Alison McGhee

Look at that thing. It’s a tree pod of some kind. I should know what it is, but I don’t. I should know the name of the tree it fell from, but I don’t. This being the 21st century, I tried to look it up and find out exactly what it is – this long, fat, dark-red beanlike pod – but I couldn’t. All I found were other long beanlike tree pods, but they all came from trees down south, and I don’t live in the south.

For years I’ve picked these pods up and brought them home. Sat them on my desk and stared at them. A pod like this doesn’t look like something that belongs here, in April, in 2009. It looks as if it grew in a prehistoric forest, and as if the beans contained within might hatch into tiny dinosaurs and start running all over my floors. And then grow bigger, and bigger. And lose their cuteness, and raise their dinosaur arms at me, and open their mouths to show their fangs.

Prehistoric. Before history. Like the alligator my sweetheart saw making his lazy switching way up the Apalachicola River, just under the surface of that dark water. Like the rib cages of the wild boars littering the banks of that river.

But these things do not exist pre-history. They are here. They are now. This tree pod fell from a tree three houses down my very own block.

Prehistoric. Like the nightmare images that wake you from drugged sleep at 3:47 a.m. Like the suck of an infant’s tongue. Like the burn of hunger in the pit of your stomach when all you can think about is food, food, where is food. Like the wild grief of loss. Like the wild desire to live, and keep living, no matter the suffering of this world.

She was fifty-five when you were born. Hers is the first face you conjure at dawn when you bow your head to your clasped hands. Hers is the scent that you tracked through a Hallmark card store until you found the old lady wearing it, bent over the Get Well cards, who looked up when you started to cry. Hers are the dresses, old and flowered and heavy polyester and unlaundered, that you keep tied up tight in a white plastic bag on a shelf in your closet, that you sometimes untie and bury your nose in. She is the one who taught you how to fold a towel the right way. She is the one who could wring a chicken’s neck and tat a doily and scrub a floor and grade 45 English compositions all in the same evening. Hers was the pantry in which you slept at Christmas, surrounded by tin after tin of her cookies. Hers is the tiny nose that turned bright red the one time she drank a sip of Champagne. She is the one who swayed in the kitchen to the sounds of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. She is the one who played the tiny electric organ with the choose-your-own background accompaniment. It was she who took you to Dairy Queen every night when you visited for that week in the summer, and it was she who asked you if you were sure that one little cone was enough, and didn’t you want a sundae at least? She was the one who gave you fourths on everything. On her coffee table was a blue glass bowl full of butterscotch candies. She laughed and laughed when Arthur tossed his spitballs at the dinner table. She had a dog named Jody. She put reflecting balls in her flower gardens. She is the one who said Semi-gloss, that’s what you want, because you can wash it with a sponge. She wrote you hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters, all of which you still have, overflowing from boxes and bags in your basement. She is the one you always replied to.  She is the one who that one day when you went to visit her could not, suddenly, make you dinner anymore. She is the one you pushed in the wheelchair. She is the one who wrote in shaky handwriting What a happy life we had together, but it wasn’t long enough. She is the one you talk to every day in your mind. Hers is the unmistakable scent you smelled the day you needed her so badly and you walked into your friend’s house and stopped short, overcome, but your friend smelled nothing. She is the one who found no faults in you. Hers were the hands you held, knotted and gnarled with the arthritis that she swore didn’t hurt. She is the one that you, phone hater, called once a week. It was to her that you said It’s okay, you can go, you don’t have to hold on anymore when your mother held the phone to her ear that last day, and then you hung up and made that sound you had never heard yourself make. It was her eulogy you wrote and read in that sun-streaked church after Oatie sang Danny Boy. Her name is the answer to every one of your computer security questions. She is the only person in this world about whom you have not one, single, regret.

Someone who knows you well gave you a charm bracelet for Christmas. Charm bracelets are hard to find. They stay in families; they’re passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter. They disappear quickly from eBay and estate sales. You never see them at garage sales.

You see your grandmother’s old charm bracelet around your sister Oatie’s neck. She turned it into a necklace, and you can stare at those charms forever, remembering the stories your grandmother told about each one.

Now you have this one. You have no idea who it belonged to, and neither does the one you love who gave it to you. It was found after much searching, in a faraway place reached after a long journey on dark and icy winter roads.

You keep the charm bracelet on your desk, below the wall with all the taped-up photos and quotes and and the postcard that reads When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?

Every day you pick it up, holding it in the palm of your hand, surprised anew by its weight. You don’t know who originally wore this charm bracelet, but you know some things about her life. She was a girl who came of age in the 40’s, you’re guessing. The 40’s are your favorite clothing era. How often you have looked at photos from that decade, and fingered dresses and skirts in vintage stores, and felt that you were born into the wrong clothing age.

She loved to travel, this far-away girl. It looks as if she made a trans-Atlantic ocean voyage to tour Europe. She began in New York, where she saw the Statue of Liberty. And then she sailed – twice, if the charm bracelet tells the true story – across the sea to London, where she saw Big Ben and lots of theater.

She had a roadster. You imagine her with a scarf tied around her neck, sailing around country roads on trips out of the city, a picnic basket in the backseat and her friends next to her, laughing.

She danced, and she ice-skated, and she even golfed. That you don’t understand – golf? it just doesn’t make any sense to you – but then you remind yourself that this isn’t your life. It was her life.

She rode horses, and if the charm bracelet doesn’t lie, she also was a good riflewoman. She got married in a church. You hope she was crazy about the man she married, and you hope she loved her firstborn, represented by that tiny baby shoe.

And she had a woodstove. Does that mean she had a cabin? She liked to camp? She was an outdoor girl who loved the country, like you? Again you remind herself that this bracelet is about her, not you.

Hello, faraway charm girl. Did you love your life?

Welcome, welcome. Please come in. Yes, have a seat. May I offer you a beverage? We can take your coat for you, or you can drape it across the back of your chair. We’re sorry it’s only a folding chair, but we hope you’ll find it comfortable nonetheless. It’s a crowded room and you have a good seat.

Excuse me? What’s that above? Why, that is a photo of double-jointed fingers bending backward.

Yes, you’re right. It is of poor quality. That’s because the lady of the house took it. We make no apologies for her poor camerawomanship, though, because this is the No Apologies Talent Show, where all are welcome.

Oh, sure you do. Sure you have a talent. We don’t even have to look beyond your outerwear to see just how talented you are. Could that multi-colored scarf be more artfully draped around your neck? We think not. You probably didn’t even look in the mirror when you doubled that scarf and pulled it through itself, did you? See, we knew it.  And you call yourself talentless.

So few people have any idea of the talent that abounds in this world, which is why we have arranged the No Apologies Talent Show.You may take the stage at any time to show us your talent. Many of you are shy, but we are patient.

You wish to take the stage, little girl? That makes us happy. What will her talent be, we wonder.

She is removing her socks and balling them up. Now she places them on the floor. Now she backs up, takes a running start, and. . .

she leaps over the socks!

That is indeed a talent. It’s called Jumping, and that little girl is good at it.

Here’s an older gentleman. What will he entertain us with? He is taking a pen out of his breast pocket. Now he is drawing little smiling faces on his knuckles. Now he is bending his hands into fists and dancing them through the air.  It’s a small army of little smiling knuckles! Everyone is laughing.

We call that the talent of the Smiling Knuckle Fists, and how happy we are to have seen it. How happy we are to have laughed.

A young boy, made bold by the success of the other talented audience members, scurries onto the stage. From his pocket he withdraws a chopstick. Now he ties a string to one end of the chopstick. Now he slowly passes the stringed chopstick through the air before him. Back and forth go our heads, in unison.

What is the young boy doing, you ask? He is fishing for fireflies. He is waiting for a kitten to appear. He is a young hypnotist in training. He is the conductor of an unseen and silent underwater orchestra.

His is a seemingly limitless talent. We bring our double-jointed fingers together in applause.

Now it’s your turn. Please, take the stage, and do not be shy. There is only admiration here in this crowded room full of audience members on folding chairs. Don’t you want to hear the applause? We are clapping just for you.

Heart. Say it out loud: Heart. Heart. Heart.

A word, said often enough, crosses over into beyond-word-land, when no meaning attaches, or meaning attaches that doesn’t belong to the original word. Heart. Hart. Hurt.

Your young daughter, she of the black river-hair, comes home from school having dissected a sheep’s heart. She split it open and, with her gloved finger, followed her way through the veins and arteries of that glistening organ.  She describes how the heart looked, and felt, and smelled.

“Were you quiet when you dissected the heart?” you ask.

What are you really asking? You don’t even know. You ask anyway. How you hope that she will say yes.  She looks at you in mild confusion. Then she understands, and so do you. What you are really asking is this: were you respectful?

“We were quiet and we were laughing,” she says. “We were learning and we were having a good time at the same time.”

Tears press against your eyes and there is a lump in your throat. Why? Why? That heart, that once it beat in the chest of a living being. The mystery of a body, laid bare on a table. Don’t laugh. Please don’t laugh.

Heart.

You were born with one that can leap into high gear, from a slow, slow 60 beats a minute to a racecar, over 200. So fast that it doesn’t really beat. It shakes. Your whole chest vibrates. If you don’t lie flat, stars gather before your eyes, and your ears pound, and darkness slides down as you yourself slide down.

You’ve slid down many times. Down the wall at a party, startling the kilt-wearing man you were talking with. Down to the floor at a funeral. Before a crowd you were reading to. In a car with your mother, who held your hand for many minutes. On your windsurfer, even, out at sea.

And then it’s over.

Up you stand, and on you go, and this is the way it’s been all your life. You don’t think about your heart, your heart, your heart, engine of your body, big strong muscle, pumping the blood that keeps you alive.

Heart, heart, heart.

Heart that pounds with desire. Heart that slows and soothes. Heart that beats you around the lake, pushes you up the mountain, glides you through the water, hurts you through nightmares and skims you through dreams.

Heart, heart, heart, heartheartheart, hearthearthearthearthearthearth, ththththththththththththththththtththththththththththththththththt

Racecar heartheartheart undone and quivering. Chest shivering up and down. See the stars. Close your eyes. Slide down. Down.

Heartheartheart, oh heart, gather yourself. Gather yourself. Remember what you are here for, heart. Big hidden fist, punch out. Keep punching. Hold yourself trembling in this slender cage of ribs. Comfort yourself. Soothe yourself.

Heart. Heart. Heart.

Up you go and on you go.

Keep saying it. Heart. Heart. Heart.

“We have cried for so long. Let us borrow light from the star that will appear for us tomorrow.”

– Marie Luise Kaschnitz

Blessings on those who in this moment are crying, and blessings on those who are laughing. Blessings on the old woman in the market who could not reach the high shelf. Blessings on the dogs who know when their humans are suffering, and who push their noses into upturned palms. Blessings on the child who sits in the entryway of the Chinese restaurant, selling Girl Scout cookies. Blessings on the boy who waits for the mail. Blessings on the girl who is afraid of being kidnapped. Blessings on the child who is training herself to run. Blessings on those dazzled by the brilliance when the plane bursts above the cloudcover. Blessings on the brother who loves his son. Blessings on the man and woman who return to their home after a long journey, and blessings on the bird who in their absence has built a nest in the woodstove chimney. Blessings on the sister who would plant her apple tree even if the world were to end tomorrow. Blessings on those who do not know themselves beloved. Blessings on the unmet friend in a far-off country who sends words of hope on a gray morning. Blessings on the girl who taught herself how to bake bread. Blessings on the child who carried her books tight against her chest in a long-ago alley. Blessings on those who love, and those who lose themselves in love, and those who at this moment cannot feel themselves loved. Blessings on you, yes, you.

Hello, San Francisco mug, third choice mug for the one small cup of perfect coffee drunk each morning at dawn.  (Why does “drunk” look wrong? Drank. Drinked. Draughted. Sipped. Savored. They all look wrong too.)

The mugs cram, to the extent that they have to be double-deckered, the shelf allotted to them. No teacups pour vous. (Tu? Stop second-guessing your word choices and get on with it.)

No matching sets except for the three – which used to be four before the kitchen-tile-floor-crash-screech-broom-vacuum incident – large flowered Italian ones bought for $1 apiece at a garage sale lo those many years ago, scooped up before that other woman got her hands on them, and you could tell she was just about to, and the two small cobalt-blue patterned ones bought in a pottery store in Mexico lo those many years ago as well.

“Do these mugs contain lead?”

Shrug.

“Lead?”

As in, lead that will slowly poison you, rotting away the brain synapses until they are misfiring more often than not, which does seem to be the case much of the time, now that you think about it.

Shrug.

The hell with it! Live dangerously. Maybe the lead will weight you down, keep you grounded, more solid on the earth as you tromp about. Would that be such a bad thing? Your synapses have long been suspect anyway.

Back to the mugs. Return to the mugs. Breathe in mug, breathe out mug.

The Jesus Loves You mug, preserved from early childhood. White china. Faded red lettering. Kept for childhood’s sake, rarely used but for those mornings when you remember swinging your legs on the folding chair in Sunday School, singing Jesus Loves You while Mrs. Steinbacher conducted.

The Smart Women Invest in Real Estate mug, which you blatantly stole from your place of partial and sometime employment, because you loved it and craved it and felt that the greatness of your love would be enough to forgive you. Did you replace it? Yes, but with a mug that even you considered far inferior. Someday, maybe, you will do something to make up for it. If a crime of mug passion can ever truly be made up for.

The How to Eat a Lobster mug, adorned with step by step illustrations on – you guessed it! boy are you a smart one – how to eat a lobster. First you crack it, then you crack it some more, then you extract it with the tiny fork, then you dip it in melted butter, then you eat it. Despite the fact that lobster is your favorite food, you don’t  much care for this mug, but your youngest child adores it, and that’s good enough for you.

The 50th Wedding Celebration mug, featuring a fifty-year-old transferred-onto-china photo of a young man and a young woman walking down the aisle. He looks happy. She looks happy. Flowing white dress. Black suit. Poorly transferred onto the china, but a favorite nonetheless, because this used-to-be-young man and woman are beloved to you.

The Cactus mug, one of the five items passed down to you from your maternal grandmother, via your mother. Robin’s egg blue inside, speckled cream on the outside, a saguaro painted on one side. Oh, how you love this mug. You place it in the very back of the mug shelf, the better to keep it safe. Yet your tall son also loves the cactus mug, and he ferrets it out. He sets it on the counter and pours orange juice into it.

You eye the mug, and you eye your son, and you bite your tongue. He looks at you with his knowing, laughing eyes. He knows the story, that the cactus mug is one of the very few things passed down to you from your grandmother, and he knows how you love it, and he knows how difficult it is for you to bite your tongue when he hunts it down from its hidden corner in the far back of the crammed mug shelf.

“Worry not, Kinswoman. I will be careful.”

You try not to worry. But you worry anyway. Oh grandmother, wherever you may now be in time and space and eternity, do you remember the mornings we sat at your tiny formica table, you groaning over your coffee, me silently eating my thickly-margarined toast?

You make a silent vow with your misfiring, possibly lead-poisoned synapses:  If all goes well, someday the cactus mug will be yours, Kinsboy, and when you drink from it perhaps you will remember how your mother tried, even though she often failed, to keep from warning you to be careful.

Yes, they are up there, large cat, on the wooden shelf that you will soon make your awkward jump onto. Cast your feline eyes upon  me, if you will, clumsy cat with the swaying belly, for I will gaze upon you in return with my dark and unblinking dog eyes until you feel the shame and self-hatred that is rightly yours.

For while you may be able to hoist your overfed body onto that high shelf as I cannot, ungainly feline, and while you may well ignore the tiny glass snail, the tiny glass seal, the tiny glass chicken and the tinier glass mouse, the better to crouch over the cat and the mailman and crunch them down your gaping maw, those treats are not yours by birthright, as they are mine.

Gaze upon the box, o craven one! Yes, that box.

The box that reads Peanut Butter Crunch, the Natural Dog Treats Your Pet Will Love! Shaped as Cats and Postmen.

And that is where you should feel shame, one of felineness, as you hunch and munch and cast your nervous eyes about.

First the Postman, oh yes. And now the Cat.

Cannibal!

You are exactly the kind of cat that other cats warn their kittens about. Have you no shame? Good thing you’re neutered, or we’d be reading about you in the paper.

On the first 60-degree day in six months, while walking with the black dog on the red leash and the black and brown and tan and white dog on the green leash, the following sights were duly noted:

A small sign stuck into the ground by a large, low stone-rimmed planter: “Please.”

A Corona beer bottle slowly emerging headfirst from an ice prison on a front lawn.

A blue plastic bag containing what appeared to be dog turds, knotted and emerging slowly from a melting pool of ice on a sidewalk.

A swingset so long buried in snow that only now can its bright red plastic seats be glimpsed, darkly, under murky, thawing ice.

A homemade Santa sign stuck into the ground next to an evergreen, with “Ho Ho Ho” painted onto Santa’s oddly slender belly.

In a scene reminiscent of Moses parting the Red Sea, a heavyset woman slowly pushes an extra-wide shovel down the sidewalk in front of her house to rid it of its six inches of meltwater, while an enormous plastic blow-up Christmas carousel next to her on the front lawn circles round and round.

A man in shorts and t-shirt, walking down the street and tossing a baseball into the air and catching it, and tossing a baseball into the air and catching it, and tossing a baseball into the air and. . . wait. . . yes, catching it.

An elderly woman in a dark overcoat, moon boots, gloves, and scarf knotted over her curly blue hair, knocking gently on the window of a car which appears to be empty, peering in, then shading her eyes and looking up and down the street.

The black dog and the black and brown and tan and white dog peeing simultaneously on either side of the same mulberry tree.

Under a park bench, emerging from a thawing patch of ice, a photograph of a woman holding a child wearing an “It’s my 1st Birthday!” crown.

The rounded toes of the long-broken-in hiking boots of a woman walking a dog on a red leash and another dog on a green leash,  soaked through and covered with mud.

Who is this child? He is a colander-headed boy.

He came into this world naked, but naked he did not stay. No, soon he was garbed in the raiment of his people, Those of Colanderness.

Through the rain and snow they saunter, heads semi-protected from the elements but with plenty of holes, the better to experience the primal nature of nature itself.

Through the lightning they also walk, because Those of Colanderness know not the fear of electrocution so often experienced by lesser beings.

Those who wear colanders have never read the Harry Potter books. They do not play basketball, nor do they golf. They will look at you with bemusement, if not bewilderment, if you mention the words “par” and “tee” in their presence.

“Birdie” is another matter, because although they do not know its meaning with regard to golf, those who wear colanders are known for their love of birds. They are at one with the avian world, perhaps because in an alternate universe, birds and colanders fly through the skies in peace and harmony, wishing no ill will to any animate or inanimate being.

Those who wear colanders worship the gods of pasta and tin. They do not wear suspenders. They dip their artichokes in Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and they can be found in the early mornings sitting on porch swings, praying that the brokenhearted of the world will know themselves beloved.