On Shore

I wrote this poem many years ago, after a time among women whose lives were very, very broken. I felt inadequate even to speak an encouraging word. I don't know if the poem is any good, and perhaps it should go back in the drawer. You can tell me what you think, if you'd like.


From where I stand

I see the endless sea

Check out, check in.

I myself am empty, a shell really,

Can barely hold sand,

Can only echo, shaped as I am,

The sound of waves.

All this is ground bone,

Salt-sea washed and soft as flesh

Beneath a tattered hem, a woman's weeds.

Unlike me she was not formed

But flung

Abandoned and unsaved

From off the breast of sea.

So much debris

From where I stand.

Into Light

She sat across the courtyard in open sun, and he thought he had never seen light glint so distinctly from a girl's hair, or catch so vividly the individual strands that framed—no, haloed—her face. Her hair was pulled back, and it brought to mind a painting he had once seen in a book, of a peasant girl standing in a field. Song of the Lark, that was it. He could picture this girl singing. In fact, her chin was lifted, her lips parted, in that very pose. No matter that she sat on a cement ledge, leaning against a bland building with a closed door on the end. There was artistry in that pool of light.

The ledge must have displeased her, because she seemed uncertain about whether to sit or no. She kept shifting her slim form forward. He could move closer to her, out of the shade of the tree where he had spread his books. But it was her solitude, too, that was so beautiful and delicate. He stayed still and imagined the cool slimness of her fingers and that he could see a pink flush of light in the dip of her throat.

Suddenly she stood up. She began to pace. When she moved to the right, she seemed almost irritated, as if someone who was supposed to appear had failed her. He was at her right, but he knew he was not the expected one. And even though she faced him, she did not seem to see him; instead, her eyes went to the tree's leaves where, he believed, she saw light dancing.

When she moved left, she did something odd but charming: tilted her head as far as she could toward her shoulder, until it seemed impossible that she would not strain the slender muscles of her neck. She looked upward, like a child curious about clouds. No, not that; it was a posture of strained listening, an impatience to hear something, the mild agitation one feels when waiting for a better song to begin. Her friends likely said, “She always does that when she is....” Friends whose laughter sparkled around her like those white-gold strays of hair. This silence must be filled, it seemed: the girl made a quick little sound, a single high tone that came from the back of her throat.

Then she turned to sit again. First, she examined the ledge, determined to take exactly the same spot as before. It must be the angle of sunlight there, or a particular cleanness on the surface. Once seated, her little hand darted across her face, because of the stray hairs. She scowled, and a line came to him: Do I dare disturb the universe? He could not remember where he had read it, but it made him smile.

She was up again. She swayed, then paced, then paused, feeling, he felt sure, the very movement of the earth in her body. She was doing something with her mouth now that he could only describe as scrunching; that was not at all the right word, of course, though it could become a juxtaposition, this charming imperfection in her fair face. Yes, fair. It was a good choice for this girl who herself was an anachronism: peasant demeanor with queenly command, and himself sitting, insignificant for now, at the edge of her realm.

The door in the bland wall opened. A large woman stepped out. “Come in, Elena,” she said.

Elena did not turn.

“Come in. Come in, Elena.” The voice was low, perfunctory.

Elena ignored her, and the large woman moved forward, holding out her hand, palm down, as if offering its scent to a wild animal. There was something about this woman that could not be trusted. As if sending a signal, Elena gave out that high, clear tone again.

The woman kept moving forward.

Now he decided to come to Elena; he, at least, would not be an unfriendly intruder. He would give her a sympathetic look, appearing from the shadows into her bright light. 

When he was a few steps from the open door, he heard singing. The voices inside were very ragged: 

                                    The wheels on the bus go round and round

                                    Round and round, round and round

                                   The wheels on the bus go round and round

                                   All around the town.

“Come in, Elena. It's your favorite. Don't you want to sing your favorite?”

Elena jerked around and almost collided with him. Now he saw clearly the cruel distortion of her mouth, the humorless obscurity of her gaze. She swatted at the air between them, flapping her hands like a wounded bird and making her shrill sound.

He was already late for his class and, hurrying off, he knew that the poem he had begun, about the palpable invisibility of love, could not possibly bear up under the heat and glare of the rest of the day.

The Worker

           When we lived in Eritrea, there was one relationship that I was hesitant to mention in my letters home. I didn't know what to call her: 'maid' seemed aristocratic; 'domestic help' sounded almost canine. In the local language she was simply called 'the worker,' but that translation was hardly adequate. She was a cultural adjustment, but indispensable. She was order in household chaos, calm in family storms. Her name was Tsegeredah, which meant rose, and while she did have a sweet spirit, she was tough as nails. 
          Nearly every household in Asmara had a worker, or serahtenya. A young girl might live with a family to help with the baby. Or a cousin might come from a village to stay. Grown daughters shared the workload until they married and had their own home and serahtenya. Side by side, these women handwashed clothes in plastic basins, cleaned house with limited water supply, prepared dough for the bread that was cooked daily, chopped vegetables, and sorted grains and legumes by hand. 
          Tsegeredah washed our clothes, wiped floors, did dishes, all with a careful conservation of water since the city pipes frequently broke. She scrubbed market vegetables, straightened messes, found lost shoes. She negotiated the various personalities who appeared at our gate: the man who sold papaya, the woman who sold eggs, the man who sold potatoes. She advised me if the price was too high or the product too bad; she scolded the seller if he was too pushy. With a self-imposed determination to protect us, she dismissed realtors, favor-seekers, people who'd reached the wrong house, and the landlord himself if, in her view, he came at a bad time. 
          Tsegeredah wasn't an avid talker, so we only had a brief sketch of her life. She didn't know her birth date--our celebrations were a novelty to her--or even her age. “Ane?” she said; “Me? Maybe...thirty?” Three of her siblings had been killed in the war; Tsegeredah had fled to Ethiopia as a young girl. From a start of selling tea along the sidewalk, she eventually owned her own restaurant. One day fire broke out on her block, and all the businesses were destroyed. So Tsegeredah came back to Asmara to live with her mother in a one-room mud-walled home. Before she worked for us, she had no job. 
          Part of our challenge was linguistic: Amharic was her first language, Tigrinya a broken second, English a sparse third. I knew no Amharic, floundered in Tigrinya and, with three small children, sometimes spoke a discombobulated third.
          Our children loved Tsegeredah; the best translation for this was "to pester." They tugged her away from work for a ride around the yard on her back (a very broad, strong one). They threw sand in her wash basin, to test her temper--which she displayed with a growl and a laugh. Her hearty "kee-DOO!" put them in stitches: from Tsegeredah, it meant "go away, you goofy kids, until I have time to play."
          With Tsegeredah, there was less waste in our home. If she saw some leftover destined to be thrown out, she would take it home for her chickens. She could burn unwanted paper in her earthen stove. Empty cans were perfect for dipping water out of a barrel, and a jar made a fine drinking cup. Her own house had no electricity, so why use ours? Even if the daylight was waning through the tiny kitchen window, she would work in the dark. In three years, I never saw her flip a switch. 
          One day we insisted she go to a local celebration with us. “Leave your work,” we said; “we'll only be gone an hour.” When we came home, there was a stranger's coat and pair of shoes on the floor, and all our rooms were disheveled. A thief! Tsegeredah was riled in an instant. She rushed around the house and yard, looking in every corner--"Alo! Alo! He is still here!”  She paced around with angry tears, punching one fist into her palm. She blamed herself: she shouldn't have gone out, it was her job to stay and keep house, why did she ever go? The day was ruined; those festivities pointless. She was so upset that I couldn't be, and felt oddly light-hearted about the intrusion. 
          The next day a policeman and a teenage boy came to our gate. I knew it was our thief: he was wearing my husband's L.L. Bean jacket. He was barefoot; we had his shoes. I thought, “When Tsegeredah sees him, watch out.” But she only took one look, gave a quick growl, and went back into the house. Her part—the indignation, the mourning—was done. It was not for the boy to fall into her hands.
          I've said that having a maid was an adjustment. But surely we were a new culture to her. I tried to explain American things. “Ay-ya,” she said, looking very thoughtful, “Than-sgee-ving... Ay-ya, Vah-leen-tine Day.” Her tone was one of recollecting a far-off memory; I never knew if she had really heard of these things or was only pretending. “Ay-ya, To-pay-ware...." 
          Our evangelical faith was something new. She wasn't a church goer; no one had taught her the Bible. One day, side by side in the kitchen, I told her the story of the woman at the well. I found myself intensely excited. Tsegeredah's hands were in the dishwater, but she was listening closely. She kept trying to guess the outcome. When I told her that Jesus knew, without being told, that the woman had five men, her eyes grew wide and she sucked in her breath. When I told her, “Jesus said, 'I can give you living water,'” she shook her head at the extraordinary claim. She was seeing it all. It was real, a story of her neighbor, like yesterday's news. She knew what a well looked like; yes, yes, she could see the woman hauling water. Ah, yes, that is a tiring job. Yes, she would want that precious water, too. Oh, the shame of living with all those men. And oh, she could just picture the woman running into her village eager to report this extraordinary man.
           For three years, Tsegeredah saw five sinners up close: tempers lost, mischief made, insufficient gratitude, complaints of thirst. When we moved back to the States we lost touch with our worker. A new war scattered the people again. Now, in my neat home and empty nest, I have all the gadgets I need to work alone. But I would like, if only for a while, to sit with Tsegeredah—if I could make her sit. I would drink tea with her and thank her for a thousand things. And I might ask if she could not, after all, tell me something about when and where she was born.

Aiming High

      For one whole week I was the substitute teacher for a fifth grade class here in San Diego. Actually, there was no real class in attendance. They had flown to Virginia to study colonial America. Only three students were left behind, and somebody was needed to work with them.

      The school was a “classical academy,” modeled after the strictures of the British prep school and the artes liberales of the Ancients. This translated into a pretty heady curriculum. Since we weren't out touring Williamsburg, we were told to read Jonathan Edwards. Picture the scene yourself: three ten year-olds who had just missed the Rapture, expected to discuss “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” With a substitute teacher who forgot to bring pipe-cleaners and string for the mnemonic device they were supposed to create: a dangling black spider.

      Our venture into Puritan poetry was much better. We read Anne Bradstreet's poem “Upon the Burning of Our House.” I went over it slowly, unraveling the hard syntax and clarifying words like “bereft” and “succourless.” Then I gave the suggested assignment: Draw a picture or write a poem about something you once lost.

      One girl did a quick scrawl of her dog; the other drew herself saying goodbye to a friend. But the one boy, Austin, wanted to write a poem. Without flinching, he told me he would write about “this boy I knew when I was seven who got killed by a truck.” Like his announcement of this heavy subject, his poem was spare in detail, sober but not sappy, and heroic. He tried to imitate 17^th century diction: “The truck did speed” and “In the ground he lies,” and his work embraced Bradstreet's worldview: “I will see him again/In the heavenly mansion on high.”

      Austin was smaller and younger than the others, with a sweet face and a sweeter soul, the kind of boy who engages adults earnestly and feeds on their affirmation without guile. As touching as his poem, was his eagerness to read it aloud to the other teachers. He typed it up that night (with a few format improvements I'd suggested) and brought it in the next day. He said he'd like to try writing some more poems.

      He was a poet all week. He never lost his earnestness, his soul never shrank, but his work did suffer from a certain hurried commercialism. Each day at lunch he called me over to announce that he was going to write another poem. Right then and there. On his napkin. Did I have a pen? And, um, what should he write about? He only had about five minutes.

      The readiest advice I had (which was given to me in college, when I wrote a pathetic story about a carnival worker) was this: “Write about what you know about.” Austin looked stymied, so I suggested baseball. He had a poem scribbled out before recess. It included the Padres' latest score and the line “Cameron Maybin robs a home run.” There was some fair imagery--“the crack of the bat/There's nothing better than that” and “He throws the ball like a gun.” But the effort was more indicative of a future sports announcer than a great poet. But here was a worthy idea: Customized Verse. Why not? After all, every young artist needs a patron. Shakespeare had his queen, Bach had his dukes. Austin had me, for the week at least.

      With versifying well in hand, Austin turned to a bigger challenge: entire recesses spent shooting a basketball over and over and over from the three-point line. I suggested he move closer to the basket, since he was only making one out of every million shots. But this was overstepping my authority. The point wasn't to make it. The point was to fire away. The idea was to work and hope and hope and work and finally exult in that one elusive moment of pure poetry.

      I have Austin's poem in front of me now—not the one about loss (his parents treasure that) but the one about triumph (he typed it off the napkin). In the boy's uneven meter, as Mrs. Bradstreet would say, “There's wealth enough, I need no more.” One perusal of this crumpled page has the power to compose me. It gives the unfolding day balance and form, as surely as any greater artist's preface or prelude to beautiful things.

The Big Big Room

     I have a friend who grew up in war-torn Guatemala. She told me that, as a child, she thought she could stop all wars if she could just get everybody in one room and talk to them. "But I had a problem," she said. "I couldn't find a big enough room." So I wrote this little story for her.
     I hope my friend will forgive me for a touch of adult skepticism. I wish that the scene were really possible. But human effort has proved a failure. The diagnosis is too serious. Happily, there is a long-term cure, and the littlest of children can come unto it.
    But here's a small tribute to one child's dream. I picture a fiercely earnest little girl with a wild mop of curly hair and very keen, dark eyes: my visionary friend in miniature. We'll call her Esperanza.


If I could find a big, big room, I'd have everybody come.

If the room was big enough, everybody in the world could come.

When they came, I'd tell them what I want to tell them.

If only I could find a big, big room.

If I could get the whole world into one big room, I'd say, "You're all here now, so listen!" (I'd have to stand on a tall, tall chair.)

I'd look at all of them and say, "You need to stop fighting so much."

The whole world would be surprised, to hear me say that.

"You should share, instead of being greedy," is the next thing I'd say.

If only I could find a big enough room!

With everybody in one room, I could tell them, "You shouldn't hurt anybody, just because they're smaller than you."

They'd have to hear this, too: "Don't go around stealing things! Stealing is just plain bad."

Everybody in that big, big room would be thinking.

 "Don't call people ugly names," I'd say. "Why would you want to be so mean?"

The whole world would hear, because they were in one big room together.

"When you tell lies, it just hurts everybody--even you."

Everybody would have to agree, if they were all there.

I'd need to say this, too: "Stop cheating. Who wants to live in a world of cheaters?"

And everyone would say, "Not me!"

With the whole world together, I'd see the different faces and remember to say, "Don't hate people just because they're different. Do you want people hating you?"

Everyone would start looking around at everyone else. They'd shake their heads.

If someone in the corner of that big, big room hollered, "I'm going to do what I want to do, and that's that!" I'd holler back, "Don't be selfish!"

Then the people would whisper to each other--one big whisper in that big, big room.

Somebody in the middle would raise a hand and ask, "How are we going to do all that?"

Then that big, big room would get very, very quiet. And I would have to think very, very hard.

"I think," I'd say, "we ought to do what we ought to do. We ought to love."

That's what I would say.

But I have a big problem.

Where am I going to find a big enough room?

Picture-Taking

     When I was thirteen, I had a strange bout of anxiety. I realized—and it hit me suddenly, like a sharp rock under a bare foot—that I didn't know how to use a camera. A terrible “What If” darkened my world, and I had to take a long walk to work it out. I left the house and headed down our rural blacktop road. What if someone asked me to take their picture, and I was...discovered? What if I was the only person who didn't...didn't...know? I was alone and inadequate in a potentially pitiless world. None of the neighbors driving into town for groceries that day could have guessed that the lone girl walking on the edge of the ditch was undergoing a terrible crisis.

       I now have many friends who were former teenagers and have learned that I wasn't unique in being tortured by something so benign. Who knows what roads my peers were walking that same day? As far as I can tell, most of us made it home. I've even caught us laughing at our old deficiencies. Some we have conquered, some we haven't, but the old disdain for ourselves has been replaced by compassion for the children we once were.

        I don't have much to do with cameras now. People are using their phones, and I can't see into them without my reading glasses. My daughter and her friends sometimes ask me to take their picture, and they twitter (in the old sense) and arrange themselves, and I say “one-two-three!” and then have to ask “Which button do I push?” Then it's “Just touch the screen.” Nothing could be easier, which is why it's so hard for me.

        But in 1979, when I turned seventeen, I got pretty good at taking pictures. I went to Norway as an exchange student, and my parents bought me a camera. I took some really lovely photographs of seagulls drifting over the north Atlantic. Possibly no Norwegian ever took photos of those same scavengers, but I came from an Illinois farm and had never seen a gull or an ocean, which just goes to show that you never know where a road might take you.

Dorothy

When we lived in the Chicago suburbs, I worked as an aide in a retirement home, on the fourth floor health care unit. I led activities, which were simple ones, because most of the patients had some degree of dementia. At the end of the day I was required to fill out a form provided by the state, reporting each patient's participation. The rows were labeled with things like Music, Crafts, Reading and Nature.

The most ambiguous item was Socialization. There were just two options: a check for “yes,” a dash for “no.” I was required to mark it and encouraged to be very liberal: check yes if the patient is breathing. I was told that you never knew, that the person might be socializing with him or herself. Or with someone in a dream. Or you simply may have missed a meaningful movement of their eyes.

The most difficult patient to judge was Dorothy. Her dementia was among the worst, and her behavior was unpredictable. The head nurse told me, “Don't stand too near her; she sometimes hits people.” This made Dorothy a liability on the ward. They kept her wheelchair next to the nurses' station all day. She had lost the ability to speak, and did not move her head, which made her look very sullen.

The genuinely sociable patients spent the day in the dining room seated at tables of four. Some of them could stand and poke around the room with their walkers, but most stayed seated all day. They especially liked Bunco and could still toss the dice from their bent fingers. The ladies loved getting their nails painted, choosing colors like Fire Engine Red and Passion Pink.

These residents were mostly from Cicero, and a few had seen Al Capone himself. Nearly all had heard Benny Goodman live. They remembered Marshall Fields at its most magical, and were ardent White Sox fans. But the topic that animated them most was Friday nights at the Aragon ballroom. They really did use the phrase “the good old days” for it. One woman, who could barely put together a sentence otherwise, told me she had met her husband on the dance floor. “He was woo-hoo,” she said, with a breathy treble on that last syllable. I regularly played big band records and took these ladies by the hands for a dance. They couldn't leave their chairs, but they could bob their shoulders and swing their arms for a little fun. On those days, everyone within earshot got a check mark for Music.

Despite the cheery moments, decay loomed on the fourth floor like the wet ends of cut flowers. There was a fecal smell from poor bathing; an odor like horses from old teeth. There were smiles, but also complaints, some irrational, some fair enough. I was once chided for lifting the window shadows to let in the morning sun. I thought it would cheer them, but they told me it hurt their eyes.

Parked at the nurses' station, Dorothy couldn't hear the music. She couldn't tell what she remembered, and had no amusing qualities or ability to exchange basic pleasantries. She had a folkloric face, large and square with a sharp nose, long hairs on her cheeks, a chin that angled outward rather than curving nicely from her bottom lip. Her forehead never relaxed. Her shoulders hunched to the level of her ears so that she could not look up into faces. Even so, you could tell she'd been a tall woman. Her hands were mannishly large. Her feet were unattractively long. She looked, in fact, a bit sinister, an impression that was reinforced when she exasperated the staff by suddenly swiping her hand and spilling juice, with a scowl that made it seem on purpose.

One day a fellow aide told me that Dorothy had, for decades, been a very active member of the Salvation Army. The image came to my mind (granted, more Victorian than post-Depression) of a severe woman in a cape swinging a schoolmarm's bell. I saw black-booted feet planted on a cold walkway of snow. I saw her staring down people who averted their eyes and walked on. This was all I could tell of the soul of Dorothy.

The day finally came, the inevitable pronouncement on ninety-three years: Dorothy was put on hospice. It had been delayed by a strong heart and a daily dose of large pills. Now the nurse brought them to her bedside in a paper cup the size of a communion glass. The juice was poured directly into her mouth, and the droplets that hovered on her lips were dabbed away. Witnessing this, I checked 'yes' for socialization.

Her slippers were empty on the floor, permanently stretched in the shape of her feet. The hospital blanket stayed molded over her long form. Her hands, streaked with veins like swollen rivers, stayed still. Had she even wanted to, she couldn't turn her head to see the bits of sunlight that slipped through the edges of the closed shades, or the gifts that had accumulated on the windowsill: a potted plant, stuffed animals, thinking-of-you cards.

One day I tested what was in her line of vision. With my face next to hers, the only thing I saw was the clock on the wall. I considered taping up her cards or digging an old poster out of the activities closet. I wondered what Dorothy would like to see. The question, I realized, was ultimately, Who was she? What would speak to this unyielding captain at her watch?

People active in the Salvation Army know all the best Bible verses, so I decided to write one on a card for her. In the office I found cardstock and a marker, and wrote out a portion of Psalm 23:

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want

He maketh me lie down in green pastures

He leadeth me beside still waters

He restoreth my soul.

I put the over-bed table across her straight body and made sure it was at eye level. I folded the cardstock into an inverted V so that it stood up. I took off her eyeglasses and cleaned them; she blinked her blue-gray eyes and did not flinch. The glass was badly smudged from neglect, which in retrospect explains a lot.

Dorothy's eyes slowly scanned the words. Or did I only imagine it? Was it pretense on my part, taking credit for a good deed? Maybe, like all those check marks, I was falsifying what I saw. But no, there it was again; I was sure of it: her forehead relaxed a little and she really seemed to be reading.

A few days later I arrived at work and saw two men pushing a trolley out of Dorothy's room. On it was a canvas bag the length and girth of a body. They wheeled it toward the elevator. Nurses stood aside. The door slid shut.

It's a strange thing to walk into a room and see a bed that has just been stripped. It's strange to gather up hand creams, a hairbrush, stale candies. To open a closet and see blouses hanging there and a pair of dress shoes on the floor. To stand in a room that is large with absence and to consider that a life had been there, a person incapacitated but able to see a promise, even in dim light, and perhaps discover that, on no strength of her own, she could still draw near to someone who had dared draw near to her.