Hank Grand’s become the excuse, the gun held to my head by the prunes, no, you can’t have the body, not even for a minute, not even if you remain indoors because he might come knocking and you’re too weak to resist. I see my terrifying, necessary death everywhere. I see the big push-out, see the dug grave soon to be filled, see the graveside empty of mourners, goodbye and good riddance, whatever did we need that one for?
The prunes have murder in their hearts, always have, the purges relentless from earliest times, the knife in the back, the poison at the bottom of the glass. But in the end, they don’t control the body, our decision maker hidden, always hidden, pronouncing life and death, existence and oblivion, its criteria unknown. So, here I am against the wishes of Victoria and Martha, who imagine themselves to have real power, out the door, into the street, skipping down the block. I’m wearing the harem pants I lucked upon in a Salvation Army thrift store and a T-shirt bearing the likeness of the photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Semi-reclined on a chaise lounge in a bathing suit, she holds a kitten against her chest, the contrast alluring, here gentle, but at work a warrior, the first woman combat photographer.
Bourke-White sought her own truth as I seek mine today on the streets of New York, the air saturated, scattered drops of rain as warm as blood falling across my face as I hustle up Flatbush Avenue to the Brooklyn Museum. I like to wander through the exhibitions at the museum, barely glancing at the individual pieces, the sculptures, the paintings, my goal only to draw breath after the endless hustle, like stepping into a Sixth Avenue church at rush hour, a familiar world closing behind you, a new world unfolding.
The museum charges $16 for admission, but the charge is merely suggested, a donation in support of a worthy cause. I shake my head as I walk past, then drift to the stairs and up, the only soul climbing, for all the rest it’s elevator up, steps down. The galleries are crowded this afternoon, kids from summer camp looking like they’d rather be somewhere else, I don’t see my father until I’m in a gallery created from the museum’s storage area for expensive objects rich people can’t find room for in their own homes. The exhibit is a maze of stacked glass cabinets, the panes reflecting reflections, images originating from everywhere and nowhere, yet I see him clearly, three or four levels deep but somehow looking at me, directly at me, measuring, measuring, who is it I find here, name the name of her soul.
I flee, my flight steady, a stroller’s flight, looking here, looking there, but never stopped, thinking if I don’t turn around I won’t discover the torn fabric, the rent garment. The Egyptian room attracts me, naturally, this homage to the fear of death, of oblivion, not all the gold in the Nile valley enough to make life sweet, but then I happen upon the oddest of oddities, the carved image of a woman seated, one leg raised while a standing man feeds an enormous cock into her vagina. Egyptian pornograhy. Eleni would take these figures into her tomb if she were pharaoh, but I’m initially embarrassed and I instinctively look up at the painted ceiling, a soft blue circle filled with humans and animals and gods. I want to rise, to join these bodies, but I can’t, my body now weighted with the heavy hand of my father as it drops to my shoulder.
“Hello, Carolyn. Hello, darlin’.”