Lila said, “Oh, I don’t want to hear your sad stories . . .”
Well, identity being an uncertain thing, perhaps it is time I tried to imagine myself Nonie.
Imagining Myself Nonie
I can’t do this.
Saying I can’t is an incantation that often shakes me into seeing that I might, after all, do it, shows me how to cross into the moments of doing it, shows me the border so clearly (if briefly) that, as if teetering on my toes, at the moment I say I can’t be Nonie I then perversely and snottily see (or think I do) into the territory (I think) she familiarly sees.
She is physically farsighted. Insensitive to nuances of color and line but she is aware, almost supernaturally prophetic about movement, stirrings, flutters in shadow or in glare behind her back, behind tree trunks, and anywhere around her vision and beyond it, ill-defined or well-defined . . . I feel that as her vision: I feel the mind-given self-righteousness of what I can and can’t do and what I won’t do as her, if she is me, if I have that body, if I am that old . . .
When I say I can’t be her, I enter, or the part of me I think of as one’s self enters, an empty space; one enters her body: the body is below (and rises into) one’s editing and explaining self . . . as Nonie . . . I am half present as myself inside this Trojan Horse thing of being her . . .
I imagine I see her territory of vision—I imagine myself asserting I see everything . . . What is this? An editorial thing? A preparation for a role. At the border I am an escaping male self, somewhat thievish.
Unescaped, I am a hugely shocking vastness of awareness of nearby movements—of all sorts . . . Imagine a nervous frontier of that sort around you. One has quite a lot of boneless flesh here and there, hips and breasts. And one is partly a perched lemur . . . partly a cat. I never dreamed of such alertness for myself—Wiley—and never fully doubted an almost supernatural extent of that in her . . . As an actor doing this, one is a child spying on the women and pretending to be them in order to learn about men.
To be Lila is to be darker: more amused. Not a lemur-cat—more a fat-thighed sphinx reared up . . . But how would I know what a lemurcat or a sphinx, reared up or not, is like? What do I know of my mother, of my sister? To imagine a state in which one is preparing a show and one asks oneself, Is my mother like this?—how strange that would be for me . . .
As Nonie, the skin is young—so is the mind—and the mind feels different inside my skull (from Wiley’s mind) and the skin feels different on me. The familiarity of the ground of idea toward women vanishes entirely when one hopes to present the reality of one . . . The imagination of a woman, the image, the imagined thing, is not likely to be guesswork or a heretofore unworded mass of perceptions of them from alongside them but is likely to have something to do with hallucination . . . hallucination and theft . . . The structures of purported psychological indecencies in knowing women and then the joke-work transvestitism (in a brotherly mode—maybe it’s that), the connection(s) of the parts of those things to each other has to do with memory—and daydream-reverie—the curious thing of: What does she think of you . . .
Why should it matter?
One moves out into darkness on the pendulum-swing of this attempt and returns and tries the incantatory doubt—I can’t becomes, perversely, Let me see, let me see, before the momentary identity fades too much. The medium of actual air imagined in airlike investigation in the mind—blowy, eccentric, as on a windy spring day with clouds skating with perilous speed across the pale blue landscape of the almost spring sky—holds a landscape and a face in it, quickened with life—a face I can’t bear to imagine myself having. Her actual presence in a real moment, her as viewer and asker—if I divorce her from any purposes of meaning, of use or of instruction to me, then, in memory, it might be real enough, I might become Nonie briefly, my thoughts of my younger brother broken into by my disgust with him—he is disgusting and selfish . . . [Breathe, breathe . . . ] He’s no one important . . . He’s not broken and defeated, he’s merely nowhere. What I am is real. I-may-want-him-to-take-care-of-me-yet. [Breathe, breathe . . . ] [I bet I could hurt him if I wanted . . . ]
On my head is (dyed, strawish) long, reddish hair. Its weight, its dependent fixity mean a permanent wave. The breasts—the thighs—the butt . . . Inhale. Exhale. My legs, large, powerfully dwindle into small feet, thicken into my hips. My biggish girl’s rump drives my oddly pendulumatory walk. In my walking, my small-ribbed and as-if-weightless tprso—my chest—floats like a different mind beneath the casually other-motored, more intellectual face . . . Nonie? It is me. I am dressed in a pendular papier-mâché costume or an entire float as this splendor-of-myself-as-her. To be her in mood, I must be quieter inwardly and outwardly, with a filigree of motions stirring here and there around me . . . Mine is quieter breathing than I am used to as a boy—my breathing as Nonie is very loud when I am upset. It is noisy in my long neck to me: I am a long-necked, oddish, pendular, swift, frighteningly alert girl: I feel it; I feel I am an intruder in her skin, then in my own skin, in the weightedness and heat in her. Her heat—as herself. I feel that to be in her is to be a runaway force—all speediness and deftness and worry and force-of-will and willfulness . . . Conscience and knowledge, the walls of confidence, the flapping of worry, the terrible alertness—that sensitivity—the psychological sense of other people and my memory, patently, patiently uninspired, then impatiently and marvelously inspired, a quick-wittedness in a real-life sense . . . formal arrangements of opinion shaded by real-life obstinacy—and resignation—scenes, outcomes, near-presences of actual opinions of me, of things, of clothes, and pain and no-pain, I (Nonie) remember pictorially and I remember in my legs and back with gooseflesh and feeling, real feelings . . . I am differently awake from Wiley. I am the chief example, the best example of anything I choose to pronounce an opinion about. I am the basic measure of truth and of courtesy in this civilization. If I say to someone in the office—or to my brother—You animal, it means it was not recognized that the treatment of me is the measure of the degree of civilization in someone. In my peculiar degree of inner silence, practical memory, hard-edged promises, commitments (contracts), and bad dreams question my memory, my confidence, my safety. Voices in me do not talk in words but they give away their secrets and impart information as animals speak, with their whole beings, circumstances and glances. Other people utter promises which contain hidden-or-open views of me, of my power: they fill the air with reviews of me all day long, all night long. For me, a face is a rapid, nearly worded gesture of immediate moment which sweeps along toward a judgment of me . . . Death (accident, inequity) I am immortally superior to: I am very pretty . . . I know what I know . . . I am practical . . . Here’s a for instance:
(At the airfield, a guy was killed in a car accident on day leave the same day a mechanic stabbed a pilot who had been berating him . . .) Everyone was buzzing around. They leaned on me. I said, Let’s localize the damage and worry about the afterwards later . . . I mean afterward . . . And I was right: everyone listened to me . . .
Me, I know what end is up. If I am upset, if I am in trouble at night, I go to Aunt Casey’s room and she will pity me; her friend Emma-Jean’s husband is a doctor; Casey will give me some of her codeine. The man killed in the car accident was from Columbus, Georgia. (The small-bodied corpse was twisted, partly mangled, charred—it was hideously pretty pink and red and burnt black; and it was yellow and pustulant.) I can bear things.
(At the airfield, planes taking off, planes landing, other planes practicing in the clear air, the sound of the motors echoed off the rocky fence of the pretty and fallen-sideways jumble of mountains.)
I do not give up. I do not give in. I do not give anything away . . .
Ha-ha.
I turn away if I have to. I know how to hide . . . in the whitish tent of the lady-warmth of her body . . .
The one who got killed was a no-good rowdy, an off-again, on-again drunk—he was a coward—he was a poor flight candidate . . . (A pecu
liar human substance as a candidate-apprentice to be a fighter pilot.)
Then in silence, in silent gesture: I worry that I have been damaged in my being a woman by what I know.
The mechanic stabbed a show-off Swedish guy from North Dakota—he just hated him—you know how it is?
Truths emerge in the queer spreading republic of death. The skewed mathematics of her logic, her sense of the behavior of aluminum-skinned actual fighter planes—slim fuselages, upright tails, slender, metal wings—she knows which of the planes at the airfield are tricky and are better avoided; her advice is good—is close to being life-and-death.
The twitches of a pilot, his reflexes and the certain oddities of his eyesight, the variety of versions, the variations in his will to live, his carelessness . . . I am, she is, the sister of such matters as that. Her—my—senses are so sharp I feel no man can feel a thing. My unworded, exclamatorily captioned thoughts are a mumbled-jumbled spirit of me being driven round the bend. Other people make me tired. I am as sourly fragile and as quick as a vixen—I am as powerful, in some ways, as Samson, but I don’t want to be trapped, captured, caged, even if only a little bit. I am not really an amateur of consolation; grown to this age, I am a professional of consolation. I will be the most famous woman in the world. I know this. I have claws. I represent what-is-bearable. I am an emblem for a man of what-is-not-bearable. If I can’t stand something or if he can’t, he says I can’t, and then it is forbidden: I inspire men this way—ha-ha. They save themselves this way. The rhythmical mumbo-jumbo (the wit or the rhythms) of my breath marks my sense of humor: I breathe and smile my humor—I don’t make jokes . . . I pass judgment—with my liking, my moods: I review everything . . .
And then my inward accompanying semi-comic-and-sad soprano screech at each of my initiations into horror in the stench of the present reality of animal things . . . I don’t know this other self . . . in me . . .
I am strained here, among the grown-ups . . . Among the grown-ups, I am a seriously pretty girl. I am watched because people want to see what I do, what I do with my life. They want to laugh. And the immensity of the truth of this lies around my thoughts like some entangling thing that sometimes forces me almost to my knees. So much has to be sneered at if I am to be a pretty girl that I am overweighted by my having to ignore things.
I have my proud, sly belief that I am stronger than the Devil himself.
If I don’t feel that way, I look haggard.
My biographical terror, my conceit, I am who I am, and I am in motion at the corners of my own eyes, running for safety’s sake . . . with my terror in my breasts and in my things—I have to laugh—the enlarged mouth, the big-eyed pretty face that some people stare at—I dive and twist and run, mad girl among mad boys . . .
And my crazedly aging but still young soul, youthfully instructed, I was an athlete before the war taught me what truth is made of, I have a sense now of being overmatched—of injustice being no joke, you know—it’s-more-than-enough-thank-you-very-much . . . I am inhabited by scrambling little-footed hens pecking, pecking . . . or by fleas and lice scrambling and ticking away in me—I am so nervous I will die of the nerves . . .
Let it all go to hell; you can all go to hell; I want them all to go to hell . . . My hands flutter: KINDNESS TO WOMEN, KINDNESS TO WOMEN . . . I ask for good manners—that’s not so much to ask: I’m just a simple person, I’m a nice girl, I’m sorry, I apologize, but you know what that is, don’t you . . . THEY DON’T HAVE ANY MANNERS! I’m not like my mother . . . I have no real brother . . . I pull a lock of my hair toughly-jauntily and I smile at you, and if I flatter you you will dream about me for nights. I know this. Listen to my breath: look into my eyes: I am alive . . . Jaunty gentille alouette . . . Alive, alive-o . . .OH . . . An almost giggly rabbity promptness in me knows it isn’t wise to be always in trouble—I say I was always happy—you know? I don’t like people to keep track of every little thing I say . . . I don’t like to fight with people . . . I don’t like to be fought with . . . I like a rainbow and a smile; I’m like my dad . . .
Damp days ruin my hair. The damp air coagulates into necklaces of opals, my favorite stone . . . motes of prismatic light, prismatic particles, the circular bits of colored light—but what good does it do me if I look like death warmed over . . . In the dark of my bedroom a car’s headlights move: myself sweating, myself heavyish below the waist, pinioned by myself down there . . . the tense silence in me is the crumpling and at this moment excruciatingly highly regarded glamour of my youth—as it thickens . . . My luck. Me, myself, and I? Me, my luck, and I. The chief music of my soul . . . I’m not badly off. But I am in steep trouble . . .
Oh, I won’t crack up . . . I’m stubborn . . .
I’ll crack up over my dead body: I’m not a man . . .
Nonie said that out loud once, seriously . . . And once in a semi-comic, partly serious speech. Bits of dust in the air have colored edges—so do oil slicks on the runways—I do a job. The F.B.I. talks to me twice a month. Men love me . . . often. It makes me giggle when men or women talk about fucking. I am always afraid . . . I am never afraid . . . Who here is bitter? . . . Not I, said the sugar cube . . . Not I, said the lemon. Not I, said the good little pretty girl. I am not greedy and sly . . . I am full of hate but I can’t help that. I am not a nice young woman—yes I am. My mother says I am blind and I am giving my life away stupidly. Not me, damn her, not me . . . I am as pure as the driven snow . . . It’s a joke . . . But I really am. Try to corrupt me: see what happens . . . I’ll have your head cut off. I do an A-number-one bang-up job when I set out to do anything. The truth is, around here the psychiatrist has to take a back seat TO ME—I am good with the boys . . . I am not a whore . . . War is no blessing . . . I keep my nerve . . . I do my work . . . Men can’t boast, but a girl can . . . ha-ha. I’d rather be a girl than a stupid smelly boy with hairy armpits any day. If I have lost my nerve, still I am not a coward. Areas of sin . . . cowardice . . . and the flames of nervous heat . . . actual flames . . . people looking on . . .
And personal merit and actual courage, as in dying for someone, a woman—who here is able to tell me about these things? I call on you to speak, silence-in-the-corner-of-the-room, molecular glimmers, the sweetly edged and tiny asteroids (that dust motes are) in the open French doors of my room in the early dawn in midsummer . . . Headlights in my room—decks of playing cards—daisies for me to dismember . . . I call on you, and on the lines of my hand, to tell me about myself . . . My fate . . . My luck . . . I am a woman drowning in silence . . . Listen, kiddo, I am all wool and a yard wide . . . These are not my last words . . . I have secret images in me . . . I keep my own counsel . . . I am the best . . . I do the best of anyone . . . I do the best I can . . . I can be mean: try me . . . I have put the fear of God into a few slackers now and sons of bitches now and then . . . I’m a handful in my time . . . This goddamned airfield is a butcher shop . . . I want to sit on my ass in a sunny place and drink daiquiris . . . I’ll manage a while longer but I could use a nice engagement ring and a long rest in a pretty place . . . I know about the graft, I don’t take graft . . . I am not intimidated . . . The corrupt guys and senior men threaten me but so what—I have the F.B.I. And Army Intelligence . . . And I have the Warners . . . I pooh-pooh a lot of things . . . I’m not a no one . . . But everything is expensive . . . you know how it is . . . I know my limits . . . I don’t know anything and neither does anyone else . . . I don’t want to go to hell but I’m not going to take crap from people who are nobodies-shit while I’m young, either . . . Believe me . . . I get even . . . We’re all just human beings, we all have to go to bed, we all have to go to the john, we take our pants off one leg at a time . . . Ha-ha . . . Talk to me and you’ll hear true things—keep that in mind. I’m a well-known girl, as bright as they make them . . . My name is Puddintame . . . We move at an insane speed above the ground . . . Paul lets me fly his plane . . . I take the joystick in my hand . . . While we flew, he wanted me TO TOUCH HIM . .
. I can be persuaded but I know how to say no . . . I hate the shit that’s in most books . . . I have a gift for not being a goody-goody . . . You want to kiss me? Don’t it’s my time . . . and I smell. It’s bad luck to talk ABOUT SOME THINGS . . . Like this . . . LISTEN TO ME, YOU SNOT-NOSED PIECE OF SHIT—oh, did I scare you? I meant to scare you . . . I scared you, did I? Are you all right . . . BUT YOU’RE LISTENING NOW I BET.
See, I’m not helpless.
Sometimes I am. How much more can I stand? My nerves, I’m a big shot around here, I mind my p’s and q’s. I’m the queen of the air base, I have my own bailiwick, I have a nickname: Old Ironcunt: I don’t get sloppy. You know what else I’ve been told? This: You’re a good girl—that means a lot to us. You are an example for us of a lot that’s good in this country. Honey, you’re a real sweetheart—I think a lot of the songs are about you.
I’m as smart as you are . . .
LOVE STORY
Casey and Nonie
In the story I am excluded from, Nonie arrives in Forestville and is met by Aunt Casey, then a tall, rangy, fine-looking woman (“she had good bones”) with one of those skating-along, far-off Southern voices—musically noisy, friendly but fairly acid all the time . . . all the same . . . Perhaps sexually aggressive . . .
The Runaway Soul Page 74