Stone Mirrors

by Jeannine Atkins

  Her hands shape stone,

  which shapes the story she means to tell

  with whatever the stone knew all along.

  Reaching its inner planes, she listens

  for a shift of sound that may warn of a weak spot.

  She stays alert for the slight changes

  in how her chisel enters.

  One slip of her hand, a lapse of attention,

  can make the rock startle apart,

  fracture weeks of work into a maze.

  A stone can break

  like mirrors or history.

  She can’t ever look away.

  Tightrope

  When she hears a call from the doorway

  —E permeso?—Edmonia steps out of the dust

  that clouds her eyes, leaves grit under her teeth,

  between her fingers, behind her ears, tangled in her hair.

  She greets a couple dressed in fine clothing,

  then stands as still as the art they circle.

  Some want mementos of honorable men.

  Others prefer sprites and imps

  with no message but foolishness or joy.

  They glance from the small statues to her,

  looking for tales to take home.

  Some faces flicker with surprise and efforts to hide it.

  Some spill praise. Others offer advice,

  or say, She’s young. True art takes time.

  Edmonia straightens to keep her balance

  between presumption’s batter and swing.

  A Way Back

  Months have different names, but through the times

  of Snow Crust, Broken Snowshoes, then Maple-Sugar-Making,

  Edmonia hunches over her work the way her aunts had

  over baskets woven of rumor, nostalgia, and some truth.

  One afternoon, a wealthy widow with two homes

  to decorate orders a marble statue of Minnehaha

  bidding her father good-bye.

  Edmonia’s hands smell like a riverbank

  as she rehearses expressions in soft, changeable clay,

  which soothes her palms.

  Then holding the vision of a face, she steps

  toward a great block of marble. She swings a mallet

  onto a thick, pointed chisel. She cuts away coarse layers

  toward imagination’s strong, sure lines.

  Slowly she sees a Sioux man carving arrowheads

  just before his daughter leaves everything

  she knows to live among the Ojibwe.

  Two figures in one stone double the risks.

  But she loves the heft of the chisel,

  the scent and taste on her tongue of soft warm dust,

  the sting as small chips bounce off her skin,

  the clamor she creates. As a face’s features emerge,

  it takes more effort to tap more gently. She knows

  she’s near the end when her breath flows

  smoothly as a needle through deerskin.

  Leaving the studio, she’s caught

  between places and times.

  She feels the curves of cobblestones under her soles,

  the precise angle of air against her palms.

  Briefly she becomes a girl in soft moccasins

  again: Earth speaks back.

  Forever Free

  She knows what Mrs. Child would say:

  She would be wise to wait for a commission

  before ordering marble bigger than herself.

  But Edmonia didn’t cross the sea

  to make art that fits on a table.

  Memory curls like fists

  as she carves sturdy shoulders

  and hands clenched like Ruth’s

  as she prayed into darkness.

  She smooths the girl’s hair,

  chisels slimmer eyes, nose, mouth,

  and face lifted to sky.

  She carves a companion with his foot

  on a ball with broken chain, fist raised,

  dangling sundered shackles.

  She sharpens her chisels on a grindstone.

  Then, carving more than cutting,

  she tilts and taps a clawed chisel,

  as if drawing into and on the rock.

  As she works her way back,

  her tools leave scratches and pale stun marks.

  After days of work, her blows become softer.

  Shaping muscles, making each arm and hand

  unique, she needs more patience than strength.

  She switches to a lighter mallet and smaller chisels,

  making short, even strokes toward her vision

  in the center of the stone.

  She can’t risk an imprecise aim in twilight,

  but hates to leave before night has fully come.

  She rakes rubble to pile by the door,

  to be hauled off by sledges. She lights candles.

  Relying on touch, she pushes a rasp like an iron,

  then rubs a rough stone over the girl’s face.

  She dips a cloth in a pail of water and wipes off dust.

  Smooth marble catches her reflection,

  there, then gone.

  The Sculptor

  Edmonia rises in the new light, hearing wagons clatter

  as they carry pails of milk, blocks of ice cut

  from the mountains, fresh fish, and crates of leafy greens.

  On her way to her studio, she passes the Caffè Greco,

  where men in berets and rumpled shirts drink espresso

  at round tables and argue about the colors of shadows.

  Girls wearing veils climb in two straight lines

  up the Spanish Steps to the convent school.

  At the bottom of the steps, models sell violets

  or offer Italian lessons along with a pose.

  Some women knit beside daughters costumed

  as Mary Magdalene. Others bounce babies

  on their laps, hoping artists will add wings

  to turn them into cherubs.

  Edmonia stops at a stall where girls who work in vineyards

  buy bright skirts. A red one with a ruffled hem

  will sway just above her ankles. She buys a crimson cap

  and a black velvet jacket with sleeves split below

  the elbow so she can swing her arms,

  and cropped at the waist so it won’t slow her stride.

  Back in her room, she opens the blades

  of her scissors, holds up her hair, and cuts

  strand by strand. It curls just under her ears.

  She won’t try to pin it flat anymore, blend in.

  She isn’t a shadow. She wants to be seen.

  The Letter

  My Dear Girl,

  Boston is proud, though don’t let it go to your head.

  Forever Free in the Twelfth Baptist Church is a fitting

  tribute to the heroes from that congregation who enlisted

  in the 54th Regiment, or mourn husbands, sons, or brothers

  who sacrificed along with dear Robert. I’m sure funds

  will be raised to pay for stone and shipping, though

  don’t most artists have money in hand before they purchase?

  Be certain to watch your purse.

  Of course you’re not a girl anymore,

  but doesn’t everyone need advice? Remember,

  if you cut your hand, to spread molasses over the wound.

  Sincerely yours,

  Mrs. Lydia Maria Child

  The Dream

  Edmonia unwraps the woolen slippers that still smell

  faintly of pepper and cedar used to keep away moths.

  She kneels by the bed, folds her hands the way Ruth did,

  then hums songs about exodus and troubled waters.

  She clasps the slippers as she sleeps and hears,

  I didn’t mean to hurt them. Not anyone.

  They drank from cups they chose themselves.

  I know. I always knew. Ruth
hands

  her a pair of soft, small moccasins.

  Edmonia wakes, but not in the room where she heard

  flames from the hearth Ruth tended

  while washing blood from her dress.

  Did Ruth keep the small moccasins,

  burn something else, then put them

  in the carpetbag Edmonia left behind?

  She can almost smell the worn deerskin.

  She knows the texture of each perfectly placed bead,

  the deliberately ragged edge. Her mother

  must have always wanted her to find beauty

  in both careful stitches and unraveling borders.

  Home

  Edmonia shops from stalls selling toasted squash seeds,

  fresh figs, caged chickens, stacks of blue and yellow flowers.

  She buys bread, crusty on the outside and soft within,

  creamy cheese, oranges so sweet they almost sting.

  She feels tucked within the soft, bending walls

  of a language she begins to understand.

  A brown-eyed boy tosses a ball his friend fumbles,

  but Edmonia catches and kicks back.

  As it slams into the boy’s hands,

  he grins and calls, Il scultore!

  A lock unclasps. The bars inside her break.

  Can this city be a home? A story still follows her,

  but it’s less like a fox, more like one of the cats

  that skulk among ivy and stone relics.

  Night

  Under chandeliers at the palazzo, the American-born

  sculptors complain, argue, and exchange advice.

  One woman carves profiles on cameos for exquisite pins,

  but most make work people must walk around.

  They discuss what to submit to juries for a grand fair

  to celebrate their old country’s hundredth birthday.

  The World’s Fair will display triumphs of science and art.

  Who do you most want to sculpt? Harriet asks

  again. Silently, Edmonia wonders if she can afford

  to make something magnificent enough

  to be chosen for this international show,

  work meant to stand under a very high roof.

  Soon she says Buona notte, starts walking home.

  Candles in windows flicker over stone monsters,

  angels, and ghouls carved around doors. A soft wind

  shifts petticoats, shirts, and stockings on clotheslines.

  A man reaches for her arm,

  twists her wrist to speak close to her ear.

  She pulls out of his grip and runs.

  Memory remains a dangerous animal,

  clutching her hair like the men who pulled

  her to the frozen ground.

  Back in her room, pieces of the past turn still,

  but the weight of all that is untold plummets.

  She’s safe now, but failure is never far away.

  She rubs oil into the cracked skin

  of her hands, nicked by tools gone amiss.

  She thinks about quitting cutting stone,

  bringing back the dead, but what would she do?

  She promised Ruth she wouldn’t scrub floors

  or pour tea and pretend sympathy for pay.

  Besides, the women she sees buying fruit and fish,

  pinning wash on lines, work with an ease

  that shows they bring the baskets to their own kitchens.

  They don’t hire help. If Edmonia can’t sell what she sculpts,

  she’ll have to go back and be told she expected too much.

  No. She expects what she needs, what she deserves.

  Come morning, she returns to her studio.

  She makes marble split and spit.

  Chips and dust fly.

  She breaks what’s before her

  to make something beautiful.

  With each swing of her arm,

  she turns the room where she stands into home.

  The Necklace

  After work, she stops at a shop where gold and gems

  shimmer in the windows. Just recently

  she worried that she’d have to leave Rome. She needs

  to save for stone, to make a piece, maybe two,

  to submit to the World’s Fair jury. But she wants

  not only to win a place for her work, but something

  to wear to the galleries in Philadelphia besides

  her crimson cap, her old jacket, and bright peasant skirt.

  She buys a string of pearls.

  Then she walks to a cathedral. It’s time to kneel and give thanks

  for her long stride, sharp eyes, and strong hands.

  Day after day, her tools cut stone and whatever comes

  between pride and boasting, between the words for confidence

  given to men and the words women are called.

  She’s glad for an art that doesn’t deal in lines,

  but blurs past and present, doubt and brave hope.

  In the long shadow cast by a stone steeple,

  a beggar in a torn dress and bare feet

  stretches her arms, holds out a cup.

  Edmonia stops walking. She unclasps

  her necklace. Sunlight teases out

  soft shades of blue, pink, and yellow

  she pours into the tin cup.

  Pearls coil and clatter among a few coins.

  A smile splits the beggar’s face like breaking ice.

  The woman turns back into a girl.

  It’s a gift, Edmonia says in two languages,

  though she doesn’t need to. She knows

  whose beauty she must look for now.

  For years she’s sculpted faces other people might want,

  and missed the girl who wants to be seen.

  Stone Mirrors

  Edmonia raises her arms to sculpt the body of a girl

  she can’t see but must find through her hands.

  She aims a chisel, taps a mallet,

  cuts a narrow path until she feels breath

  on her wrists: Imagination and stone collide.

  She chips marble, memory, a plain shift

  that falls just below the knees of a girl

  who hardly dared ask for a cup of water.

  Her clasped hands stretch out.

  One leg is set before the other

  as if striding, but in danger of falling.

  Edmonia chisels around soft spots.

  Pale gray dust settles into her knuckles,

  clings to her red skirt and loose blouse.

  She splits stone and lines

  between the girl who reaches

  and the artist who sculpts a girl

  reaching past the truth

  everyone refused to hear.

  Smashing the lines between courage and fear,

  Edmonia feels the strength of her shoulders.

  Then her arms stiffen as Hagar’s must have

  when the old man lifted her dress.

  She pauses. Each aim and blow can ruin

  not just an edge, but everything.

  Her hammer reminds her to stay afraid.

  Opening a way into the shapes of arms and legs,

  she calls a young woman back into view.

  She murmurs, Help me, Help me,

  speaking for a young woman forced

  to lie with a man. Hagar speaks back

  of what Edmonia knew in her body all along:

  When Ruth spoke about Hagar,

  when she scrubbed the blood-stained dress

  and wrung Edmonia’s leg to save her,

  Ruth was telling her own story.

  What happened to Hagar happened to Ruth.

  Both carried fury into a new land.

  Edmonia sculpts pleading eyes, a soft mouth.

  She can’t mend what was broken,

  but smooths scars and bruises.

  Memory at last takes her side.

  She drops her mallet a
nd point,

  opens her arms the way she should have

  when Ruth offered the story

  of why she had to go forward,

  why she couldn’t go back.

  We’re not the same, she told Ruth.

  She was wrong. In the stone mirror,

  Edmonia finds Hagar and Ruth and herself.

  Conversation with a Queen

  Still, always, there’s more she needs to hear.

  As Edmonia sweeps rubble and grit,

  she wonders who else will step through stone.

  Years later, she orders a piece of a white mountain,

  a chunk as large as her old bark home

  or the bedroom she shared with Ruth.

  She leans into the stone, the world,

  carving out lines that curve like ripples on water.

  Splinters sting her skin.

  Stone rubs her hands raw.

  Chips fall, like belief and doubt.

  She leaves flaws to make Cleopatra look alive,

  but she won’t sculpt the snake.

  Even a queen isn’t safe from herself.

  She wonders if Cleopatra really wore pearls in her hair.

  Did she slip potions into drinks? Poison herself?

  Where did these stories come from?

  None were penned by the queen, but even if they were,

  would they hold any more truth, which unrolls

  like a rug, each spin clarifying and concealing?

  Soldiers might keep track of swords and ships,

  but the more the story belongs just to one, the more

  it may shape-shift between tellers and listeners.

  Edmonia changes the past as she circles

  the rough sculpture to see another side.

  Sculptor and stone keep up a conversation.

  As she carves Cleopatra, the queen shapes her.

  Edmonia hammers, saying Don’t,

  as she said to Helen and Christine

  all those years ago, telling them to put down

  the potion that no one knew was poison.

  Stop. She always knew that word

  and who said it, but now as she carves

  a way forward, the truth is whole and her own.

  Her mallet pounds. Her point slips.

  She’s angry and desperate for justice

  for a girl who was told the past could be left behind.

  The stone of the queen’s shoulder splits.

  The sculptor screams as she witnesses the ruin.

  The Death of Cleopatra