An Unkind Light

At first there’s no one there when I answer the telephone at two in the morning on a winter New England night.  I’m about to hang up when I hear ragged breathing and something that sounds like crying. 

I’m at the ER, my old friend Gerry whispers, Can you come?   

I’m on my way, I tell her.  There’s no point in wasting time on frivolous questions that have no answers.

Like any small city ER, Mt. Auburn is a cheerless place, not as bad as Mass General or God forbid, Boston City, but bad enough with its sterile, harsh lights and overworked staff.  Gerry sits in a corner, head down and collar up as if she could hide her red-rimmed eyes and conceal the fresh bruises on her throat.  A Cambridge cop sits beside her with a small notebook open on his knee but she isn’t looking at him and when he quietly asks if she wants to press charges, she shakes her head stubbornly and starts to cry.  He sighs and looks at me, asks if she has a safe place to go and I nod.

Not the first time, is it, he wants to know and when I say no, he shrugs.  Press charges and maybe it’ll be the last, he suggests but Gerry isn’t listening.  He sighs again, closes and pockets his little notebook and walks slowly off.   I take his seat and slide an arm around her trembling shoulders, noticing her fists clench and unclench.   We’ve been here before and I’m torn between wanting to give her comfort or a good shaking.

A nurse appears and gently but firmly leads her out of the waiting room.  The unkind light makes her look fragile and defeated and she shuffles like an old woman.  This is what abuse looks like, I think wearily, this is what abuse does.   I’m young and still think it’s clear cut and simple.  I can’t grasp why she won’t just leave the bastard.

I learned some things later in life, useful but sad lessons.

What it’s like to feel drawn and quartered by conflicting emotions. 

What it’s like to be threatened into submission and shamed into silence.

What it’s like to reach blindly for the hope of empty promises and false apologies.

How pride and fear join forces and make you paranoid about appearances and what people will say.

How you come to believe every ugly and vicious thing he tells you.

How you become desperate that no one finds out.

How impossible it becomes to give up.  Even if he kills you.

The feeling you had the first time he hit you.  Worse, the feeling you had when you realized it wouldn’t be the last.

The growing suspicion that you’ve brought it on yourself and are a failure because you can’t fix it.

The lies, the pretending, the constant anxiety, the betrayals, the desperation, the guilt.

Seeing the worry on the faces of friends and family.

The panic as you plunge into survival mode.

The way you embrace denial as if it were a shield.  And the way it finally breaks.

It’s a long time later when all these things and many, many more race around in my mind, slamming into each other like an avalanche.  I may understand more but it doesn’t make things easier to see it happening again with someone I care about.

My old friend Gerry, damaged but intact, eventually got out.  I watched her break free and rebuild her life piece by piece. 

Light, even when it’s unkind, is better than darkness.

Who's Crazy Now

One of the hardest lessons life has to offer is this:  If you let crazy into your life, don’t expect it to leave quietly.  Crazy is a hanger-on, a master of disguises and scarier still, it can be contagious.  Crazy adapts.  Crazy takes over.  Crazy is cunning.  Crazy will make you think it's you.

At some point – after we were married – my second husband mentioned that he was what he called sort of adopted.  His mother was his mother, he assured me, but the man she was married to was actually his stepfather.   Out of curiosity, I asked about his biological father and was casually told that he had been a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who died in an asylum.  He knew his name but otherwise claimed to have no memories of him.  I suppose if there had been internet then, I might have done a little research and might have taken note of the fact that schizophrenia seems to be at least partially genetic and is commonly accompanied by alcoholism.  Then again, I might not have.  The negative symptoms – emotional flatness, apathy, lack of speech – were all there in plain view but I saw them more as personality quirks.  He was a very angry man, broken in several places and not looking for help.  He wanted more than anything to drink in peace and solitude, to be left alone with his demons.  Even in later years when things took a turn toward violence, I didn’t see it.  By then I was fairly convinced that I was to blame.  I thought I’d taken a quiet, harmless drunk and turned him into a mean, abusive son of a bitch drunk.  I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end.  My desperation and anger, fueled mostly by fear and shame, finally led me to Al-Anon and Al-Anon eventually led me back to sanity and reality.  I held on for several more years although I think in my heart, I knew that the marriage had almost no chance of survival after my first six months of meetings. Of course what you know and what you’re willing to act on are two very distinct things – it took a long time to learn to change my thinking – it took even longer to learn the courage to leave.

I still think of him every now and again, mostly with a sense of sadness and a powerful regret.

I would like to think that he found some peace of mind, some help, some way to reconcile with his children.  Last I heard and it was years ago, he’d returned to his roots and his first wife in Kentucky.  I haven’t heard anything since and I don’t go looking.  For a long while I was convinced he’d end up dead or in jail – there were some nasty incidents of domestic abuse with his third wife – and I wouldn’t have been too distressed  or surprised to learn he’d come to a bad end.  Turns out he wasn’t the only one who was angry and broken in several places.

Lewis Carroll wrote, “ I can’t go back to yesterday.  I was a different person then.”

Aren’t we all and isn’t it a blessing.

Blind Sided

The fight broke out in without much warning, one brother flying into a rage and pinning the other to the linoleum floor on the sunporch with one thick forearm across the neck and the other smashing his face repeatedly.  By the time my daddy got there, there was a considerable amount of blood  and the brother on the floor was barely conscious. The other was still punching.

Sweet Jesus! my daddy shouted, Stop before you kill him!

It took both hands and all his strength to pull them apart.  Now shouting for my grandmother, he unthinkingly flung the older one aside, sending him crashing into the drop leaf table where countless bridge games had been won and lost.  Snarling and drooling like a rabid dog, the boy recovered and jumped on his back in a blind fury.  Nana, who had been in the middle of making an apple pie, simply raised her flour coated rolling pin and swung. My brother dropped like a stone and my daddy shrugged him off and knelt on the now slippery and blood smeared floor.

I watched it all through the window - my daddy  yelling for my mother before gathering up my little brother and carrying him to the Lincoln, my grandmother keying the ignition and flying up the driveway as if the old town car had wings - even my mother's frantic flight down the stairs and her panicky scream when she discovered her oldest son, only dazed but still flailing.  He cursed her viciously, staggered to his feet and took off like a scared but pretty much drunken rabbit.

I hate you! I shouted as he passed me, I wish you were dead!

Bitch! he shot back, I hope you rot in hell!

Too overwrought and scandalized to move, my sodden heap of a mother began wringing her hands and wailing like a cat in heat.

Serves you right! I shouted at her from the doorway although I wasn't exactly sure of what, You ain't nothin' but a nasty old drunk!  Everyone says so!

This brought on a fresh wave of sobs and I fled for the playhouse.

My mother and daddy both claimed to be blindsided by the attack, although both were careful to call it THE INCIDENT.  Words and phrases like "regrettable" and "fluke" and "surely never happen again" were tossed around until Nana lost all patience.

Here's a word, she told them coldly, sociopath.  It hung in the air like smoke.

These things happen in all families, my mother said with a self-righteous sniffle.

The hell they do! my grandmother snapped, do you think these things just happen, Guy?

My daddy, a kind hearted but helpless soul when it came to this kind of thing, sighed heavily and said nothing.

I was sent to my room without supper that night but my little brother came home with a broken nose, two blackened eyes and a line of ugly stitches from his cheek clear to his chin.  He wouldn't talk about the fight.  It was Cap who eventually brought my other brother home after finding him hiding in the ferry's wheelhouse. Apart from denying responsibility for the fight, an old and worn out tactic that never failed to work with my mother but failed miserably with everyone else who saw him for what he was, he had nothing to say.  Both boys were docked two weeks of allowance and grounded for the upcoming weekend and THE INCIDENT was considered closed.  My mother fought hard for a lifting of the punishment, finally brow beating my daddy into restoring the younger brother's allowance but refusing to budge on the other.

I know you can't admit it, Jan, I overheard him tell my mother in an uncommon display of backbone, but no matter who talks or who doesn't, you know as well as I do who started it.  

My mother protested but he couldn't be moved.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

Scott Adams

  

A Thoroughly Disagreeable Little Man

The line at the pharmacy counter was six deep with unhappy, impatient customers.  They muttered and complained, shifted from one foot to the other and cleared their throats with frustration.  The hapless cashier, a frozen it’s-not-my-fault smile on her face, was doing her best but she was badly outflanked by the little man with the pageboy haircut and the overflowing grocery cart.

He wasn’t but four and a half foot high and clearly oblivious or indifferent to the traffic jam behind him, was engaged in a whiny, nasal and protracted conversation with the cashier.  He wanted someone to block print the directions for his prescription on a sheet of paper.

 Letter size paper,  he demanded, White with black ink.

The cashier assured him the pharmacist would be happy to oblige if he wouldn’t mind waiting and allow her to wait on other customers.  He stamped one small foot defiantly.

Certainly not, he snapped.

In that case, she countered, perhaps she could begin to ring up his purchases to save time.

He glanced at his grocery cart, piled so high it towered over him, and shook his head vehemently.

Not until I get my directions, and there was an edge of sneer in his tone, I’ll wait.

There was a rumble of discontent behind him and he glanced over his shoulder, wrinkled his nose.

I have as much right to be here as you do, he announced arrogantly and the rumble began to sound more like a growl.

They’s a dozen lanes open, fool, a tired looking but hefty black woman said clearly, Carry your skinny ass to one of them and come back later.  Ain’t no need to hold the rest of us up!

I’ll do no such thing, he declared, And you can’t make me!

Try me!  the woman invited and took a step closer to him.

The disagreeable little man paled, hitched up his high water pants nervously but stood his ground.

You wouldn’t dare, he mumbled.

Now ya’ll hold on, a younger black man intervened smoothly, Leave him be, Mama, can’t you see he ain’t right?

And indeed, I realized, there was something off about the little man in the long sleeved check shirt, loafers, and khaki pants with the belt cinched so tightly that they rode up and exposed his bare ankles.  His pageboy hair was only pageboy’d on the back and sides – from the top and front he was shiny bald with wispy muttonchops and a tragic goatee – I could barely see his eyes through the thick lenses of his glasses and what I suspected was a permanent part of his wardrobe, a black imitation leather pocket protector, was sturdily attached to his shirt pocket.  Then there was his cart.  Everything was in 12’s – 12 quart bottles of Pepsi, 12 bags of bird seed, 12 light bulbs, 12 granola bars and 12 of 12 kinds of candy bars. 

The black woman gave the cart a nasty jolt with one knee and the little man began to panic, I could see it in his face.

Mama!  The young black man snatched her arm and pulled her back, Mama, leave him be!

Just as I was deciding I didn’t need to know how all this would end, the harried, young pharmacist materialized at the counter and slid a sheet of paper toward the little man.  There was a collective sigh of relief as he inspected the paper, folded it 12 times, tucked it into his pocket and began unloading his cart.  One item at a time and keeping an eagle eye on the cashier and the computer screen.

White folks!  I heard the black woman mutter as she shook off her son’s arm, elbowed her way past the others in line and stalked out, Some be crazy as bedbugs!

There was an uncomfortable silence as everyone digested her words.  The wide-eyed cashier continued to ring up the little man’s purchases although it was a slow and tedious process as he would only lay the one item at a time onto the counter and then wait for her to scan it before reaching for the next one.  It looked and felt like intentional gridlock.  The pharmacist returned to his pill counting and the black woman’s son lowered his eyes and made his way out, murmuring apologies as he went. The line continued to lengthen, finally attracting the attention of a managerial-type who surveyed the situation and immediately sent in a second cashier to move things along. 

The thoroughly disagreeable little man was finally done but as he chose to plow his cart into and through the now double line – it was impossible not to believe that this was an intentional effort to displace as many people as possible since there were clear paths on either side of him – he felt the need to make a parting shot and announced nastily that he’d never felt so ill-treated all day.

Give it time, an anonymous voice from somewhere in the line called after him, Day’s still young.

This brought some scattered laughter and humiliated and infuriated, he immediately fired back with that if people like that were going to shop here, then he would take his business elsewhere.  

It’s them or me,  he crowed confidently.

The managerial-type looked from him to the line of customers and back again, shrugged and smiled.

We’ll miss you, he called politely.

Turning the other cheek is a noble notion and a worthy goal but in the real world, sometimes you just have to speak your mind and return fire.

  

Touching the Moon

Follow your inner moonlight, Allen Ginsberg writes, Don't hide the madness.

On one of those summer Saturday nights when the moon was so bright, so huge, and hanging so low you think you could reach out and touch it, we sat on the steps in the village square and listened to the tide as it washed against the rocks.   Someone had brought a tiny transistor radio and Kitty Wells was singing Dust on the Bible  while someone else was following along on a guitar.  We passed around a pack of Export A's and a half full bottle of Canadian Mist - a vile blended whiskey with the capacity to burn your throat raw, one sip was enough to rock you on your heels and getting caught with it would've meant the direst of punishments - but it was well past closing time in the square.  The general store was shuttered and dark except for the lights in the third floor living quarters and even the barber shop's brisk Saturday night business was done for the night.  Anyone not at the show - yet one more Martin and Lewis comedy, we sighed - or not getting ready for the dance was home and out of sight.  Just past ten, we ditched the empty whiskey bottle and the crumpled up cigarette pack and began to drift lazily toward the dance hall.  Only the Sullivan twins, who to no one's surprise had been drinking steadily since noon, lagged behind.

On the way, we picked up Gene and Buttons, the old retriever had a spring in his step still and trailed happily after us.  When we passed the Howard place, both defiant sisters - their daddy would've come after them with a shotgun if he discovered them sneaking out - came slinking out of the shadows and doing their best to be invisible, joined up with us.  Last but not least, we came to the Blackford house and someone let out a long, low whistle.  We heard Blackie call a good night to his folks and out he came, dressed to the nines from the Spiegel catalogue and ready to dance his size 13's off.  There wasn't a girl on the entire island who would turn down the chance for a spin around the floor with him - he was our own unlikely Fred Astaire - and every girl in his arms became an even more unlikely Ginger Rogers.

With the moon lighting our way, we made our way down the dirt road until the dance hall came in sight.  The clouds, backlit and edged with silver, moved aimlessly across the sky.  We were so young and so mostly innocent - not a care in the world - I don't think we knew there was magic and a little madness in the night. We paid our quarters at the ticket booth and slipped through the doors into the strobe lights and the music.

Marty Robbins was crooning A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation when the Sullivan twins came crashing through the door and onto the dance floor.  They were bruised and bloody and locked in a tangled version of a bearhug-combination-chokehold, each grunting and attempting to beat the other senseless.  Blackie stepped in almost immediately, efficiently grabbing each by the hair, pulling them apart and swinging them sideways clean off the floor.  This produced two identical wails of protest followed by two colorful streams of obscenity when he delivered a well aimed kick with those size 13's but he was persistent.  He cracked their skulls together - once, twice, three times in all - until they crumpled like flour sacks and slid to the floor in a useless heap.  Calmly, he took each twin by a handful of shirt collar and dragged them through the door and down the steps, flinging them into the dirt with very little effort.  It was only a flurry of madness, no where near enough to ruin the evening and Marty Robbins was still singing when it was over.

Midnight came and we danced the last dance then reluctantly began the walk home.  The moon was so pale and so near, we imagined reaching out and running our fingers over its surface.  Nowadays when I see such a moon, I wonder if maybe there isn't just a little madness and Marty Robbins in all our moonlit nights.  If there's not, maybe there should be.

And The River Keeps Rising

The swollen river spills over the banks and mercilessly sweeps away everything in her path.   Street signs and cars and parks go under without the first chance to defend themselves.  You can kneel on the railroad bridge and almost touch the muddy water.  Some home sites are turned into islands, owners left stranded.  A brightly painted doghouse drifts lazily down a residential street, carried on the water as lightly as a feather.  And the river keeps rising.

It’s been several days since there’s been any rain but the damage is already done.  The utility companies prepare to cut power in a half dozen neighborhoods and the mayor’s office issues emergency evacuation orders.  The river will reach a full foot above flood stage in a matter of hours and slowly but surely we’re running out of higher ground.  They say it may be July before the waters recede.

A number of small minded and self-righteous folks begin posting comments to the flood pictures about how and where homes ought to be built, as if the victims had brought this on themselves and suggesting that it’s retribution for their being money’d.  It’s cruel and thoughtless – but not really surprising - and there are immediate rebuttals.  Nature doesn’t target the rich, someone else points out and floods don’t discriminate.

In the very midst of all this chaos, there comes a freak wind born of a violent thunderstorm and it rages through one of the oldest and most historic sections of the city, leveling trees and fences and power lines and leaving a path of wanton destruction.  It’s 2am and the sounds of chain saws are singing people awake.

Regardless of what we’ve accomplished and how far we think we’ve come, nature still has her own agenda.  She cares not where we build our houses or how much we depend on electricity.  She speaks louder and more fiercely than all the victims put together and her mood these days is foul.

The Flood of 2015 will be talked about for years and remembered for decades.

And the river keeps rising.

A Handful of Time

Every so often I think about scooping it up by the handful and safely stashing it away, this mysterious thing called time.  It's a treasure, unappreciated and undervalued until it's a memory in the rear view mirror, dusty with age, a little distorted and fading fast.

Spend it wisely, my daddy used to say about time and money.

Until we parted ways, I had always been a daddy's girl.  He taught me to play piano and ride a bike, helped me with my homework, made the rounds with me when it was Girl Scout Cookie time, taught me a lifelong habit of books - especially satire - and gently helped me to think through crossword puzzles.  We shared a common love of language and music, a frustrating contempt for cold weather and all things mathematical, and we both thought horses were the smartest animals alive.  We had the same phobic fear of things that crawled on their bellies. We were both fascinated by history and politics and had no use for the next door neighbors.  He showed me how to water down alcohol - except for his beloved Chivas, which he treated with respect bordering on reverence - and I learned how to make one drink last a whole evening.  We made snow angels on the front lawn in winter and played badminton on the green grass in the spring.  The dead, he told me over and over again, were just shells, remnants of those who had once been.  I learned I had nothing to fear from them but even so we didn't talk about our own mortality.

And like those handfuls of time, we kept a great many secrets locked away, routinely conspiring to keep my mother in the dark about things she wouldn't have approved of - certain friends, a little supplemental allowance, the after-church visits to the drive through ice cream place - and later, after I'd been married for a few years, even his ladyfriend, a pretty young widow he used to bring to our tiny apartment to play bridge. She was well mannered and well kept company and she made him laugh but my heart absolutely froze at the thought of the risk they were taking.  She eventually moved to a small town in Maine and the affair died a natural death but I still remember the feelings I had and how utterly strange and surreal it was to be an accomplice in his adultery.

After some thirty years of these small - and not so small - conspiracies, my mother became terminally ill and everything changed.  My adulterous, secret-keeping and always-on-my-side daddy changed, insisting that I put aside my feelings and reconcile with her.

Spend it wisely, I remembered him saying about time and money and I said no.  Besides offering a half hearted apology, it was the last thing I ever said to him.  It made me sad - and angry - for a very long time but I never regretted it.  I let that particular handful of time slip right through my fingers and given the chance, would do it all over again.  

Money, like time, can only be spent once.






  

Ohney and The Revivalists

The day had started clear as a bell with bright sun and high cotton clouds.  By the time the factory whistle had blown at seven, Nana had stoked the old cast iron stove, made coffee, squeezed oranges for fresh juice and hung half the Monday wash.  By mid-morning though, the skies had begun to turn pale gray and a fog bank was forming off Peter's Island.  The air was thickening and rain wasn't a threat, it was a certainty.  

Well, I'll be damned! I heard my grandmother say as she noticed the light fading, Hurry, child, help me bring in the clothes!

I snatched the wicker clothes basket and hurriedly followed her out the back door.  We beat the rain but only barely and there was no time to organize and fold neatly as she liked - this put her in a mild temper - but it was nothing compared to what would come later that afternoon when Aunt Pearl and Aunt Vi arrived with the news that the Pentecostal caravan had arrived and set up their revival camp in Ohney Elliott's back pasture.

Charlatans! she snapped, unnerving Aunt Vi so badly that she nearly dropped her tartan patterned china coffee cup, Con men and snake oil salesmen!  What was Ohney thinking? 

I imagine, Aunt Pearl said calmly, she was thinking about ten dollars a day for that land.

I'd give her fifteen to throw their ragged asses off'n it, Nana scowled, Ain't nothin' but a bunch of money grubbin' frauds and Ohney's a pure fool to be part of 'em.

Ohney Elliott, just in her early forties that summer, had been what the village liked to call a widow woman for going on three years.  She lived alone in a modest little home on Highwater Hill, raised chickens and pigs and the occasional goat and had developed a habit of keeping to herself.  She knew about hard times and hard work - more than she'd ever wanted, she'd confessed to my grandmother one early evening at the post office -
and with her savings rapidly depleting, she'd been thinking about selling off some of the pasture land.  There wasn't much of a market back then but the factory people had made her a decent offer for five acres and it was weighing on her mind the day the Pentecostals arrived and offered to rent it.  Thinking it might be a sort of trial period to letting it go - and in sore need of cash money - she'd decided it couldn't do much harm and said yes.  

It's a ten day revival, Miz Elliott, the slick young preacher man assured her, That's a hunnerd dollars spendin' money you surely ain't got now.

When she hesitated, he took her small, roughened up hands in his and smiled.

We're doing the good Lawd's work here, Sister Ohney, he said with a smile that chipped away at the last of  her reluctance but it was the crisp ten dollar bill he slipped into her apron pocket that won the day.  

These are sinful days and Jesus needs all the help He can get, he told her, Your pasture could help us save a powerful number of souls.

And so the caravan rolled in and in a matter of hours, the glory tent was raised and Ohney (and anyone else within a half mile of the pasture) could hear the choir practicing "Brighten The Corner Where You Are" and "Standing On The Promises".   She wasn't all that much of a church goer - had in fact never quite forgiven God for the freight-train-fast cancer that had taken her husband before he turned forty - but she did love the old hymns and hearing the music made her smile.  

'Ceptin' for the music, she told Aunt Pearl, A body'd hardly know they was here.  She didn't mention the young preacher's daily visits or the ten dollar bill he forgot to bring each time.  Nor how much she looked forward to seeing him tramping down the footpath in his open throated white shirt and black frock coat.  She especially didn't mention that some of those visits lasted a little longer than needed but Pearl was a sharp-eyed observer and nobody's fool when it came to traveling preacher men and salvation.

More'n music's bein' played over there, Alice, she told my grandmother darkly, I don't reckon I much like admittin' it but seems like you mighta been right.

Nana reached for her Kent 100's and seemed to be considering.  

'Pears to me, she finally said, that we might oughta mind our own beeswax.  Sometimes Ohney don't have the sense God give a grasshopper, I know, but she's still a fully grow'd woman and I reckon she's entitled to her own mistakes.

I ain't worried about her virtue none, Aunt Pearl replied, lowering her voice to just above a whisper, I reckon that's between her and whoever she's......spendin' her time with...... But I know for a fact she's countin' on that cash money and she she ain't seen a nickel since the first night.

Lay down with dogs, git up with fleas, Nana said practically and shrugged but I had an idea that wasn't exactly what she was thinking.  She inhaled, exhaled, watched the smoke with a studied look.  She chain smoked when she was troubled or about to make an important decision and now she stubbed out one cigarette and immediately lit another.

You know, Pearl, she remarked casually after a small silence, mebbe we ought to drop by the service tonight. I heard tell that preacher man's a regular spellbinder when he gits wound up.

Oh, ay-uh, Aunt Pearl nodded, Jesus saves.


Sitting cross legged and pretty much unnoticed on the floor with my dominoes, I'd lost the thread of this conversation some time back (beeswax?) but I could sense a sharp edge in the air.  Nana went to the old black telephone in the dining room and called Elsie - her switchboard had lit up like a Christmas tree, so people said later - and by early evening the house had filled with women chattering like chickens.  Just a few minutes before eight, they all packed up and left, marching to their various cars and pick up trucks with military precision and grim, determined looks.  

I never did find out exactly what happened but the revivalists folded their tents, three days early, and slipped away with the fog the very next morning.  From the looks of the pasture, they might never have come at all and Ohney had a fistful of ten dollar bills - twice what she'd asked for - and more than enough to see her through the summer and into the fall.

The Lord helps those who help themselves, Nana declared serenely over lunch on the day of the mass departure.

And heaven help them's that gets in the way, Aunt Pearl added.

Amen.