It is the dream of reentering
Eden—innocent and running
up three flights of stairs
through the back door
into the kitchen.
They are there: mother, father.
No death here—not yet—no
lymph glands have swelled, buckled
the skin, lungs easily inhale
the fragrance from the thick brisket
steaming in the pot.
No one yet coughs. The blood
clot in father’s heart is
only a metaphor for
a child’s loss. Later, she’ll beg
her most violent lover to hit her
down there. Up
here dinner’s almost ready. The flowered
oilcloth sweats on the Formica
while she can’t wait to watch the fire-
flies attach and electrify against
the scorched window screen.
How she loves to singe
her fingertips with its prison pattern.
Her mother will insist
that now she must again go wash.
Will she ever get clean of the burnt-
out center of others’ lives? Hit me,
she whispered last night
to her lover—Herr M. There,
pointing to the wiry pit. How it fascinates—
the way the two of them mix
up love with hate. When he bites
her nipples to blood,
she can almost hear him cry
to his dead mama.
Hers just sits quiet and bald,
a million miles away. Chemotherapy
is doing its trick.
The trick is hope
that when she opens
the next door, they’ll be standing there—
waiting for her. She’s come in
from play. It’s summer again
and someone loves her.
ZIPPING UP THE peach chiffon dress that Deidre Fox bought for her daughter’s early July wedding, she was clear in her mind, once again. She was more interested in getting information from Celie about our family and most especially about Cecilia than in having the dress properly fitted. It is obvious Deidre is obsessed with Cecilia and it is also obvious she thinks Celie is too blanked out to notice. But however delicate, however breakable Celie is, she is hawk-like aware of every move Deidre makes. What Deidre does not know is how protective Celie is of Cecilia, as Cecilia is of her. And, with Cecilia’s growing popularity, Celie sees some of the negative consequences of her success and this makes her all the more concerned for her.
It is evident that Cecilia has become the sun in Deidre’s solar system and that she is desperate to know everything about her interior core—which, quite frankly, is impossible. I do, however, understand Deidre’s need to a point, for she is an unsuccessful poet and most clearly Cecilia is not. And one thing that stands out among our many flaws as humans is how badly we want to be perceived as successful. As if success were an inanimate outer, loud adornment—like a flashy broach or a medal—not an inner, silent bloom to be watered and nourished.
Being that she is one of Celie’s best customers—comes to the shop almost three times a week, mostly looking to see if Cecilia is there—Celie tells her the most superficial things that come to mind. Facts that everyone knows. For Celie, too, in her own small way wants success—though she is satisfied with what many consider a ridiculously tiny portion of it.
Celie goes along with the family myth and tells her that Cecil Slaughter was reportedly a brilliant Jew and she provides some family facts that have been passed down through the years. That he was an émigré from Hungary who, when asked his name upon reaching Ellis Island, thought he was being questioned as to who he was—meaning what he did. He paused, then made an inadvertent hissing sound through the gaps in his teeth—whistle-like, and answered in his best English, “scholar.” (He did have a position as an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at a small institute of advanced learning before he left his country.)
The tired, impatient man behind the desk recorded Cecil from the whistle and from the broken-English scholar, he recorded “Slaughter”; rather prophetic, because the newly invented Cecil Slaughter ended up working in a kosher butcher shop, hacking meat. In the back room he did, however, teach himself to speak perfect English and to read books on literature and history in his new language. When he died of pneumonia at forty-eight his young wife, also from Hungary, went mad. Had to be institutionalized.
Celie tells this to Deidre because, as I said, some things about us are not secrets, are public knowledge. She can see how big-eyed Deidre becomes when she speaks of this—as if Deidre has heard all this for the first time, which Celie believes is not true, given how unendingly inquisitive she is about our family and how she is known to make attempts to find out things about us from others.
What Celie does not tell her is that my mother and her four brothers chose to ennoble Cecil to genius status so as to make up for the shame they felt about their mother’s madness. It was this feeling about her, coupled with the blatant, totally public poverty of their early years—their sweeping self-consciousness about all of this—that made them more determined to create a brilliant Cecil—he who had no equal.
One day when Deidre spotted Cecilia at the shop buying an expensive black lamb’s wool sweater laced with seed pearls around the neck, she bought one, too. Celie does reinforce her. While she wrapped it, she explained to her how when Cecil died and left a daughter and four young sons for Idyth to raise, it became too much for her and the children were separated and shuffled off to distant relatives. Eventually each married, each had a firstborn daughter and named her after their father—all variations of his name, as if to make up for the fact that the child was female. “To watch a daughter blossom was like watching a peony in June, watch it dry up as July closed in, into a nothing to be blown away. That’s how they saw it. No blessing in a daughter.” That is how Cecilia had described it to Celie and how Celie repeated it to Deidre, who truly looked at that moment as if she had been handed a million dollars, because she had been given a Cecilia Quote.
“Some men still believe that,” Celie continued. Deidre replied, “Celie, I know this all too well.” Celie already had heard this, because Deidre had said it to Celine. Celine had taken Deidre to lunch at Cecilia’s request. Cecilia thought this would appease Deidre. Be enough. Celine was also assigned to help figure out if Deidre was dangerous. The best scenario, of course, was that with this connection to Celine, Deidre would stop trying so hard to bump into Cecilia at the shop and quit going to every local poetry event where Cecilia was reading and buying far too many of her poetry books, which gave her extra time with Cecilia as she stood there asking her to sign each book with specific inscriptions to people Cecilia felt she was just inventing so she could hang around her longer. “Sort of stalker-scary,” was how Cecilia put it—reminding her of Herr M and how he was now tracking her every published word.
At the lunch with Celine, Deidre spoke about how disappointed her husband, Harrold, was with her because they had only produced a daughter, although intellectually he knew it was his sperm that made that determination. “I, too, know something about masculine narcissism, domination, and coldness,” she confided to Celine, adding, “I fled a first husband reckless with testosterone. We honeymooned in Las Vegas. I can still picture him ogling the showgirls, their tight thighs, their bare breasts, their painted nipples, and doll faces. I began to feel dizzy and, after a day there, did get physically sick with a high fever, which he paid no attention to—just kept having sex with me, taking me to places the cartographers had yet to map!”
Celine said, “Celie, she acted as if she were proud of this. Then, she segued into the questions—the rumors that were circulating about some critic and Cecilia. Had he really threatened Cecilia? Tried to ruin her career? Attacked her? Asking who is this Herr M—the one mentioned in her most recently published poem—‘The Interior of the Sun?’”
Frankly, the thing that impressed Celie most about what Celine reported was that Celine could actually remember so many details of what Deidre had said. As if she had memorized them. But, then again, they did have to do with sex—Celine’s favorite topic. Although, she did continue her reportage with the same specificity, making Celie wonder if she had taken notes right afterward or perhaps had placed a small recording device inside her bra. Everyone knows how much she forever wants to impress upon Cecilia and Cecily that she is as sharp as they are—or sharper.
Celine confirmed to Celie that she stayed quiet as she was instructed to do, while Deidre continued with a relish she could not quite cover up, “The gossip is everywhere,” she said in as compassionate a voice as she could muster, and went on. “All her recently published poems are imbued with an eerie beauty, yet filled with unseemly acts of violence. Very Edgar Allen Poe-like.” After a pause, she continued, “Did she really let the critic hit her for his own delight or, worse, for hers? Did she deep down hate herself that much? Or was she just making it all up to add to the effectiveness of her writing?” Again, she paused, then said with great authority, “You know, some writers do this.”
Celine thought the questions impertinent and beyond this, could not envision any of it, given her own conquests. Failure with men was just not in Celine’s repertoire. Nor was she as intrigued as everyone else seemed to be by “whoever or whatever this Herr M was.” It was clear to Celine that Deidre led a fairly barren life, yet if Cecilia would just give her some attention she would feel immediately filled up—which Celine did feel “was a little bent.”
All of this Celine told Celie and Celie, in turn, told Cecilia. That Deidre even said to Celine, “I wish Cecilia and I could share our pain, our poetry—become sisters in the art. Maybe even save each other. I do see Cecilia in me, if only she’d see me in her.” It was then that Deidre’s talk made Celine feel “really creeped out” so she changed the subject to clothes and asked what Deidre had bought recently at the shop.
Deidre told her about the lamb’s wool sweater and how Cecilia had bought the same one. Celine just could not get her off the subject of Cecilia, and once again Celine tried to change the topic—this time to men. She talked about how some man in the far corner could not stop looking at her. How difficult it was to avoid his stare. She talked about how cute the waiter was, how he could not stop smiling at her. Did Deidre notice? Which again turned the conversation back to Cecilia and the critic with Deidre asking, “Is he obsessed with her? Do you know what happened between them? Do you?” Then she quoted lines from Cecilia’s poem “The Interior of the Sun”:
… Hit me,
she whispered ….
. . It’s summer again
and someone loves her.
This made Celine almost totally crazy, quickly asking for the check so as to get away from this “Cecilia-crazed woman.”
Celine was so enraged that Celie and Cecilia had sent her on this mission that to calm her Celie immediately gave her another of her shop discounts—forty percent off. Satisfied, Celine went off to buy a short-sleeved pink angora sweater, which greatly pleased her.
Sometimes Celie feels truly sad for Deidre, especially when she watches her looking at herself in the shop’s triple mirrors. She thinks, “Yes, she does look ‘like a peony drying up.’” Celine had added that Deidre all too casually mentioned, “My second husband never comes near me. We never have sex. Harrold is the opposite of my first, and I chose him in large part because of this.” Then, Deidre had snorted out a laugh and continued, “I guess, when you make your bed, you do have to sleep in it.”
When reporting this to Celie, Celine shook her head from side to side as if she were trying to get rid of such a thought, and said, “I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not, but I couldn’t take any more of such talk. Anyway, why would anyone share that? Just nuts!”
It is true, a life of such celibacy would be like death to Celine. However, Celie believes what Deidre said is true, as she watches her in the mirror. She does look like she has been pickled in a jar—well preserved, but with a blood-lessness to her flesh as if she has not been touched. Sadly, Celie’s own skin has a similar look.
After Celie filled Cecilia in on all of this, they concluded that however pathetic Deidre was, she seemed fairly harmless and maybe if Cecilia blanked out anytime she encountered Deidre and Celie stopped all “Slaughter talk,” Deidre would grow tired and eventually get the message and keep her distance. Though Celie hates to lose such a customer—she buys so much, especially if she knows Cecilia has bought it first.
Today, however, while Celie was wrapping the Hermès scarf Deidre had just bought, Deidre told her that she heard that Cecily had written a play about a poet and a critic and she asked, “Did you know of this?” Celie was astonished that she had such information, but stayed calm on the surface and said, “I did not.” Which, of course, was not true. Deidre then asked, “Are you worried?” Celie replied, “No,” which seemed like a joke inside herself, for Celie worries about everything. She just cannot show it, especially after certain things that have happened to her and seem to be known by everybody.
Celie diverted her attention to a black Calvin Klein coat, telling her that Cecilia had just purchased one, which she knew was not nice. Of course, Deidre immediately tried it on in her size and there Celie was, ringing up another large sale.
While she did this, Deidre said, cautiously and softly, “I’ve heard that Cecilia is having thoughts of suicide because of this man she calls Herr M—you know, the one in the poem.” She then paused to see if Celie would react and when she did not, Deidre continued, “Isn’t that why Idyth Slaughter was sedated and locked away, because she attempted to kill herself?” It was then that Celie became completely shaken by Deidre’s not so subtle, manipulative intrusions. She felt her old vertigo returning, but carefully and rather coldly answered—avoiding the mention of a Herr M or Grandmother Idyth—“Oh, no. It’s true she’s thinking about the subject of suicide for a book, but that’s it. Something she’s going to do all in verse.” “How interesting!” Deidre replied, with a certain amount of doubt and disingenuous enthusiasm in her voice, as Celie felt the floor begin to move even more.
After she left, Celie took her pills and called Cecilia, telling her, “I’ve concluded she really won’t be that easy to get rid of. Her curiosity is becoming more meddlesome, more aggressive.” Then she added, “Cecilia, who is Herr M?” Cecilia quickly answered in a weakening voice, “No one, Celie. No one. Just a fiction.” She then said, “Thank you, Celie, for all you’ve already done, but I might have to ask you to do one additional small thing.” After a sigh, she continued, “Did you know that Deidre told Celine that she’s thinking of changing her name to Ceil, so that she can feel she’s more a part of our family? Celine just told me this.” Astonished, Celie said, “No!” and wondered why Celine had failed to report this. Then she figured that Celine had been too distracted choosing a purchase with the discount—or maybe, on second thought, she had saved the best tidbit of information to tell to Cecilia directly, so as to prove, once again, her high value.
Cecilia continued, “Maybe we’ll have to take care of this with a poem.” Celie did not know exactly what she meant, except that the floor had straightened and she accepted that Cecilia knew what she was doing, unlike myself who understood more and more, as the years passed and my disappearance to beneath the ground lengthened, that this was not always true and became most especially obvious to me with Cecilia’s encounters with a very real Herr M. All of which coincided with her mother’s long, final journey toward what humans call death—the place where I now live and more than exist.