The family gathering resets my sights on the possibility of my own honest living, of being someone folks respect. I can possibly have a family, too, return to my life of honest work. I have made a whole lot of mistakes, taken a whole bunch of bad turns, gotten an awful lot of shit wrong, but I can still make a go of it.
It seems everyone has come from everywhere for the party. The day eventually warms up, the fog burns away. People are outside drinking, eating, talking, laughing, and then Nancy and Kimberly call everyone inside to the sitting room to sing “Happy Birthday.” After we sing, Chambers sits in his old armchair, surrounded by family and friends. He thanks us, announces he has a surprise. He starts right off without any explanation, reciting from memory the beginning of the epic saga of Paul Bunyan, which, in his opinion, is the greatest book ever written. I’ve never heard of Paul Bunyan, think he might be a relative of his from colonial days.
After five minutes, I’m impressed that a man his age, as weathered as medieval parchment, can remember that much. After fifteen minutes of his recital, I’m flat-out amazed. After thirty minutes, stunned. I have no doubt he can recite the entire Paul Bunyan book by heart, but one of his daughters stops him after forty-five minutes. The whole time he’s offering his rendition of the book from memory, his grey, glacial eyes are looking straight through us as if looking at an angel in the crowd, conveying a message so badly needed about living free.
That evening, the scientist who lent us Griselda calls to inform us that it’s time to bring her back. They’re going to fly her out to the rainforest in Central America. It’s time to say our goodbyes, take our last walks.
For many days, I have brushed Griselda’s coat, taken her on walks, fed her steak, purred to tell her how much I love her. She is large and will do fine in the wild. I need to let go of my heart-mate, who is growing stronger and bigger every day. She is the closest thing I ever had when it comes to unconditional love and friendship.
That same night, Lila and I sleep in her parents’ house, upstairs in her old bedroom. We have lent our house to the kids and friends. I’m resting in bed. I can hear them yelling and having a good time. I’m happy for them. The night is cool, an edge of bone-chill creeping in under the doors and open windows. It gets so cold that I can feel drafts coming from everywhere, and I snuggle deep under the blankets.
I’m fast asleep when I feel a shiver run up my spine. It wakes me. With my eyes still closed, I feel the weight of Lila on me, her knees and thighs against my hips. She is whisper-chanting a witch’s rhyme. I feel a strong wind come through the window. I open my eyes to find her naked, pinching a corner of the sheet in her right hand, holding it across my bare chest and draped over her thighs. Her head is craned back in a trance. She is murmuring something.
“Stop!” I say.
She gets up, puts on her nightgown. The moonlight shows her breasts and legs through the fabric. She leaves the room. A minute later, I hear Griselda growling outside. I get up, look out the window as Lila leads Griselda on a leash into the forest behind the house. The wind picks up, the moon is strong. I fear that so many earthly powers combined will make Griselda forget she is our friend and attack Lila. I want to warn Lila to come back as I watch them vanish into the woods, the strong wind shaking the branches. An hour or so later, they return, and instead of putting Griselda in her cage, Lila brings Griselda into our room, she falls asleep between us in our bed.
It’s early November and the winter decides to quit playing around. It comes down hard with ice, wind and snow, and through the fierce assault a call from my friend and mentor Denise manages to connect before the lines go down and branches break half the utility poles in the county. I mark it in my notebook: November 12th.
Denise is coming to read at the university at Chapel Hill. She gives me the date, time, tells me to be sure to go. I’m speechless. She’s in a hurry, but takes time to ask how my reentry is going. After I hang up, I rummage through the cardboard box beneath my desk, find a bundle of her letters and postcards. I wish I could be more of the poet she thinks I am. A disappointment.
I spend most of the day reading her letters, fascinated how her poignant words cut through the bars like an acetylene torch. I have a flashback to the cellblock silence and the sun rays shining into the dark cell that enclosed me. Back then, her words called out to us lonely, orphaned exiles by our names, like our imagined mothers calling us in from the dark. I remember how her words shielded me in some way from the night screams, the guards’ flashlights in my face on their nightly rounds, the gang warfare, the terror and tension and suspicions rampant in the eyes of kids. Her letters allowed me to transcend DYA life and materialize in her poems in the desert, opening my mouth to the rain, my arms to the wind, my toes clenching the dirt.
The day finally arrives when I get in Lila’s Volkswagen and drive to Chapel Hill to meet Denise. I notice a photograph wedged behind the sun visor and pull it out. It’s one Lila took of me standing on the Outer Banks beach staring out at the sea. The sky dark, the waves gray. Me standing square-shouldered, head turned to the left when Lila snapped the picture. I was wearing Brandon’s sheepskin coat. No longer a clean-faced prisoner in denims with a number patch, I looked like Che with a mustache and goatee and thick, black, tousled hair. It was the first time I had seen the ocean. Like a child mesmerized, the shimmering waves seemed to flow into me and lap at my heart, so that it made me certain this other me, this one standing on the Outer Banks beach, yearning for an otherness, was the me I wanted to be.
What did the ocean washing ashore on that late afternoon mean to a recently released young adult? The movement of water deepened my sense of sorrow for the way my life had developed, made me feel tender toward myself, which was rare, sensitive as I was to the injustices of my past. It filled me with wonder for the possible: possible happiness, possible woman, possible self-realization, possible expression of my deepest yearnings. It could happen . . . it could.
Not long ago, this beach was a battlefield, soaked with the blood of Confederate and Union soldiers. Blacks were slaves, whites were masters; a terrible legacy for whites to live with, never to be erased from the history books, a mark of shame that would stain American history and our democracy forever.
I often felt I heard the spirits of slaves breathing in the forest when I walk. I knew slave life infused every leaf of this land, haunting the dreams of the land. And now, now the change was all about—down the beach, Black and White porters pushed baggage carts, checked Black and White tourists into the hotel. Black and White baggage carriers and van drivers arrived with Black and White business passengers, and cars were jammed with Black and White families delivering Black and White college kids.
In the photograph, I notice something for the first time. At my foot, a small crab flails in the seaweed. The ebb and flow no doubt slapped it around. It reached out blindly for some cress to grip, but the waves tossed it back. It tried to cling to the seaweed. The waves pushed it, slapped it sideways as it scuttled on, receding, then moving forward in the flow again.
The crab is me. I smile at that thought as I park the car in the campus parking lot and head for the performance center where Denise is reading.
From the moment I walk into the auditorium, sit in the shadows at the back, I am in awe. Denise is reading a poem. It is my first time hearing her. No fiery rhetoric, no sloganeering clichés, no grandstanding on the stage, no jokes, no bullshit. No sense that all her literary awards have made her pompous and inflated with her own self-importance. She reads slow, soft, the words fit her tongue the way an Indio chisels an arrowhead, each word clean, carved for the soul’s hunt for truth and beauty.
I won’t lie: seeing her for the first time, even though she is more than twice my age, I feel such an overwhelming urge to make love to her, to belong to her, to have a life with her. I would do anything for her.
I know that it’s silly for many reasons, but most of all because she is refined, cultured, famous and I’m nobody. I am appallingly
insignificant in her life, but seeing her down there on the stage . . . this close . . . is enough to keep me happy for life. She has more poise than the Mona Lisa, there on the stage, sitting on a piano bench in a black skirt that conceals her knees but reveals her calves. I want to genuflect, kiss her hands, massage her ankles, her bare calves, her legs slightly curled one under the other, left arm leaning on the piano.
She reads with a lisp, her Welsh face framed by brown, wavy hair. I love her. Yes, sitting in the last row, in the seat against the wall, high up in the dark part of the theater. From up there, I sense something so raw, knowable, skin-familiar. It takes me back to the loneliness I knew so well while roaming the high desert plains in New Mexico as a child, whirling with arms out in the blowing wind, scenting the high-peak snow in my blood, my bones howling. There has been a reckoning brewing all the way down in my bones; the biscuit batter was ready for the fire, the tortilla for the comal. I want to cast aside my fears and doubts, rev up the dervish cyclones where language meets experience. My heart is pounding: Yes, this is the life I wanted.
After her reading, I stay distant from the students crowding around her, wait until she has signed her new book of poems for the last student in line. Then, I present myself.
“Hel-hel-lo,” I stammer.
“Orlando. Of course.”
She gets up, walks around her table, hugs me, then pulls back, holds me at arm’s length and smiles. Her brown eyes cast a spell on me; they are a medieval cathedral on a rainy night, its interior lighted by a thousand candles.
I don’t know what to do. Soon, we’re walking out of the building in silence to the parking lot. I open the door to the Volkswagen, drive her to her hotel. It’s a strange moment, one that I have waited for but never thought would happen. We don’t speak. I think I should show her the photo, but no— maybe not. I gaze out the windshield, nervous and expectant, anticipating something more, but nothing happens. We’re old-mule soul mates, turning over boulders in our separate fields. I drive sharing the same air with her in the car, our silence underscored by the car’s humming motor and the bumps in the road. I feel like apologizing. I am not enough.
She turns to me. “Do you think kids belong in prison?”
“No. Most are sent in for minor drug offenses, then criminalized. Many are not criminals when they arrive, just young—they made a mistake. They’re not dangerous when they come in, but they are when they leave.”
“I see.” She purses her lips slightly. She has a tiny gap between her two front teeth, her breath escapes from the aperture.
She turns again, looks at me. “Orlando, how have you been?”
I feel like I’m breathing under water, can’t speak. I can’t inhale enough air. I want to be the swordfish at the Outer Banks, launch myself up, twist in exuberant joy, but I lull into what seems the longest silence I have ever endured.
“I’m writing . . . trying to. It’s different out here. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m having trouble getting grounded. The money thing, you know? I don’t have a job, Lila supports me, pays the bills, and that bothers me.”
“Give yourself time. And read, Orlando, read. It’s a long life, you’ll get it down. Don’t worry, you were born a poet— you can’t escape that.” She pauses. Her breath fogs the windshield on her side. “Are you happy with Lila?”
I wait a long time to answer. When I do, it’s a strange answer. “Freedom is not what I expected. I had this naïve idea that society would welcome me, that I’d keep my commitment, work at a simple job, then after work climb the stairs to my loft to read. It would be a monk’s life—simple, clean, ascetic, devoted, routine. But it hasn’t turned out that way.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she says. “You’re not doing drugs are you?”
At that precise moment, I have a spectral experience: I’m running in the mountains on a trail that goes past a waterfall and a cave. I can’t understand it. It just comes to me out of nowhere.
I glance at her. “No, nothing like that. Freedom is filled with hazards, lots of sharp edges, they cut me at every turn, force me to behave in ways that are against my own choosing.”
She smiles as she looks out the passenger window, says, “Yes, yes, you’ll be just fine. Freedom is supposed to be a struggle for you. It’s supposed to leave you feeling inadequate. Your problems with Lila, your relationship going through changes, not knowing how to deal with the changes . . . that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m proud of you, Orlando. You’re actually stepping out of your prison-thinking, stepping into social thinking. Wheels up, my friend. You will never be a green-light crosswalk poet. You were born to cross borders, break boundaries others fear and make your own trail.”
“But don’t worry about me, Denise.”
“I’m not, Orlando. The ones I worry about are the liberal white poets who claim to be the oppressed, the black poets who scream injustice but earn six figures, live in gated communities, the white feminists who live in privilege boo-hooing the establishment but are the very definition of mainstream.”
I look at her. She is drawn, exhausted.
“I guess I should ask, are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? I’ll do anything—rob a bank, hijack a plane. . .” I joke.
She smiles and pats my arm. “I’m just tired,” she sighs. “I’m volunteering for this Solidarity Movement in Poland; joining in the protest against the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador . . . we have another big march coming up on December eleventh, against US government forces supporting dictatorships. I can’t believe it will soon be 1981; our troops are still massacring innocent citizens in foreign countries, all for their oil. When will it end, Orlando . . . when?”
Her expressive face lightens, she feigns a happy interest. “Well, from what you’ve told me about you and Lila, as intimate as your letters were—now, face to face—it’s supposed to be an entirely different scene. It is, right? You were a prisoner writing to her from far away, behind bars; now, face to face, it’s supposed to be hard. After all, you’ve never been trained to be a social creature, you should be uncomfortable sharing your insecurities.”
“I can’t believe you know me this well,” I say, surprised.
“It’s what you wrote in your letters. You don’t remember or don’t believe it now? You wrote in your letters that you could not remember the last time you allowed yourself to cry. You’re scared out here. You’re incapable of sharing your feelings. That makes me happy because this is your time to change that, and you can with Lila.
“I’m happy for you, Orlando. Remember, you must write about other things besides being locked up . . . a relationship is a good thing to write about. The danger of being a poet in prison is that some poets never can write in freedom. They can only write in prison about prison. You are a poet of the world, Orlando.”
I pull in under the hotel marquee, we hug. I promise to go to Somerville someday soon to visit her. Then, I watch her go into the hotel.
At the entrance to the lobby, she stops, turns and walks back to me.
“I chair a committee at PEN in New York; we help poets down on their luck or, in your case, just starting out, with emergency funds. Here, use it wisely.”
She hands me a large manila envelope and is suddenly gone. Along with the money, there’s a chapbook and note; “Dear Orlando, I took the liberty of having a friend of mine publish some of your poems. I hope you don’t mind. I think they’re beautiful. Denise.”
I open the envelope, count the money. One thousand dollars. My stomach flutters, I want to cry. For the first time I can remember, I let myself. I sniffle, my face cringing as the tears pour down.
This emotional crap is just too damned hard to deal with. Through bleary eyes, I stare at the oily, leaf-littered driveway under the hotel marquee and wonder at her kindness. It’s like I’m leaning over something high; it’s dark, I yearn to jump into Denise, never come out, be part of her body. I recall her short-cropped brown hair, her fast walk leaning forward
a little, her long neck, her furtive eyes, her small nose, wide cheeks, formidable brow . . . I love her. I can do nothing but stand there feeling my world has changed. Back in the car, I sit for a long time looking out the window.
I turn the radio dial for a talk-show to distract me. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” comes on. I try to collect my thoughts, wiping my eyes, but the tears keep coming. I’m really a baby in a crib, just crying alone. I study the beads of rain on the windshield, blow my breath on the glass. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
I was able to convince the scientist to let us keep Griselda a little longer. I pass whatever free time I have with Griselda, mostly taking her, this large jaguar, on walks across the fields behind Lila’s house. She has unbelievable strength, unbridled curiosity. From the first day we had her, every whiff of wind, each leaf that floats, every grasshopper that leaps . . . her little ears are sensitive enough to even hear the sun warming the seeds. Her presence is like sunlight, everywhere at once, warm to the touch.
Mornings, I am awakened by Griselda growling, pawing at the office door to get out. Back inside, I let her run wild in the house while I write and read. More than ever now, I’m interested in what jaguars represent culturally to the Mayans and Aztecs, who held them in high esteem. They even had warrior jaguar clans who were the highest class in the hierarchy of indigenous societies.
I move my work space to the kitchen table again, give Griselda the office. I spend more time daydreaming than reading, gazing out the big window that overlooks the forest and dormant fields. Sometimes I see deer, hawks, wild dogs or feral cats, then leave the house to see if I can track them in the forest. Other times I simply walk in any random direction in the forest, wherever the spirit moves me.
American Orphan Page 15