Friday, February 25, 2011

Everything Hard, Harder

We moved to a motel in Pacific Beach, up against the alley that snaked grey and sad with homeless. I was in the 5th grade, my sister two years behind me. We were white headed girls plucked like cotton from Jackson, Mississippi and set to wilt in the briny aired community, stuffed into the single room with our parents and two cats. In Jackson, I had been one of a few white kids in my school, the only one in my class and on my block. I had to earn love- but it was there for the earning. I had skipped rope and roughed up my white freckled arms with black skinny arms for the right to skip rope with the neighborhood girls. Abject poverty lived next door, the difference between us and them only that we had the money for maintenance, whereas Loralee next door couldn't afford to fix her molding ceilings, cracked tubs and crazy sideways porch. When I arrived at our home for a year in Pacific Beach, I felt some kind of alternate universe descend over me, like a great bowl turned upside down. This was a different kind of poor.

The teenager who roamed the complex's center was more ghost than girl, eyes spinning in vacancy, her tiny waist tucked into leggings and tanks. We ate lentil soup more nights than not, but I wondered if she ate at all. Wanna one? she slurred at me, smoking her fat Marlboro Reds. I nodded no, slunk away. I was less afraid of the crazy man in the alley way than I was of her. She was too close to my kind of pain. The homeless man in the alley had a long, white beard stained with tobacco and food. I snaked down the cement path to the alley and lay on my stomach, watching him. I wasn't allowed, but I was fascinated with him. He lived in a box. He never changed his clothes. He talked to himself. Until he saw me. My wife was a pig, he screamed. I ate her for Thanksgiving dinner! I moved so quickly away my arms were bloody from scraping the pavement.

Each person in the motel gave away their suffering differently. The single mom upstairs had one daughter and a rotation of dates. She wore thick purple eyeliner and red lipstick underneath which her face sagged and complained. She played Neil Young on Friday nights and slept all day Sunday. The two men living together directly across from us were obviously gay but called themselves roomates or pals. I didn't know the word gay but I knew the way the one with the glasses put his hand in the tall one's pocket wasn't palling around. I watched them at the laundrymat down the street, where I went to get candy from the vending machines. They always came out of their apartment separately and arrived home the same. I thought the way they laughed and leaned together was sweet. I heard them complaining that they couldn't go to the community Christmas drive together at the tall one's work. I wondered what it meant when two men loved each other. I wondered what it meant when they had to call the one they loved a pal and couldn't go to the community drive together.

My mother was beautiful with red red hair and a mysterious smile, and I kept a particular eye on the one I thought of as Mr. Chinese because of his constant take out from Chopsticks. He wore oversized suits that puffed femininely at the shoulders. His hair was glossy with gel and he smelled like cheap chewing gum. I hated the way I could see his socks when he moved and the false turn of his mouth when he smiled. I hated the way he looked at my mother. Mr. Chinese never had a woman over that I could see, and he often knocked at our door to deliver some useless piece of helpful information or drop off a newspaper no one had asked for. At night when I prayed, I prayed hardest for him, because I was stricken with guilt over my suspicions and his lonliness. I imagined him making coffee in his badly lit kitchen with the pale yellow backsplash and it was so sad and horrible a feeling I cried.

Our motel was colder on cold days and more forlorn in February. Everything hard harder, everyone weeping heard for miles. I felt the lack of nature more keenly than the lack of children. I longed hourly for the wet trees and fierce soils of Mississippi, the forest beyond the grass of my Grandmother's backyard, the long swinging ropes hanging from trees. The tick of beetles replaced with the buzzing of cars, the pushing of wind against shrub and flowers was now the pushing of wind against rain pipes, tile roofs, scattered pieces of paper on concrete. I hid behind the bush next to our motel room, scraping my face in the tangle. I imagined I was a wild thing, surviving on berries and leaves until I could find my home. Orange carpet. Linoleum. Crumble topped ceiling. Yellowing paint. Every play structure was built against a backdrop of sprawl, and every tree underfed and looking stark naked in the middle of a block of sidewalk and business.

Everywhere I turned there was a hollowness and an illness of silence, the kind of silence that arrived far away from peace, that arrives from poverty of the soul. This was the final tide that dragged me deeply inside myself. I began to create a world that could keep me alive until something broke it open.
Grease Monkey GIRL said...

you took me back, you write so beautifully

alison said...

I feel like I've come across a treasure trove, a goldmine. I've looked around a few posts and just been blown away. I will be coming back to read more. Wow.

Caroline said...

I felt like I was there. Brilliant, Maggie. I know the difference in the feeling of poverty you describe, but I have never heard anyone put it into words so perfectly.

37paddington said...

astonishing and melancholy. such beautiful writing.

Anonymous said...

I love your wild, sensitive heart, Maggie. This is some beautiful writing!

Hannah Stephenson said...

This is a fantastic piece of work.

Fiction? Nonfiction?

Either way, it WORKS. I wanted to find out what happens next.

Maggie May said...

hannah it's nonfiction- my true experience. thank you for reading!

Ms. Moon said...

Lord, Maggie, this is powerful. I feel it, I know it.
Your words are rivers we travel down.

lizzie_fitz said...

this is so good it makes my brain satisfied... like eating a bloody well cooked meal... urgh. brain happy.
xxxxxxx

esbboston said...

I read it all, a little slower than I normally do, drawing the pictures between my ears, then I had to read the final paragraph over and over ... .. .

Unknown said...

okay. wow.
write more like this...

and I was back in some of my memories.

Anonymous said...

oh wow,,, sad and brutal and beautiful writing!! you have a gift, you turn every illness of the soul into beauty. you write better and better...
love you!
yolanda

Anonymous said...

More. Please.

Jeanne Estridge said...

I just finished reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It impacted me profoundly, and this tale does the same.

Petit fleur said...

Wow.

Just Wow.

Love you,
pf

Anonymous said...

Yes, your writing is reminiscent of Wall's writing. Stark, poignant, powerful. Thank you.

(When I was 14 I used to steal my stepdad's 53 Studebaker and drive me and my girlfriends to Pacific Beach from La Mesa.)

Elizabeth said...

This is either the first chapter of a novel or a memoir -- or does it even matter. It's perfectly beautiful and I want to read more; I want to hear more of this woman's voice; I can hear and feel her words and what they signify.

98126res said...

i've read the 1st paragraph (stealing a glance from work) and that's fine b/c your writing is so enjoyable, food for this soul and sends a warmth to my toes. you are so talented. Thank you for sharing :)

Claire Beynon said...

This is a stunning piece of writing, Maggie May. . . the more because you are inside it and it, inside you. Brave writing, too. Thank you. xo

Annie said...

Hi Maggie,

This passage is beautifully written. Again, your honesty and ability to communicate and reflect shines through, in a way that makes your experiences meaningful for the reader. From the opening line, your phrases and sentences have the momentum and music of poetry, and your authentic voice gives your narrative rhythm and weight.

Because I've read your work before, I knew this was entirely the truth. You are a special person, Maggie, and we benefit from your ability to turn pain and discomfort into poetry.

Thank you for sharing your 5th grade self. She is you, and she is a beautiful person, with questions as well as answers.

Someone said, this could be a memoir. It could. You could expand on this, and combine it with some of your other writing, and take the reader from child to woman, still searching for answers, and giving us so many of them, along the way. Your deep humanity and love for people and the world always shines through.

Shelley E said...

wow...I want to read more...

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