Nunzilla revisited

Life seemed particularly secure, and exciting, that first year on Harborview Drive. He looked forward to starting at a public school, a Junior High School, and to making new friends. He also liked having his father around home more often, working together in the garden, and doing carpentry. He even began to appreciate Sunday mornings again. He liked going to the bakery after mass to pick up bear claws, a peach cobbler, or a cinnamon-almond wreath, and then sharing the thick comic section of the Sunday Chronicle. Death – including comic death - had yet to appear on his map of the world.

His sisters had recently begun to initiate him to some of the snags to expect growing up. They had told him hair-raising stories about the nuns at his old school who didn’t like boys, especially the older ones. They had warned him about women who seemed to be perfectly virtuous, but who actually took great pleasure in watching boys cry, not from physical pain, but from wounded pride. They also tried to describe some of the devious games that the nuns played to trick boys into believing that they were inferior. He didn’t really understand, but was nevertheless glad that he had managed to change schools in time, and avoid whatever torture he might have been slated to encounter.

N..... in the woodpile, con't.

His older sisters knew he was cute too. Though they would have preferred a younger sister to share in their play, they were pleased that they could count on him to pass for a younger sister. He even let hem dress him up in a skirt and a blouse, and put a scarf on his head. It was undoubtedly their indulgence and coddling that suckered him, and so he willingly went along with them when they went knocking on the neighbors’ doors. For him it was like a game of ’trick or treat’. When he was introduced as their new little sister and neighbors appeared delighted to see them, it meant that the costume in which they had decked him out had been a good choice. In their own way, or was it the way they had been taught, they were looking after him.

These games ended abruptly one night when the girls managed to hoist him out of his crib and carry him into their bedroom, to play house. The plan was to deposit him in the family heirloom cradle that was used for their dolls, but he kept trying to wriggle and squirm out. They knew that they had gone too far when it didn’t help to strap him in place, and he began to cry.

Gradually the tactic he adopted to avoid subservience was to go literally into a spin. By rapidly pirouetting with extended fists, his arms were quickly transformed into invisible blades. Anyone who ventured into the circumference of this human fan risked mutilation.

N..... in the woodpile

What is it that Anna, his daughter, sees in old photos of her father as a toddler? "He's so cute," she says.

Does he, as a young boy, remind her of her own innocence and vulnerability? His mother used to call him her “nigger in the woodpile", alluding to his dark hair, swarthiness and charm. "He's so much like his father," she used to say. Or is it that his appearance as a young boy is void of anything as devastating as the poverty and insecurity of slavery or war, the realities of the Great Depression or World War II, much less the grief over a parent's sudden death, or the burdens and responsibilities of parenthood, which generations before him had suffered? He had never really thought about it before. Is that why he cried when as he looked at them for the first time as an adult?

Perhaps the mien in these photos suddenly alerted Anna to the fact that she owed her very existence to his innocence, and naivté. Perhaps she and her father both sensed suddenly how her sustenance was dependent upon his survival, generosity and fidelity. But fidelity to what, to whom? Was it possible that his loyalties had been focused on first alleviating his mother's and then his wife's suffering? Was it possible that in order to cater to their needs he had to deny his own grief? Was it possible that this denial was a prerequisite for his self-esteem? Was it possible that what he had always thought was wisely circumspect had actually served to stump rather than stimulate his growth all these years? Was it possible that innocent people - including his own children - had suffered from his gullibility? Was it possible that he was a sucker? So many questions. So few answers.

Anna recalled the image of the orphaned fawn that her mother had once seen in the forest and was so determined to possess, as her buck. Could this cute little “nigger in the woodpile” be a plausible good ‘catch’ in her story? Why else would the vulnerabilty and innocence of this animal have to be concealed all these years, under a pile of firewood, in old photos? Anna wondered too if this pet name, "nigger in a woodpile", was an expression that everyone but she understood, like some internal joke to which she had not been privy?

"Your father would have been so proud of you" is something Anna's grandmother is purported to have said to one of her children. Suddenly Anna wondered what her grandfather would have thought of her father and her mother, or of her or her brother, had he lived to know them. "Some things are better left unsaid," was another thing her grandmother often said. What did she mean, why did she say that? Who was she trying to protect?

con't...

Construction debris – boards, nails and grey clods hardened by mortar – awaited them like land mines in unfamiliar territory. He liked the idea of a brand new house, so unlike all the old houses where they had lived before. He was proud to live in a house with modern appliances, with a chocolate brown refrigerator, and matching dishwasher, stove, and built-in oven. But he missed the tall trees, the thickets, and the wet grass around their old house in Utah.
His father was anxious to level the mound of topsoil that had been dumped in the front. Shoveling it into the wheelbarrow was something that he and his father could do together. They took turns carting the dirt around to the back yard. He liked flattening the dark soil with a garden rake and the patterns of neatness that it left. He thought about the stubborn cowlick to the right of his widows peak that refused to lie flat, even when he combed it wet.

When the monotony of the garden tasks bored him, he left to throw clods and stones, aiming for a bucket or a board on the slope behind the house. He was getting better and better at it. His father promised to buy him a new baseball mitt, and practice with him, just as soon as the yard had been landscaped.

Returning 'home'

He woud turn twelve that fall. Ever since he could remember he had learned to call San Francisco home, though he had never actually lived there. His father, who had grown up in San Francisco and left during the war, was pleased as punch to finally be returning ’home’. His mother, on the other hand, who had always been so proud of her pre-gold-rush San Francisco roots, was more reticent. Her career as a commanding officer’s wife was now over and she hadn’t even started looking for a new job. Since they were staying in a loft motel just off the bayshore freeway their first month back in California, there was no rush yet.

He and his older siblings were all happy to be there. The intimacy of family life in two small motel rooms with a kitchenette, the air conditioning, the swimming pool, coupled with the imminence of settling into a brand new house, and beginning a new school and made life seem secure, and exciting.

Nunzilla

Big boys don't cry

They hadn’t always lived on Harborview Drive 1295. The street hadn't even existed before the early sixties when roads were ploughed and asphalted in preparation for yet another new housing development. Within no time this new road would be lined with ranch style houses, one-story suburban classics, with used brick trim and pastel stucco. Here in the dry grasses along the crest of the San Francisco East Bay, the shiny new splitwood roofs were all that protected them from the blazing California sunshine. No trees had been planted yet, but there were some native, low-growing live oaks on the back slopes, and some plane trees just off the dirt road to the pauper burial grove in the valley below. That's where he went to play, in the shade of the trees that had been there for so many years.

...to be continued

Under a sun hat

I sense that her weaknesses are in fact her greatest strengths, not morally or ethically mind you, but that her survival instinct is based upon a fundamental weakness. Unfortunately, I also sense that because my investigation - regardless of any evidence it offers to the truth of my hypotheisis - is ultimately threatening to her, I have become an unwanted witness of her life. This is why she has closed all doors to me, and why her allies have been sent to complain that I ”analyze everything about her” in a tone that is as threatening as it is threatened. She is actually a passive terrorist.
She has never been a femme fatale - though I suspect that she auditioned for the role at some point. Femme malade is perhaps a better epithet. One of her sisters died during the polio epidemic in San Francisco during the depression, and it could well be that she too suffers from the residual symptoms of grief, or some other chronic obstructive disease like tuberculosis. Over the years she has learned to ride on it [her disease], to break it in and exploit it, like a wild buck. Her husband has buried his own grief in hers. That's perhaps why he is more than happy to fulfil her doctor's expensive prescriptions for fresh air in a bungalow on a secluded South Pacific beach, or from a deck chair on a Carribbean cruise …loaded with romcom and chicklit obsession novels.

Mother daughter and me

I could tell that the show was in part for my benefit - the somersault, the cartwheel, and all the aborted attempts to stand on her head. Charmed no end by this toddler, I had to share my delight with her mother who also stood nearby. I noticed that the mother was observing her daughter as though she were reading a book, silently seeking protection from the world - and probably from me - by burying herself in identification with its narrator. The young girl was her possession and her extension. I could see too that mother and daughter both sought my approval. Though this mother never acknowledged it, I am sure that every inflection of my voice was registered.

All of a sudden, the little girl jumped up on a chair in front of me. Eye-to-eye, but too close to focus, we rubbed noses. As she backed away I could see that the chair had disappeared and that she wasn’t a little girl any more, that she was in fact just as tall as I was, grinning from ear to ear with a mouth full of braces. What a sweety I thought to myself.

The next thing I knew she was running out the back door in tears, crying ”Mommy, mommy why do you keep coming in and out”. I also began to wonder where and why her mother had suddenly disappeared. With hardly a chance to reflect on the chain of events, I heard the young girl call out: ”Mommy, why do you keep running in and out, it’s making me so sleepy.” This was the first time I had ever heard my niece speak Swedish. (While Swedish is her mother’s tongue it is not her own native language.) Given the intensity of this young girl's pursuit, I thought to myself that she must have confused the Swedish word for ’tired’ with the word for ’sleepy’. But to tell you the truth I was still so very sleepy and tired myself when I woke from this dream, that we are all certainly one .

Withdrawal

I remember how happy I was to have finally met the bitch – face-to-face, eye-to-eye. I had heard so much about her, about how ugly she was, that I was actually surprised to find that I liked her. I let her hang around my apartment for a while. Then one day, sensing that she was wet behind the ears and way too demanding, I brought her down to my storage space in the basement. In retrospect I think that I did that to protect her. Furthermore, a friend whose opinion I respected at the time, complained that she was barbarous and uncivilized. Since I wasn’t sure I understood what he meant by that, we withdrew. I didn’t bring her up again until he had - for all intents and purposes - disappeared for good.

Eye to eye

Her students learn by simply watching her, keeping an eye on her. She never judges them. She speaks with difficulty and despite her silent, rather stern appearance, she is oddly very close to them. Or is it they who are very close to her? They feed on her and keep her company. I think it is because she actually hates teaching, hates telling stories, that she is such a good teacher. She doesn't want to say too much, and definitely not everything all at once. She prefers to use words to investigate her surroundings. It is a curious relationship.

Self-portrait

" While the portrait is anything but flattering, its colorful uncanny aura has continued to fascinate me over the years. In fact, I brought it up from the basement just yesterday to reacquaint myself with her. She’s a young redhead, set off against a green background and a house with no smoke stack. There’s a crow with a mossy green breast perched on her left shoulder. The shadow of this feathered friend is cast across my chin - just below my lower lip - as if to make sure my mouth is kept shut. My eyes are steadfast in their look-out, as some distant gulls seem to have sighted prey beneath my brow. What am I thinking? What is it I see? What have I heard? What do I mean? What is it that I am apparently so loath to disclose?" excerpt from Living with Gerdie's diary, "Fuel for thought", March 4, 2007