of
a triple-decker about sixty years old,
and
from the scars of a ceiling
that
no longer quite heals
a
yellow, ancient-seeming water
drops
after the first violence
each
fall and spring. For six years
we
have made a home here.
Before
us, for thirty years, and old woman
lived
in this space—alone, in the end—
with
two enormous space heaters
and
a kitchen stove fit for a family
of
twelve. From her weÕve inherited
the
bad wiring, the one wall socket per room,
the
two closets, neither deep enough for hangers,
their
plaster powdering a white silt
on
shoe and suit that canÕt be got rid of,
and
the relic of a refrigerator
which
dims all the lights when it jerks,
like
an old milk horse waking from sleep,
to
its cumbrous, rumbling work.
She
left the place, finally, too old,
and
we came, and the new owners
into
the apartment below, Jamaican,
who
speak in the courtly English
imperialism
has quixotically bequeathed them.
And
with us our shelves, books, beds, pictures,
disarray,
silt. And with them a soppy dog
they
kept in the dark of the back stairs
and
then lost, the perpetual throb
of
a West Indian bass, and two cars.
Today
a wry electrician broke in
on
our Sunday breakfast and took on, six years late,
the
jobs which the old wiring and the absent fixtures
and
the dark corners had accumulated. Now we have light
where
dim memory and another age persisted
and
shiny outlets we canÕt imagine uses for.
When
the man took up his tools,
I
wandered like a deerstalker through the house,
in
silent watch on this socket and that,
resentful
of ownership—the wherewithal to provide
fixtures
and to exact rent—and thought
of
the old woman I never met
who
walked out of here, after thirty years
of
polish, dispossessed. In late afternoon,
I
dreamt she climbed our three flights, young,
clopping
loudly upstairs, like my daughter,
and
perfunctorily put her key in her door . . .
From
whom we have inherited the refrigerator,
too
big, too heavy, too old to move,
which
shudders now, as I write,
in
its preserving work, all the lights
in
the house, for a moment, dimmed.
(published in The New
Yorker)