"Starting a New Hobby"

(1998---Ellsbeth speaks)

On the day my father is scheduled to die, my mother drives him to the hospital.

I wait at home, in the basement. Geraldine, from Shangri-La, down the road, lets herself in. She surveys my mess, picks up scattered bows and wrapping paper, tape, scissors,wrenches, hammers, puts them in piles.

I stop her, saying, "You can’t do this without supervision! You don’t know where things go!"

Geraldine shakes her hands in helpless agitation.

"We can’t clean now," I say, "my mother is due home from my father’s death."

Geraldine stands at the dryer folding laundry, as if it were any other day. But aching inertia puddles in my bones, making my hands, feet, belly and heart too heavy to budge.

A blue car turns into the driveway. "Here's my mother now," I say, and coming unstuck, I walk out through racks of photo-developing equipment. Geraldine follows. My father, on the night before his death, must have stayed up late preparing these. "These are for me," I tell Geraldine smugly. She looks puzzled. Worried.

I hurry to meet my mother, who comes in through the basement. My father comes in behind her. I inhale sharply, surprised. I study his profile and his flared nostrils, recognize him from the way he would look in his casket: dark, pockmarked, emaciated.

He frowns at Geraldine, hisses in the cracked voice of my estranged husband, she’s smelly, obese, retarded. Because I thought my father and his judgements would be gone by now, I don’t make Geraldine leave. But I'm afraid to defend her, he looks so fierce.

The photo equipment is not for me, but for my father, who is starting a new hobby. He packs his supplies and accessories. I accompany him, swarthy and silent, to catch a bus headed for the city. The bus is made of couches on wheels tied together, each jammed with people. I climb onto a trundle seat that comes out from under my father's seat to the side like a motorcycle sidecar.

Geraldine waves and waves as we drive off, still waving until she's a speck on the far horizon. A huge emptiness swallows her up. When we get to the city, my father gets off, walks away, and doesn't look back. I try to take his seat, but my hips are too wide to fit between the passengers.
They scowl, grumble and shove over to make room for me.

(Mary Stebbins Taitt---------- 080301)

"Belinda's Price"

Her chosen grave before him, Paddy brought his shovel down
And pierced the breast of Ireland to prise it from the ground.
He lift his eyes to heaven and he cried out sad and clear:
"Oh Lourd, why take Belinda and her Spirit from us here?"

"Ah, Lourd," prayed sturdy Paddy, "ye have giv'n us this Earth
And all which grows upon it and beneath, for what it's worth,
But why did ye see fit to give us poor Belinda May
If only as a flower seven years and snatched away?

"What did she in her little life not holy in your Sight?
What sin had she committed? None! so what gave you the right
To take her back untimely? Well, for taking her away,
I take this stand...I'll be god-damned if I won't make You pay!

"Belinda's Price from You, oh Lourd, is lasting Peace on Earth;
My price for her removal is redemption from our curse!
You may not wish to pay this price, but I say all the same...
My name is Paddy Donnell, and by God I make the claim!"

The blessed Moon, in crescent, like a silver scimitar
Slid sideways through a smoky sky and left behind a scar.
A Star shone through that rifted cloud of midnight in the mist
And took a fair position over Paddy's outflung fist.

And Lo! a Voice, a Rumble, like a thousand raining stones
In tumble down a mountainside in mashing, crashing moans
As if from many miles away, yet to one ears are borne
Such came the Voice of God to Paddy, answering his scorn:

"I hear ye, brother Paddy, oh ye simple, foolish man...
I hear ye as ye bellow badly, questioning my Plan
Such arrogance as you display deserves no recompense
But as I am a gracious God, to PEACE I will consent..."

And from that moment all the people, land to burning land,
Cast off from war and fighting, and instead began again
To take this World and make it in the Image of Above,
And drown all hate in charity, in hope, and faith, and love.

And children gathered flowers, woven in a grateful garland,
And in Belinda's memory they danced the fields of Ireland.
And Irish mothers smiled on them, and knew, forevermore
Their sons would be no sacrifice to foolishness of war.

By Paddy's sons' and brothers' toil a monument was raised:
A "Statue of Belinda", carved and placed above her grave.
And every morn about it were a thousand petals flung!
And everywhere those blossoms fell, a thousand seedlings sprung.

But what of Paddy, father, left to ponder what God wrought?
Well, after many months had passed, with Peace at long last bought,
He pined for poor Belinda, and her blessed presence lost,
And in the end he muttered, "Lourd, it wasn't worth the cost."

"How Uncle Jake was First to Fly the Transatlantic"

(Driving Aldy and Geraldine to the Pediatrician, 1969)

This buggy can fly! England, you say? France? Where's that doctor at, Gerry? Aldy? Do you know?

Look at her purr through the clouds--- mushrooms and magic separate the skyway into shimmering layers, dancing through each other---kelp in the tide, ribbons in a breeze, living
strands of DNA unwinding across itself---sticky---

The shining keeps slipping. Here, hold the wheel for me, Geradine!

Simultaneously I want to be more me and more "not-me." If more me is more not-me, why, when I try to speak clearly, do these words and not-words disintegrate into such gibberish?

"You don't understand me? Come along. Watch the "me"'-selves and the "not-me"'-selves split and crawl along their various skyways. The Not-me's chant---"Don't go so slowly! Someone might notice! We'll fly!" Burn up the sky, Geraldine! Don't worry sweetie---

WHUMP! Whazzat? Out here in the ether, I watch the body police attempting to reassemble
the Not-me's back into something they recognize. Some of the me's-or-not-me keel over, laughing.

"Pretty funny, isn't it Gerry? Even Aldy agrees. Listen to him chortle! Just not that big. The rest of us Me's notice the texture of the bark on this tree that holds this cumpled car, the dark
spaces inhabiting the light, the gaps between the policeman's teeth. We flow through his clenched fist like honey--sweet, sweet on some laughing, layered tongue. That's one rough runway, crew!"

--------------------(a story newly penned by Mary Taitt)