I

by Toi Derricotte

  the pretext of seeing if he had bedsores, or if he was losing weight but,

  really, all I wanted to do was fix my eyes on his body—the same big toe

  as mine, the same twisted little toe, his thick knees, each like the end of

  a club. I stared as long as I wanted, unashamed, unafraid of my great

  love, unafraid he would leave me.

  My father had lost his sexual beauty in his sixties. But in the days of his

  illness his body became lustrous, so full of energy and brightness that it

  seemed too hot to put my hands on.

  After his surgery he had said, “You’re not going to like what you see,”

  but when he lifted his shirt I kissed the long, raw cut, which looked

  like two slabs of butchered ribs stapled together, and said, “You’re

  still beautiful to me.” I had always loved what he could never love in

  himself—even his wounds.

  • • •

  Though he had been dead for ten hours, someone told me it takes

  thirteen for the spirit to move on. So he had not gone yet; he was still

  partly there, seeping out in shallow expirations.

  Certainly what one sees later, after the embalming, is an object made by

  the undertaker; it has nothing to do with the one dead. Though I hadn’t

  been with him at death, I was there to see him before the embalming

  and, for the rest of my life, to know that look of calm that had come.

  My cruel father had looked forward, seen heaven, and sent back this

  sign of peace.

  • • •

  That night I had a dream, but not a dream, for it was as real as this very

  moment, with all my feelings in it; and I didn’t have any idea of how

  or why or when. Suddenly, as if I had just been born and didn’t know

  anything before that, I didn’t feel fear. Nothing else had happened, just

  that fear had been sucked out of me, and I didn’t even remember it

  happening but just felt gratitude for an absence that made my life—I

  swear I am not making a metaphor—feel like heaven.

  But as the night went on—it didn’t feel like night, it felt like a trueness

  that made everything different and new—a worry began to encroach,

  a sliver of gray: “What if this fearlessness were taken away?” When

  I woke I felt such joy; I shook my husband and said, “I’m free, I’m

  different.” And then I began to put my feet over the side of the bed,

  slowly, the ground coming up to meet me and, at that moment, when

  my feet touched the floor, something in me said, “Your father is dead,”

  and I knew why I had felt so happy.

  • • •

  I had forgotten that moment until today, that happiness that had

  tarnished like silver, like an old old mirror in which I could no longer

  see my face. I don’t know why I lost it, why that heaviness came back—

  for wasn’t my father truly dead, didn’t I no longer have to fear him?—

  but, in a few days, the wonder faded. My mind was not ready for such

  light. I had to dig my way out of darkness one weighty grain at a time,

  as if a memory of the future had visited.

  My dad & sardines

  my dad’s going to give me a self

  back.

  i’ve made an altar called

  The Altar for Healing the Father & Child,

  & asked him what i could do

  for him so he would

  do nice for me. he said i should stop

  saying bad things about him &, since

  i’ve said just about everything bad

  i can think of &, since . . . well,

  no, i change my

  mind, i can’t promise

  him that. but even healing is

  negotiable, so, if he’s in

  heaven (or trying

  to get in), it wouldn’t hurt

  to be in touch. the first thing i want is to be able to

  enjoy the little things again—for example, to stop peeling

  down the list of things i

  have to do &

  enjoy this poem, enjoy how, last night, scouring

  the cupboards, i found a

  can of sardines that

  must be five

  years old &, since i was home after a long

  trip &, since it was 1 a.m. & i hadn’t eaten

  dinner &, since there was no other

  protein in the house,

  i cranked it open & remembered that

  my dad loved

  sardines—right before bed—with

  onions & mustard. i can’t get into

  my dad’s old heart, but i remember that look

  on his face when he would

  load mustard on a saltine cracker, lay a little

  fish on top, & tip it with a juicy slice

  of onion. then he’d look up from his soiled

  fingers with one eyebrow

  raised, a rakish

  grin that said—all

  for me!—as if he was

  getting away

  with murder.

  The new pet

  i don’t want to worry about a fish yet

  here i am when i am tired going down & up two

  flights of stairs to bring him clean spring water

  to fill up his bowl maybe he looked un-

  happy because there was no current—the water was not

  high enough to reach the motor—& he has grown used to

  the big tank, the heater & water filter, for he began to flip

  about & even leap up to my finger when he was hungry.

  surely nothing will come to me for doing

  good to a fish, & still i do it; though i often wish i had

  a mean heart

  The Telly Cycle

  Joy is an act of resistance.

  Why would a black woman

  need a fish

  to love? Why did she need a

  flash of red, living, in the

  corner of her eye? As if she could love nothing

  up close, but had to step

  away from it, come

  back to drop a few seeds

  & let it grab

  on to her, as if it caught

  her

  on some hook that couldn’t

  hurt. Why did she need a fish,

  a red

  thorn or, among the thorns, that

  flower? What does her love have to do

  with five hundred years of

  sorrow, then joy coming up like a

  small breath, a

  bubble? What does it have to do

  with the graveyards of the

  Atlantic in her mother’s

  heart?

  For Telly the fish

  Telly’s favorite artist was Alice Neel.

  When he first came to my house,

  I propped up her bright yellow shade with open

  window & a vase of flowers (postcard size)

  behind his first fish bowl. I thought

  it might give him something

  to look at, like the center

  of a house you keep coming

  back to, a hearth, a root

  for your eye. It was a

  wondering in me that came up with that

  thought, a kind of empathy

  across my air & through his

  water, maybe the first

  word I cast out between us

  in case he could

  hear. Telly would stare at that painting

  for hours, hanging there with his glassy

  eyes wide

  open. At night he wanted the

  bottom, as if it were a warm

  bed, he’d lie there

  sort of dreaming, his eyes
>
  gray & dim &

  thoughtless. For months he came back

  to her, the way a critic or lover

  can build a whole

  lifetime on the study of one

  great work. I don’t know why

  he stopped, maybe it was when

  he first noticed

  me, the face above my hand

  feeding for, sometimes, when I’d set the food

  on top, he’d still watch me, eye

  to eye, as if saying, food

  isn’t enough. Once, when I

  bent, he jumped up out of the water & kissed

  my lips. What is a fish’s kiss like?

  You’d think it would be

  cold, slimy, but it was

  quick, nippy, hard. Maybe it was just

  what I expected. For all

  our fears of

  touch, it takes so long

  to learn how to take in.

  When he stopped coming

  to the top, I guess I did all the wrong

  things—the fish medicine

  that smelled, measured

  carefully for his ounce of weight—

  for his gills worked

  so hard & he lay still,

  tipped over slightly

  like a dead boat.

  How do you stop the hurt

  of having to breathe?

  After, I took him to the middle of the

  yellow bridge right near the

  Andy Warhol museum—

  I had put a paper towel

  in a painted egg & laid him in it—

  &, at the top,

  I opened the casket & emptied him out

  into the water.

  Special ears

  I liked him for his tailfin, which was long like a mermaid’s & flowed like a

  silver blue ruffle in the water,

  larger than you’d expect a little fish’s tail to be—

  generous, excessive, a bit astonishing, like a girl with too much hair!

  Sometimes he would rise like a submarine, straight up, as if he would nip

  my finger, get out of my water, his mouth would open like a little scoop of

  blackness & let out one bubble, like a smoke ring of my father’s, a message

  from the underworld.

  Another poem of a small grieving for my fish Telly

  Perhaps I should forgive

  Telly for dying in my care, Just a

  fish, someone said, Just

  get another. Lucille said

  our power becomes

  greater when we lose the flesh; so,

  when I poured Telly out

  of his painted casket (a little wooden

  egg) out over the rail

  into the all

  becoming, was it a miracle

  that he had lived, was it a miracle?

  Once, when I prayed for a sign,

  God opened the closed

  vault of the sky, the sun popped out

  & shone directly in my face, & hail, yes,

  hail started falling (in July). I was

  afraid to believe in love. God,

  don’t waste your miracles on me. &

  the sun went back, like a face

  retreating. Telly, you are bodi-

  less, you are with my mother

  & father. Say it wasn’t my

  fault you suffered, with your little

  working gills, say you forgive me.

  On the reasons I loved Telly the fish

  Why would I say I was

  “pathetic,” when talking about my

  life, why would I think of it as

  “little”—my “little life,” I said,

  as if, looking back

  at what kept me alive,

  what I constructed to make my own

  success, to regard that with

  tenderness &

  understanding—as something even

  sweet &

  marvelous—was

  insane? Then maybe I began to

  love Telly—

  really nothing in the

  grand scheme of things—the way that lady, when I told her that

  I paid 100 dollars a month for someone to come in &

  feed Telly when I was away, said—”but, Toi, how much

  did Telly cost? $1.98? Well then why not just

  flush him every time & get another?”

  Whatever I said

  to myself, whatever

  I felt & did, that

  kind of care was

  silly,

  nice, but, well, you know,

  crazy, the way, when you grow up &

  understand the great

  things, a fish’s life is

  nothing, as if (& probably they can’t

  think or feel) there are much more

  important things to

  do to think about to

  love & dedicate ourselves

  to: there are

  doctors, great

  poets, there is

  fine furniture, true love, children,

  god, for

  god’s sake, there is everything to

  remember, everything to be

  worried & concerned about, as if I could

  find it if I just kept

  looking, something really

  real out there always just outside of what I could

  take in. & this was how I

  stayed alive.

  My aunt took me to

  her job from the time I was about

  three. I’d go down to the

  basement where she was

  head of the mail department—first black woman to have such an

  executive job in Detroit, even though it was

  in the basement—I’d take up a little

  desk in the corner & do whatever she said, open

  the flaps of envelopes by the box—five hundred in a box, maybe

  twenty boxes a day for ten cents a box &, with each box, I’d

  compete with myself, each day,

  to make more

  money, & make enough

  to buy my own

  lunch, a corned beef sandwich at the

  Broadway Market with

  two halves of a new

  dill & a fruit

  punch, & sit there at the

  marble counter enjoying

  the warmth of meat,

  the slop of mustard,

  & the way the

  rind of the bread was

  just a little tough to

  tear with your teeth.

  I worked without

  word,

  away from the grownups, able to

  make my own

  way & feel

  competent, as if I had a

  place & something I could truly

  do without making somebody

  mad or un-

  happy. &, just looking

  back on myself, as if I were an eye

  looking from a high

  place, seeing that little

  girl, counting the envelopes, boxes, making her

  fingers go faster,

  counting the boxes over & over because she’d

  forget & had to make certain,

  enjoying how many boxes were piling

  up, how, yesterday, she did a box in ten minutes &

  today she could do more than

  two boxes in twenty (there was always a way to

  try harder & give the day a good

  reason.)

  When I looked back

  on that little five-year-old, six, seven, eight, nine,

  it was as if I were a little

  busy fish being watched by an

  interested & even caring

  owner, as if I had finally

  bought myself.

  Because I was good to Telly in his life,

  because I taught him Alice Neel

  & fed him frozen mealworms,

  (until I
found out he’d

  lose his bright red tail color

  for that pleasure),

  because I never left him

  alone when I traveled (never liking those

  who said their betta did just fine

  sitting on the edge of their office desk

  over the long weekend—how would you

  like it not to eat for three

  days, I wanted to ask), for choosing

  carefully among the pet

  sitters, interviewing, looking for one who took a fish

  seriously

  & told betta stories about how smart they

  are, coming up

  to say hi in the morning, checking you

  out with a certain calm or anxious

  look in the eye, because

  I believed

  in one fish’s

  brain & life & skills &

  emptied him out into the

  thawing river saying

  prayers for my

  lover or husband or brother

  of a year,

  because of this I am certain

  he sent me a

  gift from the china blue

  rivers of heaven, a lovely man, who

  first kissed me on

  that bridge,

  sending a photo

  after rain of “Kissing

  Bridge underwater” scrawled with his loose

  sprawling letters; because all things are

  connected, a

  circle,

  bread on the water, as my mother said,

  always comes home.

  An apology to Telly the revolutionary

  Love or respect, my father said,

  you can’t have both.

  Last night, after the reading,

  the audience

  climbed to their feet

  & cheered you—as if

  you were a rock star!

  Viva Telly!

  Telly lives!

  One woman explained,

  you only let them think you were

  a fish; but, right now,

  you are in

  Jamaica or Cuba with

  Assata Shakur.

  They giggled

  at our kiss & I thought:

  now they see the real

  me, not a poet, just

  some pathetic old woman

  who made a lover

  of a fish. So I reasoned. After all,

  you weren’t real, you were only

  a symbol.

  Telly,

  I never meant

  to betray you. Just

  to distract them

  as I handed myself

  a robe.

  When the goddess makes love to me,

  she has to pass through my father,

  she has to find him

  where he sits in a corner inside me