22:35”; Sf KUIL 13 L. V0 C . .45313 L '~'lo-ba:i.u$c‘£’. \ ' I ,_; 5 I is“? :‘A we? " .‘A ‘ ‘ V . 1 a... ! ‘ ' i‘? K' ‘ H I. 4 1% ~ - 25? «m . t-‘H' ‘ rap.» ~-. M9 1 i ' 4 1n"i‘-~ "‘ 1 , 2;?“ «‘3‘. «“3? “4.4;” J \t’&) ”’1‘, “‘3. '4“. ‘. 573 W.) b 10 This is to certify that the thesis entitled S NOW I? GMAT OES presented by Cheryl Lynn Vossekuil has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for MA English degree in Diane Wakoski Major professor Date November 5, 1982 0-7639 MS U is an Watt” Action/Equal Opportunity Institution MSU LIBRARIES .—r—. \- RETURNING MATERIALS: Piece in book drop to remove this checkout from your record. FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped beiow. /4/0.. /5 77 ii) M | [x SNOW TOMATOES By Cheryl Lynn Vossekuil A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fufillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of English 1982 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the assistance of my major professor, Diane Wakoski, who has taught me much. She is a woman of generosity and patience and has been significant in my writing of this thesis. With her unceasing honesty, her critical acumen, her considerable intelligence, and her poetic brillance, Professor Wakoski has greatly influenced me and my work. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Clean Like A Splinter......................................1 Limitations Of Bone........................................6 Snow Tomatoes..............................................9 Time-Lapse Photography....................................12 Breaking The Back Window With A Wooden Spoon..............16 Something Ready To Be Found...............................20 The Testing Of Values.....................................2h Choosing Shoes............................................28 Funeral Flower Arrangements...............................30 Silent Confrontations.....................................34 Crystal Pulses............................................38 Caring For Books..........................................44 Singing Lessons...........................................u8 Ode On A Pig Farm.........................................51 Listening To Aunt Bertha..................................55 Why I Do Not Ice Skate....................................61 Coming Back...............................................67 What Does Not Happen......................................71 Playing Monopoly With A Friend............................73 Phrasing..................................................76 Why I No Longer Eat Lunch.................................80 BeneathThe SurfaceOOOOOOOIOIOOOOIOOOOOIOOOOOOIOOOOOOOOOOOBQ iii Clean Like A Splinter One in red steps onto the board pauses in concentration springs back into somersault around twice then fast into the water like a nail through soft wood and clean. Another rubs his calves with Chamois measures gait of approach bounds high arms out in rigid swan dive clicks them together like scissors just as his nails reach water. The next all shoulders and stripes rides the limit whirls like a drill punches through the surface is under. The discipline of the mind which surpasses innate fears resistance against movement, unusual angle, can lend itself malleable to reason, command, move several directions in a motion injury certain without perfect control. On the ten meter platform the boy stares down the pool below, toes in sure grip from falling as if it could help. The crowd is not watching the divers. Those behind him in line add to the taunting which rises up around him like muck. He sees the divers snap taut as whips spin effortless as lariats from various meters then bite into the water sure as Chainsaws. Poolside, the coach gestures changes in a rush of movement, asking more angle harder motion like a gunshot. The precision of the mind when it evinces logic, controls the lobes that warn against precarious dips and spins, exercises reason over basal knowledge. A woman leaps hovers as if she has a choice flicks her waist turns fluidly then into the water quick as a slap. The crowd watches the boy just away from the pool wants his yelp of descent to see him chunk down like a jackhammer, his sound better than the divers' 3 On lower platforms his friends drop off solidly as a big hand laid square on the shoulder. The guard whistles him back so others may jump, he retreats along the rail sees them step easy over the edge moves again to the front memorizes the path down as if that could help. The sometime refusal of the mind to accept the logical-- that a drop from ten meters will not likely injure, yet the absurdity of the human body falling through space clean as a foghorn. It is often what is unusual that seems dangerous. Society protects the individual with guards and coaches. It is order and will, control, that overcome fear, like learning to handle rattlesnakes, tamping the jaws locked-open, retaining the value of the unknown yet subjugating it. A few remain with the boy they are dripping begin to tremble but are silent, patient. As the boy inclines slightly another sidles up behind him, body drawn back foot snug against the other's backside, nudges him over. He goes quiet. Limitations Of Bone According to a local gerontologist, interviewed by WKAR radio, the aging process starts at thirty when the brain begins to shrink. It must dissolve the cells sifting like silt through the filter of skull. It must ooze into the hair, drizzling the strands into gray. The gray matter sodden and mushy as lobster cooked dead, taut membranes slackening as if the brain seeped like fog into the cranium, as if the head were filled with mud. Or the mass compresses congeals like a roux sticky as putty in the cerebrum, cerebellum, leaden weight of ash. There must be gaps as the brain recedes. If I shook my head like a gourd when the time came, at sixty or seventy, I might hear the dried inner workings report the limits of bone. The hints of gray that float in my eyes must be a first sign like newly muddied snow, so that years from now the gray will spread like a new bruise into obsidian gray, as, when a child viewing an eclipse, I looked at the sun through a strip of exposed film, my clear vision smudging over like a window. I am waiting to find which part of my brain will disintegrate first, though by the time I notice, first sign will no longer be an issue. Then the brain stem, monitor of heart beat and breathing, will thicken like mold. If‘I sleep too soundly the smooth gray muscles of the lungs will hinge, catch function no longer. More likely flecks of brain matter are sloughed off like a scab or virus, the unfeeling brain graying like a river in January thaw. If at seventy or eighty in autopsy they shear off my skull, they may find my brain taut and hard as a fist, the sludge of connective tissue swollen and taking up the slack. 0r pluck it from the skull's cavity like a mushroom, the gray matter reddened and absolute: the gray splat of a blood-filled mosquito, the gray of long-dead animals in the road. Snow Tomatoes In winter the only tomatoes available in Michigan look to have been grown in snow. The flesh is anemic, ochre, as if the fruit has been bled of its color by icicle leeches thinly dripping into snow, redness sliding away like the blade of a stiletto. Though they are from California or raised in hothouses, you can almost imagine translucent gardens of tomatoes growing in frozen rows, the stalks fibrous and sturdy, the ripe fruit a compromise between blood clot and pearl. In winter you almost have to pound the tomatoes like veal to eat them. If you slice into one it will be sketchy and crystalline-- a skeleton of a tomato if it had one-— like the beaded, outlined spaces in a balled length of chain. The tomatoes snag and dull whichever knife you use as ice floes trap dead timber at a rapids, blunting jagged edges. .Or, they are soft and thick like a fetid marsh or bog which doesn't quite freeze over, but would take you quickly through its surface if you stepped onto it, like a scalpel's blade sliding through the brain‘s gray matter. In winter eschew tomatoes for they will betray you like pistachio nuts cracked open to reach the prized meat inside, but somehow filled with ash instead. Avoid these tomatoes. 10 They are something which is rotten at its best moment of ripeness, like an axe murderer at twenty. If you must have tomatoes, find photographs of them for they will be far more satisfying than the tangible fruit. In winter tomatoes satisfy the palate only in theory. 11 Time-Lapse Photography The hanging plants in my living room vibrantly score the white stucco walls, move slow as the cloth Marimekko they border, creep along the wall like green vapor trails which simply appear in a thin sky though you can't see the movement can't see the jet. In the corner the philodendron spills lush vines from its ceiling basket, tracking the white with four feet of meandering green highways, interstates, junctions on a tourist's map. Near the window the Chinese evergreen undulates in a windfall of leaves from an air current, as rushes near a riverbank beckon with tapered shoots for someone, a weaver, to gather them. In Biology class we watched films of plants shown in time-lapse photography. In fifteen seconds you could see a 72 hour growth cycle, 12 could see a flower fist its way from a talon of green, fully grown, could see the growth that eludes our daily vision. I can't resist the yearning to snap on my bedroom light thinking I can catch a plant in the midst of movement, unaware, like the fashion mannequins who train themselves to remain motionless for hours-- and large salaries-— ignoring cravings to blink, scratch, and if you look at them you know that they are human, can move if they wish, but choose not to. I am convinced that plants grow in the dark arresting a guilty shoot halting a new spike if they sense someone hunts their movement. In my bedroom window the burro's tail shakes out its green-grape braids Rapunzel, Rapunzel, letting down her hair. The aloe plant on the bookshelf spreads its watery thick leaves in calculated scores, 13 an old lady at the opera with jade fan, anemic, swollen fingers splayed along the silk. Next to the succulent a cliff-brake fern sizzles up out of its dark pot--green lightning. The greenhouse on Grand River boasts exotic plants, shocked unearthly green, the green-Martian green of a green-bottle fly, the neon green of parrots, the color so vivid I have to touch the plants to make sure they are real. Walking through the foliage dodging talons thrust out into the hothouse aisles like water witches, I want to possess every plant I see: the firecracker vine the bat-wing coral tree the telegraph plant which spreads like gossip, in the sun patient lucy the flame-of-the-woods with its leaves dark as spinach the chenille plant tasselled in red like a bathrobe sash the windmill palm fronds fanned out like a deck of green cards the rosary vine 1L» the mother spleen wort the maidenhair fern filigreed and delicate as a girl's lace slip. I am convinced that I could catch one of those plants mid-growth, unaware, its energy diffused-- at being exotic in the Midwest-- I could watch the spiralling-out of new tendrils, could hear them declare growth in photosynthesis with a rustle of stems; I could listen for the clink of cell on cell, would not need a time—lapse camera for the rush of flowering like a suddenness of green kernels exploding into white popcorn big as magnolia blossoms. 15 Breaking The Back Window With A Wooden Spoon In the street today I smashed my kitchen appliances, watching them settle in heaps on the pavement. The smaller appliances will have to be replaced. I couldn't move the stove though I blackened both my eyes trying. Fragments of harvest—gold and avocado-green are scattered through the grass like steel traps that spring when eyes hit them. They were whispering to me-- I couldn't stand that. I can still hear them, their scraps of voices find my ears like mines when ships strike them. When I was five my father bought a horse for me and a rifle for himself. He taught me to ride the horse back and forth in the field 16 behind our house. While I rode he fired the rifle at targets he had set up nearby. He made me ride the horse when I didn't want to. When I was six he shot at me while I rode. As the horse and I raced panicked back and forth he shot at us over and over. At first I stopped riding and ran, but when he caught me he hit me and hit me, so I rode when he told me to after that. One bullet took a mole off my neck. The horse and I both would scream. My mother, watching from the kitchen window, screamed too, but never helped me. I could see her mouth opening behind the glass 17 Once she ran into the field pleading with my father to for God's sake stop. He laughed and shot her in the leg, saying, Itwasanaccidentyougotwhatyoudeservedbitch. He stalked into the house and went to sleep while I stumbled off the horse to call for help. After that, my mother stayed in the kitchen whenever he shot at me. Those nights they screamed for hours. My mother was always bruised, he said he'd shoot the tongue right out of her mouth if she told-— I think he had already. It is not enough to ruin my kitchen appliances. Someone, my husband, will simply replace them. There must be more. I shredded my nails 18 to the knuckle peeling up the carpet, and broke the back window with a wooden spoon. I threw my wedding rings down the disposal-- the diamonds were my mother's. I liked watching them curl down the drain with potato peels and egg shells. The stones hissed at me like maggots or earlobes or voices striking dry ice. Maybe I will shoot my father and my horse and bury them together. 19 Something Ready To Be Found Every day I walk into the wooded areas behind my house looking for bodies. I know they are out there hiding like slivers in skin, festering, suppurating, waiting to be excised. Day after day I read newspaper accounts of the murderers who leave bodies in secluded areas, faces flush with clotted leaves. It is not the finding which disturbs me, that would pass quickly as a slap, but the waiting. I cannot tolerate having something out there ready to be found, waiting to disrupt my life. There would be questions to answer, forensic photographers, unwanted attention. These killers typically accost their victims late at night 20 leaving the bodies in coagulated underbrush, behind trees; it is sometimes months before they are found. It happened to me before, though I knew little about waiting then. When I was a young girl in Germany, during the war, my mother and I were walking with my aunt who hated us both-— hated my mother for her quick mind, for being a younger sister, and hated me for my mother; my aunt later went crazy, they put her away for catching, stunning, then killing small animals, pets, immersing them live in cement, lining them up on fence posts outside her home; who drew designs on the sanitarium walls with her own shit until they restrained her; when the bombing began again. We were separated in the rush for cover, 21 my aunt and I reaching shelter, my mother not with us. Later we searched for her; my aunt found her in the rubble of a building. I tried to spring away but my aunt caught me forced me to look at what was left of my mother, holding my head, laughing, as I strained to turn away, holding my gaze there until I lost consciousness, perhaps even after that. It has become an obsession, this searching for bodies. It has become routine, as natural as the throat's glottis closing involuntarily so that breathing and swallowing remain separated. It was only while reading a letter telling of my aunt’s death, some time ago, that it all came back to me, 22 that the notion of waiting seemed to suddenly make sense, the idea of waiting no longer making even more sense. 23 The Testing Of Values I imagine him being lashed to trees, posts, doors, the way you would anchor shutters in anticipation of a hurricane, finding anything to be fastened to which would keep him upright while he slept. Hundreds of years ago there was a monk whose name no one remembers and who, himself, is remembered for one reason only: near the end of his brief life he took a vow of asceticism-- which must have made the most pious of monks cringe, or bristle because he had thought of it first-- claiming he would never again sit or lie down, but would remain standing until his death. 24 I wonder what compelled him to make that vow. It does not seem an act of humility, but pride perhaps, the way he claimed to be able to supersede what must have been an agonizing need after weeks of walking, standing, and he must have become simplistic like a doric column just standing there, concerned only with standing, he must have been able to think of nothing else. Growing up in Calvinist Grand Rapids, and spending many hours a week in church, though not by choice, I did not believe, but wanted to. I considered extremes, thinking I would convince myself, or someone, that I did believe if only I could; 25 fast for a month, pray for an hour every day, treat my sister charitably-- all certainly extremes for a ten-year-old. But I did none of those things, so others thought I believed. I lamented, felt isolated, wanting a Bible verse or hymn to swallow like a potion so I would believe. I hated my sister for singing with conviction, for believing so easily, thinking myself cheated. At a youth—group retreat I paddled a canoe alone an entire day, hid in the obscure marshes of the lake to escape the laying-on of hands, spiritual growth workshops, group prayer sessions. My hands blistered badly from the paddle 26 but I almost enjoyed the pain. I wonder if that monk who carried out his extreme, while I did not, was trying to convince himself of his belief. I wonder if he ever stumbled, faltered, fell, stole away into the forest alone late at night to lie down or to torture himself with the temptation of it, while I knew that anything which requires an extreme to test its worth, needs no testing. 27 Choosing Shoes Aunt Evelyn stood in a factory every day for forty—six years sorting three sizes of bolts into separate trays as they passed by her on the line. When the whistle blew at 5:00 she walked the two blocks home in heavy black shoes, her ankles swelling from the laced tops like souffles. She never married but lived with her parents until they died. We visited them every summer. In the hottest weather she wore the thick oxfords, changing to a newer pair every Sunday for church and for her role as Sunday School Superintendant. Aunt Evelyn lived a sparse life, meals eaten at a faded white formica kitchen table, evenings spent reading devotional materials or listening to inspirational music, nights sleeping between pressed white sheets 28 with her hair stamped in pincurls. My mother said my aunt had spent so many years on her feet that her size 8 shoe was now a 9 or 9%, but when at the shoestore she insisted on the smaller size. I thought of the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella, one of whom cut off her heel, and one, her big toe, to fit the glass slipper, each being caught by the telltale blood. But my aunt's feet mushroomed from her shoes like the five-pound sand ankle weights my brothers wore during training: her ankles pale and big as igloos swelling out of a frozen black tundra. Aunt Evelyn has now retired and lives in a modest apartment halfway between the state prison and the state hospital which account for half of Waupun's population. I doubt that she will ever realize her feet have grown. 29 Funeral Flower Arrangements My cousin drove a hearse dusted the casket showroom helped with the embalming and lived on the upper floor of a funeral home to put himself through college. The hearse was air-conditioned with black leather seats he could sink into like a hammock. Returning alone from the cemetary he played the radio full volume. He wrote me that the odor of flowers which followed him like gnats bothered him-- probably because he'd had asthma as a kid, which flowers worsened-- all else seemed tolerable. Funeral flower arrangements in rigid cardboard vases, casket sprays with their ribbons announcing: brother 30 father grandfather. Chrysanthemums cool to the touch as formaldehyde, purple statice stiff as the brushes he used to clean the stainless steel work table where each client was readied for viewing. Because the stench of the flowers followed him into his tiny second floor apartment, he stuffed towels under the door, bought a huge window fan to draw in outside air, burned pine and sandalwood incense, cooked liver and onions, smelt, all to no avail-— the odor persisted. Visiting our family on a brief vacation during the slow season, he claimed the funeral heme didn't bother him, that he was comfortable working with the dead. 31 But I noticed how he flinched as we passed a florist on driving him to the airport. The next day I found the spring flowers my mother had placed unknowingly in the guest room for him, at the other end of the house. My cousin told me of a dream he had had just several weeks ago. He woke within the dream horrified to see the flowers from all six viewing rooms banking his bed on their wire stands, lined up like a marching band with the casket sprays draped at the foot of the bed as if a second blanket. The flowers were doubling, tripling their size. Moving, leaning toward him their smell increased was visible in clouds the way trains derail spreading ammonium chloride vapors. Choking, 32 knocking aside the ferns as they reached for him, he realized the flowers were all plastic, yet the fumes continued. He ran downstairs into the showroom leapt into a bronze casket pulling the lid closed, the hermetic seal tamping out the stench of the flowers. He could hear the scratch of the stems against the lid, woke just as the air ran out. My cousin maintains his dream was not related to his leaving the funeral home the next week for employment in the reference section of a library, and to live in a modern dormitory with a closed air circulation system. He claims the pay was lousy and he couldn't get along with his co-workers. I agree. It probably had little to do with flowers. 33 Silent Confrontations On the day of an horrendous snowstorm my parents, sister, and I watched my three brothers play on three different teams in three different games in three different cities. I could not imagine a purer definition of hell. Hell = Basketball. I thought basketball a kind of religion, the national anthem, nightly line-up announcement, beginning jump-ball, half-time, all rituals connected to a kind of church service. Our team of good guys, or the saved, vs. the pagan other team, the sinners. Our players rarely or never received technical fouls, except on occasion when reacting to a referee's obviously bad call, perhaps slamming the ball down so it bounced ten feet into the air, but never swearing, and immediately repentant. My mother told my brothers, in turn, that she would haul them off the court by the ear in front of their college teammates if they ever got a technical. 34 Though I prayed to see that happen none of them obliged me. But, during an out-of—state game we could not attend, the oldest of my brothers cursed enthusiastically at a bad call, sitting on the bench for the entire second half. In my childhood I read as much as I breathed, sitting under an enormous tree in summers reading as many as six books each day, and in winters closing out the basketball world as I read in the bleachers at each game. Especially I enjoyed any story which occurred before basketball was invented. Once I read about five Chinese brothers each of whom had a special talent. One could stretch his legs at will to span hundreds of miles, the youngest had the ability to draw the entire sea into his mouth. Each day he would swallow the ocean, allowing his older brothers to gather fish as they pleased from the sea's exposed floor. But they grew increasingly greedy, fishing longer and longer each day, until brother number five warned them, 35 gesticulating frantically, that they must stop, that they were in danger. The other four paid him no heed and were therefore drowned as their brother, in horror, watched the water shoot back. I counted nineteen cars off the road that day, as we drove in an old Ford from game to game to game. My father missed the last exit, the sign nearly hidden by snow, by only a few yards, so my mother stood on the freeway's median directing the car backwards nearly being hit several times by passing cars. I cursed silently in the back seat watching in the rear-view mirror as my father bit his lip, scowling. They had many silent confrontations having learned it was better not to say anything, than to fight, and wasting so much because of this philosophy. My father heaved a radio into the floor in anger once, one of three such incidents in ten years, then spent the next six months 36 trying to put it back together again. But at basketball games, as at church, the heavy bills, petty disagreements, were forgotten: anything can give meaning or structure anything can be a religion. Basketball ordered their lives for them. My mother returned to the car ready to resume the week-long argument, saying to my father-- angry at his missing the exit, angry at missing the first few minutes of the game, angry at needing basketball so much-- "I'd divorce you right now if it weren't basketball season." I returned to my book, thankful to have only three brothers, not five. 37 Crystal Pulses You loaded the crystal into a cramped cabinet stacking delicate stems onto each other. An entire set of crystal for twelve which you could not replace, purchased when you lived with your parents after you first married. One cupboard in the kitchen that bled crystal, crystal lacerated from its cabinet only for special occasions. You loved your crystal, polishing each piece as you replaced it, nearly dulling the thin rims. Alyda's hand-cut pitcher, Evelyn's vases, Emma's individual salts and peppers, in a cabinet meant for thick ceramic plates. 38 Sometimes it took you all afternoon to ease the stemware into place, adjusting and re-adjusting Waterford ashtrays, champagne flutes. There was no room for dust. Goblets, parfaits, platters, somehow you made them fit. I could hear the crystal glimmering glistening at night, squealing brakes. It would sometimes wake me. Other times I would see a crystal mountain and the knight riding up the mountain to the rescue, and the mountain crashing crashing shattering the knight falling through the mountain, and I would wake and hear the crystal in the cupboard like a siren. 39 Until I knew better I obeyed you and set out the crystal on holidays. I would imagine my hand into the glass cave jostling stalactites, extracting stemware. I have never understood how you could have let me near the crystal you loved so much: you must have known I would break it. Was it because you were hurried, rushing to stir the gravy or slice the turkey, that you forgot the crystal you loved, risking its destruction? I think you were careless in your haste during those holidays, as careless as I was clumsy, your mind on other things. Something would always slip away 40 or shatter in my hand as I reached for thick ceramic and found instead crystal thin as an old woman's breath. You would declare it to be your favorite piece, each time a new favorite piece, and reaffirm that you could never have anything nice. But you were secretly pleased that it was I who broke it and not you, at least I thought so then. Once I destroyed your beautiful pedestalled crystal cake plate. I could not tell you and so juggled the cabinet's crystal like skulls to fill the gap. You never missed it. Ten years later, on a special occasion, you announced that this hand-cut cake plate, 41 bolted to a silver pedestal, must be put into service. I skidded it into the hOuse just removing the last of the price tag as you walked into the kitchen. You had been startled that I offered to search for it, since I had vowed much earlier never to venture into the cabinet again. And you had said maybe at least this way you could have something nice. Words spoken in haste. Spoken, I realize now, on your way to take care of five children, one of whom was ill and near death. Rushing off to a job which didn't quite cover the medical bills, rushing past the other children. I laugh unreasonably now, thinking about that cake plate. 42 Thinking about how you had probably missed it but would never admit you couldn't remember where you laid it. Would never ask anyone. It must have taken you hours, it must have perplexed you gathering bits of space for the cake plate, more crystal having accumulated between original and replacement. You will never ask me where I found that cake plate, or how to fit it back into the cabinet, or how I could possibly extricate it unscathed. 43 Caring For Books In elementary school I enrolled in a child's version of the Book-of—the-Month Club. Every six weeks our teacher gave us a catalogue of books which could be ordered and I would examine each choice, wanting the stories which promised to be as fascinating as the promotional bits I read. Though I would have preferred them all, I was permitted to select only one book each time. When my first book arrived, my father demonstrated the proper way to break it in. Working the slim volume back and forth, beginning then end, he turned the book, smoothing his fingers close to the binding, sliding them along the pages, delicately separating them with hands that could palm 44 a basketball. He warned against cracking open a new book in the center, for to do so would snap its spine like a wishbone. There are many book sales in Grand Rapids every winter which my father faithfully attends, browsing for hours at the folding banquet tables piled with books. He once purchased so many that they filled the trunk of our ten—year-old Cadillac, and he brought them into the house a few at a time each night for months so my mother would not realize he had bought so many. My father particularly enjoys reading about the Civil War, and when I brought him a pictoral biography of Abraham Lincoln on a recent visit, he did not speak to me 45 all day, but sat alone in the breezeway erasing hundreds of pencil marks left by the previous owner. My mother and I laughed in another room, listening to the scribble of eraser, and she told me how my father had read aloud to me-- books on Chinese history Jonathan Edwards trout fishing-- from the time I was four days old. I have learned to care for books, never bending a cover around behind itself, as if it were an arm twisted behind an opponent's back, choosing my books carefully, from bookstores with luxurious wood shelves, selecting volumes thoughtfully, then, breaking them in the way my father taught me, 46 my hands smooth along the pages. 1+? Singing Lessons You were a beauty at eighteen with a nineteen-inch waist, wrists slender as oboes, Kahlua—dark hair curling like treble clefs around your face. You entered Waupun, Wisconsin's annual summer beauty pageant, easily winning. You remember how they celebrated your coloratura voice, choosing you instead of: the twirler dressed like Uncle Sam, the orator of two-month's experience who read excerpts from Macbeth, the acrobat who pulled ligaments in both legs while attempting the splits, or the pianist who played Bach with a rhumba beat. The notes you could sing were sounds a small town had never heard, and dazzled them, like aborigines who see a jet thumping overhead for the first time. 48 There were many church solos, singing lessons. But you entered nursing school in Chicago to prepare for a practical career, one respectable for women in 1942. You earned perfect grades but left school to support your parents after your father grew ill and could not work. You have told of your meager salary then, working in an insurance office, yet you and your best friend attended every opera in Chicago, purchasing the best tickets when you could. When I was a child we fell asleep every night listening to operas and other classical music which you played for us on a rickety phonograph. I heard you sing the arias as you watered the flower—borders, 49 or dressed for work as an elementary school secretary-- when you thought no one was listening. But I was listening, and I want you to know I believe the pictures I've seen, believe the stories you've told. You could have been luckier. It could have been different for you. I hope you know it too. 50 Ode On A Pig Farm Great-uncle Charlie inherited a pig farm from his twin uncles Jacobus Johannes and Johannes Jacobus. The scent of hogs reached to the last inch of his acres just outside of Beaver Dam. Sandra and I visited him and Great-aunt Florence with our parents, driving out from Waupun where our grandparents lived, and past the town pool where a child drowned in four feet of water on opening day. We rolled up the car windows-- heading down the road which sent up a trail of dust behind us as if we left a wake-- to keep out the odor of pig, a futile gesture like trying to stop a speedboat with a catcher's mitt. My sister and I walked with Uncle Charlie as he did his afternoon chores, 51 listening to him tell about the time in the barn when a rat ran up his pant leg and he crushed it inside his overalls with his hands--and other stories, that the twin uncles never married never left Beaver Dam until their preacher convinced them to travel to the State Fair in Milwaukee. The twins drove there parking the car on a side street, then taking a train to the fairgrounds. As they arrived at the entrance they realized that their car was on a nameless street somewhere twenty or more miles away, they hadn't looked at the street sign. Jacobus and Johannes found a police car, rode in it for hours searching for their car, then drove immediately back to Beaver Dam, which they never again left. We watched Uncle Charlie feed the pigs filling the troughs with one hand and gripping a fireplace poker with the other, to ward off the hogs 52 who would otherwise trample him in their frenzy to eat. As he bent over I could see white ringed scars on his bald tanned head where he said he hit it whenever the tractor needed adjusting. Leading us into the dank barn he showed us his antique tools, churns, scythes, a plow, he never noticed that we stared uncomfortably at our feet. Then he led us to the grassed place where his swimming pool had been, explaining that he had filled it in after the pigs got out one night and eleven of them drowned. While the grown-ups sat inside drinking coffee and visiting, Aunt Florence brought out cookies for us and a pitcher of milk fresh from their cows still warm and thick like phlegm-- which I dumped out behind the crabapple tree after she went back inside. Sandra and I discussed our luck 53 at living in the city and debated whether we would ever forget the smell of pigs. I haven't. 54 Listening To Aunt Bertha Every Sunday morning we listened to Aunt Bertha's Children's Bible Hour while dressing for church. During the show Aunt Bertha introduced each scripture reader and child soloist, then the Tiny Tot Chorale, all accompanied by Aunt Bertha herself on Grand Rapids' most dissonant piano. After a commercial message from Zondervaan's Christian Bookstore, Aunt Bertha and her helpers dramatized a different story each week designed to make believers of all the young listeners. One Sunday morning the ten-minute radio play had Aunt Bertha driving along some highway in Montana when the Lord directed her to pull over and pick up a hitchhiker who rode with her a short while before robbing her at knifepoggt. Aunt Bertha began to pray aloud, mentioning the various charities for which the stolen money was intended, and persuading the crock within minutes to forsake his evil ways and turn to the Lord. Aunt Bertha and the repented thief broke into a spontaneous duet which ended as she dropped him off at the police station and waved as she drove away. This was about the time my five—year-old sister asked to be helped into her starched white dress and confessed that she wanted to be a giraffe when she grew up like the one embroidered on her collar. I allowed as how I didn't think that was possible, giraffes having much longer necks and all. 56 This upset her and she scuttled off crying to our mother who--not really listening as she finished getting ready for church-- reassured my sister that she could be anything she wanted to be when she grew up, then came into our room to yell at me for upsetting my sister before church. Another Sunday morning Aunt Bertha and her cousin Cyrus were picnicking in Yosemite when they encountered a huge bear who was drawn to their spread by the scent of delicious pickled bologna sandwiches, corn curls and root beer. That bear headed right for Bertha and Cyrus, and again Bertha began to pray. The bear drew closer, then abruptly turned away and fled back into the woods. Aunt Bertha thanked Jesus 57 and hummed a hymn as she slapped Cyrus to revive him. She was still trying to awaken him as I fished out the entire box of crayons my sister had just scattered into the heating duct, and just as my mother came into our room thinking me the culprit. If Aunt Bertha could get rid of a bear I couldn't understand why I couldn't keep my sister from getting me into trouble. Several Sundays later Aunt Bertha was visiting a mission in Kenya which had had no rain in several months. The agriculturalist—missionary pleaded with Aunt Bertha for help, so she prayed and prayed, 58 producing rain in forty-eight hours and saving the yam crops. In church later that morning I watched the collection plate being passed from pew to pew until it reached my sister who deposited about $10,000 in yellow, pink, and blue Monopoly money. I snatched her money out of the plate aghast, as she hollered, "You put that money back." It was easy to hear her shrill voice over the quiet organ music, and I prayed for Aunt Bertha to come and rescue me, but she did not. My mother scowled at me along with the other five hundred members of the congregation. I stopped listening to Aunt Bertha's Children's Bible Hour not long after that, figuring she wasn't about to help me 59 with my problematic sister. And my mother told me she had seen Aunt Bertha at the beauty parlor under the dryer with her hair pinned up, smoking a cigarette and reading a copy of "True Confessions". I decided I had enough to worry about with my sister. 60 Why I Do Not Ice Skate When I was ten I longed for ice skates like the sleek white gleaming skates which all my friends owned. But my mother said they cost too much and Michigan's winters weren't long enough to make them practical. Then I found my father's high school hockey skates in the cellar behind the furnace and under the water meter. I paid my younger sister a quarter to crawl underneath and get the skates, then, wearing my mother's rubber gloves, and the oldest clothes I could find, I scrubbed them for an hour with saddle soap, vacuumed the interiors, then sprayed them damp with disinfectant. I had to stuff the toes with ping pong balls 61 to keep them on my feet-- though even then they wobbled as if filled with jumping beans-- and pulled on four pairs of socks to get them laced, and protect my feet against the sandpaper and thumbtack insoles. One Saturday afternoon my friends and I planned to skate at the Pinery Park rink four blocks away at the bottom of a tremendous hill—— that we could coast our bikes down, but not ride back up. On my way from our house at the hill's top I stopped for my friends: Chichi Wright, who later became Michigan's first licensed female embalmer; Anita Penninga, who married a worm farmer and now has twelve children; Janet Hovarter, who became a minister by mail 62 and in her spare time sets Bible verses to songs of her own composing. Chichi had new Christmas skates-- white and slick as canines or refrigerator enamel-- which she removed from the box and laced for the first time as we watched. Anita's skates had yellow pompons on the toes, and Janet's skates were light blue and circled around each ankle with rabbit fur. My own skates seemed big as my legs, and had laces that wrapped in knots three times around the top; they had been black when new, though now were more a pastel mud. Hockey skates share the same angle of blade as the acute triangles whose distances I could never calculate in math. Unlike figure skates, whose tips are serrated, 63 hockey skates are sneaky as rum swizzles, taking you with them on their own terms. Since it is impossible to initiate movement or stop short of collision while wearing them properly, as my friends wore their skates, I came to rely on the sides of my feet for either purpose, pushing off alternately with the side of each foot on the ice, looking like a cross between a drunk and golden retriever on skates. We skated for several hours playing tag and crack the whip until I bit my finger to forget the pain in my feet. We had worn our skates walking to the rink, and left our boots at home. 64 My friends snapped plastic blade guards on their skates then effortlessly walked to their homes midway up the hill. I lagged behind, so they left me and I continued on, falling down several times before I realized I couldn't struggle up the slick sidewalk, and took to the dry pavement of the road. Scraping sideways against the asphalt the skate blades set off sparks as I hobbled up the hill—- lines of sparks which rasped a noise like barking dental instruments along a blackboard. I saw my friends-- whose houses I was now passing-- gather at their living room windows with their parents, laughing at me behind the curtains. I have never really learned to skate, preferring toboganning or 65 indoor activities in the winter. But I do watch figure—skating on television occasionally, and when I do, I look carefully at the skaters' feet to see if they push off with the sides of them, or if they let off sparks. 66 Coming Back The man who lived across the street from us was touched in the head, had been shell-shocked, and crazy now for twenty years, I heard my brother tell his friend. I thought that meant someone had touched Adrian with a conch or scallop shell, though I did not understand how that could cause a person to go insane. I worried that it would happen to me, gathered the sea shells my aunt had sent from Florida buried them in the neighborhood churchyard. The man who lived across the street paced the sidewalk in front of his parents' house along the edges where grass reached cement so uniformly it was as if 67 it had been drawn there with ruler and pen, shrubs trimmed into perfect shapes like helmets along the porch. I watched him stride back and forth with a rhythmic sideways motion-- a blending of penguin and sentry. The man who lived across from us walked to Kum-Bak Hamburger Stand almost every night, returning with a shopping bag of food which he ate sitting cross-legged on the porch watching cars on our busy street, following them with his head, and he would rock himself like a rocking chair, marking time, back and forth with no chair. My brother did not understand why I refused to eat any food carried out from Kum-Bak. 68 The man across the street could tolerate no changes in his life. One night when I was supposed to be asleep I heard my mother tell of her visit with our neighbors earlier that day. The neighbors had bought a new toilet which Adrian refused to use since it was a different style, but instead hurried to the Town Talk Filling Station at the end of the block; he did not always get there in time; some of the neighborhood's bushes were turning yellow. Adrian's parents had to buy back the original and with it replace the replacement. My mother then reported they had purchased him a new bed, thought he had adjusted well until his father, rising in the middle of the night, looked in to spy him sleeping underneath his bed stretched out stiff 69 like a bayonet. Adrian still lives with his parents though they are almost eighty now. My father said they would have to take him to Pine Rest soon, but would have to get a new car first, as Adrian would not ride in it because the color was all wrong. On a recent visit home I saw Adrian in their driveway at ease, legs braced, arms behind his back, as if waiting for inspection. I understand now what shell-shocked really means and question whether he came back at all. 70 What Does Not Happen Late one evening returning home from work I drove along a rural highway alone, fatigued. Trees above the still road filtered scant light from clotted clouds. Then a deer flashed in front of the car-- as one frame of hundreds splits a second on a screen-- and was gone, untroubled by inches of miss. My foot not yet to the brake, I measured the pavement ahead in deer's image, steered trembling to the shoulder. Nearby a dog set off barking to warn my car, which crouched at the road's edge like another kind of beast. Back home, realizing what does not happen, I listened to a favorite chamber work, 71 poured a costly glass of wine. 72 Playing Monopoly With A Friend I wanted to slam you through a giant colander and spatter you against the wall, or split you into fragments with a .357 Magnum. arms and legs braced like they fire guns on television police shows, when you sent me bankrupt by $5,000 as I landed on Park Place, rolled fish eyes and moved to Boardwalk, and hotels on each. You lured me into playing, persuading me you were new to the game, but I saw your smirk when I said, "Why, I don't believe I've played Monopoly in ten years." After winning the first ten games you grew too confident and let slip: reading every book on Monopoly listed in the Library of Congress and every periodical as of Oct. 1981 73 ordering a customized calculator from Shanghai playing in the tournaments at Lake Tahoe and Monte Carlo winning the tournaments spending your prize money to icefish near the Arctic Circle fly to Aruba for the sun re-unite the Beatles. After the next ten games I started to worry when I realized the playing pieces, miniscule top hat midget wheelbarrow microscopic Silver Cloud were fashioned from solid platinum, and the houses and hotels carved emeralds and carnellian. I wanted to chisel and hang an effigy of you so someone walking into the room would only see the bottoms of your Converse High-Top All-Stars. After the next twenty-five games I imagined violently overturning the table, watching you thud into the wall, gloating at how you would look, 74 insensible, with orange chance and yellow community chest cards, little houses and hotels popping out of your mouth where I had stuffed them. But I have to tell you what I've just said is a lie. I cheated and let you win. I could have beat you had I wanted to, and will the next time we play. 75 Phrasing The principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra possesses a solid gold hand-made French model Muramatsu concert flute with a "B" foot pointed-arm keys D sharp roller teakwood cleaning rod thin walls hand-tooled Moroccan leather case all of which is insured for $25,000.00 Recently during a special broadcast on PBS the flutist was highlighted in a rehearsal featuring "Daphnis and Chloe" and "Prelude To An Afternoon Of A Faun". The technique was flawless yet not mechanical, the tone spinning and vibrant, the pianissimos delicate but replete, 76 In an interview during a rehearsal break, the flutist spoke intelligently on interpretation coloring the tone phrasing articulation. Sensitively he considered the music of Ibert Faure Telemann Poulenc interrupting once or twice to clear his throat. The flutist whose instrument requires more wind than a tuba smoked for the duration of the interview. The tips of his teeth and pads of his fingers were yellowed like the gold of his flute or the calcined ridged fingernails of a recently embalmed old man. 77 As the orchestra resumed practicing I listened attentively to the flashes of flute solo. My opinion did not change. It was not evident that the wind musician smoked. Yesterday I played my silver, nearly identical Muramatsu flute for six hours, struggling with a five—measure phrase, rehearsing it at various tempos 124 times. I practiced Molique's Concerto in D Minor, 0p. 69 increasing the speed, finally playing it perfectly hitting all the notes, and able to leap from breath mark to breath mark without cheating. Later I wrapped my hands in ice packs to stop the muscle spasms. The Philadelphia Orchestra flutist is more than competant, though not considered brillant, and it is certainly possible 78 he will never suffer for his smoking, but there has to be a reason that only one or two in 10,000 flutists smokes. And it angers me irrationally that I who have trouble breathing fast enough deep enough often enough must work for hours to overcome those problems while the other flutist breathes easily for long passages for difficult phrasings, then lights a cigarette immediately after the concert. But whose problem is it? His? 0r mine? 79 Why I No Longer Eat Lunch We dip into steamy bowls of lobster bisque, the delicate shellfish tender against the tongue like earlobes, and you ask me about my current lover, want to know his name how he compares with you. Crisp salads with slices of slippery avocado are next, then rare, aged steaks sizzling as they reach our table, and you tell me she's been moody, won't look you in the eye. Over cognacs you show me the most recent of your self-cure books—- this one on zinc—- which you buy at the health-food bookstore where the woman reads diseases on the wrists. Several months later we sink into a darkened booth out of town and savor escargot sopping French bread in garlic butter 80 slicking our lips. During the Veal Orloff you explain she wants to leave you for Colorado or re-decorate the house, new bedspread, lawn chairs. We watch the captain languidly stir brown sugar and butter until it melts, then add rum to flame Bananas Foster. I tell you my lover models for life-drawing classes, tapes the sketches on his bedroom walls, wants sex five times a night. You ask the waiter for the check. The next time it is Dover sole which the captain filets tableside slipping a knife along the ribs between the smooth bone and white flesh and it is luscious, touched with herbs. Between sips of wine you relate how she agreed not to leave you if you would promise her $2,000.00 a month and would marry her. 81 You claim she found bottles of Piper-Heidsieck at a discount drugstore at six dollars apiece, tell me you still run five miles a day, one hundred push-ups, sit-ups, squat-thrusts. I explain I left him when he bought the video system. When we lived together you reserved your lunches for business associates, former girlfriends: Trish-—who scrubbed houses for a living, bought her clothes at Goodwill, tried to throw herself off your balcony when you asked her to leave. June--who sold you her furniture when she moved to Alabama, drank a bottle of hand lotion to avoid a drunk driving charge after running into a ditch the night you kicked her out. Celeste--who buried your custom golf clubs to their necks in sand on the beach at Indiatlantic when you broke off your engagement. Now I have joined the others as an ex-girlfriend. I, who gave you weekly manicures, worked three jobs to survive 82 as an undergraduate—— jobs to which you chauferred me in the Cadillac you paid cash for, complaining that you never saw me. But I am not like the others. It was I who left you. 83 Beneath The Surface Scuba divers who dive deep sometimes instantly lose their minds. Under the influence of nitrogen narcosis they swim deeper, throw away their masks and air tanks, die elated on the ocean floor a hundred or more feet beneath the surface. In a dive manual I read how the tremendous water pressure drugs divers making them mad for water in their lungs: I know this would happen to me. Every day in the summers of childhood I rose at eight a.m. to watch Mike Nelson on Sea Hunt. He was so comfortable with the water as if an extra chromosome had given him a set of gills he could secretly rely on. Once, as I sat eating cereal, I watched him wrestle and subdue a forty-foot anaconda from which two men had fled. The diving instructor, standing there in a swimsuit, 84 showed us various scars on his body, cataloging sea creatures and subsequent wounds. Then, he told of a diver who, oblivious to warning signs, dove off the California coast near an electric company's cooling plant.' There was a tunnel there over a mile long which had such suction power that it could draw in small cars. The tunnel snared the diver like a venus fly trap and slid him through the black mile until he reached an iron grate which stopped him as surely as if he had fallen sixty stories onto cement. During an annual inspection, when the tunnel was stopped and teams of divers threaded their way through to check signs of decay, they found him. The dead diver, squares stamped on his skeleton, had nearly been sent through the grate by the water pressure. 85 I have decided that I no longer wish to explore the oceans. The breathing underwater, which I love, would send me deeper than the dive charts allow. I might dive to three-hundred feet or too close to a luring tunnel, too close to mysterious danger. Like the time at the reptile house when I watched a hooded cobra fire itself at me, leaving a single drop of venom rolling down the glass. 86 2 0 8 7 7 7 1 3 o 3 9 2 1 I“ III!" N Lm I Y” III“ u E“ “I I I E“ n u H H H IIIII