Britt Haraway

Porch Song

A woman living at the convalescent home next door screams at night. The same pained tones, a German siren. A rat on the pillow. It creeps up on me like it had been there marking the seconds in the night, chewing a glob of cheese. I try to see her through the curtains of her windows, framed with bushes that must look strange when the moon shines through them, falling on her face. If she even has a profile, something more than a voice.

I wonder why we’re not all that way. If I shouldn’t be there with her. Sneak under her window and harmonize. The anti-Beatles, we’ll be called. The Lonely Hearts of Atlantis, screaming bubbles in the ocean. “Eight Days a Week” would be the saddest song.

But I’d scare her as much as she does me -- a fighting duet. We’d argue about who should scream the root and who would hold the sixth. We’d fight about whose scream was more natural -- the one that fit most squarely in the night.

I never do anything about it. She scares me too much. She with the confidence and surety of her woe, her eyes open to things I run from.

Can’t we pretend? That I am the kind that would roll her on a walk. That on one of those fall days it would be us, after a hard summer when we’d called the sun a tyrant, walking, the warmth all around our faces welcome for once? We’d roll on the sidewalk, the click of her wheels marking the yards we’d taken. Soon she frowns and disparages the youth. We’ll see it all unwind, a billboard that reads, “DNA: Who is the father?” She won’t recognize anything but the train tracks that they don’t use anymore.

Sometimes the ambulance comes for someone next door, and I sit here counting out like a kid with thunder, the lights flashing in the air -- red, orange, white, is it my girl? I check to see if the paramedics are moving fast, or if they take their time -- the outcome clear.

Then later I’ll hear her thin, steely voice pierce the night when you and I are asleep. It’s me and her voice and I’ll open a beer and try to imagine screams are sweet like gospel or that somewhere there is a translator for her. And I could encourage more, “Sing, mother. Breath -- you are alive.” I nod and she screams again like she’s seen the ambulance, that she prayed it was not for her, that she prayed it was.

I wish I knew which she wanted. That during the day, I sat with her taking notes about her childhood, love songs in the background.

I prop my feet on the rail and look at the moon half full behind a pine tree. Neil Diamond is in my headphones. “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.”

Britt Haraway graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he studied literature. In December of 2006, he received his Ph.D. in Creative Writing, and he currently teaches English and Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi. More of Britt's work can be found online in Product.