I cut my fingers
raw on you. Deep trench in the
soft tissue, I wince and fight
the urge to pull back, press instead
into the resonant sinew, press
on. It never toughens
or it has not yet
despite callous
feint and cool. It is still inflamed
in those places. Strings
bite. You don’t
pull back so I won’t.
We make this chord.
It is the first one, the only one
Now, the only one
two three notes to twine this way
ever. This stroke is all
we’ve got. I with you, we lay
ourselves bare against fret
and neck, stay there, suck teeth,
let it sting. Hear the thrum
on vein, the way sound
is wave swelling up
from grain and hollow
belly driving me against you,
plunging us
into us.
Tag: learning
Family Tie
I said, “Help?”
And help came.
It was the rising inflection
that made all the difference,
the vibration, just a lilt, carried
from throat to ear
a request
a far cry
from the flat period
of its named
and willful absence.
This was never allowed
here, and suddenly it is
as if no one ever doubted
the need
for assistance, for reciprocity,
as if we are bound
as King said, in one garment of destiny.
As if it has always been true
even here, and suddenly
it always has.
The Cat Came Back
The first mistake was the one you made.
The second was thinking it had
forgotten you. What will the third be?
Do you let it climb naked
onto your back and ride
you like a name?
Do you give it tea, your ear, a year
or three to chatter itself empty?
Do you build Hadrian’s wall
and repel any breach?
Do you involve the police?
Maybe you rest your arm
across its bristling shoulders and say
Thank you
but I’ve got this
now.
Close Shave
With Bug in the tub, it seemed a shame to let all that water go to waste. Off went the socks and up turned the jeans. My grandma would call it a “hot soaky.” I called it Yes.
Oblivious to my freeloading feet, Bug dipped into little meringues of shaving cream decorating the rim. He dotted his arms with it and donned fancy white hats and matching gloves before spreading it in whorls on the tile walls. I dug out the old Gillette Trac handle made obsolete by the march of progress and removed the last rusted blade. In Bug’s hand, the flat head became a squeegee, a paintbrush, a snow shovel.
Bug glanced at his toothless razor, the foam, my legs. The troika of temptations coalesced into their one true destiny. His eyes brightened with the dawn of revelation.
“Mommy, I have an idea!”
Spa day over in three… two…
“I can shave your legs!”
One.
Bug took the lather into his palm and smoothed it down my calf. With uncharacteristic focus and gripping the Trac handle with two hands, he opened wide, straight(ish) trails through the white. “Feel how soft,” he said, touching the damp skin beneath.
This was over a year ago. Our bathtime routine took a 180, and sea monster battles gave way to regular mock grooming sessions. In terms of life expectancy of kid innovation, a year is the outer limit. The next idea has been right there waiting to pop. So, why does it take me by such surprise? Tonight, I hand Bug the cruddy Trac handle, he gives the foam a halfhearted swipe, and the light clicks on. “You know,” he says, eyeing the razor and then me. “I could do it for real.”
“Oh.” Not a chance. “You know, I don’t think so. You don’t need to be using blades on me.”
“But I could! I know how.”
My naked boy sprawls now, taking up the tub. I can still feel the wriggling fish of him against my flesh. As an infant, he was startled by the water and loathe to inhabit that terrifying echo chamber alone. I ladled him into the bowl of my lap and kept him afloat in the warm eddy there, nursing him through the shock of immersion. He clung, mouth and claw, his eyes anchored on mine as his jaw worked in defiance of the disquiet.
Now, he rolls like a walrus, laying all the way back with his head under. He listens for the hollow tones. Then, he sits up and takes another crack at it. “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
My son, using a razor on me? This kid laughs when I stub a toe. When overexcited, he cries, “I’m gonna smack you in the face!” Or he pretends to throw a toy at me then giggles when I flinch. Bug is too enamored of his power fantasies. No, I don’t want him anywhere near me with a sharp object.
Suddenly, my hot soaky seems scant protection against a chilling insight. I don’t trust my son. Fancy that.
This seems a rather dangerous state of affairs, and it extends well beyond us. Boys become men. He has to learn how to handle his ever-increasing capacity for harm. Isn’t it my job to help my boy become trustworthy? To harness his hunger for power and focus its generative force?
What if I give him the chance to make the choice himself?
“Please, Mommy?”
Never let them see you hesitate. Into the half-beat, his desire surges. “I’m old enough! I’ll be really, really careful.”
Okay. Here goes. “You know, you work hard at lots of things and I see you getting better at them all the time.” I stand and back the 4-blade Cadillac out of its valet spot by the shower-head. “This is a big job, but maybe you can handle it.”
“I can!”
I hand him the pink razor and we look together at the tiny teeth. He touches them with a fingertip. Then he scoops up a handful of foam and lathers up both sides of my leg. I roll the jeans even higher to make way for his expanding canvas. With intense concentration, he places the razor against my skin and begins to slide it down, down. He takes such care, the blades barely touch my skin. I lay my hand on his and show him how much pressure he can apply. When I let go, he presses in, glancing up at me before continuing. I nod. He is a Zamboni, not missing a single stroke. He even rearranges me, having me place my foot up on the wall so he can slip underneath and shave my calf from below. I call him Michelangelo. He pats all around and says, “Okay, other leg.”
My son doesn’t draw a single drop of blood. When he puts the razor down and helps me rinse, he has me touch my legs again and again. “See how smooth?” He crows. “They’re so soft!”
They are, as is his touch. My boy took an opportunity to hurt me and used it to care for me instead. He made a promise. For him to fulfill it, I placed a portion of my welfare in his hands. Apparently, this is how promise works.
What a tricky thing, love. We walk this roiling deck all the time. Hold off or venture? Guard or lay bare? When is it safe to unbutton the collar and open the throat to the whims of another?
It’s not never. It’s not always. It probably isn’t even when we think it is.
It might be when we catch ourselves tipping at the warm edge of a revelation. When we find our old tools cannot prize open the curtain separating this place from the next, and a sharper edge is required.
When we know there is peril in placing such power in untested hands. When fear beats a tattoo against the taut skin of old scars and yet underneath it, a whisper (has it been there all along?)
When we tune to its key and let the dangerous thing pass between us. When we choose.
Here, we say.
Here?
Yes. Like this.
Child Proof
We are partway through Chapter 4 of The Goblet of Fire. Bug sits up in the bed and heaves a sigh as big as Mt. Rainier. “Mom, can I have a cool cloth? Please?” His cheeks are flushed.
“Sure, baby.” I put down the book and go to run water over a cloth. He unfolds it and wipes it across his face before draping it over his head. It hides his eyes. He presses his palms against the pink terrycloth, cooling his cheeks and ears.
He has been coughing for a week, but who hasn’t been? The bipolar arrival of spring yields nighttime frost, daffodil pollen, and no escape from airborne funk. “Do you think you have a fever?” I ask.
“I guess I do,” he sighs again. “Can we take my temperature?”
“Sure.” I start to crawl out of his bed.
“I’ll get the thermometer,” he cries. He drops the cloth and clambers over me. “Where is it?” It’s the kind with buttons and a digital display. It’s almost as compelling as my iPod.
“In the closet. I think I have to get it, bud. There’s that special handle on the door.” When we moved in nearly three years ago, I stashed all the medicine and cleaning supplies in the hall closet and secured it with a knob cover. It spins around and requires a grownup grip.
“No, I got it,” he calls. “I go in here all the time.” I hear the door open then close, and he strolls back in the room with the ear thermometer. “How do I turn this on again?” He presses all the buttons as he climbs back over me.
“Wait one minute, mister,” I say. “What do you mean you ‘go in there all the time’? You’re not supposed to be able to open that door. It has a child-proof handle on it.”
“Mom.” Bug levels his gaze at me. “I am not a child.”
“Oh really? What are you?”
He gives his nose a little lift of dismissal. “I am a big kid.” The pink washcloth is flopping on his head again and the thermometer is jammed into his ear. He presses the button, hears the beep, and reads the display out loud.
“97.7,” he says. “Is that a fever?”
“No, baby. You’re fine. You’re just hot.”
“Hm. I don’t know.” For the sake of accuracy, he tries the other side and follows up with a few dozen more checks of each ear. “98.1? 97.6? 97.9. . . ?”
My baby isn’t sick. Also, he is not a baby. That is just a straight up fact.
He is still a child, though. (He doesn’t need to know that.)
Takes a Licking
We do not comb our hair. We shove our feet into old sneakers. The dog dances around our knees.
The stained coat is good enough. At least it is lined and will keep the wind out. “Hold her tongue,” Bug tells me. He means for me to squeeze her snout closed to keep her from licking him. I do not do this. It would be easy but he has grown stronger with the latest surge. He is rough with the dog now. He is approaching her weight. He torments her with the grooming comb and scarves from the dress-up trunk. Instead, I place her head against my knee and try to force her still while pretending to be gentle. I try to model tenderness but it is hard when my most regular company is a 72-RPM boy and an oaf of a dog. Continue reading “Takes a Licking”
Twin Sighting
Then she realizes it is not man. It never has been man. The one whose gaze she has been seeking all this time, alert to it feeling its way up her spine, it is not one or another. It is only a gaze, an entity all its own taking on some kind of psychic presence in her orbit. It moves from eye to eye, brain to brain, sketching her into background or foreground depending on preference, on mood, on the light slanting across the edge of day.
The outsideness of it she never questions. She simply submits to it, as if only that exists: submission to the forever slipping away line of sight. Her form, laugh, posture, texture all move about like a bit player, an extra only. Just a hash-mark on the canvas, one of the legion, a soldier of oil drawn into nameless formation alongside interchangeable others down a mountainside waiting for the slaughter. She is one. She is all of them.
It is never a man at all, is it? The origin of the gaze, it never really is him placing her, taking her measure. No, it is not living tissue with intention, not even an actual eye in an actual skull.
Instead, it is the piece of her she left behind. The missing Y, the twin who was next in the queue and swam out against its will in the next tide, out into the sea, out to be lost to Marianas trench. Later, eons later, geyser force, thrust (again, unwillingly!) a briny and brimstone singed speck of what she lost back to the surface. Now this He (or, rather, her) watches, watches.
Not to take her measure, no. Not to judge or even manipulate. These are the assumptions of the simple mind. He (or is it She?) only comes to covet. For corporal life? Yes, for the depth of the bend, the unchained laugh, even – yes, even this – the pain. Deep in the bones, the age and accumulating disease, the sorrow – yes. He would take all of it. Give everything. His universal access, the boundless roaming, for one minute in her skin.
This twin, a houri, thunders in astride some winged steed made of nothing but smoke and the dried rinds of tangerines left on the riverbank. She loved him before she knew love but was gone before he ever knew her at all. Now she begins to wonder. Now, the dawning awareness.
The he is her He, and he is only just everything she traded for life. Is she wrong? Is it possible he is not the one who came after her? They lose their beginnings and endings, out there in the nothing of not-life. Maybe he was shed before? Did he, in fact, precede her by a fortnight, out into the gnashing maw of the world? Did he roll out the crimson carpet? Did he bury the landmines in his wake, just for her, just for spite?
Jealous thing, this unborn brother. No wonder he stares with such assessing frost. He hovers like an odor yet he refuses to resolve into view. Would that be his undoing? To let her see him? She dares to believe he can be undone, that she has some agency in the situation, but perhaps she is fooling herself (as is He). Surely, surely, no one would instill such power in a creature as weak and foolish as she. That would be a muck-up on a cosmic scale. She has no managerial skills, no executive privilege, no armaments (that she knows of).
He fears something. This much is slowly becoming clear. She can’t imagine what. How could it be? His everything, the whole of the skies, the diamond planet, all of Davy Jones’ locker and the soft thighs of the unclaimed farmer spinning wool in the wooden room by a window streaked with oil and light, all of this at his fingertips, and he stands there watching her? Is this the best he can do?
So finally, she turns on Him (who is her and who is surely there, even if only seeing but not seen) and speaks:
In this world you choose to crave this erratic pulse, this weak will, this drifting imagination and coarse flesh? You have nothing to constrain your wanderings – not body and its hungers, not child and the chains of toil, not the need and the clutching, relentless thirst of the ones to whom you belong. You are neither bound by gravity not checked by time. Yet still, ghost, gaze, you linger here in the doorway of my unremarkable boudoir?
And then he speaks in her voice from her own throat:
What shall we trade? One crumb each from the other plate?
They both consider.
The night is long.
Belle Starr, Jesse James
Amadeus, Arcadia, Belstar, Raab
Sorrento, Gypsy, Waltham 29
Never forget that there are as many varieties
of broccoli
Ardor, Affection, Passion, Regard
Sympathy, Fondness, Idolatry, Flame
as there are words
for love
Blue Wind, Baby, Diplomat, Dear
Perhaps you have only ever laid
your teeth into one repeating genetic strand,
twin upon twin upon
greening twin ad infinitum not to mention
nauseum.
Just because your palate has never known
this flower
in particular does not mean
bead rich stem
and root
cease
no
every spring in some
fecund patch of earth
the flourishing
yes, you would barely believe.
The Amoroso.
The Purple Santee.
Happy 100 Days: 7
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, everything was exactly right. Everything, that is, except for one little burr under my saddle.
The cheese grits and cranberry sauce were prepped and ready for morning. Presents were heaped under the tree. Shrek on the TV was babysitting my kid while the grownups sat in a circle around the kitchen table gabbing about things that were of no interest to him. The cousins who happen to be near Bug’s age were off with their other grandmother for the evening. The only other big kid in the house had grown up so much, he was more interested in finishing up Ulysses than in playing cards or hide-and-seek with the resident 6-year-old.
Between the raucous stories in the kitchen and Shrek in the living room, everyone seemed content.
So, why was I feeling like the Grinch?
This Dallas gathering has been a bright cacophony. We are immersed in family and busy-ness, yet somehow, I am unsatisfied with the familiar chaos. Something is missing. Of course, this is the first time I have had Bug at Christmas since Tee and I broke up. But it is more than just not being with Bug’s dad. It is also the loss of ways we had created together when we became a family. Where are the Christmas carols? The nighttime walks? The outings for ice skating? The group games?
Why won’t anyone here sit down with my kid and play with him?
One thing about Tee that attracted me to him was his tribe. They have created ways of being together and being in community that expand a person’s spirit. Hell, the first time I met his family, we attended his older sister’s wedding which took place at a YMCA camp. We celebrated her marriage with canoe races and zip lines. Tee’s family’s annual caroling party is a city-wide epic undertaking. Every holiday is an endless string of group sledding adventures and multi-generational board games. These activities are not grafted on; they are woven deeply into the fabric of their family. A person barely has to try. It is all there for the taking.
Of course, I couldn’t stay married just to his family. It’s a package deal. The just-add-water approach of patching a new name onto the end of my own is not an option (and didn’t work, after all).
The holidays are just another reminder that even in the midst of the chattering, loving embrace of my extended family, I do have to grow up and figure out how to cobble the new ways together from whatever I have on hand.
I know that in the coming years, Bug and I will be on our own for the holidays. We can make our own traditions. It’s just that I don’t want to wait. I wish I knew how to break familiar habits, or at least bend them enough now to put into place some of the activities I would like us to nurture in our home. It is so hard to push against the settled ways to create room for these things. It gets tiring to suggest them and to face a wall of derision and resistance. It isn’t just me. I have seen others try before me and eventually give up.
As the movie wound down, I pulled out paper and crayons.
“Sweetie, what are we going to do for Santa?”
Bug scooted off the couch and started re-arranging things in the den. He hung his stocking, clearing the conch shells and driftwood out from the unused brick fireplace so Santa wouldn’t knock them over. He put out the milk and cookies. Then, he sat down and wrote the note.
“What about the sugar?” He asked when he was finished.
“The sugar?”
“Yeah. For the donkey.” He explained that Santa has a donkey who travels with the reindeer and helps fly. Something about keeping Rudolph company up front? It was all very vague, yet Bug was firm in his knowledge. This revelation required us to fill a bowl with white sugar to feed Santa’s donkey. We also put out ten baby carrots for the reindeer. Bug arranged all of these treats in a circle around the note on the coffee table in the den.
“Alright, buddy. Bedtime.”
Bug raced to the back bedroom, leaping onto the bed, bouncing and singing nonsense.
“Dance, Mommy!” He had music in his bones. He shook his rear end in my direction and giggled hysterically.
“Where’s that iPod of mine?” I asked.
We found it and clicked on Bug’s favorite new tune from One Direction, that unavoidable pop number, “That’s What Makes you Beautiful.” Without speakers, the boy-band’s voices came out even tinnier and, well, tinier.
Bug marched around the mattresses on the floor in his jammies, bopping his shoulders and spinning in circles. Then, in a burst of excitement, he threw open the door and raced down the hallway.
“CHRISTMAS EVE DANCE PARTY!” He grabbed my mom from the kitchen. “Come ON, Gramma!” He dragged her into the bedroom. “DANCE!”
Laughing, she swayed her hips. “I can’t even hear it! What are we listening to?”
Bug didn’t stop to respond. He just clicked the iPod to repeat and cruised out the door. “I’m going to get more people!”
One by one, he dragged every member of the family into the bedroom. First an aunt, then another, then my dad. The big cousin. An uncle. Eventually, even his ancient great-grandmother was balanced on her cane in the doorway looking both confused and delighted.
“Dance, everybody! It’s a Christmas Eve dance party!” Bug called. He leaped and spun and sprang across the floor, weaving between his assembled family members. Everyone swayed and grinned and made embarrassed faces at one another. As the song wound down, they began to disappear.
“Whew, that’s enough for me,” said one aunt.
“Me, too. I’m pooped!” The aunt’s boyfriend followed her back down the hallway.
Chuckling, folks called “Merry Christmas! Good night!” My mom and one aunt, true troopers, stuck it out to the last chord. Then, pink-cheeked and breathless, everyone said goodnight and I shut the door.
“Let’s get ready for sleep, Buddy, so Santa can come.”
“Okay!” He said, and collapsed onto the bed.
My boy, not realizing that such things are not done, broke the rules and created something new. Santa’s entourage includes a donkey. At Christmas now, this member of the team simply Is and Always Has Been. Might the same be true for bringing music, dance and play to this place? Perhaps we do not need to wait. Maybe we don’t even need to try. It might be as simple as saying, “This is what we do. Come on! Join us!”
Happy 100 Days: 9
In the midst of the comings and goings
Angry Birds on the aunt’s iPad
Great Gramma asking for the 13th time, “Did I feed the birds?”
(Yes, Mother, we put seed out this this morning)
Plans for ice skating foiled by the human gridlock at the mall
Chips and margaritas at Tupy’s
Hollering out headlines from the Dallas Morning News
“Do you believe this jackass is still trying to arm teachers?”
Cowboys at noon, iced beer cracking open
Kitchen counters piled high with Chex mix and peanut brittle
Coughing, hacking, interrupted sleep
Futon frame collapsing under us in the wee hours
An after-midnight arrival of the Colorado kin
The stash under the tinsel-draped tree growing with each new arrival
The NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE
Somehow, Bug and I find our way behind a closed bedroom door. Freshly bathed with jammies on, we sit cross legged on the floor. He has found cards in the drawer where his great Gramma keeps the supply from long-ago bridge games.
“What do I do next, Mommy?” He consults the fan in his hand.
“Same shape or same number. Also, you can put an eight down at any time and change the suit.”
“Is this one a club?”
“Yep. The one shaped like a clover.”
We play up until bedtime. Bug places a final three of diamonds and wins the game. The grin on his face is as bright as the lights on the tree.
The last time Bug and I tried to play a proper game of cards, he was a year younger. He could not count the numbers and I did not have the patience to help him. In this chattering, crowded moment, we carve out a corner of the universe just for the two of us. Just for play.
Shannon E. Williams 