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"Reading Material"
In the heart of the lightening belt, enamored
of humidity—the wet ruin it makes of everything—
my sister reads to the head-injured who can only
blink or nod. Her goal is consistent response.
When I ask what she reads, she will not tell.
My sister, being my sister, just laughs. Laughs until
I laugh too. In the early days, daily laughter
a memory I did not remember, the familiar form
of recipes calmed my breathing. Bee balm salad.
What to do with wild plums in season. News was then
and remains a risk. Even when old: The November 1964
Farmington Valley Herald weekly my mother sends
because it contains notice my sister's second grade
class is going on a field trip. (My mother
knows I will save anything anybody else has saved
that many years.) But buried in the police
report. Buried after the reports of drivers failing
to maintain reasonable distance apart, buried
after the reports of drivers operating without mudflaps,
I find a young girl kept in a tobacco shed six days
she was missing from her home. Turning from the page,
I cannot turn from her, from the light streaking in
between those dark, weathered board, fracturing,
splintering upon reaching the dried blood, earth
marking the slender, golden length of her. I find
in her eyes what I found in the eyes of my own mirror.
Until I just plain stopped looking. I could not
stand what was there, not there. What I still have
no language to describe. Reaching for contemporary
distraction, I read in Texas of interest in investing
in functional clay. I don't know what functional
clay means, but I love the sound of it in my mouth. But
above the fold on Page 1, begins a story we know: Men
with eyes of sharks, wiped fingerprints, slipped
away, the Associated Press reports, leaving hostages
to stumble newly blind, emerging trembling into
desert morning darkness from a prison of fear
they will carry now with them. I remember this. This
forgetting of ways to move. What was left
of that night, I could only crawl. We could talk here
of loss. We might incorporate a discussion
of deconstructivist architecture. The irreconcilable.
The deranged. The deformed. The tilted. The warped.
The unsettling. Sabotaged notions of stability.
Contorted interiors reflecting the disquiet
of our world. Designed to cause pain. Keeping me pinned
to my own floor required somehow only three limbs.
One hand was free for what he wanted. Please, I said.
Please. I could not say that word again for a long
time without immediate need of those good pills. But
I can say that word now and still get some sleep
the same night. Some small things are returned to us
given enough time and careful care. For example, when
Barbara Louise gave me chamomile soap, I remained
longer then, under water. But, 1,572 days later, when
I man with truly wonderful hair who reads
about parrots in the wild and other interesting things
says—from an appropriate distance—could I
have a birthday hug. I say, No. Move sideways. Away.
Barbara also gave me clear pink rose-perfumed soap.
The rose you know is in the peace family. I have
a wonderful recipe for peach ice cream.
—Frances Driscoll
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