A family DNA Memoir
Chapter One
So in that moment when I stare at the 1 mm star of skin backlit on the lightbox and know it for what it is, the tears already gathered in my eyes flow down my cheeks, unstoppable. The radiology doctor meets my eyes and I see that flinch, so slight to almost be nothing at all, my face mirrored in her eyes; my trembling lips, the shock, yes, but the unremitting sorrow. Ten years to the day. The exact day, October 17, 2011, and now here October 17, 2021, here we go again. My body turned against me.
The Prairie Years
Wichita, Kansas, 1970. There are a posse of girls playing in the backyard of the colonial styled home halfway down the block on Quentin street. It’s July, and the heat has already bleached the crabgrass (the only grass tough enough to survive) into needled spikes that hurt their bare feet. It’s one hundred and four degrees by nine-thirty in the morning, but the girls are used to the heat and want to play Little House on the Prairie. The leader of the troop is hooked on verisimilitude so a corner of the family’s garage has been sectioned off with wooden screens to make a prairie home. An old drop down wooden ironing board is used as the table. A plastic sled lined with a blanket and pillow is the bed. Boxes and crates make up the shelves. The sled with the rope tied around the waist can be used as a wagon to carry goods, a realistic child’s rifle forgotten by an older brother is used to hunt for food. The mulberry bushes across the street have ripened and the girls are heading out to pick a crop for their game. They wear calico skirts (long aprons tied around their middles), bonnets (the floppy seagrass plant sleeves florists use around plants are tied around their heads with strips of bright colored cloth), the girl who will be Ma that day armed with a toy rifle in case of sudden bear attacks. Pa is always off on mysterious trips to bring in extra money for the family. Mary has yet to become blind in our story, and Carrie is a large doll riding in the sled that’s being pulled across the street to the abandoned lot where not only are there four large fruit laden bushes, but also a reedy swamp at the bottom of a steep hill now scorched mud with last year’s broken milkweed reeds. The girls busily gather the ripe mulberries and put them in baskets, stuffing their mouths with the sweet fruit, staining their teeth and fingers purple. Then it’s time to hunt. The girl who pretends to be Ma cautions the girls to stay at the top of the hill while she goes down the hill to shoot pretend rabbits. The sun by now is directly above and sweat trickles into their eyes, down the hollows of their spines. She takes a shot and an imaginary rabbit flops dead. She picks up the imaginary rabbit and substitutes a stuffed rabbit she had stuffed under her apron. She holds it aloft. The girls cheer, then pile down the hill to pluck the silky milkweed seeds. Back across the street, the sled full of little inexpertly woven paper baskets filled with berries, the rabbit, and baby Carrie jostling across the brick street. Now it’s pretend nighttime and the family is gathered round a glass lantern filled with oil, the flame slightly smoking. Chores are done. The milkweed has been stuffed into a small pillow for the baby, the seam sewn shut. The berries have been mixed with the salt and flour playdough and formed into purple buns. Water has been gathered in two tin sand buckets from the well (an abandoned wishing well at the back of the house in a small forest of trees, with a quick stop at the hose for real water) so that dinner can be made.
Ma has taken the stuffed animal that vaguely resembles a rabbit with a zipper in its belly and gutted the dried grass that was stuffed in there before the adventure, then hung the limp carcass from the a hook. There is a pretend fire made up of gathered sticks with child size cast iron pot filled with berries pretending to boil. There are songs and stories told before bed. Then bedtime, the sled for two if simply sat in, and a couple of child-size lawn chairs unfolded also with blankets. The flame is blown out. Sleep lasts only minutes because it’s hot and the girls like the storytelling part of the game. The hunts, the survival, the Christmas’s, the winters, the Indians, the creek, ma’s faith, Laura’s spunkiness, Mary’s goodness. When evening became dark the girls scattered to their homes calling out goodbyes and see you tomorrows.
The girl who played Ma that day tucks the lantern in the corner where it won’t accidentally be knocked over. She gathers the rabbit, burrows her nose between its ears and smells the sweet grass, the sawdust stuffed in its head and legs. She pulls out two little rabbit babies from her pockets and unzips the tummy. “Here’s your babies,” she whispers, though there’s no one there to hear. She wasn’t sure why the limpest, palest, least interesting stuffed animal of hers is her favorite. The metal zipper often scratches her. The fabric was worn down to the nub. The head hung awkwardly, the babies shaped more like dog bones. The smell of it. The feel of it tucked under her chin when she sleeps. Or in fever dreams. Nightmares. When darkness pressed the sheets and monsters flicked their tails. When the wind brushed the branches of the trees against her windows and sparked shadows on the walls. Crying out loud. Restless legs. Mother massaging alcohol into the muscles. “It’ll pass,” she whispers. “It’ll pass.”
Wichita, June 11, 1962. I was a reluctant joiner to the human race, an infant who came feet first with her right arm paralyzed over her head. My mom was put under for the last part, forceps used to pull me into the light. The hospital photo of me shows dark eyes under a furrowed brow, a Winston Churchill with a mop of black hair but no cigar. There were worries I would need surgery to bring my arm down, talk of permanent damage, but the arm came down on it’s own. I often ponder what effect that might have had on my health, the crooked arm pushed hard against the uterus torqueing my body in one direction as I grew.
I was the third child, a daughter after two sons. My oldest brother was a healthy child, but my second brother was born with a hole in his heart. It meant yearly trips to the Children’s Hospital in Chicago until he was fourteen, the hole closing as he grew older. Otherwise, my brothers were healthy and rarely sick. Because of a previous breast infection with my brother my mother was not allowed to breastfeed me. Whatever protection she could have given me was put in the hands of the Nestle’ company.
I managed to make it to six months before I was brought into the hospital with bacterial pneumonia spending Christmas in an oxygen tent. The hospital Santa Claus made his rounds and left me a stuffed animal. A rabbit with a zipper across its belly, the toy almost as big as me. Three months later I was back again in the hospital with bacterial pneumonia. Third Child Syndrome meant both baby book entries and pictures are rare, but those that I have show a happy baby with chubby cheeks and a wide smile. In one picture I’m wearing paper bunny ears my three year old brother colored and glued into a headband. The ears are more mouse-shaped than floppy bunny, and the picture is blurred, but I’m a happily seated buddha smiling broadly at the unseen person making faces at me.
Wichita, 1970 The sky makes a person feel small. The horizon is a curved bowl aflame. Listen to the wheat. Syncopated sometimes. A whale’s mating call only an octave higher. The shadow of clouds play across the acres. And the dust. If it is spun from the stars. From the pyramids. The boots of MacArthur. You suddenly believe. We are nothing in a universe slowly swallowing itself. The snake tumbling like a hoop across the earth. Take a breath and scorch your throat. Close your eyes. Taste the grit on your teeth. Lean in. The wind will hold you.
Three manmade lakes cut into the prairie like a god’s puddles. Stocked with wide-mouthed bass. The lake home sits surrounded by prairie in all directions except to the north where the nicest of the three lakes sits. A canoe bobs gently against a dock. There’s a large hand bell and bucket at the end of the it. The girls are ten and best friends. The grandparents of one of the girls own the land, the lakes, a herd of cattle, and few fields of wheat. He was mayor of the city for two terms. They are old money rich. He’s an avid fisherman and hunter, a lover of poetry, an educated man. She wears her hair in a rolled chignon and is a Somebody among the hoi polloi, a member of the exclusive Wichita Country Club. The grandmother has a soft top convertible the girls ride in when she takes them to the club to swim. The girl is an acceptable best friend for her granddaughter, the father a famous Midwest poet, a professor, the director of one of the finest MFA programs in the country. He is a Somebody.
The girls are on their way down to the canoe, fishing poles slung over their shoulders. It’s early evening, the sun just below the tree line. The wind has paused. The girls climb into the canoe and cast off. She sits in the stern and together they steer the canoe to where the willows cast their branches into the water. The large bass like to hide in the shade. She’s a great caster. She knows how side cast to land the lure on the water and not tangled in the branches. She knows how to draw the lure through the water. She watches for the hit. A bass suddenly leaps in the air and the girls draw in their lines and cast in the direction of the widening circles. Insects skim across the surface. The girl turns her attention back to the willows. The grandpa said the biggest bass, at least ten pounds, lives under the willows. He’s only caught him once. “He’s a willy fellow. Not easily fooled. Throw your line just there.” They haul in two and three pounders, stringing them to the side of the canoe. The sunset is a spectacular show of orange cupped in violet and the gathering dusk. The girls draw in their lines and paddle back to the dock. The grandpa is there ready to gut and fillet their catch. He fills a bucket with the fish guts, then picks up the bell and rings it. The girls watch as dozens of fish swarm to the sound. He splashes the guts into the water and it froths with the bass devouring their own.
The grandpa takes the girls to the other fishable lake and this time they go out on a flat-bottomed metal boat. The sun quickly turns the metal so hot the girls know not to touch the sides. The grandpa rows the boat to a patch of reeds and baits the girls hooks with nightcrawlers. “Just there,” he points. “Stay just in front of the reeds otherwise you’ll snag and I’ll have to cut you loose.” She’s proud that with just a few casts she can feel how the line flies through the air and when to pull back so it floats right in front of the reeds. Her best friend struggles with casting. She casts straight into the water over and over, her grandpa criticizing her every time. There are tears in her best friend’s eyes. She feels sympathy but also a secret pride. She’s not as pretty as her best friend. She doesn’t have an unusual name like her friend’s. She’s tanned dark as a chestnut, her straight black hair brushing her shoulders. Her friend’s hair is streaked with blond from the sun. Her upturned nose is lightly freckled. Her eyes are light green, and her body is already curvy. The grandpa quotes poetry as they wait for the fish to bite. He loves her father’s poetry and quotes passages to her. She says how much she loves Emily Dickinson.
After Emily Dickinson
If Fear would kindly stop for breath
His open eyes would see
That power rides upon the seas
Of Immortality
That happiness is clouded by
The fear of Fear itself
To hide in lives of gloominess
Upon a cluttered shelf
That life is placed in human hands
To battle and to die
When fear of loneliness prevails
In aging battered lives
No one sees Eternity
Raise her armored sword
No one sees Mortality
Then she becomes no more.
(Eng.Lit. class assignment 1978)
His face brightens. He pulls a book of poetry from his pocket and hands it to her to read out loud. This too she knows how to do. She writes poetry on scraps of paper or in her diary with its little gold lock.
Seagulls
Proud and strong the rise
O’er the sea,
Their great wings flapping.
Proud and strong they dive,
Hoping for a fish to eat.
Their bodies curve gracefully.
Their wings full of strength
Their heads held high above
To let people know they’re king.
Proud and strong they die
(shattering)
To be lost with the gentle sea.
Written for Father’s Day 1970
Copied by David Cutler
(I didn’t know how to lay out at poem and asked my older brother.)
She’s also heard her father recite. Taken down his books from the shelves in the living room and caressed the covers, read the words without understanding their meaning. She especially loved the book dedicated to her. Sun City, by Bruce Cutler.
The grandpa hands her a dog-eared paperback of the Collection of Robert Frost. She’s terrified. Exhilarated. The grandpa closes his eyes. Her best friend glares at her. She opens her mouth and the words flow like honey.
Jealously really is a green-eyed monster.
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