Bleeding, Still Bleeding

In the dream, I’m pregnant, so we drive to the city, circle the block three times before we find the building behind the buildings, bland office with security door, buzzer, intercom demanding my name and appointment time. No protesters. He holds my hand longer than he ever has. Other women grip bags with robes tucked inside, whisper to their drivers—aunts, sisters, roommates, all groggy, annoyed by this inconvenient abortion. Panoramic pictures span the waiting room walls—Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami: This is where you’ll go without your unwanted children.

In the dream, I have to confess to the counselor that I’ve been to the clinic before, in the spring, when my husband promised he’d get a vasectomy. Six months later, I’ve bought the peas and briefs, and am doing my part for our family. We have three children already, can’t afford another or two or more. And I can’t do this again. Or again. I crawl into the paper gown, my own robe and socks, pull myself up to the mirror over the sink and say I’m doing this to be a better mother to the three of you.

In the dream, the women are all single. One has a thirteen-year-old with Downs Syndrome. Another is sixteen, rail thin. Her mother is waiting. They haven’t told her father—a minister—who thinks they’re on a shopping spree, bonding over belts and shoes. A woman my age—mid-forties—says this was a menopausal surprise. She has raised three kids already. Her ex doesn’t believe this one is his. Her divorce was final last week. One woman, tattoo of stars on her neck, holds a rosary and says God forgives people who ask and repent. I’ll repent for the rest of my life.

In the dream, I fall asleep to the cold creeping up my arm like a spider, the elderly nurse, her lips lined like a web, counts back from ten. I wake, recovered, thick gauze between my legs. I’ve been carved out, hollow again. I call my sister, ask her: What was it like when the raped girl—sixth months gone—told you her baby had fingernails? Did you cry when she said she didn’t care about getting rid of it? Did you wish, for a moment, you’d never been born? Are you still bleeding, these five years later?

Crosses
 

A white cross looms on the highway horizon, the only rest stop for fifty miles. Tiny marble crosses swarm the base—In Memory of All the Unborn Children. At the mouth of the parking lot, a steel donation box demands payment. Behind the bathrooms, bronze statues of Jesus and the thieves carrying their loads, slouching in an infinite circle. A woman and her husband ask me to take their picture—she holds up her hands to Christ, as if to collect his blood.

At Rose Hill, the dead have bought riverside property. Lost branches of family trees abandon the tombs, while the ancient limbs swing along the boulevard, blooming in their Sunday finest. They wait for visitors to sit around the ponds, beside trickling streams, spy marble angels peeking from behind fallen magnolias. Orchestras once played in the bandstand, but no one sings for the hidden dead whose bricked caves carve the hillside.

Knees kneel under black umbrellas, the rain makes mush of the stony narrow avenues. Priestesses swaddle their heads in purple, gold, and green rags, pin pouches at their waists and fill them with feathers. They paint crosses on sealed death-vessel doors, ox-blood on marble and tarnished brass names. The ground regurgitates the dead, so they lay above it in pairs, coupled like serpents on the ark, ash mingling with ash.

We’re bone and blood, motes swirling in the wind. Our memorials prove our faith, bargain for salvation, make shrewd deals with death. But the flesh is shredded when the soul claws itself alive, then dissolves into air. So break my bones and suck the marrow. Wrap my body in cheesecloth. Anoint my hair with oils. Bury me beneath a tree. Let me rot. Don’t weigh me down. Don’t etch crosses on me.

The Damaged Ones

In honor of Poetry Month, I attempted a poem:

The Damaged Ones

The supermarket shelves day-old bread, bruised fruit, and spotted vegetables, on a rack labelled Damaged at the back of the store, near the stinking storeroom doors. Shoppers yearn for waxed apples, tough grapes, unscented strawberries, not circling fruit flies, bananas ripened by avocado gas, stale loaves, shriveled tomatoes, wrinkled zucchini. They’ll take home the perfect plum, nestle it into a cool drawer, write a poem of apology when it’s eaten. But the damaged ones, no time left, their epitaphs blacken.

I consider the torn bag of limes straightjacketed in green tape, nothing wrong except the netting is frayed, one lime is soft, ready to rim a glass, follow a shot, spoon a foil-wrapped taco. Bunches of browning bananas, blackening avocado, spotted eggplant, oozing syrupy peaches, oranges dropped and rolled, ripe, ready before they’re bought. I’m tempted to bite the yellow pepper.

I’m damaged, too. I know the stinking world, bruises, fraying. How could I not, with a father in prison, and a grandmother whose love was bleach and soap, heavy-ringed fingers, loose tongue: All men want is sex. Her love re-netted me, toughened my soft parts, re-shelved me with the undamaged: Hold your head high. No one will ever know you’re a rapist’s daughter. It’s You against Them, beat Them every time. And at my peak, ripped me open, exposed my cold bones and mealy heart, held it to my mouth so I could bite.

Empathy Cannot Be Taught

"Just look at his eyes. They're crazy eyes," she said.

"That's right," the petite woman next to her agreed.

"I mean, you can tell. He looks crazy," the first woman said.


I was sitting in the lobby of the gym where my four-year-old daughter takes a class two days a week. I bring a book, typically, and enjoy the hour I have all to myself away from work and without one of my three kids tugging on me for attention. It's my quiet time between the heaves of storm.

Unless the storm is sitting three seats away. And by storm I mean the dressed-for-the-gym moms who don't work outside of the home, have married a man who works 60 hours a week, and fill their lonely days doing charity work. And by charity work I mean buying cupcakes they take for the weekly random holiday celebrations at their childrens' schools. These women travel in packs of 3-5. Their hair is always straight and dyed. Their eyebrows invented "on fleek." Their makeup rivals Tammy Faye. They are thin. They were the girls in high school who charmed their way onto the Honor Roll. They went to college for the football games.

You know them.

The three moms were talking about the newest school shooting, this time in Florida. The crazy man they were describing was the shooter. Their magical powers of detecting mental illness should be bottled and sent to every FBI office in the country.

"I tell you what," the first mom said, "I am pissed at the FBI. Why can't they do their job?" It wasn't hard to detect the queen bee. I didn't flatter myself into thinking I'd hear anything of substance from the other two.

"I know," both of the other moms agreed.


"I'll tell you what I thought when I saw that they'd caught him. I thought 'I hope they kill him. I hope he gets tortured.' I said that. Then I had to ask God to forgive me. Because that's someone's child. I mean, I couldn't believe I even thought that."

The other two remained quiet. Queenie repeated herself. Twice. Finally one of the other bees said, "You did the right thing. It was probably what we all thought. God knows that."

"These things happen for a reason," Queenie said.

At that moment a girl--about age 9--burst from the gym and skipped over to the women. She was Queen Bee's daughter, wearing a halter, boy shorts, and a ponytail fastened with a perfect ribbon bow. There was an exchange. Then the girl went back into the gym.

"I swear," Queenie said, "she has no empathy. I was in a car wreck, in the hospital with a broken neck and twelve breaks in my ribs, and on the day I got home Madison said, 'So if you died, who would take care of me?' That was it. Not a hug or kiss or anything. Just wanted to know what would happen if I died. The girl has no empathy. None." She threw up her hands. "I don't know what to do with her. She just doesn't."

The other two moms laughed.

It was at this moment that I had to bite my lip. I had to keep the teacher in me from rearing her ugly head. I had to keep the good citizen contained. I had to pretend I hadn't read the same page of my book three times.

Otherwise, I would've started my lecture. Or challenged her. Or punched her in the face.

It was at that moment that I wanted to scream, "Empathy is a taught emotion!"

It was at that moment that I wanted to say, "You do realize you're part of the gun violence problem, right?"

It was at that moment that I wanted to point out to Queenie and the rest of her bees that they lack empathy, thus their children lack empathy, thus they are creating a hive without empathy.




I've heard a lot of stupid shit over the last 20 years while teaching in public colleges and universities. But these women, in their bubbles of privilege, admit and laugh about the fact that they can't be bothered to teach their own children what it means to experience the world through the eyes of anyone else. They can't be bothered to do just a small amount of research on their own to understand the cultural perpetuation of gun violence that is a uniquely American trait. They can't be bothered to parent. They can't be bothered. They can't be bothered.

And as if they were reading my mind, they moved on to discussing what does bother them: the cruises they were booking for their fall vacations. They've already booked their summer vacations--beach destinations--so their fall cruises to Jamaica will allow them to keep their tans into the winter.