This is also about a friend of mine,
a woman, who had a very, very--
she's one of these people that I met that makes me feel like,
and you thought you had problems.
And like it helped me because she's so brave and powerful.
And she had a childhood that made mine look like--
my father was Walt Disney and my mother--
I don't know.
Like I grew up in Disneyland or something.
And she, frankly-- her father was in the military,
went to Germany, married a very young German girl,
brought her back.
He's Mexican.
They went to live around Santa Cruz out in the country.
And she went through a terrible kind of breakdown from--
she had wanted to be a dancer.
She lost her kind of dream to do that.
She was in a very alien place and she kind of I
can understand.
But the way she dealt with, it was by beating my friend,
as a little girl, every morning of her life
until she literally went deaf in one ear.
And she beat her every day until she got too big to beat.
Then, when she was nine, her mother and father
went on vacation.
And for two weeks her brother and uncle
raped her every day and night for two weeks.
And her parents didn't believe her.
And she still talks to them and visits them on occasion.
And it made me think about myself
because I'm not particularly fond of my family
for a lot of reasons.
And most of them are dead.
And some of them I'd like to dig up and kill all over again.
And yet, I went back.
I still talk to my mother.
We have one of those families and I've seen other people
like this, where I can say and I won't say it,
but you can imagine, I can say the most obscene
and brutal and vicious thing to my mother.
And I guarantee, in a week, we'll be on the phone
again, affably chatting away as if nothing had ever happened.
My wife told me, if you said something
like that to my mother, anything like a fraction of what--
she would never be able to speak to you or look at you again.
She'd be so devastated.
And I realized there was something different about us.
My friend had this raised to a higher level.
So anyway, I wondered why we did it.
She did it.
I did it, and I know a lot of people.
Why do we do that?
I thought about this.
And so I tried to write about it and I came up with some ideas.
But then after I wrote this, I realized
that I had sort of just touched the surface.
And now, my heart sinks to think of--
I'll have to like maybe explore further more
complexities about this.
I hope not, though.
But I'd rather not, but I don't know.
What else am I going to do?
I mean, I don't have a job.
It's called the Scars Birthday Party.
I made it like a kind of fairy tale.
There's a word that I coined.
It's kindertotenvalt vault. If you
know Mahler, Kindertotenlieder, the songs
on the deaths of children.
It's a wonderful quality of German that you can make up
these compound nouns and you make words up, beautiful words.
Kindertotenlieder would be like, I don't know, the wood
of death to children or something.
But anyway, dim sun checkered path through the forest,
the perishing limbs lose their leaves,
were they mine I would gladly let go all my gold leaves.
To carpet the ground, her feet walk on,
though she merely frowned, forget I lived
and hurry on for she must not be late for reasons
not at present time.
If ever known, she can't be late.
She hurries on.
She only knows that they are waiting, they're waiting,
they are longing for her at this very moment.
This is a strange thing.
I mean, these families.
And I know this.
We do love each other.
It's very hard to understand, but I mean, it's your family.
what are you going to do?
You can't get another one.
You can, in some ways.
You get your own as you get older.
And I had to do that.
But anyway, she hurries on.
She only knows that they're waiting, they're waiting,
they are longing for her at this very moment.
All year long they have been pining for her,
waiting and listening, listening, through sleep
for the steps they know.
The little knock the child she was they most intently
listen for and wait.
The child she never was, but will be now
if somewhat tall the instant the front door
starts opening as though by itself and the option to enter
is offered apparently.
They rejoice, that mere sound of her steps
were already rejoicing, though no one will say so.
No one knows how that is done, how to make
the appropriate face even.
They wish, in their way, to delight at the sight of her
even if it is all they can do to grunt something
in greeting so great as their happiness
that she has come here standing there in person.
But for her, they have little to live for.
It's dying they live for, in fact, and TV.
Somebody hands the remote to her,
this honor has done her and gestures sit down, want a Coke,
want a cookie, they mutter.
It sounds like that. eyes still intent on the set
with the sound of familiar room, otherwise, dark curtains drawn.
There in it's light they all sit.
Father blind-- and her father did go blind.
That's strange because he was blind to what was mysterious.
Maybe it was-- yeah, he didn't see what was going on
and he went blind.
That's interesting. father blind, mother Monster, now her.
The faculty of speech regressed already
to that of a nine-year-old irreparably shy with terror,
sick with hope.
She can't say she is comfortable yet
with being seated in this vast armchair, her feet barely
touching the floor or with the prospect of having
to sleep in a bed half her length in her old room
or with lying there in utter darkness,
frozen unable to move when they enter.
Tongue drawn back into her throat,
but then she will be dreaming, won't she?
The visit, itself, may be some kind of dream.
That is still vaguely possible.
They hope entertained resorted to when necessary,
when painful and unheard of things
were occurring to her body.
For example, no cessation of them
yet in sight in previous years.
Those unending years of actually living there possessing,
in fact, no memory whatsoever of having ever
woken up anywhere else.
For the time being though, she is still
sitting here right next to mother, the fixed smiling
glare, and her husband, the mumbled joke nobody gets.
They appear to be sleeping, reclined in their chairs.
All year long, they've been sleeping, sleeping as snow
fell blowing all around the house.
Spring branch is tapping at windows, each
alone in their rooms.
Summer fields wait for harvest, then leaves, golden leaves,
falling.
Leaves of my dying, dying to see his eyes,
hear his voice saying my name.
Once again, he has come here to save me, to buy me things,
teach me how monsters have monsters.
That's right.
The tormented torment, the abandoned abandoned.
Charismatically numb, cold, surviving, the last ones
left standing.
And how shall they warm someone else so very much themselves
in need of one to come and save them from that Arctic horror
they have been crossing on foot all their lives.
The last companion eaten, the graves of my footprints
erased long ago, dying of loneliness there in my cubicle,
waiting for someone to rescue me, someone to rescue.
It comes to the same thing--
save me.
I miss you.
All the while, they were sleeping.
They slept as the seasons were changing around them,
waiting for this day.
Mother beat you daily into speechless deafness,
father blind to it all.
I'm sorry dear, we just don't have the money
for a hearing aid right now.
Blue soundless TV, and look, there's brother rapist.
unnoted, unmentioned, the origins weeping ignored,
ignored.
Knock at the back door, the knocking
that goes on and on forwarding address unknown.
And sister silent is sitting here to in a bad light,
the perpetually downcast gaze, the amputated tongue
forever nodding--
yes, yes, yes as she's mouthing the words
of the miniature Bible she carries at all times,
never getting beyond the first page.
From under her pillow, it slowly recites itself,
such a kind voice saying, everything's fine, everything
is going to be all right, abruptly
followed by a stream of loudly whispered accusations,
each one true.
But he didn't really mean it, my peace, my beloved.
While we're waiting for her to turn up,
it seems like all we ever do, poor little elder sister still
so far and maybe lost a while.
But on the straight road, once again,
surely, and she shall wear gold, golden
leaves to adorn her to guide her nodding now and then
slapping herself in the face hard, trying to shake off
the dream she keeps falling into Earth opening under her,
the dream of walking someplace else anywhere.
I must wake up now, she's saying.
Yes, she is so close.
I can already hear her.
But hearing kindertotenvalt the way is long,
the roads unnamed, etiquette strange,
changing from day to day, minute to minute.
For example, is it correct to comment, admiringly,
on a family friend's shiny new fang dentures?
There, I can't help you.
The house must be close by now, so what does one say this time?
What does one do when the sardonic greeting ceased,
you're asking me?
Cringing hugs, possibly.
Shaky chill and weightless hand.
Kiss a cheek smelling faintly of stale lilac and rotting meat.
Take an ax to them, all shrieking
exalted hunting them from room to room,
screaming the scream that will never be over.
Beats me.
And how did they manage it?
Do you imagine, all those years, keeping their true lives
concealed from the neighbors?
And look at them now and their ultimate cunning.
Somehow, they have totally changed their appearance.
I mean, past recognition.
You feel, who are these shrunken frail, elderly people who've
taken the place of our parents?
And where do they bury them?
Old people, no one would ever suspect.
Victims, now, think of that.
And abandoned, nobody to care for them here in their long
dusty nap with a grass growing up to the windows,
the household falling down around them,
all on account of this one thankless child,
miss big city fake blond and self-centered daughter,
who cannot be bothered.
Yet, here she is again.
And why?
Why?
Why do we still go on phoning them, visiting, feeded and fed
by our torturers?
Why did we not, at 18, leave and never look back
and completely forget them.
I know.
The need from time to time, the need to prove they're
really there.
You can see them.
Have proof that they actually lived and are even living still
at a listed address and not just in your head.
And besides, where else did you ever fit in?
Tell the truth.
And where else is a monster to turn?
So close now.
What else can you do?
Turn around and go home and what home would that be?
Turn around and go back to that arduously perfected
impersonation of one of the normal.
Fuck the normal.
Where were they when we needed them?
And how could they know how comprehend this poor sorrow,
the guilt, the humiliating and undisobeyable hunger
to somewhere it belong?
Just to rest for a day and be for once this crippled child
and how much she has loved.