The Kingdom Of Heaven
When I tried to hurt the young man who never had as much as an ill thought towards me, I knew my mind had packed her bags and flown north for the summer. My husband didn’t flinch at these blows of fury, but even in my manic state, my humanity could detect the fear in his eyes. It fed me— no, it fed the predatory animal that was protecting me from my past dangers. Still, the man had the saintly resolution of a Puritan. All he did was put his two big hands on my face, tilt his head, and say my name gently. My demon was struck dumb by the tears in my husband’s eyes.
As much as I ache to be a reformer, a pilgrim in this world of twisted morals and no absolutes, when I lay my head down at night I know I am really the wayward son. I am the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” and takes lightly every great mystery of love and of life. Life more abundantly, as it is written.
A measure of wisdom has been given to me in my short 20 years on this green planet; nevertheless, on my sunnier days, in little ways, I deliberately choose ignorance. My childhood was cold in many ways, but for whatever reason, I allow myself the perverted comfort of regressing to reasoning like a child. Maybe because I believe it will get me what I want, when I want it, from the good and honest people around me. My husband, God love him, would walk on coals if it meant I could live a productive and peaceful life with length of days. My own dear parents would do the same— Lord, now that they’re older and settled down, they’d pay anything to see me happy even for a day.
Still, I amuse and pleasure my own mind by walking as one who is without grace. I give myself a little too much slack to deliver jabs and abuse those ones I cherish, but only when I am deeply secure in their kindness, and assured of their intentions towards me.
The good man I’ve been given knows my mind better than I do—he knows when she hungers, when she is filled with overwhelm. So, just like he puts in 10 hour days fill up his little car and take me out to late showings of last year‘s movies, I expect him to provide for my mind’s deepest needs. I was never shown how to care for her; I was taught more about how to neglect her. I fling my every want on him, because I don’t know how to tell if what I want is what I really need. When he suggests what I might be missing in order to thrive, I berate him for trying to micromanage my life.
This is no way to live. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Where I come from, they don’t believe in psychotherapy. I’m not sure I do, either. Marsha Linehan, Confucius, the Buddha, they don’t know what’s good for me. But neither do I. I sure don’t believe in “Quit your blubbering,” because so far, it doesn’t worked. And I wonder if it is possible for me to grow up, or if I missed that boat entirely. As much as I kicked and screamed against moving out of my dark basement bedroom, it didn’t turn back the clock and force my mother and father to raise me the way I deserved.
They are a little more like grown-ups now. They even pretend to like each other sometimes. They quit going to church, but I have heard them praying. I think they may grow up to be fine parents someday. Perhaps within my children’s lifetimes.
Nathaniel tells me we are too young to have babies yet, though he has been a working man and a caretaker to his brother and sister and dogs and horses since the age of 14. The real reason we are childless is so simple, it goes without saying: I am not right in the head, If I was left at home with an inconsolable newborn, after a fortnight of fitful sleep, I would go batty. I would turn myself out to greener pasture. I cannot handle it. It’s not that I never will; it’s that the way people become decent parents is by growing up. And it would take an act of God to grow me up.
There have been acts of God in my life. When my sister was four years old, and I was in middle school, she drowned in a pool with three lifeguards on duty. A stranger, who had gotten CPR certified that very day, saw my baby sister’s purple form floating lifeless from the corner of their eye. She was resuscitated, and she made it when every precious minute ticking by said she shouldn’t have. Eight minutes without breathe testified that she should be brain dead at best. Angels were around my family that day in in the days that followed.
Unfortunately, she was already my father’s favorite before the accident, and though I love the little thing to death to this day, the miracle only solidified her royal status.
I am not bitter, or jealous; I was too old for that then and more so now. But a self-absorbed man has barely enough love for one woman in his life, let alone for a difficult and homely teenage daughter, especially when he has a tiny blonde one.
I still feel guilty to think this way, because my own father’s life is an act of God. When I was a baby and he worked seven days a week, he suddenly lost 30 pounds in just a few weeks. His body was attacking itself. He was sickly for much of my childhood. Many people who knew us then are amazed by the robust, yet aged, man he is now. So I should be more grateful that I grew up with two parents.
These days, I am. I have never been loved so much as I am now. Forgiveness is a balm in the life of a narcissistic abuse survivor, best applied liberally. But time heals all wounds only when they are not not festering with the maggots— controlling friends, partners, and relatives who decide to come out of the woodwork— attracted by that sweet, sickly smell that fresh wounds tend to emit. The kisses of an enemy are deceit.
The day I swung my fists at my gentle husband, I didn’t try to kiss him afterwards. I ran down the gravel driveway and into the road, as scared and exposed as the day I was born. Praise God that Nathaniel pushed aside his every urge to chase me down, and called for help instead. The next morning, when I looked in the mirror in a cold room that was not my own, I wasn’t anywhere to be found. I had hidden far, far away from the nightmare I created from pieces of a pleasant and quiet life I once led. I survived each day by remembering every time I had ever forgiven anyone. Surely if it felt so good, others may forgive me.
When the good man God gave me came to visit a week later, I knew what I had done was unforgivable. I had backed him into a corner, between a wall of the warm place we’d built together from our broken childhoods, and a wall of wisdom and the ways of the world. As principled and fundamental as he had been, a farm boy and a good catechism student, he ignored his Bible teachers’ warnings for to take me as his bride. I didn’t look like a bride, I looked like I wouldn’t even be interested in men. And I had long scars and I laughed too loudly at off-color jokes.
And every one of those teachers was right about me. I was less of a wife now than I was on that hot day in August with our family and closest friends. In fact, now, in the small room with the smooth doorknob, wearing paper clothes and under watchful supervision, I was more of a convict than anything.
Nathaniel’s cheeks were sallow when I saw him, and his hug more boney than it should have been. His eyes held no tears now, but were dry as the air. He didn’t say much, only told a joke comparing nurses and helicopter parents, gave me some pieces of good candy, and pulled a New Testament from his pocket. Then he lay beside me on the thin mattress and read to me about the little boy, and the fish, and the loaves.
I buried my face in his clammy neck, his voice a muffled deep noise, and wished like a thousand times before that we could make a little boy of our own. On that hospital bed, I felt the imaginary child lying between us, warm and soft and quiet. His name was Starling and he looked just like his mom. When I reached out and felt how fragile he was, I recoiled, remembering for the first time the sensation of his father‘s face beneath my fist.
“We can’t have a baby. He will fall from the nest,“ I interrupted Nathaniel’s reading and the present moment.
He gathered me into his arms as my breathing turned to sobs. His voice was barely a whisper, “Yes, my baby, he will.”
The Captain’s Song
Her mouth is froth
Cut the ties she flaps
Her wings for me
Pretty as a mayfly
She lets loose
And takes me aback
With how hateful she can be
To the one who taught her to tie her shoes
Wakes the neighbors again
I can only guess at the reason
This time is different, she assures me
She is sure she is dying
For her sins
And then hold her head
Firm and lean over
As I'm supposed to
Coaxing, ever imploring
Tell me everything
It works like a charm
My arms flexed enough
Now, her mind is a child's
So I cradle her and rock
Like a babbling brook
My name is help but
This is nonsense
My love is grown-up and
Seething and gasping
Chomping at the bit
But I tighten the reins
Once, in a moment of human weakness
I stroked her dress
Then I lived to regret
How she cringed because
I singed the edge
Of her nonexistent innocence
All for a selfish request
Because my needs are carnal
Of course hers are heavenly
In any case, I lost
Racked by breathless sobs
Her body grows stiff
Grip loosens momentarily
Rips away
On broken legs
She stomps over and
Falls, clothes catching
Through electric fence wire
Where young birds nest in briars
...
I told her once of how
My father hugged me
To his chest on days
The wind wasn't in my sail
And I fell out of favor
With man and with God
Her eyes were on me
Nodding supportively
Her feet on my dash
Fingers interlace behind my neck
She was a real woman
When I couldn't be a man
All of a sudden, I wanted a daughter
With her laughter and her sweet neck
In my mind's eye, I saw her
But the baby wasn't real
And what I got was a wreck
A grown man reduced to begging
In our studio apartment
I can't trust her by herself
Bring her takeout
Draw her warm bath
Try to quiet her storm
A knife to her own breast
It's a threat and it works
On my knees in a heartbeat
Snatching her up and consoling
Validating a sickness, fever
Tonight is no different
Sheets wet and ceiling
Close to my nose
She curls up beside me
The angels are near
...
Brother, I go down with my ship
You know where the chest is buried
All I ask is that
You kiss our mother for me
More often than not
You brave the storm just to
Capsize close to shore
The lightkeeper was up all hours
Until the siren's song
Until her eyelids fluttered
Until she drew me in the shoals
A mess
Don’t you hate the life you killed
I’m proud of you still
I was horrible and almost let him in
You made the big mistake of dancing in my storm
Let me die in your arms
I hate the way you hold me, nervous as a cat
I’m baptized in your name
So rear back, and take aim
You are my sunshine
I need your grace to remind me
There’s nothing in that town I need
Forget the sun in his jealous sky
I was so sure what I needed was more
Come and gaze upon my shadow at your door
You were always on my mind
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
Mama
Baby, sometimes a person has been sad inside for so long that they do crazy things to not feel how sad they are.
You know whenever you have a bug bite, you usually scratch it and scratch it ’til it bleeds, because scratching it feels better than letting it just itch? Even though it takes longer to heal when you scratch it up like that. That’s what is happening in your mama’s mind. She thinks making a big ol’ mess feels better than just letting her feelings go.
And your mama is sick, baby girl. And she hurts people, and that is not okay, and it really makes her more sad.
And baby, I promise your mama loves you, she just doesn’t know how to show it. I promise you never did anything to make her stop loving you. She is just really, really sad inside. Your mama thinks feeling angry and hurt is better than feeling sad. She will regret it in time. She’ll see what she’s missing.
But right now, let’s have some supper and then Grandpa will read you the story about the little bear and the blueberries. Mama will be home soon.
Sunshine…
on my shoulders makes me happy.
…
You and I are camping with Jenny, camping like we did on the island, when you called me and said you were lonely. We paddled to the shore and hung a hammock and I started biting your lip and pulling at your collar. We had nowhere to be, and that’s why we stayed like that ’til the afternoon sun filtered through the low branches and the brush. And we have nowhere to be now, except around Jenny‘s table. She listens to music by searching songs on Facebook, though she says she only checks it for family news.
You and I are a family now, but I still came from her first. Still, nothing makes more sense than bringing you here to the beach to meet Jenny. The cell that became me was, before Jenny’s daughter was even born, when her womb developed within Jenny’s womb. She carried me before I was my father’s child. I was a part of her when she was a long-haired, barefoot little thing, running on the white sugar sand riverbank, the Jungle Trail. And I was a part of her mother’s mother, who came over in the cargo hold of Turnbull’s slave ships.
How different you and I are. Your fathers came over from Scotland, on the decks of the ships, but not in much better condition than my indentured Spanish mothers. Your Caledonian fathers reached the shore and soon found Indian women in the hills of western Virginia, who became your mothers. They had black hair like Jenny.
…
in my eyes can make me cry.
…
I am Jenny’s granddaughter and I can’t believe I am. She has raven hair, like you do— like I always wished I did, like I still sometimes imagine would grow on our babies’ soft heads. I think the 1/4th of me that is Jenny is recessive, because it sure skipped a few generations. I’ll never be half of the mother she is.
When I was a girl, and too difficult for my momma, I was sent to live down by the water with Jenny. I beat the wall with my fists and yelled obscenities and, on the really bad days, I would dig holes and sit in them. Since she was too afraid to stop me, she didn’t. She shouted at me from the screen room. The hot tears poured down my face and I couldn’t why I didn’t feel a thing, so I stayed quiet. She slammed the screen door, leaving me alone.
She wouldn’t sit with me in my mud puddle; she was strong and thought she could pull me out from the edge of the thing. She couldn’t. I blared my angry music and wallowed.
Her daughter would come get me the next day. I don’t blame Jenny for not being able to fix me, though. She couldn’t have known she had to get down in the mud with me in order to help me out. That’s alright. Jenny is tall, and she is kind, but her emotions steer her vessel. This is why we used to fight so much, before I grew into a woman; I was a woman the day I learned to hold my tongue.
…
on the water is so lovely.
…
Jenny spends every day she can on the gulf, now that she’s at least semi-retired. We kids sit around Jenny’s table on the screen porch, eating the good things she fixed, while she and her middle-aged daughter sit to the side in Adirondack chairs. Her daughter lives in the mountains with her 5 children, far away, but we are visiting for the week. Jenny starts cooking 3 days before the grands arrive, and she is a fine cook. She fried the fish the boys caught last weekend— she used to love being on the water, she says, but so many Yankees have come into town with their big boats and RVs, the fish don‘t bite often enough to suit her anymore. Jenny lets the boys go, staying home with a bit of a headache and with the grandbabies, and with you and me. She says doesn’t need anything more.
…
almost always makes me high.
…
John Denver garbles through her cell phone’s external speaker. She and her daughter laugh loudly, like how you and I laughed last spring in the Subaru with the windows down on that first warm night of the year. The year I found you.
The year you came and sat with me in my mud puddle, then gently asked me if I’d like to try getting up and coming in the house. Once inside, I refused to wipe off my feet and arms, but you made me a sandwich and told me about when you were a child and your mother made you feel so cold that you punched a fence post and broke your hand. I almost didn’t believe you. You are so gentle now.
You told me I could be gentle, too, but I was sure I never could be. You were gentle like a good father, even as a young man. I was a disturbed young woman and a monster and Jenny and her daughter had both given up on me. I told you I was no mother, that I couldn’t carry the 3 babies you always dreamed of, and that you should give up, too.You said I was in no shape be a mother, because who could bring up children in that kind of environment? But you would dig through the mud with me for as long as it took. You told me you believed I could dig, too, and what’s more: you believed I would. You knew that’s what I really wanted. More than to sit and wallow, I wanted to dig and get out.
Jenny and her daughter may have made me, but didn’t know me as well as you did. They didn’t trust me, either. It’s not their fault. They each had to dig through their own mud and learn to laugh in their own sweet time. I hope I have time enough to become their daughter and their granddaughter again, now that I have grown into a woman. The first step is listening to music with them on the screen porch whose door used to slam.
I pray to God I have time. Jenny slaps her knees and my mother spills her iced tea. ”Sunshine almost all the time makes me high,” Denver’s clear tenor croons from the grave.
I am still one of five siblings, and still a child at that. I feel distant from these two women who have grown to rise above the din. I am still very much in it. I still care what others think about me.
And though Jenny and her daughter both love you, getting up to add another helping to your plate, refill your glass, and pat your back, they think me naïve. To be so in love with man seems foolish to them. They have both seen enough bad men to believe that a man’s heart is an amusing and silly thing at best.
The song is over and they head to the kitchen to clean up the supper dishes, cackling happily all the way. I don’t often laugh around them, and I don’t laugh now. But you know and I know that on good days, I have the same huge, boisterous laugh as those two great women. That much doesn’t skip a generation.
…
Splitting
Count the rings, son:
That’s the years of growth
And the dark layers were bark,
Kept out the weather & cold.
This old tree had to learn
Which years to forget,
But deep inside, he still knows them.
I won’t lie, some were real, real bad—
Baby, it don’t matter now.
Your mamma’s cold in the house,
This tree had to die. So we can
Survive seasons of our own.
But don’t you think for a minute
That his growing was for nothing.
Look at your baby sister’s rosy cheeks
And the flame dancing in her eyes.
Look at you, boy, holding that ax
Getting so big, bigger than I was
At your age. I swear, son,
you’ll remember this day forever
even though you’ll forget it by tomorrow.
The Commonplace is Sacred
To write about something well is to write about something that is specific. This is to write about something with which you have spent a considerable about of time; not only something that has kept you quiet and solemn company on rainy nights, but that you have talked with, grappled with, something that can make you laugh or clench your teeth. To tell the truth is to tell of what you know and understand.
You cannot understand what you have not sat beside on the front step under the dim yellow porch light while swatting flies away.
You cannot understand what has not held your hand in the car on the way to the ER.
You cannot understand what you have not wrapped up in a soft towel and buried in the frozen earth on Christmas day.
You most certainly cannot understand what you haven’t shared a frozen pizza with at a table cluttered with bills and crusty dishes and cups with milk rings in the bottom.
Come sit beside me, child, and let me tell you again that the commonplace is sacred. And then you can tell me about the places and the people you sit with most often.