Mother constantly lived in crisis mode. She might have been channeling Ayn Rand, although she didn’t understand Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead but that’s what she thought the 20th century actually was like, or was supposed to be like and that’s the same thing. Like there’s a king that lives inside your head even if your a girl or a woman its still a man, the boss, god maybe. Up until I was 9 or so I thought she was the best person on earth, and my champion. That changed after Bill Williams in 4th grade.
What kind of parents name their child William Williams? Anonymity that important?
Set out to hurt him? Did he believe John Galt was the main character? I’m sure mother did. That was a big part of their problem, that they read books they did not understand. Like None Dare Call it Treason. And later Portnoy’s Complaint.
He and my mother both taught 4th grade. Mother taught 4th before I’d even started kindergarten. That summer before my 4th grade was to begin, Billy Williams had gone to Europe, returning with a statuette for her of David, from Rome, fig leaf missing. This may have made her angry, but I’m not certain. She seemed so unhappy with it. It was an unnatural shade of white, cold and chalky. It sat on a shelf in our rented living room with Italian provincial furniture in olive green and turquoise upholstery. She expected perfection. I wasn’t yet sure what that entailed.
I wasn’t placed in her classroom, but his. The rooms were adjacent in Center school building that had weathered a catastrophic flood just 10 years prior. I didn’t really know about their affair until mother called me into the vast hall one morning to tell Mr. Williams that she was getting married to Roland Emond. She prompted me to tell him the good news. The look that appeared on his face still hurts me to this day. As my day unfolded I began to understand why she didn’t want to go to his wedding to a girl named Marsha Manculix, and it was not because she was already pregnant. “He’s doing the right thing; he always told me he would marry her if she was pregnant”. Her face with that disapproving sour look I was seeing more and more often. I wished she talked to her friends and not her 9 year old daughter about her unsolvable problems. Scheming and insincere, she was full of braggadocio and a great fear of being judged as inadequate, especially since she wore glasses. But it is 1965 and things were changing in my American childhood. The cardinal sign were all there.
“I ain’t sayin”. But that’s the western in me; that my mother would hate. I guess that’s how we got in the first place, Newtown, that I have tried so hard to escape ever since.
And mostly succeeded.
Its a place to grow the Patriarchy and all the little boy narcissists. Some of the girls too. Not as many.
Mother being a vulnerable narcissist, letting the most horrible unthinkable things happen to her daughters as long as she got new furniture.
She did.
So there was a lot of rape, the quiet kind Brett Kavanaugh knows well about.
People that I loved, that I still love, were so very hurt by the values that the flagpole in the middle of town and the Bee publishing group held. The DAR, Nixon, Reagan, J Edgar, all those awful men in uniforms.
I believe I escaped. Some days I’m not as certain. I loved the swampy land, the violets, skunk cabbages and bullfrogs. Sassafras tress and maple saplings so thick you could pass through on foot.
I look out my window now and see cactus sky and ravens, pulling burger wrappers from the trash or smashing into the soft shells of tiny tortoises who are on the verge of extinction. Everywhere you go there you are and its not all blues skies even in the west. I’m not a girl not even a young woman.
“they”, (colleagues, cohorts, peers, co-workers, managers) would at the very least say,
“thank you”, or
“well done”
“well met”
I wouldn’t have expected it. I didn’t want to be there any more, and not for a long time. One million people in the United States had died. It seems mind-boggling. It boogled my mind. That’s a lot of fucking people; yes of course you’re out of gloves, there’s no one to drive the trucks. You get it, Right? Truck drivers died. Drivers that drove into this stinking desert are dead now, or their mother died and there’s no one to watch the kids, the home schooled ones that if they are lucky will grow up to be truck drivers. Right now they’re too young to drive the trucks or make the burgers you get that, right? At least in California. Maybe in Arkansas. Thanks Sarah Huckabee, you ugly cunt. Because a million people have died already and more are gonna die.
That couple from Southern Sierra clinic. Clueless Kayla comes up to my desk in a panic, asking me to convince Mr._____ to take his wife to the hospital, because she has Covid. So I called him. He was surly at best. It was 1400 and he still wasn’t dressed, he said, and neither was she. He didn’t believe she could possibly be that sick. “Its a hoax”. Umm. I did convince him to let me speak to her. But she could barely speak because she couldn’t breathe. Finally, I said to Mr. ____, “your wife is GRAVELY ill”.
She was admitted to the ICU. He died at home, and she died a few days later. They had adult children, and grandchildren, but I don’t know what happened to them. Kayla may know. She still works there. I wouldn’t ask her and she wouldn’t tell me whether I worked there or not. HIPPA. That’s a thing that helps silence nurses.
Sunset inflamed the horizon like a chafing white blanket. It was hot in January. The orchards should be sprouting mustard and the hills going green. Some prayed for rain. Prayers left unanswered, or just ignored.
I crawled into bed. It’d be dark in 20 minutes, or less. All my peace was gone, for my heart was truly broken. I still had on the clothes I’d worn to work. I wanted to brush my teeth, but I couldn’t get up. My breath was hot. My lips had cracked from all the coughing. I called Jack.
His lanky form appeared at the door frame. “Please son, find the thermometer.”
A fever had clawed its way into my head. Jack brought me tylenol and orange juice. Then he called his wife.
By the time Beverly entered through the front door one floor below, Jack had dragged me off of the daybed and out into the hallway at the top of the stairs. I was still crying silently, soaking my face and my salty lips. Bev and Jack stood there with me for a while. None of us could make a decision about what to do next. Had any of us thought in a moment without pain what to do, we would have had a consensus.
They would take me to the hospital. I wanted them to drive all the way to Santa Theresa. Clearer heads prevailed. We went 10 blocks to the nearest ER.
My temp had increased despite the tylenol, but I couldn’t convince the MD that I had pneumonia. An xray was done, which I was told revealed nothing. The irony in the phrase, “the film revealed nothing.” made me laugh, because films fail totally if they have not told the story they were directed to tell, the reveal, the climax of the narrative, no one else thought it was funny, as a nurse slapped a mask of oxygen over my face and mouth. I was so cold I began to shiver and chatter. I yelled. The same nurse brought me a blanket. It was then that I realized I was wearing the same short skirt I’d had on all day working. I slipped out of it without it being unzipped. Why was I not undressed? The nurse appeared, giving me an injection from an invisible syringe. I forgot to ask her why I was wearing just pantyhose and a blouse. I couldn’t remember what shoes I had worn.
I woke when they were bundling me off to the car. Jack was driving this time, taking me home. It was then that I remembered my bird. Her cage still hung outside on the ramada, uncovered in the dark. A pet now for half a year, she sang and sang, bathing in a stainless steel ice cream dish that rang with the most beautiful sound as she washed every feather- tip pinned to her brown little form at 50 RPMs. I’d found a nestling on a scorching sidewalk outside the cinema in June. A house sparrow I had had to feed every 20 minutes, 12 hours out of the day, for 3 weeks. I smuggled her into work, keeping her in a closet to keep her alive. Soon she was able to eat what other birds ate.
I’d call Jay from work and remind him to hang her cage outside before he went to work. He was always agreeable.Then Jay had left me. He said it was “Too hard.” Too hard to be married, suddenly, after 21 years. Too hard for him to be married to me for one more day. I knew I would die of sorrow.
“Jay, the bird!” “It’s Jack, Mom. I’ll get her.”
He placed her cage in the spare room, covering it with a rose- colored duvet. I stripped off my remaining clothing with the strength of a rag doll, lowering my form first onto the floor,then pulling my torso into the bed, dragging my legs up last. Time felt wrong. My heart was thumping against my ribs. It was quietly dark. A street lamp sent vaporous light stealing through the drapes which silhouetted the furniture in my room in an unpleasant way. I believe I slept, but I’ll never be certain of this. In a period between today and tomorrow I became aware that I was hunted. Death had become tangled in the curtains and struggled to free himself. Had I planned it this way? I stood at the bedside with my hands raised as high over my head as I could reach. He would not see me if I stood rigidly in my nakedness, as still as my hopelessness allowed me to.
Hours passed. Death rattled around the room, bumping into me on occasion. I feared his insubstantial fingers would reach into my lungs. My lungs, in such close proximity to my heart, would fail me as well. I didn’t care. It was taking too long. The pieces of my soul that Jay had taken with him left me with little enough, making me unfit to even consider a fight. I was trapped by the sourness of his silent rage. Pathology that I hadn’t considered left me blinded. There was no way out. It was raining.
Hole in the Heart Diaries 