KELLI ANNE NOFTLE
Before She Was Olive
BEFORE SHE WAS OLIVE, she wanted to float the belief that
life could alter dramatically. She would test it out across the baptismal pool,
five feet deep, at three years old. She was small. She slipped under
soundlessly. Not so much as a splash.
Less than a minute after—the interruption of heaven?—a stranger reached in and
pulled her to the surface. Could she swim—not quite, she knew—against his hands—not
yet strong enough to tear away the powder blue pinafore, a twisted lattice
soaked and swaddled around her skull…
Frilly, almost doll-like. They had to wring it out to find her body.
Her mother sobbed. Her father blamed the organ pipes. It’s nobody’s fault someone repeated enough times for it to seem true. Only Catholics use real wine. Only good hymnals for God-fearing Protestants. Only believers hold these tasteless wafers on the tongue passing plastic trays with thimble-sized cups of thin purple juice. These, the symbols of redemption? More than just a metaphor for the body and the blood. It is not one person’s fault but it is everybody’s sin. They raised their hands above their faces. Lord we lift your name on high. The body and the blood. Lord we love to sing your praises.
And on that morning, after communion, nobody saw her wobbling toward the water behind the cedar pulpit. Or else not one body wanted to believe. In a living altar. And yet there he was, this man, a stranger, hoisting her into the air, the heavy pinafore hanging on her bones like soggy fur.
She had to wring out their voices in order to hear herself. Her own story, persisting with questions:
If the water fills you, do you stop floating?
If your head leaks, do you stop breathing?
Do you know what rain tastes like at the end of a tunnel?
If there’s a stone, how do you move?
Have you seen yourself in the length of the lake?
Does it get warmer closer to the edge?
You know what afterlife smells like?
How does it sound to breathe inside a hollow?
What if you’re already inside the shell?
How long do you float for?
How far?
Did you feel the dark place before?
Is it a bubble you hold with your teeth?
Is it the surface that casts a shadow?
Do you trust yourself to go below?
This, the Olive before she was—this Olive of water, anointed by oil. Olive as the Olive is alive today drifting in and out of sleepy memory-dream in her bathtub with a glass of Red in her hands.
Before she was a person. Or had the idea to be one.
It wasn’t many years later (beliefs sink) that Olive’s mother fell in love with the minister of music. Her father caught them in the back of an old Buick, kissing.
If it breathes, Olive knew, it can surely drown.
The church became a gymnasium with chairs that folded into the walls and electric guitars buzzed and echoed. Their pastor continued submerging disciples, in a custom designed pool surrounded by tea light candles. Is there a life for this kind of alteration?
Buried in the likeness of His death, raised in the likeness of His resurrection.
The man, that stranger, who saved her life (or so everyone believed)—she learned he moved to China, delivering bibles to the communists. Olive never knew his name.
Olive’s father told her (over five cups of very strong coffee):
She made you sing on Mother’s Day. You were six. You had a fever of one hundred and two.
Great is thy faithfulness
Near the pulpit, singing. There are so many things I can’t tell you. That morning…you see…that morning I had to…make her...it’s funny now but I can’t remember the song…
Morning by morning
I told her to drive you home, you were wrapped in a towel. I had to make her… learn compassion. It’s funny how the ones we love require mercy.
New mercies I see--
You were shivering, the Dodge minivan, we had a flat tire—you dropped the microphone I think—near the pulpit it was loud and hissing and all I could see—the parking lot—we couldn’t go anywhere…isn’t it something how the one you love will ultimately disappoint you?
Thy compassions they fail not
The flat tire took forever and she was impatient she was not faithful so I hit her. On the face that time. I had to.
Great is thy faithfulness Great is thy faithfulness
No one could know. She made you sing because she said they wanted to hear you. On Mother’s Day. I said we would take you back home. Put you in your own bed. You were shivering but your skin felt like fire.
As thou hast been, thou forever will be…
I know now there are so many things I could never tell you. No one can know what will happen, what will be. It was so long ago. You were only six years old. You had a fever of one hundred and two.
AFTER HER MOTHER WAS GONE, one night, Olive saw Jesus coming back. The sky lit florescent green, strangling the oak trees inside a thick neon pulse. Everything outside the windows buzzed, covered in a radioactive slime. Her father said it must have been a nearby portable generator exploding. They’d lost electricity because of the ice storm. For almost five days they had to sleep downstairs next to the wood stove. Olive washed her hair in an iron skillet each morning. The sky was apocryphal, hideous and for one half second Olive imagined she’d heard the tinny sound of miniature trumpets announcing His Return but everything went black again and the wood stove crackled its own music and she knew immediately she’d been left behind. It was the first big disappointment since her mother had moved to another town. Olive was on a losing streak—her second bottom tooth lodged inside a Granny Smith, their silver toy poodle given to a family friend—and this devastation, that He somehow missed her name or else purposely erased it from The Lamb’s Book of Life. The Son of God had no use for Olive either.
Frilly, almost doll-like. They had to wring it out to find her body.
Her mother sobbed. Her father blamed the organ pipes. It’s nobody’s fault someone repeated enough times for it to seem true. Only Catholics use real wine. Only good hymnals for God-fearing Protestants. Only believers hold these tasteless wafers on the tongue passing plastic trays with thimble-sized cups of thin purple juice. These, the symbols of redemption? More than just a metaphor for the body and the blood. It is not one person’s fault but it is everybody’s sin. They raised their hands above their faces. Lord we lift your name on high. The body and the blood. Lord we love to sing your praises.
And on that morning, after communion, nobody saw her wobbling toward the water behind the cedar pulpit. Or else not one body wanted to believe. In a living altar. And yet there he was, this man, a stranger, hoisting her into the air, the heavy pinafore hanging on her bones like soggy fur.
She had to wring out their voices in order to hear herself. Her own story, persisting with questions:
If the water fills you, do you stop floating?
If your head leaks, do you stop breathing?
Do you know what rain tastes like at the end of a tunnel?
If there’s a stone, how do you move?
Have you seen yourself in the length of the lake?
Does it get warmer closer to the edge?
You know what afterlife smells like?
How does it sound to breathe inside a hollow?
What if you’re already inside the shell?
How long do you float for?
How far?
Did you feel the dark place before?
Is it a bubble you hold with your teeth?
Is it the surface that casts a shadow?
Do you trust yourself to go below?
This, the Olive before she was—this Olive of water, anointed by oil. Olive as the Olive is alive today drifting in and out of sleepy memory-dream in her bathtub with a glass of Red in her hands.
Before she was a person. Or had the idea to be one.
It wasn’t many years later (beliefs sink) that Olive’s mother fell in love with the minister of music. Her father caught them in the back of an old Buick, kissing.
If it breathes, Olive knew, it can surely drown.
The church became a gymnasium with chairs that folded into the walls and electric guitars buzzed and echoed. Their pastor continued submerging disciples, in a custom designed pool surrounded by tea light candles. Is there a life for this kind of alteration?
Buried in the likeness of His death, raised in the likeness of His resurrection.
The man, that stranger, who saved her life (or so everyone believed)—she learned he moved to China, delivering bibles to the communists. Olive never knew his name.
Olive’s father told her (over five cups of very strong coffee):
She made you sing on Mother’s Day. You were six. You had a fever of one hundred and two.
Great is thy faithfulness
Near the pulpit, singing. There are so many things I can’t tell you. That morning…you see…that morning I had to…make her...it’s funny now but I can’t remember the song…
Morning by morning
I told her to drive you home, you were wrapped in a towel. I had to make her… learn compassion. It’s funny how the ones we love require mercy.
New mercies I see--
You were shivering, the Dodge minivan, we had a flat tire—you dropped the microphone I think—near the pulpit it was loud and hissing and all I could see—the parking lot—we couldn’t go anywhere…isn’t it something how the one you love will ultimately disappoint you?
Thy compassions they fail not
The flat tire took forever and she was impatient she was not faithful so I hit her. On the face that time. I had to.
Great is thy faithfulness Great is thy faithfulness
No one could know. She made you sing because she said they wanted to hear you. On Mother’s Day. I said we would take you back home. Put you in your own bed. You were shivering but your skin felt like fire.
As thou hast been, thou forever will be…
I know now there are so many things I could never tell you. No one can know what will happen, what will be. It was so long ago. You were only six years old. You had a fever of one hundred and two.
AFTER HER MOTHER WAS GONE, one night, Olive saw Jesus coming back. The sky lit florescent green, strangling the oak trees inside a thick neon pulse. Everything outside the windows buzzed, covered in a radioactive slime. Her father said it must have been a nearby portable generator exploding. They’d lost electricity because of the ice storm. For almost five days they had to sleep downstairs next to the wood stove. Olive washed her hair in an iron skillet each morning. The sky was apocryphal, hideous and for one half second Olive imagined she’d heard the tinny sound of miniature trumpets announcing His Return but everything went black again and the wood stove crackled its own music and she knew immediately she’d been left behind. It was the first big disappointment since her mother had moved to another town. Olive was on a losing streak—her second bottom tooth lodged inside a Granny Smith, their silver toy poodle given to a family friend—and this devastation, that He somehow missed her name or else purposely erased it from The Lamb’s Book of Life. The Son of God had no use for Olive either.
Kelli Anne Noftle’s first book of poems, I Was There For Your Somniloquy, was the winner of the 2010 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. She lives in Los Angeles and makes music under the name Miniature Soap. www.kelliannenoftle.com
