Spidercamp

cold women, kept safe

(I work with little kids and they are always hounding me to tell them stories. This is a popular favorite. It is true.)

When my grandmother was a young wife and mother, she became sort of an unofficial hospice worker, a helper to those who were sick or dying and had no family to look after them. I think this happened by chance - she took care of a few old ladies and word got around that Persis was the one to call if you were old and bedridden and needed someone to bring you soup and tend the chickens. (My theory is that she was grateful for the chance to spend some time away from the crappy house, abusive husband, and two small daughters she was utterly unprepared to raise.)

She never asked for money. It was understood that when the sick got well, they'd pay her whatever they could afford. It wouldn't be much - a few dollars, a few eggs, maybe a piglet. This was a tiny farming community in rural Wisconsin where nobody had much. But she always received compensation, in one form or another, for her time and for the various unpleasant duties involved in tending very sick people.

Sometimes the sick got well, and sometimes they didn't. It was commonplace for my grandmother to inherit an entire estate, based on the words "All Left to Persis" scrawled across the back of an envelope. Not the sort of thing that would work today. This was a small town where people generally knew and trusted each other, in the 50s, and everyone knew what my grandmother did. No one ever contested these "wills" - it would have been silly, as what she inherited was usually just enough to cover funeral costs. A ramshackle farmhouse, a few decrepit cows and chickens, an acre of barren dirt. Nobody else wanted it anyway.

Georgia and Annie Reynolds were spinster sisters. Annie had been proposed to, in her youth, but Georgia (the elder and bitchier) wouldn't allow it. She said they had to stick together as family. Annie said no, the young man went away, and the sisters grew old and bitter, together.

They lived in a slowly deflating farmhouse, some rooms made unusable by collapsed beams or sunken floorboards. They had a little farmland, which brought them barely enough money to live on and to pay the hired hands. They each had one dress.

(I have a torn sepia photograph of these two standing outside their farmhouse. Thin, severe women in dark dresses; crows. I can never decide whether they look infinitely fragile or sharp as steel.)

The Reynolds sisters were the official weirdos of the town. Prim and pinched, they sailed into town for Sunday mass, never speaking to a soul. They invited themselves to supper at strangers' houses without warning. They'd just show up on a porch, angle their way inside to the table, then sit till they were fed. They ate in silence, stood and filled their aprons with potatoes, bread, anything portable, and left without a word. It being a small town, no one wanted to become gossip fodder as the first one to turn away a hungry stranger, so Georgia and Annie's assuredly obnoxious behavior was never checked.

Georgia fell sick, and Annie took care of her until she got too sick herself. Neither of them could have been over 65, but they had very thin blankets in a very drafty house in a very cold state, and whatever bug they had, they were just not strong enough to fight. They sent for Persis.

My grandmother brought soup and blankets. She did the things she always did. Put wet cloths on foreheads. Read aloud from Revelations. Fed the chickens.

Georgia, the first to take ill, was the first to slip into sightless fever-driven delirium. She was seeing people who were long dead, calling Persis by all sorts of other names, raving and reaching out to spirits. My grandmother did what she could. Cool water and calm words. Eventually Georgia settled into a murmuring, half-dreaming state. She smiled to herself, hummed bits of hymns and lullabies, fell asleep, and died.

A few days later Annie worsened as well. Her fevered ramblings were louder and more insistent than her sister's. The tide, she kept saying. You must find the tide, the tide will take care of you and your girls! It will keep you safe, it's more than enough!

Cool water, calm words. Annie died.

As was her habit, my grandmother paid for the funeral expenses out of pocket, then set about sorting through the house to see what could be salvaged and sold to cover the costs. There wasn't much; the house was no more than an elaborate pile of firewood.

While she was cleaning out a closet full of old newspapers, my grandmother found a few incongruous boxes of detergent. A couple more in the linen closet. Six under the sink. More boxes of detergent in the broom closet. Tide detergent. They would all have been pitched into the trash, if one hadn't gone "clink."

My grandmother opened the box and found coins. Old ones.

She opened another and found silver certificates and war bonds.

Sapphire earrings, wrapped in silk. A pearl brooch shaped like a bird. A bracelet dripping with diamonds. Gold. Cash.

This all belonged to my grandmother now, by virtue of a little scrap of paper bequeathing the estate to her. No one had a better claim than she.

With a banker's help she figured out what to liquidate and what to lock up in a safe deposit box. She moved the family into a better house, bought everybody in the family a new car, and eventually sent my mother to Europe for the better part of five years. She bought her daughters each a college education (a first in her family), and rent, and books, and spending money. And some is still in the bank.

My grandmother was a poor farm wife, often yelled at by her bastard of a husband, appreciated only by strangers. She never had nice things. So she kept the jewelry. It did not go in the safe deposit box; it went around her neck and wrists. She wasn't ostentatious about it, but I'm told that for a good ten-year stretch she was always wearing at least one piece of incredibly expensive jewelry, whether waxing the floor or kneading bread.

This is the reason I own a pearl necklace (where am I ever going to wear that, but I love it). Who knew pearls were so heavy, or that they borrow the heat of the wearer's neck and grow their own smooth warmth? And this is why I own an emerald ring whose single stone is so big it looks gumball-machine fake. Lavish to the point of being completely useless to me, it's still my secret pirate treasure.

Who knows why the Reynolds sisters lived like paupers. Who knows where their wealth came from or why they kept it hidden from the world and from themselves. Why did they keep themselves hungry? Irregular meals and a freezing cold house weakened them and sent them to their graves too soon. It could have been postponed without spending even a fraction of their weird fortune. But they owned one dress apiece, lived off the cold potatoes of strangers, and never wore the beautiful jewels that lay sleeping in every corner of their crumbling house.

Except - and this is when, if I've planned my storytelling well, I raise my left hand and show the kids - except for this. This is the only piece of jewelry anyone ever saw either of them wear. It's Annie's high school graduation ring. A simple gold band with a curliqued " '06." She was wearing it when she died. I wear it often. I think of Annie, and the man she didn't marry, and I resolve to keep myself warm.

How did I get here, Sarah?

I used to share a house with three of the biggest geeks you ever saw. They were computer programmers. I had my own excuses.

The four of us had discovered just how viciously we valued our privacy by sharing a two-bedroom squat. I do not recommend sharing a space that small with anyone you're not deeply in love with, or who isn't a very small tank of fish. Mike used to try to cheer us up by riding around the apartment on his unicycle in his underpants, which was funny for a while, especially when he was cooking, but then he'd bump into a stack of somebody's stuff (stacks were our primary storage technique: clothing, books, discs) and knock crap all over the place and we'd all swear and get pissed off and wish we had rooms to storm off to and doors to slam, but we didn't, so we spent a lot of time at waffle house instead. We usually went there together, which I realize is funny. They're good guys.

When Jackson's boss suddenly realized he had hired a coding savant he could not afford to lose, and quintupled his salary, the first thing Jackson did was to start looking for a house. He said he'd pay for it and we all said Oh we couldn't let you do that, when what we all meant was, Please be serious, there will be some bad homicide if we don't get out of here soon. He was serious. He found a house in the classifieds and we moved.

Our new home had two floors, plus attic and basement. I'd never had so much room to spread out in. Even shared among four, it was more than enough space for everyone to have a bedroom and separate work area. Jackson was quite the darling of the house for a while. Our salaries couldn't compete with his so we showed our appreciation in the ways we could afford: Conrad washed his Honda, I cooked, and Mike kept his room admirably free of accumulated filth for a far longer stretch than we'd ever seen. It all embarassed Jackson terribly and I think he was glad when we fell off our weird gratitude-driven habits and went back to being [now you are just making pig noises to make me happy.|pigs] and bickering over whose turn it was to do the god damned dishes.

The house was fully wired, but the power was a little iffy. I was raised by my grandparents, so I had an edge: I was able to show off lots of previously useless skills, adjusting the flues of fireplaces, trimming the wicks of kerosene lanterns, and generally making sure we didn't burn the place to the ground. One day I came home to find [Conrad wants to know what I have been dreaming. This might get complicated.|Conrad] kneeling on the living room hearth, running his hands over the stones. Where is it, he wanted to know, Where's the thingy? There's no gas, dorkus, go chop some wood. The boys learned to hit Save every three minutes, but still, sometimes the lights would flicker and I'd hear three distinct shouts of godDAMMit from all corners of the house.

None of us owned much furniture other than sad hollow mattresses and folding chairs, and most of that got taken out to the curb, fast, after we saw the ridiculously elegant stuff the house was full of. None of us were experts on antiques but we all knew that beanbag chairs and pressed-wood card tables don't go with maroon velvet divans and glowing mahogany. It was elegant. We hated to ruin the effect with our [Geeks: A Love Story|pcs] and xboxes. But we did. I got used to typing while engulfed by a massive chair whose gnarled legs ended in lion's feet, my keyboard and monitor lonely on the end of a table built for twelve.

The house came complete with curtains, paintings, dishes. A few lovely sepia-toned [And if they haven't died yet, they are still alive.|photos] in copper frames. The wallpaper was beginning to peel at the edges, and the carpet had worn a bit thin in the halls, but everything was in amazingly good shape for its age, cheerfully frozen in the era of the previous tenants. It was like living in a charming, historically accurate dollhouse, or a museum, or someone's odd antiquated dream of the past. We weren't sure how old the house was, or who had lived there, and we had no one to ask. Our landlord was a small, silent man who preferred to receive the rent by mail.

At first we did not explore - in a house so filled with personal relics of [a stranger. She is welcome here|someone] else's life, we felt like we were staying overnight in a stranger's grandma's very weird home. The attic was eventually too much temptation for me, and I climbed up the terrible rickety wooden ladder and through the trapdoor. By the time the boys got home from the grocery store I had found the most amazing trunk full of artifacts. [That which does not kiss me makes me stronger|Connie] came up the ladder to find me rustling around in a high-collared [a scent that threatened to disperse me in particles of hope|wedding dress].

And in the hope chest, under layers and layers of lace, was Sarah's diary. The leather was cracked and the pages were crispy with age. We couldn't wait.

We read from it every night after dinner. We gathered in the parlor, the one room we kept free of all modern junk. No Depeche Mode cds lying around, no Snickers wrappers. We sat on ponderous, brocaded loveseats and listened to Mike decipher the spidery scrawls in the little book. He read slowly and made it last. We watched the grandfather clock's brass pendulum gleam back and forth. We kept it wound although it was never right - the ticking did not measure accurate seconds, the bird jumped out at random and disconcerting intervals, and who can say, really, in which direction the hands were moving?

We learned that Sarah had married Benjamin, a wealthy mill owner who had built the house to impress her. It worked. We learned that the marble for the mantels of the eight fireplaces had been shipped from Italy at enormous expense, and that the immense and curving bannister had been hewn from the trunk of a single tree. This sounded like nonsense, so we went to check. We slid our hands all over it; such a smooth wood, it left the illusion of having applied an opulent oil to our palms. We found no seams.

We learned that Benjamin had died only a few years into the marriage. After his death, Sarah had [near life experience|nothing] to say for several months. The next entry, though, was full of an enthusiasm that seemed anything but forced. She'd started painting. She learned to sew. Once, she admitted to have initially thrown herself at these pastimes as a way of distracting herself from grief. But, she said, despite this broken heart, she was not yet done with her life.

[go go gadget heart|It was Conrad] who had the hunch, went looking, and was right. The paintings and sketches which cluttered the piano and hung on every wall each bore a tiny S, often hard to spot, twisting among tree branches or edging the curve of a cloud. I fell asleep each night in Sarah's old bedroom, under a sheet edged with delicate needlework - blue tulips which danced on the ends of S-shaped stalks. In my dreams it was prounounced   shhhh, shhhh.

Connie got hooked on the things. I'd come in and yell Anybody Home, get no answer, and scare the shit out of myself by bumping into a person where I did not expect to find one. Gazing into a canvas, he would go into a contented trance. We made fun, but the more I thought about it, [Hey look at me, I'm eating angels!|the nicer a place it seemed] he had found, so I started standing with him, at first trying to see what he was seeing, then [calm down|relaxing] into my own experience, imagining myself creating the same shapes with charcoal or pencil or paint.

So of course she turned us all into artists. I will not say we had talent, natural nor developed, but that didn't worry any of us. It was enough to lie on the floor in front of a fire, making marks on paper. [Conrad's dirigible was tipping|Connie] went through this phase where he insisted on drawing me with butterflies tangled in my hair, or feathers, or tiny little fish.

It had once felt wrong to rifle through a stranger's belongings, but soon enough we stopped thinking of her as a [our nostalgia ghosts are ready to take your place|stranger], and we could not imagine living anywhere else. We agreed that this was the first place any of us had chosen to live that had ended up feeling like home. Jackson decided to buy the house. We voted him Dad.

We made ghost jokes, of course. We live in a haunted house ha ha. OooOOOOoooo. In private, though, Jackson admitted that he often felt as if we had an invisible fifth roommate, and that he gave her a little nod every time he entered the house. Mike, drunk and urgent, once whispered that he often felt like Sarah was always one room over from wherever he was. He would hear distant footsteps or the shish of pages being turned, way over on the fuzzy edge of perception, but he could of course never catch her at it, though he tried. And Connie, who told me everything, admitted he often woke himself up at night by talking to a woman whose face he could not quite discern, nor touch, which he wanted very badly to do. And I - well, I thought about her all the time. None of this was creepy. It was just the way things were. We liked it.

We stopped spending so much time [come to think of it, phone calls are excruciating too.|goofing around with electricity] and started talking to each other a lot more, every day. None of us had ever had anyone to [enjoying the conversation as it flowed like a flash flood, swamping us all and killing no one|talk] to every day before. Not for this many days in a row. We had all been hurt enough times by worse people to be able to really appreciate the good ones. I mean me, of course. I felt lucky all the time and I knew I was right.

When people are allowed to live the way they'd most like to, in a happy house filled with the people they like best (tangible or otherwise), [So...what do we do now that we're happy?|funny things] start to happen. Jackson quit speed. I quit prozac. Mike planted a garden and found out he could [hardly any of us end up poisoned|cook]. Jackson started making a comic book. Conrad started [drunk and in charge of a bicycle|touching] me, and I found out I liked it.

So it was quite a shock when our landlord stood grimly in our parlor and said That is not a possiblity. He turned to leave. What? What do you mean, not a -

He said we were not well suited to the house. He said we could not buy it. He said something about development, and the house shortly being torn down to make room for a - No! (Out of whose throat did that burst? All of us, or someone who was no longer there?)

The landlord stopped and looked at each of our faces. He said, Why should you want to live here?

Because we love her.

He closed his eyes and stood there, looking tired, looking like a tired little old man, but smiling, which we had never seen him do, but there was no time to think about that because we were all caught in a crash, a, I don't know what it was, a sonic wave, an invisible WHOMP that caught us all in the chest, what happened?

You might think death will be the biggest thing to happen to you, maybe you're right, but there are other moments which will end you just as thoroughly, or begin you. What happened? The air did something, it changed form, we could see it ripple. A shimmer, hard to see, but there, we all saw it, we are skeptics and math majors but we saw, it was all around us and it was inside us and it was so LOUD, it was like a deafening chord of music when you weren't expecting any music at all, it was, forgive me, there isn't any vocabulary for this, what happened will not be punctuated -

What happened to us? It's easier to repeat the question than to explain the answer, there are many answers. A lot happened to us. We were opened up. We were taken to the edge of something that might have stopped our hearts, then [i clung to her cloak. (or flew)|sent us home safe]. We were given a flicker of time in which an entire other life might be carried out, birth to death, as an exercise in paying attention, as a [Accept this, and your next breath will be infinitely sweeter.|gift].

We were electrified but we were not afraid. Somebody gave us the truth in a lightning bolt : [the world is warm and likes having us in it.] The room spun; I thought for a second that the house was falling down, but it was only me, and I woke up back here, my night-silent apartment, in what I used to think was my real and only life, lying in the same position as I'd fallen, with the word [I come home, she lifted up her wings. I guess that this must be the place.|Sarah] audible in my room, I heard it, I heard it, she was there.

In the real world, it is almost always women and not men who are waiting under windows

We're all at the bar again for the third time this week, because Betsy isn't done celebrating her birthday yet.  It's a good thing I'm not Betsy because I would never get done celebrating being gorgeous.  I'd be insufferable.  Betsy has messy auburn hair and naturally smoky-lidded eyes and has been known to stretch out on a couch with her feet in my lap and say, Let's live like this every day from now on, Let's be reborn.   Any time Betsy wants me to show up and raise a glass, I will.

It's a good bar.  Roomy, with massive wooden tables, a stone floor and a fireplace, it would feel a little like a drafty castle's royal hall if it weren't for the Budweiser nonsense all over the place and the enormous tv screen covering one wall.  It's busy but not too loud. Our waitress knows us and always gets a little creatively minimalistic with our tab.  I like everybody sitting at this table.  It's a good night.  Sometimes it's easy.

Into the middle of all this ease suddenly percolates the long-gone laugh of McGill.  Oh, no.  I look up and there he is.   Wow.  

In the last few months before he moved away, McGill was somehow pulling this trick where every time I saw him, he was just slightly more handsome.  Some of this had to do with losing a little weight and quitting the weirder drugs.  In general he just seemed to be settling into his life.   Getting good at being himself made him handsome.  Maybe you wouldn't think so.  Most people might not.   It's a strange face he has, an odd collection of features, but that is always what I like best.  He's a grinner and he uses big funny gestures: both these things spell visible optimism, this may be why I've always found him so damn good to look at.

In any event, he's four months worse now.  Better.  Worse for me. I hadn't expected to see him at all, much less looking like this.  He sits down across from me and it's all just too beautiful: his face is backlit up by the wild bright flicker of the enormous tv.  It's all green and rushing, alive - what is this, a gardening show?  It's unfair, it's cinematic.  The set design of this room is too good, this can't be real.  Someone is toying with me.  This feeling is not unfamiliar - this is how it always is with McGill, though usually delivered in smaller doses.   That face.  He is framed by trees and lush grasses and he looks happy to be there.  Africa?   Where am I?  I'm dizzy, he is happy to see me and full of fun things to say and I've gone stupidly silent, all I can think of is something about how cold Chicago must be this time of year, dumb, so dumb, I knock over my glass, mop up most of the spill and retreat to the bathroom, fast.

In the bathroom I do a quick recon of my nervous system to see what's going on, and I discover that I am experiencing shock, but, surprisingly, no pain.   I test this, of course, like poking a wound to see if it might still hurt.  Can I think about him being with another girl?  Sure - make it five.  What about this, what if he never comes back, what if I never see him again?  A shame, but no cause for mourning.   McGill is no longer The One Who Got Away;   he is The One Who Really, Really Missed Out.   And, as it turns out,  I am The Girl Who Could Do Better.   Huh, look at that.  I do look at that, I look at it in the mirror for a good long time.

I go back to the table with a big grin, which makes them ask, and I say that I simply had the most marvellous time in the bathroom, and I'm going to have an even better time now that I'm out, and I order another drink and I tell Betsy for the millzillionth time how lovely she is, because I am determined to make her believe it is true. One of these days.

I sit and chat with McGill, it is not difficult at all.  He is a good man and none of this difficulty was ever his fault.  I find myself full of funny and brilliant things to say.  I am cute with the blush of alcohol, I can feel it.   In the spirit of enjoying things which not everybody might appreciate, I eat a slice of lemon, slowly.  There's no mistaking a lemon for anything else; you have to respect that.

It's funny.  It doesn't hurt until he touches me.  We're all going home and McGill shakes my hand and wishes me well.  I stand in the wind, clutching my coat around me, clutching his hand in mine for just slightly too long.  I do it because it hurts, and then even that is over, and we all drive home alone.

January 10, 2003 (person)

Lauren is a redheaded Jew and she doesn't belong in a Catholic school any more than I do. She wears her hair in a high ponytail, the kind that sprouts out of the very top of the skull. She prefers pink barrettes and I have never seen her wearing less than ten at a time, all over her head. It's a good thing she is such a sweet kid because the way her face scrunches up into a grin, I am liable to let her get away with absolute murder. Freckles that would break your heart. She is shy and cheerful; she is six years old.

--

I should preface the following by assuring you that the after-school program where I work is not a deathcamp, despite the grisly stories I've been telling lately. There's the 5-year-old's electrocution, as well as the 9-year-old's broken arm ("broken" as in "humerus snapped cleanly in half inside a useless dangling meat tube") and the 8-year-old's accident with the epi-pen ("accident" as in "injecting himself with a full dose of bee sting medication, not actually having been stung by a bee, thereby flooding his system with unneeded adrenaline, causing his heart to flutter, sending him into mild convulsions and making him think he was going to die."). They all ended up ok. We've been lucky.

Our program is well-staffed, and we watch the kids as best we can. But even under the highest standards of attention and care, bad things are still going to happen. There are some kids you could lock in a rubber room, and they'd still find a button to choke on.

--

Lauren is not accident-prone, careless, or dumb. She was only running too fast, and she crashed into a sharp corner, and then there was a horrible, horrible wail trying to get out of the throat of this child, and her face was covered in blood.

I've heard that many new parents learn to tell the difference between an "I'm hungry" cry and a "my diaper has grown unpleasant" cry. I used to think that was nonsense, but that was before this job. I am not dealing with babies, but I can immediately tell the difference between tears caused by pain and those caused by emotional distress. A kid who is frustrated or disappointed or mad will cry louder, and more slowly. There's all the time in the world to be upset, and, logically, the longer you cry, the longer someone is likely to rock you and try to make it better. When you feel like crap, it's nice to be the center of kind attention for a while.

A pain cry communicates terror and urgency. HELP ME NOW. When Patrick broke his arm, all he could get out was a sort of stuttering howl, broken up by panicky gasps. Lauren sounded like a wounded puppy who doesn't understand what's going on, only knows it hurts.

Between the other grownups running around trying to forestall a massive kid riot/stampede, fetch ice, call Lauren's parents, and clean up the bloody trail she'd left, I was left on my own, holding this child in my arms on the floor of the main office. I don't think I've ever seen that much blood come out of anybody. It was amazing. When it comes to personal fluids, I know I should be more careful, but when a kid is in trouble it never occurs to me to ask for gloves. These kids are generally wealthy white upper-class Catholics, a pretty safe demographic, but still, I know, I know. At the time, I didn't worry about it, just tried to get the poor kid mopped up.

The bleeding would not stop, and I really wanted it to. Only half her crying was from pain - the other half was panic, and most of that was from seeing her own blood all over the place. All my co-workers had temporarily abandoned me, and there were no bandages or even kleenexes within reach. I was not about to let go of this little girl - she was clinging to me and whimpering, and prying her fingers loose from my arm was a cruelty I could not consider.

When a child who cannot yet pronounce her "R"s right is bleeding into her own eyes, making that stop becomes my priority. This is why I took the (clean, new, sealed) maxipad out of my back pocket, and put it on her head.

It worked; the Kotex did exactly what it was designed to do. As the flow of blood tapered off, I was able to see that whatever she had run into, she'd knocked a hole in her head. Like, a hole.

I would later find out that I was looking into Lauren's sinus cavity, right between her eyes. An inch either way, and the story would not have turned out as well as it did. The ending we were blessed with is this: I managed to get most of the horrifying quantity of blood cleaned up before Lauren's very kind father showed up and took her straight to the ER, which we had called, where a plastic surgeon was standing by. She got seven stitches, some subcutaneous. Her sinus cavity was sealed up good as new, they put the tiniest of bandages on her nose, and sent her home to eat all the ice cream she wants. Her mother called us when they got home, to say Thank you, over and over.

There is a holy moment that occurs after a child stops crying and before she falls asleep. Occasionally, I get to hold that moment in my lap.

Do you remember how small your body was when you were five?

Ashley is five years old.

Last Monday at the after-school program where I work, Ashley stuck a straightened paper clip into a wall socket. You hear about kids doing this all the time. A little shock and they never do it again. Ashley will assuredly never do this again.

I don't know what weird combination of factors came together at just the wrong moment. None of us know exactly what happened. I didn't see it, but about 40 subsequently very freaked-out kids did. They told me various versions of the story, each more grisly than the last. As it turns out, none of them were exaggerating. The adults who were supervising that room at the time (it's a big room, and they can't be everywhere at once) told me that three jets of fire burst out of the wall, knocking Ashley back about ten feet.

The carpet was burned down to bare concrete in three spots, including a charred coil shaped like the unbent end of the paper clip. Before she dropped it, it burned an identical coil onto the side of Ashley's index finger.

Her hand was blackened and bloody. Her fingers were described to me (when I tell people this story, I cannot bring myself to say this out loud.) as being split open like a hotdog that's been in the microwave for too long. They said you could see things inside, like tendons, and bone.

The woman who wrapped up Ashley's hand, and put ice on it, and sat with her until we could get the mom on the phone to verbally ok our driving her child to the emergency room (the legal hoops we have to jump through in situations like this are unbelievable) - that woman, my co-worker, fainted while telling me this story. She's good in a crisis but blood freaks her out. When she came to, she cried.

Ashley's mom is an alcoholic. Divorced. Full custody. ("Please call my daddy. My daddy will come and take care of me.") She works from home and lives three minutes from the school, but does not pick Ashley up when school lets out at 2 - rather, she waits until 6:30, when the after-school program is ready to lock its doors. Ashley is always the last child to leave. Mom stomps in the door and growls, "Where's the little bitch?" They go home and Ashley is put to bed at 7 pm. She might get dinner and she might not.

Some of this information comes from Ashley, and kids exaggerate, but her father has confirmed that it is true. I have only spoken with him once. I told him he had a sweet kid (I did not mention how sad and scared she looks all the time. he knows.) and his eyes filled with tears and he touched me on the shoulder and he told me how hard he is fighting to get custody. He told me how much he misses her. Every day.

She didn't come back to school for days and days, and I was thinking, dude, even if they chop off your arm, you'd be back to school in a week, right? Unless. Unless your cunt of a mother gets pissed at you for being a kid and doing kid things, and she beats the shit out of you, or knocks you down the stairs, or breaks your arm, or punches you in the face and is ashamed to let the world see the black eye? A lot of things could happen. Every day: no Ashley. None of her friends have seen her. We call their house and the line's been disconnected. What do you do? I mean, really, what are you supposed to do?

Today, the kids are shuttling over from the school building to our building, and they're lining up to get signed in, and I'm checking their names off the list. And I look up and there she is. And she's grabbing Emma's butt with her good hand and Emma is sick of it and she is hollering QUIT IT, and Ashley is shrieking and I have to threaten to separate them, and I've never been happier.

Later, she lets me look at her hand. I'm no doctor but my verdict is: miracle. She says it hurts, and I think, Good, that means those parts are still hooked up right. I had been thinking amputation all week, but, no. It still looks pretty bad - vicious purple slashes on her index, middle, and thumb. But there is no black flesh, or disfigurement, or stumps. She will have scars - that coil, burned into the side of her finger, will always be there, I imagine.

I ask her if she got in trouble for what she did. She says her mom wasn't mad, only disappointed. Which probably amounts to a massive guilt trip laid on the poor kid. "Verbal abuse" is such a poor phrase for words that can ruin a kid's chances, from the start, of seeing herself as anything other than useless and in the way.

Then again, Ashley says her mom told her about when she was little, and she got a bad shock from an exposed wire. And she says that when they got home from the hospital, they watched a video and had ice cream. I know it is too much to expect that one bad accident could completely reverse this hateful woman's attitude toward her daughter, a lifetime (five years.) of disregard and cruelty. But then again people change all the time, and something has to start it. Right? Can I hope for that? This little, little kid doesn't want to tell me about how much her fingers hurt, she wants to tell me about how great it was to snuggle with her mom on the couch that night, watching 101 Dalmatians. She's shining up at me. She's so happy. Can I keep hoping for more of this? How can I not?

---

update: Today I happened to be in the lobby when Ashley's mother came to pick her up. I've never talked to her very much; she scares me. I made my face as innocent as all get out and I said, Hey, we were all so glad when we heard Ashley was all right.

I've never seen tears well up in anybody's eyes so fast. She said she was on the interstate when her cellphone rang, and they told her what was going on, and she had to pull over to throw up. "I mean, I just - " She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her fist.

"I was so scared. You know?"

Yeah, I think. I know. And I think, you keep that taste in your mouth. You think about it. This might end up ok.

---

(update: October 23, 2003)

Perpetual reminder to myself: good sex is possible

do not be afraid.   you've been swimming before.
your body knows what to do.
relax.   float.
[your body knows.|your body knows] the motions that will keep you safe.

this place is vast.  but it is not too much.  you won't drown.

[you've just been born. how do you feel?|you've just been born.   how do you feel?]

               dizzy.   free of pain.

               buoyant all around.   naked.   clean.

               awake.  healthy.  honest.  beautiful from any angle.   so clean.

you can think about [your body as a whole joy].   or, you can think about [the warmth of water].   it's the same thing.

you can let it happen.   you can even close your eyes.

Around nine pm my heart was breaking so I went to bed early to listen to it happen.

I had this really great talk with Abbie. She's eight. She was miserable that day. We sat on the concrete steps at the back of the building. It was cold out; frozen asses; we sunk down inside our coats and huddled against each other. I shooed everyone else away.

We talked about when there are lots of people around and you should be having fun but instead you're miserable, the loneliest you ever get, in a crowd. And the opposite, when everything that happens is crap and you should be angry or pissed but somehow it's ok and you are able to brush it off and laugh.

Abbie. Listen. You know how grownups are always telling you I Know More Than You Do So Here Is A Life Lesson?   (yeah. she knew.)  And you ignore it?  (yep.)   Well, good. They're usually after something. Abbie, you know you can trust me, right? And you know I'm not just telling you this so you'll behave or shut up. There are some things I have figured out, and they make things easier, sometimes. One of the big ones is, The only person who can make you happy is you.   Like:   You have the power to change your day into whatever you want it to be. And you can do that to your whole life, you know? Once you grab on to that power, you have a lot more good days.   Abbie. My mom's got cancer. And I'm doing ok. I really am.

Sometimes you only get a brief window into a child's attention. Like being on a cellphone you're sure is going to cut out any second. You say it fast and cross your fingers.   Can you hear me?

Abbie looked at me, and she smiled. She didn't say anything. We sat there for another little while.

Jeannie drew me this great picture last week. She's four. I said, Wow, lots of colors, I like that. Is this a butterfly?   (yes.)   And this is a flowerpot?   (yes.)   Through the middle of this jumbled heap of somewhat-recognizeable images ran a long squiggly looping line. I looked at it, and I knew, and I leaned in secret-close to shy Jeannie and I said, Jean. Was it fun to do that squiggle?

She lit up. She grabbed me. Yes! I love to do those lines like that!

It made me think about how much of the importance of a piece of art is contained in the moment of making it. Not about showing it to someone later. Just sitting there, by yourself, getting such a kick out of what your hands are doing to the paper / screen / clay / cookie dough.

To all casual observers, I am a happy dynamo these days. Most days I come home from my arts and crafts-centric job and immediately go to construction paper, or cardboard, or the kitchen. I'm a verb; I do things. It is busywork. It is something I do to prove I am awake. It looks like fun, doesn't it.

I have a friend who recently found me out and he says I should not do these things as escapes, I should not do them unless my heart is really there. I laughed and said, sometimes, this stupid construction paper is what enables me to get out of bed. It was a pauper's laugh. It was what I could afford.

Talking to kids is nice because you have to simplify things, which makes it easier to fool yourself into thinking anything might really be simple. Maybe tomorrow I will pull Abbie aside and say, Kid, you're pretty advanced for an eight-year-old, but you've got no fucking idea what is in store for you. What I didn't mention the other day was, once you realize you're in charge of your own mood, you've only got yourself to blame when it goes to shit. I can tell you about things your brain will do that won't let you sleep for weeks, or, better, will trap you in hour-long lucid nightmares in which you are helpless at the hands of a monstrous man, which, in the dream, puts you into a panic attack. your ragged heart your ragged breath. you rip awake into the same panic attack; being awake doesn't solve anything. you walk around your apartment in the dark talking to yourself trying to get past all the gravel cruel fucking hours before there is light in the sky. the tub faucet is dripping and you can hear it even with the door shut.

life grinds down. like a dirty tired rusty broken tired filthy train. put it up on bricks; leave it; an eyesore.

There's nothing left, so I go to bed early, to listen. It happens really, really slowly. I can hear it grinding itself into pieces like an iceberg. It makes little brittle pops and clicks. It keeps me awake for a long time.

The Zada Project

I'm sitting in the park watching them run. Follow the leader meets obstacle course. I was trying to write a letter on the back of pocket receipts, using my thigh as support, but that was turning into pirate scrawls and really I didn't have anything to say and really I would rather watch these boys shriek after each other in loops and swoops around the swings, under the slide. I am ready to leap when one of them clocks himself on the corner of the monkeybars, it will happen but has not happened yet, it is still all joyous and loud. What is running without laughing and yelling? Exercise. This is not that.

[I am thankful for the ocean eyes of Shaymus|Shaymus] remembers dirt and bugs and quits the game. Zada keeps running, keeps yelling. He's not weaving around equipment now, just making one big circuit around the playground over and over. Grinning as he zooms by my bench. Grubby pokemon sneakers kicking up wood chips. The next time he comes by he is beating on his chest with one hand. Not two fists, like tarzan or a monkey, he is slapping his chest with one flat open palm.

GUESS WHAT I AM!   yells Zada. I can't guess; he's gone past already. When he comes round again he is still slapping himself. Another trip around. Another. I still don't guess. Next time around, he screams,   I'M A TAMBOURINE!   This is good but it gets better: the next time he passes, he is doing this full-body shimmy, an absolute epileptic fit as he runs, shrieking CHING CHA CHINGCHINGCHING!

How it happened: last week, I was having an adult conversation, an exceptionally boring one, which Zada interrupted. Yanks on me, frantic. Today! In school! When I was writing my name on my paper! I accidentally! Put! Two Us! Instead of one U and one A!

I congratulate him and offer him my hand. He shakes it solemnly and says, Bend down. I do. He takes hold of my nose, very gently. This is not the "got your nose" moron game. He just wants to hold on to it while he tells me, in a whisper, that Lukas is not his real name anyway.

I'm careful, I know it is tricky. Asking for his real name will turn it into his leverage, his "I will never tell, HA HA." So I just say I Understand, and I do not blink. He tells me his real name is The Zada Project, lets go of me and jumps down the stairs howling.

In the park I am thinking, where has my loyalty gone? Shaymus is such a bright light for me, but here is this other wonder, the neighbors' magnetic kid, catching my attention, adoration. Do I love Shaymus only out of obligation or exposure? I would like to think he is the coolest kid available on the market but here is Zada with his flashy slick style. Zada is upside down hanging from monkeybars, punching the sky and making up kangaroo songs. Shaymus is poking dirt around with a stick.

Later. It is settled simply. Zada is showing off his crazy kungfu style badassery. Jumping kicking slashing with his arms. Hii-YA! Shaymus's arms are not crossed but they might as well be, I've never seen a kid so unimpressed. Shaymus reaches out, real slow and delicate, and pushes his flat palm against Zada's forehead. Gentle, just enough force. Off-balance from the last high kick, Zada goes down in a heap. And I think, Oh there's my perceptive boy. And I think, Hot damn.

I yell, Quick Like a Bunny! They both know the lingo, that means Race You Home, and we do. and you should hear us laughing, I really wish you could hear us.

Every shiny fish is floating, floating, and every dark fish is at the bottom, at the bottom of the sea

Ensign has that stately-yet-rumpled look I've always admired: wavy hair all on end, wrinkled linen shirt, soft tan drawstring pants, leather sandals which bend with his feet. A man so naturally alert he may allow himself a little laziness in dress. His clothes do not appear to have seams, or the stitches are microscopic, or they are a part of his body, the natural external expression of his calm and easy focus. He has a gentle face and a natural laugh. Still, he is going to kill us soon.

We were tricked into coming up to his penthouse. I was among the last to arrive; I met the twins in the lobby and we went up together. They chattered and gawked at the chandeliers, I tried not to speak.

As soon as we step into Ensign's chambers the locks click behind us and the game is on. The others are huddled together against the wall, as frightened people will do.

The blonde blurts, You won't get away with this. No one actually laughs, but she has the sense to look ashamed about it. Ensign says, It is so kind of you to be concerned about my alibi. No need. That door is fitted with sensors which scanned you as you entered, reading and recording the numbers of any credit cards you carry. He glances at a screen embedded in his desk. Hmm. Eliza Roberts, one student-limit Visa, expires next week, looks like I made it just in time.

He tilts back in his buttered-leather chair; it gives a slight, expensively decorative creak. To all appearances you are downstairs, all of you, in the restaurant and casino, spending money with your cards. Liza, right now you are - he taps the blue screen - enjoying too many glasses of merlot in the ampitheatre annex. A crude tactic, to be sure, but we're under a time constraint tonight, and you'd be amazed how well sales records stand up in court.

We get to business, which is Ensign describing what's in store for us. He has planned out our individual deaths, tailored to our personalities, keeping in mind what we are each most afraid of. He speaks at great length about how we will be converted into pieces of meat or simply smashed. Most of the fourteen are weeping, shaking, what you'd expect. I have just gone cold (it's easy) and I am sorting the mail on the end table. I rip the letters open and read them. It appears Ensign is a famous and much-loved author.

Sounds in this room: Ensign's soothing voice, sobs, me ripping envelopes. Ensign does not like it when I interrupt his death talk to tell him what he has received in the mail. One envelope addressed in pencil to "Ensing, Sir," big childish scrawl, has chocolates in it, which have melted all over the letter.

It is almost time to begin, he says. Who's first? I will gladly take volunteers.

One of the twins breaks for the window and no one stops her. She is gone without a scream, 40 floors till her end. When the others see this is an immediate option which does not involve dismemberment, they take it. Ensign murmurs to the hesitant that they will be dead long before they hit the ground. They nod and shuffle out into the air.

The last girl but me stands on the sill, facing in. I can see the skyline behind her, it's nice from up here. Will my father be there, she whispers. Probably not, says Ensign, distracted with paperwork.

Good, she sighs, and smiles, and tumbles back.

All right, good good, says Ensign. So much easier when they do it themselves. Now, one more. He smiles at me, his lips are well-tended, calm, beautiful.

When the bodyguard comes after me, I do not run, as there is nowhere to go. I do scream, but it does not connote Help but Get Away Mother Fuck. Screamed up into the massive bodyguard's face, two feet up from mine. A pitiful offensive move, but it is what I have left. I keep my eyes open through this brief animal burst, I do not shut my eyes when it is over. My breath is rough. I am so fucking angry.

Very well then, you're the one, says Ensign, behind me. He clicks the locks on a briefcase, he hands me a ring with two little gold keys, small but very heavy. They are shaped like square celtic knots and I know better than to look at them too long, they would melt and change and win a power over me, and we are not having that. Ensign says, They go to the roof of the car, you'll see. Meet me there.

We hurry down the stairs together. There is a snag in the carpet which might have tripped me before, but within this adrenaline, every movement is a glide. We are royalty, heads up. Downstairs I signal the maitre d', who rushes over, but not for me. He wants to trade private jokes with Ensign in a simpering deferential manner that proves the rumors of Ensign's ridiculously generous tipping.

My dear man. It is the lady who needs your assistance, not I. Ensign pats the disappointed maitre d' on the shoulder and sweeps away through the gilt doors. I twinkle the keys at this portly, gaping man and he is transfixed. I'll be needing the car, I say.

Oh - I do regret - I can't bring it to you - the keys know what hands hold them and they wouldn't allow me - plus the car is in a . . . location -   I interrupt, I'll come with you, then, you will take me there. He is relieved and grateful that I have seen the solution. Yes, yes, straightaway. He offers me his arm, I raise an eyebrow and stride ahead.

When Ensign shows up, I am behind the wheel thrumming the motor and smoking a silver cigarette. Get in, I say, and he does, and kisses me. I break it to say, If we do this I am going to need some decent clothes. I'll drive.

Any minute now, you will go blind

Amy had a master's degree and could look you in the eye on any topic. She was tiny but she might as well have been taller than me. Still there were these moments.

One day she walked down to the leasing office to get a package. Came back sweaty and shedding pieces of UPS fiberfill all over the carpet. Had a story to tell me - she'd been gone for what, ten minutes, and already had new things to chatter about, more to share.

She told me there were little boys playing in the far end of the parking lot, tiny brown Mexican boys in grubby sneakers. They had a scooter, which they were clearly too little to ride, and they appeared to be fighting over which one of them would not-ride it first. Their older brother (Lean. No shirt. Cinnamon. Looked about 16, could have been thirty. Maybe he was the dad, I don't know, anyway,) bounded over the patio railing and snatched up the scooter and hopped on and invented a game where he chased each little boy in turn. Shrieking, howling, they loved it. Older brother swooped in semicircles, rode in a slow circle around her, tipped his invisible hat, smiled lazily, murmured, 'Sup, Hermana? She laughed. He was very silly.

Her flushed delighted face. She had no idea she might have been in danger. Tank top, rosy, beautiful woman alone. I saw she was barefoot and, I don't know why, but that made my stomach seize. I had a moment of brief guilt about assuming there was danger with Mexicans, but really I would have worried about her walking barefoot through a crowd of crippled saints. Who would not want to take her? Nobody with eyes or ears. Besides, I thought, I will gladly be a racist if it keeps you safe.

One day I found her in the bathroom blinking and squinting at herself. (Amy what are you doing?) She laughed, caught.

This eyeshadow, it has glitter in it, and some specks got caught in my eyelashes, and when I squint I can see rainbows. It's like little prisms, it's like snowflakes.

And all I could think was, any minute now, you will go blind. But she didn't. She only left me.