March 06, 2005

10:58 p.m.

Putting on Jocelyn's Clothes

She was a slip of a thing. Smaller than me; maybe a 6, sometimes an 8. Wide eyes and cheekbones, wide heart. Skilled fingers, trained eye; she painted, sculpted, wrote poetry. She had the means and the motivation to make art her life and world; she loved art, she taught it. She filled her house with it. She owned many hats.

Her house was a showplace -- studies, and finished pieces, and works in progress. Self portraits, one upturned face with open hands, happy; one blue and dark and tortured. Drawings for a statue of John Keats, to be placed in a London museum. Paintings of Haitian women and men, inspired by her visits there; black busts with powerful bones and thick lips and blazing eyes, hair like snakes.

I saw the house after she died in 2002. Dar took me there and, though I'd never met her, I wandered through the silent rooms gazing at the outflow of her creative soul. He had played a song, a hymn I'd written, in her hospital room as she passed over. She had never accepted death, never made it welcome. She refused to acknowledge its approach, even as the sound of hoofs came up from the street. She left her house as she'd lived in it, with brushes ready to be picked up and clothes ready to be put on.

Somehow I came into possession of the beautiful clay bust of a woman. It was leaning against the window casing in Jocelyn's living room. She was made of white clay that had been hastily brushed with an ochre paint, and one of her hands had broken off. Still, she was magnificent. Such a beautiful face, with a regal nose and slightly pouty lips, hollow cheeks and downcast eyes. Hair pulled loosely back into a bun at the nape; arms crossed protectively just above the breasts. She wore nothing; her bare shoulders were an embrace in themselves. She was so real I almost kissed her. A few weeks later Dar showed up with her, wrapped protectively and placed in a box. Jocelyn's best friend Lisa had given her to me. I wrote and said that I was a caretaker, and if she ever needed the red lady back I would return her.

Dar had a pedestal built of cherry wood, and I placed her in a corner of the living room. She is very heavy and fragile. I talk to her sometimes, addressing her sometimes as the red lady and sometimes as Jocelyn. Once I put a red hat on her and danced with the radio on. I ask her my most difficult questions, though I know she can't answer, not out loud. I look at her from different angles, because she is breathtaking, her head turned to one side, her chin leaning against the phantom hand. At times she seems to be sad, at others pleased.

It has been two years since Jocelyn died, after a long and ugly struggle with cancer. Lisa was in charge of dispersing all her possessions, and there were so many works of art she didn't know what to do with them. They took over the basement and the bookcases and the side rooms; they spilled over into the living room and the staircase and the porch. Finally her husband said, enough; they have to go somewhere. Dar called me up and said, can you come to Lisa's house? We went last Thursday for dinner.

Lisa had found someone who could repair clay sculptures, and as there were several at her house that needed mending, we decided to bring the red lady in as well. I had kept the hand wrapped up in a plastic bag at home, but it needed someone very skilled, as part of the wrist was missing. We said that Dar would come get it and bring it back to Lisa, to take in with the other pieces.

While there I saw a couple of pictures of Lisa with Jocelyn; they looked so young, back in the 70s. Happy and in the moment. Joce was the sweetest thing, Lisa said; flirty and benevolent and cute as all get out. Dar said, she was the kind of person who made you feel like the most important person in the world. Her family had money; once she donated $100,000 to a women's shelter. She was like that.

Lisa took us into the basement and showed us the "first lot." There are several more boxes, apparently, which she hasn't even unpacked yet. She pleaded with us to take some things; her husband kept making jokes about hoping we'd come with a truck. Dar chose a wonderful man's head and I chose a beautiful little white goat, and an African-looking woman's head, painted black, turned skyward and either wailing or singing. It was about half life size, and amazingly heavy. All these pieces needed a little repair, so we didn't take them with us. There were also many large paintings, but my wall space was too limited for anything big.

Upstairs we looked at more paintings and I chose a wonderful Haitian woman with stunning rounded arms and shining hair. Dar found a study of a ballerina, painted exquisitely on a piece of corrugated cardboard. There were others. A stained glass piece, as big as the bottom half of a window, of a guitar. I loved it but thought surely Lisa would want to keep it, so I said nothing. There was a cabinet of hats she hadn't even gone through yet. "And," she said, "here's a box of her vintage clothes. Do you like clothes?"

We went down to dinner, and afterwards I came up and Lisa opened the box of clothes for me. There were a lot of 70s clothes, almost peasant-style, and some beaded handbags and a satin brocade dress in the Chinese style. Several pairs of wonderful, baggy satin pants. Two sweaters handed down from her grandmother; one, yellow with embroidery on it and buttons made of little wooden doll figures, and the other a dark blue with thick white beadwork around the neck and down the front. Innumerable dresses and tops. I took a few things into the next room and began to try them on.

Jocelyn was a slip of a thing. Smaller than me, by several sizes. Almost nothing fit, but every time I slipped something over my head I thought of her, watching, seeing me putting on her clothes. I thought of her wearing the clothes, choosing them, her living body moving around in these fabrics, looking at life in her artist's way. Happy or tortured, but always looking, always reflecting what she saw on the canvas or in the clay. The blue sweater fit. It was an unusual style for me but I didn't want it to go to a stranger who didn't know that it had been her grandmother's. The other thing that fit, oddly enough, was a parchment-colored satin slip. It looks vintage; the lace and eyelet work around the bodice are not contemporary. The straps are ever so thin. It was very wrinkled from being crushed in the box for so long. But it fit. I folded it back up and put it with the sweater.

The Chinese brocade dress was made for a fairy; other items were made for elves, or blithe spirits, or children. I found myself trying to fit not just into Jocelyn's clothes, but into her body. She wanted so badly to be here; she wanted to stay. I knew these were just things, but I felt somehow that if I imbued them with life, some of it would pass on to her.

Then I went into the hat cabinet and found a wide brimmed, burnt orange felt hat with a flurry of brown feathers all round the brim. I rather shyly mentioned it to Lisa, who hadn't gone through the hats yet, and after a minute or two she said, "Why don't you just take the hat now?" She insisted, so I put it on my head and wore it home.

It's hard for Lisa to get through it all. Aside from the sheer volume of items, it also means letting go of Jocelyn. That's been the hardest part. Joce lived with Lisa and her family for the final year of her life, and her imprint on the house is reflective of her imprint on Lisa's heart.

Somehow I have come into this circle, become part of a circumference of which Jocelyn is the hub, because of a song that meant something to her as she struggled to stay alive. I never even met her. I wish I had. It's so strange to think that someone, still so very much alive in the hearts of her loved ones, has actually moved on. I wish to God I'd had the privilege of hearing her voice, her laugh, her latest idea. What I have instead: the sweater, the slip, the hat. One red lady, one wailing black African, and one little white goat.