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In 1952 my father walked into a pool hall and left his anxious immigrant behind, cued up with men who might have killed him, racked balls till dawn, with bets laid, louche women tugging at the many brands of his tight white cigarette. When he finally left with that dark stranger on his arm, and drove her deeper into Matawan, it was the birth of the wild stamen in my veins, the annual eruption and consummation that makes this land more than a rail track out of town on a moonlit night, more than the cicadas raging, more than the heat in the tall grasses the first ones came for and still know how to use.
I was in the second grade when Kennedy was shot and Mrs. Siert, the epitome of sweet and pert with bobbed hair and tightly tailored skirt put a hand to her flushed face when the principal's voice came over the intercom. She did not weep but changed forever so we — just seven year olds busily falling in love — had seven months to watch her become a woman tinged with grief before launching into the higher grades to find girls for us, while inside was the altered feminine, which determines everything: the duration of passion, the integrity of work, the choice to march or not — redeem the fallen man or become him, lay waste to our fragile lives and hers.