Amy Gerstler

For My Niece Sidney, Age Six

Did you know that boiling to death

was once a common punishment

in England and parts of Europe?

It's true. In 1542 Margaret Davy,

a servant, was boiled for poisoning

her employer. So says the encyclopedia.

That's the way I like to start my day:

drinking hot black coffee and reading

the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica.

Its pages are tissue thin and the covers

rub off on your hands in dirt colored

crumbs (the kind a rubber eraser

makes) but the prose voice is all knowing

and incurably sure of itself. My 1956

World Book runs to 18 volumes and has red

pebbly covers. It begins at "Aardvark"

and ends with "Zygote." I used to believe

you could learn everything you'd ever

need by reading encyclopedias. Who

was EB Browning? How many Buddhists

in Burma? What is Byzantine art? Where

do bluebells grow? These days, I own five

sets of encyclopedias from various

eras. None of them ever breathed

a word about the fact that this humming,

aromatic, acid flashback, pungent, tingly-

fingered world is acted out differently

for each one of us by the puppet theatre

of our senses. Some of us grow up doing

credible impressions of model citizens

(though sooner or later hairline

cracks appear in our facades). The rest

get dubbed eccentrics, unnerved and undone

by other people's company, for which we

nevertheless pine. Curses, outbursts

and distracting chants simmer all day

long in the crock-pots of our heads.

Encyclopedias contain no helpful entries

on conducting life's business while the ruckus

in your skull keeps competing for your

attention; or on the tyranny of the word

"normal"--its merciless sway over those

of us bedeviled and obsessed,

hopeless at school dances, repelled by

mothers' suffocating hugs, yet entranced

by foul smelling chemistry experiments,

or eager to pass sleepless nights seeking

rhymes for "misspent" and "grimace."

Dear girl, your jolly blond one year old

brother, who adults adore, fits into

the happy category of souls mostly at home

in the world. He tosses a fully clothed doll

into the inflatable wading pool in your

backyard (splash!) and laughs maniacally

at his own comic genius. You sit alone,

twenty feet from everyone else, on a stone

bench under a commodious oak, reading aloud,

gripping your book like the steering wheel

of a race car you're learning to drive.

Complaints about you are already filtering

in. You're not big on eye contact or smiling.

You prefer to play by yourself. You pitch fits.

Last week you refused to cut out and paste

paper shapes with the rest of the kids.

You told the kindergarten teacher you were

going to howl like a wolf instead, which you did

till they hauled you off to the principal's

office. Ah, the undomesticated smell

of open rebellion! Your troublesome legacy,

and maybe part of your charm, is to shine

too hotly and brightly at times, to be lost

in the maze of your sensations, to have

trouble switching gears, to be socially

clueless, to love books as living things,

and therefore to be much alone. If you like,

when I die, I'll leave you my encyclopedias.

They're wonderful company. Watching you

read aloud in your father's garden, as if

declaiming a sermon for hedges, I recall

reading about Martin Luther this morning.

A religious reformer born in 1483, he nailed

his grievances, all 95 of them, to a German

church door. Fiery, impossible, untamable

girl, I bet you too post your grievances

in a prominent place someday. Anyway,

back to boiling. The encyclopedia says

the worst offenders were "boiled without

benefit of clergy" which I guess means

they were denied the right to speak

to a priest before being lowered into scalding

water and cooked like beets. Martin Luther

believed we human beings contain the "inpoured

grace of god," as though grace were lemonade,

and we are tumblers brim full of it. Is grace

what we hold in without spilling a drop,

or is it an outflooding, a gush of messy

befuddling loves? The encyclopedia never

explains why Margaret Davy poisoned her employer,

what harm he might have done her or whether

she dripped the fatal liquid on his pudding or sloshed

it into his sherry. Grievances and disagreements:

can they lead the way to grace? If our thoughts

and feelings were soup or stew, would they taste

of bile when we're defeated and be flavored

faintly with grace on better days? I await the time

and place when you can tell me, little butter pear,

screeching monkey mind, wolf cub, curious furrow

browed mammal what you think of all this.

Till then, your bookish old aunt sends you this missive,

a fumbling word of encouragement, a cockeyed letter

of welcome to the hallowed ranks of the nerds,

nailed up nowhere, and never sent, this written kiss.