Thu, 19 May 2005

The Ballad of Maria Einseideln
(Undergrad Writer’s Workshop, UofIowa Spring 1996)

It was cold like this, the snow hanging in the air, the last night I was here with her, the last time I could look at the blankets and quilts and know that she was under there, asleep. I would sit here, on this rug my wife made for her last Christmas, and watch her sleep, nothing but moonlight between us. I would think about the stories I just told her, sometimes; usually I would just sit, fill myself with the stillness, the silence.

The story I told her that night was horrible.

“…and that’s why the world is flat. Now go to bed, please.”

“Shyeah, I don’t THINK so. One more time.”

“Nope, won’t happen, you have lessons tomorrow. You need the rest. You and I both know how loopy you get when you don’t get enough sleep, and Mr. Broadrick won’t care much for one of your impromptu naps tomorrow, will he? And you’re just coming back into his graces after The Swingset Incident…”

“Ah, no problem. It’s okay. See, I got a plan for that, but that’s tomorrow, anyway. ON WITH THE STORY!”

“Last one. Final. The omega point of tonight’s readings. Agreed?”

“Shyeah, I don’t-“

“AGREED?”

“Yeah, agreed, okay.”

“Okay, this is a story about Stick, the boomerang who never came back when you threw him. The hunters used to throw Stick at kangaroos and dinosaurs and missionaries but Stick just fell to the ground, still as a stone. So one day the hunters turne d him into a fire, and that’s the end of the story. Good night!”

“GYP! That’s no story, I mean, there’s just a stick and then things, and it’s…it’s just nothing! DO-OVER!”

“Shyeah, I don’t THINK so, sweet. My part of our agreement is full. Sleep!”

And she gave me The Pissed Look, but it was late, and I had so much to do the next day.

——

Story: There was a mole who lived in Big Forest all by himself because he had no friends. Mole thought people should like him no matter how he treated them, and when they didn’t, he treated them worse and worse until there wasn’t a single animal in the forest who wanted to be Mole’s friend. Life is rough.

One night Mole was walking around out by the creek and saw Wildebeest, who only had a few friends, but that was more than Mole had. Mole came up behind Wildebeest and tried to scare him, which was a very Mole thing to do, but Wildebeest didn’t get scared because he was dead. Mole started thinking and decided that since Wildebeest didn’t need it any more, Mole would dress up in Wildebeest’s skin to help make friends. But when Mole wore his skin to the clearing where the other animals were playing they liked him even less, which made Mole even more confused than he normally was.

The next day, Mole saw Frog asleep on a rock sunning himself, which was about all Frog ever did. Mole decided that since Frog never did anything good, and because Frog had even more friends than Wildebeest did, that Mole should take Frog’s skin. Well, Frog was using his skin at the time, my Mole already had the taste of blood in his mouth, so he ripped up Frog with his claws and took his skin. The other animals didn’t like Mole one bit now, but Mole kept at his plan, up the friend chain, until the only animal left in Big Forest was Peacock, the most beautiful and beloved of all the animals. Peacock saw Mole coming and flew away just in time, never to return to Big Forest again. Mole felt bad and tired and there was a pain in his back from carrying all those skins around all the time, so he went to the creek to wash off, where he saw his reflection in the water. When Mole saw his reflection, he knew that he had become Death. Mole was so afraid that he just stopped living. After that, there were no more animals in Big Forest ever again.

—-

When our daughter was born, my wife wanted to name her something exotic, something to set her apart from the everyday. I wanted to name her something simple, something special to me. My daughter’s name is Maria Conquest Of The Celestial Song Einseideln. She started calling herself Conquest around the time she could first talk (well, she called herself Con-Con, which was close enough…the way a parent’s mind will jump to conclusions…). We called her Conquest from that point on, though I couldn’t help but wonder what that would translate to by the time she reached junior high. It was around that time that I began tucking her in at night and telling her stories I had written when I was younger, when I thought I’d only be teaching until we got on our feet. I dug them out from a box filled with notes, family pictures, small pieces of cloth, a picture Conquest drew of a big purple sun. Amazing, the junk we collect and hoard — old envelopes with lost letters, broken crayons, small cold stones — everything had as a special meaning, a connection to nostalgia which falls on us like rain when we try to sleep.

—-

Story: Out behind the barns at Grandpa’s farm, past the grove of trees growing from a bed of abandoned cars and trash, past the electric fence and the place where the hunters set their deer stands, way way way out past the farthest thing you can see is where The Snow Queen lived. She floated above the lake just after the sun had set; she pressed with the tip of her finger into the ice and cracks ran from her across the surface, she floats again, she presses again, a latticework of bright white lines ran through the darker white of the lake, the same dark white as the sky when the sun would finally return.

People would occasionally go out through the fields and get lost, stumbling past this site, the movements of the Snow Queen lost to the blowing snow, their failing eyes only almost seeing what took place across the lake. Sometimes, by odd chance, a break in the wind, or simple determination, someone would see the Snow Queen and know her face. They would wander out to the shore and crawl across ice so smooth you needed to take off your gloves and claw your fingernails into the surface in order to move, all the while going snow-blind and frostbitten and half-mad beneath an invisible moon. The sound of wolves who gather, dance and pray to the Snow Queen out in the trees remains unheard to those on the ice — if heard, they would know to fear the place they are going. Finding themselves finally at the center of the lake, prostrate and dying at the feet of the Snow Queen, they breathed suppositions through lips gone blue of how they always believed, that they were convinced, that they always had faith in her.

The Snow Queen would smile, sigh, and reach down with one finger which touched them upon their foreheads. They shattered, scattered into the wind, into the cracks in the ice, down, drown, a perfect stillness.

Nothing remains of the Snow Queen now but forgotten ghosts who continue to fade and vanish.

—-

We used to take my daughter to my father’s farm on the occasional Sunday. One time she fell into the sty, where pigs five times her size nuzzled her and squealed. I remember getting up before dawn, going out to slop the pigs, screaming and crying when I fell in, afraid I’d be eaten. She just smiled. “Hi, Pigs!”. My father laughed and picked her up with his right arm, the same one that got caught in the auger when I was twelve. He shouldn’t be able to move it, much less lift with it, but my father’s a strong man.

Later that day, my father told Conquest that each snowflake is individual, that it has a design all its own. After hearing this, Conquest ran outside and began examining snowflakes. Once she saw this was true, she came to the conclusion that snowf lakes have to be alive-the reason they go to the trouble of being all different is so when they talked to each other they know who they were talking to. She ran back to the house, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me out into the night.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“Listen,” she whispered. “The snowflakes are talking to each other.”

—-

Story: My father taught my brother and I a game a long, long time ago. The game was called BLOOP!. When my father said “BLOOP! Yer a fish!”, we became fish. When my father said “BLOOP! Yer a book!”, we became books. When he was feeling vindictive, my father would BLOOP! us into things which had no form, like truth or the Seven Year’s War. Because my brother and I were very hyperactive when we lived at the farm, the phrase we most often heard was “BLOOP! Yer a stone.” And we were stones.

It did not take long before my brother and I realized that our father was a witch. And he was not a good witch, no, no, sometimes he had two right hands. And I knew long before he told us to in so many words, that if we went against his wishes we were doomed.

Yesterday, when I couldn’t pick you up from school, I went to visit my brother in the hospital. My father told me not to, but I couldn’t help it, I had to. My brother has been catatonic for two months. I just found about it yesterday. I asked the nurse if I could have a few minutes alone with my brother. Then I went over to him and whispered in his ear “bloop”. It has been a long time since I was a child. And now I am not only an adult but a witch as well. My brother’s eyes roll backward, forward, focus.

“Kevin. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah. I can.”

“Can you walk?”

“Yeah. I can.”

“You know what we have to do.”

“I know. I know.”

And we went to look for my father.

—-

So much snow had fallen one morning that school was canceled and Conquest literally sprang out of bed when she heard the news. Half an hour bundling her up, snow suit and mittens and scarves and sweaters and caps until I could barely tell it was her underneath all the fabric. “It’s meeee, dad! but I don’t think I can breathe, yeah, no my face is here, yeah,” watching out the window as her and my wife played in the snow. I sat down at my desk and lost myself in work.

Even now, as I sit here and wait, I am not sure just what happened after that point.

—-

Story: Once there was a girl who got a bad disease. Every time she closed her eyes something disappeared. Sometimes it was things of hers. Sometimes it was things which had nothing to do with her. Sometimes she didn’t even notice it was gone until much later, but eventually she would go looking for something, something she had forgotten about, and it was gone.

She decided that the only thing that she could do was to keep her eyes closed all the time, but when she tried, she couldn’t tell if things were continuing to disappear or not. She was finally so frightened that she had to open her eyes, at which point she discovered that a lot of things were gone. She couldn’t think of a way to make it stop, and she started to cry, but this made her close her eyes many times and she forced herself to stop. She then noticed that people she knew were disappearing. Her friend Ana came over and asked her why she was crying, blink, Ana was gone.

The way I wanted to tell the story, being part of the story was a fate unto itself and she disappeared as soon as I hit the period key, but no, no.

That’s not what really happened at all.

—-

Our neighbor Mark owns a gorgeous black lab he named Pookah. Conquest loved that dog; she’d run up and down, along the fence, Pookah chasing after her on the other side, until Conquest had exhausted herself and flopped down on the grass, catching giggles between breaths. On this day, Conquest was running with the dog while my wife came inside to put on cocoa, watching Conquest from the window. The snow had piled high along the front fencing, and as Conquest dashed for that side, Pookah climbed a dune and managed to climb over the fence. I could hear her cheering and laughing (but I didn’t know why) as she petted the dog, then following as the dog darted off across the street, into the fields. This was the last anyone saw of her, until we found the body, Pookah licking snowflakes from her cheeks and eyes.

By the time the ambulance had arrived my mind was in another place, where everything was bright and slow and foreign. I was talking but I didn’t know what I was saying. Someone grabbed me by the back of my shirt, threw me into the back of the ambulance and we were off. They rushed Conquest, perfectly still, into the hospital and brought us to the lobby where I began drinking reheated coffee and shaking. I went into the bathroom and prayed, I mean I actually got on my knees in front of the urinals and prayed. I couldn’t remember the last time. It had been a while. A doctor came in and looked at me for just a second, then pretended not to notice, but I felt it and I couldn’t think right and I don’t even remember what I was saying, it couldn’t have been very loud and I don’t think he heard anything, God, just give me this one thing, please, anything you want, just please, don’t let her die.

Three hours later she was dead.

—-

Story: I wake up and remember dreaming about talking with Conquest. She tells me about the need for a decision. There is no more time. I don’t understand what she is talking about. She will not explain anymore. I look around the bedroom for an obj ect which I can use as a kind of emotional locus. Conquest tells me that all ends begin to fray. I do not see my daughter because she is not there. I begin to ask Conquest something but forget what it was, this happens to me all the time now. Thoughts collect like stray balloons across the ceiling. Conquest tells me that this will not be the end of the world, I think, maybe she said the end of my world, maybe she says the end of her world, I am having trouble understanding her. I look for my daughter but remember she is a dream I had last night. Conquest tells me something, forgetfulness, blaming it on others, given up the ghost, I don’t know, I can’t hear her anymore. I laugh but I don’t feel happy. Conquest tries and tries and tries but there is no way to get me to understand.

—-

At night, after my wife went to sleep, I would come in here and read her stories. We hadn’t touched anything in the room since the funeral, hadn’t even made the bed, and with only the light from the window I could convince myself that she was still here, asleep beneath the dinosaurs on her quilts, while I sat and read so quietly that I could barely hear myself, remembering how much more important this was compared to the mornings I’d arrive at work dead to the world.

I left the old stories in the brown folder in the basement; I didn’t need them anymore. My head was filled with stories now, night after night, over and always. When my wife found out she began screaming at me, which had become converted by the next day to pity, the next week to long talks, trying to come to a kind of terms. I told her I loved her, that it was time to move on, that I cannot live in the past, whatever would end the conversation, whatever I had to do to stop thinking about it. And at night I would come in here and tell my daughter stories.

Last night, my wife left to live with our friends Aria and Matthew. She told me that I had to do this by myself, that she couldn’t do anything, that she thought I was a liar, that she didn’t matter, she said so many things. I went out with her — Matthew and I went and had a failed man-to-man over bad scotch, Aria told me that people at the school were wondering what I was up to and if I was all right, my wife told me she loved me. I drove back to the house and fell asleep in the car.

I forgot to tell Conquest her story.

It’s been so long since I’ve left the room. I have closed the door. I do nothing but tell stories. I look at the sheets and know there is no child beneath them. I tell stories I half-remember from when I was a boy, stories my father told me, things I did, things kids I knew did. I tell her stories about funny things that happened when I was first working at the school, about how her mother and I met, about my cousin who can eat broken glass. I tell her stories I remember from books, from television, that I overheard on buses. I tell her lies. I tell her things which do not make sense. I am the only one in the room. My daughter, Maria Con-Con Conquest of the Celestial Song Einseideln, is dead.

At night I can hear Pookah howl. Nothing can keep him quiet. The last time I talked to Mark, he told me he was looking for someone to take Pookah; there was just no way that dog could stay in this neighborhood. I heard something on the porch, and thinking it was my wife, got up to unlock the door and let her in. Pookah was standing there, perfectly still, as though he was waiting for me.

I stared at him. And I waited.
(12:12.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #