The Cure for Anything

“Narrowing life because of the fears,
narrowing it between the dust motes,
narrowing the pink baby
between the green-limbed monsters,
& the drooling idiots,
& the ghosts of the Thalidomide infants,
narrowing hope,
always narrowing hope.
Mother sits on one shoulder hissing:
Life is dangerous.
Father sits on the other sighing:
Lucky you.
Grandmother, grandfather, big sister:
You’ll die if you leave us,
you’ll die if you ever leave us.

Sweetheart, baby sister,
you’ll die anyway
& so will I.
Even if you walk the wide greensward,
even if you
& your beautiful big belly
embrace the world of men & trees,
even if you moan with pleasure,
& smoke the sweet grass
& feast on strawberries in bed,
you’ll die anyway—
wide or narrow,
you’re going to die.

As long as you’re at it,
die wide.
Follow your belly to the green pasture.
Lie down in the sun’s dapple.
Life is not as dangerous
as mother said.
It is more dangerous,
more wide.”
– Erica Jong

This poem always makes me think of my baby sister. I know she lived wide. I think, in her own way, she died wide too.

Our mother constantly warned us of how dangerous life is. When I was in high school a close friend of my parents was kidnapped and murdered. This sent them into hyper-protective mode over my sister and I. (My older siblings were grown by then.) I can’t think of a single time I was allowed out in public alone after that. She still tells me not to go out after dark by myself. Yeah…right. Not very practical. In her mind, I live in a dangerous city and I should move back to my hometown. It’s not my home anymore. I don’t fit in there. I’m not so sure that I ever did. Someday I’ll write about where I grew up.

I went for a bike ride the other day, and as I veered off the main trail to a much less crowded one I could hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head saying, “They’re going to find your remains next spring under that overpass if you ride down there by yourself.” Sigh. I’ve learned to just not tell her things, and that’s sad. She’s right, though. Life can be dangerous. I’ve had some horrible things happen to me. However, she was wrong to think that the “boogie man” was some unknown hiding out there in the dark. No, all the violence, assault, and sexual harassment I’ve experienced has come from people I already knew. Nothing prepared me for that.

It’s been six months now since my sister died. I still forget that she’s really gone. I catch myself picking up the phone to call her. Over the holiday weekend I ran into Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things. I came around the corner of an aisle and the woman working there could’ve been my sister’s doppelgänger. It stopped me in my tracks. I’m sure the poor woman was wondering why I was staring at her. My sister had a very distinctive look, so I wouldn’t think too many people look like her. She dyed her hair black and usually wore it in dread locks. I used to tease her and tell her that she had chola eyebrows.

We would go places together and people wouldn’t believe we were sisters. In some ways we were polar opposites. But I think we were more alike than we realized. We both lived our own version of wide.