Mother, may I?
During the screened-porch dinner of corn on the cob,
pork chops, tomatoes like red meat, warm and bleeding,
I felt the first stirring. The air moved, cracked the damp
heat that stood around the house in blocks. The backyard
maple rustled, twenty thousand green hands waving
a signal. Robins up and down the block began
scattering their coded notes. Our yard stretched larger
as the sky lost light. Out by the lilac hedge,
imaginary shapes conspired. I had to scrape
scraps into the kitchen can, rinse and stack the plates,
while outside, I knew it, everything was starting
without me. On the porch, the kittens, one tiger,
one marmalade, were climbing right up the screens
to chase the white moths that bumped on the other side,
dying, like dumbbells, to enter our box of light.
I stood on the sill, where tomatoes were lined up
to ripen, and unhooked the tiger from the screen.
Under the fur my fingers felt her secret, hot,
skinny body; her heart like a tom-tom hammered.
Then I heard Roger calling down the block, and John
did that whistle with his fingers. The dishes clinked
in the pan. Better not ask. Just, carefully,
open the porch door a crack, so the kittens won't
escape from safety, and slide out, like gliding
into warm, easy water. I ran on the grass,
I was gone. The air had a secret, sweetened
and heavy, like Hawaii, like honeymoons. Kids
were lined up already, across a yard where no
father was watering, solemnly wig-wagging
his hose. "Red Rover" was first. Whoever got named
had to charge like a ram into the other line,
try to break their phalanx of linked arms. Over
and over we flung ourselves, crashed and bounced and broke.
Later came "Mother, May I? and then "Statues": grab
somebody's arm and whirl him around and around
and let go! He must freeze in whatever funny
pose he's flung into -- Frankenstein, ballet dancer,
airplane, ape. Our bodies amazed us, taking shapes,
by chance, stranger than we could plan. Then, suddenly --
"Not It!" "Not It!" "Not It!" -- we switched to Hide and Seek.
It was real night now, moon blue and humid. Mothers
would be calling soon. I hid in the hydrangea;
John was It. Lightning bugs rose in constellations
and sank, and rose again, blinking their welcome. Sweat
prickles my neck, my scraped knee bled. I was hidden,
but anyway my heart beat hard. I was holding it,
secret, like a lightning bug cupped in my hand.
I was letting it rise in rhythm with its kind.
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Down in the dark
After three days of equinoctial
rain, I fall asleep to sounds of geese
leaving and dream right back to nineteen
forty-nine, the old house on Ashland
Avenue, the basement. The windows,
high above my head, are filled with snow.
The furnace is humming a grumbly
song, leaking a square of firelight
around its iron door. At the dim
edge of the light-bulb's circle, Mason
jars gleam in rows - tomatoes, onions,
peas, beans, cauliflower, peaches. Bright
as the Christmas balls boxed and waiting
in the attic, each jar sits wax-sealed
and dreaming, remembering sun, roots,
rain. They make me think of my mother,
bending over her hoe, then over
the steaming stove, boiling down summer
to keep us all going in the cold.
Outside, each puddle or pond is sealed
with ice. But down here, behind the lines
of laundry dried by the furnace's
secret sun, I find two round wooden
tubs where wintering goldfish swim. Orange
tomato-red, each, white, and pinto
they flick and weave within the glassy
water. These fish live in my Grandma's
basement, not ours. But this is a dream,
and I kneel by the tubs and watch fish
go round and round, dreaming of their rock-
lined pool, the roof of water lilies,
the dragonflies dipping to their kiss.
I'm six. I know that fish are cold clear
through, but I have a furnace inside.
It throbs like the big one, that engine
hauling the house toward Christmas. Then
comes my birthday, then Valentine's Day
and Easter. Then summer - bare feet, hide
and seek, peaches, tomatoes, and gold-
fish in Grandma's pool. I'll be seven
and half then. I see, for the first
time, that I have a brain that can think
all this and still be here in winter,
in the basement. I can keep it down
inside me, like secrets. I can hear
autumn rain, half-waking, and still see
the high, snow-filled windows, the bright jars,
the laundry, the furnace, the fish....
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Who was that masked man?
For years, in front of those black-and-white TV's, we believed
we'd grow up to be cowboys. Boys, girls, not one of us escaped
the dream - the drop to horseback from the balcony, the ride
through the dust to catch the black hat, the umpteenth daring rescue
of somebody helpless and blonde. Oh, it was fun to be the good
guy, it was easy. All it took was a white hat, a pair of six-guns,
and a strong, good-natured horse. The bad guys had their own guns,
of course, but were handicapped by being stupid and so unbelievably
bad that we knew they had to lose, or what was the point of goodness?
Every day we sat on the floor and watched them, after we'd made our escape
from school - Roy Rogers, Hopalong, the Lone Ranger galloped to the rescue
while our fathers, wearing hats, were heading home for dinner, riding
in trains and car pools. How we wished for silver stallions to ride
instead of our beat-up Schwinns! Like cowboys tied to chairs with our guns
out of reach on the table, we were stuck in the unrescuable
state of childhood, bound by homework and chores. We believed
we could master the thousand ways they taught us to escape -
the candle flame, the broken glass, the signal flashed to the good
Indian hiding outside the cabin. No girl dreamed of being that goody-
goody sidekick, Dale Evans. We would twirl lariats, wear chaps, and ride
after bad guys every day. Sometimes we would even help Roy escape
from the abandoned mine, bind up his wounds with one hand and gun
down desperadoes with the other. In light of this it was hard to believe
that our mothers could tell us to get up and set the table, or run to rescue
the backyard laundry from the rain. But Mom was the Law. To rescue
our dignity, we obeyed muttering that we would run away for good
and live on a ranch if only we could get the train conductors to believe
that we were older. Now we are older - and not one of us is riding
down bad guys through the dust. Where are our trusty horses? Our guns?
Our bunk beds on the ranch? A weekend in Vermont is our "escape,"
and our children, watching medics holler "clear!" and gangsters escaping
with their semi-automatics, would laugh at our dreams of rescue -
those leaps to horseback, those bloodless chases, those miniature six-guns.
They know it's not easy as black and white to tell the bad from the good,
and that when you're tied up with the fuse burning, you can foget about riding
back to the Bar-B Ranch beside the blonde. Yet somehow, we secretly believe
that we're too good to end up losing. Before the sun sets, one more beyond-belief
rescue! There are a thousand ways - the fuse fizzles, the bad guy drops the gun,
the sidekick escapes and listen! - from over the hill, the cavalry comes riding!
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[posted by Bill Betz] Sarah Sovereign Getty was our class valedictorian. She became a famous poet (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award). She died in the fall of 2009, only six weeks after being diagnosed with a rare cancer.