The Stardust Lounge

by Deborah Digges

  An old impertinence rises up in me, a frustration at text and culture. The scaffolds that surround the boys and me—the scaffolds of history, myth—show our fatherless household to be without a roof, or built on sand. The parable of the Prodigal Son erases the feminine without impunity. The mother in the story is at best assumed, insignificant to the outcome.

  Or is God the father intended to be single? I am acquainted with a few single fathers in Amherst. With what sympathy they are treated in the community. The assumption inherent in such sympathy condemns the absent mother as bad. How could she leave her husband and children? She is unnatural. Look at the hero the father. How can the community help?

  On the other hand the same community is wary of a single-mothering household. Whether it be school officials, teachers, the march of probation officers, neighbors—each looks at our home and sees something missing. I've heard it over and over from the factions who have entered our lives since Trevor moved in—that our household lacks “structure, discipline.”

  “What Trevor needs,” a neighbor once chastises Stephen, “is strict monitoring, a rigorous schedule. Your mother doesn't seem to understand this …”

  What she means is that there is no father here, no man to “complete” the picture. We are judged as not whole, as wrong or crippled. All too often we are dealt with accordingly—that is to say dismissed, unsavable for our lack, doomed in our pursuits.

  But where are the fathers? Not here on Christmas night. Why aren't they here? They have new lives, new wives, they have responsibilities. Believe them, they would be here if they could. For this plea culture forgives them. Soon, they say on the phone long distance. Say a week this summer. Listen, they love their sons. Soon, they promise.

  I restart the engine and step on the gas to bring the heat up. The lights of the apartment house in which Trev's mother and siblings receive their gifts are cut almost brutally against the dark. What must Trev's mother be feeling tonight, her oldest son home for the first time in months? He wears his new Christmas jacket. And he has grown.

  Maybe all I can offer Trevor is a few years off the streets and the distraction of a household he helped to create, a few years against eighteen, like the farm to which the Prodigal retreated during the famine and lived for a while until he came to himself.

  Inside of Trevor's silence lives his right to privacy, his right to his own story if and when he sees fit to tell it. In the meantime I'll sit at the top of the basement steps and listen to his songs.

  By now I've learned to read myself—woman and mother—relentlessly into the masculine, into the stories woven between the stars, or spun on earth: And Zebulon shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for an haven of ships…

  Only sometimes do I understand the crush of stories without us. Then we are light as a shadow, or radio static swarming the Messiah: … unto us a son is given …

  But there are no fathers here.

  Sybil / Photo by Stephen Digges

  Winter, 1996

  Nine A.M. of a weekday. Stephen is waiting his turn to see the judge. As usual the Northampton courtroom is crowded, the summoned and their parents, spouses, children, brothers and sisters standing, sitting. Every so often a court official makes his way through the rows calling out, “Any restraining orders! Restraining orders!” Some women make their way toward the official and move out the door.

  The courtroom to which we've been assigned today is less austere than others we've occupied. This one's a sort of tired classroom with folding chairs skewed out of line. We are knit close to our people, to family members, lawyers.

  There is little discussion between strangers, though at the moment we have much in common. But the anatomy of some personal crisis is soon to be made public, some lightning-fast calamity of events that took place time and distance from here, most likely in the dark; or events so plotted and executed they felt, however criminal—well, ordinary.

  Now they are to be examined and dissected here in this unimpressive room under a fluorescence that drains color from faces and exaggerates every flaw. The air smells of coffee, anxious bodies, stale cigarette smoke clinging to hands, hair, coats, everyone drawn inward at the advent of exposure.

  When we're mostly settled, a juvenile officer leads a line of boys, handcuffed and chained around their ankles, to the front pew. One of the boys scans the gallery for his mother, who sits next to us. Teary she nods to him and shakes her head. I turn to her and catch her eyes.

  “It'll be okay,” I whisper. I have a sense that I'm invading her privacy, but I speak to her anyway. Likewise, Stephen engages her.

  “Zeek's a friend of mine,” he says. “He's a great kid.”

  As Stephen leans in front of me to quite directly comfort the woman, I can smell his cologne, his clean hair combed back neatly, his sweet breath. I'm not surprised by his spontaneous generosity, or his ease at breaking protocol. When he reaches for her hand, she responds.

  “Thank you,” she says. “You look real nice today,” she adds, for the first time smiling a little.

  “Not my usual.” Stephen smiles back. He is wearing a suit and tie. He's removed his ear- and nose rings for the hearing—court appearance rituals of conduct he knows well.

  The judge enters the courtroom; we rise, then resettle. The familiar anxiety that has ushered us to this moment now gives way to a resigned if not giddy anticipation of an ending. This is our fifth court appearance in two years, yes, ours. Against the conventional pop psychology that would suggest I let Stephen deal with it alone …let him experience the consequences of his actions without his mother holding his hand… let him take his medicine…, I've escorted Stephen to each arraignment and hearing. I learned to hug him whether the ruling went for or against him, and to refrain from scolding.

  I've learned that by keeping quiet, Stephen takes on his own remorse. In the absence of crowding him with advice and reprimands, he speculates on how to avoid such a situation again. If you want to get to know someone, say the Buddhists, give him a big field to play in.

  Though to anyone else our presence here once again might appear just another dark chapter, it is actually a victory. Today's alleged offense involves a minor driving infraction complicated by the fact that Stephen seemed to have misplaced his driver's license.

  In other words, there are no weapons involved, no one harmed, nothing missing, no property destroyed or defaced, no involvement of drugs or alcohol, no gang members waiting outside to grill Stephen regarding his possible implication of them, no resounding, lingering repercussions.

  Just a simple, illegal left turn, a kid with a reputation and no driver's license on him, and a testy cop. We haven't engaged a lawyer. Stephen intends to speak for himself.

  One by one, the cases are called. We know we might be here for hours. I've brought student essays to grade while we wait, Stephen his math homework. But by turns anxious, distracted, and bored, neither of us can concentrate.

  We resort to our old ways, play many games of tic-tac-toe. Then we move on to a game Stephen invented a few court appearances back that involves finding—in one minute—as many words as possible in the other's name. When Stephen passes me his list with the word boa underlined next to a drawing of a woman with a snake around her neck, we almost lose our cool.

  We are substantially into the inevitable Hangman— Stephen having stumped me regarding the category of rap group names, my little stick man now nearly complete with limbs, torso, head, though as yet no noose around the neck—when his case is called. It's close to eleven in the morning. Stephen practically leaps out of his seat and makes his way down to the bench where he stands before the judge, his head bowed, his hands folded in front of him.

  “Mr. Digges,” the judge begins after the charges are read.

  “Yes, sir,” Stephen answers.

  “I've seen you here too many times.”

  “I know, sir. I'm sorry.”

  “I'm tired of seeing you here, Mr. Digges.”

  “Me
, too, sir.”

  “You are speaking for yourself today?”

  “I am.”

  “Very courageous. So tell me …”

  Between them, Stephen and the judge review the violation. I strain to hear their discourse. Powerfully tempted to leave my seat and go to stand next to him, I check myself and observe my son for the first time alone before the judge as Stephen politely and thoroughly narrates.

  I can't help thinking of the years that have brought us here—hard years, surprising, devastating years, years during which we were torn and we tore raggedly, painfully from each other, our separation as physical, as passionate as our earliest connection as mother and son.

  I smile at the irony as I imagine other parents feeling as I do at this moment, feeling pride as their son or daughter crosses the finish line to win the race, or kicks the ball hard to score the winning goal, or traverses the stage to receive some award, a moment in which they see their child as I see mine, separate and capable and worthy.

  As for my Stephen, he seems to have been born for adversity, he who entered this world screaming, who loved to jump suddenly from a high stairs knowing someone would catch him, who'd run headlong at his mother just as later he would run headlong at the world, leaping on its back, wrestling it to the ground.

  I suspect that were Stephen an animal, he'd be a blue jay just as I've always thought that Charles and I would be sparrows.

  So bandit-eyed, so undove like a bird…, Robert Francis writes in his poem “Blue Jay,” a poem Stephen loved as a child. Skulker and blusterer whose every arrival is a raid.

  In another life, Stephen might well have been one of those children who survived the war-torn ghettos by hiding out, scavenging, stockpiling food, growing strong in adversity, growing knowledgeable. Not so deep in Stephen's blood a wildness endures. Good luck to the world, I laugh to myself, with Stephen in it.

  Now he is smiling as he makes his way back to me. “We can go,” he whispers. “It's okay. Just a fine. I've brought my checkbook …”

  We linger at the door as the boys on the front row are brought before the judge. Their legal counsel reviews the charges brought against them. Breaking and entering a private residence. Theft of guns and attempts to resell them. Assault with deadly weapons. Attempting to flee the scene of the crime in a stolen vehicle …

  Zeek's mother makes her way to the bench to stand next to her son. She tries to remain composed. “Take him,” she says when the judge allows her to speak. “Take him and take care of him or he'll be dead before his sixteenth birthday. I can't control him, Judge. I can't look after him …”

  “Let's go.” Stephen takes my arm. “Poor Zeek.” He shakes his head. “He's gone. He's out of here …”

  “Years, I'm afraid. What a shame.”

  “It was stupid what they did,” Stephen says as we climb in the car. “They got caught up. Things lead to things. It's hard to stop it once it gets going. And it's really hard to pull out.”

  “I hear.”

  “I feel guilty, sort of.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Zeek's just a kid.”

  “A lot younger than the others?”

  “Ya. I've done some of the same things …”

  “Hmm.”

  “He's just clueless.”

  “Well, maybe he's safer this way.”

  “Safer?”

  “It's a hard call, isn't it?”

  “I guess,” he says, the flash of anger subsiding. “Look,

  Mom.” Stephen stops my hand as I begin to turn the key in the ignition. “Let's make a deal. Let's say we try never to come back here.”

  “Sounds good …

  “Well, not try … there is no try.”

  “Good old Yoda.”

  “How many years was I Yoda for Halloween?”

  “Three?”

  “So let's just say we won't ever come back here.”

  “Okay.”

  “We should shake on it.”

  “Okay let's shake.”

  “Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  PERSONAL STATEMENT / STEPHEN DIGGES

  Throughout my high school career, much of my extracurricular experience in the arts and the social sciences has been of my own invention. This is because my interests in music, photography, poetry, and psychology have tended to be nontraditional. While my school has offered me opportunities in talent shows, the darkroom, and the classroom (I made the honor roll this year), I have independently set up my own means of practicing my art by creating my own music studio and darkroom.

  I have also contracted, this year, to complete an internship with Amherst psychologist Eduardo Bustamante, whose work focuses on spirited children who cannot learn in traditional settings. Under Dr. Bustamante's guidance I have worked with and helped to counsel ADD and ADHD children. Using Dr. Bustamante's Play and Pride approach, I am completing my own studies on my observations of new ways for children with frontal-lobe deficiencies to be challenged and successful. Not only have I been proud to assist Dr. Bustamante, but this project has been extremely helpful to me as a person with ADD. I, too, have had trouble learning in the highly traditional setting of public school. Working and reading and writing on the subject have given me confidence in my own nontraditional ways of learning. I believe that I have also given confidence and insight to those who are struggling with some of the same problems I have faced at school.

  From The Broken Composition / Photos by Stephen Digges

  My family and I have also traveled extensively, so once again, my “classroom “ has been the world. My family and I lived in London for two years prior to my attending Amherst Regional High School. Attending the American School in London, I interacted with classmates from all over the world. I have also traveled to Italy and Holland. My visit to Amsterdam I planned myself; this December, for the first time, I set out without parents to explore the Netherlands.

  Last summer I traveled to New York to be a student at Parsons School of Design Summer Intensive Program in Photography. This experience above all others has led me to know that what I want to do with my life is to be a photo journalist, be out in the world with my camera. The Parsons project I invented for myself was to interview individuals who are homeless and to ask their permission to be photographed. I completed a photographic essay on these individuals in a book of my own creation entitled The Broken Composition. It is my ambition to expand this project and, along with my photographs, carefully and articulately narrate the stories of those who so willingly shared with me their experiences.

  Stephen P. Digges

  To: Amherst Building Inspector

  Description of work done on conversion of two-car garage (length) into study (back) and summer porch /room (front) at 101 Blue Hills Road:

  Back of garage was made into a study in 1992 by my former husband, Stanley Plumly, who took ownership of the house at that time.

  He did much of the work himself and, from what I understand, did not know that he must have a permit to fix up the back portion of the garage. Over the course of several years, he insulated the room himself and hired someone to wire the room as well as install a wall heater.

  E. T, a builder, helped with Sheetrocking the ceilings. Stanley Plumly also had indoor/outdoor carpeting put in.

  I talked to him recently on the phone about it and he estimated that all the materials he bought or had in his possession cost around three thousand dollars. At the time of the back room's completion, the front of the garage remained unfinished.

  Stanley Plumly has not resided at the above address since 1993. At our divorce, I was given the house.

  I have not refinanced, because I would have had to do so at a much higher interest rate. I am forwarding to the Town of Amherst a copy of our divorce decree so that it can be shown that the house is legally mine.

  Front of garage was converted in 1995. My own son and my foster son painted the walls and ceilings and I installed a ceiling fan. E. T. helped us with f
our skylights and put a wall with door and window up where we had taken out the garage door.

  We also set up an old woodstove I had bought at a garage sale which now is used as a planter. E. T. put in the chimney but advised us not to use the stove since it would need afire-wall behind it. Stove has plants on and around it.

  In the spring of 19961 had indoor/outdoor carpeting put in and tile installed under the stove that matched tile in the entryway. The cost of putting up the wall where the garage door had been, plus the cost of the skylights, carpeting, tile, etc., came to about three thousand dollars.

  Thus, I am including eighty-five dollars to be sure to cover everything. If there are any additional adjustments, please contact me since I am willing to do whatever is necessary for this work to be sanctioned and permissible to the Amherst Building Inspector.

  Sincerely…

  LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FOR STEPHEN P. DIGGES 10 JAN. 1996

  I have known Stephen for the past four years, first through his interest in—and affection for—animals, and then more generally I came to know him and his family (his mother is a professor at Tufts University, where I was dean of veterinary medicine for nearly fourteen years before moving to Cornell last fall).

  Steve is one of the most interesting and creative youngsters I have come to know. He is particularly interested in the cultural and emotional dimensions of factual material. Animals interested him initially because of their ability, in his eyes, to express ‘[feelings “ in particular situations. Later he came to become interested in their behavior and when his talent for photography emerged, he applied this to animals and other parts of the natural world.

  He is what I would describe as a “non-linear” learner; he makes observations anecdotally, then merges them over time into a coherence that makes order out of the whole. Thus, he is a talented maker of music using synthesizers, photographs using multiple images (of en superimposed), and unusual vocabulary words.