Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness

Quieted

Quieted "Ifthis path is incomprehensible, then why do you compose books combining natural science with the divine names?" He said, "For you and those like you among the philosophizers , to attract your human minds naturally. Perhaps this attraction will bring you to the knowledge ofthe Name?" THE ESSENTIAL KABBALAH Olivia and Isabel are always making drawings for Beverly and me. Sometimes Olivia writes "books," drawings with jumbles of letters around them-she can't spell or read yet. But she likes to draw pictures and tell me stories that seem to fly into her head as she turns the pages. They have little in the way ofnarrative order, but you can't fault them for unpredictablity and imagination. Sometimes, she makes cards for me and sings happy birthday any chance she gets, whether appropriate or not. Birthday songs and songs in general shouldn't be restricted to one's birthday, she seems to think. One day, she's at the kitchen table as I come in, and she quickly covers the paper she's been drawing on. "Daddy, don't look." "I'm not looking." "Daddy, don't look." "I told you. I'm not looking." "It's a surprise for you." A few minutes later, she hands me her card with a heartfelt "Happy Birthday." It is a surprise, more than she knows. On the front of the card is the figure ofa woman with her arms outstretched, no features, but a blank face, all yellow, and yellow hands, brown hair and a blueand -red-striped shirt. And on the inside ofthe card is the word NOLA surrounded by other letters that make little sense: WON, WOA, WOo I suppose the word could read "Nova," not "Nola," but I show it to Beverly, and she sees what I see, too, my sister's name surrounded by the incomprehensible. It seems the perfect birthday present from 329 330 Nola Olivia; coming as it does, not on my birthday. And yellow was Nola's favorite color, my mother tells me. Yellow is Olivia's favorite, too. I look at my children sometimes and I wonder what they've inherited from us, from me, from people they've never even known. What combinations ofletters will throw them off? What combinations will guide them? * * * My mother tells me she's working on a new novel. What's this one about? I want to know. "Mexico," she tells me. "My time in Mexico." She says she was always afraid ofthe material, but now that I've delved into it, she's been able to face it. I'm happy for her, ofcourse, and over the coming weeks and months, she tells me she's become obsessed with her book, just as I've become obsessed with mine, and here we are, writing about the same thing. At first, I feel proud ofmyselfin a way, that this action ofmine that I've felt so guilty about, uncovering my mother's past, my sister's past, bit by bit, has led my mother back into her life, has made her able to face the pain in it. But then, I come to realize that I've got it backward. My mother has uncovered the past for me, by granting me these documents . She's made me face pain and responsibility I didn't want to face. She's faced her own pain every day in the private/public realm of her stories. And me? I have started to reconcile who I am with who I was and who I want to be. For a while, I thought this was all about Nola, preserving her, bringing her back from the Valley ofEdnah. Now I see that this isn't about saving Nola. "He comes around in the end," I hear my mother say about the fictional me in her story. "Mack redeems himself" "Maybe," I say, less unconvinced. * * * My mother is still worried that I somehow see her as dishonest, which I don't. She's worried in particular about the lie she told about her fictional marriage to Elliot Chess. Tuesday) Sept. 3) I996 Dear Robin) ITS ABOUT2:00 a. m. andyou can tellfrom my typing. I must do this quickly and go to sleep . .. but have been thinking about Mexico) especially since I found another story) unrewritten) in absolute Ist draft, Nola 331 aboutElliot and the situation. I hadn't liked it andjust...