by Susan Hahn
She also decided that however interesting the pump action of the Remington 820 shotgun was—the one that had been pointed at Celine—she preferred the Colt semiautomatic pistol. It looked just like the one Uncle Abraham—Cecily’s father—had from World War II, which Cecily had shown to her, Celine, and Cecilia. Celie also thought the handgun could be carried so easily in her purse, unlike the other, which looked like it would need at least a violin case.
She learned from the man behind the counter that the shotgun was more successful in scaring a person and, if need be, more accurate for hitting the target. “The shotgun shells—their spray—would be better for someone inexperienced, better than a single bullet.” But to her the pistol seemed a more private purchase. “The shotgun,” she told him, “seems too glamorous,” which made the man with the reptilian skin grin at her. She was more than happy to take the slip of paper he offered with the addresses of firearm ranges where she could practice once her application had cleared, which she had convinced herself it would.
After she completed it, the shop’s photographer—a strong, pretty, young woman—positioned Celie in front of a screen to take her picture. When both the man and the photographer questioned her as to exactly why she wanted a gun—Had there been some trouble where she lived? Was someone bothering her?—she quickly answered, “For protection. I live alone.” She had practiced these words in front of her medicine cabinet mirror for days. But still, when she had to say them for real, her voice cracked, which embarrassed her, and she blushed. The effect this had on the man and the young woman was to focus even more on helping her. They would remember her seriousness, her politeness, her vulnerability.
Celie, however, did not notice this, so intense she had become on learning more and more about guns, for with this knowledge came the growing, exciting reality that the plan to kill Herr M was truly in motion. She could do this. She had thought of sending letters to the university about him, telling the administration about the terrible things he had done, and one to his live-in girlfriend, a woman who had escaped from Castro’s Cuba as a small child and was now teaching at the university. She had more degrees than any three people and kept winning awards with large sums of money attached for her writings on nonviolence—an irony not lost on Celie. But in the end the letter idea did not seem powerful enough. It did not settle her, could not clip off even a corner of her upset.
Now that she had figured out what she really needed to do, she felt she was on a religious mission—her own crusade—her Christian purpose, as she began to call it to herself, although she still considered herself a Jew. Through the years religion had become a mixed-up thing to her, like so many of her thoughts, just a jumble of ideas.
But with this purpose there came a sacredness. To kill an evil man seemed a good thing and certainly equal to what any Slaughter had accomplished. Suddenly, to Celie, being the most beautiful, the most talented, the most popular, the smartest, the richest, all the mosts she had grown up with, seemed so small and superficial against her own assignment.
She was no longer just doing this because of what Herr M had done to Cecilia, but also because of what he had done to her—Celie—which she knew was odd. Herr M was rapidly becoming a symbol for everyone who had hurt her—a trigger for her escalating emotions caused by all the people who had pushed at her for more and then for more again and added to this, all the people who had pushed at her mother, Aunt Esther.
While being positioned for the photograph—her mission becoming so real—she remembered a poem Cecilia had written especially for her when she was almost ten and Cecilia twelve and she smiled, which she really would rather not have done in a photograph for such a purchase.
She and Cecilia had never wanted to go to the family-mandated Friday night services at their new, fancy suburban temple, so they tried to figure out different ways—alternative ways—they might please God. One Friday night at the Shabbat service, Cecilia handed Celie a folded piece of paper during the silent prayer. Celie read it and burst into uncontrollable laughter. Both she and Cecilia were quickly ushered out of the sanctuary and later paid heavily with solemn and harsh lectures from their parents, both rabbis (junior and senior), and the cantor and as punishment made to go to even more Shabbat services—the summer ones, from which until this time they had been exempt.
As Celie stood there staring back at the small camera she said, quite inadvertently, out loud, “If I Set up the Chairs.” The young woman photographer said, “What?” To which Celie replied, startled by how the words had just fallen out of her mouth, “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of something—something I have to do.” She then took a deep breath, her face gleaming, and silently repeated the poem to the lens of the camera, as if it were the eye of God.
When the people come in to pray
they’ll need somewhere to sit.
I’ll be the one to help them stay
while they make some sense of it.
And when they are done
and go home fully blessed,
I’ll be the one
to clean up what’s messed.
Will that be equal enough
to what they do,
if I do this stuff
will it satisfy You?
For Celie, repeating Cecilia’s lines, which had been handed to her in the temple so many years ago, to the camera, it seemed as if the eye of God truly had winked at her, although it was just the shutter on the lens. Of course she knew this, but she also believed it was more too. Cecilia had taught her about metaphor—how one kind of object or idea could be used in place of another to suggest a likeness between them. Plus, Cecily was always talking about subtext—the importance of it in the plays she wrote. How under the dialogue were all the unspoken motives and beliefs of the characters—the truth as to what was really intended.
Consequently, for Celie standing there having herself photographed for the gun application became a much larger thing and she calmed more than she ever had with any of the medications given to her by any doctor. When the strong, young woman told her she was finished and everything would now be processed, Celie bowed her head as she had done many times in temple as a child, when the rabbi removed the Torah from the ark, and the law of God, with all its commandments, was about to be read. For the first time she felt aglow and anchored and religious.
When Celie arrives beneath the ground she will have to learn how to slowly rid herself of her angers by listening to the music here, especially the clear, pure bells. Eventually I will take her to visit Lao Tzu and she will come to understand his words:
Weapons are the tools of violence and all decent men detest them.
She will come to appreciate this because Celie is a good person and always will be, no matter what she thinks or does.
However, when Celine arrives, she will likely stay locked in her above-the-ground mind-set and not be interested in what is possible to learn from our unending journey. She will probably gravitate to the large circle of narcissists who pock the underground and stay forever fascinated with themselves—fastened to their vanities—never to spiral up and out of the mirror of their own stories.
Celine’s preoccupation with herself definitely peaked that day in the gun shop, where she continued busying herself staring at all the different knives in the large display case by the entrance to the shop—their various elongated, curved shapes. She thought of all the men she had known and the various elongated, curved shapes of their private parts. How Lew had once traced the curves of her body with the sharp edge of a small steak knife—over her fully plucked, shaved, waxed, naked skin—and how much it had aroused her. When he had called the next day to ask her if she were “still marked,” this had stimulated her even more as she took off her robe, carried the phone to her mirror, described to him what she saw, and touched herself with great excitement.
She also stared at the handcuffs, with which she was quite familiar. Lew liked to use them on her. This excited her too. She thought about how they would g
iggle over buying more “equipment.” It made them feel devilish, like their particular affair was more special than anyone’s—ever.
She looked at the various kinds of ropes in another case and remembered how Morris kept asking if he could “watch”—watch her with another woman—and how she finally gave in to his request—a birthday present to him, of sorts. That day Morris arrived with some rope and he bound her wrists so she was helpless. Then the woman did all kinds of things to her. The only thing Morris told Celine to do was to suck the woman’s breasts. She thought it best not to admit to Morris how much she had enjoyed it, how much it had aroused her. Afterward, however, she worried a lot about what her father, Emmanuel, would have thought of her participation in this, given his issues with such behavior. Then, she pushed this idea out of her head because of the fact that he was dead.
She is fairly quiet about such goings-on that Morris continues to increasingly insist upon and especially about how much she looks forward to each excursion, just pretends she is doing him an enormous favor for which he greatly rewards her with another eighteen-carat object.
With all these items surrounding her, Celine smiled as she wondered whether any of her cousins were capable of such adventures and concluded they were not, no matter how violent and strange the language sometimes was in Cecilia’s poems or how reckless—in a mannered way—Cecily tried to make herself look. And, of course, thinking about Celie in any area of experimentation was hopeless.
“Poor, frightened, nervous Celie,” she thought as she looked over at her cousin. But as she stared at her, Celine was stunned. For the first time she could remember, Celie looked rather lovely and calm—almost euphoric. It made Celine even happier that she had so willingly agreed to go on this adventure. That among these weapons and items for bondage, both of them had found some pleasure. And being Celine, she saw no problem in any of this.
SMALL GREEN
I do not go away, but the Grounds are ample—almost travel—.
Emily Dickinson
She’s tried Jungian, Freudian, Transactional
Analyses, even Rolfing, the instructor’s knuckles
kneading her skin, fingers pushing up
her nose, fists down
her throat, his dog barking
next to him. She’ll tell you the issues
have lodged themselves in her connective tissue
or confide in you about the therapist
who lies in his Naugahyde recliner,
the rips in it camouflaged with masking
tape to keep the stuffing from popping,
and the day he reached deep inside
himself, pulled out his own
caked-on secret, showed it
to her, and how she fled—
because she knew for him there was no cure—
to a braless humanist who played Hindu
music and had her pound
a battered paisley pillow and yell
about her mother and father.
Acquainted with every pamphleteer, she’s anchored
herself to a small green chair and watches
neighbors pack their cars for summer travel,
longs to go anywhere, always prepares a bag
twice—once for luck, once to be ready—
and when she doesn’t leave, she runs out
to buy the latest self-help book and slowly returns
each folded item to its own familiar shelf.
c. slaughter
CECILY KNEW THAT her call to Deidre would surprise and perplex her. But she also knew that Deidre would be confused and upset—actually furious and humiliated—after her lunch with Cecilia and Celine.
Celine had promised to immediately report to Cecily what had happened at the lunch and she kept to that promise. Cecily knows that Celine carries around a certain amount of guilt—at least as much as Celine is capable of—from the rumor her father started about her so many years ago, and that Celine’s given her far too much information about her escapades with men (and women). Celine clearly talks to Cecily in a much more explicit way than to anyone else in the family, maybe because Cecily’s considered on the fringes of the cousin clique—pretty much always has been. My parents certainly pushed Cecily aside after Manny’s statement about her and how it spread throughout the community. They could not tolerate any gossip that worked against them or the family, which they pretty much considered one and the same.
Celine always prefaces what she says to Cecily with a nervous giggle and these words, “Cecily, promise me you’ll not put this in a play.” “Of course,” Cecily always replies. But Celine does worry a bit that Cecily has too much information about her and this does make her a little anxious, which works well for Cecily, for it allows her to ask favors of Celine and get information about the family she otherwise would not have.
Cecily was right. When she called Deidre as soon as she arrived home, Deidre seemed disoriented not only by what she had just experienced, but also by Cecily’s invitation to take her to lunch in a few weeks. She did not want Deidre to feel she was crowding in on her, so giving her some time between lunches seemed a good tactic. At first Deidre said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m tired. Really tired.” Cecily responded, “I understand,” in her most empathetic voice and then enthusiastically said, “We’ll have a good time! I promise. You’ll see. Anyway, it’s not right now.” Deidre hesitated, then agreed with a wishy-washy, exhausted, “Okay—I guess.”
Like Deidre, Cecily was fed up with the suburban writing groups she had attended and felt far more talented than those women and the occasional retired man who would wander in and within the year die or just disappear. They would gossip too much about successful writers, rather than focus on the language that brought these people their honors. Also, they were sticky friendly to each other—until one got published. Sure, they were outwardly excited for the person, but, no matter how minor the magazine from which the acceptance arrived, when the happy writer left the room, their tongues would turn to swords, which they drove into the work of the temporarily high-spirited, absent one.
Cecily knew she deserved better than these women who would just as soon pass their time bragging about their children’s accomplishments or, better yet, their husbands’ promotions, or in their worst moments, the best sales going on at the high-end shopping mall. They continuously flattered each other’s work as long as the playing field was level—the unspoken code was that no one could stand on any stepstool of success, no matter how low it was to the ground.
There was one woman who started to achieve some outside recognition, which she knew to keep to herself. Then she suddenly left the group. Ultimately, she moved away. When she disappeared, they mocked her work a lot, especially after her writing started to appear frequently in high level literary magazines. Such was this atmosphere. Interestingly, however, they all adored Cecilia. She was their backyard star. Cecilia sightings were always discussed. This made Cecily nauseous, but she kept her feelings to herself, pretending how much she, too, adored her cousin. She had to admit they did treat her quite well because she was related to Cecilia, although this, also, made her sick. Right before she left—at the last session she attended—Deidre showed up as the new person. Cecily could tell from the look in her eyes that Deidre really did not want to be there either.
Cecily had recently quit her therapist, Dr. Mann, who in truth was a stupid man. He incessantly bragged about himself, taking up at least ten collective minutes during a session to tell about his comings and goings or some psychiatric paper he or some other therapist had delivered at a conference. The one paper that sticks in my mind the most was about Sylvia Plath and that most likely she had PMS and if she had only gotten an early diagnosis, she could have been saved. I hated how he spoke so authoritatively about this talented, dead woman’s innards.
It seemed to me a worse intrusion than being alive and discussed in such a way. Clearly I identified too much with the possibility of this. It was as if someone were ba
rging into my life, my story—reimagining the facts of it with me too far away, completely unable to explain or fight back. My total frustration over this proved, once again, I still had more work to do on myself in the art of letting go of what anyone says or does above the ground.
Sometimes Dr. Mann would describe some recent trip he had taken with his wife to what he thought was “a really fancy place”—while Cecily would be thinking, “Yes, on my nickel.” Or he would attempt to critique some highbrow art movie he had just seen, straining to be the quintessential intellectual. He even kept out a blurry newspaper clipping of himself with four other aging, bald men—all therapists, at a meeting of little consequence—for months on the coffee table in front of where his patients sat, so no one could miss it. It was distracting and Cecily, like I am sure anyone who saw it, felt obliged to say, “Oh my, what is this? Is that you?” When this not-so-subliminal script was presented to Cecily, it prompted a ten-minute discussion on the circumstances of the photograph, during which he became too animated, causing his face to swell and become garishly bright, so that he looked like a red balloon blown up to the very brink of orgasmic explosion.
Cecily felt that Deidre was definitely a better person with whom to speak and someone who could be of far greater use to her than he. Anyway, he already did not approve of so much of her behavior, nor would he have of what she now had in mind. Actually, he would have been appalled. Anyone would have been. Here his appraisal would have been focused and accurate.
She picked the same place—the Arts Club—as Cecilia had chosen. She wanted Deidre to remember how badly she had been treated. It was a large part of her plan. Cecily was already there when she arrived. Deidre looked more worn out than Cecily had remembered. Cecily stood up as she came over and shook her hand and said, “How happy I am that we’re finally, officially meeting. That awful writers’ group really didn’t count.” They both nodded their heads in agreement. Cecily gave her the enthusiastic focus she knew she had not received from Cecilia, or for that matter Celine, for Celine, as she reported it, had been instructed by Celie “to just talk about myself a lot.”