SINISTER WISDOM 32••

SINISTER WISDOM 32
SUMMER 1987
Editor and publisher: Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Production manager for 32 and office manager: Morgan Grey
Production manager for 31 and copy editor: Marianne Milton
Associate editor for 32: Linda VanceContributing editor and consultant: Irena Klepfisz
Contributing editors: Gloria Anzaldua and Beth Brant
Office Assistant: Kate Taylor
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Layout: Tex
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Distribution volunteers: the women of HOWL
Cover design by Tania Kravath (photograph by Bobby Hansson)
Copyright 1987 Sinister Wisdom. All rights reserved to individual artists and authors.
ISSN: 0196-1853

SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former Editors and publishers:
Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
Michaele Uccella (1983-1984)

NEW ADDRESS: SINISTER WISDOM. P.O. Box 3252 • Berkeley, CA 94703

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________________________________________ Contents

3 Dedication

1. The Disappeared
5 Maia • The Fortune Teller (narrative)
10 Barrie Borich • The Disappeared (poem)
13 Lynn Crawford • Bordercrossing (poem)
16 Susan Hansell. Poem for a Goodbye Never Spoken (poem)
18 Hilary Mullins. Witness (poem)
23 jillian wilkowski. hunting season (poem)
24 Norma Fain Pratt. Scared: Inherited Traits (narrative)
31 Lynn Martin • Mercy, The Perils of Pauline (2 poems)
33 Donna Allegra. The Electrician's Girl

2. A Ringing In My Ears
37 Nancy Barickman • Excerpts From Hospital Journal
40 Pamela Pratt. A Ringing in My Ears (narrative)
43 Vicki Sears. On Father's Death (poem)
46 Maude Meehan. Maxima Culpa (poem)
47 Laurie J. Hoskin. Release, Eulogy in Three Parts (2 poem
52 £lana Dykewomon • From My Journal: The Night That
Willow Died (poem)
55 Beth McDonald • From Four Beginnings for a Novel
Never Written (narrative)
58 Diana Rivers. "Miss" Alma (narrativ~)

3. Ceremony
73 Rose Romano .Heart Attack (poem)
74 Amber Coverdale Sumrall • Questions (poem)
76 Susan Hansell. The Wolf (poem)
79 Chocolate Waters. Sergi's Surgery (poem)

84
90
100
105
109
111
113
114
122

Sandy Boucher. LAst Year This Time (narrative)
Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum • Cancer In Two Voices (dialogue)
Teya Schaffer. As If The Sun, I, II, III (4 poems)
Marianne Milton. Foldings, You Watch For Me (2 poems)
Lynn Crawford. Just 1hat Would Be Enough (poem)
Susan Stinson. Belly Song (poem)
A,nber Coverdale Sumrall. Eagle Woman (poem)
Lauren Crux • Waiting: (narrative)
Vicki Sears. Ceremony (poem)§§§
123 Patricia Roth Schwartz. A Mother's Journey Into Loss (review)§§§
126 Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. Notes for a Magazine:• For The Record
131 Contributors' Notes
136 Announcements§§§
ART
83 Susan Iversen. 1he Haircu~ Ruth (2 photographs)
71 Judith Waterman. Self Portrait (painting)

A Letter to Elana

This issue is dedicated to Barbara Rosenblum
living and dying in San Francisco
as are we all, wherever we are, but not with suchconsciousness, vitality, grace and joy
I want to describe the evening of February 25, 1987, at Barbara and Sandy's
apartment in San Francisco. Elana and I were visiting. Ann Hershey, afilmmaker and an old friend of mine, had been working with Barbara thatafternoon making a video about Barbara's life, not historical so much as
essential, who she is, "for whoever sees it," she said, "I hope you wish you'dknown me." After dinner, we all watched the video together, two hours inwhich Barbara was herself, playful and serious, demonstrating her best magic
tricks, talking about her favorite poems, playing her favorite music, showing
photographs of herself, phtographs she'd taken. Barbara is a sociologist, a'professor, and she talked of her passion for education: "I wanted to be ateacher," she said, "not a professor: a teacher. Illiteracy is criminal."
In the last segment of the video, Sandy, Barbara's lover and companion ofmany years, joined her. They talked about their love for each other, about
Barbara's diagnosis, and read aloud from their jointly-created "Reverberations"(in Dina) . My memory does not. distinguish clearly between what was said on
the video and what happened that evening. I remember Barbara saying when
she gets afraid at night, Sandy reads to her; or they playa musical game inwhich one picks a category and then each in turn comes up with appropriate
songs. (I think the video ends as Barbara picks" cities" and they immediately
launch into "I'll take Manhattan," "Chicago, Chicago," etc.) I remember
Sandy describing with obvious delight Barbara's avid curiosity and intellectualenergy directed at anything new; Barbara saying, "I'll miss her-because wetalk so much"; Sandy saying how lucky she was for the time: "Barbara could
have been taken from me in an accident, suddenly." I want to record andhonor this powerful, delicious bonding; the deep evident love.
I also want to describe the moment, in the video, when Barbara was playing
records her Jewish leftist father had played for her when she was a child: Paul
Robeson singing
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
alive as you and me,3the spirit of Joe Hill, union leader; Paul Robeson, Black leftist and great
singer; David Rosenblum, who brought Barbara up on Robeson's voicetakes more than guns to kill a mansays Joe, I didn't die
and Barbara in the video, head high, back against the stereo, repeating
I didn't die
Her spirit joined theirs, magni£cent and alive, in the place where generations
join generations and peoples connect across death and other barriers throughwhat is best in them, their passion for freedom, justice, beauty and learning.

For Barbara Rosenblum, a teacher

4

Maia

The Fortune Teller
I just sort of fell into it, telling fortunes. I remember when I was a kid,
whenever we had Halloween carnivals, I was always the one with the boothcovered in stars and question marks, hands showing maps of the future, and 1'djust start to make things up as I went along, you know, and the other kids loved
it, sitting there, nodding, eyes wide, fastening on every word. Myself, I didn' ttake it that seriously, it didn't seem to matter what I said as long as the words
kept flowing and the heads kept nodding. What a way to make a living. That's
what I do now, those same children, or others just like them, grown up andwilling to pay for it, show up at my door, sit with me near a candle and I say
what comes to me, what comes like birds or rain. To tell you the truth I don't
know where any of it comes from, I don't know any more now than I did thenin that little booth, it's like stealing to take their money. But they do seem
grateful for the glimpses I give them, to them the words and pictures makesense somehow, so I guess it's all right then, isn't it?
Some nights I can't sleep and, well, just to amuse myself I try to see
something for me, Hannah, something inside my own life hidden from me.
Mostly I don't see anything at all, no ghosts, no trumpets, not even ashimmering in corners or a ragged cloud. No, but I do hear voices, lots ofdifferent voices, they come and go. It always starts up with a little whispering,so low I think it's my own breath. I stop breathing and listen, to see if it's still
there. IfI lie quietly for a long time the whispering sometimes stays and breaks
apart into phrases going up and down like music, like conversation through thewalls, only the pure hum of it, not a word understood. I can get some idea ofwhether I want to go on by then. Once you've seen it, there's no protection
from the future. I know it seems like an odd thing to say, but believe me I
know what 1'm talking about.
A knife, a hammer, one of the voices was saying. That frightened me.
Somebody planning a murder. My heart jumped when I heard that and I sat up
stiff in bed twisting at the covers like my kid sister, Connie, used to do when
she'd pull herself up out of a bad dream, panting beside me. We always slept
together when we were little and I had to tell her a story before she could sleepor else she'd beg and make a scene. So pretty soon it was just expected andmaybe after awhile I needed to do it for myself, too. She didn't seem to care or
notice if it was the same story every night, I was the one who cared about that, I
tried to vary them, making up my own, stealing them from everywhere ... but
some nights when I was just too exhausted from school or work or the fights
between Mama and her boyfriend, I repeated myself, telling the one 1'd told
the night before. When I got to the end 1'd say "The End," Connie would

5

sigh, turn on her side and fall just like that asleep. I envied her that . .. I think I
still miss her, the pressure of her bones against my back, the little wind of her
breath coolon my neck. She's dead now. Killed hersel£ I don't want to think
about it ... She made her choices carefully, even that one. The note she left me
was written in a beautiful hand on pale expensive paper with vague jaggedlines somehow pressed into it like those patterns of light behind my eyes thatswell and disappear when I'm trying to sleep, when I lie there for hours trying
not to see her face, trying not to hear the voices, humming love songs to mysel£
I can make them start but some nights I can't make them stop. If! close my eyes
the lights break like rings in water when you drop a stone into it. I let themtake me down, the lights, and the silence swallows me whole, a huge blacksnake.
" You're leaving?" Connie said as if she couldn't believe I'd do it. But I had
to. I knew if! stayed it would be the end of me, maybe she knew it herself; I
don't know, she could see things too but she pretended she couldn't, that was
her way, pretending. She was an actress, I mean, that's how she made herliving, how she lived her life, pretending things were the way she wanted
them, following someone else's script until she came to a part she didn't likeand so she'd change it, boom, just like that, used to drive directors crazy. The
other people she worked with, actors, writers, were always furious with her
for doing that, they thought she was criticizing their work, and what did she
know about scripts and dialogue and phrasing? Nothing, nothing at all, but she
had this instinct for avoiding a line or a movement that didn't suit her, thatmade her uncomfortable, to close to the truth maybe, I don't know, she nevertalked about her reasons for doing it, for doing anything, I don't think she
knew herself She was like a cat smelling water, not a drink but enough todrown in, that natural horror they have you know, of getting their fur wet.
They are made perfectly well to be strong and graceful swimmers, butsomething in them will refuse, something so stubborn they will not swim, and if
someone else wants to do the rescuing that's all well and good but otherwise
they might just go down and stop breathing without a fight. I don't understandthat. Doesn't everything have a craving to live? I am a woman in pieces, a lot ofthem lost for good, but still I want to go on, and if something pulls me down I
reach away from it. Unless it's sleep, I love to sleep almost more than anything.
Some of the pieces come to me there. Telling the future is almost like sleeping,like telling dreams in the morning when you're hardly awake. Like telling
Connie a story to help her close her eyes, my own eyes closing. . . the stories
that come out that way, they have this crazy shiny feel as if they could, as if
they were about to explain everything . . . .
It was a terrible year for us, my sister and me, that year I moved out of thecramped back room of her apartment where I'd been holed up for almost six
years, and into a place of my own for the first time. I'd gone straight from
Mama's to living with Connie and now I'm alone. Alone. That word makes my6

stomach hurt. So fmal. Alone, like Connie in the soil, a bulb waiting forspring, but it never comes. .. "The ground is the soil in which to strike root
and to stand . . ." I remember reading those words somewhere and deciding
to keep them. I like to think of Connie taking root, standing up in the dirt
somewhere . . . where you never imagined anything could grow. A longlegged flower: Naked Ladies grow like that, always a shock to come acrossthem, that pink cone at the end of a fat black leafless stem, right in the middleof nowhere. Parking lot, weeds tramped down to dust, and that one wide open
flower. Do they start with a bulb? I don't know about things like that, I just see
what I see ...
Yesterday, I was reading a woman, holding her hand, not looking at it, youknow, just to get a sense of her, I don't actually read palms, don' t think
anybody does, you read the whole body, but it helps so much to touch themand people are afraid of that, so if you say you're reading their palm they'll let
you and the pictures will start pretty soon in my head. I blurt them out as fast as
I can to keep up with them and so I won't think about what I am saying, ifl did
I'd choke up and have to stop. That happens sometimes . . . it happened
yesterday with this woman, I had to apologize and give her money back. How
can you make a living like that? It was something I saw, something about
Connie. Somehow when we were kids it had come to seem as ifher happiness
was more important than my own, or maybe mine was somehow dependent onhers, but anyway it was me who knew, really knew, how to make her happy,
how to make her laugh or cry when she needed to. And that was true, still true,
even when we were grown and and she started going with men wanting them tomake her happy. She had so many of them. I guess it was because she wasbeautiful yes, but she was so desperate for them too, dragging them homewith her, trying to get them to do this or that, be this way or that way for her,but it never worked. She'd pretend it did for a while, her face all set and funny.
And then she'd throw them out, raving and carrying on after they were gone, it
was always the same, climbing into bed with me and I'd stroke her hair until
she fell asleep. It was one of them I saw reading that woman yesterday, one of
the men she went around with for awhile, his name was Len and he was as
beautiful as she was, both of them with all that hair, that black hair, and theswagger of people who know they are lovely to look at . . . .
"What are poets for?" I found those words written on a scrap of paper in mysister's desk. It was after the funeral and I was going through her things
because the lawyers told me it had to be done and Mama couldn't do it. I keptthat scrap, I don't know why. My sister was not a poet. .. well, maybe she wasa poet, I can't truthfully say. Poets are supposed to be crazy, aren't they? Wellthen maybe she was a poet and those words, that question she left behind, theway she answered it or didn't, that was what her life was all about ... . Why did
she die? Poets aren't for dying, are they? That can't be the answer.

7

Those who reach into the dark stumble across themselves in other shapes.
Animal. Vegetable. Mineral. Everything keeps changing. I remember one ofthe other booths that always drew a crowd at the carnivals. It was the Haunted
House. All night it groaned with ghosts and screams flew out, screams andgiggles. Inside there was one place where you were supposed to reach into jars
and it was so dark you couldn't see your hands or anything, so you took a risk
and pushed your fingers or maybe wiggled them slowly toward the bottom
making a terrible face because you knew it would be something awful and justthe thought of it made you shrink. It was always something soft and wet andshapeless in there, cold and absolutely disgusting. You jerked your hand out
with a shriek and went on to the next jar, loving every minute of it. It's funnywhen you think of how alien our insides seem, the wet dark organs throbbing,the blood, the slippery veins. To kill yourself you have to overcome the fear ofblood. At least if you do it like Connie, slashing skin and tendons with a jagged
piece of glass. The doctor t~ld me it isn't so easy to do, the skin looks blue andthin there, but the body is very tough, he said, not so easy to kill.
The night Len left, Connie knew it was for good, like the others, that hewouldn't be back, though some of his things were still there, his shoes and his
goldfish in that scratched blue bowl. It was odd how she didn't cry, just got soquiet after all the yelling was over with. When she climbed into bed with methere were lines in her face I'd never noticed before. Her face under the lamp,
so worn out but childish, it hurt to look at her. But it was that night that I knew
I had to leave. I felt it when I held her and she pressed so hard against me, herbreathing funny, a jerky little catch, but no tears, no tears at all. There was ahuge black hunger, a question in her eyes I could never answer. I took her hair
down out of its knot at the back of her neck and brushed and brushed it,
humming a song I learned in the mountains once when I was ten and very
happy and didn't know what would happen and didn't care. Connie shivered
and closed her eyes, her head pulled back each time I swung the brush down
her back. I thought she was falling asleep, but when I stopped she grabbed myhand and her eyes sprang open, so I started up again, and it went on like thatfor a very long time. Finally I put down the brush, wrapping myself around herunder the blankets, saying hush, hush, and after a few minutes she asked me ifI
would tell her a story like I used to, it would help her sleep she said. Thissurprised me but I said nothing, just nodded. Soon the words started coming
without any effort at all, like telling fortunes . . . .
I keep thinking there must have been a time when she was still open, whensomething I might have said or done could still make a difference, when somelucky thing might have happened, an omen, sign, making her change her
mind. When did it happen? Had she been moving toward it all her life? That's
what it felt like living with her, not that she ever said anything about it,
nothing like that, it was just that something was coming, I felt her moving

8

toward the dark, especially when we slept together on the worst nights, likethe night Len left. She never asked for anything or said she was afraid, she
didn't have to, I knew.
It was three 0' clock in the morning ·when they called to tell me. Eightmonths ago. Or maybe by now it's nine. I used to know the days and now themonths have slipped out of my grasp. Sleep pulls me and I surrender without astruggle. The puzzle of her death attracts and repels me. I have to know why
she did it. Maybe I'm afraid it runs in the family, a taste for drama. Something I
need to know before I can rest, like Connie's story.
Mama says it's better not to pry into such things, it's easier. But I don't
think so. When I'm telling fortunes I'm always on the lookout for her, expecting
to feel her hair on my skin, her breath on the back of my neck, or maybe hervoice sleep-talking the nonsense lines she used to fling out of nowhere, chokedlaughter high in her throat. ... What did she dream of? I never asked her that.
Why did she do it? Does she know the answer? will she tell it, sister to sister?
will she warn me away from sharp edges, will she help me survive without
her?

9Barrie Jean Borich

The Disappeared
1.
She leans back in her chair
and laughs, eyes auburn
longing,
after dinner cognac
auburn fIre in her glass.
Tonight she smokesa cigarette slow
but tomorrow she's
disappeared.
We look for her,trudge neighbor to neighborphoto cupped in palm.
We stop gathering atoverdressed downtown tables.
It's not that wenever lean back and laughagain, but it always
reminds us.

2.
She knits her thin body
into poems on the stepsof the missile factory,
hair red flocks of birds
in the stiff slap of dawn.
She calls it street
theater. They call it
trespass. Clerk of thecourt pulls papers
from flies, thin yellow,
pink and blue, then whispers
to a uniform with guns.
He whisks her through doors
behind the judge' s throne
like dirt on the end of abroom and doors click closed.

10

3.
She weeds a garden long as
half a central Illinois block
when the bomb lands scraping
side of its nosein her sweet peas and she
scatters, her spring's worka blister. Her daughter watchesfrom the porch, thin arms
as if held up by strings,
small sobs rising fromher stomach like yelpsof a plastic squeeze toy.

4.
I fear my lovers

will leave me
and they might,
but what of shadowsof lovers on brick,arms held above
ears, then no shadows,
no letters, no late night
calls when rates arecheap, nothing.

5.
I want to holdyour face in my hands,
your lips to my throat.
The city outside mywindow smokes whitewith snow and cold
car exhaust. I watch
you through Christmas
lights. It's like
hands ripping open
my breasts, my lungs
torn out. I watch
you shot.

11

6.
EI Playonin EI Salvador.
This is where bodies
of somebody' s lovers
are piled like somany skinned seals.
Shavings from my pay
buy men in EI Salvador
who tear apart bodies
like holiday birds
for money
for a uniformed post
for some hybrid of pleasure.
I am a breathing pieceof this jewelled octopus my country.
None of my lovers
are missing yet.
I can drag in atentacle with themnow, or I can wait.

12

Lynn Crawford

Bordercrossing: Emissary From A Nightmare,Speaking to Me in a DreamI am trying to find my tongue.
Emptiness swells in my mouth and I try
to speak to you but you
do not know my tongue and so
I must use your tongue.
Your tongue feels clumsy in my mouth.
I want to tell your people thatmy heart hangs heavy,a purple splitting
plum, but I cannot fmd
among your words a knowledge of
my sorrow, npenmg.

In school they prepared you to ask
in my language whereis the bathroom but not
where
is my daughter.
Failing language I will try to open
the blue observing sky ofyour eyes tothe square where
I played asa girl in
the dust.
I want to trust but I am afraid
you will act asa tourist, seeing
only a dazzle oflight and color and me
an exotic peony to strip
down, petal by13

petal, named
photographed andframedA woman on her knees
sorting pebbles.
Thirteen days ago four women and four children disappearedin San Salvador so for thirteen days
I have started at the hollow shell of
space where last
I saw my daughter walking.
The contours of her shoulders
burn there but color
has been sliced
clean away.
The tips of my fingers redden
and crack as I am runningthem over and over
the weeds and gravel trying
to findmy tongue
they cut out
for asking
where
is my daughter
her facethey may peel
like a grape while
your money buys
the knife
so yanqui
can you tell me

14

where in this dust
have they flung
my daughter or
my tongue?

"Bordercrossing" served as the basis of a short film titled A Woman in EI Salvador Speaking, coproduced by the Asociacion de Mujeres de El Salvador (AMES) and Sara Halprin, and featuring
the voice of Carolyn Forche:

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15

Susan Hansell

Poem For a Goodbye Never Spoken
para Silvia, doquiera que este'

when your phone call never came i knew you had
returned. but it was the note Roque left under my door
that made me cry
i can't imagine your journey back over mountains
strewn with 40,000 dead and the blood the blood
running off in streams.
your land has reached its saturation point
everywhere the waters rise rivers rebel in the nameof the Rio Sumpul and the Rio Lempa
from across the Americas, you and icollecting our stories
and tying the years into
one momenta glance,a touch,a face can fadeinto a dark photographbut it's the land that binds us
and life
25 years circling your eyes
27 in mine
it was april when we met
in Nicaragua Libreon the day the world found out about Marcial
we traveled to the refUgee camps near Leo'npast corn fields their new green tips
reaching to the edges
over miles of bare red earth
the dust swirling the taste of it lingering
sweat running in rivulets down our backs
dripping from our thighs

16the dust is like dried blood
it cakes around the lipsof our presidents
and generals.
it crusts under their fingernails
folds itself
into clean laundry
only the longest rain will wash it away
yes, Roque told me of the rains.
how they choke the skies
with winter tears
forcing the bombers to the ground.
i saw your cousin he wanted to know every word
you had spoken. he told me how you grew up
gathering fists with your words how if anyone could
SUfVlve las guardias you would
he told me how you two arranged a meeting placea connecte' -an appointed time in a certain street
exactly two weeks after the triumph of your El Salvador
and if you do not come he will persist
week after week waiting for you Silvia
waiting17

Hilary Mullins

Witness
Paulette Crickmore was fifteen years old when
she disappeared on her way to school inRichmond, Vermont early in September of'S6.
Two months later a seventy-five-year-old deerhunter, out hunting in the early morning, foundPaulette's body in the woods of nearby Duxbury.

You know, I been hunting all my life,
every fall since I was a boy right here in Duxbury
and I seen all sorts of dead things in these woods.
You know, the scraps predators leave,
little piles of feathers,
shreds of meat and fi.rr.
Or sometimes
you'll see a whole jawbone sitting out
picked clean and off-white with weather
but the teeth will still be all set in a row.
But I never seen this sort of preyif you know what I mean.
If I were twenty years younger
I never would have seen her at all.
It's a steep hill over there,
but back then my wind was betterand I woulda kept right on headed up,
never stopped for my breath by that boulder
the way I did.
And of course
that's when my eye first caught sight of the color.
Didn't think too much of it at first thoughthought it was just some scrap of something
somebody'd left behind.
You'd be surprised how much garbage
people leave in the woods these days.
'Specially a lot of these hunters.
Hate to say it, but they're the worst.
Weren't like thatwhen I was a young man.

18

Not that I like it neither,
but1've come to the point now
where I expect itthe stuff they leave behind, I mean.
You knowbeer cans, food wrappers,
plastic this and plastic that.
That's the kind of thing
I thought at ftrst I was seeing.
But my eyes knew better than me
and I had to look again
and that's when I knew for suresomething was wrong.
The color started taking shape along the ground.
Legs-colored pant legs and off-white sneakers
and there where the color went up
it was ftlled with the rest of the body.
I couldn't really believe what I was seeing,but I had to, because there she was,this girl on the ground in colored overalls.
The strange thing wasshe could have been just sleeping,
I swear to God,just takin' a nap in the woods.
She had one arm flung careless-likeout above her, you see,and her head,
if you looked at it from one side,
was sort of nestled up against it.
But she wasn't sleepingI knew better than that.
She was too still,
too deathly still
And when I got a little closer
it weren't like she was nappin' at allthe arm I couldn't make out before
was twisted, broken backand her hair splayed out on the ground.

19

Couldn't see her face.
Didn't want to.
But I could tell she'd been lying there awhile,
lying there rotting there where she was dropped,
and I went back to the boulder
leaning up against it on account of my knees
and breathing hard.
I knew I was all alone in those woods
but I could almost see
someone staggering up the hill
her body on his backand tossing her off like a can of beer
he'd finished with.
And I could see her body falling through the air
and when she landed
there weren't a sound.
Nothing
just nothing, nothing.
Monthsof that nothing,bloomin' like blight in amongst the trees
and then here I come,old fool, stumblin' up to witness the silence.
Well, I was witnessin' it all right,
even the woods seemed soundless, dead,hushed of the usual little animal sounds
or the creaking of the trees.
But the damnest thing was
it was getting in me too,seeping in like the first signs of sickness.
I tried clearing my throat
and couldn't really muster the thing up
and right then I knew
I couldn't even talk,that it would be like trying to yell
twenty feet down ill the lake
and the water is walls
pressmg m on you.

20

Well, as the saying goes,that kind of rattled my cage,so r shook my head hard
and r saw the color on the ground again
like it wouldn't let me go.
r had to walk back to that girl's bodyand with the watery feelingshook a bit back from my headr saw something different this time,r meanr started seeing
how she must have looked in life,
you know,the way she might've moved her body,and maybe used one handto brush back her hair
when it fell in her eyes.
The way girls will do.
And it came to me
at first in fits and starts
and then all in a piece
how she must've pleaded for her life,
first explaining, then begging.
And r knew somehowthat when it came right down to it,
she had struggled,
thrashed like most creatures doin the grip of something
intendin' to kill.
And because he couldn't keep her still,he'd used his hunter's advantage,some tool,some way beyond her means.
But she didn't go quiet-like;no-she screamed.
screamed and screamed and r heard her,
God knows how
but r did,screams that twisted my gut

21and then suddenly stopped.
And there was that silence,that nothing, no noise, nothingagalILThat' s when I bellowed.
Bellowed and the woods bellowed back.
Bellowed until an old man couldn't bellow no more
and had to sit down right there.
Felt like I was back under water
what with all of it
flooding over in my eyes,
but noit was more like I'd come up for air,settin' there gaspin' on the ground
until I got my breathback in my bodyand knew I could talk again
if I wanted to.
But it weren't time yet.
I stood up,
shucked the shells from my rifle,
put 'em in my pocket
and headed back down the hillheaded for town with her story to tell.

22jillian wilkowski

hunting season
i will always remember
his hands tenderly
caressing the rifle
before the hunt oilingthe cold barrel polishing
the wooden stock weighing
grains of sulphur filling
brass cartridges with a steadyhand i will always remember
when i watch flames dance
like autumn leaves he left
us tending the fires every
fall as he walked toward
the snowline to fmd the herdof deer migrating to the warm
sierra valley the crackof gunshot in a canyon echoes
in my memory as logs snap
in the ftre i see a blacktail
deer dark eyes deep poolsof innocence sandy grayantlers spread like bony wings
legs folded beneaththe weight of a bullet
i will always remember

23Norma Fain Pratt

Scared: Inherited Traits
Anyone born to Polish Jewish parents in New York City, the Bronx to be
exact, anytime in the late nineteen-thirties will tell you what I'm about to tellyou. Childhood was not easy. Those times were frightening. The Depression.
Being foreigners even after the ftrst rosy flush of coming to this land ofopportunity. It's well known; there are even history books and films now
about the immigrants. I've read a lot of them and seen the movies because I
thought I could understand my own past by looking at the general patterns.
But when it comes down to speciftcs, family, parents, and all the rest, noamount of so-called historical objectiviy will clarify the meaning ofchildhood. Not enough to satisfy me. My childhood. My mind fmds the oldplaces again. I need to look at those places.
I guess it's important for me to understand that love for my parents held at
the center of my childhood. Mine was such an exclusive passion that later inlife I couldn't regenerate the same feelings for my lovers or even my children.
It was downright Oedipal: identifying with Mama, lusting after Daddy. We
shared the same bedroom until I was nine years old and then they transferred
me to a room with my dear, sweet, senile, eighty-ftve-year-old grandmother.
She giggled during the day, cried in her sleep, and refused to ever speak in
English. Only Yiddish. Sometimes she would tell me about her children, theeleven children. Only four were alive still: my mama Audrey, my aunts Irene
and Lora, and the apple of her eyes, my uncle Irving, who owned a dress
factory and brought the four women over from Lodz in 1922. The other either
died in infancy or were still in Europe, maybe killed by Hitler, as she put it;maybe not. In those years, we didn't know for certain and that was scary inand ofitsel£ Recently, I wrote a poem about the three of us, my grandmother,my mother and me, back a few years after the war, in the early ftfties. I called
it, "Superstition: Three Generations" and it goes like this:My grandmother buried her clipped ftngernails, her toenails, and cut her hair.
My grandmother spat three times when she passed a church.
My mother terrorized herself when her children were late.
My mother needed to have a man make her feel safe.
I believe God will not destroy the world as long as I am reading a book.

24

The other night I was sitting on my little balcony with the potted plants
whispering in the damp slightly chilly night: a true Venice, California
February evening. But no drugs, not even a little Chablis wine. A memorycame to me. Proustian, wafting in on the odors of the night. A gift I thought.
Even if it is painful. Well, just uncomfortable, because I was back in the East
Bronx at the end of my childhood.
Odd. The m ... :'1ory took form of two scenes as if out of a play. These twobrief and seemingly ordinary moments led me into remembering what
happened. The important thing that had happened. The cast of characters was
small. My grandmother (age eighty-five); my mother Audrey (age forty); myone and only sister Mona, alias Mickey (age seventeen), and me (age thirteen).
Both scenes were set in my bedroom, the one that I shared with grandma. I
could see that room so clearly decorated by the cedar chest under the window
where Mama and I sat dreaming on Friday evenings waiting for Daddy tocome home from the downtown millinery shop; the ornate French provincial
knick-knacks set on top of the fake fireplace with its glass coals and tinyelectric fan; the cut-glass box I always used as an imitation telephone, and the
bedroom set itself, a smooth blond maple American colonial style, two single
beds, two dressers, a chair, a desk, and the tiny night table where grandma kept
her hated false teeth and never wore them. A forest of symbols.
Scene I. Bedroom. Enter Grandma. She wears a shaytl, which is a wig
parted in the middle with a bun at the back of the head denoting her orthodox
piety and resistance to American culture. She is dressed in a long dark skirt anda white cotton blouse. You can see her breasts are saggy, her body is thin,almost wasted. But what catches your eyes is her bent back, stooped, nearlyhunched from carrying heavy sacks. The back of a peddler woman. Every
three minutes she sighs deeply almost like a woman in labor. I am sitting on the
bed reading a movie magazine. Ripe breasts. Big brown eyes filled withsadness and longing. My favorite movie star, Ingrid Bergman, has told theworld she is pregnant with Rossellini's child. Noway can I confide in
grandma. Just as she enters I walk across the room to the big window
overlooking the playground of P. S. 6.
Me:Grandma, how do you feel?

Grandma:Me:(silence, a sigh)Didja eat yet? Mama went shopping with Lora for a chicken.
Maybe the grocery store too.

Grandma:(silence)

25

Me:

The boys are playing baseball. God, it looks like Mickey isout there with them. It's her. Oh, she' s hit one of them.

(I open the window and call out)
Mickey stop it. Mama'll kill you.
Grandma: Farmakh dem f enster, kind, ikh bin kalt. (translation: Close thewindow, child, I'm cold).
Me:

Just a minute, Grandma, I'm going to run down. Mickey needs me.

Grandma:
Me:

Nayn.

Why?

Grandma:(silence)

I stay because I'm such a good girl and do what everybody tells me. It's akind of paralysis. All of a sudden I see Mickey running across the playground,her chubby legs rubbing together at the thighs, her sandy, tomboy blond hairsweaty around her head. In a few minutes I hear the door open. She comes in
the front door. She enters my room:
Mickey:Idiot, who asked you to yell. Everybody in the neighborhood willknow I'm fighting in the yard.
Me:

So what? You always fight with boys.

Mickey:Shut up. Grandma, come away from the window, lay down,
Mama will b~ home any minute.
(She turns toward me and barks)
Why are you reading this crappy movie magazine? Do your homework,
geruus.

(She turns and leaves. I sit on my bed Grandma gets into her bed After afew minutes
there is a long snore')
Scene II. The same bedroom. Mama and I are sitting on the cedar chest in frontof the window. Grandma is in bed. Mama is small, frail-boned but has acurvacious body covered by a matronly frilled pinafore which does not hide
her sexiness. Her blondish sandy hair curls stylishly up around the edges. In
her cleep blue eyes one can detect a bemused self-consciousness. Always a26

/mama's girl herself, she holds me lightly around the waist. I'm bigger than she.
Anyone seeing this would think she's babying a grown girL Mama is intensely
distracted.
Mama:
Me:

Just a minute, darling, he'll be home soon.
I'm hungry.

Mama:

Me:

Don't be hungry. Wait. It' s better to eat when he comes home.
Where is he? Let's play actresses and actors.
O.K.

Mama:
Me:

O .K. G.G.
That's too easy. Greta Garbo. (shouting impatiently) God, Ma, it's too
easy.

Mama:

Stop complaining. We'll eat soon. Where is he? (Grandma groans)
I'm so nervous. She cries in her sleep.

Me:

She does. Keep that old man away from me. She says it over and over.

Me:

She says funny things in her sleep Ma.

Mama:
Me:

Be quiet.
She does. Keep that old man away from me. She says it over and over.

Mama:
Me:

Don't listen. It's nothing.
Nothing? Tell me. What old man?

I'll tell you when you are older.

Mama:
Me:

Oh, Ma.

Mama:

You know, I'm nervous.

(The sound of the key in the front door. She jumps up full of excitement and interest.)
He's home. Wash your face.

27

(She leaves the room Grandma moans. I sit on the cedar chest alone watching the fullmoon and the beginning of snow falling.)
Those were the two ordinary scenes I remembered. They were tiny piecesof the family drama, "The Family Tragedy." Because what happened in thenext forty-eight hours following these scenes was awful. My mother swore me
to secrecy then. "Don't tell what happened," she begged with tears in her
frightened blue eyes. "It will shame all of us." That scared the hell out of me.
It left a permanent mark on my personality. Whenever I'm scared ofanything, anything at alL I don't talk.
It's time to tell. Simply. Without much embellishment. My grandmotherwas very old and very senile. She appeared to me to be growing more
uncomprehending, more strange every day. Not one person in the family
seemed to want to accept that cruel fact, although the evidence just kept pilingup: slurred speech; puddles of pee; clothes unbuttoned, put on backwards;
objects and food forgotten all over the apartment. Although her sharp blueeyes peered out at you, intelligent and imperious as ever, there was some new
quality of cunning laced with bitterness that wasn't quite her. One afternoon I
ran into her in the dark long corridor which led from the kitchen into ourshared bedroom. Ran straight into her. She hardly noticed; she just handed mea half peeled orange.
Always the dutiful daughter, my mother still acted as if grandma wasknowledgeable and powerful. She would ask the old woman whether the
chicken looked good or if we needed to get more salt for koshering the meat.
Grandma's eyes would squint knowingly, and silently she' d point her finger
up and down. Or she would cackle, like a hen, and this would make her laughat some private joke. My mama's eyes would widen with incredulity. If! were
there she'd look away. We were to pretend grandma had a weird sense ofhumor. No accounting for her actual behavior. Not even my daddy, who
prided himself on being so rational and worldwise, commented on how she
was deteriorating.
And yet, I was with her at night, alone. Long nights when she mumbled
and sat stark up in bed looking for lost things in the folds of the heavy quilted
covers. Drooling. "Oh God," I lay there thinking. " What does this mean?"She began disappearing at night. I never saw her leave. But I knew she wasgone because mama and daddy would be walking around in the corridor
between the kitchen and the bedroom. "Gevald, where is she?" 'mama
whispered, muffling the sound of her voice by covering her mouth with her
hand. I looked over at the crumbled empty bed. Where was she? Such an old
lady. Out there on the streets by herself A trolley car would run her over.
"Audrey," daddy said in his deep calm long-suffering voice, " we' ll find her.
Just have a little patience." "Patience," she intoned with that edge of hysteria
mainly reserved for him, " my mother somewhere. How can I have patience."28

I'd fall asleep. Before she was found. In the morning, when I got up forschool, she'd be lying in bed, covered, pale as a sheet. My sister never said aword about what happened. Maybe she slept through it because she wassleeping on a daybed in the living room. Maybe she didn't want to let me know
she knew something was the matter. Maybe she thought I was stupid and I justslept through everything.
That night, the one I remembered, after Mickey had fought with the boysin the schoolyard, when I was reading about Ingrid Bergman, when daddy waslate and mama was so happy to have him home that she left me sitting on thecedar chest alone watching the full moon and the snow, that night grandma
disappeared again, but I was awake when they brought her home. She was
wearing a thin white nightgown, no shoes and no wig so that her closely
cropped hair looked boyish and criminal. I pretended to be sleeping when theybrought her into the room. Lifting the covers and tucking her in tightly, they
settled her into bed. I could see her eyes wide open, yet she didn't say
anything. Mama was angry and more frustrated than I'd ever seen her. Daddy
was just sad. The fUll moon made the room so light.
They closed the door but I could hear them somewhere in the kitchenmaybe talking, maybe yelling at each other. I heard the phone ring and I fell
asleep.
The next morning I looked over and she wasn't in bed. When I went to the
kitchen for breakfast mama was ashen and kept her back to me as she squeezed
the orange juice, grinding away at the glass hand juicer. I was afraid to sayanything so I just sat there looking at her preparing the food. "We took
grandma to an old age home last night," she said. "I can't take care of her
anymore. It's dangerous," she added in a mumbled sort of way. I could hardly
breathe. Then she started to cry and say how her mama had lived with her all ofher life, even the eighteen years she was married. She said how she loved her,listened to her, obeyed her. And now it was so crazy. Mama whispered, "Howcan she be in an old age home when she's been with me always?" I felt numb.
When she left the room to go to the toilet, I left for school.
When I came home there wasn't anyone home. "Where is everybody," Iyelled into the rooms. Then the phone rang. It was my mama. She said she
wanted to talk to Mona. My parent's bedroom door was closed so I figured
Mona must be in there. I opened the door just a crack and there she was withher hands folded like some Christian girl at prayer and I heard her say, "God,let grandma be alive." "The phone's for you," I squeaked. She ran past me tothe phone, listened, began to cry and then just dropped it and sat on the floor. I
picked it up but nobody was on the other end. "She's dead," Mona screamed.
"Died in her sleep the first night out. Died of fright."
That was the family tragedy. After eighteen years of all of them living
together, mama and daddy had sent grandma to an old age home be~ause she

29was senile and couldn't be trusted. And they were ashamed of it as if they had
murdered her. They wanted it to be hidden and, for my part, it was. I never
told.
"Who was the old man she talked about?" I asked my mama when I wasmuch older and she and I reminisced about the days in the Bronx. "I don't
know," was her initial reply. But then she added, "My mother was married
when she was fourteen. Her husband was twenty-five. Maybe she didn't hke
him at first."

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30

Lynn Martin

Mercy" To the memory of my dear daughter-in-law,Mrs. Mercy Bradstreet, who deceased Sept. 6,
1669, in the 28th year of her age."
Title of a poem by Anne Bradstreet

Head bowed, a dark scarf
heavy on her shoulders,
my mother-in-law
is calling on her God.
Poor Woman.
Let her think I am in heaven
playing with my four dead children.
I am Mercy Bradstreet withno mercy being given in the end.
Twenty-eight years I lived,
giving birth to five children.
One survived; one child and one poem.
And I, instead of rest, Anne,walk alone.
I have let my hair growover my eyes, my nails
in sharp points. I roam
river beds scratching in mud.
If you ride by at night
it's my voice in your ear,my hand that causes
the horse to bolt.
I wear no scarf over my head,gtve no mercy.
Grieving four times over,no one's blood satisfies me,
and the split tongued crowhigh on my shoulder is restless.

31

Lynn Martin

The Perils of Pauline
Pauline is tied to the tracks.
Ear to the rail,
the humming makes her sleepy.
Through half-closed lids,
the stars collide over her head,
showering dreams:
small lights burning.
If she doesn't move,ropes fade into delusionas the wind creeps
along each fmger,
licks her ankles.
The train pounds two turns away,
screaming around the bend.
It's uncertain how many Paulines
are strung along the way.
She can't turn her head to look.
In China, Spain and Newark, N.J.,
the sun is just rising,so bright it burns the tops of the trees.
Shadows crouch under bushes
awaiting assassination, and in stations
everywhere trains bellow and snort.
Pauline's thoughts are perilous.
There is nothing she can doabout the masked figure
who tied her to the tracks.
The script calls for rescue,
scant seconds before the train's lights
discover and reveal.
The audience knows she can't free herself,
though they shout directions from the darkness.
Gr.own old in small town theaters,
Pauline's celluloid bones crackle.
She isn't even thinking of trains,
but the peril of rescue,
the next episode.
She glares at the camera eyeof the moon, no longer surprisedby what she sees.

32

Donna Allegra

The Electrician' s Girl
The prospect of having a girl apprentice was starting to grow on him.
When the foreman first told him he'd be working with Kehinde starting next
week, Tom Bailey had been pissed as shit. But the morning that he saw her ride
up to the job on her bicycle was also the afternoon that he saw her eating herlunch with chopsticks in her solitary corner overlooking the water in front of
the building, far away from the rest of the crew. Christ, a Black chick eatingwith chopsticks! Maybe there's more to this girl than meets the eye, hethought.
He'd heard the affectionate "Fuck You's" that the carpenter girl said to her
journeyman. They laughed a lot and she listened with rapt attention to his
every word. The carpenter was an old timer due to go out to pasture soon andit seemed that he wanted her to have his legacy of knowledge. The two ofthem seemed to get along well-she carried his tools and made sure that he got
his coffee first when she went out to get the break for the carpentry crew. That
happy vision of companionship wasn't lost on Tom.
He had a slight reputation among the electricians for being good at working
with apprentices. Yeah, he'd like to try out a girL She could be kind of a crossbetween kid sister and puppy dog.
Kehinde was strong-looking, solid, like she did some kind of martial art.
Her short tower of strength was not execdy the morsel of delicate femininity
he had in mind, but hell, this was a construction job. And, she had a real appeal
he had to admire. She seemed so . . . centered, rooted. She seemed likesomeone who'd never get distracted or thrown off balance.
He'd seen she had a sweet- faced smile when she talked to that carpenter
girl, but she didn't use it much with the crew. She ought to, he thought. It'dhelp her out a lot more on the job with the other guys, instead oflooking so
serious all the time like she did. You liked to see a smiling female. It made aman feel good. He'd get her to smile more. He could see himselflooking downfrom a ladder to a laughing litde girl looking up to him awaiting orders. Yes,
he was really warming up to the idea of having her as his apprentice.
As he'd done with his other apprentices, he started in with lectures on beinga good tradesman. "Hopefully, you'll learn from your mistakes. You' re gonna
make them, but they can be minimized. I try to do a 99% job. I don't say 100%
because once in a while you're gonna cheat. The customer is paying goodmoney and we get good money for what we do, so I try to go the extra inch andput in each and every thing they specified on the blue print. It may require abend when you want to do a straight run of pipe for your wire pull, but that's
what we're being paid for."33

Safety and shock prevention were his favorite topics to hold forth on. That
always got his other apprentices' interest. New ones were always worried
about getting shocks-a real possibility in their work, especially on arenovation job like this one where there was a lot of old wiring and shoddy
workmanship to contend with.
It wasn't so much that a guy could get electrocuted, but if you were up on aladder and got zapped, it was the fall by surprise that could do the damage. 110
volts wasn't so bad, but most of the work nowadays in these commercial officebuildings were using 277-volt and 480-volt systems. That could knock a manoff a ladder-and that would be your lucky break. If you got hung up in a highvoltage circuit, your muscles would freeze and your brain would know what todo, but your body wouldn't be able to respond. You just wouldn't be able to
let go. You'd stay there until you fizzled out unless some outside force broke
the circuit for you.
When she went about her tasks with him on their trouble-shooting
assignment, Kehinde seemed not to notice the excitement she generated
amongst the other trades on the job just by her being alive and there. The girlwas perpetually neutral.
"Don't look at my apprentice in that tone of voice," he'd said to one of theplumbers on the floor. She remained oblivious to the effect she was creating.
He saved a lot of his best lines to use around her and didn't make a dent in her
aura; all his good jokes were simply lost on Kehinde. She stayed strictly
business and it was like she didn't notice he was a human being with flesh andfeelings. This bugged him to no end. Why did she treat him like a tool she kept
at a distance? He wasn't like some of these assholes who'd try to bust her chops
just for being a female doing construction work.
He knew she could lighten up and joke around. Just this morning he'd seen
her be playful with the carpenter girl. He'd heard their gleeful laughter andwanted to move in on their joy. He wanted to join in with a smart remark thatwould orchestrate their smiles up to him.
He decided that today he would try to get her to break down her insulationand open up and be human with him. He'd talk about safety hazards andprecautions. Throughout the whole lecture, he was aching to engage in her
interest. Her eyes remained closed, not hostile, but no warmth lived there forhim, no recognition for his considerable charm. He'd been working with her
for weeks now and just couldn't get past those vague answers when he asked
her about her life outside of the job.
"Are you married? Got a boyfriend" he'd asked her. "It feels like itsometimes," she'd answered, resisting him. "How many feet of wire do you
want to pull for this circuit?" She always did that; She didn't leave any spacefor friendly conversation. He was just trying to make small talk to get the day
to go faster.

34

It was not that she was openly scornful like his wife or constantly criticizing

him like his daffy daughter with her feminist stuff protesting everything that
he was paying hard-earned money for her to have. Kehinde wasn't full of
explanations like the other girl apprentice who'd been on the job a few months
ago, before she was rotated to a different work site. It was like she was inanother world sometimes, like she was lightly attached to the earth and would
beam in to do a job, but kept herself somewhere else. She didn' t cut him off
when he spoke, but he sometimes wondered if anybody was at home after she
closed him out of consciousness. Kehinde would just not be moved. You
couldn't touch this bitch.
It was this very quality that hurt and attracted him the most. She was only
partly available. He wouldn't call her a space cadet, but she was elusive
sometimes.
That was the state she was in when he decided he'd do the splice live. He
wanted to get her to listen to him. He knew she' d pull the switch in time. She
was a good little mechanic, but she'd have to give him all her focus as they
worked together on the high voltage unit in the electric closet. He reallywanted to talk and there was no one else around to give him the energy she
ordinarily wouldn't conduct. For some reason, he was dying to have herappreciate him. He wasn't a bad guy. She could give up on a little humanfeeling for once, Jesus H. Christ. Why couldn't she just listen instead of
dismissing him and surprise him for once? Come on baby, give me a little
thrill. Show some emotion and give me the shock of my life.
Well, he'd force her to listen to him as they worked. He needed to air someof the bullshit his wife was giving him at home. He interspersed his tale ofdomestic woe on the home front with instructions. Ordinarily, he'd layout
her end of the job before hand, but this time, he didn't tell her what he wanted
her to do until he was ready for each little thing.
She didn't raise an eyebrow when he said, "OK, now let's do this splice live.
You need to see this procedure. First you undo the hot wire . . . " She'd been
following all his instructions and was fully alert, not in her oblivious realm. He
liked the fact that she could be depended upon to do the right thing. If only hecould teach the kid to talk. Well, he was working on that project. He'd haveher chattering away like a chipmunk if it was the last thing he did in life.
He undid the hot wires and had just cut into the neutral wires when his
pliers fell down one rung of the ladder- he'd brazenly used the painter' s
aluminum ladder because he didn't want to go down to the supply room andlug a wooden ladder up the three flights to the roof in the machine room
where they were working alone. As he reached down for the pliers caught on
the ledge, the neutral wire hit the ladder and he jumped in terror, grabbing
hold of the bare hot wire by mistake. At that crucial moment, as if she' d misseda beat, Kehinde didn't pull the circuit disconnect switch. He was hung up withthe high voltage sizzling through him, she remaining safely on the insulated
mat.

35

He screamed, but no sound came out of his mouth, his breath cut of£ as it
happens when you become part of an electric circuit and start to fry. And ofcourse, she wouldn't touch him, lest she ton get pulled in and become part ofthe circuit, all her limbs frozen as well. That fact of electrical life had been a
big point he made during one of his fIrst lectures to her. But didn't she see thewooden two by four that she could use to knock him off the ladder to safety?
Why didn't she pull the circuit disconnect switch? He couldn't let go of thecircuit on his own, but his brain was conscious, though losing it fast.
She looked up at him and he saw her shrug her shoulders, like he'd often
seen her do when she fInished a chops-breaking task that the foreman had
assigned to her as a punishment, something admittedly unpleasant, but which
she wasn't going to get upset about.
He knew then that she did see and hear everything, but she simply wasn't
going to give up on any energy or reactions. What a bitch.
But she was fmally giving him his fIrst real smile of human sympathy. There
was the compassion he'd been striving to get from her for so long. For the veryrust time, she raised those eloquent eyebrows which were usually furled inconcentration on the job at hand and looked him full in the face. At long lastshe focused her dark eyes on him with a regard he' d so often yearned for-justa simple acknowledgement of his humanity, a look of understanding andcarmg.
And Tom Bailey was happy. He was breathlessly happy. My God, all she
had to do was give me a brief smile and I can't breathe. I'm so happy I could
die, he thought. Maybe things will be different between us now. She'd pay
maybe even full attention to him when he talked, because they'd just had thissympathetic connection. It was worth nearly dying for. All he'd wanted wasfor her to notice him, some sympathy, a warm feeling between them. I justknow we can be friends now, he thought. But it was really too late to give itmuch thought, because now, darnnit to hell, he was fucking dead.

36

Nancy Barickman

Excerpts from Hospital Journal
For years I have worked as a respiratory therapist in a variety of hospitals.
This journal was written at a time when I had just returned to college andwas working on an independent study project about death.

... I have started to write down pieces of conversations that I either have oroverhear at work. Some of it is very sweet, like an old man waking up from a
nap and saying to his middle-aged daughter, "I really dream a lot, don't I?"
She, "I don't know, do you? What were you dreaming about?" He, "That you
and Chuck Sullivan had gotten back together," and she says, "Boy, you reallywere dreaming." I can't explain it, but without knowing them I got such a feelfor who they were from this that I felt I knew them all This must be due to theheightened state of being very sick or with someone who is very sick.
I am haunted by the 79-year-old who shot his wife and by the 27-year-old in
our ICU who tried to kill herself by drinking kodak chemicals, and mostpeople have a terrible attitude about her and the hundreds like her who dosuch bizarre things to themselves. But then I guess how bizarre depends on
your point of view. M. told me she tried to kill herself a few times but notreally, it was just the most dramatic or eloquent way she knew to ask for help ..

. . . Two beepers. The child wanted to know why I had on two beepers. So I
explained, one for if someone in the area I am responsible for needs something
and the other if someone anywhere in the hospital tries to die and someone
catches them, the red one goes off and says "212 there is a code in 512" orwherever, then I have to run and do my part to try and prevent it. This is thebiggest most glaringly awful contradiction at work for me. I don't mind somuch administering drugs that help people breathe easier or even taking careof machines that are keeping them alive, sometimes it's only for a little while
and they go on with their lives. But so violently yanking them back from
wherever they are trying to go really bothers me. I always feel bad afterwards
especially if the person dies anyway, I am haunted by my participation. ...

37

· .. between the 16th and 18th centuries people were obsessed with anxiety
about being buried alive. No doubt this happened often. Wills became very
detailed with instructions for making cert:Wl of death. One way was to call the
person's name three times. I thought of how in CPR training that is the very
first thing one does to determine the state of the victim. And many wild tales ofthe living dead. Such as the "prodigious bleeding of the corpse of a murder
victim when placed in the presence of the murderer," the idea of the sensibilityof the cadaver.

A day in the big house
Rebecca says "nine times that chick in bed L has tried to kill herself She's
seventeen. Pregnant for the third time she thought, old man would have killed
her, probably would have done her a favor. Sorry, but I don't have much
sympathy for that. I'm sorry, but if you ask me, she's just looking for someattention. The pain they cause others, I'm sorry but she gets no sympathy fromme." "Well", I said, "luckily for her I'm taking care of her tonight instead ofyou."
I often wonder why people feel compelled to make such moral judgements
about others they know absolutely nothing about. Is it because the third
patient of the night makes more work? It's not piece work. We get paid by thehour.
Two ladies in 564 have stolen my heart by referring to their purses as
pocketbooks. I imagine their lives, in New York and Florida. They wereyoung and got married, now one of them has vascular disease in her legs andone has a fluid-loaded heart.
In bed L you have Mrs. S. She is seventy-two years old. She passed out and herchildren thought she might have had a stroke, so they took her to theemergency room. She had, at some other time, told her children that she did
not want to be kept alive on a machine. She is in the end stages of chronic
obstructive lung disease and also has cancer in her gall bladder. Her doctor also
knew of and planned to respect this wish. But neither he nor they (thechildren) were there in the room when her heart stopped and she ceased tobreathe. The emergency room staff did their job and then there she was with atube down her throat (mistaken intubation) and soon in ICU on a ventilator,
which given the state of her lungs it is going to be very hard to wean her off o£
She seems pretty depressed but is cooperative. We had to restrain her hands as
she will pull the tube out.

38

· .. The other night I went to give Mr. Peckum a treatment. It seemed helooked much worse than the last time I saw him. But he looked downrightsallow. '·'Mr. Peckum, can you take a breathing treatment? Mr. Peckum?"
Mouth hanging open, no pulse, I had just read his chart and saw that someone
had written a "no heroics" order. I went to the nurse's station, "Is Mr. Peckum
dead?" I asked. The nurse said, "Yes, did you give him a treatment?" I
couldn't help laughing. But then a little while later I saw his granddaughter go
into his room followed quickly by this same nurse, it was very sad and I felt
terrible for laughing. It is hard to feel the right things all the time . . . .

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Pamela Pratt

A Ringing In My Ears
Dora's voice broke, broke over and over, smaller and smaller pieces. Like
picking up a vase one has dropped and shattered: but you will piece it together
again and arrange in it dried flowers- Queen Anne's lace or baby's breath, forit will not take water, will not hold water again. Tears seeping through thecracks in her voice. Giving her time, I use my words carefully, pulling her
together, the sentences connecting to keep intact the substance of her grief,
the shock. Waivering, quivering, quavering.
Dora said: I just got back from California, late last night. I've been away for months. No
one even knew where I was. I collected my mail and saw the Christmas card Emily sentme and I called right away. Oh my godOh, how rude of me, you must have thought I was a prank caller, askingfor her like tha;
I'm so sorry, so sorry. Condolences to you and her mother from Dora and Gilda, tell her
mother from Dora and Gilda.

I met her when I was nine years old, at the daycare center. We just took to each other, I
guess. She would call me and say, "I'm going to be in Brooklyn at such and such a time,
place, meet me there. I remember the day she taught me to say no. When I learned that it
made me feel so good, and each time I do it I feel powerful and sure of myself She taughtme that My family couldn't teach me that because they didn't know what no is. Emilytaught me that.
JJ

There is a pause. Dora is remembering what both of them were wearing thatday and how old she was and how wonderful and strong Emily looked andwhat room they were in, the color of the very walls. Down to the tone ofvoice, the time of day, and the last time she saw her and the first time she saw
her and-in short, everything.

The first day she showed up at the center I told Gilda it was all gonna be different And it
was. She'd always just recognize my voice when I said her name on the telephone andright away she'd go into a happy tirade about everything she'd been doing and then I would
go into a tirade and when we were both finished we'd arrange to meet Sometimes I'd justshow upat her door and she'd say, "I've got to meet someone, I'vegot to go, but come in forfive minutes anyway. And we'd have our tirades and our talks and three hours later she'dlook at her watch as we'd laugh and she'd say, "Well, I'm too late now, and then we'dtalk some more. She never sat still. In my apartment! couldn't keep her down for aminute, always moving, examining, touching, exclaiming! As if each object were the most
JJ

JJ

40

beautifu4 and just from her touch, for that second, it would be. She had to love everything.
She wouldn't settle for any less than that.
Then there were the questions. I was prepared for them, had answered themover and over, till I could say it all without thinking about it, till it wasn't me
and it wasn't Emily, just the recital of a litany drained of any meaning.
She died on a Tuesday. Her birthday would have been that Friday. She would
have been twenty-eight. Dora is twenty. And Dora is. Dora's sister Gilda, is. I
am, almost. The cats are. The cats understood and mourned in their own way.
No one walked in the door and picked them up each in tum and called theirnames and cooed the private sounds in which one communicates with cats. No
one walked in or stayed in. No one lay on the bed with the television on low
and let them crawl, walk, purr, lie all over her, all over her there was
confusion, too many people and then none, no more of what they were born
into knowing as love or need. She fed, nurtured, nursed them. Petted, fussed,
called, cooed, whispered-was, simply and always, there. They mourned intheir own way. They slept in her clothes, they tore the carpet, they waited at
the door, on the bed, in the bathtub, their siamese voices raised in a cacophonyof misery. They waited in any case, in case she might come, might come home.
We knew she was going to die for a long time. She died in her sleep. Yes, sheknew she was going to die, "But we didn't expect it just then."
I told Dora: Emily had influenza, and too high a temperature, and too manyother things had already gone wrong, andI told her: Emily was taking a nap, resting and she died in her sleep. I didn't tellher that her eyes opened for an instant and that she knew. She knew. I was
beside her on the bed, watching, close. Her eyes said she knew, that for an
instant, an instant shorter and longer than any describable length oftime ... "But we didn't expect it just then.""She seemed always to make an impression on people," I say when I havenothing else to say.
Her heart waited for last. Everything else went ftrst. That's why she couldn't
see you for months at a time, after the operations. She didn't want anyone toknow. She didn't want sympathy. I guess we really didn't think about it: we
had enough money for her medicine, and then later we didn't. We should haverealized that other parts of her body would start to go, too: we weren't
prepared for that-the ordeals, and the ftnance. The first time she was sick I
said I wouldn't go to work, I was going to stay with her. She said, this will41

happen alot, you can't stop everytime I get ill. And in the end there wasn't any
choice, I went to work to pay the bills and I was home less and less, and she got
sicker and sicker, I was there less and less, less time together when we needed
it more and more, and more. When she would say my name to me it would
sound like a light being turned on, the sound of pure light, of doors being
opened, I loved her so much.
Over and over, reliving Emily: her clothes, what she ate, her photographs, herfeelings, her acting career; peering at remnants of "our" life in theapartment-things not thrown away or burned in my first rage against her
death. Months later I find a letter she had once written me, in purple pen, she
loved purple, and I can't touch it, my fmgers burn, my throat aches. Later, I
light a ftre with it. The questions hurt, the answers hurt, everything hurts, andstill I am. Still Emily is, valiantly or hopelessly: in my own way, Emily is.
Through the twists and turns of these rooms she is saying, not under her
breath, because she had no breath left, but the lips moving, faintly forcing
sound through a shell, a hollow, she is saying is it my heart? it's not my heart, is it?
Through the halls and the windows and closed doors and the cats frantic overillness, echoes of her words are ringing in my ears: I hear what they will
mean heart, hard, heart of my hear~ heart ofgold, beating, dripping, failing, losing,

stopping, no, do not say the words, it's all righ~ just a little blood, you lost just a little
blood, you'll be all righ~ will be all right, everything will be all right, everything, losing
everything, losing my love, my heart
Try to get some sleep, my love, I'll be right here by your side, it will be all right
Try to sleep now
Bending over her, not believing it could happen, for one long afternoon
against everything, believing the words: say them, say them for me it is not
my hear~ it is not my heart
try to get some sleep now, try

42Vickie Sears

On Father's Death
Sunny school day
in the back door
all happy and alive.
He's dead.
Who?
Your father. Irene called today.
it happened two months ago.

Oh.
Well?
Well what?
gonna play baseball.
She shrugged her shoulders.
wanted something.
I couldn't cry.
didn't know why or how.
never cried
just
hit the ball in twelve-year-old springsun
and
.
ran.
Next Saturday, Mom took me to the cemetery.
forever findfound
his grave.
he spoke thatdeath is one life to another.
tears were for ourselves not
how could we be sad when

the dead.

43

the spirit stays as always was
giving council
being a warmth.

when alive?

for the truth in his speaking there was
acceptanceso no tears.
no tears for missing
what had never been a present presence.
I never cried a missing.

We went to the house where he had lived with my aunt.
Father's den was a shrine.
ceiling covered with model planes and cars
shelved books rest,
held upright by his bugle.
I remembered hearing the bugles

low mourn-filled notes in the night's darkness
when I had lived with him.
could see him sitting
legs open
arms propped on themback bent
bugle toward the floor
gently blowing
what I knew as sadness.
when he drank all the sounds werebrightly loudnot coordinated into a touching.
I stroked the bugle

his papers,
piled and crooked
corner ratty
song-filled
poem-full.
I had seen him with hisslim narrow-pointed pen
heard it suck ink to scratch,44

all without his looking at me.
caughtlost
real
it was his private place.
Irene poked at remembering with"He left you this."holding out his fountain pen.
Shadow splattered splendor
I never cried for my father.
I just hit the balland ran.

illtwelve-year sun

45

Maude Meehan

Maxima Culpa
On Cayman Island the old fisherman told youthat after the turtle is caught
and hacked from its shell the flesh squirms
and quivers, steaming on the deck.
He said, "Thees mon seen them pieces jump allnight. Sometime they still jumpin' next day."He won't eat turtle because the spirit
is trapped. "Bad ju-ju."
Last night you flirted with death again.
No real embrace. Just a quick kiss in passing.
A moist flick of your tongue between her lips
to let her know you're still interested.
Not quite ready to settle down, but willing to gamble.
No needles this time. Just downers,booze, a select number of phone calls.
And next time who knows, maybe there won't beanyone at home. Out of town, happy our, the movies,
who knows where, and no time left. Maybe
you dial one last number, the line clicks inand you've beaten the odds one more time. But a
machine answers, "Sorry I can't come to the phone,please leave your name. . . ." and suddenly you panic
sobbing, "For christ's sake LISTEN TO ME!"
Maybe next time you'll catch on. This gameis real. Next time, maybe next time we'll findyour shell, stiff and empty, and we who love you
stripped raw, quivering, trapped in your pain.

from Chipping Bone

46

Laurie J. Hoskin

Releaseyou died yesterday at noon.
by 5:00 pm there was windthat howled at my windows
and shook them into rattle
and moan but the wailing
was mine and only
mine. a good jew, I tore
at my clothes, came to
my flesh, kept on tearing
trying to feel evendeeper, trying to warm
my fingers by reachingbone-the center where a tornado
is calm, where the steel support
beams from the carousel horses
meet. you always wanted me
to take you to a carnival, buy
you blue balloons and holdyour hand on the ferris wheel but
we never went because neitherof us are children anymore.
especially you, who tried to die
so many times and finally
got it right because you practiced.
the dead are always old
and well informed. I will notdeny this death as I haveso many others; instead I wantto know what gave you
the right to do it today. I did
everything you asked me to:drove miles out of the way
in order not to passa cemetery, never asked
about your family, cooked passover
meals according to tradition,
rubbed your temples that always
seemed to ache, everything47

except need you. lady, you were
never crazy, you just took
too much responsibilty-when
my white malamutes died
you mourned harder than I
ever could, because they were hurt
on your street by a neighbor
you were friendly with-and gave
yourself guilt as others
give themselves presents or holidaysonce after loving me, I heard
you breathe the words, "one day
I must stop this and marrya man," as if they were a chant.
mad, sometimes, yes
but never crazy because you asked
for the color blue
as if you wanted to be calmed
and if I need you nowas I sit at the edgeof your livingroom undera photograph of us wading
into the Rifle River, jeansrolled to our knees
and twigs in your hair,sorting books, a pile especiallyfor those with a bookplate
reading "Sarah," a nameyou never told me,
and wrapping tissue paperaround the small enameledvases that you loved-it is because
I am tired of deathso much of it in the middleof my life, as if
I need the practice.

48

Laurie J. Hoskin

Eulogy In Three Parts
the funeral was yesterday.
eight of us stood close
against the december chicago wind.
each of us had been her loverat one time, or overa period of years. each of us
cried. there was no eulogy,
no compassionate funeral director
to choreograph the grief, nosomber music - just eight windows
and the wind full of dirty snow.
Billie, it is damned hard
to believe that you are dead.
you were the model bar dyke,
claiming the end stool at
any bar between the two coasts,
a pack of camels in your white
shirt pocket, a shot and a beer
set directly in front of you.
you watched everything, everyone.
you beat us at pool,
lit our cigarettes, bought
our drinks, listened to ourtroubles, took us home with you
as if to keep us warm. you
slicked your hair back, wore
a gold pinky ring and hada heart as big and pure
as your approach to life.
we claimed to love you;
you were a good timeand asked nothing in return49

so how dare you die. they
told you years ago that you had
to stop drinking, that your body
would give up, give in. andit did, the kidneys first,
the heart last.
so we wept. some becauseof being left behind. somebecause of not having
loved her enough to help
her live, and some because
the empty bar stool will notstay empty very long.
after, we stood aroundby the cars, waiting
for my taxi to arrive.
we talked about her
and about ourselves,
how her disappearance
from the scene would alter
the quality of the scene
and how some of us
were finally living sober.
you were my fIrst
woman lover, big
red-haired and so sureof your moves. wewent to new york andyou bought me small gold
earrings in the shapeof an apple, fallenfrom the tree. you
never spoke of your threechildren, their father,
the life you walked out o£

50

Billie, let me write
your eulogy and let
it be about an empty
bar stool and a full heart
not afraid of spilling over.
let it be about women
who never, in the whole
length of their lives,
take a drink, who neverhurt themselves with poison
dressed up as a key to pleasure.
let it be about us standing,shoulder to shoulder, in love
and in bloom.

51

Elana Dykewomon

From My Journal: The Night That
Willow Died
Someone diessomeone young cheerful
someone who knew
death was asking after her
who said
at the beginninghell, I'm scared, thismight be the big
shuffle off to Buffalo
someone grinning
who had work to do
who said
she wanted to live
to be alive, proud of how she was moving
through a hard life
someone who had been denied
and came back fighting
who said
she was not afraid
at the end
at what weofas the end

think

Someone dies
who gathered
the spirit of life around her
who opened her bones
wide wide
opened her butch bones up
to take inthe hearts of womyn
caring about thiscaring about her
caring about ourselves52And then opened again
to take in deathSomeone dies
and womyn want
to be importantwhen there is a death
someone wants
to wash the bodysomeone wants tobe the one who sings
someone wants to tell friends,
bringing the news of death
someone takes off her rings
someone watches her lover
light candles
Everyone isimportant in deathwhen one of us dies everyone
who has a story to tellis important
for what we learn here
for what we share
These are our lives
where we have totake care know how
to be with our dying
know how to hear
when the last breath comesknow how to sensewhat change happens
when someone needs us
death is a gift
our friends give to us

53I did not die at
thirty-two for nothing
she says
one of the messages
is what I give to you
use itlove each othercare what happens next
& enjoy& liveSomeone dies
her wisecracks and her art
become a hers tory
all the photos she sent
where we played in piles of dry leaves
laughing and can look again
at that green waterfall
where an oregon trail ends
gifts
to press against the place
where the ache sticks

o transform loss
& time & grief

for usbecause we wanted her to live
because good friends
are hard to make,to find over years
because losing her
is hard to bearand hard to understandtransform
so we can take with us
the spirit
she meant to give54

Beth McDonald

from Four Beginnings For A
Nove! N ever Written (narrative)
III.
August 9, 1981
When two pearls grow within the same oyster, they may lie so close
together that each bears an imprint of the other. Yet, they are not a matchedpair like gloves or shoes. Each has its own beauty and worth, independent of
the other. Like one pearl that remains after the other is crushed to dust and thedust scattered, I am indelibly shaped by Claudia. Like a dancer left without apartner, I still move through life with attitudes and ways that are in response to
her attitudes and ways.
I never changed Claudia. She changed me. I adapt. I took on her best
characteristics, and she helped me to develop my own. But she just held onto
lessons of seduction, manipulation, and materialism that she learned while she
was a girl, flirting with her daddy. She thought she could control people,
because she won such favor from him.
God I loved her! Love her still. Her influence in my life grows, forcing all
new relationships into shallow rootedness. How long I've remembered every
dress she wore! How long to see her in memory, as she moved with a swift
dance step in those dresses: the gray jersey with "windows" of bright red, theItalian gold thread suit she wore to symphony, the white brushed jersey thatemphasized her vivid brunette beauty. If one had a slight wrinkle or a faintspot, she'd laugh, "On a fast horse, they'll never notice." And I remember the
shorts I ironed for her: white ones, red and black in old, soft chino.
The memories crowd, swirL cascade, flow over and through and are me.
Too much and too close. That's why it's so hard to write. How to organize
what is chaotic and tumbling? Where to begin? I try and I'm surprised withfresh pain. It's like searching for old snapshots in a trunkful of razor blades.
I thillk of nights around the pool in Louisiana. We sat at an umbrella tablewith our drinks; and the southern moon just above the water, so close. We
knew no one but ourselves, the excitement, the closed circuit electricity of
being together-or were we opposite poles? Negative and positive, showering
sparks between us, always attracting and repelling. My physics may be faulty
but I know we made currents of wit and laughter and sheer volatile emotion.
No wonder I hate her sometimes, and she surely hated me. We could shake55

one another's self-control all to helL hurt one another so tearingly. We werepushing one another off cliffs and over falls all the time.

IV.

June 28,1984

The story of Claudia and me is a love story. All the world loves lover,right? But it won't be an easy story to tell. To a major degree, I am on the sideof those who have judged and condemned us. I cannot jusify either our
feelings or what we did about them. Whatever I tell will be told within thescope of the icy, soul-weighing glare of a Texas judge who pronounced us asadult delinquents, unfit mothers; and awarded custody of our children to theirfathers.
But another judge is harder to write against. That one is the Relentless
Reminder within myself saying: "You followed your love, just as the Prophet
says we must do." But that's only the prelude to what my interior judgereminder really wants to say: YOU RAN OUT ON YOUR KIDS! The
accusation drops into my conciousness each time like dry ice on bare skin. The
searing is deep. It leaves scars without also healing.
How do I answer the judges? Twenty-two years after that first eye-locking 'moment of enthrallment with Claudia, I insist: Actions can sometimes bechosen and modified to fit circumstances and honor commitments. Feelings
are not that governable.
In 1959, Claudia and I were not lesbians. We were barely aware female
homosexuals existed. But overwhelmingly, we were both vulnerable, each indesperate need of being heard by someone able to care and understand. We
found one another.
Now, I push the grief away. I'm too old. My body can't take the stress.
How can I grieve alone with nobody else around who loved her in spite of her
sharp tongue, her vindictiveness, her excesses of irony, her exhibitionism, her
seductiveness? Who else saw her addicted, defeated, fmgernail beds white andthen blue as she retched out stomach acid in the agony of withdrawal fromseconal? Who else held her while she sobbed her bitterness when men used her
body but scorned her opinions?
First, she put herself on the line for Spence. For him, she worked nights inadmitting at Chicago's Presbyterian Hospital and then as Echo Aluminum's
company nurse. She came home to two babies and to helping Spence pass
Hebrew and Greek.
Next, she put herself on the line for me, working at Plains Machinery andlater for Coach Kerbel, coming home to help me learn advanced grammar. Ina cast from ankle .to hip after knee surgery, she sat with a board across her chair56

arms and used my manual typewriter to type the second and fmal drafts of mythesis, understanding Campbell's Thesis Writing Guide better than I did. Did I
pay her? The thought never entered either of our minds. And I was the one
who walked across the stage in my master's robe and got the degree.
Spence wanted to be a minister; I wanted to be a teacher. She set her jaw
and said to each of us in tum: YOU SHALL BE!
How do I grieve for the one who shared my vision and freed my mind? But
those are big, abstract terms, not adequate for expressing what was eye to eye
and skin to skin. I put out my hand and she took it. For the first time, I realizedthat touch doesn't have to include demand or mean my submission as his
possession. She wanted the sensitivity of my fingertips, needed the back rubs
and hair brushings I gave, returned the kisses, accepted without question mythousand hours of staring at her face, her hair line, the birthmark lock in front,
the deep-set left eye, the patrician brow and nose that was still patrician though
twice broken, accepted my staring at her hands as she moved them with gracein smoking and talking.
She would not let me be less than the best I wanted to be. And she died. Soldout to men and drugs, another statistic to prove no one licks pancreatic cancer.
She fought it a good fight, sixteen months from surgery and diagnosis to death.
I can't grieve hard enough, long enough. I am too old. My body can't takethe stress. There is no one else who knew her to grieve with me.

~~~..... Ethics,.~ 1 e s b ian
Envisioning the

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57

Diana Rivers"Miss" AlmaTwo letters from my mother are spread out on the table of myunfinished house. The late afternoon sun comes in big chunks through thewindowless openings, flooding their pages. I've just come back from the post
offIce with them. It's the first time in weeks I've gone to town. I've been here
all this while, struggling alone, trying to get the roof on my house before it
rains. This morning I fmally finished. I climbed down victorious, feelingstrong and proud. Now all that seems so very far away.
I'm sitting here reading and re-reading those letters. I'd inadvertently
opened the second one first. "Dear Hildi. Alma Culver died yesterday. It wasprobably for the best. She was so old and she had just gotten weaker after thelast operation. The funeral will be tomorrow. Your Uncle Clarence will be the... " I stare at those words - "Alma died yesterday." The letter is already aweek old. In her first letter mother says, "Dear Hildi, I went to visit Alma
Culver in the hospital today. She is quite sick She's had pneumonia. There areother complications as well and now they're planning to do an exploratory.
operation. You remember Miss Alma don't you? You used to play at her housewhen you were little. She asked about you several times and would like to seeyou. Of course I had to tell her that I have no quick way of getting in touchwith you since you've chosen to live off in the woods. ... "It's hard for me to focus on the words. That letter is almost two weeks
old. That means that while I was wrestling with my roof and worrying aboutrain, Alma was struggling to breathe. She wanted to see me and I didn't know
it. I feel such a lurch ofloss and pain. She wanted to see me and now I'm toolate. Whatever else I do in my life I will always be too late to go and see her.
Mother says in her second letter, "You must really work out a way of
being in touch with us in case anything happens to someone in the family."The implications of that hadn't hit me the first time I read it. Now, eventhrough my grief, I feel a burn of anger - old familiar helpless anger. "Shewas my family, mother." I shout at her, punching the table, "more family thanyou'll ever be." And mother's way of saying - do you remember Miss Alma?
I want to tear up her letters but I can't. They're about Alma. Except for thesilver frog, they're .all I have of her right now. I jump up and go outside. The
blue hills quiver and soften in my tears. It's beautiful here. Alma would have
loved it. She loved the woods. She'll never see this place. She'll never see myhouse. A new wave ofloss comes over me. This house meant something special
to her. On my last visit home she was the only one that gave me support. She
was so pleased.

58

"So you're building a house, Little One? That's good. That's
wonderful. You always were a strong girL" With a smile she squeezed my arm
to feel the muscles. "You're not afraid of doing things." She opened my hands
and rubbed her fingers across the callouses. "Good strong hands." Her own
hands were shaking slightly. They'd gotten soft from her being sick so long
but you could still see the strength there, the work they' d done. The veins
were like blue snakes across the backs of them. Looking down at them I
remembered how, when I was little, I used to push down on the veins in one
spot to see them bulge in another. I used to say, "Alma, your hands are funny,"and she'd laugh. Impetuously I bent to kiss both her hands where they lay inmine. Then I blushed. When I glanced at Alma she looked confused andpleased. She put my hands together and held them between hers. "Don't get
discouraged. There'll be times when it's hard. You just have to keep at it. It
will be such a pleasure to you that you built it yourself Every day you live inthat house it will be a pleasure to you." She turned quickly and looked out thewindow. I thought she was going to cry but instead she said proudly, "All thoseflowers, they come up each year. I planted every one of them." Then she
looked back at me so intently I felt her look was full of messages. "When
you're finished I'll come visit you."
I laughed. "At the rate things are going, who knows when that will be.
You better come sooner. I'll fix a space for you with a view of the hills." She'dsmiled and nodded though we both knew she wouldn't come. She was too oldalready. It's too far. The land is steep. But I'd planned to send her pictures.
The rest of my family made me feel like a fool. I was naive. I was sofull of enthusiasm I told everyone, "I'm building a house," thinking they'd be
excited. My Uncle Clarence said in a weary voice, "That must be very
interesting. Are you studying architecture?" as if I were constructing a model
for class instead of building a house to live in. Aunt Cicily, my mother's sister,
looked me up and down and shook her head. "Well, young women these days
are doing all kinds of things." Then she gave me her quick crooked smile thatalways has some malice in it. "Aren't you worried you'll scare the boys away?
A man might be afraid of a woman who builds her own house." I gave her backa hard look that said - you know who I am and I know you do. You know
damn well I don't care if I scare men away. But she wouldn't meet my eyes.
Nothing honest ever gets said between us. It's been that way for years. She
didn't ask me a thing about how I'm building the house or what it looks like.
Neither did my mother. She just said tightly, "You always have to do things
your own way," as if that was a character flaw.
Alma got me to draw the plans for her. "You'll need a center post,
Little One. The span's too long. There's not enough support for your upper
floor." I'm almost six feet tall and she still called me Little One.

59

Now, looking at my house I think, I'll never share anything with her
again, not this house, not my work, not anything in my life. "Alma, you would
have loved it here," I say out loud to her and the pain comes so quickly I haveto press my hands against my chest to ease it.
I miss her, I really miss her. But if! had the power I wouldn't call herback. She was too old, too sick. Already the last time I saw her, I felt she was
waiting to leave. I was just hoping for one more visit. My adult self knows. It's
the child in me that's grieving, that can't let go. I lean against a beech tree andsink slowly to the ground with my arms around it. My face is pressed to thesmooth bark for comfort. I sit against it for a long while and somehow it does
comfort me-its slow deep rooted life, its coolness and its permanence. I feel
gentled the way I used to be gentled by the woods when I was little.
Alma was my oldest friend. She was the ftrst friend I found for myself
I really did ftnd her. There's a lot I've forgotten about my childhood but I
remember everything about the way I met Alma. It was on one of my
explorations. I must have been about seven then, maybe eight. At that time I
was in the woods as much as possible, in spite of my mother's scoldings. On
this particular day I was following an old road and it led me to a big whitehouse set in the middle of a patch of ftelds. I was amazed and a little scared. I
hadn't known anyone lived in that direction. To someone used to orderly
lawns and hedges it all seemed shabby, overgrown and mysterious. I sensed
immediately that this was a fascinating place and probably forbidden. There
was a woman digging in the yard. I didn't want to get scolded. I certainly didn't
want to get sent home. But I needed to see more. I hid up a tree.
From there I could watch that woman. She was old and not old, I
couldn't tell. Her face when she turned looked wrinkled but the way she moved,
she seemed young and strong. She used tools like a man, digging vigorously
and wiping her hands on her baggy pants. She talked to everything, the cat, thetrees, the birds that flew by, the plants she was setting out. "I hope you like thisspot. I want to see your face here again next spring." Once, when she stood up
to ease her back, she looked straight in my direction. I was sure she'd seen me
but she said nothing and went on planting. When she had her back turned
wrestling loose a big rock, I slipped out of the tree and ran home.
"Where were you?" Mother asked sharply.
"Just walking," I said quickly as I slipped out of the room. I was stillout of breath.
"I want you to stay close to the house. I don't like you going off thatway," she called after me.

60But I was back the next day in the same hiding place. The woman had a
big wooden bowl in her lap. She was sanding intently, humming and singing tohersel£ Occasionally she glanced up at the sky. Once she turned and looked all
around Again I felt sure she'd seen me but she went on with her sanding. Yes,
I decided, she was old. Her hands and face were all wrinkled.
On the third day there was a shoe box tied in the crotch of the tree. It
had cookies and a note inside. The note said, "If you want to come down andtalk to me that's fIne and if you don't that's ftne too but I would like to meetyou. The cookies are for you. They're good I made them with honey." I know
now what was in the note because I saved it. Then I could only read a few words
but I was sure I understood the message. I gobbled down two cookies, shoved
the rest in my pocket with the note and slipped out of my tree. Now it was goingto happen. But the women dido't look up from her digging. I was afraid to go
any further and dido't know what to say. I stood for a while half hidden behinda bush. Finally, without turning her head, she said, "It's all right, little one,come and say hello."
I went dragging my feet and looking at the ground. "How do you do.
Thank you for the cookies. They're very good," I said very fast, trying toremember how to be polite.
"Well, it's a girl." She seemed surprised but pleased. It was the rusttime in my life anyone had ever been pleased I was a girl. I was used to hearing
my father say, "Three girls, that's too many." Then my mother would sigh, "Iwish we'd had at least one boy."
The woman wiped off her hand and held it out. "My name is Alma,
Alma Culver. What's yours?""Hildi Mason," I mumbled quickly. I was too shy to look at her but I
did hold out my hand Alma actually shook it as if she was meeting an adult. I
pulled my hand back and stuck it in my pocket. Then I couldo' t think of anything to say.
"Do you like flowers?" she asked me.
I nodded.
"Do you know their names?"
I shook my head.
"That's a tulip. I just planted some red ones but they won't come up till
next year. Those are peonies. This one is a ... " She took my hand and gently
touched my fmgers to each flower. We walked through the garden together.
She introduced me to all of them. I dido't have to talk till I was ready.

61

"Do you want something to go with those cookies? There's somecider in the house. I pressed it mysel£" Trembling with excitement, I followed
her to the house. I was actually going to see the inside.
Alma's house amazed me. It was certainly different from anything I'dever seen. All the houses I'd ever been in were like my parent's house, stiff andproper, all the furniture looking like it came from the same store. Everythingin Alma's house was fluid, chaotic, beautiful and jumbled, different styles offurniture, piles of books, masks, swords, baskets, strange dolls toppling over incorners and plants everywhere. And on everything there were little white
streaks, even on the old velvet couch. She saw my look of surprise and said
quickly" the bird." Then she made a gesture toward the bookcase. A featheredball on little stick legs dropped down from the shelves. It flapped its uselesswings and hopped around the room, screeching for food. "I have to teach it
how to fly and how to feed itself from the ground so I can let it go. No use
cleaning up till after it's gone." She lifted it on he~ finger and the bird balanced
there, swaying back and forth. "It's a baby robin. Every year some of them fallout of the nest and I pick them up. Sometimes they survive, sometimes they
don't. I suppose it's foolish to save them. There are probably enough robins in
the world. " Wordlessly I put out my hand and wordlessly she set the robin on
my fmger. I held my breath and felt the tiny claws bite into my flesh.
That was the first of my many visits. I was there whenever I could slip
away. That house and the things in it seemed as strange and wonderful to mychild-self as a fairy tale. For a while my fantasy was that Alma was a witch, mywitch. I wasn't afraid. I loved the idea of having found my own witch and being
the heroine of the tale. I made up wild stories about her when I went to bed.
Much later, Alma told me she'd been a teacher for years. "I wasn't
much good at it. I liked teaching the children but I had a hard time with discipline. I stuck with it though. I had to earn my living and it did give me themoney to travel." She'd been all over the world, to Egypt and Haiti and Japan.
That's where the objects in her house had come from. She taught me geography
with masks and spears and travel stories. She even taught me some history thatway but not the kind of history I learned in schooL especially the part about the
Indians. When Alma talked about the Indians she got angry. "It was theircountry, Little One. Remember that. We're the invaders. Whatever they did
was to defend themselves." She would say it fiercely, wanting me to understand.
There was power in her anger. It frightened me a little but she never turned iton me, never except that one time with the frog.

62

Oh, that frog. I can still see myself running up to her house with thathuge bullfrog squeezed in my hands. I was holding it so tightly its eyes bulged
and its legs were flapping helplessly behind it.
She ran outto meet me, shaking her head. "No, no. You can't do thatto it. Let me have it right now.""It's my frog. I need a box. I wantto keep it." I was frantic with desire.
It was the ftrst time I'd ever caught such a big frog.
"Let go of that frog, Hildi." I tried to jump away. She grabbed my arm
and looked at me ftercely. "You caught that frog here. Things that live on myland do not live in boxes. Open your hands." Her grip on my wrist was verystrong. I opened my hands. She took the frog from me gently. The poor thing
was limp from my grip. Still shaking her head but smiling now she said, "We' ll
put it in the lily pond. It will probably stay. You can catch other frogs to keep itcompany but be kinder next time."
I named the ftrst frog Goldy. After that there was Greeny and Spotsand Bigfoot. They got so tame I could lie at the edge of the pond and scoop one
up in my hand. For a while they were my best friends.
Alma had become the center of my life. When mother asked, "Whodo you want at your birthday party?" the ftrst person I thought of was Alma. I
certainly liked her better than the kids I knew.
Very excited, I rushed over to see her as soon as I could. "It's mybirthday next week. I want you to come to the party."
Alma gave me a funny look. "I don't think your parents would likethat. "
"It's my party. They said I could ask whoever I wanted." But I reallyknew she wasn't what they meant. She was shaking her head. "If you don'tcome I won't have a party.""You certainly are stubborn." The way she said it made it seem likethat might not be so bad.
"Please Alma.""Alright, alright." She was laughing but she seemed pleased. "But
we'll pretend it's a game and have some rules. I'll wear a dress and I won't wipe
my nose on my sleeves and you'll call me "Miss Alma" and be very respectful
and polite. Can you remember?""Yes, yes. Miss Alma." I would have agreed to anything.
So Alma came. Everyone was painfully polite. I could see the surpriseon my mother's face but she was gracious the way she is when she's
uncomfortable. My father even said, " How nice to ftnally meet ourneighbor." Alma was witty and lively. She was wonderful with the otherchildren but she also remembered to be cautious. We both kept to our63bargains. She called me Hildi instead of Little One and I remembered every
time to call her" Miss" Alma even though it was a strain. Even so I was thrilled
at really having her there in my house.
She wore a dress. It was the ftrst time I'd ever seen her in a dress -some soft flowered material but it looked a little baggy like her pants. Most of
the time she remembered to wipe her hands on the little paper party napkins
but once I saw her wipe them down the sides of her dress and struggled not tolaugh. Sometimes our eyes met. The I felt a secret bubbling between us.
For my birthday she gave me a tiny silver frog from Germany. "That's
for the one you had to let go. You can keep this one in a box if you want."
My mother shook her head, frowning. "I don't think you should give
her that. She's so careless she'll lose it in no time." She seemed ready to jump
between us and snatch it away.
Alma smiled a big sudden smile. "It's been lost many times and it's
always come back. " She closed her hand around it and its coolness warmed mypal. It needs to go on to someone else."
As soon as Alma left mother said sharply, " You better let me have thatfrog for safekeeping. You can have it back when you're older.""I don't know where it is," I lied outrageously. Then I began shuffling
helplessly through the litter of papers pretending to look.
"My God, just what I said would happen and you haven't even.had it
an hour. " She went around the room shaking things angrily and I felt a guilty
pleasure watching her. " What a shame. What a ridiculous thing to give to achild. I told her but she wouldn' t listen. Well, what does she know aboutchildren anyway? Go up to bed now Hildi. You can look again tomorrow."
I slipped away leaving her still searching and slept with the silver frog
in my hand that night. I had it with me every night for years, rubbing it gently
between my thumb and ftngers as I fell asleep. In the morning I always
remembered to hide it, a pretty good record I think for someone who'scareless. Years later I had a loop put on it so I could wear it on a chain. The
details on it are all gone now, all softened and worn away.
Alma came to all my birthdays after that and sometimes other family
gatherings. I invited her. Mother didn't like it but she felt a social obligation
to be polite to a neighbor. I overheard her saying to my father with a sort ofhoneyed contempt, "Poor lonely old thing. She's probably taken to Hildi
because she has no children of her own. She seems nice enough but she' s
certainly a little strange from living alone all these years.""Well, I don:'t want Hildi over there too much. She can't really be agood influence." .
"She's teaching her to read."64

"What in the hell are we sending her to school for? It costs enough, letthem teach her to read. That child is weird enough by herself without hanging
around an old woman." I guess he was angry that private school was so
expensive but I hadn't asked to go there. My mother was the one who insisted.
She thought I had learning problems.
It was true that I learned more from Alma than I did from school but
after that I didn't talk about it. They said other things about her that I
overheard. "Those baggy dresses she wears must have come from the charitybox." "She always looks like she's just been digging in the garden." After awhile I realized those things were said for my ears. I learned that the house she
lived in, the "witch" house, had been her family's. They'd died there andshe'd stayed on. "Such a fme old house. I hear it's a mess." "She could at least
get someone to paint it." "She probably doesn't even notice." 1'd smile andthink -you don't know anything about that house.
Alma only had two dresses. I don't think she cared how she looked, notthe way other people do. She' d wear one and then wear the other one for the
next occasion. They were both baggy flower prints. I had to agree that she
looked funny in a dress. I liked it much better when she wore pants. She wasmore herself And somehow we were more equals. She used to say to myparents, "I love children. Let them come and play at my house whenever theywant." My sisters came a few times. I enjoyed showing them everything. By
then I knew all the stories about the masks and swords. I even knew where
there was a piece of elephant tusk. But I made it clear that this was my special
territory. They had a good time while they were there, exploring the attic andthe closets, but when they were back home with my parents they made fun ofAlma. "She's weird." "She wears funny clothes." "There's a bird loose in thehouse. It makes a mess on everything." One evening, in a protective rage, I
grabbed hold of Peggy and pushed her up against the wall. "If you say one
more bad thing about Alma 1'm going to punch you." Peggy was two years
older but I was bigger and fiercer. After that they stopped coming. I was glad.
Alma was mine again. A few times there were other people there but not often,
no one that mattered, not until Jenny.
That day must have been one of those times I was walking softly,
practicing being an Indian. Alma was sitting in the yard with another woman.
They didn't hear me. Neither of them looked up. They were talking low andintently and holding each other's hands. I slipped up into my hiding tree. I had
a sense that something momentous was happening. The air was charged. I
wanted to hear what they were saying but I could only hear a word or so now
and then until Alma said loudly, "It won't work, Jenny." She almost shouted
it. Then she looked up and saw me. "Come down, Little One. I want you tomeet my friend." I felt foolish being caught that way in front of a stranger.
Alma introduced us. Jenny reached out to take my hand, then impulsively, she
put an arm around my waist and hugged me.

65

"Hello, Hildi, I'm Jenny. Alma talks about you all the time."
I could see Alma had been crying. Her face was wet and dirt streaked.
She was wiping it with her sleeve. I pulled away and turned on Jenny like afierce little animal. "Did you hurt Alma? Are you making her cry?""No, no, no," Alma said quickly. "We're crying together. We'reboth sad." She hugged me too and Jenny put her arm around me again. For
that moment standing between them, I felt such expectancy, such a sense offorce and power. I'd never seen adults crying together. I was excited but
frightened too. I felt some great potent mystery there and I wanted to be
included.
Then Alma looked up at me, catching my eye. "You have to go home
now, Little One. Jenny and I need to talk. Don't come back today." She said itvery gently but it was like a hammer coming down. I was being excluded, shutout. They withdrew their arms. I pulled back and walked away, stiff- legged
and self-conscious with rejection.
Alma laughed and called after me; "You can't hide up in trees
anymore, Hildi. Your legs are too long." Already I was the tall skinny one inschool. I remember hearingJenny laugh too. As soon as I was out of sight I ran
to my favorite hiding place in the woods, the old wooden water tower. There I
climbed up the rusty ladder. For most of that afternoon I sat on that narrow
platform above the trees with a terrible new feeling coursing through me.
Much later, looking back, I knew it was jealousy. Why was I sent away insteadof her? It was a long time before I felt ready to go home.
I swore to myself!' d never go back to Alma' s. I didn't for a while, notfor a few weeks at least, not until Alma sent a note.
"Miss Alma has invited you to lunch. I think you should go," Mothertold me in that wonderfully hostile way she has. She made it sound like a social
obligation, detestable but necessary. I made an appropriately rude face but I
was delighted. I could go "home" again - an official summons. The note hadbirds drawn in the comers and a frog at the bottom. I saved it for a long time,stuck it in the edge of my mirror.
Alma made peace with me in her own way. She's saved a grass snake
for me, a long green ribbon of life that wound between her fingers and mine insupple figure eights. We went together to let it loose below the gardens.
She didn't say anything about Jenny that day and somehow I knew not
to ask. She never said anything about Jenny but often I felt her there in thehouse with us. I don't remember anything about her appearance, nothing at
all. I have an impression that she was younger than Alma but even that may be
wrong. What I do remember to this day, imprinted in my flesh, is the electricfeeling of standing between them when they hugged me.

66

Alma was a constant in my life but as I got older she became less the
good-witch-grandmother and more a friend. High school was a painful time
for me. I felt like an outsider there and it was no better at home. My sisters
were dating. The house was always noisy and full of boys. I went throughstages of trying to be "feminine" and not knowing how and stages of wearing
boots and pants, being rowdy and getting in trouble. Under it all I was
painfully shy. I was already very tall, five foot eleven, and felt awkward mostof the time. When my family was too much for me I went to Alma's. I started
studying there. Finally I was there so much of the time she cleared out a corner
for me - a table by the window and even some bookshelves. If it was spring,that year's robin might perch on my shoulder or book and leave white streaks
on my papers.
It was hard for me to study, hard to keep my long growing body socramped and still. Math was the worst. "I hate this, I hate it. Why do I have tolearn this stuff?" Alma would come and sit by me and try patiently to explain
algebra, geometry, whatever I was snarled up with at the time. "But it will
never be any use to me." I felt tortured by it.
"You never know what may be useful. You have to learn it all" She'dlook at me with so much concern it was almost like pity.
"I can't, I can't. It hurts my head." Last week when I was on my roof
trying to put up the rafters, struggling to cut angles so they'd meet otherangles, I thought about Alma, how she was back then, looking at me with loveand pity and saying, "You don't know what you'll need. You have to learn itall." You were right Alma, I'd say to her when I cut the board too short and theangle was all wrong and I couldn't figure out why. You were right - then I'd
think back to my tall awkward self sitting cramped up and rebellious at her
table, refusing to learn. But I loved history. I loved to listen to Alma tell stories
from the past. That was her way of teaching it. Those evenings when she madea fire in the fireplace, lit the kerosene lamps and we sat talking, those were thebest times in my strange high school years. Sometimes we even had a little glass
brandy together. Then I felt completely an adult and her equal. Once she
asked me about boys. I ws in a stage of being tough and arrogant, a "boots andpants" time. "I hate boys. I think they're stupid." But I could have said thesame about girls. I hated their silly ways and was angry that they closed me out.
I would have given anything to be included, even my pride, even myself but I wasn't wanted.
"All the same, you'll get married someday?" It was more a question
than a statement.
"Never," I said fiercely. "Never."
She was shaking her head. "You don't know.""You never got married.""No, I didn't. I guess I'm an old maid, what's called a spinster." Theway she said that word it had layers of meaning.

67Those fIrst few years after high school I didn't see Alma much. I wasout in the world discovering myself and didn't come home any more than I had
to. It took a while for me to discover the thing about myself that mattered
most. I think Alma must have known it all along. That' s why, when I got
involved with Leslie, I wanted to take her home so they could meet. I knew it
was important. They liked each other instantly. They even formed an alliance
together for teasing me. "Have you noticed how she ... " "Well, actually, shenever ... " "Oh, but did she tell you that .. " But there was something else
there, some strange mixture of hostility with that affection. I couldn't
understand it. It made me uneasy. Later Leslie was very critical of Alma. "Shecertainly is a frumpy dresser. Does she go out of her way to look like that? And
that house, God, you can hardly walk through it.""I thought you liked her." I felt hurt and protective. It was like mysisters all over again.
Leslie stoped and thought a moment, then she said slowly, "I do, I love
her. She's wonderful. I'm just jealous. ""J ealousr, I I"J ealous and scared. She' s known you for so long. She was your fIrst
love. Maybe I don' t feel I can measure up."
"What the hell do you mean? We were never lovers." I was shocked,
outraged, as if she'd accused me of being lovers with my grandmother.
Leslie laughed. "Don't get yourself all upset, Hildi. There are otherways of being lovers. It doesn't have to be with the body. You can be lovers on
the spiritual plane. The energy's just as real. Can you tell me it isn't there?"
I shook my head remembering my own jealousy that afternoon at thewater tower. "Leslie, she was my survival all .those years. She helped me gethere today, alive and sane. Can you understand that?""Yes I can understand and it goes both ways. You're the validation for
her life.""And you're my lover. You don't have to be jealous. There's a lot tobe said for the physical plane." Laughing, I pulled her over on top of me on therug.
That was a revelation in my life, that there were other ways of being
lovers. I learned so much from Leslie that year. She must have learned from me
too but by the end of it we separated. It was a painful, hostile separation thatleft me feeling almost suicidal. We were too much alike. We'd both been so
unrnothered. Our needs and demands were too great. When they collided, all
our vision, all our wisdom was gone and we were left with r~w animal rage.
We even fought physically, violently. It scared us each time, scarred us too,some terrible ferocity let loose between us. I took my wounds and my pain andwent back to the woods, my one sure place of comfort.
"You're not living with Leslie anymore?" Alma was looking so
concerned. I was home for my yearly visit.

68

"No, she's with someone else now.""I'm sorry to hear that. Are you living with anyone?""Not right now.""Tell me what you're doing with your life?""I'm living in a tent in the woods and learning auto mechanics intown.""Aren't you lonely?""I like what I'm doing.""It's not good to live alone.""Alma, you've lived alone all your life.""Don't you think I was lonely, Little One? If things were different, if!
was your age now and had to do it all over again, I wouldn't do it that way, nomatter what they said."
I looked at her sitting very straight and fierce in her old velvet chairand for a moment I wanted to cry out to her, "Oh Alma, I'm so unhappy, myheart is breaking, I feel like I'm going to die." I wanted to put my head downin her lap and cry and cry but I didn't. It was an impulse, not the reality. We've
never been that way with each other. So much of what's happened between us
has been unspoken, unacknowledged. I just put my hand on hers. She looked
at me again with that caring so much like pity that I remember from highschool. I wanted to ask her about Jenny. I wanted so much to ask her about
Jenny. Her name hummed in the air. But I couldn't break that seal of silencefrom so many years. Would she be glad if I did, relieved at last it was being
said? Would she never forgive the intrusion? I tried several times. No words
came. But Jenny was there in that room with us, large and present.
Alma stood up suddenly. "How good is your mechaniking?""Getting better all the time. Why?""Let's see what you can do for that old car of mine."
I'm crying again. The pain comes with the memories. I want Almaback, want her the way she never was. I want her to put her arms around me. I
want her to comfort me for my loss of her. Hold me ... hold me ... And I'mfeeling Leslie's loss too. She's not in my life anymore. I can't go to her for
comfort. Even my mother - suddenly I'm grieving for my mother.
I sit there crying, forgetful until I'm chilled and cramped. Then I haveto move, to do something. I get up thinking about the funeral. I'm sorry I
wasn't there. Then in ways I'm not so sorry. There would have been a ministersaying stupid pious hypocrisies over her body, making me want to shout"Liar" in the church. I would have had to sit still and wear a dress, or be
accused of being disrespectful. Maybe the worst of it would have been
listening to what other people said about her, my family especially. No, I'll say.goodbye to you in my own way, I tell her.

69

I go inside. In the middle of the room is the walnut centerpost, a treethat came down in a- storm. I'd planned to carve its surface with ev:erything,birds, animals, flowers. I can hear Alma saying to me, " You'll need acenterpost, Little One. The span's too long.""It's here Alma: It's holding up my house," I say, running my hands
over the COO) surface of the wood.
I get a black crayon and with clear, simple lines draw a frog with atulip on either side, the stems crossed to make an arch. Under that I write Alma .
Culvq: - 1887-1979. Then I get out my carving tools. Tbe frog and flowers
are easy enough. The letters take longer. I've never carved letters before andit's getting dark. I light a lamp. It throws quivering and confusing sha,dows. I
work a long time. The curls of dark gleaming walnut pile W on the floor. It'slate when I stop. I'm stiff and my hands are cramped. I stand up to look. It's
crud~ but it's beautiful. When I touch the letters I'm crying again.
I take the big red candle from my box of treasures. Leslie made it forme when we were still together. I light it'and set it on the floor under Alma's
name. Let it burn there for as long as it lasts.
I look at the carving again. It's not enough. I want to .w rite something
more, to say ~ow it really was. I want to write, Alma Culver, my first love, or,my real mother - something more. But the wood is so absolute and direct andfinal. Those words are ambiguous. They're confusing and distorting, have
many meanings, need more words to explain them, and stip more words, andcan obscure the reality as much as reveal it. The wood will have to stand as it is,clear, primitive, permanent; a frog, two tulips and that simple line ofletters. If
I want to say more, I'll have to write about her.
•

•

•

•
•
70

........

Detail from "Self-Portrait"72

Rose Romano

Heart Attack

My mother's mother diedwhen my mother was 4 years old.
My mother diedwhen I was 8 years old.
When my daughter was 4
I had a minor heart attack.
When my daughter was 8
I burned a hole in my chest;
unable to breathe, I quit
smoking. I'm trying to remember
what I learned in Math
about arithmetical progressions
and geometric progressions.
According to one
I'll have a fatal attack
when my daughter is 12.
According to the other
I'll have a fatal attack
when my daughter is 16.
I think.
And I wonder whether
there are other ways
to figure this.

73

Amber Coverdale Sumrall

Questions
1.
They stare:a woman about my age,
her young son in the shopping cart.
I maneuver down the aisle on crutches
she averts her eyes.
He smiles I smile back.
"Where is your leg? What happened to your leg?"
Before I can respond she slaps him hard
shoves the cart ahead.
He sobs looks back in horror
the questions thistle in his throat.
"Wait!"She turns the corner.
I swallow my answers
choke on their bitter roots.

2.
Boldly smirking
he watches me movefrom washing machine to dryer
approaches cracking his gum"Why ya limping?
Artificial leg, huh?
Yeah, I thought so.
I had a woman once with one leg,she took better care of me than most with two."
He blocks my way.
"Maybe you'd like to take care of me for awhile?"3.
~he staggers from the bar to our tableclutches my arm
her coal black hair pain.ted face
too close to mine.
"Such a pretty girl.
If that happened to me I'd kill mysel£"

74

p'

I look at her, thf woman
old enough to be my mother,"Why, why wou}d you do that?","It's tough enough being a woman," she says.

4.
On our wedding day
my father-in-law asks,"Why couldn't you have picked someone
with all of her parts?"

•
•

•
t,.

"<,

:.'

",

75

Susan Hansell

The WolfIi writewhen it hurts.
last night i dreamt
there were tubes in my back
my body
hookedto machines,
this morning i couldn't bend overi writewhen it hurts.
one night i dreamt
the soles of my feet split
i walked on bare bones,
glass splinters grinding in my joints
i writewhen it hurts.
my mind pouring out through my fmgertips, relieved
my mind melting into images i create, relieved
the words
tie meto a past
to a future
where our lives are re/lived
over and overi have a chronic illness called Lupus, which is the Latin word for wolf Lupus causes my immune
system to make anti-bodies against my own DNA. this means my body is literally devouring
itsel£

76

write it down

write it all down

push
the pencil
acrossthe pagei writewhen it hurts.
searching for words
to tell
how it feelsIIin a dream i am walking alone at night i come to an intersection of widestreets and stop to peer in every direction i am very carefUl i begin to
cross then a car drives speeding heading right for me i can't run i'm
not able to run
somehow i jump onto the hood this life is still in me 1
curse make fists and pound against the windshield, but there is no one
to hear me there is no one driving
i waketo the cries of the wolf
circling
my brainmy mind spins
into the day while
my body lags behindlicking
the wounded legs
the swollen joints

if the pain controlled me i mighttear through my flesh
and pull open the back bones
spine by spine77

if time controlled me i might never sleep
there's so much left
undonebut i have learned the power of each breathin and out

IIIi dream i have 10 days to live.
i flee the city for the earth's edge
where water turns mountain to sandand lie naked
under yellow cliffs
spilling salty currents
into the sea
rivers run from my pores
until i float
on my own
dusty bones

will youtake metake meturn my body
into smooth round stones
and scatter me
acrossthe shoreFirst published in THE POWER OF EACH BREATH: A DISABLED WOMEN'SANTHOLOGY, Cleis Press.

78

Chocolate Waters

Sergi's Surgery
Janet Sergi hobbles now
leaning on her four-pronged canefighting off the cracks and crabgrassthat she jokes are "out to get her."I am in Chicago when I get the phone call
The voices warn, "Come quickly.
They're slicing through her brain tomorrow morning.
The doctors say no hope." No hope.
I take the first flight out and mourn her deaththe long trip homeand mourn her deaththe doctors say no hope.

Janet Sergi takes things slowly now
ties her shoes one-handed
conquers forks and phones and phonemes
She learns that patience is no virtue
It' s a trial
that's linedwith terror

Arriving back in Denver
Thana says don't even stop to use the restroomShe whisks me off at highest speed
but Janet's room is empty as a campaign speech
The cutting of her brain moved up an hour.
I take the service elevator down
in disappointment.
Next floor it stopsThey're wheeling in a gurney:

79

Janetpale as babies' cheeks"It's not going to get me."
She grits her teeth.
"I'm going to be mean."
They cart her off.
She raises both her hands like Muhammed Ali.
"I'm going to be mean!"The doctors say
no hope.
No hope.

Janet Sergi speaks more slowly now
Searching for her words
the way a Scrabble player bunts for double plays
Sbe sometimes can't remember who was thereor who is coming
or if she let the dog go out in time
Although on certain things politicalshe remains quite logical.
'·Be very careful about Ronald Reagan.
A woman can catch brain tumors
just by thinking too long about Ronald Reagan."

The operation on her brain
lasts longer than six hours
The waiting room fills up with women:
old friends, ex-lovers, new-found allies.
L. Fowler paces all day long
The goddess of the snake in hand
She never gives up
She never lets down
She t~ she can prevent the death of Janet Sergi
by herself
We think we can preventthe death
We sit in circles folding hands"Sending energy"

80a euphemism that we substitute for prayer
Janet Fons leaves the room uncomfortably.
Jackie says, "Oh what the hell; it's worth a try."
Thana warns that Janet also has the right to die.
And Ronnie cries.
And Katie never cracks a joke.
The doctors say
no hopeNo hope.

Janet Sergi's softer now
kinder with her friends and with the world
She still throws plates across the room in anger
and has little mercy for the ones she thinks havedone her wrong.
She will not miss a chance to tell you so:"There are three things you have to watch out forin the universe- Birth, Death and Lover Stealers . . ."Intensive care
The doctors claim she' ll need extensive carearound the clock
She cannot be alone
The operation over
The halls all lined with women
The bandages around her headas blinding as a snowstorm.
The wires all connectedheartbeat steadyShe takes my hand
Her eyes are closed.
"Love me," she says, "Love me.
Pray
for
me."

81

Janet Sergi's hairless now
Her thick expressive hair
the price of radiation
Her fmgers trace the nine· inch scar distractedly
The quarter of the brain they have extracted
She lives alone
She goes to therapy
She takes her meds
She watches TV
Comforts Lady Wolfe the dog
Sometimes cooks a steak
Women friends come days and nights:
Marg cleans house
Kay goes shopping
Fons does laundry
Jackie signs the checks
Nina gives massage
Thana fixes things
L. Fowler supervises

And just the other day
Janet came across a memory
She said she saw old friends
Sitting in a circle holding hands
They were saying,'Live
J. Sergi ...
Live ...

82

Ruthphoto by Susan Iverson

83Sandy Boucher

Last Year This TimeOn his desk sits the flowered espresso cup I am so familiar with, a few
brown drips down its side. On the fIle cabinet stands the photo of his children,
fixed in early childhood just as they were when I fIrst came here.
Lifting his moist dark eyes to mine, he asks, "Do you have insurance?"
This man I've been coming to see every six months for ten years tocheck my cystic breasts. This surgeon with his plump face, his expensive greysuit. In these ten years, he has told me about the rash afflicting his broad pinkhands, caused by the wearing of surgical gloves, and I was sympathetic; he has
told me about the open heart surgery he endured, and I commiserated withhim. Now he wants me to feel sorry for him because, as he says, "It is so
diffIcult to have to tell women about these things," and he gazes tragically tothe side.
N ow, telling me, does he offer sympathy? Does he say he hopes it willbe all right?
No. "The biopsy will cost two thousand dollars," he announces.
Two thousand dollars!
"We will have to do the operation under full anesthetic. I can't standto have the woman go through this under a local."He slips the mammograms back into the X-ray envelope, lays it flat on
the desk and spreads his hands.
"Well, and how will you manage this?""Really, I don't know." I can hardly breathe.
He looks, at once, sorrowful, kindly and worried about me.
"Good luck," he says to me as he escorts me to the door.
I walk down the hall with its shiny marble floors and out onto thesidewalk.
In the years I have been coming here, the buildings of this university
hospital and medical school have multiplied. They loom above me now,
many-windowed towers flashing signals from their panes.
When I was four or so my mom took me to the barbershop on Route
40. After the barber had sat me in the chair and tied the cloth around me, Mom
said she had to go do an errand, and would be back soon to pick me up. The
barber was a silent man, who did not converse with children. As he clippedaway I stared anxiously at the door. Finally he brushed off my neck with his
little soft brush, and lifted the cloth off me. I got down from the chair and went
to stand by the door, waiting. Soon a man came in and the barber got busy withhim, and I waited. She didn't come, and still she didn't come. And I gave up.

84

She would never come. It was a deep and wracking reahzation. I hung my headto hide my tears from the barber, and then I pushed open the door and went
out. Trucks roared by on Route 40, shaking the earth. As I stumbled down thegravel apron of the road, fans of wind from the speeding cars were like giant
brutal hands hurting me. Tears blurred my eyes. Somewhere out here was myhome, but this world of freeway was so stark, so violent, the distances so vast,that I realized I would never fmd it. I was utterly alone.
In front of the university hospital I stand, not able to cross the street, walk
down the hill to my car. Maybe I have cancer in my breast, and this man who
has examined me and taken my money for ten years, w ho has exchanged
pleasantries with me and told me his troubles, has sent me out on the street
with nowhere to go.
My lover fmds me curled on my side in bed, staring out the window at
the tree hung with its red berries hke clots of blood.
"I'm going to die," I say. All strength has gone from me. I have sunk
deep into a dark place.
This night two friends are to come to dinner.
"No, I'm not getting up. I can't. Nothing matters."
But when they come, after they have sat on the bed and heard mystory, after they have expressed outrage and given me hugs, I begin to be tiredof my despair.
I am fully clothed. I can easily get up. My long sobbing with my lover
has cleaned out the worst of the pain. Just as the sight of my mother's car
stopping next to me on Route 40 brought comfort. I saw her face, frightened
and angry. But her fury was directed at the barber, who had let me go, andwhen she' gathered me up into the seat next to her she gave me a short stronghug. As we drove home I sat choking back tears, and she said, "You're all rightnow, you're all right now." I'm all right now and ifI'm going to die anyway,
why n<?t get up and have a good time!
So I crawl out of bed and join three women in the kitchen. I let themknow it is all right to talk about something else now, and we proceed to havean excellent evening.
Last year my friend Veronica had a mastectomy. Having no money she
wound up in Highland Hospital in Oakland, the only hospital in the East Bay
that accepts MIA' s, otherwise known as " medically indigent adults." Jesus
God, a mastectomy! I visited her there, small pale woman, her chest boundwith bandages, her blue eyes calm.
"The pain isn't bad so far today," she said.
We had been lovers once, five years ago. I knew her body, and wasfilled with sorrowing tenderness as I held her hand. Before I left, we walked

85down the hall, she wheeling the i.v. bottle on its high stand, and she asked thenurse at the desk for a painkiller, and as we came to the bend in the hallway she
said, "I realize that after we broke up we never talked. You were so hurt, andyou tried. I just couldn't then, I had my own struggles. But I want us to talknow, to work it out, what we both felt. Can we meet someday when I get outof the hospital?"
Veronica had told me one of the hardest parts of the experience of themastectomy had been figuring out how to get it done without having themoney. Harder than the fear of death, than the physical pain. Because there isso much shame in it, so much self-blame. "Here I am, an adult, and I can't
afford to go to a doctor." Veronica is an artist, a performer and teacher who
gives much joy and empowerment to her community. She is a proud,
independent person.
Along with the humiliation comes rage and terror. I feel dark andclotted inside, and I am obsessed with mysel£ My friends' concerns andproblems fade. Apartheid, the nuclear threat, the situations in Nicaragua andat Big Mountain are so many abstractions. What is substantial is my threatened
body. I spend hours on the phone calling hospitals and clinics. I leave amessage on Veronica's phone machine, asking her to call me.
In the interim I buy and begin to read Audre Lorde's The Cancer
Journals, thinking I may find it in some word or perspective to give me
strength. Instead - and perhaps because it takes me to the heart of what I mostwant to avoid - it sends me to a hot bath where I sit, my head hung low, steamrising into my face, and the sensation of a giant rock weighting my chest.
Soon Veronica calls, and she tells me that at the very university
hospital where the doctor (I refuse to write my doctor) had spread his hands inunconcern and sent me out the door - in the clinic building right across thestreet from his office - is a Breast Screening Clinic known to be one of thebest in the area. And this clinic, she tells me, because it receives federal funds,
is required to adjust its fees for low-income patients and to allow patients to
pay in monthly installments.
I'm stunned. Probably he can look out his window and see this clinic.
He surely knows about it.
The appointment has been made. In three weeks, I will go to thetowering clinic building where in X-ray they will insert a large hollow needle
in my breast to locate .the micro calcifications which are the problem, thenthread a wire down through the needle and hook it, then pull out the needle.
The wire will be left in. I will go to surgery where I will receive a local
anesthetic and a surgeon will cut down the wire until he gets to the area of the
micro calcifications, which he will cut out, after which the tissue will be taken86to Pathology where they will determine whether it is malignant. All this has
been painstakingly explained to me by a young woman at the Breast Screening
Clinic, after she told me she knew my name, had considered taking my writing
workshop the year before.
The appointment made. Nothing more to do until then. I enter aperiod of heightened awareness. One day, cutting a half-cooked little new
potato, I fInd an inner faultless circle of creamy white. Next to the fresh greenof the brussels sprouts it is all the bright beauty I can imagine in the world.
Staring, smiling, I know the rest of my day will be transformed, as it seems myeyesight has grown supernaturally sharp and all my senses quickened, and time
has slowed to a leisurely blood-rhythm, heart-felt.
It's harder with people. At fIrst when I tell someone, a chasm opens
between us, as if I have stepped over the line into another universe. The
diseased and the healthy are of a different order and speak to each other withdifficulty over a great distance. The person expresses shock, sympathy,
embarrassment; and I feel shaky and exposed, made weak.
Then it is tenderness that comes to me. Hard to receive. Caring. Thereis a miraculous happening. I see a woman I have known for fIfteen years, as awriter and peer, with whom I did political work in the old days. She issomeone I have always wished would care about me and be my friend. Whenshe hears what is going on with me, she is solemn, thoughtful. The next time I
see her, at a gathering, she comes up to me and puts her arms around me andsays, "I love you," and I feel her open heart, I know she means the words.
One could be cynical about these demonstrations. I remember
receiving a letter from my father after he had been critically ill. In the letter hewrote that he loved me. Only such a devastating event could have wrung that
admission from him. And I talk with a friend who says, "God, it really says
something about how we treat each other, doesn't it, when you have to bethreatened with death before people appreciate you!"
But I overlook the ironies when people offer me their love now. It is agreat gift to me, especially as I get to see my friends at their best, open andresponsive, operating from that which is most positive in themselves. The
woman whom I have cared about for so long: her telling me she cares about me
too - this enters with great sweetness into me, fills in a place in myself that
had been empty and sore. From this moment a real friendship between us
begins.
"A healing circle?""Yes, let's set the date. Next Tuesday? Wednesday?" My friend Ann
is insistent.
I sneak out the door muttering. "0 h ... one day soon ... I guess ... "87

It is too much. How could I possibly ask six or seven people to give awhole evening to me?! Ann says she'll ask them, I don't have to. That doesn't
help. I don't deserve people focusing their energy on me in that way. I don't
want it.
For a few days I avoid Ann. Then fmally she corners me and asks
again. I tell her what I think about this.
She frowns. "Sandy, you had better check into that. What do you
mean you don't deserve it! Wouldn't you gladly do it for someone else?"
The night before the biopsy seven women gather at Ann's house. We
sit in a circle with candles and cedar and crystals in the center making a sort ofaltar. One woman has brought a sculpted face she made, my friend Flobrought a mitt of soft fur for stroking.
Resigned now, I begin by telling what will happen tomorrow, and
how I have been experiencing life in these past three weeks. For an hour ormore these women talk of their feelings for me, sing songs, offer objects,
create a sort of a joyousness in the room.
I look around the circle. There is Jeri, whose lover recently left her,
whose face is slimmer, clarified by suffering; there is Ann, who was in an
automobile accident, whose joints ache and her dislocated wrist gives hertrouble; there is Flo, who works with the Shanti Project, whose clients areyoung men dying of AIDS, who carries their sadness with her and sometimes
has to retreat to her room for days at a time just to return to herself; there isFrances, struggling to resolve a nine-year love relationship which is changing
now to a friendship; there is my lover Barbara, who works so hard healingothers and rarely takes care of herself; Alice, who is so critical of herself,saying" I start things and I never finish"; Tricia ... Nadine ... Each of these
women is in need of healing. Weare equally dis-eased, out of ease withourselves, chafmg against ourselves or our lives.
This realization releases me. It lets me relax, deeply. And I see thatinvisible line over which I had stepped into the universe of the diseased neverexisted. There is no such place separate from the world in which these people
live.
The biopsy showed normal tissue - this time - and I was delirious
with relief For a week or so I was blissful. Then so-called ordinary life
resumed. A year has passed now. My friend Veronica has given a dance
performance to a sold-:out audience. At the breast clinic they say thateverything remains the same, and as long as that is true, 1'm safe. Strange word,safe: one I have come to understand is never accurate.

88

The branches outside my window droop, heavy with red berries likelittle hard balls of rosy light. I work, I love, I question, I fight. And when I
think of this time last year it is with gratitude, for never again can I imagine
myself separate from others, special in my pain, unique in my sense of
struggling, wounded, hopeful life.

SUPPORT OPEN
WOMENS'LAND

1'15 h~.J..CU.ri!5 fh VT.../.obe. h2Jd (1'1 J..usr.....

We. I~J yvu.. . . :~ dedqct"b1r r---.._
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Wil'l-ClCeJ::..i,J'VT. 0&401.~ I y.;l'J.h~ .{ty j'?1c.\'12-•(01'1E. V 15, I .. .11~'\'m<\,~C>l1 ..urJU.t CMf', ~ •89

Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum

Cancer in Two Voices ( Chapter One)
February 19, 1985

(Sandy)I am on my way to Winnipeg for a conference. We had, as always,
much difficulty separating. Her need of me. Mine to distance. The
ways we tear at each other for comfort and reassurance. My fear of
losing myself in her need of me. Jane and Linda help us to listen andconsole each other.
I feel misgivings about all the travel I have planned for this year.
There is a frenzied rush to much of my work that leaves little room
for pleasure. I remain harried and unsatisfied with one task merely
leading to the next. For now, I immerse myself in details-listsnotes-and find the usual soothing that results from the accomplishment of assigned tasks elusive. I am worried about the changes in her
body but trust-mostly trust-that it is noting to be alarmed about andher anxiety is more habitual than necessary. She goes for the results ofthe second test and needle biopsy tomorrow with Anna and I'll callafter work for the results. No need to worry about it in advance.
There will be plenty of time to worry if that becomes necessary.
February 22, 1985
I am on my way home. Barbara has cancer. It is fast-growing and has
already spread to her lymph nodes. More testing, then a mastectomy.
I lie here in a Holiday Inn in Winnipeg, my mind skittering awayfrom it, "it" being somewhere between mastectomy and death. I
make lists in an effort to maintain a sense that what I do will matter. Is
it that I feel the worst at once, or is the story I tell myself necessary sothat I can handle the simpler eventualities? I remember Deena's story
about the writing of the Book ofHags . She finished it in December of
1976, her exploration about the nature and function of cancer
attacking the breasts of so many young women. What did it mean andwhy was this the form it took? Only weeks later, she was diagnosed,
her own breast being attacked by cancer. How did she know to
prepare for her own battle? What was the genesis of the Book ofHags ?
How does the subject matter present itself for exploration? The fears
announce themselves as preparation for reality? When does
"knowing" begin?

90

I want so desperately to engage with Barbara, with this disease in aloving and useful way and in my racing to strategize and to plan-I
lose all feeling. I cannot yet know what this will mean and only hear
the terror in her voice.

~~~M~ry~lm

I am a sociologist and that is a big part of my identity. I was drawn to mydiscipline because of many natural and instinctive ways I look at the world I
look at systems and their sub-parts and how they all interact. And, mainly, I

look at people and figure out what makes them tick.
During my years of formal training to become a sociologist, I learned anddeveloped very fine observational skills. A tone in the voice; the raising of aneyebrow for emphasis; the gesture that accompanies the sentence and gives itmeaning and emotion; and something I borrowed from art and philosophy, anappreciation ofaperson's posture. .Everything who one is can be seen in posture,in gesture.
1'm very good at my work. And 1'm proud of how good I am at reading microbehavior.
So when the doctor came into the room, folder in hand, comporting herself
firmly and with an air ofordinary, matter-offact efficiency, I searchedfor every
clue-every curve in the face, the lines of the eyes, the hand (ifit would reach out
to me), the axis and position of the head (if it was engaged) ... I searched forclues to anticipate what she would tell me. If the result of the rest was positive or
malignant. There was no clue, only her words.
"1' m glad you went for a second opinion because it shows that it is malignant."
I shut my eyes and saw absolute black, no lines of red or purple, pure black. My
agitation lifted me off the table and I started walking around in small steps in
the examining room, working off the tension. I thought I might put my fist
through the wall.

And then when I opened my eyes, I couldn't see too well. Or hear anything too
well either. Anna, my good friend who was with me, took the notes, handled
the paperwork, received the forms for the additional tests, escorted me throughthe distorted corridors of the hospital andfinally drove me, in my brand new car,my first new car, that no one else but Sandy has driven, home.

91How to see what is there. Simply. Plainly. Without denial Everything isabout seeing and how to see, what to see, knowing what you are looking a~figuring out its meaning in terms of diagnosis and prognosis. Biopsies,
machines, microscopes-how to see it all

They need mechanica4 electronic, and computer extensions of all the humansenses to see what disease process and its tributaries have already ravaged mybody. They need mechanisms that fit in the system of diagnostics, the way acamera is an extension of the hand, the eyes, and memory. They have topenetrate the invisible with instruments that extend vision into unknown
places. CAT scans, x- rays, radioisotope scans are all ways of seeing, ofextending the eyes. Ultrasound extends our ears and uses wave technology toinfer, mode4 and image the internal spaces, using the differential densities oftissue as the basis for imaging. Computerized thermography uses heat, an
extension of touch, and makes images of the body based on different levels ofheat given off by different organs and tissues.
Some diagnoses are as elementary as palpation, touching a lymph node lightly
and sensing its swollen form. Other tests require that my body be illuminated byradioactive materials so that my inner parts glow on a screen, making
computerized images. Imagism Imagistics.
Then, with this data, they chart and classify me. What other symptoms areincluded under the family resemblances? Then, on another level, knowing thepathological process, what predictions of related symptoms will be generated?
How does the doctor know if there are micromastastes in my body? The doctor
doesn't It's all supersonic, frontier electronics, perpetrated on this still stoneage human form.

The point is that I am going to die earlier than my average survival would havebeen because of medical incompetence. Today, I have a stage 4 breast cancer
which gives me a survival of between 5 and 8 years. It travelled far into mysystem But statistical evidence is so crazy anyhow. There are so many individual
differences that comparability of cases is strained, if not forced. How many
people who received exactly the same protocols responded exactly the same way?
But my training is to see generalities, tendencies, and trends, not individual
cases and I must learn the new logic of individual cases, recoveries, and miracles.

92

(Sandy)
The shock has worn off a bit but I continue to feel frightened. It took
so many years to allow my dependence on her, but now that I have, I
feel desperate not to lose her. The tests have begun and I insist upon
being in the room with her as they place her on a metal table, wheel
her into a tunnel-like apparatus, see the machines slowly and inexorly moving up and back over the length of her body. She lies so still on
the table, not moving as she is instructed. I stare at the screen
producing color images that I cannot decipher. A young man sits
immobile before it making notes. I cannot see what he writes andcannot tell from his posture or expression if there is danger on thescreen. She avoids looking at me, just stares up at the ceiling as myeyes race around the room trying to understand the technology, the,stillness. In one comer, a young intern reads the daily paper. In
another, a doctor makes notes on her chart for the staff Everywhere
there is silence. I would speak to Barbara but cannot imagine what tosay. I hope my presence is of help to her. It isn't to me. I feel superfluous. Helpless.
There are so many dangerous possibilites. So many symptoms. A lumpunder her armpit may mean further spread. Tendonitis may mean
metastasis to the bone. Dizziness- it may be the brain. A sore throat,
symptomatic of cancer of the larynx. There are endless possibilities
and right now, as I stand over her, they all seem ominous.
Then we sit and wait for the results in an empty room. Again, I cannot
imagine what to say. My hand does not move to reach out to her. I am
encased in my own terror and cannot join her in her own. Like the staff
in the examining room, we sit side by side without moving, in silence.
'Everything seems just fme," we are told. "No further spread thatve can see." We tum to each other then, our hands reach to touch
nd we allow ourselves to breathe. We celebrate that small victory,lith an expensive dinner. At least, we reassure ourselves and eachother, it is only what it is. It isn't more.
Our level of tension is cyclical. Laughter and tears blend, our moods
are labile, and my desire to protect her is sometimes overwhelming.

93

Ire-read Audre Lorde's distinction between fear as an appropriate
response to something real and anxiety as succumbing to a shapelessand formless terror. I am aware of needing to find a balance between
my need to protect her-to throw myself across her to keep the cancer
away and respecting her need to proceed through this experience as
she needs to, allowing all the people in her life to love her and not bein the way. My own sense of balance eludes me now and I stumble.

(Barbara)
Sandy goes with me for all the tests. We've been together for six years and yet,she sometimes feels like a stranger to me. She has been unusually quiet these lastfew days of testing. They put me into machines, Sandy sits in a chair nearby
watching. She cannot ask them to stop the tes~ to comfort me. We sit together
in waiting rooms, one after the other, with long silences and yellow pads. The
only stuff worth talking about is the medical information, it seems. Words about
us just hang there, become useless. They are revealed as clumsy instruments ofcommunication, so she and I are mute. Dumb. This woman of so many words,
so many verbal styles, presentations, public speeches is mute with me and that is
how I know-in part-how deadly serious this is. We cannot use words to build
bridges between us, as we have done in the past. We are each trapped in ourte"or and cannot find our way towards each other.

(Sandy)It wasn't until the skin around her nipple began to pucker that she
grew frightened and called from New York asking me to arrange asecond opinion. I made an appointment with an older establishedwoman in a prestigious hospital. That was the turning point for her, I
think. That was the point at which she began gathering information
outside the public health system. The shift from public to private wasa major one, for it took a while for us to understand she had been
misdiagnosed. The lump we found in March of 1984 was notdiagnosed as cancer until February of1985. During that time, it grewfrom 2 cc to 6 cc, her breast enlarged to nearly twice its original size, amammogram that B. demanded was taken, read incorrectly as
negative by a radiologist who never examined her. She saw three
doctors and, still, ~o one was concerned. Below the index of
suspicion, she was told by the surgeon at Kaiser three weeks before
the consultant's diagnosis of cancer. Told to stop drinking coffee forfibrocystic disease; they would watch it.

94

The ambivalence she suffers is painful for me. The overwhelming
sense that she should-somehow-have known. She should haveinsisted on something. And yet she did everything she could. She
insisted on a mammogram when they would not have ordered one.
She insisted on the tests that have not been routinely ordered. She
drove herself to be the best consumer she could, in the same way she
drives herself to be the best at everything she does.
Once the diagnosis was made, once the cancer was discovered, shebegan to research obsessively. Chemotherapy fIrst. Surgery fIrst.
Radiation with lumpectomy was ruled out. There was a blur of days
illled with doctors, examinations, treatment recommendations,yellow pads filled with questions and answers, and B. with her pocket
tape recorder recording every doctor's answers in case she grew too
anxious and could not hear what was being said.

(Barbara)
And then there is another problem: the differences in the recommendations
given by different specializations. Surgeons tend to see breast cancer as a local
disease, so they want to cut first. Oncologists see cancer mostly systematically, as
an immune system disease, and they say attack with chemotherapy. And then,when I went to see three different oncologists, and I got three different opinions
anyhow, it threw me into a crisis of uncertainty.
Now I make lists of questions, gather up my tape recorder and am lucid, direc~
insistent, and clear in my repeated interviews with the series of private"experts" Sandy and I now consult I have chosen an oncologist finally, atough-minded woman, and developed a treatment plan. The "best." A " topman, " as my mother would call it. Chemotherapy firs~ then surgery, and thenmore chemotherapy, then radiation, then more chemotherapy. It is very
aggressive treatment with devastating side effects, loss of hair, vomiting,menopause, fatigue, but seems the only chance of controlling this virulent force
that has invaded my body.
Medicine offers no certainty but I must trust someone. I pick Kathy G. She isa tough, gentle, sensitive, coolly professional woman afew years younger than
1. She will be my lifeline. She will become the center of my life. I will visit her
for a year and a halffor my treatments. I will fall in love with her, hold on to herevery word, her every hope for me. I will turn to herfor optimism, realism, help,
understanding, drugs. She is my doctor, my hope, my survivaL

95

Two days ago, I filed a malpractice suit with an attorney because a series ofincompetent doctors failed to make an accurate diagnosis of breast cancer. I hatethem but I'm also filled with self-loathing-self doubt. What should I havedone? Why didn't I insist upon something? Why didn't I know better? But I
never learned to recognize a good doctor. Public medicine was all I had everexperienced Despite my "class travel," I still went to clinics, just as I had when
I was 1O-waiting for my glasses to be given to me for free.
Often now, when I go to the doctor, I remember my father. When he waseleven, two years before his Bar-Mitzvah, my father became an apprentice towhat is called in Polish/yiddish a feldsher. While there is no adequatetranslation for this phrase, my father says it could be translated as "para-medic"or "country doctor," bu~ when he talks about feldshers in a nonselJconscious
way, he calls them half-doctors. A feldsher was a Government-certified,somewhat trained medical person who did the following: applied leeches forbloodletting, applied heated cups to lacerations he made on the back in order todraw blood; he pulled teeth; he lanced and then filled abcesses with iodized
gauze; he was in charge of the health of local villagers and, when there waseven an eruption ofone case ofa contagious disease, such as what myfather callsin Yiddish searle tina (scarlet feve~, he would report it to the authorities of thelocal medical district. My father was a feldsher's apprentice and, had heremained in Europe, would have probably become a feldsher himself.
All of my life I believed that, if I became ill, I would go on the subway to thehospital, wait patiently to see the doctor and be appreciative of the small hurried
bits of time they proferred It was the only experience I ever had Mass medicine
for the mass ofpeople-I was one of the masses. I never had a private physician,had never been to a private hospitaL Never to a lawyer's office. Now I go to the
Heads of Departments, the Chief of Oncology who refers me to the Head ofRadiology and the Head of Surgery and they spend time with me. Not Kaiser's
quota of one patient every twelve minutes.
March 6, 1985
Exactly one week and three hours after I learned I had cancer, I had a meetingin our house of 20 women who would be involved in my healing and caretaking. It was a conscious and deliberate choice to mobilize a battalion offriends
to help and assist me in every phase offighting my disease. When the doctor toldme I had camer, I wasforced to stand alone on a ledge so steep and so scary that I
reached out my hand-grabbed the outstretched hands of the women who form
my community.

96

I assembled them so I could tell them at once of my illness. Oddly, because I ama teacher, I found myself making notes as iffor a lecture. I outlined what I
needed from them. I listed the concrete ways Sandy and I would need help. It
was all neatly categorized and outlined, as I wouldfor an intro class. Being thecenter of attention was an unusual experience for me and I was nervous andbegan to read uncomfortably from my notes. Torn between my usual f eeling ofwanting to be competent and feeling grateful for the room so full of love andconcern, after a while I found myself no longer needing my notes for my heart
began to speak Without censor and artifICe, the words found themselves. I
began by sharing the basic information about my cancer, the treatment plan I
had chosen to pursue, and as I began to hear myselfspeak, became aware ofhow
I was lingering on the medical information as a way to postpone saying the moredeeply felt words that were in my heart. As I watched their faces react to mywords, as well as the silences between them, I came to understand that I am only
the first among our friends to have cancer. There will be others. As the graphs
and statistics show, we will hear about more cases as we grow older. Such aweighty responsibility, to be the firs~ yet it gave me a purpose. I am trying tolive self-consciously (and perhaps die self-consciously) in an exemplary manner.
Many of my friends will see their future in the way I handle mine.
I told them that I needed to feel useful and to be needed They spoke of their
feelings and love for me, their commitment to the shared struggle of winningthe battle against cancer growing in my body and dedication to whatever wasneeded to win the battle. The chemotherapy was the strongest currently
available, hopefully doing enough to match and conquer the formidable enemy
that had invaded me. There would be a battle waged inside my body and I would
need suppor~ nurturance, caring, diversion, laughter, and safety to endure the18 months that lay ahead These 20 women and others across the country would
serve as my companions.

(Sandy)I see her emotional vulnerability, the trembling of her chin when she
speaks publicly. She acknowledges my greater ease with the public
selfby whispering to me before the women gathered, "This is like myfirst keynote speech," referring to the speeches I made regularly as
part of my work. Her late awareness of the love, respect, and concern
she generates are unfamiliar, she cannot quite trust these feelings. She
simply has no frame of reference for them. I too, found myself caught
in old forms and patterns. Mter she spoke, I found myself being
charming, gracious, welcoming-all the social skills I use without

97

thinking. Appalled at the ease with which such forms blot out
feelings, I just as unexpectedly began to cry and spoke publicly,
perhaps for the first time, utterly without charm, grace or style. From
my heart.

(Barbara)
That night changed the way I spoke. Since then, many friends have reminded
me of my own words. "Your life is not a rehearsal It is what it is and you must
live it. " "Don't wait to finish your novel to have a baby. " "The days when you
want to get dressed up, look outrageous, put those gold earrings on to teach aclass, do it. Do it alL There is no time to worry ifyou are too dressed up to go towork Do it. The restaurant you want to go to but is slightly too expensive. Do
it and put it on a credit card The orchestra opera tickets you've always wanted
but sat in the balcony because you are saving for a "rainy day"-buy theorchestra seats. The trip you wanted to take but you were waiting until next
year. Do it. You might not have next year. Do it now. Do it alL Live yourdreams. Live it."After I was finished speaking, I was asked to stretch out on the jloor and thewomen gathered in a circle around me, each ofthem laying hands upon my body.
Rituals and those who practice them are strange to me but it felt soothing and I
could hear the sounds of women weeping andfeel their energy being passedfrom
their bodies to mine.
Earlier in the day I had spoken to Deena in Los Angeles who suggested I find avisualization for the moment the chemotherapy entered my body for the firsttime. I asked the women in my healing circle to visualize the same image at thetime of the injection/invasion. It was to be at 4:00 PM on Monday. As I lay
upon the jloor,encircled by their bodies, their hands, and their love, I began tosense the power of such a suggestion.

(Sandy)Now that the house has emptied, the images that keep intruding arethose of a malevolent circus. The kind in the movies of the 40' s where
the final chase scene takes place on a carousel gone mad with thechilling voice of the laughing fat woman as seen through the mirrorsof the fun house. My images those of tightropes I must walk to keepbalanced between my life and ours. The highwire act or juggling tokeep us distinct yet joined. The speed with which the disease is98

growing in her body like a rollercoaster out of control. My moods are
wide-ranging and unpredictable. I marvel at her. I marvel at me. And
sometimes I want her to tell me she's sorry for getting cancer andruining our lives together. And sometimes I'm angry at her forgetting it. Other times I want to tell her that I am sorry for my letting
her get cancer and not making her go to a better doctor. And most of
the time, I lie in her arms grateful for the life we have together.

99

Teya Schaffer

Four Poems
I
The assimilation of a shocking experience
how is it done? Even the floodof loving, my heart
exquisitely awarekind
and caring,even that is a shock requiring noticeand recuperation.

II
Haircuts
We give separate reasonsfor doing the same thing.
"I will cut my hair," you say"So it will be easier to care forin the hospital." "I will cut my hair, "I say, "because it needs cutting."
We face the hospital at dawn
with hair cropped
like warriors,
when we kiss goodbye
it is the promise given before battle:
to survive.

III
I wanted to be angry at her
to yell: my lover has cancer
my lover has cancer andwhere are you now my best friend,nowwhen I need you?

100

I wanted not to have to do

the caring things I wanted nobody
else but me to do: to wash her hairto wash her body, to drain the tube
leading from her wound.
I wanted not to be so dreadfully
needed, would have felt denied
an honor if I were not her good right arm.
I wanted to yell
best friend where are you?
but she was recuperating
and I needed to be quiet.

As If The Sun
As if the sunreally was a source of energy
the days we spent indoors
left metired.
Waiting rooms
exammmg rooms
waiting rooms
consulting rooms
the hospital her apartment.
I was accustomed to the season of May.
I was accustomed
to my backyard steps
fuchsia, nasturtium
green succulents
the yellow sun
serenity of knowing
her at work
my child at schoolme alone with the sunlightall safe and soundall right with the world . . . .
There was something numbing
to the days spent indoors
as if
I were a plant,
deprived.

101

At night the evidence of something else
the griefslipping out
in a sighdampness gathering on the ground.
Mourning, keening, wailingvery quietly
very quietly matching the fall of tears
to the soft inhale exhale of her
sleeping breath.
I was alone in a vast double bed.
Worse than our worst battles every line of personal survival drawn
between us, the terrible lovers' questions
how could you say that to/
how could you think that of!
what am I doing with!
Worse than the nights her body felt too close
my anger longing to fist into her back,worse than the nights her back was everything worth loving
in the whole wide universe
and it was turned toward me daring me
and I afraid to touch.
Worse.
Worse than all.

In the morning
I would be tired
and forgetful of the night's dreams.
We were only in a phasea temporary changea brief aberration before
life would return . . . .
I was almost present
by day.
One night
her hand
whispered familiarly along my thigh.
"Just watch out for the tube,"she cautioned. Fitting our bodies andour memories together, she smiled into
my surpnse

102

"You know I learned this from you."meaning the desire when ill
my cautious touchechoing the tentative strokes
once given me when I
bedridden, beckoned her closeand closer.
Now she lay upon her back.
Now I could begin again
the return to self which is sex
which is sex as gender which isfemale which is me
naked and fullof lust with her.
Now I could begin again
the return to her which is the longing
to belong to her lust to be inseparablefrom her sensations to join the tipof my finger to the tip of her clit
to the tongue tilting up up upon her palate
to release sounds of sex
usfemalebreathing into each otherphotosynthesis
transforming our exhalations
into life.
After that
I always knew her to be alive
and turned to her for comfort
for all the waysthat would not return.

103

The Haircut
photo by Susan Iverson

104Marianne Milton

Foldings
for Carmela Ma rian Ermilio Careri
1897-1983

I wake to the green glow of a digital clocknot the kind of time you spent with me, grandmother:days of lying in a cool room,head in your lap,
laundry in piles,
t.v. on.
You taught me how to fold,I at one end of the sheet,
you at the other.
Each corner exact and sharp,
each fold bringing us closer.
Finishing,
you took the sheet by yourself,
made the last, perfect movement,
and slid the bundle, compact,
onto a pile with other~.
Now you are deadand I do the laundry alone,pare down the linens
to one sheet,
one pillowcase.
Each newly washed piece
gets tossed on the floor,sits there organic, voluminous
until I tug
first one corner, then anotherover the far edges of a large bed.
In the morning, the green glow
casts a solitary lighton the edge where noone fills it.
I lie alone.

105

Grandmotheryour exact fmgers,
stern foldings,
controlled bundles
taught me one way to live.
Now, somehow,
I must teach myself another.

106

Marianne Milton

You Watch For Me
If I were to call you by nameI'd call you motherbut I don't
so you just sit there
watching me as if
I might breathe life
into you.
Deflated like those rubber clowns
that when filled
could be beaten and pummelled
and still they would spring back for more
you sitsadly forgotten.
On this summer's day
I run to the pond
play hide and seek
with the fish. Your gaze
can't find me here
though it reaches into every cupboard
and closed room I try to squeeze into.
Late in the afternoon
someone comes by
and you smile winningly
behind your cup.
The coffee in it is seven hours old
but you don't let on.
She chats, prods you
into alertness.
Then she must go home
get dinnercall the kids
be ready when he comes home.

107

The clock moves slower
after she leaves
and you know you can't move.
You watch the shadows grow longer
along the crucifix
nailed to the doorframe.
r come home.
r have eluded you.
r try not to noticethat you have not moved.

108

Lynn Crawford

Just That Would Be EnoughMy mother who was washing the dinner plates when I told her
about my rape and who was rinsing themwhen I finished said Iris you just don't know
how to let a thing go.
She likes my sister, who slits
her yellow silk dress open
at the throat like sometulip and assumes
she can always choose
who will pick her.
How neatly she pauses between eachmorsel of meat instead ofeating eating eating
as though each bite
could pad the coat
I could wrap
myself in, an armor
of indifference.
It was a friend who told me sex
sometimes lines the undersides of your eyelids
with a violet light and just once
after the rape she asked
kind of nervous, do I
ever be afraid ofsex now and I confessed LucyI haven't had sex, what
happened to me waswar. Warthat shattered all the windows ofthis house, mybody and fearthat drops like heavy plaster on
all my ordinary moments.

109

Like anyone else I used to have nights
when I could wrap dark around me
like a soft thick fur and sleep,
just sleep would curl
its smoky feline tail along
my back and lullme.
Like anyone else I used to have days
where waking I sat witha boiled brown egg in its cup
before me and juststared,stared at that bald little world
so lopsided with genesis
and its face so nakedof roads orfences and
JOY,
Joy would break its golden yolk
inside me and I
now think just thatwould beenough, just
that.

110

Susan Stinson

Belly SongI sit naked on a chair with my legs slightly apart. I hold my bones verystraight. You can barely see my cunt. My belly pours down over it, hangs,
moves, grows hair, shines in marks that fall like fmgers curving up around its
sides. I am loose, I hang. There are not enough names for the places where my
fat gathers on me; there is belly, thigh, hip, chin, but no simple way to say
soft-mound-between-breast-and-arm, or low-full-folds-that-are-sides.
Before, my light held me in, circled me. It hung over the bed. I was a
girl. It was smooth, pale, flat, faintly blue, then darker towards the center
where the moths' bodies had fallen inside the fixture. There was a little gold
knob on the outside. If the bulb was turned off and there was sun in the room,
I could see most of my body naked on the bed. My ceiling was low, but thereflection was very small. The gold knob cut me in two.
I saw my knees rising up, blue. I saw the fat tops of my arms shimmying
against my breasts. I saw my sprawling hair, my neck, and my glasses, of course,
but my belly was left out.
Right now, I want a chocolate cream doughnut. I take one from thebox, and break it. Powdered sugar dusts the floor. I hold the halves delicately,
like crust cups. I look down at them over my breasts, wrapping my feet aroundthe legs of the chair. I'm naked in the kitchen. Soft jazz pads out of the radio on
the table. Water is leaking in the sink. I hear each drop.
Last summer I worked painting a fIre escape, spattering paint on theleaves of the tree below me from five flights up. I bent over to get at the rust
between the slats, working the tip of my screwdriver. It slipped over the surface,caught, slipped again.
I bent down. The sun made me warm and damp. My shorts rode up. I
wasn't high enough to see the river, but I was out of sight to anyone below. I
reached for the power sander, switched it on. The vibration made me shake.
Rust powdered off Blood rushed to head. My feet were apart for balance, but
my thighs touched.
I stopped, stood up, and pulled in a breath of warm air. The silence
felt good. A breeze came up. I took a drink of water from the silver thermos,
letting it dribble down the outside of my throat into the neck of my t-shirt.
I bent again, picked up my screwdriver, and felt my fat swing downwith me. I moved my back from side to side. My breasts and belly shifted,
catching the motion. I could smell my hands in my work gloves: leather, paint,
and sweat. The fIrst blisters had peeled off and hardened to smooth red places
on my fmgers and palms.

111

When I squeeze the doughnut in my right hand, cream wells up. I licka bit; it's sticky. I set the other half on the table, and dip my fingers in it. I coat
my face, stroking my eyebrows and lids, circling my nose. I put a streak on myforehead, and hair falls into it.
The half in my hand fits over the tip of one breast. Pulling it off, I
smear the cream around that nipple, then dab the other. I roll the rest of thishalf between my palms, gathering the last thickness, then make one long passdown my arms, my sides, over my thighs, knees, calves, and the soles of myfeet. Little bits of dough stick in spots.
Most of the other half of the doughnut is left on the table. I consider
my belly.
It's pale. I fasted. It's loose. I never ate dinner. It's under hairs. I went
to the hospital every week. It swells out, then folds, They said my body was
made of cubes of butter. It shakes, it moves, it jiggles. They said each quarterpound I lost was like cutting a cube of butter off a big block.
I take my belly in my hands. It's warm. My fingers feel cooL butquickly warm, too. It has a good weight, is soft. I sit very stilL and feel thepulse in my thumbs, then find the pulse in the place of my thickest fat. It's
delicate and regular, there, yes, there, yes, there. It comes from the undersidewhere my palms are resting, from the left half and the right half, from veinsthat curve out with the rest of me. This is not dead lard. It's my body. It's myliving fat.
A drop of water spatters in the sink. I look up. My eyelids feel stiff. The
doughnut halfhas fallen over on the table, spilling cream. I bounce my belly in
my hands a couple of times, then let it drop. I stand up and reach for a paper
towel I wipe the table off Leaving footprints on the floor, I walk to the sink
to begin to rinse clean.

112

Amber Coverdale Sumrall

Eagle Woman

Across red rock canyons
her songs echo.
Across circular skytrails
her wings climb.
Across snaking rivers
her shadow hovers.
Eagle Woman has left the land
her talons scrape the sky.
the smoke from her pipe
smudges the way.
Her spirit soars
to the place of emergence.
Her blessings. like feathers
return to earth.

113

LAuren Crux

Waiting
I am six years old. I wait for the gun to go off to begin the swimming race. I
don't want to race. Father, huge bald eagle sits imperiously. He hascommanded it; he wants to see his child perform. No one says no to him. He isvicious, quick, his tongue like the eagle's claws, razor sharp and deadly. He
sits, waiting, perched. The gun goes off I swim desperately. When I reach theend, gasping, I am told it is a false start and I will have to do it again. I collapse,
crying, "No, no, I can't, I don't want to."Lying in my bed, pretending to be sleeping, I hear my father striding down the hallway
towards my room. His gait is heavy and determined Like the predator who knows his preyhas no escape, he does not need to approach quietly.
He is visiting from Canada. Years ago my mother, sister and I moved to
California for our health. He was to follow soon, but instead became acommuter-coming to California for vacations. Because he is visiting I am
expected to make myself available to him. But any contact with him isfrightening to me.
He will insist that I get up and fIx his breakfast, or make phone calls for him
while he eats. Or perhaps he will simply point at his bald head, an unspoken
order that I massage it. I constantly have to ward off his orders, his sarcasm.
I pull the covers over my head, hoping that he will honor my attempt for privacy.
Instead he stands by my bed and jingles the coins in his pocket to waken me. He thinks hecan buy everyone.
When we go out to dinner he insists I dance with him. I am so nervous that I
cannot hear the beat and have trouble following him. Sometimes he counts thebeat out loud so I can follow. Other times he just scoffs. IfI refuse to dance I
will be punished with silence and scorn. My mother will tell me how selfIsh I
am to deny him something so simple as dancing. I learn to hate dancing and to
think I am clumsy and inept. Years later my mother tells me what an
impossible dancer my father is.
I am required to wear white gloves and curtsey for the guests. Again andagain I hear the refrain, "Breeding tells." He decides I should become skilled
at learning names and making introductions, so at age seven he makes me
introduce his party guests to one another. As I panic and forget names, hesays, " You have ·to learn this if you are to succeed in the world."
When we all lived together in Canada, my sister and I were required by ourmother, when he came home each evening to run to him happily, as if weloved him. It was our ritual. He must have known; he was not stupid.
He made a point ofletting me know he thought I was stupid. One afternoon
when I was in my room studying, he called me into his bedroom and asked me,114

"What is flfteen percent of eighty?" Knowing this was a test, I froze and could
not answer quickly: he peered at me through his glasses and said only," Dummy," then dismissed me. The word never left me.
Lying in my bed, covers over my head, knowing that I cannot continue to feign sleep, I
panic. Want to scream at him, "Go away, leave me alone, but I do not think I can bear
the punishment that would follow. I would wait a little longer; perhaps he will leave.
Ifhe were all bad he would have been so much easier to deal with. But there
were times when he was loving and playfUl. He taught me to shoot a gun, toplay baseball and badminton, and to drive a car, all by age seven. I loved
learning those things; but he seemed to take them all away when he ordered
me to drive him at whim, or to play with him at his command, and thencriticize me while I did it. He was not safe.
I remember when my young cousin talked back to his parents, my father
said, "If that were my child I'd knock him across the room and he'd never dothat again." I knew it was true. When I was six he had knocked me across theroom. It was a stormy Canadian evening and the electricity had gone off I was
happy. It meant candlelight, a me in the den and the whole family sitting
together. I began to worry that all this would be lost as soon as the lights cameon. I begged my parents not to turn on the lights. When the lights did come on
I began whining, pleading for the candlelight. As I crossed the room in front of
my father I was suddenly hurtling towards the couch. He had knocked me hardfrom behind without warning. He stood up hugely in front of xpe, instructing
me to sit down without a word or a movement until he gave me permission.
He then forgot me and went off to bed. Later my mother came and gave me
permission to go to bed saying what was to become her litany over the years,"He doesn't mean it, dear; he loves you."
I feel tormented The fury withers inside me. I don't know how to tell people how
afraid I am I have no words, no names. He stands now by my bedside and I am
immobilized I know that I will have to surface - he will outwait me.
My half-sister tells a story that lets me know that she understands and I am
relieved. When my father was a boy of eight the neighborhood cats kept
disappearing; no one could fmd what was happening to them. One day his
mother climbed into their attic and discovered that he had killed and skinned
them, nailed their pelts to the wall. His mother relates this story with great
amusement.
I am afraid, hold on to myself He is maniacal. I have no words; I do not know how toname it. My only defense is to wait. Knotting inside, I cannot pretend to hear the coins
jingling, feel his presence; I emerge from under the covers, smile and say, "Goodmorning. I am always polite.
Writing this chapter is painful. I write and re-write and destroy. A whitecloud of anxiety all around me. For relief I take a bike ride along the cliff
drive. I want to be near the ocean. It is early morning, and sunny -- a relief
from the battering of winter storms. I am hoping that this ride, the ocean
JJ

JJ): 115

breeze, the warmth of the sun, will calm the inner storm that threatens as I
write.
I slow down to watch two people out walking their dogs. The woman, awhite woman in her forties, wears a comfortable looking teal blue dress andhas on the end of a leash a sweet but shabby looking collie. The man walking
with her, also white, carries a full pot belly, which hangs softly over his green
work pants. I can't tell if they are husband and wife, lovers, or have just met.
Behind them runs a small Airedale terrier, looking pleased with himself, hisballs intact. But I am drawn to the little old dog that follows behind all of them.
It is homely, rotund, with a greying muzzle and long toenails that click as it
moves along awkwardly. It does not seem to be enjoying this outing; it isbreathing heavily, working hard, and not quite keeping up. As I slow to watch
this dog it turns to look at me. Its big brown watery eyes make contact withmine and I have the curious sensation that it speaks to me, but I do not knowwhat it says. When it turns its head away I feel infinitely sad. There was no
disguise in that gaze, no show. Just a little old dog out for a walk with the big
people, and it seemed tired. I start to cry and continue to peddle, regularly
wiping my eyes, feeling embarrassed. How do I understand this? Why am I
moved to tears?
There was a certain emptiness I saw in that little dog. It seemed to have no
choice but to follow along. As I rode on, I made the connection, remembering
how I followed along as a child. It seemed I had no choice. I watched my older
sister try to escape: she tried drinking, drugs, marriage, suicide. She only
became more and more unhappy and my father more vicious towards her, mymother more hopeless. I did not try to escape. I decided I would be very, very,
good and I would wait: there had to be something else. Safety became my firstpriority - survival. Like the lizard who sits immobile on a rock in my garden
as I walk by, I learned to freeze whenever I sensed danger. As I approach the
lizard it locks itself into form: only if it moves I can see it. Only ifI move canthey see me. Rigidity becomes a form of survival.
Another memory surfaces. How often I felt like the chameleons that weresold at the county fair when I was a child. They had sweet little gold chainsaround their necks, attached to a pin. I walked home one day with one pinned
to my shirt. I watched it change colors as I placed it on differently coloredmaterial. I did not imagine that it might feel terror, sorrow, separation, evenhumiliation or sadness. And, like the lizard, I could sense danger and like thechameleon, change color to adapt. Learned that being nice, being polite andkeeping my opinions to myself were how I could and would survive.
I learned also to keep private those things that were precious to me. In mylast year of high school desperate to find a way to express something about mylife, I began sculpting in clay. In my fIrst attempt, without intention, under myhands an ancient Chinese man appeared. He was old, wrinkled, very sad and116

very beautiful in his own way. * The ancient wise man reached out to me andtouched my heart. This lump of clay coming to life under my hands was mylife.
As I sat holding the sculpture in my hands, my mother walked into myroom. I showed it to her tentatively, shyly. She said it was wonderful, butwanted me to let her spray paint it gold so it would look more beautiful and we
could display it in the living room. The next day my father looked at it andsaid, "It's a little sad isn't it." I could not answer but felt afraid and my bodystiffened. I knew I must not let them take that sadness from me, spray me with
their gold.
Quickly I found an old shoe box, wrapped my sculpture carefully, lovingly
in newspaper, and buried it deep in my closet, where even my mother would
not fmd it.
I made one more sculpture that year, an old sailor man, whose expression
reflected anguish. He too was wrapped carefully and hidden away, then I
stopped sculpting. It was too dangerous and painful to create something andthen have to hide it. I decided to wait.
And what do we do while we're waiting? Some of us become rigid "goodwomen," some loose "bad women"; most of us just do the best we can. WhileI was busy being good, staying safe, my body reacted to this unnaturalcontainment which was both forced on me and which I forced on myself My
face erupted. I ground my teeth at night and bad dreams haunted me. My bodywas for years a battleground.
Fear keeps us isolated from ourselves and each other. My home was a
microcosm of a terrorist state. Violence was a form of control: unpredictableand vicious. I was never safe. I trusted no one. My mother either praised me as
the perfect one, yet was unavailable to me, or she excoriated me saying I was
not good enough. That when she was my age she was: a star, buying her
mother diamonds, working harder than I ever had or could. Now she was on apedestal and my arms could not reach that high.
My sister and I were never close. She was five years older, and, as often
happens in dysfunctional families, assumed the role of the "bad" daughter.
Warm and playful with me one minute, then without warning scratching andslapping me viciously.

*He spoke to me through the pain on his face. In later years in a discussion with author/poet,
Ray Gwyn Smith, it became clear that this was my first encounter with my own spirit and senseof integrity - my first attempt to move past control into the creative voice. And the voice wasvery sad. It was going to be through this pain, this sad voice that I would find what was valuable
and worthy in my life.

117

My father was a sadist. Any time 1was excited and happy about something,
he would take it away from me, and would laugh afterwards. Mother, sister,father, all unavai,lable, all dangerous. 1 waited alone.
As 1 became watchful and secretive 1 remember always thinking that if
things got bad enough 1would take my rifle, the one my father gave me when 1
was eight, load it, and kill mysel£ It would be years before 1 would abandon
suicide as an escape. Before 1 would learn that 1 wanted to turn the gun awayfrom my own head and point it away from me, towards the source of that
violence.
1 have a nightmare: a man's head with no body floats in the air staring at me
while 1 sleep. It is a handsome, grey-haired man in his forties; he only stares
and 1 am horrified. 1 try to scream in my sleep, the sound sticking deep in mythroat. 1 st:ru:ggle to come awake and am sweating from terror and effort. For
weeks afterward 1 am afraid to fall asleep.
Another dream: a huge shark with enormous jaws is about to attack. 1 wakeup with my jaws aching. When 1 tell a friend that 1 think the dream is about myfather, she says simply, "Look at who's talking. " 1 am becoming both theattacker and the attacked. My father is in my body. As 1 write this 1 feel myjaws tighten and hear myself say in his voice, "Your writing is driveL purecrap. Who cares." 1 see the letter 1wrote when 1was nine which he returned tome with words circled in red and the demand to re-write it and return it tohim.
My mother made me write to him each week. Believing the lie, turningaway from the violence for whatever reason - fear, ignorance, inability toimagine another life - she offered no help, only repeated that he didn't mean
any of it, that he loved me.
1 have learned my lessons well: the oppressor is most successful when his
subjects rule themselves. Most successful when he can have their motherre-inforce the sadism.
As we talk years later about his sadism my mother says, "1 did not know, 1
did not know." What is true is that she did not name what she knew. 1 do notknow why, but as 1 struggle to name for myself what I know, 1 begin tounderstand the difficulty. My ~other is filled with fear; often 1 have seen it inher eyes. She carulOt accept feeling sad or angry, denying both constantly. To
name my father' s violence she would have to feel both feelings deeply: 1 do
not think she knows she could survive.
1 feel hugely sad; 1want this chapter to be over as much as 1wanted growing
up in my family to be over. Sadness wells up through me like water burblingup through desert sand. 1 think again of the little dog 1 saw: old dog, 1 hope
they do not abuse you or neglect you. 1 could not tell if you were happy, but 1
want you to be. 1want your old years to be gentle. 1 want them to feed you andkeep you warm. Old dog, 1 want more for my life than to trot along, tired,trying to keep up and stay safe. Old dog, 1 feel so sad for the child 1 was.

118

***
This morning on the radio I hear that Reagan is fighting for more money tobuild his war machine, "for peace." My father attempts to buy land and build
condominiums on sacred Indian burial land. He says to me, "What is rightbelongs to those who have the money to make the rules. That's what ethics andideals are all about." Tonight I will go my ethics class at the university: it is aclass on moral ideals. We ask the questions, what is honesty, integrity,
courage? What makes our lives meaningful and why do we care? And until thismoment of writing I have wondered why I was so fascinated with ethical issues
and moral struggle.
My father was an evil man. It has taken me thirty-six years to say this, to tellthese stories. When I first began to contradict all the lies that I have been toldof how close and loving our family was, how noble and good our nation, as I
began slowly to speak the truth, I had this dream: my tongue was torn out at
the roots; my mouth bleeding and raw. I was filled with anguish. But as I
looked in a mirror I saw that a new tongue was growing, forming underneaththe destruction of the old one.
With this new tongue I now speak. It reaches out sinuous, eel-shaped.
moving through air as through water. It touches the tongue of a woman poet.
We play, our tongues meeting, circling each other, a serpentine dance. Shesays to me:
I am no longer afraid of mirrors where
I see the sign of the amazon. . .
I have relinquished some of the scars. . .
On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.·I am gentled by this woman. Laughingly I draw in my tongue. No longer
fearful, I have words oflove, of delight. I become my own Prince Charming,
placing the kiss of life on my mouth, breathing courage into my lungs.
As I write this I continue to breathe deeply, feeling air circulate throughout
my body as if for the first time: and I soften. Every taut muscle letting go.
Sinking deeply into this home of my body I fmd the peacefulness that has
eluded me. I remember when the stillness and quietness that now gives me
solace seemed ominous. Like the returned soldier who although the war islong over, becomes tense and vigilant walking under the light of the full

• Deena Metzer, Tree119moon, so too I feared the vulnerability of being seen or heard. I had been at
war for so long that to let go, to sink into stillness seemed dangerous. If thelight shone on me, if I were quiet and listened to those inner voices, what
would I see, hear? Would a monster rise to the light, would it be me? But, theworst hours for me were the early evening hours, when day slides slowly into
night. A sense of dread would crawl over me if! were alone. I would rush out
to be with friends, or go out to do anything, always, always, keeping busy. My
lover, who relished the hours of dusk more than any other, and who had agreat capacity for stillness, suggested that I try facing what frightened me: that
I sit alone some evening, watching the sun set, the darkness rise, and allow myself to discover what might be there for me.
I knew she was right, yet I waited. I wasn't quite ready - for what I did not
know. Some waiting is about the refusal to act out some fear. Some, about therefusal to be still, out of fear. And I was afraid.
Several months later I entered into a long period of depression. I thought, "I
can't fight any longer," and gave myself over to depression. As I sank into it, it
became a thick blanket of sadness. I was heavy with an unnamed despair. I wasable to work, and work well, but that was all. When the day was over I would
return home, leave the lights off, the music off, the curtains open, and lie on
my bed, facing the window. For three months I faced the evening dusk thisway: grieving for something I could not name. And day after day the evening
darkness would come and wrap itself around me, offering comfort. The
monster I feared never came. Instead I felt a hardness melting, slipping awayfrom around my heart. Something in me was stirring.
One late afternoon I came home as usual, wrapped myself in a quilt and lay
down. As I lay there, I was captured by the radiance of the changing light.
Golds and rose-colored streaks moved over me making everything sparkle
with movement and color. I felt alive with light: sensual, erotic, and charged
with a desire to create - to say - this is who I am.
That same afternoon, I began a series of self-portraits experimenting with a
new technique which was to keep me occupied for the next year and a half
While taking these photographs I knew I was capturing the moments, the timeof healing, and the eruption of my spirit out of depression into the formationof something new and vital.
Rather than ugliness and monsters, in my stillness and waiting-time I had
discovered something, unnamable yes, yet profound. O ut of sorrow
something unspoken in me had a chance to emerge, to release a song. This kindof waiting needs a new name. It is a letting go, it is an allowance.
Waiting, when it is a refusal to take necessary action or a refusal to be still,is a holding back from entering into the depth of experience; it is an attempt tobe safe and to avoid what is assumed to be frightening or unendurable. If wechoose to enter into experience we may in fact encounter dragons. And our120

dragons have powerfUl voices: voices of rage, of sadness, but also of greattenderness, desire, sensitivity. These voices call us, sing us deeper and deeper
into our inner lives. I know now why I am so fond of dragon stories. They
teach us that where we learn to be still and face our fear, inevitably courage
grows.

121

Vickie Sears

Ceremony
Out of grayred comes morning withflowerwinds pushing clouds aside.
I see it coming
smell it bringing itself
feel its brittle newness.
Wash my body toreflect

Brush my teeth withall words be true.

my spirit.

requestthat

Swallow water which gives life ask togive back a living which justifies the water gift.
Thank the Grandfather for
winged people two legged ones water creatures
fourlegged persons beings of the underground.
profile of the earth.
Thank the Mother for life she gives
births renewal springs winter-resting.
Ask the Hall of Grandmothers to
use me as channel of help in healing
sharing hearing.
Thank the Creator for me.
praycleanse myself

All is right.

it is timenow

I can share the morning.

122Patricia Roth Schwartz

A Mother's Journey Into Loss
The Absence of the Dead is Their Way ofAppearin~ by Mary Winfrey
Trautmann. Cleis Press, A Women's Publishing Company, P.O.
Box 8933, Pittsburgh, PA 15221. 1984, 255 pp $8.95.
Mary Winfrey Trautmann's journal, The Absence of the Dead is Their
Way of Appearing, represents a chronicle of the last years of Trautmann's
daughter Carol's life, a tug of war between the intense growth-momentum ofa young adult and the life-stopping cells of her leukemia. Published by Cleis
Press, a feminist outfit based in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, this 1984 releasehas been followed by other such exceptional works of feminist nonfiction as adisabled women's anthology and Alicia Portnoy's tales of political persecution
in Argentina. Cleis remains one of our most valuable publishers.
Death-and-dying literature abounds with tender works in which a
female author details the last months or years of a husband or son. Trautmann's
work is almost unique in exploring the loss for one woman of another, in thiscase a mother her daughter. Finally, in print, a woman seems worth grievingfor. Further, Trautmann's feminist vision gives the reader access to aspects of
the loss experience that a more establishment view would refute. Only Alice
Bloch's remarkable work, Lifetime Guarantee: A Journey through Loss and Survival(Alyson Publications) tells a similar story. In this work, lesbian/feminist Blochdetails the denial, anguish, grief, and ultimate passage toward grace the deathof her younger sister, also from leukemia, brings to her. In these works, nopunches are pulled. Female caretakers are not portrayed as simplistically allloving, all-giving. Trautmann is not a Sainted Mom, hovering over the pillows
of her gently expiring daughter.
Instead, a middle-aged wife, mother, poet, spiritual seeker fmds
herself propelled by her daughter's illness and eventual death down a twist in
the path of her own journey for which she had' not bargained. The way
contains rage, fear, bone- deep loneliness, serious questioning of faith. Absence
finally becomes, not Carol's story, but Mary' s. When Trautmann seeks out afellowship of Charismatic Christians for the prayer, the music, the support, it
is her own healing as much as her daughter's for which she reaches.
With the characteristic energy of an adolescent plunging full tilt into
her young adulthood, Carol veers constantly between a childlike emotional
state, in which she needs her mother, and a keenly mature stance about her
own options and limitations as her life draws to a close, a place into which hermother cannot follow. Carol refuses to give up anything this time in her life123

would ordinarily involve, if she can possibly manage it: camping trips to themountains with friends, school, work, a boyfriend who skiis and plays
baseball.
In contrast, Mary finds herself in suspension. She cannot be themother approaching" empty-nest" who looks forward toward a life of herown; her dying daughter needs her. Yet what that very daughter also needs isfor her grieving mother to let go, to let her child steer her own course.
Trautmann writes of the closeness the two feel after Carol receives blood:"adult, adolescent, child, infant, she recedes within my arms and returns for ablinding scintilla of time to my womb" (p.196). Yet, weeks later, Carol's off to
Utah to ski, to cram for fmal exams.
Of all the works on the terminally ill I've read, this one brought me
the most acute sense of loss: not even for Carol, who indeed took her life at
full measure for as long as she could, but for Mary Trautmann, who seemed, as
death grew closer, to come dangerously adrift from whatever previously had
moored her in her life. Again and again, within the pages of the journal thatcomprise this volume, she returns to Carol, her early poems, anecdotes ofchildhood, "snapshots" of a life already passed, yet, now, desperately combed
through as if some magic, some truth, and some gleaming image would
redeem the future, the inevitability of that fmallast blank page of the album.
While, as a literary structure, this succeeds completely, the reader isleft with a hollow ring. Reading Absence I wanted so much to reach out andenvelop Mary Trautmann in some blanket of warmth, care, and solace her
seekings did not bring her. When, with the Charismatic group, she, along withothers, eventually begins to "sing in tongues," I felt, not that she had broken
through to some new place of how to be, but that the unspeakable hadremained so: incomprehensible, unarticulated.
Still, Trautmann's spiritual progression, within these pages, shows
growth: Christian imagery does not eventually satisfY her. Her own psyche
creates in time a goddess figure, whom she calls The Comforter, a Mother for
herself - who needs one as much as her daughter, perhaps more.
This fact seems especially striking in light of how empty Trautmann's
marriage seems during this period. Although she does not editorialize on thesituation, her very silence on how she and Carol's father deal with Carol's
illness speaks volumes. Most couples whose child dies ofleukemia experience
serious marital disruption; over half end up divorced. Paul Trautmann remains
a shadowy figure in these pages, a successful businessman who just isn't
around. Not surprisingly, Trautmann herself ends up hospitalized, for vascularsurgery (could the similarity to leukemia - both disorders involving the
body's blood systems - be coincidental?). Recuperating, she confronts herdaughter-in remission, dressed up for partying, on her way out the door. "Imiss you," she says - and we know that more is dying than Carol's physicalbody. Absence ends up being not only a special chronicle of terminal illness but

124

a story of our time as women: how patriarchal constructs of what a mothermust be in our society intersect and collide with what one soul journeying
needs for herself
When the inevitable end approaches, Carol extracts from Mary a firmpromise that her mother have, in Carol's memory, a lemon tree planted. It is in
this image, deeply-rooted, flowering, bearing fruit into perpetuity, that I see
Carol Trautmann. For Mary Trautmann, such groundness has not yet
happened: she remains at the end of her story, in her own words, .. a restless
woman exploring many worlds."

125Notes From the Editor: A Letter to Elana
Dear Elana,
Today is the 19th of March, ou~side a Jew flakes of snow,) almost Spring,
between Purim and Pesakh, and I am thinking about genocide, survivaL
revenge. . . . I'm remembering revenge will be the theme of one of your issues
and how happy I am for your ideas to be feeding, dressing and transforming
Sinister Wisdom . The metaphor is so maternal.
When I was visiting in February I began leafmg through the stack of old
Sinister Wisdoms piled on the chair beside your living room couch, my bed. In
1976, in the first issue, Harriet expressed her and Catherine's commitment topublish Sinister Wisdom for one year-one year-to print three issues: there isenough money and time to do this, she said, and then we'll see.
So they saw. . . for another 4 years, another 13 issues, 16 in all; and Michelle
and Adrienne gave her 2 more years, 8 more issues; and then Michaele and I,
less than a year together, two issues, and then me alone, supposedly alone
although of course I would have slit my throat without the help, advice,support too mild a word, sustenance, and labor ofIrena, Linda, Esther, Helga,
Edie, Judy, Bernice, Gloria, Beth, Fauna, Morgan, Marianne, you, Dolphin,many many others.
Working on Sinister Wisdom, I have - like any well-trained woman-mostly
focused on shortcomings: that I was not managing to find reviewers to cover
the books which needed and deserved attention; that I did not develop thevisual side of the magazine more, that I was so often behind schedule .. . . The
truth is, for four years now I've lived with the sense of being always out ofcontrol. So today, thinklng about turning this over to you, I'm flooded withrelief Relief that I never have to meet another person postcard phonecall asking
what is happening with her manuscript; never another panicked search for anelusive bio; no more Linda and me scraping the wax off the paste-up sheet witha razor and the express mail goes out in 15 minutes and will we make it; nomore massive post office trips where the line stretches out behind me into thelobby and everyone stares at me with deep hatred. Relief that I will no longer
be trying to pay the postofficeprintertypesetterbillsbillsbills . . . . . .

126

Worst is the sense of work lost through the lack of time to work with it, thereview that needed attention I never had time to give, the story with promise
but me with no time to nurture that promise. I'm reminded again of motherand child, of the mother in Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing": She knows
what that child would become if she, the mother, could do more, and she can't
I did what I could. You will do what you can.
This makes it sound grim, and like I did everything by myself Sometimes I felt
like that. I remember times of feeling overwhelmed, alone with the burden,
the responsibility; afraid, afraid of deadlines, of controversy. But the truth isalso that I was not overwhelmed, I was not alone, I didn't have to be afraid andI'm braver now.
It's four days since I started this letter. Today I feel proud. In 1976 Harriet andCatherine aimed at one year. In 1987 this magazine is still alive and thriving,and in the words of Audre Lorde, we were never meant to survive, none of us,
not us, not our children, not our magazines. She is 11 and I helped mother her
and now I pass her on, fat and kicking and I am proud of her good health. And,as children do, she taught me. I learned. I learned that the impulse to act, evento act inadequately, incorrectly, without sufficient care is still a more valuable
impulse than the drive towards safety, self-protection. I learned there is no
point in caution, though there is much point in care. I learned-not well-to
give up some control. I learned humility: I will always fuck up. It-whatever it
is-will never be perfect: I will always wish I had done more.
And I'm remembering the thrill of seeing those first blues (the exact prints ofthe magazine, but all blue; the first time you see what it will look like; the lastchance to catch errors). And the first cartons of our first issue, Sinister Wisdom25-and yesterday, when Kate drove down from the truck depot in
Burlington with 38 cartons of Sinister Wisdom 31 in her truck (because
otherwise we would have had to wait two more days, delay distribution, etc.)
Morgan and I went racing outside to cut open the first carton we would get ourhands on. And the letters, sometimes pissed off, exuberant, sometimes small
notes in the margins of subscription renewals, thanking us for our work, giving
courage, offering help.
Most wonderful was the discovery, the new writers who skyrocket out of
nowhere I know and explode first in my brain and then onto the printed page.
This is how I got addicted to publishing. This is what publishing is for. This is
why I'm keeping on with Sinister Wisdom Books, making sure, at the very least,that Gathering, Dina, Irena's Keeper ofAccounts stay in print. I learned that what
is in print takes an qbjective identity, escapes its origins, becomes something127

else and I learned to be ready for that, to welcome the transformation. I
learned the beauty of paying attention to the material side of creation, how the
work gets out: to respect the "mechanical uncreative" process.
It' s dark now and the snow has been melting all day, Spring, between Purim andPesakh, and I'm thinking again about genocide, survival, resistance . . . and therole of culture. The lesson of Amerika is strip bathe shave your head let us
see what in you is shameful let us make you ashamed. Genocide can mean
killing a people or a people's culture: let a people die or let them live stripped
and naked let them lose language history food customs songs whichlift a people teach them in their bodies they can join to make something ofbeautysomething of powersomething of changeteach them
together they- I should say, together we are something I alone was not.
And I think about the role of Sinister W isdom in this, for lesbians, isolated
lesbians, lesbians in prisons, lesbians all over the U. S. and beyond; I think ofDina and what it' s meant for Jews; I think of Beth' s Gathering, what it meant to
Native Americans in 1983 when it fIrst came out and what it still means. All
this work is about resisting assimilation, resisting the great American
whitewash. I know Sinister Wisdom is a tool for the making of culture andculture is bread, culture is roses, culture is inspiration, inspiration is the breathof resistance, resistance is how we survive who were never meant to survive.
May you survive well together.

mit khaverteshaft and much love,128

For The Record
This letter, which is true in its way (partially, like any truth), and the credits on
the inside cover, true in their way, add up to a lack of clarity. Who did what?
Division of labor on issues 27 and 28 (produced in Maine) was clear: Fauna
Yarrow put in 20-25 hours a week as office manager, sometimes friends
helped, Irena always helped, Edie Morang typeset, Helga Manning designed,
pasted, advised and consulted, I did everthing else.
With the move to Vermont, me working a full-time teaching job, Irena coediting and co-producing 29/30 every step of the way, Esther Hyneman
working as an associate editor on 29/30, Linda Vance helping out in every
conceivable capacity, from copyediting to putting down each page number byhand- and there are 336 pages-, Morgan Grey assuming control of theoffice apparatus, things changed considerably. Often it was Morgan who
picked up the loose ends; always it was Morgan who managed thesubscriptions, advertising, coordination of announcements, bookstore
accounts and orders, post office runs, distribution, xeroxing, bill paying, andmost of the sorts of work which no one thinking about" doing" a magazine
ever conceives of as a major component; the sorts of work that enable amagazine to survive.
When Morgan cut back her hours, Marianne Milton took over advertising,correspondence, post office, xeroxing, the inordinate amount of required
shlepping. A professional copyeditor, Marianne also did a fmal copyediting
and initial proofmg and, by default and good grace, served as production
manager for 31. So Marianne was now picking up the loose ends.
I should add that since I began working full-time, in 1985, I've planned to taketime off from both teaching and publishing for three months, April to June,
1987. I also planned that my final issue ofSW would be at the printers by then,but the fmal piece of wisdom I have acquired from this work is everything always
takes longer than you think. Both Marianne and Morgan have generously agreed
to stay with SW past the expected time of transfer to complete the necessary
work. Marianne is again copyediting and proofmg, Morgan is production
manager for 32, and will work till the end ofJune to facilitate the forwardingof subscriptions, mail, etc., and to fill book orders for Sinister Wisdom Books.
Kate Taylor, who began with SW as a volunteer, as did Morgan years ago in
Lincoln, Nebraska and Marianne here in Montpelier, will be helping out in a
general capacity, book packing, the famous post office runs, taking copy to129and fro everywhere it needs to be. Irena will continue working on promotion
for Sinister Wisdom Books. Finally, Linda Vance, who has already worked
with me on many of these manuscripts, has volunteered to be the final editor,
to check proofed copy, layout, artwork, the blues, and whatever needs arise, as
they always do.
That some of the required work, the less glamorous-and hardly any of it isglamorous-is paid work as it should be. No one in the SW office gets paid as
she deserves, and no one works that hard, that committed, simply for pay.
To thank each of these women for their help seems in a way presumptuous.
We, all of us, have kept Sinister Wisdom alive.

130

Contributors' Notes------Donna Allegra: Writing, dancing and African drumming are my Life's work. The
Goddess speaks to me and through me most clearly in diose languages. I work as aconstruction electrician in N ew York City.
Nancy Barickman: Born 1948, Detroit. Raised, Southern California. Living in
Santa Fe, NM. Trying to get out of hospital work and into hospice care.
Barrie Jean Borich is a poet, borp. to schoolteacher parents on the south side ofChicago in 1959. Her family is Catholic-Eastern Europeans immigrated to
midwestern U.S.A. at the turn of the century. Now Barrie lives in Minneapolis,
publicizes multi-cultural literary events, and is part of a team that writes and produces
the theatre serial Toklas MN, a lesbian soap opera.
Sandy Boucher is presently writing a book on Women and Contemporary
American Buddhism. Her new book of 'short stories, Mountain Radio, will soon be
published. She is the author of three other books: Heartwomen, A ssaults & Rituals, and
The Notebooks ofLeni Clare. "Last Year This Time" was fIrst published in Mama Bear's
New and Notes.
Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum are life partners and collaborators on amanuscript entitled "Cancer in Two Voices" from which this chapter is drawn.
Sandra has written extensively in the fIeld of child sexual abuse and is currently
completing a book of healing stories called Once Upon a Time . Barbara is fInishing 18
months of chemotherapy and is preparing for a long and healthy remission. She has
worked as a teacher, counselor, academic administrator, and editor. She is now
redefIning what's important.
Lynn Crawford is a poet and clinical social worker. She practices in San Francisco
and at the Iris Project, a multi-cultural women's drug and alcohol recovery program.
Her work has been featured previously in Sinister Wisdom #21, Broadside (A Canadian
Women 's Publication), The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and at local readings in San
Francisco and Ann Arbor, Michigan, her former home.
Lauren Crux: I live in Santa Cruz, CA and have been here for so long-21 years- I
am considered an old-timer. I always thought I would leave, but the great surf and thegood weather have been too compelling. For work I am a psychotherapist, trainer, andconsultant. For play I like all sports, particularly bodysurfIng, hiking, biking, and131

wrestling. For art I am a published photographer, writer, and poet. In idle times I sniff
roses, visit with friends, and just lie about. I am in and out of love, for the last four
years mostly in. "Waiting" was first published in Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Women
Healing the Trauma of Family Abuse, ed. Liz Raymer, published by Spinsters Ink.

Elana Dykewomon wrote this for her friend willow Winterfue who died fromcancer on January 16, 1984.
Susan Hansell is a poet/dramatist who lives and works in San Francisco withselected friends and her cat, Calypso. Susan's fust book of poems, Decisions Terminate
Panic, (which tells the story of a doomed love affair via sequential prose poems), is dueout from e.g. press in later '87/'88. Currently, she's finishing up her M.A. and also
working up the nerve to schedule a production of her theatre piece, 14 LAdies in
Hats, for performance on the S.F. stage.
LaurieJo Hoskin: I am a twenty-seven year old sober lesbian who holds an M.F.A.
in creative writing from Vermont College, is currently teaching English in Michigan,
and whose passions include Deborah, Celeste, and Rachel.
Susan Iverson lives in Davis, CA where she is currently doing massage work. Her
photographs have appeared in The Blatant Image and Common Lives/Lesbian Lives.
Tania Kravath lives and teaches in NYC and has been working in clay since 1980.
Maia: I'm 41, a single mother, working as an editor and attendant to support mywriting, artistic, and ceremonial lives, choosing to identify myself with the Cherokee
thread that runs through my heritage. Although I've been writing all my life, until
1985 when I began a collection of short stories, I thought of myself primarily as a poet;
now I am deeply committed to exploring all of fiction's rich possibilites.
Beth McDonald, 59-year-old lesbian. Teach English composition part-time forFrank Phillips Junior College of Borger, TIC. Formerly taught full-time for Louisiana
State University at Alexandria. Also substitute for the local high school, Perryton HighSchool. Have had material published in Matrix of Santa Cruz, CA (two poems) andFeminary (autobio sketch) . First prize poem in Images of High Plains, an anthology ofpoetry. Non-fiction and a poem in Focus Magazine of Pampa, TIC.
Lynn Martin is a 'graduate of Vermont College's writing program. She is currently
living on Welcome Hill in N.H. in "a studio of one's own" and works in Brattleboro,
VT. She has been published by River City Review, Kalliope, South Florida Review, LezzieFair, Andrew Mountain Press, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She has
recently had poems accepted by the Centennial Review and the Green Mountain Review.

132

About 7 years ago she submitted one of her first poems to Sinister Wisdom which was
returned with "loving criticism" at a time when encouragement was crucial, so it isespecially wonderful, she say, to be in this issue of Sinister Wisdom.

Maude Meehan has been widely published in literary journals, magazines, textbooks
and anthologies. Her book, Chipping Bone, a collection of ten years of poetry, waspublished a year ago. She has edited and published four anthologies of Santa Cruz
Women's Poetry and is co-author and editor of "Wheels of Summer" a film script.
Ms. Meehan is a political activist and frequent guest lecturer in fields related tocreativity and to women's studies. She has been conducting writing workshops for
women for several years in Santa Cruz. "Maxima Culpa" was first published in
Chipping Bone.
Marianne Milton: I live alone in Vermont and spend most of my waking hours at
Goddard College working as Coordinator of Educational Services, finishing my
M. F.A. in Creative Writing, and talking with Vicki, who has, over the past two years,
in her own way, shown me that only by valuing myself will I ever learn to fully loveother women.
Hilary Mullins grew up on a farm in Vermont and is now living " up the road apiece" in Burlington. She free-lances for local publications and works at a crisis centerfor teenagers, her self-chosen focus there being on sexual abuse survivors.
Norma Fain Pratt is an historian and playwright who lives in Southern California.
Her book Morris Hillquit: A Political Biography of an American J ewish Socialist(Greenwood Press, 1979) explores the ideals and culture of the immigrant Jewish Leftin the early twentieth century. In the 1980's, as a recipient of a National Endowment
for the Humanities Grant, Pratt did extensive work about Jewish women including
her article "Culture and Radical Politics: Yiddish Women Writers in America, 1890 1940," and a play Margolin, about the Yiddish poet Anna Margolin. Presently she isworking on two projects: a book about Yiddish women writers, New Songs in a Strange
umd, and a translations of Margolin's Lider, her collected poetry (1929) with abiographical introduction. "Scared: Inherited Traits" was first published in Studies in
AmericanJewish Literature, State University of New York Press, Albany, No.5, 1986,
pp. 151-157.
Pamela Pratt: I live and work in New York City, But my heart is in London.
Writing has been both a necessity and a pleasure for me since early childhood. It is theway in which I learn about and connect with the rest of the world.

133

Diana Rivers: I'm a 55-year-old ex-New York artist/writer living in the I ills of
Arkansas on women's land, in a house all built by all women's hands, includinl> myown. I have been writing short stories of our lives for the past 10-12 years. They hav~
appeared in magazines such as Conditions, Feminary, Sinister Wisdom, etc. This spring(1987) Lace Publications is publishing my full length lesbian, visionary, fantasy,adventure, story Journey to Ze/indar.
Rose Romano: Most recently my work has appeared in Earth's Daughters, Rebirth oj
Artemis, Poetessa, and Sinister Wisdom 31. I'm especially happy to have in Common Livesa review of the novel about Italian-American lesbians. Italian-American lesbians areoften ignored and misunderstood by the community, and I hope to help change thissituation by contributing more in the future to our small but growing literature.
Teya Schaffer is involved, along with her lover and other women of the California
Bay Area, in the creation of the Women's Cancer Resource Center. Designed for
women who have/ had cancer and their friends, and families, the center will offer
information and referrals, counseling and support. For more information or to send adonation, write WCRC, P.O. Boxx 11235, Oakland, CA 94611.
Patricia Roth Schwartz is a psychotherapist in private practice in Somerville, MA
working from a holistic and feminist perspective. As part of her graduate training, she
served as a counseling intern on a pediatric ward with terminally ill children,
adolescents, and their families. She is also a writer, publishing poetry, fiction,
reviews, and nonfiction in feminist and small press journals.
Vickie L. Sears lives in Seattle, WA. She is a writer, teacher, and feminist therapist.
Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Calyx, Backbone, Ikon,
Gathering Ground: New Writing and Art by North West Women oj Color, The Things That
Divide Us: Stories by Women, and Hear the Silence: Stories by Women oj Myth, Magic andRenewaL
Susan Stinson is a fat dyke, raised in Colorado, and now writing and working as asecretary in Boston.
Amber Coverdale Sumrall is currently at work on her first edible poem about thekiwi. Her work has appeared in Ikon, With the Power oj Each Breath, A Gathering oj
Spirit, The Greenfield Review. She teaches workshops on disability issues and lives in the
Santa Cruz Mountains. "Questions" was first published in Toward Solomon's Mountain:
the Experience oj Disability in Poetry, eds. J. Baird and Deborah Workman, Temple
University Press, 1986.

134

Judith Waterman: This work is part of a thematic series of paintings on death begun
following the suicide of my lover.
Chocolate Waters has published three collections of poetry, short stories, andrubber stamp cartoons: To the Man Reporter From the Denver Post, Take Me Like a
Photograph, and Charting New Waters. A fourth collection, T1Je Coming Out of
Chocolate Waters: I was a Closet Woman, is looking for a publisher. She lives and writes
in New York City.
jillian wilkowski lives in San Francisco.

Correction of Contributor's Note in #31: Margie Erhart, whose story "TheUnforgiven" appeared in our last issue, has a novel coming out in the fall with E.P.
Dutton. Look for it around November. The title is Unusual Company, and the author
has become a Margaret.

135

Announcements - - - - - Do you have any thrilling stories about travelling abroad? Submissions are being
accepted for an anthology on women travellers. Please write POB 14757, San
Francisco, CA 94114, for writing guidelines.
National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights scheduled forOct. 11, 1987. For more info, contact POB 7781, Washington, DC 20044; 202-7831828 or 783-1830.
Anthology on Lesbian Coupling: seeking non-fictional essays, poems, cartoons,drawings, and songs from lesbians about the committed coupling experience. Contact
Lynn Scott and Pam White, Box 506, Millers Fails, MA 01349.
Feminist Women's Writing Workshop, July 12-24, 1987. Contact Kathryn
Machan Aal, Director, Feminist Women's Writing Workshops, POB 456, Ithaca, NY
14851: 607-273-9040.
Flight of the Mind, 4th annual summer writing workshop for women, July 26Aug. 4. For info, SASE to Flight of the Mind, 622 SE 28th, Portland, OR 97214.
The West Coast Lesbian Collections is proud to announce that it is re-opening at
a new location and under new sponsorship, continuing its service to the preservationof lesbian history and culture. The change is accompanied by a re-narning andrenewed commitment to the future oflesbian archiving. N ow named the June Mazer
Lesbian Collections in honor of J une Mazer, a pioneering LA lesbian activist andaffiliated with Connexxus, a social service agency in W . Hollywood serving thelesbian community. JMLC, 3721 N. Raymond Ave., Altadena, CA 94001; 818-7914561.
Reclaiming A Past: A documentary with Sophie andJudy Sloan, recounts thecreation of the character and script development for Sophie, Sloan's brilliant portrayalof an elder Jewish woman. Video available from Ladyslipper, POB 3130, Durham,
NC 27705.
The National Women's Studies Association 9th Annual Conference "Weaving
Women's Colors: A Decade of Empowerment" at Spelman College in Atlanta,
GA, June 24-28, 1987, will explore issues related to the intersection of race andgender. For more info, contact: NWSA '87. Emory University, POB 21223, Atlanta,
GA 30322; 404-727-7845.

136

out here flying by Jan Hardy-out, proud lesbian poetry to inspire, arouse andcheer. $3.95 + $1.50 postage and handling to Jan Hardy, Sidewalk Revolution Press,
POB 9062, Pittsburgh, PA 15224.
Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors: We meet for support andnetworking and welcome contact from other Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust
Survivors. A partners group has also been formed for women who are in relationships
with JLDHS. Membership is not dependent on both partners. Write Box 6194,
Boston, MA 02114 or call 617-321-4254.
Seeking lesbian mothers and their children who might be interested in being
interviewed about the lesbian family for a forthcoming book. Especially interested intalking with children 12 and older about what it is like to be raised in a lesbian family.
The mother need not be in a relationship. Write: Christine Ratzel, POB 267,
Amherst, MA 01004.
Class and Classism: 3 lesbians from different classes interested in presenting aperformed anthology are looking for submissions of taped, written, sung, performed,
or photographed material about how class/ism has and is affecting you and your life.
We are committed to a multi-classical, racial and cultural exchange. Contact:
Christine Ratzel, POB 267, Amherst, MA 01004.
Looking for 10-12 women to form women's cooperative business growing
jojoba in Calif, or Ariz. Contact Mariann Soulek, 1444 N. Jones, Las Vegas, NV
89108; 702-646-0538.
There's No Place Like Home: writer seeks contributors for anthology by andabout women (esp. lesbians!) who grew up in environments other than their" natural"
homes, i.e., foster homes, adoptive homes, group homes, institutions, etc.
Confidentiality guaranteed. Submit writing and bio to: Robyn Weissman, POB
20885, Baltimore, MD 21209. Let's share experiences!
Cross-Cultural Health Seminars & Fitness Adventures, Yelapa-Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico. Internship in traditional healing: women's health, and rural health.
Certification and CEUs for nurses. Brochure: Center for Traditional Medicine, POB
1526, Cambridge, MA 02238; 617-489-3806, V/TrY.
The Freedom Organizing Pamphlet Series makes available in a highly accessible
format, political analysis by women of color who are working at the forefront ofliberation movements all over the globe: #1 The Combahee River Collective Statement:
Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties, with a new Foreword by Barbara
Smith, $3.25 paper, 24 pages. #2 Apartheid U.S.A. by Audre Lorde and Our Common

137Enemy, Our Common Cal~se: Freedom Organizing in the Eighties, by Merle Woo, $3.30
paper, 28 pages. #3 I am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities, by
Audre Lorde, $2.95 paper, 12 pages. New York State residents add applicable sales tax
to your orders. please include $1 for postage and handling for the first pamphlet and350: for each additional pamphlet. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, POB 908,
Latham, NY 12110.

The Alternative Gallery, an Archive of Libertarian/ Alternative Culture and Social
Ecology, PO Box 20037, GR-11810 Athens, Greece, wants to complete theircollection of Sinister Wisdom. They are missing issues #1-6 and 8-18. If you havecopies that you would be willing to donate, write to them.

Mountain Momma Packing and Riding Co: Horse and burro pack trips in thehigh desert mountains of New Mexico. Trips available from March to October. Write
Harpy, Rt. 1 Box 23, Chimayo, NM 87522. 505-351-4047.

Our Eyes Have Found You: Angry Words from Honest Women. Submissions
wanted for an anthology that will provide a creative and constructive expression ofanger as we use it to heal from acts of physical, sexual, emotional, or mental abuse. We
can actively shape ways to express our anger that foster growth and change. Our Eyes
Have Found You will help create a language that reflects our experiences andprovide a way to hold prepetrators of violence responsible. Righteous anger protects
our boundaries, fortifIes our resistance and heals our wounds. Send poems, shortstories, plays, journal entries along with a SASE to Celine-Marie Pascale, POB 2959,
Santa Cruz, CA 95063. Deadline: Sept. 1987.

138

COMMON LIVESLESBIAN LIVESa lesbian quarterly

Stories, journals, graphics, essays, humor, poetry,autobiography, and more . ..
The experiences and ideas of common Lesbians.
We print the work of Lesbians who have been
kept invisible and silent.
COMMON LIVES

Single issue: $4.00
Oneyear: $12.00

P.O. Box 1553
Iowa City, IA 52244• Do You Need Facts About Menopause?
• Does the Stereotyping of Older Women Make You Angry?
• Do You want to be Part of an Older Feminists' Network?

BROOMSTICKa Bimonthly National Magazine
by.jor. and about Women Over Forty
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139

RADICAL TEACHER• "Radical Teacher's activist perspective confronts the real issues of classroom andcommunity .. . A practical and valuable journal, based on solid research and theory."
The Guardian• Previous issues on: Back-to-Basics, Lesbian and Gay Studies, Health Sciences Education, The Politics of Literacy, Mass Culture, Black Women's Studies, Marxist
Teaching, Feminist Pedagogy• Radical Teacher is an independent socialist and feminist magazine that focuses on
three critical areas: the politics of teaching; the political economy of education;
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~ SINISTER WISDOM BOOKS POB 1308, Montpelier, VT 05602

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AccountS" .. .increments of survival as a Jew,
Holocaust survivor, lesbian, woman attempting to make a living. "-Barbara Baracks, Womanews

I"I have never read a better sequence
about political prisoners ... "-Marge Piercy, American Book Review"Such poetry can alter human history."-Joan Nestle, Off Our Backs
One of the great Jewish books of this lifetime by a founding editorof Conditions magazine, a leading voice in the lesbian , feminist, andJewish communities .
ISBN 0-930436-17-2
1982. 97 pp. $5.95

A GATHERING OF SPIRITSECOND EDITION NEW EXPANDEDA GATHERING OF SPIRIT
Writing and Art by North American
Indian Women
Edited by Beth Brant
Wriring and Art by North American" This book is proof that love canbe made visible ."-Alice Walker

Indian Women
Edited by Beth Brant" There is a tremendous amount of writing in A GATHERING OFSPIRIT to be savored qnd enjoyed . Read this co llection ."-Maurice Kenny, Akwesasne Notes
Work by 62 Womenfrom 40 North American Nations
1984. 240 pp. $7.95

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THE TRIBE OF DINA:A JEWISH WOMEN'S ANTHOLOGYEDITED BY: MELANIE KAYE/KANTROWITZIRENA KLEPFISZFICTION· ESSAYS ·ART· POETRY· PHOTOGRAPHS· TRANSLATIONS• INTERVIEWS WITH ISRAELI PEACE, CIVIL RIGHTS, FEMINISTACTIVISTS· BOBE MAYSES • SECULAR JEWISH IDENTITY· BECOMING A RABBI· GROWING UP IN ARGENTINA,' CHINA· SEPHARDIC
IDENTITY· SURVIVING THE HOLOCAUST· ANTI-SEMITISM & RACISM• JEWISH LESBIANS • RADICAL JEWISH WOMEN'S HISTORY·YIDDISHKAYT'JUDAISM & FEMINISM-JEWISH FOOD -ISBN 0-931103-02-9 • 1986336 pp. $9.95 • Adrl $1.25/postage

Sinister Wisdom, Issue #33
In the eleventh year, time to take stock:
An issue on Wisdom

How do we express the wisdom we've come to have, the wisdoms we still seek?
How do we name what we've accomplished, how do we give ourselves credit?
What's made us cynical, skeptical? What gives us the courage to risk , to try
new ways? Where are our sources? How has wisdom been passed on to us?
What's stayed through time - from family, other womyn , from what we've
read, .from experience? How do we use what we've learned to keep growing?
Or do we use it to make peace in the place that we've stopped? Can we recognize
stages or cycles in our lives? Is knowledge wisdom? How do we use systemsof knowledge: astrology, politics, sp.irituality, sociology, technology? How do
we learn to be wrong, to make and learn from our mistakes? How does outsider status (lesbianism, class, race, ethnicity, age, ability, size) shape (\ur viSions, and how do we account for that? How do we know what we know and how do we pass it on?

Issue #34: Science fiction and lesbian visions
Deadline: September 1, 1987

142

finifTER wifDom
Current & Back Issues:(partial list of contents)#31/Special Focus on Sex and Fiction, Coming out in the South, Found
Goddesses, Waitin, Bobe Mayse, Sex and Socialist Feminism.
• Smukler Blackwomon Romano Davenport Dykewomon McNaron •#29/30/The Tribe of Dina: AJewish Women's Anthology, edited by Melanie
Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisc#28/Special Focus on Women & Work; Body Image, Size & Eating, Aging,
Comedy about Outlaw Lesbian Communities, Courage, PC/PI, Letter about SW #26• Clarke Heather Klepfisz Sturgis Gould Boucher Dykewomon Gomez Sardella Moran •#27/Special Focus on Girlhood Sexuality and Violence, Office Work, Navy
Dykes, Feminism & Snobbery, White Trash, Passion, Poetry/Performance, Womenof Color/women in Israel/women in Lebanon, Ed. Statement on SW #26.
• Adnan Felman Calvert Grahn Schalet Bogus HaMa' avak Touch Quintanales Anzaldu' a •#26/Special Issue: full length book, To Go To Berbir by Jill Drew, a journal written by
an American nurse who worked in Beirut in 1982 during the Israeli invasion.
#25/Butch/Fem in the 50's, Women's Peace Encampments, Erotic Satire, Native
American Roots of White Feminism, Welfare Motherhood, Palestinian, Haitian,Puerto Rican struggles, Jewish Radical Identity, Sexuality, SciFi• Allen Cotrell Root Stecenko Love Paz Smukler Hall Lipstadt Brant •#24/Violence Against Women & Resistance, AlcohoL Fighting Racism, Leaving
Husbands, Black Lesbians, White Working Class Identity, Censorship, Dyke
Culture, Jewish Identity• Harjo Derricotte Nestle Lynch Sylvester Pratt Moirai Parkerson.

#21/Separatism Revisited, Jewish Surival & Defiance, Blach Lesbian Writing,
Photographs of Dykes in Drag, Suicide, Bars, Letters about Anti-Semitism• Klepfisz Arobateau Segrest Simpson Tornes Addison justice Foley Crawford Wagstaff •#20/Lesbians Getting Fired, Madness & Incarceration, Class Pain, Mirros, Fat, Dykes
in the Army, Japanese-American & Jewish Lesbians, Dyke Buddies• Allegro Nestle zana Herstein De Araujo Moran Courtot •#19/Vulnerability & Power, Anti-semitism, Sobering Up, Coming Out, Scars,
Halfbreeds, Mothers & Sisters, Black Student/White College• Deming Gordon Miriam Smith Stevens Pe' rez-Trevino Bickston Hoagland Gertler Katz •143

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NEW ADDRESS: SINISTER WISDOM Magazine • P.O.
BOX 3252 • BERKELEY, CA 94703
SAME ADDRESS: SINISTER WISDOM Books. P.O. BOX
1308. MONTPELIER, VT 05602

Special issue on:
DEATH

HEALINGMOURNING

DEATH

the fortune teller. the disappeared. bordercrossing. poem for a goodbye
never spoken. witness. hunting season. scared: inherited traits.
mercy.

the perils of pauline.

ILLNESSHEALING

excerpts from hospital journal •DEATHa ringing in my ears. on father' s death.

MOURNING

maxima culpa • release.

eulogy in three parts. from my journal: the night that willow died. fromfour beginnings from a novel never written. " miss" alma.

HEALINGMOURNING

heart attack

ILLNESSquestions • the wolf. sergi's surgery • last year this time •cancer in two voices. as if the sun. I ,II,III. foldings. you watch for me.

MOURNING

DEATH

HEALINGjust" that would be enough. belly song. eagle woman. waiting.
ceremony. a mother's journey into loss. the haircut. ruth.

and MORE

SW 32$4.75