She writes …..
I look upon it all as would a monk in meditation
the cells we live inside
the Cell
I ask —facing the light as daily I do need to know; what for ….and the silent answer loud is in reply …. You are upon it ! ….the words echo ever after ….worry not nuntius
Between the sheets
“But how could it have worked?” Jörn asks me Sunday while the pale early light began to proclaim a dove colored dawn. I am still warm and we are still close, pressed, connected to him after the nice way he woke me
“How what?” I ask with sleepy head
“You say the three of you ….”
he prompts ….
I ….slowly breathe and close him out ….slowly withdraw into myself like a turtle
In my mind ….we are on the beach …. but why is Jörn suggesting ….why ….I detach from his body; like a cork it makes a sound. I turn my back to him and look toward the view from this window ….this window pulls my thoughts towards the ocean because I can see it is somewhere beyond this window in my mind’s eye. This way faces the ocean ….
“He was a politician ….” Jörn says coaxing me to talk as he contemplates. And as I say nothing , he says, “Duva?”
I just look up at him. I don’t know what he expects me to tell him. And as he looks back at me I think again about the barn house. How it reminded me ….coming up the walk. I saw something. Maybe it was the light. How the sun shone off the snow on the roof in that way ….it was Josef—an image but it was not how he looks now and I think I only know it is him because of how it feels ….it is often said we reincarnate in groups, not always but it is common to bump into more than one again
Because of the buffer of this thought I ask,
“what?”
“He was too famous, how could it have worked?” Jörn turns me so my body faces him again, and prompts again, “a religious man and the social reaction had he married your mother!”
So I think about the smeden and I think about lifetimes and how some seek power while others seek love or wisdom
I say,
“I was a child, Jörn. I heard the plans, yes. What was he thinking? I know he loved her—I think he wasn’t thinking when it came to her. Do you know my mother was upset he only wrote two sentences about her in his autobiography!” [was not as if he’d broadcast after all the avoided headlines but my mother wanted —acknowledgment….]
“He put her in there….” Jörn seems to say more to himself
“But she got her own paragraph….” I sigh now as I tell him that ….because I am remembering him the way I knew him. I know what he wanted could have worked had what happened later not had happened; my error that destroyed the dream.
….finally I decide to say,
“Jamaica ….” I just look back up at Jörn and shrug, “how could it have worked? Where would we have lived? To escape the spotlight…. just off on his boat….bye bye USA; five minutes, just zip off.we did that all the time. He did! You should know about that as a Viking,” I half tease him but shrug, “he was very grand.”
“How did they meet?” he pulls me back to him and draws the sheets over me with him, confining me within his warm cave
“At a party in Greenwich Villege—I’ve told you this story! She was just twenty one and she never heard of him!”
“Tell me again,” he says
“It was thrown by a mutual friend. Someone she knew from Pratt….” I recall the story as it’s legendary to me how my mother first told me. “So when he arrived everyone rushed to meet him except my mother. Which is the reason he walked right over to her! She said he wore this big black coat that she said was red satin inside and he wore it like a cape— and he swept it open wide when he walked towards her and bowed!”
“So she did talk to you about him ….?”
No….
Strange.
Here I must pause
I almost laugh ….look at Jörn slowly as I carefully start to say ….
“It was years later, Jörn ….we were in Amsterdam, I must have been about fifteen…? We were talking about something else ….” I go a bit blank for a moment ….i only feel myself sitting there in our Dutch kitchen
now I say more to myself,
“I was telling her about a story …. she finds out she is the illegitimate daughter of a Russian king ….stories ….one I was writing ….and one I had read ….” I get chills but just hold my breath till it goes away.
Finally I exhale. I smile and look up at Jörn
“You see….? I didn’t remember by then anymore ….. but….that is when it all started to unravel ….Barcelona ….yes, that was the very first time ….after all those years she told me about him again … she said, ‘I’d be a widow now ….’ And then she said, ‘one day I’ll tell you everything….’ but of course she never did.”
“He was much older than your mother,” Jörn comments
“He was the same age as her father —my grandfather ….”
dearest Electra …. complex ….and dna memory
But Jörn says to himself
“for twenty years they kept it a secret ….”
“You don’t understand,” I try to laugh but it is forced, “it was my grandfather who was against her seeing him! Forbidden! They were a nice Jewish family from a good neighborhood in Forrest Hills— back then, it was not at all shabby and he was an accountant so they lived well but Ethan Rhys Jones was not for his daughter to marry. It was not just the racial thing but maybe it was too ….they forced her to marry someone —else— and someone they approved of ….he did actually ask my grandfather for her hand in marriage! My grandmother was outraged! —it is hard to imagine —isn’t it? Not long ago but ….so different then, their world then but ….she said that day in the kitchen….he was the love of her life.”
I shrug and look up at Jörn
Dearest Electra ….
at the end of the day
who would notice if I fell into a ditch?
I never say, but, yes, I am grateful to have Jörn —without, there wouldn’t be anyone looking out for me.
I only pretend not to notice
Just knowing he is there and
would know if I were in trouble —I am so glad to have Jörn and —so grateful or I’d feel
I’d be completely unseen invisible irrelevant
I feel seen with him and at least now in my life I can be sure of one thing: the man with the vampire eyes
Electra ….
in Milan Kundera’s world Tomas would say that I am an amalgamation of Sabina and Tereza
and then Kundera would stand up and cry “blasphemy!”
but then sit down and later quietly agree
But then he’d create a character who mocks him and myself as she says,
“I’m a monster outside of my world of kitsch.”
West Side Story
that is what Norma would say of them. She would sit with me and ….calm me ….
I do not know why I was there. There are some dark pages ….and often it happened at night —when I was sleeping. They’d move me. It was confusing. The worst pain I recall that devestated me was ….no, I’m not ready to go there ….
Looking back I understand it
I was to go with him and I didn’t understand why I was being sent away. It was something I’d done. By mistake. What I’d revealed about the time when we went by boat to the restaurant ….i fucked up. It was me. Do you see? I was bad. And then ….in retrospect we do understand the motives; the spy equipment I found…. her husband was leaking secrets about conversations of my biological dad with the home phone number. Phone calls I remember. I remember every Thursday was the day. He’d call me. Then talk to my mother. And all this was connected to timing and details of things that were part of evidence used against him….
Those things you remember out of sequence. I’d hide in my mother’s closet—Florida days. She knew I hid there. It was like a room! I’d sit below her dresses by the boxes of beautiful designer shoes. Everything smelled so good in there, even her shoes. I loved to curl up on the floor and go to sleep. It was the one place he’d never find me. The last place he’d look. The one place I could relax and make the stomachs go away.
It was one of many times she talked to me through the door…. her way of allowing me to be there if I was quiet
but this was one bad time.it was after a very bad beating I got.they were getting worse and it did feel he meant to kill me but she was drinking ….she didn’t do that. Not in any overt way. But this time —she had a glass of wine and it was in a beautiful glass. She had the bottle too. And she dumped more into the glass….she said to me, “don’t plan on getting a college degree— you can kiss your dreams goodbye—don’t worry, I’ll keep you as my lapdog….” and the said nothing more and emptied her glass in two gulps.
I never saw her that way ever. That was the only time. But now. Only now. Do I know what she meant.
I know there is much more through that door I heard. Those are the horrors of my dreams
earlier in the diary pages of the dictionary :
I realize now that I blocked these memories. You see? Firstly, I was told they never happened; secondly, it was painful of the loss of it and agony to dream of it and know it was —not real?or not meant to be for me ….that family we were to have ….been; the three of us….the sand, the sea, the sea weed, shells on the shore, sea salt air and falling asleep
the fear that I should have created such an amazing dream of my own …. I did think I was insane then. As a child —I thought it was possible I was mad —so I had to stop thinking ever again about ….him …. the one in that voice read me those brear rabbit stories
I had to forget. Had to. Or go mad for sure
She …. would play the Jamaican tin drum music for hours ….when it was just me and her at home
The secret was real. And it was dangerous. Who I am was dangerous then and could still be so; the secret is real. I heard about when they caught a photo of them together. It was going to be front page. Imagine? Who he was! But he called the editor of the paper and had words. He could do that. He did. Many times my mother almost got caught with him in a photo but he knew all the right people. But there is one detail that I recall which —is too specific to have dreamed myself. It was something he said to me and not just once…. He said, “do you know how amazing your mother is? Do you have any idea how fabulous a woman she is and that I adore more than any other!” And I remember thinking as a child “wow—that other dad doesn’t talk about her that way at all ….” And I suppose it is his fault I’ve always been searching for that ….
I think once I blocked it and it was buried deep things thst later came never added up because I stopped remembering they ever happened
But now I do the rewind back —there’s a story there
a story I forgot —what is it ….is it my story ? my story —my story —that one we cannot tell …..
She’s standing there….see….waiting still there, little fool, someone hit her in the head with a ball
There were other signs too but so much happened. So much was going on. And even now …..it is too much to take under the microscope of thought as I feel the mind’s defense start to build its fuzzy walls within my thoughts
