Just As I Thought (38 page)

I was also vexed at myself for brooding about such an inconsequential matter as food, while there were such important things to do, or at least to read, like the
Principles of Psychology
by William James, just translated into Russian. I recalled with nostalgia the good old days when my pen was unfettered and my mind was busy with the fashioning of all kinds of legal barbs.

I might have hesitated another week or two if it had not been for an occurrence that resolved my doubts and prompted quick action.

I do not recall whether it was on the third or fourth week of my
“zharkoye”
era. It was about twelve o’clock and I was awaiting Grishka with his aromatic stew. I came closer to the window. A foul odor took my breath away. I asked a passing turnkey what the matter was.

“The sewer broke down again. This dump!” he said contemptuously. The same thing had happened two months ago. It gave me then a reason and an opportunity to compose one of my most brilliant legal papers.

A heavy weight was suddenly lifted off my chest. I saw clearly where my duty as well as my inclinations lay.

I turned sharply at the sound of the opening door through which Grishka and his stew were coming and hardly gave him a chance to cross the threshold.

“Away! Take it away and never bring it again,” I shouted. While the bewildered Grishka was backing out, I spied the turnkey standing behind him.

“Kuzma!” I said firmly, “I want a sheet of paper, pen and ink. At once!”

My Father at Eighty-five

My father said

                         how will they get out of it

                         they’re sorry they got in

My father says

                         how will they get out

                         Nixon     Johnson     the whole bunch

                         they don’t know how

goddamnit he says

                         I’d give anything to see it

                         they went in over their heads

he says

                         greed     greed     time

                         nothing is happening fast enough

My Father at Eighty-nine

His brain simplified itself

saddening everyone     but he

asked us     children

don’t you remember my dog Mars

who met me on the road

when I came home     lonesome

and singing     walking

from the Czar’s prison

Notes

II / Continuing

Everybody Tells the Truth

Conversations in Moscow

Cop Tales

Pressing the Limits of Action

1. An interview with Grace Paley by Meredith Smith and Karen Kahn.

El Salvador

Some Notes on Teaching: Probably Spoken

Imagining the Present

The Gulf War

Connections

How Come?

Publication History

These essays have also appeared in the following publications: “Injustice”:
Global City,
1955; “The Illegal Days”:
The Choices We Made,
1991; “Six Days: Some Rememberings”:
Alaska Quarterly,
1994/1995; “Traveling”:
The New Yorker,
1997; “Peacemeal”:
Greenwich Village Peace Center Cookbook,
1973; “Other Mothers”:
Esquire,
December 1995;
Feminist Studies,
1978; “Two Villages”:
WIN,
1969; “Report from North Vietnam”:
WIN,
1969; “Everybody Tells the Truth”:
WIN,
1971; “The Man in the Sky Is a Killer”:
The New York Times,
1972; “Thieu Thi Tao: Case History of a Prisoner of Politics”:
American Report,
1974; “Conversations in Moscow”:
WIN,
1974; “Other People’s Children”:
Ms.,
1975; “Demystified Zone”:
Seven Days,
1980; “Some History on Karen Silkwood Drive”:
Seven Days,
1979; “Cop Tales”:
Seven Days,
1979; “Women’s Pentagon Action Unity Statement”:
Seven Days,
1982; “The Seneca Stories: Tales from the Women’s Peace Encampment”:
Ms.,
1983; “Pressing the Limits of Action”:
Resist Newsletter,
1984; “Of Poetry and Women and the World”:
TriQuarterly Review,
1986–87; “El Salvador”:
A Dream Compels Us,
1989; “Some Notes on Teaching: Probably Spoken”:
Writers as Teachers, Teachers as Writers,
1970; “One Day I Made Up a Story”:
War Resisters Calender,
1985; “Note in Which Answers Are Questioned”:
WRL Calender,
1977; “Christa Wolf”:
What Remains,
1992; “Coat upon a Stick”:
Jewish Publication Society,
1987; “Language: On Clarice Lispector”:
Soulstorm,
1989; “Isaac Babel”:
By His Side,
1996; “About Donald Barthelme: Some Nearly Personal Notes”:
Gulf Coast,
1990; “Thinking about Barbara Deming”:
Prisons That Could Not Hold Spinsters Inc.,
1985; “Feelings in the Presence of the Sight and Sound of the Bread and Puppet Theater”:
WRL Calendar,
1983; “Claire Lalone”:
Long Walks and Intimate Talks,
1991; “The Gulf War”:
The Gulf Between Us,
1991; “Questions”:
Pictures of Peace,
1991; “How Come?”:
Fourteenth Moon,
1991; “Upstaging Time”:
Lear’s,
1989; “Life in the Country: A City Friend Asks, ‘Is It Boring?’”:
Long Walks and Intimate Talks,
1991; “Across the River”:
Seven Days,
1978; “In a Vermont Jury Room”:
Seven Days,
1977; “Introduction to a Haggadah”:
The Shalom Sedevz New Jewish Agenda,
1984; “My Father at Eighty-five”:
New and Selected Poems,
1991; “My Father at Eighty-nine”:
New and Selected Poems,
1991.

“Like All the Other Nations” was a talk given at a Tikkun Conference in December, 1988; “The Value of Not Understanding Everything” was a talk given at Barnard College in the mid-1960s; “Imagining the Present” was a talk given at the Teachers & Writers Collaborative in 1996; “Kay Boyle” was a talk given at a tribute to Kay Boyle organized by the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994; “Connections” was a talk given at Harvard University in 1991.

Also by Grace Paley

The Little Disturbances of Man

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

Later the Same Day

Leaning Forward

Long Walks and Intimate Talks

New and Collected Poems

The Collected Stories

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

19 Union Square West, New York 10003

Copyright © 1998 by Grace Paley

All rights reserved

First edition, 1998

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eISBN 9781466883970

First eBook edition: September 2014