week 3 :: textual self-portraits :: kathy

Gotten off my bum this morning after some of our readings and made a move that is not self diminishing and submitted the following self-portraiture work to a literary journal which had a call for "Like a Girl..."

(1) Damn the unseemly, I bleed 

I get stuck. The only way I know to unstick is to approach the very moment in which I reside. So I do. I drag myself down the aisle. Cardboard or plastic? Pulling one more green and blue box from the shelf, I trudge the cart-rolling trek back, shamefacedly, to the register. I am sure I still blush with each purchase, wishing it were the last. 

But no. George is here again and sitting with me in my mom's chair. I rock wedged between the big open windows of my hermitage and its fireplace. His presence, not that comfy. With his added weight, the wicker bites ridiculous patterns into my rump as I wait his leave. I hate his visits.

My mom never spoke to me of George or his visits. She most definitely did not know his name. George leaked into my vocabulary during junior high gym class as I was coming of age. Not once did my mom discuss these girl things with me. How I knew to stoop and root below the bathroom sink to resolve my first month issue remains a mystery to me now. No talk, no mom explanation, just pictorial directions within the box. What I used-up magically reappeared again and again, month after month. Who named this monthly event George, I have no idea. It was just overheard talk during gym. Code for that girl time. 

“Is George here yet?” 

“George came for a visit this week?”

And he has! Sigh. I distract myself with the thumbing of my keypad and the muffled morning rain thrumming on the metal roof. From here I can see that the leaves are beginning to clump, cling and mat. I rock. It drizzles. I bemoan the visit. Still hunting for distraction, my mind turns to damn yesterday's rotten log with its belt busting force decommissioning my tractor's mulching blade. Now I will have to work up the words to ask Mr. Bushee for a lesson in belting my banged up red babe. I am hard on my tools and toys, haranguing them to work in irregular ways. As a she-child, I did not get the useful learned lessons in machined mechanisms or their care. Frankly, even now with my shop bought fixetties, I am left wanting. The red babe, my bladed beast, has returned from the shop more broken than not. Whaaat? I paid work earned money for these repairs. They alleviate her nonfunctionalness, but bang and break something new every fricking time—broken fender, dangling head light, a quickly aging heap of machine. Superficial, I suppose, but my hard wear exasperates their bangs and breaks—front face plate recently gone as the broken fender caught hold and ripped free from a grounded clutching branch. Admittedly, I only handed over a hundred bucks for her, a divorce trophy from some poor souls' split. 

My mind wanders back to George. How can it not? He asserts himself with a fierce, unforgiving force. Try as I might to avoid his impinging, he arrives with foreseeable frequency. Here but a few days then gone again, twenty-six. His nature, damn cyclical. Only now has he begun to slow, stutter and wane with the wear of my age. Why must he still come for these bodily excavations with his little detissuing knives? I bleed each visit. Damn bastard.

A week early from his habit, he sits with me here, here in this chair. Sit still. Rock. He cramps me. This fall he has toyed, failing and fluctuating in his visits as though to leave me. I am ready for him to be gone. I yearn for the flat lake calm that will settle in with the absence of his hormonally driven storms. Perhaps I will be less of a woman in his wake. I've pre-mourned his leaving for sometime while fretting my fading femininity. He has had his cyclical spanning stay, nearly thirty-nine and three-quarter years! I am ready for him to be gone. Bastard. I suppose, menopause will be his unseemly boxless bitch. Perhaps she will linger longer.

This is not something I can discuss with my mom. I am not ready for her to be gone, but she is.

(2) The collapse of stories :: two to one

2001
I rarely travel without my husband. Nonetheless, I am in Tampa, away on business. I have won two glass Guru Award trophies and am called to the stage at the Photoshop World Conference. It is September of 2001. 

My gram lives just north of town so I have preplanned to extend my stay. This past summer, at eighty-nine, she buried her third husband. I didn’t come then, but now I stay with her for two and one half days. 

I hug my gram goodbye. Bags fully loaded, I slide into my Hertz rental car. It smells new. I depart with a wave. It is early Tuesday morning. 

Though I don’t listen to the radio or music in my jeep or at home, as I slow for a toll, fumbling for change, I oddly also reach for the dial. Not only do I dislike the constant buzz of a radio when compounded by street noise, it grates me. But still, I inexplicably turn it on. Looking up, I meet the stare of the woman in the tollbooth, just as a newscaster reports a second plane is striking the other tower. I pay my toll and continue on to the airport Houston bound. 

In media-weary disbelief, I mull over my options. My gut says, keep the rental. I will need it. At the airport, I park in the short-term lot. I expect the terminal to be in lock down, so the lack of security is startling. I walk right in bypassing the usual scrutiny. Perhaps security is diverted for Bush’s presence at Emma E. Booker Elementary School here in Florida. I don’t bother to question, let alone check-in. I glance at the TV sets, all fixed to the same station with their volumes turned up, and then descend to baggage claim. As I locate the Hertz service desk, I hear the emotional announcement of the first tower giving way and plummeting to the ground, then temporary silence. 

The gathering crowd around the rental counter is not thick. I wait my turn, not long. In an instant decision, I explain that I will be using the car to get to Houston. I am inwardly jolted by the “Yes, but … all low mileage vehicles will be kept in state.” An offer is made to exchange mine with an older model. I hand over the keys and wait. Already the second tower has been reported to have followed the first. It is not yet eleven. 

The baggage area is hushed, with only low murmurs. The sound of the terminal’s TVs still drifts down the escalators. The Hertz guy hollers for quiet. I hear my blood pulse in my left ear. He announces that they would like people headed to the same destinations to share cars. There are nods of agreement. He mills through the crowd attempting to collect destinations. 

Finally, again not long at all, my name is called. I negotiate my way back to the counter. As the rep guides me through the paperwork, he explains he has given me an in-town rate of eighty-seven dollars with no charge for mileage. He knows I am going to Houston. At the same time, another rep has been calling out for Houston bound travelers to pair with me. None. I am a little ashamed leaving without companions. 

I have kept off my cellphone at the newscaster’s request, but now I flip it open and make two calls—one to my husband, the other to my gram. I tell them my travel plans.
Behind wheel of the car, I click on the radio while reviewing the map stretched out in the passenger seat. I just need to set a route out of Tampa and north to I-10. 

Two and one half hours of driving and I take the ramp to merge westbound on the interstate. I pass no cars or trucks; I am not passed. No vehicles in the opposite direction, either. I am alone. The highway sounds different. The acoustical reverberations travel up through the floor of the car as the wheels traverse varying concrete textures. I notice the engine’s hum and the way the car cuts through the air. It is different than my Jeep Wrangler. The force of passing semis does not buffet my rental or whistle at my windows. The solitary silence is breached only by my car’s passage and the ongoing confusion being broadcast on the radio. There are no white contrails or glimmering white dots in the sky. All flights have been grounded. I notice. Fortunately the gas stations that line the highway, marking each town, are open.

Between towns, the radio signal grows fuzzy, I set the radio to seek a new station and turn the volume even lower. Off, doesn’t seem an option. I still don’t know what prompted me to initially turn it on. If I ascribe the impulse to God, then how do I account for the towers? So, I avoid unfolding the God topic within my mind. I don’t pause to pray. Instead, I contemplate my life, job, where I have been and am headed. I am thirty-nine. 

Even turned down low, the reports of jumpers catch my attention. I missed much of the early detail while at the airport, so only now do I hear the descriptions. Imagining them plummeting in ones and twos, it finally reaches me. I cry silently as though in a darkened theater. I turn the radio down even more as I recoil back into my own thinking. 

I fantasize my future, calculating my exit plan. This is something I haven’t done before. I draft and redraft my as yet unwritten resignation. Three months notice. I file the letter away in my mind and shift to the dilemma of my remaining two-year contractual obligations. I construct my arguments for extrication and imagine what it will be like in graduate school. I don’t pick up my phone for conversations with my husband. The newscasters have continually requested no unnecessary calls so the cell circuits remain open for emergency services and loved ones connected to the twin towers. Though, I normally follow Jim’s lead and rarely make decisions of my own, I resolve this new direction by myself. Alone. 

I turn off the radio on the outskirts of Baton Rouge. It is eleven as I check into a Ramada. In the room, the televised images flicker projections across the dark walls, I am road weary, spent. When I finally sleep, it is still Tuesday, September 11, 2001. 

Four a.m., I am back on the highway with four hours and four minutes remaining to Houston. The radio is silent.

The digital clock indicates it is almost seven. I pick up my phone, *2. My husband, Jim answers. I will arrive at Intercontinental, terminal C, outside of baggage claim about eight. Can you pick me up? Yes. 

Having returned the car, I descend to baggage claim and slip out the sliding doors for pick up. I am prepared to wait. Jim is consistently late and I no longer take it personally. Sometimes he refers to himself as “the late Jim Kelley.” He thinks this is funny, I have learned to smile. I unhurriedly stand, stretching my legs and back, extend both arms over my head, down to my toes. I touch my bags housing my sock wrapped glass trophies. A car pulls up, not Jim. A man gets out. The cop advances and sends him away. A car pulls up. A woman gets out. I hear the click of her door locks. I wait for the cop to intervene. He watches. She is young, pretty. He nods at her. She registers his attention and continues to enter the terminal. One minute. Two. I step behind a big concrete pillar to separate myself from the shrapnel pattern as I imagine her car a rolling bomb. I think the cop is an idiot since girls can be crazy bitches. Her petite form does not render her safe. As she returns I am still positioned to protect myself from the fantasy blast. 

Jim arrives in my Jeep. I toss my bags in back and climb in. We head to the Town and Country Einstein’s for breakfast bagels. It is Wednesday morning after eight, no school today.

We sit outdoors, our normal Saturday ritual. Jim’s cinnamon raisin bagel is slathered thick with cream cheese. My double toasted sesame, I skim with three pats of butter. Trying not to sound overly definitive, I blurt out my work and school decisions. He, sort of, listens. There is a lack of eye contact; his head is cocked as he watches other people. I explain why quitting my job and getting an MFA makes sense, is purposeful, not frivolous or selfish. The questions flitter across his face. I expected this. I re-frame my intent as ministry, wrapping Jesus around my words. It’s a little too tight for my liking. Of course this is just bullshit, I am simply trying to speak Jim’s language. Not that I don’t also believe, but I find the world smoke gray. Though I think God may nudge me this way or that, I certainly wouldn’t lay claim to his lead. Jim sees it all in blacks and whites. So as I tentatively shellac Jesus on what I want, I squirm inwardly with what feels like pretense. But still I suggest God has led me. There is a slight tug at my conscious, that hopes God doesn’t engage the smite button. Jim probably wants me to go home and pray. It is his habit, his pattern, just as it was in 1986 when he popped the marital question, but rejected that day’s joyful response. He squelched it. I was given the directive to go home and pray. Trust in me was absent as we laid the relational foundation. Despite his undermining resistance, I have learned to trust myself, to trust my gut. So with this decision, I will not be deterred. I hold firm. This is my first significant course change to make without his dictates. I don’t give way. God can handle it. 

Unknown to me in this moment is that over two slathered bagels I have struck the first overt and fatal blow to our marriage. It is Wednesday morning, September 12th, 2001. Within nine years time the marriage will fail, imploding inward on itself, all twenty-three years of stories.