TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 121

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 15, 2000000007


Dearests,

	Lumen is my grand nephew, my mother's 
first great grandchild.  She is up in Seattle at 
the festivities of his first birthday.  People 
have come in from Utah, California, Illinois. 
She called me yesterday and told me that he is 
walking and he says, "Hi".  Good first word!  My 
first word was, "Light".  Meyshe and Feyna also 
started out with "Light".  The first word.  The 
first entrance into human society.  Much more 
important than a debutante ball.  "Hi!"  What 
does that say about him?  My mother said that she 
was holding him and he planted big sloppy kisses 
all over her mouth.  She wondered if he knew her 
with all the people around.  I told her he knew 
her well enough to love her.  It wasn't hard. 
The kid has good taste.  "Hi!"




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The Paper Doll Dream

	Dweller and I bought a house in the 
Spring of 1972.  We'd looked for quite a while 
for a house.  We'd been living on Chestnut Street 
in a rented house, a small two bedroom wooden 
bungalow with a glassed in front porch that 
belonged to Mr. Murphy Holmes.  When we came to 
look at the house, as listed in the newspaper, we 
were met by Murphy Holmes and a friend of his 
from across the street.  Evidently, Murphy had 
lived in this house when he was growing up, so it 
occupied a special spot in his heart.  The 
interview was as if we were from a different 
country.  His friend served as translator.

	"I hope you guys don't throw a lot of 
parties, 'cause this is a white neighborhood."

	We looked around us.  This was a very 
integrated neighborhood.  Murphy himself was an 
African American.  Wherever we looked were people 
of every polka dot and stripe.  Black, white, 
red, brown, yellow.  We couldn't figure out what 
he meant.

	"A WHAT neighborhood?"

	"A WHITE neighborhood.  WHITE."

	We stood there, confused.  His friend assisted.

	"He means, qui-et.  A QUIET neighborhood."

	"Oh!  No, we don't throw parties.  We're settled.  Nothing wild."

	He brought us into the house and showed 
us around, then out into the back yard.  There 
was a big brambly naked bush standing in the 
corner of the yard.  No plants were taken care 
of.  It was just an overgrown square of crumbly 
earth.  Dweller looked at the strange plant, like 
a klatch of frozen lightning.

	"What is that plant?" he asked.

	"Oh.  That's Surry."

	"Surry?"

	"That's Surry.  Surry.  You know, Surry."

	His friend decoded, "Cel-er-y.  He said it's celery."

	"Oh!  Celery!"

	We looked at each other, took ourselves 
aside and agreed we liked the house.  We would 
give him a check to clinch the deal.

	"We like the house and we'd like to rent 
it.  Can we write you a check for first and last 
month's rent?  Do you need a cleaning deposit?" 
No cleaning deposit was necessary, and that was 
good because the place was filthy.  Stunned 
cockroaches lay on their backs, embedded in  oven 
grease, their little antennae and legs kicking 
around in the air - the dinosaurs in the tar pits.

	He instructed us to write a check to 
"Murphy Holmes".  Every month as I wrote that 
check, I felt like I was writing a check to a 
conglomerate, "Murphy Homes".

	He wrote out a receipt on a book of forms 
he'd gotten from a stationery store.  It said, 
"ERF DIPSOL".  We finally figured that one out. 
It stood for, "Refundable Deposit."  Had it been 
twenty years later, we would have diagnosed him 
with dyslexia.

	That was in 1968.  Now it was 1972.  We'd 
been married three years and we were launching 
ourselves into the wonderful world of home 
ownership.

	We had trouble finding the right house. 
Dweller said he wanted a big wide street.  I 
preferred narrow twisty streets.  Dweller wanted 
a newer house.  I wanted an older one.  The 
realtor, Edna Carson, interviewed us about our 
hopes for a dream house.  It seemed that whatever 
the realtor brought up, we wanted opposite 
things.  But Edna Carson did what realtors do. 
She combed the listings, took on the internal 
scuttlebutt of the realty trade, and she showed 
us houses of every kind: new, old, wide streets, 
narrow streets, Berkeley, Oakland.  We went to 
each, and from each we came away disappointed, 
usually for different reasons.  Then Edna Carson 
phoned one day, saying, "I found your house!" 
She took us to a fairy tale home.  It had a large 
living room with beamed ceilings, an hexagonal 
dining room, a tiny kitchen with what Dweller 
observed to be, "Clown Vomit Linoleum," and three 
bedrooms off of a spiral staircase.  We both 
loved it.  After all, it was the stuff of fairy 
tales.  All the dreams you've had of what could 
come true but hadn't.  All the fantasies of where 
charmed lives put their heads down at night.

	We bought it, and moved in as soon as 
escrow closed.  Friends helped us move.  Friends 
helped us paint.  Friends helped us put away the 
booty from the boxes.  Then we were on our own. 
This was when my heart feared going forward and 
my mind met me coming and going.  I couldn't put 
it away or ignore it.  I contemplated our 
marriage for two weeks, sitting on the spiral 
staircase going to the magic rooms.  I sat there 
with my head in my hands, staring off into the 
house, the boxes still lying around as if waiting 
for further orders.  What will I do?  What will I 
do?  What will I do?  I wrote a song about the 
dilemma.

No Surprise

Every day goes by without a word from you.
And I am living like a boarder in my bedroom.
Every day is very nice, orange smog at noon.
And pieces of my fantasies, like glass, splinter the room.

Every time I call you, it seems the phone's gone dry.
And we are speaking of this life it seems we are planning.
Painting over paintings, even the errors very clean.
So much time and effort,
More than either of us means, more than either of us needs.

Somewhere boats are setting sail,
While we're waiting for a wave.
Lunatics like I would be are burning all their 
promises, their pocket books and clothes,
Standing naked for a while, while you and I and other fools
Can watch it on T.V.  Can watch it on T.V.

We'll try our luck together.
Yes, we'll do it right,
Planning rolling pastures for the attic.
And forever never bothered me, and I'd love you just the same.
But I thought we'd be a miracle, and things are seldom what they seem.
They are seldom what they seem.

Now I can't get up to save my life,
The house on fire.
And I am smoking all my lovers like a reefer.
Someone once admonished me, keep some secrets in your eyes,
And when the time comes to disappear, you won't need no disguise.
So life comes as no surprise.
Now it comes as no surprise.

	I sang the song endlessly, but wouldn't 
sing it for Dweller.  I functioned like an 
automaton for those weeks, robotically going 
through my paces while my mind and heart were in 
the stair well, where I returned every day while 
Dweller was at work.  What was I doing there? 
Why did this house depress me so much?  Why 
couldn't I shake it?  Was this the end of Dweller 
and Tobie?  Where would I go from there?  What 
did I want out of life?  What did I truly want?

	That's when I had the Paper Doll Dream.

	I was supposed to show up for work in a 
warehouse.  The entrance was in an alley.  The 
door was open, and light jutted out from within. 
I had to step over garbage cans as I entered. 
First thing, I came upon my mother.  She was 
standing behind a table like an examination table 
in a doctor's office.  At one end of the table 
was a roll of paper as wide as the table.  Most 
of the roll had been used.  It was getting down 
near the core.  My mother was standing there with 
a scissors.  And she was cutting out paper dolls 
from the roll.  They were all confused.  Some 
were upside down, limbs were missing, arms were 
too long, heads were cut off, little ones, large 
ones, holding hands.  While the dolls curled one 
way and wound up on the floor at my mother's 
feet, the excess curled in another direction and 
into a waste basket at the foot of the table. 
The waste basket was filled with paper scraps, 
and the long spastic roll of excess paper which 
rose up and cascaded over the lip of the garbage 
can, spilling out everywhere, flooding the floor, 
getting mixed up with the deformed paper dolls 
that were building a pile so high my mother 
couldn't move but to cut out more paper dolls. 
She was waist deep, trapped, at a standstill.

	I looked at her, and a rage swelled up in 
me, threw itself at the exit from my face.  I had 
to squelch it.  I was terrified of my anger 
towards my mother.  I said, "I don't want to get 
mad at you."  I turned quickly away from her and 
moved further into the warehouse.  Next, I came 
upon my sister.  She was standing behind another 
table exactly like my mother's, and she, too, had 
a roll of paper.  She, too, was armed with a 
scissors and was cutting out paper dolls.  But 
Dana's roll was just beginning, and the graceful 
arc of paper dolls that emerged from work with 
her scissors slipped gently to the floor.  The 
waist basket was being filled with the surplus, 
the negative space around the dolls, but it 
wasn't half full yet.  And Dana was only ankle 
deep in a string of dolls, holding hands, 
gathering at her feet.

	Suddenly a panic struck me.

	"I have to get out of here!" I shouted 
breathlessly, pushing past my sister and my 
mother who were expecting me to show up for work. 
I catapulted myself out the door, into the dark 
and woke up, jerked awake by the nightmare which 
had threatened to strangle me.

	It was immediately clear to me what it 
all meant.  My mother had spent her life, in a 
desperately sick marriage, cutting out 
meaningless paper dolls that were immobilizing 
her.  Her work may have started out orderly, one 
doll holding the next doll's hand who was holding 
the next dolls hand.  But over the years, they'd 
become less and less recognizable as pretty 
little dolls in a row.  They were crazy, 
distorted, amputated, chaotic.  She was  now 
drowning in it all.  My sister was just starting 
out, with her four year old, Ari, and a house 
they'd bought on Prince Street.  They had wedding 
rings, a house, a mortgage and a four year old. 
Here I was, supposedly showing up for work.  I 
would be given my own table with my own roll of 
paper and a nice working pair of scissors.  All 
you need to apply for the job is a husband and a 
house.  Then you get your table and your life 
which essentially you waste keeping busy. 
Keeping very busy.

	This gave me more to contemplate as I 
occupied the stairwell, banging my head on my 
future, trying not to wind up with a roll of 
paper dolls preventing my passage to anything 
more elevated than marking time while creating 
garbage.  I shuddered with every thought of that 
dream, which was actually the dream of every 
young girl of my era.  We just wanted to grow up 
and get married, be good wives to our husbands, 
and then have children, whom we raised until they 
didn't need us any more.  Then we went to Aruba, 
or took up flower arranging, played high quality 
bridge, or just slept in front of the television.

	Doesn't anyone want more than this?



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net