In the Marvelous Dimension

(John)

Until then, I'd never liked

petunias, their heavy stems,

the peculiar spittooning sound

of their name. Now I loved

a petunia for all it was worth

-a purplish blue bloom

waving in a red clay pot outside

an office window. My right eye

could see it through the shattered

windshield. My left eye had gone

blank and the roof of the Camaro

pressed my head flat back on the seat.

I diminished to my right eye,

which could only see, past the wreckage,

that one little flower. I felt myself

growing smaller, like Alice,

a trick so I could travel

out of there, to that ledge

where a petunia waved in the dust rising

from a fallen-down freeway.

(Mary)

I picked the kids up

at 4:45, as usual.

As usual, they were antsy

and fighting. Rose tore a hole

in her new knee socks

kicking Justin in the backseat.

Timmy sucked his thumb in the corner.

Then Justin wailed at another

abuse from Rose and I was just about

to yell, Goddamnit, shut up for once,

when the whole thing went. I mean

the whole thing, the whole world,

I thought. The car tilted, the road

buckled up and then something was falling

down on us with a horrible screaming.

I guess I stopped driving and turned

to my children with a face of horror.

I reached past the seatbelt for Timmy,

my baby, and that's when it hit us.

My hand, pressed by the roof, pinned

his leg to the seat and he screamed.

Blood flowed down. Rose, my sweet

little Rose, was already gone.

I couldn't find her beneath

the bulged-down roof. Justin and Timmy,

they looked to me. They didn't understand

I was not in charge. I'd always been

their only God. They looked to me.

They wanted me to lift them up

and wipe them clean, to mend

with tenderness their shattered bodies.

But I was pinned in place. Blood

started seeping from Justin's

mouth. Timmy never spoke again.

And then I knew everything: how we

were going to die and how it didn't

really matter in the scheme of things.

My babies' suffering wouldn't matter.

It was a board game of gigantic

proportions. Our tokens

had been shaken out on the playing board

at 5:04 P.M. on the 17th of October

in the year of our Lord, 1989.

(Jane)

I must have been unconscious.

Even now, I can't remember

anything about what happened

until that arm

reached in the broken window

of the passenger seat.

It was just an arm, a black

person's arm, very strong

looking with fine hairs

all over it. The fingers

moved on my face, felt

my mouth, and then I heard

a voice shouting, Someone's

alive here, breathing.

I knew then it was me.

I was alive but I must be

in trouble. My body

returned to me slowly.

I was laid out flat on my back.

The roof of the car seemed

to be on top of me.

I couldn't feel anything

but my face where the arm

had touched me. I couldn't help

thinking about sardines

in their little oily cans,

how, in college, I ate them

on saltines, to save money.

(John)

Years ago, on a lark,

I learned transcendental

meditation. Now I focused

on the blue petunia and slowed

my breathing as I began to understand,

I thought, what had happened.

The whole fucking thing fell down.

I can't begin to explain

that terror. I've put it

in a little box in my brain

and I'm afraid of the day

it will emerge again. That petunia

saved me. Now I have

a whole garden of them

and when I wake at night

with the shits and the sweats

I go out there and lie down

among them, blooming or not,

cold or hot, and I weep long

and deep into the earth.

(Mary)

My baby was the last

one to go. And the last

shall be first. I hope

it's true. My children

dead around me, I couldn't

think of anything to do

but sing the lullabies I sang

when they were infants in their cradles

and I was sending them away

to oblivion for the night.

(Jane)

When I meet people

now, I look at their hands.

I know I'm looking for that

hand, that arm, the one

that told the world

I lived, that proclaimed me

worth saving. My own hands

lie on the arms of the metal

chair, useless and heavy.

One finger on each has enough

strength left to press these buttons,

moving me forward, moving me

back. I don't think

it would matter, anyway, to still have

the use of my body. It's only hands

I care about, my mouth that still

loves. Even in sleep, I feel

his fingers reading my terrified face,

tracing my lips like a patient lover.

He found my breath. You bastards

can have my body.

*

I couldn't believe it

when I heard this little voice

singing We Are Three Little Lambs.

I thought it had already

gotten to me, like in 'Nam,

when I freaked out

on patrol before anything

had happened. But the voice

was real, coming from a dark blue

Toyota squashed almost flat.

When I shone the flash over it,

I could see the dark pool of blood

beneath. In the dark, I could

smell it. I yelled out, Ma'am-

I'm here to help you, and the song

stopped for a moment. Then a voice,

not little at all, harder than any

I've ever heard, said from deep in the wreck,

You might as well go away. Nobody

can ever help me again.

(Mary)

People have actually asked me

what I thought about in there,

if I figured I would get out,

if I knew the children were dead.

The answer is: when I knew

the children were dead, I didn't want

to get out, couldn't get out

anyway. I was in there

forever with my three little lambs,

the smell of their blood,

and their dead faces, filled with questions,

looking at me.

(John)

When I do die, give me nothing

but petunias. Pots and pots

of them with their unpretentious

blossoms and their lack of smell.

(John, Mary, Jane)

It suddenly struck me

that I believed

the unbelievable.

(Mary)

The freeway had apparently

fallen down on top of us.

My children were dead

and dying. My head was locked

into position to watch that.

The only way to not see

was to close my eyes.

But my baby lived

a long time, I think.

I had to look at him

as long as he survived,

to say those things that mothers

say, It's OK, Mama's here, it will be

all right. All the while

I was not exactly remembering

my past, but feeling

the future. It had a shape now.

I knew what I was doing

and what I believed.

I was watching

all three of my children

die. More than ever

before I believed

in God. He was there

in that car. He caused

it, He saw it. And when

it was over, He'd gotten

what He wanted.

One more fearful

citizen bowed down

and kissed His feet.

And then, goddamnit,

I led my babies right up.

I put their little hands

in His, and delivered them over

for eternity to Him.

*

I was shaving at the sink

and drinking my second cup

of coffee when the story

about that woman and her three

dead children came on the news.

I'm a man, but I screamed

when I heard it, the saw

and all. How they had to

blindfold her, what they told her

they were doing. I'm a man

but I screamed about this world

men built.

(Mary)

I never went to college

but I know now there's something

more than this world we see.

Trapped in that car, I felt it

when Timmy, Rose, and Justin

expired. They just left, and for awhile

I went with them. We eased

right out of that wreck

and floated in a void

-a marvelous dimension-

like big flecks of ash

freed from a fire.

That's why it didn't matter

when they took their bodies.

They had left them already,

and were part of me again, as they were

to begin with, making me bigger.

(John)

I'm lucky, I guess.

That petunia got me

through it. I came out

with fear and a limp.

Not like that poor woman

who lost her kids or the quadriplegic

in the car near mine.

The magazines all want to know

what it's like, but who could describe

your whole world reduced

to the size of a washer,

your body twisted

around the spindle, fear

churning through, and nothing

to help but your brain. I was in there

for three hours and forty-eight

minutes, thinking clearly every second,

reckoning nonstop. Oh, yeah,

I prayed, and I believed. I saw

my life. It had a shape

at last and I wasn't ashamed.

I knew if I made it, I would worship

the planet, the natural

world, eschew concrete,

deny the cities. I would plant

petunias, groom evergreen trees. In short,

I would worship the earth,

not men.

(Mary)

Their father came over

from the city for the funeral.

He was drunk and terrified

to look at me. I wasn't drunk

and I wasn't scared. People looked

at me like I was a monster-dry

eyed and calm. But if they'd

touched me, they would have known:

hard as metal on the outside, empty

as a suit of armor within.

(Jane)

The most intense feeling

I've ever had was that man

touching my face. Even now,

when I can get

someone to do it,

I almost swoon with the shivering,

the delicious sensation

ascending my face.

I'm being born

again, being pulled

from my mother.

And a second chance is offering

itself in the form

of a hand,

a simple

proffered

human hand.

*

I can't imagine

going through that.

Can you? Watching

your own kids die.

Or coming out paralyzed

or soft in the head

forever. Thank God

it wasn't us. Life

could never be the same,

could it? How

could you bear it? How

could you live?

(Mary)

I live somewhere else

now. With them. It's not

in space, not

in time. It's pure

feeling, spread out

like jelly on a warm piece

of bread, sinking down

out of sight, the sweetness

still there, sodden

and hidden.

(Jane)

I used to look at cripples

and wonder how

they stood it.

I never could, I thought.

Now I thank God every

day I'm alive and a crip.

I laugh with pleasure

and get the nurse

to run her fingers

on my lip.

*

Those motherfucker newscasters

stood in front of the freeway

and broadcast their pithy little

stories every evening while people

were dying inside. Now that's

my definition of indecent.

(Mary)

A preacher came to see me afterwards.

He asked me not to be

so angry, to forgive God,

to try to see it as part

of a plan I could not understand.

I just looked at him and he saw something

in my eyes that scared him: those three

little babies, frightened as bunnies. I can't imagine

your pain, he finally said. I wouldn't try to.

Can your affliction bring you closer

to Christ? Can you be with Him

in your suffering? And then I did something

I'll never regret: I laughed

in his face, I brayed like a donkey.

*

She just kept

weeping for her babies

and he was raving

on and on about some

flower in a pot. The paralyzed

one had a beautiful smile

on her beautiful face. I don't think

she could feel

a thing.

(Jane)

When they pulled me out,

my body was dead

already but it didn't

matter. I felt the best

I've ever felt. That one hand

gave me hope. Other hands

pulled me back

into life. I wouldn't let

myself begin to believe

until I saw the sky

again. Widening and

widening, it revealed itself

in the shape of a lip

curved up.

*

Like everyone else, I watched it

on television for three straight days.

There was nothing a person like me

could do. The twentieth century

caved in finally. The earth

taught cement a permanent

lesson. Now, it's not

that I'm phobic. It's just

that I've seen postmodern light.

We're all insane

to live this way.

?

The earth settled.

The waters calmed.

The planet twirled

in the heavens

unconcernedly

again.

(Mary)

When the priest raises

the pale white Host

something really does

happen if you want

to believe. If you don't,

it might still happen

anyway. Right?

Your past wiped out

by the force of the mystery.

The future emerging

from one huge moment ...

Once, at a student play

in seventh grade,

the whole backdrop collapsed

with the wheezy singing

of nails being forced

from cheap wood. Frayed ropes

dangling like live snakes

and sawdust rising in a smoky haze.

When the scene settled,

Reality was where

it had always been:

right there, lurking

behind the drapes:

a cinderblock wall

painted pale green and a red door

marked Emergency Exit chained shut.

For once, nothing

but an empty stage separated

me from It. I was

It, and It was this:

several million tons of concrete roadway

and steel beams smashed

down on top of

approximately 274 live human beings

when the San Andreas Fault flexed a tiny muscle.

39 died, including my children. I

survived. Hundreds

took part in the rescue effort.

The rest of you-Christ

have mercy-watched on TV.

(John, Mary, Jane)

The red door

was chained shut.

We went through it

anyway. for Janet May