Incarnadine (2 page)

This
, she seems to say,
this

to create scene, the pure sweep of it,

this
to give in, feel the lushness,

this
& just a little theatrical lighting

& you, too, can be happy,

she’s sure of it—

It’s as if I cut her heart-whole from the sky,

rag & twist & tongue & the now terrible speed

of her turning

toward me like the spirit

I meant to portray, indefatigable—

see how bravely she turns, how exactly true to the turning,

& in the turning

most herself,

as she arranges herself for the exit

withholding nothing, unraveling

the light in her hair as her face

her bright, unapproachable face

says only that

whatever the next scene is,

she will fill it.

Mary always thinks that as soon as she gets a few more things done and finishes the dishes, she will open herself to God.

At the gym Mary watches shows about how she should dress herself, so each morning she tries on several combinations of skirts and heels before retreating to her waterproof boots. This takes a long time, so Mary is busy.

Mary can often be observed folding the laundry or watering the plants. It is only when she has a simple, repetitive task that her life feels orderly, and she feels that she is not going to die before she is supposed to die.

Mary wonders if she would be a better person if she did not buy so many almond cookies and pink macaroons.

When people say “Mary,” Mary still thinks
Holy Virgin! Holy Heavenly Mother!
But Mary knows she is not any of those things.

Mary worries about not having enough words in her head.

Mary fills her cupboards with many kinds of teas so that she can select from their pastel labels according to her mood:
Tuscan Pear, Earl Grey Lavender, Cherry Rose Green.
But Mary likes only plain red tea and drinks it from morning to night.

Mary has too many silver earrings and likes to sort them in the compartments of her drawer.

Someday Mary would like to think about herself, but she’s not yet sure what it means to think, and she’s even more confused about herself.

It is not uncommon to find Mary falling asleep on her yoga mat when she has barely begun to stretch.

Mary sometimes closes her eyes and tries to imagine herself as a door swung open. But it is easier to imagine pink macaroons—

Mary likes the solemn titles on her husband’s thick books. She feels content and sleepy when he reads them beside her at night—
The Works of Saint Augustine, Critique of Judgment, Paradigm Change in Theology—but
she does not want to read them.

Mary secretly thinks she is pretty and therefore deserves to be loved.

Mary tells herself that if only she could have a child she could carry around like an extra lung, the emptiness inside her would stop gnawing.

It’s hard to tell if she believes this.

Mary believes she is a sincere and serious person, but she does not even try to pray.

Some afternoons Mary pretends to read a book, but mostly she watches the patterns of sunlight through the curtains.

On those afternoons, she’s like a child who has run out of things to think about.

Mary likes to go out and sit in the yard. If she let herself, she’d stare at the sky all day.

The most interesting things to her are clouds. See, she watches them even by moonlight. Tonight, until bedtime, we can let her have those.

Mary who mattered to me, gone or asleep

among fruits, spilled

in ash, in dust, I did not

leave you. Even now I can’t keep from

composing you, limbs and blue cloak

and soft hands. I sleep to the sound

of your name, I say there is no Mary

except the word Mary, no trace

on the dust of my pillowslip. I only

dream of your ankles brushed by dark violets,

of honeybees above you

murmuring into a crown. Antique queen,

the night dreams on: here are the pears

I have washed for you, here the heavy-winged doves,

asleep by the hyacinths. Here I am,

having bathed carefully in the syllables

of your name, in the air and the sea of them, the sharp scent

of their sea foam. What is the matter with me?

Mary, what word, what dust

can I look behind? I carried you a long way

into my mirror, believing you would carry me

back out. Mary, I am still

for you, I am still a numbness for you.

But if I were this thing,

my mind a thousand times smaller than my wings,

if my fluorescent blue flutter

finally stumbled

into the soft

aqua throats of the blossoms,

if I lost my hunger

for anything else—

I’d do the same. I’d fasten myself

to the touch of the flower.

So what if the milky rims of my wings

no longer stupefied

the sky? If I could

bind myself to this moment, to the slow

snare of its scent,

what would it matter if I became

just the flutter of page

in a text someone turns

to examine me

in the wrong color?

Are you sure this blue is the same as the

blue over there? This wall’s like the

bottom of a pool, its

color I mean. I need a

darker two-piece this summer, the kind with

elastic at the waist so it actually

fits. I can’t

find her hands. Where does this gold

go? It’s like the angel’s giving

her a little piece of honeycomb to eat.

I don’t see why God doesn’t

just come down and

kiss her himself. This is the red of that

lipstick we saw at the

mall. This piece of her

neck could fit into the light part

of the sky. I think this is a

piece of water. What kind of

queen? You mean

right here? And are we supposed to believe

she can suddenly

talk angel? Who thought this stuff

up? I wish I had a

velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the

veins in my grandmother’s hands. I

wish we could

walk into that garden and pick an

X-ray to float on.

Yeah. I do too. I’d say a

zillion yeses to anyone for that.

If I can believe in air, I can believe

in the angels of air.

Angels, come breathe with me.

Angel of abortion, angel of alchemy,

angels of barrenness and bliss,

exhale closer. Let me feel

your breath on my teeth—

I call to you, angels of embryos,

earthquakes, you of forgetfulness—

Angels of infection, cover my mouth

and nose with your mouth.

Failed inventions, tilt my head back.

Angels of prostitution and rain,

you of sheerness and sorrow,

you who take nothing,

breathe into me.

You who have cleansed your lips

with fire, I do not need to know

your faces, I do not need you

to have faces.

Angels of water insects, let me sleep

to the sound of your breathing.

You without lungs, make my chest rise—

Without you my air tastes

like nothing. For you

I hold my breath.

In the late afternoon, my friend’s daughter walks into my office looking for snacks. She opens the bottom file drawer to take out a bag of rice cakes and a blue carton of rice milk that comes with its own straw. I have been looking at a book of paintings by Duccio. Olivia eats. Bits of puffed rice fall to the carpet.

A few hours ago, the 76-year-old woman, missing for two weeks in the wilderness, was found alive at the bottom of a canyon. The men who found her credit ravens. They noticed ravens circling—

Duccio’s
Annunciation
sits open on my desk. The slender angel (dark, green-tipped wings folded behind him) reaches his right hand towards the girl; a vase of lilies sits behind them. But the white dots above the vase don’t look like lilies. They look like the bits of puffed rice scattered under my desk. They look like the white fleck at the top of the painting that means both spirit and bird.

Olivia, who is six, picks up the wooden kaleidoscope from my desk and, holding it to her eye, turns it to watch the patterns honeycomb, the colors tumble and change—

Today is the 6
^th
of September. In six days, Russia will hold a day of conception: couples will be given time off from work to procreate, and those who give birth on Russia’s national day will receive money, cars, refrigerators, and other prizes.

A six-hour drive from where I sit, deep in the Wallowa Mountains, the woman spent at least six days drifting in and out of consciousness, listening to the swellings of wind, the howls of coyotes, the shaggy-throated ravens—

I turn on the radio. Because he died this morning, Pavarotti’s immoderate, unnatural Cs ring out. He said that, singing these notes, he was seized by an animal sensation so intense he would almost lose consciousness.

Duccio’s subject is God’s entrance into time: time meaning history, meaning a body.

No one knows how the woman survived in her light clothes, what she ate and drank, or what she thought when she looked up into the unkindness of ravens, their loops, their green and purple iridescence flashing—

I think of honeybees. For months, whole colonies have been disappearing from their hives. Where are the bodies? Some blame droughts. Too few flowers, they say: too little nectar.

Consider the ravens. They neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.
(Luke 12:24)

The men never saw the ravens—just heard their deep
caw, caw
circling.

Olivia and I look down on Duccio’s scene. I point to the angel’s closed lips; she points to his dark wings.

The blue container of rice milk fits loosely into Olivia’s hand the same way the book fits into the hand of Duccio’s Mary. She punches a hole in the top and, until it is empty, Olivia drinks.

And of what there would be no end

—it came quickly.

The wind runs loose, the air churns over us.

No one remembers.

But I remember, under the elm’s cool awning,

watching you watch the clouds.

Afternoons passed like afternoons,

and I loved how dull you were.

Given a bit of bark or the buzz

of a bright green fly, you’d smile

for hours. Sweet child, you’d go to anyone.

You had no preferences.

I remember the first time coming toward you,

how solid you looked, sitting and twisting

your dark hair against your neck.

But you were not solid.

From the first moment, when you breathed

on my single lily, I saw

where you felt it.

From then on, I wanted to bend low and close

to the curves of your ear.

There were so many things I wanted to tell you.

Or rather,

I wished to have things that I wanted to tell you.

What a thing, to be with you and have

no words for it. What a thing,

to be outcast like that.

And then everything unfastened.

It was like something was always dissolving

inside you—

Already it’s hard to remember

how you used to comb your hair or how you

tilted your broad face in green shade.

Now what seas, what meanings

can I place in you?

Each night, I see you by the window—

sometimes pressing your lips against a pear

you do not eat. Each night,

I see where you feel it:

where there are no mysteries.

All morning I’ve thought of you feeding donkeys in the Spanish sun—Donkey Petra, old and full of cancer. Blind Ruby who, you say, loves carrots and takes a long time to eat them. Silver the beautiful horse with the sunken spine who was ridden too young for too long and then abandoned. And the head-butting goat who turned down your delicious kiwi so afterward you wondered why
you
hadn’t eaten it.

Here I feed only the unimpressed cats who go out in search of something better. Outside, the solitaires are singing their metallic songs, warning off other birds. Having to come down from the mountain this time of year just to pick at the picked-over trees must craze them a little. I can hear it in their shrill, emphatic notes, a kind of no, no in the undertone. With each one, it is like my body blinks—which, from a distance, must look like flickering.