Nanowrimo - 8

After service ends I withstand a line of people wanting to hug and chat with their minister as they make their way out the door toward coffee and doughnuts. I learned early on ways of embracing people so as to not end up in full-frontal bear hug. I’ve never been a big fan of such expectant affection where they get to glean some sort of closeness and I must feast my nose on the fragrant symphony of those who showered, who didn’t, who ate what for breakfast and who has squirted perfume on themselves.

Once the line dwindles to an end, after about 30 minutes (people will wait for 30 minutes just to say ‘hello’?) I rush off first thing to cleanse my hands. This old habit of mine was hard learned after observing many a small pox, flu and measles epidemic. And still I do it to prevent transmission, especially after having to hug so many bodies.

Comparing those masses, stinking from work and lack of bathing to these crowds of the religiously cleanly I’m astonished at how long we lived not knowing about the value of rinsing the world’s grist from oneself. Out of the soap dispenser comes a stream of pearly, hot pink fluid. And this is supposed to clean me? I play with the bright liquid between my fingers, watching its unnatural coloring contrast my skin, before washing it away.

An usher brings the weekly headcount into my office while I sit to collect myself. 157, up from last week but we’ll see what happens as the weather gets warmer.

“Didn’t know you could play piano!” He remarks.

“I’ve been playing since, well it feels like forever. I’ve always enjoyed playing.”

“Yer pretty good! I heard Vicky saying you should play with the choir.” The pause at the end of his sentence is expectant.

“No, George, I have my hands quite full in caring for this community already. And really, I have nothing to prove there, anymore. My performing days are over. Now it’s just something that I know how to do.” I turn to look at him, fumbling with his hat in the doorway and shifting from foot to foot. He’s in his early 50’s, a salty haired fellow slipping from life as an awkward, nerdish man with small, moist hands into a lonely old age. There are more than a few of these characters in this community and each in turn has ponied up to get extra attention from their minister. I can tell he’s on the edge of taking his turn at asking me out to the diner for coffee and so I add “my schedule is really quite full” and shoot him a stern look over the top of my spectacles.

“Right! Right. Well it was just a thought. I – I’ll be going now.” Backing away he makes his awkward retreat. Jerk.

George must be the seventh one to attempt to woo the minister. I knew this would happen as I arrived here. Women’s roles have advanced quite a great deal in my observation, but the expectation of their roles as females of the species has not. They see my ringless finger as a vacuum that must be filled. And their lonely homes with wives dead or divorced and gone does look like just the fit. No matter the age the assumption persists of what I must surely desire to have in my life simply based upon the parts nature equipped me with. Well, nature has equipped me with lots of things that no one quite expected.

As I make my rounds on the weekdays of the old ones I gather the real acceptance that any human craves.

“You never got married, did you girl?” asks Helen. Her eyes, having seen much in her 89 years, have clouded over. But her expressions are just as sharp and clearly penetrating. She sits propped up in a wheelchair so padded that it could be a recliner with big wheels. Her life started on a farm filled with chickens, cows, vegetables and fruit trees. The corn grown was measured in square acres, not miles. She raises a withered hand to touch mine, an obvious gesture meant to theatrically hunt for a ring.

“No ma’am, I never did.”

“Good! It’s a waste of time! You’re smart to stay single! You can have your OWN life and call your OWN shots. No man thinkin’ he’s the big boss o’ you and thinkin’ he can push you around none. Yer money is yer money and your life is yer own! Smart! Couldn’t much get away with that in my day. Folks would talk, thinkin’ many be you weren’t normal or sumthin. Sayin maybe you were queer or somthin. But why does there have to be something wrong with a girl who just wants to enjoy her life? Answer me that!”

Her commentary forces me to chuckle. “I don’t know if it was such a conscious choice at the time. I just happened to get busy doing a bunch of other stuff.”

“Well it’s good you could. I got stuck marrying at 17. Who knows what they’re about at that age? Nowadays I could stay in school, go to college maybe. Back then you stopped learnin about the time you’re twelve and then your workin workin in the fields to keep things going. Not like now, not like now at all…”

The heartland Helen knew has long since been swallowed up by agribusiness. People, environmentalists and liberals and such, come in writing about how farms were self sustaining units before corn was king and beef was grown, raised and killed in filthy little cow cities full of feed lots. But costs are always there, hiding in history’s margins. Helen was the fifth of ten children, only six of whom made it out of infancy. Their purpose was to work, to be the blood running the engines of the farm. Personal identity, talent, exploration, all just not a part of the life equation.

“I’m gonna take my nap now miss Eleanor. Thank you for stopping by and thank you kindly for bringing that lovely lunch. You sure do raise some nice chickens. Not like that crap you get in the store now. Nope. Kill it yourself, do ya?”

“Yes ma’am. Kill them and dress them myself.”

“Well that’s just fine. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Make and kill your food like God intended, not some crap all wrapped in plastic sitting in some store. Well you take care now and thank you for stopping in.”

“It’s my pleasure to come by. I’m glad you enjoyed the food.”

“Now don’t forget to give the lord a kiss on the way out the door.”

“No ma’am, I won’t forget”

Next to the door hangs a faded print of Christ the King. Helen was raised Catholic and as much as she loves her Unitarian minister friend, her spiritual imprint was made by Rome’s thumbs. Her portrait of the kind, white skinned Jesus wearing wealthy robes like a French king is a bit smeared and faded around his face from the years of affection each person entering Helen’s home has been obligated to show. I kiss my fingers and touch the Lord’s cheek.

“So long, cousin.” I tell the picture as I exit. I love Helen. It’s only around these elderly shut-ins I start to feel right. I need to be around folks who understand what age does to your mind and soul. There’s a despair to having seen the world lurch ahead only to fall back into sad mistakes that only octogenarians understand.

Eileen likes to come in prattling on about some TV show or another sometimes. One of them is about vampires. “There’s this one guy vampire, he’s like real serious and really hot!”

So there’s something sexy about being a vampire? “It wouldn’t take too much commitment for you lot to have a similarly intimate relationship with your dinner, too.” I think as she shares the latest twists in a pretty screwy plot line.

Now that the fear of immediate death has been relegated to a small corner of nightmare land by antibiotics, hygiene, medicine and public sewage systems, people seem all to happy to remake the old boogey men into sex symbols. Such terror what used to ignite a mob to march now simply forms long lines around a theater. Although the mob was, in its own way, a form of entertainment, whether they were carrying off a king to his demise, burning a witch or lynching a black man. People blame violence and murder on the images the brain takes in from movies and TV. They have no idea how far these elements have gone to pacify the passions of the human herd.

Instead they commit suicide on the payment plan, slowly over stuffing themselves with foods whose chemical origins they cannot even begin to fathom. The sole advantage of this to a body like mine would be how very much longer I can go between feedings thanks to the excess of fats in their blood.

An image of that Jehovah’s Witness flashes back through my mind. Miss bacon & eggs. The thought makes my head burn a little and I have to take deep breaths.

What Helen doesn’t know is that I did attempt the marriage thing once, over a hundred years ago, in yet one more of many failed attempts to be normal. Zoltan had warned me about becoming involved with mortal men. “They never have a hope for maturing enough in one lifetime to understand the feelings of a woman properly. Especially a woman such as you! They must not be bothered with!” Oh but bother I did.

I really thought, though, that he was special. That he connected to me and loved me as I was. And perhaps he did, until the day when he did not. Ahhhh Gabriel where did you go? Fly back to heaven with all of the other angels? Perhaps it was never really possible for him to understand a heart like mine and it was simply selfish of me to try? I was only 50, what did I know? He grew jealous and suspicious of me in the end, puzzled that I didn’t age and possessed such strength. The man just wanted someone to take care of him. I’m not that girl. And all I have to show for it is two gold bands. Who was I kidding? Zoltan was right. I could never have entered into the kind of love I wished for. I wished, in the greed of youth, to enter into a love completely. Yet in concealing large parts of myself for fear of the popular misunderstanding, I managed to only guarantee that I could never be completely loved.

I wind the car down yet another gravel driveway. Parking by the door I reach into the insulated bag in my passenger seat and retrieve a warm chicken dinner. This one is for Jones.