I had hoped The Ministry of Information would leave the women out of this but now I recognize the distinctive voice of Paula Krantz nearby. It sounds as if she is gagging. I fear they may have removed her tongue. I think I sense desperate attempts by her to spit out the familiar words of her signature piece Given but one teacher for life may as well be given a rock in nowhere
Paula will learn as all of us have learned that speaking here is of no use.
The pod becomes one's world.
I have no perception of when I was placed in my pod nor when it was that the devoted soldiers of The Ministry determined that my words were a threat to society. Insubordination was the category they chose (in reference to my poem about a three-year-old boychild challenging his grandmother with embarrassing questions). They apparently feared the young might rise up against the old sots in power. My piece was brought to the attention of The Headman by one of the upper echelon of The Party whose pretty teenage daughter had read it in a literary magazine. She was immediately rewarded with a brand spanking new Mustang for her astute awareness and patriotism now that the precedent has been set for women to be brought to the pods, she'd best be careful what she reads.
The first time I was brought here, the pods were dry, perhaps a few inches larger. But this time, The Ministry's engineers have perfected the art of constriction so the body is confined in such a manner that there is no movement whatsoever. It is quite remarkable. Even lined with this slippery, despicable axle grease that inevitably reaches the tongue, the nostrils and eyeballs, my muscles remain static. From time to time, I allow the permanent nuisance of the crackling incandescent bulb, in front of my forehead, to distract me from the shattering pain throughout my thorax. It is as if a hand grenade ceaselessly explodes and rips there. Of necessity, I attempt to thrill and soar with the pain, to paint it on a canvas of the memory of every hue I have ever known until, at last, I faint. Then I return to the crackling. As far as I can recall, the bulb has never once burned out. Its heat surely must have shrunk my brow to jerked meat by now like blue fire searing through to whatever sparse flesh remains. Most of the time I must struggle to keep my eyelids closed. What I see is torrid tangerine. Then pure and scorching white. And when I dare to open my eyes, I see chartreuse, glaring until I can no longer bear it, and once again I close my lids. I believe they become dangerously more parchment-like each hour. I believe they eventually will erode and I will have no means to protect my sight from the incessant light.
When the mighty soldiers of The Ministry brought me here, The Headman was enjoying tremendous popularity among his sheep. His constant warnings of impending threats (thus the necessary watchfulness and fear) fed the sheep's natural love of anxiety and thus focused their trust in his all-seeing power to protect them from wily wordsmiths like Paula Krantz and me.
Our positions in these pods, you see, are hard come by. If any one of the pod inhabitants could speak, that one inhabitant would tell you these are positions of honor. If any one of us survives The Headman's regime, we will speak. I don't know why my heart continues to beat but then again, I do. I, gratefully, have had more than one teacher in life. And isn't it odd that one of those teachers is The Headman. He has taught me that blindness is optional, as in the choice of blindness by the sheep. So what if my eyelids waste away to nothing?
My vision remains clear.
As for the white light with which I've become so familiar it is what I've always been told to expect when it's all over. It is supposed to be a good thing you know, Jesus and that whole scene. A hesitant remembrance, perhaps of another lifetime, informs me that there is no cramping, no crackling on the other side.
And as for women being brought here my colleague, Paula Krantz she's spent half her life railing about equal opportunities. And now she's got them.
Setting up popcorn and a Coke each evening for the five o'clock news, curtains drawn, Mame's pupils expand as her heart bangs — first CBS, then NBC at 5:30. The fifth time this week. And the same, several weeks before.
Oh, and what about that glimpse she'd once had of sitting on Russell Crowe's chest? Ripping his fingernails out by the roots one at a time while he writhed in ecstasy. Surely it had only been a horrid nightmare brought on by her sleep medications. Heavens to mercy! It could not have been the real her. Or maybe she'd seen it on the cover of the National Enquirer while waiting in line at Wal-Mart. Yes, that was probably where it came from.
When Kent and Glenda packed up the grandchildren and moved to Duluth, her stomach had felt like a big fat sopping lump of dirty laundry for a month. Then Glenda sent her an affordable Dell computer for Christmas so she could keep in frequent contact with e-mails. And that benevolent young assistant at AARP had been so helpful in bringing her typing up to snuff, even taught her how to browse the net so she could study the kid's environs in Duluth, then, graciously, showed her how to block those filthy spam messages. She'd become expert in spotting them, then deleting them without opening them up. And though that pleasant Kenny at Office Max had sold her an additional nifty spamblocker program, those dirty tricksters still managed to find their way into her mail. What was this world coming to when a perfectly decent old woman could not communicate with her kids without being lambasted with filth?
Yet now she finds herself pinned to the prison tortures. Heaps of naked masked men. Finds herself stretching to see beyond the smudged-out portions of the photos. Believes she can spot a penis here or there, counting seven nude pictures on CBS in just one story, somewhat embarrassed to be rattled by interests she's never known she had. She takes the phone off the hook so no one will intrude as she switches to NBC where she leans forward and glares at the same heap of men once again. Then that puny smoking woman grinning with her thumbs up as she zeroes in on a masturbating masked prisoner, and stoic as she wields power over another, dragging him on a leash.
Mame is curious if, under such horrendous conditions, those men could raise an erection. Even her dear Randall (God rest his soul), had never allowed her to see his penis aroused — had always been prudent in expressing his love for her, using only the missionary position to mount her. Their cozy bedroom silent. Lights out.
Now she shudders at the instant recall of the awful time all her brothers piled upon her and, with a butcher's knife, scraped off her first-ever application of fingernail polish. Mocked her for being a girl.
Then realizes she is driving her pretty manicured nails into her kneecaps.
At noon on Saturday, Letha Estes drops by with a picnic basket — a thermos of mint iced tea, finger sandwiches (paper-thin sliced ham and turkey), and two large lumps of carrot cake on orange plastic saucers. They look like an afterthought. The cake has too much oil in it.
Letha says television has become "implorable". Mame believes Letha always comes up with fancy words because she is so lonely and wants to seem important. "Implorable" seems plain stupid instead. She thinks Letha made it up.
Mame says, "I don't think our small children should be subjected to all this torture we're seeing these days."
"Well, I guess not!" says Letha. "First thing you know, kiddo, these darling little ones are going to hook up each other's thumbs to electric conduits in their daddy's garages, and then up an what? This whole town will have a black out, dearie." Letha lifts her sleeve and wipes frosting from her mouth like she is cleaning up a major oil spill. "Mr. Dan Rather, and you know who he is, he says they're selling those pictures if you go on your computer. Can you imagine, sweetheart? What kind of crazy person would want to go and see an American get his head chopped off? Dogs with rabies is what this country has went to. It's implorable, kiddo."
Sunday at one o'clock: Mame receives her daily e-mail from Glenda. They have been too busy settling into their new environs to go to church lately. She says this every Sunday. She wants to know why Mame has not sent them any e-mails for a while and is she OK? She says Duluth still feels cold but they enjoy the view of Lake Superior and Kent is finding his job at the University a real challenge so he is napping on and off today. Seems their oldest, Ronnie, got his nose crushed in a fight defending his sister's red hair yesterday (against a gang of Hispanic bullies, hadn't they left Mexicans behind when they moved north?). Ended up bloodied — head to toe. They had not expected violence in Duluth. Glenda threw his clothes into the trash rather than mess with the blood. She says Ronnie is a trooper like his dad but his sister is becoming withdrawn. She says they think their cat, Melissa Mame, has run off and they think she might be trying to find her way back to their old house and would Mame keep an eye out for her and wouldn't it be just awful if she got smashed on I-80?
Again, Mame does not reply.
She studies the Sunday paper for new photos of Abu Ghraib. Absorbs every gory detail of how the officers and their flunkies belittled the Iraqis. She feels like she is going to faint but suddenly rallies as her interest is once again piqued by that young female with the leash — then wonders if Saddam Hussein's warped spirit has consumed the American soldiers. And America.
Wonders why she is shutting out her own friends?
She goes out to Safeway for another box of Butter Lover's microwave popcorn. She spots Letha Estes down the aisle — probably yapping with the pharmacist about raising the dosage of her blood pressure medication — but chooses to avoid her.
Mame can't recall the name of that big smelly kid down the street who gave her brothers a quarter to hold her down. She and the boys had been having such fun playing hide 'n' seek in the backyard when he showed up.
Then suddenly there was Ralphy and George and Arthur — not really sitting on her, just straddling her like a quarterback straddles a football, and Paul with the knife — not really a butcher's knife, a dull paring knife. It seemed like a butcher's knife at the time. Ralphy was twisting her arms and Paul was hovering over her face, pinching her fingers and scraping off her fingernail polish. She'd just gotten up the nerve to paint it on for the first time ever. Knew her parents would be furious.
And that big smelly kid. She couldn't actually see him though her eyes were about to bust out. She was so frightened. That big smelly kid's fingers were, well, inside of her.
And the only sound she could remember was all those boys, all of them bigger than her, shouting so loud it hurt, and taunting and taunting and calling her a girl.
About the time everyone else is sitting down for Sunday dinner, she microwaves a big bowl of buttered popcorn, fills a tall green soda glass with chipped ice and a Coke, then makes herself comfortable at her computer. All the curtains in her house are drawn. She always hopes this does not worry her neighbors.
She goes to her Search Bar. Types in: "Abu Ghraib torture photos". Bites the inside of her right cheek till she tastes blood.
spiel says, "at the ripened age of 64, i've finally adjusted to being referred to as 'crusty' and a 'curmudgeon'. my father used to tell a story about the first time he ever changed my diapers -- he claimed i looked up at him with defiance.
"at the heart of my work is the issue of conflict. i hold myself to no rigid rule as to how i will write (poetry is my specialty). yet i write nearly every day. and the bulk of it is about the darkness of the condition of man. it is the one predictability of my work: what editors and fellow poets have come to expect of me and what most naturally flows from me."
"Nail Polish" was originally published in Barbaric Yawp, 10/03.