1.
I am
thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth
year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in
the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly
the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you
back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the
medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never be as true as
these
struck leaves letting go.
I, who chose two times
to
kill myself, had said your nickname
the mewling mouths when you first
came;
until a fever rattled
in your throat and I moved like a
pantomine
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The
blame,
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
like green
witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as
if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I
must assume.
Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life
made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty
soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the
poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the
rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to
see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go
queer. You ask me where they go I say today believed
in itself, or
else it fell.
Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self's
self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there
is,
why did I let you grow
in another place. You did not know
my voice
when I came back to call. All the superlatives
of
tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe
will not help you know the
holidays you had to miss.
The time I did not love
myself, I
visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
There was new snow
after this.
2.
They sent me letters with news
of you and
I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to
tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I
didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.
Part way back
from Bedlam
I came to my mother's house in
Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at
her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my
mother said.
And she never could. She had my portrait
done
instead.
I lived like an angry guest,
like a partly mended
thing, an outgrown child.
I remember my mother did her best.
She
took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
Your smile is like your
mother's, the artist said.
I didn't seem to care. I had my
portrait
done instead.
There was a church where I grew
up
with its white cupboards where they locked us up,
row by row,
like puritans or shipmates
singing together. My father passed the
plate.
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
I wasn't
exactly forgiven. They had my portrait
done
instead.
3.
All that summer sprinklers arched
over the
seaside grass.
We talked of drought
while the
salt-parched
field grew sweet again. To help time pass
I tried
to mow the lawn
and in the morning I had my portrait
done,
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I
mailed you a picture of a rabbit
and a postcard of Motif number
one,
as if it were normal
to be a mother and be gone.
They
hung my portrait in the chill
north light, matching
me to keep
me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if
death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had
eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days
with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me
and said
I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out
and still I
couldn't answer.
4.
That winter she came
part way
back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise
of the X-ray,
the cells' arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery
incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
them
say.
During the sea blizzards
she had here
own portrait
painted.
A cave of mirror
placed on the south
wall;
matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me;
unacquainted
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
after
all.
I wintered in Boston,
childless bride,
nothing sweet
to spare
with witches at my side.
I missed your
babyhood,
tried a second suicide,
tried the sealed hotel a
second year.
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and
this
was good.
5.
I checked out for the last
time
on the first of May;
graduate of the mental
cases,
with my analysts's okay,
my complete book of
rhymes,
my typewriter and my suitcases.
All that summer I
learned life
back into my own
seven rooms, visited the swan
boats,
the market, answered the phone,
served cocktails as a
wife
should, made love among my petticoats
and August tan. And
you came each
weekend. But I lie.
You seldom came. I just
pretended
you, small piglet, butterfly
girl with jelly bean
cheeks,
disobedient three, my splendid
stranger. And I had to
learn
why I would rather
die than love, how your
innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young
intern
his symptons, his certain evidence.
That October day we
went
to Gloucester the red hills
reminded me of the dry red fur
fox
coat I played in as a child; stock still
like a bear or a
tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.
We drove
past the hatchery,
the hut that sells bait,
past Pigeon Cove,
past the Yacht Club, past Squall's
Hill, to the house that
waits
still, on the top of the sea,
and two portraits hung on
the opposite walls.
6.
In north light, my smile is held in
place,
the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming
as I sat there,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
of the
smile, the young face,
the foxes' snare.
In south light, her
smile is held in place,
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my
mocking mirror, my overthrown
love, my first image. She eyes me from
that face
that stony head of death
I had outgrown.
The
artist caught us at the turning;
we smiled in our canvas
home
before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry red
fur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my
own
Dorian Gray.
And this was the cave of the mirror,
that
double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in
time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your
grandmother
and she cried.
7.
I could not get you
back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the
picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I
unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you
asked my name.
Now you will stay for good. I will forget
how we
bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn't
the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your
knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and
crying.
You can call me mother and I remember my mother
again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.
I remember we named
you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward
guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my
heavy breast.
I needed you. I didn't want a boy,
only a girl, a
small milky mouse
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the
house
of herself. We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite
sure
about being a girl, needed another
life, another image to
remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
or
soothe it. I made you to find me.