Revenge of the Paste Eaters (27 page)
Still, it seems clear someone has to talk to that person who is moving all of that furniture around in my head. It’s hard to look cool while an armoire is sliding around behind your eyes.
Late evening lit in fading gold
a coyote trotted across the road
fox-tailed
too skinny for a dog
he bounded along the tree rows as if
his back feet were on springs,
then—sensing I had stopped—he stopped
looking back, feral eyes suspicious
cautious
unafraid:
and we stood there, predator eyeing predator,
hunters acknowledging like souls.
I thought,
You should not be here.
I live in a nearly perfect world where I am always safe,
in a nation obsessed with protecting its young,
a nation where all sharp corners are padded,
all steep drops have guardrails
and all dangerous steps are clearly marked,
where all feral predators who could pose a threat
to human life are gone.
We cannot have coyotes just
running loose, here.
Watching the coyote, sensing the hunter rise
within me, I felt a jolt of recognition
wild meeting wild.
We have not come all that far, yet.
We have forgotten who we are,
and we do horrible things to those most like us
in our forgetting.
We are hunters protecting our food source.
Nothing less
Nothing more.
i was a tomboy
as a kid. To look at me now you might not know that, but I was. My best friend was a tomboy, and I was determined to be everything that my best friend might want me to be. It’s possible I might even have played with dolls to impress her, but fortunately neither my loyalties nor my backbone were put to that sort of test.
I was tough and rugged and (when my mother wasn’t around) I used bad words. As it happens I was about half-feral anyway, so I had a number of qualities that worked on my enemies without my full understanding of exactly why. For instance, I gained a sudden, inexplicable popularity when the kickball season opened on the playground. Classmates who had ignored or avoided me all year suddenly wanted me on their team. Everyone in school seemed to know I was a serious and respected kicker, although I swear I only kicked one classmate, back in third grade. He asked for it. In fact, after I kicked him the first time, he stood there, and he looked at me, and he said, “Do it again.”
It is possible he conjured up this approach all on his own, but I suspect he had sought the subtle guidance of an adult. I suspect he had complained to some nonparenting, nonteaching adult, and he had explained he didn’t want to appear to be a sissy or whatever by turning me in, but his shins were in mortal peril (okay, I may have kicked him more than once). He couldn’t hit me back, I’m sure he explained to this adult, because I was a girl, but I was a girl with one hell of a kick and he secretly feared the breaking of bones in his immediate future. This adult—clouded as he/she was by adult thinking—then foolishly said to my victim, “Use shame—make her realize how cruel she is for hurting you, make her realize you have twice the courage she has because you can Take It.” Into each life, I suppose, some really bad advice shall fall.
I kicked him again. I never even stopped to ask myself why he might want that. I probably would have stood there and kicked him until either I got tired or I hurt my foot, because empathy was not my strong suit and because a willing, even eager victim was just too good to pass up. But my best friend got bored watching me kick this kid and dragged me off on a new adventure.
I don’t remember where the boy with the flagrant shins came from. He may have been in my third grade class—or perhaps he was in my best friend’s class—but I don’t remember him hanging around much until about fourth grade. He came from an odd family—perhaps his mother was dead, or he had a stepmother—and he swore to me, on a stack of Bibles, that he had false teeth. I never completely believed him, but I never completely disbelieved him, either, and my curiosity kept the subject popping back up. He swore his teeth were false, but he refused to take them out to show me. I would consult with my best friend,
Do you think he REALLY has false teeth?
But she lacked my passion for absolute truth. She would shrug, as if it didn’t matter. “Who cares?” she would ask, although I thought the answer to that should have been glaringly obvious.
And I don’t remember why the boy with possibly false teeth and flagrant shins hung around us so often. He was there every recess, lurking on the fringes of our games, breaking into our conversations with bursts of masculine brilliance so socially adept and clever that for a while we thought he had a false brain.
I kicked him during recess because I was a horse, and this is what horses do. He seemed to accept this with a sort of stoic endurance. I sometimes had the impression he would have tolerated anything from us, as long as we let him hang around, but I never had any conception of what that might mean. I was in fourth grade and too young to have heard the word “masochist,” and I was too close to my former life as a kindergarten pariah to assume—or even consider—that he might like me. I probably assumed he liked my best friend, which made him no friend of mine. I liked to keep her circle of friends just as small and as tight as I could, so she would have ample opportunity to appreciate me. She may have been casual about who liked her and who didn’t, but I had not yet evolved to that level of serene indifference. I held on to those few friends I had with both hands.
All I really know is that I left bruises the size of half-dollars on that poor boy’s shins, but I have no memory of his being unkind or even unfriendly toward me. I have no clear sense of what my motives may have been. I may have been jealous. I may have felt threatened. I suspect it was not even that deep.
I think I did it for all of the best reasons a bully does anything. Because either in fact, or merely within the perceptions of my own mind, I felt that someone had done it to me, and I wanted to get even.
I did it because I could.
This is not to imply that all tomboys are bullies, or that there is even any direct connection between the two. Some of us are born to the roles we are destined to play and some of us can spend a lifetime looking for the person we should have been from the very beginning. Some tomboys simply are what they have to be, and some are like me—lost souls flailing around in the confusion until eventually they find something they can hang on to.
I have no idea what happened to the boy with the flagrant shins. I haven’t seen him since high school graduation. He may have gone to Vietnam, or he may be living five miles down the road from my father—I don’t know where he is.
Wherever he is, I hope his wounds have healed.
not too long ago
a friend brought me an advertisement for a cat stroller.
I love to buy things, but it never occurred to me before that I might need a cat stroller. This particular stroller appears to retail for around $130. (It occurs to me I don’t even know how much I should reasonably pay for a baby stroller.) The advertisement shows happy small dogs (and some foreign animal I don’t recognize) all at home in their strollers. The strollers have open mesh areas, and fabric-enclosed areas for “privacy.” It states that this stroller is “great for city dwellers who own cats or small dogs.”
I own a cat. (Well, I share my home with a cat. Actual ownership is a question of attitude.)
I live in a city. (I live in an area where the houses are close together and it is against the law to shelter livestock. If I were to show my city to someone from San Francisco or New York, they would probably look around and say, “Where?”)
Other advantages to the cat stroller: it’s not “hot” like plastic carriers; it can be used for hauling groceries as well. It folds up for easy storage.
I know that Babycakes would love a stroller.
Until I threw it away, he had taken up residence in a paper bag. I don’t remember how the bag fell on the floor, but once it did it filled up with fine gold fur almost immediately, and whenever I would walk past the bag a small paw would snake out and snag my ankle. This was apparently a lovely way to pass the time, but his manicurist moved to Mishawaka and my red blood cell count began to fall. Trim his nails/throw away the bag. Trim his nails . . . Unfortunately I had misplaced my asbestos gloves, so I threw away the bag.
(I should be honest here. His manicurist is younger than I am. She is, in fact, exactly young enough to be my Beloved’s Girlchild. When she trimmed his nails, she sat down on her knees on the floor and shoved large wads of cat through her crotch, hauling out only the paw she wanted to work on. As I watched her do this, several problems came immediately to mind: (a) the last time I sat comfortably on the floor on my knees I was less than twenty. They are not the same knees I have now; (b) if I stuffed a cat into my crotch while I was sitting on my knees on the floor, it would crush the cat; (c) I’ve seen what he’s done to my
wrist
when he lost his temper. Once his manicurist moved, we struggled with slash wounds for a while, and finally I discovered I could slam him down on the waterbed, hold him down with one knee, and trim two to three nails per adventure until we were done. This is similar to a number of other bed games we play, and he has been known to purr through a claw-shortening.)
Unlike other cats I have lived with, Babycakes is not difficult to get into a carrier. Often all I need to do is set the empty carrier on the floor with the door open—someone with just slightly more patience than I have could simply watch him walk inside. I often don’t plan my life well enough to wait for curiosity to overcome my cat, and I grab him and shove him in. He does not approve of this behavior but he tolerates it. He has been known to take naps in stray carriers left sitting around. I once lived with a four-pound princess who could attach an appendage to every edge of the carrier and brace herself for dear life. By the time I had shoved her inside, the tablecloth, everything on the table, and most of my shirt were in there with her. The worst protest I have ever received from Babycakes is an annoyed little “pfft,” which means,
When my nails grow out again and you’re sleeping, witch, your left ear is toast.
It’s a dignity thing.
Babycakes does not mind riding in the truck. He rarely talks, almost never cries or whines. Often he will curl up and take a nap.
It would seem Babycakes would be the perfect cat for a stroller. I could take him to parks, walk him around, let people admire my beautiful house cat . . .
Not too long ago friends came to visit me. Altogether there were three of them, all confirmed cat people, all dedicated readers and admirers of Babycakes’ contributions to the last book. They were excited to see him. I brought them into the house. I picked him up, held him firmly and supportively in my arms, and carried him slowly and reassuringly to his adoring public.
They spoke to him warmly and lovingly.
One friend reached out to touch his soft and beautiful fur.
Babycakes laid his ears back, bared his teeth, and leaked compressed air like a punctured tire.
His admirer jumped back like a Bengal tiger had lunged at her.
I said, “What the . . . ?”
He looked at me and gave me that I-am-a-mysterious-being look of his.
At no time during this entire exchange did he even bother to stop purring.
I can see myself spending my new literary fortune on a cat stroller for my inspiration and cowriter. I could take him to book signings with me, and he could lounge in the private section when he became too tired, and come out to the mesh section when he chose to be admired. His public could ooh and aah at the wonderfulness of his fine gold self and every now and then, just to assure his place in literary society, he could threaten to rip someone’s throat out.
It sounds like $130 well spent.
There is a woman on television
who is wearing my mother’s
cheekbones, and another
has stolen that certain gesture
that once identified her hands.
Memories are everywhere, always:
a passing scent, the swish of fabric
moving—dancing as she loved to dance.
The face in my mirror, my nephew’s smile,
my sister’s taste in shoes.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,
she filters down around me like
the late evening fog cuddles
a groggy field, like rain
soaks into the thirsty earth.
She is never here with me/
She is always here with me.
not all memories are
what they first appear to be. Some are little packets of time or place or experience that explain how the rememberer came to be the person they are. Some can be a series of elements tangled together with no distinct form or substance—a feeling, perhaps, like a small ache in the chest, with a few mental photographs and an odd smattering of autobiographical data that may or may not have anything to do with the event being remembered. And some are like pearls, bright, cheerful, obviously of value and oblivious to the fact that a pearl is an irritant endlessly polished until all of the sharp edges are smooth. If I had to name the memory I want to tell you about, I would call it “homesick,” which is almost but not quite the right word. It’s a memory about a kitten.
This is what I remember.
I wasn’t very old. I don’t know how old I was. I can only try to recall that event as clearly as I can, and tell you how the way I saw things then is different from the way I see them now.
I was me. No questions, no doubts, no blurring of the perimeters. I was me, and I was the only me there was or ever had been. Everyone around me mattered or did not depending on what they did or did not do for me. I acknowledged that they appeared to have lives that went on when I could no longer see them living, but these lives were not important.