THE LONG GOODBYE
by Barbara Juster Esbensen
"Cancer costs dearly in anguish and treasure but allows for the long goodbye...." - Philip Nobile, HARPER'S, June 1976
I am uneasy, drifting
out to the end
of black rope over the oily
water.
We can always get back
you tell me
and you haul us, hand
over hand,
the old rope coiling at our feet
writhing over our bare
feet.
Don't be a baby. We can always get back.
Mary summons the cake
with egg whites and miracles shaped
like roses.
For the occasion
a movie projector focuses
its dusty rented light
on a sheet
we make rabbit noses out of
shadows and thumbs
and shadow-crabs out of our spread
fingers. After FELIX THE CAT
we eat creamed eggs on toast
and feel superior
to anyone under ten.
Wind blows into Wisconsin
from the Nile Valley or
from Oklahoma
where the farms scatter
and wheels of tinlizzie trucks
grind west
to the promised land.
This Monday morning
their dust is in our mouths.
It turns to mud on our wet sheets
flapping on the lines.
(Across one sheet
the shadow of a dead
branch
like a thin arm
lifted....)
M - E - S, we shout
O - P - O - T, I duck under
flailing rope.
My brown oxfords
are untied: A - M - I - A !
Miss Kaeding loves Egypt.
She sends the class pellmell
over the jigsaw map
of Europe. Colors,
boundaries blur.
We are out of
breath
stumbling across
England-France-Germany, the Low
Countries.
But Miss Kaeding takes us slowly
s l o w l y down the
Tigris, the Euphrates.
The Valley of the Nile is home
to us. The river soothes us,
pulls us past hippos - blue faience, flowered -
snuffling among the stiff reeds.
We memorize the staring kings,
the principal products.
On the shaded afternoon steps
of the Lowell School library
we play jacks
and wait for Martin Neilson
to shine past on his Elgin
bicycle.
The metal jacks say "chink!"
on the smooth cement.
We throw them
and scoop them in. We do
ups-and-downs
and lefts, and eggs-in-the-basket.
When Martin Neilson
rides by with his newspapers
we stare hard at each other.
We let his spell freeze us
forever, spilling out stars
on the library steps.
On a dare, you raise your hand
to him, but Martin Neilson
(better looking, even, than Dick Powell!)
doesn't see,
grows smaller and smaller
on his bicycle,
riding out to the end of Maple
Avenue, to the beach, to his dry
death on the beach
at Anzio....
It is a drought year.
All summer we sleep
on the bedroom floors. Fans
blow on us over chunks
of ice.
Gardens crack. Lakes shrink back
from shore.
The waters reek of dead fish
and my father says
it's just like Ethiopia
on the Pathe newsreel: Haile
Selassie and his big
sad eyes filled up with
sand kicked up
by Italian boots: The Lion
of Judah.
We can see him
a small black smudge
raging
on the desert.
We remember how the egg fried
in the sun.
Don't listen to him,
you tell me running
I won't I say. I don't even
KNOW Jesus!
Hey Mary! We grin up at her
Do you love Hitler?
Ach! She shouts at us
Chust you kidss shut up!
Nobody looks at the smoke
rising...rising....
We let her pass she glares
at us takes off
in the heat. Room
and board her uniforms
and seven dollars every week
she gets. Banks some
spends some at the Emporium,
at the movies, St. Bernard's
Church.
She buys Kodak film
for her accordian-pleated
camera and later
takes our picture. We are
making faces and laughing
our socks wrinkle down Marilyn
lifts her arm
just as the shutter clicks.
The top of her head
is cut off a little
her face
is out of focus...
We call each other up
You can have Dick Powell
AND Martin Neilson
I'LL take Davy Windsor!
We wish we were English
It's not right a nigger
should beat up a good-looking
white man like that
(Her second cousin the little
glovemaker
limps into our lives
from Germany
You can't imagine what they are doing
to us he weeps
We can't. We can't imagine...)
The Fireside Chat came
dimly to our ears
from porch radios.
We heard that voice
mixed with skate-growl
from old, tipped walks
hollow grey.
In those days
we caught fireflies in jars
and we skated...
SWIMMING and in five brains
a windy lake-breeze blows
five doors open. We dive
off THAT pier. Into THAT
water waving
grinning spitting Lake Monona
into the sunlight.
Inside your skull
we four have had our lodgings -
at home there lounging
in your brain's old
furniture yanking up
our socks
opening and closing our
mouths.
Today my mother called
pouring your terrible sentence
into my phone.
Inside your head
we are running Marilyn
we flee the shadow of
that spreading crab.
Rooms we laughed in darken
we fold in
like scissored dolls
hands joined faces
gone blank.
The crab moves up
Oakridge Avenue
a page
from our old geography book
in its claw.
Scritch-scratch
the crab in your brain
turns left
at Maple Avenue and worries
the scrap of paper
with the Tigris
and Euphrates on it the Delta
of the Nile. Principal
products.
See it, Marilyn
memorize
the map. Run!
(The crab scuttles sideways...)
There is a boat there rocking
unseen at the Delta
of the Nile in the lefthand
corner of the page.
It has been moored
forty years waiting.
Wind is on the water
dark now Marilyn. Fireflies
sprinkle their lights
on the Tigris the Euphrates.
Find the waiting boat
and raise your hand
to us. Black rope trails
in the water
We can always get back. Don't be
a baby We can always
get back...
Written
Memories
Barbara Juster Esbensen Memorial
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