Kathryn MacLeod
Breaking Rule
(presented at the Little Sisters Defense Fund reading, December 19, 1994)
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell
it about other people.
Virginia Woolf
(On the body like an overcoat. Carry fear in a suitcase in a foreign clime)
The hills around the town were only hills, and beyond them only more hills, beige and
treeless, but beyond them were cities of great size, countries of unknown flavours, radio
stations playing unfamiliar music, houses of either great beauty or great love.
In that place she had not stood before, she remembered being there, exactly--the
orchestra, the women in their gowns, the expectation. Hush, the adults said, do not speak
of these things. He realized at a young age, there might be places he belonged.
All her life she had known what she wanted. Sitting between her relatives at the dinner
table, Angel understood what was expected. (A boy so skinny and withdrawn the children
knew that he was starving)
Had you said what you believed, it would have ruined your career. Language is pleasure
and power.
Mac, in drag, looks almost pretty. His legs and feet, in pumps, are slender; nails are
tapered; small breasts fill out his cocktail gown, hair softly styled. Only his arm, slung over
the back of the sofa where he is sitting, looks slightly too long, his gesture too expansive
for a woman.
There is no model to emulate. This a process of discovery. He spoke of my writing as
influenced by writers I had never read. Every day we watched the beige hills, alternately
gold and grey between the sun and passing clouds. From below in the river valley, we
imagined distances beyond.
Walking on masterless and ownerless ground. Speaking from silence. The heroic women.
If you accept your position without thought, you will soon be lost. Winds and seasons
move around us. Your people will betray you, shadow will dim your sight, your voice will
not be heard beyond your anger.
Compelling order.
A good area, meaning every family had two cars, a few pots of petunias, neat lawnssome
surrounding turquoise swimming pools. On Saturdays the sons worked out in the yards,
cutting the lawn or raking leaves, depending on the season. The daughters stayed inside
with vacuums, cleaning products, dust rags. The sewing machine whirred in the afternoon.
Fear crawls out of the closet (to never see your own face).Talk of sex is always incomplete.
It took years to discover what masturbation was, the books she found too general, the
word itself too foreign to describe her pleasure.
The variety of silences.
What she remembers--the times she laughed and wept the longest, certain people that she
met, a book she read. The memory in our bones, our skin, shapes our voices and our eyes.
The memory in our houses. Outside, clouds massing over the hills, or aligned in perfect
brush strokes. (Longing to take one step further)
Somewhere, men are dancing arm in arm. Women build towers of glass and stone.
Stepping outside. Fresh air, a little breeze. The smell of smoke. The scent of honeysuckle,
apricots, dust after a sudden rain.The smell of bodies moving, dampness in subway
corridors, garbage spilling from bins behind the restaurant, the musk of beer, of buses.
A great distance to be travelled to the next town. People are wary, hold bundles tightly,
hear words as stone. I am only following the rules.
A habit like any other.
Movement, change--it never seemed to reach them. They struggled one day to the next.
Their house was full of symbols. They mixed their milk from powder, fed the cat from
tins, redecorated. A family portrait from that time is dated by the menıs ties, the womenıs
sleeves. Success was measured by compliance, any attention threatening.
The tongue traces a river from thigh to toe. The breast is cupped and nipple warmed.
Curve of stomach enters small of back. The neck is arched, the finger follows gullies,
mounds, a wrist is circled. Eyelids licked. Flesh embraces lips. A sexless passion.
The power of one idea, followed until it loses context. An eye no longer seeing colour. A
large fish swallows a smaller fish.
You are everything to me
You are my one true love
The smallest decision of silence.
He is motivated by ambition, his voice distorted with intensity, with the effort of shaping
words. The words are all he hopes for. In the morning they wake him, the noise of birds. If
he could see them clearly, instead of merely catching glimpses of their promise, they
would be his to keep. If meaning could be pinned, clipped and halted, the birds would be
in his possession. Sometimes he speaks more loudly, or more rapidly. That is when, in
great despair, he feels them rising from his tongue and fleeing.
There was rarely fog, that far inland. The horizon was crisp, the trees sharp angles. In the
summer it was hot and brilliant, in the winter snowfall cleaned the landscape.
In exile. One country to the next. Magazines are never printed in your language. Actors in
movies never look like you. No one says anything that you believe in.
The necessity of opposition.
In whose name and from what theory are you speaking--?
They spoke across the room. Their voices were all one, like singing.
In the garden, yellow of coreopsis, blue of bellflower. Anything that you believe in.
(Love being unacceptable)
Mac believed he would have died there. If not in body, then in spirit. It might take years, a
gradual progress. Eventual numbness, fatigue, dishonesty.
The garden is empty. Silence oh silence.
The landscape is detached, in memory. The mountains are bigger than they were, the river
wider and more dangerous. On Sundays the streets were empty, you could drive through
town and not meet another vehicle. (It is all we have, and not enough)
--I am speaking in my own name--
How did it begin--the movement out of safe family confines into a world that was
immediately and always foreign? No matter how well you knew the streets and houses, no
matter how familiar faces and voices, you were always uneasy.
Traveling towards the ocean, green fields and valleys came as great relief.
The choices made were not her choices. Walls grew up around her, thick as tree trunks,
casting lengthy shadows. Angel might have chose a different path, if she could have seen
her way a little further.
The censor's vise. An anxious and uncertain voice, wanting to be noticed, wanting to be
loved best (struck back).
Sweet sticky palms. insistent tongues, thighs grip, soft belly shudders, breath.
A sad vocabulary.
Writing to see your own reflection. A place of intimacy and utter freedom.
The slope less steep. The walk much shorter.
A time of life when Angel hardly knew herself. Desire was her strongest motive, fear and
anger left her helpless. Everything that bruised or sated came from unknown sources.
Angel, the voice outside said, do not speak of these things
A disease, this fear. You move in one direction, the familiar, hoping to no longer feel it. If
the landscape had not changed, if the eyes of those around you saw what you saw, if their
language had remained the same, if their food could sustain you--
Mac grew vines that spilled their flowers over bare walls, rare scented blossoms, creeping
succulents. He knew their names, both formal and familiar. Lady's mantle, lungwort, dead
nettle.
The kind of rage that allows you to resist.
Physical or intellectual omission. Opinions unheard of, undiscussed. Suggestions of
incompetence, incorrect procedures, lack of discipline. An invitation not extended.
Days that were too long, where silence warped perception of the world and self. What was
never said was not forgotten. They feared the house might tumble from the edge of the
hill, all the comfort of the everyday might disappear.
A train ride through the mountains. We were heading south, through pasture land and
orchards. The hills became a little larger, the valley narrowed, steep slopes grew. It was a
difficult journey, despite the ease of modern travel.
Bold and daring in their speech.
A place of freedom not located in geography. Greater and less than journeys before. Bad
poetry, bad manners.
Alone, she heard the multiplicity of voices in her head and heart. Remaining perfectly still,
not concentrating, she felt a wave of pleasure. The words were hers to choose.
Suggestive, victimizing, obscene, unfamiliar.
Mouth-piece. Loud mouth. Gossip. Shrew.
She dreamed of floods and fire. They were forced to flee, to fill suitcases with belongings,
to make the journey high along the valleyıs edge to escape the rising waters and
encroaching flames.
It may take years to find the way out, years of travel and return. And you have made a
single journey, and spoken just one word.
Mac was dancing on his own grave. Angels are singing. The train rattled on the tracks, the
bones of skeletons.
Copyright © 1994 Kathryn MacLeod
|
