OCR Text |
Show Moon-23 Mother, Tve heard thatif you fail to love the First Man, you can't love another. What if I looked up David, and made him into the First? Could he erase the smear on my soul from James? But why would he want to see me? I imagine him darting off down dark streets, hissing "Go away!" like a feral cat terrified of a me, who should not have been born. I was born in April, the month of the Deep Water Moon, the natives said. I go back, you told me, all the way to a governor, senators, a judge-and Pochantas, for our ancestor John Rolf came back from England with their child. This last is certainly a myth, and clearly our family line has lost its vigor, but I like to imagine a strong woman in my blood, a better beginning to our story. THE LIGHT AT THE EDGES The early years: Stations like cathedrals, with great arched ceilings and row upon row of oak benches that looked like church pews. Enormous black engines with wheels thrust forward by intimidating, insistent rods. The sad whistle and the brakes like a scream of anguish. The steam billowed over us like the breath of God Himself. My mother would stand on the platform, her fist pressing into her ribs as if she, too, felt how the trains seemed to roar right inside you when they came into the station. Sometimes we traveled all the way to Aunt Alice's in Maryland. She was a pretty woman, a softer version of Ruth, with great round blue eyes and hair |