Mary J shuffles in with her niece, Kathy, and sits down in a dirty jacket at the table. Mary J’s lips are shriveled around a deflated balloon of a mouth, her face banged up by life’s bitter punches. She places an unsteady hand on the table and fingers the place setting. Asks me for coffee—which I fetch from the urn set up on a table across the room. Once we pass around the platters of turkey and stuffing and cranberries and potatoes, Mary J and Kathy eat in silence. They cut the meat into tiny pieces that they can chew, and lift plastic forks to their mouths with wind-chapped hands.
At the next table are Linda and her two boys, Martin and Rashim. Linda keeps her chin high, and collapses the stroller in one quick motion to store against the wall. She wears a black leather jacket, a scarf on her head—and sits at the end of the table with her two neatly dressed boys. I try to catch Linda’s eye, try to find a way to let her know that I am not what she sees. That we are more alike than she might guess. But Linda is too busy making this day okay for her sons, too busy to care about making me feel better…
As I look up, four men amble in and settle thenselves at the table. Mary J and Kathy continue to eat without talking at the other end. The men wear hooded sweatshirts under their heavy coats. They speak Spanish for the most part, and English a little bit. Carlos tells me that they are from Ecuador. That there is no work here. They do stone work, carpentry, landscaping, cleaning, he explains. But no work, no work. Carlos and his friends do not know about this holiday of too much, of everything covered in gravy. They know only their empty bellies, their empty pockets, their empty hearts. Carlos tells me of his daughter back home, that she is 14, that he hasn’t seen her since she was 9. No work, he says, as he spears a big slice of turkey with his fork…
Mary J and Kathy are nearly finished eating. I bring them two pieces of pumpkin pie, and another cup of coffee. Mary J tells me she likes it light and sweet. And as I place the coffee before her tired hands, she pulls out a battered wallet and shows me a picture of Harold, her lover who died last month. Of cancer, she says, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. In the picture, Harold is sleeping on a couch—but even so, he looks much younger than Mary J. I ask how they met, and Mary J explains that she met Harold pushing a grocery cart down Main Street. That was eight years ago, she says, staring at the picture, her eyes teary. We were very happy…
When Mary J and Kathy leave, John sits down. He is a small man with kind eyes. He tells me that he wasn’t sure he would come here today, that he has a sister nearby whose house he could go to. And I feel a flash of anger at this sister who would forget her brother today—but then I remember my own brother living his own troubled life in a state where so many plagued souls land. Down there with his own paper cup, his own quivering pride…
And then the vets: George and Raymond. George talks and talks: of the leaves he just raked around his yard, of boxing with Mike Tyson. Beside him, Raymond is quiet, his eyes focused on his plate. I learn that he was in the Navy—but it is civilian life that has nearly killed him... I’ve been hit by a car five times, he explained, as he struggled to sit. I held his bony arm, as he leaned against his cane and very slowly eased himself into the metal folding chair. I tease Raymond about staying out of the road in the future. But he does not laugh. Instead, he moves the plastic fork from the plate to his mouth, asking for seconds; and I remember that not everyone has the option of not walking in the road, not walking with their backs to speeding cars and souped-up SUVs...
Later we will stroll along the manicured streets of my neighborhood and laugh at all the folly: the ill-designed dormer, the poorly sited house, rhododendron bushes that have overtaken the view. The sun is on our faces as we walk. Already Mary J, Kathy, Harold, Linda, Martin, Rashim, Carlos, John, George and Raymond have been lost to the names printed boldly on the mailboxes along this curved, smooth lane on a lovely afternoon in November.
***
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Touching
Right after they fish the baby from my reluctant womb, a rash tiptoes up my belly, over my engorged breasts, and into the warm folds of my neck. I don’t notice the rash until I shuffle back to bed from the sterile bathroom, and catch a glimpse of my ravaged body reflected back at me in the night time hospital window. I stand there, alone, and stare at the unfamiliar shadow in the glass: rounded, curved, bloated, in places that used to be angular and defined. I see a monster this night in the window, as my baby sleeps beside me, swaddled and sated by milk suckled from two raw nipples. And when I lift my hands to the shadow in the window, to trace that unfamiliar body, I notice the rash, red and agitated, that has crept onto the back of my hands. And I begin to cry…
I did not know then that I would lose the weight quicker than it had been gained, or that the rash was a temporary thing. I saw only loss that night in the hospital window. A youthful body disappeared; my independence sprinting down the quietly lit road, her back to the wind, her back to me—as I stood alone in that stoic room. I stepped gingerly to where the baby lay, the stitches in my lower belly pinching, the unfamiliar burden in my thighs and hips slowing things down… And this monster lifted her baby cub into the crook of her arm and breathed his milkiness; studied the filmy vein that revealed itself along his temple; watched his mouth search instinctively for me. I brushed one grown-up finger gently over the tuft of hair, along the curve of his balmy face, down to the tip of one tiny, delicate finger—which curled against mine. This baby, this boy, that I would not let go…
And this is how I get to know the people I love--because I do not trust these far-sighted eyes. These fierce dark eyes that sometimes see “SHH” lit up on the lighted clock beside my bed at night when I roll over. And it’s only when I squint that I bring 5:44 into focus, grateful for another hour's sleep. So I do not always trust my vision… And instead it is my hands that move, that reach out, feeling the landscape for softness, for potency, for where it might hurt.
My hands are working woman’s hands. They know dishwater and hot stoves; they know the curved rubber handle of the vacuum; of freshly laundered sheets shaken out over the bed and tucked into heavy corners. The hard thin shell of a pen... These hands that chop onions and carrots; that lather shampoo into a tired boy’s hair; that sponged ointment over fifty-two staples in the top of his head after the accident. These hands that seek out pleasure at night when I am alone…
Last night, I slip my hands under the shirt on my little boy’s back and move my fingers quietly along his spine. I sing the song I always sing, as he hugs “Charlie” and my hands move, lulling him. I rub his two tender shoulder blades and massage the back of a warm, willing neck. Reach around and touch my fingers to his heavy lids. Leave one quiet hand over his as he drifts off to sleep…
And later when we are in bed, I run my fingers through a different landscape: his closely cropped beard, a muted cheekbone, down a long thin unresponsive arm. He lies perfectly still for this examination, on his back, his eyes trained on the ceiling—afraid of my touch, afraid of what might get revealed…
***
I did not know then that I would lose the weight quicker than it had been gained, or that the rash was a temporary thing. I saw only loss that night in the hospital window. A youthful body disappeared; my independence sprinting down the quietly lit road, her back to the wind, her back to me—as I stood alone in that stoic room. I stepped gingerly to where the baby lay, the stitches in my lower belly pinching, the unfamiliar burden in my thighs and hips slowing things down… And this monster lifted her baby cub into the crook of her arm and breathed his milkiness; studied the filmy vein that revealed itself along his temple; watched his mouth search instinctively for me. I brushed one grown-up finger gently over the tuft of hair, along the curve of his balmy face, down to the tip of one tiny, delicate finger—which curled against mine. This baby, this boy, that I would not let go…
And this is how I get to know the people I love--because I do not trust these far-sighted eyes. These fierce dark eyes that sometimes see “SHH” lit up on the lighted clock beside my bed at night when I roll over. And it’s only when I squint that I bring 5:44 into focus, grateful for another hour's sleep. So I do not always trust my vision… And instead it is my hands that move, that reach out, feeling the landscape for softness, for potency, for where it might hurt.
My hands are working woman’s hands. They know dishwater and hot stoves; they know the curved rubber handle of the vacuum; of freshly laundered sheets shaken out over the bed and tucked into heavy corners. The hard thin shell of a pen... These hands that chop onions and carrots; that lather shampoo into a tired boy’s hair; that sponged ointment over fifty-two staples in the top of his head after the accident. These hands that seek out pleasure at night when I am alone…
Last night, I slip my hands under the shirt on my little boy’s back and move my fingers quietly along his spine. I sing the song I always sing, as he hugs “Charlie” and my hands move, lulling him. I rub his two tender shoulder blades and massage the back of a warm, willing neck. Reach around and touch my fingers to his heavy lids. Leave one quiet hand over his as he drifts off to sleep…
And later when we are in bed, I run my fingers through a different landscape: his closely cropped beard, a muted cheekbone, down a long thin unresponsive arm. He lies perfectly still for this examination, on his back, his eyes trained on the ceiling—afraid of my touch, afraid of what might get revealed…
***
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Coming Home
There is a determined black fly trapped between the panes of the closed bedroom window. It is almost dawn when I hear him buzzing, hear him colliding against the glass. I lie there in bed, under the window, listening to his struggles, thinking that we are all like that trapped fly. Trying to make our way, bumping into the same things over and over. The same tenacious futility. With perhaps the luck of someone coming along to open the window, and suddenly discovering our freedom. Of course, so many of us—like the fly—would not recognize the freedom that was offered, would fly right back into that same window casement.
And he sleeps peacefully beside me, his breathing quiet and rhythmic, his hand tucked under his head. And I am awake in the early dawn, listening to the struggle of the fly, watching morning creep along the far bedroom wall like a quiet spill. Eventually, we get up, make coffee, shower. The fly forgotten.
When we get to that small town, we enter from the east. Travel without stopping past the old house at the dip in the road, and follow the long road where I used to walk into town to find books; to go in my imagination where my feet could not yet take me. Which was anywhere but in this small town with its snow banks and its memory. When I moved away, I left nothing behind, and so the memory is a single-sided one that I have tried to erase, re-write, and erase again.
It is her birthday, and she sits in the seat behind us in the van. He drives along unfamiliar roads and streets, listening as we tell him to turn this way and that. She and I talk over each other, trying to give our histories. He is patient as we reconcile our stories, finding overlaps, discrepancies. We are deciding which story gets to be the “real” one—and we both understand that the only truth is what we decide is real... Then we drive over the bridge, and turn onto 1st Street. Past the Armory where they looked away from our gaping, hungry mouths as they dropped into our boxes the things they would not eat. Our hands covered with socks against the Lake Effect snow, against a vicious winter wind whistling across that Great Lake. They made us wait outside in the cold, I remark; and she nods, remembering…
And later, as we drive past the housing project, we recall our first day there; of sleeping on the hardwood floor with a sympathetic furnace thawing out our bones. We look at each other and smile over this shared memory, remembering the way the heat made the hairs on our arms stand up after a long winter in that unheated house. How did you stay warm? he asks. And she—or I—explain that we lived in our coats and hats, slept together on the fold-out couch. And we agree on this memory, too…
But she does not remember my hunger, does not remember going three full days without eating—until her boss at the diner let her bring home the leftovers. I remember her coming in that Friday night, the smell of the fish making my empty stomach broil; the oily stain in the parchment paper that she carried through the front door like an offering. Hoping as she unwrapped it that it was enough this time. Instead, she recalls only her own hunger—which I remember, too—and does not want to remember hungry children whom she could not find food for. This woman who sold her own bed to feed us, who “borrowed” cans of tuna from her boss to feed a hungry daughter, replacing those cans when payday arrived. This woman who would not let me steal the package of chicken I had slipped beneath my coat that day at the supermarket when both of our stomachs howled. No, she cannot remember this on her birthday forty years later. She shakes her head and takes one tiny sip of her birthday wine. I did what I had to do to feed you, she says, certain that her memory is true. This resourceful mother…
Later in her bedroom, I will flip through a book and find where she has underlined a short passage about being grateful for the blessings you have, when you find that you don’t have enough. I take a pen and write in the margin: fuck that.
And we travel around that small town, built quietly along a strapping Great Lake that sends water rushing down an abundant river. We catch a glimpse of the fishermen; drive down by the marina; out past the school. And she says from the backseat that perhaps she will move back.
Tonight as I come across the bridge into Westchester, the sun is setting against a pink and gray sky. I navigate the construction around Peekskill; accelerate onto 9A to get up that extended stretch of hill; drive past the sign that says “New York City 21.” It is a warm evening for November, and the radio plays. Two more miles and I will be home...
***
And he sleeps peacefully beside me, his breathing quiet and rhythmic, his hand tucked under his head. And I am awake in the early dawn, listening to the struggle of the fly, watching morning creep along the far bedroom wall like a quiet spill. Eventually, we get up, make coffee, shower. The fly forgotten.
When we get to that small town, we enter from the east. Travel without stopping past the old house at the dip in the road, and follow the long road where I used to walk into town to find books; to go in my imagination where my feet could not yet take me. Which was anywhere but in this small town with its snow banks and its memory. When I moved away, I left nothing behind, and so the memory is a single-sided one that I have tried to erase, re-write, and erase again.
It is her birthday, and she sits in the seat behind us in the van. He drives along unfamiliar roads and streets, listening as we tell him to turn this way and that. She and I talk over each other, trying to give our histories. He is patient as we reconcile our stories, finding overlaps, discrepancies. We are deciding which story gets to be the “real” one—and we both understand that the only truth is what we decide is real... Then we drive over the bridge, and turn onto 1st Street. Past the Armory where they looked away from our gaping, hungry mouths as they dropped into our boxes the things they would not eat. Our hands covered with socks against the Lake Effect snow, against a vicious winter wind whistling across that Great Lake. They made us wait outside in the cold, I remark; and she nods, remembering…
And later, as we drive past the housing project, we recall our first day there; of sleeping on the hardwood floor with a sympathetic furnace thawing out our bones. We look at each other and smile over this shared memory, remembering the way the heat made the hairs on our arms stand up after a long winter in that unheated house. How did you stay warm? he asks. And she—or I—explain that we lived in our coats and hats, slept together on the fold-out couch. And we agree on this memory, too…
But she does not remember my hunger, does not remember going three full days without eating—until her boss at the diner let her bring home the leftovers. I remember her coming in that Friday night, the smell of the fish making my empty stomach broil; the oily stain in the parchment paper that she carried through the front door like an offering. Hoping as she unwrapped it that it was enough this time. Instead, she recalls only her own hunger—which I remember, too—and does not want to remember hungry children whom she could not find food for. This woman who sold her own bed to feed us, who “borrowed” cans of tuna from her boss to feed a hungry daughter, replacing those cans when payday arrived. This woman who would not let me steal the package of chicken I had slipped beneath my coat that day at the supermarket when both of our stomachs howled. No, she cannot remember this on her birthday forty years later. She shakes her head and takes one tiny sip of her birthday wine. I did what I had to do to feed you, she says, certain that her memory is true. This resourceful mother…
Later in her bedroom, I will flip through a book and find where she has underlined a short passage about being grateful for the blessings you have, when you find that you don’t have enough. I take a pen and write in the margin: fuck that.
And we travel around that small town, built quietly along a strapping Great Lake that sends water rushing down an abundant river. We catch a glimpse of the fishermen; drive down by the marina; out past the school. And she says from the backseat that perhaps she will move back.
Tonight as I come across the bridge into Westchester, the sun is setting against a pink and gray sky. I navigate the construction around Peekskill; accelerate onto 9A to get up that extended stretch of hill; drive past the sign that says “New York City 21.” It is a warm evening for November, and the radio plays. Two more miles and I will be home...
***
Friday, November 6, 2009
Seeing Things
I love how the moon shines through my window at night. Most evenings when I settle into bed, and later, when I roll over, the moon is there—that great luminous orb in the sky—peeking into my room, filtered through the diagonal run of mini blinds and my pale blue window sheers. And while I know the moon is out there, above my bed, beyond the window, it steals into my room in slices, in shadow, and so what is revealed is also partially concealed. And for some reason, I like this. Like the idea that the moon illuminates at the same time it shadows. And so I pull the sheet and comforter over my body, and think about the moonlight functioning as a symbol of how we see--this moonlight that settles like dust across my bed, across my nightstand and the lamp and the lighted alarm clock. Althusser talks about the non-vision inside of vision, which I want to think more about tonight. But it is the witching hour, and I am very tired…
Morning comes, announcing itself flirtatiously, bumping night off the stage with a lively slip of her hip. I wake, stretch; squint to bring the numbers of the alarm clock into focus. Gone are the night shadows, the mystery—and all is revealed. I take in the full sweep of my room: this old iron bed; the dresser against the far wall with the Clinique perfume and Helen’s open letter; the slipper chair in the corner with a pink linen skirt folded over it that has been there for weeks, waiting to be taken to the cleaners. What is here, really? What does someone see when they peer into this room?
I think they see that I am hiding. And I believe that this is true. I am hiding, waiting, in this temporary space…
Today I walk around the fountain on a cool fall morning, and the wind blows. I have my iPod, my sneakers, and my jacket pulled down to cover my hands. The last of the season’s leaves are shuddered from spindly tree branches and thrust by the wind onto the ground. They crunch beneath the rhythmic movement of my sneakers along the paved walking path. The sun moves in and out behind roving clouds; the fountain has been turned off. It is a season of dying, of quiet, of turning in. And yet I find it beautiful… The ending, the melancholy, the peacefulness of it. This is my favorite time of the year, my favorite time to go the Cape—after all the visitors have gone, after some of the shops have closed. I like to observe what gets left behind—the air pregnant with stories, with history, with loss and desire. I know it’s not what other people see…
He tells me last night of a book he wants, this man who really only wants one thing. There are tears behind his tired eyes; these eyes that have seen the world, seen the goodness of men’s souls; seen our son lifted—defiant and wet—from the bowels of my belly. Just one book. And of course it is about the thing he loves. And he swallows the choke of emotion as he tells me how they went to Joey and Johnny and Dee Dee’s house, how they cleaned, how they mowed the lawn. How they tried to pay back a seminal group who never got its due. I observe that he sees himself in that… And I also notice that it is getting dark, and that the hands of the clock tell me it’s time to make dinner, time to get my boy inside. And I see him still invested in his youthful passion—his dream—still viewing the world through that lens, as I close the front door and move into the kitchen, with the memory—the vision—of his tired eyes, his passion, haunting me.
***
Morning comes, announcing itself flirtatiously, bumping night off the stage with a lively slip of her hip. I wake, stretch; squint to bring the numbers of the alarm clock into focus. Gone are the night shadows, the mystery—and all is revealed. I take in the full sweep of my room: this old iron bed; the dresser against the far wall with the Clinique perfume and Helen’s open letter; the slipper chair in the corner with a pink linen skirt folded over it that has been there for weeks, waiting to be taken to the cleaners. What is here, really? What does someone see when they peer into this room?
I think they see that I am hiding. And I believe that this is true. I am hiding, waiting, in this temporary space…
Today I walk around the fountain on a cool fall morning, and the wind blows. I have my iPod, my sneakers, and my jacket pulled down to cover my hands. The last of the season’s leaves are shuddered from spindly tree branches and thrust by the wind onto the ground. They crunch beneath the rhythmic movement of my sneakers along the paved walking path. The sun moves in and out behind roving clouds; the fountain has been turned off. It is a season of dying, of quiet, of turning in. And yet I find it beautiful… The ending, the melancholy, the peacefulness of it. This is my favorite time of the year, my favorite time to go the Cape—after all the visitors have gone, after some of the shops have closed. I like to observe what gets left behind—the air pregnant with stories, with history, with loss and desire. I know it’s not what other people see…
He tells me last night of a book he wants, this man who really only wants one thing. There are tears behind his tired eyes; these eyes that have seen the world, seen the goodness of men’s souls; seen our son lifted—defiant and wet—from the bowels of my belly. Just one book. And of course it is about the thing he loves. And he swallows the choke of emotion as he tells me how they went to Joey and Johnny and Dee Dee’s house, how they cleaned, how they mowed the lawn. How they tried to pay back a seminal group who never got its due. I observe that he sees himself in that… And I also notice that it is getting dark, and that the hands of the clock tell me it’s time to make dinner, time to get my boy inside. And I see him still invested in his youthful passion—his dream—still viewing the world through that lens, as I close the front door and move into the kitchen, with the memory—the vision—of his tired eyes, his passion, haunting me.
***
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Willow
He reveals, by a cell phone text, that our great-grandmother was a full blooded Mohawk from the St. Regis tribe. He is cavalier, witty—responding to my playful fault-finding of his recent hunting trip. This older brother of mine with his facial hair, his silence, his love of the outdoors. We have looked at each other askance these many years, as I ran down that lilting road in my high heels and hope, turning my back on him, and on the rest of them in that house settled quietly at the dip in the road—pulled instead toward the music of a faraway city. He ignored me, too, as I ran away, walking off into the woods with his gun, with his bow and arrow. He doesn’t like that I tell stories, won’t like that I am telling this. He is a Silent Man whom I suspect the Mohawks would have a name for, but since I do not know that name, do not know that language, the great-granddaughter of the Mohawk woman will communicate across the gulf of human silence and an impervious technology...
Y have u never told me this b4?? I text him back.
In the closet, I pull down the photo albums that I have meticulously maintained, with the dates and locations written in black magic marker along the spine. I am looking for the year my grandfather died—1992—and the obituary I remember keeping there. I want to find the Mohawk woman’s name, the mother of my French Canadian grandfather... Many mornings, I sat beside him on the tiny wooden stool in the barn, listening as the milky liquid he manipulated from the belly of a cow sprayed forcefully against the side of a dented tin pail. The cow flicking its long tail, the both of them peaceful. But when one of his animals got sick or hurt, my grandfather would dare Jesus Christ to come down from the heavens and duke it out with him in that barn. Esti-Tabernac! he’d swear. Merde! And I would cower in a corner, never afraid of him, but of the Son of God who I was sure would appear in that old barn to smite this fierce man. And me, too, for loving him… And now I wonder if it was his Mohawk mother’s blood that raged?
I feel that same fierceness sometimes…
I find the obit, tucked in the back of an album of smiling photos of me in an ancient Upstate town. My grandfather’s name is bolded along the top of the newspaper clipping. I search through the quiet print and find her there, alongside her husband. Her name is Willow... Willow of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe. But that is all I know—and what is in a name other than a superficial understanding of what it means? I think it was Marx who said that.
I have worn many names, and all of them have tugged a bit through the shoulders, pulled a little at the sleeve. My father’s name, my step-father’s name, and then a husband. In my closet is a fire-proof box that contains the papers that gave those men the right to name me, to hide my story deep within the pages of their own. Like Willow got named, and her story concealed…
But I am Rachel and my history will not be erased by a silent tongue, by a tawny piece of paper in a fire-proof box. I am the daughter of Ann; the granddaughter of Marjorie and Mary; the great-granddaughter of Maude and Willow. This French Canadian stew with a fearless dash of Mohawk. This great-granddaughter of the St. Regis tribe, with her Westchester, her degree. The impassioned sister of the Silent Man. Beware my fiery tongue, beware my stories…
***
Y have u never told me this b4?? I text him back.
In the closet, I pull down the photo albums that I have meticulously maintained, with the dates and locations written in black magic marker along the spine. I am looking for the year my grandfather died—1992—and the obituary I remember keeping there. I want to find the Mohawk woman’s name, the mother of my French Canadian grandfather... Many mornings, I sat beside him on the tiny wooden stool in the barn, listening as the milky liquid he manipulated from the belly of a cow sprayed forcefully against the side of a dented tin pail. The cow flicking its long tail, the both of them peaceful. But when one of his animals got sick or hurt, my grandfather would dare Jesus Christ to come down from the heavens and duke it out with him in that barn. Esti-Tabernac! he’d swear. Merde! And I would cower in a corner, never afraid of him, but of the Son of God who I was sure would appear in that old barn to smite this fierce man. And me, too, for loving him… And now I wonder if it was his Mohawk mother’s blood that raged?
I feel that same fierceness sometimes…
I find the obit, tucked in the back of an album of smiling photos of me in an ancient Upstate town. My grandfather’s name is bolded along the top of the newspaper clipping. I search through the quiet print and find her there, alongside her husband. Her name is Willow... Willow of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe. But that is all I know—and what is in a name other than a superficial understanding of what it means? I think it was Marx who said that.
I have worn many names, and all of them have tugged a bit through the shoulders, pulled a little at the sleeve. My father’s name, my step-father’s name, and then a husband. In my closet is a fire-proof box that contains the papers that gave those men the right to name me, to hide my story deep within the pages of their own. Like Willow got named, and her story concealed…
But I am Rachel and my history will not be erased by a silent tongue, by a tawny piece of paper in a fire-proof box. I am the daughter of Ann; the granddaughter of Marjorie and Mary; the great-granddaughter of Maude and Willow. This French Canadian stew with a fearless dash of Mohawk. This great-granddaughter of the St. Regis tribe, with her Westchester, her degree. The impassioned sister of the Silent Man. Beware my fiery tongue, beware my stories…
***
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