I wiggled free and went back to the club. Copernicus was talking with Steve. They looked my way oozing prime rib lust. A quick glance around told me, sure enough, I was the last lady in the club. A few seedy looking guys at the pool table were arguing over a missed shot. Dante, Steve, and Copernicus were wearing viper smiles. All of a sudden that poem was a piece of trash and I was an idiot to be so flattered.
I felt disheveled and leveled from the sting of that slap back to reality. My cheek was actually smarting. I put my hand to my face as a great rush of fear and nausea ran through me. I was twenty-six years old and the only girl in a bar full of druggies at 5:30 a.m.
Coke made me talkative, active, funny, and friendly. But I could see it was not having the same effect on my “friends.” I imagined whispers. My mind flashed on the prospect of a possible gang rape.
Tommy stood alone by the bar. I made my way over to him. He put his arm around me and whispered, “I think it’s time for us to go now, yes?”
Dante looked over and yelled: “Yeah, whitey you best get on home now. You’re up way past your bed time.”
Tommy directed me to the door and out into the sunlight. I had my sunglasses in my pocket. I put them on with shaking hands as the roar of trucks and grating sound of steel gates opening brought me back to my senses.
“Whoa! Shit! Thanks for the save, Tommy. Want to go get breakfast?”
What I really wanted was to take him home, rip his clothes off and bury those last dreadful moments in lust and sweat.
“I live a few blocks away,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “What do you say I make us breakfast? I’m brilliant at scrambled eggs.”
He moved in close and put on a pair of aviator shades.
I didn’t leave his place for three days.
After that night I quit cocaine for good.
White powder brings out the worst in all colors.
Photographic Memory
Tejas
THERE IS NO PLACE to hide in those old black and white photographs of my family.
They’re captured, the lot of ’em. Tiny Papa Sam, all Old World mustache and fedora. He looks around blankly in most of the pictures, as though wondering how he ended up in this strange America. His wife Biddy Esther, predatory beak aquiver with suspicion, shown as the sour old thing she was. Creased shadows on Aunt Beck’s face anticipate the disease that was to claim her life only a year or so after this shot was taken. And I am there, seemingly too young for awareness, yet this is exactly how I see them in memory.
There’s my father, still wearing his war uniform and bitterness. Next to him is handsome Uncle Marty, staring hungrily at my mother. I can see the way his gaze is riveted, as my father and grandparents must have seen it before me.
The photographs of my mother are saved for last. You can’t run away from me this time, Mommy, I tell her image. You’re trapped. I can study you at my leisure. As a child, it was too hard to look at her. She dazzled the naked eye. In a black and white snapshot, I can follow her lines a little bit at a time. I like to imagine that the camera invented her, fashioning those fine bones, that taut skin. Her beauty could make sense, looking at it that way.
The most painful photograph is the one in which she is holding a crying, squirming child. At first glance, I thought maybe she was comforting me. Then the camera reveals the truth: She is looking at Marty. Why, I ask my mother, trying after all these years to bring me into her focus, why did you choose him over me?
These images tell a part of my family story. They were found eventually, in her effects, with instructions to deliver them to me. I look at them now, in full knowledge of what happened when they were developed. And what happened after that, the epilogue that I am still living.
There is no place to hide in those old black and white photographs of my family, but my mother manages to elude me still.
Missionary Position (Reprise)
Meme_in_Situ
I’M A LITTLE NERVOUS when I ring the doorbell. I’ve heard about this house. Its occupant is well known to missionaries. Marked next to the address on our canvassing notes it says “Occupant uses profanity and is belligerent.” Which means: Don’t bother. But I’m not doing missionary work today – I usually don't do political work, but this was such an important issue: the murder of innocent children. Maybe he would sign my petition. There’s a movement in the window and a few seconds later the door opens. He’s not wearing a shirt and he has tattoos up his arms and across his chest. Some of them are racist. There are a few on his neck too. His head is shaved, but I don’t see any tattoos up there. I take a breath.
“Good afternoon sir, my name is Samuel Gleason and I’m going door to door with this petition – ” I pull the clipboard out from under my arm – “that calls for a constitutional amendment that will make all abortions illegal. Are you a registered voter?” He’s looking me up and down. I remember the words of Martin Luther King: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” And smile.
He has a smile that makes fun of me. I repeat the words to myself and try to love him. I blurt out: “Abortion is murder. Babies are just as much people as you and I are. How can killing them be right?”
He looks over his shoulder. I can hear the sounds of a sports cable broadcast on the TV. Something about a rugby match that’s about to begin. Not surprising that he likes such brutal sports. I’m not feeling hopeful; but I have to do this.
He’s looking at me again, still wearing that smirk. It reminds me of a boy in my high school. In a high raspy voice with an eastern accent he says: “So you want to make all abortions illegal? Even first trimester?” The Lord commanded us to witness. I tell the tattooed man what I believe. “We are all people, and we have souls and rights from the moment we are conceived. Abortion is murder.”
His eyebrows go up a little and he says: “So you’re saying a single cell can have a soul?”
Was he an atheist? The notes would have indicated that if he had already said so. So he must believe in the soul. Maybe if I take another tack.
“The baby has a soul from the moment it’s created. We have a duty to God to protect our children, no matter how small they are.”
He repeats himself: “So a single cell can have a soul?”
There’s no way I want this to get bogged down in a pointless discussion about biology. What can I say to make him see the truth? For some reason, I want to convince this man. Am I still trying to win over that boy in high school who knocked my books down and flicked my ears whenever he got behind me?
The tattooed man says: “You do know that a baby starts from a single cell don't you?”
I don’t know what to say. That is not the issue. The issue is the sanctity of human life. If our lives are not sacred inside the womb, then what makes them so when we are born? This man. This man doesn’t care. I can’t make him care.
I try once more though. I say: “Do you think it’s right to murder babies?” Surely he will agree with me that murdering babies is evil. Instead he asks me if I still have sex with my dog. It’s over. At least he didn’t start hurling racist remarks at me. He’s just looking at me with that same little smirk, his eyes slightly hooded. I have to leave. Before I leave, I remind him of what he must already know.
“God will remember this.”
Then I turn my back on him and walk away. He yells something about his puppy that died. I’m thankful I didn’t hear the rest. I pull out the list and add a small note under the other: “Vicious dog.”
White Dog in the Snow
Teenager
BOLD BLACK LETTERS stare up at me from the white page and then jumble before my eyes, mixing up the words, the sentences, that I have been writing since early this morning.
If there’s a better way of telling my story, I don’t know it. Yesterday I stood in my yard, looking out across the pastures at three white baby goats. As if on cue, they commenced their high-pitched bleating. Just beyond them, the yearli
ng ram with his thick, black fur and milk white tail gave me a challenging look. I stared back before turning around to step into the house.
And here I still sit.
It was only four days ago that I returned home from Jamison Mines without you. Frozen and numb, I drove home blindly, letting myself be hypnotized by the freeway markers, afraid that I’d crash if I let your face surface in my mind. You parade now in the fore of my vision, recalcitrant as always, but allowing me to experience the torment of your loss.
Outside the window I see your station on the deck. It was there that you watched the fields with sharp black eyes, never missing the stray black and white cat, Tuxedo Man, that used to drink milk from our porch before you came to us. Tuxedo Man became a stranger, but I wonder now if he will return in your absence.
That absence dilates like a gaping black hole in the center of that white-out day. It didn’t feel like day at all, or night. There was only snow, continuing in an even sheet from my feet into the sky. I felt my pack pull me back as I struggled for balance on a terrain I couldn’t see. I stepped forward and slid down onto my knees, painfully wrenching an already sprained ankle. Gasping, I looked up to call you, expecting you to be nearby. Directly ahead I saw your white form darting through the trees. I called again, my voice shushed by the snow. My throat felt hollow and cold. I swallowed hard, rising up, jerking myself toward the trees. I called your name. I called and called, staggering along.
Later, in my tent beneath the trees, I knew you had finally chosen to follow your wanderlust. I saw before me your black almond eyes, victorious, against the ice white of your face. That night I cried pitifully, imagining that you regretted having gone too far and that you searched for me. I awoke the next morning with swollen eyes and cold joints and looked at the sun coming up over the mountains. The light erased black shadows in the creases of the snow until the ground sparkled. The peaks mimicked the graceful arch of your ears.
When I returned home I told no one what happened. I felt paralyzed, and even now I cannot speak. And so I write this and imagine your final resting place, your brave end without fear as your white form sank down, slowly covered by silent snow.
And Read All Over
CGT
WHEN I WAS a little boy, I had a great idea. I was going to be the first person to publish a newspaper in color. The idea came to me while throwing newspapers from door to door.
The black ink from the Huntingdon Daily News would rub off on my hands after delivering 98 papers each evening. Not only were my hands jet black, but the webbed patch of skin that connects the thumb to the pointer finger was dried out and cracked from eight years of being the town’s newspaper boy.
My customers were addicted to the black and white daily. They waited for me to show up each night around 6 p.m. with a wad of paper, rolled like a joint, secured with a pink rubber band.
Witnessing the sheer panic of my customers when their paper was late, I knew that if I were to publish a newspaper in color, readers would become alcoholics for the news.
There was more to the Daily News than black words printed on cheap white paper. My hands were not only stained by the black ink, but I lost my soul when I delivered lies for a mere three cents a copy.
I felt powerful as a newspaper boy – like a Walter Cronkite on foot. I fell in love with the power of the pen. When my mother would complain about a town resident who rubbed her the wrong way, I would often throw newspapers really hard against his screen door to make mamma happy!
The Huntingdon Daily News was – and still is – a classic hometown newspaper. In the boredom of delivering papers, I actually started reading the front cover. The paper hosted a “School News Page” for the eight area high schools located within the boundaries of its circulation district.
My high school, Southern Huntingdon, had the reputation for being the winner of the Traveling News Page Trophy most times during the twenty-five years the paper hosted the Friday School News Page Section.
One August day in 1982, on the front cover of the Daily News there was a black and white photograph of the reporters from my school who had won the traveling trophy again. My girlfriend, Aileen, was one of the reporters. She had made the front page of the Daily News and when I folded the papers for delivery, the seam went right down her face.
Aileen talked me into becoming a writer for the school news page during my sophomore year in high school. I failed English my freshman year. It was the only big fat red F ever to hit my report card. I was a wiz in science, but for the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend parts of speech. I hated English and the teacher who instructed me during the ninth grade – Mrs. Robinson.
By an act of God, Aileen was able to convince Mrs. Hicks, the school news page advisor, to let me join the Southern Huntingdon writing staff as I entered tenth grade.
The things I had written must have made real work for Mrs. Hicks to tighten up. I was surprised to see my first article appear in the Daily News with my name in big, bold dark letters: By Charlie Taylor.
After growing comfortable with such a talented advisor, I really didn’t worry about what I turned in as a school news page story each week. Mrs. Hicks made my words read like Shakespeare’s.
Soon, Charlie Taylor started winning “best news story” week after week. It was frightening to receive all that praise. I too was becoming an alcoholic for that black and white daily.
When Mrs. Hicks was my English teacher, I started getting all A’s in class. My grammar didn’t improve, I just learned how to be flirtatious with the advisor and those people who knew how to correct the things I wrote.
I went on to win best story award the most times my senior year, and was also selected as Reporter of the Year by some famous journalist who worked for the Pittsburgh Press.
The Huntingdon Daily News hired me as an intern staff writer the summer before I was supposed to start Penn State’s journalism school.
I sat in the newsroom with a bunch of professional writers day after day and lost my desire to become a writer and bailed out of my enrollment to Penn State.
They were really sad, the reporters who worked for the paper. They told me secrets about the publishing world that I care not to repeat.
Not only did I give up my desire to become a writer, I also threw away my idea to print the first colored newspaper.
USA Today came around and brought color to news racks across the nation, and then the local dailies started using color, then the big metro papers – even the New York Times. But I don’t care. You can find plenty of color everywhere you go.
Singed Black
Sandshovel
WE BURIED MY FATHER on an unusually warm November day. Odd how the sunlight looked through branches without leaves. There were maybe thirty of us surrounding the burial site and I heard the priest’s monotone voice, but the words did not register. I didn’t think I really needed anyone to help me through this but was grateful to feel my best friend’s arm around my waist ... just in case. Then it was over.
Coffee Cake and Conversation
My mother’s house was filled with relatives and a few friends. Laughter … teasing ... eating ... drinking. I knew I could escape. Almost out the door, my mother called to me.
“I want to give you something,” and she disappeared into her bedroom and returned with dad’s forest green fall jacket. “Do you want this?”
“OK … sure … yes … I do … I’ll wear it, I think,” I stammered and put it on and it felt good – I knew he would have worn it recently. “I'm just going for a coffee, OK?”
I didn’t wait for a response. I avoided her eyes and made my escape. I had to be alone.
Starbucks, Sunshine and Smoke
I pulled into a Starbucks half a mile away and sat with my bitter cup outside and alone with the November sunshine hurting my sleep-deprived eyes. I put my sunglasses on and pulled his coat tightly around me. I wanted a smoke and couldn’t find my lighter in my purse. But because my fathe
r had a fatal addiction to cigarettes, hope rose in me that there would be matches in his pocket. Eureka! Not just a pack of matches but a cigarette that looked like he had lit up and put out after one or two puffs.
I stared at the white cigarette with the black singed end and thought it was probably the last one he’d attempted to smoke. The doctor had told my mother to stop nagging him about quitting; that it was too late and she shouldn’t make him suffer anymore than he already was.
I held the cigarette to my lips, struck a match and inhaled that intoxicating poison deeply into my being and for the first time felt the tears stinging my eyes.
Trace and the Black and White
Brimmer
THE LAPD BLACK-AND-WHITE glided to a stop at the curb and the young officer in the passenger seat shot a long, level gaze in Trace’s direction. Trace shifted the bag of groceries to his left hand, keeping his right hand free to carefully reach for his wallet, as he knew he would be asked to show identification.
“Where are you heading to?” the young officer asked as he stepped out of the black-and-white, left hand resting on the baton strapped to his hip. Trace imagined the cop, with that buzz-cut blond hair and cold blue eyes, as a German tank commander emerging from his hatch in the African desert.
“Home,” Trace replied with as little tone as possible.
“Where’s home?”
“Up the street.”
Trace fished in his back pocket for his wallet and offered his ID before it was requested. The officer gave thanks with a curt nod of his head and strolled back to the patrol car to have the driver radio in Trace’s information for outstanding warrants.