Blurring the Boundaries: Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction

Marcia Aldrich

7 Marcia Aldrich The Structure of Trouble Some think of trouble as difficulty, as something to be overcome. Examples: I’m having some trouble untying this knot. I’m experiencing some trouble getting into my kayak. I’m having some trouble getting my horse to move forward. The assumption is that a remedy is available: the knot can be untied, you can be assisted into the kayak, the horse can be moved forward from its stopped position. as the negative consequence of unwise or forbidden behavior. Examples: Pregnancy as the consequence of unprotected sex; a traffic ticket as the consequence of speeding. Personal Example: In eighth grade, my science teacher, Mr. Samuels, warned me to stop pumping my leg. I had trouble (as in difficulty) keeping still in my seat for the whole period and I jiggled my leg aggressively, according to Mr. Samuels, scissor kicking, he called it. He warned me that if I didn’t stop, there would be negative consequences. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Mr. Samuels took down the wood paddle hanging on the wall near the blackboard and paddled me in front of the class. 8 marcia aldrich as when someone or something behaves in such a consistently troubling manner that she becomes synonymous with the word trouble. Examples: My friend Martha has a puppy who so regularly misbehaves that instead of calling the puppy by her name, Lousie, Martha says, “Here comes Trouble.” Or a kitten named Trouble because he was repeatedly found caught in the toilet bowl. as a specific event of a certain duration that causes distress, that disturbs the heretofore tranquil waters of our life. Examples: bad news (that can be gotten over), a fight (that will be resolved), a storm (that will pass through). Question: But what if trouble is something larger than a fight or a storm or a piece of bad news? What if it’s a depth we plumb? What if it isn’t an event but something that lives in the body and, like the blues, it comes upon us, it comes over us and we don’t know when or if it will pass? Women may get the blues; Men are more likely to get a bullet Through the temple.1 How Trouble Feels It feels like a headache. Even though I don’t get headaches, that’s what I say when it’s too hard to describe what I feel like when trouble comes, when I’m heartsick and want to lie down, when I can’t stand up to the day before me. A headache is an acceptable reason to lie 1. Barbara Ehrenreich, “Did Feminism Make Women Miserable?” Salon.com, October 15, 2009. the structure of trouble 9 down in the middle of the day, or so it seems in my experience. Who says, I can’t stand up anymore to her boss, her teacher, her paramour? No one who wants to keep her job. Complicated excuses or explanations that require interpretation don’t cut it in the workaday world. What You Can’t Say You can’t say: It’s a blue afternoon suddenly and I’ve got to lie down. You can’t say: For some reason I can’t pinpoint, I’m remembering something that happened to one of my best friends in ninth grade who rode horses with me. How one night that year, horses at the stable were left out in the pasture when they shouldn’t have been, despite tornado warnings. How in the storm the horses broke out of the fenced pasture and ran as a group onto the highway where because of the storm and the dark drivers couldn’t see. Some of them were hit and killed and my friend’s horse was among them. Question: I don’t know why I am sometimes visited by this memory. Does the memory make me low or does my state of lowness trigger the memory? Which comes first? I never picture their deaths—just the running and the blood draining from their brains, and then my friend getting smaller and smaller, shrinking into a wizened old woman, shrinking into someone I could hardly recognize from the girl I once knew. WARNING: It will not go well for you if you say anything like this. People will think you are unbalanced and given to visitations. The untroubled...