Soon—if I survive—I’ll’ve completed the transition that began years ago but didn’t commence in earnest until recently. It’s not a matter of things going as planned: Nothing ever does, especially on this block. Which, of course, means that the inevitable happens.
What, if anything, had mother planned when she met that man whom I saw –just me and him—the last time I was here? About him, I can state two facts with certainty: He fathered me, and he left. Could she have foreseen either event? Could anyone? I only know, from what I’ve heard, that her family “warned” her about him. Did she ignore them, or did she simply not hear them? In any event, I don’t think she envisioned his flight. If she could’ve foreseen it, would she have spent that night, that day, or any other time with him? I don’t think she’d’ve taken the time with him as a dare, or as a way to defy and cheat death (as the young so often do) or authority. No, she wasn’t that kind of girl. I guess she never could’ve been.
But she ended up like the women who attended her funeral—and, in fact, every other woman who’s lived and died on this block: Alone, unless she was in the company of one other woman, and no more. And there were only a few women who could sit next to her, and whom she would’ve wanted by her—only one of them at a time, of course. She probably wouldn’t’ve liked this funeral any more than she liked any other gathering. But she wouldn’t’ve tried to stop it: She’d’ve known she’d’ve had as much chance of stopping the rain.
When I was growing up, sometimes she’d lose her temper. She’d yell at me and toss things across the room. But her outbursts never came when I expected them, like when I flunked math again or some teacher wrote yet another note about me doing something or another, or even when someone on this block—one of the women who ended up taking turns kneeling by her casket—accused me of taking possessions from, or teaching curse words to, their kids. Or, for that matter, of teaching them anything at all. Somehow, I seemed to be the easiest one to blame when their kids started talking about sex sooner than they should’ve—that is, as long as they were living with their mothers, on this block. Well, I guess it made some sense: There weren’t any men here to take the fall, and I was older than the other kids, or at least it always seemed that I was the oldest. And I didn’t have any younger siblings to whom I could impart my wisdom, or corruption.
I don’t now, either. I don’t know that anything I’ve learned, or am about to learn, will be useful for anybody else. The change I’m going to make, soon after we bury mother, is one neither I—nor anyone else—can prepare for. No one’s prepared to bring a new being—or, more precisely, to complete the transformation that brings a new form of life or life in a new form—into this world. Expectant mothers have classes, and other less formal encounters, to tell them what they’re going to experience. Sometimes their friends, mothers and sisters shower them with gifts of food and clothing for the soon-to-be-born. But nobody can prepare them, not only for the physical pain and struggle they endure, but also for the transition they’re about to make. In most cultures, they believe that such a transition makes a girl into a woman or a woman into a lady and have some sort of ritual for it.
Whatever they call the transition, they know it’s inevitable and irreversible. Which means, of course, that it can—and sometimes does—kill the one who embarks upon it. Of course, no man has ever had to, or wanted to, undertake such a journey. (Journey: How quaint the sound!) Actually, no man has ever skirted death from a life within his own body. For him, death is death is death—whether it’s from cancer, a bullet or any other projectile strikes at the walls around the moat of his life forces. If he escapes one kind of death, there are other kinds: all sorts of collisions and other accidents. But they are all the same kinds of death, really.
Occasionally a man dies to save a life already present. But that’s not the same as, it’s not even comparable to, dying in the process of delivering a new pair of eyes and ears and a new voice into the world. Perhaps I won’t have to do anything like that, either. But no man has ever faced such a possibility.
All I know with certainty is this: Either I will die, or I will live as someone different from the person who left this block.
There’re some rooms I’ll never enter again: Some because I won’t need to; others I won’t want to see again. Some of my old clothes, I won’t wear again. I’ve bought some new ones, and others have been given to me, but I don’t know which ones will be right for me. And I don’t know that I’ll wear again what I’ve worn to mother’s funeral.
After the changes all the women at my mother’s funeral have made, many years before the funeral—and after the ones I’ve made, and am about to make—you don’t eat the same things, or in the same way. Some women binge on certain foods when they first become pregnant and never eat them again once their babies are born. Someone told me I might experience something similar. Sometimes you need additional, and unusual, substances to support the life you’re about to create and sustain.
Until about a year ago, I’d never eaten an avocado. Now I can’t get enough: I don’t know whether it’s because of the taste, which I like. I know there’s nothing like breaking open that hard, almost barklike, shell and opening up to flesh that’s almost fluorescent—soft and cool at the same time, the taste an echo of its color. And swallowing it is a unique experience: It goes down smoothly, but not with the cloying unctuousness of olives. I still eat olives, but lately I’ve begun to eat them with peppers. Will I want to eat avocados, olives, peppers or anything else I eat now once I leave the hospital in the outfit I’ve chosen especially for that day? Will I want to wear that outfit?
For that matter, I can’t even say for sure that I’ll get away from this block once I’ve buried mother. That’s what I planned to do, but I have to be careful, and keep my eyes and ears open. There are plans, and there are the lives we bring into this world—and this block.
Memories And Those Who Stayed 