So, one day in a crowded restaurant, when a waiter recited the daily specials to me, I heard him say, “American woman, get away from me,” instead of whatever he said about the salad du jour.
Yes, in crowded rooms, my confused and hardworking brain works like a jukebox. Or maybe more like the shuffle on an iPod. My brain translates misheard language into song lyrics I know by heart. And like every pop culture addict, I can sing along with hundreds—perhaps thousands—of top-forty rock hits. I know my brain contains a vast data bank of lyrics, so I laugh at the possibilities. Which songwriter’s poetry will I hear the next time a stranger or friend or family member speaks to me in a crowded room?
I hope to hear Prince’s sexy lyrics more often than Air Supply’s sappy shit. But I won’t be in control of that process.
After neurosurgery, I have learned that my brain is a boardinghouse where my waking consciousness rents one room with a hot plate and a black-and-white TV while the rest of the rooms are occupied by a random assortment of banshees, ghosts, mimes wearing eagle feathers, and approximately twelve thousand strangers who look exactly like me.
And, oh, there’s an auditorium in my mind where Hank Williams is always singing. So, if I ever meet you in a crowded airport or bookstore, and you say something like “I love [or hate] your books, I’ve been reading [or ignoring] them for years,” I might think you said something like “I’m so lonesome I could cry.”
This auditory phenomenon is somewhat scary. But it also feels like a piece of magic.
And what’s the magic word? It is compensation.
134.
Hydrotherapy
I don’t know how to swim.
I can’t think of a much worse Place to be than immersed In water. But I live in a city Surrounded by lakes
And canals and bays.
What can I say? You must bless Your enemies lest they continually Defeat you. My mother
Was terrified of the water And never learned to swim either, So did I inherit,
By nature and/or nurture, My hydrophobia from her?
My sisters and brothers can swim From one side
Of the river to the other.
So what happened to me? Well, I was born hydrocephalic And had brain surgery as an infant.
So, for years, my damaged head throbbed And quaked
From any atmospheric pressure Like driving into the mountains Or into the valleys. So imagine how Much it hurt to be underwater.
Imagine how much it hurt
To watch my siblings learn to swim And then to swim freely In the dozens of rivers, streams, Lakes, and ponds
On our reservation or at some city pool.
My father swam, too,
With a stroke as lazy as he was.
But, on the shore, always removed From the water,
My mother and I sat
And watched our family swimming Away from us.
“Why are you afraid
To swim?” I asked her once And she said something vague about Drowning when she was a kid.
“You mean you almost drowned,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I drowned.
And then I came back.”
And, listen, my mother was a liar
So I don’t know how much of this is true.
But she never fully entered a body Of water
And would only sometimes Sit on a dock or shore or poolside And soak her feet.
So I wonder: Will a person who has drowned, Or almost drowned, always feel Like they’re drowning, Even after they’ve been saved?
Did my mother’s continual rages originate, In some large or small way, from Her drowning
Or near-drowning?
I don’t know. But I remain terrified That I’ll die in a plane crash, but not
From striking the earth. No, I’m afraid that my plane Will plummet into water.
I’m terrified that I will drown Inside an airplane.
And, as I say this fear aloud, I laugh And laugh and laugh at death. Hell, When death comes, I’ll laugh And say, “Hey, Mr. Death, It’s nice to meet you.
That sickle makes you look fat.”
Because you must mock your enemies Lest they defeat you.
Because you must bless your enemies Even if they don’t bless you.
So I bless the water, my provider And my nemesis. And I bless My mother, who gave birth to me In water, by water, near water, And in honor and fear of water.
135.
My Food Channel
My mother frying baloney. It curls At the edges and rises
Off the cast-iron pan.
This is not acceptable. We are poor But we do not deserve
Fried baloney that is crispy hot In the middle of its circle But cool and fleshy around its diameter.
Fried means fried.
Partially fried means it ain’t fried at all.
So my mother slices the meat Incompletely,
Four cuts from rim halfway to midpoint, Just enough to make the baloney go flat In the pan and cook evenly.
This culinary display doesn’t take very long.
We children, hungry enough To eat everybody’s sins, listen To the sizzle, sizzle and realize, realize It’s one of my mother’s love songs.
136.
Triangle of Needs
Too poor in most winters To afford cold-weather clothes, I fought snowball battles Using old socks for gloves.
Doesn’t sound so bad, I know, But my jacket was thin cotton And I also wore Kmart tennis shoes That we called rez boots.
My cousins had uranium money So they had warm stuff To wear. I pretended to be Okay when we fought
For hours in the freeze.
I suppose I could have stayed Inside. But I was a kid, And like all other kids, I needed to play.
And I would keep playing In the midwinter ice Until I started to shake Uncontrollably. I wonder How often I was close To hypothermia.
I wonder how near
I fell to dangerously Low body temperatures.
In December 1974
Or 1975, I stumbled Through two miles
Of slush and freezing rain And arrived home
Only to discover
That we’d lost electricity.
We had no heat.
My mother, wrapped
In an old and thin quilt, Was constructing
A new and thicker quilt.
“What happened
To the lights?” I asked.
“We had no money
To pay the bill,”
She said. “So I need To finish this quilt And sell it to this White woman in Spokane So I can pay the bill And maybe get some
Tomato soup and Pepsi, too.”
Shivering, I cried
And said, “But I’m cold now.”
So my mother told me To take off my wet clothes.
And then, wearing only Underwear, I crawled beneath The old and new quilts, next To my mother’s legs And eventually got warm.
And, yes, my mother finished And sold that quilt
For less than it was worth, But she paid the bill— She moved the goddamn earth— And got our electricity back.
137.
Artist Statement
ON OUR FIRST date, my future wife said she’d once broken up with a boyfriend because his favorite song was the Eagles’ “Desperado.”
Well, I remembered that my wife had revealed that goofy bit of information to me. But she always insisted that she’d never said it and that it wasn’t true. She’d never dated a man like that. And I insisted just as strongly that she had told me about her Eagles-loving former beau and was just retroactively embarrassed by that particular romantic partner.
We argued about it for years.
Then, one evening, my wife and I watched a Seinfeld rerun.
“Hey, Elaine,” Jerry said. “What happened to that guy?”
“Ah,” Elaine said. “I dumped him.”