Her Monologue of Dark Crepe with Edges of…

Mistress Adrienne, I have been given a bed with a pink dresser

In the hothouse

Joining the Concord Public Library: the walls and roof are

Glass and my privacy comes from the apple-geraniums,

Violets, ferns, marigolds, and white mayflags.

I get my meals

With the janitor and his wife and all of the books are mine

To use. I scour, sweep, and dust.

I hope you don’t think of me

As a runaway? I remember your kindness,

Your lessons in reading and writing on the piazza.

My journey was unusual. I saw some of the war

And it was terrible even far up into the North.

My first fright was at a train depot outside Memphis

Where some soldiers found me eating not yet ripened

Quinces and grapes, they took me prisoner: first

I helped some children carry tree limbs to the woodbox

Of the locomotive, then, I was shown to a gentleman

In the passenger car who was searching for his runaway

Negress in a purple dress; he wouldn’t identify me,

And I was thrown in with about forty stray blacks into

An open boxcar and soon we were moving, next to me

A man was sucking on the small breasts of a girl

Maybe twelve years of age, across from them

A sad old woman smiled as she puffed on an old cigar end,

By afternoon she was dead, her two friends

Just kicked her out so that she rolled down into pasture

Frightening some hogs that ran off into a thicket.

The girl next to me whimpered and shook. Those quinces

Just ran straight through me and all I could do was

Squat in one corner that was supplied with ammonia-waters

And hay. We were given that night Confederate uniforms

To mend and when the others slept I dressed in three

Shirts and trousers and leapt from the moving train,

The padding helped some but I couldn’t walk the next day.

I hid in a shack that seemed lonely but for a flock

Of turkeys, some young hens, and a corncrib with tall

Split palings. The next morning from a hill

I watched field-workers on a tobacco plantation, it took

Two men to carry a single leaf like a corpse from

A battle scene. That night I found a horse with a bit

In its mouth made of telegraph wire. He carried me up all

The way to Youngstown. Chloe, you must

Learn to swim in the pond and to ride the old sorrel.

I am grateful. I had to swim two rivers. I fished some

For perch, bream, and trout and ate dried berries.

I stole a bushel of oysters from the porch of a farmhouse.

I treated my sores with blackgum from poplars. I witnessed

The hanging of three Confederate soldiers at a trestle:

Once they were done dancing, they settled in their greatcoats

Like dead folded birds. I have a hatred

Of men and I walked away from the trestle singing.

I spoke to The Concord Literary Club last Tuesday

About my experiences. I told them you never did

Abuse me. How we would sit out in the gazebo

And listen to the boys with their violins, tambourines,

Bones, drums and sticks. How we wept as girls

When the fox bit the head off our peahen and that

From that day how the peacock, missing his mate, would

See her in his reflection in a downstairs window

And fly at it increasing his iridescence with lacerations.

When I left you the windows were all missing and daubers

Were making their mud houses in the high corners

Of the hallway. With sugar-water and crepe I have put a new

Hem on my purple dress.

At night I walk down the aisles

Of the library, the books climb twenty feet above me,

I just walk there naked with my tiny lamp.

I have the need to fling the lamp sometimes: but I resist it.

Mistress Adrienne, I saw three big cities burning!

Did you know ladies from Philadelphia rode for two days

In wagons to climb a hill where with spyglasses they watched

The war like a horse-pulling contest at a fair.

The man beside me on the train who was sucking the little

Girl’s breasts, he was your stable boy, Napoleon. He said

He never had a bad word for you. His little mistress was

Still bare to the waist and before I leapt from the train,

And while he slept, I ran a rod into his eye. I stabbed him

In his brain. She stopped weeping.

Remember that French lullaby where two fleas in a gentleman’s

Mustache die like a kiss between the lips of the gentleman

And his mistress. How we laughed at it!

I hope you were not long unconscious there beside the pond.

I just ran away from you, listening the whole night

For your father’s hounds. I am

Afraid I split your parasol on your skull. If I

Don’t hear from you I will try to understand. Chloe.

Copyright Credit: Norman Dubie, “Her Monologue of Dark Crepe with Edges of Light” from The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001). www.coppercanyonpress.org

Source: The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001)