Janet Sternburg - Phantom Limb

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A LIFE IN EARRINGS
by Janet Sternburg

The day I wore my first suit, my father took a photo of me standing in the driveway, pump-shod, one foot slightly turned out in front of the other, like a model in a girls' magazine. The deckle-edged photograph was in black and white, but I see a dusty rose suit, as though my memory has hand-colored the image. A thin ribbon holds my hair back. I am not wearing earrings.

A second snapshot, at an art gallery, a wine glass in my hand as I talk with a man who is clearly interested in me. I think of him as older, even though he's in his mid-thirties. Already he is a distinguished professor, noted for his radical views on culture and politics. I have become aware of my good points; well-articulated collarbones, a long neck framed by delicate drop earrings.

Between these two pictures, I became a woman.

For a cousin's wedding, I was allowed to wear tiny fake pearl earrings. My ears weren't pierced, and I can still feel the surprising pinch of clips on my lobes.

For the first time too, I was given a corsage, an orchid that arrived from the florist in a white box, under tissue paper that I carefully unfolded. My mother helped me pin the corsage to the bodice of my taffeta dress.

I had never worn nylons before that evening. As I danced with my uncle on the polished ballroom floor, my feet felt slippery and dry at the same time. I could smell his shaving lotion, feel his back, the sweat coming through his white starched shirt. That too, for the first time.

In grade school I struck up a friendship with a new girl who wore little rings through her ears. Her name was Carrie, which was short for Carmen Marie. One day she invited me to come to her house after school. We had to take two buses to get there, and then walk up a hill.

Her house looked like it was wearing a coat of nail polish that had mostly chipped off. On the clothesline, sheets were flapping every which way. In the yard, a goat was eating overgrown grass. I heard my mother's voice: "Don't stay long."

When I came to the city, I rented an apartment above a grocery store that sold one egg at a time. Across the street in a storefront shop, a tall woman in wire-rimmed glasses and a long flowered skirt made earrings of her own design. The ones I chose were filigree, framing a small square where a pendant danged. Whenever I turned my head, its bead of ruby red glass danced in the opening.

I was turning to greet the world.

Around the corner, at a store that made sausages, I bought steaming links wrapped in butcher paper, for immediate juicy eating.

At a loft downtown where writers gathered, I read my poems aloud for the first time, so nervous I was afraid my voice would break.

I had chosen to wear a favorite pair of earrings that reminded me of stained glass windows. Afterwards, a man from the audience came up to me and said that next time I should wear different earrings, ones that don't catch the light. Nothing, he said, should ever take away from the radiance of words.

I still have some earrings that were made in the early seventies, by a receptionist at the company where I had my first serious job. I wonder what became of her; she had a gift for unusual shapes. This pair made me feel remote, reflective, as though I were wearing moons.

They were a present from a man I was dating who also worked there. When we met, he was a vice-president, with a spacious office furnished with wing chairs and lamps made to look like a ship's steering wheel. I was on another floor, an assistant with a desk out in the corridor. Even after we were married, I used to walk into his office softly, almost on tiptoe on his thick rug.

After all this time, shouldn't he know me better?

How could he ever have chosen these?

Is this really his idea of what I'd like?

Other earrings of mine were strong and splendid, like something unearthed from an ancient past. At first I was afraid that people would think they were too bold. Wearing them a few years later, I felt unconstrained and powerful; the way women all over the country were beginning to feel.

People often think that one of my favorite pairs is made of ivory. When I receive a compliment on them, I like to slip one off and drop it, almost weightless, into the admirer's palm. Invariably, "so light. . . plastic?. . . amazing."

I'd never wear ivory, not with my soft spot for elephants. Something in my father's face used to remind me of a benevolent elephant, his big nose, perhaps, and slightly close-set eyes. He would come home when I was a child with his arms full of groceries. I pressed my face against his cold coat and picked grapefruits and milk cartons from off the top of his brown paper bag.

After my divorce I went to India. By the time I returned, my father was ill, depleted, like an empty refrigerator, white and hanging ajar. I brought him a gift, a little blue figurine of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom. It's easy to become fond of Ganesha, with his big belly and chubby thighs. He is thought to protect people from that poacher, death.

At first we were cautious with one another, like two deer sniffing through a wire fence to see if the other might be dangerous. It wasn't as though we were vulnerable because of youth; we were in the middle of our lives, and each of us had known wounds.

As our slow courtship progressed, we discovered that we knew instinctively how to heal each other with tenderness, which is how I felt when you stood in the shower soaping your hair, all the while earnestly explaining to me how a weather system works.

I became seriously ill. That was when you decided to come live with me, when someone else might have run away. The night after surgery, I half-opened my eyes to find you sitting beside me. You began to read a poem aloud, knowing what would restore me.

You asked me to marry you, which I did. My wedding ring is a swirl of leaves. For our anniversary, you gave me earrings to match.

Soon after we got married, we moved to California. Several months later, at my parents' request. I flew back across the country to attend a family wedding. On the morning of the event, I put on a silk pants suit with a pretty necklace, both of which I had purchased especially for the occasion. To my eyes, I looked just fine but my mother said that I looked unfinished, the outfit needed earrings.

On the way to the wedding, we got lost because my father, who was sitting in the back seat with my mother, kept insisting he knew how to get there, even though it has been years since his doctors told him he must no longer drive. My mother cautioned,"Stop, you'll make her nervous," but couldn't prevent herself from worrying aloud:"What time is it now? I don't think we'll make it."

I spotted a large motel, pulled up to the entrance and, before either could protest, sprinted into the lobby to get directions. Then I dashed into the gift shop for a chocolate bar. As I was paying for it, I caught sight of this pair on a revolving stand next to the cash register.

Pleased that I could satisfy my mother and relieved to know how to get to our destination, I came back to the car wearing the earrings. "See anything different?" I asked as I stepped on the gas pedal, flashing my profile and smiling like a magician who amazes her audience, a rabbit pulled out yet again.

If I had a daughter, would she pierce one ear all along its rim and insert metal rings into the punctures?

If I had a son, would he?

What would we say to each other?

I would say to them that everything changes.

For years I've imagined myself in my eighties sitting in the audience at a chamber music concert, silver hair coiled on top of my head, shoulders draped in a shawl of silk paisley, neck wrinkled but elegant, even at this late date able to carry off drop earrings.

At a recent concert, I looked around during intermission, picturing myself in that vision of stately and receptive old age.

For the next half of the concert, I watched the musicians lean towards their instruments, intensely working together. I'd like to study the cello someday. I imagine playing in a quartet, drops swaying as my old body keeps time with the music.

Will we even recognize each other after so many years?

I'd planned to meet him at the appointed hour, dressed just so. A half hour before, I was standing at the bathroom sink washing my face, wearing underwear and high heels, secure in the knowledge that I had enough time to assemble myself.

There's a knock on the door. I call out "Who's there?" and it's him, my former husband. "You're early" I shout. (Ouch, did that sound accusatory? What a way to begin after not seeing someone for nine years.) "Give me a minute." I quickly put on my pants that tie in the front like a sarong. Except that I seem to have put them on back to front. I look like a badly diapered baby.

"Sorry to keep you waiting out there, but I wasn't dressed yet." (Will he think I'm being provocative? Or maybe, "Just like her, always late.") Damn! In my haste, I've forgotten that these pants narrow at the ankles. As I'm struggling to take them off, they catch my shoes, entrapping them heel to toe. One shoe slides out easily; the other I can't dislodge from its silk claw. I bend over, rocking the shoe back and forth, calling out from time to time "Hang on. . . I'll be right there . . . Just a second." Finally I extricate the shoe, retie the pants, forego lipstick, and mistakenly clip on two mismatched earrings as I run to open the door.

Hoop earrings remind me of myself as a young woman. I had long hair and wore big hoops with a full red skirt and tight black top. My boyfriend used to call me his "barefoot contessa." Even though I secretly yearned to be as wild and abandoned as Ava Gardner in that movie, he made me feel self-conscious. I couldn't tell whether he was hinting at his ardor or making fun of me.

My hair is short and has been for ten years, since chemotherapy when a friend who'd been through it advised that I definitely did not want to wake up each morning to find long wavy filaments all over my pillow. As for hoops, a bit later I said goodbye to them too.

Then I saw this pair and couldn't resist. It was the color combination that got me; I held them up against clothes in my closet. . . russet, mauve, peach, lime green . . .

A few years ago, my parents paid a visit to my new home in California. My husband took photographs of us in the backyard: my father, bald and grinning with satisfaction, his arm around my mother, still stylish, timid-looking but clearly pleased. Our dog is in the picture too, smiling up at them like a grandchild. I know I wore these earrings that day because just now I stood out in the backyard in a light like then, a light that made me remember: him alive and her well, so sharply the hoops came back.