Flash Memoir: Privates

(c) 3/19/2022

Charles wore thick-rimmed glasses that were held onto his head with a large rubber band and a nose clip. To make it easier to wear, he’d said, his mother shaved his hair down to a blonde crew cut reminiscent of the soldiers on the news.  No one else at school wore hair short enough to show even their ears.

Whenever Charles saw me on the playground, he came charging whether I was on the girl’s or the boy’s side, or at the top of the neutral stairwell that led down to the street. No matter how many times I told him to go away he laughed loudly and drew even more attention. Sometimes he handed me a note with hearts drawn all over it. Once he told me that he loved me. When he brought blue bells picked from the school entrance, I scrunched them with my foot on the concrete.

One day, after ripping up another note, waving it in his face and yelling, “Stop it!”, Charles said that he would pull down his pants for me. My friend Stephanie looked shocked. Kanda laughed. I certainly did not want to see his privates, let alone any boy’s privates. I didn’t think he’d go through with it.

And yet, “Sure Charles” I said. “You can pull down your pants for me. But not here on the playground.”

He decided it would be at Roger’s Park after school let out the next day. Roger’s Park started at the bottom as a track with a soccer field in the center. From there it was like a bowl with a steep climb up to the trails through Fir, Hemlock, Maple and the stinky scent of Scotch broom. In the late Spring we girls like to sit off the track, chain daisies together and talk about boys. We never talked about Charles.

Charles raced to find me after school. His forehead glistened with sweat. His voice shook. “Are you ready?” he asked me.

I had forgotten but dutifully turned with Kanda and followed him. My word is my word!

Notice of the event had spread. At least fifty unruly, exuberant students already assembled followed Charles. He stopped walking halfway out on one trail and turned to face the crowd who were now surrounding him. He looked frozen. One hand on a Fir trunk, his other clutched his trousers as boys shouted threatening encouragement. Pinecones were thrown. Small spits of gravel. Charles started to unbuckle his belt.

“I don’t think I can watch,” I said to Kanda. What if I had pushed through and told Charles that I didn’t even want to see his privates? How could I say that amidst a mob?

Charles dropped his trousers. Underneath the standard beige he had on plastic pants that were covered with cartoonish fire trucks.

“Oh no!” I gasped. Nobody wore plastic pants. That was for babies, not for third graders. What was wrong with him?

As I turned to leave Charles was crying, sweat rolling down his forehead into his eyes. Still besieged by the throng, the din captured the attention of college boys jogging in the bowl who, thankfully intervened.

I felt shame and regret that I’d agreed to look at him. I was partly to blame for his humiliation. It was a guilt I didn’t have to face for long. He transferred to another school the  next week and he was soon enough forgotten.

 

Flash Memoir: The Fit

 (c) 03/16/2022

1968 and we were eight and nine, the butt-end of the baby-boomers, city kids whose working class parents didn’t flee to the suburbs. Nixon was president. The Vietnam war raged across our black and white television screens. Kennedy and King had been assassinated, yet we didn’t know a thing about racial unrest or civil rights. Zoning red lines had lifted in Seattle; our student base still looked like it was segregated. None of us had parent’s contemplating divorce, and we were shielded from those older cousins who started taking the pill.

The world rarely broke through our slumber-party TV nights, the homogenous Brady Bunch and the strangely matriarchal Partridge Family. The three of us, Kanda, Stephanie and I, had Davy Jones posters on our walls. A couple of times I wiped boogers across Davy’s face.  

Kanda was already talking about how many babies she would have. Three, maybe four and at least one of each. We were allowed to look at, but not touch her baby doll. It was expensive and looked real. Stephanie didn’t talk about babies. She was already focused on what her husband would be like.

The last thing I wanted was a baby, and the attention of grown men either made me uncomfortable or terrified. It was clear to me that I’d would never quite fit the mold they both so easily slipped in to. I didn’t know what else to want.

Kanda’s mother worked at Fircrest which is an institution housing the intellectually disabled. That was not the label we used in 1968.  We went there on weekends to play on the trampoline, but just us. Not the residents. I was confused by their visible inabilities to do simple things on their own, such as walking. Kanda’s mom seemed unfazed by it.

Stephanie’s mother volunteered at the church. I tagged along sometimes to youth events. I’m sure someone, somewhere hoped I’d become a believer. For a while I did.

We lost touch over the years, got back in touch, lost touch.

In 1980, Kanda had secured a job for me as a housecleaner for anarchists. There were guns on the floor and in cabinets and hunting knives on the kitchen counter. I cleaned one day and never went back to collect my money.

When I introduced her to my infant, Kanda held my daughter for two hours.

At our twenty-year high school reunion, Kanda brought one of her gay male friends and introduced him as her husband. We made eye contact. He shrugged.

As it turned out Kanda never had any children. She died of alcohol poisoning before she turned forty.

The last time I checked Stephanie had already been divorced three times. She is still committed to her church community.

I kept trying to fit the mold our parents set before us, even while the world all around illuminated that the mold was faulty. That if it wasn’t the mold that would break, it was us.

Flash Memoir: That Time David Bought me a Rolls Royse

 3/5/2022 (c) 

I was still on maternity leave and David was still working the dinner shift. He told me we had money, but so far we weren’t living it. Or at least I and the baby weren’t. The only groceries in the apartment were popcorn and one old bag of rice, and not always butter. I learned how to eat it dry. That wouldn’t be so bad except David liked to call me on his break and describe the quail under glass, the steak tartare, French onion soup, or whatever he was having that night. Even then, under the weight of that unnecessary cruelty I made excuses for him. I would make excuses for years, mostly to myself.

One day he came home from work in a Rolls Royse. It was an older model but mostly clean and such a pretty blue-gray. He said he bought it for me. I would have preferred food but said nothing as I didn’t want to appear ungrateful.

“You should drive it into work and show your coworkers!” he said.

 I wasn’t working. I could wait to show it off. He was insistent, so I drove it downtown.

“What did they say?” Well, they thought it was a pretty car.

“No,  about me?” Well, yeah. They thought it was a generous gift.

He let me know that my enthusiasm was insufficient. Perhaps the lack of nutrients going into my body and my baby sucking out what flawed nutrition she could took my mood down. In any case, a week later my car was gone.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Oh, I sold it and made a tidy profit.”

 I pointed out that as the Rolls was a gift it belonged to me and he had no right to sell it. Plus, I could use that tidy profit to fill the fridge. Never saw the fridge filled or the profit. This is how his gifts worked. They were rare and they would come then shortly go.

His Pride

 3/6/2022 (c)  for Charlie

Well, I’d hardly say he’s effeminate, though he is dapper

applying a grand expression to his clothes—

lint-free top hats, well-shined shoes,

all the accoutrements in between.

 

His glasses are special, almost magic—

everything he sees he devours.

 

Whether he writes Dada poems,

paints surreal stories on canvas,

or presents a PowerPoint at work,

he burns brightly.

 

Sometimes he is too much—

an over-achiever, harrowing to follow

no matter how inspiring his endeavors are.

 

I tried to love him once.

I was barely eighteen.

 

There was little space for my ideas

and even less for me.

 

And like a lion in its grandiosity

he had plenty of wild cats in his pride.

Queen of Wands

 3/6/2022 (c) p.s. currently not caring about line breaks.

The Queen of Wands is not sensual

so much as sexual.

She is fecund and if nature rearranged itself

the queen could birth babies until the cows came home.

 

You don’t have to seduce her.

She knows exactly what she wants

and if she doesn’t want you, you will know it,

though you will still feel your loveliness

and not think of it as rejection.

 

How sun lights upon her face!

Does she wear a halo?

Maybe. For a time. Orion imbues her

with an otherworldly glow so bright

she can paint, dance, or write by its light.

 

Sometimes she sprouts an avian head

or wings luxurious as fur

wrapped around her shoulders.

She can take you along as she rises

to moonlit heights.

 

The Queen radiates magic and keeps

an assortment of masks

she applies with such cunning

that you will thank her.

 

The Queen holds her scepter—

a wand hewn from the mustard tree

because all great things come from small beginnings--

held away from her belly

pointing to all the possibility in the world.

 

From Hand to Bank

 (c) 3/1/2022

I like the word apothecary

though I use the word pharmacy or drug store

as though elemental magic is long gone.

I envy the midwives and the women

who used to gather herbs and powders

and make poultices, teas, and incense

although I use the words

compress, syrups and pills.

It has all become knowledge

disconnected from Mother earth

and transferred from the hands of women

to the banks of men.

Yew Wands

 (c) 3/4/2022

All parts of the Yew tree are poisonous.

Tea steeped from the leaves easily makes

a small child sick. Placed in wise womanly hands

Yew heals swollen tonsils, inflamed joints,

and aborts. 

Some believe the trunk

of the church-yard Yew contains purifying properties,

like a baptismal font.

Townsmen choose Yew wood as rods

to bludgeon the stranger for the sin

of being a stranger.

Rods hewn from Yew trees offer balance

to the crippled witch.

  

Yew rods have been cut to hold up the climbing vine,

to frame a window; to offer the magician

a wooden bridge between her hand,

earth, and the sky.

Everything depends on what is cut, or whether

it is ever picked up.