On my way to the Holy Land
I passed effigies of knights
spread out on their tombs,
their legs a display of precise twists
to exhibit how many crusades they fought.
On my way, I couldn’t find
the promised dry path through the sea,
though I looked and looked.
Two boats sunk, but I was saved—
the good child who believes
what is told to me. On my way
I saw a man crucified on an X-
shaped cross, his immobile legs
on winged display. Another, hung
head down with feet stretched up—
the martyred, at once awkward
and lovely. I saw a man
in a loin cloth, his side was pierced,
his legs were crossed.
I stared, then forced myself
to look away. The good child who does
what is taught to me—
within the gold and jeweled
reliquary—ruby for blood,
beryl for rebirth, pearl for purity.
The good child who tries to do
what is asked of me—
when I arrived, I dug through layers
of dirt to discover
the container disappeared, the land emptied.
I couldn’t go home
with nothing to share.
The good child buries herself there.
SHE DID NOT KNOW if he would be home as she began the long drive to his house. She did not even call to see if he would pick up the phone so she could just hang up and then be somewhat confident of finding him there when she would arrive over an hour later. Of course, it was possible that just Arletta would be there and she worried about that—about what she would do then. She did not wish her any particular harm, at least nothing she could focus on at the moment no matter what her ambivalence was about Arletta’s character—for all she cared she could live out her life winning prizes for her books on kindness, loving your neighbor, and the glories of her new homeland, which in fact was not that new since she had pretty much grown up here.
Her topics, however clichéd, made people hopeful and she did believe Arletta was at least somewhat sincere—as well as quite clever and driven by a mega-ambition. Yet, she did wonder if when these ingredients were mixed together they could produce a truly good person. She certainly was not a blatantly evil one like him, just a manic overachiever who plotted out the course of her life methodically and, so far, enormously successfully.
Others took notice of this, too. (As did I, given my own issues—both above and below the ground—with the all too blatant success-grabbers and attention-mongers.) Many were quite aware of how well Arletta aligned herself within the university and used the shoulders of new, important acquaintances to stand on and how this always seemed to lead to someone who stood taller and consequently to another large cash fellowship to improve her life—buy nice clothes, a house—and further her career. Whether eventually there will be a growing backlash from all of her good luck and, if there is, she will be strong enough to ride it out or canny enough to diffuse it, is yet to be decided, but I am guessing the answer will be yes. For now, the one thing that is for sure is that everywhere Arletta goes, she strategically positions herself in the most advantageous ways to take those successful, higher leaps which, given my best instincts coupled with my lessons with Lao Tzu, I find intensely unappealing.
She thought of Arletta a lot as she set out on her journey and imagined what she knew had to be the truth—that in her childhood Arletta had someone—her mother? her father? both?—who truly believed in her and told her she was wonderful and that whatever she chose to do with her life she would be successful. That she was unstoppable. She could make all of her dreams come true.
The more she thought of these words and made of them a litany in her mind, “wonderful, successful, unstoppable,” the more she craved to return to her own childhood and start over, find for herself such a figure to help her—as if a child could actually do this.
These past months, especially, she had found herself if not falling, at least stumbling over the smallest of hurdles, and worse than this, becoming mind-clumsy. The more she tried to do everything right—to coordinate her walk with her talk, the more she strived for gracefulness, the more she fell short and it was clear that this was becoming obvious to others. However much she attempted to cover up her awkwardness and panic when she was with people—especially if there were more than one person to deal with—increasingly, she was becoming outwardly brittle. If there had ever been any suppleness to her actions, it had dried and the false confidence she publicly exhibited to compensate for this only added to the escalating pressure of a final break inside of her. She knew this.
As did I.
“Right now,” she thought, “Arletta is definitely the It Girl of the academic circus and with this it is inevitable she will begin to have her own cabal—however small—of enemies hovering nearby, hoping she’ll misstep—perhaps even break her neck or at least slip on some unnoticed black ice, which would force her to wobble off for at least a while.” To her mind this had already happened, with Arletta’s relationship with Ivan Durmand, a man fading in attractiveness—his face sagging a bit, his waistline thickening, his thought processes most likely slowing—yet still maintaining enough charisma and connections. She could only think Arletta must have her own insecurities about her ability to move forward alone and the all-too-familiar need of females for male help with advancement. Or perhaps, Arletta was just a realist, knowing that this path was still, unfortunately, the most propitious and rather than rail against it, to just use it.
To her it was obvious, too, that Arletta knew how to keep her story of where she had come from—her struggle up from the restrictive, heavy Cuban mud—strong. She had seen how she glowed on stage—almost ignited—when she gave the details of her early life. She behaved as if she had never told any of it before—like a brilliant actress does reciting her lines, becoming the character she plays each night, even though she has played the part a hundred times before and it, quite likely, has grown somewhat stale inside her. “Maybe Arletta’s deftness with this should also make one wonder further about her true self, or selves.” She added this to her basket of Arletta thoughts.
She believed Arletta shut herself down when it came to any rumors concerning Ivan Durmand, put metaphorical blinders on and earplugs in if someone directly approached to confront her about him or even alluded to any talk about the damage he had done.
She once, quite by accident, found herself in a room with her and it was clear from the high alert look on Arletta’s face, she wished she were not there. She could tell Arletta had made a connection with her last name when they were introduced for she took a step back from her and more than this, averted her eyes from hers and arched her spine too straight. Even Celine, who was with her, noticed this, which made her believe Arletta’s actions were filled with even more discomfort than she had realized at the moment, given Celine’s absence of sensitivity to nuance about anyone other than herself. Celine had said of the encounter, “That woman seemed almost afraid of you. How could anyone be afraid of you? You are strange it’s true, but to fear you? Right? No one should fear you?”
She just grabbed Celine’s hand in a cousinly fashion.
She continued to think about Arletta while she was stuck in the impossible city traffic. Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead and the palms of her hands felt fevered. Her mind was becoming a cold, wet rag, heavy with too many thoughts. Even with the heat in the car on full blast, she could not get warm enough. It was below zero outside and that was without factoring in the wind chill. She imagined when she stepped outside the beads of sweat would turn to frost and her face would glitter like on a clear night when all the stars are out and can be so clearly seen. Thinking this gave her some peace—that more than ever, she would at that moment merge with the outer atmosphere. She would no longer be alone with the snarled, closed-off upset inside of her. Finally, she would be in sync, conjoined with something infinitely larger than herself. This image of her face twinkling like the stars made her feel religious in a Zen-like way and brought her a momentary calm.
Her thoughts wandered even more as she looked at the barren trees—the funereal lace of their branches on both sides of the highway. Their stripped, over-extended, broken patterns were more consistent with the way she felt inside. Then, she imagined the carefully mapped, clear-sighted plan Arletta had for herself—that soon she would leave Ivan Durmand and make a move to someone higher on her totem pole of ambition, and how she, with this trip, would cut her own notch into the wood of it and make this easier for her. She would free Arletta, just as her parents had freed themselves and her when they arrived in Miami with great secrecy and she learned to grow up shrewd enough to say to people with great earnestness in this country what she thought they wanted to hear, maybe to the point of actually believing it herself—her voice at once vulnerable and articulate. She had lost that touch, if she truly ever had it.
She envied her, hated her, and wanted to help her escape, because it was important to her that some female feel that free. In the Slaughter family it seemed no woman got out alive—deadened or dead was their destiny. “Except for Aunt Rose,” she thought, “who lives forever, with her feeding tube and crew of attendees, always demanding and receiving more than any ten persons’ shares of attention.”
Her anger and impatience with everyone had definitely grown weighted and ungainly. For months now whenever she went outside she had a terrible aversion to all strangers—strangers walking too fast, too slow, strangers driving what seemed too close to her. Strangers in stores not waiting their turns, talking too loudly on their cell phones about the mundane matters of their lives—the unending details of their comings and goings from here to there, as if every move they made was crucial to their world, to the entire world—while pushing too near her body, the foulness of their breath polluting her insides further.
Added to this were the salespersons’ talk—talking down to her with the detestable “Honey” or “Dear,” not just giving her what she asked for, always trying to sell her something more, taking advantage of her all-too-obvious vulnerability which made her seem that she could easily be intruded upon and convinced to purchase anything they pitched—as if they could make her believe that a change in eye shadow, a new fragrance with a hyper-seductive name, or the cheery color of some lipstick could stabilize her. “If only,” she would think as each one chattered on. It was hard enough these days for her to just enter a store—any store—and ask for what she needed.
Everywhere she went it seemed everyone used too many words, making her mind even more a clutter. It was as if no one could appreciate the precision of efficient discourse so as to lessen the outside noise—their tongues all thickened thumbs, thumping out more sound, drumming out more nonsense of self-importance and condescension. There seemed a competition out there with so many people trying to trounce each other in the narcissistic territory of the “I,” using her current most hated word—busy. “Yes,” she emphatically thought, “more and more, people seemed to be going for the Olympic gold in busy.”
Yet, now that she realized she was about halfway there—on her path to straighten out what had been done, done to her in her twisted life story—in this jammed traffic, she felt only compassion for the people around her. She listened calmly as they pressed on their horns and studied their impatient, angry faces—all the animated energy they used as they poured more redundant, trivial talk into the receivers of their phones, and she looked at each one with a sincere patience.
She felt both a pity and an empathy for their lone-liness—as if everyone were trying to cover the jagged potholes of their lives with the thin pages of a newspaper, trying to run over the news, the truly sad stories imprinted on the fragile sheets and on themselves. Silently she thought, as she watched them, “Someday, one by one, each of you will tear or burst from all the damage done from the rock-hard edges of your life you so ceaselessly try to ignore.” But, at least on this ride she did not have the almost uncontrollable urge to roll down the car window and shout this message out to them. She wanted to tell them quietly, “The pliability and softness of the cushions all of us use to comfort ourselves can only be temporary. The multiplying hungers for distractions can only give us the feeling of safe passage to a point. Eventually all diversions lead to the same isolated destination.” The truth was, even on this mission that felt so right, she was still her old, glum self.
However, with the gun quietly resting in her purse, the voices that sometimes would scream at her saying, “Everything you do is wrong. You’re not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough. Nothing enough,” had silenced. She had bound herself to the Old Testament version of revenge. At least by her interpretation. She thought, “It’s being practiced every day if you just listened to the news—in the world, in this city, in backyards, inside homes.” She became the God of Israel, the Ineffable One. She became Yahweh, the name observant Jews never say out loud and with this thought she said His name out loud. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. And it made her feel giddy and wildly happy.
As I watched her, I could only hope some other thoughts would rise up in her to calm her, to stop her.
She ruminated on how easy it was to buy a gun—fill out an application—hedge a bit on the truth of how balanced you were—have your picture taken, and wait for it all to be processed. Just a couple of months—if that. Then come back and make a purchase. Or better yet, use an old one. One that looks like a harmless relic, but is not. One with a family history.
She deeply felt Arletta’s vision of the world was unrealistic—so simple-minded and wondered why people lined up to buy tickets to her lectures. To her it was as if when they entered the Great Hall to hear her, each picked up a blindfold to the world—all the complexities of history, all the misery caused by humans.
Arletta would tell her audience how lucky they were to be living in this country and how easily the problems here could be solved. She would do this with seemingly great respect for their intelligence, making references to the Greeks and Romans, to their history and mythology, paralleling these to the present—to current events, movies, music—and what they could learn from the long, lost past—its lessons, its mistakes, and all its glories. She did this without being pedantic—without arrogance—pronouncing that anything wrong now could be fixed through generosity of spirit, good deeds, and friendship. Her speech pattern was the perfect balance of angelic and evangelistic.
She went to listen to her three times. Since she had an insatiable craving to know everything about Ivan Durmand, to examine him from every possible angle—piece by piece, particle by particle in as microscopic fashion as possible—she also had the need to know more about the woman with whom he was living. Even though she sat hunched in a far corner with a scarf covering her head and dark glasses on so no one would notice her, she could still see that on stage Arletta looked as composed as Queen Katherine of Aragon and she remembered thinking even that elegant, aristocratic woman had lived with a monster. Yet when she thought of the comparison of Henry VIII to Ivan Durmand, she smiled at the stretch of this and how it was far too much a compliment to the latter and his very limited polluted puddle of power.
Each time she saw her, Arletta was dressed in a dark, trim, perfectly fitting designer pants suit with a striking necklace of Spanish stones, as if to remind everyone of her lineage—her adventurous and powerful heritage. Of course, she never spoke of its violent history—the tortures, the awful, senseless carnage, which, in fairness, could be the history of any country and always in the name of some god. No, Arletta would not ever go into that.
The necklace she remembered most was quite large and made of saffron colored carnelian. It had geometric squares and ended with a large, highly polished tear drop which fell at the perfect place on her skin so as to delicately, purposely, cover any hint of cleavage. Yet, the suggestion of sensuality was clearly intended and definitely effected. The color of the stones intricately entwined in the shine of thick, pink gold wire only added to the glow of her smooth, naturally sun-kissed tan skin. She thought of Celine and how that was the color she always strived for, only to end up with some variation of orange on herself from the many brands of cream she purchased during the winter months.
She imagined every woman in the audience wanting to ask her where she had bought such a necklace—and all the others she was known to wear. She certainly wanted to—however superficial the impulse. To her the brilliance of this self-decoration with its subliminal effects were far more fascinating than anything Arletta wrote or said. She just could not react the way the others did.
Today, before she left home, she put on a necklace she found at the shop. Supposedly it is authentic—the center drop of it being a circular coin sliced in half, recovered from the El Cazador shipwreck. It had a tag on it with its history. The vessel had disappeared into the winter sea in another January—1794 to be exact—and the treasure it was carrying discovered only recently—1993—by a fishing vessel named Mistake. She smiled at that when she first read it.
She wondered who wore the other half of this small, full moon disk. If it had brought them bad thoughts or good luck. She wondered, too, if Arletta would admire her necklace with the coin at the center of which was a Spanish inspired cross, embellished by four black onyx tips separated by four curved rows of four clear-colored cabochon gemstones. Her urge to buy it gave her the small hope that perhaps in wearing it she might become stronger—more like Arletta. That she could be empowered by such a neck-lace—however ridiculous that thought seemed, and was not.
Certainly Arletta’s words gave her audiences hope—a vision of Eden before the apple, gave their minds a rest like a meditation or a sermon and that for some moments after they reentered the world they felt smarter, and everything seemed brighter now that they were filled with the belief that easy solutions were possible. At least until they got into their cars and had to deal with the incessant messages left for them by disgruntled relatives or coworkers. Or from having none at all—nothing received from the ones whose voices they truly needed to hear, so as to give them a little affirmation, a boost of positive attention to get through to the next day—a little polish for their spirit. Soon enough, the drivers next to them would begin impinging on their space and the dirty looks, obscene gestures, or the games of chicken with steel vehicles would begin and the words—always the words—when they turned on the news from the disembodied air would start spitting on them again with the events of the day so much larger than their own lives. Nothing picayune here—rage raining and reigning everywhere. Maybe then they would wonder about the validity of Arletta’s vision or perhaps just be grateful for the distraction of it. Most likely by this time they would have forgotten much of what she had said—it being too sallow in its shallowness to last even the drive home—and be left with just a small halo effect of its optimistic pleasantness.
She is a bad driver. She never knows what to do when the merging cars take their aggressive places on the highway. She always feels that this leaves her with no space. That she is being crowded out. That the road she is trying to take for herself is being intruded upon by someone far more confident. Someone stronger, someone bolder. She has tried so hard to hold on to a path in this world of being—of being a Slaughter, of knowing she was unacceptable from the beginning for being a daughter. Always with the realization of not being—not being the everlasting Rose. Of never being able to outwardly perfectly comply or inwardly deal with the rules and expectations set for her way before her birth, no matter how hard she initially had tried. Yet, as she kept touching the leather of her bag and feeling the shape of the gun, with her target closer—now just miles from here—all this seemed of no consequence. She felt what she was doing was not random; what she was doing was filled with great purpose; what she was doing had many dimensions; what she was doing was multifaceted and hard like a diamond.
It was then I became truly frightened.
She touched the sweat that now completely covered her face. It had become fluid, like a second foundation and that, too, felt perfect. Now she imagined, when the air hit her exposed skin as she stepped out of the car—so close to her goal—she would look less like the sprinkled stars in the night sky, but more unified, like a cold, hard jewel. That finally, she would resemble a gem of great value.
Suddenly, in the middle of these dot thoughts, which she knew, if she drew the lines all connected to her maze-puzzled life, she realized she was on his street and she started checking the numbers of the houses, which was difficult because it was now almost past the twilight hour in the city-filthy, dark hole of midwinter and the homes were closer together than she expected, some almost disappearing into the next with no light shining on their addresses. She was surprised by the narrowness of each house, but tried not to make of this a metaphor—let it intrude or multiply. She had to keep her mind locked into the reality of what she intended and not leap around in the possibilities of language.
When she finally saw a number near enough, she found a parking spot—one where the city had plowed the snow high, so she fit in easily. The car and her frostbitten thoughts were now imbedded in a concrete igloo of ice. She turned off the car’s lights and the ignition and paused, took some deep breaths to try to steady what felt like a not-unfamiliar arrhythmia of her heart. Then, she slipped the gun into her coat pocket, stuffed her purse under the passenger side of the seat and stared at the thick rubber soles on her boots, hoping they would keep her from slipping, keep her anchored to the ground when she got out of the car and edged along the newly fallen snow which deceptively covered layer upon layer of built-up ice.
Her plan was to find the house—the house he and Arletta bought together—by walking toward it, her head down so she would look weather-beaten like everyone else just wanting to get home at the end of a hard workday. She would go up the steps or the concrete walk to the front door—whichever it was—and ring the bell. If everything worked as she imagined, Herr M would open it, stare at her, and before he could slam it in her face she would take the gun—now resting so snugly in the deep of her pocket—point it at him, while looking straight at him so he could see her, see who was doing this to him. See her and that would be the last image he would ever see. See her. Her shooting. Her shooting him.
As she walked, all her thoughts were about death. About the soul and its being released from the mind-body and how she longed for this—for some perspective on what we do to ourselves and to each other and the poem “The Soul’s Aerial View of the Burial” started racing around in her mind, and she said it in the smallest whisper, like a prayer to the air—its frozen emptiness the perfect audience—
Everything is black or white—
the mourners’ heavy wool coats
wander over the crisp snow,
their arms holding on to whoever’s left—
while I wait for them to seal
the perfect rectangular hole
so I can go—to where
But for now I muse above the bony
trees, about how fragile
the dance is that they do,
and how I don’t remember
ever having such an unfettered view.
And in saying it, she hoped that when this was over, she, too, would see everything clearer and be freer. But she was not sure, for now she was beginning to feel lightheaded.
It was at this point a little hope rose up in me that she would turn around and go home … but she did not.
When she found the house, it was even narrower than the others, turn of the century old and three stories high. It was not made of brick as she had imagined, but rather a faded yellow clapboard from which the paint was peeling, perhaps with some of the strips turning to rot. The children’s story of the three little pigs jumped into her mind and she said out loud, “Not even of brick.” At that moment she felt like the wolf, quite capable of blowing this house in, which was, after all, her intention.
Then she thought, “This doesn’t look like the kind of house that Arletta would stay in for long. This doesn’t seem like a place Arletta would ever live. Surely her exit will be sooner than later.” She idealized Arletta’s future once again and pictured her gracefully dancing away into warm, spring air to a larger, grander house with lots of lawn and flowers blooming everywhere. In her mind Arletta’s story always, inevitably, led to a happy Hollywood ending.
She was unsteady, her gait definitely off, as she slowly headed up the shoveled, cracked, concrete path which ended with five overly large steps of wood. Only one light was on, in an upper front left-side room on the attic-like top floor. She imagined him there with its sloped ceilings—that were soon to fall in on him—ensconced with his books, perhaps grading papers or preparing tomorrow’s lecture—which now would never happen—or listening to some classical music or smooth jazz, feeling so safe and warm.
Perhaps he was reading Nietzche’s The Genealogy of Morals, going over his favorite part on how the world is intrinsically filled with cruelty and violence, given the instincts inherent in humans, and how it is up to a higher thinking man to develop his own code of morality, not be led or convinced by clichéd beliefs—“let us be aware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as ‘pure reason,’ ‘absolute knowledge,’ ‘absolute intelligence.’” He had read her those words early in their relationship and she thought him an expansive thinker and a passionate scholar. Now she believes he used this treatise as an excuse for any and all of his behavior, his voice becoming so theatrical as he continued, “What a mad, unhappy animal is man! What strange notions occur to him; what perversities … what bestialities of idea burst from him, the moment he is prevented ever so little from being a beast of action?” How these lines have stayed memorable in her mind, like an indelible stain. She guesses one could say she had been forewarned.
She wondered how Arletta’s philosophy could possibly fit with such beliefs and whether or not they argued a lot about this from their not ivory but wooden tower. However before she could get entirely lost in this quagmire of thought, the rising and dying noise of someone trying and retrying to start the frozen motor of a car shocked her out of her wobbly, over-intellectualizing and returned her to the imminent impermanency of Herr M’s own situation and this made her smile and helped steady her some. As did a Life-Saver she unrolled from her other pocket with her ungloved hand and placed on her tongue. At this moment, the bitter, sugary taste of the lemon one helped unify her senses. Her eyes began to focus better.
She saw that the front porch was darkish gray. The depressing color seemed contradictory—it should have been lighter, as in a welcoming. As it was, the entrance to the house looked like a cave. The floorboards creaked as she stepped on them and there was a matching wood swing held up by rusty chains. She imagined that when it was new it had been painted white and had brought great delight to those who had swung on it. Children. Parents. Lovers. She walked around it as quietly as she could and had the urge to sit on it to rest so as to further help balance herself, though it looked like it would make loud, squeaking sounds or worse, that if any weight were placed on it, it might fall from the low, warped wood ceiling from which it hung.
It was then she thought of a title for a poem: “The Rapist’s Porch Swing,” quite aware of its multiple meanings and with this, that night two years ago quickly came back to her with too much memory: her initial bewilderment when he leaped up from his chair and pressed his open mouth onto hers; how the force of this act, coupled with the bristly hairs of his goatee made it feel as if a mask were pressing against her face; how empty this opening to his body felt—like a rough dark pit into which he was trying to swallow her; how he then quickly yanked her to the futon; how he pushed her down on it; how he would not let her up; how he kept saying, “Turn. Turn. Turn Over,” with her idiotically thinking if she did so, he would let her up and how he did not. How that was just the beginning of his pushing—his pushing himself into her any which way it pleased him.
The feelings of that terror, the physical pain, and the seizure that overtook her when he was nearly done all returned as she stared at the porch swing—its bench becoming his penis and her arms the rusted chains—yes, these past two years, the rusted chains just trying to hold herself up by writing—writing about what had happened that night, so she would not go crashing to the floor, completely broken and useless. Then, the image changed—consolidated itself—and she became both the chains and the bench in all their wreckage, an object on the brink of becoming a complete heap of junk. Something to be tossed to the curb or thrown into an alley, then picked up by a foul smelling truck, and carried off to the dump.
For well over a year, most of it in silence, except for her pen, she had tried to keep her grip, but the chains had become too worn and were about to snap from the ceiling of herself and no God-hope could hold it up. The rhythms she created in her writing room could no longer swing her high enough to reconcile what had occurred in that dungeon apartment.
How she went filled with the anticipation of having the attention of such an important, attractive man. How she went with a rise in her step and a girlish flirtation, which she was now sure had emanated from her face and body and from her velvet slacks and soft angora sweater that she had carefully chosen for the occasion. Everything about her that evening was so soft.
“Yes, a soft target,” she thought and with this, once again, the full grief-rage welled up inside her, like a river overrunning its banks, for her own unbearable naiveté, for her own vast stupidity, for the wasteland that night had made into her future, and she started shaking.
The lemon Life-Saver had already dissolved on her tongue and she reached down into her pocket for another. When she saw it was green, this brought a smirk to her face, because of how green she had been as she had so cautiously climbed those outside, slippery steel steps to the place he inhabited that evening in January—the month which holds the hope of new beginnings and positive resolutions, but, like any other, can explode into unimaginable endings.
She thought of Michael to even herself further.
And with this, I prayed that the power of Michael in her mind would make her turn back. But it did not.
She thought about the phone message she had left him saying that if she were not home, she would be back soon and to bring milkshakes topped with hot fudge, adding, if possible, to please rent the movie Wuthering Heights. She imagined his familiar sigh at this suggestion and him saying to himself with tired amusement, “Again!” She did all of this so he would not think anything was out of the ordinary with her not being there when he arrived. That she was just out, running a common errand. That she was okay. In her mind she was always worried that Michael would show up here—show up to kill him. And with this thought she looked around.
It was important to her that he have at least a little more time thinking that everything was getting better. That she was improving. She tried to give him that impression and could tell he was beginning to feel optimistic about this from his words the other evening when he said, “Perhaps we could eventually put all of this behind us and build a new future.” She stayed quiet, giving him an enigmatic smile and a slight positive nod, which he was used to and to which he lightly responded, “So what exactly are you really thinking?” She only continued to smile. Something he also found familiar.
It had been a mistake to tell him anything about what had happened. She saw this as soon as she had begun opening up to him. Of course, once she started, he would not let her stop. Afterward, she had tried her best to reassure him, saying that being able to talk to him had been cathartic. But she had heard what he said all too clearly and had seen the way his face and neck had reddened as she spoke and how afterward he stood too still for too long a time, his skin looking as if it were about to burn off.
She did not want this gentle man to take on any more of her problems than he already had. She did not want him to be the one to take action. She wanted to free him. To free him of her. She wanted him to be finally free of her so he would be able to release himself into life again.
She closed her eyes and pictured him putting the large shakes in the refrigerator, placing the movie on the kitchen table, taking off his warm, black overcoat, black leather gloves, and unwrapping his long Burberry scarf from his neck. She had bought it for him as a gift and he wore it religiously. How he would then put a glove into each pocket and neatly wrap the scarf around a hanger, place the coat on it and fit it carefully into the hall closet. He then would quietly check to see if perhaps she had arrived early—if the door to her writing room was closed. Since it would not be, he would sit down on the couch and turn on the TV—watch something he knew would not interest her, and how he would be pleased to have some time to himself for his own indulgence, and this calmed her.
She also thought about some of the titles of the poems she had written these past two years and the poems themselves—her small, frightened, yet daring little poems, her little selves—her pathetic, struggling, little persons—“Melancholia,” “Claustrophobia,” “Paranoia,” “Schizophrenia,” and on and on. How they had taken over her mind, populated her life and yoked her in, centered her some—kept her from becoming a splatter a little longer and she thought about what anyone might make of them after this night, after the act that was about to happen.
By now, her mouth curved into a large grin. Touching it with her ungloved hand, it felt stuck there and she wondered if she looked like a madwoman at this moment—if she looked like the terror-stricken image she had of Grandmother Slaughter; if she looked like the Insane Idyth Slaughter. If, in fact, her own history had finally imploded within her—not just from Grandmother Idyth, but from the not-so sealed pit of reptiles her mother carried with her from Auschwitz, which forever crawled inside her mother and had slowly entered her the more she found out another detail of her mother’s story. Then, she stared at her smooth, high, black boots, and it was the first time she realized how much they looked like the ones the Nazis wore when they goose-stepped their way along so many pavements toward their vision.
She thought about the story of Celie’s grandmother Eva, sitting with her daughter, Esther, as Esther wrote to the American Red Cross looking for Eva’s parents, brothers, and sister long after the crematoria had taken them from her, with her not knowing for years that they had gone to ash, and she stared again at the sight of her now horrifying boots. She thought of Celie and how she was born into Eva’s hysteria after she found out what had happened to her family and the shrieks of all of Eva’s fears into the baby Celie’s ears and how they had infected Celie. At this moment all journeys that ended in disaster seemed to crash into each other and into her.
She thought about the critics. She could almost see the high-powered ones lined up in front of her like a firing squad, and of their possible commentaries about the body of work she had created. If she would be added to their short list of great, yet crazy female poets and if they would come to write volumes about her, too, or if she would only keep the lesser ones busy, writing with a gossipy tabloid fascination about her and her ever so miniscule mini-moment in literary history, and this only hardened her grin and created a new rush of wired energy within her at the temporality, nonsense, and vanity of all of it.
It was then I prayed as hard as I could for her to stop, as if I could reach her, even though I knew I could not.
She lifted her gloved hand to ring the bell, the same hand that would reach into the deep pocket where the gun lay quiet. Her only fear at the moment was that the bell would be broken or would be too soft and that he would not hear her. “Hear me. Here me,” she thought. Another chant from childhood and a line from a poem whose title at the moment she could not remember. She absolutely washed from her mind the possibility that Arletta would be there. It had to be he who opened the door. She said out loud, “It had to be.” As if by saying this, she could will it.
The bell had a too-loud buzz. She thought of a buzzard—a bird waiting for its prey. Circling. Then she heard someone coming down the many stairs, and she wondered if he had a new dog and if the new dog would accompany him. And if the dog would be female and if she would be beautiful, yet look beaten—if her fur would be unwashed and glued together from her constant gnawing on herself, and his neglect. But there were no animal sounds. Just those of someone heavy-footed. Then she heard him. She heard him say in an annoyed way, “Who’s there?” She stayed silent and, being the buzzard, she rang the bell again. And again, he said, “Who’s there?” Only louder.
Suddenly, the first floor lights flicked on. She leaned over and peeked through the dirty dining room window, incongruously trimmed with clean, white lace curtains, and she saw him coming down the stairs. He was alone. And in seeing this the adrenaline in her body reached a euphoric surge she had only sometimes experienced when writing a poem—the words arriving almost too rapidly with an overwhelmingly ecstatic, yet excruciating excitement building inside her in trying to catch all of them—as if all language at those spectacular moments was being funneled into an opening at the top of her head from a place high above—a golden place of great, unbounded splendor.
Angrier, he yelled, “Who’s there? Damn it! Who’s there?” Hearing his irritation, she rang the bell again and then again, because she never felt more the master—more the master of herself and of him. And this feeling made her giddier—made her glide higher. She liked being the tormentor. She liked finally being in charge. Then he opened the door, and there he was looking tired and sloppy. And she took the gun out of her pocket and shot him.