Forty-Fifth Paradox Writing

We waited for the phone to ring.

They waited him to fly down,

then out, then up, then upside down.

I could say his hair caught my eye,

you could say I needed a distraction.

Across a few walls, my mom fought to breathe

Across a few latitudes, he fought gravity.

He won a gold medal in a few minutes

Mom opened her eyes in a few days.

Death still hasn’t learned his lesson.

This is the second time this year,

he’s tried to fight me.

Sometimes he comes armed with a scythe

sometimes with a breathing machine,

and feeding tubes,

but I know I scared him away;

I know he’s a coward.

He never allows his opponent to live long

enough to defeat him.

I would drive as far as my gas tank would take me,

and then I would run the rest of the way,

until I reached the shores of Victoria.

I would gather each plant, each flower,

each piece of the Old World,

each rock, each government building,

each lamp, each iron-wrought lamp,

each cup of tea, each cube of sugar,

each drop of cream, each foreign accent,

each wink, each photo, each sigh,

every bewildered stare,

and gather them up in a bag,

just to see her smile again.

“I’m sorry Mr. Death, but Penny Jacobs isn’t in that room anymore.” Her eyes, brimming with innocence, stared back at his empty ones.

“Then who is?” Mr. Death sighed, smoothing his pale hair back. He could feel in his hands where this headed.

The nurse glanced at the open binder on her desk. “Pam Jacobs.  Completely different person Penny’s family says.”

Mr. Death, or Al, as he preferred to be called, rubbed his face wearily. (Angel O. Death tended to give people the wrong impression.) “You’re absolutely sure?”

The nurse twirled a blonde curl in her hand. “Absolutely.”

“Alright.” She half expected him to sigh in defeat, but he almost looked relieved. “You said there was somebody I should see in room 50?”

She flipped through her notebook, sliding her finger down to the appropriate name. “Yep, that’s the one.”

“Thank you.” As Al left, the nurse swore she saw his shadow linger longer than the others.

Waiting until Angel O. Death vanished around the corner, the nurse headed to “Pam” Jacobs room. The nurse sat in the chair next to the hospital bed and whispered “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but your husband was right.’

Though she’s not my husband, nor even my lover,

she’s an heir to a special part of my heart.

I know she’s alive,

but the distance that separates us is an ocean,

and it takes far too long to sail home.

My suitors are not but worries, anxieties, fears

that visit me every morning and every evening.

I know the moment she comes home they’ll flee

like dust in the four winds.

I fear she faces many trials and monsters harm in women’s clothing,

and that she will come home one day,

but I want her home today.

Time holds my mother prisoner.

The unknown sits, an owl, on his shoulder.

A a gold pocket watch ticks slowly,

slowly,

slowly, on in his gnarled hand.

I wonder if she even notices the clown

on the other side.

He dances and tells jokes,

but none of us hear the punchline.

The ticking watch drowns him out.

“Hey Dad?” She bobbed on her heels, the curls in her pigtails bouncing. Her small pink hands grasped onto the corner of his armchair as she leaned towards him.

“Yes Princess? He glanced down through the narrow passage between the newspaper and his face.

“Would you pray for me?”

The newspaper sank a little, crackling slightly as it wrinkled in his hands. “What’s wrong?”

Princess beamed, her curls bouncing a second time. “Oh, nothing’s wrong Daddy.”

“Oh?”

“Mommy says that when two or more people pray, God’s with ‘em.”

“Mm-hm.” One of his eyebrows stretched to the ceiling knowingly. “And what are you praying for?”

“A pony.”

“A pony? But Princess….”

“Would you please pray for me? Pretty please?”

“Of course. But don’t get mad at me if God says to wait.”

My ancestors journeyed over an ocean,

to what they saw as a new world,

but I think they became new,

like new pronunciation,

new religion,

a new neighborhood,

a new language,

A new identity.

___________

My mother and her sisters

wouldn’t have known that their distant

cousins wore stars of David

on their sleeves,

a few years before my mother’s birth,

or that fifth-cousins-three times-removed

wanted a neighborhood of their own,

without imposing walls or armored tanks on the other side.

__________

She wouldn’t have known that her relatives wanted their own national identity.

_________

She wouldn’t have known,

if someone had not said:

“You’re Jacob’s,

Are you Jewish?”

She couldn’t have come sooner,

in better condition,

brand new,

mint even.

Like cotton, the nurses wash her once

to see if she shrinks.

We’ll try her on,

to see if she fits.

What would your mother say, standing there with her face in her hands? What could she say, that you’d actually hear through the wood and the padding? What could you see in her eyes past the tears? What would she do with those stars and stripes they’re handing her on a cloth, much too small to cover your empty bed? What would she say to the others standing around her, trying to comfort her with their hands, their eyes, their mouths?

She would say she’s proud of me.