Saturday, December 24, 2011

I Believe

**An older piece of writing, dedicated today to all my writing friends who struggle and strive to put it all down on that blank page, to tell the stories they are meant to tell. Happy New Year lovely bones. May the muse be with you in 2012!**

I believe that I am made of stories.

I believe that my stories tether me when nothing else does. To family. To place. To spirit. When I was four, I began telling stories of a mythical place that I called rainbow land. The way I told it, rainbow land was a magical place, a place where the living was easy. I told my mom and dad that I could access rainbow land from three places- the farm where my father grew up, the park across the street from my house, and Taos, the northern New Mexico town that we traveled to every summer. All I had to do was stand in wait for a rainbow to reach down and take me there.

My father taped me telling stories at this age. He was an audio visual man with a penchant for documentation. Two years ago, when my father lay in the back room dying, I listened to some of those tapes. My small voice scraping against the microphone, words just spilling out of my little PJ wrapped body. I spoke like a river- easy, constant, steady. I told stories that seemed deep and taken from somewhere important but I also told inane little diddys that seemed plucked from underneath my nails, or scraped up from the bottom of my shoe. One in particular that I remember was about building the perfect crib for my older brother. This was my long winded way of calling him a baby. I could hear my Dad snorting in the backdrop, getting a kick out of my indirect insult.

But the most striking thing about these tapes is that my telling didn’t yield or break until my father took the mike out of my hands. I just kept talking. Like it was the only thing keeping me there. Like I was born for it.

When I got to be a little older, I began writing the stories down. I figured out somewhere along the way that you can’t expect everyone to want to hear what’s inside of you. You can’t turn yourself inside out all the time and expect to be liked. So I picked up my pencil and I wrote some of it down. As I got older, though, I became impatient with writing. I felt frustrated by its limitations. My hands couldn’t keep up. There were so many other things to do, anyway. I adopted an attitude of futility. Words are like boxes, I’d say. Language is what separated us from life, I’d muse. I’ll write when I’m old and can’t do anything else.

These last years, though, I’ve been feeling too full, like I’m holding on too hard, carrying the weight of something dying. All the untold stories pushing against my ribs, closing in around my throat. Some of them sit cloistered around my heart and just burn. Listening to those tapes, hearing that river coming out of me, I understood.

I am made of stories and stories are meant to be told.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Dear Heavenly Father

You gotta know the rules. And the rules are different everywhere you go.

In our house, supper starts with grace. Dear heavenly father. We don’t say it at breakfast or lunch or dinner out or dinner at friends. So its dear heavenly father when its just the four of us there in the kitchen for supper, packed tight, elbow to elbow. Dear heavenly father. Sometimes mom says let’s say grace and we all bow our heads like your supposed to and dad says just the word grace real quick and funny and we laugh and then start up like usual. Dear heavenly father.

Chris and I share a side of the table, small wooden chairs, kitchen not much bigger than the table, the stove, the sink and the fridge. We get trapped up against that wall and fight each other for elbow room. Sometimes it gets serious and finally dad takes a measuring tape, finds the middle and saws a clean line in the metal rim of the table to show us what’s what. There, he snorts, that’ll keep you quiet.

Quiet’s another one of the rules. Dear heavenly father and quiet.

I went to Tricia’s house across the street and had Italian dressing on my salad. I got home and mom asked what I had for dinner and when I told her about the Italian she seemed mad. Like thousand island ought to be good enough. Like Italian was uppity. I just liked it better I guess.

Like I said, you gotta know the rules. And one of the biggest rules is that you don’t always get to understand the rules.

After dear heavenly father comes bless this food for our good. And after that its and us to thy service. In Jesus’ name. Amen. That’s how grace goes. I get the part about blessing the food and that food is good for us but I’ve never been real sure about Jesus and us to thy service. We go to church and I know that on Christmas Jesus was just a little baby boy that got born outside with his mom and dad, the goats, and three wise men. I know that much but I still don’t know about us to thy service.

I like Tricia’s church better than ours. Her family goes to St. Agnes and they kneel a lot and touch their fingers to their body to make the cross and they even get up in the middle to get in line and stick out their tongues for a cracker. In my church the main thing is to be quiet and still and listen even when something is so funny you can hardly stand it. I draw a lot. Mostly pictures of houses. I like to make big chimneys out of brick and round windows above the front door. But sometimes Chris and I get to thinking something is so funny that we can hardly follow the be quiet rule. One time it was because Pastor Almquist hiccupped in the middle of his sermon, talking about Jesus and his friends and then real loud, bouncing off all that quiet, a giant hiccup. I like the Pastor even though his talks are boring. He’s missing one of his fingers and I think Dad said it got chopped off somehow when he was in Africa teaching Africans about Jesus. I imagine little African kids and wonder if they ever heard the Pastor hiccup or if they draw houses instead of listening.

Another one of the rules is go to your room.

It’s supposed to be a punishment but sometimes I feel real good about the fact that it doesn’t really feel like one. My room is better than the living room for sure, mainly because I have an even better couch in my room, one without wooden arms, PLUS everything else. There’s my bed with my favorite yellow bedspread that’s itchy but pretty. There’s also my doll house and my shelves and shelves of stuffed animals that came from all over. The knitted ones are from Grandpa Johnson’s neighbor at the Manor. She’s right next door and way less scary than Grandpa J. because she smiles and remembers me and gives me things. She even pats her big tall bed and invites me up while she knits. I like to watch her hands. Even though one of the rules is don’t touch, I always want touch her skin because it looks so soft and loose and freckled. I guess some of the rules don’t apply when you are just a baby because everyone likes to tell the story about how I used to be hitched up on Grandma Johnson’s hip, taking my little baby fingers and touching all her moles, tracing the lines of the loose soft skin under her chin. Everyone says she liked it and thought it was funny. I wonder if she were still alive if she’d let me touch her skin still. I wish I could remember how she laughed when I did.

There’s one person in my family who used to make me forget the rules and that’s my Grandpa Stewart.

It’s not that I broke all the rules when we’d go see him or anything, its just that when we sat down and did a puzzle or something I just felt the rules leave my body. He and my Dad liked each other a whole lot too. It always looked like the rules left my Dad’s body around Grandpa S. too, not like with his own dad. Sometimes the rules seem like they belong to everyone, but they didn’t seem to belong to Grandpa S. He especially didn’t have the no touching rule. He’d wrap his arm around me tight when I was on his lap and if I stood next to him he would lean into me a little until I knew to lean into him. My Dad would always smile and stick out his hand to Grandpa S. when we’d leave Hutch and he always took it and then pulled my Dad’s big stiff body into himself. When he released him he’d keep his eyes on his and pat and rub the outside of my Dad’s shoulders, kind of like my Dad was a kid like me, maybe a little sad to go and maybe a little scared just in general.

I had a really good dream about Grandpa Stewart one night and when I woke up in the morning and went to the living room Mom and Dad told me he was dead. Just like that. I could tell that they were trying not to upset me by trying to hide their sadness from me but it was all over the room. Even the early morning sun light speckled on the couch seemed sad. The one person in our family that didn’t have the rules just died and all of us sat in the living room and knew we’d miss him forever.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

***Over a year ago, I started a story, narrated by a young girl named Jemma. I dropped the story after only a few measley pages, but Rawlins, the adult stand-in Dad character, has dogged me since. I don't know who he is or how he came to be in charge of Jemma and Jasper. He has seemed both loved and adored by Jemma, but also hated for his harshness. This is just a little back and forth between them....I'm going to try and figure this guy out without thinking about writing or story...let him speak for himself. ***


Dear Jemma,

I’m not sure you’ve got it in you. To tell our story, I mean. I’ve been standing out here in the hot sun, tapping my foot, dressed in my white shirt like a goddamn fool, waiting on you, you know. You think I’m mean, and I’m sure that’s how you’ll tell it, but you know what you are kid? What you’ve always been? Scared, like those little rabbits out there in the field, darting off like the air is dangerous, like the next thing that’s comin is the thing that’ll end them. Your daddy thought you were something so goddamn special, so smart, he said, so observant, so “in tune”, whatever the hell that meant. But I’m sitting out here in the hot sun waiting for your observations, waiting for you to just fucking open that mouth of yours and tell us what you think, something other than your errant fuck you’s. What is it kid? Am I not good enough for you? Are you afraid of what I might do or what you might do back at me?

You could write me the way you always wished me, you know. I could clean up and be nice for your story, put my pretty party face on for you and your readers like I did at the parties and at church and in front of your mom before she got smart and high tailed it outta this fucking place…what did you call it….a yellow knot of land? Fucking poetic Jemma. Why don’t you just put me out of my misery and write it down, get me outta this stupid shirt and out of the dust and get it done.

Joseph T. Rawlins

P.S. Don’t forget to tell them that what happened to Rowdy was just as much your fault as mine.


Rawlins,

Maybe I’ve left you out there in your boots with that white shirt on because I want to watch you squirm. Maybe I want you to watch me as closely as I always watched you, waiting for my cue, instead of the other way around. Maybe those rabbits are scared for a good reason and for all their darting around, at least they’re still alive. I mean, what happened to you, Rawlins, so scared of nothing, so big and mean, what happened to you to make your eyes get so hard, so dead? Maybe that’s what I’m waiting on. The part of the story that I don’t know. My dad, the way I remember him, was good. He was brave and smart and he always had time for me. I always figured you must have been the same way or he wouldn’t have been your friend, wouldn’t have spent those long nights up with you after mom left if there wasn’t something good and alive in you. So what happened Rawlins? I’ll write it when I know you better, because even though I hate the thought of it, you are the story. I’m the kid, the witness, the one who gets out alive because I’ve got a lick of spirit like Dad said. A lick of something fine. Do you remember him saying that? That Jasper had the guts, but I had the heart? Do you remember? Is that why you hate me?

Jemma

P.S. Don’t you think I think about Rowdy every day and know what I did. The heart never forgets mistakes like those, Rawlins. You know that because I see it in your eyes, standing in the dust, waiting for me like a sinner waits for his confessor.


Jemma,

Well, well, well. At least I know you’re still there. Right, kid? Still there. Give me a glass of whiskey in my hand and some shade and I’ll tell you a few things.

Rawlins

Dear Rawlins,

Take a walk back to the porch and sit on the swing. I’ll go in the house and get you some whiskey if that’ll make you talk. But you’d better tell it to me the way your heart remembers it, because I’m just not interested anymore in anything else. God, Rawlins, did you ever think about the fact that little girls and boys and horses know a goddamn thing or two? Like maybe you couldn’t just say and do and be whatever shade of mean you wanted to be without us noticing? Without it mattering?

Jemma

Dear Jemma,

Thanks for the shade. And thanks for the whiskey, but I take a couple of ice cubes just so you know for next time.

Where do you want me to start? Do you want me to dwell on my childhood like you? Talk about my mommy and daddy and all the things they did wrong? Or would you like to hear about your Dad or the war or your Mama. Or do you want me to tell you about how I see you, how I see Jasper, Rowdy, and all of those years there. Do you want me to tell you about what your Daddy said to me when he died? Or dear Jemma, do you want me to say anything at all that might change what you think you know. You’d better ask me direct.

Rawlins