Anderson - Some bright morning, Ill fly away: a memoir

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This book is dedicated to my sweet three, Avery, Grayson, and Aidan, without whom I would not have been able to fly away to such sweet finally.

I would like to express my profound gratitude to Jen Gates at Avevitas Creative Management, who saw this book from the first fifty pages to final draft and championed me every step of the way; to Nichole Argyres at St. Martins Press, who believed without wavering in this memoir and the poet who wrote it; and to Mira Bartok, Jo-Ann Mapson, Barry Goldstein, Daniel Jensen, the late Storm Delarverie, the late Norris and Norman Mailer, Stephen King and the Haven Foundation, PEN America, Caroline Leavitt, Luis Alberto Urrea, Lidia Yuknavich, my writing teachers Mark Doty, Jean Valentine, Sharon Olds, Dennis Schmitz, and especially the late Thomas Lux, my mother, Mary Anderson, and, of course, Avery, Grayson and Aidan Anderson.

We make chapels of our scars.

They cross our skin and soul, a topographic map of the past. Our scars are built on the delicate yet dazzling scaffolding holding our weary, ragtag hearts aloft. I have in me a scar where my childhood sits, made up of playground songs and the raised-red slap of despair, inside the slate-blue cloudless empty spot between my ribs. In me there is a scar made of Paris nights so bright, plum-black and terrifying, my legs striding cobbled streets toward something, anything, that doesnt look like disaster. In me I have a wedding scar, pasted on with disappointment, made of that sinking feeling of not knowing if you do, the moment before the moment you are required to say I do , and do. There is a childbirth scar, born of the one who came and left at once in blood and tearstoo soon, too soon. There is a father scar, made of terrible nights and resolution and a line of still green trees standing ornate as lace in a grove outside a medical school, where my father gave his body, saying my body for yours : a kind of atonement by tree. And I must admit in me there is a terror scarit snakes so gingerly around my life entire, barbed and impossible to escape, a battered paper sack of oblivion I carry with me everywhere I go. But there are love scars, too, the most jagged of them allwhere one child and another and another and another were born in fire and bliss; where the one whose eyes shone like promise embraced you night after night, sharp kisses holding impossible daylight at bay. Every one of them is a chapel. Every one of them becomes the religion of your life.

We all make chapels of our scars.

Extraordinary things always happen on ordinary days. It was another quiet Mississippi morning, with the acrid scent of debris-pile fires sharp in the humid air. The kids and I were making trips back and forth between the FEMA trailer perched in Mr. Mannings backyard and the Land Rover when his daughters, Lana and Shelby, showed up and asked the kids if they wanted to go to town for some errands and a treat. Lana was my best friend; Liam had always hated her. With porcelain skin devoid of makeup, a wild head of black curly hair, jeans so tight and tank tops so small, Lana was more 80s Nagel poster come to life than proper Southern gal.

The kids loved her, and so did I.

These days my sweet three were attached to me like sequins on an opera diva, but Lana and Shelby mentioned going to Tato-Nut (the local doughnut shop in downtown Ocean Springs, where the sinfully hand-fried doughnuts were made of a mashed potato dough), and so the kids eagerly hopped in her van, and it pulled away down the long, red dirt drive.

Mr. Manning, otherwise known to all as Daddy, took one look at me standing there in my vintage Wranglers and sleeveless plaid shirt, cocked his eyebrow, and gave me the look.

You know: the look. The one your daddy gives before he shoves you off the lake cliff, or guns the boat motor, or buys you your first shot in a dive bar down to Bayou La Batre. Like theres about to be trouble.

Welp, he said, watching the van disappear between the scorched towers of salt pine savanna on either side of Poticaw Bayou Road. Might as well learn you a bit of something while theyre gone, he called over his shoulder, heading off in the direction of Lanas house.

We walked the three or four houses down the street to Lanas, went through the back door into the mudroom, then the kitchen, where he went about removing all the cereal boxes from the cabinet above the fridge.

Are we supposed to? I started to ask.

Hush up, now! You think I need permission to be in my own girls kitchen? He laughed.

Then he went about setting four, five, then six, finally nine pistols on Lanas kitchen counter, all in a row. Now, Id never touched a gun before, let alone had a row of them lined up before me like new pocketbooks down to the Gautier mall out on Highway 90. We stood there, on opposite sides of Lanas periwinkle speckled kitchen counter, silent, staring down at the guns. Finally, Daddy broke the ice.

Which one ylike? he asked.

I stood looking at them for a bit, momentarily speechless.

Well?

I dont even, I mean, Ive never, I guess. Well, are these? I dont, you know, where did these? Um, did they? I just, its just that, I couldnt, I mean, I can. I just havent, or shouldnt, or, well, you know, I have kids! But I do want to, well, you know. Shoot.

Daddy laughed at mehand slappin his thighs, turning around in circles, wiping tears from his eyes, trying to speak but falling apart in squawking sounds of total conniption, stomping his boots, and finally (mercifully) resting his head on his arms on the Formica countertop and letting out a big, long, high-pitched sigh.

Whew, girl! That was the best damn laugh I had since George Bush was on the WLOX changing a porch bulb with that Gautier doctor!

Well, that got me.

See, after the storm, George Bush caught a lot of grief for being virtually absent from the disaster. He was off doing God knows what all while people tried to rise up from the mud and get their dead cool enough to bury. So before you could drag your party barge off your grandmas roof, Bush finally decided to do a flyby, past New Orleans, and on down the coast to Mississippi, where it seemed the whole world could not give a good goddamn wed suffered a direct hit. Grayson and I were folding another load of our neighbors clothes wed done running the washing machine off the generator one day when we heard the unmistakable whap whap whap whap of a helicopters propeller cutting through the wet air. We ran out just as it broke across the line of our roof behind us and passed above our heads: I stooped to scoop up Grayson instinctually, all the while hunched over like those blades would cut me down. But to my disappointment, Marine One passed right over us and landed another block down on the lawn of Dr. Jim Bullinger.

Bush stepped out, proceeded to shake hands, survey the swanky, mostly untouched-by-the-storm-surge yard, then stepped up on his porch, media clamoring, to change a bulb.

One damn bulb.

Meanwhile, folks were waiting for the earth to dry to bury their dead.