Leaving Yuba City Read online

  In the airless morning I

  jerk open the shutters of the room I share

  with locked black trunks that bear my husband’s name,

  faded quilts, sagging folds layered

  with neem leaves to keep off moths,

  stacked stainless steel pots

  for weddings and funerals. The excess

  of household. Thin slats of light

  across my empty arms like the gold bangles

  I have put away. My sari white as desert

  around my body’s

  useless blooming. My pale, bare

  forehead. Will the voices never come

  to call me to my chores? Already

  in the inner courtyard the pigeons have

  begun. Black, white, black, white,

  they coo and strut and tussle,

  rub bills, peck at the earth in pairs. The maid

  has finished milking and the calf

  runs to its mother and butts

  its head against her flank. She turns

  to lick it clean. I press

  palms against my flat belly, firmness of

  unused breasts. If I had

  a word for this pain I would scream it so loud

  from the house-roof

  the world would stop until my body

  shattered the ground. The sun

  drags its bloated circle over the coconut trees,

  red as the marriage mark I no longer

  have a right to. I stare

  till it eats my eyes, till wherever I turn I see

  an empty spot of light. As when

  I try to recall my husband’s face. This world

  gives us one chance at happiness. After,

  only work can save us. That plunge

  into the swirl of household to make them

  milk-tea and parathas, chop

  the hard green pickling mangoes, fetch water,

  pound til for the sweet white laddus they love,

  rock their babies, roll out wicks

  to ready their lamps for dark. Today again I will

  fill my arms with their praises, kind sister,

  fine cook, tireless, good woman,

  words shiny as the makal fruit

  no one can eat. I will wring out in thanks

  the last drop of water

  from the wash-bright saris, the kurtas

  of my husband’s brothers. The child-clothes

  tiny and fine as those of temple idols.

  Stretch them one by one

  on the courtyard wire. I will make sure

  I have no time to watch how steam rises

  from the hot wet ground

  as from the giant blister

  of the heart. I will be safe till night.

  Note

  parathas: Indian bread for special occasions, rolled and fried

  til: sesame seed

  kurta: long top worn by men or women

  laddus: Indian sweets

  makal: shiny red fruit with a very bitter taste; a traditional metaphor for something that looks deceptively beautiful

  Storm at Point Sur

  Stillness is the harbinger of desire,

  containing all things. Look how, wings unriffled,

  the gull hangs in this weighted purple air

  that carries the burnt smell

  of an approaching lightning.

  The ground squirrels have all

  disappeared, knowing the storm

  in their nostrils, their porous

  bones. Salt on our tongues, lips,

  is the first taste, mother-sweat

  sucked in with milk. Today,

  if we two kiss,

  what is taken? What

  given back? An uneasy light

  flickers at the edges of the giant cumulus clouds,

  in your hands.

  Leave him, you say, why can’t you

  leave him, your thumb tracing

  the small nub of bone just above

  my elbow. The cry of a cormorant

  falls from the black cliff into

  the black sea. We live our lives

  by metaphor. Shape, season. And now the wind

  flings fistfuls of grit at our hair,

  eyes. We begin to run,

  but it is difficult on this loose

  shift of sand. In the distant parking lot,

  only our two cars, smudges of brown and blue,

  to take us to our separate homes.

  I stop to shake

  gravel from my shoe, then walk

  barefoot. Deep under,

  safe in their tunnels of packed damp,

  claws furled, the sandcrabs wait

  for thunder, for rain.

  The Lost Love Words

  When the clock in the dark hall strikes two, I climb out of bed. You are in your usual place at the other edge of the mattress, turned away from me, shoulders stiff even in sleep. If I touched you lightly on your jaw where the night stubble is already rising, you would make a sharp movement with your head. With the back of your hand you would brush off my finger as though it were an insect. Leave me alone, you would mutter. All without waking up.

  It is hard to walk in the dark. It presses against my legs, against my concave belly, thick and viscous, a black sea that wants me to return to bed. But I’ve got to make it to the kitchen. I’ve got to continue my search for the lost love words.

  When did they start disappearing? I can’t say for sure. One day you came back from work, flung down your jacket, kicked off your shoes, turned on the TV. You lay down on the sofa and asked me to please move out of the way of the 6 p.m. news. In the kitchen, as I heated your dinner, I tried and tried to remember the last time you called me by the special name you had given me.

  Over the next few days I noticed they were all gone, the love words. I couldn’t even recall what they had been. What had you said waking up? On your way out the door? During those midmorning phone calls? When I cut my hand with a can opener? When you brought me a no-reason gift? When I wore that black silk negligee to bed and we made love with the lights on? When I told you I was pregnant?

  Though I can’t remember them, I know they’re somewhere close. That’s why I’ve been searching the house each night. I’ve peered in shoe-boxes and coat pockets and behind wall-hangings. I shook out the photo albums and your silk handkerchiefs. Looked into the suitcase in the garage where you

  hide your Playboy magazines. In the bathroom behind the bottle of expensive French aftershave you bought last week. Under the pillows in the empty baby room.

  Tonight I search the kitchen. Between the stacks of dinner dishes left unwashed in the sink, in the curved rims of the dusty crystal wine glasses we bought one anniversary. In the cabinet where half-used packets of lentils hunch over a bottle of date-expired prenatal vitamins. No luck. I lean against the refrigerator door and press my knuckles into my tired eyes.

  Then I hear the humming. It rises from deep inside the refrigerator’s belly. How could I have missed it all this time? I grab the door and pull it open so hard it bangs against the wall. I’ve scraped my knuckles raw but it doesn’t hurt, because there they are, among the weeks-old pizza, the grey sandwich meat, the tomatoes watery with rot.

  I pick them up one by one. They are discolored, shrivelled, but I recognize them. This one you spoke the day I ran away from home with you, this one you whispered into my hair each night just before we fell asleep in an electric tangle of arms and legs. And these, frozen now and heavy as pellets of steel in my palm, you said these after the miscarriage, holding me close, after the doctor told us I couldn’t have any more children.

  I place the words on my tongue. They don’t taste too bad. A bit sour, maybe, like dill pickles, a bit too salty, like dried beef jerky. Things I loved when I was pregnant. I swallow them, slowly at first, then fast, faster. Feel them sliding down my throat. When I have eaten them all, when the hollows inside me are filled with the lost love words so they can never be
lost again, I will go back to bed. I will hold you. You will put your hand on my belly and feel them move.

  Via Romana

  Four Travel Poems

  The Drive

  The Tourists

  Outside Pisa

  Termini

  The Drive

  Our first evening in Italy and we’re careening down Via Appia Antica in Uncle’s rickety Fiat, the windows down, the hot July air flooding our skulls with the smell of meadow-dust and manure. Drying sunflowers. Crickets crying in the grasses. Uncle aims for the center of every pothole. The car lurches and shudders and Aunt, sitting in front, shrinks into the worn plush of her seat and clutches at her face. Your fingers are gripping the armrest, white. But floating in the last of the brassy light I note them only vaguely. A celebration, Uncle yells, because its the first time you and your husband are visiting Rome and me! Yes, Yes, I call out. The signs stream past us, Catacombe di Domitilla, Tomba di Cecilia Metella, a few olive trees with sparse silver leaves, fields of barbed wire, ruined pillars, the gates of a hidden villa.

  Uncle points. See where the armies marched in triumph. Yes, yes. And it is a night with sudden fireflies exploding against the windshield, the sweat-sour smell of old wine drifting through the car like a suspicion, the car going too fast, flying through the potholes and years, is it forward or back, someone crying in the front seat, and your voice with the shaking in it saying shouldn’t we be returning to the city. Breathing is hard and wonderful. And it’s not my uncle’s voice now but Father’s, rising like bells out of a lost time, dread and exhilaration. Imagine the emperors at the head of the procession, Augustus and Trajan and Nero. Yes, yes. The road is slippery as a snake, twisting, trying to throw us off, and alien stars hurtle across the inky sky just as they did one childhood night long ago.

  So I am ready when the tree looms up, a mad lunge of thorns straight at us, ready this time and laughing. That screaming in the front, godgodgod, is that Aunt or my mother? I do not scream. I am ready for the jagged glass, the black splatter of blood, yes, the ambulance’s red whirling eye, the pale slits of mouths at the cremation grounds, the heavy stench of funeral incense and relatives saying, poor child. Saying, we knew, sooner or later, this would happen.

  The brakes screech, the car jerks, I fall forward, hit my forehead. It doesn’t hurt. I’m still laughing in great gasps that can’t be stopped. You make a harsh sound in your throat and slap me across the mouth. What are you doing here, in this car out of my childhood? Thorns scrape metal as you throw the door open and pull Uncle from the driver’s seat. Aunt is bent over, crying soundlessly. I want to touch the thin ridges of her shoulder bones, but where are my hands? You shift the gears, reversing, getting us back onto the road, towards the city, away from the fireflies, the past. I read the short stiff hairs on the back of your neck. It’s going to be one of those nights.

  Then he leans towards me, a conspirator, his breath sweet and grape-red, my father’s. Remember the gladiators with their shining tridents, the slaves and Christians naked in chains, behind the chariots the wild caged bears? Yes, yes, I whisper back.

  The Tourists

  The heat is like a fist between the eyes. The man and woman wander down a narrow street of flies and stray cats looking for the Caracalla Baths. The woman wears a cotton dress embroidered Mexican style with bright flowers. The man wears Ray Ban glasses and knee-length shorts. They wipe at the sweat with white handkerchiefs because they have used up all the kleenex they brought.

  The woman is afraid they are lost. She holds on tightly to the man’s elbow and presses her purse into her body. The purse is red leather, very new, bought by him outside the Coliseum after half an hour of earnest bargaining. She wonders what they are doing in this airless alley with the odor of stale urine rising all around them, what they are doing in Rome, what they are doing in Europe. The man tries to walk tall and confident, shoulders lifted, but she can tell he is nervous about the youths in tight Levi’s lounging against the fountain, eyeing, he thinks, their Leica. In his halting guidebook Italian he asks the passers-by—there aren’t many because of the heat—Dov’e terme di Caracalla? and then, Dov’e la stazione? but they stare at him and do not seem to understand.

  The woman is tired. It distresses her to not know where she is, to have to trust herself to the truths of strangers, their indecipherable mouths, their quick eyes, their fingers each pointing in a different direction, eccolo, il treno per Milano, la torre pendente, la cattedrale, il palazzo ducale. She wants to get a drink, to find a taxi, to go to the bathroom. She asks if it is O.K. to wash her face in the fountain, but he shakes his head. It’s not hygienic. Besides, a man with a pock-marked face and black teeth has been watching them from a doorway, and he wants to get out of the alley as soon as he can.

  The woman sighs, gets out a crumpled tour brochure from her purse and fans herself and then him with it. They are walking faster now, she stumbling a bit in her sandals. She wishes they were back in the hotel or better still in her own cool garden. She is sure that in her absence the Niles Lilies are dying in spite of the automatic sprinkler system, and the gophers have taken over the lawn. Is it worth it, even for the colors in the Sistine Chapel, the curve of Venus’ throat as she rises from the sea? The green statue of the boy with the goose among the rosemary in a Pompeii courtyard? She makes a mental note to pick up gopher poison on the way back from the airport.

  They turn a corner onto a broader street. Surely this is the one that will lead them back to the Circo Massimo and the subway. The man lets out a deep breath, starts to smile. Suddenly, footsteps, a quick clattering on the cobbles behind. They both stiffen, remembering. Yesterday one of the tourists in their hotel was mugged outside the Villa Borghese. Maybe they should have taken the bus tour after all. He tightens his hands into fists, his face into a scowl. Turns. But it is only a dog, its pink tongue hanging, its ribs sticking out from its scabby coat. It stops and observes them, wary, ready for flight. Then the woman touches his hand. Look, look. From where they are standing they can see into someone’s backyard. Sheets and pillowcases drying whitely in the sun, a palm scattering shade over blocks of marble from a broken column, a big bougainvillea that covers the crumbling wall. A breeze comes up, lifting their hair. Sudden smell of rain. They stand there, man and woman and dog, watching the bright purple flowers tumble over the broken bricks.

  Outside Pisa

  Above the Boca del Arno the sky

  bleeds its last red. The sea gives up

  its colors to the dark. On the barren shore

  we stand trying to hold hands.

  to smile like lovers. The fishermen

  have left their nets and poles, black and jagged

  against the night’s coming. Nothing

  remains for us to say. Smell of salt

  and death, older than this broken harbor, older

  than the white tower

  this morning by the cathedral.

  After all the pictures, how small it seemed,

  how fragile in its leaning. Dark slits of windows,

  the sooty upturned spiral, the holding on,

  walls damp and slippery to the palm,

  surface-scratched with names and hopes:

  Lorenzo e Rosa, Pietro, Clementina,

  Sally loves Bill. And when we came out

  into the hot light, all around us

  the breathless rainbow sheen of pigeon wings,

  couples kissing, mouth to moist

  rose-mouth. This same death-smell.

  The clean tilt of the floor

  under my feet, no railings, just

  the adrenalin rush of white edge

  into nothing. You were taking pictures. I

  kept my face turned away In case

  you saw my eyes, my longing to jump.

  After the miscarriage, when the doctor said

  no children, I sensed

  the stiffening in your bones. We never

  spoke of it.

  Deep bell-sounds fr
om the baptistry

  where they say Galileo discovered

  the centripetal motion of this world,

  the headlong, wheeling planets held

  arc upon arc, calm and enormous,

  without accident.

  Now I let go your stranger’s hand,

  the unfamiliar callus on your thumb.

  We are suspended as dust

  in this dark river air, floating

  away from each other, from the other shore

  where we cannot be,

  its gleam of fairy lights

  that we would die for.

  Termini

  We’re in an immense hall lined with black—black walls, black floor, a roof that recedes into black. A fitting end to this vacation. The smell is of steam and sweat, of fear and time running out, and barred ticket windows spilling out words that run together in jittery letters, prenotazione, oggetti smarriti, biglietteria.

  In front of each window endless lines twist around each other. Men in black fedoras and bow-ties, girls in spiky eyelashes, stiletto heels, coats with huge black padded shoulders. Shriveled beggar-women huddled in gipsy shawls that smell of smoke. Over the entrance an enormous banner dances out Bienvenito a Roma. You run from line to line with your pale papery voice, from face to blank face. Per favore, scusi, is this where I get a ticket to Venezia. I am sickened by your watery smile, the apology in your shoulderblades. I want to walk from your life into the yellow Roman afternoon opening outside for me like a sunflower.

  But I am trapped in my own line, a caterpillar that inches its sections up to a neon sign that announces, dispiritedly, Ufficio Cambio. The neon has burnt out in parts, leaving black holes in place of the ‘o’s, and as I watch I feel their dreadful suck at my sleeves. They siphon the air out of my lungs. They pull disheveled hair over your eyes. So that you don’t see them coming, the four boys that spring out of the cement, the desperate thin bones of their hands going for your pockets, throwing you down onto the streaked floor. As through a magnifying glass I see the moving shapes of your lips, polizia, polizia. But a whirlwind sucks the words away and the people go on standing in their lines, the women in midnight skirts, the men in their buffed leather jackets. An elbow is rammed against your breastbone, a flash as of a knife. Your mouth opens like a wound. Aiudo, aiudo. I am trying to go to you, pushing, but they stand dense and faceless, a forest of bodies. So hard to get past them, past the cement buckling up around my feet like the years we’ve been together.