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"Poetry and Poison"


Chapter 1
Poetry and Poison

By Sis Cat

“If anything ever happen(s) to me . . .                                                                  
You are to come and get the Poetry.                                                                            
These are very, very important.”
--Fred Wilson’s letter to his son Andre,                                               
December 28, 1985
 
“Is there more to the story?”

I pressed my ear to the phone, waiting for an answer to a mystery. My mother’s voice, already fading in her illness, traveled through land lines from Southern California to Northern California. In her Texas drawl, she whispered, “There is, but it will have to wait for another time.”

Pulling back from the wall phone in the kitchen where dinner simmered, I retreated from interrogating my mother. My father, Fred Wilson, had died ten weeks earlier without telling me what happened between him and mother. Whenever I visited him in Albuquerque, he stood in his potter’s apron, splattered with clay, his face Sphinx-like. Now that he died, I feared the answer died with him.

I still had one parent left—my mother. Half of a story is better than none. When I visited her in June 2012 to scatter my father’s ashes at his childhood home, I stepped back when I saw her for the first time since that February. She covered her goiter with a scarf around her neck and wore split shoes to ease her swollen feet. Given that my parents had divorced forty-two years earlier, my mother’s deterioration after her ex-husband’s death spurred me to ask the question I always wanted to know: “Why did Fred divorce you?”

Her bloodshot eyes darted, and then stared at me. Her nose dripped. “He didn’t divorce me. I divorced him. I started the proceedings.”

Over the next hour my mother confessed like a woman who knew she was running out of time. Even when I returned to the Bay Area, I called and peppered her with more questions, not only because I wanted to know the truth, her truth, but because I sensed I was running out of time. When she told me over the phone that I will have to wait another time for her to finish her story, I backed off. A part of me resigned to never knowing everything that transpired between her and my father, but I had to respect my mother’s wishes not to press further for more information. A couple of days later, in the wee hours of a Sunday morning on July 8, 2012, my mother, my storyteller of one thousand and one Texan nights, Jessie Lee-Dawson-Wilson, died without telling me the end of her story.

I caught the first flight to L.A. Monday morning.

Until I saw my older brother, Terry, I had thought it was impossible for an African American man to look gray. Our mother's death had drained the life from his face. Tears rimmed his eyes. He stood in the doorway to our mother’s bedroom like an undertaker at a funeral parlor. His hand motioned to the bare patch of dirty green carpet by a quilt-covered bed. “I went into her bedroom and she was on the floor. It looked like she had been praying and fell over. I touched her and she was already cold and beginning to stiffen.” 

Entering the bedroom where our mother died, I thought, "I am grateful that I was not the one to find her body, because I would be unable to function with that image etched in my head. I must stay focused on the tasks ahead." 

I looked around. Books and papers, poetry and writings covered every conceivable shelf and surface in the room. Even before the paramedics arrived to pronounce her dead and move her body, her room was a mess. “Hoarder,” I thought, embarrassed that others saw this room.

When she ran out of shelf space, she stacked more papers and books on her bed along the wall so that she only slept on half a bed, as if her body was another figurine on a shelf. Whenever I visited, my mother would clear off her bed and make her room presentable for me to sleep while she slept on the living room sofa. None of my siblings who rushed to her apartment wanted to sleep in her room after she died. I proceeded to clear her bed for myself one sheet of paper at a time.

My hands found a typed poem she wrote forty-two years earlier titled “Oblivion.” My lips moved as I read the opening lines,

If I could live in another world,
Or have another life,
My hope above all others
Is that I could be your wife.

I thought, “What is my mother doing with this poem on her bed when she died—a poem about death and divorce? I thought things were over between her and Dad.”

I read onward through rhymed stanzas of loss until I reached the poem’s end,
           
Love must not linger wishfully                                                                                                          
When oblivion is its end;                                                                                                                   
May I wish you happiness beyond compare,                                                                                            
And just to be your friend.

The poem served as my mother’s “Dear John” letter mailed to my father in the last days of their marriage. It signaled the end of their relationship and offered the hope of friendship. I grew up ignoring my mother’s poetry. Now that she died, I combed her poem for clues to the riddle she gave me in her last telephone conversation: “There is more to the story.”

When my brother, Jaison, and his wife, Franchesca, arrived to help with the funeral arrangements, I read “Oblivion” to them. Although gray with grief, they listened as I laid out my case. “I’ve heard of twins and elderly couples dying close together. First one dies and then another. You think, ‘Oh, how romantic. The couple has to be together even in death.’ Remember our Sunday School teachers, Carl and Charlotte Anderson?”

My brother nodded a bristled face.

I continued, “When Carl died, Charlotte died soon afterwards. You could not stop her. It was as if she could not live without him. It may not have been a coincidence that Mom died eleven weeks after Fred.”

Franchesca objected, “But your parents have not been together for over forty years. They lived in different states.”

“I know, but why did Mom have this poem on her bed when she died?”

The three of us stared at the riddle. The answers to our many questions escaped us. There was some connection between our parents which transcended time and death.

In 1985, my father wrote a letter asking me to retrieve his poetry if anything ever happened to him. When he died and my nephew found my response in a box of scrap paper, I traveled numerous times to Albuquerque to grab every poem I could find in his pottery studio file cabinets. I brought empty suitcases to pack. I bought boxes at Staples to fill and ship. I even rented a pickup to drive his poetry, pottery, and pictures across three states. I stand before my guest bedroom closet packed to the ceiling with plastic file cabinets containing my father’s memories. I stored more items under first one and then two guest beds. When I ran out of space there, I stored plastic storage bins in my bedroom closet, and, when I ran out of space there, I stored boxes and bins in the place of last resort before a paid public storage unit--the garage.

One of my father’s poems I found was titled “The Unshadowed.” It mirrored stanza-by-stanza my mother’s poem “Oblivion.” His poem told his version of the divorce, mocking her opening lines with his,

Perhaps another world,                                                                                   
certainly another place!                                                                                                      
If not this time in space,                                                                                             
certainly another place.
 
Like Jessie, Fred proposed marriage “perhaps in another world.” The date at the bottom of April 1970 corresponded to the dates I found on court documents of their divorce, which finalized on May 7, 1970. I did not find a copy of my mother’s poem at my father’s house and I have yet to find a copy of my father’s poem in my mother’s apartment or storage unit. Their poems are so similar, that I reconstructed that Jessie sent Fred her poem during the final days of the court proceedings. Her “just to be your friend” line was a conciliatory olive branch. Fred had none of it. He threw her poem back in her face, mocking her stanza by stanza. He filled his poem with imagery of table saws, needles, and paper cuts—imagery of blood and castration.

I print here my parents’ divorce poems side-by-side so you can examine how they communicated with one another through poetry. Jessie’s poem “Oblivion” is on the left and Fred’s poem “The Unshadowed” is on the right. You can read straight down on the left or right side to read their poems separately, but when you read zigzag from stanza to stanza, like a ping pong match, you hear their conversation in poetry.

If I could live in another world,                                                                                                      
Or have another life,                                                                                                                                
My hope above all others                                                                                        
Is that I could be your wife.

Perhaps another world,
certainly another place!
 If not this time in space,
certainly another place.

To grow old and frail together,                                                                                                       
As hair turns silvery grey,                                                                                                              
To love without restraining                                                                                                              
A love that found its way.
To hold both threads of the
Needle’s edge,
And cutting the lacing of
Those threads,

You cannot longer remain                                                                                                              
An after-image in my memory,                                                                                                        
For lives and loves are soon forgotten;                                                                                        
Only the soul lives eternally.
Leave no memories to desire,
but opens the womb of life inspired.
Turn around this table blade.
Lay down the strapping of those threads.

Love must not linger wishfully                                                                                                  
When oblivion is its end;                                                                                                              
May I wish you happiness beyond compare,                                                                                       
And just to be your friend.
                                                           
Give fold to the paper’s edge.
The spirit and the flesh
Are usually the ones to be bled.
                                             
My mother’s tone is controlled and elegiac. My father’s tone is harsh and cutting. She spoke of the oblivion of death. He spoke of the illumination of birth. Both mused that in “another world” perhaps they could marry. Forty-two years later, they died eleven weeks and eight-hundred miles apart, as if fulfilling a pact.

Back in my mother’s apartment, I presented to my brother and sister-in-law a brittle sheet of typed paper I found in our mother’s bedroom. “Mom wrote a story about how she first met Fred.”
 

Author Notes I conceived of "Poetry and Poison" in 2012 when both of my parents, potter Fred Robert Wilson and poet Jessie Lee Dawson-Wilson, died eleven weeks and eight hundred miles apart. They left me hundreds of poems which bore striking resemblance and communication with one another, but I was so grieved with my parents' loss, I did not know how to approach the subject.

Enough time has passed for me to piece together their lives through their poetry. Part poetry and prose, essay and story, romance and mystery, "Poetry and Poisons" shows that the words we leave behind can either haunt us or liberate us. I will initially write about seven chapters to expand later. I will submit individual chapters for publication.

I thank Angelheart for use of the image "Speaking Poison."


Chapter 2
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 2

By Sis Cat

Last Paragraph of Chapter 1:

Back in my mother’s apartment, I presented to my brother and sister-in-law a brittle sheet of typed paper I found in our mother’s bedroom. “Mom wrote a story about how she first met Fred.”
 

Chapter 2


“Get outta here.” My brother Jaison shook his head at the thought of the man who left his children so young, they never became comfortable calling him dad. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“No.” My hand raised the sheet like a lawyer raises evidence in court. “Mom wrote it in the mid-sixties as part of a story after she met Fred.” I pointed to the number three typed in the upper right hand corner. “I only found the third page. I do not know what happened to pages one or two if there is any more. Do you want to hear it?”

“You bet I do.” Franchesca leaned forward and tossed back black hair which had hung over an ear.

Like a town crier, I held the sheet on both edges and read,

Jessie L. Wilson                                                                                                   3
30814 San Martinez Rd.
Saugus, California



I volunteered to finish preparing the refreshments and got busy. With everything completed, I decide to browse through the exhibit—viewing paintings, ceramics, textiles, and sculptures. A strong feeling of purpose crept over me.

One little sculpture seemed to impress me more than anything else in the entire exhibit. I asked the artist about purchasing the little 18 inch woman with a worried look on her face, offering to pay $5.00 down and $5.00 a month until the price of $25.00 was paid.

With a very concerned look on his face, he demanded, “Why do you like it?”

“It speaks to me,” I replied.

“If you really get the message,” he continued, “you can have it,” pushing it toward me.

Again his overt manner disturbed me. I questioned his reasons, wondering why he was giving me the sculpture. At first he was extremely evasive. Then he impulsively dragged his index finger from my forehead down across my lips, smearing my make-up as he went. While looking at his raised finger, he whispered softly, “Behind all your powder and paint, I discern a spiritual soul.” He turned and walked swiftly away, greeting some people who were entering the exhibit—leaving me dumbfounded.

Six months later we said our marriage vows in an artistic “Sundown Wedding.” The little sculpture, “Woman of Pain”, is still in our art collection. It is not for sale; it is a connecting link in our marriage.

I finished reading the story fragment. Our mother dead for less than twenty-four hours, we began an autopsy, not on her body at the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, but on her writings scattered and stuffed around a San Fernando Valley three-bedroom apartment. I closed my eyes and recollected. “I remember Mom telling me last month that she met Fred at a fashion art show. He was an artist and she was a model.” I opened my eyes to the actual story our mother wrote around 1963 after she met our father. It was not the whole story, but it was a lot more than the “I met him at a fashion art show” one-liner she told me two weeks before her death.

The three of us dissected the fragment. “He ran his finger down her face and ruined her makeup!” I ran my index finger from my brown forehead, down the ridge of my nose, and past my lips.

Franchesca cringed, as if Fred ran a finger down the middle of her makeup. “Why would he do that?”

My brother shrugged at his Italian American wife. “I don’t know.”

I proposed, “Mom was light-skinned and looked white. Fred ran his finger through her makeup because he wanted to see if she was white or a black woman wearing white makeup.” Raising my index finger and thumb, I rubbed imagined foundation makeup between them and mocked my father’s pickup line, elongating the "o" in "soul." “Behind all your powder and paint, I discern a spiritual soul.”

The three of us laughed, even though we had two memorial services to plan—one for our mother and one for our father. Jaison waved the paper away. “I can’t believe she fell for that line.”

Franchesca relaxed her face from its imagined violation by my father’s finger. “I wonder what happened to the other pages of your mother’s story.”

Huddled in the only clear space in our mother’s cluttered bedroom, we glanced around at shelves and desks buried beneath books and papers. The closet was so full of boxes and clothes, that our mother strewed garments on the back of a chair, too full to sit upon. We hoped that pages one and two, and, perhaps, many more would be sitting atop a pile of papers. We sighed, not wanting to undertake the excavation. In a flash, we all thought the same thing: “The storage unit.”
 
The storage unit door bulged outwards. Two weeks before our mother’s death, Terry had turned the combination padlock. The lock clicked and clinked. Lock opened, we dodged to the side of the door and swung it. We waited. Instead of an avalanche, the crushed boxes released a sigh as they bulged a further half inch into the doorway. The damp smell of mold and decayed paper wafted from the cavernous space, its busted ceiling light unrepaired. Terry snapped a white ventilation mask over his black face. He looked like a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. The mask jiggled as he spoke. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for my writings and anything from Fred.”

Now, with our mother’s death, I must retrieve her papers, too, and find a place to store and analyze them in my condo running out of space. Sifting through the family storage unit will consume my weekend visits to Los Angeles for years to come. Leaving behind the florescent-lit hall of the public storage, I entered the cave and climbed a mountain of paper.

 


 

Author Notes I owe a debt of gratitude to my late mother, Jessie Lee Dawson-Wilson, for giving me life and the inspiration for this novel which incorporates her writings and that of my father, potter and poet, Fred Robert Wilson. The story fragment quoted about how they first met is Jessie Wilson's writing from around 1964. I do not know its title, but if you want to find out what else I uncovered about this story, you will have to read the next chapter.


Chapter 3
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 3

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:

The damp smell of mold and decayed paper wafted from the cavernous space, its busted ceiling light unrepaired. Terry snapped a white ventilation mask over his black face. He looked like a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. The mask jiggled as he spoke. "What are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for my writings and anything from Fred."

Now, with our mother's death, I must retrieve her papers, too, and find a place to store and analyze them in my condo running out of space. Sifting through the family storage unit will consume my weekend visits to Los Angeles for years to come. Leaving behind the florescent-lit hall of the public storage, I entered the cave and climbed a mountain of paper.
 

CHAPTER 3
 
From thirty-five thousand feet, I looked down from my Southwest Airlines window at the ancient lava flows that snaked across the Arizona and New Mexico deserts. I focused on the extinct volcanoes that time had eroded. My finger traced on the pressurized windows the rivers of black rock oozed, cooled, and sunbaked over the Martian landscape eons ago. You cannot see these Southwest volcanoes and lava flows while walking on the ground because you are too close. Only when you gain perspective can you see the landmarks of time.

I lost my perspective when I landed in Albuquerque for a visit.
 
“He must think you’re Fred.” My stepmother peered under the dining room table at the German shepherd, nuzzling my lap. “Down, Dooner. Leave Andre alone.”

“That’s all right.” I rubbed the dog’s head. Sure, I look like a younger version of my father—bald, black, five foot seven with a slight stooped shuffle, but what I want to know is do I smell like my father, too? The dog’s tail thumped the flagstone floor as if his master had risen from the dead.

Kristen continued, “You know, Fred met Jessie at a fashion art show. She was a model.”

My back straightened. “I know. Mom wrote a story about it.”

My father’s widow, a jeweler, appeared to have emerged from the New Mexican red earth, bringing along with her the metals and gems of her trade. Sheltered from the Albuquerque sun in a home stuccoed and tiled like adobe, Kristen raised eyebrows behind tan sunglasses at my mention of a story.

I continued, “She wrote that Fred gave her a sculpture and then swiped her makeup.” My finger gestured, drawing a line from my forehead to my lips. I mocked my father’s pickup line, “He told her, ‘Behind all your powder and paint, I discern a spiritual soul.’” I laughed.

Kristen pursed her lips. “Fred would never do that! Your mother must have made up that story.”

I raised my hand from Dooner’s head beneath the table. “That’s what she wrote.” My voice trailed off. I was uncertain whether to believe my stepmother who married my father for his last twenty-five years or my mother who married my father for five years in the 1960s. The 2012 Fred Wilson would never swipe a woman’s makeup, but who was this 1963 Fred Wilson? Was he a figment of my mother’s imagination?

Ending the silence between us, Kristen diplomatically advanced the subject without changing it. “He said the very next day, Jessie returned to the exhibit and gave him a poem she wrote. He was impressed, because no one had ever given him a poem before. They started dating and soon got married.”

My hand resumed petting the dog. His tongue lolled outside his grin.

“Did he say which poem Mom gave him?”

Kristen shook her red hair. “No, he didn't say. He just said that the poem moved him, because no one had ever written him a poem before. You see, your father was very shy man towards women. He did not have sex until he was thirty-two shortly before he met your mother.”

I grimaced at the thought of my father as a thirty-two year old virgin.

Recollecting, Kristen continued, “His Mama Jennie was a wild woman. She dumped Freddie with her mean-spirited Catholic sister in Indiana. She left him there for five years while she partied in Chicago nightclubs, dancing atop the bars. Once, when Aunt Liza caught Freddie playing with himself, she burned his hands on the kitchen stove.”

My hand flinched from Dooner’s head, as if my fingers had touched a stove. I grabbed my crotch to protect my penis from its imagined burning as well. My stepmother and I sat at the table and pondered how those early messages—“Don’t touch the stove. Don’t touch yourself.”—transmogrified into “Don’t touch women.” Under the table, Dooner’s brown eyes gazed at me. He hoped I would resume petting him. I obliged.
 

Back in my California condo, I researched the missing poem, the poem my mother gave my father when they first met. I opened the guest bedroom closet door. My mother’s writings shared closet space with my father’s writings. Plastic, see-through drawers stacked half way up the back wall. A hanging file folder box sat atop the drawers on the right. White and gray binders, chronicling each decade of my father’s ceramic career through the 1990’s, stood atop the drawer skyscraper on the left. My father’s slide collection of his ceramic work sat in yellowed Kodak slide carousel boxes stacked in the right corner of the closet shelf. Another hanging file folder box, containing letters my mother mailed me over the years, sat in the left corner of the closet shelf. I view this closet archive as my Library of Alexandria—a repository of information on my parents which is as valuable to me as the Library was to the ancient world.

Acting on a hunch, I opened my mother’s drawer and grabbed a stack of hanging file folders Post-It noted with the titles of her reassembled chapbooks. I picked up the folder marked Afterglow. Using the index, my finger followed the list of poems until it reached the poem on page forty-nine, “Soul Artist.” I opened the unbound chapbook. Poems threatened to spill on the carpet. My fingers arrived at page forty-nine. My eyes read as my lips whispered the rhymed couplets on various forms of creation,
 
Who painted colors in the butterflies’ wing, / Gave the bird his song to sing, / Taught the spider the web he weaves, / Then drew tiny veins into the leaves?

Who designs the pattern of a snowflake, / The form is never a duplicate; / Sculptures mountains large and small, / Which stand from winter to misty fall?

Who gave movement to the wind, / Created these beings we call men, / Put depth into the sea, / And planted a seed to write in me?

He who maketh the sun to shine, / Sees an ant as being Divine; / This Artist creates never in part, / The entity that we know as God.

Gazing at the poem, I wondered, “Is this the one? Is this the poem Mom gave Dad?”

Using exalted language, Jessie illustrated how all forms of creation, from butterflies’ wing to her own writings, derived from a Divine source, “This Artist . . . that we know as God.” According to Jessie’s story, at their first meeting, my father, the artist, had smeared her makeup, rubbed his fingers together, and said, “Behind all your powder and paint, I discern a spiritual soul.” He then left her “dumbfounded” at the fashion art show where he exhibited and she modeled. According to what Fred later told Kristen, Jessie returned the next day to the exhibit and gave the artist who discerned her “spiritual soul” a poem that impressed him. Could “Soul Artist” be that poem? If you want to build an artist’s ego, compare him to God. Jessie had included this poem in her Afterglow chapbook self-published in 1984 after an earlier chapbook in the 1970’s, but did “Soul Artist” exist in 1963 when my parents met?

I reached for a white binder marked on the spine “Fred R. Wilson, Muddy Wheel Before 1968.” My fingers leafed through the scrapbook until they arrived at the May 7, 1966 program for the “Poetry and Art” poetry reading and sculpture lecture held at the Pacoima Church of 7th-Day Adventists in the San Fernando Valley. Alternating along the themes of childhood, young adulthood, and adulthood, Jessie read her poems followed by Fred lecturing on his sculptures. The program listed the poems Jessie read, including “Soul Artists” in the final “Emphasis to Adults” section.

I noticed the plural form of “artists” which she dropped in the final title of the poem. As plural, the “artists” referred to both Jessie and Fred collaborating and creating together, as they did at the “Poetry & Art” poetry reading and art lecture. As singular, “Soul Artist” referred to God as the ultimate creator, who inspired all creation. When Fred and Jessie worked as partners, the plural title “Soul Artists” made sense, but when they divorced, the singular title “Soul Artist” made sense. Does this poem date back further to 1963 when my parents first met?

I imagined my mother, stripped of her makeup and fashionable gown, writing all night in a bout of fevered inspiration. The sculpture “Woman in Pain” looked on. In the morning, she sent to school her two children from her first marriage, Dion and Terry. Conscious that she no longer wore the Cinderella gowns of the fashion show the night before, she dressed in the best clothes she owned—a classic black dress, a string of faux pearls—so she will not resemble a country bumpkin from Somerville, Texas. She hot combed, oiled, and sprayed her black hair. My mother was so light-skinned, she resembled the First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

Jessie caught a bus from her West Los Angeles apartment. Poem neatly typed in a manila envelope, she rushed to the exhibit, hoping the artist was still there. She spotted the top of the artist’s bald head bobbing above a crowd of guests. She admired the back of his black suit, his broad shoulders, and his white collar. She approached and called, “Excuse me.”

The artist turned. He flinched at the sight of the woman who resembled the model whose makeup he had smeared. Is this the same woman who wore the fashion gown last night? His eyes widened. She is. Is she returning to avenge his smear of her makeup after the fashion show? He braced himself for the slap that was sure to come. He stuttered, “Hell. . . hello.”

“I wrote this for you.” Jessie handed him the envelope.

Fred handled the envelope with the tips of his fingers and far away from his body, as if the letter would explode. He opened it cautiously and read the title “Soul Artist.” He read the poem. From time to time, he glanced from the page to the woman’s Peter Pan smile. Since he also wove and exhibited textiles, he noted the line “Taught the spider the web he weaves.” But he primarily sculpted, so this line stood out to him, “Sculptures mountains large and small.” He reached the last lines, “This Artist creates never in part, / The entity that we know as God.”

Now it was Fred’s turn to be dumbfounded. Unlike his abandonment of Jessie the night before, she did not turn and leave, but waited for his approval. This woman had discerned his soul and gave of herself her only talent—poetry. This soul poet had matched his soul artist. “Why . . .why, thank you. No one had ever written me a poem before.”      
                                  
"You're welcome." If Jessie’s smile widened further, it would have wrapped around her powdered face.

They started dating and became engaged, but is “Soul Artist” the poem Jessie gave Fred?
 
TO BE CONTINUED

Author Notes LIST OF CHARACTERS:

Andre: The main character and narrator of "Poetry and Poison." He embarks on a quest to uncover the secrets of his deceased parents using the poems they left behind.

Jessie: mother of Andre and a poet who died without finishing her story about how she meet his father, Fred. She is Fred's ex-wife.

Fred: poet, sculptor, and father of Andre, and ex-husband of Jessie. Fred dies without telling his side of the story about their divorce.

Kristen: Third wife of Fred. She acts as guide to helping Andre understand his father.

Terry: brother of Andre. Terry acts as guide to helping Andre understand his mother.

I would like to thank Angelheart once again for the use of her image.


Chapter 4
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 4

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:

Now it was Fred’s turn to be dumbfounded. Unlike his abandonment of Jessie the night before, she did not turn and leave, but waited for his approval. This woman had discerned his soul and gave of herself her only talent—poetry. This soul poet had matched his soul artist. “Why . . . why, thank you. No one had ever written me a poem before.”      
                                  
"You're welcome." If Jessie’s smile widened further, it would have wrapped around her powdered face.

They started dating and became engaged, but is “Soul Artist” the poem Jessie gave Fred?
 

CHAPTER 4
 
A black bubble formed on the surface of the tar pit. Surrounded by a layer of trapped leaves and tar-tipped sticks children had inserted through the fence, the bubble grew in diameter and circumference. It expanded to the size of a rotten cantaloupe and burst. The methane gas released an audible sigh. The smell of asphalt filled the air, the smell of newly paved roads and tarred roofs. A black concentric ring radiated in slow motion on the molasses-like surface. The tar was so thick, inertia and gravity trapped the burst bubble ring and pulled it below the surface, like the mammoths and sabretooth cats it trapped eons ago. After a pause, another bubble formed.

My brother, Terry, strode up the pedestrian bridge connecting the Pavilion of Japanese Art museum café to the adjoining George C. Page Museum in Los Angeles where he volunteered as a Saturday docent. He also had given me a guest ticket to see the tar-stained bones of unearthed prehistoric animals before I took a lunch and writing break. Black and tall like an Ethiopian, he wore a baby blue T-shirt titled Titans of the Ice Age 3D. The shirt pictured a wooly mammoth stomping through snow. A lanyard badge hung on my brother's chest and read, “ASK ME: TERRY.”

As he entered the café overlooking the La Brea Tar Pits, I turned from my laptop and smiled a greeting. He glanced at his Mickey Mouse watch. “I only have a twenty minute break.”

“Why don’t you get something to eat?”

He left me at the chrome and glass table and visited the pay-by-the-ounce salad bar. Returning with two rolls, a hamburger tray half-filled with raisins, and a cup of tap water, he sat across from me. His long fingers tore open a roll and slathered butter from a foil packet on it. I shoved the remnants of my vegan burger into my mouth and beat my brother chewing and swallowing so I could ask, “Do you remember Mom’s poem ‘Soul Artist?’”

He gulped to clear his mouth. “Yes.”

“How far back does the poem date?” Leaning forward, I hoped to hear the magic word: 1963.

He tossed a few raisins into his mouth. “It was about 1964 or 1965 when we lived in Val Verde. I can’t remember.”

My eyebrows arched. Those dates move the poem back in time from 1966 to 1964 and possibly earlier. Have I found the lost poem Jessie gave Fred?

My brother’s boast interrupted my “Eureka” moment. “Mom wrote the poem about me because I was always drawing pictures of butterflies. You know the line, ‘Who painted colors in the butterflies’ wing?’”

I nodded.

He pointed at himself with half a roll. “That’s me. I remember her reading me this poem when I was about in the first grade.”

I deflated like a burst methane bubble in a tar pit. The poem was all about Terry, the boy who later became a cartoonist? Something did not fit. I conceded he drew butterflies which inspired our mother to write the butterfly line in her poem, but what about the other creation verbs? Our mother’s story about how she first met our father mentioned he exhibited “paintings, ceramics, textiles, and sculptures.” He possessed the skills for most of the lines in “Soul Artist” to reference him.

I pointed to my laptop screen. “She wrote ‘web he weaves.’ Fred was a weaver. And she said ‘sculptures mountains.’ Fred was a sculptor. Could these lines be inspired by Fred?”

My brother blinked. “Probably so.”

The corners of my mouth curled upward.

The entire poem is not about Terry, but about creators as diverse as Fred the weaver-sculptor and Jessie the poet, whom God had “planted a seed to write in me.” I traced the poem back to the early days of my parents’ marriage, but is this the poem that started it? There was one place where I could find definitive answers.


I parked my car in front of the Public Storage gate on Saturday evening. Terry exited the passenger side, walked in front of the car, and keyed the gate code at the box. He slipped through the gate as it rattled open. Before the gate fully rolled back for my car to drive inside, my brother ran like a Kenyan marathoner to the back door of the main storage building attached to the manager's office. As my car drove into the area before the alleys of orange-doored storage units began, I saw through the windshield Terry twist the doorknob, knock, and turn a grimaced face towards me.

“The door is locked.”

He pointed at the gate closing behind my car. I turned my car around. He keyed the code again. The gate reopened. Before I drove out, he entered the car. “New hours. They closed the office at five. We can’t gain access to our storage unit attached to the main building.”

Mom’s diaries from the 1960’s are probably in there. If they exist, they could answer many questions. My Sunday schedule included quality time with family—a church service, a takeout lunch, a recital—, but no time to search the storage unit during this Los Angeles visit. Does my quest to track the poem my mother gave my father end here?

That night, I searched my mother’s bedroom. My brother and sister had removed our mother’s bed and converted her bedroom to an in-house storage unit. Three walls of bookcases stored records, boxes, and family photo albums. I picked through a few boxes but only found things that predated or followed 1963, with the exception of my parents’ charred wedding book which had survived a fire. I gazed at the signatures of wedding guests and at a couple of news clippings, but the inspiration escaped me. How am I going to search through all of these boxes? How about those other boxes in the storage unit? The quest is over. I am never going to finish this project. I felt like I was in the warehouse at the end of that Indiana Jones movie. How will I find my Lost Ark?

“Just write,” a thought answered inside my head.

I argued against the thought, “But what if I get it wrong?”

“Just write,” the thought answered again in a feminine and strong “voice.”

“But what if I find something later that refutes what I wrote?”

“Just write.”

“But I don’t have all the answers.”

“Just write.”

“Shouldn’t I wait until after I sort through every box before I write?”

“Just write, write, write,” the voice intoned within.

I slumped to a cross-legged position on the carpet where my mother had died years earlier. My eyes stared at my laptop screen. I tapped a few keys, but the inspiration escaped me. My head hung to my chest. “I can’t believe I am having a writer’s block. This project is over.”

I decided to call it a night and closed the laptop. Without grabbing a blanket, I curled up on the exact spot where my mother had died on the floor years before. My brother had ceremoniously covered the spot with a soiled, white rug woven with a Japanese cherry blossom pattern.

Lying awake in the womb of darkness, curled up in a fetal position that provided me my only warmth, I wondered what went through my mother’s thoughts in her final moments. I wondered what position my brother had found her body. “It looked like she had been praying and fell over,” Terry had told me the day after. I wondered if by sleeping here on this exact spot, I would discover a gateway to seeing her again. I wondered if she would visit me at night in my dreams or when I awoke. Wondering all of these questions, I slept in the room and on the spot where my mother had died.


I awoke in darkeness. Boxes loomed around me. My index finger pressed my iPhone’s start button. The blackened screen changed to a galaxy of stars. The time read “1:12.”

I sat up and turned on the lights. My hand flipped open the laptop. I wrote and wrote and wrote. The ideas rushed at me. Did my mother awake in the middle of the night to write like I am doing now? Did she write at night because she just couldn’t wait until the morning when the inspiration may have left her? I answered these questions by writing. Now I understood the poem I had found in my mother’s bedroom the day after she died. She had scrawled it on the first page of a Japanese notebook on January 22, 1967:
 
I write because I must and I must because I must, must, must.

She had left the rest of the notebook pages blank. I read this poem at her memorial service. Now I write because I must, must, must.

Dawn lightened the cobalt sky I glimpsed through vertical blinds. I closed my laptop and captured some sleep before a non-stop day of church, shopping, lunch, and recitals with my family.

Afterwards, I had to leave what remained of my family and drive up north to San Francisco. With a backpack slung over my shoulder, I stepped backwards out of my mother’s bedroom to take one last look at the boxes that awaited my next visit. I paused in the doorway, kissed the tips of my fingers, and pressed them to her door. “Thanks, Mom, for the inspiration.”
 
TO BE CONTINUED

Author Notes Yes. At an impasse about this book, I wrote this chapter while seated on the spot where my mother died years ago.

LIST OF CHARACTERS:

Andre: The main character and narrator of "Poetry and Poison." He embarks on a quest to uncover the secrets of his deceased parents, using the poems they left behind.

Jessie: mother of Andre and a poet who died without finishing telling him her story about how she meet his father, Fred. She is Fred's ex-wife.

Fred: sculptor, poet, father of Andre, and ex-husband of Jessie. Fred dies without telling his side of the story about their divorce.

Kristen: third wife of Fred. She acts as guide to helping Andre understand his father.

Terry: brother of Andre. Terry acts as guide to helping Andre understand his mother.

Photo of tar bubble courtesy of Google images.


Chapter 5
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 5

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:

Now I understood the poem I had found in my mother’s bedroom the day after she died. She had scrawled it on the first page of a Japanese notebook on January 22, 1967:

I write because I must and I must because I must, must, must.

She had left the rest of the notebook pages blank. I read this poem at her memorial service. Now I write because I must, must, must.

Dawn lightened the cobalt sky I glimpsed through vertical blinds. I closed my laptop and captured some sleep before a non-stop day of church, shopping, lunch, and recitals with my family.

Afterwards, I had to leave what remained of my family and drive up north to San Francisco. With a backpack slung over my shoulder, I stepped backwards out of my mother’s bedroom to take one last look at the boxes that awaited my next visit. I paused in the doorway, kissed the tips of my fingers, and pressed them to her door. “Thanks, Mom, for the inspiration.”
 

CHAPTER 5

Driving up I-5 from LA, my gaze turned towards the dead almond orchards along the interstate highway threading California’s Central Valley. Row upon row of cut trees covered the drought-blasted landscape. The workers had left the trees where they fell. The orchard resembled the forest that the Mount St. Helens eruption had flattened in 1980.

STOP THE CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL

a warped sign read in front of the orchard, accusing the government’s water restriction policies of amputating these trees, like the Big Bad Wolf who blew down the Three Little Pigs’ houses made of straw and wood. Reaching for my water bottle in the console’s cup holder, I wondered what explosions awaited me when I returned home and resumed my search for any companion poem my father may have written for my mother’s poem, “Soul Artist.”

#
 
I arrived in Hercules. The former dynamite-manufacturing town flourished after the factory closed in the ‘70’s and the explosions ceased. My condo stands as one of many that mushroomed in the factory’s former blast zone.

In my guest bedroom closet, I sorted through my father’s poems. One poem struck me as similar to Mom’s because he also wrote about creation. He titled the poem “What is the Right Chemistry?” This poem glowed on my radar screen for months and then years. I did not focus on it because I had assumed my father had plagiarized my mother’s poem. End of story.

One day, my fingers stayed from plucking a basil leaf from a branch. I washed my hands of Parmesan and olive oil, and then abandoned my pesto preparation in the kitchen. I entered my home office, opened the closet door, and grabbed the only book of poetry my father published, Soul Reflections, Heart Expressions: The Art and Poetry of Fred R. Wilson.

My hands placed and opened the copper-toned book to the poem “What is the Right Chemistry?” Its opening line sounded similar to the opening line of Genesis. I darted to the bathroom, snatched the Bible from the toilet shelf, and returned to the office. I compared the Bible’s opening line to the first line of Fred’s poem:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

“In the beginning there was the earth.”      

I recoiled from my father’s poem. “There is no God or Heaven,” I said. My eyes scanned the lines. The pattern of a Godless creation continued. Fred only mentioned God once as a “wisher” of fish, not a Creator. The earth simply “was.” Evolution reigned through chemistry. The poem continued:

The sun comes up each morning. / The moon comes out each night, / and that is the chemistry of life.

There fell rain / which made the flower Bloom, / and feather and nurture the soil of the earth / from dusk to early noon.

Run wild the animals / that roam the blandish land. / They breed and flourish— / Another form of chemistry from generations past.  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
The birds and the bees / fly o’er this great sky / traveling to and fro / carrying on their life cycle until their time to die.

All about us lies the great ocean / containing the fish— / Man’s greatest supply of food / Another form of chemistry that of God’s wish!     
                                                                     
I read the final stanza:

Then came Man and Woman, / the highest level of Life, / One of the most complicated of all chemistry, / That of Man and Wife.

My chest tightened. Tears rimmed my eyes. I backed away from this poem and retreated to the kitchen to resume the pesto.

After I picked a few more basil leaves, the poem drew me to reread the final stanza. I had never read my father's poetry book when he gave it to me in 1996, inscribed, "To my firstborn son." Now that he died, I studied each word for clues to who he was and how I came to be. I whispered, “The most complicated of all chemistry is marriage." I nodded and said, “That’s deep, Dad." Before tears could fall on his poem, I fled to the kitchen again.

A few moments later, I approached the poem with a revelation: “The poem is a bookend.”

Jessie’s “Soul Artist” christened the beginning of their marriage. Fred’s “What is the Right Chemistry?” eulogized the end of it. His evolution theme is neither random, accidental, nor serendipitous. He channeled “Soul Artist.” While Jessie asked, “Who painted the colors in the butterflies’ wing?”, hinting at the answer, God, Fred responded with his own question, “What is the right chemistry?” Their poems offered opposing views of the universe. The Book of Fred rebutted the Psalm of Jessie. He dismantled Jessie’s poem, God, creation, and the universe, like the couple had dismantled their marriage. His universe evolved through chemistry alone. He thought, “I remember my ex’s poem ‘Soul Artist.’ That poem started this marriage which ended in divorce, alimony, and child support. How could I have been duped by that poem? Well, let me write my own poem about how the universe really works: chemistry.”

Just when I thought Fred finished his poem, he added two stanzas titled “P.S. In Retrospect”:

On the last form of chemistry, / as I am told by others, / you can tell when things are right. / All forms of order fit their place.

If this be true in this part of my life, / oh, then where is my mate, / if this be the case?

The last form of chemistry—marriage—mystified Fred. How can you tell when things are right in a couple and all forms of order fit their place? Earlier typed versions of this poem in my archives displayed on the bottom the date of October 12, 1971—a year and a half after the divorce.

“Thank you, Dad, for writing the date on your poem,” I said, hoping that wherever he was, he would hear me. “I do not have to search for when you wrote this poem.”

He answered in my memory of his 1985 letter, “I keep extensive records.”

The date of October 12, 1971 followed seven days after my sister Joi’s sixth birthday—among the first of many birthdays he would miss of his children. After the divorce, Fred pondered the chemical imbalance in his marriage. While all manner of animal, bird, fish, and plant populate the earth in his poem, Fred lived alone in his pottery studio. He wandered a Godless landscape and wondered, “Where is my mate?” As he stated in his earlier poem “The Cry of a Lonely Soul”, dated two years earlier in March, 1969, “I have lost faith in the spiritual / For I am but a victim of a lonely soul.” Jessie’s “Soul Artist” and Fred’s “What is the Right Chemistry?” bookended the beginning and the end of their relationship, but what happened between?
 
#
 
The next morning, I drove through haze to work. Smoke from California wildfires had blanketed the San Francisco Bay. From the East Bay Hills, I neither saw the Golden Gate Bridge nor Alcatraz through the smaze. I kept my car window rolled up to prevent the inside seep of outside air. Ashes sifted onto my windshield. My memory drifted to the conclusion of my mother’s poem, “Aftermath”, she wrote after her divorce:
 
The volcano which has been / Smoldering inside me, / Has finally erupted. / As I watch it slowly die, / I feel a part of me die too. / In time, my love, / Only the ash of a memory will remain / From this fire of experience. / When the smoke has faded away, / Again will I see life clearly.

Driving through stop-and-go traffic, I saw through the haze in my mind an answer to my father’s question, “What is the right chemistry?”

“If you want to know if a couple has the right chemistry,” I said, “study their poetry.”

Scanning the freeway to see if police watched to ticket me for “distracted driving,” I steered with one hand and grabbed my iPhone with the other to record a thought I may use later: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”

I saved my recording and replayed it through my car speakers: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”

“That sounds about right,” I said, and drove into the haze of distant wildfires.
 
TO BE CONTINUED

Author Notes smaze=a mixture of smoke and haze.

I reformatted the poems due to limitations of what I can achieve with not-so-advanced Editor. Chapter 3 includes the complete text of Jessie Wilson's poem "Soul Artist" if you wish to compare it to Fred Wilson's poem "What is the Right Chemistry?" One person writes a poem at the beginning of a marriage; the other person writes a poem at the end. These are among several sets of thematically linked poems I uncovered.

The picture is from Google Images and is typical of the signs I saw posted in front of dead almond orchards in drought-stricken California.


Chapter 6
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 6

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS: Driving through stop-and-go traffic, I saw through the haze in my mind an answer to my father’s question, “What is the right chemistry?”

“If you want to know if a couple has the right chemistry,” I said, “study their poetry.”

Scanning the freeway to see if police watched to ticket me for “distracted driving,” I steered with one hand and grabbed my iPhone with the other to record a thought I may use later: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”

I saved my recording and replayed it through my car speakers: “Just because opposites attract, does not mean they should attach.”

“That sounds about right,” I said, and drove into the haze of distant wildfires.
 

CHAPTER 6

The Hercules Public Library loomed atop a hill, like the prow of Noah’s Ark settled on Mount Ararat after the flood receded. A mosaic of bricks ran up the walls. Emerald City glass shimmered on the corner of the trapezoid structure, like a ship’s observation deck. I imagined myself looking out the windows at San Pablo Bay. 

I parked across from the main entrance and entered the library for the first time since its construction six years earlier. Air, space, and light enveloped me. Polished surfaces reflected my image. I turned my head to the left. Behind a wall of glass, a magnolia tree grew within the library’s sky garden. I squinted. The library surrounds a tree? The library reminded me of a temple people would have constructed for the Tree of Knowledge, if it existed today.                                                                                                                
I approached a librarian behind a counter. “Where do the Poets of the Square Table meet?”

The librarian pointed left. “Right over there in the conference room.”
                                          
I followed the direction of her finger to a glass-walled room. Three elders sat inside at The Square Table, actually rectangular. They looked up and smiled as I entered with a folder of my parents’ poems in my hand. “Is this the Poets of the Square Table?”   
                                   
“Yes,” the most senior poet answered. Silver hair crowned the woman’s head. Laugh lines graced her face. She extended a wrinkled hand and with the other proffered me a book. “Hi, my name is Gwen. I’m the organizer of this poetry club and this is my new book, No Departures. It’s a true story about my family during the Spanish Civil War.”       
                                             
I shook her hand and admired her book without picking it up, because then I would be obligated to buy it. It’s not poetry, but she’s published. “Wow.”

She grinned wider, but expected more from me. 
                                                                              
I rolled out my full name to sound French. “My name is Andre Le Mont Wilson.” 
            
“Name’s Art.” A Japanese man behind a laptop reached his hand to me.  I unclasped Gwen’s hand and clenched Art’s, noting its small size. He displayed salt and pepper hair and Buddy Holly glasses. “I write tanka poetry.”

                                                                                        
“Oh.” I nodded and imagined yellow Tonka trucks, but doubted he wrote odes to them. I intuited he wrote a form of Japanese poetry. “That’s interesting.”
                                                         
“Lance.” The man extended his hand and swallowed mine. Round glasses flashed white for a moment and then cleared, revealing blue eyes. Light glinted off his pate as it did mine. “I write poems mostly about nature around the Bay Area.” 
                                                                                                              
“Oh.” I nodded and returned a smile. “Name’s Andre.”   
                                                          
Aged forty-eight, I observed the wrinkles, gray hairs, and glasses of The Poets of the Square Table—each one at least  twenty years my senior. 
                                                                                                  
Gwen motioned to a chair. “Come join us. We always welcome visitors.” 
                                        
I sat and placed the poetry folder on the table. I brought photocopies so I would not lose the originals in public.                            
                                                                                              
Gwen gazed at me. “Do you write poetry?”
                                                                                             
“No.” My hand rested on the folder like it was a Bible. “I want to share my parents’ poems. They both died earlier this year eleven weeks apart.”  
                                                                                     
When I said that, the poetry club changed to wake.                                                                 

Gwen tilted her head to denote sympathy. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”           
                             
Art bowed his head in a way I saw Japanese do. “You have my deepest sympathies.” 
                                          
Lance saved words and tagged his comment onto theirs. “And my condolences.”        
           
Gwen put a positive spin on my parents’ deaths. “At least they’re together again after a long marriage, I’m sure. Some couples die close together.” 

I drew in breath and exhaled words. “My parents divorced forty years ago. Dad died in Albuquerque; Mom in LA.”                                 
                                                                          
The Square Table Poets shifted their expressions from sympathy to puzzlement. Gwen relaxed in her chair. “We’d love to hear their poetry. You don’t have to write poetry in our group. Just appreciate it. We accept listeners, too. What we do here is go around sharing poems. They don’t have to be your own. If you don’t mind, I’ll start first by sharing an excerpt from my book.”     

Art and Lance rolled their eyes. I sensed that Gwen pitched her non-poetry book to every visitor to the club.

While she read and I waited my turn, I spread the contents of my folder onto the table. Since my father had an eleven-week head start on my mother, I brought seven of his poems from his entire collection I grabbed out of his file cabinets, but only three of my mother’s poems found around her room at the time she died. I frowned at my parents’ lopsided representation. Their deaths struck me like two bullets from a double-barrel shotgun. I focused my grief on sharing their poems. As long as I read their poetry in public, my parents lived.  
                                    
Gwen concluded reading. Art and Lance praised her. I joined in, too, although I had not been listening. “That’s nice.” 
                                                                                                                    
Art pressed his laptop screen and read tanka poetry whose meaning I felt but could not voice. I now understood tanka as a form of Japanese poetry related to haiku but with two extra lines that read like a proverb. He concluded.                            

                                                      
Gwen and Lance complimented him. I joined in. “That was moving.” 
                                      
Lance unsheathed typed poems from his folder and read about the waters and wetlands of the bay. Since I lived there surrounded by creeks, marshes, and the bay, I understood his poetry. Never before had I seen these waters provide inspiration to poetry. I offered my praise before Gwen and Art offered theirs. “That’s really good. I love your use of details.”                                              

The Poets of the Square Table excelled at the love of words. Gwen published . . . and promoted, Art introduced me to tanka, and Lance encouraged me to notice the waters around me. The Poets have probably written longer than I have been alive. I looked at them with awe, but then I looked at myself. I had not written a poem in twenty years. All I had to offer were poems written by someone else—my parents. How do I begin to tell their story? I made my opening remark. “What I want to do is read one poem from my mother and another from my father so you can see the connections.”                                                                                                                          
Gwen nodded approval for me to read two poems.   

I read my mother’s “Oblivion” poem found on her bed at the time she died. She pined for her lost marriage and then offered Fred the compromise of friendship. In my father’s “Unshadowed” poem, he rejected her compromise and cut her out of his life to have the freedom to sculpt.                   

Lance, a retired postal clerk who probably imagined himself delivering their poems, asked, “Did they mail their poems to one another?”                                                                                             

I theorized. “I think Jessie mailed her poem to Fred first, and then he responded, point for point. The two poems’ structure and stanzas are similar, but I do not know if he mailed his poem to her. I haven’t found it yet.”                                                                                                                         
Art raised an eyebrow. “Very interesting.”  

Gwen, who published a book about her family history, praised mine. “That is quite a treasure you have there with both your mom’s and dad’s poetry.”

Lance nodded. “Yes, you should write an anthology.” 

The Poets of the Square Table planted a seed in me—the idea of book combining both of my parents’ poetry. But I wanted to accomplish more than an anthology with Mom’s poem on one page and Dad’s poem on another. I wanted to tell their stories through poetry. I wanted to uncover the mystery of who they were to each other and how I came to be.
                                      

In addition to the poems I shared when the Poets of the Square Table passed the invisible mike to me, I read a fragment of a story—the final page—that my mother wrote about how she met my father. The Poets leaned in and listened with an attentiveness they did not display towards the poetry. This was a story, at least, part of one. In my mother’s story, she finished modeling clothes and setting out refreshments at a fashion art show in Los Angeles and decided to browse the exhibit of ceramics, paintings, and textiles. “A strong feeling of purpose crept over me,” she wrote and continued:     
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
One little sculpture seemed to impress me more than anything else in the entire exhibit. I asked the artist about purchasing the little 18 inch woman with a worried look on her face, offering to pay $5.00 down and $5.00 a month until the price of $25.00 was paid.

With a very concerned look on his face, he demanded, “Why do you like it?”

“It speaks to me,” I replied.

“If you really get the message,” he continued, “you can have it,” pushing it toward me.

Rubbing my fingers and examining the tips for imagined makeup, I mocked my father’s response when my mother confronted him over why he gave her the sculpture. “Behind all your powder and paint, I discern a spiritual soul.”  

The triumvirate of poets laughed at my imitation, and then became entranced by the story’s conclusion:
                                                                                                                                     
Six months later we said our marriage vows in an artistic “Sundown Wedding.” The little sculpture, “Woman of Pain”, is still in our art collection. It is not for sale; it is a connecting link in our marriage.

Silence followed my reading as the Poets absorbed the firsthand account of my mother meeting my father. Lance squeezed a fist together and pressed it beneath his chin like Rodin’s The Thinker. “I wonder what happened to the sculpture.”                                                                    
“Does your family still have it?” Gwen asked.  
                                                                                   
Art requested concrete imagery for a sculpture that Fred could have carved from wood, sculpted from marble, or molded from clay. “What did it look like?”       

Unprepared for their questions about a sculpture, I stared at the poems scattered on the table before me and found no answers. The thought flashed my mind of the dragon I have not slain yet—the contents in my family’s storage unit. Perhaps crushed boxes entombed the scratched sculpture. My memory wandered away from the library and back to Mother’s Day, 1985.                                                                                                                      
My parents had been divorced for fifteen years by that time. Holding a violet vase of flowers at arm’s length, my mother entered the bedroom I shared with my brother. Her face showed no emotion as she set the vase on a desk. “It’s cooler in here. Be sure to water it every day.” She turned and left.   
                                                                                                                                
I ran to the vase. No one had ever given me flowers before. I opened and read the card on the forked stick: “To Jessie, Happy Mother’s Day, Love, Fred.” I closed the card and buried my nose in the yellow daisies . . . daisies . . . and white carnations. Sprays of green ferns nestled the flowers. I inhaled their mixed fragrance.                                                                                            

Joy over receiving hand-me-down flowers failed to overwhelm my suspicion that Mom dumped the flowers in my room because no amount of boxed chocolates, baskets of fruit, or bouquets of roses could undo the damage done by the divorce. To accept these gifts, Trojan horses that they were, would be accept his apology. She was not ready for that yet. Since she seldom entered my room, she never saw the flowers again. 

Since my mother gave away Fred’s gifts after their divorce, did she give away the first gift he gave her before their marriage?       

                                                                                            
My thoughts returned to the library conference room. Poets leaned in, waiting for an answer as to what happened to the sculpture, “Woman of Pain.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she gave it away.”     

                                                                                                                                       
The poets’ expressions deflated, as if I had deprived them of the happy ending they wanted: “I found the Maltese Falcon!”

The library intercom boomed. “The Library will be closing in five minutes. Please bring your items to the checkout counter.”     
                                                                                                                           
The Poets of the Square Table disbanded their fellowship until the following month. My appearance there on August 27, 2012 marked the first time I shared my parents’ poetry in public after their deaths weeks earlier. I did not know then that when I later became a poet, writer, and storyteller and created a spreadsheet listing hundreds of readings and performances, I would list the Poets of the Square Table as my first public event. The poets planted the idea in me of telling my parents’ story through their poetry, but I had overlooked their second idea: telling my parents’ story through Fred’s sculpture. Jessie wrote that “Woman of Pain” “is a connecting link in our marriage.” If I can find the sculpture, I could find the “connecting link.”
 
TO BE CONTINUED
 

Author Notes Yes, the Poets of the Square Table existed. Housed in the Hercules Public Library on the last Monday of the month, the poetry club welcomed me as a "visitor," but did not accept me as a full member--a poet or knight. The club held its last meeting on January 28, 2013. I changed the names of the members to suggest the names of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere.

The previous chapters focused on the poetry of my parents Fred and Jessie Wilson to uncover who they were. This chapter opens up a second front--the examination of the sculpture of Fred Wilson to uncover why Jessie connected with him.

Image of the Knights of the Round Table courtesy of Google.


Chapter 7
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 7

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPH OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:
 
The Poets of the Square Table disbanded their fellowship until the following month. My appearance there on August 27, 2012 marked the first time I shared my parents’ poetry in public after their deaths weeks earlier. I did not know then that when I later became a poet, writer, and storyteller and created a spreadsheet listing hundreds of readings and performances, I would list the Poets of the Square Table as my first public event. The poets planted the idea in me of telling my parents’ story through their poetry, but I had overlooked their second idea: telling my parents’ story through Fred’s sculpture. Jessie wrote that Woman of Pain “is a connecting link in our marriage.” If I can find the sculpture, I could find the “connecting link.”
 

CHAPTER 7
 
“Is that what I think it is? Is that blood?”
 
My left eye closed. My right eye squinted at the Kodak slide I held up to the light. Boxed carousels of my father’s slides crowded around me on the bed. I lacked a slide projector. Instead, I examined his slides—thousands of them—one by one in search of Woman of Pain, the sculpture Mom reported Dad gave her when they first met at an art fashion show where she modeled and he exhibited. My mother had concluded her written account of their first meeting by writing:
 
The little sculpture, Woman of Pain, is still in our art collection. It is not for sale; it is a connecting link in our marriage.
 
If I can find that sculpture, I can discover why my parents connected. Oh, Andre, why didn’t you grab Dad’s slide projector, too, when you rescued his art slides from his Albuquerque studio after he died? It would have made examining these slides easier. Who has a slide projector nowadays anyway?
 
The slide I examined showed a wood carving of a pregnant woman. She gripped her bulged belly, like the Venus of Willendorf—that Paleolithic carving of a woman with child-bearing hips and milk-filled breasts. My father’s carving resembled a chain sawed railroad tie—the cheapest wood available to the young sculptor. The deep-set eyes and long body reminded me of an Easter Island monolith. A gouged mouth frowned. I recalled my mother described the sculpture as “the little 18 inch woman with a worried look on her face.”
 
If that’s not a worried look on your face, I don’t know what is. You’re having a baby.
 
Mom also stated in her account that the title of the sculpture was Woman of Pain. The pain of childbirth? Could this be the sculpture? I found the title Woman in Pain listed as #20 in the file index of a metal box my father taped and marked,
 
SLIDES OF SCULPTURES VAULT Property Fred Wilson Muddy Wheel EXTRA—DO NOT REMOVE
 
Despite his warning not to remove the slides, he or someone did, because slide #20 for Woman in Pain was not there. What remained was his note in red on the index that he carved the sculpture in wood. I counted all the sculptures listed in the index as “wood” and reached ten total. Only half were sculptures of women: Indian Lady, Hold on Little Woman, Sister of Holy Family, Fat Lady, and Woman in Pain. I had to track down all five sculptures to find the one my father gave my mother. I recalled seeing several wood carvings around his Albuquerque gallery. Years of sun and rain exposure had bleached the wood gray. I planned to call his third wife, Kristen, to see if she still has them.
 
More than the provenance of the pregnant woman carving in the slide, what appeared to be red pigment on her lips and between her troll-like legs perplexed me. She looked like a vampire having a miscarriage. I did not know. The wood grain swirled around the woman’s breasts and belly which glinted in the sun. I know from my mother that my father could not afford wood polish for his carvings in the 1960s. Instead, he stained the surface with shoe polish and paint to resemble polished wood. Perhaps my perception was a trick of the light, the slide’s age, and a coat of red paint. The size of my thumb, the slide refused to release its secret.
 
I put aside the slides and opened another line of attack to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at a show fifty years earlier. My mother stated in her story that their wedding occurred six months after the fashion art show. They married on September 7, 1963. Counting backwards, I flicked my thumb out of my balled fist followed by my index to my pinkie. September, August, July, June, May. I ran out of fingers on my right hand and raised my thumb on my left. April. The event when my parents met occurred in April 1963.
 
I pulled my father’s 1960’s scrapbook off a closet shelf, placed the binder on the bed, and opened the book to the early pages. Behind a brittle sheet protector, a yellowed newspaper clipping from The California Eagle, the oldest Negro newspaper in the western United States, announced on Thursday, March 28, 1963, “FASHION SHOW.” The clipping smaller than a postcard explained:
 
High fashion collections of hats in flattering shades by Laura Brooks and Maudrea Milliners and Easter finery from Ruby’s French Shop will highlight the versatile program.
 
Ordinarily, a newspaper clipping about a fashion show would be out of place in an artist scrapbook if it were not for both parents reporting that they met at a fashion show. My father included this clipping because of its significance to him. I noted that the article used the verb “will” as in “will happen on a future date.” The fashion show had not occurred yet. March 28, 1963 was two weeks before Easter on April 14. As a high fashion model, my mother wore hats in “flattering shades” and “Easter finery from Ruby’s French Shop.” I imagined her dressed in the pastel shades of Easter eggs.
 
I read further:
 
Proceeds from the affair will be used for the Bethune Monument in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles Music Center.
           
I reread the words “Bethune Monument in Washington” and Googled them. A Wikipedia article appeared on the screen. A photo showed a bronze sculpture of the Civil Rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. She stood with a cane in her right hand and extended with her left hand a diploma to two black children. The inscription on the base read “Let her works praise her.” The National Council of Negro Women sponsored the sculpture which they erected at Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. in 1974.
 
My father and mother participated in a 1963 fundraiser for that monument?
 
I did a double take. My father participated in the fundraiser for more than altruistic reasons. He carved wood, molded clay, and chiseled stone, but his hands failed to grasp one material.
 
I recalled the crunch of snow beneath my shoes as my father and I trudged to a foundry in Taos, New Mexico one Thanksgiving in the 1990s. Snow-covered bronzes of cowboys and Indians decorated the yard, as if Jack Frost had frozen Custer’s Last Stand. The sun glinted off the snow and blinded my vision if I stared too long. I focused on the door of a building ahead. My arms held tight to my swaddled body to preserve warmth. Once we entered the foundry, I heated up. Furnaces melted bronze and cast sculptures. Men busied among the giant plaster molds.
 
“I would like to make bronzes of my sculptures,” my father squeaked. I winced because I sounded like him. “But it costs a lot of money.”
 
His fur-lined earflap hat, visor up, completed his resemblance to the Disney character Goofy. He told me figures and I stared. My mother would love to have had thousands of dollars from him to raise his three kids alone. Now he expects me to give him thousands to raise an army of bronzes?
 
“If I could cast bronzes of my sculptures, I could charge more for them and make copies, so that all I have to do is sell the copies in different sizes and keep the original.”  
 
I shrugged. “Wow, that’s a good idea.”
 
We left the foundry but his dream followed.
 
My thoughts returned to my present research in my father’s scrapbook, which laid open on the bed I refocused on the “Fashion Show” article and read the next paragraph:
 
Great sculptors on occasion heighten their message by deforming their figures. Wilson utilizes this approach in his sculptural portrayal of the idea that the world will eventually become a woman’s world.
 
The world will eventually become a woman’s world? A paper published my father in 1963 as portraying and prophesying this? Now, I was really curious to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at the fashion show and why. As my mother wrote, “One little sculpture seemed to impress me more than anything else in the entire exhibit.” Who was the Woman in Pain?
 
TO BE CONTINUED

Author Notes My book "Poetry and Poison" will be more like "Pottery and Poison" for several chapters as I explore the sculptures of my father Fred Robert Wilson and their role in his marriage to my mother Jessie Lee Dawson. My conclusions are subject to change based upon what I uncover. The image is of the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial in Washington, D.C. by Roberts Betts. Through articles, I confirmed that my parents met at a fundraiser for this monument.


Chapter 8
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 8

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:
 
My thoughts returned to my present research in my father’s scrapbook, which lay open on the bed. I refocused on the “Fashion Show” article and read the next paragraph:
 
Great sculptors on occasion heighten their message by deforming their figures. Wilson utilizes this approach in his sculptural portrayal of the idea that the world will eventually become a woman’s world.
 
The world will eventually become a woman’s world? A paper published my father in 1963 as portraying and prophesying this? Now, I was really curious to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at the fashion show and why. As my mother wrote, “One little sculpture seemed to impress me more than anything else in the entire exhibit.” Who was the Woman in Pain?


“Andre, I found something.”
 
Over the phone, the voice of my brother, Terry, choked with tears. Did he find the Woman in Pain—the wood carving our father gave our mother when they first met? I pressed the receiver to my ear. “Is it Fred’s sculpture?”
 
Terry sobbed. He dribbled words one at a time. “No . . . it’s . . . Mom’s . . . writings.”
 
“What’s it about?”
 
“I can’t tell you over the phone.”
 
What couldn't he tell me over the phone? Why the tears? I changed strategy to snatch the information from him. “Could you scan and email it?”
 
“No, I’ll just wait until you get here.”
 
Terry piqued my interest. I had planned a trip to Los Angeles the next day to attend the memorial jewelry show that my father’s widow, Kristen, staged at the house of his former pottery student. I cracked my knuckles. My hands ached to grip the document Terry found. A clue to our parents’ marriage?
 
I flew to L.A. and stepped into my mother’s apartment. Strange how I referred to it as “my mother’s apartment” as if she still lived here. My siblings, Terry and Joi, had drawn the blinds. Shadow pervaded the rooms. A mountain of brown flowers, once yellow, including those which had lain on our mother’s casket, decayed on the dining room table. The memorial service had occurred three months earlier.
 
As I sat on my mother’s bedroom floor, I sorted her boxes of papers on the spot where she had died—a green patch of carpet beaten down from foot traffic and from praying on her knees. I heard breathing and footsteps behind me. I turned. My brother Terry teetered in the doorway, papers in hand, tears in his eyes. “This is what I found.”
 
His hands trembled. I grabbed the sheets. The typed pages appeared brittle. The room darkened as I read:
 

After the Sun Went Down
 
The door slammed behind my husband as he left for court. Little did it appear, that January morning, that the year 1959 was always to stand out in my memory as an awakening. Since the night had a definite effect on me, my life was to reach an all-time low in a struggle for sanity. Alone we stood, my two sons, and me—pregnant.                                                                      
 
We lived in Aliso Village, one of the many housing projects in Los Angeles. Alcoholics, dope addicts, prostitutes, and people who used Aliso as a stepping stone to a goal in life here, too. I was not a part of their worlds; my world was painfully different—the world of the mentally ill.
 
Struggle for sanity? The world of the mentally ill? I reread those phrases before I proceeded to read about what happened when her first husband—a philandering Korean War vet—walked out on her, two kids, and a baby on the way:
 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .            
 
The boys and I were now receiving Public Assistance. There wasn’t a financial worry. Still, twice a week I visited the out-patient psychiatric clinic, trying to free myself of this alien personality which was my constant companion.             
 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .                                                                          
With all my efforts, there was still no way of keeping my two-year-old from knowing the agony my mind and body were going through. Although the door to my bedroom was closed and my head covered, he would come in and ask, “Mommy, why are you crying? Who hurt you?”
 
Feeling ashamed that he had caught me again, “Nothing,” I would say. “Nothing. Just go back to your room.” Time after time this would happen while I was quietly sniffling, trying to get out a cry after the boys went to bed. It amazed me that he always knew.      
 
Finally, . . . (w)henever I sensed an attack of depression coming, I would go in the bathroom and lock the door. While the water was running in the bathtub, I could cry unheard. My body trembled, felt caged, and desired to be free of these bounds. There was no trust in myself around the children during an attack. I might become violent and hurt them, for deep in my being was a strange aversion to small children.   
 
Alone in the living room, I would go from wall to wall—sometimes even hitting them. Just to have been able to cling to the walls and walk on the ceiling would have been a relief. When deeply depressed, I would scratch myself and grip my hands. There was a desire to cut my wrist and get out of this living hell.   
 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
One of my attacks landed me in the county hospital with a miscarriage. This was to be my longest night. After an examination and many questions, a specific room was assigned to me. I felt suspended between two worlds, but I could hear the doctor telling the nurse, “She’ll probably need an operation later on.”                                                                                                                      
At the word “operation,” my life started backward. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the hospital anymore. Instead, there lay a little girl who had been hit by a baseball in the pelvic region many years ago. The doctor represented a doctor my mother had taken me to and the nurse was my mother. I remembered the doctor whispering in the other room as if it were now, “She may never have children, and even if she does, there will probably be an operation later on.”
 
Never once in all these years had I thought of the doctor’s prediction. However, in my subconscious mind it was bothering me. I realized that was the clue to what I had tried to tell the psychiatrist many times. All I knew to say was, “It’s just something about babies that bothers me.” At night I would try to draw my fears, but to no avail. My drawings never progressed beyond a certain point—a woman wanting to go out the door and in big letters I would write the word “BABIES” in front of her.                
 
Somehow my childish mind had conceived the idea that having a baby was the worst thing that could happen to a woman. It was quite plain to me why I had been resentful toward the children at times. I really believed childbirth could contribute to the operation the doctor had predicted.
 
As the night wore on, I was given more sleeping pills, but sleep continued to evade me. My mind was running away with ideas. I wanted to talk to somebody. . . . Only one person could help—my psychiatrist. . . .
                       
As I stepped off the ward elevator, at the desk sat the psychiatrist busily studying my chart. . . . I tried to tell him about my strange reliving of an ugly childhood experience. He was wise and suggested I wait and talk at the clinic. My appointment was the next day. I knew and he knew as I tried to tell him—this experience was the door I tried to open in vain for many months.
 
I welcomed leaving the hospital because I could accept my children more fully. Even though I knew my marriage was over, the thought of facing life with two sons wasn’t frightening. A different Mommy would be coming home to four little waiting arms.                 
                                                                       
I finished reading with tears in my eyes. Now I knew why Terry would not share her essay over the phone or email. I turned to him in the doorway, “Mom had a miscarriage and mental illness?”
 
He nodded. “Yes.”
 
My earth quaked. A tsunami of grief engulfed me. Each wave pulled me further into the ocean. First, I grieved over the loss of a brother or sister I never knew. Second, I grieved over my mother’s statement “that having a baby was the worst thing that could happen to a woman.” Did she want me? Did my birth stop her from going out the door and achieving her dreams? I felt survivor’s guilt for being born. Third, I grieved over the depression she experienced. If she had succeeded in her “desire to cut (her) wrist and get out of this living hell,” I would not have been born four years later.      
 
Two aftershocks: mental illness and my mother’s kept secret from her family. Before they married, did Jessie disclose to Fred her past history with mental illness? Was she mentally ill when she raised me? Since she had a mental breakdown in 1959 following her first divorce, what happened a decade later following her second?  I searched my past for clues. Nothing screamed “crazy.” I thought I knew my mother because she raised me, but I realized that I did not know her deeply enough. I felt helpless, like when my brother Terry, aged two, stood in our mother’s doorway and asked, “Mommy, why are you crying? Who hurt you?”
 
The back of my index finger wiped tears from my eyes. I ceased trembling, straightened my back, and handed the essay back to my brother. “Make a copy for me.”                                         
 
I scanned the cluttered room. Unread papers filled unsorted boxes. I resumed my tone as the lead investigator. “This is why we have to sort through Mom’s stuff carefully. We don’t know what else she has hidden.”
 
“I know.”
 
Armed with this essay, I pursued my hunch that my father’s woodcarving of the hemorrhaging, pregnant woman was the Woman in Pain carving he gave my mother. I called my stepmother to verify she still possessed the carving. I flew to Albuquerque, rented an SUV, and laughed when I drove back to Oakland. I found the Woman in Pain. I found the Woman in Pain.
 
But when I returned, I measured the statue. Aged and cracked like a piece of driftwood and spray painted silver in my father’s attempt to make it look half decent, the carving measured twenty-nine inches high. In her essay about her first meeting with my father, my mother had stated that the sculpture he gave her measured eighteen inches. I frowned at the measuring tape.

photo Pregnant Lady_zps8lfs2lvh.jpg
 
The red paint for blood my father had applied to the woman’s chin and below her swollen belly had long since washed away. I noticed the trophy plate fastened to the wooden base. A half century of tarnish and dust obscured the engraved words. I stuck out my tongue, licked my index finger, and rubbed spittle on the plate. Cursive words emerged:
 
PREGNANT LADY
1960 Fred R. Wilson  
 
This was not Woman in Pain. It had a different title than Fat Lady that Fred wrote in black marker on the slide frames and in the slide index. The date of 1960 placed the sculpture three years before my parents met. I wondered if he exhibited it at the 1963 fashion art show. I wondered why he changed the title from Pregnant Lady on the sculpture base to Fat Lady on the slides of the same sculpture.
 
My eyes brightened. I wagged a finger and nodded my head to no one but my inner voice. I bet Mom complained to Fred about the sculpture. Given her miscarriage, she forced him to change the title when the sculpture triggered “an ugly childhood experience” regarding a pelvic injury and a doctor’s prediction that she would never birth babies.
 
“Now, Freddie, you’ve gone too far.”
 
“No, Jessie, that’s not a carving of a woman having a miscarriage. That’s a carving of uh . . . um . . .  a fat lady.”
 
Fred applied a new title to the sculpture which never appeared in newspaper photos of his wood carvings in the 1960s. The sculpture resumed its original title after their marriage. While I have not found Woman in Pain yet, Pregnant Lady told me a lot about my parents.
 
My search for the Woman in Pain focused too narrowly on the pain of childbirth. Given what my mother wrote in her essay “After the Sun Went Down” about 1959, the year of her “awakening,” Jessie experienced a broad range of pain before her marriage to Fred in 1963—a divorce, a miscarriage, mental illness, depression, loneliness, suicidal thoughts, her involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward, her separation from her children, her desire to kill them, and her wish to walk out the door without the word “BABIES” written in the sky like “SURRENDER DOROTHY” that the broom-riding Wicked Witch of the West wrote in black smoke above the Emerald City in the Land of Oz.
 
Her essay provided me a backdoor to discover why this “little sculpture”—Woman in Pain—impressed her “more than anything else in the entire exhibit,” as she wrote in another essay. I repeat my parents’ dialogue about the sculpture here:
 
With a very concerned look on his face, he demanded, “Why do you like it?”
 
“It speaks to me,” I replied.
 
“If you really get the message,” he continued, “you can have it,” pushing it toward me.
 
Woman in Pain spoke to the many pains Jessie experienced. She got the message. He got a wife.
 
I called my brother to ask follow up questions. “Terry, do you remember the story you found about Mom being committed to a mental hospital?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Do you recall a period in your childhood when Mom didn’t live with you.”
 
I heard silence on the other end of the phone. Terry broke it. “Come to think of it . . . there was a period when Mom did not live with us.” He referred to himself and our oldest brother Dion.
 
“How long was it?”
 
“Oh, a couple of weeks . . . maybe a month.”
 
Mom in a mental hospital for a month. Her essay made it sound like she stayed a couple of days. “What happened to you guys? Who took care of you?”
 
“We went to live with Aunt Edna up in Oakland, and then she came down to live with us in Los Angeles. Grandma Dawson came to live with us, too, and cousin Thaddeus. We were living on 57th Street then.”
 
I opened the kitchen drawer, grabbed a marker, and wrote notes on the refrigerator dry erase board. “When was this?”
 
“About 1961.”
 
1961? That was two years after the events chronicled in our mother’s essay but two years before her marriage to Fred. Are we talking about the same commitment to the psychiatric ward, or did she have a relapse after her essay concluded with “a different Mommy would be coming home to four little waiting arms”?               
 
“Did anyone explain anything to you what was happening to Mom?”
 
“No one explained anything to me. You may want to talk to Dion. He’s older than me and may provide more information or a different perspective.”
 
I added “call Dion” to my mental to do list and asked a final question. “Did you notice any difference when Mom came back from the hospital?”
 
“I really could not tell any difference. She was her regular Mom self.”

TO BE CONTINUED
 

 

Author Notes "After the Sun Went Down" is an actual essay that my mother, Jessie Wilson, wrote about her bout with mental illness. I cut the story by a third to fit as a story within a story. Her essay is undated, but newspaper accounts of her marriage to Fred Wilson state that she was a free lance writer. I estimate that she wrote this between 1959 and 1963. I would deeply appreciate insight from people who have dealt with the issues she addressed in her essay.

The images are of my father's sculpture Pregnant Lady as it appeared in 1960 and today. I thank Dean Kuch for instructions on how to use Photobucket.

Thank you for your review.


Chapter 9
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 9

By Sis Cat

LAST PARAGRAPHS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER

“Do you recall a period in your childhood when Mom didn’t live with you.”
 
I heard silence on the other end of the phone. Terry broke it. “Come to think of it . . . there was a period when Mom did not live with us?” He referred to himself and our oldest brother Dion.
 
“How long was it?”
 
“Oh, a couple of weeks . . . maybe a month.”
 
Mom was in a mental hospital for a month. Her essay made it sound like she stayed a couple of days. “What happened to you guys? Who took care of you?”
 
“We went to live with Aunt Edna up in Oakland, and then she came down to live with us in Los Angeles. Grandma Dawson came to live with us, too, and cousin Thaddeus. We were living on 57th Street then.”
 
I opened the kitchen drawer, grabbed a marker, and wrote notes on the refrigerator dry erase board. “When was this?”
 
“About 1961.”
 
1961? That was two years after the events chronicled in our mother’s essay but two years before her marriage to Fred. Are we talking about the same commitment to the psychiatric ward, or did she have a relapse after her essay concluded with “a different Mommy would be coming home to four little waiting arms”?               
 
“Did anyone explain anything to you what was happening to Mom?”
 
“No one explained anything to me. You may want to talk to Dion. He’s older than me and may provide more information or a different perspective.”
 
I added “call Dion” to my mental to do list and asked a final question. “Did you notice any difference when Mom came back from the hospital?”
 
“I really could not tell any difference. She was her regular Mom self.”

In August of ‘63, Dr. Martin Luther King thundered his “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of 200,000 in Washington, D.C. Five months earlier, Fred Robert Wilson had a dream, too—to design the Capitol’s first monument to a Negro, educator and civil rights leader, Mary McLeod Bethune.
 
Around the country, local chapters of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) held fundraisers to erect a monument to its founder in Lincoln Park and not on the National Mall. When the Fine Arts Committee of the Los Angeles chapter of NCNW announced plans for a fashion show and art fundraiser a week before Easter 1963, Fred pounced on the opportunity to win the commission and “breakout” from being a potter. He accepted a slot on the program alongside Rosalind Whelden, a UCLA art instructor who lectured about the role of art in contemporary America; Yong Ho Chi, a Vietnamese painter who demonstrated portrait techniques; and a Negro soloist named Julius Caesar, of all things. Fred planned to stand out from the “rabble.”
 
In the months leading up to the event, Fred carved and sculpted women—Indian Woman, Woman in Pain, Hold on Little Woman, Calling Mother. Measuring less than three feet high, these sculptures showcased his potential as a monument maker if they were enlarged to life size. They also appealed to the women who would decide the Mary McLeod Bethune Monument.
 
Since 1962, as the Civil Rights Movement swirled around him, Fred sensed that the roles of men and women would change in the 1960s. Women's emancipation would become the next great social movement to sweep the country and the world. He planned to become its sculptor.
 
He sculpted “Ductless Man.” It portrayed a nude woman holding what appeared to be a gangly boy clinging to his mother but was a man who had shrunk while the woman grew. If people confused the two as mother and child, he explained, “This sculpture is about the dwindling stature of man. As woman reaches her full potential, man becomes a child in the arms of woman.”
 
He solved this perception problem with “Majestic Woman.” Instead of a standing nude woman, he portrayed a seated nude woman behind the head of a man. While she grew to majestic stature, his body shrank so that all that remained was his full-sized head, alive and staring in wonderment at the changed roles of men and women. Borrowing an idea from his idol Michelangelo, who had portrayed himself in sculptures and murals, Fred portrayed himself in the head of the bald man.
 
He would prove that he could compete in the art world as he did in the sports world as an athlete in football, basketball, and track in high school and college. He also played chess. Life was a game of chess. With only two weeks to go before the art festival, Fred picked up the phone and called The California Eagle, a Negro newspaper in Los Angeles.

 
On the morning of Thursday, March 28, Fred’s clay splattered hands opened the paper. He grinned at a photo of Majestic Woman atop page two. He read the caption:
 
A WOMAN’S WORLD—Sculptor Fred Wilson, in his ceramic “Majestic Woman,” depicts how the stature of man will shrink proportionately as women gain their full emancipation. The controversial creation will be on display at the Wilfandel Club April 7 when the Fine Arts Committee of the National Council of Negro Women presents its annual Arts Festival.
 
He rolled the word “controversial” around in his mind. Controversy improved sales, and may win him the Bethune commission. He skimmed over the other artists and the fashion show plans mentioned in the article and read the parts about himself:
 
Great sculptors on accassion heighten their message by deforming their figures. Wilson utilizes this approach in his sculptural portrayal of the idea that the world will become a woman’s world.
 
The former athlete, never a great speller, Fred had misspelled in his written statement he gave the paper the word “occasion” as “accassion.” The editor, figuring it was an artsy French word, left it uncorrected. The beginning of the article, “Art Festival to Show Sculpture, Painting,” also titled the sculpture as Magnificent Woman instead of Majestic Woman. Despite the flaws, publicity was publicity. C. Marie Hughes wrote seventy-five percent of the article about him. She concluded by mentioning his art awards at county fairs and his study at California state colleges. With half-moons of clay embedded under his fingernails, Fred cut out the article and prepared for the show.

#

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile . . .

Nails scrubbed, Fred, dressed in a black suit and a skinny tie, groaned as the daughter of the NCNW Fine Arts Committee chairman, A. C. Bilbrew, crooned Nat King Cole’s song “Mona Lisa.” Behind the singer dressed like Lena Horn, a woman artist drew back a red curtain to unveil her huge reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Three months earlier, the Louvre Museum had loaned the world's most famous painting to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, where a million people thronged to glimpse the painting for twenty seconds each. The NCNW hoped to replicate that Mona Lisa magic with a replica on the West Coast. Filling the Spanish-style Wilfandel Club, a crowd of Negro society women, dressed in Easter finery, hats, and gloves, oohed at the reproduction painted by one of their own. Like exotic birds, they fluttered before the canvas.
 
Noticing that his own sculpture was not getting attention during this spectacle, Fred wriggled his nose at the artist. She’s nothing but a paint-by-numbers hack. And why are these Negro women praising a bad copy of a white artist?
 
The piano tinkled. The guitar strummed. The chairman’s daughter sang:

Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep
They just lie there and they die there

Fred shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. His polished shoe kicked the carpet. Connections. Connections. It’s all about connections. She only got this singing gig because she’s the chairman’s daughter. How about connections helping me get the Bethune commission?
 
Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa.
 
The solo ended, thank God. The crowd applauded as the daughter curtsied before the Mona Lisa reproduction. This was real art, the NCNW members acclaimed, and we will auction it off to erect a monument to our beloved founder, Mary McLeod Bethune. Fred sighed.
                                                                                                          
The rest of the art festival progressed. The NCNW auctioned off “Majestic Woman” to raise money for its cause. The paper’s publicity helped. Some of his smaller sculptures, paintings, and textiles sold, too, with a portion of the proceeds going to the organization. He rocked on his heels. Play nice, Freddie. Play nice.
 
He made it a point to compliment A. C. Bilbrew. She chaired the Fine Arts Committee which would decide the monument. The tall woman wore a corsage that matched her hat. He shook her gloved hands. “Madame Bilbrew, your daughter is a most talented singer.” He placed his hand on his chest. “I am honored that you invited me to participate in your art festival.”
 
The woman smiled and nodded. Her hat bobbed. “Why, thank you, Fred. It’s all for a good cause.”
 
Still no word yet on whether or not he would receive the commission.
 
He distracted himself by watching the spring fashion show. The models formed an Easter parade down a red carpet. Floral arrangements of lilies, orchids, and daffodils lined the runway and were pinned to the bodices of both the models and women in the audience. The air filled with their fragrance. The gowns swished and their beads rattled. The models appeared to float down the runway rather than walk.
 
The emcee narrated, “Velma Steverson wears this cotton candy confection of melon chiffon. It comes with a jeweled jacket and a matching jeweled bodice in a floral design. This gown is available at Ruby’s French Shop.”
 
The audience oohed and leaned forward to examine the fabric. Fred grimaced. Women dress for women. They have to go out and spend money to impress other women. Women have been told, “Forget about love. Money is the most important thing.” I’m trying to tell them to save their souls. Love is still the basic thing.
 
Love.
 
Fred had just passed his thirty-first birthday a virgin. Perhaps if his Aunt Liza hadn’t burned his hands on the kitchen stove when she caught the boy masturbating, things would be different. Perhaps if his mother Mama Jennie had stayed in Chicago where there were plenty of Negros instead of following a soldier to Victorville, California where there were few, things would be different. White college administrators only admitted him to desegregate their campuses along with a Negro girl if he promised not to date the white ones. Perhaps if the handpicked Negro female students had expressed interest in him, things would be different. Perhaps.
 
Fred dreamed of marriage. He had carved two statues titled Wedded Bliss, showing an entwined couple. If only his sculptures of women came to life, like Galatea did for Pygmalion, he would find a wife.
 
Observing the models at the fashion show, Fred saw them as untouchable. They towered in their high heels and hairdos. He felt small, like that tiny, ductless man clinging to the giantess in his sculpture, or, smaller still, the man’s head sitting at the foot of an Amazon. Who could love a man with clay-covered hands and a clay-splattered bald head?
 
One model caught his eye because she stood out from other Negro models. She appeared white. Was she a Negro, white, or a Negro woman wearing white makeup? He could not decide. He found himself thinking of the line in that song the chairman’s daughter sang:
 
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?
Or just a cold and lonely lovely work of art?
 
Wrapped in a Botticelli cloud of chiffon, the model drifted down the red carpet and paused at the end. Her smile never changed. The emcee narrated, “Jessie Thompson wears a yellow chiffon gown with a bodice of dropped pearl loops and crystals. This gown is available at Ruby’s French Shop.”
 
As the model turned to walk up the runway, the hem of her gown swirled to rise and fall. She disappeared into the model area. Fred raised his eyebrows. She will always be a mystery to me.
 
The fashion show ended. Fred worked the crowd to make sales and connections. Hope this charm offensive works to get me the commission. A group of women in black cocktail dresses accented with orchid corsages confronted him. A woman who wore a turban of ribbons and flowers looked to her friends for approval before making her comment to him. “Fred, I noticed a pattern in your sculpture. You have these oversized women with undersized men.”
 
Fred regurgitated his well-oiled artist statement. “I believe this world would eventually become a woman’s world. The stature of man will shrink proportionately as women gain their full emancipation. Once man recognizes women’s great potential and their proper place in society, man will rise once again to the stature he at one time maintained.”
 
The women smiled and nodded at him and each other.
 
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the “white” model gazed at his Woman in Pain. She wore a black cocktail dress with pearls now, but her hair still rose in curls. He turned to the women around him, said with a slight bow, “Excuse me, ladies,” and left them. He whisked across the exhibit room, dodging guests and pedestaled sculptures, but he slowed as he approached the woman. No amount of makeup could hide the hint of sadness he saw in her face which echoed the worried look on his sculpture. She snapped out of her daydream and noticed him. “Oh, you’re the artist?”
 
He heard the just-off-the-plantation Southern accent in her voice. He lost his Chicago accent in California, but not his speed. “Yes, Fred Wilson.”
 
“Jessie Thompson. Pleasure to meet you.” She extended a white gloved hand.
 
He hesitated grasping it, fearing he may still have clay remnants somewhere on his hand. He allowed her to grip his hand, firm yet delicate.
 
She glanced at his bald head. He noticed her eyes looked up for a split moment. Embarrassed that he saw her looking at his scalp, she stared at the carving. “How much is this?”
 
Fred rubbed his hands. “That will be twenty-five dollars.”
 
She reached for her beaded purse. “I’ll pay five dollars down and five dollars a month until the price is paid.”
 
Fred marveled that the model could talk and make unprogrammed moves. All the robots do is walk down red carpets and smile. Now, one stood a living, breathing woman in front of him, a Galatea come to life. Only a sculpture separated him from Jessie. He knitted his brow and pointed. “Why do you like it?”
 
“It speaks to me.”
 
Everyone had praised his sculptures of oversized women with undersized men, but Jessie was the first to notice this small carving of a lone woman in pain. Perhaps if he gave her the statue, he could lessen her pain. He pushed the sculpture towards her. “If you really get the message, you can have it.”
 
Panic and confusion crossed her face. He could tell she thought he wanted to give her the sculpture in exchange for a date. Men hit on models all the time.
 
“Why are you giving this to me?”
 
He averted her glare. His shoulders shrugged to buy time. Think fast, Freddie. Think fast. He pressed his index finger on her forehead and dragged a line of smeared makeup along the bridge of her nose and across her red lips. He examined the makeup on his raised finger and whispered, “Behind all your powder and paint, I discern a spiritual soul.”
 
She stood there, dumbfounded, with a line down her face, as if she had a split personality.
 
Better beat a fast retreat, Freddie, before she throws Woman in Pain at you. That would be some real pain—getting hit up side your bald head by your own sculpture.
 
He turned and sprinted to the door. He greeted the guests entering the exhibit and buried himself in the crowd of women—his Amazon bodyguards—to dissuade Jessie from following. He tensed, waiting for a tap on his shoulder and a slap across his face.
 
Don’t look back, Freddie. Don’t look back.

TO BE CONTINUED
 

 

 

Author Notes The chief thing I accomplished in this chapter was to get out of the way and let my parents tell their own stories. For my father, I stitched together dialogue by using direct quotes from interviews. Yes, those were his thoughts at the time. I also took my mother's written account of her meeting my father (Chapter 2) and rewrote it to tell his story from his perspective. I had fun with this chapter. When you know your characters well enough, they could write their own story.

Yes, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Council of Negro Women unveiled a reproduction of the Mona Lisa while the chairwoman's daughter sang the Nat King Cole song.

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