Free A Separate Country by Robert Hicks

character. But he had learned to find different sorts of fights. He fought for love, for instance. Believe me when I say he didn’t understand the first thing about love when we met. But with love, the struggle replenishes, the combatant rarely fails to rise. You were born the next day, our first child.

    I hope that you never leave this city. I hope you will love it as I have, imperfectly, inconstantly, but passionately. I am captured by this town of my ancestors, by the heat and milky bright light, by the smell of sweet olives. There has been little for me but this city. I wonder if I could breathe the air outside New Orleans, whether I would drown. Has any person ever been so perfectly formed by such a small place? It can’t be left behind: the streets I walked on, the doors I entered, the steeples I navigated by, the bright and ringing crystal I raised to my lips, the river, the carriages, the gliding crowds of nuns. I could see myself laid out in every direction, street for blood and building for bone. I am glad of this place only because I could not survive anywhere else.
    I remember days in my peignoir, reclining below the window, the breeze lying on me and gliding over me, the men on the banquette stealing glances and hurrying off, eyes cast down. This was New Orleans, too, the city I had made. A funny city arrayed between the flesh and the cross. Paris had been that way, though older and weighed down by centuries.
Its
flesh sagged,
its
crosses gathered dust, but my home was young and avid for both cross and flesh. None of those men passing by my window and stealing glimpses of the girl draped in lace would have guessed I had a volume of Livy open in my lap, and a slender copy of
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
under my pillow. I was a young woman and all around me things ripened when I passed, or they were made new again.
    This was the woman who married your father, who met him at another senseless ball, another night of light across dark gardens, sweet dough frying, the hollow thump of my shoes on thick carpet, violins glistening on the shoulders of black-suited young men. The geometry of the parquet stretched out in every direction, uninterrupted by the twirl and slide of bodies orbiting each other like planets, their gravities stronger every minute. The servants laughed and made jokes at the top of the stairs, performing their own dance and coming together by their own physical laws. They spoke French.

    No, this is not precisely the woman who met your father. I must try again. Why do I write this? It is this pen. It is smooth and black, edged in gold with a gold nib. It fits my hand perfectly, as if it isn’t there. I’ve never noticed it before, but how many inanities have I forced through it onto paper? Thousands. Letters and notes crossing the city year after year. Have I written anything to remember me by? This pen questions me. Will I write something of use? It is a beautiful pen.
    You could not understand the girl who met the General without meeting the girl who flung her clothes off for the thrill of being watched, who remained chaste even so, and who slippered about the streets like a Helen without a war and no idea how to start one. Silly girl, I still love her. But do not let me catch you posing nude for old men, Lydia. I have friends at a convent that would take you,
chère
.
    I was a young woman but still a child, stepping along the banquettes with my dress caught up in my hand to avoid the mud and the sharp corners of the boxes piled everywhere. Young and beautiful. What has happened to that skin, that shiny hair? Who was that girl? I hardly recognize her now. She was buoyed by desire, it carried her down toward the opera house: her desire and the desire of the men who lingered in the dissipating fog of her lavender scent. I remember that she wanted to be touched, and yet on every block down Royal and over toward the Opera she was not even brushed in passing. Crowds parted, children ceased