Because

by Joshua Mensch

  St. Andrews JHS, 1990 – Fall

  Because the room is not a room

  but a phone call,

  the principal at my school

  has concerns,

  ran a background check

  and turned up reports

  from a camp where Don worked

  ten years before,

  alleging impropriety with

  children, mostly minors

  from broken homes — retribution,

  Don said later,

  for his complaints that the kids

  weren’t being fed enough,

  weren’t given clean clothes

  (You know me, he said,

  I’m always fighting for the interests

  of our youngest citizens);

  because Don is my father’s best

  friend, and mine, too;

  because school sucks;

  because Don doesn’t ask

  for more than the cost of my keep

  to homeschool me;

  because I’ve already been in his care,

  and deny everything

  when my father quizzes me

  about his behaviour,

  asks if Don has ever touched me

  down there; because I beg

  to go; because Don’s cabin is quiet,

  and we can read Plato

  and track animals through the forest;

  because he likes me,

  which is really nice of him;

  because of history,

  which goes back forever

  between friends; because

  even when I ask him about it

  later, say, Don, do you

  do this to the others, too? he looks

  shocked and says

  No, no, there’s only you, Oh god,

  there’s only you;

  Maritime Bus, 1990 – Fall

  Because the room is a window

  seat on a bus grinding

  against snow and blowing winds

  up the 401

  to Cape Breton Island where Don

  is waiting to pick me up;

  because the causeway is piled

  with ice and buried cars;

  because there’s music playing,

  a tinny AM radio tuned

  in to a Nashville hit, which fades

  in and out of the static;

  because the wind outside throws

  its own static across

  the road in sheets so thick

  the bus is forced to crawl,

  stop, threaten not to make it,

  which would mean going back

  to my father, who will say, I’m sorry,

  you can’t miss more school;

  because even one more day

  at school would kill me;

  because the bus finally makes it,

  and seeing Don standing

  under the port next to his van

  floods me with relief;

  because his wife, Lorna, is with him

  and she is so happy

  to see me, they won’t be alone

  this winter after all

  and she has so much to teach me

  about the earth, the

  environment, the building blocks

  of the natural world;

  because Don couldn’t not let her

  come along, we have

  shopping to do and she wants to

  buy her own things;

  because Don doesn’t want to

  answer my questions

  while she’s around, so I have

  to hold my tongue,

  which is burning; because I can’t

  even wait until Lorna

  rounds the corner with the first

  load of groceries to

  blurt out a word I’ve never used

  before, pedophile, a word

  that sounds like what it means;

  because he tells me

  my understanding of its meaning

  is wrong, or not wrong

  but imprecise; because what he feels

  is not attraction but

  fondness; because who is society

  to tell us what we can

  and can’t do with our own bodies?;

  because it is not something

  most people understand; because

  I want to understand

  and react badly when he tells me

  to stop, to settle down;

  because it’s time to take the rest

  of the groceries inside

  and then there’s dinner to make;

  because it takes ages

  for Lorna to finally retire

  to her own small cabin

  fifty metres down the road,

  a replica of Thoreau’s

  at Walden Pond surrounded

  by a grove of poplar

  and birch, with a large window

  facing the road;

  because society thinks it can

  regulate our desires;

  because as soon as we’re alone

  we are naked, face-to-face

  on the Big Bed, a kerosene lamp

  on an unopened book

  between us, which makes his eyes

  twinkle and his skin glow

  like a source of heat; because

  I’m tired of hugging

  my knees; because when he asks,

  Doesn’t it feel good? and

  Why should you or I be ashamed of it?,

  I don’t really have

  an answer; because his logic

  seems completely solid;

  because I let him take things

  further than before,

  let him show me how

  he does it to himself;

  Forest Glen, 1990 – Fall

  Because the room is a one-room

  cabin with a bed,

  a desk and a step ladder that

  leads up to a small loft

  where Lorna keeps her books,

  no toilet, not even

  a sink with running water

  to wash her face,

  so she has to bathe in the house;

  because I have

  to stay upstairs when Lorna

  is naked and peek

  through the cracks in the floor

  to see what she

  looks like; because the floor

  is made of a single

  layer of hardwood, wide panels

  hewn from trees

  that stood where Don cleared

  the land to build

  his house; because Lorna’s breasts

  are larger and fuller

  than I expected from her shirt,

  heavy, white balloons

  hanging gracefully from her chest

  as she leans over

  with a towel to dry a leg;

  because I shuffle

  from gap to gap to watch her

  as she crosses the room;

  because I imagine her

  coming upstairs

  instead of Don, or at least

  joining us; because she says,

  Josh! I hope you’re not peeking and

  I can hear you breathing

  through the cracks, so I scramble

  off the floor, almost

  knocking a bookshelf over;

  because Don comes up

  fifteen minutes later to tell me

  tonight he’s going

  to Lorna’s, so I have to spend

  the next few hours

  alone, terrified both of the dark

  upstairs, and of being

  seen by marauders in the light

  of the kitchen below,

  where there is no place to hide

  from anyone; because

  when Don returns I am almost out

  of breath with relief

  yet deny it vehemently when he

  teases me for being

  scared; because the whole point

&n
bsp; of me being here

  is to not be afraid,

  and it embarrasses me

  that I am not truly wild

  the way I pretend to be,

  and when Lorna later calls me

  coureur des bois—

  runner of the woods, I feel ashamed

  that even a walk

  to the chicken coop, or down

  to the river, makes me

  want to run in fear of what might

  try to get me; because

  I never venture into the forest

  alone like E., the boy

  from the valley who disappears

  for days at a time

  just to be alone, who emerges

  unscathed by the dark

  and sometimes even

  bearing a trophy,

  a rabbit or a grouse, which Don

  strips and spices

  and roasts with root vegetables

  from the cellar,

  which I fetch by climbing down

  through a small trapdoor

  in the middle of the floor,

  terrified of what

  might happen if it closed;

  Forest Glen, 1990 – Fall

  Because the room is the top floor

  of the cabin where we

  are completely alone for the first

  time ever, no other kids,

  Lorna fifty metres away in her retreat

  and no neighbours

  for five miles in the only direction

  possible to travel by road;

  because I’ve just completed my first

  assignment for Don’s

  “class,” three questions on Plato’s

  Ion (1. he was a poet,

  2. he couldn’t defend his verse,

  3. he must have been

  blessed by forces larger than himself),

  which leads to more

  questions (1. was he a real poet

  or merely a performer

  of someone else’s words?

  2. what wisdom does

  poetry express that plainspoken

  knowledge cannot

  through logic deduce?); because

  math class is Chapter 1

  of Euclid’s proofs; because

  the books are old, worn

  with study; because Don turns on

  the generator as soon

  as the lesson is over so we

  can watch Dead Poets

  Society on VHS starring Don

  as Robin Williams and me

  as the deep-feeling guy who dies

  at the end (which

  prompts me to ask: Why

  would someone kill himself

  just to get back at his dad?)

  until the gas runs out;

  because the generator can

  only run for two hours

  max on a single tank of gas,

  so we’re lucky we make it

  to the credits before the television

  blacks out, along with

  the room; because matches

  are found by groping hands

  and a single candle is lit,

  a slim embryo of light

  in a wooden womb, a chiaroscuro:

  Man and Boy on Bed,

  Don’s stack of Hustlers no longer

  hidden but just out

  of reach, so he says, Go ahead,

  take a look; because

  Don wants to use his mouth

  this time, reminds me

  that I promised to let him once

  we got to know each other

  a little more; because I once used

  the phrase he used

  with me the first time I asked him

  what the inside of a girl

  felt like, which was the first time

  we met and his hand

  was covered in my sister’s lotion,

  which he slathered

  all over my chest and down

  my legs, wherever my skin

  was exposed; because my answer

  is still no — and I’m not

  sure why it’s such a big deal

  but now it’s a matter

  of principle; because he tries

  to lower his head

  anyway, so I push at his scalp, pull

  his thinning hair away;

  because he turns his back to me

  and I feel bad for him,

  so I pull him back around but keep

  my belly facedown

  so all he can tickle is my rump

  until I pass out, wake up

  uncovered with the winter sun

  licking me, bright,

  without heat;

  Forest Glen, 1990 – Winter

  Because the room is a cabin

  surrounded by frost-

  bitten trees, where torrents

  of white gather

  in furious gusts, get tangled

  in branches or ram

  themselves into trunks; because

  the wind is literally

  howling at the walls where

  Lorna and I sit

  sipping tea among scattered

  clothes, dirty cups

  and jars of pee, waiting for the

  gale to pass;

  because the outhouse is fifty

  metres away and

  outside the wind whips ice

  into our faces;

  because it is better to sleep

  with the tang of urine

  than to go outside and fight

  the blowing snow

  just to relieve some tension;

  because the room

  is thick with incense, bunches

  of lavender hang

  from rafters absorbing smoke

  from the tiny cones

  that smoulder and ossify in

  a bowl on Lorna’s desk,

  become fragile dust that explodes

  and settles on the sill

  of the frost-covered window

  every time one of us

  sneezes or coughs; because it is

  deep winter, inviting

  meditation and sleep; because Don

  is out with J., our new

  student (taken on for the spring)

  getting groceries

  and making phone calls from

  the old rotary telephone

  in the schoolhouse:

  J. to his mother in

  Montreal, Don to his tax advisor;

  because Lorna sings

  the song of my name to me:

  my name fought a battle

  and the walls came a-tumbling down;

  because it wasn’t his horn

  that felled the city but his eyes —

  through Joshua’s eyes

  God saw what Jericho had become

  and saw fit to shatter it;

  because to see is to devastate;

  because Lorna believes

  that science is the study of life,

  and that to study life

  you have to look at life —

  only in the natural world

  can the answer be found; because

  Lorna had the potential

  to turn the world of cell biology

  upside down, and when

  Don tells me later that he wrote

  Lorna’s dissertation

  after she had a nervous break-

  down, he makes sure

  to point out that the core research

  was hers; because Lorna

  believes it’s not the observation of things

  but their beings,

  their being-ness that clues us in

  to dimensions that exist

  beyond our single slice of the universe;

  because Lorna wants

  to teach me how to meditate,

  how to block out thought

  but not the senses, so that I, too, can

  feel the other bodies

&n
bsp; I have lived in; because I imagine

  my previous lives

  stacked like sheets of paper,

  on each one a story

  of who you were and how you got here;

  because I beg Lorna

  to ask about me the next time

  she talks to the Voice

  of Light, a woman in San Antonio,

  Texas, whom Lorna calls

  every few months to get patched

  through to God;

  because God is not a man

  but a highway along

  which all souls travel, occasionally

  falling off and dropping

  into lives like the ones we’re in

  right now; because,

  sometimes, the souls of lovers

  dive off the side

  of the highway, one chasing

  the other so that

  they can be together longer,

  only to end up brothers

  or on opposite sides of a war;

  1991

  Forest Glen, 1991 – Spring

  Because the room is a theatre

  where the last war ever

  is taking place, Desert Storm,

  Stormin’ Norman,

  Colin Powell and a sober ex-vice-

  president whom Don

  says controls things quietly, pushing

  buttons to kill Iraqis,

  thousands of them at a time,

  while the Yanks

  and the French, the dozens of other

  countries there for show

  die exclusively by friendly fire,

  a few at a time; because

  I proclaim this war to be the last

  one ever, and Lorna

  agrees with me; because

  You don’t have to worry

  about who will win, the stakes are so

  uneven; because every

  town in America has yellow ribbons

  tied to their trees

  and awnings and porch pillars,

  tied to signs saying

  Support Our Troops and Not One Life

  though none of our boys

  it seems are in any real danger

  except from themselves

  and the weather; because it’s so cold

  I can’t even imagine

  the heat of a desert; because

  the last time we protested

  the country almost shattered (Don);

  because we’ve

  been here before, it was the same

  in Athens (Lorna);

  because Lorna and Don were there,

  two athletes, friends,

  men competing against each other

  and they’re still trying

  to finish their race after all these

  years; because I was

  a monk in my past life (she asked!)

  and before that a swami

  in India, which is disappointing;

  because the Voice of Light

  thinks my purpose in life is to

  reconcile Christianity

  with Reincarnation, neither of which

  strikes me as particularly

  interesting; because I’d rather ask her

  silly questions like

  what if a dinosaur in the year minus

  2 million came back

  as a house cat on a spaceship