My great-grandmother
on my mothers side
the not so secret shame
of a family given to secrets
and half truth
When I was a child
and she was perhaps 65
and on her fourth husband
she used to cackle
and make sounds
that I did not believe
were possible
I remember
visiting her
just as my new teeth
were coming in.
My mouth ached
and she brought out
a clean washcloth
and poured rye whiskey
on the cloth till it was soaked
She handed it to me,
and said
chew on this
it'll help the pain
and she was right
it did help
Her hair was bright red
just like Lucille Ball's
it was very thin
and seemed to float
above her scalp
it made a sort
of strawberry halo
My grandmother
whom I love so deeply
could barely stand to speak
with her mother
who had abandoned her
as a child
Whenever we came home
from visiting her mother
my grandmother
would go to her room
and stay there
until it was time
time to prepare our supper
My mother told me stories
of her grandmother
my great-grandmother
the old woman
with bright red hair.
When Elsie was young
her red hair was not a Halo
but a mark of her profession
she was a "cook"
for a lumber camp
up north in Ontario
Which I always thought
terribly funny
because she could not cook
she lived on take-out
Long before take-out existed.
Her fourth husband
always sat in the living room
listening to the radio
when we came to visit
we would stay in the kitchen
we did not greet one another.
Did I say that she cackled
She did.
When I was a child
I thought it very funny
but now I know
it was just a sign
a sign that she was drunk
When my great-grandmother Elsie
finally died, she was in her 90s
and my grandmother was greatly relieved
in that she had for the previous 10 years
been required by her conscience
to visit her mother twice a week
in the one-room flat
the county welfare had given her.
When Elsie died
the church she had attended
for 30 years
refused to say a funeral mass
not because she was
a whore or a haradan
(and she was perhaps both those things)
but, because she was cremated
The priest said
that it was an insult
to the doctrine of the resurrection
as if it were easier to resurrect
the worm ridden corpses of the buried
than the grey dross of her remains
he was a fool
and he was mean
A methodist pastor
a kindly fool
took on the impossible job
of saying kind and foolish words
to heal a breach
that perfect depth
But there are no words
by some fool of a parson
which can convey
an unsought healing
upon the survivors of
this red haired infamy
My grandmother cried
locked away in her room
so that we could not see
her tears, but we could see
just as if we were in the room
we could see the tears
in our imaginations
My mother just sat
and smoked cigarettes
she said nothing
which was unusual
for she had inherited
the role of the harridan
and she reveled in it
Somehow, the baseness
and the meanness
of my great-grandmother
skipped a generation
leaving my grandmother
a wounded innocent
between her mother
and her daughter
But Catherine
(that was my grandmother's name)
somehow stayed unstained
free from the anger
and the mistakes of judgment
that crippled the moral life
of her mother and her daughter
it was not that she was oblivious
actually she was acute
in her observations
of the world, both natural
and unnatural
She was a gardener
on a grand scale
in her small market garden
where in the acres of tomatoes
carrots, potatoes and corn
she put aside an acre
to plant with flowers
The flowers were good business
she sold them to funeral homes
and florists in town
but the acre of flowers
was close to the house
and all summer long
she woke to the sight and smell
of many flowers
Catherine cried
and I think she cried often
I think she mourned a childhood lost
and the marriage without love
but only the thin tenderness of mutual regard
and the compact of survival
made between opposing powers
I loved my grandfather
he was strong
and had a voice that was low and determined
and he loved me
and even though he was a man, strong
and self-sufficient
he was not afraid to say
to his grandson, that he loved him.
But, I think that he was a mean man
as much feared as respected by his friends
and I think that he hated women
much more than he respected them
and I think that my grandmother
Catherine was in some terrible way
caught up in this hatred
that meshed neatly
with the self-portrait
that she carried 'round
in her head.
His name was Harold
(that was his middle name,
but he we choose not to use his first name
which was John
because John was his father's name
and he was loath to use the name
of the man he hated and feared
John, my grandfather's father
was by all accounts
a man filled with hatreds
and some kind of terrible fear.
John was a strange kind of ex-pat
a Canadian by birth
who came south
just across the border
at Niagara Falls
to work the trains
Of the Erie Lackawanna
John died before I was born
so I have nothing but
the suspicious memories of others
to give him life
or the breath
that comes from
retrospection that in anamnesis
grows a new garden
of sinew and bone
muscles and blood and skin
(the hipbone connects to the...)
a garden that a picture does become
cleaned up a little
neatened around the edges
and made less the bloody mess
that this wannabe monster was.
God, how he hated
Papists and Jews
Niggers and Spics
perhaps all those polite Canadians
asked him to leave
when it became apparent
that he was a bundle of hatreds
swaddled in the blood of others.
I tremble, even writing
those foul words
I can not bring those words forward
save, somehow, that I can strike them out
they disfigure my page
replicating that terrible pain
with each unfolding.
But, John did hate
any lineament
that betrayed too much otherness
that bespoke strange allegiances
and foreign powers.
For a man born across the border
he saw America as too small
his adopted country too frail
his home to easily stained
by the tears or the blood
of that other
hellborne, how he did hate.
That leaves I think
my brother and me
and of me
you have these many words
that lie and cheat
that the truth might be
My brother's name was Paul
but no saint was he
though once he did fall from his horse
and retreat to silence
for a day or two
His name was Paul
and he hated
he hated my mother and his lying life
he hated all that was bright and shiny
all that hinted of a life
that was more than could be seen
by bloodshot eyes.
I saw him the first night he drank
he was so young
but even then at 12 or 13
it was clear that his incomparable
mind was headed down some
angry stretch of road
where desolation lived
being wed to his liver
and tightening its claws
No one really tried
to take away the booze
the grass
the amphetamines
that made him whirl
like some maddened dervish
who spins and spins, then spins again
away from God, away from love
away from intellect and hope
This sparkling mind
that as a child
set his world alight
with questions
and answers
beyond what could be
for an innocent
a child
But that was gone
gone never to return
the drugs
the alcohol
pulled him down
to a place far beneath
Satan's old lair
you see, he hated
hated what he could be
It was a lonely road at night
I do not know if there was a moon or not
he drank that night
but then, he always drank at night
he was with a friend
another souless child
enveloped likewise in rage
they were a month or two
after having left school
when the car turned
and went end for end
killing one not two
It took a while his death
ten days and a bit more
crucified on a Stryker frame
dying an inch at a time
as he refused to live
the blood would not stop
to bleed in some unseen place
down in the gut
so he died
a death all his own
and that leaves me
and that leaves me
