The First Rise and Fall of Us
Herstory Part 1. How do 8 years fit into 8 verses?
At seventeen you crushed on me
I was too young to know what that meant
I had left a sweet boy behind in DC
who didn’t know how I felt. Or knew
but didn’t care. Who can tell at sixteen?
But you had the same name
how was I to know the Universe
had played a wicked game?
You were gangly and hairy
whistled tunes and told stories
re-enacted movies frame by frame
all the young boys were taken by you
the girls all stayed away…I should have known.
you played games in the common yard
your favorite one was when you got to hit
my hands in a game of speed…
why was I the only girl playing?
I got such a bad reputation
playing games with you…too young
to know any better, too young to know…
At twenty you pursued me relentlessly
till I fell like a ripe peach into your arms,
my hair too curly to be in, not straight enough
my body too hairy, my skin not clear enough
my height not tall enough, my American accent gone.
With each barely uttered put down, so subtle…
I hardly felt them accumulating like a mountain
in a dust storm, until they buried me.
Not even then…I just moved from being
desired, to opening my legs for your desire.
The less I became, the more I desired you
the more I desired you, the more you felt
you had earned the right to be desirable.
What a convoluted game we played
not knowing the rules, not wanting to know…
My heart opened to receive you
but you found my mouth a better host.
How could you know what I gave up?
I took my father’s beatings to be with you
how could you not know…?…
Those five years in the middle
you admiring my girl friends
your jealousy of the college mates
(I can’t really call them your friends)
angry that they could talk to me
because I knew how to make friends?
Those five years in the middle
your button fly pants always
straining at the seams.
Those five years in the middle
knowing only spent erections
as the way of knowing you.
Those five years in the middle
hiding me in the men’s bathroom
and other boys’ dorm rooms
when your mother came to visit
I got such a bad reputation…
I was a slut for visiting you
but you were a stud for having me,
how does that work?
Those five years in the middle
filled with forced separations
by parents and circumstances
beyond our young control
the debilitating pain of being away
for months on end every summer
the longing, the missing you
were they just mine? No, you too
missed our being together — in your bed
the finding each other, the getting together
the abortion, the bleeding untended
for eleven straight days
not knowing any better
but you should have known
being in med school, shouldn’t you?
You might have known better
but it was winter break and you
had amateur radio shows to do.
What should have rendered us apart
just brought us closer together.
At twenty five, with your last paycheck
you flew home to marry me, but not really…
too afraid of the woman who had raised you
with a bitter tongue, to meet me alone
in the four days before our hastily
arranged wedding, too afraid of
doing the right thing instead of
what was easier…an undertaking
I would find repeated for years
to come, years…nay decades…
“Don’t show your teeth smiling”
my mother whispered at the mandap
how could she not know
what marrying you meant to me?
A hurried ceremony, a faster
doli, surrounded by your girl cousins
being told to skip welcoming bridal games,
settled in the childish rose strewn bed
you lifted my wedding sari, and being quickly done
said “I don’t love you anymore”.
At twenty four I broke into many me’s
all determined not to tell anyone
what you had said or done to me.
I have seen her in pictures of the
days after our wedding, gazing
into the camera, a doe already hit
by the speeding car she did not see
coming…that was, after all, your forte.
At twenty four, but really much younger
more innocent, flying in my wedding
finery not really suited to a TransAtlantic
flight, to meet you. throwing up the whole way
on a nice young man who held my hair
and wiped my face with cold towels
and warmth i would not know again, beyond compare.
At twenty four arriving in a country
I did not know except from television
and the three years spent getting through
five years of school, to a city I did not know…
At twenty four, being told to wait in NYC
instead of finishing my travel to Detroit.
I did not know (then) why I had to spend
my first three days in the U.S. with your friend
and the young new bride I heard him raping
my first night in America. How could I know
what to think, what to feel, what to say?
My sweetest memory, of meeting Gautam
in Times Square and hearing him behind me say
“Who is this vision in pink?” How long
did I keep that memory and that sari
as my talisman, years after he died at forty.
At twenty four getting off the plane to a
strangely bearded man who was my husband,
who was you, a newlywed in a shared apartment
with another man, when I had not ever even
lived with you, my own man, who told me
on our wedding night that he was not
mine anymore. How could I know…
what to think, what to feel, what to say.
At twenty four that lasted for twelve months
I learned to cook and drive and attend a program
for unemployable women, that was the best you could
find for me, who had graduated English Lit with high honors,
and I aced it ahead of graduation earning 70 bucks
per week stipend, handing it over to you with no
bank account of my own, nor sharing yours, trying
to become the woman you wanted me to be…
got a job, aced it, then another with a man much
like you who wanted nothing more than to overwork
and underpay me, and be inappropriate in ways that
I did not recognize then. I learned to become the
woman that I though you wanted me to be.
Twice I moved apartments, packing
and unpacking alone, so many trips in my first car.
I remember the first set of 120 dishes we bought
for ten bucks from Doris and Jose, the couple who liked me
but you, not so much. At twenty four I couldn’t say no
when two guys from your medical school moved in for months
and I shopped and cooked and cleaned for all of us.
Twenty four lasted a fucking eternity!
Inspired by A Maguire’s A Trillion Stars and Jef Littlejohn’s A Surf Bum and Fatal Alchemy…writing in long form.
