Paying Attention

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

 

Ansil guided us through the mangroves. My mind fidgeted but my eyes found his hands and focused there. I watched as his hands on the oars guided the wooden boat through the mangroves. Soon my mind joined my eyes and forgot to worry.

The night before an intruder had robbed us while we slept in our Bimini hotel room.  A few hours later Ansil Saunders stood before us. He smiled and brushed aside the events of the night before.

“I will take you bonefishing for free.”

We followed him like children to his big American car that seemed out of place on an island where most people traveled by golf cart. He drove us to the spot here his boat was tied.

For the rest of the day as Ansil guided us through the shallow waters we concentrated on spotting the nearly invisible bonefish.

We learned that the best approach was to stop trying to see the fish and just cast where Ansil pointed. When we did that, we caught fish.

Ansil brought us to an open space in the mangrove. “They call this Bonefish Hole, but I call this Dr. King’s Creek of Peace because this is where I brought Martin Luther King.”

Dr. King had come to Bimini at the invitation of Adam Clayton Powell to work on his acceptance speed for the Nobel Peace Prize. King had spent the day with Ansil not for bonefishing, but for relaxation. I wondered how long it had taken his mind to stop fidgeting and focus his eyes on Ansil’s strong hands.

Ansil gestured to the sky, the water, and the mangroves. “Dr. King asked me what I told people who still doubted the existence of God. I told him I didn’t have an answer but I would the next time.

When King returned Ansil had his answer.

As we sat in Dr. King’s Creek of Peace, Ansil shared the Psalm he’d recited for him “…and God made the fish that swim in the ocean, the cows the graze beside it and the stars that shine above…” As he spoke he gestured to the ocean, the shore and the sky.

That was Martin Luther King’s last trip to Bimini. A few weeks later he went to Memphis.

Jan 08, 2011 | 1 comment View Post

Tiny Boxes

This is a chapter from my novel PUNGO CREEK  

On the morning they were to be baptized, Rose and Pearl woke up to find tiny boxes on their pillows. The boxes were wrapped in tissue paper and decorated with sprigs of Queen Ann’s Lace.  Their mother watched from the open door while the girls unwrapped the presents. “I wanted to give you something special today. I am just busting with pride today, girls.”

Each box held a tiny gold locket. Rose and Pearl looked at their mother. She had tears in her eyes.

“I haven’t been able to give you girls a lot of fancy things. I wanted to but…”  She stopped there.

Pearl hopped out of bed and threw her arms around her mother. “Oh, Mama, this is the most beautiful thing I could ever own. I will treasure it forever. Here, help me put it on.” She lifted her hair so Irene could fasten the locket.

“Me too, Mama.” Rose handed the locket to her Mama who fastened it around her neck.

“Look, Rose. It opens up.”

“I didn’t put anything inside. You girls can decide what you want to wear around your necks.” Her hand went to her own locket.

“What’s in your locket, Mama?”

Before she could answer, Benjamin’s voice boomed from the kitchen. “Can’t a man get breakfast around here? It’s bad enough that you wasted money on trinkets. Are you going to let me work the fields with my belly empty.”

“Benjamin, you can’t work today. Today is Sunday. Your sisters are getting baptized today. It just wouldn’t be right for you to work today.”

“I’d rather be out there in the fields than sitting around here watching you all act ridiculous.” Benjamin left, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

“Well we can’t be dawdling. The church bus will be coming soon and you girls can’t be going to church in your nightgowns.” Irene smiled the sad smile the girls knew so well.

“We’ll be ready, Mama. Don’t worry.” Rose kissed her mama again. “Don’t worry about Benjamin. I’m going to take him a nice sandwich for him to have for his lunch. He’s right. He can’t be working on an empty stomach.”

“Well just hurry or Benjamin won’t be the only one missing church today.” She smiled to herself at how grown up they were – especially Rose. She was her father’s daughter to be sure. She was bold and forthright while Pearl was meek and timid. She had Grover’s good looks. Rose was strong and tall for a girl but she was also womanly.  She had matured quickly and looked much older than her twelve years. It was hard raising the girls alone. At times Rose seemed more like the mother than she did.

 Rose got dressed quickly and made Benjamin two chicken sandwiches and cut him a piece of pie. “I’ll be back before you finish combing your hair, Mama,” she shouted as she ran down the back porch steps.

When Rose got to the field Benjamin already had the plow hooked up to the tractor. She took off her shoes and walked toward him. “Benjamin, Benjamin” she called. “I brought you some lunch.”

Benjamin either didn’t hear her or had decided to ignore her. He climbed onto the seat of the tractor, started the old engine and steered the tractor away from Rose.  She ran into the field. Her feet sunk into the soft earth. Mud splattered onto her skirt.  The previous night’s rain had left the field soaked. “Too wet to plow,” she thought.

Benjamin reached the end of the furrow and turned the tractor around. He headed back to the spot where Rose stood, ankle deep in mud. She waved her arms. He was too far away for him to hear her but she called out anyway. “Benjamin, stop. I want to talk to you.”

He looked straight at her but he didn’t stop. Instead he turned sharply.  The plow and the rear wheels of the tractor dug into the mud and the front wheels lifted. The tractor back flipped.  Benjamin was thrown from his seat to the soft, freshly dug earth. Rose screamed and ran toward the spot where Benjamin lay trapped beneath the tractor’s wheels. Rose managed to wedge herself under the overturned tractor and turn off the engine. All was quiet, except for her brother’s screams. 

“Benjamin! Oh my God. Benjamin!”  She grabbed her brother’s shoulders and tried to pull him from beneath the tractor but she only intensified his pain. “Benjamin, I’m going for help.” She ran across the muddy field, back toward the house where she met her mother and sister. They had heard Benjamin’s cries and come running. “Mama! Benjamin is trapped under the tractor.”

Irene looked first at her mud-covered daughter then toward the field where she knew her son lay. “Go get C.M. Smith. Tell him to bring his tractor. Hurry, child.  Pearl. You come with me.”

Rose ran as fast as she could up the lane, then down the dirt road toward the Smith farm a mile away.  The church bus came toward her. She stood in the middle of the road waving her arms. The bus stopped and Reverend Gaskins jumped off the bus and ran toward her.

“Rose, what is the matter?” His gaze took in her mud covered bare feet and her torn dress.

“It’s Benjamin,” she gasped. “He’s trapped under the tractor. There.” She pointed to the field.  “I’ve got to go get C.M. Smith to pull the tractor off him.”

“Get in. I can drive you there and then I’ll come back and do what I can.” As he talked he pulled Rose into the bus and threw it into reverse. He backed the bus almost a mile to the Smith house where he barely stopped as Rose leapt out and ran to the house. She related for the third time that morning what had happened to her brother. Smith wasted no time. He shouted instructions to his wife while throwing chains onto the back of his tractor. “Rebecca! Get Doctor Wright. Tell him to get there fast.  Keep the girl with you. She don’t need to see this.”

When Smith got to the field Benjamin was still conscious and screaming in agony. Reverend Gaskins was standing next to the tractor powerless to do anything but pray.  “Reverend! Don’t just stand there. Help me get unhitch that plow.  Together they released the plow and with the help of Pearl and Irene they pulled it away from the back of the tractor. Smith hooked one end of the chain to the overturned tractor and the other to the back of his tractor. “When I pull, you three pull him free.” He jammed his tractor into gear. At first it didn’t budge. The rear wheels just threw up mud but then, slowly, Smith’s tractor moved forward just a few inches. It was enough to allow them to pull Benjamin from beneath the wheel. 

His left leg was mangled. “Irene! Give me your petticoat. We have to get a tourniquet on this boy.” Smith could see that the soft earth saved Benjamin’s life. If it had been hard he would have been crushed to death.

You can purchase PUNGO CREEK on Amazon   

Jan 05, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

When It’s Dark Enough You Will See the Stars

Today I woke to the sound of a dog breathing in my ear and a toilet flushing. The first words I heard were “are you up?” Those are the first words I hear each morning Monday through Friday. The second are always “here’s your coffee” as he puts a cup within easy reach. Darcy puts here muzzle close to my nose and the smell of dog breath mingles with the aroma of hazelnut coffee. I still haven’t opened my eyes because as soon as I do the remnants of my dreams will scatter. Today I woke up with faint memories of dancing in a full skirt and tweezing one eyebrow. All the other images had gone where algebra went so I gave up and opened my eyes. 

Hubby was next to me sipping his own coffee. “These sheets smell good” he said.

“We could be in a commercial for fabric softener” I replied. I do like to wake up to the smell of sheets washed with Snuggles fabric softener. I’d changed the sheets last night. They did smell terrific. “Do we have time for a hot tub this morning?”

He said we did so we took our coffee outside and shivered until we were submerged in the 104 degree water. We watched the sky turn pink and orange. We watched Arlo and Darcy chase each other around the yard, pausing occasionally to peer over the side of the tub – never too close to the edge. Hubby was complaining about a presentation he’d made yesterday that wasn’t well received. “Turn your frown upside down.” I repeated the phrase with accompanying hand and facial gestures until he smiled. I can always make him smile. I am the optimist, the Pollyanna, the one who would look at a water hazard on a golf course and only see the cute ducks.

The branches of the surrounding trees gestured against the brightening sky but I could still see a few stars. For some reason I thought of Van Gogh’s Starry Nights. Those huge cartoon stars in the blue-purple sky. Then I thought of the darkness that those beautiful paintings were born in. How we have to take our writing into the dark for a time before it is ready. Of course, some of my writing has been in the dark too long. So long it feels like it was written by someone else.

For no particular reason these lines are begging to be included in this meandering post. They are the words of Stanley Kunitz – one of my favorite poets.

In a murderous time
   the heart breaks and breaks
      and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
   through dark and deeper dark
      and not to turn.

Jan 04, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Dreams Can Come True

When she was a child she lived in a war zone. Not literally, of course. Her world was bordered by a dusty, dirt road and crab and croaker filled creek but to her it was as dangerous and unfriendly as the battlefields of the Korean War from which her Uncle Bill had just returned. He’d given his army knife to her mother as a souvenir. Some nights when her mother and father’s verbal attacks were accompanied by pushing and shoving and flying fists she was sure the blade of that knife would end up protruding from her father’s hairless chest.

Her family never shared meals at the yellow Formica table that was pushed against the wall of their tiny kitchen. The surface of the table was covered with half finished crossword puzzles, overflowing ashtrays, and chipped mugs holding cold coffee. She and her sister ate in front of the television set. Her mother ate standing in the kitchen after she’d carried her father’s plate to the bedroom where he’d retreated with a paperback novel and a beer.

If she’d had friends she would have been ashamed for them to visit the modest house where cooking smells hung to the shabby drapes in the cramped living room and the smoke from her parents’ cigarettes had turned the walls a rancid yellow. But she had no friends.

As she grew older the anger, the poverty the filth that filled that little house displaced her, created a wall between her and the rest of the family. In order to deny the meagerness and rage of that house she had to abandon her family. She abandoned them emotionally long before she left them physically.

As a young woman she tried again and again to create a house that could hold the love, abundance and beauty she’d longed for as a child but the harder she tried the more miserably she failed.

It wasn’t until she’d almost given up trying that she realized she’d that her dream would never be reality until she’d forgiven her mother and father for their failings and herself for being ashamed of them and abandoning them. The guilt and blame was blocking her vision for herself.

She remembers the moment when this happened. She was in a beautiful room in the hills of Pennsylvania surrounded by men and women who had been strangers a week earlier. It was one of the last group meetings of the Adult Children of Alcoholics treatment she had reluctantly and desperately attended. They were each to give their answer to the question: What is your vision for yourself when you leave Chit Chat?

She raised her hand first. She’d been preparing the answer to that question her whole life. “I am going to have home where my friends know they can enter without knocking. A home where there is laughter, love and honesty. Where meals are shared around tables laden with meals prepared with thought and attention. Where I can feel safe and speak without fear.”

She went on and on. It was as though a plug had been removed and the words just flowed. Her vision was so crystal clear that she even began to describe the Christmas tree that would stand in the living room of the home that she had not even bought yet.

It all came true. The house, the friends, the meals even the Christmas tree. Forgiveness was the key that opened the lock for her and there is one truth that she believed to the bottom of her carefully manicured toes:

When the soul wants to have an experience of something, she throws an image of the thing ahead of her and then enters into it.

Meister Johann Eckhart

Dec 24, 2010 | 1 comment View Post

NaNoWriMo Rant

If you are one of the other 150,000+ writers participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) who is a bit peeved at Salon.com’s notion that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time – who doesn’t agree with Laura Miller that “writing a lot of crap” doesn’t sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November”  …. keep on writing. 

If you need one more reason JUST DO IT … it really irritates Laura Miller. 

For more inspiration, read @shelfmagazine’s excellent rebuttal in Shelf Unbound

7523 words and counting!

Nov 04, 2010 | 2 comments View Post

Willis Clarke 1982-2010

On October 12, 2010, the world lost an amazing person. Willis Stephen Clarke died suddenly after an attack of acute pancreatitis. He was surrounded by his family and friends.    In the words of a dear friend “Willis had a seemingly magical ability to bring people together. He didn’t make friends; he made family.” He was 28 years old.

A natural athlete, between the ages of twelve and seventeen Willis spent his summers swimming with the Holmes Run Acres Hurricanes in Falls Church, Virginia where he excelled at the butterfly and leading his team in cheers.

Willis was a 2000 graduate of Princess Anne High School, Virginia Beach, Virginia where he was active in the Color Guard. He went on to participate on several national competitive color guard teams. He was employed by GEICO until shortly before his death.  Although ill, he spent the last few months reconnecting with his inner child and teaching himself how to indulge in the small pleasures of life like video games, photography, music, and pressed coffee.

Willis was preceded in death by his mother Robin Barnes Clarke. He is survived by his father Willis Mackey Clarke, his stepmother Linda Clarke, his stepsister Teresa Robinette and his sister Reva.  He is mourned by his many, many friends, his partner Justin Ludwick, his aunts Addie Stubbs and Brenda Mantz, and his Uncle John who taught Willis how to drive a stick shift.

A celebration of Willis life will be held at Calvary Chapel of Virginia Beach 5228 Indian River Road, behind Kramer Tire Center at 3pm Saturday, October 16.

Grief

by Mark Klein written for Willis Clarke

This cry is the sound of a heart
being torn in two. This rumbling
in my chest is the world coming undone.

We now collect our memories
carefully in anthologies. We record
those words as though divine.

Because of these
we are changed forever.

The forests are on fire; they burn
to the ground. Everything is broken
to be restored, new.

Oct 14, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

This made me happy…

Al Boss wrote a lovely review of Pungo Creek  - so good that it prompted my husband John to read my book …..finally. 

Thanks, Al!

I was swallowed up by Pungo Creek. I breathed in its cooling, brackish water and filled myself with it. I would have died like many others if it had been the actual water, but fortunately for me it was just the book.

Pungo Creek (the novel, not the North Carolina stream) climbs the family tree of the Foremans, following the lives of people whose tough existence has been bedeviled by poverty, alcoholism, violence, death, incest, and rape. It is a grim, gritty, and spellbinding tale.

Brenda Mantz is a powerful storyteller. Intellectually, I know I’ve never set foot anywhere near Pungo Creek, but my senses have experienced the smell of the wind coming across its water over the pines. The feel of the earth there on my bare feet still lingers. I can hear the voices of generations of the Foreman family blowing through the screens of the clapboard houses, the creak and splash of the oars in the rowboat on the water, fatback popping in the pan on the stove, and the Baptist minister calling out invocations toward a seemingly indifferent God. I have seen the furtive, telling looks on the people’s faces and can often taste the whiskey on their breath. Such is the potence of this evocative, tragic tale; the reader is drawn into the maelstrom and every sense becomes connected to the story.

I was stuck to the book from first sentence, which, granted, was the entire prologue and covered a couple of pages, but it hooked me and hauled me in as if I were just another fish in Pungo Creek. I was crushed, transcended, assailed, and defiant, totally engrossed by the characters while I read. If the novel had been longer my family might have had me locked up. If the story had been shorter I might have locked myself up and not come out until I could read more of it.

Aug 12, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Aunt Gladys

Another poem from Myra Shapiro’s Workshop last week

When thoughts of me glide past you

like those wooden ducks at Ocean View pick them up

–remember when you dried tiny wet hands on my violet skirt

When you’re frightened, my cowardly lion,

remember when you woke trembling and I help you and whispered

“you see, Brenda, it was all a dream.”

When thunder rattles the walls of your heart

just pretend it’s resin balls crashing against wooden pins

in the bowling alley beneath my apartment on Jefferson Street

When you’ve flown through six time zones to taste

gelato in Porto Ercole and risotto in Verona

remember those stolen hotdogs I brought home in my pocket

And when you pass a mirror and see my face

remember my finely arched brow and perfectly line lips

that left crimson stains on innocent cheeks

“>

Aug 08, 2010 | 1 comment View Post

My Ghazal

Maria greets me each morning in the lobby

holding a rag or a mop.

I don’t see her when I’m going home

The trees that line my street are taller now

than they were when I walked past them the first time

when I didn’t know I was going home

The ocean crashed against the shore

a fiddler crab danced just out of reach

and I paused at the high tide line before going home

Even Mother Theresa lost her faith in the end. I wonder.

Did I ever have faith? I’ll worry about that another time.

Today I’m not going home

A melody repeats itself

I hear it in a silent room

I sing it to myself as I’m going home

Brenda, daughter of Frankie Mae & Virginius

who takes such large steps on this earth. My child,

do you know you are already going home?

Aug 07, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Recipe Poem

A Poem for 3 Seasons 

Dream through the cold winter of ripening fruit.

When boats are shrouded in snow,

when branches snap themselves into kindling

sit before a fire and remember the taste, the texture

Of figs

When winter curtsies to spring and leaves by the back door

pull on a sweater and stand near her greening branches

and offer blessings for her fecundity

Bless earth, bless rain, bless sunshine

Bless figs

It is hot now. Summer is full upon us.

walk to her side and feel the power of a July sun

see her strain under the weight of unripe fruit

Explore her high branches – the ones closest to the sun

It is there waiting for you.

Your fig

Jul 24, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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