I Believe In A Kind Of Fidelity

My Vocabulary Is Adequate For Writing Notes And Keeping Journals But Absolutely Useless For An Active Moral Life.

Here I Am In The Garden Laughing An Old Woman With Heavy Breasts And A Nicely Mapped Face How Did This Happen Well That's Who I Wanted To Be At Last A Woman In The Old Style Sitting Stout Thighs Apart Under A Big Skirt Grandchild Sliding On Off My Lap A Pleasant Summer Perspiration That's My Old Man Across The Yard He's Talking To The Meter Reader He's Telling Him The World's Sad Story How Electricity Is Oil Or Uranium And So Forth I Tell My Grandson Run Over To Your Grandpa Ask Him To Sit Beside Me For A Minute I Am Suddenly Exhausted By My Desire To Kiss His Sweet Explaining Lips.

I Saw My Ex-husband In The Street. I Was Sitting On The Steps Of The New Library. Hello, My Life, I Said. We Had Once Been Married For Twenty-seven Years, So I Felt Justified. He Said, What? What Life? No Life Of Mine.

I Don't Have Any Degrees. I Went To Hunter College One Year And New York University Another Year. It's Just On The Basis Of My Books That I've Been Hired At Any Of The Places I've Been.

My Language Limitations Here Are Real. My Vocabulary Is Adequate For Writing Notes And Keeping Journals But Absolutely Useless For An Active Moral Life. If I Really Knew This Language, There Would Surely Be In My Head, As There Is In Webster's Or The Dictionary Of American Slang, That Unreducible Verb Designed To Tell A Person Like Me What To Do Next.