I leaned over to Connie’s ear. “Death never walks alone. She always walks with her sister, lust.” I was really tripping.
“And why is that, Irene?” asked Connie, as if it were an ordinary conversation.
“Because lust carries the seed.”
“The seed?” Connie rolled her eyes. “Uh huh.”
“Of life. The next generation. Always another generation. Like waves, they keep coming despite lassitude, drunkenness, boredom, satiation, and listlessness. Despite death.” The door opened, and I could see the black night outside. “What’s the point of life, Connie, if we’re all headed in the same direction—death? Tell me, what’s the point? Struggle or don’t struggle, all the waves crash in the end.”
“Baba Irene, guru to Lithuanians, wherever they may wander.” Connie lit her Marlboro.
“Baba means wise man. Sounds like boba in Lithuanian. Means foolish old woman.” I felt my mouth curl in disgust. “Sexism.”
Connie grabbed her purse and stood up to leave. “I’m sick of this. Let’s go home. I’m going to wake you early tomorrow for the Democratic National Convention. Remember? We’re going, in case you forgot.”
The next day started out kind of pleasant for Chicago. Crowds of hippies were watching Alan Ginsberg chanting “Ooommm” in Lincoln Park. All of Lincoln Park looked stoned in an ecstasy of togetherness. There was a feel of festival in the air—music playing, people dancing. This was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
Connie wore bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed t-shirt while I wore my Lithuanian blouse with the red embroidery over frayed jeans and my favorite water-buffalo sandals with the strap around my big toe. I was covering the demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention for the alternative press, as I liked to call it, but in reality it was a throwaway paper that landed on the doorsteps of incense stores and head shops. Connie and I headed over to Michigan Avenue, where Lyndon Johnson was staying at the Hilton. Across the street in Grant Park, the serious demonstrators were gathered wearing khaki jackets and jeans, bandanas pushing down their shaggy hair as they shouted angry slogans through bullhorns and waved antiwar placards. Though I was against the war, some of these demonstrators struck me as a tad too self-righteous, their anger more put on than heartfelt—a bit like my Bolshie professors at the university, whose beliefs seemed to stem more from current fashion than conviction.
The chop-chop of helicopter blades snapped me to attention, as one landed behind a long line of National Guard troops on the park side of Michigan Avenue. They were standing at attention with their rifles in hand. Behind them, the Guard jeeps bristled with a grid of barbed wire in front of each car’s grill.
“Geez, friendly looking group.” I started to creep away.
“It’s a police state,” said Connie. “They’re not kidding around here.”
“Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh,” some shirtless hippie taunted a young Guardsman, whose grinding jaws worked silently. Another hippie was putting a flower into a rifle stock.
“I say let’s boogie on home.” My stomach was beginning to churn with nervous tension.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” whined Connie. “This is just Mayor Daley flexing his muscles, showing off in front of his fellow Democrats, letting them know he’s one tough son of a bitch.”
“But he is one tough son of a bitch!”
“Yeah, well, never mind. We’re here and we’re staying. They can’t frighten us away.” Connie marched on, like the Taurus bull she was. The trouble with Connie was, she was a true believer. I, on the other hand, though anti-war, was a bit too cynical to truly be in the trenches, but also too curious not to at least put a foot in. One foot in, one foot out—my perennial stance.
I ran to catch Connie by her arm. “Hey, nothing’s started yet, and I need to go over to Walgreen’s for some tampons and a cup of coffee. My head is still throbbing from last night.”
At Walgreen’s, Connie sat at the counter sipping coffee, staring out the window toward Michigan Avenue, while I went to the bathroom and took some aspirin and some “window pane.” At the very least, maybe the acid would give me some needed courage. When I sat back down, the waitress poured us another cup of coffee. I studied it like it was the Rosetta stone, pouring cream in, stirring it, and watching the coffee swirl around in the cup, and then I stirred it again. And again. “I wonder if coffee swirls in the other direction south of the equator,” I said slowly, not daring to look at Connie.
“Coffee swirls in the direction you stir it, above or below the equator.” Connie finally took a good look at me. “Oh bloody hell, don’t tell me you took something while you were in the bathroom?”
“Just a touch,” I said sheepishly.
“Now what am I going to do with you?” Connie was pissed.
“Nothing, why?”
“Irene, we’re going to go yell ‘hell, no, we won’t go’ to the assembled Democrats. We will do this in honor of your brother and Al Vitkus, who are both in Vietnam. Remember?” Her voice was rising like some Biblical prophet.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, suddenly contrite. “For Pete and Al. You think I’m not going?”
“Irene, you’re turning into a total head.”
“It’s only because I don’t know how to live my life. It’s all so confusing.” I was beginning to feel remorse.
Connie sighed. “Come on. Just don’t freak out on me.” She didn’t know anything about life either. She was just scared of acid, like I was scared of rifles and jeeps with barbed wire.
On State Street, the usual shoppers and hawkers thronged the street. When Connie and I walked toward Michigan Avenue, we heard the sound of a crowd yelling and figured that LBJ had finally arrived at the Hilton. Then we stopped, feeling confused and concerned as we noticed a group of kids, wild-eyed with fear, running toward us, followed by others. A group of long-haired hippies blitzed by, followed by a cloud of tear gas floating over from Michigan Avenue. We could feel the sting in our eyes and throats as we started to run back toward State Street.
Suddenly, the Chicago police materialized, their pale-blue shirts everywhere, their clubs cracking the heads of protesters and onlookers alike in a delirium of violence. A policeman grabbed Connie by her big hair, dragging her away to a waiting patrol car, while she screamed obscenities, writhing and kicking.
I wanted to help her, but I stood still, totally immobilized by fear. All around me, students cursed the oncoming threat. A policeman rained blows on a girl nearby as she screamed in pain, clutching her head, a trickle of blood between her fingers. I longed to help her, but I had turned to stone. My mouth was open in a silent scream. My whole life I had listened to my parents tell apocalyptic stories about the chaos of World War II. Now it was finally here—chaos, maw open wide, most ravenous of beasts, riding a tear-gas cloud, feeding on innocent blood. I had been waiting for this beast for so long, it was almost a relief to finally see it.
Suddenly, I felt a hand grab mine and I shuddered, prepared to die. As death’s sour breath reached my cheek, I was ready to be the sacrificial lamb. Oh, lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on me. The hand pulled me again, and I submitted, surrendering to the beast as it swept into the melee of screams, shouts, and curses. Still the hand pulled, and then a bus door closed behind me, and the bus driver hollered, “That’s it. We’re not letting any more in. No more room.”
Bus 1968 to hell. The express—no stops, no transfers. I stood pressed against a hairy young man who looked like Van Dyke, or was it Henry Hudson? “Whew, that was close,” he said.
“Where am I?” I tried to focus. Was this some post-death bardo state, or was I Alice in the rabbit hole? “Are you a Dutch captain on the Hudson River?” I asked.
“Are you crazy?” he asked back.
“Maybe,” I answered, but I knew nothing. Looking out the window at the rough sea of violence swirling around the bus, I was in t
he eye of the tornado, an eddy in the storm. Who was stirring this? What hand had pulled me to safety, and why me and not those people out there? I started whimpering, thinking they were all from my grammar school. I knew them, didn’t I? Why was one hurt and not another? Why did my brother Pete go to Nam? Why Al? I began to sob while Van Dyke held me.
I didn’t know how long I stayed on that bus. Clinging to Van Dyke in my grief, I grew old there. I didn’t know yet that his name was Joel. I only knew that my jeans were soaked with blood. Had I gotten injured? Nothing hurt. It took me a long time to remember the bathroom at Walgreen’s. I had forgotten to use the tampons. The ambulances arrived, and they wanted to put me inside with those who had been injured. I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t. The solicitude of attendants, nurses, and doctors was too much to resist. Why was all of this feeling so Catholic? Always the redemption of blood. Or was it a blood sacrifice? Martyrs, torture, flagellation, and the always-dying Jesus on the cross.
When the ambulance attendants lifted me onto a gurney, Van Dyke went along for the ride to the emergency room. The TV cameras were rolling. It was my finest hour. I was ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. It was faux, but I was a symbolic martyr of the Democratic National Convention.
It was only much later, after the LSD had worn off, that I began to feel embarrassed. Then I was totally mortified. Penitent. The doctors were not amused. My savior, Van Dyke, stayed with me, though I don’t know why. We bailed Connie out and got her home. She was neither bruised nor broken as I had imagined. Just angry.
Chastised, I bowed my head, bad to the bone. I couldn’t hold my head up or speak for days. I would have worn ashes and sackcloth, or joined the flagellants if there had been any around, but instead I scourged myself with a running inner monologue of self-loathing. I went to all my classes at Roosevelt University, worked my dull credit-office job at Marshall Field’s, apologized over and over to Connie for doing too much acid, and vowed never to take it again. And I promised myself I would go see my parents the following weekend. I needed the stability of home.
The trouble with home was that it made me sad to go back to my old South Side neighborhood, which always looked like one of life’s forgotten backwaters. There was Life with a capital L, full of risk and excitement, and then there was this old life, cautiously lived, saved, and parceled out carefully. I knew every nook and cranny of that South Side life.
“We saw you on the news, Irene.” My mother was studying me.
“You did?” I felt sick.
“Last week, during the convention. What were you doing there with all those hooligans?” My mother was looking at me the way Margaret Mead might have looked at those South Seas islanders.
“What did you see?” I asked warily.
“You were being dragged onto a bus. They kept showing it on every newscast. All the neighbors called to ask if you were all right. They saw you too.” My mother bit her lip. “I was so embarrassed, Irene.”
I didn’t know what to say. Why did seeing parents mean being crushed with guilt? It made me remember an old Arab saying that said a man resembles his time more than he resembles his father. I guess the same held true for mothers and daughters. I marveled at how little I knew my mother.
“I was demonstrating against the war, Mama. For Pete and Al, so that they could come home.” My face was turning red, as I wondered if my mother had seen my bloody pants. I didn’t ask. I ate my mother’s apple cake and drank her hot tea. The clock ticked loudly on the wall, the same yellow electric clock my parents bought in 1950. It reminded me of grammar school, sitting at the table, doing my homework for Sister Kunigunda.
My parents looked at me like I was an escapee from a perpetual Mardi Gras—colorful but not to be taken seriously. And I knew they were right. My mother poured more tea, and we were quiet, stirring our cups until she looked up. “Mr. Vitkus told me yesterday that his son was injured in Vietnam.”
“What?” I was shocked. “Al was hurt?” I held my breath. It must be my fault. The acid, the demonstration, the tampons—something I did wrong.
“He said it was his leg.”
“Will he be OK?” I felt sick. I hadn’t had a letter from Al in many months.
“His father said it was nothing serious.”
I wasn’t relieved. I knew Al wouldn’t tell his father if it was serious. “How about Pete?” My brother was due to come home soon.
“He’s fine. He writes that he’s in Saigon working in an office. I pray for him every day.”
Pete was lying too. He was in Hue, but he didn’t want Mama to worry.
When had my mother gotten so much older, so much grayer and tired looking? When had my father gotten so bald? It squeezed my heart to see them like this. I wanted to keep them young and vital, the way I remembered them from my childhood.
“Are you going to visit your old friends, Vida and Ona?”
“I don’t have time, Mama. I have to write some papers for school.”
“Vida’s engaged, you know. To Jonas Janulis.” My mother said those words like they were a charm—one of life’s alchemical phrases.
“Yes, I heard.” I knew my mother wanted me to dress like Jackie Kennedy, marry some nice Lithuanian engineer, move into a brick bungalow down the street, bring her grandchildren to dinner every Sunday after Mass, and send them to Lithuanian Saturday School. I wanted her to have that too. Who doesn’t yearn to heal their mother’s heartbreak? I just couldn’t do it, even though life would be easier if I could. It was not in my nature to be so compliant. I was a wild card. Now I would have to play it to the end.
I kissed my parents and told them I loved them. My heart ached, realizing that I had taken a turn in life; I couldn’t say exactly when it had happened, but it was irrevocably away from them. When I walked down the stairs of the brick two-flat and headed for the bus station, Al’s sister, Magda, crossed the street, walking alongside me without saying a word. As we walked down Talman Street together, I remembered a day when Magda was about twelve, and I was about seven. She was walking ahead of me in the alley wearing a blue housedress. I watched in amazement as she picked up her dress, pulled down her underpants, and squatted down to pee. When I walked by the place where Magda had been, I saw blood. My first thought was that she was dying, that something was terribly wrong with her. And after that, for months, I carefully watched her with apprehension, looking for signs of a fatal illness. I knew nothing about menstrual blood then. My mother had once mentioned that someday I was going to bleed, but that, God forbid, I should never tell my father or my brother about it. In my baffling ignorance, I thought I was going to have the stigmata. What else could it be? I knew more about the martyrdom of saints than I did about my own body.
It suddenly occurred to me that Magda was short for Magdalena, after Mary Magdalene in the Bible. Jesus had cast out seven devils from her. Poor Magda was as innocent as a baby, while I seemed to have the seven devils in me. I took Magda’s hand and walked to the end of Talman Street, where I knew she would walk no farther. Magda had her perimeter in this neighborhood, like I supposed her brother Al had in Nam.
She smiled like the six year old she still was inside. Why had God done this to Magda? Was she the sacrificial Lamb of God? I felt a sudden sympathy for all of life’s misfits—for the slow and the clumsy, for all the rejects and queers, for the deformed and the misshapen, for the odd and the slow-witted. I knew I was one of them. I hugged Magda fiercely like the sister I’d never had. Sisters in menstrual blood.
I took the bus to Loomis and got on the El. The wheels of the train screeched and clacked as I sat quietly, staring at the blur of broken back porches on the South Side. When the train slowed, I could see a window where a tired, middle-aged black woman stood at an ironing board, staring back at the train as it passed. Below, three boys were jumping from the rail of a porch onto a pile of old mattresses. Soon, the train sped up, the wheels clacking in rhythm
against the rails, as the backyards and the sagging, rickety wooden porches of the South Side became a blur. My eyes brimmed with tears as the elevated train finally descended into the dark subway tunnel, into the underground below the city, sparks flying, wheels squealing, tracks clanging, and my confused heart beating out the seconds of my life.
War Wounds
Al Vitkus, 1973
The crisscross of bullets sliced the thick air as Al Vitkus struggled to reach the trees across the clearing. His feet were like dead weights and the radio on his back was so goddamn heavy he couldn’t run, its straps like razors cutting into his shoulder muscles. Straining to get to cover to radio for help, he pushed himself with everything he had in him until he felt a hot, searing pain in his leg. At that same moment, he turned to see Bob Lund get shot through the neck, a look of such surprise on his friend’s face. It was followed by a concussive blast. It seemed as if hours went by. The damp smell of rot rose in the clearing. Pain and black numbness, and then pain again when he opened his eyes to see the medics zipping the plastic body bag shut over his chest, right over his face. “Hey,” he whispered in a harsh rasp. “Hey, I’m not dead yet, hey,” he yelled, “I’m not dead.”
Al awoke panicked, gasping for air, heart thumping, bathed in sweat. For a moment, he looked around, not knowing where he was, and then, of course, it slowly sifted back to him. He was in his old room, safe in his childhood bed where there was no danger, nor bullets, nor body bags. Yet, even though it had been a week since he had returned from Nam, he still didn’t feel at home. It was so unreal to be in his room or sitting at the same kitchen table with his parents and Magda as if nothing in the world had changed, as if he hadn’t entered the maw of hell itself. In Nam he had conjured up every detail of his house with such longing. It had calmed him, but now that he was actually home it felt wrong. He was what was wrong.
When he’d come back stateside, Irene Matas had been waiting for him at the airport, along with his parents and Magda. He had carried Irene’s picture in his wallet the whole time he was away, written her letters, thought about holding her. He had thought about it so much it hurt. At night in the jungle, he had whispered her name like an incantation, a litany of love. She would heal him. Yet, when she finally stood there in front of him at the airport, looking even better than he remembered, he was so emotionally flayed, so unprepared for civilian life, that he could hardly look Irene in the eyes. The veneer of civilization had been stripped away, and only the raw animal in him remained, and he was afraid that everyone who looked into his eyes could see it. What he needed most now was time to grow a civilized skin again, and to once again learn the language of ordinary humans.
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