Never in winter, there, remembered. Save the one aside a kerosene heater, naked in a copper washtub. Abandoned at five. She on her knees hands washing me, the whispering heat hissing. Christmas?
No.
Forever afterward--always summer.
Out of school, into the Packard buried under trunks, crumpled on the back seat. Or in a bus. Or trains. New York so hot it sucked off my shoes crossing tarmac to a terminal darkly looming . Pennsylvania mountain crossing, air conditioning broken; a tag upon my shirt, ‘Do This If Lost.’
Or ‘Found?’
Alone.
My maternal grandmother’s house, an imposing edifice. Red painted brick and white trim. Second Street, National Highway Route 52, passing through the night village in rain; truck tires whooshing. Upscale for that end of town closest to Cincinnati. Same distance as the designator showing the way up river from the Mississippi leading southerly into a starry night sea. Heart quickened in sweet agony approach knowing the inevitable annual divorce. Snatched back hurled forward again.
Barefoot or in shoes. “Get ‘um quick, slip in the screen door quiet like.” Stomping in the dark. She’d reach in, turn on the kitchen light; beneath my feet cock roaches scurried. Our excursions were seldom ended in darkness. Except for prayer meetings Wednesday nights in the 12 over 12 Methodist Church faintly illume with bug lights snaking from the dark above.
Upon the pew back enthroned.
“GET DOWN!” Stage whispered she!
“no”
I fell off thumping resonant in the gloom echoing through the nearly empty plain windowed sanctuary. She, leaning over my prostrate form, forming the fatal word, spelling “I’m going to ‘M_U_R_D_E_R’ . . . There was no ‘you’ just her crooked forefinger like mine, then and now, pointed between shocked eyes glazed upward.
That night I danced circles around her chanting, terrified what was to come upon arrival her home; “Oh Mama Lu I love you” over and over all the three blocks way; my execution site, darkly silent awaiting, our arrival. light turned on, she laughed and holding my shoulders, no higher than somewhere between her knees and waist, she boxing, like paint mixing back and forth between cans, pouring her love in my face smiling. I was King once more, the only male child of her body in a generation of women.
Married at thirteen, she the last in a family of eight with seven brothers ‘farmed out.’ The father dead from cancer. The farm hand married and took her. First birth at fourteen, second at nineteen--my mother. Fatherless at four she’d say only he died in a hunting accident.
Later inquisition, of all seven brothers, indicated it was a shotgun wound to the groin taking twenty days to bleed out, self-inflicted. Perry Hill was otherwise a circuit riding Methodist Minister and an expert hunter.
There was a darkness shrouding my childhood. Not only the imagined nakedly snow covered stubble field flecked red beneath the barbed wire fence shot gun rested against my grandfather slumped. My beloved son would die on the same date: December 10th later on.
Unspoken legend: to survive Christmas assured another year of life to face other sudden departures.
There were others there, in Ripley, Ohio, death taken, accident, shot, fallen, mysteriously. Children roughed, men somber women with flowers. Wakes open caskets. Small wonder I wander stone gardens of memorials for peace in perpetual communion. Here, now, Las Cruces, New Mexico, finally home, the cemeteries littered with memorial toys; tiny forms sleeping beneath. Special is this boarder place melding melting cultures. Christ Crucified limp in anguish scourged; dripping blood. Not triumphant robed in glory resurrected. Both traditions reside here birth, life, death, life renewed.
120424 04:07 final-final
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