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Last Updated:
Jul 8th, 2005 - 18:19:47
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The Travels of our First Webmaster
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Arts & Letters
Not long ago when our Oregon House of Representatives was voting to increase the monthly co-payment of the working poor to order to "save" the Oregon Health Plan from the state budget chopping block, I wrote my representative that we should actually waive the health fees for low-income people. The reasons that some women cannot find six extra dollars to buy a money order, find a stamp and mail in the six dollars, are many. Ones I know about personally:
When I was a young teacher in Coos Bay with a four year old of my own, the couple above me had a two-year old and a baby. The man would waylay the postman for the welfare check. cash it and take the money to the saloon to buy his beer and cigarettes. The woman, bullied, signed the checks but she never saw any money. She used my phone to call her parents in California. I sent up extra food now and then. I don't know what else they ate. I took the man and the baby who had pneumonia to the Emergency Room one night. I don't know how they got home. The couple argued way late most nights. When I complained about the noise. the man offered cheerfully to slit my throat.
A few years later in Eugene, same scenario, different couple. The step- father was mean to the little boy. She was afraid to leave because he told her he would hunt her down and kill her. She begged me not to tell. Police cannot protect women all the time. (This was long before there were secure women's shelters like Woman Space.) She knew it and I knew it. She had no money either. Not even six dollars.
Now I no longer know personally of such hard luck stories because I no longer live in low-rent apartments. I am sure the stories are never ending. Those of us who sit smugly in our comfortable homes, writing checks to pay the bills, not even having to decide what bills to leave unpaid, wouldn't have a problem with a six dollar fee. But there are others, many others...
No Jury Would Convict or The Year was 1960
Why are you crying?
Monty starts kindergarten soon.
He needs a warm jacket.
Myron bought our little girl
a pretty coat yesterday.
She already has a good one.
A sob caught in the young woman's throat.
Blonde curls hid haunted eyes.
Whatever for?
He does mean things like that.
He always ugly to my little boy
Says he won't amount to a damn,
just like his father.
He hits him often...
Her voice dropped to a whisper
It makes me sick to see the bruises.
Why don't you leave him?
Don't you have anywhere to go?
Only my relatives.
He knows where they all live.
He isn't their real father?
No, their father was much older
... but handsome.
He left us for a rich woman
who'd lost her husband.
She bought herself a new one
with money ....and with sex.
Doesn't he send you any money?
I never hear from him.
He loved the children and treated them real nice.
Always told our little boy he was special.
Named him Monty ...for his grandfather.
And Cheryl, he named her for his mother.
Monty misses him a lot.
Cheryl asks why doesn't he come back.
How did you meet Myron?
After Bill left, I waited table
at Hamburger Heaven.
Myron was the dishwasher.
He sweet-talked me.
Couldn't have treated the children better.
Said together we could make a go of it.
As soon as we were married,
he turned nasty.
Said I flirted with the customers.
Said I was a slut.
He takes it out on Monty...
Cheryl can do no wrong.
Holds her on his lap while he says
horrid things to Monty ...and to me.
Makes us all sit there and listen.
Cheryl hates him too.
When I knew a baby was on the way,
I hid out at my folks.
He found us.
Said he'd kill us if we left again.
Swore the baby wasn't his.
Deviled me all through the pregnancy.
I cried when Baby was born dead.
My mother said it was a blessing.
He still says awful things about
that poor little baby.
Asks me who the men were that I slept with?
Can I even count? And worse.
Over and over.
Is there anything I can do to help you?
No, nothing. Please don't try.
It would only make it worse.
Tortured eyes in the pretty facer retreated.
She left the park, her children trailing her.
The Legend of Uncle Richard and the Beautiful Barbara
My Uncle Richard was a ladies' man.
One of the ladies that took his eye
was a blond Polish maid back in 1930.
The plumbing at her house was on the fritz.
Richard invited her to his bachelor flat
to shower. She accepted.
At the end of the hard day's work ...
he in the logging woods and
she in the cornfields...
they walked home together
bragging, bantering, giggling
having fun as young folk do.
After her shower, she came out
wrapped in a towel
challenged Richard
to a wrestling match
... in the nude.
Richard accepted.
Both were six foot, nineteen
years, in their prime.
He stripped to the buff.
She dropped her towel.
Shoulder to shoulder
they took each other's measure.
They went at it.
Try as he might, he could not
take her down, this husky Polish maid.
The particulars Uncle Richard never told
of how the match continued.
Only that it was a draw.
And he smiled.
Copyright© 2005 by Eckley Guerin
Eckley Guerin is a writer, poet and editor living in Astoria, Oregon. She edits a sister publication, "West By Northwest, The Book," which publishes true adventure and first person narratives of Northwest life, then and now. You may write to her c/o of publisher@westbynorthwest.org.
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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