Before I applied to grad school I spent the summer reading MFA reading lists for schools across the country. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was on several lists, so I read it. The book has stuck with me for its vivid imagery and uniquely light way of speaking to dark subjects. Angelou's ability to write with the innocence and wonder of a small child carries this book, and even though I sometimes wonder if she's really a trustable narrator- because her style of storytelling IS so vivid-- I feel satisfied that I am getting an accurate portrayal of Marguerite's life. So in reading our lecture notes, I wasn't surprised to learn that Angelou's magic carpet is sherry, a deck of cards and secluded room. As writers we have to do whatever it takes to get us out of the ordinary into a place where language sings and the common description/definition of things falls away. Because of this, I think Caged Bird is a timeless story, one that speaks to a certain period of Americana, but at its heart can show anyone how to live and move beyond one's world. Even if that world was a war-torn Parisian cafe and the writer was Hemingway, or a crummy, dumpy house and the writer was Augusten Burroughs, writers have the unique ability to take a moment and move beyond it to speak a larger truth.
So, in moving away from the 2010 Caribou cafe in which I sit now, let's go to Nebraska, circa 1989. This might be hard for some of you to read.. sorry. It's just what came to me.
The burlap bag is heavy in dad's hand-- I can tell becuase the muscles in his tanned forearm are shifted out a little, and with each wriggle and bulge of the bag I see that muscle tighten and pulse as he steps forward. I'm not sure where the bag came from, but he probably had it out in the dusty shop. When he came to the house with it an hour ago, I grabbed it from him and watched it puff the scent of dirt and tractor grease, surprised at its presence in his hand.
"Marcella, where did Touca have her kittens? Can you find them?"
Dad refered to me as his "right hand man," and becuase I had yet to start school and mom was gone all day, I spent my days with him in the shop. He was my best friend, and at five years old, I was all sugared compliance and quick eagerness.
"Yeah yeah, she had them in the old pig barn, over behind the saddles. You know, where you keep the old hay bales? Only one of them has been up and walking but--"
"They're sick, Marcella. All the cats around here always get distemper. It's not good to have sick kitties, it is?"
Was dad actually telling me he was going to take my kitties to the vet? This was unheard of. The feral cats mothered batches of babies the way I collected toads and slugs in the summer-- often and a fierce protectiveness, and dad had no use for the multitudes of wild cats that teemed around the farm propoerty. I couldn't believe he was going to make sure this group got the attention they needed to clean up the boogers that constantly plauged their eyes, and I didn't want him to stuff them in a bag, but if that was what it took to get them there safely, then so be it.
"No, it's not." I said, agreeing that sick kitties were bad. I couldn't play with them, what with their snotty faces, and most of the time, they lived for a while then died any way. If dad was going to get them some help, maybe I'd actually get to tame one, feel its soft down fur and nuzzle it in the way my friends with indoor cats got to. "I can help you get them if you want."
Dad had nodded me toward the pig barn, and we'd gone in to find the kitties. The old shed hadn't been used for hogs in years, but in the dust-mote shades of shadow and light that filtered in through the cracked and broken boards you could always smell some combination of amonia, straw, mash, pig shit and mold. I loved the old buildings on our farm, but I never played in this one becuase it was so old and fally-downy. The containment corrals had mostly fallen down, but next to the building and the one fence still standing, and old well and water tank still bobbed mossy water in and over its lipped surface.
"Ok, Marcella, I see them. You can go back to the house now."
I wasn't sure why dad was sending me to the house alone-- I figured we'd load up the kitties then take them to the vet together.
"You don't need my help here? But I can--"
"No, no, go in and.. get me some.. twine or something. To, uh, tie the bag? Please?"
The tall grass that had grown up around the pig barn knicked my legs as I ran through it, trying to get to the house and back in time to help dad. I don't know why I can still remember the way that grass and the weeds felt as they slapped against my bare legs, but I know that I'll never forget the scent of that pig barn, or the way dad's arms looked as he walked around the water tank, carrying that bag, arm muscles bulging. By the time I had found and hauled the spool of twine back to dad, he was outside again, moving around the water tan, dipping the bag in it. I stood and watched as he dipped the wriggling bag in the water, holding it under longer and longer each time, then letting it drop. I knew then, as a child knows a bad thing when she sees it, that something was wrong with this picture, that my kittens were sick and that dad was drowning them. I knew then that yes, maybe those kittens were beyond saving with the vet's medicines. I knew that even pulling them up was probably not going to save them. But what I witnessed was wrong in a particular way that only the executioners of bad men can probably know. My dad had drowned my kittens to put them out of their misery, and to end his own discomfort with their presence, but those things alone were not exactly what was so wrong with the scene. What was wrong was that he had lied to me, that my dad had lied to me, or at the least, misled me as to what he was doing with the kittens and why he needed my help. I eventually grew up and got hogs to show for 4-H and housed them in that pig shed. They drank water that came from that tank; I "got over" what I saw that dad and how bad I felt for the mewling bag of sopping kittens who had their eyes cleansed in the most unholy of baptisms, and I left the farm. That memory doesn't come to me often, but when my last cat died, it did. When my dog ate poison and died, it came to me then, too. There is something beautiful and innocent about a life lived among the cycles and organic moments of life and death on a farm, but I wonder if it only when we keep them masked and containted that we are able to accept them.
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