by Gary Soto
GARY SOTO
Why I Don’t Write Children’s Literature
(and other stories)
ForeEdge
ForeEdge
An imprint of
University Press of New England
www.upne.com
© 2015 Gary Soto
All rights reserved
Frontispiece photo by Douglas K. Hill,
doughillphoto.com
For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953855
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61168-711-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61168-712-5
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
A River Runs Through It
Losing Your Place
Hard-Boiled Eggs
In Praise Of Daylight Savings
Words We Don’t Know
You Wear It Well
A Night Out
Walking With Oral Lee Brown
Bad Start
The Family Fortune
Why Do I Remember This?
Rice
Cupcakes
Slow Learner
Wells, England
Why I Stopped Writing Children’s Literature
Play Going
Shakespeare & Me
Haggling Over Watermelons
Mexican Migrant
Expiration Date
Work Force
The Palmist
How Does A Poet Answer This?
Someone You Loathe
Naps
The FBI
Paraphrase
Committee Meetings
Q & A
This Be Love
Oakland, California: Girls With Guns
A Dog Story Featuring Geese
The Crowd Inside Me
Gina
The Bust Of A Poet
Business Calls
The Seal Of Approval
Man Cave
The Things We Say
What Would You Give?
My Time At The Marsh
Dance With Me
Thirteen Stereotypes About Poets
Snarky
Homage
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of these pieces first appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Guardian (UK), the Huffington Post, Packing House Review, Readers Digest, and Santa Monica Review.
The author wishes to thank Peter Fong, Michelle Hope, and Carolyn Soto for their editorial suggestions.
This book is for Emily Klion, musician, theatrical producer, and friend.
A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
In my effort at guerilla gardening, I manage a street median outside High Street Presbyterian Church in Oakland’s Fruitvale District, where a strip of undernourished soil flows and bends up that long, severely littered street. As I am a member of this church with a mostly aged congregation, I would like the congregants to admire a beautiful lushness when they exit. God knows, in this area of Oakland, we have little beauty but plenty of dispiriting clutter — what’s with that mattress leaning against a mailbox all about? And what trucka (truck) did that filthy sofa fall from?
I’ve enjoyed gardens small and large, public and private, new and old, kept and unkempt, native and non-native. My last jaunt was to view gardens within the old walls of the City of London — Noble Street Gardens; St. Olave, Silver Street; St. Alphage Garden; St. Mary Staining; Postman’s Park; Christchurch Greyfriars; and the Barbican. Maintained by city workers and volunteers in lime-colored reflective vests, these pocket plots, stamp-size in relation to some of the world’s gardens, benefit citizens, tourists, and civil servants, plus the frantic insect world. In short, they give pleasure. How could we frown at a moist bed of pansies, some red, some yellow, as they do their best to hold their faces up in the city wind?
I harbor inside me a wish to create a garden where passersby will slow, reflect on my anonymous handiwork, and believe the world a great place. Am I naïve? Litter, I find, still creeps along this Oakland street. Tire-marked french fries are pressed into asphalt. Condoms, with frightening bubbles locked inside, must be shoveled with a discarded plastic spoon into a plastic bag. This I do, not so much with disgust but relief that the young — and old — are practicing safe sex.
Why not plant daffodils, I asked myself, a common enough plant — though their springtime careers are as short as those of ballerinas. In October 2011, I bought sixty bulbs from American Meadows, generic types with names like King Alfred, Golden Ducat, Dutch Master, Tête-à-Tête, and Miniature Cheerfulness — yes, Miniature Cheerfulness, a daffodil that expressed my motive. I kept one sack of bulbs in the garage and another in the fridge, as required for money-back, guaranteed success. On a cool November day, my buddy David Ruenzel and I dug mole-like holes into dry earth. We scooted bulbs into the holes, sprinkled fertilizer on them, and covered them with a layer of potting soil. We didn’t really know what we were doing; we just assumed that a buried bulb is a good bulb, provided it was set with its tip up. We watered them by hand, as recommended by the catalog, and poked wooden chopsticks into the ground to mark our plantings. And God favored our unselfish Christian effort because, in January, they began to appear. Up King Alfred, I sang, up Golden Ducat and Tête-à-Tête. And you, Miniature Cheerfulness, why are you teasing us with your lateness? In spite of the constant barrage of litter, the street became instantly more beautiful, eye candy for older men like me. But I realized immediately that sixty flowers is hardly any display at all. What was I thinking? The median needed the colorful madness of more.
The next year, for an annual fee of ten dollars, I joined the Northern California Daffodil Society, proof that I’m now entering another stage of life. The first meeting was at the Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore, and the members were debating a small point in their mission statement when I arrived. The debate was serious, I guessed, because none of the members greeted me. True, their eyes lifted to acknowledge my quiet presence, but no hearty hellos followed. Engaged with the issue on the floor, they were single-minded in arriving at consensus. Thus, I sat in a folding chair with my hands on my lap and did my best to suppress a yawn — the discussion reminded me of a heady English faculty meeting. As the matter came to a close, the members stood up, stretched, then locked their eyes on me. I was greeted by smiles and handshakes.
I helped myself to coffee in a Styrofoam cup and, after a few minutes of mingling, returned to my folding chair. I was given a paddle to hold up if I wished to bid on heirloom daffodil bulbs, some of them forty dollars a shot. Costly little babes, I thought. When the auction was done, however, I came away with Polly’s Pearl, Goddess Chispa, Earlicher, Bravoure, Golden Dawn, Fragrant Rose, Storyteller — bulbs that meant nothing to me at the moment but indicated to the other members my willingness to open my wallet. I was ready to join their enchanted lunacy! What was twenty dollars to me? Forty dollars? Sixty dollars? (These specialty bulbs were devalued as soon I returned home. I told my wife that I got them for a dollar each, not wanting to give her permission to go wild with jewelry purchases.)
The bulbs would go into my personal garden and prove to be colorful showstoppers, friendly depots for bees and, yes, prizewinners in February’s show. Once a radical Chicano poet with shoulder-length hair, I would earn six ribbons for my daffodils, including Best in Show for Small Grower! These ribbons would be kept in my desk drawer, out of the light, for I wouldn’t want them to fade. I might want to have them framed someday.
But that success was months away. After the meeting in Livermore, I scanned the Internet for more afforda
ble varieties from American Meadows, fifty-per-bag assortments. For the street median, it didn’t matter if the bulbs were the princely sort, with pedigrees; I was interested in a massive display that would shock neighbors and bystanders and give hope to Presbyterians. That fall I dug in the median alone, nearly two hundred small holes. My gopher-like ambition grew as I clawed at the resistant earth. My fingernails became dark moons of grit, my neck sunburned, my eyelashes covered in dust. Dime-size sweat dropped from my face into the dry dirt. With a shovel, I cut short the lives of bitter weeds, warning them not to come back. Next time around I would be armed with Roundup, a true gangster.
One day a Mini Cooper pulled up to the median and honked. A young woman craned her head out the window and yelled, “Hey.” Having responded many times in my life to “Hey,” I walked slowly to the car with a trowel in my hand. Bending over with my hands on my knees, I saw a young woman with a very short dress, bare legs, and white panties similar to the daffodil called Ice Follies, $13.95 for a bag of eight. I caught myself assessing her Ice Follies, then swiveled my eyes back to her face, mouth red as Flanders poppies, eyelids blue as hyacinth.
“How can I help you?” I asked.
“We looking for the cannabis,” she said.
Two cars passed, honking, the drivers maddened at the back end of the Mini Cooper, which was jutting into the street.
“What?” I responded. “What’s that?” I winced in confusion, thinking, Jesus, maybe I need a hearing aid — like my wife says I do.
“We’re looking,” she began again, as another car swerved around us, “We be looking for the canna — ”
That’s when her friend, a girl as tall as a giraffe in that squat car, leaned over and said, “Daddy, the cannabis club. You know it? Suppose to be off Thirty-fifth.” Her dress was very short too, but her panties were pinkish, like the dazzling beauty called Pink Charm, $6.98 for a bag of eight.
“A cannabis club!” I said, chagrinned not by the question but by the fact that the women in the car were not actually lost and I, a citizen volunteering for the betterment of Oakland, was not going to be able to help them hook up with some righteous medical marijuana.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I answered, standing straight up and backing away. My trowel, I realized, was bright as a chrome handgun. At that point I should have scratched my old man’s scalp, maybe even smacked my lips to suggest that my dentures were at home in a jam jar.
The Mini Cooper pulled away, the sassy women laughing. As I returned to work, the sky was dark and heavy, promising rain. The newly planted daffodils could use a natural shower, I thought, an autumn blessing.
It stormed that evening and all the next day, rain tapping on my roof, rain tapping roofs all over Oakland. Four months later, at the beginning of February, my daffodils began to emerge, the flirty Pink Charms and Ice Follies the first to swagger in the cool spring air. From the right distance, even the ever-present litter resembled flowers.
LOSING YOUR PLACE
On the first Sunday of Lent, I arrive late to service, hat dotted with rain, my overcoat on my arm. I enter the sanctuary quietly while the congregation sings, “O Emmanuel,” the solemnity working on my soul within seconds. I know this Protestant church, and I know the members, all thirty. They are mostly adults, some infirm, others recovering from injuries, almost all without gainful employment.
One gentleman with his sweater buttons in the wrong holes grips the back of a pew and lifts himself up. He brings the Bible to his face. Instead of reading the assigned passage from Luke, he mumbles through Mark. No one interrupts until the deacon struggles to her ancient feet and, with the help of a cane, approaches him. He continues reading until she tugs his sleeve. Then he looks up, his eyes like pale-blue fish behind his eyeglasses.
“What?” his face says, confused.
The deacon whispers, “Wrong verse, Henry.”
With her help, he locates the correct page and passage. The deacon’s long fingernails are pale as candle wax. He rewets his lips, stubborn as the old can be. He’s going to get it right this time. Face close again to the page, he reads the correct passage. He grins at us after he finishes.
“This morning,” he says, “I read more scripture than you deserve.”
HARD-BOILED EGGS
On a bright Monday morning, I received a letter from the MacArthur Foundation, which is known for its “genius awards” and the jealousy they create, as in: “How the hell did he get a prize for that drivel! The dude can’t even spell!” The envelope had arrived along with a few bills, some advertisements, and Better Homes and Gardens. I pleated my brow, wondering what the foundation could want from me, when it already had the huge dump truck that goes around unloading $250,000 to $500,000 on awardees’ lawns. I would have opened the letter at once except for the hard-boiled eggs rattling for my attention. I made my way to the kitchen, spooned two eggs out of the pan, and set them in a white bowl with ice. For a creative second, this reminded me of conceptual art, the kind of arrangement that might have gotten you an MFA in the 1970s.
Then I returned to the letter, eager to see if it was my time. When had a foundation, large or small, ever written to me? But I can’t spell either! Maybe I was at the front of the line. Outside the kitchen window, however, no laden truck cast a shadow across my lawn. And there was no guy with a clipboard at my door, asking, “You’re Soto — right? Sign here.” Just two robins pulling stringy grubs from the lawn.
I opened the letter, made dutifully ragged by my excitement, and read the first paragraph. The foundation was asking if I could scout around, ninja-like, for individuals who might deserve lots of money for their creative work — music, art, poetry, fiction, etc. They had their dump truck idling not far away, the bundled twenties piled on pallets. I could write back — hush, hush, they recommended — with names. They would do the rest.
Deserving people? They were on every dirty corner, living in bushes, for Pete’s sake, and sustaining themselves, like saints, on crackers. When I heard the toaster pop, I went back into the kitchen. A question mark of smoke rose from the toaster’s grills. I buttered my slightly burnt toast and peered at my two Humpty Dumpty eggs, still steaming among the ice cubes. I took them from the bowl and tapped their crowns. The shells broke into shards and I peeled them, artistically. I spread my toast with jam. I rained salt and pepper on the eggs, blew on them, and made my way to the sofa. There, I picked up the first egg between thumb and index finger and bit — the center was fully cooked. I let a portion of it lay on my tongue (it was hot) before chomping a few times. I bit into my toast — O, the little crescent of a smile! I returned to the kitchen for chili flakes, for that perfect south-of-the-border experience.
I feasted on my morning meal while marveling, through my reading glasses, at the foundation’s stationery — so formal, so educated, so authoritative. The signature was sort of muscular and most certainly from a fountain pen — a nice touch. I should get stationery with my name on the top, I thought. I sighed, remembering that I don’t possess the grace of artful penmanship. I should have listened to the nuns when I was in grade school. I imagined the letter’s author, properly educated, with a PhD’s regalia in his closet, seated in a nice office with a Norman Rockwell on the wall. No, I corrected myself, not Rockwell: Frank Stella. Shelved along the walls were leather-bound books by philosophers who had lived on onions and wept over their failures. In the background, a Bose sound system played a sonata by a composer dead three centuries.
In my own office, I revisited a poem about first love. The poem was meant to stir young couples into love — or at least to make them horny. It had been in my file for more than a year and I was seeking good lines to pilfer and cobble into a new work. But then I got sidetracked by a lone cuff link I found in my desk drawer. I began a search for its mate, my hands clawing like a convict’s through rubble. I ended the quest after noticing a shard of eggshell on the cuff of my sweater. It took three seconds to detach the shard and ten more seconds to conc
lude that the two poems, new and old, were both anemic efforts, not worth the trouble. I flipped the cuff link like a coin into the drawer.
Back in the kitchen, I re-read the MacArthur Foundation’s letter. Because of its formality — and because I had a hunch that my opinion would be just one among many — I didn’t bother to write back, supply names, or hint, “Hey, what about me?” The foundation, in turn, never wrote to me again. Since then, I’ve cracked hundreds of boiled eggs, looking out my picture window, where I can see a lake, some placid deer munching their daily rations, and a stand of trees. Anyone who lives in Berkeley would recognize this as a million-dollar view. Soon, the genius of daffodils will add even more beauty to our yard and the Japanese maple, presently denuded, will unfurl its leaves like newly printed fifty-dollar bills.
IN PRAISE OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
Last week I pulled from the shelf Gombrich’s A Little History of the World and was charmed by the clear writing and the easy-to-absorb erudition. I sought out this book because I’m preparing myself for daylight savings time, when the day ends just behind a line of trees and the stars appear before I set out the soupspoons for dinner. The cat will claw and meow at the front door. If he gets no response, he will cry at the back door. The heater, rumbling below, will send warmed air upward through three ducts until it reaches me in my comfy leather chair.
Is it too late to learn more about ancient history? I’m already acquainted with Neanderthals, those lumbering foresters who kept their distance from humans. They resembled us but were hairier, had stronger jaws for chomping on bones, and were shorter and thicker in build, like running backs. They were from the valley of Neander in what is now Germany. They mated without romance and died in blizzards or from tumbling off cliffs in search of rabbits, long-horned deer, and edible roots anchored in ice-hard earth. The Neanderthals invented tools: sticks to hold rabbits over a fire, stone axes to break the snouts of onrushing bears.