Julie R. Enszer's Blog, page 20

Hauntings from the Past

This photograph popped into my email the other day. It is my business card from probably 1991 or early 1992. This card was, according to filmmaker Brian Alexander, in the wallet of Sue Pittmann when she was murdered by her neighbor over a dispute about a fence. Very early in our Saginaw exile, I wrote about the murders of Pittmann and Puckett and how painfully resonant it was for me when we were harassed when we first purchased our home and then last year after we adopted Tibe. In the earlier post, I wrote:

Always haunting me during this neighborhood conflict was what happened to Sue Pittmann and Christine Puckett in the suburbs of Detroit on May 5, 1992. It feels like an eon ago when they were shot and killed by their neighbor, someone with whom they had on going conflict. When he was arrested he just said, I had to do it. Initial reports in the newspaper were that it was a conflict between neighbors over a fence. In fact, these two open lesbians were shot and killed in cold blood and with no remorse by their next store neighbor. Bigotry and homophobia kill lesbians.

Seeing this business card from my twenty-one- or twenty-two-year-old self reminds me of how little I understood about bigotry and homophobia then but how committed I was to ending it. The image, remembering the card in my hand, the quality of the paper on which it was printed, what it meant then to have a card with the word Lesbian on it, reminds me of my earlier self. She haunts me. I want to retreat and never speak to people again; she demands something different. She demands a commitment to creating a new world free from homophobia and bigotry. She dwells within me. She haunts me.

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Of What We Are Made

When I left Saginaw last, in August 1987, I had one ambition: I wanted to be a lesbian and a feminist in a community of lesbians and feminists. I fulfilled that ambition.

Now, twenty-six years later, as I contemplate leaving Saginaw again, I am struck by a few things. First, while I think of myself as a wildly different person today in 2016 than I was in 1987, I can see characteristics that I carry with me over time. Two are striking to me now. They are not flattering. First, I am competitive, and I despise losing. I recognize these feelings from throughout my childhood and the fact that I have few skills to really manage the competitive drive and the profound hatred of losing. I recognize that I cope with it primarily by avoiding competitive environments; I want to compete with no one but myself. Moreover, I recognize the competitive drive in my grandmother. In spite of the cognitive challenges that she faces, the decline in mental acuity, when I brought a game, Tenzi, to play with her, she lit up. She became especially animated when she won the first game and then when she beat me roundly, four out of five. I could see and understand the competitive drive, the commitment to winning. My grandma is a good sport; I do not want to suggest she is a sore loser, but she prefers to win. She wants to be a winner. I am the same way.

Second, I recognize how much I hate weakness. My own and others. I think that this intersects with the competitiveness, but I do not fully understand those connections. I just know that I hate weakness. I recoil from it. I do not want it to be around me. I despise even a whiff of weakness.

What I have learned about myself, what feels new over the past twenty-six years, is that I actually am willing to put something else in the world over my own well-being.

If you had asked me would I put another life before my own twenty-six years ago, I would have said no. I recognized, even at seventeen, my own self-centered ness. I am not sure that it actually has abated with the passing of adolescence. Somehow, though, in the past twenty-six years, I developed a capacity to put something else before me, to put the life of a dog, specifically saving the life of a dog, over my own interests in the world. I never thought that would be an attribute in my make up. 

When we first came to Saginaw, I thought that I was taking these actions on principle, that I was standing on principle on behalf of Tibe. That action I would expect of me, but not an action of saving a dog, of putting his life over my own. I am not sure that this is an attribute I want. Intellectually, I prefer principles to the messiness of human connections.

I am not sure what to make of these new understandings of my interiority. I am not sure that I have isolated attributes that are positive; I think I am describing more of what is than anything else. That is, this is how things are, neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. Still I know, every night I ham happy when Tibe is sleeping next to me, on the bed, at the foot of the bed. Every night and every morning, he is there. And now I know how far I am willing to go when threatened, when my dog is threatened.

Maybe our actions are required only by how much I despise weakness. To return Tibe, to put him down, would have been a show of weakness. To leave, defiant, willful, was a show of strength. The loss at the Animal Control hearing was devastating to that competitive part of me. It felt like a terrible showing of weakness, of being unable to protect and defend our family. Strength–and vengeance–both take time, however. Time I have, and both strength and vengeance will be mine.

Tibe sleeps at my feet. I am scheming for the second escape from Saginaw and what ambitions I will carry with me. Somehow, competitiveness and strength will figure into the future, as will my beautiful crew of animals, each strong and gentle, each loved and loving, each fierce and kind. The bigots who attack us underestimate of what we are made. Their actions make us stronger, feed our hunger for vengeance. What are we made of? Something competitive. Something that takes hatred and turns it into strength. Something that turns injustice into power. We are made of soft fur, hard nails, perpetual slobber, and a spirit that demands righteousness and justice. Do not underestimate our strength, do no underestimate our memory, how we hold to the idea of vengeance. Do not underestimate of what we are made.

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Closet

Last night, we were all sitting in the family room, below the master bedroom upstairs. I was reading. Tibe was snoozing; Emma was in front of the fan. Vita was sitting on the window sill. First, we heard a shuffling upstairs. Nothing loud. It didn’t startle anyone. The animals did not move, but it was clear. Shuffling, as though shoes we being moved about or the dry cleaning papers were rustling against the wood floor. If Vita was not sitting right there with us, I would have thought she was running around after an insect or just playing with a piece of paper. After less than a minute, it stopped, then a few minutes later more rustling, a little walking, as though someone was casting about, looking for something. The beloved is in New York. Everyone in the house is in my eyesight.

I did not investigate. After a few minutes the sounds stopped. An hour or so later, all of the animals were with me up in the bedroom. They did not sniff or act as if anything was amiss. I know what it was. Ruth, my mother, now of blessed memory, was looking for her shoes or a sweater. She knew exactly where it was, but don’t you know, most of her stuff has been removed from the house. I know she is not happy about it. Things being removed; her stuff no longer in the house; she is not happy about any of it. I know she also is not happy about these big dogs in her house. I know she is not happy about her house being dismantled, about the plan for it to be sold. I also know none of this is sensical. She is not here; she has no more opinions or feelings about anything.

Yet, living in her house over these past months, she seems present–in good ways and bad. Kim marvels at her cooking utensils. We think she would be happy that they are being used. Though I imagine she would not be happy that SHE was not using them. She would be happy that the swimming pool is clear and warm. She would like the new vacuum cleaner.

The Maryland situation would not have surprised my mother. I can hear her asking, well, what do you expect being involved in that lesbian mess? She would have found a perverse sort of justice in us being forced out of the neighborhood. Don’t think that just because you live that way, it is okay. Mothers leave a complex legacy.

So when I hear here rustling in the closet upstairs, I do not go to investigate. She will find what she wants or she will not. I wonder though, when we are gone, where will she go? I hope that all of this cleaning, sorting, organizing, and eventual emptiness will bring her to rest. When the house is an empty shell, may she find peace.

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Narratives

The beloved is at a funeral this evening down in Detroit. A dear friend’s sister died. When I asked her, how did she die? The beloved said, Thirty years ago she got a divorce and lost custody of her child. She stopped there. I knew. She died from grief, from a life of pain.

In so many ways, my mother died similarly. Her favorite cousin, killed in a car accident a year after my mother married. My sister, my mother’s child, who died in a car accident. She carried that grief and that pain with her daily. Some days she raged, but most days it just pressed down on her. Eventually it crushed her heart and her mind. She died in this house where we are living.

I recognize these stories. I know these stories. I tell these stories. I desperately do not want to live in one. I do not want to be the person in X number of years about whom people say: she died because they tried to take away her dog. She died because she was driven out of her home by bigots, by bullies. She never really recovered.

I feel that narrative, however. Even as Tibe sleeps at my feet, even as I know nothing and no one will take him away from me, I feel the narrative of grief and loss press on me, surround me, encircle me.

Individual lives are filled with hundred, thousands of narratives. Various events happen; we give them meaning or evacuate them of meaning. What stories become important in our lives and in our minds is a complex alchemy. What stories, what narratives do we retell, remember, hold on to? Do we tell a narrative of success and triumph? Or one of failure and despair? All lives have both. How do we tell the stories with nuance so that we are not trapped by the grief and pain? How do we tell stories about our lives that do not embrace false positivism? How do we construct a narrative that builds a bridge to the next story rather than trapping us the disappointments, the pain, the grief of the past?

Narrative seems simple. A simple noun. A story. An account. Until the telling begins. Then the complexities, the consequences emerge.

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Cedar Chest

Approaching the beginning of the ninth month in Saginaw, I can report the following:

The basement is finished: cleaned, painted. I must confess in the big freezer (for the east cost readers, people in the Midwest keep big freezers so that when they buy a half a cow they can freeze the meat for the year or when they pick twenty pounds of blueberries, they can freeze them and eat them all year round. It’s a Midwestern thing, I believe.) there was food that was purchased when I last lived in this house permanently. I graduated from high school in 1987. I’ll pause for a collective ewwwww.
There is a working door bell. It has a different chime for the front and the back door.
The small China cabinet is empty and up for sale on Craigslist. (If you are local and want it, I’ll make you a good deal.)
The pool water is like bath water and I have the noodles floating just waiting for quick dips to cool off on these hot days.
I have started measuring things to determine how many cubic feet the moving receptacle needs to be for our travels from Michigan to…. (Still not talking publicly about where we are headed, but I will soon and it is starting to feel more tangible.)
Tibe had a bath today. He smells great. No more skunk on my little man. And they still love him where I take him for baths. And I love when others love my dear pup.
My grandmother’s cedar chest is in our front room. It will travel with us to our next home. Vita already likes it.

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Discovery

Generally, the cleaning out of my childhood home has been difficult, challenging and with few rewards. Like after my mother’s death when my dad and I dealt with all of her clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup and other personal effects, the days of cleaning are long and labor-intensive. Everything must be sorted, bagged, and removed. It is not hard physical labor, but it is labor. Then when things are removed, the prospect of cleaning remains. Eventually, when it is done, there are empty rooms which provide a sense of accomplishment, certainly, but also loneliness as though the loss of my mother, of the past, of childhood manifests itself in empty space.

As I have written before, the house in Michigan is nearly cleaned out. I have one more trip to Goodwill. The basement floor still needs to be painted. Almost all of the electrical work has been done, though the electrician will return on Monday for the final needed outlets and fixes. We will have to pack up our personal effects and the dozens (perhaps over a hundred) books that I have accumulated and the issues of Sinister Wisdom that I have had shipped here. Remaining will be a couch, a dresser, a desk, two tables. My dad will take some, the rest will be donated. The empty house will go on the market. 

This ending, combined with our ending in Maryland, feels like the closing of many chapters, many books in my life. Many have observed how lucky I am to have had this opportunity–to help my dad, to help my grandmother, to have closure in this space. Like the skunk incident, however, I could have lived a happy life without these experiences. Maybe though, I’ve always been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

When I first arrived back in Saginaw, there was one book I wanted to find in the house. A big, glossy book I remembered as a teenager called, The Horse. For the first four months, I looked through my father’s books, convinced that it was somewhere on one of the shelves in the house. Dad and I discussed it. He had not seen it. I could not find it. I wanted to have that book back in my collection. It seemed though that it was gone forever.

Amid the search for The Horse, I did find the first book I made as a child. 

The title page:

I was not yet using my middle initial and I seem to recall that we had very specific guidelines to follow in the creation of this book.

Then a few days after finding Blackie–the story of a colt, while cleaning out storage under the eaves, I found the book I remembered loving as a teenager.

Encyclopedia of The Horse. It is as gorgeous as I remember. I am so happy to have it back in my library.

Finally, because the beloved delighted in the final page of Blackie, here it is:

So this is a remnant of my early publishing aspirations and an example of a book that I loved as a teenager.

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Keeper of Accounts*

Like these my despised ancestors I have become a keeper of accounts.

Bashert by Irena Klepfisz

I have a few fun blog entries planned, but I seem to not have time to get to them lately or I am overwhelmed by world events before I write and publish them. Today, I want to bear witness to two lives.

This morning, while Emma and I ambled about the neighborhood–it was cool and crisp and sunny and we really loved walking–we came upon our neighbor round the block and his two greyhounds. One has a pinched nerve in her leg. She has been on prednisone for two weeks. We were all hoping the nerve would resolve itself, but it hasn’t. Now there is cancer, probably wrapping around her spine. Her caretaker, a lovely gay man, I do not know his name, said that “it” would probably happen at the vet tomorrow. He said, I should have done it three days ago, when I was there, but it is so hard. You know, you have them for a few years, and then…. His voice trailed off. He looked down. He said, this is an end for me. No more rescue dogs. I need a break. I want to do something different. Something without pain and loss. I nodded. Emma nodded, then decided to walk away. We said our goodbyes.

I have been thinking about this neighbor all day, appreciating his care for the greyhounds, witnessing how much pain he is in as one approaches the end of her life.

The other life that has been on my mind is the life of Jeffrey Montgomery. Jeffrey died a few days ago. I knew his health was declining, but he was still young. It felt sudden.  I haven’t talked with Jeff in a number of years, but I miss him in the world. I met him when I started working at Affirmations. He had a demeanor of irascibility and a scowl that I at twenty-three wanted to cultivate for my future irascible self. Then I learned that that demeanor, that scowl, was a smokescreen. Inside was this joyful, exuberant, kind, and yes, even generous person. That was the Jeff I knew. We smoked and drank coffee together. He was funny and intelligent. He taught me many things. The things I value most is he taught me about anger and indignation and fearlessness. He was all three, particularly in moments of crisis, when all the are most needed. I have never been able to mobilize those feelings like he did, but I studied it, I yearned for it. Jeff refused to let the murders of Sue Pittmann and Christine Puckett to be categorized as a neighbor dispute. He framed them as a hate crime. He was right. He changed how that case was prosecuted and understood. Similarly, when the media wanted to blame Scott Amedure for his own murder, Jeff put the focus on Schmitz, refuting any notion of gay panic. Jeff was a warrior, determined, single minded, biting. I feared him at times, but I always, always admired him.

As a young woman, one of the things I marveled about Jeff was his multiple passions. He cared about anti-gay and anti-lesbian hate crimes, but he also helped save Detroit’s Orchestra Hall. His knowledge about the city of Detroit seemed encyclopedic. He was always reading, always thinking, always ready to argue. He had long hair and was scruffy. He liked sex. Kinky sex. He wasn’t afraid to talk about it. He was strident and challenging. He had bravado and care. Life was hard for him and sometimes I remember seeing the small wounded animal inside him. He cared for it, but I always wondered did he get enough love, enough praise, enough compassion, enough accolades. Today, I am missing him in all his wonderful was, complexity, and brilliance.

I do not want to be the keeper of accounts. I do not want to be sad about each death, about what we must endure in our lives, about what the world asks us to shoulder. Even as I want none of this, I must write about my neighbor. I must write about Jeff. My despised ancestors. A keeper of accounts.

A photo of Jeff from Wikipedia, as I remember him.

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Skunk

Today it happened. Tibe got skunked. This means the local vet in addition to being sexy is prescient. Let me explain how it happened. 

The bridge between our house and Ojibway Island is closed for road work. So each morning this week we have been going to a different park, near Ojibway Island, but not on the island itself. Today I decided to drive the extra quarter of a mile so that we could take our usual walk in the Ojibway Island meadow. Both Tibe and I were happy to be there. I was especially happy because as we walked to the pathway to the meadow, we saw two of the walkers and Tibe became animated for a moment as if he was going to bark, but he sat down, calmed down, and then walked with me into the meadow. We walked by the picnic pavilion and were headed into the meadow itself, but Tibe became distracted by something in one of the bushes. I didn’t think of it much at first. Then he started pulling and sniffing more intensely. Suddenly, I knew we had a problem. I couldn’t see what it was. Leave it, I said, to no avail. Suddenly from out of the bush pops a tiny little black being. I thought at first it was a kitten. It was about the size of Vita when we adopted her. She weighed less than two pounds. Then it lifted its little white and black tail. I knew what it was. Tibe was fighting me to pursue it. Then she sprayed. He went crazy. She scurried off into another bush.

Tibe finally got himself under control. We walked into the meadow. He rolled on the grass spreading that skunk scent on the grass, his front paws, his ears. I had nothing at the park to deal with this situation. No towels. Nothing. So I let him clamor into the car.

Back at the house, he got hosed down. Then I looked up the recipe for treating skunk on dog and doused Tibe’s head in a mixture of baking soda, vinegar, and dishwashing liquid. Then rinsed again. He smells better, but still that little baby skunk remains about his head. I keep wiping his head with apple cider vinegar. It is better and the smell does not seem to be wiping on the furniture or carpet. Vita will have no part of him, nor Emma. For the next six weeks, I know we will be calling him, accurately, stink head. Oh, Tibe, what adventure you have, my dear friend.

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A Household Brimming with People

I had forgotten how many people came in and out of our house in Maryland. Friends visiting, students working with me, volunteers for Sinister Wisdom, the lovely women who cleaned our house (I have missed the clean floors and bathrooms since we have been in Michigan; I try, but it is a losing proposition for me to keep up). Bullying, of course, isolates people. Even in my mind, we were cut off from everything by the bigots and bullies. They drove us out and no one stood with us, everyone looked away. That of course is not true. Also not true is any sort of narrative where Tibe is mean and aggressive to humans. In fact, he loves people. He is friendly and loving and primarily interested in how fast he can get on his back and get a human rubbing his belly.

I remember all of this today, with people in and out of our house,seein how much they loved Tibe and how friendly he was with them. We had for the first time a gaggle of visitors. My cousin, her wife, and their friend are in town from Massachusetts. They visited my grandmother and then came over for a swim. We ate veggies afterward with cheese and chatted outside. Amid the whole visit, they pet both the dogs, rolled around on the floor with them and even tried to make friends with Vita. She had no part of it in general. The friend of my cousin and her wife is a big dog lover, familiar with mastiffs. She loved Tibe. For the first time ever, I let someone else hold Tibe outside. I let her hold Tibe’s leash. I let her handle him while I brought out food and drinks. He loved her. He showed off his good sit and down and even appeared to have command of a stay. Mostly, he let her rub his belly and took ice cubes from her and little bits of food. It is the first time I have sat outside without being responsible for Tibe. It was marvelous. The day was hot and sunny. We all swam. We sat outside with the dog like he was any other dog. A good companion. Happy to be with us humans. Well-mannered. Well-behaved.

Bigoted bullies drove us from our house, but they also stole from us our sense of well-being in the world, our understanding of who we are, what we love and how we live. They stole from us our stories about what kinds of worlds we create. In their narrative we are bad pet owners with undisciplined animals that cannot be trusted. We are not like them; we need to be prevented from being in their neighborhoods, our dogs need to be destroyed to protect them, their safety, their valuable way of life. In reality, we have two giant dogs that love us and want to be loved. I can almost imagine creating another household brimming with people.

Tibe, tuckered out from his day of play.

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Three Dog Stories

1.

Every morning we see the same walker. He is a jovial fellow who walks around the park for at least an hour every morning. I think he is recovering from some kind of illness; it looks like he still has the tube in his throat from a tracheotomy. He smiles and waves when we drive by. Often, too often, Tibe barks at him from the back seat. This behavior, I want to change. I cannot have a dog who barks at people while we are driving in the car. So I have been working with Tibe on the no bark command. For months. It seemed that he clearly did not understand. Then one day this last week, we drove by our walker and Tibe started to bark and I said, Ah, ack, aa, NO BARK. And he sat down in his seat. I thought it was an error. Then today, the walker. Tibe seeing him, the beginnings of a bark. I say, Ah, ack, aa. Tibe sits down. No bark, though I do not even give the command. Change happens, my friends, change happens.

II.

I am reading Bronwen Dickey’s Pit Bull. I shouldn’t. Each chapter has me in tears. Tears of joy and happiness or sadness. What we do to animals; how we hurt them, how we violate their very presence in the world. Still I am reading it and loving it, through the tears. In chapter five, “Dogs of Character,” I love Diane Jessup, a trainer of American Pit Bull Terriers. She is the crazy dog lady I fear I will become, living alone, with a huge pack that rotates every few hours to different places in her home and yard. Here is why I love her: “People always say, ‘You must be deficient in some way because you want a strong dog,'” Diane said. “Or, you must be compensating for something.’ And I say, ‘What’s wrong with you that you don’t want one? Why are you so threatened by a dog that is strong than you are?'” As she told me this, she stared into an empty middle distance. “It’s a shame we don’t have better ways to talk about the friendship between dogs and people. Not love, or affection, or cutesy shit. Friendship. Real friendship.”

III.

It is hot here in Michigan. The next three days we will sit at more than 50% humidity, see days in the 80s and nights only down to 70. We have no air conditioning in the house. I do not want to complain. I remember days in January and February, and I am glad for the heat. I just want to keep Emma cool and comfortable. Right now she is sleeping peacefully. In front of a fan. After she ate dinner, we went for our usual walk. A quick one before treats. A woman walking on State Street saw Emma and made a beeline for us. She delighted in Emma. Her size, her coat, her very being. This woman had had a rough life. I could see it in her lined face, her missing teeth, her small body. She said she had someplace to get to, but she just wanted to see this beautiful dog. Then she looked me in the eyes and said, Dear, a new life is coming for you. God is sending you a new life with Emma. A good life. And though I did not want to, I cried. I hustled Emma away, begging off because Tibe was barking while watching us out the window (why does she get to meet all the people, he crowed?). Of course dear, she said, then walking away, hollered, gleefully, to me and the neighborhood and the clear blue sky, Your new life is coming. God is giving you a new life. It is good. A new life.

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