A Termination, page 9
I turn a page to the hard beautiful face of a woman with snakes for hair. In the myth, the snakes hiss, but in my ten-year-old imagination they are silent, their movement sensual. When I begin to draw snakes, I draw them at rest, also the slinking gesture of their bodies extending.
Snake as transformation, but also regeneration. Motion is what matters, rather than the thing in motion. I draw the snake and I see what I have drawn—not something to fear. The moment in translation when a word, suspended between one language and another, exists free of language. An object falls from my hand—the moments in space before it reaches the floor.
In the book, she has no color, but they say the Greeks painted their sculptures. Snakes as green, as red, as azure and orange. The snake hair was a punishment, it is said, for her tryst with Apollo. Radiance. Perseus is told that if he looks at her face he will turn to stone. There is no myth of a young woman looking at the woman with snakes for hair, of a young woman who resists turning to stone.
I am standing here, on an outcropping of granite. Abruptly the sun is overshadowed and there is a harsh chill in the air, seconds ago so pleasant. Let’s say I am outside time but within a dimension of time that includes all I have lived. I am considering what has been forbidden and also the idea of consequences. I am often here with my sisters, but today I am alone.
I hear the snakes curling and uncurling. A sound like the words sheathe, hush, streak, expanse. Because I can see her with my back to her, I evade the curse.
Was it she I was looking for when I opened the outdoor entrance to the cellar and went in? So literal, thinking I would find some secret of the past in the cellar beneath that childhood room. I do not want to reduce her to what I imagine she might say. Reduce her, Medusa. Slant rhyme.
What is it that remains unsaid?
At a table in late autumn, I make my way through what I have written here. Interesting how I can’t remember the beginning when I reach the end. It’s always that way, how you’re tossed forward to start again.
I did not tell, begins this book.
I’m telling you, ends the long-ago poem.
—NEW YORK CITY, 2020–22
Acknowledgments
There are four people without whom this book would not exist, and I thank them beyond measure: Sarah Chalfant, who said yes, do it. Mary Allen, for remote fast writing sessions, NYC / Iowa City. The never-wavering Robert Leleux, for reading and rereading. Brigid Hughes: for seeing this book and its author, for her uncanny insight, meticulous attention, and respect for the traditions and enterprise of literature.
A book comes from the efforts of many, and they are how a book moves into the world. They are also first readers. For all of you, no thanks is sufficient: Ruby Wang of A Public Space; Anne McPeak, redemption through copyediting; Janet Hansen for the cover design that reminds me boldness is good; Francesca Richer for the elegant interior design; Kait Astrella, remarkable publicist, and Katie Freeman, for getting the word out. Alyssa Shea, for making the book presentation visual, and Michelle Roque, web designer extraordinaire. And forever thanks to Rebecca Nagel, Bonnie McKiernan, and everyone at the Wylie Agency.
For their memories, perspectives, time, and thinking, thank you: Beverly Winikoff, Marina Warner, Quito Ziegler, Jill Eikenberry, Heather Domenicis, Ellen Chesler, Sherry Turkle, Robert Mandel, Pamela Diamond, Peg Boyers, Daphne Merkin, Mary Gordon, Michael Posnick, Gordon Talley, Robert Fowler, Barbara Smith, Victoria Redel, Jim Hart, and Pamela Jones (a.k.a. Revalyn Gold), whom I was unable to locate.
Gratitude for support in the past as I remembered, and in the present as I wrote and sought a place for this book: Robert Boyers, Laura Cronk, David Freeman, Charles Dillingham, Rita Gabis, Carol Gilligan, Vivian Gornick, Margo Jefferson, Elizabeth Kendall, Herman Krawitz, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Claire Messud, Marian Moore, Rosemary Moore, Laila Nabulsi, Robert Polito, Victoria Redel, Luz Rivera, Susan Robertson, Max Rudin, Jennifer Cho Salaff, Maggie Simmons, the students and faculty of the New School writing program, and those whom I may have not remembered—please forgive me.
And for conversations I had with women during the writing of the book: What are you writing about? My pre-Roe abortion. I had one.… and then I would get a story, which (startlingly) often concluded with the woman saying, You are the first person I’ve ever told.
In memoriam, with gratitude: Lily Farmer and Gordon Rogoff.
Honor Moore, A Termination
