Joseph S Bocchi

Joseph S. Bocchi

Allegorical Illustrations of Common Household Plants

Dr. Gladys Szisznyck

Principal

Normal School No. 9

1245 Genoa Street

Atlanta, GA 30301

January 12, 2019

Dear Mr. Bocchi:

I am writing to you in regard to a situation worsening here at Normal School No. 9: Namely, your daughter, Barbara. It appears that the discipline problem which we discussed at the October Teacher-Administrator-Parent Dialog Night has charted an all-time high – despite your promise of remediation: Early yesterday afternoon, while the children of other parents were busy at class, your daughter was discovered by our School Sanitation Engineer lying on the third-floor fire escape landing, her blouse and bra having been removed, her jeans having been pulled to around her ankle, and her shoes nowhere to be found, having been dropped to the snow below, apparently. Despite repeated pleas from several teachers called to the scene from nearby, and later, stern imperatives from Assistant to the Vice Principal Mr. Gardino, Barbara obstinately and disrespectfully refused to clothe herself and come inside the building! She had to be carried physically from the landing, at great risk to the Assistant to the Vice Principal, who ventured out onto the icy fire escape gridding without the benefit of rubber boots. Our school nurse, in adhering to School Board Recommendation governing on-premises mishaps of potential liability or cases of suspected child abuse, notified Doctor Babhul Hamani of St. Peter and Paul Hospital, whom the District was required to retain as On-Call Physician. Upon examination, Barbara was ascertained to be “a 12-year-old of a most healthy disposition”: There was no reason in heaven, said Dr. Hamani, that she not be sent back to classes immediately. But when we directed your daughter, Barbara, to dress by the bell so that she would be ready for the start of mathematics, she refused –and she had secured herself to the examination table by having bound the restrainer straps around her wrists, tightly.

Exhaustively, I have attempted to reach you, both at home and at the “other” number listed on Barbara’s personal file, unsuccessfully. We at City Normal School No. 9 understand the financial strains under which some of our single-parent households are placed, but we would appreciate greatly your most prompt and speedy attention to this rather serious matter, regardless of work or recreation schedules. Writers must be held responsible for the welfare of their children, as other working fathers.

Should you wish to call my office, please do so during regular school hours. Should you call while I am away from my desk, my assistant has been instructed to take any message you might wish to leave and/or answer any questions you might have.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gladys Szisznyck

Dearest Mom, Martha, Hi!

I know what you’re thinking – after all these years! – but I don’t blame you. I’m sorry. I really am. It gets so lonely out here in the desert never-never land, even with Todd and the toddler. You know, no one to listen, no voices I need to hear. Just the desert air and Jamie tearing up the house!

Let’s face it, I haven’t been the best of daughters. You tried, you really did. All your letters. I denied them at first, called it a horrible joke, said my mother was dead, I killed her at birth. I shook so and cried to tell it. And Todd not understanding, watching me fumble with that first unopened letter, rubbing his dirty thumbprints off my countertop. I would burn them all at night, when Todd and the boy slept. I still call him baby though he’s big for his age, Todd says, and he’s even starting to talk. I burned them, I had to, the temptation was too great.

But then for a while your letters and emails just stopped coming. I’d phone Todd at the garage – he’s a mechanic, Mom, a good one, I hear – make up something, say I was expecting some store stuff or that I wrote to one of those special schools in Albuquerque asking about the boy’s hearing problems, anything, just so I could find out what the mail brought. (You never did like email!). I got so worked up I’d almost scream. Todd would say, There now honey, that boy don’t need no help like that, he’ll outgrow it, you just wait and see. But Jamie didn’t get any better, and I think he never will, and pretty soon Todd caught on to me, got suspicious. He wouldn’t say much when I called. I worried what was going on inside his head. Maybe he saw those letters really meant something and that I was nothing but a liar. Maybe it was another man that wrote them.

Well, last week Todd comes home late one night. He’s drunk, though he never drinks, I swear. So he’s just standing there, leaning on the screen door, almost afraid to come in, and he’s got a paper bag in his hands, dangling it in front of him like a school lunch and him a little boy waiting for a bus. He looked so cute, Mom, but he looked like something was terrible wrong, and my first thought was that he knew everything about the baby. There, he says, and throws the bag on the table. I was afraid to touch it, the bag smelled so, like grease and gasoline. I should have lit a match to it right then and there, but before I could even take a step Todd had opened it and pulled out a dirty bundle of work rags. Then he dumps a bunch of soiled paper out. There was wire wrapped around it so tight, it was nearly ripped in half. He left, Mom, he didn’t come back till morning, and it took me half the night to read and reread them all and the other half to keep from packing up the boy and heading out of here.

What happened with you and Dad was not your fault, Mom, don’t blame yourself. It was his. You’re right, I did accuse you. I thought you had abandoned me. God, Mom, how smart you were to leave Dad. After that time at school, did he even ever tell you? Probably not! I knew I just had to get away, anywhere. Lucky I had Todd around when it happened. He was so good for me. He still is. All these years I’ve kept it inside, never telling no body, hoping to forget and sometimes doing just that. Then one morning you wake up and it’s there, burning like a heat rash, turning you inside out.

Last night I saw it again, Mom. A head, floating in white sky. It looks like the shocked, open-mouthed Confederate soldier I had tattooed with those backing sun bursts on my foot top and tried to get it removed, so only the shadow remains now, with the surprised face, mouth, and eyes, and Confederate cap. I felt the heat of a body, the weight of dirt on me. The snow stung my breasts. Tiny teeth they were, Mom, whispering whore into my ear. Twinkling stars, burning my eyes. Whore baby. Whore baby. I laid there on my side, watching Todd sleep, bawling. Brave Babs, who no one could ever tease or touch – remember? I cry because I hate Todd, Mom, I hate his innocence. I hate the way he makes me feel. Sometimes I look at little Jamie and hate him too. But I love him, God, I really do. I guess it’s just that he’ll always be part of someone else, a part I’ll never understand.

Well, I rambled here pretty good, Mom, but there is so much to say, it’s been so long. Todd always says I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time. Write or email me back, soon, okay? Please! It’s all right to say anything you want. Todd won’t read it though he’ll sniff around some. I can’t write any more right now, the boy knocked a glass of milk off the coffee table and Todd’s asking about dinner. So write. Don’t call. I don’t think I could talk to you just yet. I love you. I do.

Take care.

Your loving daughter,

Babs (Mrs. Todd Singletary!)

Mr. Singletary:

I am the mother of your wife…and I know you. Though we have never met, there is none that I know so well as you. Your voice crackles in my ear. You roar like fire, uncontrolled and controlling. You ravish my world. When I played your loving mother, upon your knee, you promised me the earth, the ocean, and the glorious sky; your gifts, your words, never would they leave my side. Later, as a lover, you proffered your lap in yet another form. Your element was air; the metaphysics of love, your desire. These would last forever, you claimed, as the earth and the sky and the water had not yielded to time, though their promise of meaning be transformed. You whispered to my willing sex, “Give,” and I took your world inside me, where it lived to destroy. Now I call you son, sun to my daughter’s arid life. How faithful have your words been. How permanent your rule. You fill the earth with sand, the sky with forgiveness. Beware, God. Leave! Leave now before it is too late. She does not need your silence. Your love is frozen rain; you shadow her dreams. Should your temple split open, it shall not be to spring another history of yourself: A fury unlike hell or heaven will have descended upon you to rip you from your throne with a shriek of talons.

Ed. J. Killabrew

Editor

Dialogue

Albuquerque, NM 43678

11/10/2020

J.S. Bocchi

7 Stonehenge Court

Savannah, GA 31401

Dear Dr. Bocchi,

Thank you for the epistolary triptych (of sorts). It was one of the most interesting things to cross our desk in some time. We’re sorry to say, though, that we cannot accept it for publication as it now stands. Of course, it’s always a good idea to read a sample copy of Dialogue before submitting. Your “Allegorical Illustrations” comes close to what we have in mind, the regional aspect of the central letter makes it a strong candidate. Yet, some minor modifications and clarifications may be called for. Here are a few of the comments and suggestions that surfaced during our discussion:

The use of your own name is too problematical and perhaps too edgy and confusing for our audience. (It also presented some problems for our readers, who weren’t quite sure how your fictional concerns played in with the plight of young Barbara.)
The first letter is a bit too blackly comical, given the story. The distance established by that bureaucratized prose creates a pricking texture that, in the other two letters, seems no longer to be useful and in fact detracts from their realism and power. The style approaches a sardonic slapstick that must quickly yield to a more endearing voice.
Tone down the “humanity” in the second letter. It’s overly sentimental, moving toward cliché. Perhaps this is an over-compensation for the Szinsznyck communique?
The transcendence of the final voice seems contrived to some extent. The escape from the male-dominated world you’ve envisioned has not been carried off, not fully in any case. What remains is the mere implication of power, mythic perhaps, but ultimately apocryphal. You may need to introduce the “father” at this point; he’s so enigmatically eluded the work from the start, it seems only proper that the readers hear from him now and that the business of reconciliation be commenced.

Again, we are very much interested in this. Should you decide to follow up on our comments, we’d be glad to take another look at “Allegorical Illustrations of Common Household Plans.”

Sincerely,

Dr. Joseph Bocchi has been a writer and professor of writing for more than 40 years. Now retired, he teaches online writing courses for Excelsior College, where he was Faculty Program Director of Writing until 2018. His writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, both academic and popular. His 1982 short story “The Seed,” set in Georgia, which won third place out of 9,000 entries in Twilight Zone Magazine’s first short story contest, with judges Harlan Ellison, Peter Straub, John Matheson, and Carol Serling? (Volume 2, number 1 (April, 1982). http://twilightzonevortex.blogspot.com/2019/05/reading-rod-serlings-twilight-zone.html His research and case studies have appeared in a number of scholarly journals. Because as a doctoral student in writing he chose professional, business, and technical writing, his university teaching has focused primarily on those genres. He has worked in human resources and marketing communications at national companies.

DM

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