The Angel Of Death In Kansas

My thoughts scuttle across the sidewalk around the blessed feet of Benton, a young man who walks with dark blue polyester strides. His hairless chest peers out through the unbuttoned lapel of his light blue shirt. His long pale blond hair bounces in a ponytail between his small shoulder-span. My thoughts scuttle like early-summer fallen leaves around these feet that stepped into the air one summer day, never to touch the earth with weight again.

I think of his finger tracing with mine whenever I write in Japanese, the way he told me he practiced on misted shower doors, a grey ghost finger of a small hand gently touching my curled fingers. He was in my room and in the backseats of cars in front of me all winter. For months I tried to give him peace.

My thoughts scatter in the wind with the last breath of Aunt Helen, a lady with invisible skin. Her smile is etched with wrinkles from soft “I love you’s” whispered from underneath her last, long sleep. I hold out my hand to a softer side of my grandfather, one touched by the most gentle spirit for 67 years, now to be alone until he lies with her again. My thoughts scatter like the harvest dust to have touched skin that knew such devotion.

My thoughts gather in thunderhead fashion above a wavering summer road where a van speeds to a mistaken burial. There was no warning for this loss, no foretelling of Jeff’s quick passing. He stands thoughtfully in the plaza outside Zendoji Temple in Nagano, Japan. He laughs over a shared meal, witness to one of my high school Novembers. He takes his family to church to be lost in a crowd of people who live comfortably at home while his family longs for home. My thoughts gather in thunderhead fashion for his funeral I missed, for his bereaved son and daughters and for his long-haired widow.

The spirits of the dead are moving in and out of my head, oiling the gears of my mind with emotion. My grief is a dream of transcendence, kindred and compelling, as it is for any old soul. The blossoms smell the same every spring even though nothing else remains. I cannot commune with the spirits of the dead and hardly any longer with the spirits of the living; the blossoms and my grief alone are truly kindred.

One month after I walked back into the world from a week on the fourth floor psychiatric ward at the local hospital I was hired at a nursing home in a nearby Mennonite town. I spent ten months slicing vegetables and preparing gelatin desserts, ten months baking casseroles and serving homemade chicken noodle soup, ten months meeting the elders of Kansas, where I am now a resident.

A few weeks after I started in my new position I received news via email that my fifteen-year-old Japanese student Benton, whom I left behind in Nebraska the previous spring, had hung himself in June. That next month my dear friend Jeff, who had been like an uncle to me growing up, had passed away suddenly, and I had not been able to attend his funeral. While it seemed I had been missing out on the presence of the angel of death, now I had elected to work alongside him in the stark halls of the Midwest retirement communities.

LeRoy and Marilyn, my grandparents in Kansas who did not get to watch me grow up as I was in Japan through those years, have big families and many of my relatives reside in the nursing homes of Central Kansas. My grandpa’s brother and sister-in-law Gib and Helen lived together at the home where I was hired. It was strange to me that I made their dinner every night but saw them very rarely.

Aunt Helen also passed away in July and I attended her funeral. During the ceremony the pastor of my grandparents’ church and the chaplain from the nursing home asked the staff from the nursing home who had cared for her in her last months to stand and be recognized by the community who knew her during her life. The chaplain called each by name as they stood, but I was not recognized. I sat next to my great uncle Del who had graciously offered me his arm when I arrived at the church.

Uncle Del had found me standing alone at the casket of Aunt Helen, who was dressed in the soft blush of cherry blossom pink. The Bible was open on the platform, and streams of her peers and our relatives flowed by, stopping briefly before being ushered into the sanctuary. I was given an idea for a painting then that I would finish a few weeks later, and I was inspired to eulogize Benton, Jeff and Aunt Helen.

It has been two months since I last set foot in the nursing home where I worked, where over the months I had received the news Rubina had died, and Rueben, Richard, Pauline, and others. Expired, sometimes it was written. My thoughts get muddled as I wonder about Hazel, Leona, Everett and Gene. Missionary Ralph Cox passed away that year, whose influence was integral to my parents’ decision to move to Japan, where I was raised. I have met friends recently whose lives have been completely changed by losing someone to leukemia.

I have been learning that residence is transitive for everyone, not just for an expatriate like me. The diagnosis is that we are all dying. In Japanese the kanji character for “house” also reads as “family.” It is becoming my practice to expand my boundaries for each of those meanings and cling less to the compartments of my mind where I sometimes find them tied up and gagged. This demonstrates my desire to honor the urge to grieve and celebrate the spirit of memory, though it is often incited by intense loss.

Ambiguity

This is a dream. Finally after a month of nightly, vivid dreams, one comes that startles me to realization. I haven’t addressed it yet; I was raped. It was four years ago this Halloween.

I am in the living room of the house where I live. In my dream my husband David is away to drill in Salina for the weekend. His friend is visiting, sitting on our futon facing me as I stand in the doorway to our storage room. He gets up to get a drink from the kitchen. As he walks past me I feel his hand grab and tug on my ass, rounding out the back of my stretchy blue jeans. He keeps walking but he calls over his shoulder,

“I like that ass.”

I stand where I am, feeling awkward but oblivious as to a way to communicate some boundaries. I decide to let it go. As he returns to the room he half-turns me around to face him with a hand on my shoulder and steps around me and then wraps me into a desperate embrace. His hands press into my clothes and traverse across the back of my body and he grinds against me. When his fingers rise to touch my neck I speak,

“You should talk to me about this, ask if you can kiss me. I am able to make a decision about doing this with you.” He has paused for a moment and I think he might listen, but he does not. He continues to grab at me.

He is pushing me toward the bedroom but I am fighting against his direction. We come to struggling in the open front doorway of my house. With both my hands I break some of his fingers that are on my leg. He doesn’t wince, doesn’t whine. I think of the crowbar just by the coat rack but then I remember this is David’s friend. What can I do to him? I feel my lighter in my pocket and say,

“Listen, it didn’t have to be this way!” I hold the lighter in my grasp, “I have been raped before and I will destroy you!”

With that my left hand grabs his face, my thumb in his mouth and hand wrapped around his jaw. I start the flame against his lips. Now he is fighting to get away from me, but I will not let go of his face. I hold the lighter tightly and although my fingers hurt I take it across his eyes.

I do not remember that he ever made a single sound.

My phone beeps and vibrates with a message from my friend during the next scene, waking me up. In my dream he had been cleaning out his locker at school where the hallway is completely deserted but for us. I find myself apologizing to him as he walks out and then I feel incredibly alone.

Then, as I stutter awake, silently thanking my friend for texting me, I feel devastated that David might already be in formation at drill before realizing he won’t leave town for two more hours. He will be home from class in fifteen minutes. I sift through my disorientation and walk into the living room, then into the dining room to sit at the desk.

Ten minutes pass before I jump and shriek as David’s keys rattle against the door. My whole body tenses as I fear it could be someone other than him. But David walks in and walks to me, holding out a postcard. It is a postcard from a friend whom I had lunch with two weeks ago after five years of separation. When he places his hand on my shoulder, I tell him I had a dream about rape. As he makes a sound of empathy I finally let my body relax.

“I burned his face off and then I apologized.” Now these are emotions I haven’t been able to identify yet. In this realm my self becomes indistinct. I sense a hint of revulsion at myself for not taking a stand at the very beginning, but then I am willing to apologize at the end for my fight to survive?

I am coming to the conclusion that there is no blame for me, as much as I am still trying to find it. I am the sort who asks for forgiveness in the end after I have destroyed you for threatening to destroy me. I am the sort who will always blame myself for the handful of ass you grabbed. I will stop in the middle of it and think of who you are, even though you never listened to me. Someone will say you deserve to die. Someone will say you deserve to live. I don’t decide things like that. I don’t get to have a decision. Remember? You didn’t give me one.

Hypotheses

Knew you once,
Saw you,
Heard you,
Touched you,
Loved you who held my stack of paper,
My pages covered with iconic scrawl.
They read like a message
Orated by an angel,
And weighed like a brick of cocaine.
We let it burn in your mind,
We let it burn as kindling for your fire,
For you who lets genius coagulate in the lungs,
Lets it run through crooked teeth,
Plays with it like a jewel in the tongue
When pontificating of love.
Knew you once,
Saw you,
Heard you,
Touched you,
Loved you.