Visible/Invisible

 After quoting from a novel by Michael Ondaatje in Hands (2004) Janet Zandy asks “What does it feel like to be described by other people and erased by them at the same time?” (p.87). Images of rooms flash through my mind as I ponder being erased and described by other people. A sterile room devoid of presence and personality. A room vividly alive from the presence of the personality.

I had to live in my stepmother’s home during a difficult time in my life. Daily, a bizarre, twisted version of Sisyphus would be reenacted. Each morning after I left the house, all vestiges of my belongings would be removed by my stepmother from the room where I was sleeping. My belongings were deposited into the cold, bleak attic among other remnants of life "she" did not want seen in her home. Evening would come and upon my return to the antiseptic room I was given to sleep in, I would turn around, walk to the door leading to the attic and trudge wearily up the steps.  I would joyfully bring back down the stairs my beautiful plant, my art supplies, my artwork, and my clothing. Me. Mine. There was solace in my possessions that this unfriendly house could not offer me. There was comfort in drawing my potted plant; this was my link that I was alive, visible, had a past, a present and a potential future.

The next image that comes into focus is my Aunt Sheba and her apartment. Her one room studio on Central Park West in Manhattan was a haven of comfort filled with luscious color and alive with artwork.  Displayed on the walls were paintings and drawings. Vibrantly colored fabrics covered the pillows and couch that doubled as her bed at night.  There were only a few pieces of furniture along with some knickknacks from countries she had visited in her late twenties and thirties. I was ten years old when I learned to take my shoes off before crossing her threshold as she did not like the dirt from the streets to enter her home: the habit became a lifelong practice upon entering any dwelling.

When I was seventeen, my mother passed away. My Aunt became my surrogate mother as we turned toward each other to help in our time of mourning. During my college years in New York City I would ride the bus up to my aunt’s several times a month to spend the night with her. I slept on the floor on a mattress next to her studio couch turned bed at night. We talked, laughed, argued and laughed some more as the years passed.

           

In my twenties I moved to New Mexico. Although I was unable to visit New York often, I spoke to Sheba several times a week. I kept her as involved as possible in my life with letters and photos as the years swiftly moved from my twenties through my marriage and divorce in my thirties and finally, into my forties. I begged her to come live with me in New Mexico, she begged me to come live with her. I asked her, “Where would Cat and I stay in your minuscule apartment?” We wouldn’t fit! We reached an impasse.

Fourteen years ago this Thanksgiving I purchased tickets for a trip to New York City for my then thirteen year old daughter and myself to visit “Tanta Sheba” who was in hospital. Several months earlier she had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and was slowly slipping away.  The day we were supposed to leave for our Thanksgiving visit she passed away. Instead of a visit we attended her funeral.

After the funeral I asked my cousin for a key to her apartment. I wanted to see her home and be in that place once more before returning to Texas.  In familiar routine, we entered her apartment after removing our shoes. I walked into a room that I barely recognized. There were some piles of papers on the floor; the couch/bed was still there although the bright coverlets and pillows were missing. The jewelry boxes, bric-a-brac and furniture were mostly intact, yet all felt like a shadow of the original.

We walked around the all-too-silent apartment. I looked into her closets. There were only two of them. She did not have many new outfits, but decades old styles of well cared for clothing that had already been in and out of fashion several times. Taped to the wall in the tiny kitchenette was a letter that my daughter Cat had written and drawn for her “Great Aunt Shebee”. Cat had dictated the letter to me when she was less than five years old and unable to write.  The many coins that Cat had pasted onto the letter were still in place. The hallway closet mirror and the living room mirror held more letters that my daughter had drawn and written, along with the many photos I had sent to my Aunt over the years. Weeping, I took down all the letters, drawings and photos to take home with me.

           

I am a memory hoarder. Memories run rampant in my mind when I look at objects from my past.

              

Besides my daughter’s pictures and letters, there were some items from my aunt’s apartment that I packed up to take back to New Mexico. The first, a tiny paper mache mirror that my aunt made on one of her trips to Mexico. I always loved this mirror. To my knowledge, it was the only piece of art my aunt had ever created. The mirror is scratched so you cannot see much when looking into it, and the face of the girl on the backside of the mirror is also worn and distressed after more than thirty years. I have looked at this piece and held it in my hands years upon years and wanted it as a keepsake.

           

Two other items of importance were prints of women by Diego Rivera. As a young girl, I used to stare at these whenever I went to visit my Aunt.  As a teenager, I had become intimate with them, yet did not realize how much they had become part of my being and incorporated into my “style” of drawing women. Diego Rivera stated, “Only the work of art can raise the standard of taste (http://artquotes.robertgenn.com/auth_search.php?name=rivera).  Exotic and mysterious looking, his women influenced my earliest sensibilities. I did not find out until many years later that these prints had actually been wedding presents to my mom and dad, but my brother was so frightened of them that my mom gave them back to my Aunt.

The movie Ever After ends with the lines: “...And while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after… the point, gentlemen, is that they lived” (Tennant, 1998).

As I turned to leave the apartment that had been my refuge for so many years, I realized what was missing: my Aunt’s presence.  The body is an empty shell once a person dies and the spirit has left the body. Without Sheba, the apartment had no personality. This studio apartment that had been a most magical place was now an empty shell. Sheba was the magic. Sheba was the presence and I shall remember with joy that she indeed lived.

When I work with my students, I realize that they, too, have memories that affect them. Like me, some students might be memory hoarders while others might be memory buriers. They each have their own story. I want my classroom to be a place of creativity, magic and healing. I want them to know their joy, sadness, confusion, loss and hope for new beginnings can be shared and expressed.