Magnets of Faith and Knowing

If my mind truly is broke, at least I’m the only one
holding the pieces. That’s a rare claim around here,
owning something outright. My own people never
seen it for real, so all they can do now is walk around
the fact of me like a pack of wild dogs barking at
a boxed-up turtle, not knowing whether to shout
or go blind in the terrible newness of it all. Excuse
the truth, but those pieces are mine and not one a’
them’s allowed near. Might get cut and they know it.
Had their chance to play is what I’m humming as I
sling those pieces like razor dominoes. Used to,
I would have been extra careful, about them first,
of course, but the world is surely changed. If it
hadn’t changed, I’d have to laugh outright, watching
‘em suffer in their confusion. But it has changed,
so I don’t. I work my pieces.

On a good day it’s like suddenly being able to play
that fifty-cent piano lesson half-learnt in the neighbor’s
house and finally getting it right. The curtains open up
like a big red flower and everybody claps and there you are,
but it’s your own house and everybody’s clean and no one’s
shaming your hands that can barely rise above the keys
as you stare at the dimes stacked level with your nose,
knowing that’s either food for eight or a whipping
earned for not learning and you can’t even breathe,
so how could you possibly play?

Now it’s fifty times right for every time wrong,
is what should finally balance me out, I figure,
but there’s always the starting over at the first
sour note and some days I do get stuck, some
off-key piece won’t work no matter how hard
I pound it. Can’t help them days. Other times
I’m halfway home before the bell rings, playing
loud as I want, loud as I can. Then soft, softer than
my hands could ever dream, softer than the teacher’s
dress that I ached to lean against. So soft she has to close
her eyes to catch it and it’s so pretty and soft that she forgets
to slide the dimes into her pocket. Considers herself paid in pretty.

It’s funny what you do come up with, though,
just playing. Right pretty designs, sometimes.
Other times it’s downright awful stuff that makes
you scatter them pieces quick, look out the window
and swear off your grief-grubbing forever. But it’s
just broken pieces of memory glass on a fat lady’s lap,
ain’t nothing special going on. Throw ‘em in the air
if I want to, catch ‘em if I care to. Don’t matter.
They always come back. Can’t help it. They are mine.

#

The world-changing started for a fact with
Verdell, Jr. soon as they got me inside and settled.
Not two minutes after the funeral, the house crawling
with people I ain’t seen in years, and that child is out there
racing back and forth on the ride-around mower his daddy
parts-built. There’s a proud one, I thought as I watched him
through my side window. Staring straight ahead and grinning
like a blessed fool, he revved it for the hill, roared it under my
window, then spun in circles around the only stick tree in that
burned-out yard. Now who in their right mind would go and
mow the yard two minutes after burying a sister? And still
in their church clothes? Probably hoping for a quarter,
that one. Give ‘em all fifty cents to go away for good,
I thought as I looked around at what death’s
home cooking had brought to my door.

Oh, you stupid grass, I sighed, the nerve to grow
where nothing else grows. Stupid child, I moaned,
so the Devil wouldn’t hear, making me to smell
the wicked cut of life when I’m striving for emptiness.
Stupid me for plopping out his daddy when I had said
no more after six. Stupid how it goes on and on and when
does it end? When can one of us count to more than twenty
and not feel like a genius was what I wanted to know.

I was squeezing my armrests and rocking fast as I could
when that junked-up machine ran over the hose pipe
and exploded right under my window. And the cat…
Good God! Attacks the walls of the house, the ceiling!
People are throwing plates of food in the air and screaming
like a bomb done gone off. Then the beast drops on me
and I’m caught, done for, pushed over the edge
by stupidity, animals, and di—rect pain.

An ungodly sound flew out of me as I pulled that monster
off my neck and moved myself to the bathroom—for I was
always parked a straight shot in front of it. Hadn’t been alone
on my feet for over thirteen years and there I was, walking,
if you could call it that. More like should have dropped like
the bloated sack of fat I was, but the crazy rage of a death
gone wrong had me by the neck and wouldn’t let go.

I slammed the bathroom door behind me, grabbed hold
of the sink with one hand and clawed through the medicine
cabinet with the other, looking for ear-cotton, and Lord,
the relief once I twisted it in. But it weren’t enough for
my trouble, and lately trouble had been hitting faster than
I could rock, what with Wayne in prison, Aileen buried today,
Lucy long dead, and now Henry starting up wheezing.

Feeling my legs about to go, I cried “Mercy!”
At that very moment I found me some open Vaseline
to swab that cotton in to better seal up my ears.
“Thank you Jesus,” I whispered as I grabbed my
side rails just in time. Then, by releasing my fingers
like the airbrakes on Henry’s truck when he’s holding a hill
—inch at a time, inch at a time—I hiked up my skirts, lowered
myself directly onto the commode and made use of it.
Of all the prideful things that I cannot afford in this life,
a wasted trip to the washroom surely tops the list.

That’s when I saw the penny.

Stuck half-under the baseboard near my foot,
my old penny-hunger flared right up. I groaned
with frustration and shot my arm out, but didn’t even
come close. Worked on it with my shoe, but only managed
to shove it in tighter. Damn, I thought, if ever there was a time
to get me a penny this was it, for the feel of a found penny
always calmed me good. But here was only more proof
of my predicament.

Now, pennies are familiar, but when you’re surrounded
by filth and nonsense like I was, a penny shines bright.
Bright and quiet. Waiting to be found or not. Don’t care,
just is. Like I never was allowed, always pushed and pulled
and Queen-bee’d to death by Them. That’s why I wanted it.
A nickel one of the babies would gobble up fast as a goose.
Dime? Quarter? Grown men gone crazy, fighting like birds
over a piece of string. But a penny lies flat and brown.
Takes dirt on its face, says, Okay. Takes feet, says, Thank you.
Takes it all and never speaks up. Guess ol’ Abe done bit
his tongue so many times he just give up on talking,
like I was about to. But I heard him just fine.
And the fact that I could not have this one
damn near killed me.

I toed the penny’s edge as I sat, looking in the mirror
glued on the wall, licking my fingers and wiping the blood
spots off my neck. Then folks started knocking on the door,
asking politely Was I okay. I knew they only wanted to use
the facilities, but figured if I could hear that I still weren’t
safe. My eyes started flinching, looking around on their own.
Panicky. Finally lit on an old pair of Henry’s shootin’ plugs
on the toothbrush holder where the soap should a’ been.

That nasty habit of his might have finally paid off for me,
I thought as I pulled up, leaned forward and caught myself
on that poor old sink near ready to pop off the wall from its
years of double duty. Doused them plugs with peroxide right
where they was and watched the filth boil out as I counted my
seconds. Then, by switching hands real quick as I straight-armed
the sink—thump, thump—I worked the plugs in, squeezed back
onto the commode and stared at the ceiling cracks as the world
slowly faded to the great beyond. Finally twinked away, I thought,
flicking my fingers and hearing nothing. The real deal, these.
Can’t be nothing better.

I pushed the plugs in deeper and shuddered as a tickle
shot down my spine. And then, for some reason I’ll
never understand, I started thinking about old times
—or old times started thinking about me—until out of
nowhere I caught a vision of us gone to the grocery store,
me shuffling down the aisle with my fake, taped-up
leather pocketbook weighed down with whispering Abes.
Only this time I knew why people was looking at me
and Henry and the kids. Sitting in that tiny bathroom,
squeezed between two linoleum-patched walls
with the pattern rubbed slick off both sides again,
knowing the floor might give out at any minute but
too tired to care, I also knew what they was thinking.
How could he? Why would they? But fat, stupid me,
I had held my head high, thinking this, that, or the other
child you’re staring at in disbelief just might be the great,
great…oh, many greats grandfather of the final, fat-assed
redneck child. And that child will someday put his stupid
lucky hands on the giant pretty wheel, spin it just right
and win the million dollar prize for all mankind—
saving this world from all horrible death,
somehow, in the bargain.

Such was my dream.

But in the meantime—and knowing our blood was bad—
I dropped child after child into the litter box of life.
“There a whore, here a thief, there an idiot. Don’t know
what that one’ll be, but go ‘head on, Mr. Devil, take your pick.
Take ‘em all, I guess. There’s always more. We’re a lucky family,”
I muttered as I shook my head at my old self. Lucky that outright
retardation hadn’t attacked us in holy vengeance, is more like it,
I thought anew, for them Bible stories had nothing on that old house.
By the age of seven I had seen and heard the coming and the going
and all the in-between. Even guessed-out half the truly hidden stuff
as well. Weren’t pretty to hear then, and there’ll be no telling of it now.
What’s done in the barn stays in the barn, is all I’m saying.

Shameful lot all.

But they can’t disappoint you, I realized with a guilty sigh.
You knew what you was making, no matter what your dream.
One a’ them wasn’t gonna come out waving no fat daddy-check
and taking ya’ll to some fancy Florida, you most certainly must
have known that. Must be life itself that needs ‘em, then, to fill
some dark hole or such so the good folks don’t have to touch dark,
can just walk on by and never even guess at what’s looking up at ‘em.
But I don’t need to hide from dark. I have touched it plenty.
I shivered hard to shake loose any old memory’s grip that even
thought of climbing out and eased on back into the silence.

Like seeks like sure as man is born to trouble, it came to me
at the top of a yawn as I stretched my unaccustomed backbone.
Never seen a dog hopping a turkey, I added, and almost smiled,
feeling a bit of the blame lift from my shoulders. So we find each
other, it can’t be helped, and are generally safer for the finding,
I thought, nodding my head with the forgiveness you allow yourself
when times are hard. And generally’s pretty good, considering.
I reached for the healing plant—my old touch-comfort—and slid
my fingers up each long arm in turn, pulling off the dust, wiping
the many mouths. The better to breathe, my darling, I thought.
The better to sing, for you, my sweet, are the last living thing
I dare to touch with love.

Then I pinched a leaf and did my cuts.

But as the smugness of my satisfaction wrapped
around my mind, I tripped over the true ugliness
of that word, smug, and knew it for the sin it was.
For suddenly I saw my people like I was having
an early-morning dream in color—an endless
swarm of pig-like creatures crawling through
the mud between the factory and the kitchen,
the used-parts stores and the Nearly New,
picking up what trash and government cheese
they could find to patch their lives together until
it all became the one, the ever-lasting dreadful day,
and how one silly pig trying to escape the pig-sand
was pulled down by the stupid, stomping feet
of the others and buried for good.

I turned to the mirror to blot out that horrible image,
but when I saw my own tiny eyes half-buried under
sweaty layers of fat I understood the personal truth
of my vision and how it came to be. How one day,
between pushing the wolf’s nose out the window
with one hand and putting the big pot in the little pot
with the other, somehow managing to light a fire under
it all and even give it a stir now and then—how one day,
between baby-this and baby-that and God a’mercy kick
the dog out the kitchen with one foot and rattle the stove
with the other—how, on one thoroughly average day,
your whole life takes that final hit that changes everything
and nothing because it’s your whole life being shifted
and way over in the far corner where no one ever looks
or cleans the little trick-peg slips down the little trick-hole
and before you know it you’re tail-nailed again, hunkered
down and going in circles, still wanting better but not able
to touch it, barely even think it.

Certainly not make it.

For me it was bearing the nightly burden of little Henry Pratt
climbing Mount Lurleen for thirty-seven years—pushing, crawling,
crab-desperate to get somewhere—as I lay there, sorting laundry
in my mind, figuring bills, listening to the already kids screaming
for dinner and yes, finally, I was done. A mind like mine must
have comfort, I decided at that moment, for look at where
suffering has landed me.

#

‘Used to be alive.’

Nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard that,
even though I felt, more than heard, the words,
which made it worse, for there was a touch to it
that I did not care for, like a little red snake had
uncurled itself in whatever warmth I was making
with my visions and slipped its way through the grey
at my feet to rub against my leg as I sat, disappearing
in the quiet so deep I wasn’t sure I could feel my own fingers.
I touched my mouth—still closed—surprised at the sadness
of the hurt that shot through me after the shock of the words wore off.

‘All of you, Lurleen,’ the voice whispered like an ugly gossip,
lifting my chin, forcing me to listen. I shook free, grabbed my rails
and strained to see around the wall, half expecting one of Them
to be standing there, grinning and pointing me out to the Devil.

“Well, if I did, I got nothing to show for it ‘cept Them!” I hollered,
waving my hands in front of me, trying to break up the cloud
of memories the voice was riding on.

‘You had powerful thoughts and feelings about better, Lurleen.
Kept your mind above the roof and rent,’ the voice continued
like the smoothest rumor. ‘Had powerful sufferings, but you
took it straight on, Lurleen. Never ran from, never ran to,
but stood in the presence and received your blessing.
You were planted deep, Lurleen …’

Rocked to a sleepy peace by the hearing of my name
over and over—by the fact that someone or something
was actually talking to me—I side-stepped the voice
on some skinny bridge and walked straight into the land
of dreams where I saw myself before the true troubles
had hit. I cried out and tried to run forward, but something
cut, I tell you, and I could not go there. I lowered my face
to my hands in a belly-wash of sadness and squeezed
my eyes, striving for the dullness my ears had found,
but brilliant flashes of my old life splashed across
the black like a crazy chopped-up movie running
double-fast. Ghostly children running through
the house and squawks of wild laughter all walled up
with piano tinklings and tears swirled across my eyes
with the hidden screams of doors slamming and animals
bleeding, birthing into the eternity of us kids running
and running till crazy with laughter and tumbling onto
the grass like shaking candy at the sky. But also one far cat
moaning low, mouth near the ground, and small hands
shaping the air above the rough dirt mound of one rag doll
with one rag dress buried at sunset in memory of the unspoken
bundle under the midnight rocks and later, clothes snapping
on the line and a bigger me on my knees with my hands
deep in the summer garden, focused and solid and true.
And food! Huge plates of food of my own making!

“I did, I surely did. I remember! What happened, Lord?
Where did it go?” I moaned, no longer wanting to stop
whatever was happening for there was a powerful
sweetness to the pain.

‘… and the whole house sang and you called the tune
until all your plans and hard work were slowly pushed
into the muddy river of stupidity by Them, Lurleen,
that constant hair on the tongue of your grace
that you will never spit out, Lurleen, never.’

Finished, the voice stood back and faded like the man
I had seen walking under the last streetlight on his way
out of town as Daddy and us older kids slowly drove past
from seeing Mama off at the hospital. Never forgot that empty,
stricken face looking straight into the darkness and how I wanted
so badly to reach out and touch him that I had to sit on my hands
—and the sudden, uncontrollable hunger that flooded my mind.

“So I sat and sat and grew fat,” I whispered through my fingers,
“and wanted no more bad to happen. To me.”

I felt the presence of squalid damnation as the walls
squeezed tighter and the floor jerked hard and the bulb
rattled and flashed above my head. But as I kicked my feet
above the ground and struggled to rise, I was filled with
an indignation that brought my head up quick.

“I said it!” I cried out. “I done confessed my sin!
Ain’t that what you tell us to do, Lord? Can’t help if it’s
the Devil got me first!” I shouted, searching the air above me
for some twist or thickening of forgiveness. “I couldn’t stand
to be alive like that no more. I know I done turned rotten
inside but it’s better this way! Lucy’s gone, damnit!
Aileen just, the whole world knows Wayne’s in prison
and what for, and now Henry’s going down quick.
Ain’t no cotton for that, Lord!”

I leaned forward the best I could and sobbed like a baby
as the demons of pain and disappointment fled my heaving
body, leaving me balanced inside, is all I can think to call it
—then I closed that door for good. After a time, I dried my tears,
shanked my hair down over my ears to hide my plugs and slowly
moved myself back out amongst Them. From the way they stopped
chewing and stared you’d think they was watching Lazarus jitter-
bugging with a monkey. I wouldn’t know, though I felt a lightness
such as I never felt before. They fell back like wheat in the wind
as I walked straight up to my special-made chair and began
my new life. Ain’t heard nor spoke a word since. Now, if that’s
a broke mind then so be it. Broke mind don’t mean but one thing
to me and that’s blessed peace as the world slips through,
tasting like Eternity. Tasting good.

#

The others come around on special days,
their tongues pushing dark air back and forth
above the endless parade of mouthing, red-faced
babies. I hold the creatures, when offered, smell
the fresh-cut ginger of their bodies, run my hands
over their butter-smooth skin and pretend to smile.
But secretly I’m feeling for the source of the curse
—be it heat or lump—so I can learn it with my hands
and squeeze it out, this ongoingness of stupidity.
I lift them till we’re touching noses and wait
for their eyes to open wide. Then I go inside
and pray for the barren womb, the twisted
and meager seed. And don’t come out
‘till their breath blows cold.

When they’ve gone to bed I sneak with my eyes.
Down the hallway, there, under the flower table,
a little brown floor-face shining up. I’ll wait hours,
if need be, then heave up and push off. Quick like.
Another to hide, to slide in. Won’t tell you where.
Like seeks like in the dark. Makes like in the dark.
Magnets of faith and knowing, they are, these
seven penny years I’ve rocked, and don’t you
tell me it’s time to start counting. Don’t you
tell me nothing. They are mine.