The Watchman on the Shelf

For thus the Lord said to me: “Go, set a watchman, let him announce what he sees. When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs, riders on asses, riders on camels, let him listen diligently, very diligently.”

Isaiah 21:6-7 (RSV)

I bought Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman the day it came out but, months later, I’ve yet to read it. My reasons fall into three areas.

First, I always treasured To Kill a Mockingbird as a Great American Novel if not the Great American Novel. In many ways it addresses American’s issues with race, class, and gender which have not changed much since Mockingbird was published in 1960. Just check out today’s headlines: isolated enclaves where the select erect barriers against the “other” who is not one of “our” kind and where they imagine grievances that affirm their opinions of people they don’t know. Even when faced with evidence that they got it wrong, they cling to their “truth” until it hurts. We still have lessons to learn from To Kill a Mockingbird about our history and our present lives.

Even if the themes did not resonate across two centuries, Mockingbird is literarily rich. When I teach the novel, I always read aloud the beginning of the first chapter – using the last vestiges of my Mississippi accent overlaid with exaggeration. When the class has ended the novel, I read aloud the end of the last chapter and immediately re-read the beginning of the first chapter again. Full circle! Don’t you love it?

Then there’s the complication of narrator and point of view. I lead students to distinguish Jean Louise Finch, the adult narrator, from Scout Finch, the child from whose point of view we experience the story. Jean Louise has an adult’s vocabulary, prospective, and insight into what connects people and events across time. She knows how the story will end and so is careful to recount what really matters so we can understand as much as possible about what it all means. Scout is only six as the story begins and, I believe, eight by the end of the novel. She does “listen diligently, very diligently” and notes rich details of her experiences. We can  understand more than she does about what it all means only because of the rich details she gives us.

Unfortunately, some schools fail to see this distinction of point and view and narrator. For those without vision, it’s a child’s story and when students read it when they are too young to “get” what Scout misses, it remains a child’s story and they never arrive at what really matters. Was it Boo Radley’s coming out? Was it Bob Ewell’s poverty of self-worth? Was it Tom Robinson’s tragic ending? Was it Mayella’s pitiful existence? Was it Atticus’ parenting skills? Was it Scout, Jem, and Dill’s loss of innocence? Or was it the mockingbird that symbolizes each of these characters? (Guess which one I think matters most?)

I read the online free first chapter of Watchman before the book was released and did not get that chill as I did with the first sentences of Mockingbird. There was nothing special in the language and I was not inspired to take on a southern accent and read aloud. By the end of that sample, I was nearly bored and didn’t really care about Jean Louise’s fate. I really didn’t want to read any more. That is why the novel stares at me from my bookcase rarely tempting me to dive in.

My third reason for not yet reading Watchman is on a lighter -- and yet more serious -- note. The pace of life in Maycomb and the people who populated Harper Lee’s fictional town resonated with memories I have of my childhood in Jackson, Mississippi. The Radley house was much like my Aunt Sarah’s, with rumors of a specter who came out when no one was watching to do unmentionable deeds. Like Scout, Jem, and Dill, my sister and I daily dared each other to touch Aunt Sarah’s front steps, her porch, her door. Both of us would run screaming with laughter if we caught any movement of a shadow in the window. But there was no Nathan shutting her in the basement, away from the world.

When she finally emerged into the light of my grandparents’ living room, Aunt Sarah smiled and offered us sweet treats with bright innocent eyes. Like Boo Radley, Aunt Sarah kept to the shadowy corners of rooms when adults were present but relaxed her guard with children.

When I eventually was given her permission to enter Aunt Sarah's little house down the road from my grandparents, I glimpsed a solitary life in a one-room dollhouse. The one room was clean and orderly with neatly groomed dolls filling every room much like my home is always filled with books. Dolls posed on chairs, propped on shelves, relaxing on the bed, and even tenderly placed against furniture on the floor but not too close to the wood-burning stove. There were no fewer than three dolls in each spot.

Even when I was young, I knew Aunt Sarah had a problem (one I could never name) when I saw her holding a conversation with a roach crawling up the wall. Aunt Sarah died before I heard her story but I never doubted there was one as full as Boo’s with sorrow and regret, mystery and borrowed joy.

When I read that first chapter of Watchman, nothing resonated. In fact, I experienced the opposite. Jean Louise already the "watchman" looking from the dining car, her arrival at the train station and everything that happens after she gets off was alien to my childhood in Mississippi. First, the trains were segregated and we were only allowed in the dining car to serve. Pound cake and fried chicken in a shoebox were always part of our journey from Chicago to Jackson. Getting home from the train station was nowhere near as pleasant for me, scrunched in an overcrowded cab with eight other “Negro” passengers and carrying my own suitcase. I found no points of identification with this stranger and the people she met on her way.

It doesn’t bother me that Harper Lee writes about a white experience. What else could she do but “announce what [she] sees” and hears? The experience of growing up white in the south is her experience. In fact, I appreciate the fact that she does not write much about the Negroes of Maycomb. When I teach the book, I spend a good amount of time on the scene when Calpurnia takes Jem and Scout to her church. Our only glimpse into Negro life may very well have been part of Harper Lee’s childhood experience, which explains why it’s part of Scout’s. The only other scene set in the Negro part of town was when Atticus goes to tell Helen Robinson of Tom’s death. In the book, Jem recounts his experience to Scout because she wasn’t there. It is likely Harper Lee had no direct experience of visiting a Negro neighborhood and there are only murky details mediated through Jem’s sleepy memory.

This leads me to the questions that occasionally tempt me to pick up Watchman. Do we learn more about the Negroes of Maycomb? Does Jean Louise venture where Scout did not/ could not? Do we learn what becomes of Helen Robinson and her children? Is Calpurnia still part of the Finches’ lives? What becomes of Dill? Does Jean Louise see Atticus with the same rose-colored glasses Scout wore? Has Maycomb changed in any significant way – as the result of world events if not the events we read about in Mockingbird? How does post-War War II Maycomb differ from post-Depression Maycomb?

If at least some of these questions are not addressed, I know I will be disappointed. Is it better to leave me with the satisfaction I gained from Mockingbird or to instill bitterness for Harper Lee’s failure to live up to the promise of her first novel?

More to come.

Dressing on the side: Another story in progress

            Brea was the kind of Minnesota woman who went from sandals to boots with no other footwear in between. In October, in a nod of acknowledgement to the climate, she’d wear long sleeves with her shorts and sandals, adding a jersey hoodie and boots to her longer shorts the closer the month moved toward Halloween. She rarely wore a winter coat before Thanksgiving, complaining along the way of the cold winds and snow. Her sweater and boots and jacket should have kept her warm.

            Brea was Rebecca’s wild child. She’d kicked off whatever southern heat might still cling to her genes and rejoiced in the ice of the land of a thousand lakes.

            Trish consumed sunshine through her skin. She gloried in the rays and the warmth, thinking of winter even in August as she stored memories along with the thermals. She divided her clothing into three seasons: summer, winter, and the in-betweens of fall and spring. She didn’t wear boots until the snow fell but by October, she’d stop wearing sandals and sleeveless tops. Everything in its season.

            Trish was Rebecca’s mild child. A person might think she carried the South in her veins and sought to thaw Minnesota from her blood.

            You’d think Brea needed taming, and you’d be right. But Rebecca heeding the warning about still waters knew it takes more than boots and clothing to regulate temperament. And Trish called herself a hot blooded woman.

Furious

To end your happiness

The gods will send you deep despair

They will conjure up horrors to haunt your dreams

They will shrink your joy

They will call out the  furies to torment your waking

To  feed you venom

For

Only gods may feast on ambrosia to satisfy all hungers
Only gods can savor nectar that quenches all thirst

The gods will not grant grace to  mortals

They will not salve you with balm 

They will not soothe your sorrows

For

The gods are jealous

They aim to kill your soul

Song for Marguerite Ann Johnson, A Free Bird

Are you singing

Now that your prayers are answered?

Is it for merriment and angelic choirs?

You’ve risen to the highest bough

And now

You can defy what is known

And soar through the night and the rain

You can sing at sunset

You can bathe in the Sargasso Sea

Or does sorrow yet plague you

Because you see us still searching for our diamonds here in the dreck?

Do you yearn to reach us again with your warmth?

With your voice

You healed our battered wings

With your words

You beat back our fears

With your life

You told us

That we, too, would rise

The cage door is open.

Go and breathe in the day

And watch your smile shimmering in the sun

As you rise above the river.

You can sing softly at midnight

When fears and doubts take wing,

You can sing us songs

Of heaven’s dawn

That carry us through our dark days,

Or you can rest.

Listen as heaven sings praise

To a weary soul at rest.

You are the reason

And the song.

2 June 2014

Pasodoble

Remember

When you wrapped me around your shoulders and

I hugged myself to you

like a consuming fire?

As we floated above the floor

I inhaled your air and exhaled my smoldering flame.

Until

You felt my love a dousing rain

Assaulting your blazing light,

smothering your cool points

You twirled a pirouette into a revolution

Entwined in your heat

I followed your rhythm

Did you know:

You carried me and the fire

As I leaned into your kiss

Your killing blow

hidden in the heat

hiding in the beat

Found my heart

I smoke at your feet

holding on to passion

drowning in the rage

Eating Clouds

“What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape “

from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

Six days a week, for all of my childhood and some years beyond, my Aunt Yvonne worked in Jackson, Mississippi at two jobs servicing white people. Her employers and those she served loved her, and rewarded her well for her art as a chef. We thought her rich because she took my sister and me shopping at the end of each summer and bought us clothes for the start of school in the fall. When she retired, Aunt Yvonne collected a social security check that paid for her to live. What she saved also helped pay for college, down payments, drug treatment, restitution, and bail for sundry children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and others. In her eighties, Bell’s palsy struck and only half of Aunt Yvonne’s face turned up when she smiled. When she was in service, she always smiled. And she always took care to assure that her appearance and behavior were asexual and guileless.

Stepping lively and beaming smiles, Aunt Yvonne left her house at nine in the morning to help cook at a nursing home. She wore shoes that made sense for a woman who would walk to the bus stop three blocks over and stay on her feet all day. Her serviceable dress – always a governess grey or washed out blue or barely there brown – was short sleeved and buttoned in the front. The hem fell below her knees and the waist was ill defined. Her hair was tightly bound in a bun at her nape and carefully secured with the required black net. No enticing lock ever dared to peek out.

Aunt Yvonne wore no make-up or perfume, but she did wear talcum powder between her legs and her breasts to guard against friction and sweat. A surprisingly dainty handkerchief with flowers and lace grew visibly from her cleavage. In that position it hid where her bosom overflowed, and it was handy when her face perspired. No white person ever saw Aunt Yvonne sweat, but the steam from the pots and pans burned an eternal glow on her cheeks and brow.

Neat and trim in sensible shoes and hair net, cool and collected with her handy kerchief and talcum powder, Aunt Yvonne marched down the road, swinging one arm as if leading a charge. On the other arm swung her large black pocketbook with the necessary money and keys, and enough room to bring home leftovers. She also carried The Upper Room and a New Testament, and a small black apron with white ruffles around the edges. This apron and her dress constituted her uniform for her evening job.

After the nursing home, Aunt Yvonne became the proud pastry chef at “one of the finest white restaurants in Jackson, Mississippi” where colored people entered through the kitchen and stayed there. From that kitchen, Aunt Yvonne gained fame for turning out the lightest biscuits and dinner rolls in town. “Feathers!” some exclaimed. “Clouds!!” they rhapsodized. No white person who ate Aunt Yvonne’s cooking ever choked on quills or saw tears flow like rain. Aunt Yvonne was a sorcerer making magic.

She returned to us each night with bags full of treasure for two little girls who had fought sleep to greet their “Aunty Vonne” when she came home from work. We knew she had braved the nether world to fight for us, and she always brought us her softest clouds to eat. She had taken care to season them herself so that we would not have to swallow our own tears.

Six mornings a week, Aunt Yvonne charged down Cox Street and disappeared around a corner my sister and I were not allowed to turn alone. Neither one of us would have to cook or clean for white people to make our living, she declared. Armored in protective clothing and covered with fairy dust, Aunty Vonne carried books of spells in her sorceress bag as she rode her unicorn to battle the demons who threatened our safe kingdom. Confidently, she charmed the ogres posing as helpless old people and deceived the dragons pretending to be courtly ladies and gentlemen so that they mistook her for a plain and harmless colored girl. Seduced by her smile, they never realized she fed them slow poison of bitterness concealed inside their bread. And they never knew she took back the best of her magic to feed us divine dreams.

Heavy Air

“Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?”

From “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

The house was breathing loudly. Inhaling as if lifting heavy air – some of it spilling over and through the fingers. Falling in plops. Like molasses. Exhaling was a train braking, with no station in sight. I tensed, waiting for the derailment, until the heavy air lifted once more. And somewhere in my waiting darkness the uneven rhythm lured me into a fitful sleep.

The summer before, when I was five and my sister was six, my MamaGran was attacked by her generous heart. It began for me with MayCath’s hysterics interrupting my dreams. My sister and I stood on the edges listening to MamaGran’s gasping while our youngest aunt, MayCath, ran next door, screaming for her older sister, our Aunty Vonne.

Aunt Yvonne called the doctor from her house because MamaGran had no phone. Leaving MayCath on the porch with her hysterics to wait for whoever would come, Aunt Yvonne brought a wave of calm into MamaGran’s house. The three of us rode it together as we listened to MamaGran trying to push air through her lungs and patted her arm in turns.

“They’re here,” MayCath eventually called out in whispered urgency. Not sure who “they” were, I saw strangers lifting MamaGran like a baby and carrying her and Aunty Vonne away in their van. We were left with MayCath, barely a teenager herself, who never in her grief and worry thought to explain to two quiet little girls, the urgency, the possibilities. We had never known someone to go away and never come back.

Throughout the following weeks I heard adults talking about MamaGran’s large heart, as her bed and bedroom were made ready for her return. Our father came South early to pick us up for the return trip to Chicago – or so I supposed. I think now he’d rushed down “just in case” MamaGran’s heart was indeed as large as her generosity and gave her similar troubles.

A tall, hippy woman with big feet and raised blue veins on her hands, MamaGran’s light skin was darkened with dots of liver spots and moles. Her salty hair was thick, long, and easily tangled like mine; both of us were tender headed. When mama combed my hair, I’d squirm and cry out as she pulled my scalp with the tangles. Mama would give me a sharp hit in the head with the comb and scold, “Be still, girl!” If I could, I’d run to MamaGran before mama could get to my head. I still squirmed when MamaGran combed by hair but I never cried out. MamaGran knew my pain; she never pulled my scalp or hit me. Because I had her hair and tender head, I feared getting MamaGran’s large and tender heart as well.

When I learned the difference between large and enlarged, being big hearted stopped being a double-edge sword I ducked in fear that my every kind deed would viciously turn to bite back.

The summer following MamaGran’s attack, I saw the result of a heart that was too large. MamaGran moved slowly and seldom left the front porch. She tended her garden sparingly and went to church only if offered a ride. Her rose bushes started to stoop as much as she now did. But from the porch swing, she’d watch us hopping the pattern we had drawn in Aunty Vonne’s driveway dirt between the two front yards, or teaching the southern girls how to jump double dutch with the clothesline. 

Many evenings Bubba and his sister Jean and some of the Klines crossed the street to play pitty pat or smut in the parlor room. A fireplace was handy to provide the soot for whoever lost at smut and MayCath’s piano provided entertainment for whoever had to sit out a hand of pitty pat. MamaGran never played piano or cards but I could see her through the screen door watching us from the porch.

MamaGran still sent us to tell the man on the truck to stop by so she could select three watermelons – one to eat immediately and two to put under the house to keep cool for later. She’d also buy a half-bushel of peaches to can, instead of her usual bushel or more. We still helped her by washing and rinsing jars and lids, but instead of peach cobbler we got banana pudding as payment. And she sat rather than stood as she worked in the kitchen. Most of the peaches stayed uncanned but not uneaten. MamaGran’s peach tree was also in decline.

Except for the slowing down and the drooping, little else important changed  for us during our summer sojourns at MamaGran’s. When a canning jar broke across my pointing finger, cutting it to the bone, MamaGran was able to bind it tight enough to stop the blood and she even bathed it in Mercurochrome and love enough to stave off infection. When my sister’s last baby tooth hung loose, giving her pain and hunger for solid food, MamaGran was strong enough to tie a string to a doorknob and slam the door to pull it out. There was no blood and my sister screamed only a few seconds, or so it seemed to me. MamaGran was waiting with warm salt water and patting hugs. 

I learned to love banana pudding until I ate nearly a whole one and threw up on MamaGran’s neglected roses. I learned to eat cucumber that grew up on vines in MamaGran’s backyard while missing the greens and root vegetable that required so much bending and digging for cultivation. Aunt Yvonne made sure a telephone was installed in MamaGran's house.

Sometimes, while playing summer games, I was overcome with sudden stillness. I’d glance around for MamaGran and invariably find her close by watching. My eyes became a camera lens and my squint into the sun a shutter as I made pictures of MamaGran to remember: tsking by the rosebush leaning on her hands on her ample hips, veined-fingers spread out and pointing behind her; resting on the back steps slowly snapping beans that pinged in the metal bowl at her slipper-clad feet; sitting on the front porch swing slowly moving wherever the wind wanted her to go. 

And the summer I was six, I lay awake late each night listening to the sound of heavy air and waiting breathlessly for a train to derail.