowd begins to pulsate, to express their joy through shuffling feet, lilting hips, and fingers snapping out their pleasure. It’s not long before I am swept into the swell, into the energy of the people here tonight, and I move alone—carefree, captivated. My bliss lifts up into the dusky night to join hands with the rest of the joy that has been released up there. I feel every curve of my body, every rounded angle and swell, as I move, move, move… And suddenly the slightest touch of a hand on the small of my back, on my arm—and he’s there. An unexpected man who asks if I am alone. I am, I tell him, flashing a noisy smile that he flashes right back. But I don’t want to be…
And he urges me to a space just a few steps away--where we might move together on this hot summer night, under the watchful eye of those guardian buildings. You are the brightest woman here, he says as we move—and I suspect he’s talking about my dress, the flash of my smile, my polished pink toes. The drums and bass lay down a pulsing rhythm that draws the whole crowd closer, including the unexpected man and me. His face is just inches from mine, this tall stranger: gray licking at his temples, eyes as black and daring as mine. It’s a hot summer night—and we move, and we move, and we move…
Later we take a giddy walk down Broadway, two strangers, two open souls, on a fanciful night in the city. Still, he says: you are a sad woman, I can see. Which I don’t deny, but instead tell him that I won’t always be. I have lost a lot, I say, but I’m ready to find other things. I don’t like going through life empty-handed…
At the bar, he orders our drinks, and leads me outside to a small patio where music floats along in the heavy air from speakers no one can see. There are tables and expectant people—the sound of laughter, of newly ripened love. In the corner, white lights shimmer like crystals from a sassy tree. We sit together at a small glass table, the tension in my knees igniting a heat that I can feel each time I cross my legs. Above us, the moon and stars remain hidden, leaving us to the night and all its brassy shadows. Tomorrow, and my own jagged pain, float along somewhere with the music, waiting for the dawn, for this night to end, for me to reclaim them…
***
On the south plaza, the crowd is assembling, moving slowly onto the smooth gray stone, still warm beneath our shoes from the day’s heat, just beyond the Center. I pause alongside the fountain, and remember all those times I sat there—a majestic spray and the perimeter of lights mirroring my joy. Those were happier days when I was kissed with an open mouth, was loved with both arms and a man’s thirsty heart… Tonight, the fountain is under repair—like me and this wounded body, a string of caution tape stretched around my own bruised heart.
Along the plaza, sculpted trees lift long, graceful arms that are haloed in light from some unseen place below—and tall, courtly buildings stand anchored around us, like sentinels, like guards to make sure we don’t get too raucous tonight. Which is what I ache to do, what I want to have happen. Me alone and unloved on the flagstone plaza, the warm, quiet breeze my inconstant lover—like the man I knew before this. I know there is more than emptiness and pain, that my fire and heat are magnetic, wanted…
The band kicks in and the crowd begins to pulsate, to express their joy through shuffling feet, lilting hips, and fingers snapping out their pleasure. It’s not long before I am swept into the swell, into the energy of the people here tonight, and I move alone—carefree, captivated. My bliss lifts up into the dusky night to join hands with the rest of the joy that has been released up there. I feel every curve of my body, every rounded angle and swell, as I move, move, move… And suddenly the slightest touch of a hand on the small of my back, on my arm—and he’s there. An unexpected man who asks if I am alone. I am, I tell him, flashing a noisy smile that he flashes right back. But I don’t want to be…
And he urges me to a space just a few steps away--where we might move together on this hot summer night, under the watchful eye of those guardian buildings. You are the brightest woman here, he says as we move—and I suspect he’s talking about my dress, the flash of my smile, my polished pink toes. The drums and bass lay down a pulsing rhythm that draws the whole crowd closer, including the unexpected man and me. His face is just inches from mine, this tall stranger: gray licking at his temples, eyes as black and daring as mine. It’s a hot summer night—and we move, and we move, and we move…
Later we take a giddy walk down Broadway, two strangers, two open souls, on a fanciful night in the city. Still, he says: you are a sad woman, I can see. Which I don’t deny, but instead tell him that I won’t always be. I have lost a lot, I say, but I’m ready to find other things. I don’t like going through life empty-handed…
At the bar, he orders our drinks, and leads me outside to a small patio where music floats along in the heavy air from speakers no one can see. There are tables and expectant people—the sound of laughter, of newly ripened love. In the corner, white lights shimmer like crystals from a sassy tree. We sit together at a small glass table, the tension in my knees igniting a heat that I can feel each time I cross my legs. Above us, the moon and stars remain hidden, leaving us to the night and all its brassy shadows. Tomorrow, and my own jagged pain, float along somewhere with the music, waiting for the dawn, for this night to end, for me to reclaim them…
***
Friday, August 21, 2009
Choices
It was an explosive day—his size 13 foot landing solidly in my gut, my teeth, my head—the pain erupting like a 5-alarm fire. I swear I didn’t see it coming. It was a day like any other day, and then suddenly it wasn’t. And me, silly me, caught so unaware. Sitting there, wide-eyed and believing, when the kick came. Like an open bull’s eye that his foot sailed right through.
And I am an imposture, living my fake life. My unfamiliar life. After the blows land and he walks away, I tend to my wounds for a short while, but before I’ve even stopped bleeding, I turn away from the pain and back to my work. Check emails, take phone calls, read papers. Try to recreate an unremarkable day. Every now and again, I rub the swollen, bruised places on the soft part of my skin. But I don’t linger there too long—because even the gentlest touch in those areas is painful, makes me cry. Toward the end of the day, Liza comes in and says, you’re not okay, I can tell. And she’s right, I’m not, but I grab a mask from my desk drawer and slap it on quick. I’m fine, I tell her. Just tired. But as sometimes happens when I put my mask on too quickly, it lies obliquely on my face—and Liza walks away shaking her head. Girl, I hear her say, it ain’t none of it worth it…
Last night I sit with my son in a place that sells pizza and pasta and salad—and wine. My little boy and I skim the menu, make our choices. I want something new, something I haven't tried before. The man at the counter pours a quiet Chardonnay, and slides the amber colored glass across the flat surface between us. Here, he says in a lilting voice I recognize, it’s on me. He smiles, and I return an anemic smile—the best I can do tonight—and limp back to the table where my son waits, still deciding. Around us are families playing out their lives, making their choices. The young mother beside us feeds her baby pizza, chocolate cake and Mountain Dew. I wrinkle my nose at her choices, but just that one action pains me—and I remember that I am in no position to judge: my own life like a shattered picture window around me. No matter how I rearrange the shards, and make choices about the pattern, I cannot figure out how to put the window back together. I am laid bare without even a gas-filled pane to shadow me. And then suddenly, at just the right volume, a bit of reggae and then r&b, modulating from hidden speakers--and it soothes me and all the raw places along my wounded body. The man with the voice I recognize has made his choices known, and I see him watching me as I sip my wine and pretend to eat. He tries to read my story from the choices I make, moving my fork around my plate. And I ache to tell him that I no longer recognize my story, that I am bruised and hurt. That I am lost…
Out in the car, I study the floor beneath the wheel. Gas pedal and brake. And tonight I see the two things as symbols. Both are within reach of my delicately painted toes and the hard flat surface of my shoe. I test the resistance of each one, gently at first and then with more conviction. I am surprised at times by my own strength, even when I am wounded. It is a clear night tonight—the streetlights march along the avenue, lighting the way into the distance, into the future. My son and I are buckled in, ready for the ride—he trusting that I will make good choices, and me playing over the options in my mind, wanting desperately to get it right...
***
And I am an imposture, living my fake life. My unfamiliar life. After the blows land and he walks away, I tend to my wounds for a short while, but before I’ve even stopped bleeding, I turn away from the pain and back to my work. Check emails, take phone calls, read papers. Try to recreate an unremarkable day. Every now and again, I rub the swollen, bruised places on the soft part of my skin. But I don’t linger there too long—because even the gentlest touch in those areas is painful, makes me cry. Toward the end of the day, Liza comes in and says, you’re not okay, I can tell. And she’s right, I’m not, but I grab a mask from my desk drawer and slap it on quick. I’m fine, I tell her. Just tired. But as sometimes happens when I put my mask on too quickly, it lies obliquely on my face—and Liza walks away shaking her head. Girl, I hear her say, it ain’t none of it worth it…
Last night I sit with my son in a place that sells pizza and pasta and salad—and wine. My little boy and I skim the menu, make our choices. I want something new, something I haven't tried before. The man at the counter pours a quiet Chardonnay, and slides the amber colored glass across the flat surface between us. Here, he says in a lilting voice I recognize, it’s on me. He smiles, and I return an anemic smile—the best I can do tonight—and limp back to the table where my son waits, still deciding. Around us are families playing out their lives, making their choices. The young mother beside us feeds her baby pizza, chocolate cake and Mountain Dew. I wrinkle my nose at her choices, but just that one action pains me—and I remember that I am in no position to judge: my own life like a shattered picture window around me. No matter how I rearrange the shards, and make choices about the pattern, I cannot figure out how to put the window back together. I am laid bare without even a gas-filled pane to shadow me. And then suddenly, at just the right volume, a bit of reggae and then r&b, modulating from hidden speakers--and it soothes me and all the raw places along my wounded body. The man with the voice I recognize has made his choices known, and I see him watching me as I sip my wine and pretend to eat. He tries to read my story from the choices I make, moving my fork around my plate. And I ache to tell him that I no longer recognize my story, that I am bruised and hurt. That I am lost…
Out in the car, I study the floor beneath the wheel. Gas pedal and brake. And tonight I see the two things as symbols. Both are within reach of my delicately painted toes and the hard flat surface of my shoe. I test the resistance of each one, gently at first and then with more conviction. I am surprised at times by my own strength, even when I am wounded. It is a clear night tonight—the streetlights march along the avenue, lighting the way into the distance, into the future. My son and I are buckled in, ready for the ride—he trusting that I will make good choices, and me playing over the options in my mind, wanting desperately to get it right...
***
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
At the Pool
Today my son and I pack a quick bag and head to the pool. An uncaged sun unleashes a heat that snakes around us and squeezes tight. But he and I look to the clear blue sky and laugh at all that power. And he pushes me in the water first—and this time I allow myself to sink lower into its quiet pull, and to take my time coming back up to that vigorous sun, to the heat, to people enjoying a hot afternoon in August. Then my son jumps in, splashing me, his wet face flashing pure joy as he breaks the surface of the water and clings to my arm. And I am grateful for this one perfect moment, with my boy and me in the water, his matted hair and dripping face just inches from mine. His 7-year-old smile with all the holes in it. The sun at our backs, the sound of other people’s joy in our ears. A flawless moment, this... But it, and he, slip from my grasp before I’ve had my fill. I chase after them both, but they’re gone. He disappears under the water and lifts two sturdy legs in the air. And I recognize a much smaller version of my own flat feet, and laugh.
Pulling myself up the ladder, I step wet and dripping to where we have set up our things, and settle into my chair. Put on my sunglasses, lift headphones to my ears. My son is off with kids his own age—as he should—and I sit alone with my Sunday salvation singing in my ears. Around me, the lie that I have recognized as such plays out very believably. Children splash and swim; parents sit along the side of the pool, cooling their grown up legs in the noisy water; others gather in fleshy clusters on lawn chairs under the relative cool of the canopy. Fathers and sons play ping pong, shuffleboard. Beyond the pool area, women my age grill polenta and chicken for their men, create comfort and security around a picnic table for their sons and daughters. I search the women’s faces for cracks in the façade--but today I can’t find any. They are happy here at the Westwood, their families assembled around them like pegs on a board. And there’s me, loving my son and feeling like I’m doing it all wrong—because I am not that on a sunny afternoon in August. I switch my iPod from music to Bill Hicks, listening intently, even though I know every word in his act…
At the deep end of the pool, my son waits behind a cluster of boys for his turn to jump off the diving board. The boys are older, yet their bald shoulders and skinny limbs give them each a deflated look. I watch the boys ignore my son as he steps around to be a part of their boastful banter, part of their laughter. He laughs when they laugh, and I wait to see if they will acknowledge him, will welcome him into their fold. And then a younger boy my son knows joins the group, is recognized and welcomed by the older boys. And my son—my little guy—stands rejected, quietly waiting his turn at the board…
Many years ago, I walked along a hiccupping sidewalk in a housing project in a quiet, comfortless town. An uneventful day. Me and my newly erupted body walking along in cut-off jean shorts, a tank top and pony tail on my way to nowhere. It was summer. And so when my mother’s friend Janie called to me from her front door, I had no expectations. I was too young for such things, too young to recognize that Janie was acting on pure impulse that she would later come to regret. Rachel, she hollered, there’s someone here I want you to meet. And so I turned into Janie’s sidewalk, hearing excitement in her voice—something other than my own curdled boredom—and I stepped inside. It took just a moment to adjust to the darkened interior, Janie’s apartment familiar, comforting. At the table by the window, a man with short dark hair and my eyes stood up and extended his hand. This is your father, Janie said, clapping her hands together over her plentiful bosom. The man and I shook hands. And he sat back down, and we were done with all that.
And this is what I want to tell my boy today: that you cannot make people love you, cannot make people want you—and only a desperate soul, a futile soul, tries. And I watch him closely as the boys climb the ladder to the diving board and jump, tossing remarks over their wet shoulders like shiny coins that their friends scramble to pick up. But not my boy. He dances around to an unheard melody playing in his head, excited for his turn to jump, okay with being alone—like me, my little guy, like me.
***
Pulling myself up the ladder, I step wet and dripping to where we have set up our things, and settle into my chair. Put on my sunglasses, lift headphones to my ears. My son is off with kids his own age—as he should—and I sit alone with my Sunday salvation singing in my ears. Around me, the lie that I have recognized as such plays out very believably. Children splash and swim; parents sit along the side of the pool, cooling their grown up legs in the noisy water; others gather in fleshy clusters on lawn chairs under the relative cool of the canopy. Fathers and sons play ping pong, shuffleboard. Beyond the pool area, women my age grill polenta and chicken for their men, create comfort and security around a picnic table for their sons and daughters. I search the women’s faces for cracks in the façade--but today I can’t find any. They are happy here at the Westwood, their families assembled around them like pegs on a board. And there’s me, loving my son and feeling like I’m doing it all wrong—because I am not that on a sunny afternoon in August. I switch my iPod from music to Bill Hicks, listening intently, even though I know every word in his act…
At the deep end of the pool, my son waits behind a cluster of boys for his turn to jump off the diving board. The boys are older, yet their bald shoulders and skinny limbs give them each a deflated look. I watch the boys ignore my son as he steps around to be a part of their boastful banter, part of their laughter. He laughs when they laugh, and I wait to see if they will acknowledge him, will welcome him into their fold. And then a younger boy my son knows joins the group, is recognized and welcomed by the older boys. And my son—my little guy—stands rejected, quietly waiting his turn at the board…
Many years ago, I walked along a hiccupping sidewalk in a housing project in a quiet, comfortless town. An uneventful day. Me and my newly erupted body walking along in cut-off jean shorts, a tank top and pony tail on my way to nowhere. It was summer. And so when my mother’s friend Janie called to me from her front door, I had no expectations. I was too young for such things, too young to recognize that Janie was acting on pure impulse that she would later come to regret. Rachel, she hollered, there’s someone here I want you to meet. And so I turned into Janie’s sidewalk, hearing excitement in her voice—something other than my own curdled boredom—and I stepped inside. It took just a moment to adjust to the darkened interior, Janie’s apartment familiar, comforting. At the table by the window, a man with short dark hair and my eyes stood up and extended his hand. This is your father, Janie said, clapping her hands together over her plentiful bosom. The man and I shook hands. And he sat back down, and we were done with all that.
And this is what I want to tell my boy today: that you cannot make people love you, cannot make people want you—and only a desperate soul, a futile soul, tries. And I watch him closely as the boys climb the ladder to the diving board and jump, tossing remarks over their wet shoulders like shiny coins that their friends scramble to pick up. But not my boy. He dances around to an unheard melody playing in his head, excited for his turn to jump, okay with being alone—like me, my little guy, like me.
***
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Glass
The other night I stepped on glass. Walking down a busy West Village street, I saw the shards there, collected like shiny gems on a hot sidewalk. The moon floated quietly somewhere above dignified buildings, and occasionally a lazy, moist breeze came around a hidden corner to please the backs of our necks, to seduce the tender part of my shoulders. I lifted the hair from my temples and laughed at such a night as this. I felt full, anticipatory. A woman in a red dress walking with strength and confidence right through the shards of glass glittering on a pretty street on a hot, sultry night in summer. I had no sense of danger—the night was too perfect for that, too full of promise. And of course I misjudged, mis-stepped—and suddenly there was pain, and then blood from the tip of one newly painted toe…
Sit down, he says, taking my arm. But I don’t want to sit down tonight, don’t want to stop moving. I’m uncertain about where we are heading, but I want to keep going. I want to see this night through: I am curious, hopeful. Later, in a crowded brick room, the singer says from the stage, Hey, Red, you got the fire in you. And I forget until I look down that I’m wearing a red dress. Something that will come off later and take the fire with it, a heap on the floor, and me stretched across the bed in pain.
Glass is a lovely thing, full of contradictions—like me, like us. Smooth, sharp; reflective, translucent. It brings the new day inside, the morning sun radiating polished leaves just beyond the window; at night, glass hides the outdoors, reflecting the bedroom lamp and my obscured face back at me. There is glass everywhere in this lonely house. Sometimes I avoid the large glass mirror hanging on my bedroom wall, and sometimes I stand before it and lean in close.
Today the cut is healing as I sit with my sore foot propped up on a pillow on the coffee table. I have washed it, applied ointment, and will wait through the healing. Sometimes it stings more than others… Before me, my son sings flat and impassioned to the TV, the mic in one hand, rock star hopes in the other, and an animated band on the screen. He is surprised when I know the songs—oblivious to the fact that his mother has lived, has loved, in ways that he is unaware. You know this song? he says, looking back at me with a grin that makes the pain disappear. But only for a moment. And then it comes back, throbbing, insistent, saying, don’t forget about me…
***
Sit down, he says, taking my arm. But I don’t want to sit down tonight, don’t want to stop moving. I’m uncertain about where we are heading, but I want to keep going. I want to see this night through: I am curious, hopeful. Later, in a crowded brick room, the singer says from the stage, Hey, Red, you got the fire in you. And I forget until I look down that I’m wearing a red dress. Something that will come off later and take the fire with it, a heap on the floor, and me stretched across the bed in pain.
Glass is a lovely thing, full of contradictions—like me, like us. Smooth, sharp; reflective, translucent. It brings the new day inside, the morning sun radiating polished leaves just beyond the window; at night, glass hides the outdoors, reflecting the bedroom lamp and my obscured face back at me. There is glass everywhere in this lonely house. Sometimes I avoid the large glass mirror hanging on my bedroom wall, and sometimes I stand before it and lean in close.
Today the cut is healing as I sit with my sore foot propped up on a pillow on the coffee table. I have washed it, applied ointment, and will wait through the healing. Sometimes it stings more than others… Before me, my son sings flat and impassioned to the TV, the mic in one hand, rock star hopes in the other, and an animated band on the screen. He is surprised when I know the songs—oblivious to the fact that his mother has lived, has loved, in ways that he is unaware. You know this song? he says, looking back at me with a grin that makes the pain disappear. But only for a moment. And then it comes back, throbbing, insistent, saying, don’t forget about me…
***
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Heat
It’s 3 am and I have kicked off the sheet and flipped my pillow over to find the cooler side. I run a tired hand through the tangled, moist hair cleaving to my cheek, my temples. Finally, I sit up in the darkness, alone in my house on a hot and muggy night. I have been dreaming: my heart throbs against my nightgown; the back of my neck is damp. I stare into the murkiness of this bedroom and listen to the weary hum of the air-conditioner. The old iron bed frame squeaks as I pull my knees to my chest—and soon the tears come. I never wanted to be alone like this…
I like the heat of many things. The heat of a feverish night in summer—with friends on a rooftop deck, a breeze rippling off the river. The heat of a few good words on a page. The right color and stroke of the brush in a frame. The heat of people walking in their own deliberate and self-assured way. The heat of an audacious love... Which I have lost to something more tempered, more subdued. A flat, dry cracker of a love when I desire the grit and spice of a New Orleans love, a raucous kind of love.
I lift my legs to the side of the bed and pad down a hot, darkened hallway, the hardwood floor sticking to the bottom of my feet. In the bathroom, I splash water on my face, my neck—a softer image of me reflected in the quiet mirror. My edges and lines lost to the dusky shadows. I am me in a dream tonight, moving about an empty and unfamiliar house, moving around my unfamiliar life—bumping into things. I reach out sometimes to steady myself, but there is often nothing there. Yes, this must all be a dream…
The other night I am in the kitchen and he sits by himself in the living room. I hear staccato voices as he flips through the channels as so many men do. I chop vegetables, sauté onions, simmer a fragrant spicy stew. Yet he does not come to see, to test, to sample. He is not curious about the heat, a kitchen alive with the smell of gumbo filé, cayenne, andouille in the pan. I wipe my hands on a towel, sip a smooth red wine that slides like bliss along the back of my throat, my cheeks flushed from the open flame on the stove. And he sits in another room unaffected by the heat…
Sally tells me once, long ago, about a meal downtown with a man who dipped his fork without noticing the lace of sauce, the sprinkle of rosemary--the heat of it. She turned away, she said, and swallowed a soul-less meal that night all those years ago.
And so I make my way back to the bedroom, down a long quiet hallway, and wonder, as I settle back into bed, what to do with this night—with its shadows and silence. What to do with my own gnawing sadness. On a hot summer night in August: alone, alone, alone.
***
I like the heat of many things. The heat of a feverish night in summer—with friends on a rooftop deck, a breeze rippling off the river. The heat of a few good words on a page. The right color and stroke of the brush in a frame. The heat of people walking in their own deliberate and self-assured way. The heat of an audacious love... Which I have lost to something more tempered, more subdued. A flat, dry cracker of a love when I desire the grit and spice of a New Orleans love, a raucous kind of love.
I lift my legs to the side of the bed and pad down a hot, darkened hallway, the hardwood floor sticking to the bottom of my feet. In the bathroom, I splash water on my face, my neck—a softer image of me reflected in the quiet mirror. My edges and lines lost to the dusky shadows. I am me in a dream tonight, moving about an empty and unfamiliar house, moving around my unfamiliar life—bumping into things. I reach out sometimes to steady myself, but there is often nothing there. Yes, this must all be a dream…
The other night I am in the kitchen and he sits by himself in the living room. I hear staccato voices as he flips through the channels as so many men do. I chop vegetables, sauté onions, simmer a fragrant spicy stew. Yet he does not come to see, to test, to sample. He is not curious about the heat, a kitchen alive with the smell of gumbo filé, cayenne, andouille in the pan. I wipe my hands on a towel, sip a smooth red wine that slides like bliss along the back of my throat, my cheeks flushed from the open flame on the stove. And he sits in another room unaffected by the heat…
Sally tells me once, long ago, about a meal downtown with a man who dipped his fork without noticing the lace of sauce, the sprinkle of rosemary--the heat of it. She turned away, she said, and swallowed a soul-less meal that night all those years ago.
And so I make my way back to the bedroom, down a long quiet hallway, and wonder, as I settle back into bed, what to do with this night—with its shadows and silence. What to do with my own gnawing sadness. On a hot summer night in August: alone, alone, alone.
***
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Barge
We walk the plank over a quiet, murky water and onto a hulking barge where drinks are being served, where music thrums from two hefty speakers suspended from the ceiling. The sun is yielding to the lustiness of evening, and I feel hungry for a certain potency tonight.
We find a tall table by the railing and I hoist myself up on the stool. The tall man sits with ease in a chair his own size. I look around at the other tables—to the people collected like beads around the bar—and across the river to the hills beyond. It’s been sixteen years since I last lived here. A different life then: me and my books, me and my future displayed like assorted chocolates in a fancy box—each with the promise of sweetness ready to explode on my tongue. I made my selections and tasted many good things…
Tonight, though, I am a different woman, sitting across from an unexpected man. We order two drinks from a dewy waitress with a Kool-Aid smile. I envy her her youth, all her choices yet to come. When she returns with two tall glasses, a lime draped over each rim, I want to tell her to take her time with things. To go slow, even when she’s in a hurry. To look in the mirror and enjoy what she sees. It will all come too quickly: this. But of course I say none of this to her as she smiles and lifts each chilled drink from her tray onto our table. And she is off to please the next table, sate them with drinks, with charcoaled burgers and baskets of hot wings. It is after all a summer night here on the barge.
Sixteen years ago I did not understand that change was coming. I saw only my days as they revealed themselves. I read and wrote and cooked and walked the cobblestone streets at night and felt the town’s history. I never wanted to leave. Thought my life would gently makes its way along, like a scroll being unrolled along each of those antique streets. I’d wear my hat and scarf in winter, the snow crunching beneath my boots, stopping for cake and tea in the warm basement café. I’d bike those same streets in the fever of summer, the muscles in my legs like loaded springs. I saw the seasons unfold in the trees, in the windows of the stores, in the voices on the street. And it was good enough for me.
But that is simple in a way that life is not. And so I took things from the walls and put them in boxes; stood naked before the bay window overlooking the plaza; said goodbye to two old Jewish brothers who owned the liquor store around the corner—and as they patted my hand and wished me well, I saw for the last time the tattooed numbers stamped along their bony wrists... And I was gone.
Change has come in many ways. Including this barge that rests—tightly tethered to the grassy banks—along the Hudson River. And up the street, a fancy catacomb bar reminiscent of Poe’s Amontillado, of his Fortunato. But down where I once lived is a lapsed neighborhood—those old whispering buildings: Silenced. Blinded. Empty. Cars tires clicking along the cobblestone, headed to the colorless suburbs. My two old friends and their liquor store: gone. But I’m back and I want to remember and I want to be remembered. I look around at the vigorous faces of the crowd collected here on a Friday night on a barge tethered to the quiet downtown banks of a place I once loved—and that once loved me. Yet there is no history here, no face reflecting mine back at me. Not even at this table. The tall man across from me talks of all manner of things as I study his face to find something to hold on to. But I recognize that he has tethered himself as tightly as this barge is harnessed to the banks along the river. I see the thick knotted ropes that hold him steady, keep him secure. Each time he feels their moorings slip, he shores things up with one quick determined tug, so that he—like this barge—does not list, is not rocked by the wake of people passing by. Including me. And so I lift the chilled glass to my lips and drink, while the music fills the space around us, and the unexpected man talks of history, of past, of inconsequential things.
***
We find a tall table by the railing and I hoist myself up on the stool. The tall man sits with ease in a chair his own size. I look around at the other tables—to the people collected like beads around the bar—and across the river to the hills beyond. It’s been sixteen years since I last lived here. A different life then: me and my books, me and my future displayed like assorted chocolates in a fancy box—each with the promise of sweetness ready to explode on my tongue. I made my selections and tasted many good things…
Tonight, though, I am a different woman, sitting across from an unexpected man. We order two drinks from a dewy waitress with a Kool-Aid smile. I envy her her youth, all her choices yet to come. When she returns with two tall glasses, a lime draped over each rim, I want to tell her to take her time with things. To go slow, even when she’s in a hurry. To look in the mirror and enjoy what she sees. It will all come too quickly: this. But of course I say none of this to her as she smiles and lifts each chilled drink from her tray onto our table. And she is off to please the next table, sate them with drinks, with charcoaled burgers and baskets of hot wings. It is after all a summer night here on the barge.
Sixteen years ago I did not understand that change was coming. I saw only my days as they revealed themselves. I read and wrote and cooked and walked the cobblestone streets at night and felt the town’s history. I never wanted to leave. Thought my life would gently makes its way along, like a scroll being unrolled along each of those antique streets. I’d wear my hat and scarf in winter, the snow crunching beneath my boots, stopping for cake and tea in the warm basement café. I’d bike those same streets in the fever of summer, the muscles in my legs like loaded springs. I saw the seasons unfold in the trees, in the windows of the stores, in the voices on the street. And it was good enough for me.
But that is simple in a way that life is not. And so I took things from the walls and put them in boxes; stood naked before the bay window overlooking the plaza; said goodbye to two old Jewish brothers who owned the liquor store around the corner—and as they patted my hand and wished me well, I saw for the last time the tattooed numbers stamped along their bony wrists... And I was gone.
Change has come in many ways. Including this barge that rests—tightly tethered to the grassy banks—along the Hudson River. And up the street, a fancy catacomb bar reminiscent of Poe’s Amontillado, of his Fortunato. But down where I once lived is a lapsed neighborhood—those old whispering buildings: Silenced. Blinded. Empty. Cars tires clicking along the cobblestone, headed to the colorless suburbs. My two old friends and their liquor store: gone. But I’m back and I want to remember and I want to be remembered. I look around at the vigorous faces of the crowd collected here on a Friday night on a barge tethered to the quiet downtown banks of a place I once loved—and that once loved me. Yet there is no history here, no face reflecting mine back at me. Not even at this table. The tall man across from me talks of all manner of things as I study his face to find something to hold on to. But I recognize that he has tethered himself as tightly as this barge is harnessed to the banks along the river. I see the thick knotted ropes that hold him steady, keep him secure. Each time he feels their moorings slip, he shores things up with one quick determined tug, so that he—like this barge—does not list, is not rocked by the wake of people passing by. Including me. And so I lift the chilled glass to my lips and drink, while the music fills the space around us, and the unexpected man talks of history, of past, of inconsequential things.
***
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Home
the 1st
what i remember about that day
is boxes stacked across the walk
and couch springs curling through the air
and drawers and tables balanced on the curb
and us, hollering,
leaping up and around
happy to have a playground;
nothing about the emptied rooms
nothing about the emptied family
--Lucille Clifton
I am picking my way over a crumbling sidewalk on a hot muggy day, on my way to jury duty this morning, when I pass by a blighted brick building with sheets of metal blinding all the windows. Above the front door is a bold white sign that announces the coming of lovely new condos. Luxury living, the sign asserts. And I can’t help wonder what that means, and how they will deliver on their promise. I want to live luxuriously, comforted at night by expensive sheets, filtered air, a master bath beckoning just off the corner of the bedroom. But of course that is luxury defined in simple terms. I want to live luxuriously in other ways, too, but I’m not sure this decayed building, even when it emerges from its makeover, can give me that. Assuming of course that I could afford one of these luxury condos, which I very likely cannot.
I live around lots of wealthy people, and sometimes I grow tired of being poor. And sometimes I like being just where I am. And sometimes—like when I’m volunteering at the food pantry—I feel rich indeed. Filthy, undeservingly, rich. So I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective.
But either way, don’t get on your high horse and tell me about the immateriality of material things. You who don’t know want. I, on the other hand, know what it’s like to be without. Without a roof, without bread, without the comfort of coins jingling in my empty pocket.
So it was a hot and muggy day, very similar to this one, when we went barreling down the highway, certain that he was going to appear like some half-crazed madman bearing down on us in his blue Chevrolet. Ah, but we were young, my two brothers and I—just children—and we hadn’t yet learned that people only chase after what’s worth having. And we were not that for him. And so we barreled down the highway, crying in the backseat, terrified, without any idea of where we were headed. After my father left for work that morning, my mother told us to get dressed quickly and no horsing around. She was jittery, her movements sudden. As my brother and I tugged on our clothes, with the pulse of our hearts throbbing in our ears, my mother came in to extract the suitcase she had hidden under the bed; I was surprised to learn it had been there all along. The baby slept in the crib next to our bed, the window above his crib draped with a pink bath towel. You can each pick out two things to take with you, she said. And that’s it. Put them in here. And be quick about it. And so we did, selecting two things each from our scant pile of treasures. I don’t remember what I took, my choices lost to other terrors. Even though we didn’t know where we were going, my brother and I knew we weren’t coming back...
And then a woman who owed my mother money for babysitting showed up in our kitchen. She too was skittish and kept looking behind her toward the door, kept bending over to search for approaching ankles along the window of our basement apartment. She too did not understand desire: he wasn’t coming back. Later we’d learn that my mother bartered a ride back to that sleepy cold town, back to the housing project where Janie was waiting. She had $1.49 in her purse. That’s it. And three kids. And a half a pack of Tarreytons.
Still, those were the good days, those first few months. Because before that, we also went hungry--but our stomachs growled at night to the sound of my father’s raging and my mother’s screams beyond our bedroom door. Once we got to Janie’s, there was only our rumbling bellies against the hum of TV static after the channels went off the air. He showed up once—about a week after we arrived—to plead his case, Janie slowly sweeping the living room floor as he and my mother talked and I lurked in the hallway. He threatened to put my mother away, which terrified me, but only for a minute because Janie rested one ample elbow on her broom and said with a quiet sigh: you’re not taking her anywhere. And because he wasn’t all that committed to the idea anyway, he was easily dissuaded. Besides, most people knew enough not to mess with Janie and her broom—even a fool like him.
But then shit happened because shit always happens: somebody squealed. Might have been one of Janie’s three kids, I don't know. We were, after all, taking up space in a place where there wasn’t enough of it, our gaping mouths devouring what they needed for themselves. The housing manager said, Get Out. Or else. And my mother figured it was better to have one woman and three homeless children than two women and six homeless children, and so we beat it out of there quick.
It was snowing, I remember. Cotton ball size flakes falling from an ashen sky, blanketing the supermarket parking lot in white, the parked cars becoming muted white hills in a cold white landscape. My brothers and I sat like three small bags of sticky white trash on the bench by the exit while my mother dropped dimes into the payphone. I eyed the heaping shopping carts of food rolling by in front of us—people gearing up for a blizzard—and watched my mother from the corner of my eye. She put the heavy black phone back in the cradle and slumped against the supermarket wall.
I had noticed the woman in the dark green parka observing us from the checkout line, and she made her way over to my mother... Then out to her car, where, after she brushed off the snow from the windshield outside, we rode in silence to a vacant old house she owned on the other side of the bridge. We got deposited, along with several bags of groceries, on the sagging front porch. Inside, the house was unheated, with two rusty spaces--like missing teeth--cut into the kitchen counter where the stove and refrigerator used to be. But it was luxury living that cold winter day—right there on East 3rd Street—without the bold white sign over the front door. And we made do, which make-doers like us are always quite good at. Wearing coats and hats to bed—all four of us together—on a fold-out couch in the living room. Milk and eggs on the back porch, when we could get them. Food warmed on a hot plate. And still my brother and I would run and slide over the empty hardwood floors in our socks, like world class skaters, like kids living a luxurious life. Happy in our luxury living. Happy to be in that big old drafty house on a quiet street in the darkest month of winter.
***
what i remember about that day
is boxes stacked across the walk
and couch springs curling through the air
and drawers and tables balanced on the curb
and us, hollering,
leaping up and around
happy to have a playground;
nothing about the emptied rooms
nothing about the emptied family
--Lucille Clifton
I am picking my way over a crumbling sidewalk on a hot muggy day, on my way to jury duty this morning, when I pass by a blighted brick building with sheets of metal blinding all the windows. Above the front door is a bold white sign that announces the coming of lovely new condos. Luxury living, the sign asserts. And I can’t help wonder what that means, and how they will deliver on their promise. I want to live luxuriously, comforted at night by expensive sheets, filtered air, a master bath beckoning just off the corner of the bedroom. But of course that is luxury defined in simple terms. I want to live luxuriously in other ways, too, but I’m not sure this decayed building, even when it emerges from its makeover, can give me that. Assuming of course that I could afford one of these luxury condos, which I very likely cannot.
I live around lots of wealthy people, and sometimes I grow tired of being poor. And sometimes I like being just where I am. And sometimes—like when I’m volunteering at the food pantry—I feel rich indeed. Filthy, undeservingly, rich. So I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective.
But either way, don’t get on your high horse and tell me about the immateriality of material things. You who don’t know want. I, on the other hand, know what it’s like to be without. Without a roof, without bread, without the comfort of coins jingling in my empty pocket.
So it was a hot and muggy day, very similar to this one, when we went barreling down the highway, certain that he was going to appear like some half-crazed madman bearing down on us in his blue Chevrolet. Ah, but we were young, my two brothers and I—just children—and we hadn’t yet learned that people only chase after what’s worth having. And we were not that for him. And so we barreled down the highway, crying in the backseat, terrified, without any idea of where we were headed. After my father left for work that morning, my mother told us to get dressed quickly and no horsing around. She was jittery, her movements sudden. As my brother and I tugged on our clothes, with the pulse of our hearts throbbing in our ears, my mother came in to extract the suitcase she had hidden under the bed; I was surprised to learn it had been there all along. The baby slept in the crib next to our bed, the window above his crib draped with a pink bath towel. You can each pick out two things to take with you, she said. And that’s it. Put them in here. And be quick about it. And so we did, selecting two things each from our scant pile of treasures. I don’t remember what I took, my choices lost to other terrors. Even though we didn’t know where we were going, my brother and I knew we weren’t coming back...
And then a woman who owed my mother money for babysitting showed up in our kitchen. She too was skittish and kept looking behind her toward the door, kept bending over to search for approaching ankles along the window of our basement apartment. She too did not understand desire: he wasn’t coming back. Later we’d learn that my mother bartered a ride back to that sleepy cold town, back to the housing project where Janie was waiting. She had $1.49 in her purse. That’s it. And three kids. And a half a pack of Tarreytons.
Still, those were the good days, those first few months. Because before that, we also went hungry--but our stomachs growled at night to the sound of my father’s raging and my mother’s screams beyond our bedroom door. Once we got to Janie’s, there was only our rumbling bellies against the hum of TV static after the channels went off the air. He showed up once—about a week after we arrived—to plead his case, Janie slowly sweeping the living room floor as he and my mother talked and I lurked in the hallway. He threatened to put my mother away, which terrified me, but only for a minute because Janie rested one ample elbow on her broom and said with a quiet sigh: you’re not taking her anywhere. And because he wasn’t all that committed to the idea anyway, he was easily dissuaded. Besides, most people knew enough not to mess with Janie and her broom—even a fool like him.
But then shit happened because shit always happens: somebody squealed. Might have been one of Janie’s three kids, I don't know. We were, after all, taking up space in a place where there wasn’t enough of it, our gaping mouths devouring what they needed for themselves. The housing manager said, Get Out. Or else. And my mother figured it was better to have one woman and three homeless children than two women and six homeless children, and so we beat it out of there quick.
It was snowing, I remember. Cotton ball size flakes falling from an ashen sky, blanketing the supermarket parking lot in white, the parked cars becoming muted white hills in a cold white landscape. My brothers and I sat like three small bags of sticky white trash on the bench by the exit while my mother dropped dimes into the payphone. I eyed the heaping shopping carts of food rolling by in front of us—people gearing up for a blizzard—and watched my mother from the corner of my eye. She put the heavy black phone back in the cradle and slumped against the supermarket wall.
I had noticed the woman in the dark green parka observing us from the checkout line, and she made her way over to my mother... Then out to her car, where, after she brushed off the snow from the windshield outside, we rode in silence to a vacant old house she owned on the other side of the bridge. We got deposited, along with several bags of groceries, on the sagging front porch. Inside, the house was unheated, with two rusty spaces--like missing teeth--cut into the kitchen counter where the stove and refrigerator used to be. But it was luxury living that cold winter day—right there on East 3rd Street—without the bold white sign over the front door. And we made do, which make-doers like us are always quite good at. Wearing coats and hats to bed—all four of us together—on a fold-out couch in the living room. Milk and eggs on the back porch, when we could get them. Food warmed on a hot plate. And still my brother and I would run and slide over the empty hardwood floors in our socks, like world class skaters, like kids living a luxurious life. Happy in our luxury living. Happy to be in that big old drafty house on a quiet street in the darkest month of winter.
***
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