Music

complex piano scales drift through the walls
fingers pushed against nature
that would curl them into tender fists
against a mother's breast
the passage is repeated
again

I remember singing 'Kyrie'
until our voices beat the walls
the tabernacle in clear harmony
Kyrie eleison,
eleison
eleison
have mercy
Sister Julie St Francis stood in the dusky aisle below
again 'Kyrie'
again

I learned Our Lady of Perpetual Help was powerless
or disinterested
there would be no mercy but the music itself

Sister Perpetua said
Math is the music of the universe
covered a facial mark with makeup
did she look in a mirror then?
she hated sophomores
wise fools
I saw quarter, eighth notes
drift against a measured staff
in silent, black space
she turned equations
into form on graph paper
particular curves

reader of stories
writer of obtuse lyrics
I fell in love with math my sophomore year
she demonstrated with white chalk
on a blackboard
(now they are green with yellow chalk
I dislike that
she would have liked it
told us why
mathematicians and artists have elegance in common,
joy)
she demonstrated with supple aged fingers
algebra lovely as rosy fingered dawn

now
over the scales
some young woman babbles sterile nonsense
about rhythms
duple, triple
we clap in time
the tired old 'Nutcracker' soars once again
walk time
march time
dance time

Sister Mary Perpetua died last fall
in her nineties
but I remember her pleasure
in a clean, formal proof

Mary Jimenez, 1992
edited April, 2008

rubber bands

hair hangs over my face
brushes my neck
annoying
I consider getting up and checking
the drawer in the bathroom
where I put the big card of black
covered bands for my hair
weeks ago when I bought it
dammit, I'll be able to find this
how much bigger could it be?


of course
the drawer probably has the
nail strengthener I've been looking for
in every drawer in the house
including that one
for days
pink manicured nails cracking, peeling
no lady I

there will be no bands
meanwhile
I'll have to get up
damnit

I lift my right wrist
there it is !
Next to the silver bracelet
I have been wearing for days
I learned about just putting on some piece
and leaving it until I am tired of it
from Mexican women

Praise my mother!
I tie back my hair




Suddenly Mother's wrist is there
she picked up rubber bands all over the house
from the rolled newspapers
Daddy brought home


Los Angeles Mirror
or the The Herald, The Times
or the evening
Los Angeles Examiner lying
on the green lawn with the rosebush in the middle
when Daddy got home in the evening scented with ocean breeze

Daddy dug the hole in the middle in the lawn
and planted it the little bush with his own freckled hands
it was still there when they tore the house down
to expand the magic elementary school across the street
with the huge pine in front

my brother hung from the highest branch one Saturday
three stories up
we children just looked
Phillip's hanging!
I prayed he wouldn't fall

Anyway she picked up those bands
and safety pins from the baby's diapers
all over the house
stuck the pins to her shirt
and pulled the bands over her right wrist
they were always there
except when she put on her heels
to run to the bus for work

I have no clue what she did with the rubber bands
the pins as I said
were for the infinite diapers
of nine children
one after another
from age 30 to 40
I'm sure they removed the bands when they carried her hemorraging
from the house over and over
I pull back my middle class hair
and think of my mother
my dad and his infinite newspapers
magazines
Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post

sitting on the stool in the kitchen
talking to my mother
drinking
and reading
man of the house
we children waited silently for him to finish
so we could have the comics
the magazine

he brought us back
Little Golden Books
from his evening walks
Mother hid James Baldwin under her mattress because
he was not okay reading for children
The Fire Next Time
I stole it, read it while she was at work
put it back

9/11 and Pearl Harbor

Harry Truman kept a sign on his desk: The Buck Stops Here. If someone had decided during his administration to bomb New York City off the face of the earth and Truman had not been able to stop it, he would have held himself personally responsible. He ran for office on the idea that he was the best man for the job, and he considered that to be a very high expectation indeed. He was a competent, responsible adult. That is: he was a very conservative, old fashioned adult.
Conspiracies are notoriously difficult to carry through successfully. Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the American people have always held our government partially responsible for that tragedy. We had intercepted the information; we simply did not think bombing our fleet out of the water was the most likely thing the Japanese would do. It seemed unlikely. Our government was mistaken, and many Americans have consistently considered that mistake deadly and inexcusable, but no has ever had the gall to put forward the theory that the devilish Japanese were so innately evil and superior that our ability to govern ourselves according to our own constitution was in question. We honored responsible adults in those days and did what we needed to do and came home and raised our families as best we could. We considered caring for our children and each other what adults did, even if the commitment sometimes made us very unhappy for long periods. People stayed married for the children.
Our Beloved Leader and his backers have never themselves taken responsibility for the horror of their own incompetence in terms of the the surreal fact that commercial airliners flew out of Boston carrying women and children as well men and into the World Trade Center in New York City. He has snatched citizens off the streets of major cities , denied Americans the basic right of Habeas Corpus, and whipped the citizens of this comparatively open society into a frenzy of paranoia without admitting that the success of that loony plot was unlikely in the extreme and an incredible illustration of his administration's utter incompetence. People look to fascism to protect themselves with a strong competent leader when they feel themselves under uncontrollable and incomprehensible threat. We now have a proto fascist government, and I am no alarmist. I never think a successful disaster is the result of a conspiracy. Conspiracies mostly just fail; they are too complex. The best explanation of any phenomenon is usually the simplest that covers all elements of the question; that is never a conspiracy unless the government is run by irresponsible, paranoid proto fascists. There you are.

Elmo Comforts

 
 
 
 

La Fortaleza

 

 

Maggie

Mollie sat on the cot against the back wall of the Health Office holding the large syringe high in her right hand, feeding Ellie formula through her tube, watching her closely and chatting with Nurse Ester. It had been a busy morning of bruised knees and doctors who did not return calls. The two women were relaxing a little in the quiet. Someone knocked on the door, and Carla walked in holding little Maggie's hand.
Maggie had appeared in the school about a year ago at the same time as Lola. She was small for her age and slender with a thin, pale face and the smile of an angel. She spoke English when Mollie said, Hi in the hall, but chattered with warmth if Mollie addressed her in Spanish. Maggie and Lola had immediately been taken up by a group of giggling girls in their Upper Academic room at Jone's school for he Visually Impaired. and Mollie loved to watch the little group chattering in the halls and bathrooms. They seemed so ordinary and third grade, standing in a row at the sinks,washing their hands or walking down the halls arm in arm, marching around the yard in a big circle. Mollie was embarrassed that she could not tell these girls apart. They were both silly, shy, and the same age. They took turns telling Mollie the Spanish word for bracelet over and over when Mollie admired their gold chains or pink Hello Kitty jewelry. Pulsera
Mollie said, Hi, Maggie, what's up? Maggie looked up at Mollie and said, My leg hurts. Maggie had been a perfectly normal six year old in first grade at her neighborhood school until the headaches started. At first, the clinic doctor had said that it was probably nothing and suggested that Maggie was still adjusting to school. The headaches were just tension, and Maggie would stop having them when she adjusted. Maggie was a sensitive child and the baby of the family. He recommended a nap for Maggie after school, but the headaches did not get better. Maggie loved her teacher, and she was reading very well, but the headaches became blinding. Finally, the doctor scheduled an MRI and discovered that Maggie had a malignant brain tumor.
She had surgery immediately and spent months recuperating, first in the hospital where they checked her temperature and blood pressure a dozen times a day. The nurses removed the bandages that covered the open wound in her head to check that the jagged mark running over her bald skull to assure that it was healing correctly. Maggie's teachers came to visit almost every night after school. They brought Get Well cards made by Maggie's class and talked about what the children were reading. Miraculously, Maggie recovered her cheer and looked forward to going back to school; the doctors told her that she would be fine soon.
When she went home, she was visited every week by a special teacher from the district and learned to listen to the stories from her reading program on tape and figure out who the stories were about and what the action was. She could soon tell Mrs. Geoghan why she liked the stories. Of course, she always liked the stories. She learned to count unifex cubes and little bears without being able to see them. The surgery had left her intelligence and charm intact but taken her vision.
Fortunately, she was young, and she was alive. Her whole family prayed in gratitude before she slept every night. Thanks to Mrs. Geogahan, her mother did not let her get away with much, but Maggie learned to see her mother's face with her hands. She learned to eat with a fork by thinking of the plate as a circle with marks at the top and bottom and each side. Her mother told her where everything was, and she scooped with a spoon or stabbed with a fork. When Maggie could get out of bed, nothing was ever moved in the house again so Maggie would not trip. She learned to get around using the walls as guides.
After while, Maggie started at Jone's at the same time as Lola and became part of the gang of giggling little girls in hallways and bathrooms. They had to be separated in the classroom so they would pay attention to their braille reading and math. She took Orientation and Mobility with Ms. Isabel. She learned to find her way around the school using the walls and then a long cane. She learned to run on the playscape and get yelled at for riding the tricycles too fast. She learned how to read a braille map and tell North from South and East from West.
Now she was sitting on the chair next to Nurse Ester's desk with her feet swinging, telling Ms. Mollie that her leg hurt. . Nurse Ester got up from her desk and looked at Maggie's right leg. She asked Maggie if she had fallen on the yard or bumped into anything. Maggie said, No, but she had told her Mom about the pain, and her Mother had told her it was nothing and given her ice to put on the spot. Nurse Ester asked when that happened, and Maggie said, at Christmas. It was now March. Nurse Ester ran her hand up Maggie's leg and found the bump. She asked, Is this where it hurts? Maggie said, Yes. Mollie said, Nurse Ester, give Maggies some ice for the bump. It well help her feel better. The nurse looked up at Mollie and said, Yes. She went to the tiny freezer they kept medicine and water in, got an ice pack, wrapped it in a paper towel and gave it to Maggie to put on the lump. Maggie knew the Nurse and Molllie always put ice where it hurt. Ester said to Carla, Maggie can go back to class and hold the ice as long as she wants it. I'll call her Mother. Maggie left with Carla and her ice pack.
The last of the formula disappeared into Ellie, and Mollie slowly poured in two ounces of water to clear the tube. Then she removed the tube from Ellie's stoma, put the syringe and tube down on the tray in front of her, and covered Ellie's button. She took Ellie's hands and helped her off the cot. She removed her gloves and took Ellie to the sink to wash their hands. Nurse Ester called Maggie's mother and told her she needed to pick up Maggie and that Maggie could not return to school without a note from her doctor. Mollie walked Ellie back to class, watching her trail the wall independently and occasionally saying, a la derecha or vuelta, por favor.
Maggie came to the Spring program and sat with her parents in the audience. She had her right leg removed at the hip, hoping to stop the bone cancer. Her teacher visited her twice a week in the hospital and took braille get well cards made by her friends. She talked to the other girl gang members on the phone, gossiped, giggled and told them she was scared of the surgery. Nurse Ester visited her class to help the children understand and cope without too much fear. Every child in the class knew he or she was delicate; they had all seen lots of doctors and hospital rooms. The district sent a counselor trained on crisis management.
Maggie was taught by a different Itinerant teacher and started to learn her braille contractions and where a comma went. The news spread around the school that Maggie had an infection, then that she had recovered and was being fitted for a prosthetic leg. In late June, Maggie walked on her new leg with a mask on her face to keep out germs into the music room to sit with her class for music class. The teacher played major and minor chords, and the children identified them. She taught them a folk song from India about a mother who loves her baby. The children sang. Maggie sat and smiled and smiled. Molllie stood at the music room door and watched.
Mollie said nothing to anyone; she did not attend the funeral because she felt she belonged with the kids while they were in school. She did not cry, but she no longer felt that anything was more than she could stand. She never again said, Why me? She fed Ellie every day, covered bruised knees, soothed bumped heads, and put up with idiocy with as much patience as she could. When Maggie's parents came for her last report card and her backpack, Maggie looked them in their ashen faces and said, Maggie was beautiful child. I'm so sorry. She did not say, I know your pain.