The Skin Above My Knee

by Marcia Butler

  A long if quiet trauma with my father had prevented any easiness in my body. I never saw it—nakedness—as a natural state. It was a condition, like an illness—a mistake, really, that had to be healed or rectified as quickly as possible. I was painfully shy as a child, and even before I’d gained, through the loose folds of my father’s trousers, an encyclopedic knowledge of what an erect penis felt like (in all its various iterations, from slightly chubby to broom-handle hard and every degree in between), that bashfulness would continue to hound me as I became a young woman and throughout my adult life. I preferred loose-fitting clothing that hid my curves. Even in bed with men, I’d throw the covers back on top of us as fast as I thought was acceptable. Sex was indeed like doing hard time, counting the minutes, waiting to be released so I could turn away and relax back into the chill of the ice floe that encased my mind. Numbing myself in so many myriad and covert ways kept me at a distance from feeling anything, even when I was naked and at my most vulnerable. I’d been blind to my body since the day I told my father that I “understood” him. And with that nod of the head and just a few words, a girl’s future potential, perhaps her most wanted desire—free and unfettered physical love—was sliced open, gutted out, and left for dead.

  Now, with cancer, a real death threat, embedded into my breast, I was forced to literally look at them. My breasts. It was not an easy view.

  So I didn’t like this smaller, higher breast—or the other one, for that matter. And I didn’t like the look of the flesh at my gut or the sick yellow chemo pallor under my eyes. My legs appeared to be shapeless stumps, my arms just conveniently placed appendages that could quickly cover up those ghastly bumps on my chest. I felt hideous.

  I was uncharacteristically late that morning. Two children’s concerts were scheduled for that afternoon, and I needed to get to the hall. I quickly dressed in concert black, but thinking of Donna and her red scarf the day before, I decided to wear red shoes for the trip to the hall and stuck a pair of black flats into my backpack for the performances.

  Walking into the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, I could hear the giggles and shouts of young children as their parents patiently tried to rein them in. I’d played this job, for the Little Orchestra Society, for years, and it was one of my favorites because the concerts exposed kids to classical music for perhaps the very first time.

  The program that day was Peter and the Wolf by Sergey Prokofiev, which I had performed dozens of times over many seasons. Throughout the concert, kids squealed nonstop. Looking into the audience and seeing the faces of children who might never before in their lives have heard a flute, a clarinet, a trumpet, or an oboe, much less an orchestra, was a privilege I never took for granted. I wasn’t sure why, but the idea of giving this gift to them was especially poignant that day. Maybe it was because they were seeing me, and my eyes were open to them. I was looking, connecting, and understanding. And if I could begin to understand, then somehow I might also begin to forget. I felt a befuddling sense of happiness and somber resignation simultaneously.

  The last notes sounded; the kids roared with applause. I’d play this exact show again in about an hour, and I wanted to get to the corner deli for a quick sandwich. But as I started to pack up my instrument, a mother and her small daughter made their way toward me. The stagehands rushed over to shoo them away, as union rules prohibited audience members from coming onto the stage. Putting my oboe on the chair beside me, I quickly walked over to the edge of the stage and knelt down to greet them.

  “Did you like the concert today?”

  The mom encouraged her shy daughter to answer my question.

  “Yes.”

  “Emily, ask the lady what you want to know.”

  “What’s your question, Emily?”

  “What’s that thing you’re playing?”

  “My instrument is called an oboe. I played the Duck in the performance. Did you hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Emily, ask the lady…”

  “Could I play the oboe?”

  “Of course you could. But tell me, Emily. Why do you want to play the oboe?”

  The girl thought for several seconds, then stared at me intently.

  “Because I felt something strange.”

  I looked into this girl’s confused eyes as she tried to articulate something that could not be clearly said, maybe even known. Giving her the chance to say it in her own words, I began to ask more questions.

  “Ah…what did that strange thing feel like?”

  “It was good…”

  “Okay…”

  I winked at the mother, who was looking at her daughter as if she were an alien from Mars. The little girl continued to struggle. “And it was…um, just good…I guess…”

  “Good is great. But what kind of good? Can you tell me more about the good?”

  “It was kind of squishy…”

  Perfect. I took this shy girl’s averted face between my hands and pulled her in toward me. Looking directly into her eyes, I passed along what Kirsten had given me when I was four years old.

  “Well, Emily, that sounds like a perfect reason to play the oboe, because I’ll tell you a little secret. That’s exactly the same reason I became interested in music, too. Something felt squishy.”

  Tristan und Isolde

  As a freelancer, you find few opportunities to play opera. It’s very expensive to mount productions outside the majestic venues: the New York City Opera (now, sadly, defunct) and the Metropolitan Opera. But one day a miracle happens. You get a call to play six three-hour rehearsals for a reading of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Your very own Tristan! Your beloved Isolde!

  A few managers of “up-and-coming” and “rising star” opera singers are putting together the reading to generate exposure—and contracts—for their clients. You’re hired to play English horn. This is so very exciting: you can now play Isolde’s music. Kirsten’s music. Your English horn solo will be the “shepherd’s tune” in the third act, a sad and foreboding premonition of Tristan’s death. At this moment in the opera the orchestra stops, and the English horn plays this solo for three long minutes.

  Traditionally, many opera productions will require the player to come out of the pit, get into costume, and play the solo from memory onstage, as an actor. It is very dramatic. Tristan hears the shepherd’s song and remembers how Isolde helped nurse him in battle. He looks to the sea for the ship that may carry her. With his eyes fixed on the horizon, he waits for her as he listens to the shepherd’s plaintive tune. But in this rehearsal context, you will simply stand within the orchestra and play.

  You prepare for two solid weeks, and it is a glorious event to anticipate. Everyone in the orchestra has given up better-paid work to accept this job. So the rehearsals begin—and the singers are great, and even the Italian conductor isn’t bad. You go home every night and feel lucky that you have another day with Isolde to look forward to.

  On the fifth day, however, they haven’t even finished with the second act, and you begin to worry that you might not get to play the shepherd’s tune after all. You worry that they might skip it altogether to save the three minutes of time. After all, it’s not about you and your silly English horn solo! It’s all about the singers. And in defense of them, why should they waste time on you and your shepherd’s tune?

  As you enter the rehearsal hall on the final day, you go into a deep protective space, girding yourself for the eventuality that they will skip your solo. After some playing and some waiting, they finally dive into the third act. The rehearsal has been extended an extra hour because the conductor realizes how badly he has planned. It’s going along, and you are nervous: you just don’t know what will happen.

  Then they get to your spot in the music, the place of the shepherd’s tune. Everyone stops and looks your way. The conductor nods. You get to your feet, pull the music stand up, take the correct breath, and begin. Your nerves calm down. Your hands stop shaking. The saliva comes b
ack into your mouth. You take your time. You think fleetingly about Kirsten throughout the three minutes. You finish the solo. There is silence. The conductor says “Bis,” which in Italian means “encore.” He wants you to take three more valuable minutes and play it again! Everyone is looking at you, staring you down. You take your time, begin again. Again. For your Kirsten.

  Red

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON at the Kaye playhouse, after I’d played the second show, I thought of Emily. I worried that her mother would not understand just how profoundly music had touched her daughter. The sensation Emily felt, and was brave enough to verbalize, emerged from a miraculous, sweet place that would need attention from a loving parent, a parent who perhaps didn’t understand but who was willing to learn along with her daughter. This opportunity could easily be missed by a mother who was too busy, a father who didn’t care, or through simple neglect. Or worse.

  Then I thought of all the freakish accidents and interactions that had somehow guided my own life. The brilliance of my mother’s Hoover, which never seemed to drown out Kirsten’s voice; switching from flute to oboe by simply acknowledging, in the moment, a powerful energy that compelled me to rise to my feet and volunteer—that is something I will always shake my head at in disbelief. There was a lot that went wrong, but I was saved; perhaps I’d saved myself. So I resolved to not worry about Emily. She’d probably be fine.

  Lost in thought and butting up against some hard memories, I left the theater and walked without purpose, staring down at my red shoes. A Saturday on the Upper East Side at dinnertime left the streets fairly empty. I wandered, looking into the pricey shop windows, trying to guess the cost of various items that might be nice to own in another lifetime. But I moved forward, uptown and then eastward, trying to forget that little girl.

  I found myself on East 74th Street just opposite the space where Mannes used to reside. The street still had that tony doyenne charm, but the music was long gone. In the mid-1980s Mannes had moved to the Upper West Side, into a larger facility. The row of connected town houses had been razed—a low, boxy residential building now stood in front of me. Staring at what should have been the school, I realized that Mrs. S.’s apartment building was behind me. It stood there, untouched. How many times had I raced across this very street to get to my classes straight from a fight with Whitney or from eavesdropping on Mrs. S. as she gossiped with Bitsy about Blabsy?

  Feeling surrounded by my own distant but tender history, I felt a pulsing ache, like a bruise that had gone through its red-blue-purple stage and was about to turn that final ocher and heal. Sweat broke to the surface of my skin, and I adjusted the small backpack holding my oboe. It felt heavier across my shoulders and back than it should have. My stomach buckled, as though I had swallowed sour curdled milk. And then I remembered I’d had my chemo just the day before. Breathing deeply, I realized I couldn’t remember whether I had walked down this street since I’d left Mannes in the late 1970s. Perhaps I had inadvertently, but I couldn’t actually remember it, as if I were a determined amnesiac who wanted to forget the people I ran toward and from. As I stood there, the view was benign but also tinged with sweetness. Kind of like when you return to a place you lived long ago, and the memory is huge, but when you go back, the room and the view are dwarfed, improbable.

  I took the backpack off, set it on the ground, sat down in the middle of the lowest step to Mrs. S.’s building, and lay my head down onto my knees. I smelled the lotion and rubbed my forehead back and forth, deep into the skin. Then it came up—a dream from the night before. About my mother.

  Honey, you can always move.

  All of a sudden it was as if I were standing on 23rd Street and Seventh Avenue in the Chelsea of the 1970s. The southeast corner—darkly familiar. A screaming angel of a woman had interrupted my stutter step years ago on this very corner. In my dream, I turned around and around, gathering together each specter of my past. I looked west toward the Hudson River and could see everything with brilliant twenty-twenty vision all the way to New Jersey. And my hearing was also acute; I heard every breath each bird took and every secret, wisplike breeze the earth pushed my way. The weather was warm, balmy, and a breeze blew up against my lower back. My mother stepped out of the bodega on the opposite corner. As she strode confidently across the street in my direction, the cars swerved around her without slowing down. It all appeared to be a choreographed dance. She wore the shirtwaist dress of my childhood, her knees peeking out from below the hem. This was my mother of the pre-Hoover years—my mother before I met my Kirsten. This was the mother it was safe to love and who, I imagined, loved me in return—my mother from the page of a yearbook, smiling, with a crooked tooth. With her head canted in my general direction, she tossed the words to me as she strode by.

  Honey, you can always move.

  Honey. The throwaway endearment I had heard all my life.

  You. Me, Marcia, her daughter.

  Can. It is possible.

  Always. Without exception.

  Move.

  “Miss? Excuse me. I need to get in here.”

  Someone was speaking, but my head felt cemented to my knees. When I opened my eyes, my red shoes came into focus, then the ground under them. I saw a pair of jeans and Nike sneakers with a red swhoosh.

  “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t feeling well.”

  As I lifted my head up, the man, startled, quickly jumped back, as he clearly saw my unhealthy bald skull and sallow eyes. Inured to his reaction, I smiled and scooted to the side of the stoop.

  “Can I get you something? I live on the first floor. Water?”

  “No. I’m fine. Thanks. I was just resting for a minute.”

  “Well, take your time.”

  I was not a homeless lunatic, just a cancer patient. Relieved, he stepped by me and entered the building.

  My hand was crimped shut and held stiff across my chest in a kind of deformed salute. Slowly I opened my fist and shook it out. I’d been there for some time, and I imagined—a bit sheepishly—all the other people who must have walked by and seen a bald woman curled into a ball on a stoop. Time to move. I grabbed my oboe bag, slung it on my back, and walked east. As I was crossing Third Avenue, something caught my eye. Something red. I walked in that direction, feeling pushed, pulled, beckoned.

  Dusk was falling, and my long shadow stretched out in front of me. My skull looked like a dot on a clothespin; the sun pressed heavily at my neck. Turning to look behind me, I saw the beginnings of a red sunset, which boded well for sailors—their morning delight. The next day would be clear, sunny—perhaps hopeful. And now this wondrous thing directly above me flapped vigorously in the strong, gusting wind. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked up. A red cloth banner extended from a pole attached to a building with huge glass doors.

  Just then, I understood that red was the most luscious color in the world. A resonating, resounding, and restorative color that infuses and organizes the universe, like the sound waves of music that rule our local and distant solar systems. With the fabric swirling above me, in front of me, all around me, I heard the red’s melody, and I felt its rhythm pound against my chest.

  My sweat, still sticky, had almost dried up, and I could now smell myself. Exhausted and possibly insane, I looked into this building, pressed my nose to the glass door, and saw people milling about, strolling from wall to wall. White papers were plastered onto those walls, and the color red was prominent, popping out—perhaps art, though I couldn’t be sure. Someone in a tuxedo, a waiter, it seemed, was filling tulip glasses with bubbly, and occasionally someone raised a glass in a toast. I imagined they were celebrating the red. Words were said; I couldn’t hear; didn’t care.

  For more time than was surely appropriate, I stood looking into what must have been a private event. I was not invited, yet I felt tethered to these people, who, I imagined, also loved the red. Everything whirled and shimmered—the flapping red banner above me, the red sky behind me, my red shoes below me, and the red splashes I felt ins
ide. All around, red flowed freely and surrounded my vacant heart. With both hands placed firmly on the crystal-clear glass door, I pushed forward, opened my heart, and walked into the red.

  Amnesia—A Love Story

  For many years you work hard to forget. Complete amnesia the goal. It’s not easy or always successful, but after a time the memories you seek to avoid recede, and in their place you gain some manner of neutrality. You’re not cold, exactly, but you’ve managed a reprieve from the sad heat that used to burn your heart. To the touch, you are cool.

  One day while you’re taking a break, watching a midday soap opera, you hear the postman drop a particularly heavy parcel through the slot of your front door. It lands with a beckoning thump. Curious, you step into the mudroom and see the handwriting—distinctive fat loops, unchanged over time. You rip it open. It’s a book—a memoir. She’s written about her life, and after ten years of silence it seems your mother wants to tell you something.

  But you don’t want to read. You don’t want to bring back the hope that nailed you to your cross of wanting, which you carried on your back from the age of zero. The book, a self-published affair, feels radioactive, as though its very presence will poison you and give you cancer again. So you pick it up by the corner and quickly, before it explodes, run into the kitchen and throw it into the garbage bin. Over the next few days it remains buried under an ever-increasing pile of coffee grounds, eggshells, uneaten toast, and other rotting items. It’s just plain old nonrecyclable refuse.

  You hold off taking out the garbage. That toxic ream of paper seems to glow every time you enter the kitchen. And finally, because the garbage is beginning to reek, you reach down through the clotted food to retrieve the book. You wipe off the bits of grounds and yolk and stains as best you can. Now, you tell yourself, you’re ready to read what she wants you to know; certainly information known and unknown, maybe her secrets, but perhaps an answer that will allow you to become warm again; a woman who has a mother.