We’re on the Thruway, with the rhythmic swipe of lazy wipers, a sad and cold night beyond the foggy windshield—and my boy says from the back seat, Make sure it isn't a shaggy hotel. He has his head down, watching a SpongeBob DVD. I laugh and catch the lighted dashboard of a car passing alongside me on the highway. I wonder about the driver—alone in his car—and where he’s headed on a night like this; I wonder, too, how my boy would know about such things as a shaggy hotel. The boy in the back that I have wrapped my armored self around so the world cannot get at him.
No, I say, smiling, no shaggy hotel room for us. And we drive a few more miles along the Thruway, up around the capital, and continue heading west. Rain falls in heavy drops that are almost snow. Too early for that, even up here where deserted factories sit silent and decayed just beyond the highway, their windows like cracked teeth. All the life exhaled out of them a long time ago… I do not want my son to know this. The inherent sadness up here, the loss, the fear that creeps like rust along your bones, your spirit. I am an Upstate girl, moved away many years back. What is there to give him from that? My friend Sally, in her braids and her blackness, tells her blonde-haired daughter that she is a black girl. Remember that, she tells her. And what do I have to give my boy to remember? A closed fist that, once opened, is empty. Like our bellies long ago, our pockets…
The rain has stopped and night time is undiluted beyond the car windows. I feel a heaviness creeping along my neck, in the muscles in my jaw, behind my eyes. I watch for a hotel sign beckoning from the highway. And eventually it appears: a grating yellow sign for a hotel that I’m hoping won’t be shaggier than the two of us can handle. At the end of the exit ramp, a tired green sign tries to announce two local points of interest. But the images are too faded to read. Beyond, is the raffish yellow sign of the hotel, a gas station, and a bit further down the road, a diner flashing neon. The rest—if there is anything out there—is shrouded in night time. I follow the sign for the hotel, driving over a corrugated parking lot, and park between two pick-up trucks.
Inside, the woman behind the desk wears a stained and pallid polo shirt with the logo of the hotel on the lapel. She is weighted down by life, by junk food consumed in front of the TV. Her sooty hair is pulled straight back into a ponytail secured by a brown rubber band. She wears smudged, wire-rimmed glasses. And when we come in, my boy and me, she flashes a genuine smile—revealing the telltale sign of her poverty. And suddenly I remember sitting in Janie’s kitchen all those years ago, as Janie took pliers to her mouth, and pulled out her own howling tooth. My mother and me across the table from her, sipping tea—the only thing left in the cupboards before we walked down to the armory the next day for the government cheese, for the free black & white cans labeled “meat.”
The woman at the check-in desk engages my son, chats with me—and I am audacious, dismissive. Wrinkle my nose, want to know about the room, wave a self righteous hand in disdain when the woman asks whether I want a smoking or non-smoking room. Behind her on the wall is a typed sign that says there is a $10.00 fee for pets. I show my horror at such a thing as pets in a hotel.
And the woman behind the counter in her rubber band ponytail and her melancholy teeth is patient, kind. Doesn't expose me for the fraud I am--the daughter of a Welfare mother, who is obviously still running, still trying to shake the rust from her shoes. I enter my Westchester address on the form, give her my 914 area code, wait for her reaction. And of course there is none. She smiles, hands me the room key, wishes me a lovely night, teases my son. And, she adds, as we head for our room, there is continental breakfast in the morning. And as we pass the counter where breakfast will be set up, my son squeals in delight at the cereal dispenser, and skips down the carpeted hallway of this shaggy hotel tonight.
***
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
East Division Street
It’s a pock marked town now, kicked square in the teeth by a bunch of dirty work boots when all those industries moved out. Just another sorry personality up there in the Rust Belt. But back then, it was a bit of a city, with lights and highways and people doing things. And on the lower North Side, where we lived, it was mostly Italian-American families making the gravy on Sundays, grandmothers in mourning, worrying the rosary beads.
And that’s where the six of us landed: in a big Victorian rental with a bum front porch. On East Division Street. Right off Park.
I claimed the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. I had a double bed, a radio, a handful of records, and my Bob Seger poster. Later I would acquire an old Kent drum set, which I set up in the corner, practicing my double-stroke roll under the watchful, energetic eye of that Midwest man. My room had 3 east-facing windows, and mornings announced themselves boldly, like a parade marching through. Which was great for me, as I have always liked mornings; but my lover at the time—a dark haired, late-night musician—would groan, would pull the pale pink coverlet up over his face to block out the sunlight drumming on his eyelids. Still, it never prevented him from stepping up the creaky wooden stairs after his late night gig, and crawling in beside me, the smell of bar smoke and beer on his clothes, his skin. I’d hear the quiet thud of his Les Paul case set upon the floor, his Chuck Taylors kicked off; the sound of jeans and heavy belt landing. And then him beside me, reaching, ready. I loved being awakened like that, loved the ache I felt as he pulled me toward him…
But not every night unfolded like that. In fact, many did not. That old white house, with its slanted stairway, its stained glass window, came alive at night. Shook the cobwebs from its windows, forgot about its age, and remembered instead how it once stood--young and cocky--on that plain and muted street. Around midnight is when the music really started: always Andy at the upright piano in the living room, and then guitars, bass, violin; even cow bell once that I remember. We inhaled music in that house, and lived our lives as if nothing else mattered. The six of us, bringing our wounded souls together: me, Helen, Rick, Nancy, MaryAlice, and Jeff. We talked of music, painting, sculpture, acting, dance. Left our haggard pasts behind. We painted, we wrote, we read--made and played music. Lots and lots of music. And when the dawn started to whisper, people crept off to bed, sometimes alone, but not very often.
And that’s where I fell in love. In that house, on that street, in that neighborhood. In love with many things. The dark-haired man with the pursed lip smile, who giggled when he laughed, who unveiled the shadowed streets of his neighborhood as we rode our bikes at 3am. The only ones awake, the two of us with the wind in our hair as we rounded Butternut Circle and coasted down that vigorous hill. The world is ours, Rachel, he said one night, with a sweep of his muscular hand. The strumming one. The one that made its way over my body hungrily each time… We lifted our faces to the night sky and laughed. He told me once about his father coming at him, and he not wanting to lift his guitar-playing hands to protect himself—of just letting the blows land… I love you, he said huskily later that same night, in my bed, the streetlight peeking in through closed blinds. Both of us falling… Better than Keats’ urn and his nubile lovers, captured in their forever youth. We didn’t want that. We wanted the sweat, the pulse of heartbeat, a cry escaping from parted lips...
Upstairs, in the attic, is where Jeff lived. One of those gentle beings the world sometimes delivers—too fragile on the inside to make it. A Darwinian experiment... Jeff had his grandfather's fishing pole, a bed, his well thumbed Bible. And a pair of Klipsch la scala speakers that could bring that old house to its knees—and, along with it, the quiet rush of police cars pulling up to the curb whenever he cranked Southside Johnny, or the Clash’s London Calling.
That dark-haired musician made me tremble with love, with want—with exhilaration those nights that we listened to music, and tumbled into bed. And Jeff. He taught me about the dignity of all living things... He in his illiteracy, his drunk. The entire natural world was a marvel to him, was something sacred. He believed in the goodness of everyone and everything. Even after his mother traded him in for drafts at the Elks; even after he never learned to read--still he believed that we lived in a holy place. On the nights that my lover didn’t come, we’d sit and talk about all manner of things... Walked out onto the street to study the stars, listen to the crickets, watch how the wind moved through the sunflower stems dancing proudly along the fence. A gift, Jeff told me one night, smiling his gap toothed smile. A set of drum sticks in his wiry hands. He’d beat out the rhythm to the song that was playing—on the Klipsch la scala speakers, or a song playing brashly in his head, that only he could hear. Listen, Rachel, he’d say. Listen.
And I did listen. And I still do, Jeff. Even though you are gone, dead at 36. But my old dark-haired lover is still up there in that beaten town, still protecting his hands, still strumming. And it’s me—Rachel—down here saying thanks. Saying thanks for the joy, saying thanks for making me think of you both today.
***
And that’s where the six of us landed: in a big Victorian rental with a bum front porch. On East Division Street. Right off Park.
I claimed the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. I had a double bed, a radio, a handful of records, and my Bob Seger poster. Later I would acquire an old Kent drum set, which I set up in the corner, practicing my double-stroke roll under the watchful, energetic eye of that Midwest man. My room had 3 east-facing windows, and mornings announced themselves boldly, like a parade marching through. Which was great for me, as I have always liked mornings; but my lover at the time—a dark haired, late-night musician—would groan, would pull the pale pink coverlet up over his face to block out the sunlight drumming on his eyelids. Still, it never prevented him from stepping up the creaky wooden stairs after his late night gig, and crawling in beside me, the smell of bar smoke and beer on his clothes, his skin. I’d hear the quiet thud of his Les Paul case set upon the floor, his Chuck Taylors kicked off; the sound of jeans and heavy belt landing. And then him beside me, reaching, ready. I loved being awakened like that, loved the ache I felt as he pulled me toward him…
But not every night unfolded like that. In fact, many did not. That old white house, with its slanted stairway, its stained glass window, came alive at night. Shook the cobwebs from its windows, forgot about its age, and remembered instead how it once stood--young and cocky--on that plain and muted street. Around midnight is when the music really started: always Andy at the upright piano in the living room, and then guitars, bass, violin; even cow bell once that I remember. We inhaled music in that house, and lived our lives as if nothing else mattered. The six of us, bringing our wounded souls together: me, Helen, Rick, Nancy, MaryAlice, and Jeff. We talked of music, painting, sculpture, acting, dance. Left our haggard pasts behind. We painted, we wrote, we read--made and played music. Lots and lots of music. And when the dawn started to whisper, people crept off to bed, sometimes alone, but not very often.
And that’s where I fell in love. In that house, on that street, in that neighborhood. In love with many things. The dark-haired man with the pursed lip smile, who giggled when he laughed, who unveiled the shadowed streets of his neighborhood as we rode our bikes at 3am. The only ones awake, the two of us with the wind in our hair as we rounded Butternut Circle and coasted down that vigorous hill. The world is ours, Rachel, he said one night, with a sweep of his muscular hand. The strumming one. The one that made its way over my body hungrily each time… We lifted our faces to the night sky and laughed. He told me once about his father coming at him, and he not wanting to lift his guitar-playing hands to protect himself—of just letting the blows land… I love you, he said huskily later that same night, in my bed, the streetlight peeking in through closed blinds. Both of us falling… Better than Keats’ urn and his nubile lovers, captured in their forever youth. We didn’t want that. We wanted the sweat, the pulse of heartbeat, a cry escaping from parted lips...
Upstairs, in the attic, is where Jeff lived. One of those gentle beings the world sometimes delivers—too fragile on the inside to make it. A Darwinian experiment... Jeff had his grandfather's fishing pole, a bed, his well thumbed Bible. And a pair of Klipsch la scala speakers that could bring that old house to its knees—and, along with it, the quiet rush of police cars pulling up to the curb whenever he cranked Southside Johnny, or the Clash’s London Calling.
That dark-haired musician made me tremble with love, with want—with exhilaration those nights that we listened to music, and tumbled into bed. And Jeff. He taught me about the dignity of all living things... He in his illiteracy, his drunk. The entire natural world was a marvel to him, was something sacred. He believed in the goodness of everyone and everything. Even after his mother traded him in for drafts at the Elks; even after he never learned to read--still he believed that we lived in a holy place. On the nights that my lover didn’t come, we’d sit and talk about all manner of things... Walked out onto the street to study the stars, listen to the crickets, watch how the wind moved through the sunflower stems dancing proudly along the fence. A gift, Jeff told me one night, smiling his gap toothed smile. A set of drum sticks in his wiry hands. He’d beat out the rhythm to the song that was playing—on the Klipsch la scala speakers, or a song playing brashly in his head, that only he could hear. Listen, Rachel, he’d say. Listen.
And I did listen. And I still do, Jeff. Even though you are gone, dead at 36. But my old dark-haired lover is still up there in that beaten town, still protecting his hands, still strumming. And it’s me—Rachel—down here saying thanks. Saying thanks for the joy, saying thanks for making me think of you both today.
***
Friday, September 25, 2009
Marion
Marion committed suicide, my mother tells me this morning. Her daughter just called to give me the news. I hear the quiver in my mother’s voice. Her friend of forty years gone—the link to her own young motherhood, her own lost beauty and youth. Another reminder of her gnawing mortality. My mother up there in that tired, vanquished town, waiting for her turn…
And I’m sick of suicide. Ed’s parents, my uncle, and now Marion. Most people don’t know suicide like this, and I get to claim three. Marion with pills; and the other two choosing a basement beam and a tightly knotted rope.
She was a Welfare mother, too, living next door to us in the housing project just off Seneca Hill. What I remember about her apartment was the large family portrait that hung above the couch, with Marion posed like one of those women in an old Elvis movie. Her long blonde hair brushed seductively over one eye, and draped to the side of her angled, bare shoulder. Her four kids arranged like props around her. We had no money for such things as family portraits, and so I remember staring longingly at that airbrushed photo with the fake pink blush across Marion’s cheeks. My mother was beautiful, too, in her dark curly hair, her sinewy frame. But when people came to our apartment, our walls boasted only the free pin-up calendar that Barrett’s Insurance gave out each year, and the paint-by-numbers picture of a matador and his bull.
Despite the blonde hair and white lipstick, her hips, her travels, and the men who orbited her life right up until she swallowed the pills last night and went to bed, Marion was always on the run, always on the move. It was her idea that she and the kids jump off the bridge that day--into monstrous snow banks deposited by yet another Lake Effect snowstorm. Huge white cushions of snow covering the railroad tracks below, the snow still tumbling from thick gray clouds; schools closed for the day because of the storm. And when he jumped—her only son, her first-born—they heard the crush of bone, but did not hear the quiet snap of spinal cord, his neck breaking... At 17, he spent a full year in rehab, learning how to brush his teeth and dress himself, his wasted limbs indifferent to the struggle.
And what is a Welfare boy to do in a wheelchair in a town where it snows from October to May? Marion understood that, and did what any desperate mother would do: she used the only resource she had to help her son. And so at night, under the cover of shadows, the men came knocking. She moved her Elvis-movie body, shook her provocative hair. Until eventually she saved enough in a plastic bin that she kept hidden under the bed. Then she took her children to Florida. Bought her boy a house, had it fitted for a wheelchair.
The next time I saw her, Marion’s long blonde hair had been bleached to straw. It was also the day after her facelift when my mother and I arrived. Marion in her movie star sunglasses that she removed each day just long enough for me to take her picture, wanting to chronicle her healing. The purple stitches like hyphens on her eyelids, tucked into the recesses by her ears; I tried not to gag as I held the camera steady. She was a nudist by then, too, and when she asked my mother and me if we wanted to see her photo albums, we both declined…
And she had a ridiculous house, even by Florida standards. A Spencer’s Gifts house, with toilet tissue rolled off a penis shaped holder; hand soap nestled in the exposed bosom of a ceramic figurine. She laughed as I recoiled. You’re too uptight, Rachel! she teased that week while we were there. Yet I knew she was hiding behind all that...
And now she is dead, and I wonder if they will drape her hair off to the side, if they will put her in the ground as she wanted to be seen: in her nakedness, her Avon lipstick. And her son will wheel himself to her funeral next week, say goodbye to his mother—never knowing what I know. Not knowing exactly how much she loved him. How much she suffered because of that day in the snow.
And here in New York, they report on the news that a 38-year-old woman jumped last night from the Tappan Zee Bridge. Left a note in her parked car. Marion and this young woman—two strangers—choosing a hushed and sober evening in September to end their pain.
***
And I’m sick of suicide. Ed’s parents, my uncle, and now Marion. Most people don’t know suicide like this, and I get to claim three. Marion with pills; and the other two choosing a basement beam and a tightly knotted rope.
She was a Welfare mother, too, living next door to us in the housing project just off Seneca Hill. What I remember about her apartment was the large family portrait that hung above the couch, with Marion posed like one of those women in an old Elvis movie. Her long blonde hair brushed seductively over one eye, and draped to the side of her angled, bare shoulder. Her four kids arranged like props around her. We had no money for such things as family portraits, and so I remember staring longingly at that airbrushed photo with the fake pink blush across Marion’s cheeks. My mother was beautiful, too, in her dark curly hair, her sinewy frame. But when people came to our apartment, our walls boasted only the free pin-up calendar that Barrett’s Insurance gave out each year, and the paint-by-numbers picture of a matador and his bull.
Despite the blonde hair and white lipstick, her hips, her travels, and the men who orbited her life right up until she swallowed the pills last night and went to bed, Marion was always on the run, always on the move. It was her idea that she and the kids jump off the bridge that day--into monstrous snow banks deposited by yet another Lake Effect snowstorm. Huge white cushions of snow covering the railroad tracks below, the snow still tumbling from thick gray clouds; schools closed for the day because of the storm. And when he jumped—her only son, her first-born—they heard the crush of bone, but did not hear the quiet snap of spinal cord, his neck breaking... At 17, he spent a full year in rehab, learning how to brush his teeth and dress himself, his wasted limbs indifferent to the struggle.
And what is a Welfare boy to do in a wheelchair in a town where it snows from October to May? Marion understood that, and did what any desperate mother would do: she used the only resource she had to help her son. And so at night, under the cover of shadows, the men came knocking. She moved her Elvis-movie body, shook her provocative hair. Until eventually she saved enough in a plastic bin that she kept hidden under the bed. Then she took her children to Florida. Bought her boy a house, had it fitted for a wheelchair.
The next time I saw her, Marion’s long blonde hair had been bleached to straw. It was also the day after her facelift when my mother and I arrived. Marion in her movie star sunglasses that she removed each day just long enough for me to take her picture, wanting to chronicle her healing. The purple stitches like hyphens on her eyelids, tucked into the recesses by her ears; I tried not to gag as I held the camera steady. She was a nudist by then, too, and when she asked my mother and me if we wanted to see her photo albums, we both declined…
And she had a ridiculous house, even by Florida standards. A Spencer’s Gifts house, with toilet tissue rolled off a penis shaped holder; hand soap nestled in the exposed bosom of a ceramic figurine. She laughed as I recoiled. You’re too uptight, Rachel! she teased that week while we were there. Yet I knew she was hiding behind all that...
And now she is dead, and I wonder if they will drape her hair off to the side, if they will put her in the ground as she wanted to be seen: in her nakedness, her Avon lipstick. And her son will wheel himself to her funeral next week, say goodbye to his mother—never knowing what I know. Not knowing exactly how much she loved him. How much she suffered because of that day in the snow.
And here in New York, they report on the news that a 38-year-old woman jumped last night from the Tappan Zee Bridge. Left a note in her parked car. Marion and this young woman—two strangers—choosing a hushed and sober evening in September to end their pain.
***
Monday, September 21, 2009
Memphis
It is a quiet summer night in the city a few years ago. There is a light rain. I am walking the narrow streets of the Village with Susie, a delicate Korean woman who I met in my writing program. Susie has moved here from California with her boyfriend, and they don’t yet know a lot of people. And so Susie is slumming it with me. She likes to tell me about her degree from the University of California at Irvine; and because she feels compelled to remind me of this so often, I know my response disappoints her. I did my undergraduate work at the University at Albany, I tell her, with appropriate emphasis, but she rubs her nose. Suggests we stop for tea. Which we do. Susie and I are in the writing program in Brooklyn—a flunkie program with an old bearded director who neither reads our work, nor pretends to. But that night as we walk down the West Village street, we are writers, Susie and me. Talking about writing. And we are going to see Lucille Clifton read…
We find the place and step through the wrought iron gate and down several cement steps. It is an auxiliary building of NYU. Inside, off the foyer, is a room benignly set up for us--and already a number of people have settled themselves into their seats. There is the rumble of hushed discussion, nervous anticipation. By the door, Ms. Clifton has her books on display on a small table. I own all but the newest one—the Terrible Stories—which I know I will purchase tonight. Susie does not know Lucille—perhaps they do not study her at Irvine—but we are writers, and so she is here with me tonight.
I pick a seat a few rows back from the lectern where Clifton will stand to read. Susie wants to move closer, but I have never liked sitting in the front row in these situations. When I want to hear something, feel something, I like some distance. I need room to move my response around a bit. And so I tell Susie to go ahead and sit up front, but that I am going to sit right here. Instead, she settles into the seat beside me.
Many months later, Susie and I will sit at a long wooden table in a pub in Park Slope. There are a number of writers clustered around the table that night—including Suki, a young woman newly admitted to our program. Suki is all long black hair, all scarves, all things Japanese, all things Asian. Susie sits beside her, and I overhear her tell Suki that her real name is Sujin. Sujin? I say. You told me your name was Susie. And she is fierce that night in claiming her identity, sitting next to Suki and all those scarves; she laughs haughtily and says, Did you really think my name was Susie?
People continue to filter in that night in the West Village, until all the chairs are filled with people needing whatever Clifton has prepared to give us. She is not a scary poet, like Olds. But she delivers truth as she knows it, as she has lived it. A truth delivered in single syllables, in just 4 or 5 lines. She trusts the reader, Clifton. And she is a confident poet. A confident writer. In the way that Susie and I will never be…
We fidget. Tug at our pant legs, clear our throats, look around the room. Wait. Then finally Clifton appears from somewhere, and she is at the lectern—and her white hair surprises me. Whatever she says by way of introduction, I do not recall. I remember only that a lump immediately lodges itself in the back of my throat, like one of those lottery balls that gets spit up into the cylinder. I try to force it down, but it lets me know who’s boss, and so there it stays.
And Lucille Clifton reads… Her voice is what I imagined it would be. Not like seeing Gwendolyn Brooks, who sang her poems in hills and valleys—when I had read them flat and measured. Clifton reads from Good Woman, New Poems, The Book of Light. She is courageous in her revelation. In this room full of strangers…
Then Clifton reads poems from her new book: consulting the book of changes: radiation; 1994; scar; amazons… The lump in the back of my throat sits there quietly, not moving, not causing any disturbance. Until. Clifton reads her Memphis poems. The room is silent, all eyes directed toward the imposing figure with the shock of white hair and her quiet, husky voice. She reads, “in the latter days/you will come to a place/called Memphis…” Which is a city I have visited many times. Walked Beale Street up and down. Heard music. Ate BBQ and pecan pie. Felt the history. But. Not. Like. Her. When she reads her Memphis, her Beale Street, I see right away that it is not mine. I sense her antennae—palpable in this sterile room tonight—sprinkled like tiny, sensitive hairs along her fingertips, her toes, her tongue. She tells us she feels the footsteps of her people “throbbing up through [her] shoes” on auction street; that she understands the mud of the Mississippi hides what should be revealed; of another “dusky woman/weakened by too much loss.”
Beside me, Susie Irvine sits as still as stone while the inside of me tumults, while my legs quiver, while stubborn tears drip saltily into the corners of my mouth. And I am ashamed. Self conscious. Try everything to make myself stop…
Later, I wait in line for my book to get signed. My nose runs and I am without tissues. I am mad at myself for this response. I keep my head down. Hand Clifton my book. Utter my name. And when I am composed enough, back on the West Village street, I open the book to find that she has written “For Rachel. Joy!” with her lovely name--Lucille Clifton--spelled out below.
***
We find the place and step through the wrought iron gate and down several cement steps. It is an auxiliary building of NYU. Inside, off the foyer, is a room benignly set up for us--and already a number of people have settled themselves into their seats. There is the rumble of hushed discussion, nervous anticipation. By the door, Ms. Clifton has her books on display on a small table. I own all but the newest one—the Terrible Stories—which I know I will purchase tonight. Susie does not know Lucille—perhaps they do not study her at Irvine—but we are writers, and so she is here with me tonight.
I pick a seat a few rows back from the lectern where Clifton will stand to read. Susie wants to move closer, but I have never liked sitting in the front row in these situations. When I want to hear something, feel something, I like some distance. I need room to move my response around a bit. And so I tell Susie to go ahead and sit up front, but that I am going to sit right here. Instead, she settles into the seat beside me.
Many months later, Susie and I will sit at a long wooden table in a pub in Park Slope. There are a number of writers clustered around the table that night—including Suki, a young woman newly admitted to our program. Suki is all long black hair, all scarves, all things Japanese, all things Asian. Susie sits beside her, and I overhear her tell Suki that her real name is Sujin. Sujin? I say. You told me your name was Susie. And she is fierce that night in claiming her identity, sitting next to Suki and all those scarves; she laughs haughtily and says, Did you really think my name was Susie?
People continue to filter in that night in the West Village, until all the chairs are filled with people needing whatever Clifton has prepared to give us. She is not a scary poet, like Olds. But she delivers truth as she knows it, as she has lived it. A truth delivered in single syllables, in just 4 or 5 lines. She trusts the reader, Clifton. And she is a confident poet. A confident writer. In the way that Susie and I will never be…
We fidget. Tug at our pant legs, clear our throats, look around the room. Wait. Then finally Clifton appears from somewhere, and she is at the lectern—and her white hair surprises me. Whatever she says by way of introduction, I do not recall. I remember only that a lump immediately lodges itself in the back of my throat, like one of those lottery balls that gets spit up into the cylinder. I try to force it down, but it lets me know who’s boss, and so there it stays.
And Lucille Clifton reads… Her voice is what I imagined it would be. Not like seeing Gwendolyn Brooks, who sang her poems in hills and valleys—when I had read them flat and measured. Clifton reads from Good Woman, New Poems, The Book of Light. She is courageous in her revelation. In this room full of strangers…
Then Clifton reads poems from her new book: consulting the book of changes: radiation; 1994; scar; amazons… The lump in the back of my throat sits there quietly, not moving, not causing any disturbance. Until. Clifton reads her Memphis poems. The room is silent, all eyes directed toward the imposing figure with the shock of white hair and her quiet, husky voice. She reads, “in the latter days/you will come to a place/called Memphis…” Which is a city I have visited many times. Walked Beale Street up and down. Heard music. Ate BBQ and pecan pie. Felt the history. But. Not. Like. Her. When she reads her Memphis, her Beale Street, I see right away that it is not mine. I sense her antennae—palpable in this sterile room tonight—sprinkled like tiny, sensitive hairs along her fingertips, her toes, her tongue. She tells us she feels the footsteps of her people “throbbing up through [her] shoes” on auction street; that she understands the mud of the Mississippi hides what should be revealed; of another “dusky woman/weakened by too much loss.”
Beside me, Susie Irvine sits as still as stone while the inside of me tumults, while my legs quiver, while stubborn tears drip saltily into the corners of my mouth. And I am ashamed. Self conscious. Try everything to make myself stop…
Later, I wait in line for my book to get signed. My nose runs and I am without tissues. I am mad at myself for this response. I keep my head down. Hand Clifton my book. Utter my name. And when I am composed enough, back on the West Village street, I open the book to find that she has written “For Rachel. Joy!” with her lovely name--Lucille Clifton--spelled out below.
***
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Caution
My friend Stephanie jumped out of an airplane. It was something she longed to do, and one day, she just did it… Later, at my house, we watch the video they made of the jump. Stephanie stands, weighted down with goggles and backpack, at the gaping hole in the side of the plane, the wind and open sky beckoning. Just standing there on the precipice of that hurtling plane, she gets further than I would have. And then after several moments of indecision, she pitches herself into the sunny abyss, shrieking I can’t do this!, her voice trailing off as she plummets down toward the earth, back down to her uneventful life in a small white house with a husband named Fred and her dark green mini-van.
Jumping out of a plane is not something I’ve ever felt called to do. I suppose because I don’t like heights; and also because I can’t imagine having the courage to jump. I would need to be pushed—which, I understand, they will not do. But there are days—many days—when I desire to live my life a bit more incautiously, a bit more dangerously. I want to jump out of a metaphorical plane; I want to live out the danger a bit more in the abstract. Stephanie has her plane, and I have mine, too.
I have many dreams, many hopes, that play themselves out in my head as I drive along in my car, as I am folding laundry, as I cleanse my face at night before crawling into bed. When I’m feeling brave, I lean in close to the mirror, examining the porous nose, the crinkled skin collected like paper fans at my eyes, the lines between my eyebrows that remind me how I knit my brows together when I am considering things. My face. The one I show to the world, and the one the world interprets and judges. It’s a scary thing to consider, when you stop and think about it. Putting your face out there like that everyday…
Yesterday I tried bourbon and whiskey for the first time. We are standing in a converted barn, in the Catskills, on a warm afternoon in September. A short young man explains the science of distilling; he is knowledgeable and passionate about the making of spirits. I read their story in a magazine: two young men who took a chance. Who threw caution to the wind. Who tried something entirely beyond their experience and now have this. We are a small group, listening; most of us catching only part of the science of how grain and fruit get transformed into something special. Later, in the tasting room, I will sample the “baby bourbon,” made of corn, and stored in an oak barrel. After that, I swallow the distillery’s house specialty: whiskey. And it does a deliciously slow burn down my throat and into my belly. I am with someone who hurries through the process—of this, and the tasting of wines at two other places we stop—but I stand there, feet planted solidly on the wide plank floor, wanting to savor the moment, my new experience. Feeling that whiskey burn…
Most days I live very tepidly. I wake up, shower, coax my son from the warm folds of his bed, make breakfast, put him on the bus, go to my office, come home from my office, make dinner, read to my boy, read to myself, and go to sleep. And the next day loops around for me to go at again, just the same way. And suddenly many weeks have gone by, many months, many years… Things get broken up, of course, with Christmas, with trips to the ocean, with something brand new carried home from the store. Just enough distraction to keep me from recognizing the banality of life, of the quiet, uneventful way most of us go about living it. Just enough to mask the absurdity of it.
My mother often told me when I was a young girl that I had too many dreams, too grandiose a plan. And this when I never fantasized about the stage, or the road, or the underbelly. I wanted simply to get out of a place where the snow silenced everything, where the winds of change never blew. My mother shook her head at this and cautioned me against such thinking. You will be sorry, she said…
And yet, as I stand before the mirror this morning, I am sorry only that I have not lived more, loved more, and taken more chances. Outside the window, there is the harmony of birds answering each other—and I am savoring the moment because it is, after all, late September, and mornings will soon be quiet with winter… Last night as I drove home from the mountains, there were three text messages saying come into the city; be my guest tonight—and it is a lovely night, the sky littered with stars, a lively Manhattan just a few short miles down the road. But instead I turn on to my own familiar street, park my car, come inside. Kick off my shoes, drink a tall glass of cold water, hang my sweater alongside others in my organized closet; settle into bed. And it’s not long before I am drifting off to sleep, thinking of the new home I plan to buy, of the smoky blue walls I will paint, with creamy white trim, and a new chocolate colored couch; of the brownies I will make tomorrow for my son; of a quiet Sunday afternoon with him and the Times; of the walk I will take around the fountain after dinner.
***
Jumping out of a plane is not something I’ve ever felt called to do. I suppose because I don’t like heights; and also because I can’t imagine having the courage to jump. I would need to be pushed—which, I understand, they will not do. But there are days—many days—when I desire to live my life a bit more incautiously, a bit more dangerously. I want to jump out of a metaphorical plane; I want to live out the danger a bit more in the abstract. Stephanie has her plane, and I have mine, too.
I have many dreams, many hopes, that play themselves out in my head as I drive along in my car, as I am folding laundry, as I cleanse my face at night before crawling into bed. When I’m feeling brave, I lean in close to the mirror, examining the porous nose, the crinkled skin collected like paper fans at my eyes, the lines between my eyebrows that remind me how I knit my brows together when I am considering things. My face. The one I show to the world, and the one the world interprets and judges. It’s a scary thing to consider, when you stop and think about it. Putting your face out there like that everyday…
Yesterday I tried bourbon and whiskey for the first time. We are standing in a converted barn, in the Catskills, on a warm afternoon in September. A short young man explains the science of distilling; he is knowledgeable and passionate about the making of spirits. I read their story in a magazine: two young men who took a chance. Who threw caution to the wind. Who tried something entirely beyond their experience and now have this. We are a small group, listening; most of us catching only part of the science of how grain and fruit get transformed into something special. Later, in the tasting room, I will sample the “baby bourbon,” made of corn, and stored in an oak barrel. After that, I swallow the distillery’s house specialty: whiskey. And it does a deliciously slow burn down my throat and into my belly. I am with someone who hurries through the process—of this, and the tasting of wines at two other places we stop—but I stand there, feet planted solidly on the wide plank floor, wanting to savor the moment, my new experience. Feeling that whiskey burn…
Most days I live very tepidly. I wake up, shower, coax my son from the warm folds of his bed, make breakfast, put him on the bus, go to my office, come home from my office, make dinner, read to my boy, read to myself, and go to sleep. And the next day loops around for me to go at again, just the same way. And suddenly many weeks have gone by, many months, many years… Things get broken up, of course, with Christmas, with trips to the ocean, with something brand new carried home from the store. Just enough distraction to keep me from recognizing the banality of life, of the quiet, uneventful way most of us go about living it. Just enough to mask the absurdity of it.
My mother often told me when I was a young girl that I had too many dreams, too grandiose a plan. And this when I never fantasized about the stage, or the road, or the underbelly. I wanted simply to get out of a place where the snow silenced everything, where the winds of change never blew. My mother shook her head at this and cautioned me against such thinking. You will be sorry, she said…
And yet, as I stand before the mirror this morning, I am sorry only that I have not lived more, loved more, and taken more chances. Outside the window, there is the harmony of birds answering each other—and I am savoring the moment because it is, after all, late September, and mornings will soon be quiet with winter… Last night as I drove home from the mountains, there were three text messages saying come into the city; be my guest tonight—and it is a lovely night, the sky littered with stars, a lively Manhattan just a few short miles down the road. But instead I turn on to my own familiar street, park my car, come inside. Kick off my shoes, drink a tall glass of cold water, hang my sweater alongside others in my organized closet; settle into bed. And it’s not long before I am drifting off to sleep, thinking of the new home I plan to buy, of the smoky blue walls I will paint, with creamy white trim, and a new chocolate colored couch; of the brownies I will make tomorrow for my son; of a quiet Sunday afternoon with him and the Times; of the walk I will take around the fountain after dinner.
***
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Snake
There is a snake—long, thin, shiny—that lurks in the walls of his basement. He tells me this recently, standing up to demonstrate his composure at finding it there. He moves to the corner of the living room, his lanky arms and fingers easily touching the ceiling. He is poised, still; curious at his discovery. And I believe him.
But who would not recoil from an unexpected snake? Who would not drop the putty knife, still wet with mortar, when the snake revealed itself, metallic and powerful, its hungry tongue licking at the shadows down there? That snake with its potency, its ability to coil around something many times its own size and squeeze it into lifelessness… Instead, he shows me how he stood there, just inches away from that probing tongue, and studied the iridescent etchings, the quiet black eyes—he and the snake alone in the hushed, dark basement of his farmhouse. Of course it was only moments before the snake disappeared behind the concrete walls, into some unknown nest, and he stood alone, as cool and measured as that hungry reptile.
And I wonder what that says about him? About us? I imagine my own wild response, coming face to face with that snake: the spontaneous screech, tools jettisoned, feet that carry me, like a skiff riding the waves, straight upstairs. To light, to safety, to warmth. My uneven breathing, terror howling from my eyes, sweat in the palms of my outstretched hands. And him, anchored quietly in that basement, half smiling, hammer gripped securely in his working hands, hoping to catch another quick glimpse. Intrigued by the science of it…
Today I push an obstinate cart around the smooth, well lit aisles at Target. I toss things in the cart to ward off my fears: face cream, body shaper panty hose, Children’s Tylenol. I am looking at the lacy bras, in black, cut low the way I like them, when I hear her yelling. Loud enough to pull me away from the delicate fabric that will cleave to my heavy breasts and give them shape, form—and as I step out from behind the rack, she is there, bent over a little girl. And then she slaps her. Hard. Then yanks a fragile arm so that the pigtails shake. And the little girl cries. You come when I fucking call you, the woman barks, standing up in her adultness, her motherhood, her conviction. Her hand on a stroller where a smaller baby sleeps. You fucking hear me? she says, answering her own rhetorical question with another slap. And I am terrified of this woman’s power, and her powerlessness, her poverty. I glance around to see who else is there, but I am alone with this young mother in the brightly lit aisle, living my own troubled life, making my own bad choices. What are you fucking looking at? the woman hisses at me. I think I am looking at fear, I want to tell her. But please is all I manage to say before a dog-eared man appears from nowhere, lifting the pigtailed girl to his chest. Don’t fucking comfort her, the woman tells him, as she muscles the stroller down the aisle, mad at me, at the little girl, at the world. But I know it’s really fear—of a different kind than mine; but fear is fear, I’ve come to realize. And we are never at our best when we’re afraid…
And I watch him, even in his strength and height--even as he stares down reptiles--erecting walls, puttying over cracks, building doors out of wood and wrought iron hinges with his own ample hands. Closing things off. Boxing things in. Sealing things tight. And he goes about his construction methodically, patiently—confident in his workmanship and exactness. As fearful as the rest of us…
***
But who would not recoil from an unexpected snake? Who would not drop the putty knife, still wet with mortar, when the snake revealed itself, metallic and powerful, its hungry tongue licking at the shadows down there? That snake with its potency, its ability to coil around something many times its own size and squeeze it into lifelessness… Instead, he shows me how he stood there, just inches away from that probing tongue, and studied the iridescent etchings, the quiet black eyes—he and the snake alone in the hushed, dark basement of his farmhouse. Of course it was only moments before the snake disappeared behind the concrete walls, into some unknown nest, and he stood alone, as cool and measured as that hungry reptile.
And I wonder what that says about him? About us? I imagine my own wild response, coming face to face with that snake: the spontaneous screech, tools jettisoned, feet that carry me, like a skiff riding the waves, straight upstairs. To light, to safety, to warmth. My uneven breathing, terror howling from my eyes, sweat in the palms of my outstretched hands. And him, anchored quietly in that basement, half smiling, hammer gripped securely in his working hands, hoping to catch another quick glimpse. Intrigued by the science of it…
Today I push an obstinate cart around the smooth, well lit aisles at Target. I toss things in the cart to ward off my fears: face cream, body shaper panty hose, Children’s Tylenol. I am looking at the lacy bras, in black, cut low the way I like them, when I hear her yelling. Loud enough to pull me away from the delicate fabric that will cleave to my heavy breasts and give them shape, form—and as I step out from behind the rack, she is there, bent over a little girl. And then she slaps her. Hard. Then yanks a fragile arm so that the pigtails shake. And the little girl cries. You come when I fucking call you, the woman barks, standing up in her adultness, her motherhood, her conviction. Her hand on a stroller where a smaller baby sleeps. You fucking hear me? she says, answering her own rhetorical question with another slap. And I am terrified of this woman’s power, and her powerlessness, her poverty. I glance around to see who else is there, but I am alone with this young mother in the brightly lit aisle, living my own troubled life, making my own bad choices. What are you fucking looking at? the woman hisses at me. I think I am looking at fear, I want to tell her. But please is all I manage to say before a dog-eared man appears from nowhere, lifting the pigtailed girl to his chest. Don’t fucking comfort her, the woman tells him, as she muscles the stroller down the aisle, mad at me, at the little girl, at the world. But I know it’s really fear—of a different kind than mine; but fear is fear, I’ve come to realize. And we are never at our best when we’re afraid…
And I watch him, even in his strength and height--even as he stares down reptiles--erecting walls, puttying over cracks, building doors out of wood and wrought iron hinges with his own ample hands. Closing things off. Boxing things in. Sealing things tight. And he goes about his construction methodically, patiently—confident in his workmanship and exactness. As fearful as the rest of us…
***
Saturday, August 29, 2009
On Reading Marx
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…
***
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…
***
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