The Assemblagist

Inter­est­ing (I hope) change of pace — a per­sonal essay pub­lished ear­lier this summer.

as pub­lished:

Valerie MacE­wan lives in east­ern North Car­olina with her hus­band, a hoard of uncanny dogs, var­i­ous grand­sons, neigh­bor folks, and yard birds. She is the edi­tor and pub­lisher of The Dead Mule School of South­ern Lit­er­a­ture [www​.dead​mule​.com]. Her assem­blage art is cur­rently on dis­play at the Beau­fort County Arts Coun­cil and can be found online at The Assem­blag­ist [www​.assem​blag​ist​.org].

And yet so brief, a true “story” of Mom, whose memo­r­ial ser­vice was held at the river house on May 23 in Bayview, NC. She was 92 years old.

Liv­ing with Ruth

I hear a noise, stop typ­ing, and look up from my key­board. My mother lurches into view as she lunges toward the din­ing room table. She uses fur­ni­ture to steady her­self, the four-​pronged alu­minum cane stands in mute tes­ti­mony to her dis­dain for any doctor’s advice. My com­puter mon­i­tor shiv­ers as the chair she grabs slaps into the side­board. The shak­ing cup­board releases a stack of mag­a­zines from their pre­car­i­ous perch atop my laser printer. A pile of papers slide to the floor. I briefly close my eyes, find my cen­ter, recover, and then smile up at her. “What’s up?” I ask.

“I was raised on poetry.” She attempts to maneu­ver her­self between the din­ing room table and the wall. A lith­o­graph of Cincinnati’s Foun­tain Square slides off its nail and lands with a gen­tle thud on the car­peted floor. “Let me tell you some­thing I just remembered… ”

“Under a toad­stool,
Crept a wee Elf,
Out of the rain,
To shel­ter himself.”

“Nice,” I say and pick up a few pieces of paper, hop­ing the move­ment will remind her that I am work­ing. I pre­tend to read.

“No. No… I’m not through. I’ll fin­ish. There’s more…
Under the toad­stool,
Sound asleep,
Sat a big Dor­mouse,
All in a heap…”

She waivers a bit before con­tin­u­ing, “I’m shrink­ing, you know. Five feet, one inch. Think. Just think. If your father were still alive, he’s be over a foot taller than me now. He was a tall man, that Bob. He never shrank at all. Stayed over six foot four until he died… I have so many more poems. I often won­der why I remem­ber a par­tic­u­lar verse at a par­tic­u­lar time. Your father would know, he would tell me just why I am think­ing what I am think­ing. He was good at that… he always knew.
‘Where is my toad­stool?’
Loud he lamented.
And that’s how umbrel­las,
First were invented.’”

She’s on a roll now. “I think it’s going to rain later this after­noon. I’ll lower the patio umbrella in a lit­tle while. Have you eaten today? It’s almost lunch time… did you eat break­fast? What did you have? Did you eat yes­ter­day? I never see you eat.”

It is her stan­dard line of ques­tion­ing, always want­ing to know if I’ve eaten. Even if there is a crumb-​filled plate beside the key­board, she ques­tions me about food.

“I don’t want to bother you. I see you’re writ­ing, oh sorry, I mean blog­ging. I’ll just fix myself a sand­wich… I will leave you to your work.” She doesn’t mean a word of it, “I can take care of myself, you know. I’ve been doing so for almost a cen­tury now.
‘I wish I lived in a car­a­van,
With a horse to drive, like a ped­lar­man!
Where he comes from nobody knows,
Or where he goes to, but on he goes!’ “

“Do we have any turkey left, how about cheese? I’ll be out of your way in a minute. Maybe I’ll have some of that casse­role you made last night. That was really good, you know. And I found my book on Celtic knots. I thought I’d lost it. I enjoy alge­bra, you know. Knots are pure alge­bra. Your father used to come home from work, when I had you and John in the house with me all day long, just babies to talk to — and I’d say, ‘Talk to me in alge­bra.’ And he would. Or Latin. He loved Latin. Did I ever tell you my father grad­u­ated from Ohio North­ern Uni­ver­sity in 1899 with a degree in Latin and Greek? Did I? I’m sure I did. Well, I’ll leave you to your work.”

She turns and slowly wends her way back to the kitchen. A sec­tion of today’s news­pa­per slith­ers to the floor in her wake, lit­er­ary rose petals scat­ter­ing the floor.

Now that my mother’s out of my line of vision, I find myself star­ing at the pho­tographs on the wall beside me. Printed in black and white, brown tones of early 1900s sepia, Kodachrome fad­ing to green, the unabridged his­tory of a small fam­ily. She doesn’t say it, but I hear it any­way, You have your grandfather’s laugh­ing eyes. Gosh, I loved that man. And your hair, it curls just so, like my mother’s. She used to wash her hair with Fels Naptha soap, down in the base­ment, her head hung low in the sta­tion­ary tubs. My father put blu­ing on the cat’s tail, she was so proud of her tail, he said she deserved it. It was her plummage…

I’m always think­ing of con­ver­sa­tions with my mother. A human DVD. Fast for­ward, pause, con­tin­u­ous play. The pass-​through to the kitchen is my tele­vi­sion screen and I watch as her face becomes illu­mi­nated by the open refrig­er­a­tor door. She speaks to the may­on­naise jar she holds in her hand,
“Are you a Giant, great big man, or is your real name Smith?
Nurse says you’ve got a ham­mer that you hit bad chil­dren with.
I’m good to-​day, and so I’ve come to see if it is true,
That you can turn a red-​hot rod into a horse’s shoe…

Ah… we’re almost out of bread. There’s plenty of food in here, that’s for sure, but we’ll need bread and sugar soon. I think I’ll eat out on the porch.” She looks over her shoul­der at me. “Keep writ­ing, I won’t bother you. I have known you were to be a writer, ever since you were four years old and I put a pen­cil in your hand. You were already telling sto­ries and you needed to know how to write them down. Remem­ber that story, your first story, about the frog that fell in love with the butterfly?”

Lunch pre­pared, she passes through the din­ing room again. It’s dif­fi­cult for her to jug­gle her sand­wich plate, lighter, pack of cig­a­rettes, and glass of iced tea while open­ing the heavy slid­ing door to the patio. I rise to help but she waves me off and spills about half of the pack of cig­a­rettes onto the floor. She man­ages to hold onto the sand­wich and iced tea. Grasp­ing the door han­dle like a Pull­man porter, she wrenches the door open and half-​falls out onto the patio deck.

As she set­tles her­self in a green plas­tic chair next to a small table, three of her cats climb over the pri­vacy fence and sit at her feet, wait­ing for their turn in her lap. Thisbe the Elder, is first. Before eat­ing lunch, she will rock the cats, one by one. Through the screen door I can barely hear her whis­per­ing another poem…
“The Owl and the Pussy-​Cat went to sea
In a beau­ti­ful pea-​green boat,
They took some honey and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-​pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang on a small gui­tar,
‘O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beau­ti­ful Pussy you are,
You are!’
What a beau­ti­ful Pussy you are!’

“Oh kitty. You are the finest kitty, sweet Thisbe.” She puts Thisbe on the patio table and reaches for the next cat. “Oh Tru­man,” she says, “Where have you hid­den your money? Pearl, sit down, you’re next. Tru­man is telling me about the full moon. I know you’ve been to the Kitty Bars… I know where you all go when the moon is full. See what a mess you’ve made of your lives. And now you’re pregnant…”

I pour myself a glass of iced tea and join her on the patio.

“You are the kind­est per­son I’ve ever met,” she tells me. “I mean that.”

[orig­i­nally pub­lished in Car­rboro Free Press, June Fic­tion Issue 2009]

c