Alysse Aallyn

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  • Haunted by Emily…a play

    Scene 3


    (Lights down on EMILY, up on the library of the other house where SUE stands at the mantel playing with her jewelry. AUSTIN enters.)

    SUE
    (Coldly)


    Did you see Mrs. Todd?


    AUSTIN
    (Very superior)


    I told you that I would.


    SUE


    A woman coveting two men! And you pretend to such discrimination! The imagination beggars!


    AUSTIN


    Evil to her who evil thinks. Unlike “civic beggars” both of mind and body I recognize value when I see it, and a scientifically trained astronomer with a cultivated, operatically trained lady for his wife greatly enhances the prestige of our little town.


    SUE


    Yet you – and the Trustees – seem to value David Todd more when he’s out of town or in some other hemisphere altogether, chasing an eclipse! Poor little dud David! He doesn’t realize he’s been eclipsed at home!


    AUSTIN
    (Consults an extravagant gold watch)


    The Trustees of the College are none of your concern.


    SUE


    And now you want to give Mrs. Todd our property, or so I hear!


    AUSTIN


    Not your property. Mine and my sisters’; a mere slip of land so the Todds can build a house. The Trustees can’t afford to reward David Todd appropriate to his needs, so I’m helping out.


    SUE


    But Emily won’t sign.

    AUSTIN
    (Sighs)


    I fear our Poetess knows nothing of business. Nor, I should say, do you. Have you been dosing yourself again?


    SUE
    (Turns away)


    You used to say Emily saw things just as they are! You know I’ve been ill. Your public shamelessness sickens me – and it’s sickening the children.


    AUSTIN
    Ned was surely sickened by your attempts to destroy him in the womb!


    SUE
    (Gasps)


    Untrue! Your cousin Zebina had the falling sickness his whole life long! While Emily –


    AUSTIN
    Do not dare to speak of Emily’s illness! Do you deny your morbid fear of childbirth has poisoned our relations?


    SUE
    You promised me the sacrifice of a marriage blanc! I have your oath written out! Did you forget? “I will ask nothing of you, take nothing from you are not happier in giving me.” I can quote it exactly.


    AUSTIN
    You entrapped me! You are the spoiler of my life! Did you forget a wife’s duty and a man’s requirements? I went to our wedding as to my own execution!


    SUE
    (So upset she is tearing the wallpaper in strips from the walls)


    You pursued my sister, made her love you and then abandoned her! You broke her heart! I said no a thousand times. Why, oh, why did you have to marry me!


    (MAGGIE bursts into the room)

    MAGGIE


    It’s Emily! Her breathing is that ragged I fear she’s dying!


    (They rush to the other house where they gather around a figure lying on the sofa, face turned away, younger sister VINNIE in attendance. We hear the horrible breathing on the sound track. But EMILY, dressed only in a flesh colored leotard, her hair down, watches them with interest from her cross-legged position atop a bookcase. The breathing sound fades.)


    EMILY


    My cocoon is tightening
    I’m feeling for the air
    A dim capacity for wings demeans the dress I wear.
    This is not death for I stood up
    And all the dead lie down.


    AUSTIN
    (Sobbing)


    Sorry for how I teased you, dear sister! Sorry for everything!


    EMILY
    (Suddenly amazingly youthful again, she is beginning to feel her own body, discovering she can dance, jumps down and advances to address the audience. Her relatives remain absorbed by The Thing on the sofa)


    The whole of it came not at once.
    Was murder by degrees!
    A thrust – and then for Life a chance –
    The bliss to cauterize.


    SUE


    Oh, Emily, don’t leave us! I’m sorry for my temper, for all the times I was self-absorbed, for all the scintillation you elected not to share!


    EMILY
    (Dancing round SUE)


    Susan is a stranger yet;
    Those who know her, know her less
    The nearer her they get.
    To own a Susan of my own
    Is of itself a Bliss
    Whatever real I forfeit, Lord,
    Continue me in this!

    (Sister VINNIE kneels, sobbing)


    VINNIE
    Emily, don’t leave me all alone! First father, then mother, then you!


    SUE
    (Angrily to AUSTIN)


    You won’t need her signature – now!


    EMILY
    (Dancing)


    I felt a funeral in my brain
    And mourners to and fro
    Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
    That sense was breaking through!
    And then I heard them lift a box
    And creak across my soul –
    A plank in reason broke
    And I dropped down
    Hit a world and
    Finished knowing then.
    (Spins around)
    I feel barefoot all over!

    (SUE, AUSTIN and VINNIE rise and face the audience, realizing that death is irreparable)


    SUE
    Exultation is the going of an inland soul to sea. Past the houses – past the headlands, into deep eternity.


    AUSTIN
    Like eyes that looked on wastes
    So looked the face I looked upon –


    VINNIE
    So looked itself on me.


    (Lights out.)

  • Haunted by Emily…a play

    Scene 2


    (Birds shriek morning. Hat in hand, holding a basket, MABEL stands outside The Homestead, gaudily and fussily dressed in her spring best, attempting to pay a call – MAGGIE, a classically hardworking Irish domestic leans against the door)

    MABEL
    (Loudly)


    You have received me so generously in your home; please allow me the satisfaction of this slight return. Please accept my hand painted panel of Indian pipes, which I hear is your favorite flower.


    (MAGGIE, listening, does not open the door – EMILY standing at her writing table, considers a pad of paper)


    EMILY


    Tudor never was a beggar.


    (Mockingly)


    “Please accept this adder’s tongue.”


    MABEL
    (Trying again, producing a trophy from her basket)


    I painted this jug myself with lovely trumpet vines.

    EMILY
    (Collapsing into her chair)


    Summer’s delight is deterred by retrospect. Any gift but spring seems counterfeit, yet I always was attached to mud. We do not thank the Rainbow, though its trophy is a snare.


    (Sits down and begins to write)


    O Sue! Your absence insanes me so! I want to think of you every hour of every day. You have taught me more than Shakespeare. I have dared to do strange things – bold things – and have asked no advice from any. I heed beautiful tempters and do not think that I am wrong. An experience bitter, but sweet, and the sweet did so beguile me…nobody thinks of the joy, nobody guesses it. Now there is nothing old but things are budding and springing and singing…Take all away from me but leave me Ecstasy! I enclose my heart – sunburnt and half broken. Oh, the myrrh’s and mochas of the mind! A life that’s tied too tight escapes!


    (Confidentially to the audience)


    The most pathetic thing I do
    Is pretend I hear from you
    I make believe until my heart
    Almost believes it too
    But when I break it with the news
    You knew it was not true.
    I wish I had not broken it and so would you.


    MABEL
    (Loudly interrupting, talking determinedly through the door, holding out a book)


    If I may quote dear, dear Emily, my beloved Austin’s cherished sister, “A book is a bequest of wings”. Please accept this copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets From the Portuguese –
    (A hand reaches out the door, snatches the book and slams the door.)


    MAGGIE
    (heavy Irish accent)


    This is a house of sickness, so it is, you interfering madam!


    EMILY
    What Nature forgets, the Circus will remind her. Oh, Egypt! Oh, entangled Antony! Why should we censure Othello when the Lover says, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me?”


    (MAGGIE silently hands her the book)

    EMILY
    (scornfully recites)


    What soft, cherubic creatures
    These Gentlewomen are!
    I would as soon assault a plush
    Or violate a star!
    Such Dimity convictions
    A horror so refined
    Of freckled human nature –
    Of deity – ashamed.
    Redemption, brittle lady
    Be so ashamed of thee.

    (Tears up and throws away a page, begins again)

    I’ve dropped my brain, my soul is numb. “Dear beguiling villain –“

    (Throws that one away and starts again)


    She dealt her pretty words like blades
    How glittering they shone.
    And every one unbared a nerve
    And wantoned with a bone.

  • haunted by Emily…a play

    Scene I, cont’d

    (Lights up on the EVERGREENS where SUE stands before the fireplace mantel, holding a wineglass, extravagantly dressed in low-cut gown and jewelry; speaking to people we don’t see. Party noises.)


    SUE
    I was roused about half past four by such strange sounds – wild snortings and huffings. Running to the window, who should I see but our coach horse Tom tearing over the grounds – as fine a warhorse as I ever expect to see! I shall never forget the picture – the moon just over the elms with one star fainting in its light – the east pink with dawn – fresh and dewy as only early morning can be and that great splendid animal exulting in it all, swishing through the wet grass triumphing in his freedom. For a moment it seemed enough to just be Tom. Alas, he was forced to make a most ignoble retreat.


    (She sighs.)


    He did no harm, I’m sorry to say.


    (Consults her watch.)


    I can’t imagine what’s keeping Austin. He’ll eat another cold dinner.


    (Drinks, waves a hand)


    Or he’s over at the Homestead where decent ladies daren’t go. Those girls have no idea of morality whatever – why, when I went last week I found Emily reclining in Judge Lord’s arms!


    (Voices swell with excitement and clatter. Lights out on SUE and up on the HOMESTEAD parlor where the lovers dress.)


    MABEL
    If people only realized that the more they try to keep lovers apart, the more they brood and think upon each other! Thoughts that are flames of conflagration greater even when than when they’re together. There would be less of these absurd separations.


    AUSTIN
    If you knew Sue –


    MABEL
    I thought I knew her. I wish she loved me. She fascinates me.


    AUSTIN
    Well, she doesn’t fascinate me, and by her own choice. Believe me, I suffer every wound you receive from my family. I will straighten out the matter or smash the machine – I had rather be under the wreck than under what I am. There would be broken heads, certainly, but I would take a chance of coming out on top.


    (He ushers MABEL out the door. Light goes up on EMILY writing at her table.)


    EMILY
    Dear friend, it is strange that I miss you at night so much when I was never with you – but love invokes you soon as my eyes are shut and I wake warm with the want sleep had almost filled. Should I curb you, say the “Nay” and spoil the child? You know you are happiest when I withhold. Don’t you understand that NO is the wildest word in language? The Stile is God’s my sweet one – for your great sake – not mine – I will not let you cross. But what I am is all yours and when it is right I will lift the bars and lay you in the moss. Oh, my too beloved, save me from the idolatry that would crush us both. T’is a stern winter in my pearl jail.


    (Tosses a crumpled page – speaks to herself)


    Tell him the page I didn’t write! I am afraid to own a body! I am afraid to own a soul!


    (Recites a poem)


    A bone has obligations
    A being has the same
    A marrowless assembly
    Is culpabler than shame!
    (Writes as she speaks)
    I cannot live with you
    The sexton keeps the key.
    They’d judge us.
    I cannot die with you for I must await
    The other’s gaze shut down.
    How you sought; I could not.
    You saturated sight when I had no more eyes.
    Were you saved and I condemned
    My self were hell to me.
    So we must meet apart – you there – I here
    With just a door ajar,
    There oceans are, and prayer
    And that white sustenance
    Despair.


    (Lights out. end scene)

    To be continued…

  • Haunted by Emily…a play

    Scene I, cont’d

    (enter EMILY‘s brother AUSTIN, tall, sedate, black-clothed midlife male with somewhat wild hair. He sweeps off his wet hat.)


    EMILY
    Brother! This is the season reindeer love! What brings out you on a night like this when thunder gossips low, and water wrecks the sky?


    (Very dramatic, gesturing)


    A massacre of suns have been by evening’s sabers slain!


    AUSTIN
    (Pushes past, impatient at her foolishness. He doesn’t want to play.)
    Is everyone in bed?


    EMILY
    Yes of course. I have taken off my crown of thorns and donned my evening diadem. (Sighs explosively) Ah! To die divinely once a twilight!


    AUSTIN
    I must needs interview, dear Sister. I require the parlor.


    (He looks and acts guilty.)


    EMILY
    Brother, how can we receive those who talk of hallowed things and embarrass my dog! The only one I meet is God.


    AUSTIN
    No, no, no. Off to bed with you, Emily. It’s just that Sue can’t attend to…Mrs. Todd.


    (Falsely jovial)


    You remember Mrs. Todd. She’s indisposed.


    EMILY
    Brother, you become improbable. Mrs. Todd is indisposed?


    AUSTIN
    No, Sue.


    EMILY
    (Anxiously pulling at his sleeve)


    Is my Domingo ill? It’s easier to look behind at pain than to see it coming.


    AUSTIN
    Sue chooses to be ill. She chooses to be black as death. Please don’t wait up for us. We won’t disturb you.


    EMILY
    Life is death we’re lengthy at. All right, then, Brother. Impossibility exhilarates! I will take up my lantern, and go in search of deathless me. Keep a gas light burning, Brother, to light the danger up.


    (AUSTIN brushes away her hand – EMILY dives behind the door to her conservatory – but eavesdrops. AUSTIN opens the front door, ushers a heavily veiled but elegantly clothed and youthful lady inside, into the parlor, closes the door behind them. Shoots the bolt home.)


    EMILY
    (Listening behind the door)


    They might not need me – yet they might! I’ll let my heart be just in sight. A smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity. Ah, night’s possibility! I don’t mind locks as long as I can pick ‘em.


    (In the parlor AUSTIN builds up the fire, as MABEL unwinds her many veils, which he eagerly receives. They face one another. )


    AUSTIN
    Rubicon!


    MABEL
    Rubicon indeed.


    (They scrabble desperately at one another’s clothing, half undressing.)


    EMILY
    (Listens, shaking her head)


    Here’s a candy scrape! Love is hungry and must graze! Good to hide and hear ‘em hunt but better to be found.


    (Spot follows her as she prepares her plants for the evening.)


    AUSTIN
    I am famished for you.


    MABEL
    I trust you as I trust God.

    EMILY
    (Singing)


    Title divine is mine!
    Wife without the sign!
    Garnet to garnet, gold to gold,
    Born, bridalled, shrouded in a day
    Is this the way?


    (She holds a blossom to her cheek.)


    My red, red, Persian ladies! Flowers are so enticing I fear that they are sins. I would rather have your moment’s blossom than a bee’s eternity.


    AUSTIN
    (To MABEL)


    I love you! Why should I and why shouldn’t I? Who made and who rules the human heart? Where is the wrong in preferring sunlight to shadow?


    MABEL
    You reached out your hand in darkness, almost without knowing, and met another, warm and tender and you clasped it. It shall never be withdrawn.


    AUSTIN
    I am overwhelmed, overjoyed. Intoxicated. We were made to give joy to each other.


    (They make love. Light goes up on EMILY)


    EMILY
    The bane is love. To lack it is a woe, to own it is a wound.


    (She looks toward the parlor)


    In all the circumference of expression the words of Adam and Eve never were surpassed: “I was afraid and hid myself.”


    (Lights out on HOMESTEAD.)

    to be continued…

  • Haunted by Emily…

    a play

    In her inimitable style, Emily comments on her relatives’ struggle over her estate following her death. Based on family letters, trial documents and the letters & poems of Emily Dickinson.

    CHARACTERS


    EMILY DICKINSON – a spryly girlish middle-aged woman with red hair
    AUSTIN DICKINSON – her slightly older brother, very tall and dignified but with hair and subtly tailored clothing that suggest a wilder inner spirit and a conviction of personal aristocracy
    MABEL LOOMIS TODD – a very pretty woman in her late twenties accustomed to showing herself to advantage, drawing all eyes and getting what she wants
    SUE GILBERT DICKINSON – a woman Emily’s exact age but more commandingly matronly as Austin’s wife she is the major local hostess accustomed to luxe décor, rich and fashionable clothing, valuable jewelry, elegant parties, avant garde discussions of progressive ideas and competently ordering fleets of servants.
    MAGGIE MAHER – Middle-aged Irish maid, very devoted to the Dickinsons, especially the Sisters
    LAVINIA “VINNIE” DICKINSON – slightly younger than Emily, a tad foolish and very fond of cats, she is easily led until she gets her back up
    DAVID TODD – a proud lover, a well-dressed ladies’ man, an astronomer and inventor who simply can’t advance in the world because he can’t leave other men’s wives alone
    MR SPAULDING – The lawyer from Northampton. A clueless booby.
    JUDGE – Elderly male
    MR. HAMMOND – Prosecutor – hard driving mature male
    MR HAMLIN – Defense – silky voiced mature male
    MATTIE DICKINSON – Young woman; Sue and Austin’s daughter – pining for a youth lost in family squabbles, the very last descendant of an increasingly embattled family (should be played by the actress who plays SUE)
    MILLICENT TODD – Young woman; an upstart with a good education determined to prove her mother’s not a whore (should be played by the actress who played MABEL)

    SETTING: AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS IN THE 1880’s and 1930’s.

    SCENE BREAKDOWN:
    Scene 1 – Massachusetts in the 1880’s. The stage is divided into two “houses”, represented at right by The EVERGREENS (open to show Library) and at Left by the HOMESTEAD (open to show Parlor.) A strip of flowery meadow runs down the center. Both buildings are in tiptop condition. Action takes place back and forth between The HOMESTEAD and The EVERGREENS.
    Scene 2 – Same year, same place, a spring morning a few days later. Back and forth between the houses. Action commences at The Homestead where MABEL attempts to pay a call.
    Scene 3 – A few weeks later, beginning at the Homestead.
    Scene 4 – Austin & Mabel at the Homestead
    Scene 5 – A brilliantly sunny day a few years later. A fresh-painted new house has been added between the two previous houses – at the back of the stage.
    Scene 6 – Same places following AUSTIN’s death.
    Scene 7 – Mabel & Vinnie at The Homestead
    Scene 8 – A path in town a few weeks later
    Scene 9 – Massachusetts courtroom in the 1890’s.
    Scene 10 – The Homestead and the Evergreens in the 1930’s.

    Scene 1
    (At the front of the stage, lights go up on a red haired woman wearing worn black boots and a gauze aproned petticoat over black modern dance full-figure leotard. She stands stiffly at the center of the stage, clutching opposite hands in formal recitation pose.)


    EMILY
    (Introducing herself; a recital pose)


    This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me.


    (Clears her throat, nervous at first, confidence increasing)


    I’m Nobody! Who are you?
    Are you Nobody too?
    Then there’s a pair of us.
    Don’t tell! They’d advertise, you know.
    How dreary to be somebody!
    How public! Like a frog!
    Telling one’s name – the livelong day
    To an admiring bog!


    (She attempts some awkward dance steps.)


    They shut me up in prose when I was just a girl, so I cannot dance upon my toes. But had I ballet knowledge, I’d pirouette to blanch a troupe!


    (Ring on bell followed by knocking. EMILY rushes to answer door.)


    What fortitude the Soul contains that it can so endure the accent of a coming foot, the opening of a door!

    To be continued…

  • #Haiku:

    Anxiety

    Worried the future


    Stumbles


    Over Now?


    Chaos theory says


    Surprise!

  • Impure Women

    Between my breath and your breath


    Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on


    The volcanic dragstrip of my city


    The wounded in the scorched earth policy


    Of love


    Muster, linger, await


    Embodiment.


    Pills to make their hearts race faster have


    Stopped their faces dead as clocks


    That witnessed crimes unspeakable


    To mothers versed in tabloid gore.


    Who will bring them


    Absolution now that I am gone?


    In the fresh wounds of a


    Seconal summer


    The stopped children meet


    And kiss.

  • Gothic Novel

    A woman alone is open, gaping like


    a button hole without a button hook.


    She carries her muff before her like an offering


    Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers


    slit the pause like razors.


    This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur.


    “I prefer the window up, thank you”


    “I prefer it down”


    She lights a Sobranie to remind her


    of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen


    lean forward, reading the initials


    on her morocco case.

  • Remembering my Father

    CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION

    Famously, my father was a conscientious objector. He wrote all about it in his book, Not By Might. He grew up in a home where his mother had divested herself of the religion she was born with by becoming a member of the Church of the New Jerusalem, a follower of the writings of mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg.

    My father needed to work to contribute to his college education and so matriculated at 5 year Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, just south of Cleveland where he grew up. It was a “Society of Friends” school, so this was his introduction to Quakerism, and it came just in the nick of time, 1937; the run-up to World War II. He always talked reverently about the classes of Professor Mukherjee, who proved to his complete satisfaction that there could not possibly be a God. This freed my father from the oppressively militaristic and jingoistic attitudes of his origin family. He was incredulous that I, forty years later, wanted to attend a Catholic college and study mysticism. He liked that Quakerism didn’t insist followers agree on a creed; what dogma they had he applauded. To him it seemed stupid to solve diplomatic problems with threats of violence and soldiers. He completely embraced Gandhi’s theory of “ahimsa” – greeting abuse with reasoning and peaceful resistance. In fact he, my mother and a few college friends moved into a broken-down family farm, renamed it Ahimsa Farm, and made a good-faith attempt at communal farming.

    When it became time for him to register for the war he announced he was a conscientious objector. The draft board, accusing him of cowardice for not wanting to go to Europe and be killed, sent him to Federal prison at Ashland, Kentucky. He was very afraid his first night there, but he soon made friends with the wide array of conscientious objectors of all faiths. Both my mother and father’s families were appalled and used every manipulation from shaming to shunning to talk him out of it. Unsuccessfully. He was finally sent to work in a Friends’ ambulance unit in China, and that experience gave him troves of stories we listened to wide-eyed as children.

    We were very proud of our father but what he couldn’t seem to understand was that by giving me a model of conscientious objection he was also giving me a template to resist him. I’m afraid I drove him crazy! My first objection was to the Quaker boarding school they sent me to (and refused to allow me to leave) which I saw as a nest of the exact same hidebound theocratic hypocrites he had fled from. My second objection was to all the peace demonstrations he (and our Quaker school) wanted me to march in. I didn’t reject social justice per se, but I was annoyed by “group think” and enraged and insulted by the Quaker attitude to art as “self-indulgent”, “hedonistic”, “morbid” and “depraved.”

    Needless to say, my work has been one shock after another as far as they were concerned. They were convinced I was doing it just to upset them, whereas I was trying to understand my own life and “Life” in general in the fine, independent tradition he had laid down for me! When I locked him out of my room he broke down the door: I threw my typewriter at him! Mom read my diary and listened in on my calls – behavior they usually condemned but felt forced to resort to by my unruly adolescence.

    I did manage to graduate from Plumly (I couldn’t WAIT to get out of there) but I certainly didn’t want to go to college which I feared would be more of the same compulsion and obligation. Mom and Dad didn’t help their case by endlessly razzing my older sister Merrill about any interest she had in boys and the interest they inevitably showed in her. Ugh! I decided to go to acting school instead and be discovered. At Circle in the Square in New York City I found out pretty fast that I didn’t want to be an actor. I hated mouthing other people’s lines and was too full of my own ideas. But I did meet an actor there who needed to go back to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin to avoid the draft and so I went with him.

    There I discovered I was an intellectual! This was a fact Plumly had completely concealed from me through its endless harangues against art and sexuality. I discovered the letters of Elizabeth Gaskell, the diaries of Dorothy Wordsworth, and the wonderful controversies of Shelley scholarship. I studied Russian magical realism and Tillich theology and wanted more.

    Unfortunately, one thing Plumly and my upbringing did give me was a smug sense of political and cultural superiority. My boyfriend’s father was the editor of the Scientific American and his grandmother lived in a 13 room apartment on Park Avenue in New York City but I treated him (and probably his entire family) as pathetically benighted. Every objection either of us had to Lawrence University and Appleton Wisconsin could be solved, I insisted, by transferring to Antioch College! Finally, I was throwing my poor parents a bone. My father as very gratified. We transferred to Antioch’s Columbia, MD campus where everything was “experimental”. What could possibly go wrong?

    Well, it turned out there were no grades and we had to teach the classes ourselves, a fact which outraged my father. (He was paying for this!) I taught a class on women writers and my boyfriend had to travel long distances to secure an acting coach. We split up; I found a new boyfriend who wasn’t averse to marriage (he had been married before.) I saw this as another bone for Mom and Dad, although they acted less than thrilled, even after I told them this guy had been hauled out of Vietnam in military handcuffs. (He was given a dishonorable discharge which I considered a badge of honor.) Still, grumbling, they went ahead with a Quaker wedding. This “solved” nothing; me and my new husband soon had problems up to our eyeballs. After two years after moving, house buying and selling, we were on the rocks and I was working in Baltimore for a group of architects to pay the bills.

    My parents and I had many more clashes over the years; mostly on taste issues since we agreed politically, but there were sadly few opportunities for Principled Conscientious Objection. (Sigh.) I must say I miss them!

  • Morocco

    In spring of 1961 my father announced that he was giving up his job building public housing in Cleveland. He would be taking a position as Director of Refugees for the American Friends Service Committee in Morocco. We were to sell our house and almost everything we owned and move to Africa. I was only ten years old and my parents had a lot of explaining to do before I could even begin to understand.  I had just been diagnosed with “myopia” and told I would need glasses for long distance vision and I was privately worrying about going blind. I recall asking Mom if we would be “poor” and she gave some needlessly confusing answer about how both she and Dad would be working for $50 a month. My sisters had started a pattern of ridiculing my fears so I could only find answers in books. Mom and Dad told us we could each take ten books on our move and gave us “carte blanche” at the College bookstore. I preferred history; somehow the disruptions in the lives of husband-seeking princesses sent to foreign courts seemed bizarrely comforting. We had to have a series of shots that sent us all to bed for a full day. I recall applying for passports while mothers’ friend swore, hand uplifted, that she had always known us and that we had no desire to sabotage or plot against the U.S.
     
    We held a yard sale where I sold all my dolls and comic books. The cats and dog were given away. My friends were very excited that I was going to northern Africa and asked a lot of questions about the Sahara and Arabian horses that made the trip sound like it might be more of an adventure than a threat. 
     
    First, we flew to England to stay in a castle used as a Quaker conference center where Mom and Dad would receive training. At that time, I was reading about the French Revolution and was particularly taken by the Affair of the Necklace. Living in a castle – it had beautiful grounds – made me part of the story and only seemed appropriate. Then we flew to Switzerland to leave elder sister Merrill at the International School. Mallory had been enrolled at the Quaker boarding school at Barnesville, Ohio and Mom and Dad took it for granted that she would stay there while we travelled; but she absolutely refused, even contacting her congressman for help in springing her from that prison! Merrill still recalls all of us driving around Geneva crammed into a taxi looking for some family to take her in. Somebody had heard of a cleaning lady who might know someone who – etc. Since we were in Switzerland anyway, we might as well take a look at Mont Blanc. Dad rented a Peugeot, which he always said afterwards he had to kick up and down the Vosges Mountains; in Morocco, he made sure we had a Citroen with a special lever allowing it to ford streams!  To get to Chamonix we had to take the Grimsel Pass, and it was grim, a sheer drop with no railing of any kind. We all sat as far as possible on one side of the car. But Chamonix was worth it.
     
    We also saw Paris. Like most people, my sisters and I were stunned and seduced by the food. French breakfasts were a dream come true – chocolate in big drinking bowls, croissants, jam in elegant little earthenware pots, and curls of moist butter. Heaven!  Picnics in the French countryside with bread, salami, cheese and iron-tasting mineral water. We saw Carcassonne, which is a living fairy tale. The streets erupted on Bastille Day – just in time for baby sister Avril’s birthday. She was thrilled to see an entire nation celebrating her birth with songs, fireworks, sparklers and parades.
     
    My first sight of Morocco was very different from the desert I expected. There were fields of brilliant red poppies in bloom, hills dotted with stubby trees (sometimes with goats in them!) I was amazed by how people would stand unmoving in the road when a car was approaching, forcing the car to go around, and how children would come right up and speechlessly just stare. Berber girls were blue-eyed and clad in multiple wild colors while Muslim women wore full hijab with only their eyes showing. Their outfits looked very uncomfortable and hot to me but Arab girls my age didn’t seem to have to wear them, although grown men still looked at us strangely and became visibly excited by our Bermuda shorts. At one point Mom – wearing a straight skirt – was “goosed” by a man walking behind her. All this had to be explained to me by apologetic parents struggling to maintain compassion toward what they saw as crippling “medieval” religious beliefs. 
     
    Our house was in Oujda, a town on the edge of the Algerian border. Because the Algerians were waging a war of independence against the French colonialists, Arab refugees were pouring across the border and had to be housed in tents and encampments. Morocco bragged that it had avoided becoming completely French because of its strong monarchy (in the fifties, King Mohammed V reputedly threw a journalist to the lions.) The current king, Moulay Hassan II, had several feisty sisters who wore jeans and refused to take the veil. My favorite, Ayesha, was a wrecker of sports cars. Then there was the great resistance fighter, Jamila, tortured by the French. We heard many legends like this from local potentate, Moulay Suleiman, who entertained us to tea while his wives peered excitedly at us through a wooden screen.  Tea was served in glass cups nestled in silver filigree holders; it was mint, bright green and at least half sugar.  It was not my thing but we were warned to be polite. Moulay Suleiman invited us to a meshoui, the celebratory cooking of an entire sheep in a pit. Even the eyeballs and lungs are eaten. (The eye is a great prize.) We were also treated to the sight of armed horsemen in ceremonial dress riding straight at us, stopping inches away and firing their rifles in the air while shouting. It was impressive, and they would do it as many times as we wanted.
     
    The Oujda house (Dar el Baraka, House of the Blessed) was enormous, a central tower ornamented with arrow slits and two big stuccoed wings in a 2-acre garden. The whole property was surrounded by a cement wall with broken glass cemented on top. The garden contained a guest house, (used only for storage), a garage (where the gardener and his wives lived) and swimming pool that a special town ordinance banned from ever being full. However, the garden had a complex set of irrigation ditches managed by the gardener Lakhdar. In the right wing lived a team of British nurses and Midwest Quaker volunteers. There was also a cook named Embarka who lived behind the kitchen with her son, Mujahed. Embarka was a fantastic chef; my favorite dishes of hers were rabbit stew with olives, and for dessert, chocolate balls – basically fudge rolled round and around in her hennaed hands. 
     
    The central tower contained an enormous two-story “salon” with two living areas, a long dining table with sixteen chairs and a fireplace the size of a mudroom. During the morning Embarka and her helper Fatima (Lakhdar’s youngest wife) would close the long interior shutters and swab the terrazzo floors with water; this kept the big room cool all day. The tower and rooftop terrace were reached by outside steps shrouded in brilliant bougainvillea; at night, the view of the stars was spectacular, and sometimes sister Genevieve and I were allowed to sleep up there.
     
    Our rooms were in the left-hand wing, all three sisters together in one room with a big fireplace and its own bathroom. The bath had a hot water tank with a pilot light that had to be lit – “Boudagaz” – often singeing our eyebrows.
     
    My sister Genevieve and I loved exploring the garden, which was always excitingly alive with bats, birds and feral cats. The guest house was full of boxes of onion-skin correspondence from previous tenants of the House of the Blessed, French colonialists bewailing their separation from the mother country. From our perch atop the wall we watched Lakhdar manage his irrigation ditches.  Poor Avril, aged only six, wanting desperately to join our club, asked how we got up there. We told her we knew how to fly but we wouldn’t be teaching her. This caused her to break into the Grand Salon while Mom entertained ladies to tea, sobbing, “Genevieve and Alysse won’t teach me to fly!”  Mom stomped out on the terrace shouting, “You teach Avril to fly this minute.”
     
    We grudgingly tied Avril up in time-consuming paperwork to “join our club”, insisting she submit a urine sample. She brought us a glass of white port instead, which we deemed acceptable. Unfortunately, at that point my thirteen-year-old sister and a 22-year-old intern from the Midwest named Bill discovered each other and became boyfriend and girlfriend conducting a steamy 50’s affair, with no pushback from our deliberately blinded parents. I developed a relationship with one of the cats, who I named Christopher, and fed with scraps from our meals. Apparently, this made the other intern, a heartless, handsome and ideologically rigid idiot resolve to poison them all.  Christopher, who had always refused to enter the house, crawled under my bed to die. I turned to Agatha Christie, who explained the heartless idiot perfectly to my eleven-year-old mind.
     
    Then it was time for school. The world outside the walls was even more problematic. At our gate stood a licorice seller. The previous Refugee Director’s little boy sent us a “Missing you” postcard to deliver to him, but the hard, stuck-together clumps of licorice failed to gratify Genevieve and me, who preferred expensive French pastry sold at The Colombo. When translated into dirhams our allowance provided a very favorable exchange rate. The licorice seller also guarded the spot of a recent murder, showing off the gruesome bloodstain to passersby.
     
    The schools spoke French. The previous director’s children had been home-schooled until their French was “perfect”, but Mom and Dad decided to throw us in at the deep end and hope for the best. Until we made friends, Jennifer and I were likely to have stones thrown at us by Arab children shouting, “Romains!”; slang for Westerners.
     
    To attend school, you needed a “cartable” (briefcase) and a “tablier” (smock) purchaseable at a weird store right out of a Humphrey Bogart jungle equipment movie. They also sold block chocolate and warm Pepsi (nobody ever had ice.) “Lunch” was two pieces of French bread (small pieces) with anything between them. A chunk of cheese or chocolate was perfectly fine. Mine was struck out of my hand on the very first day and stepped on by a boy screaming wildly with delight. “Ha ha! Now you can starve!” Luckily, I acquired a wonderful friend – Zubeida Benkhala, who said her father was an Algerian general. And he may have been, because she lived in a big house and not the refugee encampment. I went to visit her after school one day and was a hit because I could sing the English version of “Ne Racroche Pas” (“Don’t Hang Up.”) The French would not associate with Arabs and since I associated with Arabs they would not associate with me. All of us had Arab friends, Avril’s was Karima Bouzidi and Genevieve’s was Salima. Arabs were friendlier.
     
    School was terrifying. The teachers were physically abusive, the bathroom was a Turkish hole. When marched up to the blackboard, poor Avril just peed in front of everyone. We all learned enough French to get by; I began to dream in the language. My teacher, Monsieur Touati, couldn’t decide whether to make me his enemy or his pet, since I wouldn’t be his stooge. (I was not especially polite to adults.) After I left, he wrote to me, demanding pictures, when I sent one, he said it was too dark and he couldn’t see me properly. I think that was the end of our correspondence.
     
    Life was enlivened by visitors and tourism. NY Times war correspondent Tom Brady was posted locally with his entire family; they invited us out to “watch the bombing” for entertainment after dinner. I found staring at explosions over darkened hills a dull experience but my father was impressed by Brady and considered him a celebrity.

    Another visitor was Quaker historian Paul Johnson and his wife, who introduced us to a monastery full of interesting and highly educated European monks. We visited the holy city of Moulay Idris where infidels (such as us) cannot remain after dark. We travelled to Meknes, Fez and Casablanca and visited all the souks where we learned to bargain for leather goods (all you had to do was threaten to leave.) We visited a leather-dyeing facility – glorious pools of deep color but the stench was so terrible we held handkerchiefs over our noses.

    Most interesting was Melilla, a coastal city still belonging to Spain where we had to go through customs both in and out. Moroccan customs actually took down our tire identification numbers to make sure we wouldn’t buy new tires and fail to declare them! We travelled to Volubilis, gorgeous Roman ruins with huge storks’ nests atop the columns, saw the Sahara Desert and the Atlas Mountains with its snow and ski lodges, penetrated deep into the earth at the Grotte de Chameau (where I had a panic attack.)
     
    Back home Genevieve played flute with the Oujda Philharmonic Orchestra and Avril took ballet; I read the Complete Molesworth and started a newspaper for the “inmates” of the Dar. Mom and Dad and the Quaker team taught sewing, carpentry and electrical wiring to the refugees and wanted to have a graduation celebration with food, games and awards.  Jennifer and I gave a popular puppet show and the women danced. The next day we heard all the women had been beaten up by their husbands for dancing in front of foreign men. I began sleepwalking. It was spring and I was ready to leave Morocco. The French and Algerian war ended with an Algerian win. Ben Bella rode triumphantly through the streets while the women yu-yued from behind their hijabs. Mom and Dad and Avril prepared to move to Algeria. Genevieve would be sent to Plumly school, and I would be sent to live with my aunt, uncle and four boy cousins in Wayland, Massachusetts.