by Susan Hahn
Copyright © by 2012 Susan Hahn.
All rights reserved. No text or photograph may be used or reproduced in any form or medium without written permission.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is coincidental.
Published in 2012. First Edition.
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.
Fifth Star Press
1333 West Devon Avenue, Suite 221
Chicago, Illinois 60660
Distributed by Small Press United.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 978-0-9846510-0-9
For Fred and Rick
The two great gifts
of my life
and
For Jean and Jacob and Charlie
The three great gifts
of years more recent
THE BELLS XI
I tie a string of bells around my ankle.
I am told I make a jingle
of delight. Sometimes, when I dance
I think my feet might burst.
Yet, I toll of my own accord.
I am not the maiden who threw herself
into the melting pot so that the metals
would fuse—perfect the sound—
make the air notes sweet and strong.
I am not that sacrifice.
Still, when my toes toss off
the earth, I can frighten away
the browsing snake.
I know someday I might break
and close my eyes to that scare,
pretend I glow like ruby and sapphire,
am a choir of tinkle and chime—
dainty, joyful, charmed, and wayward.
c. slaughter
THE CROSSES V
Cross my fingers, cross my heart,
arms extended, legs together, not apart,
I make of myself a cross.
In my pockets bright blue beads,
small clay gods, scarabs,
four leaf clovers, bejeweled mezziahs.
In my hat cockleshells
to exorcize the demons,
to keep hidden the seventh chakra,
the tonsure, the bald compulsion.
Cross my fingers, cross my heart,
arms extended, legs together, not apart.
In my ears little bells of confusion,
to frighten away eyes of evil.
On my breast a foul sachet
to repel the lick of the Devil.
Cross my fingers, cross my heart.
In my window a glass witch ball
to guard against the shatter
from intruders.
Cross my fingers.
c. slaughter
CONTENTS
Widdershins I
Flowers
Widdershins II
Queen Bee
Trichotillomania
No Sad Songs Sung Here
The Interior of the Sun
The Devil’s Legs
Yom Kippur Night Dance
The Sin-Eater of the Family
Confession
Nijinsky’s Dog
The Lovers
Mania
If I Set up the Chairs
Small Green
Mens Rea
Paranoia
The Crosses I
Clean
Widdershins III
Acknowledgments
WIDDERSHINS I
Turn counter to the clock
tick, its annoying tic,
stir the pot
left to right, set
the table west to east,
steer the small boat
from the harbor
against the sun path.
Traveling the heavens
has not led to protection.
c. slaughter
WHEN I FINALLY FELT the full impact of the death of Herr M and the awfulness that came after—that a member of my family was involved—I fled to Lao Tzu for advice. I knew there was nothing I could have done to stop it, but I needed specific instructions as to what to do now. “What should I do?” were my exact words as my mind went running off. It was an impulsive action—this mind-running—and even though I knew it was wrong-spirited at the time, I did not think to stop myself.
Here, far below the earth’s surface, I continue to discover mountains where the glory of all seasons converge and burst into full bloom—the English oaks, German silver firs, Burmese banyan figs, and African acacias, all in their quiet dignity, existing together—and the lakes where still waters throw a perfect reflection and where the limestone resembles majestic waterfalls. A world I had now—with this news—temporarily abandoned, my mind and sight not focused on all the beauty I had come to find on this path to visit Lao Tzu.
I ran past the jubilant summer gardens filled with flowers crowded together without outline—boneless—existing with riotous exuberance and ease, past the venerable plum trees, gnarled and lichen covered, and the lotus flowers floating in the rivers, past the peach trees in the full glory of their blush and fragrance, past the flowering almond ones, their rosy blossoms dusting the ground beneath my feet as I ran faster and faster to Lao Tzu for advice.
Clearly, my alarmed reaction was an above-the-ground one, my emotional, panicky leap up there—my “trip up”—a backward step. But I had my reasons. I always felt, because I was the eldest of my cousins, that as the years passed and I grew wiser I would be able to fix things for them, and for that matter for others in my family. I wanted to polish the egos of those left so tarnished and dim the lights on those so focused upon the gloss of themselves and their possessions, much of the damage having been done by my father and my mother. But my life was cut off, shut down midcourse and therefore all my hopes for this—whether they were altruistic or egocentric or some combination of both—were thwarted.
When the long journey of my illness concluded with my forced detour to beneath the ground, intruding on all my good intentions, it was inevitable that I carried with me this over-responsibility, this overburdening of concern and resolve and however much I try not to, I continue, even at this distance, to assume the quiet, watchful role of the Slaughter family’s night nurse.
Now, I excuse myself for many reasons, starting with the fact that my time spent in eternity has been short and therefore my behavior, especially when I am under extreme pressure, is still more blatantly alarmist-human than otherworldly calm. Also, there was the act itself—that Herr M had been murdered. And a murder was definitely on the far side of that which goes against the natural life flow. Yes, everything I did after the instant of my full knowledge of what had happened—of all that I had witnessed—seemed to be going in reverse.
FLOWERS
With her thumbs she’d press at the beginning
stems, try to push them back into her chest
as if that could arrest the budding.
Not wanting anyone to see,
so they couldn’t point, make fun,
she’d stretch her sweaters
down around her knees,
the yarn slackened and blanketing
her body. She didn’t know then that
a young man would come with flowers
which felt like the soft skin
of her own grown breasts, their areolas
knowing how to roughen into crinkled leaves,
nipples ruddy. She didn’t realize how easily
they all could decay,
that someday they’d be taken from her,
the way s
he imagined her caller stole
each bloom from its stem, a risk
he took for the fantasy of touching her,
his fingers working carefully, anxious
that he’d get in trouble, have to stop—
all blossoms plucked from their hands.
c. slaughter
I AM SURE MY mother knew that her nieces hated her and that she understood it to a point. She knew her nick-name—the one her brothers called her openly, and often to her face—“American Beauty Rose”—got to them, irritated and upset them. She understood why not only her nieces, but I too—her own daughter—would go through our lives always troubled by having such beauty in the family. She knew she was the standard-bearer of beauty not just for us, but for any female who encountered her, and that no matter what any of them did to copy her or rebel against such beauty, she believed no one could compete. Consequently, she, as burden or blessing depending on who you were, remained unfazed and moved forward with her life.
Since I was born homely, I gave up rather early on how I looked, refusing makeup, not watching my weight, barely combing my intentionally chopped-up hair, and most certainly giving no thought to what I wore. Eventually my parents accepted how I looked and set me on a different path. I was to become a famous philosopher—a true scholar. I would equal or surpass Grandfather Cecil.
All of the female offspring were named after him—me (Ceci), Cecilia, Cecily, Celine, Celie, and Celeste—a fact that Cecilia thought really dumb and voiced to me. She believed it ridiculous to pay such homage to a man when there was only anecdotal evidence—“glory stories,” she called them—of his brilliance. “Frankly,” she told me when she was ten and I was twelve, “it’s Grandmother Idyth whom they should have honored—that woman locked away for all these years—her impressive stamina for a long life, however much the doctors drugged her.” When she talked like this my eyes would grow so big they felt like they might burst. And Cecilia talked like this a lot. Especially to me, because of how well I listened and laughed at what she said, for deep inside me, there was a rebel—an iconoclast—but I just could not quite bring it forth. Only Cecilia allowed herself to be free enough to give such ideas voice, however quietly she whispered them. She felt with me a safe place, which made our relationship special, for she did not feel there were many safe places in this world for her.
My parents liked to compare things and people to flowers. They would brag unrelentingly about Cecil’s genius—say my mind was so similar, compare it to a rare and gorgeous orchid. At the Passover Seder each year where my father presided with great authority, I was always given the role of the Wise Son, which made me flush terribly with discomfort and guilt. Cecilia was predictably and painfully designated the Wicked Son, and the Simple Son was alternately assigned to Celie, Celine, or Cecily. Joshua and Jeremy, Celie’s brothers, were far younger than the rest of us—either had not yet been born or were too little to be called upon. My father always spoke with great pedantic pleasure on behalf of the Son Who Does Not Know How to Ask.
Once, they called Cecilia a dandelion—which, as everyone knows, is just a weed. It got back to Aunt Lettie—Cecilia’s mother. So directly and quietly, with a sadness and dismay in her voice, she asked, “Ceci, is it true that your parents called Cecilia this?” Telling Aunt Lettie, “It is,” made me sick.
Rather quickly the dandelion comparison made its convoluted path to Cecilia and she cried. She was six. It tangled her mind—bound her to awful bottom thoughts about herself—snarled through her body and knotted it. However, when she was old enough, she looked up “dandelion” in the dictionary and discovered the root was from the French, dent de lion—meaning “lion’s tooth.” From that moment, she felt a little stronger and happier. She found it, perhaps, a divine message. Cecilia thought like that. And she waited …
Cecilia really detested my mother—perhaps the most of my cousins. She thought her soul a muddy, bog-like place—a sewage pit—and I could not argue with any of this, although thinking about her soul in such a manner hurt. The subtle, subversive way my mother talked—always starting out so sweetly, then ending with a twist, an insult—punctured like a dart. For example, she would say, “Cecilia, you look so pretty—today—even though you’re so thin. Doesn’t your mother feed you?” Or, “That beauty mark on your cheek, Cecilia, looks so artificial. Did you place it there with a pencil?” In truth, it was real.
Aunt Lettie would tell Cecilia, “When one has such beauty, it can do two things to you—either cause you to have great trouble or to have great luck in life and in Rose’s case, it’s great luck. We just have to get used to the fact of it—that Rose can, because of how she looks, get away with how she speaks and what she does. Don’t you see,” she would continue with amazement in her voice, plus a pinch of bitter, “it never rains when Rose throws an outside party? The sun always shines on her. That’s why everyone wants to get married, or celebrate their anniversaries or birthdays, in that huge and glorious backyard.”
It was true—it never rained on my mother’s plans, only on the other days, so that her flowers could grow as lovely as they were capable, while the dandelions ran amuck in the field beyond her elaborate, expensive wrought-iron fence. When very young, I would wonder if the clouds, the rain, the scary rock hail, too, were dazzled by her and also a little afraid of her powers—her wrath if they dared to intrude.
Eventually, Cecilia came to love the freedom of the dan-delions—their unpredictable paths—the independence of their ways. And once, I even said in an almost angry voice to her, “You are lucky, you are special, you do exactly what you want.” Then I paused, took a breath and said in a whisper, “I envy you.” I said this at the point when I got really sick and began to completely disappear, disorienting Cecilia so much she felt herself becoming all dandelion puff—her mind a’scatter. Those were among the last words I ever said to her. Words which I now truly regret, thinking how wrong I was to envy her gifts, given that they were the direct cause of what happened to her with Herr M.
Cecilia’s mother had said nothing bad would ever happen to my mother, had said it always and it was because of this Cecilia found what happened to me impossible and unacceptable. She could not fit it into her mind—it became a chunk of granite that she would never be able to push through any door, no matter how she tried to angle it.
She concluded God had made a mistake. That she, Cecilia Slaughter, was the daughter who should have gotten sick. She was the daughter who should have died. But it was, in fact, my mother who had lost a daughter. It was my parents who were forced to place a daughter in the earth.
On the day I was buried, Cecilia told her mother and father how she felt—about being the one who should have died. Her father, Samuel, said a too-loud, “Hush,” so upset that his sister Rose was having to go through all of this. Aunt Lettie just remained stunned silent that the myth had a crack, that it had, in fact, split wide open and what oozed out was too grotesque.
The whole family was stupefied that Rose—the golden beauty of the family, of the neighborhood, of the community—had suffered such a loss. From that day, my mother looked at her nieces with an outrage so deep, yet carefully hidden behind her fixed blue eyes, I was pretty sure Cecilia, with her acute eye for detail and ability to pick up on what was too subtle for the others, was the only one who felt the direct hit of it.
That day at my grave Aunt Sonya’s face was empty of emotion, for all feelings of loss had long ago been scoured out of her with the death of Celeste, her baby daughter. Uncle Emmanuel wept violently, his tears really for Celeste, too, and because he was prone to making a spectacle of himself.
Cecilia just stood there numb, staring at each of them—Celine, fussing with the flower pin on her too-tight suit, trying hard not to think of Celeste, her dead little sister; Celie, averting her eyes as she always did in any kind of tense situation; Cecily, tapping her foot as if all she really wanted to do was kick someone, which was not uncommon. Michael, Cecilia’s husband, stood in b
ack of her, his hands on her waist, helping to hold her up. Joshua and Jeremy were in their late teens and traveling through Europe.
My mother’s other brothers and their wives cried hard, while my father stood immobile, stiffly clutching my mother, only the color in his huge face moving tumultuously—from boiling red to violent purple. After the service he turned his back to his nieces. From that moment they ceased to exist.
Cecilia was truly the only one who took on the long, mourning task, as if her whole life had been building to it. She could not get out of her mind how I had called the tumors growing inside me, my dying, rotting flowers. Cecilia, with her dandelion tenacity, could not stop digging into the ground pit of herself, forever looking for the why of it. The why of any of it …
“Survivor’s guilt” was what the psychiatrist called it, and perhaps he was right, however crazy he was from his own polluted history, which eventually he told her because he had fallen in love—in love with her. A bad luck story because as Cecilia grew up she had become the other side of what can happen to beauty—a beauty which immediately drew Herr M to her, and, ultimately, led to violent acts and conclusions.
“The ugly duckling to the swan”—how Cecilia remembers that book, which her mother read to her over and over when she was little, as Aunt Lettie sighed and looked at her daughter, whispering to herself, “Well, maybe … ”
Cecilia would stare at the psychiatrist, sitting there in his perfectly coiffed strawberry-blond toupee, for an hour three times a week puzzled, until she eventually figured out he had four different ones of varying lengths so by the fourth week he looked like he really needed a trim—which of course he got by returning the next week to toupee number one. It took her three months to figure out this cycle. That is what she focused on while he gawked at her, eventually convincing her that she had to come more often—that she needed him—and cut his price to a third of what it was originally. Finally, when he nervously said, “Perhaps I should no longer charge you,” then hesitated, leaned too far forward, and continued, “maybe someday, and soon, we could go for a ride, and then have lunch,” she fled his office.
