The Writer who wrote the Words

Stella Pope Duarte, author of the book "If I Die in Juarez"

Last week I had a quiet lunch with Stella Pope Duarte before she led a lecture and discussion of her books. My colleagues and I had recorded her book "If I Die in Juarez" for the National Library Services/ Arizona Braille and Talking Book Library.


Stella shared her way of writing a book. She researches it, she travels to the sites, she interviews the many involved people. She photographs the crosses marking the finding of the bodies. She lives the story. She dreams the story. She journals her dreams and includes those actions in her book. She is encased in the story, becoming a heartbroken observer of each victim.


In recording the book, we also become encased in the story. Not just engrossed, not just consumed. Even more than monopolized... we know that Stella's voice becomes ours.

We make notes in the margins, we underline words of emphasis or phrases of silence.

We verify any pronunciation of words and we study colloquial phrases.

We map each track of audio; we note each minute of reading.

 

We catch our own mistakes and make corrections.  Mistakes could be a stumbling of a word or in an inflection of voice.

We live the story. We are haunted by the young women of Juarez. And we easily turn to Stella Pope Duarte as a friend who has survived this, too.

I shouldn't borrow

 Lending Out Books 

by Hal Sirowitz

You're always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she'll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn't have the time
to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again
you'll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

(From Garrison Keillor, Good Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), p. 102.)

I try not to borrow books from friends. It is too easy to claim them as my own, to forget to give them back.

Right now I am borrowing a book titled "The Good Good Pig". I am not a Good Good Borrower.

I also have a Barbara Kingsolver book that isn't mine. I worry.

It is so much easier to borrow books from the city library. They send me gentle reminders that my books are one week due, three days due, DUE TODAY! I haven't stretched into the realm of 'overdue' yet -at least not for my 'city' books.

It is also easier to just buy the books I want from Amazon. They have my info on speed dial. I pick a book or two or ten, click 'order', and in 3 days the box is on our front porch. 

Anyone want to borrow a book? My therapist said it is okay... Just don't lend me a DVD.

(The photo is of my dad - in the middle - and his two older brothers. Circa 1933)

Walking away

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: 'What is it you see
From up there always -- for I want to know.'
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.

This is from the poem 'Home Burial' by Robert Frost.  This poem was first published in the book North of Boston, copyrighted 1915.

Take these lines again...
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: 'What is it you see
From up there always -- for I want to know.'
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.

Change it into an essay with conversation:
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs before she saw him.
She was starting down, looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it to raise herself and look again.


He spoke, advancing toward her: 'What is it you see from up there always -- for I want to know.'
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, and her face changed from terrified to dull. 

The first time I read this was in a New Yorker essay, I believe it was an article by Joseph Brodsky (Close Readings, “ON GRIEF AND REASON,” The New Yorker, September 26, 1994, p. 70).

Each sentence in this poem was written plainly as a story would be. The story jumped out of the page at me - I was hooked. I had to know more.

He said to gain time: 'What is it you see?'
Mounting until she cowered under him.
'I will find out now -- you must tell me, dear.'
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and a while he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, 'Oh' and again, 'Oh.'
'What is it -- what?' she said.
'Just that I see.'

'You don't,' she challenged.
'Tell me what it is.'
'The wonder is I didn't see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it -- that's the reason.'

The little graveyard where my people are!

So small the window frames the whole of it 

I was so totally enthralled. It was creepy, but I was curious. I didn't like that 'she' wouldn't tell him, that she made him figure it out by himself. But I was on the verge of being angry at him, for not knowing that a view of graveyard could haunt her.

I didn't know that their child was buried in the graveyard. I didn't know that 'he', the child's father, had to dig the grave himself. I didn't know that 'she', the wife, watched from the window. I didn't know the hurt, the anger, the grief that they both felt.

He starts again:

You make me angry. I'll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it's come to this,
A man can't speak of his own child that's dead.'

She answers:

'You can't because you don't know how.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand--how could you?--his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave

And talk about your everyday concerns.

This is a family grieving separately, not knowing how to reach for one another. This is a husband and wife both so hurt that they can't reach each other. OUCH. I was in tears at this point.

The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life

And living people, and things they understand. 

I don't why today this poem came flooding back to me.

I want to hug one who is grieving, one who is alone, one who has watched a grave and not wanted to walk away.

Reading a book out loud

When I was child, my dad's work moved us to Argentina.

We rented a 'company' house - one that was passed from one employee to another over the years. It was an English tudor style house and when we moved in it was very bland.

But bushes were planted and roses were tended to - and the house blossomed.

For most of the first year we lived there, our furniture was in shipment somewhere between Los Angeles and Buenos Aires. Neighbors lent us furniture, including a purple velveteen loveseat. For several months, the purple velveteen loveseat was the only piece of furniture in our living room. I can still picture it - very ornate, very soft, and very purple. And not at all useful for a family with children. My mother supervised every time we sat upon it. No shoes were allowed near it, no snotty noses, no toys.

When winter arrived, my mother started reading the book Heidi to us. I was fascinated by Heidi, how she was uprooted and sent to live in an environment so different. I hung on every word as my mother read to us, one chapter at a time. Mom would sit in the purple velveteen loveseat; my brother and I would sit on the wooden floor near the fireplace. Page after page was turned, chapter after chapter was read. I retreated into the book and into Heidi's friendship with Peter and life with her grandfather. I ached for her and suffered her same sadness. I, too, needed to find something I was a part of, something I could hold on to for the rest of my life (well, when you are 5 years old, stability for the rest of your life is expected!).

Months and years went along. I learned to read my own books, mostly Nancy Drews or the Boxcar children books. And my favorite, The Secret Garden. I so badly wanted my mother to read Mary Lenox's sad story out loud to me. I think I craved hearing my mother's voice read it as a reassurance that my mother wouldn't die as Mary's mother had - that I wouldn't become an orphan, too.

All these memories came flooding back to me as I now read the book "After You" by Julie Buxbaum. A child is left motherless, and a family friend draws the young girl out of her shell by reading her The Secret Garden.

I am escaping alone, all over again.