Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  Even though the book was a tough read for me in the tenth grade, there was one part of it I remember enjoying. At one point Hawthorne describes how Hester no longer thought of her A as standing for adultress but rather for able. That’s all I remember, the word able. I like these moments. These are the moments that I really enjoy as a reader. It’s like in The Color Purple when Sofia tells Celie that if Harpo (Sofia’s husband, technically Celie’s son-in-law) beats Sofia again, she’s going to kill him. (“Now you want a dead son-in-law, Mrs. Celie? You just keep on advising him like you doing.”) Suddenly, literature turns into a good movie and you’re standing up in your seat, smiling and clapping in your head. You wish at some point in your life you get to tell someone how you really feel about them. It makes you wish that you had the courage to redefine what your letter stood for. So, looking at the gray, beaten copies of The Scarlet Letter, I started to think about myself. I have a big W sewed across myself. I am a widow. My title is Widow. Not Mrs. or Miss, but Widow. Not married or divorced, but Widow. But what else could my W stand for? Wise? Not quite. Wonderful? Once in a while. Willing? I think about this. What’s my new W word? What’s my nonwidow six-word memoir?

  My FMG sits in one of the big comfy leather chairs at Borders. Her eyes are closed and her head is tilted back. She’s wearing a big black puffy coat and sweatpants. I ask her what her six-word memoir was when she was raising her children. Without even taking a moment to think or use her fingers to count out words, she says with her eyes closed, “Leave me alone for five minutes.”

  march

  George’s hands stopped working the cards. His voice was growing warmer. “An’ we could have a few pigs. I could build a smoke house like the one gran’pa had, an’ when we kill a pig we can smoke the bacon and the hams, and make sausage an’ all like that. An’ when the salmon run up river we could catch a hundred of ’em an’ salt ’em down and smoke ’em. We could have them for breakfast. They ain’t nothing so nice as smoked salmon. When the fruit come in we could can it—and tomatoes, they’re easy to can. Ever’ Sunday we’d kill a chicken or a rabbit. Maybe we’d have a cow or a goat, and the cream is so God damn thick you got to cut it with a knife and take it out with a spoon.” Lennie watched him with wide eyes, and old Candy watched him too. Lennie said softly, “We could live offa the fatta the lan’.”

  —JOHN STEINBECK, OF MICE AND MEN

  Of Mice and Men is set in rural California in the midst of the Great Depression. George and Lennie are two migrant farmers who are wandering around looking for work. Lennie, a massive human being with tremendous physical strength, is mentally handicapped. Although Steinbeck never gives a diagnosis, we don’t need one. Lennie doesn’t understand certain things. He doesn’t understand certain rules of social settings, and George has to explain things to him over and over. George is his primary caretaker; we quickly learn that Lennie cannot survive on his own. Lennie likes to touch soft things, but he is unaware of his own strength. At one point in the book, he is petting a puppy and accidentally kills it. He has the mind of a four-year-old but the body of a Cyclops.

  George and Lennie are always on the move. Lennie continuously gets them intro trouble and George has to find a way out. Steinbeck has a lot of big ideas in this book, but one thing that we talk about in class is how all of the characters are powerless. Steinbeck is interested in our surroundings and how those surroundings affect us. In literature, this is referred to as naturalism. It’s kind of like the opposite of existentialism. While Sartre argues that the individual is ultimately responsible, Steinbeck counters that no matter how hard we try, we cannot outwit the circumstances into which we are placed. Lennie, for example, must live the way he does because of his mental disability. Another character, Crooks, is a black stable hand. He has to live in a bunkhouse separate from all the other guys because of his skin color. Crooks has a crooked spine as a result of being kicked by a horse. So sure, he can make choices. But he’s a black man living in America in the 1930s and he is physically handicapped, so Crooks doesn’t have a whole lot of options.

  Throughout the book, George and Lennie have this dream. They dream that one day, despite the economic climate, they can earn enough money to buy their own plot of land. They don’t want a lot of it, just a little slice. As long as it’s theirs, as long as there is no boss, that’s all they care about. This would be an amazing feat for this unlikely duo—not only to survive the financial black hole of the twentieth century but actually to beat it. The two of them are so committed and so hardworking, we (or at least I) are led to believe that they may actually pull it off. But the one important detail about the dream is that they can only survive together. George needs Lennie’s size and strength. And Lennie obviously can’t do anything without George.

  At the end of the book, George is forced to make an important choice about Lennie’s life. Lennie accidentally killed the landowner’s wife and now Curley (the landowner) is out to kill him. But Lennie didn’t mean it. He isn’t a murderer. So George takes Lennie by the river. Lennie anxiously asks what he did wrong. George calms him down and tells Lennie to talk about the dream—the rabbits, the smoked ham. George hears the sound of the mob approaching, and he holds a pistol to the back of Lennie’s head. Right before the mob arrives, George pulls the trigger.

  In the end, George makes a choice. But the biggest question is, did he really have any choice at all? And the other question is, was there ever any hope in fulfilling the dream, or did the economic climate and Lennie’s disability mean that failure was the only outcome? We talk about this in class. We talk about the notion of being a victim and being a product of your surroundings.

  Not surprisingly, teenagers are incredibly reluctant to admit or to consider that they are a result of anything except their own efforts and ideas. They don’t want their parents or their homes taking credit for their good or bad qualities. And of course I have to ask myself this question. Am I powerless? Will I turn into a different mother because I am a single widow? Will I be more short-tempered because I do this on my own? Will I be more frustrated and tired? Will that affect my ability to parent? Will that affect the boy and man that Kai becomes? Steinbeck would say yes. Or at least he would say it’s worth thinking about.

  The word victim, obviously, has some connotations. It evokes a sense of pity, not a proud pity, but an overdue, almost unearned pity. Nobody likes to be pitied. It also triggers this sense that the victim is choosing not to do anything and may be evoking his or her own sense of victimhood. But at the end of Of Mice and Men, the reader gets this sense that this is the only way it can be in life. Everybody has to be where they are and no one can escape. I don’t want to be a victim, but sometimes I can’t help but feel that way. I can’t help but feel that I have no control over my surroundings.

  Every now and then in eleventh-grade Honors English, we ask students to write something about themselves in connection to literature. But every time I ask my students to make a connection with a character or a problem from an assigned text, no one ever chooses to connect to naturalism. I’ve only had one student choose to write about Of Mice and Men. Last year, Sam Baker wrote about how he is like George and his girlfriend is like Lennie. She’s not mentally handicapped, but she relies on him for everything. He makes all of the plans, he drives everywhere, he always has to tell her how pretty she looks. He is constantly comforting and reassuring her. Sam expressed in his essay that this was a tiring position to have in a relationship and as much as he adores her, he really wishes she were more independent. I made a couple of formatting and structural notes on Sam’s paper, but at the end of my comments I said, “Sam, above all, the most important message to take from me is, whatever you do, under no circumstances do you show this essay to your girlfriend.”

  Teenagers want to feel like they are in control. We all do. I thought I was in control until Josh died and then it hit me that I’m not in control and I never will be.

  I think about Steinbeck when I go to my single moms’ parent
ing meetings. I love going to group. I look forward to it all week long. When someone is absent because of the flu or something, I get sad. I love seeing all of the girls and hearing about their lives. In the middle of teaching Of Mice and Men, I can’t help but look at them and think about how much power we don’t have in the world. At the same time, it never seems to faze us.

  A few weeks ago, my single moms’ group gained a new member. Miranda is short with long dark hair. She wears a brown puffy coat with a fake-fur-lined hood. On the back in gold embroidery it reads APPLE BOTTOM JEANS. Her son, Alex, is the oldest in the group. He has large brown eyes and curly black hair. He rivals Kai for cutest baby boy ever. Miranda is attending alternative high school. She is seventeen.

  Last week we didn’t have a speaker, so Janet and Heidi had us do an exercise about thinking about our goals for the future. They had us write down what we wanted for ourselves in the future. When Janet asked if any of us would like to read our goals out loud, Miranda raised her hand. She said that her goal is to be completely independent. She told us about her sister-in-law who buys Alex tons of clothes and gives her all sorts of hand-me-downs. Miranda added that of course she is grateful, but she feels like her sister-in-law’s charity project. “I’m not your Oprah episode,” she said, moving her head back and forth. “That’s what I want to say to her. It’s like she doesn’t think I can buy clothes for myself.” Miranda started to cry. In the spring she is going to Oakland Community College and then on to earn her bachelor’s degree. She said her goal is to become a pharmacist. Not a pharmacy technician, a pharmacist. She said that someday she’ll make more money than her sister-in-law. She said this and smiled and wiped her tears away. I wanted to hug Miranda. I want to tackle her to the ground and tell her that she can do it, that if anyone can do it, she can. Can’t she? Why shouldn’t she be able to do this?

  This week, Miranda tells us about her current battle in trying to figure out her health insurance. She is unemployed, under eighteen with a baby, and she said she’s not sure what to sign up for. No one is very helpful in explaining things to her and everything she reads is confusing and everyone she calls is standoffish or rude. Alex is behind on his immunization shots. When Miranda switched insurance companies she went to get him immunized but was told it couldn’t be done because the paperwork hadn’t been processed yet. Miranda, who most certainly qualifies as one tough cookie, seems to be insecure and unsure when dealing with health professionals.

  Nisi is a yoga instructor. She’s trying to make ends meet. Roger’s dad is some hotshot lawyer, so the custody battle isn’t exactly moving in her favor.

  Ellen and her boyfriend are trying to work things out. Ellen’s mom died when she was fourteen, so she doesn’t have a lot of support from her family. She said her dad tries to help, but it drives her nuts to watch him screw everything up. He put Rose’s diaper on backward the other day when he was babysitting. She doesn’t have a car because Pete works two jobs and needs the car all the time. She says she is constantly showing Pete how to be more helpful around the house when he can. She shows him how to do everything, but then two days later he “goes dumb.” Those are her words: “goes dumb.” I know it’s been a while since I had a husband, but that is the funniest, most honest thing I’ve ever heard a woman say about a man in my entire life.

  “Pure genius,” my FMG says. She lies on the floor on her stomach, holding herself up by her elbows, watching Ellen’s baby, Rose, try to pull herself up onto the chair. We quickly decide that Ellen is one of the smartest people we’ve ever met.

  Ellen tells us that she and Pete really want to get Rose dedicated to a church. They’ve tried four different churches near their house, but none of them will do it because Ellen and Pete aren’t married.

  I remember when I first learned that Ellen was a devout Christian. She made some reference about church or God and I remember thinking, So you’re a believer in everything except the rule on sex and marriage. Obviously that was a snooty thing to think, which is why I didn’t voice it out loud. But now, after hearing about how a baby was rejected from four churches just because of a choice her parents did or didn’t make, and looking at Rose with her big, observant brown eyes, I want to personally drive to all of these churches and punch these ministers, or whoever declared such a stupid rule, in the front teeth.

  “No baby-mamas, huh?” Wham, right to the face. And just as Pastor Ding-Dong comes to, I knee him in the groin. “No room at the inn, huh?” WHAM! Then, as he pushes his chest up with his arms in an attempt to stand, I really pull out all the stops.

  When a wrestling submission hold is needed, most go for the half nelson, the full nelson, or an all-out sleeper hold. When I was little, however, I was shown the greatest pressure-point move of all time. Before the guy can get back on his feet, I whip off his shoe and sock and grab ahold of his big toe and twist as hard and fast as humanly possible. This is called the Nairobi toe hold. If you aren’t familiar with the Nairobi toe hold, consider yourself lucky. My uncle Kel taught us this when we were little and the painful memory of the Nairobi toe hold has never left me. The Nairobi toe hold is simple. You acquire your victim’s bare foot and lock your thumb and forefinger around his big toe. Then you pull and twist the big toe. Obviously, it is impossible to break the short bone of the big toe with such little leverage, but you basically take your victim to the point of pain where a bone is about to break but it never actually does.

  So there I am with Reverend Dumb-Ass, trying to get to his feet, and just when he feels the pain subsiding out of his crotch, I pull the Nairobi toe hold on him. “Let’s get one thing straight,” I yell as he wriggles in pain, probably crying at this point. “You either let my friend and her baby and her baby-daddy into this church—” He pleads for me to let go, but I don’t. I can’t keep him here too long, I can’t have him pass out from the pain. After some serious Nairobi toe holding, I toss his foot aside. Then I lean toward his ear and in a very soft voice I say, “Or I’ll Carlo-Rizzi your ass so fast, you won’t know what hit you.” Then I turn and calmly head for the door, but not before throwing a copy of The Scarlet Letter at him. “A little bit of light reading material,” I say as I open the door. “Maybe it’ll teach you a thing or two, ya jackass!” I yell as I walk out the front door.

  This is my superhero alter ego. I go around the world finding people who commit social injustices and I attack them with copies of literary classics to teach them a lesson. The kid who is suspended for racial slurs? I break into his bedroom in the middle of the night, knock out a few of his teeth, and leave him with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The parents who get arrested because they let their twelve-year-old throw a party without their supervision and the kids break into the liquor cabinet? I visit the parents in their holding cell to drop off two copies of Lord of the Flies. Before the next presidential election I’ll skip around the country like Santa Claus, delivering 1984 to all eligible and literate voters.

  With Steinbeck sitting in on our single moms’ group, I wonder what he makes of us. The beauty of Steinbeck is that it doesn’t feel like he is out to teach us a lesson; he is out to show us something. I don’t think he necessarily wants us to consider ourselves victims when we read his books but instead to make us aware of the challenges other people face.

  “Well, why can’t they just work hard and save money and buy a house like my parents did?” Eva Carmen says from the third row of Honors English. We are talking about the availability of certain opportunities in twenty-first-century America and if they really are as available as we think. Are dreams really possibilities for all Americans? All of the girls in my baby-mama group chose to have sex with a man who was not their husband. They did it without taking into account their financial situations or the status of their own romantic relationships. They made a choice. But now, because of the place where they started, everything is more challenging for them. People judge them. I judged them. Their surroundings don’t support them in a way a mother should be supported. They
have dozens of external factors working against them and their children. Their children, who have made no choices at all, have already inherited a tough situation.

  It’s so painful to read Of Mice and Men again because when Lennie and George talk about their dream, it’s so vivid for them. You know they can see it dangling in front of them. But you also know that it will never happen. It will never happen because of the world they were born into and because of the characteristics they can never shake. I wonder if Steinbeck would look at us the same way or, more appropriately, look at our children the same way. Part of me thinks sadly, yes, he would.

  • • •

  In Michigan, the month of March is when the weather starts to turn. Right now winter is receding just slightly and spring is getting ready to scoot in. The gross brown snow is slowly melting. The air feels different. I love when this happens. I begin to remember that I don’t live in the Arctic Circle and soon there will be a morning when I don’t have to scrape my windshield before work, and maybe someday it will even be warm outside again.

  There seems to be a similar thaw happening between my in-laws and me. Deedee and Ashley are great about coming over so I can have a little time to do stuff on my own. We are getting more used to being around each other and communicating. Actually, I think I am getting used to how they communicate.