What the Body Knows, and: Selective Memory

Abstract

What the Body Knows, and: Selective Memory Maria Mazziotti Gillan (bio) What the Body Knows I tell my students they have to be vulnerableas peeled grapes if they want to write,and this morning, sitting in the IHOP,I am quivering and exposedas a peeled grape myself,my eyes filling with tears,my daughter's voice on the phoneflat and toneless as a straight line,though I feel how much effort it takesfor her to say anything at all.When she hangs up, I knowit is because she is cryingand can't speak. I cry, too, [End Page 111] and then I call you, and I start cryingwhich is the last thing you need,frail as you are, though you makesoothing sounds to comfort me,and then your voice shaking you tellme you haven't eaten your dinner yet.It's ten o'clock. You've been too busy you say.I know this means it will take you at least threehours to eat your dinner, another coupleof hours to eat your salad, two moreto eat your bowl of fruit. It will be sixin the morning before you get to sleep. I encourage you to start eating, and hang upfeeling bereft and lonely. Earlier, I heldmy friend's daughter, her blonde hairpressed to my chest, my hand on her sweethead, her eyes huge and lovely as pansiesafter rain, and I remember holdingmy daughter at three in the same way,this sweetness that rose off her,and I think how my body keeps insideitself the sensory memory of holding a child, how clear that child is to me, thoughshe is grown now and alonein her Cambridge apartment,and how when I held herand she fell asleep in my arms,I was so young, I thought this dampand delicate weightwas all I'd ever have to bear. [End Page 112] Selective Memory My daughter tells me I practice selective memory,that I erase the parts of the past I don't like or don'twant to know. I denied it but then I thought maybeshe was right after all, that maybe I need to softenthe sharp edges of memory, to soften them as thoughI were working colored chalk over a painting. So it must have been selective memory that I waspracticing when I let myself forget that I've alwaysloved my husband more than he loved me, that factI forced myself to forget as he grew ill and we grewtogether over the years, moments glittering like goldin rock the way those remembered glimpses of abeloved face or the feel of a hand or words spokensoftly stay with us and run like a vein through the livesof couples like us, long married and happy together,our lives growing to fit us like another skin, and it must be selective memory that makes meremember the explosion of love between us and notthe pitiless anger with which we fought when we wereyoung and before you got sick. One night, sitting in our bed, I am raving and furiousthat my friend who cried at his wife's funeral twomonths ago is already going dancing each night.Ranting, I say he'll probably be married within sixmonths and you say If something happened to you Iwould remarry, why not? And your words sting worsethan if you had stabbed me, who wanted-noexpected-to hear that you wouldn't want anyonebut me, even if you were lying, the kind of lie we alltell to protect those we love, and I can't believe you,I say, and you say, Why not, why not? And I think [End Page 113] that my daughter is right, that I practice selectivememory. I am angry thinking of you, like my friendspending his wife's money on someone else,and I wish you had lied to me as I lie to youso often to protect you. For a moment I see you...