Moll Flanders, Zia Louisa, and Me
Ah, Moll Flanders, of all the characters
in those novels I read when I was still young and in grad school,
it's you I remember,
flamboyant, sensual, in love with life.
You always looked for the “Main Chance”
and I, who can barely remember a name
five minutes after I hear it, remember yours.
I knew you were self-serving, but I loved
that you never lied about it,
that you never made excuses,
and I imagine you trying to make your way
in 17th Century England, where a woman on her own
would have been vulnerable, a victim.
You remind me of my Zia Louisa,
that woman who married four times,
who wore
a tan-colored corset with lace stays
that had to be pulled tight to hold in
her large breasts and belly,
who loved to dance the Tarantella,
her whole body exhilarating
in moving and stomping.
And though I know Moll only through a male writer’s portrayal,
I know Zia Louisa from my childhood,
watched her move
like an armored vehicle through life,
past three dead husbands and onto a fourth,
handsome, elegant Zio Guillermo.
They lived in the small apartment above us
on 17th Street in Paterson, NJ.
My mother told me that in the night she’d hear
Zia Louisa crying, but in the morning
she’d come down the back steps,
her cotton dress stiff with starch,
her lace handkerchief tucked in her sleeve,
and she’d be smiling and laughing.
She never told my mother
what sorrow she carried hidden in her sleeve.
The world does not need to know;
it only wants to pretend nothing is wrong,
and you are mistaken
if you think you heard wild sobbing
in the night.
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, from her poetry collection, When the Stars Were Still Visible
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