Kate Fetherston
First, there’s the growing into an identity as a woman---which is always a messy affair offering plenty of fodder for writers. Flannery O’Connor’s famous line that, having survived childhood, a writer will have plenty of material for life seems only part of the truth. Trying to figure out what being a girl means and how to have agency as a woman has been a major focus for my adulthood---and my work.
Then there’s living with the rub between woman and artist. The late Deborah Digges said it best when she noted, “No matter how proud your family is of your accomplishments as an artist, basically they just want their damn spaghetti.” So, making or stealing time to write and create is a big problem for every woman artist I know. I’m not available to problem solve how to get that BBQ stain off my husband’s shirt when I’m writing. My selfishness is a necessary component of every line I write. And, my desire to be a good girl is often in direct conflict with what I need as an artist.
A rich imagination is an absolute necessity for a woman, in my opinion. This week I’m visualizing Durga Ma, the all-powerful Hindu goddess who rides on a tiger. Her power comes from all of the gods yet she belongs to herself alone. I sometimes wonder if Durga Ma is whom every woman needs to see in the mirror in order to speak. So, this week, I’ll be riding my tiger through the streets of my small town, buying vegetables at the farmers’ market, I’ll be astride my tiger while folding laundry, balancing the checkbook, and, most of all, when I’m dreaming in words on a blank page. Gender that, dude.
Ballad of Richard Parks
By the time we’re nine, she’s
skinny legs under a sack
dress, but Denise’s almond eyes
glint with skeptical intelligence beyond
boys’ power to resist. She steals
inside her body to escape notice, but
Richard Parks begs to carry
her books and finally
she lets him and doesn’t
care that he’s the boy every
girl at Acoma Elementary wants
to marry. She’ll blossom into
the woman hiding inside her father’s
lumpy gray cardigan, trying to bust
her biological clock so the cat-calls will
stop, so she can shine from her own
light, but when we’re nine, already I’m
the girl lusting for adventure. I’ll tell you
where babies come from and, for ready
cash, I can enumerate the Latin
names for bodily functions that
sound so much nastier than just plain
shit. My head wrapped in jacquard
scarves and a cast-off shawl, I don’t
fit anyone’s idea of beautiful, squinting
behind red glasses, my thatch of white
hair held askew at a theatrical angle.
The day after I bribe Richard to play
doctor, he ignores me by the monkey
bars and later he’s walking her
home and I hate her for that, but
she likes my stories and I need
an audience more than an enemy, so we’re
best friends by sixth grade when Richard
and his whole family disappear overnight.
Everyone, even the teacher wringing his hands
when he tells us, loved Richard Parks. It’s
Kennedy shot all over again, but never
mind. That day, our adolescence is done for, even
before Denise trudges Jackson Junior High’s halls
head down, trying to ignore the leers. And even before
I’m sobbing in the girls’ bathroom when pimple
ridden dog boys won’t risk talking to me and my mother
says, “But you have a beautiful soul” which is the final
blow so by now I’m speed reading novels where sallow
faced women lean artfully into loneliness and where
virginal sunlight through cracked windows
illuminates a single white bed, all tidiness
and erasure. Later, when we’re twenty,
Denise waves feminist while she’s
retreated to bib overalls and the monastic
cell of her childhood bedroom. Meantime, I’m
pacing downtown alleys all hours in my Goodwill
get-ups, a flask of Southern Comfort tucked in
for warmth. But, by the time we’re thirty-nine, life’s
the usual disaster. We’re strolling the Los Altos golf
course pushing her babies, and I’m kvetching
about my lesbian divorce, when I think I see Richard
in two-tone loafers and peach polo, but it’s only some
tax attorney flashing Rolex. Denise punches my arm,
cracking up, and I’m doubled over laughing too as
the guy asks if we’re all right. “We’re just
fine,” snorts Denise, grabbing my shoulder. Richard
Parks, wherever you are, you’re home free.
Balancing Act
Agile as a dancer, my father balanced
a dictionary on his head, showing me how
to walk like a lady, which my mother
couldn’t do. He swayed down the stage-
lit hallway on the balls of his feet, calling
over his shoulder, “Look, Katie---it’s
easy!” From the couch, Mom, who could
slam dunk a basketball but got her
pinkie stuck in the charm
school teacups, eyed Dad---smiling but
not smiling. What did I know? I tried
to flatten my head by pressing down
hard on my skull with my chin
pressed to the windowsill at night.
I’d pray to the moon, Make me
graceful. I practiced faithfully, still
the book always fell. Home sick
from school, I’d steal
Dad’s Allspice scented shaving
mirror and navigate the house
by ceiling. Freed from gravity, I sashayed
effortlessly around corners, a ballerina
in disguise. So, when Dad
cautioned me at dinner with, “A girl who
sings at the table will marry
a fool,” I only lowered my head and kept
humming into the plate
of liver and onions.
Kate Fetherston’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, and Poetry Miscellany. She co-edited Manthology: Poems on the Male Experience and Open Book: Essays from the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. Kate won a Vermont Council on the Arts grant for poetry and holds an MFA from Vermont College. She is a classical singer and psychotherapist in private practice in Montpelier, Vermont.