drops and witches, only it was not a dream. I missed my mother, but there are many places other than home, a shame, a blessing both. The nuns were there. And the red doors opened, and I saw I was strong. And all the snow was singing.
CHAPTER 4
SINCERELY, YOURS
J ANUARY 18, 1998
D EAR R EADER:
Every night before dinner I say grace. I light two white tapers, and even though I was born a Jew, I clasp my hands and give thanks to a Christian God for the kindness he has shown.
For most of my life I’ve had a relationship with God. When I was ten, and learning how to fall, I felt personally connected to God, who also knew how to fall, fleshing out his body and bowing into vulnerable human form. Children understand intuitively that God lives in leaves and skin. I knew God when I was ten, when the nuns touched me and an easy sureness filled my lungs, so even the snow was singing.
I came home from that convent school as strong asI had ever been. I have a few pictures of me from that time, and, although it was winter, I look mysteriously tan, my body a rich brewed color, my teeth flashing. In those pictures I grin like an imp. I grin like a girl with know-how.
If you had asked me back then, one month, two months after the convent, I would have told you what the mind learns it cannot forget, that the new and bendable body signals the same for the brain. I had no idea how the body changes as it ages, how at ten there is a certain stability to the skin that hormones, and longing, eventually leach away, until you forget the self you once were. I forgot. I grinned like an imp and then I didn’t. I turned eleven; I turned twelve; I turned thirteen, and the rich brewed color faded back to the frailer peach of a girl on the edge of sex and weakness.
For me, the adolescent years were not about ripenings. Instead, I felt used up and dependent. If others did not admire me, I thought I would disappear.
I had seizures once a day, sometimes in school. The seizures horrified me; they were thrashing humiliations, especially when I wet my pants. I’m sure it was for this reason alone I did not attain popularity. When I thought of the word
popular
I saw a pert pink flower open in the sun. The sky was blue. A girl smelled good. Not me.
My mother, it turns out, had her own popularity issues. Once, she had thought I might do it for her, be a skating star or a genius. Now, however, I was just a person with a disease. Our paths went wider and wider apart, until at last, one day, I saw I was alone in the woods, with the worms and crows.
And where was she? She turned into a writer of maxims. She said she had an editor by the name of Suki Israel who would one day publish her work. “Dress for the position you want,” she wrote, “not the one you have,” and “If it’s not a beautiful morning, let your cheerfulness make it one.”
The year was 1976, and all over the country love was flowering. My mother caught on. Those were the days when you could go into a bookstore and the entire front display would be of happy meditations. On the fridge, where once had hung a picture of me in my red-and-white skating skirt, was now the maxim she said was her best yet: “Even when you don’t feel brave, pretend you are, for this is how courage comes.”
And so as I went down, down into adolescent sickness and skin, down into daily seizures, she went up, up into the clear air of adage. She sent her work off to Hallmark, to poetry contests listed in the back of
Good Housekeeping
, contests where you had to pay thirty dollars and renew your subscription for the next five years, contests that would turn you into a star. I loved those entry forms, their tiny lines and boxes making it seem so neat, and the promises written in bold black: $8,000 AND A W ORLDWIDE R EADERSHIP! With her pen, she scratched her way toward it.
Sometimes weeks and weeks, months and months, would go by, and she’d get no reply to her submissions. The longer she waited, the happier
CHAPTER 4
SINCERELY, YOURS
J ANUARY 18, 1998
D EAR R EADER:
Every night before dinner I say grace. I light two white tapers, and even though I was born a Jew, I clasp my hands and give thanks to a Christian God for the kindness he has shown.
For most of my life I’ve had a relationship with God. When I was ten, and learning how to fall, I felt personally connected to God, who also knew how to fall, fleshing out his body and bowing into vulnerable human form. Children understand intuitively that God lives in leaves and skin. I knew God when I was ten, when the nuns touched me and an easy sureness filled my lungs, so even the snow was singing.
I came home from that convent school as strong asI had ever been. I have a few pictures of me from that time, and, although it was winter, I look mysteriously tan, my body a rich brewed color, my teeth flashing. In those pictures I grin like an imp. I grin like a girl with know-how.
If you had asked me back then, one month, two months after the convent, I would have told you what the mind learns it cannot forget, that the new and bendable body signals the same for the brain. I had no idea how the body changes as it ages, how at ten there is a certain stability to the skin that hormones, and longing, eventually leach away, until you forget the self you once were. I forgot. I grinned like an imp and then I didn’t. I turned eleven; I turned twelve; I turned thirteen, and the rich brewed color faded back to the frailer peach of a girl on the edge of sex and weakness.
For me, the adolescent years were not about ripenings. Instead, I felt used up and dependent. If others did not admire me, I thought I would disappear.
I had seizures once a day, sometimes in school. The seizures horrified me; they were thrashing humiliations, especially when I wet my pants. I’m sure it was for this reason alone I did not attain popularity. When I thought of the word
popular
I saw a pert pink flower open in the sun. The sky was blue. A girl smelled good. Not me.
My mother, it turns out, had her own popularity issues. Once, she had thought I might do it for her, be a skating star or a genius. Now, however, I was just a person with a disease. Our paths went wider and wider apart, until at last, one day, I saw I was alone in the woods, with the worms and crows.
And where was she? She turned into a writer of maxims. She said she had an editor by the name of Suki Israel who would one day publish her work. “Dress for the position you want,” she wrote, “not the one you have,” and “If it’s not a beautiful morning, let your cheerfulness make it one.”
The year was 1976, and all over the country love was flowering. My mother caught on. Those were the days when you could go into a bookstore and the entire front display would be of happy meditations. On the fridge, where once had hung a picture of me in my red-and-white skating skirt, was now the maxim she said was her best yet: “Even when you don’t feel brave, pretend you are, for this is how courage comes.”
And so as I went down, down into adolescent sickness and skin, down into daily seizures, she went up, up into the clear air of adage. She sent her work off to Hallmark, to poetry contests listed in the back of
Good Housekeeping
, contests where you had to pay thirty dollars and renew your subscription for the next five years, contests that would turn you into a star. I loved those entry forms, their tiny lines and boxes making it seem so neat, and the promises written in bold black: $8,000 AND A W ORLDWIDE R EADERSHIP! With her pen, she scratched her way toward it.
Sometimes weeks and weeks, months and months, would go by, and she’d get no reply to her submissions. The longer she waited, the happier
Similar Books
