She Held Me in Her Eyes

I tossed and turned all night:

The baby is sleeping on his back in the garage, the garage door full open. The floor is concrete, fresh white and so clean you could spread out a Sunday lunchtime tablecloth on it. "Janice," I say, "call me if he cries, will you?" He is sleeping after all.


He flips over like a leaf, summer to autumn to winter to spring, never lingering on one season. I tuck the edges of the blue blanket under the carriage mattress, so the blanket lies smooth and tight, and with my tip of my saddle shoe, I slip up the brake. The carriage is driving on its own─one two three down the driveway. Four five─ a head as small as a doll’s takes wing toward Van Horne Avenue, soft white shoes disappear under black rubber wheels, fingers flattened like Thursday’s dough under my mother’s wood rolling pin. I open my mouth to scream, but my heart freezes over like the deepest lake in the coldest winter. I walk to where the head lies, to the hands lying flat and still on the pavement, the feet sitting side by side, and I turn the baby onto his back as he had been before the carriage decided to make a break for it─away from that house and the sad lady in it. I fix the head so it sits like a pumpkin on his body, fix the feet so the toes point out ever so slightly, and set the hands just beyond the line of the his wrists, curving each finger just a little. Then I take a deep breath of air as crisp as fresh sheets flying on the line, and I walk, one double-bowed shoe in front of the other, into the house.



His head lies tilted like a mournful question. I reset it neat and square. I smooth out each finger and tie the bows of the little shoes. Then I scream and scream and scream.

I can't recognize him when they carry him out. He looks like a boy doll with a proper boy's haircut and little boy bangs. "Where's the neck?" I ask because all I see is a pocket of extra skin where a neck should be, but I hold him close anyway.



I set the bowl on my head and cut my hair right up to the rim. I used to sit on the living room stool while my mother turned each strand of hair round and round, a bobby pin like Cupid's arrow through each curl. “Why, why?” she says, but the ice around my heart is so slippery, the answers can't stay upright; they just fall and slip away. I watch lines grow like weeds between her eyebrows, her hair lying all limp and helpless like cut grass, and I sit down right close beside her. “I will never cut my hair again or push a baby carriage into the street,” I say. After supper I walk straight into my room. I pick up the doll with the red striped dress that snaps and ties in the back, and I cut her hair short short. “Smokey, Smokey," I call in my morning corn syrup voice and dress my cat in Julian’s baby t-shirt, laying him all safe and harassed up on his back in the shiny carriage my grandfather gave me and parade him down Wilder Avenue to Rockland Park. One day I whisper “tch tch tch” as I lift up my bedskirt, peer on tiptoes behind closet shelves, behind books, under my dresses, inside my mother’s hatboxes. I don't cry when I can't find him. On my maple bureau, there's a picture of me on my grandfather’s lap and Smokey on mine.


The phone is ringing. I pick up the receiver even though I know I'm in the middle of a dream and it’s not polite to walk out on company. Abie is calling from Russia. “I’m in Russia,” he says on his voice mail. Actually he’s in Moscow, staying at his Russian girfriend’s three-room apartment. Her daughter and ex-mother-in- law also live there. The apartment has no living room. Abie figures he’s completing a deal, so he’s gone over to Russia. Ninety days ago the manager of his apartment building gave him notice. But he kept thinking his deal was going to close and of course it didn’t, so now he’s in Moscow at Anya’s. “I don’t want movers touching my suits,” he says, “or my menorah or my photos.” I tell him, “I only wish I’d had that choice.”


When Abie talks, I shut my eyes. He gives my heart arthritis, I’m sure. It must be damp in there from so much sadness and crying. It aches; it really does─the left side at the top. Even when he stops talking my chest is still shuddering. Is it possible he’s damaged my heart? “Breathe in,” I tell myself, “nice and deep, breathe.” There was a car I once had that refused to start when the wheel was turned too far to the right; the key would not turn in the ignition. The only way to get that car going was to gently shake the wheel left, right, left, and bring the handle all the down. All the wrangling and cajoling, and the car might start. Might. I need someone to rock my heart. I close my eyes. It’s not that I want to get back to the dream, but I think maybe there’s something significant tucked away in a drawer and if I can sift through dressers and cupboard . . . A butterfly comes to rest on my eyelids and I close my eyes.



There’s no one in the house, no friend to call “hey, would you come over.” No one pops by and I like it that way. It’s only the second day after washing my hair and already it’s oily. I have to wait four days until I can wash it again. And then there are things to organize. I have a list in my pocket. The baby is in his carriage and I think, if I go inside to make one call, leave a message─one minute, maybe less, so I call “Janice, will you watch Julian for five minutes?”


One thing. There’s a man, big, huge actually. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t trap me with vile words neither. I watch him cradling my baby in one of his big arms and how Janice tags beside him, her arm raised so she could slip her small hand is his immense warm one. I peek through the hospital venetians. He stands in the middle of the parking lot, looks up and waves which is kind of funny coming from such a large man─the wave of a visiting dignitary. Later when a doctor in white walks in to talk to me, I stand sideways in front of the window. The large man is gone. There is no car in front of the yellow barrier, nor do I see the retreating back of a tall, wide man in a navy blue raincoat.


I was everything to her. Not my sister who was born without a heart. Something kept her alive, but it wasn’t her heart. I think she was just plain mean and staying alive for spite. My mother held me in her eyes until my brother was born. His soft blue blanket with shining borders lay folded in my lap. I held the soft wool to my face and breathed in its sweet country air. And then there it was, all round and full on my mother’s lap while I sat still and quiet in the back.

Ladies bustle from the boy baby’s room to the kitchen. The water pops before the bottles are lowered into the silver pot. I love the bottles and the round flat caps and the way the rubber nipples hide underneath, their tips just kissing the milk.

She rolls down the window and waves. She just slides into her brown velevt coat and goes and when she comes back, she lies in bed in her nightdress. I tiptoe into the room. “Janice,” she says. She’s so quiet, she almost whispers. She never twirls my hair again. She gets tired when she talks to me. Sometimes I’m mean and she gets sadder and sadder. I think she’s like one of the flowers outside, wilted and falling before winter. But when she opens her eyes wide, I hear rich full music streaming from them - voices and instuments twirling. Her eyes are clear and sweet as heaven. I hold my breath to keep the air from rustling. "Ma," I say, "Ma." And her eyes skim the room like bees in a desert.

Copyright Janice Colman 2008

Sex in '65

Melez simultaneously slides down his pants and underwear. I do the same and lie down as twigs scratch my ass and legs. I spread my legs. Melez sets himself on target and pushes. He presses against me and tries again.
“Melez,” I say, “maybe you’re not exactly in the right place.”
He fingers me.
“Nope. I’m in the right place all right. You’re just too small.”
“What?”
“I said I think you’re too small.”
I lift my legs in the air. “Listen, push harder, “I say. “Don’t worry about me, just push hard.”
Melez pushes, grunts and shoves.
I’m losing confidence. He’s smart all right and I love his profile—but when a girl gives a guy permission, lays it out there all wide and willing—“We’re going have to stretch you,” he says.
“You can do that? You think we’re going to make it tonight?”
He looks down, his eyes deep and brown glowing. “It’s going to take a week,” he says. I put my head on his bare strong shoulder. He wipes my eyes with his lips and pats down my matted hair. I’m learning about tenderness and loving it.
“Don’t you worry, one more week and you’ll be ready.”
I straighten myself up, tucking in my jersey front, sides and back.
“And Janice . . .”
“Yes?” I say.
“I love you.”

**************************

I enjoyed stretching. For one week, Melez fingered me.
“You’re ready,” he said one night after he’d wiggled five dove-tailed fingers up me. Melez poked in and out, slow and easy and then faster. I held my breath the whole time—I was like a novice swimmer just learning how to do the crawl. I wanted my life to be a wild fuck, free soul floating wild and home at last. I guess I saw cock to cunt as a lifeline—I was struggling in the deep end and fucking was going to be a life line pulling me to shore.
“It’s something you’ve got to learn, like walking or driving a car.”
I wasn’t reassured.

One night as Melez’s cabin mate, Martin Segal (whose voice never changed and who later became a double-chinned Conservative finance minister) lay asleep in the cot just two feet away, I lay flat pressed on top of Melez, his prick shoved up me as I grinded against his pubic hair. “Harder, harder, hey, don’t stop,” I said. I had a feeling this was an important moment—sun shining southern hot, its rays spreading like water rippling or a sand dune, skimming up to the surface, outward to my thighs, along tensed legs to pointed toes, breasts filling and swelling, skin all soft and velvet. I was hot. It was, we were, and then it was over, the tide slipped away. I wanted to hang on and ride the wave, and then I started grinning. I was gold-digger screaming happy. Marty, moralist virgin, yeshiva voyeur, woke up five minutes after I left which the following morning Juan remarked, “was impeccable timing.” I spent the rest of the summer on Melez’s wheezing cot, dancing on his cock and waving at Marty.

At the end of the summer Melez, shifty-eyed with promises of writing and weekend furloughs, hopped on a bus back to Buffalo. I had locked onto my north star which I’ve been following it ever since. After that summer I would bring my boys downstairs to the den and fuck them while grinding on top or beneath— it’s all about friction. Nothing hardcore screaming—I was just bent on the climb, reaching the top and planting another coming flag.



Copyright Janice Colman 2008

Expoding Bits and Pieces

Married life is a bad trip: our apartment building looks like one of those concrete store-it-yourself facilities. I stand at the far end of the corridor in front of apartment 807. This morning I asked him, “Are you sure this is a good marriage? Is this how it’s supposed to be?” "Sh," he said, "of course it’s a good marriage. Don't be silly," and then he held me. My head rested on his neck like a duck asleep on its feathers and I thought finally a place to rest, a warm body on a winter’s night. I’m learning to love him in hugging bursts, in quiet longing, and then all the time aching, but sometimes my heart feels like a safe that's been sprung and looted.

It’s after eleven. I leave a note on the bedroom door. “Please keep the darkness away. Please don’t put the light out.” And I sign it, “Yours,” even though I don’t belong to anyone.

Abie wakes me up in the middle of the night to wish me Happy Anniversary. “Come on, come on,” he says, putting his green terrycloth robe on my shoulders. On the bathroom mirror, there's a foamy "I love you" written in capitals. Abie is a capital-letter, underlining, and exclamation-point man, and I, I’m a National Film Board animation. As soon as I take shape, a limb reaches out, twisting and transforming. I’m a devil and an angel─sort of a metaphysical hermaphrodite.

“Oh,” I say, “Oh.” And I start to cry. I guess he’s used to my crying─I don’t save my tears for fancy occasions─he carries me to bed just like you see in the movies, possibly French or Italian with subtitles, and he kisses me, my neck, ears, and that space between my eyes where the world stands still. He lifts himself and lies full weight on top of me and rams in. I wrap my arms around him, tightly, so he can’t see my eyes unveiled and barren. And then he cups his palms on my ass, pushing it up, down-up and down like he’s priming an engine, and it’s true, he is.

He pokes his finger up my asshole. “Move it,” he says. “Move your ass.” He knows I need friction. I squeeze my eyelids closed and all the while I’m playing this old blues song in my mind, hush now baby come home baby, find your way home, until the brush of a snare drum grazes my thighs, and the back of my cunt like a camera shutter opens, closes, opens, closes, opens, letting in the pearl white light. The sun radiates. That’s what it is. I’ve got the sun in my cunt. Not the whole world in my hands; I’d tremble and drop the damn thing. I’ve a cunt full of world, exploding bits and pieces like there's no tomorrow.

Copyright Janice Colman 2008