That Was All I Ever Knew of Nepal
I sit in the tub
and watch clouds motor.
After the closed-door
shoutdown with Eleanor,
twelve-year-old Lucy showed
me her poster on Nepal.
The two red triangles
of the Nepalese flag,
symbolizing the Himalayas.
White sun on one.
Cool moon on the
other. Imports: petroleum
products, electricity,
fertilizer. Exports: jute,
leather, clothing, carpet,
hand-hammered tingsha
and singing bowls. Sal wood
obtained in forests, bamboo
and rattan. In her querulous
glitter-glue script: “One of
the poorest countries in
the world.” My friend
Megan died there. That
was all I ever knew of Nepal.
I was seventeen. We’d met
for cream-filled donuts from
Ed’s Market for breakfast on the
beach in south Jersey. Megan
down from Philly, me from
the suburbs. Her bright winter
skin on the beach in her jeans
and t-shirt. I laughed at her.
We talked about Eric,
her lover. A year later they were
sucked under a truck while motorcycling
in the mountains in Nepal. She’d
told me Eric was her all.
I met him once. She
was funny and kind,
never once offered a critical
word. Eleanor lost a significant
part of her mascara today
to her upper cheek when she
said she was “in love.”
Unlike others
she was actually in love
and would make her decisions
accordingly. Adventure, even
danger, in Mexico, with her
African/Swiss/French boyfriend. Other exports: grain,
herbal treatments, oils and
pashmina. Currency: rupee.
Flag of two pennants also symbolic
of Hinduism and Buddhism.
Blue border, peace and harmony.
Crimson, Nepal’s national
color. Brave spirit. The pulse
of the people. Megan had
those qualities. I was too
wrapped up in bimbo-ness to
be able to pin it down. Megan
and Eric died together. Tonight
it’s 46, tomorrow it will
be 8. In between, some
violence. In between, some
action. A skyful of scudding
clouds. Eleanor wept real tears
and we administered “tough love.”
I said Djibril had to man up
(trying to think of the French
equivalent) and finish high
school. Pay the
price of the year spent
skipping lycée and dealing
hashish. I said nothing
about Megan. I hadn’t
seen the poster yet, hadn’t
yet shocked the wits
out of Lucy and her friend Heather
by telling them the one
story I knew about their
chosen country. My friend Melora
Bonn from Philly came down
to the shore to visit, fell in love
with Megan’s brother, Rob.
I remember her stealthy, labyrinthine
journey into center city that fall
to the birth control pill doctor so
she could give Rob her flower.
A couple of years later,
after they’d split, she had
a breakdown at Penn.
I hated facing Rob at the beach
the summer after Megan died.
Between that and our shared
history of Melora I thought
my heart would break. Rob
was a mechanic. He looked
like Arlo Guthrie. Melora said
all the time how smart
he was. But wasn’t it
me, just two weeks ago, after
a twelve-step meeting, advising
the younger man, Jon—
whose beautiful, intent face
(with one curved crease
down each gaunt cheek)
had been coming to me in dream,
whom I thought of also
while awake—about his love life? As
I approached, he stepped back.
I felt like the cellulite
monster. His face, his kind
laughing face, the time he
stopped his pickup in the middle
of Sixth Street in a snowstorm
to speak to me—he said, It’s always
a pleasure to see you. Knowing,
I guess, of his effectiveness
with women. I saw his face
on the icy highway going to work,
as one commute after another
the semis fell, taking cars with them.
Eleanor loves Djibril like a girl.
He’s her dove, her coney. I
know. I do know. “Adventure
and maybe even danger.” I hear
the wind spanking the house. The
temperature will drop
forty degrees. Maybe snow.
Jon’s knee will never
be right, from the time
the police shot him. And
he told me he was worried
about telling the woman he
was falling for that he wasn’t
from a two-parent family!
Possible snow
showers. Severe drop in temperature,
more opportunities for truck
crack-ups and the errant, the
random, the unlucky cars. 