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Ethel Clevans filled the emptiness in my life history the way a painter fills a canvas. Her simple technique permitted little room for evasion.
To begin with she was named she. Yes, that was how I thought of her. I had never experienced anything like her: enormous the way a mother appears to an infant, a neutral pronoun the way a stranger reveals yet conceals, with the vast potential of unexplored frontier that a special vista invokes-she.
The stranger took a proper name when, after months of considerable silence, she suddenly agreed fervently with a statement I finally found the boldness to utter: I will not relate to anyone who denies me free expression! Of course not, she said. Now I knew that she and I struggled together.
I startled, however, when she audaciously addressed my most familiar pattern of behavior: I rushed to all appointments, almost invariably arriving a bit late.
One day, months later, she greeted me with “How are we supposed to get our work done here when your lateness deprives us of time?” She was risking the impossible. What faith encouraged her to raise such an intractable issue? She became a member of my extended family, available to provide information about the world, perhaps even to help-if that should ever be possible.
Now I reported annoyance at intermittent discomfort in breathing. She had the temerity to say, again after an interval of many months, “You have the right to breathe all the time.” How I loved her and hated her for that! I wanted so to believe her, to accept my right to live. But she was wrong: my family proved her