9

Keep stretching a bow
You repent of the pull,
A whetted saw
Goes thin and dull,
Surrounded with treasure
You lie ill at ease,
Proud beyond measure
You come to your knees:
Do enough, without vying,
Be living, not dying.

From The Way of Life
according to Lao Tzu

Translated by Witter Bynner

 

 

Everything happens fast and in slow motion.

The gun is in the manicured hands of Beautiful Girl. She points it at me screaming, “You’re going to die!”. K and I dive into the bathroom, slam the door. Push the bolt lock. Beautiful Girl is hysterical. She shrieks over and over, through the barrier, “You are going to die!” D erupts from the bedroom yelling, “STOP! STOP! K is in there! STOP IT! Give me the gun! Drop it! NOW!”

Two shots explode.

The sound blasts into space. The upper panel of the bathroom door splinters like grated cheese, at the same moment a jagged hole blasts through the left door frame. K and I hold tightly to one another cringing low inside the bathtub. K shakes and sobs. My jaw is chattering.

D and Beautiful Girl are screaming back and forth. He is trying to get her to stop waving the gun. She has come to kill me. I hear more commotion at the back door. Voices of several brothers try to convince Beautiful Girl to give them the gun. She shrieks demanding that then they should kill me! Kill me because of what I have done. She screams over and over that I must die. She starts wailing, “She cannot live after what she’s done!” I hear her collapse into a wailing/sob. Someone sends a brother to get Handsome Man.

Minutes later she hears Handsome Man’s voice and like a trapped animal, her wails begin again. My stomach turns. I am stiff and hurting from being crouched low into the bathtub. My jaw shakes my teeth chatter. Splinters of daylight pierce the ripped door. She screams again. I can hear the dull throb of her fists pummeling his chest. Loud voices erupt as more brothers gather. The dog barks in the apartment below. Beautiful Girl finds her words and screams, “He needs to die! He can’t do this to me!” I am crying. K is shaking so badly that her elbow drums softly against the porcelain.

The commuter train runs by on the track outside the door.

Beautiful Girl cries out, “He can’t do this! He knows I’m pregnant! Somebody do something! He’s killing me! He needs to die!” I listen to her being ushered out the door and down the stairs. I can still hear her crying echo as she is driven away.

Slowly K struggles to climb out of the tub reaching up to unlock the bolt on the shattered door. D is waiting to embrace her, all color drained from his pock-marked face. Standing together in the center of the quiet kitchen we’re in shock, wondering what has just happened. D is the first to speak. He shakes his body, as if to shake the whole thing off,  and declares, “Beautiful Girl is a hothead!”

He dismisses her. She isn’t important. She should not be so dramatic. He laughs nervously saying, “I wouldn’t want to be Handsome Man right now. She is hot! There is going to be hell to pay.” D looks directly at me. He smiles. He thinks he knows things. He smiles with a conspiratorial nod as he hugs K looking at me over her shoulder.

D and all the brothers grew up in this neighborhood. There is a generational code of conduct. He looks at me, the outsider, as though I planned to seduce Handsome Man. He implies that scoring is exactly what I meant to do. Isn’t Handsome Man needing some extra attention now that his girl is pregnant? Isn’t that what any guy in the neighborhood would think? Handsome Man is entitled to have some girl fun. He is entitled to have what he wants when he wants it. Within the code, it is Beautiful Girl who needs to adjust her thinking.

I have not stopped shaking. This is an extremely dangerous system that has nothing to do with me. I am in an environment where I do not belong. The westbound train passes a few feet from the back of the house. The sound and rhythm rattle me awake.

This apartment is less than half a mile down the track from the train station where I so innocently left the railcar last January. I was not yet four months pregnant with twelve hours off from my work as a domestic at the Special Arrangement house. On that brisk winter day, I made my way from the train platform down the concrete stairs and across the small park. Entering the Big Blue House to visit my artist friends, I smell bread baking and see the soup pot simmering on the large stove. I hear new music, share exciting conversations, and see art projects in process, dancing with the velvet and beads clad doll.

Now I stand in this kitchen. I am here because Medicine Man has given me a place to stay while I experience the first stage of healing. I am a few blocks walking distance from the Big Blue House. I have no idea where my friends are or what has happened to them.

It is now late fall.

Mid-summer I borrowed mom’s car. It was less than six weeks after giving birth on June 8th. My baby is born. There is no celebration. There are no photos taken. No one sends a card. The nurse brings my infant son to me when it is time for the new mother to feed her baby. She nestles him into my arms leaving me to hold him while I quickly kiss his sleeping forehead, drawing his portrait on the back of the adoption papers. Minutes later she realizes her mistake, removes him, and has me sedated for showing my heartbreak.

Less than six weeks later on that mid-summer Sunday, I feel lonely. I want to see my friends. I want to feel a bit of life returning. I am relieved that mom reluctantly says yes when I asked to borrow her car. Be home before dark.

As I drive I feel buoyant thinking that I will soon be walking up to the back door of the Big Blue House. I hope with all my heart that my life can now begin again. As I drive, I can already catch the aroma of bread baking as well as the scent of the mint growing in the flower boxes as my hand brushes over the blooms. I listen to The Four Tops on CKLW. Mom’s car glides across town. Soon I’ll be listening to Joni Mitchell’s  ‘Both Sides Now’ wafting through the open screens as I pull into the yard of the Big Blue House, on the corner, just across the park from the train station.

Instead, there is not a bicycle to be seen. Everything is quiet. The window box is dried out, the mint is drooping. The curtains are not gently moving back and forth against the screens in the summer air. The windows are closed. There is no sound of music. The man’s voice on the phone said my friends looked forward to seeing me. He asked what time I would be arriving. I step through the back door into the trap: three miscreants, a snarling attack dog, and the gun aimed at me are just out of sight at the top of the stairs. Realizing something is wrong I turn to leave. The voice from up the stairs bellows, “Touch that door and you’re dead!”

The kind doctor who first told me that I was pregnant and who now, less than a year later treats, the severe infection that comes as a result of the attack, asks that I read this paperback book. He says, “Please read this, I don’t want you to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.” 

Early this morning, hours before Beautiful Girl kicked the door open, I had been reading in chapter thirteen. I read some chapters over and over again. I am learning new ways to think. I am making my best attempt to comprehend.

‘How to Turn a Crisis Into a Creative Opportunity.’

We lead timid lives, shrinking from
difficult tasks till perhaps we are forced
into them … and immediately we seem to
unlock the unseen forces.
When we have to face danger, then courage comes;
when trial puts a long-continued strain upon us, we
find ourselves possessed by the power to endure; or
when disaster ultimately brings the fall which we so long
dreaded, we feel underneath us the strength as of
everlasting arms.

The attitude of fearlessly accepting the challenge
and confidently expending our strength.

Keep your goal in mind.

You intend to “go through” the crisis to experience, to
achieve your goal.

You keep your original positive goal, and do not get sidetracked
into secondary ones ____ the desire to run away, to hide, to avoid ___
by the crisis situation.”

The next day, Friday, Medicine Man takes me to dinner at one of the fancy restaurants in the neighborhood. He calls the waiter over, orders me a glass of expensive wine, rises from his chair, comes behind me, places his hands on my shoulders whispering that he will be right back. He circulates among the tables doing business with the old guard. After dinner, we drive a short distance to the side streets where he does his weekly shooting gallery drops. The last stop of the evening will be seeing the Man in Charge.

At the restaurant over salad, I ask for his help. I tell him that I need to move on. He knows about The Farm.  He knows that I arrived at The Farm while still under the influence of his LSD ‘medicine.’ I have told him about the letter from Alice. He has asked many questions, fascinated by my descriptions of the land and the lifestyle.

Here, at dinner, he suggests, “Why don’t we drive down to The Farm to see Alice?”

I am shocked.  I look at him trying to understand the meaning of this. I am trying to imagine what it will be like to see Alice again. 

For the remainder of the evening and through the next day I repeatedly ask myself if The Farm experience was real. I have the letter, the poem’s, the four paintings. What will it feel like being able to walk back into my dream?

I do not know if I made a phone call or if we simply made the drive. I had the address from the envelope. I cannot say. That Sunday, that very next day, as we make the two-hour drive, I tell Medicine Man once again that I need to be moving toward my dream. I am working part-time for the Lovely Lady. She pays me well. I am feeling ready. I thank him for his help over these past three months. He places his hand on my knee and tells me that he will do whatever he can to make the move easier for me.

The forest green Jaguar turns off the country road. The long lane bordered by cornstalks now makes a brittle rattling in the wind. The clouds hang low. The atmosphere feels quite different. The lush foliage of mid-summer has faded. Yet I sense an ‘All is Well’ sensation move through me. I see the barns further down the lane as the car rounds the bend. I see the earth hugging house that Larry built for Alice. I see the light reflecting off the pond.

I am back at The Farm.