2000 Deciduous Trees : Memories of a Zine (9781937316051) (9 page)

He is laughing and sits down on a cement
bench. She kneels in front of him and holds his hands. He protects
her with his knees around her shoulders. 

Him: So tell me about women. They’re
mountains and clouds?

Her: Are you sure you want to hear this?

Him: Yeah.

Her: Well, I’m not a feminist or a lesbian,
and I’ll tell you why those ideas are too simplistic. Good for
somebody. Sure. They run counter to society. Yes, there is a male
patriarchy, but fuck that. Women are subject to men, but they
aren’t just women either. They are half from woman and half from
man.

Him: So are men.

Her: No. Not really. Each man starts new.
Each man is additive. He is his father and his mother: XY. But
women are their mother and their father’s mother: XX.

Him: When was the last time you took
biology?

Her: Just listen. In men, XY each is from
the identity of his own parents. The chromosomes came from their
ancestors and yes, they’re mutating and all that but the identity a
man receives is as alive as his mother and father at the time of
conception. That was his dad’s Y. And that X was his mom’s.

Him: Barr bodies? Have you—

Her: Don’t push me. Men are additive. They
are always approaching infinity. But women are pulled back from the
present. They are removed from infinity because they are the
consummation of the mother and the identity the father’s mother
gave to her son, which was then sacrificed for his own
identity.

Him: It’s part of his identity.

Her: I’m not done. So as man is built, man
upon man, as if every one is an extension of Adam and each based in
God—or if you don’t want to use God, then each benefits from the
ability to plant his identity in an unbroken line of men. But
women. Women are built on a fault line. Women are founded on what
men can live without. Adam was fine missing a rib and yet it was
Eve’s creation. Or again getting God stuff out, women are made from
the half of identity men choose not to pursue.

Him: Nobody chooses anything.

Her: In a way. Yet isn’t it true they
do?

He tries to respond but is tired. And
confused. And just hoping she could be happier. It is hard for him
to process everything. She goes on.

Her: So you—you’re a man. You are your mom
and dad fucking. Maybe it wasn’t love, but it could have been and
even if it wasn’t it is based in the present. It is action. It is
passion. Men are created in that heat. They are forged in
orgasm.

Him: Have you been reading poetry again? Or
did your sister send you another one of those tapes? This is
ridiculous. Women are the same as guys.

Her: Just listen. Women are very similar,
it’s true. So similar in fact that virtually no one sees the
implications of the nuances and so they account their pain to
inferiority, insecurity, or whatever. But don’t you see? A woman is
made from her mom fucking her father’s mom. It’s sick. It’s an
impossibility. It’s based in decay.

Him: This is fucking crazy.

Her: Two more minutes. If the man has X and
Y but suppresses X all those years and lives in Y then when a girl
is conceived that X is only his mother lying on her back however
many years before. That X is what the father mounted. That X was
last thought of when those grandparents fucked that father into
being. That X is another rejection, because the father goes on
being a man. If a boy is conceived that is the love and passion a
man has for a woman.

Him: Can you be a little more abstract?

Her: But if a girl is conceived that is the
hatred between the mother and the mother-in-law. That is the
tension of like forces in proximity. Like magnets. That’s her. And
those Xs have been passed down for however many hundred years in
that disjunct fashion. All Xs eventually having that poison about
them. Not like the Ys, which hold that solid background.

So women grow up with this at the core of
their being. So it comes to nights like this between you and me. It
comes down to these fights. It comes down to house payments and
colors for cars and children's schools and names for the dog. It
comes into every decision. That blackness of all those Xs. And the
man—each with his Y from God—always wins.

So he is able to be silent and proud,
unforgiving, focused, and feels no understanding for the chaotic
world. Woman is different. She stands shadowed by her mundane life.
Hoping her children are good enough for the fucked-up world. Hoping
to catch some sun on her face from a deep damned canyon wedged
between two monstrous obsidian cliffs. But never really believing
in herself and her beliefs. Never content and constantly
questioning her limits. Not expanding them but assuring herself as
to where they are because they are constants. They are her means of
support.

She’s tired and frail and she knows better
than to divest herself of the limits the way a submarine knows not
to crack its walls. So here I am tonight with you asking me to
marry you. And all I can think of is your mother.

All I can think is that you should be happy
and that the world should go on as it has always gone on. What
right have I to go off alone? I have no right. My duty is to you
and your love for me. My duty is to that diamond—right?—and to the
three-year-old in a grocery cart that comes with it. Why is that my
duty? Not because of you. Not even because of society. Because you
don’t care. And they don’t care. No matter what I do—whether I hold
up a feminist label or wave a rainbow flag—they’ll see the diamond
ring and the grocery cart. So that’s not it.

But I have this duty to my mother.

I’m supposed to endure what she endured to
show I’m not too good for her. To show that I appreciate all she’s
done for me and believe that all her pain, which she has stuck down
in that dark cavern, was not for no reason. That’s why she calls
and asks if I have a boyfriend. That’s why she’s always pressuring
me to get married. That’s why she’ll think I’ve failed no matter
what else I do, if I don’t have kids. And even if I was with you,
Babe. Even with you. I love you. I know it would work. I know I
would love our kids. I know I could spend the rest of my life with
your voice and your arms and your eyes. I know that. But why? Why?
Because no matter how liberal or equal or nontraditional a
relationship we create, I will still disappear. I will still become
that thing that is caught between my duty to my mother and my love
for you.

That’s what marriage is and the rest gets
squeezed out. The rest is a hobby. The rest is a part-time job at
the deli. Or it’s the doctor’s nurse. Whatever. Look at it. The
feminists cut off one side of the canyon—their duty to their
mother. And lesbians cut off the other—their love for a man.

But what is that?

Steeped so long in what all I’ve just said,
without replacing those barriers with another of the same
magnitude—like social isolation, hatred, contempt, or artistry—that
woman is bound to dribble away. And if she is not taken for insane,
she is only a thin film with her cohesive force, her memories of
self from childhood.

Even so. It is time that is the enemy. If a
woman can remove one side of the canyon, love for a man or duty to
the mother, and stop time simultaneously, then she is preserved.
She would be tall and stand like a sculpture formed from the mold
of her mind. The beauty of her vision of the future—the part of her
that would correspond to the pressure of her love for one man—on
one side. And on the other, the side that affronted her duty for
her mother, would be her integrity, responsibility, and perception
of the past. It would be her. Frozen there and beautiful.

He wants to kiss her. And he wants to run.
He tilts his head back toward the sky and wishes she could relax or
trust him or see what he sees. Tears flood his eyes and the stars
swim past and away so as not to be intrusive. He blinks several
times and stands up. She fidgets and wants him to talk. She doesn’t
want him to be hurt. She just wants him to understand. 

Him: I love you. And that’s not going to
change. I knew you needed more from me and I thought that meant
marriage.

He looks at her. Her face is blank and her
body inert. 

Him: But if more is realizing I’m a mold or
a barrier or Y or whatever and I’ve got to go—I don’t know. Shit.
I—

She laughs.

Her: Don’t get all deep on me, Babe. You
want to make me cry?

He laughs and shakes his head. But yes. He
wants her to cry. Other girls would cry. He wants her to wear the
stupid ring and be happy. He wants her to have everything. He wants
her to understand. 

Him: God damn it. All I want to know is do
you want this fucking ring? Because if you don’t, I can take it
back and buy a motorcycle.

Her: Oh. Yeah. Please buy a motorcycle. I
love all those songs about motorcycles. Would you take me for
rides, Babe?

He closes the little black velvet box around
the ring and shoves it in his pocket. He picks her up and throws
her over his shoulder.

Him: Fuck the motorcycle. I’ll take you for
a ride right now.

She stops him, puts her
hands on his chest, and looks him in the eye.
Her: I just don't want to have kids. I'm worried I'll fuck it
up. That they'll fuck me up.

Him: Okay. Why didn't you just say that?

Her: I didn't know how. It doesn't seem like
something you're supposed to say.

Him: Supposed to say to who? Fuck it. It's
just me.

He kisses her on the hip and climbs over the
railing. The lights are orange over the water and the sky is close.
He looks at the moon, that half-moon that you always wish is more
poetic, and jumps into the river, letting her laugh and scream and
cling to him all the way down.

SAD ASIAN FACE

Sad Asian face

in a trench coat alley

letting the snow go

all around his

thinning uncovered head.

Warm brown face

in an altogether

huge gray world.

Letting looks go

too often towards

the pavement and

opening his closing

gloved fists repeatedly

against the cold

professorial thoughts.

MONDAY
NIGHT RAIN WITH FOOTBALL

The room was really too small for the size
of all the men on the television. Like looking through a child's
dollhouse window: valiant Patriots and runaway Dolphins came
through the screen to us sweaty, and heaving.

A fat Christmas tree wore a
single ornament in the way a poor girl might wear a silver chain.
It must have been a gift. The talk was small, filled with
I remembers
and
the
Well if I was him
s.

We all drank beer. Lots of beer and the
short guy and his sister seemed to fight with the giants in the
window for our attention.

I would have left hours before if it hadn't
been raining.

YOU’RE SIERRA
LEONE

You're Sierra Leone. But just a child hiding
out. Did you know there is a cottonwood tree here, too, young sir?
Mine stands with roots tangled in dark Indiana soil, leaning over a
river made simply when a strand of God's hair touched the earth by
accident. It's in the little ravine behind my house where the
vulture likes to swoop-beat slow and rise again on warmer air. I've
known that tree my entire life. With its shivering leaves and its
snow tears. Charming. Peaceful. My constant refuge of
hide-and-seek.

And now, God, now, I hear about your
cottonwood tree. On its red soil. Where you must be afraid even of
its immutable peace. Because the leaves are your only witnesses.
Irretrievable when they fall.

Can it be possible? Who is
stopped listening to that? Can the world be so cruel? I had hoped
not. But there you were, finding God's grace in a plane full of
bombs. Saved from your own execution by so many others. And now
these photographs. Coming to me between ads for push-up bras and
cellulite cream in some
Vanity
Fair.

These photographs of soldiers wearing blue
flip-flops with their camouflage garb. Where bloody smiles point
victoriously to severed heads. Where the man from Chicago, the good
doctor who wanted to return for his family, lies watching death
approach as if on a beach gazing at the gulls pass. He knows. He
knew what I wonder. Who are these fucking murderers?

You wanted to explain. So you began with
your careful midnight matchsticks. Huddled close. Writing with lime
juice ink. Waiting for someone to wet your autobiography with their
own tears so as to be able to read it.

But as you come running from the bombs with
your new cache of these horrid photographs and you huddle with the
cottonwood which shudders itself in fear, who do you meet? Are you
looking for an accomplice? I only know how to play. Are you looking
for help? I am only a child on a river bank. And if you are looking
for someone who understands your hideous fear I am not afraid—don’t
have to be. What would I fear in my cottonwood? I am only hiding
from a friend. And you, oh God, you are hiding from the same kind
of immortal accident that made my hairline river. From his shifting
feet or leaning elbow. Trying to anticipate his tired movements so
as to avoid his weight.

God is careless, I recognize.

And I begin to cry. You look at me, scared.
Realizing that we're not hiding together. That your photographs can
only be part of my game. I scream at you in my own defense, "Look!
Look where your pictures are! Look what else came with them! Movie
stars? Technology moguls! Shiny pages and pretty colors!" And I'm
so sorry. In a thousand ways. Because if it weren’t for the movies,
I never would have known. And if I never had known, maybe your God
behind the cottonwood has no purpose.