Three Poems
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Shame
Today I was thinking about shame and how much it is a part of
everything
we do, the way I was ashamed at 10 to say to my cousin
That my mother asked me to buy toilet paper, as though my
grown-up
Male cousin didn't use toilet paper and wasn't stuck with all
those
Messy bodily functions we have to plan our lives around, the
way public
bathrooms and our need for them reminds us of our humanity,
a cosmic
Joke on us, so we won't forget how rooted we are to the earth
and not the
ethereal beings the nuns wanted us to be.
Today I was thinking about shame and I see Dennis, thin and
frail and
naked, the skin stretched tight over his big bones, not an ounce
of fat
To cover him, the skin blue and translucent as he crawls from the
bedroom
on his helpless legs to the bathroom. How ashamed he is, as
though this
Illness were a failure of his own manhood and he to blame, how
he pounds [End Page 88]
his fists on the floor in frustration, how he scuttles into the
bathroom and
Closes the door but not before I see the dark well of sorrow in
his eyes.
Today when I am thinking about shame, I wish it were only toilet
paper
Or a red splotch on my dress or my inability to learn the Periodic
Table
In Chemistry that made me feel it, instead of my convoluted
feelings
About my husband's illness, how nothing in our lives is all one
thing
Or another, not love, not grief, not anger, but always mixed
with its
Opposite emotion, so when I see Dennis crawling along the
floor,
I am struck with the axe of grief, a terrible pity that can do
no good,
but mixed in with it, the shame of my own impatience when
he can't
remember something I told him two minutes ago or when he
struggles for
twenty minutes to open a package and won't accept help or
when he
insists he can walk down the stairs and falls, the corrosive shame
of my
quick annoyance, the shame of my lack of patience, the shame of
feeling
that his illness is a deep and muddy river in which we both will
drown. [End Page 89]
The Secret I Would Tell
The secret I would tell if I could, the life
Hidden behind the black door in my mind
That I keep sealed shut. You know how that is,
The things you cannot bear to know about yourself?
How talking to you on the phone last night, I feel
The sharp hook of guilt for having left you behind,
Only our neighbor to check on you, and the cat
To keep you company. You struggle now
To complete the smallest task. Picking up a knife
Becomes an action complicated in the thought
It takes for you to open up your hand and reach
Out and close your fingers around the handle.
Behind my mind's black door is my fear
Barking like a pit bull. It is not his death
that frightens me, I tell my friend, "but his life,
as his body becomes more immobile with each day,
And what if, when he is rigid and corpse-like,
His mind still functions? You'll have to be his rock,"
My friend says, but I feel hollow and delicate
as the shell left behind when my father sucked the egg out.
Your voice in my ear sounds reedy and frightened. I force
A sureness into my own voice when I speak to you now,
Knowing you need my certainty to hold you up. [End Page 90]
How to Turn a Phone Call into a Disaster
Sunday morning. Dennis has gone to church;
I, as usual, when I don't have a workshop or a reading,
Am sitting on the sofa in my nightgown and robe.
I decide to call my son, and first my daughter-in-law
Answers; she sounds unpleasantly surprised that I called.
Well, she says, I'm just going out. Here's John, and then,
My son's voice. I ask how the children are, how Caroline
Is managing with her broken arm, and the front door bell rings.
Oh, who's that? I say, annoyed but moving to the front door
With the phone in my hand. My husband's friend is there,
Saying Get the walker. Dennis is having trouble.
I get flustered, as I always do in a crisis. I'll call you back,
I say, my voice shaking. I rush off to get the walker
With its little wheels, but I can't go outside. I'm still
In my soft slippers and it's raining so I watch as Al
And his wife help Dennis up the walk, one on each arm,
Dennis embarrassed and struggling, each step only achieved
After immense effort. Panic fills my chest like hundreds
Of mosquitoes. In the hall, the carpet catches in Dennis's feet,
And I shout stop, stop, you have to lift your feet, as though
He can help having his feet stuck to the floor. His body leans
Toward the walker as it slides away from him, his torso
Parallel with the floor. I lean over to pull his feet forward;
Only later do I realize that my fat thighs must have been visible
When I bent down. I get a chair for him; thank Al and his wife,
get Dennis a glass of water and his pills, my hands distraught
So I know I could never be a nurse or a doctor and I think
How terrible I am at this, and what a bad caretaker I'll make
What will I do? How will I manage? I leave Dennis
Sitting in a chair in the living room waiting for his medicine [End Page 91]
To work, and I go into the den to call John back. Before I get past,
Hello, I hear Dennis calling me, his voice tremulous. Wait, John,
I have to see what he wants, and with the phone in my hand,
I run out to the living room where Dennis goes through an elaborate
And slow explanation of how he wants me to ask John whether he uses
An electric razor and does it work and what kind does he use.
His friend told him that he uses a Norelco. What does John think?
It takes him ten minutes to say all this, as my mother-in-law
Used to say to make a long story short, and she'd go on for two hours
So when he keeps on explaining what I already understand, nervous
Laughter starts to bubble up into my chest. I rush back into the other room
And explain to John about the razor, and suddenly, I am sobbing and can't
Stop. I only cried like this, without restraint, maybe 4 times in my life,
But I can't stop and I can't get words out while my son is saying,
Mom, what's the matter? What's the matter? When I can speak again,
I say, John, you needed this phone call like you needed a hole
In your head! I've added one more worry to this son of mine who takes
Responsibility on his shoulders like an old man, though he is only34,
And I have added one more burden on this rainy Sunday morning.
I try to make small talk, ask about his job, the children, the new house. [End Page 92]
I can feel my composure crumbling, my voice starting to break apart again.
I say goodbye though I know he can tell I am choking on my own tears.
I think I could make a million dollars teaching people how to ruin
A person's day with a phone call.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan has published seven books of poetry, including Where I Come From (Guernica Editions, 1995) and Things My Mother Told Me (Guernica Editions, 1999), and is co-editor with her daughter Jennifer of three anthologies published by Penguin/Putnam: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America. She is the editor of The Paterson Literary Review.
