Everyone living in their propriate boxes. Artificial universes. Protective paper walls. You are... I am... He couldn't punch himself out of his own paper bag. People living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I threw a stone and broke a windshield. Ya see that van approaching kid? Hit it with this rock. He'll give you a new shiny bike... Brakes screaching... The big boys? Me alone in the grass. Me, crossing the yards on tiny legs... man at my heels. Mother yelling, "ROSS, get back here! What have you done?" I was 5 or 6-years-old. The box was closing itself on me. I'm not a burner, not a stoner... I don't like those traps... I'm a prude... I am the glew, names sticking to me and bouncing off you... A skinny little boy, a Jew, big fat Sheri above me pinning, jumping her ass on my stomach, me, a mini-trampoline... #2 trapped in my box she's crushing... #1 doesn't like competition for daddy's love. She is his little girl, could be his little boy too... But daddy died years ago. I sent him to his wooden box 6 feet down. The pilot light and the Lincoln Log, the moving boxes and the baby's crib. The pilot jumped the basement alight where we lived.
Dad and mom with a garden hose through the window. Fire trucks and an ambulance. People gathered in the street. Daddy on a cot on the front porche, ambulance parked infront. Bad uncle S and auntie E assessing the damage talking about me. I feared the basement forever more... Daddy, where did you go?
I'd like to open the cage and walk outside, smell the flowers... Rose has thorns and she is always pricking... Blood drops like dew, serena, the sweat on my brow, red velvet skin, the dream, it never begins... I think I'll create a rose that doesn't cause pain, doesn't draw blood... but I like mine, not on the tongue. Iron platelets sabor, the smell of iron rising from the floor. Ajar is the door, skating on pools of blood, empty living room mudmen blood slides falling into a cushion of darkness drained from the outside in, acrylic paint salpicada walls and ceilings, doors, black paint and the chaotic intensity of Rachmaninov 11 years down the road a river of blood a river navegated by mudmen a river of love of tears of sweat of he does she does little boy blue in the face from holding his breath, if I don't breath, they won't hear me. I can hold myself below longer and longer and longer floating below the surface... The water developes a pink hew. Rose pettle dew 14 years after you... Sylvia stuck her head in the oven to forget Daddy and became a Jew... wandering in the ether of dead adult children victims of hidden abuse…
Draw the shortest straw, die a tragic death. Leave behind your young strawberry blonde painted wife and 3 young children. You drew a longer one; they didn't check your ass... medical school practice, who will be the lucky one and kneel down on all 4s, cheeks to the wind, squeal pig squeal, lets see how this thing works, nope, no polyps here. You checked the wrong patient fool... More interesting practice would have been you! Just one straw, just one straw... the difference between life and death. Had it been him, they would have known... years before tomorrow...
Mother says, "there weren't any ambulances." You lit the fire, but he was leaving for Sloan Kettering TOMORROW. you couldn't have known... Tomorrow always was yesterday and yesterday is perputually today in this box of hidden treasures. I was in the kitchen baking pizza. Your father in bed upstairs. The door to the basement must have been open. I didn't know you were down there. Had your father not been ill, an adult would have looked after you... 4-year-olds don't belong in basements. amongst the adults we talked about how to punish you. "Had we not punished you, you would have punished yourself... much worse than we could have punished you. I guess I was wrong. You're still punishing yourself"
Don't worry mother, uncle S beat my ass when he could. I, the only son of his only brother dying... 4 years old, too young to convict for arson, too young to convict for homicide... too young to defend myself on the stand, too young to organize thoughts, to analyze situations to formulate words, too young to take justice into my own hands...
Bars of a prison door and windows, cool and damp cinder blocks, grey light passing through small windows above... the smell of paper smoke and mildew, the air shimmies thick yet clear, buzzing in my ears, afraid of going there... to the dream of the mudman. I don't have nightmares. This one I saw with my eyes, open... age of 5, movement in the air, the molecules, brown specks moving, swirling, pointilism in motion, densening, shapes forming. A man with his dog approaching, the back of a house in Martinsville, a creek separating yards... me laying in bed, eyes open screaming... The buzzing increasing, filling... me. Alone in the basement I "feel" the horribly familiar hum. If I allow it, takes over my body. I don't want to go there... I don't go there. Never went there. Probably should have gone. Should have entered that door, to see what it was on the other side... Maybe I wouldn't have returned... Never let myself. I remain in my box, my prison cell. Little Drew passed through the snow filled television screen. Someone knew what I felt? Too scared to make that journey to hell.
Back then, the hospitals didn't allow family visits by young children. Somehow we snuck you in. I remember my father being rolled into the waiting room in a wheelchair, lots of tubes... I remember a large waiting room with long black vinyl couches. My mother waiting for the surgeon to visit. My mother crying. The last time you saw your father he reprimanded you for acting like a normal 4-year-old boy... He was so distraught at leaving his children behind... He couldn't control himself... I'm sure he was sorry.
I'm sorry too. Daddy I killed you. God, you appeared in a dream. Had you heard my silent screams?
We (the adults) believe that children were resilient, unaffected by the moment of death of a parent. You were at the funeral. But you were aside playing. Children don't suffer, aren't affected. Everyone was concerned about me, the widow. But I was abandoned too.. I was all alone. What was I to do?
Call me a pig, lazy, stupid. Beat me with a wooden board until I don't remember anything afterwood until you apologized for the first and last time... I was 5-years-old 6... Tell me you wish you hadn't had me... make me eat soap for calling you what you called me. Tell me something one day and deny it the following... Give your daughters birthday presents and give me excuses... reasons for why not... little boy blue in the face for asking "why and why not? too many times... too many times, too many times...
When your father died I was afraid of creating an unhealthy relationship with you, like... My cousin and my aunt after his father died... Sick. I couldn't have you as the Man of the House. So I pushed you away...
I sniffle. Margarita looks up towards me concerned as I pass from our bedroom where I am writing towards the outhouse. I sniffle again. I find myself sniffling as I write. During the day, at night. She comes up to me silently as I'm writing. She passes a long minute looking at what I'm writing in Inglés... and says in Spanish, "How many miles?" and she presses her face against mine, looks at my ears and says, "you are very hot, your ears are red. You must be tired. How are things going?" and she brings me a glass of water. This isn't somewhere she can go. I don't invite her although she "knows" everything. The language barrier protects us from the other life, from the other world, from the other box, from my former prison... But I’m entering it; returning… She knows everything, but I don't invite her to share the suffering. You? Yes, I ask you to feel it so you can understand it... Why? Because we shared something. A horrible misunderstanding. Each person in his or her own box looking outwards with their personal perspectives towards the boxes of others... although they don’t know what’s going on inside. On those boxes there isn't written a warning, "this child did not choose to be born poor or Jewish or female or black or indian or latino or with this disease or to a parent who would soon leave, disappear or die, or less "attractive" than the others or deaf or to absentee mothers or to alcoholic fathers or into a house with sex-abusing neighbors or slower than usual or as #2 after a posessive and jealous #1 between 2 girls and raised by a confused and desperate suddenly widowed mother who over-compartmentalizes her personal world or in a country not in the peer group of the U.S. This child didn't want to suffer, to be less educated with less opportunities, to become unhealthy physically or mentally. This child wanted to be accepted, to be loved, to be cared for, to be appreciated, to be protected, to be heard and listened to, to learn how to become strong, respected, independent, successful, helpful, intelligent, interesting... to enjoy his or her life while alone and while in company of others..."
Instead, they called me "Jew", they rolled pennies down the isle, they asked, "where's your beanie?" They said, "Go back to your temple!" They said, “You don’t believe in God because you don't believe in Jesus” or “You killed Christ”… They locked me in a locker, they played keep the hat away from Ross and if Ross losses his cool, they would practice their Rocky moves on Ross... and the teachers said "nothing" and my mother said, "you are making these things up. The kids don't do that." or "you must have done something to incite them..." or "your teachers aren't anti-Semitic." And they would spit hockers in my eye and they would spit at me getting off the bus after school and then Sheri, #1, would lock me out of the house and would and would and would and would... But if I lost my cool?
Place another label on my box, put another bar on the cage and go free to create a wonderful future for yourself and leave me here to rot in your guilt and fear and misdirected concerns… and then say, “what? What did I do? What did we do? What did they do? What did I not do? What did I say? Who said what? There’s no cage… and if there were a cage, there’s no lock… and if there is a lock… here, take this key. Set yourself free. You’re an adult. You’re free.”
Ross, do you think it's possible you were born with something within your personality that draws negative attention from people?
“Yes mom. I was born with an Astrological chart that says that one or both of my parents would die or disappear. This must be my destiny. You play that role in my destiny. Beth invited all the sexual abuse she received from little girl to her mid 20s at Rutgers University. She emulated her mother having horribly loud sex in the bedroom next to Beth’s. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! So loud that Sheri invited me into her room to listen to music and play Go Fish to wee hours of the morning, so she remembers. If I believe others can hear us, I don't do it. 2 weeks at the ranch; two weeks of abstenence...
Yes, the rape victim is guilty of her rape. The slaves sold themselves to the Europeans. The poor don't want to eat. The abused child invited the abuse because they were mentally ill at birth, not reverse...
Beth and I were very close in early childhood…
Yes, the rape victim is guilty of her rape. The slaves sold themselves to the Europeans. The poor don't want to eat. The abused child invited the abuse because they were mentally ill at birth, not reverse...
But people exclaim that they are so amazed how close knit a family I have! And Sheri says she doesn’t remember having problems with me, how close we were… And Beth had flashbacks with a therapist when she was in College and remembered everything. But she doesn’t remember why we aren’t close anymore… On one of our walks from Penn Station on West 34th Street to York Avenue and East 70th Street and our bi-annual rectal exploratory visits with Dr. Decosse at New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center I asked, “Beth, don’t tyou remember what happened between us…?” She telling me about our wonderful sibling relationship, her fantasy that we could be like Mom and Uncle Henry, the bicycle doctor, Dr. Demento our hero and mentor. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02EEDF103FF930A35752C1A9609C8B63What happened between my mother and her younger brother? How old was he when she pushed him through a plate glass door? He had this horrible scar on his inner arm from the elbow to the arm pit… One summer my grandfather sent them alone to a cabin in upstate New York… Was there a tone I heard in their voices during that story that ended abruptly, did I see a shadow pass over their faces? Did my Aunt Mary Beth suddenly stop talking to my mother after Henry’s death by the NYPD tow truck because Mary Beth knew something and didn’t have to continue being nice to her husband’s favorite and older sister; how many family gatherings; Henry and Marsha complaining about the aging process, joking, “Don’t worry, when we get old, we can live together and care for each other…” How did Mary Beth feel hearing that so frequently later in the years? http://ghostbikes.org/new-york-city/dr.-carl-henry-nach“Have you heard from Mary Beth lately?” We talked a little after the funeral. I invited her to family gatherings. I wanted her to know that we were there for her. But she’s just SO angry. She has this tongue of a snake! So, I stopped reaching out to her. I can't tke her wrath. I’m in contact with Zoë but Asher doesn’t respond to my letters…
I can’t live in someone else’s denile. I don’t believe in maintaining relationships based on lies. I couldn’t allow Beth maintain this fantasy about us. She doesn’t remember our fighting? She doesn’t remember the things she said to Sue? She doesn’t remember that we share absolutely no interests and that our conversations lasted a maximum 5 minutes? What’s the problem here? So I was frank with her.
Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven and turned on the gas. Women are afraid of violent suicides... monodioxide fumes in a garage from a car engine, sleeping pills, drowning themselves, sticking their heads in ovens... Sylvia Plath, Smith College Graduate, successful poet, sexually abused child, Suicide. Make a list of famous and respected suicides... Who kills themselves? Don't worry. I don't reveer superstars. I respect them for their accomplishments, their talents, skills and creativity. I look at them and I wonder, "Truthfully, what makes them different? I just don't understand something..." Should I put people on pedestals? Should I prostrate myself and kiss their toes? I just want to know how they did it... How they made the connections, had so much energy, what was their training, if any…
Before a migraine begins, I will pause…
2 comments:
Nothing I could say would rise to the level of adequate "sending out," but I'm here, at least trying, in honor of the intake.
Jenny. It's horrible that pressure of feeling that you must say something adequate in the process of showing your support. Granted, it's much better than not saying anything. I almost wrote "Thanks Jenny"... But realized that is inadequate, as if today is my birthday and you just gave me a present. But, you don't want a "thank you." You want the connection. I want that connection too. How do you express your appreciation adequately? What a dolor en la cabeza, no?
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