Stealing her Back

Dancing in Tennessee

How was he to know, when his father left themand his mother took him by the handto her clothes closet, screaming

because he did not understand how to behaveand because, alone and lost, she herselfdid not understand how to behave,that this was the room she led him to,

20B in the nursing home, where he satonce more in the dim light among her slippersand shoes, calling out to her, “Mama, Mama,”

though now she was right therein her bed, half-deaf, eyes wide openin her blindness, her teeth out,breathing rapidly through her mouth?

How could he have known when she whipped himas if she would never stop because his fatherloved someone else, it was the shock

of this final unbelievable lovelessnessshe was preparing him for? All gone, her yearsafterward with the new man, and the houseand farm she helped build to replace

the hopes that she once had. Goneto ruin, the house and the farm,but never mind. And never mind

her lifelong anger, and all her failuresof the heart: this was not his mother.Lying on her stroke side, her nosea bony thing between her eyes that blinked

and blinked so he could see behind themto her fear; she was a creaturewhose body had failed, and he had no way

to reach except through her favorite songhe sang as a boy to lift the grief from her face,and began to sing now, “The Tennessee Waltz,”understanding at last that its tale of love stolen

and denied was the pure inescapablestory of her life, his father the stolensweetheart she never forgave

or forgot. It didn’t matter that she could notsee him beside her there or, struggling for air,she was unable to eat or drinkor sing. He took her good hand in his

and rocked her and sang for them both,his mother discovering once more in the tipsof her fingers what touch was like,

and he discovering too, while he sang onand on, stealing her back from this momentin the small, dim room where she lay dying,and they danced and danced.

Why I Carried My Mother’s Ashes

Because her mother told her in the Ozarks,don’t come running back.Because it was too far to run back.

Because, when my father left herin the projects of Springfield, Vermont,

up all night sewing with threekids upstairs, she went back anywayin her mind. Because I looked up at her

bent over the Singer’s tiny lightthat hurt my eyes and left a scar

on everything I saw—the scar of herrejection and hurt. Because I missed herwhile she was right there beside me

disappearing into her work, then and in allthe years afterward, making a life

with my stepfather out of exhaustionand self-denial and unrequitedlonging. Because late on lonely nights

she phoned to hear the voices of her sistersand brothers talking about nothing at all,

which was for her the dearest talk.Because the wings of the planelifted me high above the rain clouds

of New England as I carried the ashes backto the rolling fields and farmhouses and hot sun

of the country where she was born.Because in the cooling twilight my oldwidowed Aunt Dot waited for me

among family photographs in her smallapartment, and I lay right down on the floor

in the pump-up mattress by the fan. Because, whenI woke, I discovered her just as she had always been,never mind the bad circulation

in her legs, up early bringing back her deadhusband and sister and brother in stories

where they lived with her childrenand grandchildren while the toast popped upand the ham and eggs fried.

Because as we arrived at the gravesof my grandmother and grandfather, my uncles

and their wives waited, too, Truman on a canesmiling beside his Cadillac with his sorrowful...