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Authors: Margaret Robison
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side by side in their black satin slippers on a small needlepoint stool. Behind me on the mantelpiece and propped against a pair of cut-glass candlesticks stood announcements of her death, addressed in her own hand. The cards were bordered in black and said: “Dear Friend, Grace Clemons has passed away on this __ day of ____, 19__.” On the other end of the mantelpiece stood a snapshot of her mustached nephew from whom she awaited a visit year after year. On the wallbeside me hung a picture of Death rowing a young woman across the River Styx. I say it was Death because I always thought of the somber figure standing at the stern of the boat as Death itself, though it was in fact Charon, the ferryman who rowed the dead across the River Styx into the underworld.
“Cold lips and breast without breath,” Mrs. Clemons had recited earlier from Sir Edwin Arnold’s poem “She and He.” “Is there no voice, no language of death?” She’d recited the poem to me many times over the three years since I’d begun to visit her after I’d started taking painting lessons from Mrs. Forbes, who owned the house in which both women lived, and who lived below Mrs. Clemons.
She recited the poem slowly and passionately. And, as always, when listening to her recite the poem, I saw in my imagination a vast room, high-ceilinged and windowless, and at its center, a beautiful young woman’s dead body lying on a slab of marble, long hair streaming down the sides of her pillow, strewn with blossoms, as was the hair of the young woman Death was rowing and rowing across the River Styx.
Stillness. Gloom. Cold. These words from the poem filled my imagination, where the image grew so still that it became more like a tangible presence than the absence of sound or motion. That stillness had a weight to it, like the heavy cloak Death wore.
During the three years that I’d taken my midafternoon break from my Saturday painting lessons and sometimes—as now—waited with her for my mother to come for me afterward, Mrs. Clemons often talked about her death. Sometimes she would announce: “I hear the bells tolling midnight in the distance and they are coming closer,” her deep voice anchoring the words in a place of sober acknowledgment and resignation. Sometimes she made reference to the funeral announcements. But until that winter evening she’d never talked about communicating with me after her death. She spoke carefully and thoughtfully. “If you aren’t with me when I die,” she said, “go to my grave. The soul has to have a place to come home to.”
Whatever my eyes said must have been an adequate response forher. I had no words and she asked for none. I didn’t look from Mrs. Clemons’s gaze as we sat facing each other, the small room filled with the silence of a connection I’d never felt before. The fear that I’d experienced earlier at the idea of leaning close to her dead body was replaced by the feeling of wonder that I, a thirteen-year-old girl, mattered enough to her that she would try to communicate with me even after death. And I knew that she mattered enough to me for me to listen.
The blast of a car horn rose from the street below.
My mother had come for me. I hugged Mrs. Clemons goodbye. Then I rushed down the stairs and out the front door, her words playing themselves over in my mind—
a place to come home to
.
II
I no longer remember what threatened Mrs. Clemons’s health so much that she invited me to spend a night with her to keep her company. Her fear was so upsetting, yet no serious illness developed and I’m left with memories of a few details that anchor me in the turbulent waters of that weekend.
Before then I’d barely noticed what she referred to as her guest room, nor had I ever known her to have an overnight guest. She’d shown me her entire apartment when I first began to visit her, but until that weekend, there’d been no reason to go anyplace except the room in which we visited, and the kitchen
“Cold lips and breast without breath,” Mrs. Clemons had recited earlier from Sir Edwin Arnold’s poem “She and He.” “Is there no voice, no language of death?” She’d recited the poem to me many times over the three years since I’d begun to visit her after I’d started taking painting lessons from Mrs. Forbes, who owned the house in which both women lived, and who lived below Mrs. Clemons.
She recited the poem slowly and passionately. And, as always, when listening to her recite the poem, I saw in my imagination a vast room, high-ceilinged and windowless, and at its center, a beautiful young woman’s dead body lying on a slab of marble, long hair streaming down the sides of her pillow, strewn with blossoms, as was the hair of the young woman Death was rowing and rowing across the River Styx.
Stillness. Gloom. Cold. These words from the poem filled my imagination, where the image grew so still that it became more like a tangible presence than the absence of sound or motion. That stillness had a weight to it, like the heavy cloak Death wore.
During the three years that I’d taken my midafternoon break from my Saturday painting lessons and sometimes—as now—waited with her for my mother to come for me afterward, Mrs. Clemons often talked about her death. Sometimes she would announce: “I hear the bells tolling midnight in the distance and they are coming closer,” her deep voice anchoring the words in a place of sober acknowledgment and resignation. Sometimes she made reference to the funeral announcements. But until that winter evening she’d never talked about communicating with me after her death. She spoke carefully and thoughtfully. “If you aren’t with me when I die,” she said, “go to my grave. The soul has to have a place to come home to.”
Whatever my eyes said must have been an adequate response forher. I had no words and she asked for none. I didn’t look from Mrs. Clemons’s gaze as we sat facing each other, the small room filled with the silence of a connection I’d never felt before. The fear that I’d experienced earlier at the idea of leaning close to her dead body was replaced by the feeling of wonder that I, a thirteen-year-old girl, mattered enough to her that she would try to communicate with me even after death. And I knew that she mattered enough to me for me to listen.
The blast of a car horn rose from the street below.
My mother had come for me. I hugged Mrs. Clemons goodbye. Then I rushed down the stairs and out the front door, her words playing themselves over in my mind—
a place to come home to
.
II
I no longer remember what threatened Mrs. Clemons’s health so much that she invited me to spend a night with her to keep her company. Her fear was so upsetting, yet no serious illness developed and I’m left with memories of a few details that anchor me in the turbulent waters of that weekend.
Before then I’d barely noticed what she referred to as her guest room, nor had I ever known her to have an overnight guest. She’d shown me her entire apartment when I first began to visit her, but until that weekend, there’d been no reason to go anyplace except the room in which we visited, and the kitchen
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