you sound like the babelite you are, writing your gibberish and pretending there is any word of truth to it
and for snacks, a pack of lorna doones ah yes lorna doones and the state-owned boarding school and the hall of cots and the late night visits of our rough-voiced big-handed monitor with the pack of lorna doones
and a bar of monterey jack for the one bright spot of rosemarie who brought one back every time her papa took her out
and my hunting knife that folds into itself, cute as a boy’s toy, in the bag
Looking for where you might be staying
walking round and round the glassy storefront where the cute bookstore brunette (I can see her now) scans with her magic wand the books someone has piled on her counter
pass three cappuccino bars two bagel shops a card store a small cafe called cachet and count five little boutique dress shops two shoe stores a deli with sausage links like nooses for sale in the window and four parking garages like the little gal on the phone said there would be
sharp wind blows off the lake
a snowflake and another snowflake no two alike so they say
going further and further out
and I am in luck as I find the big westin where you might be staying about twelve blocks away from where x marks the spot
It is easier than I think
I go up to the desk and say, I am a reporter from the SUN TIMES here to interview the author yolanda garcía
this black spic, a spic and spade (hahaha) with a little name tag saying he’s mr. martinez like I can’t tell looking at his brown face and the pencil-thin mustache above his fat lips
doesn’t blink an eye but types you up in his computer and BINGO! he is on the phone saying the interviewer from the SUN TIMES is here
and I hear your surprised little voice saying, who?
and the guy puts me on, shrugging, she wants to talk to you straightening up my voice, saying oh-so-politely, sorry to bother you, ms. garcía, but my secretary set this up with your publisher so I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get word and I sure do hope you can squeeze me in as we’ve planned a big feature article for sunday with color photos and we think this will sell lots and lots of your wonderful books
wow, you say, impressed, but see, nobody told me, in fact, my publicist purposely left the afternoon free so I could visit with my sister who came all the way down from rockford just to see me—
unless—and your hand is over the speaker and your voice all garbled—and then you’re back on saying unless you don’t mind interviewing me with her in the room
and now it’s my turn to hesitate and wonder can I carry it off and sure enough I feel an extra rush to think there will be two of you
no problem, I say, and then you say the room number
Which at first I think is your joke on me, having figured out who I am, and no way are you going to be in room 911—the call-for-help number—the number you dialed the night I sat outside your door at the top of the stairs, knowing you had no other way out as the fire escape was only built later after the fire
which was ruled arson and which they tried also to pin on me
sitting there crying and begging you to let me in
and you were screaming on the other side of the door, get away from me, leave me alone, I don’t want to have anything to do with you, you scare the hell out of me with all your crazy letters and your following me around and going through my trash and picking out things and appearing on my doorstep with your crazy talk that I am your other, your soulmate, your doppelgänger, I am not, I am not, I am not, do you hear me, I swear, billy or george or gerry or whatever your name is, if you don’t leave this minute as much as I hate calling the pigs on anyone I will dial 911 and you are going to be in hot water as I’m sure you’ve got a record trailing you from somewhere
and I pleaded saying, please just open the door and let me in for five minutes you can time it and throw me out when my time’s up but I need you, I need you, I need you to hear me tell you what I’ve been through
and this fat lady with a knocked-around face came out from downstairs saying, you gotta leave her alone if she don’t want to talk to you
and I could hear your voice on the phone saying, there is a man out there who has barricaded me into my apartment, who has been following me around for fifteen years on and off
and no, officer, no
and I could hear your thoughts in your head thinking, I know how you guys think if you get raped you must have cockteased the guy, if you get mugged you must have provoked the guy, if you get stalked you must have put out your pretty hooks, but no, I have never slept with him, never talked with him more than five minutes that night fifteen years ago when he walked into the damn quickstop where I was working and told me he had no money but was hungry so I made him an angel on horseback which was a hot dog sliced down the middle with melted cheese inside and bacon wound around the whole dog and I don’t know who named it that or why cause why would an angel with wings need a horse but see even this detail of what he was fed whose naming I had nothing to do with he read as a sign—and the only time I can think that I talked to him for more than five minutes besides that first meeting was at a bar where this guy I was married to and I were having a fight and so when this crazy guy sat down on my other side I just let him go on and on about how a force had sent him to be with me
and other crazy things like that, and I admit, okay, I admit that I let this crazy guy go on so my husband would see how somebody could go mad with love over me
but I never ever again capitalized on his madness, I swear
and I could hear your voice on the phone saying, can’t you hear him, officer, yes that’s him pounding on the door and shouting I have to let him in
so please, oh please, send someone down to 20 high street, a big gray two-story building with a falling-down porch up front where you’ve been before when the guy downstairs went berserk when he found his clothes in the yard but I’m the apartment on the second floor with the narrow staircase coming up to my door and that’s where he’s been for the last hour, so I can’t get out, but please you or someone else stay on the line with me while you get down here as I’m terrified because now he is throwing his whole body against the door and what if it breaks and he gets his hands on me?
I get off on the eighth floor as I don’t want you waiting at the elevator then quick running down the hall and locking yourself and your sister in
a little maybe vietnamese maybe korean girl with her cleaning cart parked in the hall next to an open door nods and goes back into a room with the tv blaring a soap
from room to room she watches the world turn and fall apart
pretty little gal with her long hair pulled back in a black ponytail which makes me want to take all the doll bottles of her shampoo and pour them out in a tub and turn the faucet on full blast and climb into that steaming fragrant soapy water and have her rub me good and hard and should the hunting knife slip out of my bag and she jump back alarmed, I’d say, do not be afraid as evil is always a choice and you know what waylays it and allays it and as a matter of fact slays it
take a guess
and maybe she doesn’t know much english because she looks at me funny as she comes out of the room and sees me standing here perusing her little soaps and clean face towels and phone message pads and ballpoint pens—maybe she doesn’t understand my english
but still in her own funny tongue she knows the answer she knows what holds the darkness she brought with her to this country from the killing fields of vietnam or salvador or korea or wherever she left behind a village burnt down, the men begging pleading oh please in the name of god allah jesus christ buddha coca-cola the shouts the screams the naked kids running around with worms coming out of their behinds—
she knows that even here hundreds of thousands of miles away that evil will break down her door and burst into her head and make itself right at home—unless she tells someone she loves or could love what she h
as been through—
but now she is looking at me with a hesistant catch-of-the-breath not-so-sure smile so I take up one of her pens and jot down the BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS number saying, any time you want to talk—
but already she is backing into the room, shaking her head, saying, no english, mister, and that scared look in her eyes I can never get through
so I head for the exit door and climb up the one flight of stairs to you
I knock and you open and before I get out hello I’m the reporter from the SUN TIMES I see the same scared vietnamese-girl look in your eyes and you try to shut the door on my face, but I’m already inside
slipping the bolt locking you in a neck hold and yelling at your sister who has sprung to the phone
you touch that and she gets hurt
so your sister throws up her hands and says, no, no, no, no, look I’m not calling anybody but please don’t hurt her just take our money and even my wedding ring and this pendant my husband gave me for our twentieth anniversary which should be worth lots as he is still paying on it
I loosen my hold and you are touching your neck and coughing with your back to me and I give you a little nudge and say very gently, why don’t you go sit on the bed there next to your sister
and you do as you are told, the two of you side by side holding hands on that flowered bedspread that matches the drapes the two paintings the lavender carpet—a room not unlike rooms I have known in institutions I have known where anyone can briefly live a businessman a poet a woman who will be operated on for cancer after her test results are in a woman who has beaten her child a woman waiting for a lover
a woman calming her weeping sister saying, it’s okay, don’t worry, really, he’s somebody I know from the past, who will not hurt us
but your voice trembly over the last statement as if you are not so sure
Your face older, thinner, marked with lines where before it was a smooth moon pulling and pulling at the tides of my deep need for you
and your hair short now and wild with curls and speckled with gray instead of the long thick rope of your braid I tried to cut off with a pair of scissors after the first restraining order after the fire after the time in brookhaven
and your hands bony and troubled and your shoulders thin and wingless
feeling cheated to have you before me but not have you before me as I would want you before me a worn-out woman a soulmate become mortal
I sit down opposite you on the other queen-bee bed
I take off my coat, I pull out your books from the bag—you are both watching closely—the lorna doones, the monterey jack, and of course the knife
which when I press on the white eye pops open and you both jump
and this time your sister does not cry
but makes terrified animal noises little whimperings and whines so I cut you each a slice and offer it to you with the point of the knife
and you take yours with a shaky hand and hold it as if it is poison contagion the atom bomb
until I say, you are not going to waste it, are you, this is my body this is my blood (hahaha) and with little nibbles you slowly eat my offering up
I’ve waited a long time for this moment, I begin, a long time—marking the numbers in the air with the knife—twenty-five years, ten years since I last saw you or didn’t see you on the other side of the door then fifteen years before that
which adds up to a quarter of a century suffering on account of one bitch after a quarter of a century suffering on account of the other bitch who put me away for pouring out her frosted flakes
which is no more no less than calling the cops on a guy for trying to talk to you for they caught me going down the stairs took me down to the station they fingerprinted and interrogated me and then they let me go but they were watching me and when a week later the fucking house you lived in burned down you must have told them you thought I did it because they dragged me in and by that time they had some other dope on me and offed me to brookhaven for trying to cut off that braid you used to have, remember
stand up and let me show your sister how long that fucker was
and you stand up turn around give me your back and I press the blunt side of my knife just above your little ass
and your sister gasps
and I say, wouldn’t you say it came down to about there
and you say, feeling the knife, you say, yes, about there is right
Then slowly you turn and face me, your hands held out, small, star-like, pleading
I just want to say I’m sorry I never meant to cause you pain I want to explain why—
and I scream, shut up, bitch, shut up, don’t come at me now with your sorrys your fucking oh-if-I-knew-back-then-what-I-know-now
but in a soft voice a sweet rosemarie voice a voice hard to resist you say, oh please
Please don’t make me shut up as I feel terrible
because seeing you here—I know you are going to think I’m lying to you, that I’m just saying this stuff to get out of a tight spot—but seeing you here, I see that you were right when you said you were my soulmate, my other, my doppelgänger or whatever it is you used to call me
but you see you used to say it in a scary way that made me run away which I’m not saying was your fault don’t get me wrong
just that the style of a person and the tone of voice can make all the difference
for supposing you had come without that needy desperate look and without that spooky thorazine voice
saying, you are my soulmate my life your name belongs among the stars—
I might have listened I might have helped I might even have fallen in love with you for my husband—yes I am now married to a big strong man who should be coming back any time now from the art institute—he says pretty much the same things to me
and it feeds my soul it fills my heart to hear him in his calm sure voice saying so
but believe me, you are not the first whose style and tone just don’t go with mine as I was married twice before once to this hippy guy and once to this british man
and though both guys meant well and loved me with all their heart and I loved them with all my heart
still their styles just rubbed raw where I was sorest
and maybe that is a shabby excuse though I’m not blaming you as I am sure no matter the style you project or the tone of your voice you have a good heart as I can testify you never laid a hand on me never tried to hurt me only that one time yanking my hair to cut it which I’m not saying was wrong because how else can you cut a braid but by pulling it away from the head and my sister and I we can both see that you came here to share your cookies and cheese and get your books signed which I really appreciate
for to tell you the truth one of the reasons I was so scared of you was that you were facing bravely and openly yes I can see that now bravely and openly a dark and fearful part of yourself that I was too afraid to face unless it was on paper
which is why I write books as my way of giving you yes you my way of saying, take this as maybe it will help for a moment to hold back the terror heal the wound make a brief stay against the confusion—
shut up! I scream, I told you to fucking shut up, lunging from the bed
and putting the blade to your throat and saying, do you think I don’t mean it, bitch, and the sister begging you, please please please, and finally you shut up and I sit back down and cut myself a piece of monterey and wolf it down and I don’t know maybe it is the taste of this cheese rosemarie used to feed me but I start to rock myself and feel the fear and the pain and the old old tears
And gathering my voice
to say finally after so many years to say
what I would have said—
but every time I tried to talk to you everywhere I followed you you shut the door you ran off you let your boyfriend come shove me around you called the police your husbands called the police you put your fingers in your ears and screamed, go away you’re crazy and you’re sca
ring me
you would not listen though just a few months ago I heard you on the fucking radio talking about the importance of stories how after food and clothing and shelter
stories is how we take care of each other and all this bunch of crap
— and I hurl one of your books at the window but of course the hotel glass is hard and thick and suicide-proof and the book lands on the carpet and another book and I tear out the pages of a third and pull open a fourth to show you what I have done
the pages all sliced and tampered with
—and you gasp, oh my god! and that is when you start to cry holding your sides and sobbing
which makes me want to puke cry take to the streets fly out the window as what good does it do when the boy is beaten the cat is beaten the village burnt the books destroyed the shank of dark hair in my fist and it still hurts
so I say, I say
— stop stop for I swear to god I’m not going to hurt you as I give you my word which I have never done before
— and look as a sign of my good will I am putting away the knife picking up your books leaving you the lorna doones renouncing my rough magic
— but before I go away I want you to do something for me which is to sit there quietly yes like that yes without crying just calmly truly hearing for once what I tried to tell you for years but you would not let me
and you glance at your sister with a look of not believing
you take a deep breath
you look at me with a look that sees all the way back to the beginning
okay, you say, okay, I’m listening
The father
conclusion
Of all my girls, I always felt the closest to Yo. My wife says it is because we are so much alike, knocking her head with her knuckles as she says so. But that is not why I feel closest to Yo, no.
She looks at me, and I know that she can see all the way back to when I was a boy in half trousers raising my hand in that palm-wood schoolhouse. What color is the hair of God? When you reduce a sum by its shadow and multiply it by its reflection, what will you get? Our teacher, who called himself Profesor Cristiano Iluminado, spouted his wild questions. Soon after I passed on to the higher school, the mad professor was hauled away to the asylum to eat mashed plantain and sleep on straw and contemplate the mathematics of the stars. But, and this is the point of my anecdote, I was the only child in that classroom raising my hand to answer those impossible questions.
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