The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

March 1, 2002

I wonder why she stutters when she speaks. She has no impediment, no extenuating condition. The speech pathologist says that her only worrisome quality—and I have known this from infancy—is her quietness. The doctor has hinted at Autism, a learning disability, or even hesitation, but until she grows older we cannot know, definitively.

Mia, my daughter does not speak much. When spoken to, she replies in monosyllables. Downcast, her eyes bode a certain grey cowardice like mine, but are heavy and unyielding. The first time she even uttered a word was the day after her fourth birthday. 

The word was “Dad.”

It was a Saturday and she sat on the swing set, as contemplative as a toddler could be, simply humming. In her left hand was a branch she had nicknamed Wand. Wand prodded the anthills, and angered the occupants. It whooshed through the air ostentatiously, as a symphonic conductor does. And it fell. Then came the word. It came most effortlessly, especially for one who had never spoken and it hit me like an arid heat. So, I choked. 

D-dad, Daddy, Daddy-o. She mouthed the words at first, then chimed them in falsetto. And she went on like that in a superfluous, singsong sort of way. 

Who is Daddy? I do not know. I choose not to think of him as an aggressor, as that is begrudging of me. Rather, I see an illustrious painting wrought from the far-reaching tendrils of my consciousness, painted with mental watercolor. 

Dad is a Harlem boy. He is ageless, fatherless, a dropout, working per diem, and owing child support. He lives under the rigid dominion of concrete streets, the penumbra of the law, and he is young. He reminds me too much of my students: where they are from and where they have gone. I could paint him as a masochist, a voodoo doll stitched of sackcloth. I could weave a man with insidious intent, but doing so would corrupt this picture, even dilute it. His ferocity will not denounce me to the muck and mire. For I am a woman of many colors, and blackness does not frighten me. 

Mia, does not know her father. She does not need to know that it was I who had spent an hour in his presence, thrashing and scratching and most probably pissing on myself. I, her heroine, who had nearly lost her conviction. It is strange, that I possess a piece of mind from an ignorance of him. Had I looked at his face—briefly under the bridge in the night, my strength would have been sapped.  I kept quiet, and didn’t cry out. I didn’t tell anybody. The world could only sympathize, and I did not need its pity. So I kept my eyes closed, and imagined my painting.

My daughter says that I am kind, that I have a good heart. My students call me fair and honest. But one cannot be honest in all things, and this secret she must not know. It must be concealed until it is ready for an appropriate season, as was my plight in coming here. 

I came to Brooklyn six years ago, studying film. Prompted by a desire to move from out of a foster home in Cincinnati, I giddily studied in New York– my dream actualized. Forsaking all else, I studied and received my Bachelor’s in Education and Cinematic Studies. Film, I soon abandoned as I had no ambition of becoming a screenwriter or director. Instead, I turned to English education, behind the veil of the classroom.

What many true teachers feel and don’t say is that our fulfillment does not come from the time spent grading papers, or writing tests. If we heralded our jobs for the sake of income, we’d be laughed at. Sometimes, when we are in the foolish presence of our peers, or in group conversation at parties we steer the conversation from the Topic of Occupation. We stifle our speech for fear that our passions for the Humanities did not enrich us, as did the engineers, or the businessmen, or the nurses. We bite our tongues until we speak of Fulfillment and that is when the ball is in play. Then, when we speak of our students, the room falls silent.  

March 13, 2002

I cannot remember when I had my first anxiety attack. If I had a guess, I’d say after I knew I was pregnant, but they’d started long before then. My most recent was at the beginning of last month when I stood at the lectern, reading. Then they ensued with sudden frequency: before I picked up Mia from daycare; on those long walks between the parking lot and the campus, the place where the elms recede. The worst was at a staff picnic. Sasha and Dean called after to check up, but I haven’t answered them yet. I’ve been on sick leave for a week now, and being pent up resting doesn’t seem to help. 

——

A man stopped by today.

After he’d knocked twice, rasping at the door most insistently, I obliged to open it. The man was formidable and large: his girth took up the door frame. He wore a suit and tie, (with a stickpin) like a Jehovah’s Witness, and a beret. In his hand was a King James Bible, with yellowing pages. 

I’m not much of a churchgoer, I say, and have never been–not after I left the foster home. The Bible, I’ve read once through for leisure but it seems incompatible, an incongruity of floating pieces, like a bad lover. He handed me the pamphlets, so I accepted them with acquiescence. 

——

The pamphlets, I toss in the fireplace. I imagine them shriveling, letters charring in the cinders. A conflagration in a forge. But there is no fire to envelop them; no wood to light. The thermostat reads fifty, but I stand in my nightgown shivering. 

I turn to my painting. 

It stands on the aisle. Blank, it petitions for anything: a brush stroke, a sketch. The blankness, I tell myself, is only a phase of creation. The oil pastels I’ve bought, are lined in spectra. Each paint tube is splayed on the hardwood floor like a giant color wheel. I spin in the center, to see them all revolve.

Once, when the world was new I spun in a lilac-ridden field. That was long before I’d heard of Jesus, Mother Theresa, Bill DiMaggio, or Bob Dylan. Before I’d heard of any sainthood or prophet, my divinity was life and an abundance of it. 

That was my primary cure. 

The second cure was to imagine. I emote through this journal detailing my comings and goings–where I abscond to mentally. 

So today, I am attending a Writer’s Workshop in New Jersey. 

It’s free, thank God. 

Though reputable, the event is run like one of those pyramid-scheme seminars, with a guru on stage who surveys the topography of the audience. The auditorium corrals us, and we wait for our speaker. To the envy of everyone there, the instructor is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist. He says that dreams hold merit like a vessel and that they are are provocative and literary. For our first exercise, we are told to write down our dreams. Upon the dais, he says:

 “Think back to a recurrent dream. Think of all its eccentricities, its ornateness. Even think of its bias, and immerse yourself within that sea.” 

But before we write en masse, he tells us to relay our stories aloud, subjecting them to criticism before pen and paper. Our aspiring contemporaries, he says, are also our companions. As peers, they are told to challenge us, to question: What makes this dream special to you? Are these events autobiographical?  What point of view did your dream take? First or third person? Collective? What convoluted context do the succession of these events represent?

After we finish this, the speaker addresses us again. 

He says, “After you’ve plunged into that murky sea, rise to the surface. Take a breath. Look around. Use your faculties. Now, you’ve been christened.”

That was our cue to write, so I did: 

Usually, the lights go out. Then, it begins with the water.

The water is patterned. It trickles at first in a lattice, usurping the furniture. It slopes down the yellowing mascarpone walls, upon the windowsills and the picture frames. A cataract, it rushes out through the outlets, the switches, the sprinklers and the faucets. The toilet overfills. Sometimes snow peppers the bed, coating the headboard. Like crystal, icicles grow from the ceiling at an exponential rate. The green fibers are damp and the mass sloshes, unleashing the scented lives of the previous tenants: the spirited, musky odors of pot, dogs, and sex.

Then, soon everything is slick and wet and buoyant: the television, the clock, the kitchen knives, the food stamps, the essays and the WIC checks. They are all drowning, spinning feverishly. Wind beats the building, expiring into the windows, as mist kindles. Lightening hits, boring a browned hole on the counter. As static buzzes, my hair frays on end. Auroras of light play in my peripheral vision.

Mia wades. She treads the water. I can see that she is cold. Despite this I am distracted, because the painting bobs up and down. 

The windows shatter, like the defenestration in Westerns. All is lost. 

March 14, 2002

I’m back.

My students are perplexed, after I’ve been subbed by a woman who looks like Mrs. Hannigan. 

“Alice,” they say, “Where have you been?” I tell my students to address me by Alice, not Ms. Hanson.

“Oh,” I tell them, “I’ve been sick with a bout of pneumonia. But I’m good now.” (This is the same story I tell Sasha and Dean in the teacher’s lounge)

The students smile. They’re glad I’m back. We go in rounds this time, reading a paragraph each from The Grapes of Wrath. 

October 2, 2002

At the grocery store I buy apple sauce and oatmeal. At Mia’s request, I also get Lucky Charms and Vanilla Wafers, all generics of course. The food is enough for the week, and mostly for her. I can skip a meal or two. She’s speaking more now, saying words like “crayon” and “Elmo,” but she still hasn’t said “Mommy” yet. Instead she uses “Mother,” detachedly. 

I have noticed though, that before she speaks, she ponders in rumination for several seconds. When she has caught the thought from off the coast of her imagination, her eyes brighten. 

“Where is Daddy?”

My breath catches. Then, I creep a fake smile.

“Daddy left. A long time ago.”

Mia shakes her head. I have tressed her hair and threaded colorful beads in the extensions. They rattle.

“But why?” She stomps her foot. Her plea is fervent and unassuaged. “Dads don’t just leave!”

“They shouldn’t, but they do. Sometimes.”

Her eyes search me. The truth has satisfied her tantrum for now. I know though, that it has whetted her appetite for more answers.

Mia’s curiosity is like mine, though physically we differ. She possesses warm, chocolate skin. Mine is pallid and freckled. My hair reddens at the ends. It is straight. Hers, if allowed to grow would fall into terse locks, the kind that Shirley Temple had.

 We both possess that same quality of introversion. Though with this crutch is an aptitude for reading and writing. 

Mia prefers that I read to her what she calls “adult-books,” namely, the books I teach with. I try not to let the toddler have free reign, so I try to be selective. We have read To Kill A Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer. She relates with Scout best; Tom she likes. 

I try not to think of this, or even let the thought fester, but I cannot help but wonder. If I do not put The Thought on paper, it will wreak havoc—through lucrative means, throwing my conscience off kilter. And that thought is a question. I am honest and there is dissonance in the life I live, with what could be. 

What would life be like without Mia? Would it be happier? Easier? Undoubtedly, my painting would have changed. That is true. The aisle would be enlivened water colors; it would be replaced: emboldened with confident brush strokes of oil pastel. The ink, I am sure, would never fade hanging in a garnished frame above ivory upholstery.

October 3, 2002

The school social worker came by. His name is Dean Humphrey. Undeniably, he is attractive. We’ve been on only two dates, both to open air delis, but I’ve decided I like him– more as a friend. Divorced at thirty five, the wrinkles have not yet etched deep enough into flesh. Yes, there are crowfeet, but they are as fine as his auburn hair. At 5’8, Dean possesses a lucid expression. He is my height and dons a Mr. Rogers sweater vest with a half-zip, high collar. 

“How’s the rabbit hole?” he says.

“Good, except for a few Jabberwockies.”

“It’s alright. We’re in Wonderland after all.”

*

He tells me the story of his most recent client, a manic depressive hoarder who fenced her kids in with barbed wire and fed them a staple of chicken feed. The preschool teacher, tipped off the authorities, after the kids exhibited signs of malnutrition and ultimately kwashiokor.

 The story amuses me and scares me at the same time. 

“Some clients I’ve had are really messed up,” says Dean. He is animated like a marionette, finicky. “There’s the run of the mill issues with neglect and caretaker absence, but the worst is when I’ve had to subpoena for single mothers smothering their kids with pillows, or drowning them. Fucked up shit like that.”

“Jesus. Aren’t you overstepping patient confidentiality?”

“And a slew of other HIPAA regulations? Yes I am, but fuck it. I want to trust you,” He looks me in the eye. “ How’s the dream?”

“Happens every night. More so with the Prozac. It’s not just a dream, it’s like one of those lucid dreams in the horoscope section of the paper.” I look at him for acknowledgment. He nods, so I continue.

“It’s more tangible than it is immaterial,” I say, “Are you shrinking me? This better be off the books.”

“Of course not, and yes it is.”

“I’m not crazy, Dean.”

“I know that. So you’re drowning?”

“Yes–well– Mia is drowning.”

“And like any good mother you rush to save her? Right?”

I pause.

Dean reiterates. “In this apartment–practically everything is swimming around like a primordial soup. Do you rescue her?”

“I don’t.”

“You can’t?”

“No, I don’t. I see her there. She’s shivering, and stuttering, and cold, but then this painting floats by, bobbing and it catches my attention, so I fixate on it. I get distracted.”

“You mean that painting?” Dean gestures toward the blank painting in the living room. I nod. There is a brief silence between us.

“How’s Mia? The stuttering?” Dean says.

“Good. She’s stuttering less. She’s so smart. Curious, I’d say.  She’s a real actress though,” I laugh.“She plays off like she doesn’t know.”

“But you’re thinking it’s time?”

“Soon.”

He rises from the recliner, and sits next to me. Dean touches my hand and tenderly, he kisses me. “Alice,” he says, “I’m obliged to make routine visits, professionally. But if you need anything else please don’t hesitate to call.”

“I don’t,” I say, and he leaves. 

October 8, 2002

In the morning, as an exercise I write down my dream, its continuation: 

Like an extinguished flame, the water is gone. The floodgate subsides.

Bleach. That is the smell of the place. Like a respiratory system, the building breathes. If you listen hard, above the throbbing in your temples, you will know.  Orderlies march out of the wing, past the grieving families. Their walk is stunted, breath bated. The corridors hiss, like the bronchi of an asthmatic or the first gasp of a newborn.

I, of course, know why I am here. I knew long before the EMTs swarmed the apartment or the neighbors dial 9-1-1. This was before the lightning storm, or the water; even before Mia shivers, and her teeth chatter. Before she was cold, I knew she would drown.

My clothes are wet, still. 

I ask an orderly, where the restroom is. Second floor, to the right of the lobbyists, the debates on climate change,  and passed the infirmed children.

Once there, I gaze at the silver. 

I am the woman in the mirror, her face and hair matted with paint. Her fingers stick together. Her tie-dye garments have shrunk, and her flesh is colored: a flourish of orange here between the eyebrows. A stride of blue on the lips. Red and yellow dabs on the eyelids. Fresh straw, matted upon the head–the consistency, and drab texture of wool. A single red dot rests upon my forehead like a third eye. Were this window open it would burn the tongues of liars, and profiteers. It would mend the beseeching hearts, and set coals upon the heads of the guilty with the ire of millions.

But for now, this eye is closed.

Then, I laugh for I am a living canvas. 

October 9, 2002

I’m not crazy. Not like that bitch Aileen Wuornos. She died today.

On the subject of lunacy, I recall a time long before I watched the news. In Sunday school, when I was ten or so, I remember learning the Bible story of the Mad King, Nebuchadnezzar. Through apocalyptic denunciations The prophet Daniel interpreted the King’s dreams. He also prophesied that the King would lose his marbles for seven years: grazing on grass like a bull; that his nails would resemble talons and his hair would grow as long as an eagle’s feathers. When I came back home–that is to the foster home– I tried to imagine myself in poor Neb’s shoes.

I sat in the courtyard, tasting the milkweed that grew on either side of the threshold. I wondered what seven years of insanity would do to you. For one, I was sure that the first thing to go, after your mind, would be your continence: shitting on yourself, like those vegetables on TV. Second, would come fear since that’s instinctive. Then, I wondered what Neb’s first thought was when he came to. Was he happy? Embarrassed? Humbled? That’s what my Sunday school teacher taught us, but now I’m not so sure. I’m sure that after clarity, I’d have felt ashamed of a number of things: My nudity. My recklessness. My ambition (or lack thereof). My life. Myself.

 Neb then praised God in a succession of hallelujahs. He was happy despite his nudity and his recklessness. His ambition returned to him, he sat upon the throne of Babylon–humbled as his life story was scrupulously written upon cuneiform tablets for subsequent archaeologists, and the world to read. 

Unlike Neb, my story is not for the world to read. Mine is sheltered–pent up in a stupidly colored house, with yellow walls comprised of yellow bricks. It is not inscribed on stone–or even paper– and nobody knows of it; though it lives and breathes vehemently. It kicks even, like Mia did when I read to her before she was born. 

August 31, 2003

There is no other calamity like the first day of class. The psyche of the teacher is this: that she must peruse through all the prior year’s acquired knowledge; recalling it to memory. Along with this burden are the jitters, for what will the day hold? Will it be one of those silent days, where we go in little rounds (reminiscent of preschool) and tell our names? Our stories? What will be the lesson plan, and having acquired it, is it in line with the curriculum? One welcomes the board of sniveling parents, who rise to complain about the performance of their children. Or the pervasive complaint, that English is a language the world knows, so then why are we studying it? In addressing these qualms, planning is essential. But in these areas, since nothing is certain, I hate to do so. I’ll just wing it. 

The one thing I welcome, far more than the anxiety, is the same faculty of individuals. The principle, Sasha Mavis. Dean Humphrey, the school social worker. There are several in my department that I regard with distaste, but these are few and far between. For the most part they are kind, and honest–and it is these qualities I admire. 

Of course, my favorite are the students. Each year has its debutantes and its narcissists. But teaching Freshmen in high school is like that. But the best students, I see as a reflection of myself: the ones who are keen to learn; who supplicate but are without these proper instruments. Often, they are poor. They speak only when called upon. I put my focus on these students. They are the tardy ones, or the dirty ones. But when they speak they tell their story, and the world listens.

In college, while the same world read the twentieth century modernists, I settled upon contemporary literature. To this day my favorite author is Sylvia Plath. Any fledgling reader of her work, no matter if it is her prose or poems would soon discover the relatable nature of her stories, how she can empathize. Her genius, along with Ted Hughes’s, is their ability to project the duality of covetousness and  sheer unattainableness clearly, presenting the dire antithesis of each. There is a constant striving, a spirit that we all have. Like cutlery, these can either tarnish or shine, based upon the realm of experience, but for Women this can rust.

It is fitting then, that the second book in class that we will read is the Bell Jar. I read the novel when I was nineteen, still in high school and it struck me, placidly. 

March 1, 2003

When I open the door, a cop stands with a warrant. Lieutenant Lloyd Brown, as his badge reads, stands on the threshold, but he is offish, as if present in another plane. Three others accompany him. He commands and they obey like dogs. They shuffle through the corridors, make a mess of the dining room, upturn the furniture, and peal back the linoleum. The WIC checks, they scatter. 

“We’d like to bring you in, for questioning,” Brown, the automaton, says.“Will we be needing these?” He dangles the handcuffs from a fat finger.

“No, don’t detain me. I’ll go. What do you need answered?” But his answer is lost. 

Looking out the window, I catch a glimpse of Dean.

*

I am calm. 

In the cop car, the world flourishes. Incendiary, the lights gleam one after the next like a garish funeral procession. I begin to appreciate my immersion in space, like I am submerged–tumbling with infinite inertia. All is viscous. 

The vehicle is a cage that sheathes me. It is a cacophonous cocoon, from which to see the world of passive men and women: some who glare at the ferocity of the beast as it passes. 

We stop at a light. Under the bridge, the rain is obstructed, ceasing to fall. I see Mia in the other car. Her face petitions through the glass, like a doll on the other side of a store window. 

She knows. 

Before the rains fall again, she shivers. I can see her mouth the word, coldly.

 Mommy. 

I look around. 

On the adjacent block, I see the preacher. He is the Harlem boy, alone, and working per diem–imploring of penance under the concrete dominion of the streets. He is the man working nine to five with a surrogate family. He brings his daughters to Mass, prays with them in the dark of the night.