I’d have to get used to it, so I’d take a little breath and squeeze it out. It finally stopped clattering as it fell off my lips. It modulated into the rest of the sentence. It didn’t have to be capitalized. It’s just a word, after all. Just another bay filling up along the rocky coastline of my life.

What a relief.

Suddenly everyone was doing it. All those nice stable couples I knew where splattering all over the windshield of happily-ever-after-ness: a midlife no-rest stop.

Stop saying we, start saying me. I’m owning my life once again, or is it the first time? Who remembers. Make some decisions: who do I consult? Will I ever sleep with a man again? Who needs them anyway?

Geez it feels great. I should have gotten out years ago.

I’m so tired of figuring out all these little details. How can I make decisions that will affect the rest of my life and my daughter’s life when I’m so off-balance? When I don’t know whether to love or hate? When I don’t even know what this word means. D I V O R C E. What am I? Some country western singer with big hair?

Yeah, who kicked my dog

I don’t have a dog

Right, I’m busy taking care of myself

And my kid.

And I don’t have to take care of a so-called grown man.

God I have great friends. This is a great town. I’m so comfortable here. And my shoulders feel like I’ve just put down my trenching tool. I have energy: myself; my anger; my stereo, silence; blood running in my veins.

At first I didn’t really notice it creeping up on me. Then I started to run across it more often as I edged towards 50. That’s when I finally had to admit that I really didn’t know where I was going, anymore. I had to wonder if I ever did? But I seem to remember “knowing” so clearly at one time, long ago.

And you, Mom? You knew that loneliness at such an early age. But you’ve never complained about it, not when Grandma was sick, not when you were nursing Dad, or after he died, or when your friends started to move away to go live with their children. Even now you won’t let the word take hold in the room. You smash it away like a tennis pro. “I don’t have to be lonely.” For you, that’s a testament to your mind, your will, your control over your world. It’s an article of faith. And why should you let it in? There’s nothing to be gained by it now.

Mom, I thought you’d always be here for me. That’s silly I know. Grandma died, Dad died, I knew you’d have your time. I was afraid you’d take me over if I let you in. You were so much fiercer than I. I had to be different, modern, I wanted justice, reason, but I learned from you the hard way—through sarcasm and anger. When I wanted to be free of harsh judgment I became a judge, a critic. I had to stay away from you and the rest of my family who knew too much, too old, too scary about another world—a world without choices.

But now I hear you, I want to hear you. You have left your marks on me, good and bad. I’m already caught.

People are nice to me—they always are except when they were so horrible. Even in camp, I found people who were nice to me. I would talk to them. I think once I make some sort of connection with a person it is hard for him to be mean. When I saw the young man in concentration camp who baked the bread and I spoke with him, it turned out I knew the baker he learned under. When he knew this about me, he would give me extra rations of bread until that became too dangerous for him. It is only in this way, by connecting even to the hateful people—those female Gestapo soldiers—that I could survive in a world designed to kill me. It is always important to know how to survive, but hopefully I do not need these lessons where I go.

When I see New York and how Carole lives, how she has grown up, I am so sad her father is not alive to see. Here she is a woman. She takes such good care of me and of Ilsa. She is a real American. It is different from anything I know. I don’t know how she did it without a Mother or a Father and all the time having to make her own way. But she did. She learned fast. Now she is almost like a Mother to us.

She is different from the girl I knew. She is harder, quick to decide and to move and laugh and to get angry. All of New York is so quick. I guess she has to be that way. There is no maybe in New York.

After Ilsa is here a year or so, Carole asks us if we might like to move to an easier place—some place warmer, a little smaller, less crowded. She has opportunity to go to Texas with her work. She can run the photo studio at a big store down there. We don’t know so much about it. She writes to Texas and they send information. It is sunny and warm with plenty of space. She is right, it is easier to live in Fort Worth Texas than in New York City and while many things are a great surprise to us, good things happen here.

There are not so many Jewish people in Fort Worth so they all know each other. We meet a few people and they are so friendly. I don’t speak such good English so it is hard for people to understand me sometimes. But still they are nice and want to include us in things. And then suddenly I have a date with a nice man—a widower—a Jewish man who owns clothing stores. Who am I to have a date with a man when I have two beautiful unmarried daughters? But this woman I met with Carole knew the man and he was coming to town and would I like to meet him, she asks? Sure I said and so I did and he proposed to me that day.

This is the same thing that happened with my first husband. He met with me at my family’s home—thirty years ago now, more even–and asked me to marry him right away. Well with Mr. Winkler I told him I wanted his children to meet me first. I didn’t want them to resent that I should marry their father—sometimes grown children are like that—then I would have no peace. So he arranged for me to meet them—there are four children and they live in different cities all in Texas–and they all like me just fine. So we are married a month later when he came back to Fort Worth. That is certainly not something I expected when I wondered what the future would bring on the boat coming to New York. And it’s not what I imagined when Carole asked me if I wanted to move to Texas. That shows you, all that business is silly, really.

I moved with my new husband to his town, which is very small and far away. He is the merchant in town and everyone knows him and respects him. When he brings back a new bride, everyone wants to meet me and welcome me to town. His son and daughter in law live in the town and are part of the business and they have a little grandbaby. I fit right in; now I’m a Grandma. We are the only Jewish people but everyone is very nice to me.

I had never lived anywhere with such a strong sun before. I love having a yard and a home to care for. I have a dog and I when my husband goes for market in Dallas, I shop for lovely clothes at Neiman Marcus.

I work sometimes in the store and I like that. I am trained, you know, as a merchant’s wife and I know how to do such things. And this way I get to know everyone and I learn more English. Also a little Spanish because so many people speak Spanish here. I go to luncheons with the ladies and they are nice to me. Sometimes they want to hear my story. My daughters don’t think I should talk about my experience in the war. They are afraid it hurts me all over again. I have nightmares. This is true. But I think these people should know what people are capable of and they are interested.

Now I am busy and don’t have time to be lonely. When I lived in New York I did feel lonely. It would be like the damp and get inside me when I was a little tired or unsure and the girls were at work. Then it was hard to get rid of it. I think all that busyness made me lonely. I didn’t have so many people in my life. Seeing everyone rushing and preparing made me miss the people I had lost. I would think about my poor husband who had been so strong and handsome. You know when I met him he just came home from the war and walked straight and tall like a soldier. The last time I saw him he could barely move, he was so weak and thin and covered with lice. What would he think of me in that crazy city, learning a new language when I am almost 60. But you do what you have to. If he could have lived, he would have done also.

So my memories turned to cold water, rushing in through the gash the iceberg left. An iceberg—there’s a devil. How wicked to hide a towering city of thoughtless cold beneath the water’s surface–invisible and unknowable. The water rushed to evict air with drowning clarity. “It was this; you can’t control. You don’t even know. You may never know.” Irrefutable choking ignorance.

Warm or cold, these memories suffocated me. I became used to pushing them away from my throat, from my chest, from my eyes.

But now memory is hard to find and trickier still to hang onto. I do hang on as it tears across a field with me clutching at it’s mane, afraid to fall. It stills the world around it like that wild horse would do—with terror, hot steam and cold reality. Who cares if you ate lunch, darned socks, read the paper or answered the phone? Only this matters now: hanging on tight and noticing which way the fence goes. I could fall and even if I could hang on, this crazy ride might crush my legs against that fence. She has a will of her own and pays me no mind.

My own mind, my thin, sometimes not-there mind, knows only on the mane and the fence. I am in the memory. I live it again in the tell, I live it again in the show, I live it again in the steam of my breath, I live it again in the blood and the bone and the taste of stale kisses. And when it’s finally still, I let go, slide off, and wonder where I’ve landed.

I thought we would never get to our home. I don’t know if I would have tried to go back home even, but Ilsa said that is what we must do. We must first live through those first weeks when she is so sick with the other ladies and I take care of them all. I don’t know what happens to the others, but I know Ilsa finally gets rid of the fever and then she can eat the little bit of food they give me to cook. I have to go very slow, giving her little bits of soup.

Then she is also right—we must get away from the Russian soldiers. They save us but they would also take us and then maybe we will never find Carole. Ilsa is so weak but still she tells them we have to go home, to Germany, to see if anyone else survived from our family. Then Ilsa says to me, we try and find Carole and we apply to go to America.

She is right, people don’t stay in the same place all that time, especially in New York. It is eight years since Carole left and we have to find her. First we have to get back to our home in Germany, but what a mess we go through. We must get across the Polish Corridor and then still so far, with everything miserable and broken. People die on the platform just waiting for the train; the tracks are broken and torn up. How do we get anywhere? It wears me out when I think about how we did it, even though now I have a bed and we have food and little coal for heat. I used to think all these things are normal; now I don’t take them for granted. I know they are very important and I am lucky to have lived to have them again. Some are not so lucky.

I’ve walked the streets of small towns, big cities, beaches, exotic continents, parks and neighborhoods, all alone. I’ve made most decisions big and small alone. I’ve trod the hardest trails alone: father’s death; mother’s deterioration; divorce; child’s illness; career dissatisfaction. I didn’t know what to say when asked by the partners and friends I’d kept at the periphery. Even I didn’t see the invisible barrier.

I wouldn’t call myself a loner. I have pockets of people: new friends to make; old friends to catch up on; and calendared gatherings. But I’m just fine alone—even in a movie theater—that most forbidding of lone adventures.

Some came closer, spun out, and hated the not-knowing and shifting priorities. Some would have been there for me had I let them. And some got through and took a bit of the strain from my tired bones.

You might not have noticed just how alone I am. After all, I lived well-loved with my parents for eighteen years. I spent thirty years as part of one couple or another. But coupling can be so isolating. At its worst, it steals the generous mantle of solitude and replaces it with missed-opportunity.

In unconnected hours face-to-face, drenched in the ice-water of failed intimacy, alone finally becomes loneliness. My strong right-side withered under worm-eaten embraces, preoccupied hearts, and habitual sex. The unearthly weight of sadness, the black weight of doubt, the sharp stones of anxiety, sent me sprained and sprawling atop the original ruin.

You might not know it’s ok to be alone. But alone stands on two strong legs. Feet may tire, shoulders ache, and breath rasp, but the slow stride uphill can continue almost indefinitely, alone.

I don’t know exactly why I bit her ankle. I hate ladies—I hate this lady: hate; hate; hate her. But I love having her ankle in my mouth. I’m so used to having this ankle in my mouth. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t bite it anymore. Would life be as sweet? Would I have all those fantasies again about ankles?
Would I feel lonely? Would I long to have my mouth fill with her blood?

Do I even like blood? I don’t know–I’m a dog. I’m bred to hang on, so I do.

She was nice to me, once. She fed me, scratched my ear, but then I ran away. When I came back she said that she was “really quite allergic.” She felt better without me. But that’s not gonna work with me. NOBODY walks away from me. I’ll bite. That’s all there is to it. I’ll show her.

She’s wondering how she can get rid of me. But she can’t. She can’t cut off her foot. That’s not really a solution. I don’t think she’ll go for the old silver bullet. I mean she could wind up worse off than me. She thinks I’ll get tired and fall off, or maybe I’ll get hungry, or distracted.

I mean, what if we pass a really good Bar B Que? Oooo that smell…that smell might get me.

Oh look, a ball–a kid with a ball. I could go for a ball.

(catches himself almost distracted enough to let go) She is so frustrated; trapped by a dog this way. She really cannot believe this is happening to her. She’s busy. I know ‘cause she keep saying that to me after she stops screaming.

And she’s bleeding. Her strength is bleeding away. Yeah, right in my mouth.

She screams out ”Won’t someone please shoot this dog? Please, if I circle back around the block one more time, will you please have your gun ready and try to shoot the dog? Shoot the damn dog and don’t shoot me? Please.”

But she is panting so hard, nobody understands her. Just like a dog.

Taunts and whispers slide through empty hallways of red brick school houses. Ancient songs and rhymes pop out of bureau drawers or cackle in the whoosh of a campfire. Voices trapped in air currents swipe my ear, my memory and my imagination. They brush my eyes or my nostrils, and suddenly, the indelible media of song and spirit rush out. I feel the trials and joys, the courage and fears recorded there. The more these voices catch me, the more I crave their stories.

I don‘t think this is mere longing for a tender time past. Rather, it‘s time-trained listening joined to a jagged sort of hearing pressed deep into the quick in some dark amino acid.

The stories transcend time and technology. I listen to the wind for epics that blow across plains. I touch the earth and feel the hoof beats of settlers. I soak in the river that bathes the heron and native bones. Fondling tea cups stained with gossip and advice, I hear shuffles, accents and laughter of women I know, yet I’ve never met. Thumb-prints entice; are they mothers, maids or visionaries that twist canvas, stitches, stone, and glaze into beauty? The dust of Moses, Beethoven, and my grandfathers showers me with gifts. Ancient brothers sacrifice goats while sisters raise timbrels and dance in the deserts. My imagination dazzles.

Sometimes they weigh me down, the promises duty binds upon me and the gifts I can never repay. Those days, I am haunted by history, especially the dreams stolen from young dreamers. I cannot avoid the stench of camps where cruelty crushes the spirits of millions in the machinery of fear. I feel wooden and unworthy.

Other times these bygone days tingle in my nostrils and lift my wings. They charge the hair on my neck and drive the balls of my feet into ground. My pliers easily bend the next link of chain. I fill the song with my voice. My chest heats with wonder and the future shines, illumined by the past.

The Bitch started to move in during the muddle of middle school. My mother groomed her. First, she was a frustrated teen: pushing, hiding, wisecracking, seething and getting by. That’s the girl who needed the theatre so much, who was afraid to speak and wanted someone else to write her lines, to ive her a way to expel the steam inside her—“Bill Starbuck, you’re a liar and a fake.”

She was fed by the confusions of suburban California in the late ‘60s. With her sarcastic tone and sneering style she polished me into a young woman. She could take on Mama-the bitch-of-survival.

And finally I was rid of that damnably shy little lost thing who could never say what she wanted, never trust that her legs could carry her fast enough or that her lungs would support anything like abandon.

That one? Even though she was a kid, she listened to cautionary tales, she saved and measured, she played alone, quietly, she listened to the adults. Don’t ask questions, don’t upset anyone. She stuffed away her big old, grand old self: no one could love her that way.

Oh forget about her; let’s go be The Professional Bitch. The Professional Bitch was the only way to approach the repetitive carelessness of a cruel workplace, of a viscous profession, of a narcissistic husband.

She could close every comment, every argument. Last words were her specialty: last words and stage whispers. She could keep a list a mile long. She could drink scotch and laugh with the men. And with the Bitch, I was funny and glib. With her, I had a context, a ‘tude, a style. With the Bitch boa wrapped around my shoulders, nothing could hurt me. My stride was, sexy, witty, and impermeable.

But … I was a bitch.

She was powerful. And a little toxic.

Really, I was a hollow milk chocolate bunny, the kind my mother was always disappointed to bite. Didn’t everyone know I was hollow inside?  I thought it was perfectly obvious.  If I let anyone get close they were sure to know, right off.  Empty!  Fraud! My biggest fear. I could listen for a cue, be ready to run, adopt passing dreams, directions, beliefs, mannerisms. But I couldn’t muster conviction. I didn’t follow through.

The anger must have been there all along, just waiting to be flung at some unrepentant shit-head. Oh, I wouldn’t dare. And I wouldn’t even think about it for another twenty years.

By then, the Bitch had mellowed considerably. She ran into the usual pumice of disappointment, exhaustion, love, empathy, indifference, time and uncertainty. Grain by grain the rock-face wore away; sometimes boulder by boulder. She didn’t become less exacting or critical. She just got tired and gave up more often.

And that damnably shy little lost thing? She grew, even shut away and abandoned like that.  She grew: silent; hidden; unknown. She wanted a turn. She finally grew strong enough to push the door ajar.

“H’lo?  Where did she go, that Bitch that ran my life?”

It was my daughter who discovered the surprising fact and told me—I wasn’t a bitch. Next thing I knew, a man told me I was sweet.

“Sweet?  Me? The Bitch? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No—your essence is sweet.”

Now how can he know something like that?  How could he see inside when there’s nothing there to see?

But it just might be true. I can tell the story my way. I’m a grownup and I fill me all up from my toes to my fingers.  I feel the sun on my shoulders and it’s ok. Maybe I don’t need the bitch to protect me.

When I moved to Portland, I bought my first car: a perfect green Rambler Rogue. I paid $1000 for a car that ran almost perfectly for years and worried that I likely overpaid.

I spoiled her faded, matronly body, by plunging it into a small yellow truck in a residential intersection. My only defense was exhaustion; I had just finished my first year in law school. The humans were just fine, but the Rogue gushed blue all over the intersection. My heartbreak.

My boyfriend loved cars and had monkeyed around with them since boyhood. This was more complex body work than he had done before but his devotion let to months of rehab. Love me—love my Rogue. She re-emerged as the lemon-lime Rogue. She had a shiny yellow hood and fenders, fresh from the junk yard, on her straightened steel frame.

In search of my next human romance I came to discover the Rogue’s special secrets. The front seats flattened back into a double mattress—they even took a fitted sheet if one was to be so delicate. She was the auto-equivalent of the diaphragm: up-front and functional. Together we navigated the public lands of Oregon in those wondrous days before “sex” was modified by the word “safe.”

I didn’t think she’d make it cross-country so I let her keep her cushy job, trucking law students to school, for a few more years. Eventually I replaced her with a brand new little red Chevette. I sometimes regretted leaving the Rogue behind. She didn’t need red, shiny, brand new. She was a classic, beyond all that. Her light yellow and faded green body was like Sophia Loren however thick the glasses. She was permanently hot.